A Broken World

by EDWARD WATKINS

WE all write poetry when we’re young, Hymie said. “I wrote it too at your age. But you’ll grow out of that. We all do.” More than a decade has passed since he spoke those words, but I can still see him, dressed in a cheap suit that somehow managed to emphasize his dignity, lounging beside me on a bench in Madison Square Park. It was an unseasonably warm spring day, and he had taken off his hat and was allowing some stray sunbeams to play across his bald pate. There were perspiration beads on his sallow face and around his small, sandy mustache. He spoke in deprecation, with a slight overtone of nostalgia; but it was the deprecation my eighteen-year-old mind chiefly seized upon — a blow had been delivered into the very heart of my ego.

“I don’t believe that,” I said. “I won’t grow out of it. Inside I’m going to stay young.”

“Perhaps you’ll be the exception,” Hymie said tactfully, and then he added, a little more urgently, “Perhaps you’ll even write about me. Heh, kid?”

I grinned indulgently. It was nice of him to go back on what he had said, but as for writing the story of Hymie Goldfarb — well, I had more important things to do; there were great plays to be written, perhaps in verse, treating of great themes and having as their principal characters no Hymie Goldfarbs but symbolic personages to rank with the characters of Ibsen and Shakespeare. I might, of course, work him into one of the bits.

“Jimmy — ” he began, somewhat hesitatingly. “Perhaps you wonder why we’ve sort of drifted into having our lunch together and sitting here in the park. After all, I’m a Communist, and you, in spite of all my attempts,” he smiled, “are an indomitable Catholic.”

Mechanically my mind started gathering its defenses again, for that was another thing I was -sure of at eighteen. But Hymie was too relaxed to do any attacking; the day was too warm for proselytizing; even for a Crusader and an Infidel, it was a day to take one’s armor off.

“Well, I’ll tell you why it is I don’t seek out one of the comrades during the noon hour,” he continued. “You’ll admit there are plenty to choose from. It’s because we have something altogether different in common. Like having written poetry. Like having an aesthetic sense. Gilda writes poetry — ”

Gilda, I knew from the office grapevine, and Hymie knew I knew it, was his common-law mate. It was said he had had several before her and that a long time ago he had actually been married.

“Gilda writes poetry for the New Masses. Now, ordinarily the New Masses is infallible; it tries to be, anyway. But Gilda’s poetry — well, it just doesn’t reveal any aesthetic sense. If she doesn’t get a ‘red dawn’ or a ‘new day’ in there somewhere, she doesn’t consider it a poem.”

I was listening to him now in a mild state of amazement. That he should breathe a word of even offhand criticism of a sacrosanct organ of the masses to me, of all people, was as unbelievable as my venturing to speak to him in a derogatory way of the Commonweal or the Messenger of the Sacred Heart.

“How about your own poetry?” I asked, “ What was that like?”

He smiled in an almost embarrassed way, and I noted with surprise that someone over thirty-five could still retain a certain modest charm.

‘ Romantic,” he replied. “Very romantic. Like yours. That was Ruthie’s influence. Ruth was my wife. Her father was a rabbi, and her sister believed in free love. Ruth was very conventional.”

I waited for him to say more. Time stretched out, lethargic and patient in the heat of the sun.

“I have a boy, too. Milton. He’ll be your age in a few years. Perhaps he’ll ‘write poetry also. Who knows? And then, there’s Shirley. She was the baby.” His watery blue eyes were gazing idly at the walk, and he seemed to be off somewhere romping with Milton and Shirley.

I hesitated. “Don’t you ever see them?”

“No,” he said, leaning wearily against the back of the bench. “That part of my life is closed. Too many things have happened since then that Ruthie wouldn’t approve of. Like quitting my job with the advertising agency — that great American institution. Like officially becoming a member of the Party. Like migrating to the Village to write the greatest novel since And Quiet Flows the Don — and going stone-broke. Like Rose, and Francie, and Gilda—” He paused, as if watching this parade of memories pass.

