In the Beginning

  “I found them outside near my school,” I said.

  They looked at the books dangling from the strap I held in my hand. I was standing near the small showcase of inexpensive watches, watch bands, and costume jewelry my father had recently added to his watch repair service. It stood alongside the workbench. The books were dimly reflected in its front pane of glass. My father sat looking at the books. The wings of his nostrils flared slightly; a look of revulsion came involuntarily into his face; then he made his face expressionless.

  Mr. Donello cheerfully pointed his hammer at the chair that stood near the second lathe against the rear wall of the store. A small narrow mirror alongside the chair showed me walking through the store and putting the books down.

  “I bring the books to the school in the morning,” Mr. Donello said. “I know you don’t go into a Catholic place. You got a good-hearted boy, Max. He save the books from the rain.”

  I looked through the front window of the store. A slanting rain had begun to fall. I saw people running for shelter. The sky was dark. From a long distance away came a vague roll of thunder.

  “You will get wet,” my father said. “Wait until it stops.”

  I stood in the doorway looking out at the rain. Behind me my father worked intently on a watch and Mr. Donello banged away at a shoe, humming through his mouthful of nails. The rain fell heavily upon the street and school buildings and apartment houses. I saw the stones and bricks wet in the rain. Puddles formed on the sidewalk. Then the sky grew very dark and the rain fell in a torrent and I could no longer see the street through the blur of rivulets on the window of the store. I waited inside the store for the rain to stop. It was a long rain and it did not give me the feeling of having cleansed anything.

  The rain was gone in the morning but the sky had not cleared. I walked to my school between the dark puddles on the street. Later in the morning the pavement of the school yard was still wet when we came outside for recess. I stood near the chain-link fence and listened to Yaakov Bader talk about the damage done on his street by the rain. He lived near Jerome Avenue in the Bronx and a tree had been felled by the wind and had crushed a parked car in front of his apartment house. We crowded around him, listening.

  “I don’t ever remember a storm like that,” someone said. “I thought the sky broke open or something.”

  “We had a storm like that last month,” someone else said.

  “Not like that we didn’t.”

  Later I stood near the fence with Yaakov Bader and we looked out at the street. His dark eyes brooded. I asked him if his family was upset because his uncle was leaving for Europe.

  “They’re all worried,” he said. “My father is scared the Nazis will get hold of him. He doesn’t want him to go.”

  “But he won’t be in Germany.”

  “The Nazis are all over. My father says he has only one brother and doesn’t want him to get hurt.”

  “What does your uncle say?”

  “He’s going to Europe in two weeks.”

  “In two weeks? He didn’t tell me that. I was with him Sunday.”

  “The people he works with decided yesterday.”

  “But in two weeks?”

  “Yes,” he said and kicked moodily at the chain-link fence.

  We stood together a moment. A warm damp wind blew his light blond hair across his forehead. His eyes were moist with sadness. I could not remember seeing him sad before and I did not know what to say that might cheer him. He stood there, kicking lightly at the chain-link fence and talking about how worried his family was that Mr. Bader would soon be leaving for Europe.

  “People say there’s going to be another war,” he said. “Sooner or later.”

  “There are lots of people who don’t think so, Yaakov.”

  “I hear about it in the house. They sit around and talk when my uncle comes.” He kicked at the fence, striking it lightly with his sneakers. “Do you hear Hitler’s speeches? He’s a little crazy.”

  “We hear them.”

  “My uncle doesn’t really want to go. But he has a job to do. They want to save as many Jews as they can.” He was silent a moment. “You know,” he said, turning to me with a sad smile, “he told us one of the things he regrets most about leaving is he won’t be able to teach you anymore.”

  I felt my heart turn over slowly.

  “He said you have one of the best minds he’s ever met in his life. He told me to take care of you. He said you’ll be a great scholar one day.” He kicked at the fence, still smiling sadly. “He said your uncle was going to be a great scholar and now your family all want you to be a scholar and I’m supposed to watch you.” The sadness left him slowly. He opened his dark eyes very wide and stared at me. “So I’m watching,” he said. “I’m watching.” Then he laughed and threw an arm around my shoulder and patted my back. “It will be good,” he said in Hebrew. “It will be good.”

