Old Men at Midnight (3 page)

“Ilana, ninety-seven hot enough for you?”

I said, “Hot enough.”

“Tomorrow they say’ll be ninety-nine.”

I looked along Nostrand Avenue and saw Noah going into a greengrocer.

“Buses coming,” Mr. Wolf said.

I thanked him and turned right onto Eastern Parkway and waited at the synagogue for the buses. Rachel was wearing her two-piece blue sunsuit and wide-brimmed yellow sun hat and came off the bus amid a tumult of campers and parents. She looked bronzed in the sun, vividly dark-eyed, lustrous. Her dark hair was done in two braids, and wisps of it lay helter-skelter on her neck and face, while her fingers and arms went into an account of what had happened that day.

She walked beside me, prattling on about how the boys in her group kept chasing her. The camp had again been taken to the zoo. The tigers and elephants and leopards and seals. The new lion, prowling in his cage. The monkeys screeching and jumping.

We started along Nostrand Avenue. Sunlight fell in great cascades broken sharply by the shadows of buildings. And there was Noah, emerging from a candy store, with an empty shopping bag in his hand. He did not see us. He wore a long-sleeved shirt and dark trousers, and he moved slowly in and out of the afternoon sun that bathed him alternately in light and shadow.

I called out, “Noah, hello.”

He was standing in the sunlight and he raised his left hand to his forehead, shading his eyes. For a moment he was lost among the people who passed between us. Then he saw me.

“Davita.”

“What are you doing here?”

He briefly raised the shopping bag.

“Delivering?”

“Yes, delivering.”

“This is my sister, Rachel.”

Still shading his eyes with his left hand, he looked at Rachel.

“Noah is one of my students who is learning English.”

I could see Rachel looking closely at Noah. The sun was hot on my face and arms. We were a small island in the middle of the street, and people kept eddying around us.

Rachel suddenly asked, “You like baseball?”

“Bezbol?”

“You like to play?”

“American soldat play bezbol.”

“They play in Prospect Park.”

“Who play?”

“Boys like you.”

“She means Hasidic boys,” I explained. “Hasidic boys play running bases.”

“I not Hasid.”

“They play near the lake.”

“I not Hasid,” he said again.

“I
am
not a Hasid.”

“I am not a Hasid.”

Rachel reached up and tugged at my hand. “Ilana.”

“What?”

“I need to make pee-pee.”

“Then let’s go home. Noah, I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

But I saw him again the next day on Nostrand Avenue, a block from where I had seen him the day before, in front of a jewelry store. He carried the shopping bag and entered the store. I waited in the shade of an awning and he emerged and stood for a while in the sunlight, staring at the glittering watches and rings in the window. I walked past the newsstand and glanced at the headlines. Mr. Wolf nodded and waved his arm. I went up Eastern Parkway to pick up Rachel, and when we were again on Nostrand Avenue, I looked along the street and did not see Noah.

He came to the house the following evening, and when I opened the front door to let him in I felt the heat thrust against me. All day the air had been sweltering and now had become an implacable brownish mist. The windows were closed in the house and the fans were on. He brought inside an odor of hot, stagnant air. Beads of perspiration ran down the sides of his face and chin.

I closed the door. He stood breathing with difficulty.

“Are you all right?”

He said something in Yiddish.

“I don’t understand.”

“Never Poland hot like this.”

“I’ll get you a glass of water.”

I hurried into the kitchen. My parents were in the den, listening to the radio. I did not see Rachel. Fans whispered in rhythmic undercurrents to the voice of a radio
announcer. As I put ice cubes from the refrigerator into a glass, I heard news about British forces in Palestine moving to intercept surviving European Jews and interning them on the island of Cyprus. I glanced into the den and saw my mother and stepfather looking at the radio. I filled the glass with water from the faucet and went into the living room.

Noah was standing in front of the fireplace, peering inside. It was two feet deep, lined with red brick and fronted with a wire-mesh screen. I handed him the water and he recited the blessing and drank with his head tipped back, his Adam’s apple bobbing, liquid sounds issuing from his throat. I heard the tinkling of the ice cubes and, at the same time, someone hurrying down the stairs. Rachel, wearing a one-piece yellow sunsuit and carrying drawing pencils and a coloring book, halted at the foot of the staircase and stood watching Noah drink.

