Содержание → Chapter 8 → Часть 4
Глава 8
Часть 4
'How would I feel if someone gave you books to read which I believed might be harmful to you? '
I asked him why he had done it.
'Because Danny would have continued to read anyway on his own. At least this way he has some direction from an adult. It was a fortunate accident that he stumbled upon me. But it is not a comfortable feeling, Reuven. I dislike doing this to Reb Saunders. He is certain to find out one day. It will be an uncomfortable situation when he does. But he will not be able to stop Danny from reading. What will he do when his son goes to college? '
I pointed out to my father that Danny was anyway reading on his own http://www.booksamillion.ru now, without direction from an adult. My father certainly hadn't told him to read Freud.
My father nodded his agreement. 'But he will come to me to discuss what he reads, ' he said. 'At least there will be a balance. I will give him other books to read, and he will see that Freud is not God in psychology. Freud yet. At fifteen. ' And he shook his head gloomily.
Danny and I arranged to spend Shabbat afternoon together with his father, studying Perkei Avot. When I turned off Lee Avenue that Shabbat and started up the sunless street on which Danny lived, the feeling of having crossed into a twilight world was only a little less strong than it had been the week before. It was just after three o'clock, and there were no bearded, caftaned men or kerchief-wearing women on the street, but the children were outside, playing, shouting, running. Except for the children, the sidewalk in front of the three-storey brownstone at the end of the block was deserted. I remembered how the black caftaned men had parted for Danny and me the week before, and I remembered, too, the tapping of Danny's capped shoes on the pavement as we had gone through the crowd and up the wide stone staircase. The door in the hallway that led into the synagogue was open, but the synagogue was empty – except for the echoes it contained. I stood just inside the synagogue. The tables were covered with white cloths, but the food had not yet been put out. I stared at the table where I had sat, and I could still hear the gematriyot tumbling out of Reb Saunders' mouth and then his question to Danny, 'Nothing more? You have nothing more to say? .' I saw the idiot grin spread itself slowly across Danny's lips. I turned quickly and went back out into the hall.
I stood at the foot of the inside stairway and called up, 'Hello! Anybody home? ' After a moment, Danny appeared at the head of the stairs, wearing his black caftan, black pants, and a black skullcap, and told me to come on up.
He introduced me to his mother and sister. His sister 'was almost as tall as I, with dark, vivacious eyes and a face almost exactly like Danny's, except that the sculptured lines were a good deal softer. She wore a long-sleeved dress, and her dark hair was combed back severely and dangled in a thick braid behind her. She smiled at me and said, 'I know all about you, Reuven Malter. Danny never stops talking about you. ' His mother was short, with blue eyes and a roundish body. Her head was covered with a kerchief, and there were faint tufts of sand-colored hair on her upper lip. They were both sitting in the living room and had apparently been reading or studying what looked to me to be a Yiddish book when we had interrupted them. I told them politely that it was nice to meet them and was rewarded with another smile from Danny's sister.
We left them and started up the stairway to the third floor.
Danny explained that the third floor contained his room, his father's study, and a conference room. The second and third floors were completely separated, just as they were in any three-story brownstone. They had thought once of moving the family to the third Floor, Danny said, so as to avoid the noise made by the people who were constantly climbing the stairs to see his father. But his mother wasn't well, and a three-Floor climb would be too much for her.
I asked him how his brother was feeling.
'All right, I guess, ' he told me. 'He's asleep now. '
Danny took me through the third-floor rooms. They were identical with the ones in which my father and I lived. Danny's bedroom was located exactly where my father's bedroom was, the kitchen had been left intact – to serve the visiting dignitaries tea, Danny said with a grin – the bathroom was next to the kitchen, the study was where my father's study was – except that one of its walls had been knocked out so that it also included what in our apartment was my room – and the living room contained a long glass-topped conference table and leather chairs. Danny took me into the conference room first – we went through the outside hallway door – then into his room, which had a narrow bed, a bookcase full of old Hebrew and Yiddish books, and a desk cluttered with papers. A Talmud lay open on top of the papers. The walls were white and bare. All the walls were white and bare. I saw no photographs or paintings anywhere, neither on the floor where his family lived, nor here on the floor where he lived and his father worked.
We stood outside his father's study, and Danny knocked softly on the door. 'He doesn't like me to barge in on him when he's in there, ' he whispered with a grin. His father said to come in, and we went in.
Reb Saunders sat behind a massive, black wood, glass-topped desk, wearing a black caftan and a tall, round, black skullcap. He was sitting in a straight-backed red leather chair with intricately carved wooden arms. A single light bulb glowed white beneath its ceiling fixture. The study, with its additional room, seemed enormous. A thick red carpet covered its floor, and its walls were lined with glass-enclosed wooden bookcases jammed tight with books. There were books everywhere – on the two wooden chairs near the desk, on the desk itself, on the wooden file cabinet that stood near the door, on cardboard boxes piled in a comer, on the small wooden stepladder, on the black leather easy chair that stood in another comer, even on the window seat. Many of the books were bound in black, red, and brown leather. One book had been bound in white, and it stood out prominently on a shelf among the black-bound books around it. Danny told me later that it contained the sayings of the Ba'al Shem Tov and had been presented to his father as a gift on his fiftieth birthday by the members of his congregation. All the books seemed to be in Hebrew or Yiddish, and many of them were very old and in their original bindings. There was a musty odor in the room, the odor of old books with yellow leaves and ancient bindings.
Reb Saunders told us to clear the books off the two chairs near the desk. The desk stood in almost the exact spot where my father had his desk. Danny sat at his father's right, I at his left.