by Chaim Potok
There was tumultuous applause. My mother returned to her chair. I looked up at her. Her eyes shone; a thin sheen of perspiration covered her flushed cheeks and forehead. Her face was expressionless. The bald man shook her hand. The applause continued a long time. Then the crowd burst into song. All stood at attention, singing.
Afterward we came down off the stage and people pressed densely around us. I thought I saw the tall, dark-suited figure of Mr. Dinn in the crowd. A woman moved across my field of vision. When I looked again he was gone.
Someone took us home in a car. I remember a dark river and a tall bridge and cobblestone streets and a wide parkway. I clung to my mother and smelled her warmth and the sweat on her face and neck. I fell asleep and woke later in my bed in the darkness of my room and heard the voices of my mother and Mr. Dinn. The room was cold. My bed was wet. A chill wind blew through the leafy branches outside my window. In the cellarway a cat wailed.
I said to my mother during breakfast the next morning, “What do you and Mr. Dinn talk about at night?”
She gazed at me wearily. “Don’t you ever sleep, Ilana?”
“Do you talk about Uncle Jakob?”
“Yes. And other matters.”
“Why did Papa die?”
“Why? I don’t know. He just did, that’s all.”
“Like my little brother?”
“Yes,” she said, after a brief pause. “Like your little brother.”
“I hate it when there’s no reason that people die. Will you do anything else for Papa?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will there be another memorial service?”
“No.”
“Nothing else?”
“What else do you want, Ilana?”
I didn’t know what to say and was quiet.
“Go get yourself ready for school,” she said. “I don’t want you to be late.”
I left her in the kitchen, looking down into her cup of coffee, and went to the bookcase in my parents’ bedroom and carefully searched the shelves. There was another bookcase in the living room and I looked through that one too. The book I wanted was not in my parents’ library.
I was late getting out of the house and ran most of the way to school and came late to class. My teacher said nothing. My classmates tried to avoid looking at me.
During the morning recess I went into the school library and quickly scanned some shelves. After school I walked along Eastern Parkway and went into a large stone-and-glass building and climbed up a marble staircase. I waited awhile on line and then asked the librarian for a certain book.
She had white hair and metal-rimmed spectacles and gazed at me piercingly from across her desk.
“Who is the book for?”
I told her the book was for me.
“That isn’t a book for a little girl. It’s in the adult division.” I went home.
The next day after school I crossed Eastern Parkway very carefully, with the help of the lights, and walked some blocks to a bookstore. Inside I asked an old man with a lined face and a white mustache and heavy-lidded eyes if he could show me where to find a certain book.
“Why?”
I hesitated, my heart pounding. “To buy it.”
“Who for?”
“My mother,” I said.
He went over to some shelves and pulled down a book. Then he told me what it would cost.
I told him I didn’t have enough money.
He put the book back on the shelf. “Come back when you do,” he said.
The next afternoon I walked again down Eastern Parkway and turned into the library. I climbed the staircase to the adult division, went through wide glass-and-wood doors, and found myself in a vast hushed tall-ceilinged marble-floored room. Sunlight streamed through enormous vaulted windows onto long polished wooden tables and tall dark-wood bookcases. There were few people at the tables. I stood frozen for a long moment, awed by the silence and the light. It seemed a room without shadows, its furniture and books and reading lamps and catalogues starkly outlined by the brilliant sun. I stood very still. Coursing through me was the gently electric attraction of the books. I looked cautiously around. The librarians were busy at their desks. I slipped easily past their gaze.
I entered the maze of bookcases. So many books! So many more stories than in the children’s section below! I did not know what to do.
Standing nearby, searching for a book, was an elderly man in thick glasses, baggy pants, and a sweater. I asked him where I might find Nineteen-Nineteen by Dos Passos.
“Hah?” he said, staring at me.
I repeated the question.
“I don’t know that book,” he said. “Why don’t you ask one of the librarians?” I said nothing.
