“Krantz,” he whispered, “why weren’t we allowed to cross the tracks?”
Twelve righteous faces told him to shh.
Still, and he knew it was arrogance, he often considered himself the Authentic Jew. His background had taught him the alien experience. He was grateful for that. Now he extended that experience to his own people.
What was it all about anyhow? A solitary man in a desert, begging for the inclination of a face.
Anne performed a Hasidic dance, annihilating anything womanly in her body with the crammed, ironic movements. But for a few moments they were lost in Europe, their skins untanned, waiting in narrow streets for miracles and the opportunity for revenge they would never take.
After the Sabbath services a butterfly seemed to follow him down the hill, disappearing as he left the wooded area for the hot campus. He felt the honour of it all through the day.
9
“It’s so hard,” said Shell’s voice. “Everybody has a body.”
“I know,” Breavman said. “And there’s one point in an evening when the thing most urgently needed is just an arm around the shoulder.”
“I’m so glad we can still talk.”
Her honesty obliged her to describe her temptations. She wanted to keep nothing from him. They both understood the danger of this technique: there are humans that desire me. Keep me or they will.
He leaned against the wall in the dark kitchen and listened. How curious that anyone should speak to him so softly! How had he managed to arrange the miracle in which someone spoke softly to him? It was a magic he was sure he never possessed, like reading one’s first poems. But here was his own name whispered.
An ugly forecast developed in his heart that he would drive the whisperer to a hundred indifferent beds and silence her.
“Shell, I’m coming to New York tomorrow!”
“You’re quitting camp?”
“There’s nothing for me here.”
“Oh, Lawrence.”
It was raining when he went outside, her voice still with him. He began to circle one of the playing fields. The tall pines around the field and hills gave him the impression of a bowl which contained him. There was one black hill that seemed so connected with his father that he could hardly bear to look up at it as he came round and round, stumbling like a drunk.
The rain hazed the electric lights isolated here and there. An indescribable feeling of shame overwhelmed him. His father was involved in the hills, moving like a wind among the millions of wet leaves.
Then an idea crushed him — he had ancestors! His ancestors reached back and back, like daisies connected in a necklace. He completed circle after circle in the mud.
He stumbled and collapsed, tasting the ground. He lay very still while his clothes soaked. Something very important was going to happen in this arena. He was sure of that. Not in gold, not in light, but in this mud something necessary and inevitable would take place. He had to stay to watch it unfold. As soon as he wondered why he wasn’t cold he began to shiver.
He sent Shell a funny telegram explaining why he couldn’t come.
10
Breavman received a letter from Mrs. Stark, Martin’s mother. It wasn’t customary for parents to reply to the official reports the counsellors were obliged to send.
Dear Mr. Breavman,
I’m sure my son Martin is in excellent hands.
I’m not anxious and I don’t expect, any further detailed communications concerning his behaviour.
Very sincerely,
R. F. STARK
“What the hell did you write her?” demanded Krantz.
“Look, Krantz, I happen to like the kid. I took a lot of trouble over the letter. I tried to show that I thought he was a very valuable human being.”
“Oh, you did?”
“What was I supposed to say?”
“Nothing. As little as possible. I told you what she’s like. For two months of every year she doesn’t have to look at him every day and can pretend that he’s a normal boy doing normal things with other normal boys at a normal camp.”
“Well, he isn’t. He’s much more important than that.”
“Very good, Breavman, very compassionate. But keep it to yourself, will you? It was Breavman you were pleasing, not the boy’s mother.”
They were standing on the balcony of the Administration Building. Krantz was about to announce Evening Activity over the PA.
Didn’t Krantz know what he knew about Martin? No, that wasn’t true. He didn’t know anything about the boy, but he loved him. Martin was a divine idiot. Surely the community should consider itself honoured to have him in their midst. He shouldn’t be tolerated — the institutions should be constructed around him, the traditionally incoherent oracle.
Out in the open, tempered by the dialogue, it wouldn’t sound so mad.
Krantz looked at his watch, which he wore on the inside of his wrist. As he turned to go in he caught sight of a figure lying face down in the darkness near a row of bushes at the bottom of the lawn.
“For God’s sake, Breavman, that’s the sort of thing I mean.”
Breavman walked quickly across the lawn.
“What are you doing, Martin?”
“Twenty thousand and twenty-six.”
Breavman returned to the balcony.
“He’s counting grass.”
Krantz shut his eyes and tapped the banister.
“What’s your evening activity, Breavman?”
“Scavenger hunt.”
“Well, get him over there with the rest of the group.”
“He isn’t interested in a scavenger hunt.”
Krantz leaned forward and said with an exasperated smile, “Convince him. That’s what you’re supposed to be here for.”
“What difference does it make whether he goes looking for yesterday’s newspaper or counts grass?”
Krantz leaped down the stairs, helped Martin up, and offered him a piggy-back across the field, to where Breavman’s group was assembled. Martin climbed on gleefully and as he rode stuck his index fingers in his ears for no apparent reason, squinting as if he were expecting some drum-splitting explosion.
Every night, just before he went to sleep, it was Martin’s custom to declare how much fun he had had that day. He checked it against some mysterious ideal.
“Well, Martin, how did it
