"Who is making that hissing noise? Who is working? What are you doing, you young scamp?"
He stood beside me, and bent over my sharpening-stone. He caught hold of my ear. A fit of coughing choked him.
"Ah! Ah! Ah! Little knives! Heh-heh-heh!" said my father, and he took the knife and the sharpening-stone from me. "Such a scamp! Why the devil can't he take a book into his hand? Tkeh-heh-heh!"
I began to cry. My father improved the situation by a few slaps. My mother ran in from the kitchen, her sleeves turned up, and she began to shout:
"Shah! Shah! What's the matter here? Why do you beat him? God be with you! What have you against the child? Woe is me!"
"Little knives," said my father, ending up with a cough. "A tiny child. Such a devil. Tkeh-heh-heh! Why the devil can't he take a book into his hand? He's already a youth of eight years.... I will give you pocket-knives—you good-for-nothing, you. In the middle of everything, pocket-knives. Thek-heh-heh!"
But what had he against my little knife? How had it sinned in his eyes? Why was he so angry?
I remember that my father was nearly always ailing—always pale and hollow-cheeked, and always angry with the whole world. For the least thing he flared up and would tear me to pieces. It was fortunate my mother defended me. She took me out of his hands.
And that pocket-knife of mine was thrown away somewhere. For eight days on end I looked and looked for it, but could not find it. I mourned deeply for that curved knife—the good knife. How dark and embittered was my soul at school when I remembered that I would come home with a swollen face, with red, torn ears from the hands of Mottel, the "Angel of Death," because an ox gored a cow, and I would have no one to turn to for comfort. I was lonely without the curved knife—lonely as an orphan. No one saw the tears I shed in silence, in my bed, at night, after I had come back from "Cheder." In silence, I cried my eyes out. In the morning I was again at "Cheder," and again I repeated: "If an ox gore a cow," and again I felt the blows of Mottel, the "Angel of Death"; again my father was angry, coughed, and swore at me. I had not a free moment. I did not see a smiling face. There was not a single little smile for me anywhere, not a single one. I had nobody. I was alone—all alone in the whole world.
. . . . .