“Life isn’t as simple and straightforward as it seems at your age, Jimmy,” he said finally. “You go on choosing between one thing and another, and then between that and another thing, and one day you wake up and the gulf is staring in your face.”

“What gulf?”

He looked me in the eyes. “The gulf between what you wanted your life to be and what it is.” His glance rose to the clock on the Metropolitan Life tower. He put on his hat.

“Hell, kid, we’d better get back, or we’ll have that bastard Jolly on our tails.”

As we walked the few blocks to the Central Office of the Emergency Home Relief Bureau where we worked, I could not help wondering if what Hymie had just told me was the reason that he drank.

2

CENTRAL OFFICE occupied a large part of a grimy, twenty-story building on a narrow, congested street in the Twenties. We employees entered by the freight entrance and were taken to our respective floors in the freight elevator. Each floor was a long, loftlike affair with makeshift partitions that reminded us they had been put together in an emergency, as we had, and that when the emergency was over, which might be any time, there would be no further need for either them or us.

Hymie and I had worked side by side in the same department for about six months, and since I was the youngest one in that section, the most menial and most monotonously simple tasks invariably found their way to me. This turned out to be an admirable arrangement as far as Hymie was concerned, for on those days following his increasingly bibulous week-ends the sealing of endless envelopes or the reflex motion of putting one carbon between two forms ad infinitum was just about all Hymie was good for, and he found me quite willing to change places with him at the typewriter.

On such days, Miss Epstein would train her quiet, supervisory eye to another portion of the arena, and no one of any consequence was the wiser. She did this, I felt, out of both Party sympathy and sincere human compassion; she would have acted just the same if it had been anyone else. It was like my having acne: my co-workers suggested jemedies which sounded worse than the condition itself; Miss Epstein, I was sure, accepted it as a symptom of my personal involvement with time and nature, the last thing in the world she would have attempted to cure.

It was on such days, too, that Hymie and I were able to savor the enormous pleasure of deceiving Mr. Jolly, who from time to time would pop out of his administrative cubbyhole like a debonair jackin-the-box, his senses recording the sights, sounds, and smells of the barnlike room with the accuracy of a secret agent, and the springs of his unsullied, dissembling wooden soul trembling to pop him back into his box again.

On the day which came to be so painfully memorable to Hymie, Mr. Jolly was an early visitor.

I looked at the wall clock, which read 9.21, and with a twinge remembered it was Monday.

“And where is Mr. Goldfarb this morning?” he asked as he came to where I was sitting. I felt his question was only a formality; mentally, he had already entered a note in his little black book, which was the diminutive counterpart of a much larger Black Book.

“Men’s room,” I said casually and with a bored air to signify I was engrossed in my work. Actually I was engrossed in the picture Hymie made as he alighted from the elevator and stood, hat in hand, blinking at the nightmare before him. His eyes were blearier than on other Mondays, his suit looked as if it had been slept in, and the few wisps of sandy hair just above his ears looked tousled and forlorn.

Mr. Jolly was standing with his elegant back to the elevator, and I shifted my gaze to his immaculate lapel, remarking to myself that he actually did not wear a gardenia, no matter how strong an impression he created that he did. After a lengthy moment, he appeared to accept my facile explanation with junior-executive tentativeness, and by the time he had hovered down the aisle and turned, Hymie was already in his seat, his felt hat crushed beneath his coat.

“I want everyone to be on their toes today,” Mr. Jolly warned, brushing aside all such petty considerations as grammar. His gaze fell upon Hymie and, seeing that he was really at work, he glared and sauntered off in a sulk.

“O.K., kid,” said Hymie’s wink, but it was a fuller wink than usual—in fact, he closed both eyes and forgot to open them. I immediately arose from my pile of envelopes and, by accidentally bumping into him, shook him into a remote state of consciousness.

“Suppose you work on the envelopes today.”

