“You thief!”
His words, too, hung on the silent air, and then one of the kids said, “Did he steal them from you, Uncle Jimbo?” and another kid shouted, “He’s a crook!” and then suddenly the word “Thief!” was shouted by one of the senior boys and picked up by a junior, “Thief!” and the air rang with the word, “Thief!” and then it was shouted in unison, “Thief! Thief!” and all at once there was a bloodthirsty mob. A kid who had come down from the ball diamond waved his bat in the air and began running after Ronnie. Another kid seized a fallen branch and rushed past the flagpole with it. The others bellowed screams of anger and rage, hysterically racing toward Ronnie, who had dropped the suitcase and turned to face them. There was a pale, sickly smile on his mouth, as though he hadn’t expected this kind of backfire. “Look,” he said, but his voice was drowned out in the roar of the kids as they rushed forward with Jimbo. Ronnie turned and tried to run for his bunk, but Jimbo caught his collar from behind, and pulled him backward to the ground. I saw the kid raise his baseball bat and I leaped to my feet and yelled, “Stop it! Goddamn you, stop it!”
The bat hung in midair. Slowly they turned toward me.
“It’s only marbles,” I said.
The camp was silent.
“It’s only marbles,” I repeated. “Don’t you see?”
And then, because I had intruded upon a fantasy and threatened to shatter it, because the entire spiraling marbles structure was suddenly in danger, they turned from Ronnie, who was lying on the ground, and they ran toward me, shouting and screaming. Jimbo, the champion, struck me on the jaw with his fist, and when I fell to the ground, the kids began kicking me and pummeling me. There was more than anger in their blows and their whispered curses. There was conviction and an overriding necessity to convince the unbeliever as well. I refused to be convinced. I felt each deliberate blow, yes, each fierce kick, but I would not be convinced because I knew, even if they didn’t, that it was only marbles.
I quit Camp Marvin early the next morning. Not because of the beating. That wasn’t important. I carried my two suitcases all around the lake to Camp Lydia. It was raining, and I got soaking wet. I waited at the gate while one of the girl campers ran to get Rebecca. She came walking through the rain wearing her dirty trenchcoat, walking with that peculiar sideward lope, her hair wet and clinging to her face.
“Come on, Beck,” I said. “We’re going home.”
She looked at me for a long time, searching my face with her dark solemn eyes while the rain came down around us. I knew that word of the beating had traveled across the lake, but I didn’t know whether she was looking for cuts and bruises or for something else.
“Are you all right?” she said at last.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said. “Becky, please go pack your things.” And then, as she turned to go, I said, “Becky?”
She stopped in the center of the road with the rain streaming on her face and she looked at me curiously, her eyebrows raised, waiting.
“As soon as we get back,” I said, “today, this afternoon, I’m going to talk to your father.”
She stared at me a moment longer, her eyes very serious, and then she gave a small nod, and a smile began forming on her face, not the usual fast-breaking smile, but a slow steady smile that was somehow very sad and very old, even though she was only nineteen.
“All right, Donald,” she said.
That afternoon I went to see her father at his dental office on Fordham Road in the Bronx. It was still raining. When he heard who was calling, he told his receptionist he didn’t want to see me, so I marched right in and stood beside his chair while he was working on a patient, and I said, “Dr. Goldblatt, you had better see me, because you’re going to see a lot of me from now on.”
He didn’t want to make a very big fuss because a patient was sitting in the chair with her mouth open, so he walked over to his receptionist and quietly asked her to get the police, but I just kept standing by the chair very calmly. He didn’t know it, but I had been through the hysteria bit before, in spades, and this mild case didn’t faze me at all. Finally, when he realized I wasn’t going to leave, he again left his patient sitting in the chair, and he told his receptionist to never mind the police, and he led me to a private little office where we sat on opposite sides of a desk.
He looked at me with dark solemn eyes, almost as black as Rebecca’s, and he said, “What the hell do you want from my life?”
“Dr. Goldblatt,” I said, “I don’t want anything from your life.”
“Except my daughter,” he said sourly.
“Yes, but that’s not from your life, that’s from hers.”
“No,” Dr. Goldblatt said.
“Dr. Goldblatt,” I said politely, “I didn’t come here to ask your permission to see her. I came here to tell you that we’re getting engaged, and as soon as we graduate we’re going to get married.”
“No,” Dr. Goldblatt said. “You’re a Gentile, she’s a Jewish girl, it would never work. Don’t you know the trouble you’re asking for? Different religions, different cultures, how will you raise the children, what will you...?”
“Dr. Goldblatt,” I said, “that’s only marbles.”
“What?”
“I said it’s only marbles.”
The office went very silent, just the way the camp had when I’d shouted those words the day before. Dr. Goldblatt looked at me for a long time, his face expressionless. Then, all he said was “Marbles.”
“Yes,” I said, “marbles. Dr. Goldblatt, I’m going to pick up Becky at the house tonight at eight o’clock. At the house. Dr. Goldblatt. I’m not going to meet her in some dark alley any more.”
Dr. Goldblatt said nothing.
“Because she’s too nice to be meeting in dark alleys,” I said, “and I love her.”
Dr. Goldblatt still said nothing.
“Well,” I said, “it was nice talking to you.”
I got up and offered my hand to him, which he refused. I shrugged and started for the door. I had my hand on the knob when I heard him say behind me, “Marbles. This is what my daughter picked. Marbles.”
I didn’t let him see me smile. I walked downstairs to the street. The rain had tapered off to a fine drizzle. The gutters ran with water, and large puddles had formed in the hollows near the curb. I could remember sticking my hand into puddles just like those long ago when I was a kid, when the loss of a hundred immies had meant a great deal to me.
I called Becky from a telephone booth in the corner drugstore.
The nut — she cried.
To Break the Wall
The door to Room 206 was locked when Richard Dadier reached it for his fifth period English class. He tried the knob several times, peered in through the glass panel, and motioned for Serubi to open the door. Serubi, sitting in the seat closest the door, shrugged his shoulders innocently and grinned. Richard felt again the mixed revulsion and fear he felt before every class.
Easy, he told himself. Easy does it.
He reached into his pocket and slipped the large key into the keyhole. Swinging the door open, he slapped it fast against the prongs that jutted out from the wall, and then walked briskly to his desk.
A falsetto voice somewhere in the back of the room rapidly squeaked, “Daddy-oh!” Richard busied himself with his Delaney book, not looking up at the class. He still remembered that first day, when he had told them his name.