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PARTISAN REVIEW
279
Isaiah? You think Isaiah was crying for the Jews? He was crying
for himself. He knew - God sits on the edge of the Universe and
bas a good laugh. You think good is coming? Not any good, you
know. Howl-Rabbi Lux! Howl!
"What's the matter?" cried Yeboodiss, corning up to the
Rabbi. "What's with Mrs. Blatz."
Plenty was the matter and not just with Mrs. Blatz. But Rabbi
Lux said nothing. He backed out of the kitchen, holding a finger to
bis mouth, going "Shhhh ... shhhh . . . shhhh. . . ."
Paul Smith
From ANNIE
[W]e were eating supper with Ellen Simms in her
room in Galleons Lane. It was a late supper, this last meal that the
three of us would ever eat together at Ellen Simms's big kitchen
table. And on it on plates in front of us, marble-headed scallions
veined with green gleamed on large leaves of fresh salad. Beside
them pink slices of cold corned beef lay; and on little plates sucking
up to the ones we were eating from, huge cuts of homemade brown
bread sat, soaked and lathered under salt butter melting.
Starting in on second helpings and passing the dishes back and
forth among ourselves, we were not talking about the subjects we
usually thought about with Ellen Simms, and
so
far no mention at
all
had been made of the thing that had brought us to her door
tonight. Instead there began a strange conversation that was finally
to lead Ellen Simms into telling us a story we had never heard
before, and neither had anybody else. And it came about in this
way:
"I was saying," Annie said, "that nothing is ever what you think
it will
be.
I mean, a person can't get up in the morning and be
