“I’m like my father,” she exclaimed suddenly. “Vexation makes my scalp itch! Today you can learn what kind of a woman not to marry.”
Several times during the afternoon, David had been on the point of asking her whether Luter were coming for supper. But something always checked him and he never formed the question.
To avoid the strange emotion, that his mother’s behavior aroused in him, he would have gone downstairs again, even at the risk of encountering Annie or Yussie, but there again, he divined how impatient she would be if he asked her to wait in the hallway. She had seemed cross when he called to her frantically after his meeting with them at three. As she offered no objections he remained indoors and occupied himself in a score of ways — now frightening himself by making faces at the pier glass, now staring out of the window, now fingering the haze of breath upon it, now crawling under beds, now scribbling. He spent an hour tying himself to the bed post with a bit of washline and attempting to escape, and another constructing strange devices with his trinkets. He tried to play the four-handed game of manipulating patterns out of a double string with two hands and the leg of a chair. It was difficult, the old patterns slipped before they were clinched, ended in a snarl. The mind too was tangled, apprehensive, pent-up.
Meanwhile he had observed that his mother’s nervousness was increasing. She seemed neither able to divert her mind nor complete any task other than was absolutely necessary. She had begun to sew the new linen she had bought to make pillow-cases with and had ended by ripping out the thread and throwing the cloth back into the drawer with a harassed cry. “God knows why I can’t make these stitches any shorter! Six to a yard almost! They’d have parted with a shroud’s wear!” And then later, gave up the attempt to thread a cupful of large red beads and dropped them into the cup again and shut her eyes. The newspaper received only a worried glance and was folded up again and dropped in her lap. After which, she sat for such a long time staring at him, that David’s uneasiness grew intolerable. His eyes fluttered hurriedly about the room, searching for something that might distract the fixity of that stare. And grazing the coal sack beside the stove, the seams of the ceiling, the passover dishes on top of the china closet, sink legs, garbage pail, doorhinges, chandelier, lighted on the mantle burning with its soft, bluish flame.
“Mama!” He made no attempt to conceal the anxiety in his voice.
Her lids flickered. She who was always near him in spirit, now seemed hardly aware. “What?”
“Why does that light — that light in the mantle stay inside? In the mantle?”
She looked up, combed her upper lip with her teeth a moment. “That’s because there are great brains in the world.”
“But it breaks all up,” he urged her attention closer. “All up if you — if you even just blow.”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t burn even when you light it?”
“No.” The dull remote tone never left her voice — as if speech were mechanical, forced.
“Why?” He demanded desperately. “Why doesn’t it?”
“Doesn’t what? I don’t know.” She rose, shivered suddenly. “As though it pierced the marrow! Is it cold in here? Or where I sit? Chill?” And stared at the stove, then followed her gaze after a long pause as if her very thought were delayed, and picked up the poker.
“I don’t feel cold.” David reminded her sullenly.
But she hadn’t heard him. Instead her eyes had swerved from his face to the wall and she stood as if listening beyond him, as if she had heard a sound in the hallway outside. No one. She shook her head. And still with the poker in one hand, lifted the other to adjust the gas-cock under the mantle-light—
“Ach!” Exasperatedly she flung her hand down to her side. “Where are my senses? What am I doing?” She crouched down before the stove, buried the poker into the ashes with a provoked stab. “Have you ever seen your mother so mixed? So lost? God have mercy, my wits are milling! Ach! I go here and I’m there! I go there and I’m here. And of a sudden I’m nowhere.” She lifted the stove lid, threw a shovelful of coal into the red pit. “David darling, you were saying—?” Her voice had become solicitous, penitent. She smiled. “You were saying what? Light? Why what?”
Heartened by her new interest, he began again eagerly. “What makes it burn?”
“The gas? Gas of course.”
“Why?”
“One lights it — with a match. And then — Er. And then—” As abruptly as her mood had changed a moment ago, it reverted again. That odd look of strain spindled the corners of her eyes, her face resumed that hunted, alert look. “And then one turns — the — the—”. She broke off. “Only a moment, darling! I’m going into the front room.”
That was the end! He wasn’t going to talk to her any more! He wasn’t going to ask her anything. No, even if she talked to him, he wouldn’t answer. Sullenly, he slumped down into his chair and sullenly watched her hurry up the steps into darkness … heard the window slide open, softly, cautiously … and then close again … She came down.
“Not even the cold air can rouse me.” Her fingers drummed nervously on the ridge of a chair. “Nothing does any good. My head is — Oh, I’m sorry, David, beloved! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to run off in the middle of answering you.” She came over, bent down and kissed him. “Do you forgive me?”
Unappeased, he regarded her in steady silence.
“Offended? I shan’t do it again! I promise!” Where the broad waxen plane of her cheeks curved into the chin, small dents of contrition appeared — the very furthest away a smile could get from the distracted brown eyes, the creased brow. She shook herself. “Er … Burns, you said. Burns! Everything burns! Yes! Or almost. Kerosene, coal, wood, candles, paper, almost everything. And so gas — at least I think so. Er … And so gas, you see? They keep it in great vats, you know. Some tall — like the ash-cans out in the street, some short, like drums, only bigger. I don’t understand them.”
“But mama!” He wasn’t going to permit her to pause; she would fade back into her old mood if he did. “Mama! Water doesn’t burn when you throw a match in a puddle.”
“Puttle?” she repeated. “What is puttle? Your Yiddish is more than one-half English now. I’m being left behind.”
“Puddle. It’s water — in the street — when it rains sometimes.”
“Oh! Water. No, tears sometimes — No! You’re right. Water doesn’t burn.”
“Is there always a — something burning — when it’s light — like that!”
“Yes I think so. When I was a girl, the goyim built an ‘altar’ near a town some distance from Veljish because two peasants saw a light among the trees — yet nothing burning.”
“What’s a — what you said? Altar?” It was his turn to be puzzled. “Means old man?”
“No!” She laughed shortly. “An altar is a broad stone — about so high.” Her downturned palms impatiently leveled the air at bosom’s height. “They have a flat top. So. And because the ground was holy, they fenced it in.”
“Because why? They saw a light and — and nothing burned? So that was holy?”