by Chaim Potok
“Well,” he said gently in his soft voice. “We wondered where you had taken yourself off to, David. Isn’t it awful the way big people will sometimes talk and talk and forget that there is a little boy around who can’t understand them?” He had placed a thumb and forefinger on the photograph and was removing it from my hand. “That isn’t nice of big people, and I apologize. But they were important, the things we talked about.” I watched the photograph disappear into a pile of papers. “There is a little pamphlet here I wanted to show your father. Here it is. Come, let’s go out. It’s so dark in here I can barely see you. Would you like a glass of milk and another cookie?” He had his arm on my shoulder as he spoke and I felt myself moving and when he was done talking we were outside in the hallway. Behind me the door to the study closed with a soft click. I looked up at him. He was so tall I had to bend my head far back to see his eyes. His thin craggy features smiled down at me benignly. “We may even have a game for you somewhere. I’ll ask my wife. I’m very sorry we ignored you, David. Come.”
He brought me back to the living room where I found my parents talking earnestly together on the sofa. They stopped talking when I came in.
I spent the rest of the visit in the kitchen with a game of dominoes Mrs. Bader found in a drawer somewhere, and thinking of the photograph in Mr. Bader’s study.
We stood at the doorway. Mr. Bader helped my mother on with her coat. He seemed strangely reverential now in the presence of my father, as if he was parting from him with great reluctance.
“I will take care of everything, Max,” he said reassuringly.
“You have left your umbrella,” Mrs. Bader said.
“It has stopped raining,” my father told her. “I will come back for it tomorrow. Have a safe trip, Shmuel. Be careful of the crazy Bolsheviks and the bastard Chekists.”
“I am always careful, Max. It’s a reflex by now.” He turned to my mother and bowed slightly. “Goodbye, Ruth. Don’t worry about anything. But of course you will worry anyway, won’t you, until you hear from them?” He smiled down at me. “Goodbye, David. Stay well. Do you hear me, David? Stay well.”
We went slowly down the stone stairway and through the ornately decorated and furnished entrance hall into the pale early evening street. The rain lay in dark, dirty puddles on the sidewalk and along the curb. A cool wind blew remnants of rain from the trees.
My mother helped me button my coat. Her fingers were cold; I felt them cold and trembling on my neck as she raised and buttoned my coat collar.
A car drove by on the cobblestone street, sending rain onto the sidewalk. My father stepped agilely between us and the oncoming car and took most of the cascading rain onto his coat and trousers.
“Are you wet?” he asked me quickly.
“No, Papa.”
“Bastard,” my father said. His short, thickset form and squarish features had hardened in a sudden flash of rage at the rain-splashing automobile that continued along the street, heedlessly sending waves of water onto the sidewalk.
“Max, please,” my mother murmured.
He took her arm. They were both short, but my father’s thick shoulders and muscular frame reduced my mother’s height even further. He patted her hand. “Everything will be all right, Ruth. Let’s go home.”
But we did not go directly home. We had walked one block when, on an impulse, my father decided that he wanted to see his brother. “I feel a need to see him,” he responded to my mother’s feeble protest. We detoured two very long blocks to a wide cobblestone boulevard lined with wet trees and dense with traffic. The sky, leaden with clouds, had brought early darkness to the day. We walked quickly, keeping close to the elegant apartment houses on the boulevard and away from the traffic near the curb. A trolley car jammed with passengers went by in a clattering rush. Abruptly all up and down the street the lamppost lights came on. Gauzy yellowish halos formed themselves out of the evening and hung like ghostly balloons over the wet pavements and bare trees. We turned into an apartment house and climbed two flights of stairs. As my father knocked on the door to his brother’s apartment, my mother bent and unbuttoned my coat. The vague pain behind my eyes, which had left me when we had come out onto the street from Mr. Bader’s apartment, now returned. I felt it throbbing softly. It was a familiar pain and I dreaded it.
