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  “Now I’ll tell you a little of what you read, then what it means. Listen to me well that you may remember it. Beshnas mos hamelech.” The two nails of his thumb and forefinger met. “In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw God. And God was sitting on his throne, high in heaven and in his temple – Understand?” He pointed upward …

  “Now!” resumed the rabbi. “Around Him stood the angels, God’s blessed angels. How beautiful they were you yourself may imagine. And they cried: Kadosh! Kadosh! Kadosh! – Holy! Holy! Holy! And the temple rang and quivered with the sound of their voices. So!” He paused, peering into Mendel’s face. “Understand?”

  David is stimulated but does not find holiness in the Hebrew letters. He is startled by the reluctance of other boys to use the strips of Yiddish newspaper in the communal toilet – Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet. What is sacred for him is mother love. Eventually, we can guess, the radiance of this primal event in his life is what he will seek by bending the recalcitrant world into words. “Outside,” in the cellar especially, is the world of fear he must learn to master. The whole first section of the book is named “The Cellar” because it deals with the underground side of life – physical, aggressive, sexual. A crippled neighborhood girl wants him to play “bad” with her. She explains that babies come from “de knish.”

  —Knish?

  “Between de legs. Who puts id in is de poppa. De poppa’s god de petzel. Yaw de poppa.” She giggled stealthily and took his hand. He could feel her guiding it under her dress, then through a pocket-like flap. Her skin under his palm. Revolted, he drew back.

  “Yuh must!” she insisted, tugging his hand. “Yuh ast me!”

  “No!”

  “Put yuh han’ in my knish,” she coaxed. “Jus’ once.”

  “No!”

  “I’ll hol’ yuh petzel.” She reached down.

  She tells David that they have been playing “bad.” “By the emphasis of her words, David knew he had crossed some awful threshold. ‘Will yuh tell?’ ‘No,’ he answered weakly.” When his mother gets him home, “she didn’t know as he knew how the whole world could break into a thousand little pieces, all buzzing, all whining, and no one hearing them and no one seeing them except himself.”

  David is now a fallen creature, out of Eden, who must confront the terrible but fascinating city by himself. What had occurred to him in earliest childhood is now dead certainty: “This world had been created without thought of him.” By the same token, he is free. The joy of being a boy in the city, that endless spectacle, is that the findings are everywhere. In a box kept in the pantry he collects “whatever striking odds and ends he found in the street. His mother called them his gems and often asked him why he liked things that were worn and old. It would have been hard to tell her. But there was something about the way in which the link of a chain was worn or the thread on a bolt or a castor-wheel that gave him a vague feeling of pain when he ran his fingers over them.… You never saw them wear, you only knew they were worn, obscurely aching.”

  This concern with materials marks the novelist-to-be. From this point on, the city becomes the web of life in which, even when he is “lostest,” David senses his destiny. It is the writer’s city of instant and continuing perception, the Joyce-inspired city of wonders as they come to us through the sensations of a very young being:

  When he had come almost to the end of the dock, he sat down, and with his feet hanging over the water leaned against the horned and bulbous stanchion to which boats were moored. Out here the wind was fresher. The uncommon quiet excited him. Beneath and under his palms, the dry, splintering timbers radiated warmth. And beneath them, secret, unseen, and always faintly sinister, the tireless lipping of water among the piles. Before him, the river and to the right, the long, grey bridges spanning it –

  A bridge makes David think of the sword with the “big middle” that used to appear on the Mecca cigarette composed of Turkish tobacco, of the bridge clipping the plumes of a long ship steaming beneath it, of gulls whose faces are as ugly as their flight is graceful, as they wheel through the wide air on wings that cut like a sickle. A tug on the other side of the river pecks at a barge, stolid in the water. “Yoked at length to its sluggish mate,” it gives the barge the look of a mustache! The water is sunlit rhythmic spray sprouting up before the blunt bow of the barge. The spray hangs “whitely” before it falls. Now David associates the blunt heaviness of the barge with a whole house of bricks as “a cloud sheared the sunlight from the wharf.” His back feels cooler in the sharpening wind, smokestacks on the other bank darken slowly, “fluting filmy distance with iron-grey shadow.”

