ISAAC
81
her what happened and she screamed, "Don't move." He sat in the
booth, fell asleep, there was a knock and his eyes opened. She
looked through the glass. "Katya," he said, "like a coffin." She
wouldn't discuss the idea. Neither would Chaim, her husband, or
Fage!, her husband's sister, or hunchback Yanke!, the peddler,
who asked where Isaac felt pain. In the back? In the leg? He
remembered a fall in which he hurt his knee. Did Isaac's knee hurt?
No? Very strange. How did a scholar, he wondered, fall in the
street like an animal; but then what's one leg shorter compared to
a brain concussion with blood bulging from the eyes? No compari–
son. Lucky Isaac. Isaac winked, made a little lucky nod, and
collapsed. Fagel screamed. Katya screamed. Chaim gave Isaac his
umbrella. Isaac pressed it with one hand. The other pressed
his
sister's arm. They went down the street together - Isaac, Katya,
Fage!, Chaim, Yanke!. Cracow, the chiropractor, had an office
nearby.
To keep his mind off
his
stumbling torture, Katya told Isaac
about Moisse, who wasn't lucky. He came to New York sponsored
by a diamond merchant, friend of politicians, bon vivant, famous
for witty exegeses of the Talmud. "So?" So as a condition of
sponsorship, Moisse promised never to abandon, in New York, any
tradition of the faith. He imagined no circumstances in which he
might, but married, opened a dry-goods store and had a son.
Circumstances arose in doctor bills. He had to do business on Satur–
days. Isaac licked his lips. Chaim punched his chest. Yankel shrugged
his
hunch. "So?" So it followed, like the manifestation in the garden,
that the merchant's beard hung in the door one Saturday. - "You
know what day this is, Moisse?" What could he say? Isaac said,
"Nothing. What could he say?" Chaim punched, Yankel shrugged.
The beard nodded. The mouth hacked up a spittle, the spittle
smacked the floor and the baby son was discovered on the prostrate
body of his mother, shrieking like a demon while he ate the second
nipple. Now Moisse doesn't do business on Saturday. His worst
enemies won't say he isn't a saint.
"You got another story?"
"It's the only story I know."
"Tell me again," said Isaac.
Before she finished they were inside an old brownstone, looking
up a high, narrow stairway. She tugged at the umbrella, but Isaac
