by Colm Toibin
It worried her enough to decide to explain to him exactly what her problem was. Just as he spoke quickly in his lectures, moving from one case to another, from what a certain law could mean in theory to how it had been applied up to then, so he disappeared as soon as the lecture was over, as though he had another pressing appointment. Eilis determined to sit in the front row and approach him the very second he had finished speaking, but as it came to the time she was nervous. She hoped that he would not think that she was criticizing him; she also worried that he might begin talking in a way that she would not understand. She had never come across anyone like him before. He reminded her of waiters in some cafés near Fulton Street who had no patience, who needed her to make up her mind about everything there and then and always had a further question for her no matter what she asked for, if she wanted small or large, or if she wanted it heated or with mustard. In Bartocci’s she had learned to be brave and decisive with the customers, but once she herself was a customer she knew she was too hesitant and slow.
She would have to approach Mr. Rosenblum. He seemed so clever and he knew so much that she still wondered as she walked towards the podium how he would respond to a simple request. Once she had his attention, however, she found that she had become, without too much effort or hesitation, almost poised.
“Is there a book I could buy that would help me with this part of the course?” she asked.
Mr. Rosenblum appeared puzzled and did not reply.
“Your lectures are interesting,” she said, “but I’m worried about the exam.”
“You like them?” He seemed younger now than he did when he was addressing all of the students on the law.
“Yes,” she said, and smiled. She was surprised at herself, that she had not stammered. She did not think she was even blushing.
“Are you British?” he asked.
“No, Irish.”
“All the way from Ireland.” He spoke as though to himself.
“I wondered if you could recommend another textbook or a manual that I can study for the exams.”
“You look worried.”
“I don’t know if the notes I’m taking or the books I have are enough.”
“You want to read more?”
“I would like to have a book that I could study.”
He looked around the lecture hall, which was emptying quickly. He seemed deep in thought, as though the question perplexed him.
“There are some good books on basic corporate law.”
She presumed that he was about to give her the names of these books, but he stopped for a moment.
“Do you think I am going too fast?”
“No. I’m just not sure my notes will be enough for the exam.”
He opened his briefcase and took out a notepad.
“Are you the only Irish student here?”
“I think so.”
She watched him as he wrote a number of titles on a blank sheet of paper.
“There’s a special law book store on West Twenty-third Street,” he said. “In Manhattan. You’ll have to go there to get these.”
“And will they be the right books for the exam?”
“Sure. If you know the rudiments of corporate law and tort, then you will get through.”
“Is that book store open every day?”
“I think so. You’ll have to go and check it out, but I think so.”
As she nodded and tried to smile, he appeared even more preoccupied.
“But you can follow the lectures?”
“Of course,” she said. “Yes, of course.”
He put the notepad into his briefcase and turned away brusquely.
“Thank you,” she said, but he did not reply. Instead, he quickly left the hall. The porter was waiting to lock up when she pushed open the lecture-hall doors. She was the last to leave.
She asked Diana and Patty about West Twenty-third Street, showing them the full address. They explained to her that west meant west of Fifth Avenue and that the number she had been given signified that the store was between Sixth and Seventh avenues. They showed her a map, spreading it out on the kitchen table, amazed that Eilis had never been in Manhattan.
“It’s wonderful over there,” Diana said.
“Fifth Avenue is the most heavenly place,” Patty said. “I’d give anything to live there. I’d love to marry a rich man with a mansion on Fifth Avenue.”
“Or even a poor man,” Diana said, “as long as he had a mansion.”
They told her how to take the subway to West Twenty-third Street, and she decided she would go when she had her next half-day free from Bartocci’s.
When the prospect of Friday night arose Eilis could not face asking Miss McAdam or Sheila Heffernan if they were going to the dance at the hall and she knew that it would be too disloyal to go with Patty and Diana, and maybe too expensive as well, since they went to a restaurant first and since she would need to buy new clothes to match the style that they were wearing.
On Friday night after work she came to supper with a handkerchief in her hand, warning the others not to come too close in case they caught the chill from her. She blew her nose loudly and sniffled as best she could several times throughout the meal. She did not care whether they believed her or not, but having a cold, she thought, would be the best excuse for her not to go to the dance. She knew as well that it would encourage Mrs. Kehoe to discuss winter ailments, which was one of the landlady’s favourite subjects.
“Chilblains, now,” she said, “you’d want to be very careful with the chilblains. When I was your age they were the death of me.”
“I’d say in that store,” Miss McAdam said to Eilis, “you could get all sorts of germs.”
“You can get germs in offices as well,” Mrs. Kehoe said, taking in Eilis with a glance as she spoke, making clear that she understood Miss McAdam’s intention to belittle her because she worked in a store.
“But you’d never know who’d—”
“That’s enough now, Miss McAdam,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “And maybe it’s best early bed for all of us in this cold weather.”
“I was just going to say that I heard there are coloured women going into Bartocci’s,” Miss McAdam said.