He looked at me as if he hadn’t quite comprehended. Usually on Mondays he suffered from a terrific hang-over, but this time he had wandered in just plain drunk. If only he had phoned and reported himself sick, but now he could not even do that without giving himself away.

I repeated what I had said and, although he still didn’t seem to get it, out of habit he arose, somewhat unsteadily, and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Whatever you say, kid,” he mumbled heavily.

The double-distilled strength of his breath drove me down into position before his typewriter, and I watched as, with exaggerated care, he made his way to the long wooden table at which I had been working, and by mere chance managed to sit down. He smiled at me rather inanely and started running the envelopes over the moistener one by one.

Miss Epstein’s birdlike face appeared and disappeared along the aisle, and as I sat typing, her peculiarly disturbed expression lingered in my mind and made me feel somewhat uneasy. It was not like Miss Epstein ever to be disturbed. She was above all that; in her somewhat different way, she possessed the serene dedication of a nun, and a nun’s pale, quiet composure. Slender, plain, ageless, she was not the jolly, volatile type of nun at all.

3

AT exactly 10.15, Mr. Jolly stepped out of his office and walked importantly in the direction of our department. I looked at Hymie, who was nodding himself awake with each envelope he sealed. With Mr. Jolly was a rotund little man, dressed in a too snappy pin-stripe suit; he kept smiling a wide, self-assured smile, displaying his prominent gold-capped teeth. He carried a brief case and looked like a salesman.

When they had grown as large as life, they stopped to confer with Miss Epstein. She clapped her hands demurely and asked for our attention.

Mr. Jolly cleared his throat luxuriously. “Staff,

I want you to meet Mr. Johnson. He is an efficiency expert who is making the rounds of the Bureau and will endeavor to show us short cuts with a view to speeding up our work.”

Stepping down from this speech, he accompanied Mr. Johnson down the aisle. Miss Epstein signaled for us to resume our work, and we did so with nervous self-consciousness. I now realized the reason for Miss Epstein’s disturbance.

I looked at Hymie to see if the announcement had impressed itself on his elusive mental state. Obviously it hadn’t. I was calculating whether I would have time to deposit him in the sacred confines of the Gents’ when an impeccable shadow fell across my machine, and I knew I wouldn’t.

The gold caps were jabbering over Hymie now. Mr. Johnson pulled up a chair and began to pile up the envelopes in a neat and rather intricate formation. The table soon resembled a long field on which a giant air force had lined up for a Fourth of July demonstration. I sat watching, not without trepidation, yet knowing there was nothing to do but wait for the fireworks.

Zip, zip, and by some miracle of dexterity or sleight of hand, half of the envelopes were sealed. Mr. Johnson turned a blinding grin on Mr. Jolly, and Mr. Jolly, with a satisfied nod, bestowed his official stamp of approval on Mr. Johnson. Only Hymie looked left out, and he seemed to become aware all at once that something was now expected of him.

He half smiled, and a look came into his eyes that I had seen only on those occasions in the dim past of first acquaintance when he had pitted his Communism against my Catholicism. It was a quiet, wily look, but behind it lay an ancient pain and a serious and hurried one-man revolution. His bemused mind had got its signals mixed, and he was confusing the squadron of envelopes before him with an arising army of the workers of the world. I stiffened in my chair.

Zip, zip, and the envelopes were making graceful circles in the air: Independence Day was being celebrated, or was it May Day? Zip, zip, another flight took off and plunged headlong to the dusty floor,

Hymie smiled and gazed into the open mouths of Messrs. Jolly and Johnson. Suddenly realizing that something was wrong, he stopped smiling and, blinking at the envelopes where they lay in scattered confusion, he made an awkward attempt to rise and retrieve them, fell over the chair, and sprawled backward onto the floor.

4

HYMIE and Gilda lived on the second or top floor of one of a row of small houses, each with its own garden, that lined a short street in the Village leading to the river. I had not seen or heard from him during the several weeks he had been suspended from the payroll; but the day after I learned of his dismissal, I received a postcard from him asking if I could come to his place the following Saturday afternoon. He added that it was important.

