by Chaim Potok
When my uncle came over that night I helped him and my mother put up some shelves in the kitchen. My uncle was not too adept with hammer and nails. We began to empty the cartons in the living room. The carton with the photograph and the letters lay near the door to my parents’ bedroom. I saw my mother pick it up and go with it into the bedroom, closing the door behind her quietly with her foot. She was gone awhile. When she came out of the bedroom she had a strained, almost tortured look on her face; she was just then as she had been during all the years I could remember her: frail, frightened, her eyes timorous and darting nervously about. I thought she had been crying. She kept her head lowered as she went through the living room and along the hallway to the kitchen.
My uncle had opened another of the cartons and had pulled out some books. “What are these?” he asked.
I told him about the books left to me by Mrs. Horowitz. He looked through the carton.
“Are they books with special prayers, Uncle Meyer?”
“What?”
“Against the evil eye and fever and the Angel of Death and for helping people remember things.”
“What are you talking about, David? These are books of sermons and explanation of customs. This is a translation of the Bible into German. Here is one on the Bible, also in German, but I don’t understand the title. What is Quellenscheidung? I’m afraid we do not have time to read books now. Where is the carton with the quilt covers that your mother asked me to unpack?”
I heard my mother walking along the creaking wooden floor of the hallway. She came into the living room, looking composed. She had washed her face. Her eyes were calm. Did we want anything to drink? she asked. She wanted to stop now and go to her room. She especially wanted me to go to bed. In response to my uncle’s question, my mother raised her eyebrows, nodded, and indicated the hallway. My uncle put the three cartons of books given to me by Mrs. Horowitz into the back of the hallway closet.
I had a glass of milk and came back into the living room. I saw my father standing in the doorway to his room, leaning heavily against the jamb. His dark blue pajamas were rumpled and his hair was wild and he was staring fixedly at the canary.
“Why don’t you sing?” I heard him mutter in a low voice. “Sing.”
The canary sat on its perch, a round yellow faintly swaying ball. It had stopped eating.
“Sing,” my father said, his voice changing abruptly, a faint note of pleading in it now. “For David you sang. Remember?”
I heard my mother’s footsteps behind me and the creaking of the hallway floor. She brushed past me and went over to my father.
“It doesn’t sing, Ruth,” he said in a forlorn voice.
“Max, it takes time for a bird to grow used to a new place. Please go to bed.”
He turned and saw me in the doorway to the living room. “David,” he said very quietly.
“Yes, Papa.”
“Are you a good boy, David?”
“He is a very good boy, Max,” said my mother softly.
“Are you a good brother, David?”
“Yes,” said my mother in the same soft tone.
He looked at her.
“What time is it, Ruth?”
She told him.
“That late already? Is there news on?”
“You’ll hear it tomorrow, Max.”
“My watch is not working. What happened to my watch?”
“Let me take you to bed, Max.”
She took his arm.
“What happened to my watch?” he asked again plaintively as they went into their bedroom. “Why isn’t it working, Ruth?”
“Did you remember to wind it?”
She closed the door quietly on his answer.
I sensed someone beside me and looked and it was my uncle. I had not heard him come through the hallway.
“Uncle Meyer,” I said. “Uncle Meyer.” I felt a quivering inside me. I could not control it. It kept rising from somewhere deep inside me. It was rising and climbing and I knew I had to stop it. “Uncle Meyer,” I said again. My voice was trembling.
He embraced me. I put my head against him. Then I felt him bend his knees so he could see my face closely. I looked through his gold-rimmed glasses into the young eyes of my father. I looked and trembled and saw the young face of my father. It had aged since the time we had all walked together through the zoo and the meadow to the pine wood and the clearing. But it was still so much younger than the face of my father.
“Now, now,” my uncle said, his hands gently holding the sides of my face. “Are you a big boy?”
I nodded slowly.
“You are sure you are a big boy?” he asked, smiling.
Again I nodded.