  The Polish boy Leo, whom David admires beyond words for his defiant show of independence, shows him a rosary. The black beads become “lucky beads” to David. In his Jewish innocence the links of the rosary drive him wild with envy. He is the perpetual outsider. The sight of a boy on the block grabbing a girl makes him feel all the more isolated in his cruelly won sexual “knowledge.” “I know … I know … I know,” he repeats to himself. In one of Roth’s most telling images, David in sluggish thought resembles “a heavy stone pried half out of its clinging socket of earth.” Leo’s rosary must belong to him, because the beads give out a light like the marbles which other boys roll along the curb.

  As a Jew, David is transgressing, and there may be no safe place at home in which to hide a rosary. In marvelous counterpoint to Leo playing “bad” with David’s own cousin Esther, David watches Esther, who is afraid of being detected, hears her squeals at being handled by Leo. Leo insists that David “lay chickee” for him and Esther (be a lookout). Leo pays him off with the rosary David so much desires. The crucifix attached to the rosary quite frightens David; he recognizes something that may be hostile to him as a Jew. The cellar where all this is happening is dark; the gold figure on the crucifix swings slowly. David lets the glistening beads fall, one by one, in order to see how they light up the murk. Suddenly Esther’s sister Polly appears and accuses Esther: “Yuh wuz wit’ him in dere!” David slinks away. In the now violent dispute between Polly and Leo, the Catholic cries: “Yuh stinkin’ sheeny!” and the Jew is outraged that her sister not only has been petting, but petting with a Christian! “Her voice trailed off into horrified comprehension. “Oooh, w’en I tell – He’s a goy too! Yuh doity Crischin, ged oud f’om my cella’ – faw I call my modder. Ged oud!”

  David flees the cellar, flees the frightening transposition of sexual taboo into religious taboo. In the streets he just wants to get back to his own familiar world. He reaches the cheder, performs brilliantly in his Hebrew reading for the visiting rabbi, then in an excited leap of fantasy, based on his fascination with the rosary, tells Yidel Pankower that his mother is dead and that he is really half Christian, the son of a European organist who played in church. The rabbi, all alarmed and curious, intrusively carries the strange story to David’s home. There is a violent altercation with his father, who is all too willing to believe that David is someone else’s son, and beats him. The scene is mixed with violent humor because it is the same moment Genya’s sister Bertha and her husband have chosen to come in to ask for a loan. To cap everything, David, as he is shaken by his father, drops the rosary. Totally beyond himself now, Albert hysterically takes this as proof of David’s supposed Gentile parentage. “God’s own hand! A sign! A witness! A proof of my word!… Another’s! A goy’s! A cross! A sign of filth!”

  David runs away in earnest this time, ends up at the car barns, where at the foot of Tenth Street “a quaking splendor dissolved the cobbles, the grimy structures, bleary stables, the dump-heap, river and sky into a single cymbal-clash of light.” David has inserted the metal dipper of a milk can “between the livid jaws of the rail, the dipper twisted and bounced, consumed in roaring radiance, candescent.” As a long burst of flame spurts from underground, growling “as if the veil of earth were splitting,” David is knocked out, looks dead to the hysterical crowd that froths around his body. Only his
ankle is partly burnt, and in a rousing conclusion to the book he is brought back to his home. The near-tragedy somehow brings Albert to his senses. As his mother weepingly puts David to bed, David finally has some slight sense of triumph, for he is at last at peace with himself.

  It was only toward sleep that every wink of the eyelids could strike a spark into the cloudy tinder of the dark, kindle out of shadowy corners of the bedroom such myriad and such vivid jets of images – of the glint on tilted beards, of the uneven shine on roller skates, of the dry light on grey stone stoops, of the tapering glitter of rails, of the oily sheen on the night-smooth rivers, of the glow on thin blonde hair, red faces, of the glow on the outstretched, open palms of legions upon legions of hands hurtling toward him. He might as well call it sleep.

  The light he made for himself in the darkness of the cellar was real. David has won the essential first victory. He is on his way to becoming the artist who will write this book.

