“
Mir darfn a hindl oif scahbes,
” His mother greeted him as he returned home that evening. “
Dir wil ariberbrengn a hindl?
”
“
Yes, Muter, there will be a chicken,” he said with a kiss to her warm cheek. She looked up from her cooking, patted his chin with her floured hand, and smiled as he passed. He took his place at the table next to his father, and without waiting for the question, he softly said, “Yes.”
His father peeked around the corner of his newspaper and squinted in mock suspicion at Yousep.
“
You know so much what I was going to ask?”
“
Yes,” Yousep repeated, with his smile turning to a grin.
“
So you just sit and tell me you
farkoifn a fotografisher aparat?
What if it is raining, should I ask that, what would you have said?
Jo demolt oich?
”
“
No, not today. But tomorrow it will rain,” Yousep declared loud enough so his mother could hear the amusing conversation.
“
And Moses was sure he could leave Egypt after only the first plague!” His father folded the paper and laid it beside his plate. “Do not be so sure of the heavens and their water!” he shook his finger into Yousep’s growing smile. “Now! Tell us of this camera you sold today!” he beamed at his son.
Caraliza prayed to see the boy in the window when she emptied the mop bucket into the gutter. He longed to see the girl on the stair when he stole a glance outside the shop window. They were determined their eyes should meet. They were approaching a point of distraction, which likely would cause more trouble than either could bear; she - the least of the two.
She dare not allow herself to be found idle on the stair, if the brute should return. It happened one time too many, when she was newly arrived at her ‘home’. She learned painfully, she should not be outside the basement, until the sewer needed filling, from the mop bucket or the basin. Yet, they were becoming desperate, she and that boy, and risking as much as they dared, for that first stolen glance.
Several days would pass before either caught more than a fleeting look of the other, too late to see eyes in sweet faces, which were merely daydream until then. It was one such pitiful day of disappointment; he suddenly spied the brute at the top of the stair, for more than a lingering moment. The huge man was lighting a cigar, and having no luck of it for the breeze that was putting out his flame. Papa Reisman was nearby, adjusting the display cameras, and Yousep decided to chance a question.
“
That man, Mr. Reisman, across the street with the cigar. I have seen him sometimes at that stair. Who is he?”
His employer was not much distracted, and glanced up only a moment, for a look; yet, there was more terrible information in his answer than Yousep cared to know.
“
Such a man as that one! I am glad of not knowing his name. He is a brawler by reputation, feared at the taverns by folk, and police the same. Though I’m not surprised you should recognize every soul and nag that crosses this window, as often as you gaze out of it.”
There seemed a very serious tone to this answer; too serious for Menashe to trouble himself and use again.
“
Why do you spend so much time looking at a street? Perhaps it grows more beautiful because you look at it?” he gave Yousep a friendly poke at the shoulder. “What do you look to see, with so much longing?”
Yousep must have reacted in too interesting a manner, perhaps making it more interesting, because he immediately tried to hide whatever he had shown.
“
Yousep, what do you look at so?”
“
I have seen a girl across in the stair, where the man now stands.”
“
You have seen no one. Whoever you have seen, put them out of your mind! Such things as you might see where that man lives, you should not be involved,” Menashe suddenly frightened his clerk.
“
But, she is sometimes there at the curb-” he affirmed.
“
You have seen nothing you should know of, Yousep!”
“
What should I not know? How could meeting someone there, be so bad as you make it sound?”
“
Ask those fools who sometimes sit and spit from that stoop! They lost one of their own to the very man lighting his cigar on that stair. They will tell you what trouble will come from looking into that hole!”
He paled, and weakened with sudden understanding. The chill on his spine returned as he looked across the street to the form at the curb. There were no lags on the stoop; in truth, he had not seen them there all week, for they had – all of them, vanished!
“
Ask those fools why the police have found no body to charge the man with?”
The window was suddenly much too wide for Yousep to be standing in.
Yousep carried his fear home that night; he did not give a thought to hiding it. His parents sensed a profound change in the gentle smiling nature he had always shown them. Too young for most worldly concerns, they wondered what could trouble a boy with nothing more pressing on his mind than the chicken for the Sabbath.
During the evening meal, his father suddenly lowered his paper and asked if Yousep were feeling quite well these days? Yes, Yousep replied, he was quite well. Had there been bad luck with the repair of the treasured camera? Well, yes, Yousep explained; there had been no time to spend tinkering with the repair. It was waiting still, in the studio, for him to attempt the task.
His father asked again, had there been a disappointing outcome to the sale of the student cameras, or his employer’s hire as a portrait tutor? No, Yousep replied; those were still both blessings to rejoice. Another camera had been sold to a parent of one of the students, a thankful trend was beginning, and Mr. Reisman was more than pleased.
He once again took a chance on his own question.
“
I have heard, a youth, perhaps my age, is missing from the neighborhood and shop street. I have only heard one mention, and but wondered.”
His mother and father exchanged glances; she left the table to dabble in the kitchen, not wanting to know of the incident his father seemed ready to mention to his son.
“
One week now gone, across from your shop, blood there was found on a stoop. Street urchins blame a murderer of one of their own. The authorities cannot find the deceased one, or the murderer.” He looked at his son and could see, the news was distressing to him.
“
We have been silent, not knowing the outcome. We trust Mr. Reisman to keep you safe. The police are diligent, you have probably seen. They should be always in the neighborhood these days.”
