One day that week I looked up from my untouched lunch and saw my mother in the doorway of the school dining room. She was watching me. I knew it could not be my mother. But the woman looked exactly like my mother. I closed my eyes and when I opened them the woman was gone.
One week later men arrived early in the morning and brought large barrels into the apartment. I looked at the barrels and felt a trembling begin inside me. Alex stared and grew very still. My mother began to pack up the apartment, with the help of my uncle and aunt. Sometimes Saul came over, too; but he always had schoolwork and was quickly sent home.
Slowly the kitchen cabinets were emptied; walls became bare; rugs were rolled up and stacked against walls; mirrors were carefully taken down; closets became cavernous; the contents of drawers were carefully sifted and selections made for the trash can or the moving van. The drapes were taken down. The apartment began to fill with empty spaces; the empty spaces sent back echoes of our voices.
Night after night my father sat in his living room chair and watched the slow disintegration of the apartment. At first, he had tried to help my mother with the packing. But he seemed unable to participate in the breakup of the house. He would tire easily. A bewildered look would come into his eyes. One night he watched my uncle and aunt move furniture and roll up the living room rug. His chair had been moved over to the wall near the canary who sat in its cage, perched on one leg, puffed up and swaying slightly, and silent for days. My father watched the parquet floor expand as my aunt and uncle rolled up the exotic birds and flowers and jungle animals populating our living room floor and then pushed the carpet to the wall opposite the sofa. His eyes glowed dully.
“God in heaven, Meyer,” I heard him mutter. “What is happening to us? What are you doing to my house?”
“I know what I’m doing, Max,” my uncle said. “Rest. Take it easy. Why don’t you go into the bedroom and lie down?”
“You are taking apart my house.”
“We have to move the end tables, Sarah,” my uncle said. “Be careful of the lamps.”
From inside the kitchen came the sounds of my mother emptying the cabinets, packing the silverware and dishes. The radio was on. The smooth voice came softly through the apartment, and the empty spaces near the walls and windows echoed with the words.
“How could you do this to me, Meyer?” asked my father, a dull bewildered look on his face. “This is how you repay me?”
“This is how I repay you. Later you will thank me.”
“We are brothers, Meyer!” My father’s attempt at a shout came out hoarsely and seemed to exhaust him immediately. He sat back in his chair, his arms limp and faintly quivering on his thighs. “You know what it means to be brothers, Meyer?”
“Yes,” said my uncle quietly, as he moved an end table with my aunt’s help.
“You do not know what it means. You are a Cossack! Sarah, how can you let him do this?”
My aunt straightened for a moment and wiped at her damp forehead with the back of her hand. She wore an old dress and her short dark hair was covered by a kerchief.
“Max, do you think Meyer would hurt you?”
My father looked at her sullenly out of the tops of his eyes and said nothing.
“We must move from here, Max. What’s left? Nothing. Echoes. Everyone’s gone. What’s the matter with you, Max? Do you need a war in order to be a man?”
“Sarah,” said my uncle quietly.
“Do you want your son to starve to death?” my aunt said. “He doesn’t eat in school. Look at him. Look at your son. Can’t you see what is happening?”
He turned his dark eyes upon me. I stood near the portiere and felt his eyes rake my face. His jaw hung slack. I could not bear to look at him.
“I do not understand,” he muttered. “What? David? What?” A film seemed to settle across his eyes. “David is what?” he said. “David? David?”
My uncle and aunt went to him quickly. They took him into his bedroom. I undressed and went to bed and watched the jumping and swarming of the creatures inside the darkness of my room.
I said to my mother the next morning, “Mama, are we moving because of me?”
“What do you mean?” she asked from the counter where cartons competed with breakfast dishes for space.
“Because I’m not eating?”
“No, darling. Of course not because of you. We have to move. Now we are moving sooner.”
“Why can’t I eat, Mama? I never feel hungry anymore.”