  Alfred Kazin

  PROLOGUE

  (I pray thee ask no questions this is that Golden Land)

  THE small white steamer, Peter Stuyvesant, that delivered the immigrants from the stench and throb of the steerage to the stench and the throb of New York tenements, rolled slightly on the water beside the stone quay in the lee of the weathered barracks and new brick buildings of Ellis Island. Her skipper was waiting for the last of the officials, laborers and guards to embark upon her before he cast off and started for Manhattan. Since this was Saturday afternoon and this the last trip she would make for the week-end, those left behind might have to stay over till Monday. Her whistle bellowed its hoarse warning. A few figures in overalls sauntered from the high doors of the immigration quarters and down the grey pavement that led to the dock.

  It was May of the year 1907, the year that was destined to bring the greatest number of immigrants to the shores of the United States. All that day, as on all the days since spring began, her decks had been thronged by hundreds upon hundreds of foreigners, natives from almost every land in the world, the jowled close-cropped Teuton, the full-bearded Russian, the scraggly-whiskered Jew, and among them Slovack peasants with docile faces, smooth-cheeked and swarthy Armenians, pimply Greeks, Danes with wrinkled eyelids. All day her decks had been colorful, a matrix of the vivid costumes of other lands, the speckled green-and-yellow aprons, the flowered kerchief, embroidered homespun, the silver-braided sheepskin vest, the gaudy scarfs, yellow boots, fur caps, caftans, dull gabardines. All day the guttural, the high-pitched voices, the astonished cries, the gasps of wonder, reiterations of gladness had risen from her decks in a motley billow of sound. But now her decks were empty, quiet, spreading out under the sunlight almost as if the warm boards were relaxing from the strain and the pressure of the myriads of feet. All those steerage passengers of the ships that had docked that day who were permitted to enter had already entered—except two, a woman and a young child she carried in her arms. They had just come aboard escorted by a man.

  About the appearance of these late comers there was very little that was unusual. The man had evidently spent some time in America and was now bringing his wife and child over from the other side. It might have been thought that he had spent most of his time in lower New York, for he paid only the scantest attention to the Statue of Liberty or to the city rising from the water or to the bridges spanning the East River—or perhaps he was merely too agitated to waste much time on these wonders. His clothes were the ordinary clothes the ordinary New Yorker wore in that period—sober and dull. A black derby accentuated the sharpness and sedentary pallor of his face; a jacket, loose on his tall spare frame, buttoned up in a V close to the throat; and above the V a tightly-knotted black tie was mounted in the groove of a high starched collar. As for his wife, one guessed that she was a European more by the timid wondering look in her eyes as she gazed from her husband to the harbor, than by her clothes. For her clothes were American—a black skirt, a white shirt-waist and a black jacket. Obviously her husband had either taken the precaution of sending them to her while she was still in Europe or had brought them with him to Ellis Island where she had slipped them on before she left.

  Only the small child in her arms wore a distinctly foreign costume, an impression one got chiefly from the odd, outlandish, blue straw hat on his head with its polka-dot ribbons of the same color dangling over each shoulder.

  Except for this hat, had the three newcomers been in a crowd, no one probably, could have singled out the woman and child as newly arrived immigrants. They carried no sheets tied up in huge bundles, no bulky wicker baskets, no prized feather beds, no boxes of delicacies, sausages, virgin-olive oils, rare cheeses; the large black satchel beside them was their only luggage. But despite this, despite their even less than commonplace appearance, the two overalled men, sprawled out and smoking cigarettes in the stern, eyed them curiously. And the old peddler woman, sitting with basket of oranges on knee, continually squinted her weak eyes in their direction.

