Cramped in the bushes, peering between the iron pickets, he heard the word trouble thumping away in his head. In the distance, midway between the fence and the railroad tracks that bound the cemetery at the far side, he saw the mourners standing in the sunlight. The day kept getting bluer and bluer, and the sun rose and rose, and around him the gravestones glittered. Behind was a long line of automobiles, none of which he recognized. Wasn’t it his father being buried? Was he hiding needlessly? But time had passed — of course, everyone owned a new car. He looked back into the light. Where was the coffin? Was it over — the old man covered up? Then chapter one was history.
He tried to feel relief. He rose on stiffened legs, telling himself he would now start fresh. But inside the cemetery men were taking the arms of the women and helping them along. He couldn’t be sure; were these his relatives? He edged along the fence, holding branches down so they would not flick back at him. He had to see just one pair of familiar eyes, and then he’d make a break for it, off and away into his new life. However, all the men were wearing hats and all the women holding handkerchiefs to their faces, and what made recognition even more difficult was the brightness, the luminosity of the day—
He was out in the open. Where was the fence? Gone! Weaving along the paths, swaying around swollen burial plots, they were headed his way. And he was in the gateway. Almost at his back — the whiff first, then the sad sight — was a hearse full of flowers. A death had taken place. The thought penetrated into him all the way.
There were several choices open to Paul that moment; it was not because all the paths of escape were blocked that, instead of moving out, he moved in. He could have run away, or simply walked away, but he moved in because in was the direction of his life. In and in and in, past all kinds of tombstones, fancy ones, plain ones, old ones, past memorials to cherished mothers and beloved fathers, faithful husbands and dutiful wives, and even little children, whose dates told the whole miserable story. Levine’s youngster, 1900–1907. Rappaport’s child, 1926–1931. Abraham’s child, 1929–1940. Born the same year as Paul. Drowned? Run over? Meningitis?
Dates. Names. Flowers. Above, the sun. All came at him with sharpness and clarity. He saw now where he had misread. Not Abrahams. Abrams. Abraham’s child was Isaac. Here were interred the bones of Abrams, his contemporary. The thought seized him. He moved in and in, and then up ahead he saw a figure moving out and out, toward him. But his mind was occupied with the mystery of Abrams’ death and his own survival. Little Abrams catching spinal meningitis or diphtheria, himself skinning through on only German measles. Lucky him. Unlucky Abrams. Isaac, he thought … Every gravestone that he saw had a date on the right to go with the date on the left. That fact caused his knees to shake. Justice, will, order, change — the words whistled by him, windless as the day was, like spirits moving off in the opposite direction. Dates. Names. Flowers. Sky. Only facts of history and of nature had meaning. The rest was invention.
So in he moved, in, and then he saw the faces. Yes, there that wicked mouth on his father’s sister, his. Aunt Gertie’s mouth. There a pair of sad blue eyes, more blue than sad: his simpleton cousin, the all-Brooklyn basketball star Harvey. The black hair of his beautiful cousin Clare. The soft hands of his Uncle Jerry. There in circles of fat, Maury; in black beside him, Doris. They were all clear to him; but at the center, a trick of the atmosphere, or of his senses, there was a haze, just a haze rushing toward him. He heard a cry — his name! Oh, and Asher. There was Asher. And what did Asher understand of anything? What had he understood himself? Who was the fellow in the black coat? Lichtman, who would not marry him to Libby? Who was—
No one moved, just himself, and what rushed to meet him: a figure in black. And now at last he saw who that was too, yes, and now he closed his eyes and opened his arms and what he saw next was his life — he saw it for the sacrifice that it was. Isaac under the knife, Abraham wielding it. Both! While his mother kissed his neck and moaned his name, he saw his place in the world. Yes. And the world itself — without admiration, without pity. Yes! Oh yes! What he saw filled him for a moment with strength. Not that in a sweep of forgiving he could kiss that face that now kissed him; it was not that which he had seen. He kissed nothing — only held out his arms, open, and stood still at last, momentarily at rest in the center of the storm through which he had been traveling all these years. For his truth was revealed to him, his final premise melted away. What he had taken for order was chaos. Justice was illusion. Abraham and Isaac were one. His eyes opened, and in the midst of those faces — the faces of his dream, the faces of the bums, all the faces that had forever encircled him — he felt no humiliation and no shame. Their eyes no longer overpowered him. He felt himself under a wider beam.
2
Usually that summer we swam off the rocks at Fifty-fifth Street. We became friendly with other couples — some married, some like ourselves — and spent long Saturdays and Sundays on the tiers of rock that led down to cool Lake Michigan, talking and sunning and offering around sandwiches and white wine out of our straw hamper. I had bought the picnic hamper at Abercrombie’s as a gift for Martha, a commemoration of the Fourth of July, our first time in bathing suits together, and certainly a milestone for any American boy and his American girl.
Martha was employed now at the University as secretary to Claude Delsey, the director of the summer quarter, and, at last, had weekends off and nights free. Some months earlier she had wrapped her two waitress uniforms in brown paper, tied the package with a string and given it to her cleaning lady, Annie LaSmith. Then, with her first University pay check in her purse, she had gone off to Marshall Fields and bought three summer dresses to wear to the office: one lavender, one pale blue, and the third, my favorite, an apricot color, with a wide square neck and a pleated skirt. The following week she bought shoes, two strands of pearls, and a pair of white gloves; and then one day when Delsey was out of town, she took a few hours off in the afternoon and went up to the Near North Side, from which she returned with her hair whirled up in an intricate and elegant coiffure. She looked quite stunning, even if not entirely like herself, but in bed that night she had to wear a silk stocking over her head for protection. I complained that her headpiece had a debilitating effect upon my passions, but she said that passion was out of the question anyway — she had to lie perfectly still. Fortunately, the hairdo was beginning to sag the next day at breakfast, by lunch-time was lopsided, and by dinner beyond repair; a little after midnight she crawled in close beside me again, bareheaded.
I suppose there were times when she was really very happy, and when our life together would have seemed, to someone strolling beneath our open window on a summer night, peaceful and comfortable and serene: Martha, in shorts and a sleeveless blouse, stretched out on the sofa drinking iced coffee and reading a book; I in the chair across from her, with a yellow pad on my knee, scribbling notes for an American literature course I was to teach in the fall … It was a pleasant July, especially for Chicago. Whenever it threatened to turn muggy and hot, the clouds would pile up at dinnertime and a thunderstorm would clear the air and leave the city smelling like the country, and the streets perfect for a long walk over to the campus. There, with the trees damp and full and glittering in the early moonlight, the only sound was the comforting one of the night watchman going around and shaking the handles on the doors of the empty buildings. “In the fall I think I’m going to take a course,” Martha told me. “Delsey said it’s okay with him.” “What course?” I asked. “I’m not sure yet. I went over to the Administration Building and checked — if I take one course a quarter for the next two years I can get my B.A.” “Then what?” I asked. “Then,” she said, “I’ll have it.”