The pale blue light of the transom obliquely overhead.
— Nobody — in?
He crept to his doorway, stiff ankle-joints cracking like gun-shots. A blur of voices behind the door.
— Sh! Who? Who’s there?
Pent breath trembling in his bosom, he leaned nearer, leaned nearer and poised for flight.
Someone laughed.
— Who? She? Mama? Yes! Yes!
Again, out of a mumble of voices, again the laugh — strained, nervous, but a laugh. Hope clutched at it.
— She! Laugh is hers! She don’t know! Don’t know nothing! Wouldn’t laugh if she knew. No! No! Don’t know! Can go!
His brain flew open as though a light were swung into it—
— Nobody knows! Can go!
Yet his whole being shied in terror when he reached out his hand for the door knob—
The door that clicked open, clicked shut upon their voices. And—
“David! David, child! Where have you been?”
“Mama! Mama!” But not soon enough could he fling himself into her bosom, not deep enough nest his eyes there before he saw in a blur of vision the bearded figure before the table.
“Mama! Mama! Mama!”
Only the sheltering valley between her breasts muffled his scream of fear to her heart. Convulsive, unerring hands flew up to her neck, sought and clasped the one upright pillar of this ruin.
“Hush! Hush! Hush child! Have no fear!” Her body rocked him.
And at his back, his father’s voice, morose, sardonic, “Yes, hush him! Comfort him! Comfort him!”
“Poor frightened one!” Her words came to him from her bosom and lips. “His heart is beating like a thief’s. Where have you been, life? I’m dead with anxiety! Why didn’t you come home?”
“Lost!” he moaned. “I was lost on Avenue A.”
“Ach!” She clasped him to her again. “Because you told a strange tale?”
“I was just making believe! I was just making believe!”
“Were you?” Behind him his father’s cryptic voice. “Were you indeed!”
He could feel his mother start. The heart beneath his ear begun to pound heavily.
“Hi! Yi! Yi! Yi! Yi!” From another corner of the room, the rabbi’s dolorous groan broke up into a train of sighs. “I see I have wrought badly coming here. No?” He paused, but none answered his question. Instead,
“Stop your whining, you!” his father snapped.
“But what was I to do?” The rabbi launched himself again. His voice, so uncommonly unctuous and placating, sounded strange to David’s ears despite his misery. “Had he been a dullard, a plaster golem, such as only the King of the Universe with his holy and bounteous hand knows how to bestow on me, would I have believed him? Psh! I would have said — Bah! Ox-brained idiot, away with this drool! And then and there would I have fetched him such a cuff on the jowls, his children’s children would have cried aloud! Hear me, friend Schearl, he would have flown from me like a toe-nail from a shear! But no!” His voice heightened, deepened, grew rich with huskiness. “In my cheder he was as a crown in among rubbish, as a seraph among Esau’s goyim! How could I help but believe him? A yarn so incredible had to be true. No? His father a goy, an organ-grinder — an organ player in a church! His mother dead! She met him among the corn—”
“What!” Both voices, but with what different tones!
“I said among the corn. You, Mrs. Schearl, his aunt! What! The like will not be heard again till the Messiah is a bride-groom. Speak! No?”
Again that silence and then as though the silence were creaking with its own strain, the ominous grating sound of a stretched cable, his father’s grinding teeth. Under his ear, the heavy beat of the heart tripped, fluttered, hammered raggedly. The stricken catch of the quick breath in her throat was like the audible sublimate of his own terror.
“But uh — uh — now it’s a jest, no? Uh — ah, what! A jest!” His hurried nails could be heard harrying his beard. “Not-eh-ah-poo! Not a doubt!” Stumbling at first, his speech began to tumble, growing more flustered as it grew heartier. “It’s your child now. No! It’s your child! Always! What’s there to be disturbed about? Ha? A jest! A tale of a — of a hunter and a wild bear! Understand? Something to laugh at! Ha! Ha — hey, scamp, there! You won’t gull me again! What these imps can’t invent! Ha! Ha! A jest, no?”
“Yes! Yes!” Her alarmed voice.
“Hmph!” Savagely from her husband. “You agree readily! Where did he get this story? Let him speak! Where did he? Was it Bertha, that red cow? Who?”
David moaned, grasped his mother closer.
“Let him alone, Albert!”
“You say so, do you? We’ll find out!”
“But uh — you won’t hold it against me — uh — I mean that I told you. May God requite me if I came here trying to meddle, to stir up rancor. Yes! May I wither where I sit! Hear me! Not a jot did I care to pry! Let the feet grow where they list, I cared not! Not I! But I thought here am I his rabbi, and I thought it’s my duty to tell you — at least that you might know that he knew — and in what way he was made aware.”
“It’s all right!” She unclasped one arm. “I beg you don’t be disturbed.”
“Well then, good! Good! Ha! I must go! The Synagogue! It grows late.” The creak of his chair and scrape of his feet filled the pause as he rose. “Then you’re not angered with me?”
“No! No! Not at all!”
“Good-night then, good-night.” Hastily. “May God bestow you an appetite for supper. I shan’t trouble you again. If you wish I’ll start him on Chumish soon — a rare thing for one who has spent so little time in a cheder. Good-night to you all.”
“Good-night!”
“Hi-yi-yi-yi-yi-! Life is a blind cast. A blind caper in the dark. Good-night! Hi-i! Yi! Yi! Evil day!”
The latch ground. The door opened, creaked, closed on his hi-yi-ing footsteps. And of the silence that followed the beating of her heart condensed the anguish into intervals. And then his father’s voice, vibrant with contempt—
“The old fool! The blind old nag! But this once he wrought better than he knew!”
He felt his mother’s thighs and shoulders stiffen. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you in a moment,” he answered ominously. “No, on second thought I won’t need to tell you at all. It will tell itself. Answer me this: Where was my father when I married you?”
“Do you need ask me? You know that yourself — he was dead.”
“Yes, I know it,” was his significant retort. And his voice tightening suspiciously. “You saw my mother?”
“Of course! What’s come over you, Albert?”
“Of course!” he repeated in slow contempt. “Why do you smirk at me with that blank, befuddled look? I mean did you see her before I brought her to you myself?”
“What is it you want, Albert?”
“An answer without guile,” he snapped. “You know what I’m talking about! I know you too well. Did she come to you alone? In secret? Well? I’m waiting!”