He lowered his hands to the sides of my shoulders. “Then you will behave like a big boy. There is a time for crying and there is a time for doing. Now is the time for doing. Is your mother crying? David will not cry either. All right? Very good. You are truly a big boy. You are worried about your father. I understand your worry. But do not be frightened. Do you know what David would say now if he were alive? Your dead uncle, my brilliant little brother, do you know what he would say, David? The exact same thing he said when he saw what the Cossacks had done to the Jews in Galicia. ‘What should we do?’ your father asked him. ‘We must protect ourselves and pay back the Cossacks,’ my little brother David said. ‘How?’ your father asked him. ‘We must do something that will enable us to build and build so that we can see the results and help ourselves,’ my little brother David said.” A wistful tone had crept into my uncle’s voice. He paused for a moment and took a deep faintly quivering breath. “Dear God, I remember that night as if it had just happened here in this living room on Washington Avenue. ‘How?’ your father kept asking. ‘How?’ And my little brother kept answering, “I cannot tell you how to do it, I can only tell you what must be done. ‘The how you will have to find by yourself.’ He kept saying that over and over again. ‘The how you will have to find by yourself.’ He said the how must be a passion. Do you know what a passion is, David? Something to which you give all your heart and soul, all your thoughts. ‘I cannot tell you what is inside your heart,’ my little brother kept saying. Your father went away and thought about it. And do you know what he did, your father? He took about fifty of his friends and he joined Pilsudski’s army. We thought he had lost his mind. My God, how everyone carried on! All the mothers were hysterical with fear and all the fathers screamed and shouted with rage. Jews should join the army of the Polaks and live in mud and eat pork and maybe, God forbid, get killed—for what? For Poland and the lovely, gentle way it treats Jews? My God, how they carried on; the rabbis they ran to; the screaming that took place in the house and on the streets and in the synagogue. It went on for weeks. Our mother even went to some old thief who had a reputation for casting out demons; she thought your father had a demon in him. He had a demon in him all right. He took forty-nine men into Pilsudski’s army with him. I would have gone too but I was already married and your father did not want anyone who might have his mind in Lemberg when he should be killing Cossacks in the Ukraine. David would have gone, but they would not take him because he had very weak eyes. The men who came out formed the Am Kedoshim Society. Now it is all ruined and your father does not know what to do. He is searching for something to do. Wait. You don’t know your father yet the way I know him. There is something going on inside his head. He will find something. And we will all laugh. Or we will go into shock. Our mother fainted when she was told he had asked to be a machine gunner. You can kill a lot of Cossacks with them, he told me. He enjoyed taking them apart and putting them together. Machine guns, I’m talking about. Wait. He will find something. We have to help him until he does. Now—I am tired and it is late and my knees hurt me from being in this position so long. I am not old but I don’t have the bones I had ten years ago. Go into your room, David, and go to sleep. Everything will be all right.”
“Uncle Meyer?”
“Yes, Davi
d.”
“Where are all of Papa’s friends?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where are they? Have they gone away?”
“Some have gone away.”
“To other cities?”
“Yes. One just went to Eretz Yisroel.”
“Why don’t the others help us?”
“Help? What do you mean, help?”
“Why did we have to move? Why do we have to live here?”
“David, David, your father doesn’t want to live on someone else’s money. Your father has to decide by himself what he wants to do. No one can decide for him. Can you understand that?”
“I think so. Yes, I think so.”
“Now go to sleep.”
“Good night, Uncle Meyer.”
“Good night, my big nephew. Thank you for helping me put up the shelves. You are a good fixer.”
Later I gazed from my bed into the dark rectangle of my window shade. The shade was softly stirred by the minute streams of cold air that blew in through the cracks in the frame. Strange shapes moved within the rectangle, flickering, as if a candle had been lighted somewhere in my room with the flame unseen. A dull reddish glow spread slowly across the rectangle, lighting an array of marching figures. Torches smoked; flags and banners whipped in the wind. A noise filled the room. Is that what it was like, the salute and shout of twenty thousand brown-shirted men? Like the heavy drawn-out thunderous presence of the elevated train rushing along the trestle? They were sharpening their swords. Was Mr. Bader there, watching? We have to do something. Papa! We have to do something!
I slept and was awakened by the dying radiator. The rectangle was dark, black. I slept again and was awakened by my father’s sudden hoarse shout. “What happened to it? My life I put into it. What happened?”
There was a brief echoing silence and then my mother’s soft soothing voice.
Alex stirred and whimpered softly. I heard him get out of his bed in the darkness.
“Davey?” His frightened voice was next to my ear.
I took him into my bed. The apartment was very still. Lying next to my brother, with my head on the pillow, I could feel the warmth draining out of the room. Often I would see my breath forming clouds in the air if I woke in the night and went to the bathroom or remained awake after the dying of my radiator to listen to my father or to watch the rectangle of my window. That was a month of bitter cold, that February in the year 1933, and each of its icy nights entered my room and spread piercing chill upon me and my brother.
Inside our new apartment a discernible order began to prevail. Curtains were hung, pieces of furniture assigned permanent locations, mirrors put up. In my parents’ bedroom I helped my uncle hang the oval-shaped wedding picture; my father was in the kitchen with my mother at the time. When we were alone I stared at the young and glowing faces in the picture, then turned and walked out of the room. The remaining cartons, except those containing Mrs. Horowitz’s books, were emptied and piled by the dumbwaiter near our door. The thick ropes creaked and the darkness of the shaft was chilling, but I helped my mother and uncle load the cartons onto the dumbwaiter and then listened to the creaking and thumping as my uncle sent it to the darkness beneath us.
My aunt and uncle came over one evening together with Saul. My father was in bed. Saul wanted to see my room. He stood in the doorway, surveying my desk and small bookcase, the beds, the bureau. He gazed out the rectangle of window. He would not look at me directly.
We were quiet, gazing together at the cats huddled among the garbage cans in the dimly lighted alleyway.
“When will you be moving, Saul?”
“In March, I think. The place has to be painted. My mother wanted some changes in the sockets and things.”
“Where will it be, your new place?”
“Not far from here. Clay Avenue. Opposite a small park. It isn’t bad.”
