In the Beginning Read online

  “Hey,” Eddie Kulanski said. He put his hands on his hips and gave me a little smile. He had a pointed chin and a straight, sharp pointed nose. His eyes looked sleepy. “You ain’t sick again yet with that Jewish disease?”

  The other boy looked at him. “He’s got a disease?”

  “A Jewish disease.”

  “Yeah? Is it catchy?”

  “Yeah, it’s catchy. My friend Tony got it.”

  “Hey, what disease is it, kid?”

  I did not know what to say. If they touched me, I would shout and someone would come to help. But the big boy could hit me very hard and then run away and deny he ever hit me. I sat very still, staring at them.

  “What’s that in there?” the older boy said, pointing to the carriage.

  “His kid brother,” said Eddie Kulanski.

  They sounded like twins. Even their voices were identical, thin, flat, edged with sarcasm and contempt.

  “His kid brother,” the older boy said. “I got to look.” He moved over to the carriage and peered inside.

  I looked up and down the street. My arms and legs were trembling. “Go away,” I said. “Please. He’s a little baby.”

  The older boy straightened and stepped back from the carriage. “He ain’t got them,” he said.

  Eddie Kulanski looked disappointed.

  The older boy turned to me. “When did he lose them?” he asked.

  “What?” I said.

  “The horns. When do you kikes lose them? He ain’t got them. How old is he?”

  “Two,” I heard myself say through the drumming of the blood in my ears.

  “Shit,” the older boy said. “We ain’t got no kike babies on my block. I thought I would see them.” He looked closely at my face and head. “When did you lose yours, kid?”

  I did not understand what he was saying.

  “We ain’t gonna hurt you, kid. What’re you shaking like that for? Look at him shaking, Eddie. When did you lose your horns? When you was about one?”

  “Yes,” I heard myself say desperately in order to tell them what I thought they wanted to hear.

  “No wonder they keep those kike kids always bundled up. So we won’t be able to see their horns. Right?”

  “Yes,” I said. My throat was dry. Was I becoming ill again? But there was no pain behind my eyes.

  “Sneaky Jew cock,” he said. Then he said, “One of these days I got to see a Jew cock.”

  “Hey,” Eddie said eagerly, looking up at the older boy.

  The other one ignored him and regarded me intently out of his half-closed eyes. “Listen,” he said. “Eddie here is my cousin. I like to take good care of my cousin. You stay away from him and his friends. I don’t want him catching none of your Jew germs. Understand?” He put a long bony forefinger against my chest. “Understand?” he said again, and poked me hard with the finger. It felt like a bar of iron. “Understand?”

  “Yes.” My chest ached where his finger had jabbed me.

  “You understand. Okay. We don’t like to be too close to Jews, that’s all. My old man says you all got a bad smell and now I find out you got a Jewish disease. So stay away from my cousin and his pals.”

  Inside the carriage my brother stirred. I saw the carriage rock slightly on its springs. My brother cried softly and was quiet.

  Eddie Kulanski’s cousin looked at the carriage with a sudden sharp return of interest.

  I got up off the chair onto my feet and stood alongside the carriage.

  Eddie Kulanski looked up at his cousin. “Hey, I want to,” he said.

  “Yeah,” his cousin said. “The kid’s up anyway.”

  I blocked their way.

  “We ain’t gonna hurt him,” Eddie Kulanski’s cousin said. “We just want to look.”

  “Go away,” I pleaded. “I’ll yell. I’ll call the police.”

  The older boy stiffened. The smile vanished. His eyes narrowed. “You hear that, Eddie?” he said. “He’s gonna call the cops.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie Kulanski said.

  “You know what we do when someone calls the cops?”

  “Keep away from my brother!”

  “Look at him,” Eddie Kulanski’s cousin said. “He’s gonna shit right in his pants.”

  Eddie Kulanski laughed.

  “I’m gonna tell you—” Eddie Kulanski’s cousin began, and stopped.