“Everything will be all right, darling. I promise you. Don’t you see how we are all working together? It will be all right. You should eat at least a little of your cereal, David.”
“I feel nauseous, Mama.”
“All right,” she said. “Drink your milk and go to school. Don’t keep Saul waiting in the cold.”
I woke with a sensation of dizziness the next morning and my mother told me to remain home. That afternoon Alex played in the living room and I sat near him staring out the window at the maple tree. My parents were in the kitchen. I looked at the cartons piled neatly one next to the other against the wall opposite the door to my parents’ bedroom. They had been removed from the bedroom the night before by my uncle so that they would not be a hazard in the darkness. Alex played quietly with his cars. I went over to the cartons. They had been loosely packed and it was not difficult to search through them. I found the photograph near the top of the third carton beneath a thin layer of letters written in a small delicate handwriting that I had never seen before. The letters were in Yiddish. I began to read the first one and put it down. Then I scooped out the letters and there was the photograph of the men with guns and knives in their hands in the ice and snow of a Polish forest. I looked carefully at the faces in the photograph. It felt odd to be holding in my hands the heart of the firm and solid world molded by my father at the very moment when that world had disintegrated. Standing there, surrounded by the disarray of the dismembered living room, I stared intently for a very long time at the photograph, remembering Mr. Bader’s study and my days in the forest when I had entered the rectangle in my hands and joined myself to my father’s friends. Now, as I peered into the snowy depths of the forest, the men seemed to stir. Before my eyes, as I watched, they moved slowly and silently from the world contained by the rectangle. One by one they slipped away, taking with them their guns and knives and flags until all I held in my hands was an empty forest through which blew the winds of an icy and indifferent winter. I replaced the photograph in the carton, covered it with the letters that had once been written by my father’s dead brother David to my mother, went over to the window and looked out at the gray street and the naked maple and the pages of old newspapers blowing in the wind.
The next day we moved into an apartment house on Washington Avenue two doors away from Eddie Kulanski.
In the rectangle that was my bedroom window I could see clearly the narrow cement channel of sunless alleyway that led from the street and ran alongside our ground-floor apartment. The bathroom and kitchen and living room windows also looked out upon the alleyway and from the two windows of my parents’ bedroom I saw the dense patches of weeds and brambles and the gray lagoon of cracked cement that was our back yard. Beyond the broken wooden fence that bordered the yard was another yard and another fence and more yards and more fences and the naked unbricked backsides of apartment houses and the rear of a furniture shop in a low building on Third Avenue and, finally, the dark looming girders of the elevated train. There were no trees.
Below my window a steep flight of iron stairs led from the alleyway to the cellar bakery under our apartment. Along the right side of the alleyway a stone wall rose to a height of about ten feet and became the brief cement plateau that met the red-brick side wall of the adjoining apartment house. Below our kitchen window, which I could see clearly from my bedroom, was the metal double door that led to the forbidden darkness of the basement and the furnace room and the last stop of the dumbwaiter. Cats loung
ed and played and fought one another among the cans of coal ash and garbage hauled out to the alleyway by the janitor, a big-bellied flaxen-haired Irishman with wet lips and inflamed eyelids who was often drunk. I kept away from him.
Early each night the janitor would turn off the steam and I would lie in my bed and listen to the radiator dying. The contracting metal made knocking sounds that echoed in the darkness. Then the cold came into the room like a mist filled with infinitesimal particles of stinging ice and soon Alex would begin to stir restlessly as he searched for the disappearing pockets of warmth beneath his covers. Then he woke and cried softly and called my name. This was not a cold I had ever felt before. It had in it not only the weather but the drab house and the slate-gray street and the worn faces of anguished people. I would take Alex into my bed and we would huddle together against the darkness and the cold. I slept, my brother’s body against mine, and was awakened in the predawn darkness by the hissing and spitting of the steam which the janitor sent shooting back into the radiators. My nights were spanned by the death and resurrection of the silver-painted loops of metal below the sill of my window. I dreaded the nights.
