In the Beginning

  He read flawlessly. And when he was done a murmur of approval swept through the congregation. My uncle bowed his head for a moment; then I saw my father lean over and embrace him. Their faces tightly together as they held that embrace for a long moment while still in their chairs, they seemed startlingly alike, for now there were lines too on my uncle’s features, and it seemed one face could with ease be substituted for the other. They seemed alike in their pride in my cousin’s singular achievement and, later, they were alike in their laughing reaction to the bags of candy that suddenly came hurtling from the section of the room behind the gauzy curtain where the women prayed. Children scrambled for the candy. Saul ducked his head. There was laughter. Then my uncle went up to the podium to lead us in the Additional Service and Saul sat down next to me after receiving a kiss from my father.

  His face was flushed. There were tiny beads of sweat on his upper lip, which was covered now by a soft down of pale blond hair. His forehead was damp. He glowed with pride.

  I leaned over toward him. “Not one mistake, Saul!”

  He gave me a warm, grateful smile.

  He rose again from his seat before the Silent Devotion and stood behind the podium and spoke briefly to the congregation in Hebrew. He cited a verse from the Torah reading and used it to make a point about how important it was for mankind not to lose hope. He thanked his parents and relatives and friends. He was especially grateful, he said, to the members of the Am Kedoshim Society who had walked miles to share in his happiness. He thanked his parents again, and he took his seat.

  After the service we all went to the social hall downstairs and there was wine and whiskey and cake and herring and fish and cookies and noodle pudding and a joyous tumult of voices and jostling and people greeting one another and words of congratulation for Saul and my aunt and uncle, who stood together near the long table, my uncle proud, my aunt cool and elegant and smiling, and Saul beginning to look a little tired.

  I stood against a wall, chewing slowly on a piece of cake and thinking about the portion of the Torah Saul had read.

  “How are you, David?” someone said and I looked up and it was Mr. Bader.

  He shook my hand. His fingers were warm and strong.

  “I think you are the only person I know who can daydream in the middle of a crowd like this. Aren’t you having a good time?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes.”

  “I am very proud of your Cousin Saul. He did splendidly. Were you able to follow the reading?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were? Very good.”

  “He didn’t even make any mistakes with the trup.”

  He looked at me.

  “Not a single mistake,” I said.

  “You were able to follow the trup?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” he said, smiling. “Wasting time is not going to be one of your major sins.”

  “Mr. Bader?”

  “Yes, David.”

  “Can I ask you something about the sidrah?”

  “You may ask me anything you wish, David.”

  “First God tells Noah to take two animals of every kind into the ark; then God tells Noah to take seven of the clean and two of the unclean animals into the ark. Which did God tell Noah to do?”

  He gazed at me and was silent for a long moment. All around me rose the happy voice of the celebration.

  “Are you able to read Rashi?” Mr. Bader asked and I almost could not hear him for the noise. But I saw the word Rashi formed by his mouth and I knew what he had said.

  I nodded. “I understand the Rashi. The seven clean animals were for the sacrifice after the Flood. But, Mr. Bader, when they go into the ark, it says Noah took in two of each animal. It doesn’t say two and seven; it only says two. And Rashi doesn’t say a word about that.”

  I stopped, feeling my face a little damp with exertion. I had had to speak very loudly to be heard above the voice of the crowd. I looked up at Mr. Bader and wondered if he had been able to hear me. He was so tall and the noise was so loud.

  He had heard me. He bent down and patted my shoulder. “You asked a good question. You aren’t satisfied with the answer given by Rashi?”

  I shrugged.

  “My shrugger,” said Mr. Bader. “Between the way you hang your head and the way you shrug your shoulders you have developed a vocabulary that can be understood by half the population of the world. This is not the time to talk about the Flood. I promise I will talk to you about it another time. All right? If I don’t congratulate your aunt she will become my enemy and I do not relish that prospect at all.”

  “Mr. Bader?”

  “Yes, David.”

  “Will you be going back to Europe soon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you really in the export-import business?”

  He smiled.

  “What do you export and import?”

  I had the impression the query caught him somewhat by surprise for he mouthed a word that was almost entirely swallowed by the noise and which he clearly regarded as an indiscretion as soon as it had left his lips. I did not react to the word for I was not certain I had heard it correctly. Then I heard him say, “Jewelry and art objects and paintings. Things of that sort, David. I promise you we will talk another time about Noah and the Flood.”

  He patted my shoulder and moved away into the dense crowd. I stood against the wall wondering if the first word he had spoken and which had almost been lost in the tumult around us had been jewelry or Jews.

  I did not see Mr. Bader again until the following spring.

