— Road. Black! Black! Where did I hear it before? Black? Not now.
His mother had paused. Now she clucked her lips in a slight sound of distaste. “Well, I’ve told you. And now that I have I don’t know whether I’m glad I did or not.”
“Pooh!” Aunt Bertha scoffed, belligerently. “Why? I promised you I wouldn’t say anything about it. Besides, whom is there to tell? The shop-girls in the flower factory? Well, Nathan perhaps. But he wouldn’t — What are you so afraid of?” she interrupted herself. “Would Albert be jealous if he knew?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tested him. Besides, he doesn’t seem to want to know these things, and so I’m just a little afraid of your — well — rashness! But come!” she said abruptly. “Let’s talk of the living.”
“Yes!” There was alacrity in Aunt Bertha’s voice. “My Nathan will be here soon. Has any of the powder come off my nose?”
His mother laughed. “No. It will take longer than that.”
“I can always smear it down from my nose to my cheeks. That’s the advantage of having plenty there. You know, Nathan is very fond of your baking?”
“I’m happy to hear it. We’ll get some kupfel out.”
“Too bad we haven’t any schnapps.”
“Schnapps? Why schnapps? A Russian wants tea.”
“Yes,” Aunt Bertha laughed. “And thank God he’s a good pliant man and a Jew. I’ll never have a heartbreak such as yours. But one never knows. And tell me,” she switched in her sudden giddy fashion. “Your husband says I do everything with my left hand now that I have an engagement ring. Is that true?”
“Oh, no! Not at all!”
David started. They had begun stirring about the kitchen, and here he was still squatting beside the doorway. They would see him. They would know he knew. They mustn’t. He got softly to his feet, sneaked to the furthest window and peered out intently. Pretend he had just been looking out all this time, that he hadn’t heard. Yes. But now he knew. What? Had anything changed? No. Everything was the same. Sure. Didn’t have to get scared. What had happened? She liked somebody. Who? Lud — Ludwig, she said. A goy. An organeest. Father didn’t like him, her father. And his too, maybe. Didn’t want him to know. Gee! He knew more than his father. So she married a Jew. What did she say before? Benkart, yes, benkart in belly, her father said. What did that mean? He almost knew. Somebody said — who? Where? Gee! Stop asking! Look outside before they come in.
Realizing intuitively the necessity of having to explain his presence in the front room, his eyes swept the outdoors hastily, seeking some object prodigious enough immediately to distract curiosity from himself the moment he called his mother’s attention to it. Beyond the straggly roof-tops was the thin band of grey-green river and the smoke stacks on the further shore. Against the dusty-blue sky above the horizon, the cold, white smoke of an unseen tugboat frayed out and drifted. No. That wouldn’t do. Couldn’t ask anything about those. What then? He pressed his brow against the cold window pane and peered down into the avenue. Passersby walked more briskly now that November was here; they leaned a little in the wind, head sunken in coat-collars, hands in pockets. The breath of horse-car teams and hurrying pushcart peddlars had become visible. Getting colder … Sewers did that too … Saw them when? Could ask why. No. A Negro passed. Was his? Yes. White too. He could ask that. Why does he breathe white if he’s black? No! Dumb-ox! They’ll laugh! But something, something he had to ask, to pretend to be fascinated by or they’d guess—
Two small boys crossed the car tracks on Avenue D and squatted down on the curb. One of them had been carrying a round, tawny-colored object that not until it was set in the gutter against the curb did David recognize it. It was a headless, stove-in celluloid doll with an egg-shaped bottom, the kind that when they were pushed, bounced upright again. He had seen them before in the candy-stores. But what were they going to do? They looked so engrossed, so expectant. He squinted to see better. Exultantly he told himself that here was his excuse, here was the fascinating thing that had kept him there all this time. If only they would hurry up. One of them, apparently the owner, took something out of his pocket, struck it against the sidewalk — a match. Cupping it carefully, he touched it to a cracked edge of the doll — It flared up with a burst of yellow flame. They recoiled. He could hear their muffled shouts. And then one pointed to the spot where the doll had been and where now nothing remained except the char against the curbstone. The other bent down and picked up something. It glittered like a bit of metal. Both stared at it — and David did too from his height.
Behind him he heard his mother mention his name. He turned to listen.
“I lost him somewhere,” she said casually. “Did he go down, Bertha?”
“That’s queer,” was the reply. “I thought I saw him go into — Why I think he must have gone down.”
“Without a good-bye?” His mother’s voice preceded her through the doorway. “Oh!” She looked at him keenly. “Are you still here? I thought — What makes you stay in this cold room?”
“In the street,” he answered, pointing gravely to the window. “Come here, mama, I’ll show you a trick.”
“Oh, then he is here.” Aunt Bertha came in also. “He’s been something too quiet even for him.”
“He’s going to show me a ‘drick’,” his mother laughed. She understood ‘drick’ to mean kick, which in Yiddish had the same sound.
“A ‘drick’,” Aunt Bertha asked grinning. “Where? In the pants?”
“You see downstairs?” he continued soberly. “That boy? He has a green stocking-hat. He burned a doll and he made ‘mejick’. And now he’s got a piece of iron. You see it? In his hands? Look!”
“Do you know what the simpleton’s jabbering about?” Aunt Bertha inquired.
“Not yet.” Smiling, his mother peered down at the two boys below. “Yes. I do see a bit of iron. What do you mean ‘mejick’?”
“There’s a little piece of iron,” he explained. “In that kind of doll. That’s what makes it stand up when you push it over. And the doll burned. And only the iron is left.”
“Aha!” Still smiling, she shrugged. “Well, come into the kitchen anyway. You’ll get a chill here. Do you know it’s growing cold, Bertha?”
David followed them out of the front-room. Easy, he thought in hazy satisfaction. Easy fool them. But they didn’t fool him. Didn’t scare him either. Didn’t change … Gee! The picture! Not now, though. Look at it later, when nobody’s here … Green and blue it’s — Sh!
BOOK III / The Coal
I
TOWARD the end of February, a few weeks after Aunt Bertha had married, David’s father came home from work a little later than usual. David was already at home. The morning had been snapping cold, surprising for that time of the year; the afternoon had turned dull and sleety. With his customary brusqueness, his father flung his dripping, blue milkman’s cap on the washtub and began peeling off his rain-soaked mackinaw; then the vest beneath and the grey sweater. That sense of drowsy desolation that David had felt a long time ago when his father’s arising had wakened him, he felt again, watching him, reminded of the bitter cold and the long darkness. Puffing, his father worked his heavy rubbers loose and kicked them under a chair. They left a slimy trail on the linoleum.