My cousin, a tall, shy boy four years older than I, opened the door and smiled in startled surprise when he saw us.
“Who is it, Saul?” I heard my aunt’s voice from somewhere within the apartment.
“Uncle Max and Aunt Ruth,” my cousin called back over his shoulder. He gave me a warm smile and a pat on my arm. “Hello, Davey.” He was always solicitous of my needs. He helped me off with my coat. “Is it very cold outside?” he asked me quietly.
“Yes.”
He looked at me. “Are you okay, Davey?”
I nodded.
He gazed at me intently and I saw he did not believe me.
My aunt and uncle came into the hallway and there were greetings.
“I need a glass of tea,” my father said.
We went into the living room and sat on sofas and easy chairs by the soft light of a tasseled floor lamp, for the Shabbat was not yet over, and the other lights in the apartment would not be turned on until after the Havdalah Service. There was more tea and cake for my parents, and more milk and cookies for me, and, served in little dishes, a jamlike concoction of strawberries and sugar for all of us, and more subdued conversation, which I did not bother to listen to this time. Then I heard my uncle say, “You couldn’t have gone yesterday?” His faintly nasal voice registered mild reproach. “The letter came this morning,” my father said. My uncle nodded. I felt bewildered: my father had torn open a letter on Shabbat and no one seemed shocked. I recalled that my father had quickly left the house when we had returned from the synagogue and had been away a long time. We had eaten Shabbat dinner late.
Now they were talking about my mother’s mother. Their voices became very low. I looked away and noticed Saul. He had paid no attention to the conversation between our parents but had sat quietly all the time, watching me from across the room with a look of concern. I avoided his eyes and gazed at the intricate design on the rug and at the rococo whorls and gyrations in the wooden arms of my easy chair. Then I saw Saul get to his feet. He came over to me and whispered in my ear, “I’ve got a new midrash for you. I just read it today.” We went quickly through the dark hallway into his room.
The room too was dark save for the pale yellow street lights that came through the window. It was a fairly large room, with a dark-wood bed, a chest of drawers, a small desk, a bookcase, and two wooden chairs.
“Lie down, Davey,” he said to me. “You look a little tired.”
“We had a big walk, Saul. We went to Mr. Bader’s house.”
“In the rain? It was like a flood outside today.”
“Papa let us take an umbrella.”
“On Shabbos? It must have been important.”
“It was about Mama’s mother. Mr. Bader is bringing her medicine for her sickness.”
My cousin was silent. I could dimly see him regarding me through his shell-rimmed glasses. For a moment I thought to tell him about the photograph. But I sensed that the photograph should not have been seen by me, that its presence on the desk had been an inadvertence on Mr. Bader’s part. I remained quiet.
“There’s a new elephant in the zoo,” my cousin said, breaking the silence.
“Really?”
“And a new billy goat. A friend of mine told me. I thought I would go today. But I stayed home and read because of the rain.”
“Saul?”
“Yes, Davey?”
“What does Mr. Bader do?”
“Do? What do you mean?”
“Like Papa sells houses. And your father is a lawyer. What does Mr. Bader do?”
“He’s in a business called export and import. He buys things in countries outside America and sells them here to Americans. L
ike rugs and jewels and things like that.”
“But he reads the Torah and teaches Mishnah in the synagogue.”
“A businessman doesn’t have to be an ignoramus, Davey. Your father also reads the Torah. Mr. Bader went to yeshivas in Europe when he was young.”
“Does he travel so much because of his business, Saul?”
My cousin fell abruptly silent. The street lights glinted dully off his glasses. Around us the darkness seemed to deepen in the wake of the sudden silence. I had begun to notice that people who knew Mr. Bader did not like to talk too much about him; they spoke with glances and gestures rather than with words.
“Can I tell you that midrash now, Davey?”
I settled comfortably on the bed and closed my eyes.
“I heard it first when I was a little boy in the yeshiva. But today was the first time I actually read it.”
