The surges of laughter, plunging within him, were so overwhelming he could feel himself grow faint restraining them. Cold sweat was on his brow. He felt he would burst soon if he couldn’t give outlet to his swollen mirth. Almost sickened by restraint, he finished the page, looked up imploringly.
“Go!” The rabbi pinched his ear.
The relief was so vast it was sobering.
“Play with those tracks again,” he shook his spread palm significantly. “And you’ll lack only death among your woes. Your mother ought to—”
But David was already racing laughter to the door. Across the yard he sprinted, up the stairs, and barely had he reached the hallway when the fit overtook him. There, leaning against the wall, he screamed till his eyes and his drawers were wet, screamed till he could no longer stand, but screaming slumped to the floor and rolled from side to side.
— Gee! It’s funny! Gee! Ow! It’s funny! Ow! Ooh! Ow! I’m peeing! It’s funny! Ow! Funny!
Slowly, by gasps, giggles, chuckles, giggles again, the paroxysm relented. On buckling knees he pushed himself erect, stood swaying. Sudden tears, as void of bitterness as of cause, deep as they were random, runneled his cheeks. Frightened now, he wiped them off hurriedly on his sleeve, stumbled sniffling out of the corridor, ribs aching at every step.
— Gee, what’d I laugh at? Crying now. Crazy! Wet all down. Ooh! move it away! Gee, bath too I have to take! She’ll see. Pissy-pants. Gee, it was funny! Ooh! No more! No! No! Forget! Gee! Crazy! Don’t know what! Walk and get dry. G’wan!
He turned west, wandered uncertainly toward Avenue C, straddling the air in mid-strides from time to time to ease the chafing of his wet drawers against his thighs. As he walked he gazed about him — avidly — as though familiar sights would more quickly still the gales within him. The stores he peered into were closing or preparing to close — even candy stores and they almost never closed. In the bakery store no bread was to be seen. Instead of a heap of rolls on the oilcloth covered base behind the window, lay a white baker’s apron, crumpled and discarded. They were scraping the chopping blocks in the butcher shop, hanging large paper bags from the gleaming meat hooks in the window. Before the stand of the greengrocer’s an old woman in a blue kerchief picked off the tiers of a pyramid of apples. Leaning into the mirror, the white-coated barber was shaving himself. The tinsmith, standing in the doorway was washing his grimy hands with kerosene. Hurrying faces passed, all curved into the same smiling absorption, all sharpened toward the same goal. And now by housewives shrilled, and now by peddlars bellowed, and now muttered by aged Jews with blunt or cloven beards, out of windows, out of doorways, from sidewalks, from gutters, up, down and across, the greeting flew—
“A guten yuntif!”
Deliverance was in the air — The Passover — deliverance from Egypt and from winter, from bondage and death!
— Still wet! Gee! Better go another block.
He crossed Avenue C and continued westward. Here and there children, already dressed in their best, were coming out of hallways and stoops. Gleaming in neat braid, broad ribbon, washed face, pressed Sabbath suits, they gathered in little groups apart from their ungroomed fellows — or approached with the new diffidence of cleanliness. At Avenue B, the open stretch of the park lay before him and beyond in the distance, the city’s towers pried chiseled edges between spume and clarity. He entered, sat down on a bench; and while he watched the children romp noisily over the brown and barren ground, mechanically aired his crotch with hand in pocket. Dry at last, rested somewhat, he rose, retraced his steps.
While seated in the park he had felt nothing but a lethargy, a dull vacancy, hollow as it was leaden. But now as he walked homeward his spirit uncurled again, expanded. All laughter had gone from him and all tears with it, and now only a deep untroubled gentleness was left, a wordless faith, a fixity, mellow and benign. With every step he took his body seemed to grow less his own, his limbs so light and rare, his legs drifted over the pavement with a tranquil, feathery ease. Even the swing of his arm by his side set up ichorous eddies along his bosom as though a hand were caressing him. The cool, limber April air was suddenly winy to his nostrils, teasing the breast into swelling. The sunlight on his face laved his cheeks with so soft a touch, it lifted the throat into its bounty, lifted it, and—
E-e-e! Twee-twee-twee. Tweet! Tweet! Cheep! Cheep! Eet! R-rawk!
Gee! Whistle. Thought it was that man. In the tugboat. In the shirt. Whistling. Only birds. Canary. That lady’s. Polly too — Polly want a cracker — is out already. On the fire-escape. Whistle.
Reluctantly, he neared his doorway, climbed the iron stoop, reluctantly, entered the hallway, sighed.
— Gee! Used to be darker. Funny. Gee! Look! Look! Is a light! In the corner where baby-carriages — No. Looks like though. On the stairs too. Ain’t really there. Inside my head. Better is inside. Can carry it. Funny! Ain’t so dark anyway. Ain’t even scared. Remember how I was? Way long ago? Scared. Used to run up bing-bang-biff. Hee! Hee! Funny I was. I’m big now. Can go up alone. Can go up slow, slow, slow as I like. Can even stand here and don’t even care. Even between the windows, even if nobody’s in the toilet, even if nobody’s in the whole house. Don’t even care. I’m big now, that’s why. Wonder if — Yea, all dry now. Can go in now. New underwear she’ll give me like the other kids already. For Passover …
— Funny. Still can see it. There. And over there. And over in the corner where it’s real dark. It sticks inside all the time, gee, can’t never be scared. Never. Never. Never …
— Fo-o-urth floor. All off! Gee, happy I’m!
He sighed.
BOOK IV / The Rail
I
TRANQUILLY the months had passed. Summer had come and the advanced grade and the glowing, incalculable and unlimned vista of the school vacation — that had remained unlimned. But David felt little disappointment on that score. Let other boys boast of prolonged visits to the seashore or to the mountains or to camps. For him the mere passing of time was a joy. The body was aware of a lyric indolence, a golden lolling within itself. He felt secure at home and in the street — that was all the activity he asked.
It was a day in that season when the sun bolsters a fallen wing with a show of soaring, a day of heat and light. Light so massive stout brick walls could scarcely breast it when it leaned upon them; light that seemed to shiver windows with a single beam; that crashed against the careless eye like rivets. A day when clouds played advocates for pavements, stemming the glare on tenuous bucklers, growing stainless with what they staunched. A day so bright that streets would slacken when shaded momentarily, façade and wall would slump as if relaxing, gather new strength against new kindling. It was late July.
Walking home from the free baths on 6th Street, David, already flushed and perspiring, wished he were back again. It had been cool under the showers. One could slide on one’s belly down the chill, slippery marble aisle for almost a block — at least it looked that long. But the moment one came out into the hot streets, the coolness vanished. Only one’s hair remained damp — and that was the worst part of it — the man at the door always ran his fingers through one’s hair and chased the repeaters from the line.
He trudged on, breathing through his mouth from time to time because the air had grown so hot it seemed to sear the nostrils. Although he had not yet crossed Avenue C, the street was so deserted and the sun so bright, he could see the glint on the brass bannisters before his house. He glanced at the clock in the corner drug store — it pointed to a quarter past nine. Past nine? Where was his father’s milk wagon? Good! He was gone. Despite his feeling of greater security these days, that same sense of relief still cropped up. Good! He didn’t have to think about him now. He could go upstairs now and have his second breakfast — his first before going to the baths had been a glass of milk. After that the day was his. He quickened his step—