III
Another year of college.
That was the hardest year. Emmanuel told himself every day that it would have to be the last—another seven hours in the classrooms would kill him. No, not kill him, make him do something, murder, suicide, what did he know? What if he kicked over an apparatus in the laboratory, what if he spat into the dean’s august, bearded face? They’d throw him out then.... Histology, materia medica, physiological chemistry, the rotten, dead stuff ... all the rotten, dead stuff.... And then there would have to be an added year, in a hospital. He, Emmanuel Wolkowitz, an interne. He, Emmanuel Wolkowitz, taking thermometers out of the mouths of patients, making clinical charts, listening to the smutty confidences of leering nurses....
He tried to go through that year, somehow. The street was still there, but since that evening many months ago when he had turned to defy it, he was no longer afraid of it. He was doing something which, he knew, the street must approve of.
He was doing something! He was writing. Writing was easy. Except when the words would not come. Or the wrong ones came. The dictionary was stupid. Dots and dashes and exclamation marks were stupid. They ruined the melody. Who said writing was easy, anyhow? What about the song? It would go on in your head, in your ears, it would paint pictures: dreamfields of the dawn, grottoes where purple and blue flowers sang. When you tried to put all that to paper there were only words and the song was gone. Words were harsh—you couldn’t write down the melody.... But he wrote.
He said to Etta:
“I’ll be a writer!”
“Gowan! Not a doctor?” She didn’t believe what he said, of course. She thought it a good joke. “That ain’t a good trade.”
A trade!
“Oh, yes, it’s very good when it’s a trade,” he replied. “Mine will be art.” He wanted to take back the words immediately. Art! He! When the melody could not be captured. Uncertainly: “Well, of course, it’s not very profitable.”
“Then you can’t be a writer,” decided Etta, “because you’ll have to earn money. Sure!”
“Oh, money!” Emmanuel looked at his shiny trousers. “Money!”
“Now, Manny, get all that foolishness out of your head. You’re gonna be through school in no time now and then we’ll get married. My father will furnish an office for you and....”
Yes, he knew that. Her father would furnish an office for him. All East Side fathers did. He had seen it happen again and again. To some of his classmates, too. An office—then he’d have to practise. Marry Etta, practise, make money for her, for his family, for Reba’s dowry, who would in turn be sold to somebody else, a lawyer or dentist perhaps. Was there no way out of it?
There must be! He would be a writer. An author. After all, there must be money in it. So many magazines. And then, perhaps, he would write a book. Would Etta, would his family care how the money came, as long as he gave them enough? He saw his name on a dull-red volume. In golden letters: Emmanuel Wolkowitz.
But why did they want money so much?
“Why do you want money so much, Etta?”
“Well, my Gawd, who don’t? This ain’t living, the way we go on now. Maybe once a week you take me to the movies. Oh, I ain’t complaining, Manny. Only it’s pretty hard. All the other girls at the office have good times. They go to Coney Island, Broadway, they go to cabarets, dances. I’m as good-looking as they are. I got nice clothes. You’re all right, Manny, but gee, it’s long, waiting like this.”
“Oh....”
“You ain’t sore at me, are you, because I told you? It’ll be all right, Manny! You’ll make good. I’ll speak to my father. He’ll come across.”
“Oh....”
He didn’t go near her for the next three or four days.
There were two letters on the dining-room table. One had come in a large, oblong manila envelope, the other in a cheap pink one.
Emmanuel had just come home from college. He picked up the letters. He saw that his mother had opened them. Now, as he came into the room, her diseased eyes narrowed:
“That’s why we go hungry an education to give you? That’s why?”
He coloured. Angrily.
“You shouldn’t have opened them. You had no business to.”
“What? My own children’s letters I shouldn’t open, maybe?”
Anyway, she couldn’t have read them. She couldn’t read English. One of the things was a returned manuscript, the other a letter from Etta.... Still, his mother must have guessed, because now she turned on him:
“Goils! To spend money on. And this craziness, this story business.”
Pale, he threw at her:
“I’ve got to write if I want to be a writer!”
Her face hardened. She shook her bony, needle-scarred finger in his face:
“A writer he wants to be, with the family starving.” She wiped her nose, her eyes. “A doctor he don’t want to be, what’s a profession. A writer, even if maybe we die and your sister Reba got to break her arms pushing that machine.”
Out in the kitchen he read Etta’s letter. She had spoken to her parents, she wrote—Emmanuel had left that to her because he didn’t have the courage, he didn’t care enough—and her father had expressed willingness to furnish an office for him after the marriage. “Gee, I’m just tickled silly, are you glad, honey?” was her question in the even, characterless business-college handwriting. “I just couldn’t wait until I see you, so I had to write.”
“So that’s it,” he thought. His mouth moved: “Glad....”
His mother was standing next to him again.
“Goils! I’m going blind with embroidery and your father any minute is gonna kill himself with that rheumatism yet. All our lifes, all our lifes for you we worked.”
Oh, yes, all their lives. Putting pennies into him, putting food into him, waiting, waiting....
“It’s all right, Ma, I....”
“My eyes feel like they was on fire....”
“It’s all right, Ma. Listen!” He read her the letter. “You see, Etta’s father is going to furnish an office for me. You see....”
“Manny! Oh, my good God, honest? Honest, Manny? My Manny, my good son, what’s going to be a doctor, what’s going to be so good to his family!”
She kissed him. She pawed over his face, his hair. He suffered that. Writing? Well.... Where was the street? Well.... He’d be a doctor.... Etta, his father, his mother, Reba....
“Sure, Ma.”