Henry Roth - Call It Sleep

Luter sighed. Startled, David looked up. I’m a mouse — I’m an ogre! The thought lingered. He eyed Luter furtively. Unaware that he was being watched, Luter had put down his paper and was staring ahead of him. Something curious had happened to his expression. The usually upturned, affable lines of his face either curved the other way now, downward, or where not curved were sharp, wedge-shaped at the eyes and mouth. And the eyes themselves, which were always so round and soft, had narrowed now, so narrow, the eyeballs looked charred, remote. His upper teeth gnawed the skin of his lips, drawing his face into a brooding frown. It worried David. A faint thrill of disquiet ran through him. He suddenly felt an intense desire to have someone else present in his house. It didn’t have to be his mother. Anybody would do — Yussie from upstairs. Even his father.

Luter rose. David hastily dropped his gaze. Deliberate, brown-clad legs approached (what?) passed by him (he relaxed) stopped before the wall (peered over his shoulder) the calendar. Luter thumbed the leaves (black, black, black, red, black, black) held up a thin sheaf, and with puckered lips, stared at the date as though something far more intricate and absorbing than the mere figures were depicted there. Then he lowered the upturned leaves slowly, cautiously (Why? Why so carefully? They had only one place they could fall to) and rubbed his hands.

On his way back to the chair, he glanced down at the empty shoe-box between David’s knees, emptied of everything except its calendar-leaves.

“Well!” His voice seemed amused, yet not entirely so, as if crossed by a slight start of surprise. “What are those? Do you get them from there?”

“Yes.” David looked up uneasily. “I save them.”

“Yesterday’s days? What do you want with them? To scribble on?”

“No. Just save.”

“Chm!” His laughing snort sounded unpleasant to David. “If I had so few days as you have I wouldn’t bother about them. And when you’re as old as I am—” he stopped, indulged in a short chuckle that pecked like a tiny hammer— “you’ll know that the only thing that matters are the days ahead.”

David tried not to look resentful for fear Luter would accuse him again of looking like his father. He wished he would go away. But instead Luter nodded, and smiling to himself, glanced at the clock.

“It’s time for you to go to bed now. It’s long after eight.”

He poured the various trinkets back into the box, went over to the pantry and stowed them away in the corner.

“Do you know how to undress yourself?”

“Yes.”

“You’d better go in and ‘pee’ first,” he advised, smiling. “How does your mother say it?”

“She says numbuh one.”

Luter chuckled. “Then she’s learned a little English.”

After he had gone to the bathroom, David went into his bedroom, and undressed and got into his night-gown.

Luter looked in. “All right?” he asked.

“Yes,” he answered climbing into bed.

Luter shut the door.

Darkness was different without his mother near. People were different too.

VI

IN THE bedroom where she had gone to tuck away the tablecloth, David heard the closet drawer chuckle softly close. And then,

“Alas!” came his mother’s voice. “He has forgotten it.” She reappeared, in her extended hand a parcel. “The present he was going to give them. He goes empty-handed now.” She set it down on a chair. “I must remember to give it to him to-morrow, or perhaps he’ll remember and return.”

That Luter might come back disturbed David, he pushed the thought away. He had been looking forward to this evening when he would have her to himself until bedtime. It was the second theatre night. His father had gone alone.

She lifted the kettle of water from the stove, bore it to the sink and poured the steaming water into the basin.

She turned to look at him. “The way you watch me,” she said with a laugh, “makes me feel as if I were performing black magic. It is only dishes I’m washing.” And after a pause. “Would you like another little brother?” she asked slyly, “or a little sister.”

“No,” he answered soberly.

“It would be better for you, if you had,” she teased. “It would give you something else to look at beside your mother.”

“I don’t want to look at anything else.”

“Your mother had eight brothers and sisters,” she reminded him. “One of them may come here some day, one of my sisters, your Aunt Bertha — would you like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’d like her,” she assured him. “She’s very funny. She has red hair and a sharp tongue. And there’s no one she can’t mimic. She’s not so very fat, yet in the summertime, the sweat pours down her in torrents. I don’t know why that is. I have seen men sweat like that, but never a woman.”

“I get all wet under here in the summer.” He pointed to his arm pits.

“Yes,” said his mother with peculiar emphasis, “she did too. They told her once — but you never saw a bear?”

“In a book. There were three bears.”

“Yes, you told me about them. Well, in Europe the gypsies — gypsies are men and women, dark people. They roam all over the world.”

“Why?”

“It pleases them.”

“You asked me about a bear.”

“Yes. Sometimes these gypsies take a bear along with them wherever they go.”

“Do they eat porridge?” He had said the last word in English.

“What’s porridge?”

“My teacher said it was oatmeal and farina, you give it to me in the morning.”

“Yes, yes. You told me. But I’m not sure. I know they like apples. Still if your teacher—”

“And what did the bear do?”

“The bear danced. The gypsies sang and shook the tambourine and the bear danced.”

David hugged himself with delight. “Who made him?”

“The gypsies. They earned their money that way. When the bear was tired, people threw pennies in their tambourine— Now! I was telling you about your aunt. Someone told her that if she crept up behind the bear and rubbed her hands on his fur, she would stop sweating under her palms. And so one day while the bear was dancing—”

She stopped speaking. David had heard it too: a step outside the door. A moment later someone knocked. A voice.

“It is only I–Luter.”

With an exclamation of surprise, she opened the door. Luter came in.

“I went away without my head,” he said apologetically. “I’ve forgotten my gift.”

“It’s a pity you had to take all that trouble again,” she said sympathetically. “You left it in the bedroom.” She picked up the parcel from the chair.

“Yes, I know,” he answered, resting it on the table. He looked at his watch. “I’m afraid it’s too late for me to go now. I couldn’t get there before nine and then how long can one stay, an hour.”

David was secretly annoyed to see him sit down.

Luter opened his coat and with an expression of anxious indecision on his face regarded David’s mother. His eyes had a brilliance and restlessness greater than usual. David was again aware of the difficult curves of the man’s face.

“Take your coat off,” she suggested. “It’s warm here.”

“If you don’t mind,” he slipped it from his shoulders, “Now that I have nowhere to go.”

“Won’t they be disappointed when they see you’re not coming?”

“No, they’ll know that the black hour hasn’t seized me.” He laughed. “Please go on with your work, don’t let me interfere.”

“I was merely washing some dishes,” she said. “I’ve finished now, except for these pots.” She picked up the red and white can of powder in the corner of the small shelf above the sink, shook some of it into a pot, and rubbed the inside vigorously with a dish rag, stooping over with the effort.