Call It Sleep
By Henry RothPicador USA
Copyright ©2005 Henry Roth
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312424121
Chapter One
STANDING before the kitchen sink and regarding the bright brass faucets that gleamed so far away, each with a bead of water at its nose, slowly swelling, falling, David again became aware that this world had been created without thought of him. He was thirsty, but the iron hip of the sink rested on legs tall almost as his own body, and by no stretch of arm, no leap, could he ever reach the distant tap. Where did the water come from that lurked so secretly in the curve of the brass? Where did it go, gurgling in the drain? What a strange world must be hidden behind the walls of a house! But he was thirsty. "Mama!" he called, his voice rising above the hiss of sweeping in the frontroom. "Mama, I want a drink."
The unseen broom stopped to listen. "I'll be there in a moment," his mother answered. A chair squealed on its castors; a window chuckled down; his mother's approaching tread.
Standing in the doorway on the top step (two steps led up into the frontroom) his mother smilingly surveyed him. She looked as tall as a tower. The old grey dress she wore rose straight from strong bare ankle to waist, curved round the deep bosom and over the wide shoulders, and set her full throat in a frame of frayed lace. Her smooth, sloping face was flushed now with her work, but faintly so, diffused, the color of a hand beneath wax. She had mild, full lips, brown hair. A vague, fugitive darkness blurred the hollow above her cheekbone, giving to her face and to her large brown eyes, set in their white ovals, a reserved and almost mournful air.
"I want a drink, mama," he repeated.
"I know," she answered, coming down the stairs. "I heard you." And casting a quick, sidelong glance at him, she went over to the sink and turned the tap. The water spouted noisily down. She stood there a moment, stuffing obscurely, one finger parting the turbulent jet, waiting for the water to cool. Then filling a glass, she handed it down to him.
"When am I going to be big enough?" he asked resentfully as he took the glass in both hands.
"There will come a time," she answered, smiling. She rarely smiled broadly; instead the thin furrow along her upper lip would deepen. "Have little fear."
With eyes still fixed on his mother, he drank the water in breathless, uneven gulps, then returned the glass to her, surprised to see its contents scarcely diminished.
"Why can't I talk with my mouth in the water?"
"No one would hear you. Have you had your fill?"
He nodded, murmuring contentedly.
"And is that all?" she asked. Her voice held a faint challenge.
"Yes," he said hesitantly, meanwhile scanning her face for some clue.
"I thought so," she drew her head back in droll disappointment.
"What?"
"It is summer," she pointed to the window, "the weather grows warm. Whom will you refresh with the icy lips the water lent you?"
"Oh!" he lifted his smiling face.
"You remember nothing," she reproached him, and with a throaty chuckle, lifted him in her arms.
Sinking his fingers in her hair, David kissed her brow. The faint familiar warmth and odor of her skin and hair.
"There!" she laughed, nuzzling his cheek, "but you've waited too long; the sweet chill has dulled. Lips for me," she reminded him, "must always be cool as the water that wet them." She put him down.
"Sometime I'm going to eat some ice," he said warningly, "then you'll Like it."
She laughed. And then soberly, "Aren't you ever going down into the street? The morning grows old."
"Aaa!"
"You'd better go. Just for a little while. I'm going to sweep here, you know."
"I want my calendar first," he pouted, invoking his privilege against the evil hour.
"Get it then. But you've got to go down afterwards."
He dragged a chair over beneath the calendar on the wall, clambered up, plucked off the outworn leaf, and fingered the remaining ones to see how far off the next red day was. Red days were Sundays, days his father was home. It always gave David a little qualm of dread to watch them draw near.
"Now you have your leaf," his mother reminded him. "Come." She stretched out her arms.
He held back. "Show me where my birthday is."
"Woe is me!" She exclaimed with an impatient chuckle. "I've shown it to you every day for weeks now."
"Show me again."
She rumpled the pad, lifted a thin plaque of leaves. "July-" she murmured, "July 12th ... There!" She found it. "July 12th, 1911. You'll be six then."
David regarded the strange figures gravely. "Lots of pages still," he informed her.
"Yes."
"And a black day too."
"On the calendar," she laughed, "only on the calendar. Now do come down!"
Grasping her arm, he jumped down from the chair. "I must hide it now." He explained.
"So you must. I see I'll never finish my work today."
Too absorbed in his own affairs to pay much heed to hers, he went over to the pantry beneath the cupboard, opened the door and drew out a shoe-box, his treasure chest.
"See how many I've got already?" he pointed proudly to the fat sheaf of rumpled leaves inside the box.
"Wonderful!" She glanced at the box in perfunctory admiration. "You peel off the year as one might a cabbage. Are you ready for your journey?"
"Yes." He put away the box without a trace of alacrity.
"Where is your sailor blouse?" she murmured looking about. "With the white strings in it? What have I-?" She found it. "There is still a little wind."
David held up his arms for her to slip the blouse over his head.
"Now, my own," she said, kissing his reemerging face. "Go down and play." She led him toward the door and opened it. "Not too far. And remember if I don't call you, wait until the whistle blows."
He went out into the hallway. Behind him, like an eyelid shutting, the soft closing of the door winked out the light. He assayed the stairs, lapsing below him into darkness, and grasping one by one each slender upright to the banister, went down. David never found himself alone on these stairs, but he wished there were no carpet covering them. How could you hear the sound of your own feet in the dark if a carpet muffled every step you took? And if you couldn't hear the sound of your own feet and couldn't see anything either, how could you be sure you were actually there and not dreaming? A few steps from the bottom landing, he paused and stared rigidly at the cellar door. It bulged with darkness. Would it hold? ... It held! He jumped from the last steps and raced through the narrow hallway to the light of the street. Flying through the doorway was like butting a wave. A dazzling breaker of sunlight burst over his head, swamped him in reeling blur of brilliance, and then receded ... A row of frame houses half in thin shade, a pitted gutter, a yawning ashcan, flotsam on the shore, his street.
Blinking and almost shaken, he waited on the low stoop a moment, until his whiffing vision steadied. Then for the first time, he noticed that seated on the curbstone near the house was a boy, whom an instant later, he recognized. It was Yussie who had just moved into David's house and who lived on the floor above. Yussie had a very red, fat face. His big sister walked with a limp and wore strange iron slats on one of her legs. What was he doing, David wondered, what did he have in his hands? Stepping down from the stoop, he drew near, and totally disregarded, stood beside him.
Yussie had...
