by Henry Roth
He didn’t like his father. He never would like him. He hated him.
The candy store at last. He opened the door, hearing overhead the familiar tinny jangle of the bell. Gnawing a frayed chicken bone the half-grown son of the storekeeper came out of the back.
“Waddayuh want?”
“De Tageblatt.”
The boy lifted a newspaper out of a small pile on the counter, handed it to David, who having taken it, turned to go.
“Where’s your money?” demanded the boy impatiently.
“Oh, hea.” David reached up and handed over the dime that he had been clutching in his hand all this time.
Clamping the bone between his teeth the boy made change and returned it, greasy fingers greasing the coins.
He went out, hurried toward the house. Walking was too slow; his mother would be waiting. He began to run. He had only taken a few strides forward when his foot suddenly landed on something that was not pavement. The sound of hollow iron warned him too late—A coal-chute cover. He slipped. With a gasp, he teetered in air, striving, clawing for a moment at a void, and then pitched forward, sprawling in the icy slush. Money and newspaper flew from his hands and now lay scattered in the dark. Frightened, knees and stockings soaked, he pushed himself to his feet, and began wildly looking about for what he had dropped.
He found the newspaper—sopping. Then a penny. More, there was more. He peered frantically in the dark. Another penny. Two cents now. But he had eight before. He plunged his hand here, there into the numbing snow, felt along the rough pavement, retraced, groped. Further ahead! Back! Nothing. Beside the curb maybe! Nothing. He would never find it. Never! He burst into tears, ran toward the house, careless now whether he fell or not. It would be better for him if he fell now, if he were hurt. Sobbing, he entered the hallway. He heard a door open upstairs, and his mother’s voice at the top of the stairs.
“Child, I’m here.”
He climbed up.
“What is it? What is it? Why, you’re soaked through!” She led him in.
“I lost the money.” He wailed. “I only have two—two cents.”
His father was staring at him angrily, “You’ve lost it, have you? I had a feeling you would. Paid yourself for your errand, have you?”
“I fell in the snow,” he sobbed.
“It’s all right,” said his mother gently, taking the newspaper and the money away from him. “It’s all right.”
“All right? Will everything he does be all right always? How long will you tell him that?” His father snatched the paper from her. “Why, it’s wringing wet. A handy young man, my son!”
His mother took his coat off. “Come sit near the stove.”
“Indulge him! Indulge him!” her husband muttered wrathfully and flung himself into a chair. “Look at that paper!” He slapped it open on the table. “My way would be a few sound cuffs.”
“He couldn’t help it,” she interposed placatingly. “It’s very slippery and he fell.”
“Bah! He couldn’t help it! That’s all I ever hear from you! He has a downright gift for stumbling into every black moment of the year. At night he breaks one’s sleep with a squalling about dreams. A little while ago he flings his spoon into his soup. Now—six cents thrown away.” He slapped his hand on the paper. “Two cents ruined. Who can read it! Beware!” he shook a menacing finger at David who cowered against his mother’s side. “There’s a good beating in store for you! I warn you! It’s been gathering for years.”
“Albert,” said his wife reddening, “you are a man without a heart.”
“I?” His father drew back, his nostrils curving out in anger. “A plague on you both—I have no heart? And have you any understanding, any knowledge of how to bring up a child?” He thrust his jaw forward.
A moment of silence followed and then “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean it. I meant only—these things happen sometimes—I’m sorry!”
“Oh, you’re sorry,” he said bitterly. “I have no heart! Woe me, to labor as I labor, for food for the two of you and for a roof over your heads. To labor and to work overtime! In vain! I have no heart! As if I gorged myself upon my earnings, as if I drank them, wallowed in the streets. Have you ever gone without anything? Tell me!”
“No! No!”
“Well?”
“I meant only that you didn’t see the child all day as I did—naturally you don’t know when anything is wrong with him.”
“I see enough of him when I see him. And I know better than you what medicine he needs most.”
His mother was silent.
“You’ll be saying he needs a doctor next.”
