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Часть 1
Danny and I were together almost every day during the first month of that summer. It was a hot, humid month, with a fierce summer sun that left a heat shimmer over the streets and softened the asphalt. Manya was forever muttering about the streaks of black tar that clung to my shoes and sneakers and rubbed off on the floor of the apartment.
Danny spent his mornings studying Talmud, either alone or with his father, while I spent Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings playing ball with my yeshiva friends, none of whom seemed to be bothered by my friendship with Danny – they accepted it and just didn't talk about it – and Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings studying Talmud with my father, either on our back porch when it was a nice day or in his study when it was not. My father and I were studying Sanhedrin – slowly, patiently, intensively, not leaving a passage until my father was satisfied that, at least for the present, we understood it fully. Often, we were only able to do about ten lines at a time. Danny, on the other hand, had his daily Talmud goal increased to three blatt by his father. It didn't seem to affect him very much; he was still able to spend all his afternoons on the third floor of the library, reading. I joined him 'there every afternoon, and frequently my father came with me. He was writing another article, on a passage in Avodah Zarah, which, he said, he was only now beginning to understand, and he needed one of the journal collections. So the three of us sat there in the aftemoons, reading or talking quietly, until it was time for supper. Once I invited Dan to come home and eat with us, but he refused the invitation with a lame excuse, looking a little embarrassed. On our way home, my father told me that Danny probably didn't eat anywhere except in his own home, or in the home of one of his father's followers, because of kashruth, and that it would be wise for me not to embarrass him again with another invitation.
On Shabbat afternoons I would walk to Danny's house. Danny would take me up to his father's study, and we would all do battle again over the Talmud. Then would come the glass of tea, the Afternoon Service, the ritual of the contest – Danny didn't once miss finding his father's deliberate errors – the Evening Service, and the Havdalah. Reb Saunders didn't talk to me again about Danny's reading, but I knew he was bothered by it terribly. I could tell from the occasional silence that filled the study while. Danny would be downstairs getting the tea. And Danny didn't talk about it, either. He just went on reading.
Only the evenings were unscheduled. We sort of played them by ear, as Mr Galanter might have said, deciding during the afternoon whether we would spend the evening walking, or in my house or his, or alone. Often, I went to the movies either with my father or with some of my school friends. Danny never went to the movies. They were forbidden by his father, he said.
My father and I followed the war news very carefully, and there were now many more New York Times maps on the wall of my room. From the fourth to the tenth of July there was a violent battle in the La-Haye-du-Puits area. A panzer counterattack west of the Vire was smashed on the eleventh of July, but the American drive toward St-L