“Who did you say is the author?” “John Dos Passos.”
“Try under P,” he said. “Wait. Dos Passos? Try under D. Maybe you’ll find it under D.”
I told him I couldn’t find the D’s. He told me where to look.
I found Dos Passos. I did not find the book. I went out of the library and walked quickly home.
I returned the following day. The book was not there. Nor was it there the day after.
The next day was Friday. I walked in a drizzle to the library and climbed the marble staircase and went past the long counter behind which sat the librarians, working at their desks. I went to the bookcase and searched the shelf and there was the book.
I took it from the shelf and held it and had no notion how to find what I was looking for. I began to turn pages and found a page marked contents. It contained a list of names and something called Newsreel and The Camera Eye. I kept turning the pages and looking at the names. I found nothing about a place called Centralia.
I went through the contents page again. The third name from the end was Paul Bunyan. I turned the pages and saw what I thought were newspaper headlines: BAGS 28 HUNS SINGLEHANDED and GANG LEADER SLAIN IN STREET and REDS WEAKENING WASHINGTON HEARS. I couldn’t understand why there were headlines in a book of stories. Was the book about true stories and made-up stories? How would I know the difference between them?
I found the page I was looking for and saw in large letters PAUL BUNYAN. I began to read.
“When Wesley Everest came home from overseas and got his discharge from the army he went back to his old job of logging.” I read very slowly. There were many words I did not understand. “In the army Everest was a sharpshooter, won a medal for a crack shot.” Some of the words were very long and seemed made up of two or more words. I couldn’t understand why a writer would put words together like that. I read, “Wesley Everest was a logger like Paul Bunyan.” I read about the Wobblies and the timber owners and Memorial Day, 1918, in Centralia and the way a group called the American Legion wrecked something called the I.W.W. hall, beat up everyone they found inside, and drove the rest out of the city. I read that the loggers hired a new hall and on Armistice Day, 1919, people broke through the door and there was shooting. Wesley Everest fired his rifle and ran for the woods. He was captured crossing a river and brought back to jail.
Then I read, “That night the city lights were turned off. A mob smashed in the outer door of the jail. ‘Don’t shoot, boys, here’s your man,’ said the guard. Wesley Everest met them on his feet. ‘Tell the boys I did my best,’ he whispered to the men in the other cells.
“They took him off in a limousine to the Chehalis River bridge. As Wesley Everest lay stunned in the bottom of the car a Centralia businessman cut his penis and testicles off with a razor. Wesley Everest gave a great scream of pain. Somebody has remembered that after a while he whispered, ‘For God’s sake, men, shoot me … don’t let me suffer like this.’ Then they hanged him from the bridge in the glare of the headlights.”
I read those last two paragraphs again. Then I finished reading to the end. “Nobody knows where they buried the body of Wesley Everest….”
I returned the book to the shelf.
My hands were shaking and I coul
d not breathe. I slid past the suspicious gaze of a librarian and hurried down the marble staircase to the street.
It was raining. I walked beneath the trees, trying to take deep breaths. A queer heaviness lay upon my chest. The rain came through the leaves and fell upon the puddles on the sidewalks. Along the darkly glistening asphalt of the streets, cars moved cautiously, tires hissing. People scurried along beneath umbrellas. I needed to go to the bathroom. I turned off the parkway into a side street and could no longer control my trembling. The strange heaviness still lay upon my chest. Then I felt the flow of urine begin to seep slowly from between my legs and into my panties and down along the insides of my thighs. I stood under a tree in the rain and felt the hot rush flow outward. The street was empty save for automobile traffic. I began to run. I ran along the side street and then through the street where I lived and up the stoop and through the doors and up the staircase into the apartment.
The singing of the door harp startled me. My mother must have untaped the wooden balls before leaving for work. She should have told me she would do that. Why hadn’t she told me? I would have said not yet, I didn’t want music yet, it was too soon for me to be hearing again the singing of the harp.
