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!…
An evil day.…
And at noon, he had quarreled with Ruchel, his daughter, over the chicanery of her husband, Avrum, the butcher. Cold-storage liver he was selling and palming it off for fresh. A snide generation. Why should the children be better than their fathers? No sanctity anywhere, no faith. It’s kosher, she said. Ruchel his daughter, his thorn. It tastes just as good. In food there should be some trust, he had answered. If you were selling walking sticks sell the flawed, the warped, the brittle. Say nothing, tell nothing. But what enters the mouth, there you must betray no trust. If you’re selling “treifes” say it is “treife” and men will hold you a man. If you’re selling cold-storage for fresh—But it’s kosher, she had said. Of course it’s kosher, he had answered. Liver is kosher till it rots. It needs no washing before the third day. No salting. Even a goy knows that. Hi! Hi! My daughter, my daughter! It’s good. It tastes good you say. There was a Jew traveling toward Odessa and he ate in an inn without knowing what he ate. Good beef he called it. Savory gravy. And they told him—what? They told him it was horsemeat. And hi-hi-hi my daughter—it tastes good. And how far is the step from cold storage meat to meat not kosher and how far is the step from meat not kosher to pig’s flesh? Hi! Hi! Hi! My daughter! You’ll drive me into the deep earth with a weight of shame. May your head drop off from your shoulders, and your husband’s head beside it. My daughter …
Hi … An evil day.…
And in the afternoon, Reb Schulim had come to his cheder, Reb Schulim, his townsman, to review learning. And had reviewed not learning but a long procession of numbskulls, stutterers, louts half blind with too much loitering in cellars. A black fate had let the best ones read first, and the best had scattered before Reb Schulim came and only the dullards were left to shame him. A good rabbi, Reb Yidel, he must have thought—Hmmmm-m-m! h-m-m—h-m-m-m! A good rabbi! Not one has he taught to utter three words one upon the other without fumbling. Not one could speak the tongue without a snffle or a snort—except this child, David, this bastard, God have pity on him, a goy’s spawn, a church organist’s. Hi! Hi! And it is strange that true Yiddish children of pious parents should prove such God-forsaken dolts and this one—only half-a-jew—perhaps not (I could have found out then and there, but—) circumcised—an iron wit. God’s ways. Hidden. A pitiful story and a triple curse befall the aunt, sister, slut, who revealed it. I say the gallows, Haman’s gibbet, high …
Hm-m-m-m! Evil day!…
Then why do you go? Reb Yidel, why do you go? Would it not be better on a day like this not to be the bearer of evil tidings? Accursed, calamitous day! Would it not to be safer to turn and stride back toward the synagogue. They may not understand. Should they accuse you of breeding hatred, call you augur-nosed, are you prepared? Should they mock at you and scorn you and say, Reb Yidel, your nose is in every wind like the spokes of a wheel, have you a remedy? Have you an answer? None. But I am an upright man, and someone must tell them. Shall the child know and they not know he knows. Is he truly a Jew, this David? Shall the foul sister go un-spared? Someone must warn them, advise. And I vowed. I vowed. Hi! Hi! Hi! Alas! Foreboding!…
Grimacing so violently his black beard twitched in several places simultaneously, twitched and caught the sunlight in a skein of drawn pitch, pin-point glints and iridescence, the dumpy, ageing Jew stopped at the corner of Avenue C and Ninth Street, looked west into the sun when he meant to go east, and opened the trigger-taut button on his dull alpaca coat. Relieved from strain, the cloth crumpled against his arms in flutings. The curtains drawn, the grease spots on his vest glistened in vitreous tableau. Beaked thumb and forefinger pecked among his pockets, drew out a torn bit of paper, unfolded it.
“Seven-forty-nine,” he muttered after scanning the Hebrew characters. “Fourth floor. Perhaps this corner of Avenue D. Perhaps the other. Pray God I put it down correctly.”
He replaced the scrap of paper, turned and strode east through the familiar street. Abreast of his cheder doorway, he felt the old bleak stir of recognition, glanced into the hallway and crossed the street. Head cocked, he scanned the house numbers increasing one after the other.
“Seven-forty-nine.” His lips formed the words silently. “Fourth floor.” He added mentally. And taking a deep, sighing breath against the stairs he had to climb, climbed the stoop, entered the hallway and mounted the shadowy stairs.
Winded, stertorous, perturbed, he reached the top and brightest landing, and with heaving paunch, eyed the Mizzuzahs, some still bright, some painted over, above the several doors. And knocked at the nearest one.
“Who is it?” The sharp female voice behind the panels inquired in Yiddish.
“Does the Mrs. Schearl live here?” He asked, knowing somehow that she didn’t.
“No.” A heavy busted, bar-armed woman opened the door. “She lives there. That door in the front. That door.”
His eyes swept from the coarse-grained red skin of her throat to the door her finger pointed at. He nodded, not surprised that she kept her own door opened, watching him inquisitively. And knocked again.
“Oh! David! David! Is it you?” A voice of immense eagerness called out to him. “Is it closed? I’ve been waiting—”
“This is I—Reb Yidel Pankower,” he said as the door opened.