“Perhaps he—”
But someone was knocking at the door. She stopped speaking, went over and opened it—Yussie came in; he held a wooden clothes-hanger in his hand.
“My mother wants you to go upstairs,” he said in Yiddish.
David’s mother shook her head impatiently.
“Have you taken to gadding about?” asked her husband disgustedly. “Only a few days ago, you had no neighbors at all.”
“I’ve only been there once,” she said apologetically. And to Yussie, “Tell your mother I can’t come up just now.”
“She’s waiting for you,” he answered without stirring. “She’s got a new dress to show you.”
“Not now.”
“I ain’ goin’ op,” Yussie switched into English as if to avoid any further discussion. “I’m gonna stay hea.” And apparently satisfied that his mission had been performed, he approached the uneasy David who was still seated beside the stove. “See wot I got—a bow ’n’ arrer.” He brandished the clothes hanger.
“I’ll have to go for just a minute,” she said hesitantly. “This child—she’ll be wondering—”
“Go! Go!” said her husband sullenly. “Am I stopping you?” He picked up the newspaper, plucked a match from the match-box and then stalked up into the frontroom and slammed the door behind him. David heard him fling himself down upon the couch.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” said his mother wearily, and casting a hopeless glance after her husband, went out.
“Aintcha gonna play?” asked Yussie after a pause.
“I don’ wanna,” he answered morosely.
“W’yncha wanna?”
“Cause I don’ wanna.” He eyed the clothes hanger with disgust. It had been upstairs in a closet; it was tainted.
“Aaa, c’mon!” And when David refused to be persuaded, “Den I’m gonna shootchuh!” he threatened. “Yuh wanna see me?” He lifted the clothes hanger, pulled back an imaginary string. “Bing! I’m an Innian. If you don’ have a bow ’n’ arrer, I c’n kill yuh. Bang!” Another shaft flew. “Right innee eye. W’yntcha wanna play?”
“I don’ wanna.”
“W’yntcha get a bow ’n’ arrer?”
“Lemme alone!”
“I’m gonna shootchuh again den,” he dropped to the floor. “Bing! Dot one went right inside. Yuh dead!”
“Go ’way!”
“I don’ wanna go ’way,” he had become cross. “I’m gonna shootcha all I wan’. Yuh a cowid.”
David was silent. He was beginning to tremble.
“I c’n even hitcha wit my hatchet,” continued Yussie. “Yuh a cowid.” He crawled up defiantly. “Wanna see me hitcha wit my hatchet?” He had grasped the clothes hanger at one end, “Yuh dare me?”
“Get otta here!” hissed David frantically. “Go in yuh own house!”
“I don’ wanna,” said Yussie truculently. “I c’n fight-choo. Wanna see me?” He drew back his arm, “Bing!” The point of the clothes hanger struck David in the knee, sending a flash of pain through his whole leg. He cried out. The next moment, he had kicked at Yussie’s face with all the force in his leg.
Yussie fell forward on his hands. He opened his mouth, but uttered no sound. Instead his eyes bulged as if he were strangling, and to David’s horror the blood began to trickle from under his pinched white nostrils.
For moments that seemed years of agony the blood slowly branched above his lip. He stood that way tranced and rigid. Suddenly he sucked in his breath, the sound was flat, sudden, like the sound of a stone falling into water. With terrified care, he reached up his hand to touch the scarlet bead hanging from his lips, and when he beheld the red smear on his finger tips, his face knitted with fright, and he threw back his head, and uttered the most piercing scream that David had ever heard. So piercing was it that David could feel his own throat contract as though the scream were splitting from his own body and he were trying to stifle it. With the awful realization that his father was in the next room, he sprang to his feet.
“Here, Yussie,” he cried frenziedly, trying to force the clothes hanger into his hands. “Here, hit me Yussie. G’wan hit me Yussie!” And striking himself a sharp blow on the brow, “Look, Yussie, you hoited me. Ow!”
But to no avail. Once more Yussie screamed. And now David knew he was lost.
