Henry Roth - Call It Sleep

— Show her the penny when I get upstairs. And she’ll tell Papa. What would he say? Bet he wouldn’t believe. He’d say I found it. But I could say it for him — all over again. One kid, one only kid, and then he’d have to — That candy store.

He stopped, stared thoughtfully at the clutter of toys and tin horns, masks, soda bottles and cigarette posters.

— No. Have to show her first. See what I got. Then could buy. What? Candy? No. Like to get those little balls in the hoople-cage. You blow and catch. Only can’t catch so good. When will I catch good? Maybe better wait till tomorrow when I get another penny. And then — Gee! Go to Aunt Bertha’s candy store. When was I? Long time ago, that time with mama! Too far. And girls, Esther and Polly. Hate them. How they fight, gee! How they eat soup! Poppa’d murder me if I did. But Uncle Nathan only hollers, and Aunt Bertha hollers on him. Remember Uncle Nathan and his mama? Vinegar and light when he told. Light! Gee! And Isaiah and that angel-coal. On his mouth. But remember. Blue book — so big. On page sixty-eight. Maybe ask next time. Maybe mama knows. Penny? Where? Oh! Here! Nearly didn’t get it. When that funny jumped into the middle of the chad godyuh. Wonder what! I was saying. Yes. I was saying—

“Little boy.” The words were in Yiddish.

He started and looked up. He had almost run into her — a shriveled old woman with a face so lined with short, thin wrinkles, they slanted down the sere skin like a rain. She was stooped. A striped blue and white apron covered the front of her rusty black satin dress. The whites of her eyes were cloudy as an old tusk and caught in a net of red veins. Her nostrils were wet. Between her brow and the white kerchief on her head a stiff brown wig protruded like a ledge.

“Little boy.” She repeated in a quavering treble, head rocking infirmly from side to side. “Are you a Jew?”

For a fleeting instant, David wondered how he could have understood her if he hadn’t been a Jew.

“Yes.”

“Well, it won’t harm you anyway,” she mumbled. “You’re not old enough to sin. Come with me and I’ll give you a penny.”

He stared at her. There was something terrifying and dreamlike about it all. The gingerbread boys the old witch baked. In two A one.

“You’ll light the gas stove for me, yes?”

That’s what they did too — only it wasn’t gas. Gee! He felt half-impelled to take to his heels.

“I lit the candles”, she explained, “and it’s too late now.”

“Oh!” He understood now. It was Friday. Still why had she lit them so early? It wasn’t night yet.

“Are you coming?” she asked and turned to go. “I’ll give you a penny.”

After all, this was his street. There was his house only two houses away. And he would have another penny. He followed her. She shuffled toward a nearby house and labored slowly up the stoop. Her panting breath on the second step turned to groaning on the fifth. Above him the slow, wrinkled, cracked shoes stopped at the threshold. He drew up beside her.

“We haven’t any more steps to climb,” she muttered, waiting for her loud breathing to quiet. “A curse on the black sleep that took me. When I awoke it was dark, and I, sodden with sleep, lit the candles. Too fuddled to look at the clock first, too dull to light the gas-stove. Woe me.” She wavered into motion again. A few steps through the hallway and she stopped before a door, opened it and went in. The kitchen, swept and drear, glaze worn from the linoleum; four candles glimmering above the heavy, red-and-white table-cloth. Odor of fish. Stagnancy.

“First pull over a chair,” she said, “and light the gas up there. Can you reach the matches?”

David pulled open the drawer she pointed to and found the box of matches; then he dragged a chair under the gas lamp and climbed up.

“Do you know how?” she asked.

“Yea.” He struck a match, turned on the gas and lit it.

“Good! And now under the pots.”

He lit those too.

“Smaller,” she said. “Smaller. As small as small is.”

When he had done this, she pointed to her purse on the table. “Take it,” she said and began nodding and nodded as if she couldn’t stop, “and take out a penny.”