“
Mr. Reisman is very concerned at what things I should know and not know,” Yousep said before he could catch himself, wishing he had not been so hasty to speak again.
“
For such a good man, your Muter and I are thankful.”
He began to have vivid, disturbing dreams. The basement stair
was
a casket, the brute but the phantom inside it, speaking to him in his sleep. The girl would beckon him, to come and stand alongside her, and gaze into the darkness with her; her mouth cruelly tied with a dirty cloth.
More than once Yousep wet his bed in fright before he awoke. It embarrassed him; to admit to his mother that he had done such a thing. It was more embarrassing, to find his mattress drying on the porch, in the back of their house, those nights when he returned home from work.
The appearance of the girl, in his terrible dreams, sent different shivers to his spine. She would beckon, but would not speak. The fiend in the stair, it would speak but not beckon. Yousep could move no closer, yet his desire to touch her, and hear her voice, would pull him, and he could not escape; her dress would fall from her shoulders - she would reach to take his hand….
He would wake in sweat, painfully aroused. This unfamiliar reaction shamed him, and he would mention none of it to anyone; an incontinent bladder he could confess, an immoral heart - he could not.
His father said a prayer at dinner that Yousep would not be troubled, and he might find his peaceful rest again. They were certain he was more troubled by the suspected murder than they dared suppose; Yousep was growing ill of it.
Caraliza did not dream of anyone. Yet, the boy was constantly in her waking thoughts, and she planned; two minutes on the walk - each time she stepped out her door, until he passed the window. They were going to meet, each trembling with understanding; each thought they might die in the attempt.
Thunderstorms came; for two days it rained such that Yousep was sweeping the seep out of the store, every few minutes, before it soaked the floors. They found a near-disaster of a leak, in the stairway leading to the store stockrooms, over the studio. Papa Reisman was distraught, the paper stocks were sure to be ruined, if the moisture made it to the shelves. As no customers were about in such weather, Yousep was set to watching in the storeroom, all afternoon.
Twice, Caraliza was forced to strain at the sewer grate, and clear it of the filth that would stream down the stairs into the basement.
Twice, she stood drenched and trembling, her ragged dress but gauze around her form, looking across the darkened street to the darker shop, trying to see within, to the boy she wanted to know.
Twice, she almost ran to the shop.
Twice, she turned down the stair in tears, for want of some warmth, for want of some food, for want of some courage; tears for want of the brute out of the basement, instead of waiting on the bed.
The leak did not make it to the shelves either day, and Yousep never had the chance to see her beckon him come stand beside her. Prayers rose from both sides of the street, above it, and below it; pleading the rains should stop.
If sitting in an attic storeroom could have a benefit, it was to have one for Yousep at least; his Waterbury was finally repaired. Papa Reisman agreed the lad should not go blind staring at walls in hope of water; he could be diligent, and repair the camera as well as watch.
If two days torrential downpour could have a benefit, it was to have one for Caraliza at least; the brute would find a week’s steady work afterwards, at some distance from the basement hole.
If ever a deadly outcome could have drawn closer to them both, it would have been the brute employed on the roof of the Reisman’s Portrait studio. Desperate as it was to be repaired, Papa was unaware he was neighbor, for more than twenty years, to a man who could fix any roof in the city, and another such man had been sought through an acquaintance.
Yousep and his girl felt themselves slipping in the ropes that bound them to their lonely sides of the street. The camera wanted him out of the shop and into the air. The brute would leave her before dawn each morning, and would not return until near dark, the next week of impossible days.
The very day after the rain, once the shop was opened and all the shelves dusted, Papa suggested his clerk wash the window in the front, to clear it of the street splatter the two wet days brought. Yousep was suddenly on his curb, with a reason to be in view for half an hour. When Caraliza crept to the top of the stair for the first breath of air, she wept from spying him so suddenly, through the bottom bar of the rail.
It was not a glance - such a thing as she wanted so badly; this was a thirst being quenched - such a thing as she was dying to have.
Satisfied his task was perfect and complete, Yousep slapped his hands on his bucket, and turned to the gutter, to toss the water out - he dropped the pail to the bricks instead. Across the street, looking at him, with tears washing her cheeks, was Caraliza.
She saw him, and did not turn away. She did not realize - she climbed the last steps, and only her hand, holding tightly around the rail, kept her to her street side. She was at the top, in the sun, weeping at the sight of him.
Yousep was so terrified she might bolt into the street, he simply held up his hand as if to hold her back, and did not realize - he beckoned to her with the other. Only for a breath they stood there, for the fall of another tear; only long enough for Caraliza to reach both hands in want of him, and then she brought them to her mouth, to cover her sobs, and disappeared beneath the stoop.
Yousep bit his lip so that it bled.
He trembled, almost too much to gather the dropped pail. He certainly trembled so much at the door, Papa hurried to his aid, to open the accidentally locked door for the lad. The employer found the clerk in such a state he wondered if a doctor should be called. Yousep was agitated, and could not be seated. He was hot and pacing, refusing a drink, refusing a chair, and shouting he was perfectly calm, though such calm could not be calm at all. Yousep was in such a state, they nearly argued; a thing that never happened between them before.
Papa finally was allowed to soothe the boy, enough to ask what caused the commotion. The clerk was unable to say, he just staggered to the storeroom steps, and knelt at the bottom, to vomit up his breakfast onto his knees.