Henry Roth - Call It Sleep

David, who was leaning from the side of his chair could see Luter and his mother at the same time. Absorbed in watching his mother, he would have paid little attention to Luter, but the sudden oblique shifting of Luter’s eyes toward himself drew his own gaze toward them. Luter, his eyes narrowed by a fixed yawn, was staring at his mother, at her hips. For the first time, David was aware of how her flesh, confined by the skirt, formed separate molds against it. He felt suddenly bewildered, struggling with something in his mind that would not become a thought.

“You women,” said Luter sympathetically, “especially when you marry must work like slaves.”

“It isn’t quite so bad as all that. Despite the ancient proverb.”

“No,” said Luter meditatively, “anything may be lived. But to labor without thanks that’s bitter.”

“True. And to labor even with thanks, what comes of it?”

“Well,” he uncrossed his legs, “nothing comes of anything, not even millionaires, but esteem gives the trumpeter breath — esteem and gifts naturally.”

“Then I have my esteem,” she laughed, straightening up and turning around as Luter arranged his mouth more firmly. “I have esteem that grows.” She regarded David with an amused smile.

“Yes,” said Luter with a sigh, “but everyone can have that kind of esteem. Still, it’s good to have children.” And then earnestly, “Do you know I have never seen a child cling so to his mother.”

David found himself resenting Luter’s comment.

“Yes, I’m sure you’re right,” she agreed.

“I think so,” he said warmly. “Why, my cousin’s children — the very relative I was going to visit to-night — they are home only when they sleep and eat. At night after dinner, they are up in some neighbor’s house,” he lifted his hand to emphasize the point, “playing with other children the whole evening.”

“There are other children in the house,” answered his mother. “But he seems to make friends with none. It has only been once or twice,” she turned to David, “that you have been in Yussie’s house or he here, has it not?”

David nodded uneasily.

“He’s a strange child!” said Luter with conviction.

His mother laughed condoningly.

“Though very intelligent,” he assured her.

There was a pause while she emptied the dishpan into the sink; the grey water muttered down the drain.

“He looks very much like you,” said Luter with the hesitance of careful appraisal. “He has the same brown eyes you have, very fine eyes, and the same white skin. Where did you get that white German skin?” he asked David playfully.

“I don’t know.” The man’s intimacy embarrassed him. He wished Luter would go away.

“And both of you have very small hands. Has he not small hands for a child his size? Like those of a prince’s. Perhaps he will be a doctor some day.”

“If he has more than hands.”

“Yes,” Luter agreed, “still I don’t think he’ll need labor for his bread like his father, or even like myself.”

“I hope not, but only God knows.”

“Isn’t it strange,” he said suddenly, “how Albert has seized hold of the theatre? Like a drunkard his dram. Who would have believed it?”

“It means a great deal to him. I could hear him beside me gnashing his teeth at a certain character.”

Luter laughed. “Albert is a good man, even though the other workers think him odd. It is I who keep the peace, you know.” He laughed again.

“Yes, I do know, and I’m grateful to you for it.”

“Oh it’s nothing. A word here, a word there smooths everything. Truth is, I might not have been so ready to protect him, if I hadn’t known you, that is, if I hadn’t come here and been one of you. But now I take up his interest as though he were my own brother. It is not always easy with so strange a man.”

“You’re very kind.”

“Not at all,” said Luter. “You have repaid me. Both of you.”

Picking up several dry utensils she crossed the kitchen to the pantry. There she pulled open the door, bent over and hung them on the nails inside. Luter’s head tilted, his gaze flitting to her bosom. He cleared his throat with a pecking sound.

“But say what you will, Albert is — what shall I say, a nervous man — till you know him, of course. But I can see why you’ve never gone out with him anywhere,” he ended sympathetically. “You’re a proud woman with a great deal of feeling, no?”

“No more than anyone else. What has that to do with it?”

“I’ll tell you. You see, Albert, well—” he smiled and scratched his neck, puzzled. “Even in the street, he behaves so strangely. You know better than I do. He seems to look for jeers in the faces of passersby. And when you go with him — I go with him every night — it’s as though he finds some kind of pleasure walking behind a cripple or a drunkard or any kind of freakish person — I don’t know what! One would think it made him feel safer. He wants people on the street to look at someone else. Anyone else, instead of himself. Even a water wagon or street gamblers give him this odd satisfaction. But why do I talk this way when I like him so much.” He paused and laughed quietly.

David’s mother looked at the dish towel, but made no answer.

“Yes,” he chuckled, hurriedly. “I like especially the way he never speaks of Tysmenicz without leading in the cattle he once tended.”

“Well, there weren’t many things he loved more in the old land.”

“But to love cattle so,” Luter smiled. “All I thought of when I saw a cow was that it gave milk. Now when I think of Europe, and of my hamlet, the first thought that comes to me, just as his first thought is a cow or a prize bull, my first thought is of the peasant women. You understand?”

“Naturally, each has his memories.” Having placed the last dishes in the closet, she drew a chair beside David’s and sat down. On one side of the table sat Luter, on the other David and his mother.

“Exactly,” said Luter, “Each one remembers what appealed to him, and I remember the peasant wenches. Weren’t they a striking lot, in their tight checked vests and their dozen petticoats?” He shook his head regretfully. “One never sees the like here. It’s a scanty soil from what one sees of it in Brooklyn and its women are spare. But in Sorvik they grew like oaks. They had blonde hair, their eyes blazed. And when they smiled with their white teeth and blue eyes, who could resist them? It was enough to set your blood on fire. The men never dazzled you that way?” he asked after a pause.

“No, I never paid much attention to them.”

“Well, you wouldn’t — you were a good Jewish daughter. Besides, the men were a worthless lot, vacant lumps with great shoulders and a nose on them like a split pea. Their women were wasted on them. You know,” his voice was very earnest, “the only woman I know who reminds me of those girls, is you.”

She reddened, threw back her head and laughed, “Me? I’m only a good Jewish daughter.”

“I am not accusing you of anything else, but never since I have been in America have I seen a woman that so reminded me of them. Their lips were so full, so ripe, as if to be kissed.”

She smiled curiously with one cheek. “God knows, there must be enough Austrian peasants even in this land. If Jews were let in, surely no one would bar the Slovaks.”

Luter looked down at the ring he was twisting around his finger. “Yes, I suppose so. I have seen a few of them, but none I cared much about.”

“You better look about a little more then.”

Luter’s face grew strangely sober, the lines about his nostrils deepened. Without lifting his head, his eyes slanted up at David’s mother. “Perhaps I can stop looking.”