  The truth was there was something quite untypical about their behavior. The old peddler woman on the bench and the overalled men in the stern had seen enough husbands meeting their wives and children after a long absence to know how such people ought to behave. The most volatile races, such as the Italians, often danced for joy, whirled each other around, pirouetted in an ecstasy: Swedes sometimes just looked at each other, breathing through open mouths like a panting dog; Jews wept, jabbered, almost put each other’s eyes out with the recklessness of their darting gestures; Poles roared and gripped each other at arm’s length as though they meant to tear a handful of flesh; and after one pecking kiss, the English might be seen gravitating toward, but never achieving an embrace. But these two stood silent, apart; the man staring with aloof, offended eyes grimly down at the water—or if he turned his face toward his wife at all, it was only to glare in harsh contempt at the blue straw hat worn by the child in her arms, and then his hostile eyes would sweep about the deck to see if anyone else were observing them. And his wife beside him regarding him uneasily, appealingly. And the child against her breast looking from one to the other with watchful, frightened eyes. Altogether it was a very curious meeting.

  They had been standing in this strange and silent manner for several minutes, when the woman, as if driven by the strain into action, tried to smile, and touching her husband’s arm said timidly, “And this is the Golden Land.” She spoke in Yiddish.

  The man grunted, but made no answer.

  She took a breath as if taking courage, and tremulously, “I’m sorry, Albert, I was so stupid.” She paused waiting for some flicker of unbending, some word, which never came. “But you look so lean, Albert, so haggard. And your mustache—you’ve shaved.”

  His brusque glance stabbed and withdrew. “Even so.”

  “You must have suffered in this land.” She continued gentle despite his rebuke. “You never wrote me. You’re thin. Ach! Then here in the new land is the same old poverty. You’ve gone without food. I can see it. You’ve changed.”

  “Well that don’t matter,” he snapped, ignoring her sympathy. “It’s no excuse for your not recognizing me. Who else would call for you? Do you know anyone else in this land?”

  “No,” placatingly. “But I was so frightened, Albert. Listen to me. I was so bewildered, and that long waiting there in that vast room since morning. Oh, that horrible waiting! I saw them all go, one after the other. The shoemaker and his wife. The coppersmith and his children from Strij. All those on the Kaiserin Viktoria. But I—I remained. To-morrow will be Sunday. They told me no one could come to fetch me. What if they sent me back? I was frantic!”

  “Are you blaming me?” His voice was dangerous.

  “No! No! Of course not Albert! I was just explaining.”

  “Well then let me explain,” he said curtly. “I did what I could. I took the day off from the shop. I called that cursed Hamburg-American Line four times. And each time they told me you weren’t on board.”

  “They didn’t h
ave any more third-class passage, so I had to take the steerage—”

  “Yes, now I know. That’s all very well. That couldn’t be helped. I came here anyway. The last boat. And what do you do? You refused to recognize me. You don’t know me.” He dropped his elbows down on the rail, averted his angry face. “That’s the greeting I get.”

  “I’m sorry, Albert,” she stroked his arm humbly. “I’m sorry.”

  “And as if those blue-coated mongrels in there weren’t mocking me enough, you give them that brat’s right age. Didn’t I write you to say seventeen months because it would save the half fare! Didn’t you hear me inside when I told them?”

  “How could I, Albert?” she protested. “How could I? You were on the other side of that—that cage.”

  “Well why didn’t you say seventeen months anyway? Look!” he pointed to several blue-coated officials who came hurrying out of a doorway out of the immigration quarters. “There they are.” An ominous pride dragged at his voice. “If he’s among them, that one who questioned me so much, I could speak to him if he came up here.”

  “Don’t bother with him, Albert,” she exclaimed uneasily. “Please, Albert! What have you against him? He couldn’t help it. It’s his work.”

  “Is it?” His eyes followed with unswerving deliberation the blue-coats as they neared the boat. “Well he didn’t have to do it so well.”

  “And after all, I did lie to him, Albert,” she said hurriedly trying to distract him.

  “The truth is you didn’t,” he snapped, turning his anger against her. “You made your first lie plain by telling the truth afterward. And made a laughing-stock of me!”

  “I didn’t know what to do.” She picked despairingly at the wire grill beneath the rail. “In Hamburg the doctor laughed at me when I said seventeen months. He’s so big. He was big when he was born.” She smiled, the worried look on her face vanishing momentarily as she stroked her son’s cheek. “Won’t you speak to your father, David, beloved?”