In my room I removed my clothes. Naked, I went to the bathroom and washed myself. Peering down at the ridges and valley between my legs, I felt suddenly nauseated and thought I would vomit. I sat down on the toilet. After a moment the nausea passed. I returned to my room and put on fresh clothes. I did not know what to do with my wet underpants. I went into the kitchen and threw them into the garbage pail under the sink. They would be in the alleyway that night with the cans of garbage and the roaming cats. I lay on my bed and put my hand over my eyes. What had they done with Wesley Everest’s—? Paul Bunyan. What a sweet story that had been each time my father had told it to me. Tall Paul Bunyan, his huge ax, his blue ox. Through half-sleep I heard a great scream of pain and sat bolt upright on the bed, shaking. I lay dazed in a sleep of exhaustion when my mother came home.
During supper that night I said, “Did Papa see what happened to that poor man Wesley Everest in Centralia?”
My mother coughed and put down her knife and fork and stared at me.
“I read it in a book today. About what happened to—” My mother broke sharply into my words. “I do not want to talk about that at the table,” she said. We ate in silence.
After supper I asked my mother, “Did they really do that to that man?” “Yes,” she said.
“How could they do that? What kind of people would do that?”
“Ilana, I wish you had not—” “Did Papa see them do it?”
She hesitated. “Yes,” she said. “He saw them hang him. But he was too frightened to tell anyone.” “It’s not a story?” “No, Ilana.”
“But it’s in a book that’s a story.” “It happened,” my mother said. “I’m scared, Mama.”
“Come here. Come to me. Let me hold you. Would you like to go to the movies tonight? Maybe there’s a funny movie playing in the neighborhood. All right? Ilana, tell me something. How did you find that book?”
I told her. She stared at me and shook her head; but she said nothing. Later we went to a movie but I cannot remember what it was. I closed my eyes during the Movietone News and put my hands over my ears—and suddenly understood what the word Newsreel meant in the book by John Dos Passos. Sitting in the cavernous darkness of that theater, with my eyes and ears closed against the horrors of the war on the screen, I saw inside my eyes the words, “Wesley Everest was a logger like Paul Bunyan,” and the words, “Wesley Everest gave a great scream of pain.”
In the morning I walked to the synagogue and sat alongside the dividing curtain, peering through the distorting fabric at the boy who stood at the lectern leading the service, and then seeing him clearly through the tear in the ninon. The boy was becoming a bar mitzvah. Ruthie had told me about that. He was taking on all the obligations and privileges of an adult Jew. No, Ruthie had said in response to my question, girls didn’t become bar mitzvah, only boys. And she had giggled.
The synagogue was crowded. Cool air blew in through the open windows on the men’s side of the large room. I saw David and his father sitting together near the front of the room, watched them rise and say the Kaddish together and then sit down. No woman rose to say the Kaddish. I had noticed that over the weeks I had been coming here: no woman ever recited the Kaddish.
The boy at the lectern completed the service and moved to the podium to chant the Torah portion. He had a high sweet voice. The room was hushed as he read. All around me women sat beaming. He faltered once, was quietly corrected by one of the men who stood near him at the podium, and went on. Soon after he was done with the reading, the Torah scroll was lifted and wrapped and given to a boy about my age to hold; he sat on a chair, clutching the scroll tightly. The bar mitzvah commenced chanting aloud from a book. Candies were thrown when he was done. An elderly man in a long graying beard rose to continue the service. The Torah was returned to the ark. Someone gave a brief talk. All rose as the elderly man resumed the service.
I was very tired. My heart beat fiercely; I thought the woman sitting next to me would hear it pounding. I held the prayerbook tightly; I could read the alphabet. Many words were familiar to me now; I could speak them, though I understood almost nothing of what I was saying. It seemed strange to be deriving comfort from unclear words; I couldn’t understand that.
We rose for the long silent prayer. I stood thinking of my father and the nun whose life he had tried to save. Then I thought of Wesley Everest and the events in Centralia—and I began to understand how it might be possible for a life to be changed in a moment by a single startling event.
