Henry Roth - Call It Sleep

“How did you get in?” he demanded fiercely, “Ha?” The open window caught his eye. He stared at it, disbelief wrangling with ire. “You crawled in?”

“The book!” David stammered. “The book! I wanted it.”

“You broke into my cheder!” The rabbi seemed not to have heard a single syllable. “You opened the window? You climbed in? You dared do this?”

“No! No!”

“Hush!” He paid no heed to his outcry. “I understand.” And before David could budge, the rabbi’s heavy hands had fallen on his neck and he was being dragged toward the cat-o-nine on the floor. “Fearful bastard!” he roared. “You crawled in to steal my pointers!”

“I didn’t! I didn’t touch them!”

“You it was took them before!” the rabbi drowned him out. “Sly one! You! Different I thought you were! Hi! Will you scoop!” He reached down for the scourge.

“I didn’t! I came for the book! The blue book with the coal in it! The man and the coal!”

His iron grip still unrelenting, the rabbi lowered the cat-o-nine. “The man! The coal! You try to gull me! ” But uncertainty had crept into his voice. “Stop your screeching!” And haling David after him, he yanked out the drawer of the reading table in which he kept his pointers. One glance was enough. Savagely, he thrust it back. “What man? And what coal?”

“Here in the book! The man the angel touched — Mendel read it! Isaiah!” The name suddenly returned to him. “Isaiah!”

The rabbi glared at the book as if he meant to burn it with his eyes, then his gaze rose slowly to David’s face. In the silence, his clogged, apoplectic breathing was as loud as snoring. “Tell me, did you climb in only to read this book.” His fingers uncurled from David’s shoulder.

“Y-es! About th-that Isaiah.”

“But what do you want of it?” His open palms barely sustained the weight of his question. “Can you read a word of chumish?”

“No, but I remembered, and I–I wanted to read it.”

“Why?” From under his derby, pushed back by aimless fingers, his black skull-cap peeped out. “Are you mad or what? Couldn’t you wait until I came? I would have let you read a belly-full.”

“I didn’t know when you — you were coming.”

“But why did you want to read it? And why with such black haste?”

“Because I went and I saw a coal like — like Isaiah.”

“What kind of a coal? Where?”

“Where the car-tracks run I saw it. On Tenth Street.”

“Car tracks? You saw a coal?” He shut his eyes like one completely befuddled.

“Yes. It gave a big light in the middle, between the crack!”

“A what—! A—! Between a crack? You saw a light between a crack? A black year befall you!” Suddenly he stopped. His brow darkened. His beard rose. His head rolled back. “Chah! Chah! Chah! Chah!” Splitting salvoes of laughter suddenly burst from the cavern behind the whiskers. “Chah! Chah! Chah! Oy! Chah! Chah! Chah! This must be told.” A hasty hand plugged back his slipping derby. “He saw a light! Oy! Chah! Chah! In the crack! Oy! Chah! Chah! Chah! I’ll split like a herring! Yesterday, he heard a bed in the thunder! Today he sees a vision in a crack. Oy! Chah! Chah! Chah!” Minutes seemed to pass before he sobered. “Fool!” he gasped at length. “Go beat your head on a wall! God’s light is not between car-tracks.”

Ashamed, yet immensely relieved, David stood mute, eyes staring at the floor. The rabbi didn’t know as he knew what the light was, what it meant, what it had done to him. But he would reveal no more. It was enough that the light had saved him from being whipped.

Uttering a short, hopeless snort, the rabbi moved off and hung his coat and derby on a nail. Returned, he pinched David’s ear. “Come and read, simpleton,” he ordered with amused contempt. “And if you ever crawl into my cheder again when I’m gone, nothing will help you. Not even a light.”

David slid over the bench. The rabbi dragged out the tattered book, picked up his pointer.

“Begin!” he said. “Ma tovu”.

“Ma tovu oholeha yaakov meshkanoseha Yisroel.” He poured the sounds out in a breathless, chaotic stream. “Va ani berov hasdeha awvo baseha eshtahave el hahol kodshehe beyeerosehaw.” They were growing funny! “Adonoi awhavti maon baseha umkom mishcan knovdhaw.” It was hard for him now to keep his face straight. “Shalom alachem malachi homlac him malchai elyon, me melech malchai homlachim hakadosh boruch hu.” Ripples of laughter were trembling in his belly. He read faster to escape them. “Boachem lesholom malachai ha sholom malachai elyon me melech molachai haomlachim ha kodash boruch hu.” The ripples had swelled to breakers. Immense hilarity battered against his throat and sides. Faster!

“Noo!” The rabbi grabbed his arm. “Is the devil after you, or what? You fly like a felon.”

By an enormous effort, David braked his speed. A short, high giggle pried its way through his lips.

“Fool! What are you laughing at, ha?” But strangely enough, behind his black beard, a faint smile stretched his lips as well. “Read,” he growled, “before I give you a cuff.”

David bent his head down, bit his lips till he thought the teeth would meet and read on.

The surges of laughter, plunging within him, were so overwhelming he could feel himself grow faint restraining them. Cold sweat was on his brow. He felt he would burst soon if he couldn’t give outlet to his swollen mirth. Almost sickened by restraint, he finished the page, looked up imploringly.

“Go!” The rabbi pinched his ear.

The relief was so vast it was sobering.

“Play with those tracks again,” he shook his spread palm significantly. “And you’ll lack only death among your woes. Your mother ought to—”

But David was already racing laughter to the door. Across the yard he sprinted, up the stairs, and barely had he reached the hallway when the fit overtook him. There, leaning against the wall, he screamed till his eyes and his drawers were wet, screamed till he could no longer stand, but screaming slumped to the floor and rolled from side to side.

— Gee! It’s funny! Gee! Ow! It’s funny! Ow! Ooh! Ow! I’m peeing! It’s funny! Ow! Funny!

Slowly, by gasps, giggles, chuckles, giggles again, the paroxysm relented. On buckling knees he pushed himself erect, stood swaying. Sudden tears, as void of bitterness as of cause, deep as they were random, runneled his cheeks. Frightened now, he wiped them off hurriedly on his sleeve, stumbled sniffling out of the corridor, ribs aching at every step.

— Gee, what’d I laugh at? Crying now. Crazy! Wet all down. Ooh! move it away! Gee, bath too I have to take! She’ll see. Pissy-pants. Gee, it was funny! Ooh! No more! No! No! Forget! Gee! Crazy! Don’t know what! Walk and get dry. G’wan!

He turned west, wandered uncertainly toward Avenue C, straddling the air in mid-strides from time to time to ease the chafing of his wet drawers against his thighs. As he walked he gazed about him — avidly — as though familiar sights would more quickly still the gales within him. The stores he peered into were closing or preparing to close — even candy stores and they almost never closed. In the bakery store no bread was to be seen. Instead of a heap of rolls on the oilcloth covered base behind the window, lay a white baker’s apron, crumpled and discarded. They were scraping the chopping blocks in the butcher shop, hanging large paper bags from the gleaming meat hooks in the window. Before the stand of the greengrocer’s an old woman in a blue kerchief picked off the tiers of a pyramid of apples. Leaning into the mirror, the white-coated barber was shaving himself. The tinsmith, standing in the doorway was washing his grimy hands with kerosene. Hurrying faces passed, all curved into the same smiling absorption, all sharpened toward the same goal. And now by housewives shrilled, and now by peddlars bellowed, and now muttered by aged Jews with blunt or cloven beards, out of windows, out of doorways, from sidewalks, from gutters, up, down and across, the greeting flew—