  Outside the chain-link fence an old woman passed by, walking slowly. I turned and leaned against the fence and looked around the noisy yard. Larry Grossman was involved with a game of Johnny-on-the-pony. I saw him run and leap and land on the waiting row of backs. The row sagged and held. I turned and looked out again at the street. Yaakov was talking with some of our classmates. I looked at the tall cross on the roof of the church; it seemed to make darker still the already dark sky. I kicked idly at the chain-link fence. A few drops of rain fell, then stopped. David, someone whispered into my ear. I turned my head. There was no one near me. Yaakov Bader stood a few feet away talking about Babe Ruth. “It’s his last year,” he was saying. “They want him to be what he can’t be anymore. He’s too old. You can’t make a person what he isn’t.” I looked out again at the street. David, came the whisper. David. Leave me alone, I thought. Please leave me alone. I knew he was dead and could not whisper but I thought again and again, Please leave me alone. Then I thought, What would it have been like if my father had not married my mother? If my Uncle David had not been killed, then I would not be David and someone else would be my mother’s first son. It’s because my Uncle David was killed by a goy in a pogrom that I am David. He died and I am David. I am David. Everyone has a different picture of me or wants me to be another Uncle David. But I want to be my own David.

  I kicked lightly against the fence and put my forehead to the cool heavy wire. I felt strangely weak and fatigued. The voices of my classmates seemed a comforting balm.

  The whistle blew. I walked across the yard with my classmates. I felt a tickling sensation in my lower right leg and I flexed it as I walked and the feeling disappeared. Larry Grossman brushed up against me in the corridor but kept his face turned stiffly away from me. Inside my classroom, I sat down at my desk and looked at the plywood-covered window. Then I opened my Bible and sat back and closed my eyes. The class grew still. The teacher began to talk about the Rashi we had been studying earlier that morning. I relaxed in my desk and thought again of what I had thought before. I could not grasp the idea that I was alive because my Uncle David was dead. The idea seemed to penetrate through me and double back and come through me again, and still I could not grasp it. I was alive because goyim had killed my uncle. There was the tickling sensation again in my foot and I flexed it and the feeling was gone. What did it mean that if someone had not died I would not be alive? I tried to see the idea inside my eyes but it seemed to slip back and forth through me and I could not hold on to it. My leg itched and tickled and I flexed it and pushed down on it and it felt fine. I sat there slouched down in my desk listening to the teacher’s explanation and thinking of my Uncle David. A train rumbled by along the Third Avenue trestle. There was the itch again, in the curve of my foot directly above the tongue of my shoe, and I reached down and scratched at it lightly. The itch was immediately gone. A moment later a vague throb traveled through my lower leg like a pulse beat. I opened my eyes and sat up. I had scratched at the foot with my right hand. The hand was on the Chumash on top of my desk. I looked at it. Then I looked dow
n at my foot. Below the rim of my trouser leg my light-brown sock was stained dark. I raised the trouser leg and put my hand to my sock and felt the sock warm and moist against my foot. At that same moment, the pulselike throb traveled once again through the leg. I withdrew my hand and stared at my fingers. They were red with blood.

  I sat very still for a long moment staring at my fingers. A vague sensation of choking came slowly into my throat. Memories tumbled across one another inside my eyes. I raised my hand and asked to leave the room.

  In the bathroom I leaned against the white tile wall near the sinks and removed my shoe and sock. The upper part of the foot was covered with blood. The blood formed a ragged patch of ugly darkness, clotted along the edges and bright red near the center. As I watched, a thin trickle of blood oozed out from beneath the clotted edge along the inside of my foot, traveled slowly down my ankle and fell onto the white tile floor of the bathroom. Drops of blood lay on the floor, red, glistening. I stared at them in horror and disbelief and could not understand what had happened. I wet some toilet paper and carefully washed away the blood on my foot. Then I saw the wound. It was a puncture wound almost directly above the instep. I must have inflicted it upon myself earlier when I had kicked at the chain-link fence. My foot had struck one of the sharp points at the ends of the metal twists in which the fence terminated. But I had felt nothing. Why had I felt nothing? Perhaps it was like cutting yourself with paper; you felt nothing until afterwards. A pool of bright red blood lay inside the wound. I felt no pain, only a dull discomfort. The wound did not look to be very deep. I washed around it again with warm water, then covered it with a thickness of toilet paper and pulled my sock back on over my foot. The sock was damp with blood. I put my shoe on and walked slowly to the classroom. The leg throbbed briefly as I sat down and again at the end of morning when I rose from my desk.

