“Keep looking at it, keep looking – fast fast!” Isaac laughed.
“Fast fast,” shouted Moses. The whole earth was speeding quickly past the clouds. Moses felt a little dizzy. They were rushing along, and he couldn’t stop. With a sudden little scream he wrenched his eyes away from the cloud and twisted his body around so that he toppled right on top of his father. “I jumped off!” He adjusted his eyes to his father, blinking a little. His father, close and solid in his vision, laughed too.
“The earth goes round and round,” said Isaac, “fast fast fast.”
“That’s true.” Abraham pushed the paper away from his face and smiled at the two of them. He had not been asleep after all. “You can’t jump off.” He shook his finger at his grandson.
“Yes I can.” Moses jumped from Isaac and attacked his grandfather. They tussled noisily.
Isaac’s eye sought the cloud again. Its position had changed. Strange how a child will skip from a thought into an action, afraid neither that he will lose the thought nor spoil the action. It didn’t matter to Moishe that in the time he had taken to tussle with them the cloud had changed position a fraction. At that moment it had been more important to tussle. The warmth of the afternoon began to seep into Isaac’s bones and scramble his thoughts. He closed his eyes, and the cloud remained, orange on the inside of his eyelids, then purple, then faded into other shapes and colors. In the confusion of pre-sleep it seemed to him that his son had committed an act of courage, jumping off that way, and as he fell asleep he was pointing this out with a swell of pride to the figures that crossed his eyelids.
—
His mother opened the door for him, and Moses stepped onto the front porch. “Be careful,” she cautioned.
Moses looked around him experimentally. The outlines of things sprang sharply into his eyes. He blinked once or twice. On his nose perched the spectacles, round, black-rimmed. They seemed to be all over his face. He swiveled his eyes round and round, trying to see the entire circuit of the rims. Experimentally he took a step or two forward to find out if the world would remain steady about him. He stretched out his arms and stepped cautiously, at the same time peering through the glasses as though he were afraid that they would fall off suddenly and he would lose his balance. Carefully he seated himself on the top step, unnaturally owlish, a thin-faced little boy, wriggling his nose uncomfortably.
While he was preoccupied with the sensation of wearing the glasses, taking them off, putting them on again, Dmitri appeared suddenly, sturdy legs on the rungs of the fence, his gang ranged sturdily beside him. His body leaning far over the fence, he bawled in his rough, child’s voice, “Yah Moses, the freak, has to wear goggles because he can’t see the pot he pees in!”
Moses looked up, heart beating, acknowledged the greeting with elaborate sarcasm. “Dmitri Biblbiblbibl” – finger on lip.
Laughter from Dmitri’s gang.
Angry, the voice of the enemy – “Come on out and fight if you’re so smart.”
“Your gang will jump me.”
“Okay, we’ll let my sister Junie fight on your side. Junie Jew-lover.”
Laughter from the gang.
Moses didn’t answer. Instead he made a face and laughed out loud, convinced that the joke was between himself and the glasses, that though he could see his enemies they could not see the face he made behind the glasses.
“Hey ya, blind! Goggle-eyes!” The voices of the gang now assailed him in chorus. He made a face again, then looked past them with pretended indifference toward Mad Mountain in the distance. Pretend it’s the loonies howling.
The words separated and detached themselves from one another, and gradually from their meanings. Moses listened to them almost with pleasure. “Dirdyjoo, dirdyjoo” – until a rock shattered his little pose.
They didn’t dare come near him at other times, though, not when he marched to the synagogue, all dressed up in his Sabbath clothes, with his grandfather striding along beside him. His day to go to the synagogue came before their day to go to church. They knew nothing of meeting Reb Chaim Knopp, and of the eversame amiable question. “You like to go to the synagogue with Grandpapa?” And of the eversame delight in blaring up at him, “Yoh!” in that loud trumpeting voice that everyone seemed to wear for his grandfather, a shouting that was something fine and joyous.