When I arrived there, I found I was not the only one who had received a postcard. A gathering of over a dozen other Bureau employees had assembled in what was apparently a meeting to protest Hymie’s dismissal and to take steps to get him reinstated. Many of the employees I did not know, as they worked in other departments, but apparently they had been chosen on a basis of loyalty to the Party and to Hymie as a Party member.

When I came in, Hymie separated himself from a group, came over and shook me warmly by the hand. “Thanks for coming, Jimmy,” he said. “The union’s getting up a petition asking that I be given another hearing, and I thought you might want to be in on it.”

“I sure would,” I said. “We’ve missed you at the office.”

Hymie took me around and introduced me to several people, and I could see that he was on his best behavior.

“Gilda,” he said, detaching a pretty, bushyhaired, dark-complexioned girl from the crowd, “I want you to meet my friend, Jimmy O’Malley, the fellow poet I told you about.”

Gilda gave me a warm, self-possessed smile and thrust out her hand. “Hi, Jimmy,” she said. “We’re not the only poets here, as you’ll see later. It’s so nice of you to come. Max over there has gotten a lot of names from union headquarters, and with those of everyone who has been dropping in here, maybe it will all do some good.”

A new arrival had engaged Hymie’s attention, so I followed Gilda’s straight, muscular figure over to the table where the petition lay. She was in her early twenties and wore a plain brown dress without any adornments. She walked as if she thought herself a latter-day Joan of Arc.

“ You know Max, don’t you, Jimmy?” she asked.

I nodded, and Max gave me his usual scowl by way of greeting. Although I had seen and heard Max many times at our tumultuous staff meetings, the only time I had come in close contact with him was when he had ambled over to my desk one day and insisted that I join the union. I wasn’t convinced that a City employee needed a union; but that, after all, was only an opinion, subject to change, and I could not understand the truculent personal distaste he exhibited thereafter whenever we were in even remote proximity to each other.

I took up the pen and signed my name. It was quite a list, and at the top there was a typewritten statement addressed to Miss Hodges, the Administrator, setting forth Hymie’s case and pledging his good conduct in the future. As I laid the pen down and straightened up, my eyes met those of Miss Epstein, who was sitting quietly in a corner of the room by the table. Max and Gilda had fallen into an ardent political conversation, so I wandered over and shook hands.

A copy of The Revolt of the Angels lay open on her lap, and in no time at all we were sharing a mutual regard for the written and exact word. Her appreciation far surpassed mine in scope, as I was in a stage of development where my allegiance to humanity was sworn through my religion rather than through literature.

My conversation with Miss Epstein was momentarily interrupted by Hymie, who had brought me a chair from the kitchen and set it down by the table. He handed me a glass of iced tea, and then somebody called him to another part of the room. I continued talking to Miss Epstein and sat down, stretching my arm out to put the glass of iced tea on the table. As I did so, someone in the crowded room brushed me in passing, and my elbow struck the bottle of ink, which emptied its contents over the table — and over the petition. I had just had time to notice what I had done, when I felt a hand on my collar and I was lifted bodily from the chair.

“You bastard!” Max yelled furiously. “You came here to spy on us, didn’t you? You stool pigeon!” He waved his fist threateningly in my face. He was a little fellow but built like a wrestler. I was confused and intimidated and fearful of riot. I began to stammer an incoherent reply.

“Take it easy, Max,” Hymie said, coming between us. “The kid’s O.K. I invited him here.”

“It was an accident,” Miss Epstein said calmly and clearly, with a displeased glance at Max.

“Of course, it was an accident,” Hymie said, looking at me. “I know that without being told.” He turned to Max. “This kid’s O.K. We can write our names on another sheet, anyway.”

“The Grievance Committee is seeing Miss Hodges the first thing Monday morning,” Max said through tight lips. “It’s impossible to get all those names by then. And I don’t give a damn what anybody says, this kid’s not a member of the union and he looks like one of the administration’s Gestapo to me. I’ll be goddamned if he’s going to get away with a stunt like this!”

