Henry Roth - Call It Sleep

“Bah! He couldn’t help it! That’s all I ever hear from you! He has a downright gift for stumbling into every black moment of the year. At night he breaks one’s sleep with a squalling about dreams. A little while ago he flings his spoon into his soup. Now — six cents thrown away.” He slapped his hand on the paper. “Two cents ruined. Who can read it! Beware!” he shook a menacing finger at David who cowered against his mother’s side. “There’s a good beating in store for you! I warn you! It’s been gathering for years.”

“Albert,” said his wife reddening, “you are a man without a heart.”

“I?” His father drew back, his nostrils curving out in anger. “A plague on you both — I have no heart? And have you any understanding, any knowledge of how to bring up a child?” He thrust his jaw forward.

A moment of silence followed and then “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean it. I meant only — these things happen sometimes — I’m sorry!”

“Oh, you’re sorry,” he said bitterly. “I have no heart! Woe me, to labor as I labor, for food for the two of you and for a roof over your heads. To labor and to work overtime! In vain! I have no heart! As if I gorged myself upon my earnings, as if I drank them, wallowed in the streets. Have you ever gone without anything? Tell me!”

“No! No!”

“Well?”

“I meant only that you didn’t see the child all day as I did — naturally you don’t know when anything is wrong with him.”

“I see enough of him when I see him. And I know better than you what medicine he needs most.”

His mother was silent.

“You’ll be saying he needs a doctor next.”

“Perhaps he—”

But someone was knocking at the door. She stopped speaking, went over and opened it — Yussie came in; he held a wooden clothes-hanger in his hand.

“My mother wants you to go upstairs,” he said in Yiddish.

David’s mother shook her head impatiently.

“Have you taken to gadding about?” asked her husband disgustedly. “Only a few days ago, you had no neighbors at all.”

“I’ve only been there once,” she said apologetically. And to Yussie, “Tell your mother I can’t come up just now.”

“She’s waiting for you,” he answered without stirring. “She’s got a new dress to show you.”

“Not now.”

“I ain’ goin’ op,” Yussie switched into English as if to avoid any further discussion. “I’m gonna stay hea.” And apparently satisfied that his mission had been performed, he approached the uneasy David who was still seated beside the stove. “See wot I got — a bow ’n’ arrer.” He brandished the clothes hanger.

“I’ll have to go for just a minute,” she said hesitantly. “This child — she’ll be wondering—”

“Go! Go!” said her husband sullenly. “Am I stopping you?” He picked up the newspaper, plucked a match from the match-box and then stalked up into the frontroom and slammed the door behind him. David heard him fling himself down upon the couch.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” said his mother wearily, and casting a hopeless glance after her husband, went out.

“Aintcha gonna play?” asked Yussie after a pause.

“I don’ wanna,” he answered morosely.

“W’yncha wanna?”

“Cause I don’ wanna.” He eyed the clothes hanger with disgust. It had been upstairs in a closet; it was tainted.

“Aaa, c’mon!” And when David refused to be persuaded, “Den I’m gonna shootchuh!” he threatened. “Yuh wanna see me?” He lifted the clothes hanger, pulled back an imaginary string. “Bing! I’m an Innian. If you don’ have a bow ’n’ arrer, I c’n kill yuh. Bang!” Another shaft flew. “Right innee eye. W’yntcha wanna play?”

“I don’ wanna.”

“W’yntcha get a bow ’n’ arrer?”

“Lemme alone!”

“I’m gonna shootchuh again den,” he dropped to the floor. “Bing! Dot one went right inside. Yuh dead!”

“Go ’way!”

“I don’ wanna go ’way,” he had become cross. “I’m gonna shootcha all I wan’. Yuh a cowid.”

David was silent. He was beginning to tremble.

“I c’n even hitcha wit my hatchet,” continued Yussie. “Yuh a cowid.” He crawled up defiantly. “Wanna see me hitcha wit my hatchet?” He had grasped the clothes hanger at one end, “Yuh dare me?”

“Get otta here!” hissed David frantically. “Go in yuh own house!”

“I don’ wanna,” said Yussie truculently. “I c’n fight-choo. Wanna see me?” He drew back his arm, “Bing!” The point of the clothes hanger struck David in the knee, sending a flash of pain through his whole leg. He cried out. The next moment, he had kicked at Yussie’s face with all the force in his leg.

Yussie fell forward on his hands. He opened his mouth, but uttered no sound. Instead his eyes bulged as if he were strangling, and to David’s horror the blood began to trickle from under his pinched white nostrils. For moments that seemed years of agony the blood slowly branched above his lip. He stood that way tranced and rigid. Suddenly he sucked in his breath, the sound was flat, sudden, like the sound of a stone falling into water. With terrified care, he reached up his hand to touch the scarlet bead hanging from his lips, and when he beheld the red smear on his finger tips, his face knitted with fright, and he threw back his head, and uttered the most piercing scream that David had ever heard. So piercing was it that David could feel his own throat contract as though the scream were splitting from his own body and he were trying to stifle it. With the awful realization that his father was in the next room, he sprang to his feet.

“Here, Yussie,” he cried frenziedly, trying to force the clothes hanger into his hands. “Here, hit me Yussie. G’wan hit me Yussie!” And striking himself a sharp blow on the brow, “Look, Yussie, you hoited me. Ow!”

But to no avail. Once more Yussie screamed. And now David knew he was lost.

“Mama!” he moaned in terror. “Mama!” And turned toward the frontroom door as if toward doom.

It opened. His father glared at them in angry surprise. Then his features grew taut when his eyes fixed on Yussie. His nostrils broadened and grew pale.

“What have you done?” His voice was deliberate and incredulous.

“I–I—” David stammered, shrunken with fear.

“He kicked me right in duh nose!” Yussie howled.

Never taking his blazing eyes from David, his father came down the parlor stairs. “What?” he ground, towering above him. “Speak!” Slowly his arm swung toward the sobbing Yussie; it was like a dial measuring his gathering wrath. “Tell me did you do this?” With every word he uttered his lips became thinner and more rigid. His face to David seemed slowly to recede, but recede without diminishing, growing more livid with distance, a white flame bodiless. In the molten features, only the vein upon his brow was clear, pulsing like a dark levin.

Who could bear the white heat of those features? Terror numbed his throat. He gagged. His head waited for his eyes to lower, his eyes for his head. He quivered, and in quivering wrenched free of that awful gaze.

“Answer me!”

Answer me, his words rang out. Answer me, but they meant, Despair! Who could answer his father? In that dread summons the judgement was already sealed. Like a cornered thing, he shrank within himself, deadened his mind because the body would not deaden and waited. Nothing existed any longer except his father’s right hand — the hand that hung down into the electric circle of his vision. Terrific clarity was given him. Terrific leisure. Transfixed, timeless, he studied the curling fingers that twitched spasmodically, studied the printer’s ink ingrained upon the finger tips, pondered, as if all there were in the world, the nail of the smallest finger, nipped by a press, that climbed in a jagged little stair to the hangnail. Terrific absorption.