What could Dmitri and his gang know, standing around bedraggled and dirty, of the discovery he had made about the skullcap of the Reverend Chaim Knopp? When he was a baby Moses had always thought that because the Reverend Knopp was such a holy man – almost as holy as his grandfather, although his voice was not quite so loud – God had sewn on the little black skullcap Himself. His grandfather’s skullcap, his father’s skullcap, everybody else’s skullcap could be taken off. The Reverend Knopp’s skullcap was irremovable, fastened to his head by the invisible stitches of God Amen. Even when he wore his other black serious outdoor hat, the skullcap remained underneath it. This Moses had seen.
And then one day at the synagogue Moses, because he was a baby no longer – they even gave him snuff for sneezing sometimes – had realized that the skullcap of the Reverend Knopp could be removed like anyone else’s if he chose to do so. No one had had to tell him. He had understood for himself. Dmitri wouldn’t know this. He was too dumb. Dmitri was – you mustn’t say – a prick.
—
“Well,” said Abraham, “we will have Hymie Polsky with us from now on.” It was late in the evening. Ruth had made a glass of tea, and Abraham, Ruth, and Isaac sat around the kitchen table, drinking tea and nibbling pieces of rock-hard honey cake, one of Ruth’s specialties that was a particular favorite of Abraham’s. “He will be the big doer at the opening of the business on Saturday evening.”
“Oho,” said Isaac. “So he’s finally passed his exams?”
“Passed his exams!” Abraham pushed his glass away from him. “I don’t know how he isn’t ashamed to show his face. You should only know.”
Ruth and Isaac exchanged glances. All evening they had seen that Abraham was upset. Gradually now Isaac drew the story from him. Through either mischief or laziness, or through an impulse of vanity, or all three, Hymie Polsky had decided to do well in his final exams. Accordingly he had managed to bribe one of the poorer boys, a brilliant student who was already beginning to save money to enter the university, to write his final exams for him. All had gone well until the third test, when one of the invigilators happened to be a teacher from their own high school.
“So they threw them both out of school,” concluded Abraham. “And it served them right.”
“Whom did it serve right – Hymie Polsky?” queried Isaac ironically. “What kind of a punishment was it for him? Graduating and being expelled, they are one and the same thing for him. At worst he’ll get a beating from his father for getting caught, if his father isn’t afraid to lay a hand on him now that he’s grown into such a strapping hulk.”
“Yes,” added Ruth, “the punishment fell on the other one’s head.”
“It’s he who’s had his chances ruined. He must have needed the money pretty badly to risk so much to get it,” continued Isaac.
“Hymie says he had started to save money to go to the university,” repeated Abraham, “but was this a way to save money to go to the university? To cheat?”
From his couch in the living room Moses watched the hazy long streak of light from the open crack of the kitchen door play on a strip of wallpaper in front of him. His mother left the door slightly open almost as though she knew that he was still sometimes afraid of the darkness.
“But how far could it really be called cheating?” He heard his father’s voice respond thoughtfully to his grandfather’s rumbling. “He knew it made no difference to the Polsky boy, and those few dollars might mean the difference between saving enough for college and never getting there.”
“Was that” – his grandfather’s voice was raised somewhat, sternly – “the kind of money to use to build himself a ca
reer? Money he sinned for?”
His mother’s voice sounded a little sharp, as though it were cutting into the smooth pudding and deep chocolate sounds of his father and grandfather. “All right, so it was a sin, but how much of a sin was it?” she said. “Polsky had the money the other one should have had to go to college, so when it was offered to him he took the chance. What opportunity does a poor child have? It’s a pity that he was caught.”
“Cheating?” Abraham’s voice rose. “What kind of a start was this for a career in the university? What would someone like that study? There are enough lawyers in the world already. Tell me, my son, would you have done it?”
“It doesn’t matter whether I would have done it. I don’t know whether I would have done it. But I can understand how someone might be driven to it. How can we condemn him?”
