The ship curved around in a long arc toward Manhattan, her bow sweeping past Brooklyn and the bridges whose cables and pillars superimposed by distance, spanned the East River in diaphanous and rigid waves. The western wind that raked the harbor into brilliant clods blew fresh and clear — a salt tang in the lull of its veerings. It whipped the polka-dot ribbons on the child’s hat straight out behind him. They caught his father’s eye.
“Where did you find that crown?”
Startled by his sudden question his wife looked down. “That? That was Maria’s parting gift. The old nurse. She bought it herself and then sewed the ribbons on. You don’t think it’s pretty?”
“Pretty? Do you still ask?” His lean jaws hardly moved as he spoke. “Can’t you see that those idiots lying back there are watching us already? They’re mocking us! What will the others do on the train? He looks like a clown in it. He’s the cause of all this trouble anyway!”
The harsh voice, the wrathful glare, the hand flung toward the child frightened him. Without knowing the cause, he knew that the stranger’s anger was directed at himself. He burst into tears and pressed closer to his mother.
“Quiet!” the voice above him snapped.
Cowering, the child wept all the louder.
“Hush, darling!” His mother’s protecting hands settled on his shoulders.
“Just when we’re about to land!” her husband said furiously “He begins this! This howling! And now we’ll have it all the way home, I suppose! Quiet! You hear?”
“It’s you who are frightening him, Albert!” she protested.
“Am I? Well, let him be quiet. And take that straw gear off his head.”
“But Albert, it’s cool here.”
“Will you take that off when I—” A snarl choked whatever else he would have uttered. While his wife looked on aghast, his long fingers scooped the hat from the child’s head. The next instant it was sailing over the ship’s side to the green waters below. The overalled men in the stern grinned at each other. The old orange-peddler shook her head and clucked.
“Albert!” his wife caught her breath. “How could you?”
“I could!” he rapped out. “You should have left it behind!” His teeth clicked, and he glared about the deck.
She lifted the sobbing child to her breast, pressed him against her. With a vacant stunned expression, her gaze wandered from the grim smouldering face of her husband to the stern of the ship. In the silvery-green wake that curved trumpet-wise through the water, the blue hat still bobbed and rolled, ribbon stretched out on the waves. Tears sprang to her eyes. She brushed them away quickly, shook her head as if shaking off the memory, and looked toward the bow. Before her the grimy cupolas and towering square walls of the city loomed up. Above the jagged roof tops, the white smoke, whitened and suffused by the slanting sun, faded into the slots and wedges of the sky. She pressed her brow against her child’s, hushed him with whispers. This was that vast incredible land, the land of freedom, of immense opportunity, that Golden Land. Again she tried to smile.
“Albert,” she said timidly, “Albert.”
“Hm?”
“Gehen vir voinen du? In Nev York?”
“Nein. Bronzeville. Ich hud dir schoin geschriben.”
She nodded uncertainly, sighed …
Screws threshing, backing water, the Peter Stuyvesant neared her dock — drifting slowly and with canceled momentum as if reluctant.
BOOK I / The Cellar
I
STANDING before the kitchen sink and regarding the bright brass faucets that gleamed so far away, each with a bead of water at its nose, slowly swelling, falling, David again became aware that this world had been created without thought of him. He was thirsty, but the iron hip of the sink rested on legs tall almost as his own body, and by no stretch of arm, no leap, could he ever reach the distant tap. Where did the water come from that lurked so secretly in the curve of the brass? Where did it go, gurgling in the drain? What a strange world must be hidden behind the walls of a house! But he was thirsty.
“Mama!” he called, his voice rising above the hiss of sweeping in the frontroom. “Mama, I want a drink.”
The unseen broom stopped to listen. “I’ll be there in a moment,” his mother answered. A chair squealed on its castors; a window chuckled down; his mother’s approaching tread.
Standing in the doorway on the top step (two steps led up into the frontroom) his mother smilingly surveyed him. She looked as tall as a tower. The old grey dress she wore rose straight from strong bare ankle to waist, curved round the deep bosom and over the wide shoulders, and set her full throat in a frame of frayed lace. Her smooth, sloping face was flushed now with her work, but faintly so, diffused, the color of a hand beneath wax. She had mild, full lips, brown hair. A vague, fugitive darkness blurred the hollow above her cheekbone, giving to her face and to her large brown eyes, set in their white ovals, a reserved and almost mournful air.
“I want a drink, mama,” he repeated.
“I know,” she answered, coming down the stairs. “I heard you.” And casting a quick, sidelong glance at him, she went over to the sink and turned the tap. The water spouted noisily down. She stood there a moment, smiling obscurely, one finger parting the turbulent jet, waiting for the water to cool. Then filling a glass, she handed it down to him.
“When am I going to be big enough?” he asked resentfully as he took the glass in both hands.
“There will come a time,” she answered, smiling. She rarely smiled broadly; instead the thin furrow along her upper lip would deepen. “Have little fear.”
With eyes still fixed on his mother, he drank the water in breathless, uneven gulps, then returned the glass to her, surprised to see its contents scarcely diminished.
“Why can’t I talk with my mouth in the water?”
“No one would hear you. Have you had your fill?”
He nodded, murmuring contentedly.
“And is that all?” she asked. Her voice held a faint challenge.
“Yes,” he said hesitantly, meanwhile scanning her face for some clue.
“I thought so,” she drew her head back in droll disappointment.
“What?”
“It is summer,” she pointed to the window, “the weather grows warm. Whom will you refresh with the icy lips the water lent you?”
“Oh!” he lifted his smiling face.
“You remember nothing,” she reproached him, and with a throaty chuckle, lifted him in her arms.
Sinking his fingers in her hair, David kissed her brow. The faint familiar warmth and odor of her skin and hair.
“There!” she laughed, nuzzling his cheek, “but you’ve waited too long; the sweet chill has dulled. Lips for me,” she reminded him, “must always be cool as the water that wet them.” She put him down.
“Sometime I’m going to eat some ice,” he said warningly, “then you’ll like it.”
She laughed. And then soberly, “Aren’t you ever going down into the street? The morning grows old.”