Brooklyn Page 0,51
my dinner in peace.”
By the time silence had descended and Patty had stopped shrieking with laughter, Sheila Heffernan had left the room, but Miss McAdam, white-faced, was staring directly at Eilis.
Eilis could see no difference between Brooklyn and Manhattan when she went there the following Thursday afternoon except that the cold as she walked from the subway seemed more severe and dry and the wind more fierce. She was not sure what exactly she had expected, but glamour certainly, more glamorous shops and better-dressed people and a sense of things less broken-down and dismal than they seemed to her sometimes in Brooklyn.
She had been looking forward to writing to her mother and Rose about her first trip to Manhattan, but she realized now that it would have to join the arrival of coloured customers in Bartocci’s or the fight with the other lodgers on the matter; it would be something that she could not mention in a letter home as she did not want to worry them or send them news that might cause them to feel that she could not look after herself. Nor did she want to write them letters that might depress them. Thus as she walked along a street that seemed interminable with dingy shops and poor-looking people, she knew that this would be no use to her when she needed news for her next letter unless, she thought, she made a joke of it, letting them believe that, since Manhattan was no better than Brooklyn, despite everything she had heard, she was missing nothing by not living there and by not planning to go there too soon again.
She found the bookshop easily and was amazed, once she was inside, at the number of law books on sale and the size and weight of some of them. She wondered if in Ireland there were as many law books and if the solicitors in Enniscorthy had immersed themselves in books like this when they were studying. It would, she knew, be a good subject to write to Rose about since Rose played golf with one of the solicitors’ wives.
Eilis walked around the store first, studying titles on the shelves, aware now that some of the books were old and maybe second-hand. It was easy for her to imagine Mr. Rosenblum here, browsing, with one or two big books open in front of him, or using the ladder to get something from the higher shelves. When she had mentioned him several times in letters home, Rose replied to ask if he was married. It was hard to explain in return that he seemed to Eilis so full of knowledge and so steeped in the detail of his subject and its intricacies and so serious that it was impossible to imagine him with a wife or children. Rose in her letter had also suggested once more that if Eilis had something private to discuss, something that she did not want their mother to know about, then she could write to Rose at the office and Rose would, she said, make sure that no one else ever saw the letter.
Eilis smiled to herself at the thought that all she had to report was the first dance; and that she had felt free to write to her mother about it, mentioning it only in passing and as a joke. She had nothing private to report to Rose.
She knew, as she browsed, that she would have no hope of finding the three books on her list in the middle of all the other books, so when she was approached by an old man who had come from behind the desk she simply handed him the list and said that these were the books she had come looking for. The man, who was wearing thick glasses, had to raise them onto his forehead so that he could read. He squinted.
“Is this your handwriting?”
“No, it’s my lecturer’s. He recommended these books.”
“Are you a law student?”
“Not really. But it’s part of the course.”
“What’s your lecturer’s name?”
“Mr. Rosenblum.”
“Joshua Rosenblum?”
“I don’t know his first name.”
“What are you studying?”
“I’m doing a night course at Brooklyn College.”
“That’s Joshua Rosenblum. I’d know his writing.”
He peered again at the piece of paper and the titles.
“He’s clever,” the man said.
“Yes, he’s very good,” she replied.
“Can you imagine…,” the man began but turned towards the cash desk before he finished. He was agitated. She followed him slowly.
“You want these books, then?” He spoke almost aggressively.
“Yes, I do.”
“Joshua Rosenblum?” the man asked. “Can you