“And do you think they’d give a Jewish child another chance?” Moses cringed in bed at his grandfather’s sudden shout. “His father went to the school and begged them! He came to the shop today to find out if Hymie knew where his son had disappeared to. You should have seen it. Hymie stood there with that oafish smile on his face and told the crying father that he’d seen him climbing onto the freight train!”
It was as though he could hear the sudden silence rush into the vacuum left by his grandfather’s voice. He strained his ears to hear a noise, a reassuring sound from the kitchen. But all noise was frozen except for the scudding sounds his heart was making. They did terrible things to Jewish boys. They had done something terrible to his uncles, he knew. Was his mother still there, in the kitchen? “Mama!” called Moishe in a frightened voice.
A sudden, reassuring rasping of chairs. The light streak widened on the wall. His mother’s pleasant, sharp voice beside him.
“A drink of water?” whispered Moses.
In the kitchen Isaac took the question up again in a lowered voice. “We can’t say it’s because he’s Jewish. There are rules, after all.” And then again, after a moment’s silence: “It’s as much because he’s poor.” Isaac shook his head. There were so many reasons. “One could almost just as easily say it’s because he is alive.”
—
The new butcher shop – delicatessen – kibitzarnia was opened on a Saturday evening, after the Sabbath was officially over. Saturday evening had always been a busy time. Now, in addition to the regular customers and the old friends who came to see how the business was going, the pool-hall boys swept over en masse for corned-beef sandwiches, and an inaugural game had been started by some of Polsky’s old cronies in the back room. Here Laiah presided, and her hoarse, throaty laughter often rang out from behind the curtain.
The place had never been so busy or so noisy. Every now and then someone would sweep back the curtain to the kibitzarnia and shout out an order for drinks and sandwiches. The poolroom crowd lounged around, talking loudly. Polsky ran about, large and jovial. Hymie, like his father, excited, sweating, important, repeated the story of his expulsion from school as though it were some heroic exploit, to each new friend that came in. Chaim, who had dropped in for the opening, found that his barrel was occupied, and the noise was so deafening that he left after a few shouted words to Abraham. The din at last seemed to come from within Abraham’s head rather than from the room.
When finally he swept out the butcher shop and turned off the lights he felt as tired as though he had just completed a whole week of steady work. The kibitzarnia and the delicatessen were still going strong. Abraham locked up the butcher shop, for Polsky, on the theory that two front doors give a place a classy look, had kept the two separate entrances. As he was leaving, Hymie, sweating in the face and swelled out with importance, called out to him with a new-found familiarity.
“Avrom, I forgot – would you do us a favor? Deliver a parcel on your way home, eh? She wants it for tomorrow morning. I’ve written down the address.”
The silence of the outside was like a sudden blow. It was a pleasure to walk through the darkened streets, enjoying the stillness, the freshness of the air, the knowledge that he was nearly home. Almost he forgot about Hymie’s parcel. When he remembered he had to turn around again and walk back. So Hymie really was a boss in the business now. Well, all right, but Polsky was still his employer. As long as Hymie didn’t try to interfere with his work or make a habit of sending him, like this, blocks out of his way, let him be a boss. He thought of his own business and of his partner Isaac, of how their percentages would increase and their dividends multiply. There was Moishe Jacob, there would be Sarah, there would be even more children, perhaps, someday. They would not be idle in the world. In spite of his fatigue, his legs moved more quickly to the rhythm of his thoughts.
ELEVEN
Abraham waited until Ruth had filled the basin with soapsuds and water, so that there should be no splashing noises to distract them. The child sat with his elbows on the table, his mouth slightly open, waiting – He doesn’t take his eyes from my face. He listens, he wonders, like a grown-up human being.
Isaac too sat at the table, leaning back in his chair, his mouth pursed slightly while his fingernail idly scratched through some breadcrumbs on the tablecloth. He listens too, thought Abraham, as I listen. No matter how often one has heard it and even told it, one always listens. Always there is a moment of happiness before the beginning, a rising up, a reaching. This is ours.