He had grabbed me by the collar again, but before I could make a move Hymie pushed him roughly aside.

“Lay off,” Hymie said angrily. “This kid’s a friend of mine, understand? I’ll vouch for him, and that should be good enough for you or anybody.”

“Don’t get so excited, Hymie,” said Gilda. “Max didn’t know— ”

“I will get excited. And Max can speak for himself.”

Max looked at Hymie very quietly, and then a mischievous twinkle brightened his dark eyes, and his lips began moving wryly. He almost smiled.

“I can speak for myself and for the Committee,” he said with tense enjoyment. “We were a little dubious about this whole business, anyway. You’ve got a weak case, Goldfarb, and right now when we’re trying to get the staff on civil service, it wouldn’t look so good for us to plead for every Tom, Dick, and Harry. To put it bluntly, we don’t feel you’re an asset any more, we feel you’re a liability — to yourself, to the staff, to the union, and to the Party.”

Hymie’s face turned red with embarrassment and rage; his voice quivered with rising excitement. “I’m as good a Communist as you any day! I’ve done as much for the Party, and more.” He took a step forward and grabbed Max by the coat. “Get out of here,” he said, emphasizing every word, “before I knock you out!”

“Hymie! Hymie!” Gilda shouted angrily, separating them. “What kind of talk is that? Don’t you know what side you’re on any more? Apologize to Max — you want your job back, don’t you?”

“Max can lake his petition and stuff it,” said Hymie quietly. “I’d rather work for the WPA or go on relief than kiss his hand for my job.”

5

MAX scowled, turned, and left the apartment without another word. The group began to break up.

“Stick around, kid,” Hymie said. “Gilda has some poets here she wants you to meet. They’re getting some kind of left-wing anthology together.”

I followed him out to the kitchen in gloomy silence and helped him prepare some sandwiches and pour some more iced tea. Gilda’s voice drifted in as she assured those departing that Hymie hadn’t realized what he was saying and that everything would be all right. I touched his arm.

“Hymie—” I began, by way of apology.

“Forget it, Jimmy,” he said. “I never did like that guy’s guts, anyway,”

Out of the corner of my eyo I observed him surreptitiously take a half-filled bottle of liquor out of the cupboard and pour himself a stiff one. 1 went on slicing the bread.

“Hymie,” I said, when I had finished, “I guess this will mean you won’t be going on the staff boat-ride? I guess I won’t be seeing you?”

“You’ll be seeing me,” he said somewhat savagely. “No little runt like Max is going to queer the boat-ride for me. Or anything else. Gilda and I will be there.”

As I placed the food on a tray, I saw Hymie open the cupboard, reach in and pour himself another drink. Then I followed him into the sitting room.

Miss Epstein was still there and so were four or five others. Gilda came up to me, took the tray, and set it down. She smiled in the same warm, self-possessed way and took me by the arm.

“I know you’re not a class-conscious poet, Jimmy,” she whispered, “but it’s not too late. Anyway, I think this will do you a world of good.”

She made some introductions, and amid the general chatter I went over and sat down by Hymie. I thought the group a strange assortment, and Miss Epstein’s amused glance from the other side of the room seemed to confirm my opinion.

“Oh, please, do,” Gilda was saying to an apoplectic-looking little man who had just begun to devour a sandwich. He needed no further urging, for he immediately put the sandwich down, took out a sheaf of papers from his inside coat pocket, and rose with the air of a Roman emperor. He wore a deep-purple shirt and a yellow tie, was very fat, and had a beardless, ruddy face.

“Bert’s going to read his Workers’ Ode,” Gilda said, with the proper touch of awe. I looked at Bert and could hardly bring myself to believe that his last name was Clancy. But I soon had no doubt.