I woke and dressed and left Alex asleep in my bed. Carrying my schoolbag, I threaded my way carefully through the clutter of the living room where cartons lay still unopened and where the dinginess of the alleyway sent a pallid light across the furniture and the carpet bestiary on the floor. The hallway from the living room to the kitchen was long and dark, a bleak tunnel with a floor of creaking wood. My mother was in the kitchen, tired, very tired, circles of sleeplessness rimming her eyes. She would try to conceal the fatigue when she spoke.
“Good morning, darling.”
“Good morning, Mama. How is Papa feeling?”
“He is the same. But he will get better.”
That was the morning litany of those first days on the new street. I ate quickly and left the apartment.
The entrance hall of the house—white and green tile floor, gray walls—was bare and cavernous, filled with sudden pools of cold air. Along the street the wind blew cruelly and stung my eyes. I walked past the Chinese laundry, the tailor, the shoe repair shop, and paused at the newsstand in front of the candy store near the end of the block. There, briefly, I scanned the headlines and looked at the photographs and was awakened starkly to the day. Then I went to school.
In the rectangle of my classroom window I could see the street through which I had just walked. I listened to my teacher explaining the awesome double miracle of the plague of hail in the Book of Exodus—fire and ice simultaneously visited upon those who had enslaved the children of Israel—and saw my brother come out of the apartment house and enter the rectangle, dragging my old tricycle. I watched him riding it up and down the block. He rode skillfully, avoiding with ease the people who walked the street and the groups of playing children. Then my teacher asked me if I would be so good as to pay attention to the blackboard rather than the window. I turned my eyes upon the slate rectangle in front of the room and after a moment found that I had inserted within its borders a sharp unmoving picture of my brother on the tricycle. Then, abruptly, he moved and rode happily about, within the borders of the blackboard. It was an odd sensation, and vaguely satisfying. I closed my eyes for a long moment and when I opened them he was gone. I glanced out the window and there he was, riding around on the tricycle, bent forward over the handlebar and pumping away at the pedals.
During lunch, which I ate at home now, I said to Alex, “I saw you riding around this morning.”
“Was I good on it, Davey?”
“You were all right. You ride okay.”
“The wheels squeak a lot, Davey.”
“Ask Papa to fix them.”
“Leave your father alone,” said my mother from the sink. “He has other things on his mind now.”
“There’s a can of oil around somewhere. I’ll fix it for you, Alex.”
Sometimes my father would come in from the bedroom and sit at the kitchen table while we ate lunch. My mother would give him a glass of coffee and a buttered roll. Then she would serve herself and sit with us.
“You are doing your job in school?” my father asked me suddenly one day during lunch, giving me a sharp burning look.
“Yes, Papa.”
“Good. Good. That is the only job left now. There is nothing else.”
“Max, don’t you want your roll?” my mother asked quietly.
“Where is Meyer?” he said, turning to her. “Why isn’t Meyer here?”
“Meyer was here all last night, Max. You don’t remember?”
“What kind of brother does not help?”
“He helped me unpack, Max.”
“Is he moving? When is he moving?”
“In a few weeks.”
“In a few weeks? What is a few weeks?”
“In March.”
“Where is he when I need him? Doesn’t he realize I need him?”
“He will be here again tonight, Max.”
“Tonight?” He was silent a moment, his eyes clouding. His face, gaunt from his weeks of disinterest in food, had beneath the stubble a dull dead gray color. He turned abruptly to Alex. “Are you a good boy? Tell me.”
Alex, startled, jumped in his chair. “Yes, Papa.”
“You are? Is he a good boy, Ruth?”
“Yes, Max.”
“Your job is to be a good boy. Do you hear me, Alex?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“You must be a good boy and a good brother. Are you a good brother? Are you?”
“He’s a good brother, Papa,” I said.