  I came out of the school and walked home. The toilet paper was sodden with blood when I removed it in the bathroom of our apartment. I washed the area of the wound again and covered it with gauze and tape. I heard my mother calling me in for lunch. I changed my socks and put the bloodied pair into my pocket. No one has to know about it, I kept saying to myself. I did not understand why I felt that way. It’s nothing, I kept saying. It’s a little cut. I don’t want to make anything big of it. I haven’t had an accident in a long time and this is nothing. I had lunch and went back to school. On the way to school I threw the socks into a garbage can in the alleyway of an apartment house.

  The pain began in the afternoon. It did not seem to be very bad, but I felt it with a sense of numbing dread. As I walked out to the yard for the afternoon recess, it intensified slightly. A sudden dense warmth traveled briefly along the top of my foot. I went over to the chain-link fence with Yaakov Bader and some of my classmates. There they were, the sharp pointed ends of the metal twists at the foot of the fence. It was a warm windy day. The air was gray. Old newspapers and candy wrappers blew along the sidewalk. I heard Yaakov Bader talking about the latest baseball antics of Dizzy Dean. Later that afternoon we would briefly watch the senior class rehearse their graduation. I wondered if they would do any marching. My leg throbbed faintly. I thought about my own graduation next year. In four weeks school would be over. I had learned more this year outside school than inside. Mr. Bader had told me once that most schools were not set up to teach exceptional students. He had looked at me from across his desk and had smiled and I had felt proud. The light from his desk lamp had cast a golden sheen upon his firm features. The tall spare body; the soft voice; the dark glittering eyes beneath the heavy ridge of eyebrows; the smoking jacket and cravat; the manicured nails—he had been my teacher for a long time and now he was going away and the Nazis might get him. Why would the Nazis be after Mr. Bader? Maybe they thought he was a spy. Maybe they believed he was one of the elders of Zion. They might throw him into prison or kill him. I closed my eyes and felt the full steady throb of pain in my foot. It’s healing, I told myself. It’s a cut and it’s healing. Every cut causes pain. Since when have you become a stranger to pain? Big shot! You haven’t had an accident in a long time and all of a sudden you don’t know what pain is anymore. Relax. It’s healing.

  But when I sat in the classroom later that afternoon listening to our English teacher talk about the graduation play and the speeches, a sudden swift flame of pain rose from my foot to my knee. It was immediately gone. The foot throbbed.

  After school I walked home and carefully removed the bandage. The small blackish circle of the wound looked strangely terrifying. The skin around it was tender and had turned red. I felt a queer burning sensation now extending from the wound to the ankle. It seemed such a small wound. I wished I could move time backward. I would not kick at that fence. I remembered reading in one of my mother’s German books that camphor was used by many doctors to cure a variety of illnesses. Of course! That was the medicine I needed. I had even read about it in one of my Uncle David’s German books. Der Kampfer ist eine ausgezeichnete Kur. My mother kept a box of camphor in a cabinet near the bathroom hamper. I opened the box and spread some of the white flakes on the wound. Then I placed a fresh bandage on the wound and put on my sock and shoe. The wound tingled faintly but the pain diminished. When I went to bed there was almost no pain at all, only a vague warm tingling sensation in the area of the wound.

  I woke suddenly in the night and lay in my bed staring into the darkness of the room and trying to remember what had wakened me. I had dreamed of a man in a robe lying asleep in a tent. From the earthen floor of the tent rose a dark form. Slowly it approached the sleeping man. The face of a withered crone appeared in the opening to the tent; a brassy voice had shouted a warning. I had come awake. In the first seconds of waking I remembered the face and voice as belonging to Mrs. Horowitz.