She said, in her high voice, “I had a class in swimming today.”

Noah finished the water. I turned to Rachel. “What did they teach you?”

“I learned the backstroke.”

Noah handed me the glass.

Rachel looked up at him. “Do you swim?”

“Swim? I no swim. No.”

“You should learn to swim.”

I said, “Let me take this back to the kitchen,” and left them there. In the den my parents were still listening to the radio. Demonstrations were taking place in Tel Aviv. When I returned to the living room—I could not have
been gone more than two minutes—Rachel was saying, “All right, draw something.”

Noah said, in a barely audible voice, “No, cannot.”

Rachel said, “You just told me you can.”

“No do now.”

Rachel stood with her head firm, her lips set. Dark eyes suspicious. “Why not now?”

Pale color had risen to his neck and face. His right hand moved up as if to ward off her anger. His left hand held tightly to his notebook and pencil.

He turned to me. “Lesson now upstairs.”

Rachel insisted. “Draw the house you lived in.”

A look of dread came upon his face. “The house?”

“Yes, yes.”

“In Kralov?”

“Yes, yes, in Kralov. Draw the front of your house.”

“No.”

“The front, just the front.”

“No, no.”

She stamped her sandal-shod right foot.

He said in a low, tight-lipped tone, “Can no draw now.”

She announced suddenly, “You don’t play baseball, you don’t swim, and you don’t draw. Don’t you have fun?”

“Fun?” Noah asked.

“I don’t think fun is important to Noah,” I said.

She gave him a puzzled look and marched off toward the kitchen.

Noah stood very still in the ensuing silence, his eyes soberly following Rachel.

“What happened when I was in the kitchen?”

“Ask if she use pencils for coloring or for drawing, and she say coloring, and she ask if I draw.”

“Can you draw?”

“Once I drawed.”

“Once I
drew
.”

“Once I drew.”

“Can you draw now?”

A vague tremor shuddered across his face. “I no draw. No want to draw.”

From the den came Rachel’s voice raised to a cry.

“Hurt Rachel?” Noah said, sounding distressed.

“It probably has nothing to do with you,” I said.

He followed me up the stairs. We could no longer hear Rachel crying. A while into the lesson he asked if he could have a glass of water, and I went across the hall to the bathroom. There was no ice, but it was good Brooklyn water. I filled a glass and brought it to him.

The walk through the hall to the bathroom, letting the water run to cool down, filling the glass, bringing it to him in my room—it all couldn’t have taken two minutes. I found him at my desk drawing with his left hand on one of the pages of his notebook. The fluorescent light from my desk lamp illuminated his moist face and pale fingers. His hands were shaking. He sat with his face close to the pencil and the paper. A drop of sweat gathered at the tip of his nose, hung there quivering, and then tumbled onto the lower right corner of the paper. I stood there watching him draw. He seemed unsure of himself; there were marks of hesitation; it all took a long time. Straightening, finally, he put the pencil on the desk and took a tremulous breath.

“We live inside,” he said, pointing to the drawing. “Reb Binyomin live floor on left side.” He folded the page along the inside edge and tore it from the notebook. “Please give to Rachel.”

I took the drawing.

“No want make Rachel cry.”

I told him I didn’t think he had made Rachel cry.

He wasn’t listening. “First hear many people cry. Then years no hear anyone cry. No little child, no anyone.”

I stared at him.

“I go home now.”

I glanced at my wristwatch. “Now?”

“Very tired.”

“I’ll see you on Sunday.”

“Yes.”

“Would you rather go to the park on Sunday?”

“The park?”

“Come here at about two-thirty and we’ll take the subway.”

“Have lesson in the park?”

“Yes. We’ll sit under a tree or on a bench.”

“I ask Aunt Sarah.”

“If you want me to, I’ll call her.”

“Yes, call.”

I gave him exercises for homework. We started down the stairs. The door to Rachel’s room was closed; she was preparing for bed. We passed through the living room. I felt the fiery evening on my face as I let him out of the house.

My mother was coming down the stairs. I asked her what had upset Rachel.

“Camp.”

“I thought she loved camp.”