  Behind him Mrs. Savanola had put her head out of her window. “Hey, you, Eddie Kulanski!” she shouted. “What you doing there?” The two of them turned to look at her.

  “You keep your hands off that Davey Lurie. You want me to tell his papa you making trouble?” I could see Eddie Kulanski’s lips curl into the little smile. The smile seemed to incense Mrs. Savanola. Her face reddened beneath its olive coloring and her chins trembled. “What you laughing at me for? You take your cousin away from that Davey or I tell his mama to call the police.”

  The two of them stared at her. Eddie Kulanski’s cousin rubbed his hands along the sides of his shorts. Without a word he turned, went up the front steps and into the house. Eddie Kulanski gave me a cold, malevolent look and followed him.

  Mrs. Savanola looked at me. She had dark shiny hair and dark eyes. “That’s a mean boy, that Eddie’s cousin. How you feel, Davey?”

  I opened my mouth but no sound came out. I swallowed hard and felt I was downing sand.

  “I’m okay,” I said to her in a hoarse dry voice.

  “You look like a stick, like a, whatchamacallit, a scarecrow. You got to eat more, Davey. My Tony, he sick in bed today. Why you no sit more in the sun? You pale like a sheet.”

  She pulled her head inside. The lace curtains stirred and were still.

  I sat down on the chair next to my brother’s carriage and felt the trembling move through me. After a moment I began to cry. I sat there, trembling and crying. My brother stirred again in his carriage and was quiet. Near Mr. Steinberg’s candy store, the old man rose slowly and moved his chair out of the shade that had crept over him and sat down once again, his face to the sun, his palsied hands shaking as they rested on his knees. A few minutes later, I went into the house and brought out my tricycle and rode around for a while.

  Joey Younger came out of the house and watched me.

  “Davey,” he called.

  Inside his carriage, my brother began to cry.

  “What did you have to yell for?” I said, and got off the tricycle.

  “Can I get a ride, Davey?”

  I let him take the tricycle and stood there rocking my brother back to sleep. I sat down in the chair and put my face to the sun.

  “Hey, Davey,” Tony Savanola said behind me.

  I turned in the chair and saw him in the window. His dark hair was uncombed and he wore red pajamas. He smiled at me and I was happy to see him. I got down off the chair and went over to the window and looked up at him.

  “How’re you feeling, Tony?” It was a strange sensation to be asking someone else how he was feeling. I felt almost a little happy to be able to ask that, to be seeing someone else who was ill.

  “I got fever, Davey. Don’t come too close to me. The doctor said it might be measles. My mama said Eddie Kulanski and his cousin were bothering you.”

  I looked down at the sidewalk.

  “Did they hurt you, Davey?”

  “No.”

  “His cousin is mean, Davey. I don’t like him. He hurts things. I saw him hurt a cat once. Hey, you haven’t been sick since last time. That’s good isn’t it, Davey?”

  “He says I got to stay away from you, Tony.”

  Tony Savanola looked uncomfortable.

  “I don’t want no trouble, Tony.”

  “What you doing at the window, you crazy!” I heard Mrs. Savanola’s loud voice from inside the apartment.

  Tony’s dark eyes looked momentarily startled.

  “You sick and you standing by the open window!”

  He waved at me and vanished behind the lace curtains.

  Joey
Younger rode by at high speed, his hair wild, his body bent forward over the handlebars, his legs pumping.

  I sat down on the chair. Near Mr. Steinberg’s candy store, the old man had fallen asleep. The sun had moved and his face was in shade. His gnarled arthritic hands continued to tremble faintly as he slept. I sat in the sun and watched Joey Younger riding my tricycle up and down the block. I was tired. After a while I closed my eyes.

  My cousin said to me in my room that Shabbat, “It means ‘Anonymous Empire,’ Davey.”

  He and his parents had come over to join us for Shabbat dinner in the early afternoon. Now we were together in my room and our parents were talking quietly in the living room. Saul sat next to me on my bed, looking troubled.