This went on for five interminable stanzas. Gilda and her friends listened with profound attention. Miss Epstein kept her eyes lowered, communing with herself. Hymie seemed to be thinking about something else, and in the middle of the fourth stanza disappeared into the kitchen. I was somehow reminded of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and it kept repeating itself in unison with Bert Clancy.

He finished with a great oratorical flourish and smiled above the adulation. Before he could begin another poem, Gilda turned to his companion and said, “How about you, Gawayne? You read so well; haven’t you anything for us?”

Bert looked rather piqued and sat down.

Gawayne Greene smiled enigmatically and had to be urged. He had overlong blond hair, what looked like plucked eyebrows, intense green eyes, and a petulant mouth. He wore a panama suit that hung limply from his appallingly thin frame.

Gilda urged him with a guarded cordiality that I suspected she reserved for more esoteric and chameleon natures. When he took a volume from his pocket and suggested that he read from his latest love, Gert rude Stein, she said a little heatedly: “Of course, but where does she stand on the class struggle?”

Nevertheless, primly propped in his chair, his face expressionless, his voice a drone, Gawayne Greene read from Gertrude Stein. “7 am saying that there are many kinds of men and women and many millions made of each kind of them. . .

Hymie wandered in and sat down next to me. I could smell his breath now, and the glass in his hand wasn’t iced tea. He looked at me and smiled. I smiled back.

“ One kind then of men and women have it in them when they know this was once all of them a little baby then and knowing nothing, one kind of men and onekind of women have it in them then to lose inside them their everlasting feeling, the world is then a broken world inside them, more broken for them then than death breaks it for them, ending is less of a breaking to such kind of them than beginning. . . . ”¹

As Gawayne’s voice droned on, I looked at Hymie. The lines of his face were relaxed, but his eyes were more sober than I had ever seen them. He looked like a man who had turned a comer and come face to face with himself.

Gawayne stopped. For a moment there was silence, and then conversations rushed in, crossed each other, and went off in different directions.

Hymie turned to me. “How do you like this group?” he said quietly.

“Well — it’s different from what I’m used to.”

“Yeah. What have you been used to?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Family life, I guess.”

“Well, this is family life,” he said, his voice assuming its serious Marxian tone. “The human family.” Then he looked at me with a self-mocking look in his eyes and added hurriedly, in a low voice: “But it’s not the same, is it, kid?”

6

THE De Witt Clinton was pulling out of the 42nd Street pier on its Sunday morning trip up the Hudson to Bear Mountain, when I sighted Hymie and Gilda making their way through the crowd to where we were sitting on the lower deck. He waved and shouted something, but just at that moment the dance band behind us struck up Fortysecond Street. I could see the two of them waving and talking to the others, but no one seemed very anxious to detain them. Couples were getting up to dance, and some had already started necking. Miss Epstein and I opened the two extra camp chairs we had been saving, and Hymie and Gilda came up, somewhat breathless, and plopped happily into them.

Gilda greeted me in her usual warm way, but as soon as she had said hello to Miss Epstein and placed the shoebox lunch where it would not be in the way, the smile disappeared from her face.

“Good ole De Witt Clinton,” Hymie was saying loudly and drunkenly. “You know, Jimmy, it’s been years — years since I been on one of these tugboats. Used to take the kids up Indian Point — Chris’, what torture, what torture!” He made a mock gesture of anguish, smacking his hand against his head a couple of times. “Good ole AlexanderHamilton,” he said, growing expansive again. “Good ole Robert Fulton. When they gonna name one a these tugboats after you, kid? Good ole Jimmy O’Malley.”

“Hymie,”Gilda said sharply, under her breath, “you’re making a fool of yourself. You promised — ”

“Promise? Promise? Whassa promise?” he spouted laughing and tugging at his coat pocket. He extracted a bottle of rye in a brown paper bag, pulled out the cork, and took a swig.

“Hymie! Jimmy, can’t you do anything with him?”

“We have some black coffee,” I suggested.

“ Ugh!” Hymie made a face. “No coffee, Jimmy. Please. No coffee.”