  My leg burned faintly. It felt heavy. But there was no pain. In the morning I dressed the wound again, using the camphor, and went to school. Before lunch I looked at the wound and saw the skin around it was dark red and felt very warm to the touch. I put a fresh camphor bandage on it and went into the kitchen.

  “Are you feeling all right?” my mother asked me.

  I told her I was feeling fine.

  “Your nose? Your throat?” she said anxiously.

  My nose and throat were fine, I said, and ate lunch. I had no appetite.

  I woke again that night and listened in the darkness to someone calling my name. David, the voice called as if from inside a vast cave. The burning sensation in my leg had reached to my knee. I heard my brother snoring quietly. In the alleyway a cat wailed in an eerily human voice. When I inspected the wound before going to school I saw the skin close to the hole had a bluish look to it.

  I was frightened. I bandaged the wound. My father sat at the kitchen table over breakfast and sniffed the air. “Is someone using camphor?” he asked. There was no answer. “I smell camphor,” he said. Still there was no answer. “I smelled it last night, Papa,” Alex said. Then my mother put hot oatmeal on the table in front of us and my father said nothing else about the odor of camphor.

  During the mid-morning recess, Yaakov asked me, “Are you getting sick again, Davey?”

  I leaned against the fence and shook my head.

  “You don’t look good,” he said worriedly.

  “I’m all right,” I said. My head was damp and I felt feverish. But I knew I could not possibly be having any fever, for my nose and throat were fine and my eyes did not hurt.

  Later, in the classroom, I felt the burning sensation in my leg spreading slowly upward. It throbbed and pulsed and moved like waves of heat. Slowly I raised my leg off the floor and flexed my foot. There was a feeling of flesh suddenly ripping beneath the bandage. A thrust of pain reached up along the leg to my groin. I shivered and felt hot and sweaty. The letters on the Chumash wriggled slowly across the page. I sat very still, trembling with fear. A sharp steady throbbing pain settled relentlessly into the top of my foot. I felt all my body pulsing to the beat of the pa
in. I was sweaty all over now and feeling the pain all through my leg. I closed my eyes and waited for dismissal. Voices drifted over me. The teacher kept talking about Rashi. He had a quiet voice but it resonated loudly inside my head. With my eyes closed, I could see him in front of the class, short, pudgy, with his kindly face and milk-white hands. I had once answered a question he had put to me by citing a passage from the Ramban from memory and there had been a long silence and he did not call on me too often after that. I listened to his thin voice and to the voices of students. They washed and drifted back and forth across me like gentle waves. I thought someone was calling me but I could not open my eyes. Then a voice separated itself from all the others and I heard Yaakov Bader say urgently, “Davey! Davey!” and I opened my eyes and smiled up at him. I raised my arm lazily and waved and then almost cried out at the pain. Suddenly the pressure of my shoe on the wound was intolerable. I bent, feeling the queer pounding of the blood all inside me, and slipped off the shoe. I gazed at it in astonishment. It was wet with blood. The voices swelled to a roar, then became subdued. Yaakov Bader helped me to my feet. The floor moved crazily. I leaned heavily on Yaakov and another classmate. We were out of the building. They helped me along Washington Avenue. We passed the shoe repair store but my father did not see me. My mother was home. She looked at the wound, put me to bed, and went hurriedly out of the apartment. Yaakov stayed with me. “You’ll be all right.” Then he said, “Why didn’t you tell me, Davey? I’m supposed to take care of you. Why didn’t you say anything?” His tormented voice moved darkly through my room. All the voices began moving into my room and I knew I would not be able to endure them. Not all of them together in my room. I closed my eyes and heard my father’s heavy tread on the creaking floor of the hallway and knew I did not want to hear his voice now, there were already too many voices calling my name. I sensed him looking at my foot. “God in heaven,” I heard his voice say. Then I heard his voice say, “Go call Weidman. God in heaven.” Then I was falling slowly into the darkness of a cavern and I heard no more sounds for a long time.