  “I asked one of my teachers in school,” he said. “He wanted to know where I heard it and I told him one of the goyim on my block yelled it at me. He said goyim think there’s a group of Jews who keep meeting secretly somewhere and planning ways to take over the whole world. They’re called Elders of Zion. This group is supposed to be able to make all kinds of problems for the goyim because it owns most of the banks and newspapers in the world. These old Jews can do almost anything because they have so much money and control the news and what people say and think. They have plans for all the goyishe governments to get into such bad trouble that they’ll fail—and then these Jews can take over the world. My teacher said that in Poland they call this secret organization Anonymowe Panstwo. It’s even in the Polish dictionary, he said. Almost everyone in Poland believes it.”

  “What do ‘anonymous’ and ‘empire’ mean, Saul?”

  He explained the words to me.

  “Is it true, Saul?”

  “No, it’s not true, Davey.”

  “The goyim really believe that?”

  “A lot of goyim believe it.”

  “But so many Jews are poor. And Mama said she was in a place in Poland once where Jews were hurt and killed by goyim. How could that happen if we’re so strong?”

  “My teacher says the goyim think we let some Jews stay poor and get hurt and killed so the goyim shouldn’t know how strong we really are.”

  “Goyim really believe that, Saul?”

  “That’s what my teacher said.”

  “They believe that we killed Jesus and own all the banks and things and want to take over the whole world and we let some Jews stay poor and get killed so the world should think we’re really not strong?”

  He nodded soberly, his eyes dark.

  “Saul?”

  “Yes, Davey.”

  “I have to tell you about something that almost happened with Alex.” Very quickly, fearfully, I recounted the incident with Eddie Kulanski and his cousin.

  Saul was very upset; he seemed frightened. “You should tell your father,” he said.

  “They didn’t touch him, Saul. I would tell if they touched him.”

  “You should tell anyway.”

  “I don’t want them to fight, Saul. Eddie Kulanski’s father is so big.”

  My cousin chewed his lip and was quiet.

  “What does it mean, horns and things, Saul?”

  “Some goyim think Jews have horns.”

  I stared at him.

  “They think we’re like Satan or the Angel of Death or something. They think we kill goyishe babies and use their blood in matzos for Pesach. They think we’re like devils or demons. Every terrible thing that happens in the world they blame on us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they hate us.”

  “But why do they hate us?”

  “Because they think we do all those terrible things.”

  “I don’t understand it, Saul.”

  “Neither do I,” he said. “If Jews owned all the money and banks why would your father and my father have to work so hard to make money to bring all the rest of our families to America? It’s a way goyim have of telling lies about us and getting everyone to hate us.”

  “Does everyone hate us, Saul?”

  “My father says most goyim hate us.”

  I could not understand what it was like to be hated by so many people. I could not remember ever having hated anyone and so I did not understand the feeling—unless it was something like the way I felt about being ill so often. Yes, that must be a little of what it must be like to hate.

  “It’s a scary feeling, Saul, so many goyim hating us.”

  He nodded again, slowly. His eyes were dark behind their glasses.

  “Is Papa bringing all the families to America?”

  “In a few months. He has money to give them and places for them to live and work. Yes, in a few months. When your mother’s mother is all well.”

  “Is she sick, too, a lot of the time?”

  He looked at me uncertainly, started to say something, and stopped. “She’ll be all well soon, Davey. You want to hear a new midrash I read this morning about the giants in the time of Noah? Mr. Bader showed it to me. Then we’ll go to the zoo, if your papa and mama say it’s okay.”

  He told me the midrash and, later, we walked the long narrow side street to the wide boulevard and crossed over and came into the zoo. For the first time, I found myself frightened of the tawny-skinned lions. Saul held my hand as we circled their outdoor pen. Inside the tiger pen, a huge tiger rose suddenly on its legs from a reclining position, and roared. I cried out. Saul took me quickly away from there to my billy goat.

  I petted his warm wet nose and let his hard lips and wet tongue tickle the palm of my hand.

  “You ought to tell your father about Eddie Kulanski and his cousin,” Saul said quietly, watching me.