For a moment no one spoke.
“I heard that too,” Sheila Heffernan said after a while in a low voice.
Eilis looked down at her plate.
“Well, we mightn’t like them but the Negro men fought in the overseas war, didn’t they?” Mrs. Kehoe asked. “And they were killed just the same as our men. I always say that. No one minded them when they needed them.”
“But I wouldn’t like—” Miss McAdam began.
“We know what you wouldn’t like,” Mrs. Kehoe interrupted.
“I wouldn’t like to have to serve them in a store,” Miss McAdam insisted.
“God, I wouldn’t either,” Patty said.
“And is it their money you wouldn’t like?” Mrs. Kehoe asked.
“They’re very nice,” Eilis said. “And some of them have beautiful clothes.”
“So it’s true, then?” Sheila Heffernan asked. “I thought it was a joke. Well, that’s it, then. I’ll pass Bartocci’s, all right, but it’ll be on the other side of the street.”
Eilis suddenly felt brave. “I’ll tell Mr. Bartocci that. He’ll be very upset, Sheila. You and your friend here are famous for your style, especially for the ladders in your stockings and the fussy old cardigans you wear.”
“That’s enough from the whole lot of you,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “I intend to eat the rest of my dinner in peace.”
By the time silence had descended and Patty had stopped shrieking with laughter, Sheila Heffernan had left the room, but Miss McAdam, white-faced, was staring directly at Eilis.
Eilis could see no difference between Brooklyn and Manhattan when she went there the following Thursday afternoon except that the cold as she walked from the subway seemed more severe and dry and the wind more fierce. She was not sure wha
t exactly she had expected, but glamour certainly, more glamorous shops and better-dressed people and a sense of things less broken-down and dismal than they seemed to her sometimes in Brooklyn.
She had been looking forward to writing to her mother and Rose about her first trip to Manhattan, but she realized now that it would have to join the arrival of coloured customers in Bartocci’s or the fight with the other lodgers on the matter; it would be something that she could not mention in a letter home as she did not want to worry them or send them news that might cause them to feel that she could not look after herself. Nor did she want to write them letters that might depress them. Thus as she walked along a street that seemed interminable with dingy shops and poor-looking people, she knew that this would be no use to her when she needed news for her next letter unless, she thought, she made a joke of it, letting them believe that, since Manhattan was no better than Brooklyn, despite everything she had heard, she was missing nothing by not living there and by not planning to go there too soon again.
She found the bookshop easily and was amazed, once she was inside, at the number of law books on sale and the size and weight of some of them. She wondered if in Ireland there were as many law books and if the solicitors in Enniscorthy had immersed themselves in books like this when they were studying. It would, she knew, be a good subject to write to Rose about since Rose played golf with one of the solicitors’ wives.
Eilis walked around the store first, studying titles on the shelves, aware now that some of the books were old and maybe second-hand. It was easy for her to imagine Mr. Rosenblum here, browsing, with one or two big books open in front of him, or using the ladder to get something from the higher shelves. When she had mentioned him several times in letters home, Rose replied to ask if he was married. It was hard to explain in return that he seemed to Eilis so full of knowledge and so steeped in the detail of his subject and its intricacies and so serious that it was impossible to imagine him with a wife or children. Rose in her letter had also suggested once more that if Eilis had something private to discuss, something that she did not want their mother to know about, then she could write to Rose at the office and Rose would, she said, make sure that no one else ever saw the letter.
Eilis smiled to herself at the thought that all she had to report was the first dance; and that she had felt free to write to her mother about it, mentioning it only in passing and as a joke. She had nothing private to report to Rose.
She knew, as she browsed, that she would have no hope of finding the three books on her list in the middle of all the other books, so when she was approached by an old man who had come from behind the desk she simply handed him the list and said that these were the books she had come looking for. The man, who was wearing thick glasses, had to raise them onto his forehead so that he could read. He squinted.
“Is this your handwriting?”
“No, it’s my lecturer’s. He recommended these books.”
“Are you a law student?”
“Not really. But it’s part of the course.”
“What’s your lecturer’s name?”
“Mr. Rosenblum.”
“Joshua Rosenblum?”
“I don’t know his first name.”
“What are you studying?”
“I’m doing a night course at Brooklyn College.”
“That’s Joshua Rosenblum. I’d know his writing.”
He peered again at the piece of paper and the titles.
“He’s clever,” the man said.
“Yes, he’s very good,” she replied.
“Can you imagine…,” the man began but turned towards the cash desk before he finished. He was agitated. She followed him slowly.
“You want these books, then?” He spoke almost aggressively.
“Yes, I do.”
“Joshua Rosenblum?” the man asked. “Can you imagine a country that would want to kill him?”
Eilis stepped back but did not reply.
“Well, can you?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The Germans killed everyone belonging to him, murdered every one of them, but we got him out, at least we did that, we got Joshua Rosenblum out.”
“You mean in the war?”
