Henry Roth - Call It Sleep

The type was small. The thrill of apprehension that ran through him seemed to flutter the characters before him. He focused on them, condensing their blur. “Bishnas mos ha melech Uzuyahu—!” And stopped and stared. The number on top of the page was sixty-eight. The edge of the book was blue.

“What’s the matter?” Rare tolerance softened the rabbi’s voice. “Why do you wait?”

“It’s — It’s him!” Past radiance threw a last parting beam into the depths of his mind. “That one!”

“Which one? Who?”

“That man! Th-that man you said! Isaiah! He said — he said he saw God and it — and it was light!” Excitement clogged his tongue.

“Well, Reb Schulim!” The rabbi’s swarthy brow canted in triumph. “One glance was all he needed, and that was months and months ago! This!” His blunt finger drummed on David’s brow. “This has an iron wit! No?” His black beard seemed to shake out sparks of satisfaction.

Reb Schulim tapped his cane against the bench. “A cherished seedling of Judah. Indeed!”

“Now all of it!” The rabbi settled down to business. “Begin once more.”

“Beshnas mos hamelech Uzuyahu vaereh es adonoi yoshaiv al kesai rom venesaw veshulav melayim es hahayhel Serafim omdim memal lo.” Not as a drone this time, like syllables pulled from a drab and tedious reel, but again as it was at first, a chant, a hymn, as though a soaring presence behind the words pulsed and stressed a meaning. A cadence like a flock of pigeons, vast, heaven-filling, swept and wheeled, glittered, darkened, kindled again, like wind over prairies. “Shaish kenawfayim shash kenawfayim leahod. Beshtyim yehase fanav uveshtayim.” The words, forms of immense grandeur behind a cloudy screen, overwhelmed him—“Yehase raglov uveshtayim yeofaif—”

“As though, he knew what he read,” Reb Schulim’s husky speech. “That young voice pipes to my heart!”

“If I weren’t sure — indeed, if I didn’t know him, I’d think he understood!”

David had paused. The rabbi sat back, hands locked on his belly.

“Vekaraw se el se vamar—”

The head of the cane clicked against the table; a shadow glided over the page. Leaning forward with outstretched arm, Reb Schulim patted David’s cheek with chill fingers.

“Blessed is your mother, my son!”

(- Mother! ) “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh adonoi tsevawos.” The words blurred. A howl of terror beat down all majesty. (- Mother! ) “Mlo hol haeretz h-vo-do—” He stumbled. (- Mother! )

“What is it?” The rabbi’s fingers unbraided upon his paunch and stretched out as if to seize.

“Va-va- yaw-yaw noo-noo-” (- Mother! ) Without answering, he suddenly burst into tears.

“Hold! What is it?” His hasty hand clicked David’s chin up. “What makes you weep?”

Reb Schulim’s large compassionate eyes were also on him: “Reb Yidel, I tell you he does understand.”

David sobbed brokenly.

“Come, answer!” Perplexity made the rabbi urgent. “One word only!”

“My-my mother!” he wept.

“Your mother — well?” Sudden alarm quickened his speech. “What of her? Speak! What’s happened!”

“She — she’s!—”

“Yes! Well!”

He did not know what it was that compelled him to say it, but it was compulsion greater than he could withstand. “She’s dead!” He burst into a loud wail.

“Dead? Dead? When? What are you saying!”

“Yes! Ooh!”

“Shah! Wait!” The rabbi stemmed his own confusion. “I saw her here. Why! Only—! What—! When did she die, I ask you?”

“Long ago! Long ago!” His head rocked in the abandon of his misery.

“Hanh? Long? Speak again!”

“Long ago!”

“But how could that be? How? I’ve seen her. She brought you here! She paid me! Tell me, what is long ago?”

“That — that’s my aunt!”

“Your—!” The breath jarred audibly against his throat. “But — but you called her mother! I heard you! She told me she was.”

“She just says she is! Owooh! Just says! Just says! To everyone! Wants me to call her too—” A gust of grief blew his voice from him.

“Aha!” In suspicious sarcasm. “What kind of a yarn are you telling? How do you know? Who told you?”

“My aunt — my aunt told me!”

“Which aunt? How many are there?”

“Yesterday!” He wept. “No. Not — not yesterday. When you wanted to — to hit me. Then. That — that day, when I c-couldn’t read. She owns a candy st-store. She told me.”

“On that day — Monday?”

“Y-yes!”

“And she told you? The other one?”

“Yes! Owooh! She owns a c-candy-store.”

“Ai, evil!”

“Foolish woman!” Reb Schulim chided sadly. “To reveal this to a child.”

“Pheh, foolish!” The rabbi spat disgustedly. “Sweet sister, the hussy! What business of hers was it? Squirming tongue! The gallows is due her! No?”

Reb Schulim sighed, shook David gently: “Come, my child! Dry your tears! If it was long ago — then long ago already was too late for your weeping. Come! She no longer has ears where she lies there. God commanded it.”

“Well, where’s your nose-rag?” The rabbi patted irritably among David’s pockets. “The gallows! Here!” He drew it out. “Blow!” And as he pinched David’s nose clean. “You don’t remember her then, do you? When did she die?”

“No! I don’t — I don’t know. She didn’t tell me.”

His brow knit in fresh perplexity. “Well, why aren’t you with your father? Where’s he?”

“I–I don’t know!”

“Hmpph! Did she say anything about him?”

“She s-said he was a- a-”

“What?”

“I forgot! I forgot how to say it.” He wept.

“Then think! Think. What was he, a tailor, a butcher, a peddler, what?”

“No. He was— He was— He played—”

“Played? A musician? Played what?”

“A— A— Like a piano. A — A organ!” He blurted out.

“An organ? An organ! Reb Schulim, do you see land?”

“I think I see what is seen first, Reb Yidel. The spire.”

“Mmm! Why aren’t you with him?” His voice was cautious.

“Because — because he’s in Eu — Europe.”

“And?”

“And he plays in — in a— She says he plays in a ch-church. A church!”

“Woe me!” He slumped back against his chair. “I foresaw it! You hear, Reb Schulim? When he said an organ-player, I–I knew! Oh!” his face lighted up. “Is that what you meant when you said spire — a church?”

“Only that.”

“Ha, Reb Schulim, would God I had your wisdom! And what do you think now?”

Reb Schulim gravely flattened his grey beard against his coat. “There’s truth in an old jest.”

“That a bastard is wise?”

Reb Schulim hawked, hawked again more violently, spat under the table. For a second or two, the only sound in the room was the smeary scrape of his foot on the floor. “Let us hope they saw to it he was made a Jew.”

“I’ll do more than hope.” With a righteous scowl, the rabbi scratched the blunt end of the pointer among the sparse hairs of his underlip. “I’ll do more!” He regarded David fixedly. “Er — David, mine, tell me this one thing more. Did she, that everlasting slut, that candy store muckraker, your aunt, did she tell you where — in what land your mother met the-er-the organ-player?”

“She-she — yes— She said.”

“Where?”

“In where there was— there was c-corn.”

“Where?” His brows drew together in ragged ridges.

“Where corn was grow-growing. She said. Where corn was. They went there. She told me like — like that they went.”

“Oy!” The rabbi sounded as though he were strangling. “Enough! Enough! Thank God you’re here, Reb Schulim! Else who would have believed me! Ai! Yi! Yi! Yi! Can you picture so foul, so degraded a she who would tell this to a child so young!”