“Yes?” He looked at me. His eyes glowed darkly. He was looking through me at someone behind me. But there was no one behind me. It made me feel cold on the back of my neck to see him looking at me that way. “You are satisfied he is a good brother?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“A brother must be good to his big brother. A big brother has a terrible job. Terrible. He must have help. God in heaven, where is Meyer?” His voice choked. He closed his eyes. I sat staring down at my food, trembling with dread.
“Meyer will be here tonight, Max,” my mother said again firmly, patiently. “Eat your roll. Shall I bring you another glass of coffee?”
He straightened abruptly and his eyes flew open. The sudden jerking movement of his body sent his tall black skullcap sliding to the floor. Without a word, my mother bent, picked it up, and placed it gently back upon his head. He seemed not to notice at all what she had done. He blinked his eyes rapidly and said, “The German maniac, what is he doing today?”
We were silent.
“What has he done? Where is my paper?”
“It’s in the bedroom, Max,” my mother said quietly.
“Nu, David? What? You are the brains. What is happening?”
I reported to him what I had read in the headlines and seen in the photographs.
He sat back in his chair, his heavy shoulders sagging. “There will be blood,” he muttered. “My nose smells it.” He turned his queer burning eyes upon me. “Tell me what to do and I will do it. You have the brains. We must do something. All the brains went to you. You have a job, David.” He raised his voice slightly. “Tell me what to do.”
I felt a shuddering take hold of me. I saw Alex gaping at him. I turned to my mother. Her eyes were very calm.
“Tell me what to do!” my father suddenly shouted with all the rage that was left in him. The shout echoed and reechoed through the apartment. Alex whimpered. I sat frozen to stone.
“Max,” said my mother very quickly. Then she leaned forward and spoke to him softly in Polish.
He became very still.
My mother sat back in her chair.
“What time is it, Ruth?” he asked, sounding dazed. He was not wearing his wrist watch.
She told him.
“The news is on.”
“We’ll hear the news another time, Max.”
He looked at the Ingersoll clock on th
e counter near the sink.
“Something is wrong with it,” my mother said. “It is slow. Maybe it was damaged when we moved. Please finish your roll, Max.”
“We should hear the news. We must know what the maniac is doing.”
“Will you eat your roll, Max?” said my mother. “You should eat it.”
He took a bite from the roll. We ate in silence for a while.
“Was there mail?” my father asked.
“Yes,” said my mother.
“From whom?”
“I will show it to you later, Max.”
He drank his coffee and finished the roll. He sat back in his chair, murmuring automatically the Grace After Meals. His robe had come undone. I could see his pajamas and the furlike thickness of hair on his chest.
“Are they coming?” he asked when he was done.
“No,” said my mother. A cloud covered her eyes and was immediately gone.
“They are all staying?” He sounded incredulous.
“I will show you the letters.”
“Not now. I want to lie down now.”
She helped him to his feet.
“I am tired. Why am I so tired, Ruth? What did Weidman say?”
They were in the hallway. I heard my mother answer, “He said you will be all right.”
“Yes? When? Ah, what does he know anyway? The Bratzlaver was right. Doctors are messengers of the Angel of Death.”
I was alone in the kitchen with Alex.
“I’m scared, Davey,” Alex said.
“Papa will be all right.”
“I have bad dreams about him, Davey.”
I was silent for a moment. Then I said, “I think I remember where that oil is. I’ll fix the bike. Then I’ve got to get to school. I don’t want to be late again.”
But I was late again anyway and drew a withering look from my English teacher as I entered the class and slid into my seat. Later, in the rectangle of window, I saw my mother walk to the grocery store at the far end of the block. She walked very quickly, a short slim figure in a dark coat and with a scarf about her head. Then I saw her walk back, carrying the blue cloth shopping bag. A while later my brother entered the rectangle and rode up and down the street on the tricycle. I thought I could hear the smooth turning of the wheels. It had been a good feeling to fix it.