He told me the story of Abraham smashing the bodies and heads of his father’s idols. I listened and was suddenly frightened. Heads lying smashed on the ground; noses and ears and eyes. Idols.
“What is that?” I had once asked my mother, pointing to the statue of a woman in front of one of the Catholic churches in our neighborhood.
“That is one of the idols of the goyim,” she said.
“An idol? What the Torah talks about?”
“Yes, darling.”
I had thought of idols as belonging to a misty time when patriarchs and prophets walked through a pagan and Israelite world. I shivered with the thought that there were idols in my neighborhood, as I shivered now with the vision of broken stone bodies littering the sidewalks. I opened my eyes. It was a strange, cruel story.
“That was an awful thing he did, Saul.”
“Why was it awful? Abraham did it because he believed in God.”
“But he broke their heads and bodies, Saul. He broke them into pieces.”
I could feel him looking at me. I stared at the dark shadows on the ceiling.
“Why did he have to break them all to pieces, Saul? Couldn’t Abraham have done something else?”
“But they were idols, Davey.”
“It was awful, Saul. Abraham should have found another way. Breaking them with an ax all over the sidewalks and the streets. Wouldn’t the goyim get angry if we did that, Saul?”
“Take it easy, Davey,” I heard him say in a quiet voice.
I lay on the bed and closed my eyes. The pain had settled into a weighted dullness. I shivered again. The room moved faintly.
“It’s time for Havdalah,” my uncle called from the living room.
I sat up and the room moved again.
“Are you all right, Davey?” my cousin asked.
I let him lead me into the dining room where our parents stood near the head of the table, watching my uncle light the long braided candle. A wick sputtered, taking the flame given it by the match; then the remaining five wicks caught and a single tall flame burned and smoked in the dark room and sent a reddish glow across the faces near the table. In that glow I saw my cousin whisper into my mother’s ear and my mother glance at me with a helpless, resigned, forlorn look. I stared at the night outside the window.
“David,” my uncle said, and handed me the candle. Molten wax slid down the candle onto my fingers. I watched and felt the faint trembling of my hand, and shivered once again. I stared at the flame, at its red and yellow and blue brightness, at the way its tip danced and spiraled and reached out into the enshrouding darkness; then I stared through the flame at the faces reddened by its glow, at the hard, strong-boned, squarish face of my father, at the pale, weary, nervous face of my mother, at the smooth-skinned oval face of my aunt, at my uncle’s face, so much like my father’s but softer, gentler, without the flaring moments of rage that seemed to have cut deep lines across my father’s brow and into the corners of his eyes, and at the shy, kind, gentle face of my cousin—at the faces of the only family I had in America: four adults and a boy. Everyone else—fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins; more than one hundred fifty in number—was still in Europe.
“Hold the candle still, David,” my uncle said softly, looking at me through its flame.
I stiffened my hand. The pain behind my eyes had begun to travel upward to the area above the bridge of my nose and downward along the ridge of my cheekbones. I could no longer breathe through my nose.
My uncle raised his cup of wine. They were all looking at the flame. Beyond the warm brief spread of light from the flame were the shadows that spread grotesquely upon the ceiling and walls and the velvet darkness of the night that lay heavily upon the tall wide front window. My uncle chanted in his soft, faintly nasal voice.
“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid.”
The candle sputtered and smoked and flared; they seemed transfixed by its flame. My uncle chanted on, completing the brief introductory prayer. He made the blessing over the wine, then put the wine cup on the table and picked up the exquisitely filigreed silver spice box, made the blessing over spices, and sniffed at its interior through a silver window which he opened. He handed the metal box to my father, who repeated the procedure and handed it to my mother. By the time the box had made its circuit of the family and had come to me, my uncle had completed the blessing over the flame and had once again raised the cup of wine. I could not smell the spices through my clogged nose. I put the box on the table. A sudden single stabbing flame of pain sliced through the area above the bridge of my nose and disappeared. I held the candle stiffly and listened to the beating of my heart.
“Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe,” my uncle chanted, “who distinguishes between sacred and profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the other nations, between the seventh day and the six days of labor. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who distinguishes between sacred and profane.”
“Amen,” everyone murmured.
My uncle leaned forward and extended the cup to me. I saw his fingers around the silver wine cup as he tipped it to enable me to drink from its rim. I drank the dark sweet liquid, felt it warm and sweet on my tongue and faintly irritating on my throat. He spilled the remaining wine into a dish on the table, took the candle, and put the flame into the wine. The flame sputtered, fought for life, and died. There was a moment of total darkness. Then someone turned on the lights in the crystal chandelier and the room came starkly alive.
“A good week, a good week,” were the murmured wishes.
I blinked in the sudden light and once again felt the pain shoot through the front of my head.
My mother bent and kissed my forehead. “A good week, my darling son,” she murmured. I felt her lips hesitate on my forehead. Her lips were dry and I felt them moving against my forehead as she murmured words I could not understand: “Armimas, rmimas, mimas, imas, mas, as.” She straightened slowly and gave me a weary look. Then she sought out my father’s eyes and nodded briefly in my direction. His gray eyes focused immediately upon my face; then he turned and spoke rapidly in a low voice to my uncle. “Two thousand dollars is enough,” I heard my uncle say. “More than enough.”
At the far end of the dining room my aunt drew the drapes and shut out the night.
My cousin stood beside me. “Are you getting sick again, Davey?”
“I think so, Saul.”
“I’ll wish you a good week anyway.”
“A good week, Saul.”
“I’m sorry the story about Abraham upset you.”
“What story was that?” my uncle said. He had come over to us to wish us a good week. “Did my storyteller tell you a new story today?”
“About Abraham and the idols and Abraham breaking all their bodies and heads and their noses and lips and eyes. I didn’t like the story, Uncle Meyer.”
My voice had come out high and strained. They looked at me. I could feel them all looking at me as I kept my eyes on my uncle’s face.
“Why didn’t you like the story, David?”
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nbsp; “I didn’t like the smashing and the breaking and all the arms and eyes and noses everywhere all over the sidewalks and the streets.” I stopped abruptly. The pain had stabbed again through my head and this time had licked downward toward the cheek on the right side of my face.
The room was very quiet. They were all looking at me intently.
My uncle bent down very close to me and gently pulled me to him. He was not so heavy-chested and muscular as my father; still he seemed very strong. I saw his gray eyes—like my father’s eyes but clear and without the lines in the corners.
“Don’t you think Abraham tried talking to the goyim before he broke the idols? Don’t you think he talked and talked to them, David?”
I had not thought of that. Saul had not told me that. I looked up at Saul. He was staring at his father.
“What should Abraham have done when he talked and talked and they didn’t listen? And all the time he believed he was right.” He held me to him lightly. His thick wavy brown hair lay neatly combed on his head and his face was stubbled, as was my father’s, for they did not shave on Shabbat. On the right side of his forehead a vein throbbed slowly as he spoke. I watched its pulsing rise and fall, and asked myself in wonder and dread, How can you smash a head? There are so many precious and beautiful things in a head. Eyes and a nose and lips. Even in a head of stone. Still, if Abraham had talked and talked and talked—“What should he have done, David?” my uncle said. “Sometimes you have to smash.” His voice was soft; it was barely audible. He had spoken his last words almost in a whisper. “You have to smash.”
I felt a shudder pass through me and was silent.
My uncle bowed his head, as if in sadness. “You’re frightened,” he murmured. “You needn’t be frightened, David.”
“Saul, what kind of stories are you telling the child?” I heard my aunt ask with a tone of accusation. “Look how you frightened him.”
“But it’s about Abraham, Mama.” Saul was bewildered by my reaction. “Everyone knows that story about Abraham. I only thought to tell it to Davey because Mr. Bader showed me the story in the midrash this morning in synagogue after the Torah reading. He was teaching me to read it in Aramaic.”