Abraham spoke slowly, savoring his words, reflecting. “In those days the people were still wild. Instead of worshiping God they worshiped idols of clay. And to these images they prayed and made sacrifices. They laid their children on the altars. They sacrificed human beings to their wild gods.”
“Did they kill them when they sacrificed them?” asked Moses in his clear, earnest treble.
“Yes.”
Human children. Ruth pulled a chair up to the sink quietly and dropped into it. Barbaric. She laid down the dishrag carefully and listened.
“Abraham’s father was Terach, a rich man, a maker of idols. People came from all over to buy his idols. He offered them many gods. And the people bought them and worshiped them.
“Now this was something that Abraham, even when he was a little boy, could not understand. He could see that these gods that his father made were only things of wood and clay, things of the earth. He himself had often watched them being hacked out of blocks of wood, molded out of wet blobs of clay. Could these be gods of earth and sky?
“He was curious. Often he went to the place where his father and the workmen were. One day when he was still a child he waited until all the workmen were gone from the place. And he went in and looked around. All about him were the idols, standing quietly in the shadows. Now another child might have been frightened, standing there in the still, dim light, surrounded by all of those mighty gods. But Abraham, instead of running away, went quickly up to one of the gods, almost before he knew what he was doing, and tweaked his nose! Well!”
Moses laughed. Abraham had tweaked his nose unexpectedly.
“He waited. Nothing happened. There was no sudden thunderbolt of revenge. The gods stood dumbly as before. So Abraham went from one to the other of the images. And one of them he scratched on the arm, and from another he chipped a little bit of clay. And still nothing happened. And Abraham, who was still very young, thought that this was very strange.
“Still, as he grew older, the question perplexed him. Gradually he began to feel that it was a terrible thing that human beings should be sacrificed. This idea grew on him until one day a few years later he found himself again in the factory with the gods. This time he had to be sure! He seized a strong wooden club and with it he laid about him, shattering the gods, breaking them into little pieces. When he was finished, one image remained standing. He left his club in the arms of this remaining god.
“In the morning there was great excitement. Abraham was dragged out of bed and brought to where his father stood amid the broken gods. His father said to him, ‘O Avrom, my son, last night you were seen entering the factory
. What have you done to the gods?’
“ ‘I have done nothing, Father,’ answered Avrom. ‘You can see for yourself that this god has beaten all the others.’ ”
Moses laughed and wriggled in his chair. Ruth nodded in appreciation.
“ ‘How can he have beaten all the others,’ cried Terach, ‘when he himself is but a block of wood?’
“ ‘Aha!’ cried Abraham. ‘If he is but a block of wood, then why do you fall down and worship him, and why do you sacrifice your children to him?’ And Abraham said to the people, ‘I do not believe in these gods. I believe that there is only one God!’
“But his father said to him, ‘And what does your God look like? How may we depict Him?’
“ ‘It is impossible to depict my God,’ said Abraham. ‘For He is the God of Heaven and Earth. We cannot conceive of Him in wood and clay.’
“But the people demanded that Abraham should be punished as an unbeliever who had destroyed their idols. So his father had him cast into a flaming furnace, and all the people believed that here was the end of this heretic who dared to believe in one God.
“But Abraham walked through the flaming furnace and was not destroyed. And when the people saw this they knew that the man was a prophet. And his father ceased to build idols and would worship them no more.”
Ruth had resumed work with her dishrag, scrubbing vigorously in water that was now cool. But she could not help holding up one ear to listen.
“But throughout the lands most of the people still worshiped idols and destroyed children. Avrom knew that he must preach against this and teach them that there is only one God, and that God did not want them to destroy their own. All his life he went about and talked to the people and tried to make them understand. But people are hard to change. As he grew older he saw that there was no one to carry on his work when he died. So at first he tried to persuade Eliezar, who was the manager of his estates, to follow in his steps. But Eliezar was a businessman. He wasn’t interested in such things. One God, many gods – why should he bother his head to go out and preach and get laughed at, yet? He was making a living.
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