“Saul?”
He looked at me.
“What’s happening to everything?”
He was quiet.
“I’m scared sometimes, Saul.”
He began to respond but was stopped by the hoarse cry that came from my father.
“Ruth! Ruth!”
My brother looked up immediately, frightened. I felt my heart jump. Saul looked startled.
“What time is it, Ruth?” my father called. My mother must have gone into the bedroom for his next words were low and indistinct. Then he raised his voice again and there was in it a plaintive tone. “But I cannot see them now, Ruth. Look at me. How can I see them like this?”
“Davey,” Alex said softly. “Davey.” He was very frightened.
“Papa will be all right. He’s just in a bad mood, Alex.”
“Can I sleep in your bed, Davey?”
“All right. But go to sleep now.”
I pulled down the white rectangle of the shade.
Saul’s eyes were large and brooding behind the lenses of his shell-rimmed glasses.
“I hope you move here soon,” I said to him.
“What happened?” my father suddenly shouted from his room. There was a moment of shrill tingling silence as the words crashed through the apartment. Then my father said, imploringly, “We must do something, Ruth. Give me an idea what to do.”
He grew quiet after that. Later he came out and sat in the living room in his pajamas and robe, listening to whatever was being talked about: the freezing weather, politics, friends. Abruptly he looked at his wrist. He was not wearing his watch. He rose and, without a word, went into his bedroom.
There was a long distressing silence. Then my mother told me to say good night and go to bed. I went to bed but lay awake a long time and found I could not stop thinking of Mrs. Horowitz. I kept seeing her skinny birdlike neck and wrinkled face and hearing her voice. But she was dead and could not help me. I listened to my brother’s soft breathing. The radiator died. The cold crept silently into the room like a hungry jungle animal.
My English teacher said in her brassy voice the next afternoon, “What do you see out of that window, David Lurie?”
“Twenty thousand Nazis marching,” I said, because that was what I had been seeing.
There was a stir in the room. One of the students laughed, then grew immediately silent as the teacher fixed her gaze upon him. I took my eyes from the window and stared down at the top of my desk. I was frightened. I should not have said that. But the words had been out of my mouth before I had thought what to say. I would have to be careful. I did not want anyone to know what I saw in my rectangles.
The teacher turned her thin face upon me. “Do you read newspapers?” she asked. Her voice was low.
I nodded hesitantly.
She peered at me a moment longer out of her large eyes. “What newspapers do you read?”
I named a Yiddish daily and said I did not actually read an English newspaper but only looked at headlines and a paragraph or two and at the captions of photographs. “We don’t get an English paper,” I said. “My parents don’t read English too well. We only talk Yiddish at home. Sometimes I talk English with my aunt and uncle and Cousin Saul. And with my little brother. But not with my parents. My parents know a lot of languages, but they don’t know English yet too well. But they’re both American citizens. They’ve been citizens a long time. And we listen to the radio a lot. We hear all the voices on the radio.”
Everyone was staring at me. Why were they all staring at me like that, as if I were some kind of zoo animal? Even Yaakov Bader was staring at me.
The teacher too was staring at me. But she said nothing. After a moment I looked back out the window. A few minutes before dismissal, as we were writing down the answers to a surprise test she had given us in geography, she came over to my desk and asked me in a low voice to remain behind after class.
I stood alone beside her desk in the empty classroom.
“I am sorry my class is such a boring experience for you, David.” Her thin face, her rouged cheeks, her long skinny neck
—she kept reminding me of Mrs. Horowitz.
I fidgeted uncomfortably.
“I have books at home that might be of interest to you, David. I will bring you some tomorrow. Take my newspaper. I am done with it. You may take my newspaper every day if you wish. Why don’t you get a good night’s sleep tonight? Don’t you sleep at all? Your eyes are falling out of your head. And button your jacket when you go outside. If you have a gift of brains, you have a responsibility to take good care of your body. You are now dismissed, David.”
I went home in the cold wind and found my father in the living room watching the canary eating. My mother was in the kitchen doing laundry in the washtub; my brother was seated at my desk looking at one of my books. I had no strength to be angry at him. I lay down on my bed and fell asleep.
My father came to the table in his pajamas and robe that Friday night and made the blessing over the wine at the start of the Shabbat meal. His hands shook and some wine spilled onto his fingers and dripped down onto the white tablecloth. He ate and fell asleep at the table. The tall dark skullcap sat askew on his brown hair. “David is not here,” I heard him mutter suddenly. “We will have to find an idea without David.” He slept, his head on his shoulder, his mouth slightly open.
I spent the next day reading one of the books given to me by my English teacher. That was the day eight inches of snow fell on New York and the streets lay in a deep entombing silence. From my window I saw the snow fall silently into the alleyway and across the adjoining cement plateau. A wind blew through the alleyway and the snow drifted across the steps to the cellar bakery and the double door of the basement. The garbage cans looked like white misshapen mounds and the cats were all gone somewhere out of the snow.
“The last winter in Lemberg,” I heard my father say from the living room. “You remember the snow, Ruth?”