  “You gave your word, Saul. You gave me your word.”

  He looked away and was silent.

  The billy goat licked my hand and after a little while I was able to laugh with delight—as I had laughed this afternoon when we had stopped to feed the billy goat on the way through the zoo to the pine wood and the clearing where I now sat watching my father and uncle talking earnestly together near a tree at the opposite end of the clearing, and my mother and aunt sitting and talking on the blankets, and Saul and my little brother Alex playing happily together on the grass. I sat near the path that had taken us through the wood and kept skimming the palm of my right hand lightly over the low grass. The tickling sensation was delicious. Overhead the sun cleared the thin layer of clouds and sent a stream of golden light onto the clearing.

  From somewhere in the wood behind me came the sudden sharp sound of a cracking branch and the soft murmur of voices. I turned and saw a straw hat moving across the top of a clump of tall brush alongside the path. Then the brush fell away and a man and woman stepped into the curve of the path. They were followed by two more couples, then, a moment later, by three more couples. The men carried blankets and picnic baskets. I recognized them all: they prayed in the same little synagogue near our house as did my parents and aunt and uncle. I had not been in that synagogue more than four or five times during the past few months because of illness and because my father sometimes went very early and would not wake me. The last time I had been in the synagogue was about a week ago during the Festival of Shavuoth. I had not liked being there. I had not liked sitting in the same small room with some of the men whose faces had been in the photograph everyone said I had not seen.

  They were all about the same age as my parents, somewhere in their thirties. They were smartly dressed in light-colored summer clothes. The men wore straw hats or fishermen’s caps; the women had on wide-brimmed flowery hats. They greeted me as they went by; some asked how I felt; one man, a tall man with small eyes and a large nose, bent down and pinched my cheek. “Good to see you, little David,” he said cheerfully in Yiddish. “A very beautiful day today, yes? Good to see you.” He had held a gun and a knife in the photograph.

  A moment later Mr. and Mrs. Bader came up the path, passed me with a smile, and entered the clearing. Mr. Bader did not carry a blanket or a picnic basket. He looked tall and trim and dapper in a
light blue summer suit, a red bow tie, and a hard straw hat.

  My father and uncle had broken off their conversation when the first couples had entered the clearing. They came forward to greet them. There was loud happy chatter; blankets were spread out on the grass; the silent wood filled with the sounds of voices speaking Yiddish.

  I sat on the grass near the path at the edge of the clearing and watched the men and women on the blankets. They spoke to one another in their bantering Galician Yiddish, the way they did in our little synagogue or when they met on the street. They had all been friends in another and, it seemed to me, darker land and time; nothing of what they said meant anything to me. As I sat watching, four more couples came through the wood and entered the clearing. They did not pray in our synagogue but came to the house from time to time for an evening. All four of the men were in the photograph I had accidentally not seen. Not all the men who had been in the photograph were now in the clearing but all the men in the clearing had been in the photograph, except Mr. Shmuel Bader.

  The vague pain behind my eyes had disappeared for a while; now it returned and began slowly to move into my forehead above the bridge of my nose. Yes, I would be ill again soon. I sat there skimming my hand slowly back and forth across the low grass.

  The women were removing food from the picnic baskets and laying it out on serving dishes and paper plates on the blankets. My brother and I were the only very young children there; some people had seemed surprised to see us. Our blanket was in the center of the rough semicircle formed by the blankets, and I saw one of the men talking earnestly to my father and pointing to me and my brother. I looked quickly away and scanned the food appearing in awesome quantities from the apparently bottomless picnic baskets. There was smoked meat, delicatessen, fish, Kaiser rolls, rye bread, sour pickles, sauerkraut, salads, fruit, soda water. From the bowels of a basket a woman produced and held high a bottle filled with amber liquid. There was a burst of laughter and scattered handclapping. Startled by the noise, a bird rose from a branch over my head and flew deep into the wood with a swiftly vanishing flutter of wings. The pine wood returned the noise faintly to the clearing as it caught and echoed the sudden laughter and applause.