“I don’t know, Martin. How many?”
“In all the walls?”
“Of course all the walls. What good would it do to know the number of windows in only one wall or even three walls?”
Martin supplied a number triumphantly. Breavman idiotically promised himself he would check next time he was in town.
“How many cars were in the Dionne’s Parking Lot last Thursday?”
“Tell me.”
Fifty campers invaded the bus. There was much scrambling and bargaining for seats and Breavman’s rapport with the boy was lost. Martin sat calmly through the ride, mumbling to himself. Breavman learned later that he liked to give himself four-figure numbers to multiply together.
On the way north Breavman asked him, “Do you like the countryside?”
“After I investigate it.”
6
Three hundred jaws make a lot of noise chewing together. The benches were always too far from or close to the table and needed complicated co-operative action to adjust. He almost slapped a camper for blowing bubbles in his glass of milk.
After the meal Breavman and Ed performed, Breavman pumping out intricate chords that he knew were lost and Ed ruining the high registers of his harmonica to rise above the general mess-hall din.
Breavman, who always wanted to hear Handel playing in his head, beat the wire strings of a borrowed guitar. He had no callouses to resist the bite of the strings on the fingers of his left hand.
His campers and Ed’s shared a bunkhouse, and the counsellors had a partitioned area to themselves in the same wood building. They had between them decided on a policy of rigorous discipline for the first few days. Then they would ease off and be nice guys. After a stern talk the boys went to bed efficiently, except for Martin, who took half an hour to urinate. Ed told them to keep quiet in the morning no matter what time they got up.
The counsellors lay on their cots, the atmosphere of strict control hanging heavy. Martin’s queer clipped voice rang out.
“Can I make number two before line-up?
“Yes, Martin.”
“Can I clean my nose?”
“If it isn’t a noisy operation.”
“Can I write my brother?”
Ed leaned over and whispered to Breavman, “He has no brother.”
When they were asleep he ran to the kitchen, where there was a telephone. He phoned Shell in New York. He wanted her voice to obliterate the day. He wanted to hear her say the word “darling.” He had phoned her half a dozen times from the city and he owed a huge bill.
He gave nothing to her and waited, reading over and over the Telephone Company’s printed instructions on how to dial a number. An interior voice was screaming: It doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.
Shell told him how much she loved Joseph Conrad.
They said good-bye softly, both of them knowing the three minutes had failed.
He wrote for two hours, describing the day in detail. The black-fly bites on his arm disturbed him and he put that down. His Indian jacket was too hot but he didn’t feel like taking it off. He put that down.
7
Martin fascinated him. He reckoned that he had misinterpreted Martin’s expression. It was not vacant terror but general wonder. He was that rarest creature, a blissful mad-child. The other children understood his election and treated him with a kind of bemused awe.
One afternoon they entertained themselves by encircling Martin and firing large numbers at him to multiply.
He rocked back and forth, like a man at prayer, his eyes closed. He beat his thighs with open palms as he thought, like an awkward bird trying to leave the ground, and made a buzzing sound as though his mind were machinery.
“Em-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m …”
“Look at him go!”
“Em-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m …”
“C’mon, Martin boy!”
“Eighty-one thousand, nine hundred and eighteen.” he announced, opening his eyes. The boys cheered and hugged him.
Then he caught sight of a small pine tree. He stopped dead, stared, and walked out of the circle. Breavman followed him.
“Are you okay?
“Oh yes. I believe I’d better count these.”
Until supper he amused himself by discovering how many needles there were on an average pine tree.
Krantz was annoyed when he discovered what Breavman’s afternoon activity was.
“That isn’t what Mrs. Stark pays her money for.”
“No?”
It was incredible that they should have put themselves into a position where one could castigate the other.
“Not to have her son used as a side-show freak.”
“What does she pay her money for?”
“Come off it, Breavman. You know it wasn’t healthy. She wants the kid to be like everyone else — integrated, inconspicuous. It’s hard enough on her as it is.”
“Okay, we’ll force him into baseball.”
“Infractions of the regulations will be severely disciplined, Herr Breavman.”
8
A horse-shoe of hills rose behind the bunks. On one of the hills there was an amphitheatre with wooden benches and stage. It was used for plays, singsongs, and on Sabbath as a House of Prayer.
How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob,
and thy dwelling place, O Israel …
They sang in Hebrew, their voices mingling with the sunlight. It was fragrant there, the pines high, blasted, and black. The camp was assembled in white clothes.
That’s how we are beautiful, he thought, that’s the only time — when we sing. Storm troopers, band of crusaders, gang of stinking slaves, righteous citizens — only tolerable when their voices ring in unison. Any imperfect song hints at the ideal theme.
Ed told a wonderful Sholem Aleichem story about a young boy who wanted to play the fiddle but was forbidden to by his Orthodox parents. For a minute Breavman thought he would overdo it, but no, he swayed and danced under his imaginary fiddle and everyone believed him.
The same Ed who bet with a girl’s body.
Breavman sat thinking that he could never do as well, never be so calm and magical. And that’s what he wanted to be: the gentle hero the folk come to love, the man who talks to animals, the Baal Shem Tov who carried children piggy-back.
He would