  It had something to do with banks and I did not understand it. Also there was the problem of who would take me to and from school once Saul began to attend the Yeshiva high school in upper Manhattan after this year. There were long conversations into the night between my mother and father. Often my aunt and uncle were there too, in our living room or kitchen, talking. Sometimes they all argued loudly. I could understand nothing about the banks but I remember my father’s enraged voice. One of the banks had been owned by Jews and they had swindled hundreds of immigrants. He stormed against those bank owners, the veins in his thick neck bulging with his bitter fury. At breakfast one morning, while reading his newspaper, he smashed his fist down on the table and shouted, “The stinking bastards!” Then he threw down his paper and went from the room. Alex whimpered. My mother’s face was ashen. I sat frozen to my chair listening to the wild jumping of my heart.

  “We have no more money, Mama?” was all I could find to ask when I felt my heart calm enough.

  “Finish your breakfast,” she said with a tone of anger in her voice. “You concern yourself with your studies, David. That’s your job. Nothing else.”

  And she turned to soothe my brother.

  I saw the newspaper in Mr. Steinberg’s candy store. But I was unable to grasp what it was all about. I was happy that someone called Roosevelt had won the Presidency. My father had stood a long time in a line waiting to vote for him. My father disliked standing in lines.

  I could not go near my father. He was irritable. He flared with rage under the slightest provocation: a small act of mischief, the faintest indication of disobedience. Once he smacked my brother across the face for dropping his bread to the floor during a meal. I cowered. My brother screamed. My mother shouted. My father stormed from the kitchen.

  In the middle of December there was a brief meeting of the board of directors of the Am Kedoshim Society in the living room of our apartment. Six men attended, in addition to my father and uncle. My mother served coffee and tea. I lay in bed and listened to their voices. I could not hear my father’s voice. I do not think he spoke at all during that meeting.

  At the end of December the Am Kedoshim Society went into bankruptcy. The little synagogue was closed; there were barely enough people now for a minyan and the rental could no longer be paid. Sometimes on Shabbat my father and I prayed in the large synagogue. Often we stayed home and prayed by ourselves.

  M
y father began to sleep late into the mornings. As the weeks went by, he became increasingly bewildered. Sometimes I would hear him say to himself, “I cannot understand it. What has happened? Nothing I do seems to help.” Once he said to my mother, “Your parents and my parents are the smart ones. They stayed.” Sometimes in the night he would moan in his sleep and once, in the deep blackness of a January morning, I heard him let out a cry and I felt myself terrified and wished I could be ill and drugged with medicine so I could sleep and not be wakened by the sighs and soft moans of pain I seemed to be hearing often now in the dark.

  My brother said to me one evening as he was getting into his pajamas, “Davey, is Papa sick?”

  “I don’t know. He’s very worried, Alex.”

  “He hits me all the time.”

  “If you didn’t behave like a wild Indian, he wouldn’t hit you.”

  “Did he used to hit you too, Davey?”

  “Sometimes,” I said, after a pause.

  “He hits hard.”

  “Did you touch my books? I told you not to touch my books. You want to get hit by me, too?”

  “I only wanted to see the pictures, Davey.”

  “Put them back straight. The way I have them. Lined up straight. I don’t wany my desk to look as messy as your bed.”

  He said to me later, looking up from the children’s book he was leafing through, “Is this word ‘house’?”

  I said from my chair at my desk, “I’m trying to do homework, Alex.”

  “But is it ‘house,’ Davey?”

  I turned to look at him. He was sitting up in his bed, the book on his lap. He had undressed himself and his clothes were strewn all over the floor near his bed. His brown hair, uncut for weeks, lay across his eyes. He pouted unhappily as he returned my gaze.

  “Show me the word,” I said.

  He held up the book.

  “House,” I said. “And go to sleep. It’s late.”

  “How will I learn to read if you won’t help me, Davey? Mama’s with Papa all the time. She doesn’t like me to bother her.”

  My aunt and uncle came over one evening and my aunt stepped into our room as I was reading Alex a story.

  “Well,” she said. “Don’t let me interrupt, David. I only wanted to see how you both were and I see you are fine.”

  “Aunt Sarah,” Alex said without preliminaries, “is Papa sick?”

  She gave him a careful smile. “Your father will be fine. We are all going to see to it that he is well very soon.”

  Late one night as I sat at my desk I heard a soft noise behind me. I turned in my chair and saw my mother in the doorway. She looked tired but her gaze was firm.

  “It’s late, David.”

  “I’m almost finished, Mama.”

  She glanced at my brother, who lay in his bed surrounded by his children’s books which he would not relinquish even in sleep.

  “You are a help to me with your brother,” she murmured. “I am very grateful to you, my son.”

  “Is Papa feeling better?”

  “With God’s help, your father will be all right.” She gazed at me steadily and a smile lightened her wan features. “It is good to see you working at your desk this way. It is … very good.”

  “Is Papa asleep now?”

  “Yes.”

  “He woke me last night. Did he wake you?”

  “Yes. He has bad dreams. It will pass. In many ways it was easier for him in the war than it is now. He’s a man and in the war there were things a man could do. And he did them well, your father. How he did them. And there were Jews who had to be helped and he had ways to help them. But now?” She shook her head sadly. “It is a difficult time. But it will pass. We are all helping and it will pass.”

