“Hey, look, Iz, he’s cryin’!”
“An’ jos’ my nex’ too!”
“Waddee hitchuh fuh? Hey!”
“Hey watsa madder!”
The corridor muffled their cries. He fled through to the street. One wild glance at his house and he scurried west. A strange chaotic sensation was taking hold of him — a tumultuous, giddy freedom, a cruel caprice that made him want to caper, to skip, to claw at his hands, to pinch himself until he screamed. A secret wanton laughter kept arising to his lips, but never issued, gurgled in his throat instead with a gurgle of pain. He wanted to smirk at the people whom he neared, wanted to jeer, bray, whistle, double-thumb his nose — but dared not until they had passed. He rattled the loose spheres on the stanchions of stoops, struck the tassels of the awnings, set the chains before the cellars swinging, kicked the ash-cans.
“Fugimbestit! Fugimbestit!” The pressure of his frenzy, too great to be contained seethed from his lips. “You! You! Watchuh lookin’! Yoop! Don’ step on de black line! Bing! Don’ step on de black line. Ain’t I ain’t! Ain’t I! Pooh fuh you too ’lilulibuh! Don’ step on de black line! I’m sommbody else. I’m somebody else—else—ELSE! Dot’s who I am. Hoo! Hoo! Johnny Cake! Blt! Dat’s fuh you! Blyoh! Stinker! Look out fuh de fox. Fox; fix fux, look out! Don’ step on de black line. Yoop! Take a skip! In de box! Yoop! Yoop! Two yoops! Yoop! Hi! Hop, skip an’ a yoop! Hi! Funny! Ow! Owoo!”
At Avenue C, he ran blindly north.
“Yoop! All busted lines. Here all busted. Watch oud! Watch oud! Hey, busted sidewalk, lousy, busted sidewalk, w’y yuh busted? Makes double jumps! Triple jumps! Fawple jumps. Fipple jumps. Yoop! Yoop! Triple! Fipple! Fipple! Kipple! Is a cake! Johnny cake! Why yuh busted? Touch a crack, touch a cella’, touch a cella’, touch a devil. He, black buggerunner! Busts it! Hee, yee! Va y’hee! V y’hee, wee, wee. Wee. Wee. Pee, pee! Pee, pee, tee tee! Yoop! sh! So watchuh lookin’? Make me step on it. Don’ count, devil, ’cause— Pee, pee, dere! Blya! Pee, pee, yea, gotta. Sommtime gotta. Gonna now! Naa! Yea! Gonna now. Take id oud! See! Look! Look! All de goils. Sh! Shattop! Wot I care. See! Hea id comes. Double dare yuh stop me. Double—”
He stepped to the curb.
“Izz wit! Zzz! Lager beeuh comms f’om — He said, Goy, sonn’va bitch! Goy sonn’vabitch! Leo sonn’vabitch! He said! Zzz! Ha! Piss higher! Look o’ my bow! Who cares! Ooh bedder! One bott’n, two bott’n! C’n jump now! Higher. Yoop! Yoop! Hi—”
Tenth Street. The car-tracks. To the east the panel of the river, shore and hazy sky.
“It follows! Run to elebent’. Run, run, Johnny cake! Yoop! Look o’ me ev’ybody! Watch me! No, no! Not me! Him! Him — me! Me — Him. Watchuh lookin’? Fuhgimbestit, it’s him! He fooled him! Ol’ smoke-mout’-stink! He fooled him, ol’ geezer. Wuz’n me. Him! He did it! I ain’t! I ain’ even! So tell. Can’t tell on me. I ain’. So tell! Tell her! Tell Tanta Berta! Tell my modder! I ain’! Yoop! Look o’ me-no-him-go! Look o’ him! Him! Him! Weewuth! Weeewuth! Ain’ even tiad! Ain’ even me! Elebent, a’reddy! Follers me it, water. Follers no me-him! Watchuh foller’n fuh? Lousy, bestitt, copycat river! Skidoo! Mind yuh own lousy biz! Beat it den, beat it, lousy! Beat, Beat it! Beat it! Yoop, Yowooh!”
He ran screaming northward.…
XVI
THREADING his way among the hordes of children, hurdles of baby carriages, darting tricycles and skate-wheel skooters that cluttered the sidewalks of Avenue B, the squat, untidy Jew waddled northward on weak and flabby hams. He stooped slightly as he walked. Seen from the front, a glossy black beard hung suspended from a brown straw hat; the arms that were locked behind his buttocks furled both sides of his dull alpaca coat revealing a greasy insufficient vest that lapsed before reaching his belt; upon the spotted broad expanse of vest a broad watchchain stretched across the wide paunch, barely spanning the gap from pocket to pocket; between the vest and the belt, soiled, wrinkled shirt tails cropped out in a foliated ledge of linen. Seen from the side, baggy pants of indeterminate somberness swept upward and outward in a soft curve, bracket-wise to the overhanging shirt. Slant sun-light on his rear, alternate upon the worn-smooth, almost-lacquered cheeks and cylinders of his pants teetered with his teetering limbs and ricocheted. And he walked northward threading his way.
