Colm Tóibín - Brooklyn

Eilis walked around the store first, studying titles on the shelves, aware now that some of the books were old and maybe second-hand. It was easy for her to imagine Mr. Rosenblum here, browsing, with one or two big books open in front of him, or using the ladder to get something from the higher shelves. When she had mentioned him several times in letters home, Rose replied to ask if he was married. It was hard to explain in return that he seemed to Eilis so full of knowledge and so steeped in the detail of his subject and its intricacies and so serious that it was impossible to imagine him with a wife or children. Rose in her letter had also suggested once more that if Eilis had something private to discuss, something that she did not want their mother to know about, then she could write to Rose at the office and Rose would, she said, make sure that no one else ever saw the letter.

Eilis smiled to herself at the thought that all she had to report was the first dance; and that she had felt free to write to her mother about it, mentioning it only in passing and as a joke. She had nothing private to report to Rose.

She knew, as she browsed, that she would have no hope of finding the three books on her list in the middle of all the other books, so when she was approached by an old man who had come from behind the desk she simply handed him the list and said that these were the books she had come looking for. The man, who was wearing thick glasses, had to raise them onto his forehead so that he could read. He squinted.

"Is this your handwriting?"

"No, it's my lecturer's. He recommended these books."

"Are you a law student?"

"Not really. But it's part of the course."

"What's your lecturer's name?"

"Mr. Rosenblum."

"Joshua Rosenblum?"

"I don't know his first name."

"What are you studying?"

"I'm doing a night course at Brooklyn College."

"That's Joshua Rosenblum. I'd know his writing."

He peered again at the piece of paper and the titles.

"He's clever," the man said.

"Yes, he's very good," she replied.

"Can you imagine…," the man began but turned towards the cash desk before he finished. He was agitated. She followed him slowly.

"You want these books, then?" He spoke almost aggressively.

"Yes, I do."

"Joshua Rosenblum?" the man asked. "Can you imagine a country that would want to kill him?"

Eilis stepped back but did not reply.

"Well, can you?"

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"The Germans killed everyone belonging to him, murdered every one of them, but we got him out, at least we did that, we got Joshua Rosenblum out."

"You mean in the war?"

The man did not reply. He moved across the store and found a small footstool onto which he climbed to fetch a book. As he descended he turned towards her angrily. "Can you imagine a country that would do that? It should be wiped off the face of the earth."

He looked at her bitterly.

"In the war?" she asked again.

"In the holocaust, in the churben."

"But was it in the war?"

"It was, it was in the war," the man replied, the expression on his face suddenly gentle.

As he busied himself finding the other two books, he had a resigned, almost stubborn look; by the time he returned to the counter and prepared the bill for her he had come to seem distant and forbidding. She did not ask him any questions as she handed him the money. He wrapped the books for her and gave her the change. She sensed that he wanted her to leave the shop and there was nothing she could do to make him tell her anything more.

She loved unwrapping the law books and placing them on the table beside the notebooks and her books on accountancy and bookkeeping. When she opened the first of them and looked at it she immediately found it difficult, worrying that she should have bought a dictionary as well so she could check the difficult words. She sat until suppertime going through the introduction, no wiser at the end as to what the "jurisprudence" mentioned at the beginning might be.

That evening at supper, when she had noticed that neither Miss McAdam nor Sheila Heffernan was still speaking to her, Eilis thought of asking Patty and Diana if she could go to the dance with them the following night, or meet them before it somewhere. She did not, she realized, want to go at all but she knew that Father Flood would miss her and, since it would be the second week for her not to be there, he would ask about her. There was another girl at supper that evening, Dolores Grace, who had taken Eilis's old room. She had red hair and freckles and came from Cavan, it emerged, but she was mainly silent and seemed embarrassed to be at the table with them. Eilis learned that this was her third evening among them, but she had missed her at the previous meals because she had been at her lectures.

After supper, as she was settling back down to see if she could follow one of the other two law books any better, a knock came to the door. It was Diana in the company of Miss McAdam, and Eilis thought it was strange to see the two of them together. She stood at her door and did not invite them into her room.

"We need to talk to you," Diana whispered.

"What's up now?" Eilis asked almost impatiently.

"It's that Dolores one," Miss McAdam butted in. "She's a scrubber."

Diana began to laugh and had to put her hand to her mouth.

"She cleans houses," Miss McAdam said. "And she's cleaning for the Kehoe woman here to pay part of her rent. And we don't want her at the table."

Diana let out what was close to a shriek of laughter. "She's awful. She's the limit."

"What do you want me to do?" Eilis asked.

"Refuse to eat with her when the rest of us do. And the Kehoe woman listens to you," Miss McAdam said.

"And where will she eat?"

"Out in the street for all I care," Miss McAdam said.

"We don't want her, none of us," Diana said. "If word got around-"

"That this was a house where people like her were staying-" Miss McAdam continued.

Eilis felt an urge to close the door in their faces and go back to her books.

"We're just letting you know," Diana said.

"She's a scrubber from Cavan," Miss McAdam said as Diana began to laugh again.

"I don't know what you're laughing at," Miss McAdam said, turning to her.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry. It's just awful. No decent fellow will have anything to do with us."

Eilis looked at both of them as though they were nuisance customers in Bartocci's and she was Miss Fortini. Since they both worked in offices, she wondered if they had spoken about her in the same way when she first came because she would be working in a shop. She firmly closed the door in their faces.

In the morning Mrs. Kehoe knocked on the window as Eilis reached the street from the basement. Mrs. Kehoe beckoned her to wait and then appeared at the front door.

"I was wondering if you would do me a special favour," she said.

"Of course I would, Mrs. Kehoe," Eilis said. It was something her mother had taught her to say if anyone asked her to do them a favour.

"Would you take Dolores to the dance in the hall tonight? She's dying to go."

Eilis hesitated. She wished she had guessed in advance that she was going to be asked to do this so she could have a reply prepared.

"All right." She found herself nodding.

"Well, that's great news. I'll tell her to be ready," Mrs. Kehoe said.

Eilis wished she could think of some quick excuse, some reason why she could not go, but she had used a cold the previous week and she knew that she would have to make an appearance at some stage, even if just for a short time.

"I'm not sure how long I'll be staying," she said.

"That's no problem," Mrs. Kehoe said. "No problem at all. She won't want to stay that long either."