“Mama!” he moaned in terror. “Mama!” And turned toward the frontroom door as if toward doom.
It opened. His father glared at them in angry surprise. Then his features grew taut when his eyes fixed on Yussie. His nostrils broadened and grew pale.
“What have you done?” His voice was deliberate and incredulous.
“I—I—” David stammered, shrunken with fear.
“He kicked me right in duh nose!” Yussie howled.
Never taking his blazing eyes from David, his father came down the parlor stairs. “What?” he ground, towering above him. “Speak!” Slowly his arm swung toward the sobbing Yussie; it was like a dial measuring his gathering wrath. “Tell me did you do this?” With every word he uttered his lips became thinner and more rigid. His face to David seemed slowly to recede, but recede without diminishing, growing more livid with distance, a white flame bodiless. In the molten features, only the vein upon his brow was clear, pulsing like a dark levin.
Who could bear the white heat of those features? Terror numbed his throat. He gagged. His head waited for his eyes to lower, his eyes for his head. He quivered, and in quivering wrenched free of that awful gaze.
“Answer me!”
Answer me, his words rang out. Answer me, but they meant, Despair! Who could answer his father? In that dread summons the judgement was already sealed. Like a cornered thing, he shrank within himself, deadened his mind because the body would not deaden and waited. Nothing existed any longer except his father’s right hand —the hand that hung down into the electric circle of his vision. Terrific clarity was given him. Terrific leisure. Transfixed, timeless, he studied the curling fingers that twitched spasmodically, studied the printer’s ink ingrained upon the finger tips, pondered, as if all there were in the world, the nail of the smallest finger, nipped by a press, that climbed in a jagged little stair to the hangnail. Terrific absorption.
The hammer in that hand when he stood! The hammer!
Suddenly he cringed. His eyelids blotted out the light like a shutter. The open hand struck him full against the cheek and temple, splintering the brain into fragments of light. Spheres, mercuric, splattered, condensed and roared. He fell to the floor. The next moment his father had snatched up the clothes hanger, and in that awful pause before it descended upon his shoulders, he saw with that accelerated vision of agony, how mute and open mouthed Yussie stood now, with what useless silence.
“You won’t answer!” The voice that snarled was the voice of the clothes hanger biting like flame into his flesh. “A curse on your vicious heart! Wild beast! Here, then! Here! Here! Now I’ll tame you! I’ve a free hand now! I warned you! I warned you! Would you heed!”
The chopping strokes of the clothes hanger flayed his wrists, his hands, his back, his breast. There was always a place for it to land no matter where he ducked or writhed or groveled. He screamed, screamed, and still the blows fell.
“Please papa! Please! No more! No more! Darling papa! Darling papa!” He knew that in another moment he would thrust his head beneath that rain of blows. Anguish! Anguish! He must escape!
“Now bawl!” the voice raged. “Now scream! But I pleaded with you! Pleaded as I would with death! You were stubborn were you! Silent were you! Secret—”
The door was thrown open. With a wild cry, his mother rushed in, flung herself between them.
“Mama!” he screamed, clutching at her dress. “Mama!”
“Oh, God!” she cried in terror and swooped him into her arms. “Stop! Stop! Albert! What have you done to him!”
“Let him go!” he snarled. “Let him go I tell you!”
“Mama!” David clung to her frenziedly. “Don’t let him! Don’t let him!”
“With that!” she screamed hoarsely, trying to snatch the clothes hanger from him. “With that to strike a child. Woe to you! Heart of stone! how could you!”
“I haven’t struck him before!” The voice was strangled. “What I did he deserved! You’ve been protecting him from me long enough! It’s been coming to him for a long time!”
“Your only son!” she wailed, pressing David convulsively to her. “Your only son!”
“Don’t tell me that! I don’t want to hear it! He’s no son of mine! Would he were dead at my feet!”