Arrived at the corner of Sixth Street and Avenue B, he stopped to let an automobile pass, and made good the few seconds he whiled away by drawing out his watch. Under the pressure of thick and oily thumb, the case snapped open like a gold, obedient bivalve. He glanced at the face. Ten minutes to six. Hi! (He sighed mentally) Over an hour before sunset. There was time. There was time. None would gather in the synagogue before seven. There was time to spare. And he squeezed the gold lips clicking over the glint of white. But as he brought the watch near his vest pocket, his head snapped back, jarring his brown straw hat over his eye-brows and he sneezed. Shaken fingers missed the slit in the cloth. The time-piece bounced off his paunch and swung out on its gold chain like a pendulum. He cursed in Yiddish, clutched at it, hauled it in and thrust it rudely back into its place. And then retreating a step from the curb, bowed himself, and pinching his nostrils trumpeted their contents into the gutter. The mucus spattered into the dust like livid fleurs-delis. He reached for his grey handkerchief, buttoned his coat, (it was cool for July) and stepped forward again.
Yi! Yi! Yi! He mused bitterly as his rambling fingers investigated the dryness of his beard. Nothing had gone right with him this day. Nothing. Uufortunate Jew! Was he not an unfortunate Jew? Dear God! Dear God! To sneeze when he holds a watch in his hand. Hi! Hi! Hi! True, it was chained to his person. But what if it was? Does the heart know that? The foolish heart! How it leaps with fright like a colt! And then finds out. A curse on it! On what, the heart? No, not the heart, the watch! No, not the watch either. Hi! Hi! Hi! He was getting stupid with his years. Not the watch, the event. A curse on the event! By all means! Hi-i! An evil day! And this morning when he crossed the gutter, engrossed in bad news (truly, the cause of it all, he reassured himself) engrossed him! Where was his brain that moment? Engrossed, he had caught his walking stick in the eye of a sewer-cover. May it be ground to a powder! Caught and broken it above the ferrule. And a dollar and thirty cents he had paid for it not so long ago, a dollar and thirty cents. From Labele Rifka’s, his cousin, and would it not be meet in the eyes of the Almighty that death befell Labele for selling him a broom-straw for a dollar and thirty cents? For that price, God would surely nod in assent. Broken it above the ferrule. And the brats had stood about him and laughed.…
A curse on them! He glared about him at the children and half grown boys and girls who crowded the stoops and overflowed into the sidewalks and gutter. The devil take them! What was going to become of Yiddish youth? What would become of this new breed? These Americans? This sidewalk-and-gutter generation? He knew them all and they were all alike — brazen, selfish, unbridled. Where was piety and observance? Where was learning, veneration of parents, deference to the old? In the earth! Deep in the earth! On ball playing their minds dwelt, on skates, on kites, on marbles, on gambling for the cardboard pictures, and the older ones, on dancing, and the ferocious jangle of horns and strings and jigging with their feet. And God? Forgotten, forgotten wholly. Ask one who Mendel Beiliss is? Ask one, did he shed goyish blood for the Passover? Would they know? Could they answer? Vagabonds! Snipes! Jiggers with their feet! Corrupt generation! Schmielike, his own grandchild, lifting a nickel from his purse. (Ah, but he fetched him a few sterling whacks when he caught him. A few, but good ones.) And his wooden pointers stolen from his cheder. And those brats in the street laughing when he broke his walking stick. An ageing man and they had jeered at him. And that lout especially, may he break his bones before the rest; asking him if he had lost a ball, in the foul water below. He, a rabbi, an ageing man. Hi! Hi! May a tumor in his belly and a tumor in his head grow to be as big as that ball. Mocking an ageing man. Yiddish youth! Turdworth. Exactly so was his own boyhood in Vilna, in Russ-Poland. Ex-a-actly so-o! Others went sliding on sleds. Not he. Others slid on the ice with the goyim. Not he. They stuck pins into each other in the cheder. Not he. Hi! He had scarcely ever laughed even in his youth. Pogroms. Poverty. What was there to laugh at? Reb R’fuhl was his rabbi then. That was a rabbi! No random cuff did you get from him when he was vexed. No mild pinch on the jowl. Ha, no! When he was angered, he flogged, and when he flogged he took their pants down and spread the flap of their drawers — and all so slowly and with what sweet words. Hi! Ha! Ha! That was a sight to behold! They remembered it those young ones. Not the watery discipline that he enforced. That’s what was ruining this generation, watery discipline. Hi! And he, himself a rabbi now, he had held the culprit’s legs while the straps sank into the white buttocks. There was a kind of pleasure then in hearing another howl, in watching another beaten, seeing the naked flesh squirm and writhe and the crack of the buttocks tighten under the biting thongs. A kind of pleasure, but it had passed now, dulled with over-use he supposed. Hi! Hi!..