Dockworkers nearby were unloading a ship of its cargo, huge steel beams, each of which took a dozen men to handle. When they heard the splash they all came running. My father floated, his heavy coat spilling out around him like a black water lily. I feared this was to be our last good-bye, and I would now be on my own. I sprinted back to the dock, sweating and in a panic. My feet were on the railing and I was about to jump in to rescue him. I didn’t know how to swim, but that was not the reason I did not leap in. It had often seemed possible that he might take his life when we wandered through the forest. Once I had discovered him with his belt made of rope looped in his hands. He was staring into the branches of a tree filled with black birds. I grabbed his arm and told him there was a path only yards away, and then, as we wandered forward, I found it.
We had come this far together, and I was stunned that he was now willing to leave me behind in this world of grief. But hadn’t he been looking for a way to rejoin my mother? Wasn’t his love for her more compelling than his concern for me? Now the cage had opened; the bird had flown. In that instant, my responsibility to my father vanished. It was then I decided the person I would save was myself. I owed nothing to my father, nor to anyone else in this world.
The dockworkers pulled my father from the river and wrapped woolen blankets around him, but I walked away. That night, when my father came home, he acted as if nothing had happened, and so did I.
But it had.
After that I avoided people in our neighborhood. I no longer considered myself Orthodox, and I left my hat under the bed whenever I went out alone. I was drawn to the river, and began fishing. I went farther and farther on my expeditions, away from the harbor where blue crabs ate the bait off my line and the fish tasted of petroleum. The very act of angling calmed me and allowed me to think. I studied what other men did and thereby learned where to search for night crawlers and how to spy a run of shad in the darkening waters. I went ever farther uptown, looking for solitary places, and finding them.
In those days I was walking through a dream rather than living my life. I had become someone else, but who was that someone? The watcher at prayer meetings, the false son who sat in silence at our meager dinner table, the boy who had failed to rescue his father. He had finally found employment again, sewing women’s blouses, and I worked beside him once more. Here the conditions were even worse than in the first factory. We were not allowed to speak or open any of the windows, most of which were nailed shut. There were no fire escapes where we might sit and catch a breeze from the west. In the summer it was sweltering; in winter we wore gloves with the fingers cut off so that we might still sew. Rats ran inside the walls, and I sometimes put my ear up so I could hear them. The truth is, I envied them their freedom, and longed to be among them, darting into the alleys, living out of sight, doing as they pleased.
There were several other boys there, and I was befriended by one, Isaac Rosenfeld. We did the pressing of finished clothes with gas-fueled irons, in which a flame burned so hotly we needed to take care to ensure that we didn’t burn ourselves or drop sparks onto the piles of lace and muslin spread around. We shared whatever food we had—an apple or some raisins that we stole from the pushcarts on the streets when no one was looking. We did not speak much, but we usually worked side by side. When the supervisor walked through, Isaac always made an obscene gesture behind his back and we had a few laughs. We shared our contempt for the rich and well fed, and that bound us together.
By then I was eleven years old. I had swallowed my share of bitterness, but a portion had stuck in my throat and turned to rage. That rage was there night and day, looming at all hours. Sometimes I would see the owner’s children come to visit their father in a horse-drawn carriage, a boy my age and a younger girl. I felt a hatred inside me that seemed too large for me to carry. My father’s fingers bled every night, and he soaked them in a glass of warm water to soften the calluses. One day I was sent to the storeroom for thread. As I walked along the corridor, I heard the owner’s children laughing and playing in their father’s office.
I crept nearby to spy on them. They were seated behind a large, handsome oak desk playing cards, using real pennies to bet. The girl was wearing a rabbit coat over a ruffled dress, and the boy was saying, “That’s not fair, Juliet, you’re cheating. You have to play by the rules.” Perhaps my stomach rumbled, or I breathed out my hatred in a foul gasp. They looked up to see me in the doorway, dressed in my father’s old black trousers, a scowl on my face. From their expressions I could tell they saw me as menacing. Immediately, the boy held out his watch. I didn’t think twice. If they expected me to be a robber, then I would accommodate them. I grabbed the watch from the owner’s son and stuffed it in my pocket. Luckily, I no longer carried my prayer book.