“Oh, David, David beloved!” In her anguish over her child, she seemed to forget everyone else, even her husband. “What has he done to you! Hush! Hush!” She brushed his tears away with frantic hand, sat down and rocked him back and forth. “Hush, my beloved! My beautiful! Oh, look at his hand!”
“I’m harboring a fiend!” the implacable voice raged. “A butcher! And you’re protecting him! Those hands of his will beat me yet! I know! My blood warns me of this son! This son! Look at this child! Look what he’s done! He’ll shed human blood like water!”
“You’re stark, raving mad!” She turned upon him angrily. “The butcher is yourself! I’ll tell you that to your face! Where he’s in danger I won’t yield, do you understand? With everything else have your way, but not with him!”
“Hanh! you have your reasons! But I’ll beat him while I can.”
“You won’t touch him!”
“No? We’ll see about that!”
“You won’t touch him, do you hear?” Her voice had become as quiet and as menacing as a trigger that, locked and at rest, held back by a hair incredible will, incredible passion. “Never!”
“You tell me that?” His voice seemed amazed. “Do you know to whom you speak?”
“It doesn’t matter! And now leave us!”
“I?” Again that immense surprise. As though one had dared to question a volcanic and incalculable force, and by questioning made it question itself. “To me? You speak to me?”
“To you. Indeed to you. Go out. Or I shall go.”
“You?”
“Yes, both of us.”
With terrified, tear-blurred eyes, David watched his father’s body shake as if some awful strife were going on within him, saw his head lunge forward, his mouth open to speak, once, again, then grow pale and twitch, and finally he turned without a word and stumbled up the parlor steps.
His mother sat for a moment without moving, then quivered and burst into tears, but brushed them off.
Yussie was still standing there, mute and frightened, his blood smeared over his chin.
“Sit there a moment.” She rose and set David on a chair. “Come here you poor child,” she said to Yussie.
“He kicked me righd on de nose!”
“Hush!” She led Yussie to the sink, and wiped his face with the end of a wet towel. “There, now you feel better.” And wetting the towel again, came over to David and set him on her lap.
“He hit me first.”
“Now hush! We won’t say anything more about it.” She patted the lacerated wrist with the cold towel. “Oh! my child!” she moaned biting her lips.
“I wanna go opstai’s,” blubbered Yussie. “I’m gonna tell my modder on you.” He snatched up the clothes hanger from the floor. “Waid’ll I te
ll my modder on you, yuh gonna gid it!” He flung the door open and ran out bawling.
His mother, sighing painfully, shut the door after him, and began undoing David’s shirt. There were angry red marks on his breast and shoulders. She touched them. He whimpered with pain.
“Hush!” she murmured again and again. “I know. I know, beloved.”
She undressed him, fetched his nightgown and slipped it over him. The cold air on his bruises had stiffened his shoulders and hands. He moved stiffly, whimpering.
“It really hurts now, doesn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes.” He felt himself wanting to sniffle.
“Poor darling, let me put you to bed.” She set him on his feet.
“I have to go now. Numbuh one.”
“Yes.”
She led him into the bathroom, lifted the toilet-seat. Urination was painful, affording relief only as a mournful sigh affords relief. His whole body shuddered as his bladder relaxed. A new sense of shyness invaded him; he crept furtively around to stand with his back to her, contracted when she pulled the chain above his head. He went out into the bright kitchen again, into the dark bedroom, and got into bed. There was a lingering, weary sadness in the first chill of the covers.
“And now sleep,” she urged, bending down and kissing him. “And a better day.”
“Stay here.”
“Yes. Of course.” She sat down and gave him her hand.
He curled his fingers around her thumb and lay staring up at her, his eyes drawing her features out of deep shadow. From time to time a sudden gasp would shake him, as though the waves of grief and pain had run his being’s length and were returning now from some remote shore.
XI
DECEMBER sunlight, porous and cloudy, molten on upper window panes. Though it was still early in the afternoon, the tide of cold shade had risen high on wooden houses and brick. Grey clots of snow still clung under the lee of the battered curb. The air was cold yet windless. Winter. To the left of the doorway a sewer steamed.