“She was tired out from the camp. She’s having too much fun. She needed to go to sleep. How is your Noah?”

“I think we’ll have our lesson in the park next Sunday afternoon.”

“Yes? Well, take him to the zoo. Rachel says they have a new lion.”

Inside my room, I sat at my desk and studied Noah’s drawing. It was a facade of a three-story stucco apartment house, clumsily rendered, with tall windows and wrought-iron balconies on the second and third floors. Wooden shutters hung open from the windows. An arched entranceway led to an inner courtyard and disappeared into dissolving shadows. The left corner of the drawing was still moist from the drop of sweat that had fallen onto it.

Noah’s home in Kralov, Poland.

From a drawer in my desk I took a pale-blue eight-and-a-half-by-eleven lined spiral notebook, of the kind commonly used in high school. Seated at my desk, I opened the notebook to the front page. There I wrote in pencil the name “Noah.”

The next day I called Noah’s aunt and told her that I wanted to take Noah to Prospect Park that Sunday afternoon. About a ten-minute subway ride.

She said, “Take care how you cross the streets with Noah.”

“Mrs. Polit, can I ask you, does Noah ever draw?”

“Draw? What do you mean, draw?”

“Does he ever make pictures?”

“He works in the store or he watches the children or he studies. When would he have time for pictures? Has he been making pictures?”

“He drew a small picture for my little sister.”

“How old is your sister?”

“Almost six.”

“That’s very nice. How is he getting along, my Noah?”

“Very well.”

“He is a good student?”

“Yes.”

“You are satisfied with his progress?”

“Oh, yes.”

“So he draws a picture for your sister. Can there be harm in it?”

I came into Rachel’s room that evening and handed her Noah’s drawing. She was playing on the floor with her dolls. “From Noah,” I said. “His house in Kralov.” She glanced at the drawing, seemed momentarily to study it. Then she put it on her bed, and went on playing.

My mother asked me later, “What did he draw?”

I said, “His house in Kralov.”

That Sunday afternoon Noah showed up at my home with his notebook and pencil, and we took the subway to the park and the zoo.

T
he subway train swept into the station. Noah backed away from it. We entered the car and found seats. I asked him if this was his first time on a subway. He stared out the open windows at the rushing darkness and nodded.

The train was not crowded. It entered the next station and halted with a grinding of brakes. He looked at me.

“Two more stops,” I said.

The doors slid shut. He stared out the windows. The air hovered on the edge of combustion. He held tight to his notebook and pencil. I could not imagine what he was seeing.

The train pulled into our station. The ride had lasted about ten minutes. We climbed the stairs to the street.

I was wearing a print skirt with a white blouse, and he had on dark trousers and a white long-sleeved shirt. We emerged on the edge of Grand Army Plaza. There was not much traffic on the vast sweep of street around the Civil War statuary. The air was liquid with heat. We walked past the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, crossed Flatbush Avenue, and went down the hill to the park. Families sat under trees and children raced about and there was a baseball game in one of the fields. Beyond the field was the lake, with people in rowboats. Not far from the baseball game, on this side of the field, three youngsters about Noah’s age were playing running bases. They wore white
shirts and dark trousers, with skullcaps and fringes, all playing sweatily in the heat.

We stopped to watch them play. The two playing the bases were heavyset, and the one racing against the ball was short and thin, with his right hand holding his skullcap tightly to his head. The base-players were yelling in Yiddish from their bases, and the thin one stood still, and then they got off their bases and quickly moved toward him, throwing the ball to cut down the space between them, and he suddenly swept past the one on the right and reached the base and raised his hand in triumph. One of the heavyset ones wiped sweat from his face with the sleeve of his shirt, and then he spotted Noah and came over. The others noticed and joined in. A brief conversation in Yiddish followed, nothing of which I understood. We walked on.

Noah said, “They from Hungary.”

“When did they come to America?”

“Not ask.”

I looked back. They had begun another game.

We found a bench under a tall oak and sat down. I had brought along a new reader, and he proceeded to read from it aloud. He had gained some confidence in the past weeks, and he read now with a steady voice. His dark eyes were fixed on the page, his long, pale fingers pointing to each syllable as he mouthed the words.