He couldn’t think, that was his trouble. So he would be expelled from Stuyvesant; so his good name would be ruined. So he would be known as a thief, as a goniff. He alone knew that before; now it would be known by all. . And what if, what if he also knew, it were also known, that he had been caught too, committing something worse than theft, an abomination? As it well might be, but a single slip. Then throw your briefcase into the water now. Forestall everything: if he threw his briefcase into the water, he’d have to jump after it to get it back. And then? He wouldn’t have to think about anything anymore. Sure, the water was cold, gravel-color cold. It would sting. But if he took a deep breath, a real, tired deep breath. . in the water. . it might all be over. . before the water got through his clothes. . his secondhand topcoat, his secondhand jacket. What was there to be afraid of? He might not even feel it. Anybody could slip off a rock in the river, even a flat one. . like this. . just swing the briefcase into the restless, dented water, as far as you can, into the water, rippling all the way to the gloomy Palisades. Come on. Soon be dark, and no more nerve. If he could only think. Yisgadal, v’yiskadash, sh’mey rabo, the mourner’s chant, was that how it went? What did it mean? That’s how it sounded. Pop would sit on a wooden box, the way he did when his father died, after he learned about it in a letter from Europe, slit the buttonhole of his vest with an old Gem razor blade, and sit on a box, sit shiva. And Mom, Mom, Mom! Wait—
Wait: now he knew. The river had just told him. He didn’t have seykhl enough to discover it by himself. It didn’t matter. It was true. No, it wasn’t loony; it was true. If it wasn’t true, then nothing was true; and if nothing was true, what difference did anything make? But here he was, standing with his briefcase on the diving rock on the Hudson, with his briefcase to throw in the water before it was nighttime. Why would he be standing here if it didn’t make any difference? If nothing was true? Then something was true. Here he was, at day’s end living; in a moment to drown.
He turned around on the block of stone, turned his back to the river. So now suffer. Everything. The outcries at home. The expulsion from school. The shame. That was only the outside, the outside wreckage. What he was, what he already was inside, he would have to bear. He didn’t know what he meant, only that the agony would be worse, and he had chosen to bear it, bear the havoc of himself, the only thing true. .
He climbed up toward the paved, lonely, darkling lanes, went underneath the viaduct, went on toward Broadway, into motor-din, store-light, headlights, human cries; he plodded south. It would be a long way to 119th Street, a long way to Park Avenue. But that was nothing compared to what lay in store for him. Just a long hike compared to what waited at the end. . just a long hike — nothing, compared to destination. . Yes, what was anything compared to himself?
III
An hour later, Ira trudged home. It was after dark, well after dark, and long after even a belated arrival from Stuyvesant’s second session might have warranted. A moment he stood in the hallway under the transom light, and then numbly opened the kitchen door: perceived the blank window shade drawn full-length down the window on the other side of the room; perceived the green oilcloth on the kitchen table, the silly, little-figured red apron hanging from the rim of the black iron sink; perceived the gas-stove burner on; green-painted icebox with alarm clock on it and box of household matches, green-painted icebox in the corner of green-painted blistered walls next to the bedroom door where the mop handle leaned. And Pop seated at the table, and partway through supper, his dog-brown, worried eyes lifted to Ira as he entered. Heard Mom exclaim in relieved Yiddish, berating, “A plague take you, Ira. Where have you been since school let out?”
Followed at once by Pop’s sardonic “Uh-huh! I can see by the crestfallen nose on his face something’s gone wrong for him again.”
Words clotted in Ira’s throat; speech jammed. He crossed the room, took the mop handle from the corner, and handed it to Pop.
“Are you crazy?” Pop turned pale.
Passage had to be forced, passage for confession, his covenant with the river: “I was caught stealing a fountain pen. Another boy’s fountain pen. The—” Ira hardened himself for retribution. “The assistant principal wants you to come to school with me tomorrow.”
But instead of retribution, Pop threw the mop handle down. He looked, he was — could it be? — stricken close to tears. He threw the mop handle down, and fled from the kitchen into the gloom of the bedroom. Strange, the merest mote of a revelation formed in Ira’s mind: Pop wasn’t as strong as he was. Pop couldn’t mete out what his son was ready to endure. Soft inside. So that was what he was?
“I think I’m going to get kicked out of school.” Ira spoke stolidly, stood stolidly. “They took away my books. They want me to bring the rest tomorrow.”
“Oy, a brukh af dir!” Mom drove the execration home with a fierce nod of her flushed, broad face. “Get buried, won’t you! For all the torment you cause us! Dolt! Clod!”
And as suddenly as he had fled, Pop was back. “I hope to see you dead!”
“They were stealing from me!” Ira broke into wailing lament. “They stole my new briefcase, all my fountain pens.”
“Dummkopf! If you’re not smart enough to keep track of your own belongings? Whom are you deceiving?” Mom flung at him. “Others also have briefcases, have fountain pens. And who knows what else? And still they manage to keep them! Choke on your excuses!”
Pop heaped rage on rancor. “I hope you rot out of my sight! Rot! And this child I nourish? May flames char him to cinder. This thief I pamper?” He turned savagely on Mom. “It’s all your fault. It’s all your doing. You send him to high school. Hah! I would send him — you know where? To dig in the ground. To lay turf. For that he’s suited. And may he lie under it!”
“Oy, vey, vey!” Mom groaned, stooped, stooped to pick up the mop handle. “Blunderer! Great ox! Oh, you’re nothing to me but grief!”
“Send him to high school! She needs, she craves, a learned son. Nah! You have him: as learned as a canker. I told you!”
“You told me. Good.” Mom opposed Pop’s vindictiveness with her own anguish. “Can you say anything more than that? May a black year befall him. Oh, my grief!” And to Ira, “Yes, stand there like a post. Gott’s nar. Take off your hat and coat and sit down. How did they discover you were a thief?”
“I stole a silver fountain pen from a rich kid, from a rich kid’s pocket. And I gave it to Farley. He went around with it in the gym. You know: where we go — for exercise.” He lamented in English: “The gym. And the kid — he saw it. He wanted it back.”