“I don’t want it—” he hung back.

“Go! Go!”

While she watched him, he fished out a penny.

“Now close it.” And when he did. “You’re a good child,” she said. “May God bless you,” and she opened the door.

VI

NO, HE thought as he went out, she wasn’t a witch — just a 9th street old woman, that’s all. But even so, an unaccountable sadness thickened the joy he should have felt at getting another penny. Even if he hadn’t been turned into gingerbread, something had turned the heart heavy. Why? A sin, maybe? Yes, bet that’s why. But too young, she said. No. Bet nobody was too young. So which is the sin penny? He looked at them. Indian this. Lincoln this. Lincoln just got. But the cool air of the outdoors as he entered the street whipped away remorse as it whipped the nostrils clear of kitchen odors. He turned toward his house and quickened his step. Dusk was resuming the alley of the east. Smokestacks across the dark river had begun their pilgrimage into night. On the corner of Avenue D, the shadowy lamplighter with the pale, uplifted face was thrusting his long, glow-tipped lance into the hazy globe of the street lamp. David stopped a moment to see whether the gas inside and the mantle would catch. A faint puff and the globe filled with a yellow bloom. He climbed up the stairs of the stoop, wondering whether lamp-lighters were ever disturbed by their own sacrilege or whether they were all goyim. As he mounted the hallway stairs, the voices of boys drifted down.

“So yuh have tuh.”

“Yuh don’!” another answered.

“Id ain’ Shabis yet.”

“Id is so. Id’s dock.”

‘Id’s dock in hea, but id ain’ Shabis.”

Before the halt-open doorway of a water closet, inside of which a boy was squatting, stood two of his companions.

“I am gonna tear it,” came the rebellious voice inside. “Dere ain’ nutt’n else.”

And as David walked by the doorway, he saw the boy who was squatting on the seat inside tear a long swath out of one of the newspapers that littered the floor.

“Now yuh god it!” said one of the onlookers vindictively.

“An’ ids a double sin too,” added the other.

“So w’y is id a double sin?” the squatter’s provoked voice demanded.

“Cause it’s Shabis.” The righteous voice below meted out. “An’ dat’s one sin. Yuh can’t tear on Shabis. An’ because id’s a Jewish noospaper wid Jewish on id, dat’s two sins. Dere!”

“Yea!” the other chimed in. “You’d a only god one sin if you tord a Englitch noospaper.”

“Well, w’yntcha gimme a Englitch noospaper?” demanded the first voice disgustedly. “I ain’ goin’ haffee witchoo no more.”

“So don’.”

Their bickering voices faded below.

— Looks every place, He. Knew I shouldn’t have lit the gas. One penny is bad. Real bad. But one penny is good. So that makes it even, don’t it? Maybe He won’t get mad. Gee, didn’t know He was so every place. How can he look in every dark, if He’s light — the rabbi said — and it’s real dark. How can He see in the real dark and we can’t see Him. What’s real dark? Real dark. Gee! That time — Annie — closet. Cellar — Luter. Sh! Don’t! Gee! Sin it was. Hurry up! Sin it was! Every place, sin it is. Didn’t know. Hurry up! Coal He touched him. Hurry up!

Eagerly he glanced up at the transom above his door. It was unlit — stained only by indigo twilight. His heart sank. Then she was out — his mother was out — and only his father was there, asleep probably. He stopped irresolutely, hedged in by two fears, the dark and his father. He would have to wake him if the door was locked, and that — there was peril in that. The rungs of the shutters of memory snapped open and closed — a fragmentary fleeting image, but clear. Better run then, wait in the street until she came home. No. He would try the knob first — just once. He turned it; the door opened. That was strange. He tiptoed into a blue room, aware of a blue washboard on a blue washtub, aware of his father’s throaty breathing in the further bedroom. He sheered away from it — where was she? — and entered the front-room. She was sitting beside the window, her dark face in outline against the frosty blue of the pane. His heart leapt.