Gilda turned from him in disgust. “Why, why, why do you drink, anyway?” she said, exasperated, staring at the calm glare of the river.

Hymie looked at me and winked mischievously. He shrugged his shoulders. “Fill the gulf,” he said carelessly.

“What gulf?” Gilda snapped,

He looked me seriously in the eyes for a moment. Then he looked at Gilda. “Gulf of Mexico!” He guffawed, hiccoughed, and took another swig.

“You don’t have to treat me like a child,” Gilda said in quiet anger. “You’re nothing but an escapist, a sheer escapist.”

Hymie had a burst of uncontrollable laughter.

“Hymie, stop laughing. Look, there’s Max over there — he’ll see you. Stop making a fool of yourself.”

“Max? Where’s Max?” Hymie swung around. “Hell of a lot I care Max sees me or not,” he said, attempting to rise. “ Hey, Max,” he yelled, “c’mon over and have a drink, you lil sonofbitch— ”

Max stood by the stairway glaring at him, then he turned his back and went up to the next deck.

“Hymie!” Gilda’s voice rang out, her anger uncontrolled. “How dare you do such a thing! After all Max has done for the union and the Party! Have you lost your senses?”

“Max, Max,” Hymie said petulantly. “Why don’t you go to Max if you’re so stuck on him?” Gilda made a move to rise. “Whassa matter, can’tcha take a joke? Max don’t wantcha. C’mon here, give Poppa kiss.” He tried to embrace her, but Gilda brushed him roughly away.

“So you think Max doesn’t want me, heh? A lot you know!” Gilda rose and smoothed out her dress. “I’m sorry, Jimmy,” — her eyes began to fill with tears, — “but I’m sick and tired, sick and tired— ” She turned and ran up the stairs.

“Gilda! Gilda! Come back!” Hymie called.

He tried to rise but fell back onto the chair. “Where’d she go? Where’d she go, Jimmy?”

“She — she’s just going to walk it off, I guess, Hymie. She needs to cool off,”

The roll of the boat was having a quieting effect on Hymie, and his head nodded toward his chest. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “cool off, let ‘er cool off.”

I looked at Miss Epstein, and she smiled wanly. She had watched the entire scene as if from a distance, and she now returned to her copy of Joyce’s Ulysses. Kids ran up and down the stairway carrying cokes and ice cream, groups of fellows and girls passed by, intent on having loud fun, and an elderly couple were taking a careful turn about the deck. The river went on washing the Palisades.

The band came back after its intermission, and there was a sudden scramble of people towards the dance floor. A loud blare of music hit the deck. Hymie awoke with a start. A male singer was crooning When You Were the Girl on the Scooter (and I Was the Boy on the Bike).

Hymie listened in a sort of half daze. “Good ole Robert Fulton,” he said.

I could see Max and Gilda descending the stairway from the upper deck. His arm slipped around her, and she walked close to him as if in comfort and defiance. They did not look our way.

Hymie was turning his head from right to left. “Gilda, where’s Gilda?” he asked, half rising. And then he saw her.

His voice choked in his throat, and a crimson glow spread upwards from his neck and covered his face. He began to pant and beat his hands around wildly, like a drowning man. He moved forward, swimming in rage, his feet striking out for the dance floor.

I grabbed him, and we struggled with each other.

“Please, Hymie, as your friend— ” My voice almost broke.

“Who’s my friend?” he said bitterly, his reeking breath close to my face. “Lemme go!” he shouted, pushing me away. His hand sailed out and smacked me solidly on the cheek. “You bourgeois bastard, you — ”

I stood for a moment stunned. A faith more basic than any I had ever known I had, seemed to give way

Hymie looked at me. Suddenly his eyes filled and he turned to the rail and buried his face in his hands.

“I’m sorry — sorry, Jimmy,” he mumbled thickly, sobbing so that I could hardly catch what he was saying. “It’s just that — it’s just that — there’s one kind of men and women — lose their everlasting feeling — everything a broken world—”