The man did not reply. He moved across the store and found a small footstool onto which he climbed to fetch a book. As he descended he turned towards her angrily. “Can you imagine a country that would do that? It should be wiped off the face of the earth.”
He looked at her bitterly.
“In the war?” she asked again.
“In the holocaust, in the churben.”
“But was it in the war?”
“It was, it was in the war,” the man replied, the expression on his face suddenly gentle.
As he busied himself finding the other two books, he had a resigned, almost stubborn look; by the time he returned to the counter and prepared the bill for her he had come to seem distant and forbidding. She did not ask him any questions as she handed him the money. He wrapped the books for her and gave her the change. She sensed that he wanted her to leave the shop and there was nothing she could do to make him tell her anything more.
She loved unwrapping the law books and placing them on the table beside the notebooks and her books on accountancy and bookkeeping. When she opened the first of them and looked at it she immediately found it difficult, worrying that she should have bought a dictionary as well so she could check the difficult words. She sat until suppertime going through the introduction, no wiser at the end as to what the “jurisprudence” mentioned at the beginning might be.
That evening at supper, when she had noticed that neither Miss McAdam nor Sheila Heffernan was still speaking to her, Eilis thought of asking Patty and Diana if she could go to the dance with them the following night, or meet them before it somewhere. She did not, she realized, want to go at all but she knew that Father Flood would miss her and, since it would be the second week for her not to be there, he would ask about her. There was another girl at supper that evening, Dolores Grace, who had taken Eilis’s old room. She had red hair and freckles and came from Cavan, it emerged, but she was mainly silent and seemed embarrassed to be at the table with them. Eilis learned that this was her third evening among them, but she had missed her at the previous meals because she had been at her lectures.
After supper, as she was settling back down to see if she could follow one of the other two law books any better, a knock came to the door. It was Diana in the company of Miss McAdam, and Eilis thought it was strange to see the two of them together. She stood at her door and did not invite them into her room.
“We need to talk to you,” Diana whispered.
“What’s up now?” Eilis asked almost impatiently.
“It’s that Dolores one,” Miss McAdam butted in. “She’s a scrubber.”
Diana began to laugh and had to put her hand to her mouth.
“She cleans houses,” Miss McAdam said. “And she’s cleaning for the Kehoe woman here to pay part of her rent. And we don’t want her at the table.”
Diana let out what was close to a shriek of laughter. “She’s awful. She’s the limit.”
“What do you want me to do?” Eilis asked.
“Refuse to eat with her when the rest of us do. And the Kehoe woman listens to you,” Miss McAdam said.
“And where will she eat?”
“Out in the street for all I care,” Miss McAdam said.
“We don’t want her, none of us,” Diana said. “If word got around—”
“That this was a house where people like her were staying—” Miss McAdam continued.
Eilis felt an urge to close the door in their faces and go back to her books.
“We’re just letting you know,” Diana said.
“She’s a scrubber from Cavan,” Miss McAdam said as Diana began to laugh again.
“I don’t know what you’re laughing at,” Miss McAdam said, turning to her.
“Oh, God
, I’m sorry. It’s just awful. No decent fellow will have anything to do with us.”
Eilis looked at both of them as though they were nuisance customers in Bartocci’s and she was Miss Fortini. Since they both worked in offices, she wondered if they had spoken about her in the same way when she first came because she would be working in a shop. She firmly closed the door in their faces.
In the morning Mrs. Kehoe knocked on the window as Eilis reached the street from the basement. Mrs. Kehoe beckoned her to wait and then appeared at the front door.
“I was wondering if you would do me a special favour,” she said.
“Of course I would, Mrs. Kehoe,” Eilis said. It was something her mother had taught her to say if anyone asked her to do them a favour.
“Would you take Dolores to the dance in the hall tonight? She’s dying to go.”
Eilis hesitated. She wished she had guessed in advance that she was going to be asked to do this so she could have a reply prepared.
“All right.” She found herself nodding.
“Well, that’s great news. I’ll tell her to be ready,” Mrs. Kehoe said.
Eilis wished she could think of some quick excuse, some reason why she could not go, but she had used a cold the previous week and she knew that she would have to make an appearance at some stage, even if just for a short time.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying,” she said.
“That’s no problem,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “No problem at all. She won’t want to stay that long either.”
Later, after work, when Eilis went upstairs, she found Dolores Grace alone working in the kitchen and made an arrangement to collect her at ten o’clock.
At supper, none of them spoke about the dance in the hall; Eilis presumed from the atmosphere and from the way in which Miss McAdam pursed her lips and seemed openly irritated every time Mrs. Kehoe spoke and from the fact that Dolores remained silent throughout the meal that something had been said. Eilis understood also by the way both Miss McAdam and Diana avoided her eyes that they knew she was taking Dolores to the dance. She hoped they did not believe that she had offered to do so and wondered if she could let them know that she had been press-ganged by Mrs. Kehoe.