  “Will we have to move from here, Mama?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We will have to move.”

  One of the middle-aged women who helped in the dining room came over to me during lunch. “You’ll fade away,” she said. “You’ll become like the wind. Why do you sit there like a golem? Why don’t you eat?”

  I shrugged.

  “What kind of an answer is that? From such an answer you’ll put flesh on your bones? It will soon be impossible to tell you apart from your shadow.”

  “She’s right,” Yaakov Bader said when she went away. He sat across the table from me. “You’ll get sick if you don’t eat.”

  “You want my sandwich, Yaakov?”

  “I had a sandwich. Why don’t you eat, Davey?”

  I shrugged again.

  Another of the middle-aged women came over to me the following day. “David Lurie, look at you. You are like a toothpick. There is something the matter with the soup? You want me to give you a different soup? What do you want?”

  I stared down at the table.

  “How can you study if you don’t eat?” she said loudly. I saw heads turning to look at us. “What’s the matter with you?”

  When I did not respond, she went angrily away.

  “Are you all right, Davey?” Yaakov Bader asked. “Can I help you with anything?”

  I shook my head.

  That night I heard someone scream my name in the chill darkness of my room and knew it was a dream. But I heard my name again, followed now by a gasping cry and a loud sob that ended as if muffled by a pillow. Then, through the blackness, I heard, faintly, my mother’s calming words. “It was a dream, Max. That’s all. A dream. Yes, my husband. Yes. It will be all right. I make you a promise. It will be all right. Sha, sha. You will wake the children. It will be all right, my husband. Shall I bring you a glass of coffee?”

  There was a heavy stirring inside my room.

  “Davey?” Alex said faintly. “Where are you? Davey?”

  I came up quickly from beneath my covers. “I’m here, Alex.”

  “Was that Papa?”

  “Don’t talk so loud. Papa had a dream. He’s all right.”

  “I’m cold, Davey.” He was sitting up dazedly in his bed. “I’m scared.”

  “The steam will come on soon, Alex. Go back to sleep.”

  “Can I sleep with you, Davey? I’m really scared.”

  “Come on,” I said.

  He padded quickly across the space that separated us and climbed into my bed. His hands and feet were cold.

  “Papa screamed,” he said. “Didn’t Papa scream?”

  “No talking,” I said. “Just go to sleep.”

  “I thought I heard Papa scream, ‘David,’ ” he murmured drowsily, curling himself into a ball. “Why would Papa scream your name? Were you in Papa’s room?”

  I was spared the need to respond; as soon as he asked the question he fell asleep. I huddled against the form of my little brother. Just before I fell asleep I thought I heard the soft voice of my mother chanting quietly from a distant room of the apartment.

  One of the upper-grade English teachers, a bald-headed man with a roundish face and gentle gray eyes, came over to me during lunch the next day.

  “You’re not eating, David.”

  I looked at him and knew I should have felt awe and trepidation. But I was very tired. I looked away and was quiet.

  “How’s your father feeling?” he asked gently.

  I hung my head.

  I did not hear him move away but when I raised my eyes a moment later he was gone. The noise of the dining room rang dully in my ears. My head hurt. Familiar pain had resumed its old place behind my eyes. I would be ill again soon. I welcomed it.

  The pain remained but I did not become ill. For days I went to school with that vague dull pain behind my eyes. But it did not move from there. And there was no fever and no burning inside my nose or throat.

  The bitter days of that winter moved on slowly. A heavy slate-gray darkness began to cloud the periphery of my vision. Inside my classroom or on the street or in the school yard, I began to see small dark shadowy creatures that I knew were not present to my eyes; and at times I could not see shapes that I felt certain were before
me. Twice I tripped on the outside stone steps of the school, the second time splitting my lower lip so badly that I was unable to speak clearly for a few days.

  My aunt came over to the house alone one night. My father had eaten earlier and had fallen asleep in his living room chair with his head lying awkwardly on his shoulder, his jaw hanging slack. Then, abruptly, he had begun to grind his teeth in his sleep. I could not bear the sound and had gone to my room. I heard my mother putting him to sleep. Now I heard her in the living room with my aunt. They spoke quietly together. I lay in my bed. Alex was asleep.

  I heard my mother say sharply, “For how long?”

  “Days,” said my aunt.

  “My God, that is all we need now. No wonder the child looks like a ghost.”

  “I think it must now be as soon as possible, Ruth.”

  My mother’s reply was indistinct.

  “I will help you. You must tell me what to do and I will do it.”

  Again, my mother’s reply was indistinct.

  Later, my uncle came over and the three of them sat talking into the night. But I was very tired and did not listen. I lay very still, feeling the pain in my lip and behind my eyes and wondering why I was not becoming ill.

  My brother woke that night crying and I went to him and soothed him and walked with him to the bathroom. I sat on his bed until he was asleep and then I went to bed and lay awake a long time listening to the darkness. When I woke in the morning Alex lay next to me on top of my covers, curled into a tight ball. I covered him and dressed to go to school.