I must have dozed. I sensed a silence about me and opened my eyes. Peering through the opening in the curtain, I saw David and his father rising to their feet. And then I was on my feet too, listening to the voices on the other side of the curtain and reciting faintly with the men the words of the Kaddish, which I found, to my astonishment, that I knew by heart. There was a surge of whispering, a soft surflike rush of sound from the women around me. Someone said, “What is she doing?” Another said something in Yiddish. I stood, quietly reciting the words. There has to be more for you, Papa, than just one memorial service. Can one recite the Kaddish for a father who wasn’t a Jew? I didn’t care. I went on. The Kaddish ended. I sat down and closed my eyes, feeling upon my face the hot stares of all those nearby.
The service went on. Then, moments later, I heard again the words of the Kaddish, and I rose and began to recite them too, louder this time, and I thought I heard one or two of the women answer, “Amen.”
Outside on the sidewalk after the service David came over to me and said, “Good Shabbos, Ilana.”
I returned his greeting.
He fidgeted uncomfortably. “Ilana,” he said. “Listen.” I looked at him.
“Girls don’t recite Kaddish. Women aren’t—” “Does it make any difference that my father wasn’t Jewish?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. I’ll have to ask my Talmud teacher. But that’s not what I’m—”
“I’m very tired, David. I have to go home now.”
I left him there staring at me as I turned and walked off.
I had no sensation of walking. The warm May sunlight seemed a perverse and malevolent counterpoint to my feelings and filled me with despair. I shivered with cold. The streets of the neighborhood were gray and unfamiliar. I walked as in a stupor, turning fearful corners like some blind and unthinking creature, coming upon my own street, filled now with playing children and old women on their stoops and young mothers with baby carriages and men washing their cars and others returning from the synagogues of the neighborhood. Out of habit I walked carefully beneath the trees, avoiding the cracks and roots in the sidewalk; out of habit I waved at neighbors and responded to their greetings; out of habit I raised my eyes to my window in the castlelike turret that formed the side of the house. And the
re in the window next to mine, the bay window of our living room, I saw my mother’s face and, beside her, a pale visage that seemed an apparition. I stopped and stared and felt the surge of blood in my ears. I flew up the stone stoop and the inside stairway and through the apartment door, which my mother had opened for me. Behind me I heard distinctly the singing of the door harp as I flung myself into the gaunt arms of Jakob Daw. And I buried my head in his chest, saw out of the sides of my eyes the face of my mother, her wet eyes, her trembling lips, and felt suddenly the rush of all the weeks of grief and the ocean of pain pouring forth. And I wept like the child I was.
Five
That same day a letter from Aunt Sarah addressed to my mother arrived in the mail. Aunt Sarah was somewhere near Madrid. I asked Uncle Jakob if he had seen Aunt Sarah in Spain and he said no, he hadn’t, because she worked in a battlefield hospital and cared for the severely wounded. The three of us sat around the kitchen table as my mother read the letter aloud.
“Dearest Anne. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’
“I loved my brother. I find that I cannot believe he is dead. Unlike my parents, I did not think that politics should sunder a family. That belief is reinforced every day in this dark and tragic land. The hatred here of man toward man is boundless and unfathomable, the slaughter is unimaginable. We are a vile and cursed species and were it not for the grace of God all life would be a hopeless travail. I know such faith is for you a chimera, an illusion cast upon us by those in power so as to make existence bearable and their power impregnable. But, my dear Anne, isn’t what you call an illusion simply someone else’s dream with which you disagree? And what of your workers’ revolution, your classless society, your dream of an early end to social strife, economic scarcity, individual degradation and misery? If faith in God is merely an illusion, then why not faith in man too? Anne, are your dreams too not an illusion? It seems to me that those who do not care what means are used to achieve their ends, indeed who justify all in the name of an end, need illusions far more than those others who see in mankind suffering and sin and the radiant power of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.