The top floor. David’s eyes flashed to the transom. It was lit. They were in. What would they say? He moaned again in terror.
“Where is it?” the red face before him puffed.
“Over — over dere!” he quavered weakly.
The door. The arm under his knees slid forward. Beefy knuckles rapped, sought the knob. Before an answer came, the door, nudged forward by his own thighs, swung open.
Before him stood his mother, looking tense and startled, her hand resting on his father’s shoulders, and below, seated, his father, cheek on fist, eyes lifted, sourly glowering, affronted, questioning with taut and whiplike stare. The others were gone. It seemed to David that whole ages passed in the instant they regarded each other frozen in their attitudes. And then just as the policeman began to speak, his mother’s hand flew to her breast, she gasped in horror, her face went agonizingly white, contorted, and she screamed. His father threw his chair back, sprang to his feet. His eyes bulged, his jaw dropped, he blanched.
For the briefest moment David felt a shrill, wild surge of triumph whip within him, triumph that his father stood slack-mouthed, finger-clawing, stooped, and then the room suddenly darkened and revolved. He crumpled inertly against the cradling arms.
“David! David!” His mother’s screams pierced the reeling blur. “David! David! Beloved! What is it? What’s happened?”
“Take it easy, missiz! Take it easy!” He could feel the policeman’s elbow thrust out warding her off. “Give us a chanst, will yuh! He ain’t hoit! He ain’t a bit hoit! Hey Doc!”
The interne had stepped between them and David, staring weakly through the sickening murk before his eyes, saw him pushing her resolutely away. “Now! Now! Don’t get him excited, lady! It’s bad! It’s bad for him! You’re frightening him! Understand? Nicht ver — Schlect! Verstehen sie?”
“David! My child!” Unhearing, she still moaned, frantically, hysterically, one hand reached out to him, the other clutching her hair. “Your foot! What is it, child! What is it darling?”
“Put him down on the bed!” The interne motioned impatiently to the bed-room. “And listen, Mister, will you ask her to stop screaming. There’s nothing to worry about! The child is in no danger! Just weak!”
“Genya!” his father started as if he were jarred. “Genya!” He exclaimed in Yiddish. “Stop it! Stop it! He says nothing’s wrong. Stop it!”
From outside the door, the bolder ones in the crowd of neighbors that jammed the hallway had overflowed into the kitchen and were stationing themselves silently or volubly along the walls. Some as they jabbered pointed accusingly at David’s father and wagged their heads significantly. And as David was borne into the bedroom, he heard one whisper in Yiddish, “A quarrel! They were quarreling to death!” In the utterly welcome half-darkness of the bed-room he was stretched out on the bed. His mother, still moaning, had followed, and behind her his restraining hand upon her shoulder came the interne. Behind them the upright, squirming bodies, pale, contorted faces of neighbors clogged the doorway. A gust of fury made him clench his hands convulsively. Why didn’t they go away? All of them! Why didn’t they stop pointing at him?
“I was just this minute going down!” his mother was wringing her hands and weeping, “Just this minute I was going down to find you! What is it darling? Does it hurt you? Tell me—”
“Aw, Missiz!” the policeman flapped his hands in disgust. “He’s all right. Be reasonable, will yiz! Just a liddle boined, dat’s all. Just a liddle boined. Cantchuh see dere’s nutt’n’ wrong wid ’im!”
She stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“Schreckts ach nisht! Schreckts ach nisht!” The chorus of women in the doorway translated raggedly. “Sis im goor nisht geshehen! S’ goor nisht geferlich!”
“Dat’s it, you tell her!” The policeman shouldered his way through the door.
The interne had undressed him, pulled the covers down and tucked him in. The smooth sheets felt cool on his throbbing foot.
“Now!” He straightened, turned decisively to David’s mother. “You can’t help him by crying, lady. If you want to help him go make him some tea. A lot of it.”
“Kein gefahr?” she asked dully, disbelievingly.
“Yes! Yes! That’s right!” he answered impatiently. “Kein gefahr! Now make him some tea.”
“Teh, Mrs. Schearl,” a woman in the doorway came forward. “Geh macht eem teh!”
“Teh?”
“Yes! Teh!” the interne repeated. “Quick! Schnell! Yes?”
She turned numbly. The woman offered to help her. They went out.
“Well, how’s the kid?” the interne grinned down at him. “Feel good?”
“Y-yeh.”
“That’s the boy! You’ll be all right in a little while.”
He turned to leave. A fattish, bare-armed woman stood at his shoulder. David recognized her. She lived on the same floor.
“Ducktuh!” she whispered hurriedly. “Yuh shoulda seen vod a fighd dere vus heyuh!” She contracted, rocked. “Oyyoy! Yoy-u-yoy! Him, dat man, his faddeh, he vus hittin’ eem! Terrible! A terrhible men! En’ dere vus heyuh his cozzins — oder huh cozzins — I don’ know! En’ dey vus fighdingk. Oy-yoy-yoy! Vid scrimms! Vid holleringk! Pwwweeyoy! En’ den dey chessed de boy all oud f’om de house. En den dey chessed de odder two pipples! En’ vee vus listeningk, en’ dis man vos crying. Ah’m khrezzy! Ah’m khrezzy! I dun know vod I do! I dun’ know vod I said! He ses. Ah’m khrezzy! En’ he vus cryingk! Oy!”
“Is that so?” the interne said indifferently.
“Id vus terrhible! Terrhible! En’ Ducktuh,” she patted his arm. “Maybe you could tell me fah vy my liddle Elix dun eat? I give him eggks vid milk vid kulleh gedillehs. En he don’t vonna eat nottingk. Vod sh’d I do?”
“I don’t know.” He brushed by her. “You’d better see a doctor.”
“Oy bist du a chuchim!” she spat after him in Yiddish. “Does the breath of your mouth cost you something?”
His mother returned. Her hair was disheveled. Tears still stained her cheek though she had stopped crying. “You’ll have some tea in a minute, darling.” A tremulous gasp of after-weeping shook her. “Does your foot hurt very much?”
“N-no,” he lied.
“They told me you were at the car-tracks,” she shuddered. “How did you come there? You might have been— Oh! God forbid! What made you go? What made you do it?”
“I don’t — I don’t know,” he answered. And the answer was true. He couldn’t tell now why he had gone, except that something had forced him, something that was clear then and inevitable, but that every passing minute made more inarticulate. “I don’t know, mama.”
She groaned softly, sat down on the bed. The fat woman with the bare arms touched her shoulders and leaned over her.
“Poor Mrs. Schearl!” she said with grating, provocative pity. “Poor Mrs. Schearl! Why ask him? Don’t you know? Our bleeding, faithful mother’s heart they think nothing of wringing. Nothing! Woe you! Woe me! Before we see them grown, how many tears we shed! Oy-yoy-yoy! Measureless. So our children bring us suffering. So our men. Alas, our bitter lot! No?” Her see-saw sigh heaved gustily, pitched audibly. She folded her hands on her loose flabby belly and rocked sorrowfully.
His mother made no answer, but gazed fixedly into his eyes.
In the kitchen, he could hear the policeman interrogating his father, and his father answering in a dazed, unsteady voice. That sense of triumph that David had felt on first being brought in, welled up within him again as he listened to him falter and knew him shaken.
“Yes. Yes,” he was saying. “My sawn. Mine. Yes. Awld eight. Eight en’—en’ vun mawnt’. He vas bawn in—”