greenhorn to the omnifarious city, and Max reinforced his attitude by perceiving the streets for once as amusement rather than likely threat. Relinquishing a little his habit of eternal vigilance, he also let go of the impulse to cloak himself in yet another disguise, so protected did he feel in the company of his bed fellow, this patent meshugener with his strange avocations whom he was nonetheless growing to admire. There even came a point in their stroll when, watching some girls in their dove-gray shifts playing potsy, chanting “Chatzkele, Chatzkele, shpil mir a kazatzkele” and using a fisheye for a marker, Max’s spirits rose almost past containing. “What a jubilee!” he exclaimed, then was immediately embarrassed, feeling that such an indecorous outburst must be a joke of Jocheved’s at his expense (while Jocheved, from her concealment, wondered if Max had lost his mind).
Another awkward moment for Max came when they stopped for a bowl of borscht at a dairy café, and Shmerl—digging into his knippl, the little knot of cash he’d been hoarding since he’d become a hired hand—insisted on paying the tab. Having passed a dark season as the object of charity, the beggar now wished to be benefactor, despite having no material resources to speak of.
“It is for me my pleasure,” his host assured him, proud to be arm-inarm with such a silken youth, so delicate-featured and slight of frame, attributes almost unseemly for a man. With a sigh Max had accepted the refreshment, just as later he learned to graciously accept the ticket to a Yiddish theater production of Hamlet, der yeshivah bocher, translated and improved for the edification of the general public, or the price of admission to a cabaret. For his part, Shmerl felt heartily beholden to his companion for allowing him to show them both a good time. How long he had waited for someone with whom to share his enthusiasm for the knockabout streets and the institutions he’d been too shy to enter alone. It was as if he finally belonged to the teeming neighborhood and had at last arrived in America.
As for Max, he still couldn’t quite believe that he’d fallen into such agreeable circumstances. For one thing, despite the forced physical intimacy of their digs, it was relatively effortless to hide Jocheved’s gender from his host. This was thanks in part to Shmerl’s consideration of his guest’s privacy, that and his discretion regarding his own modest habits. As a consequence, even the concealment of Jocheved’s menstrual rags was not an issue, though the smell sometimes lingered; but Shmerl seemed to regard it as Max’s distinctive scent. Given Shmerl’s cavalier inattention to his own sanitary needs, and conditioned as he was by the fetor of the wagonyard, a fundamentally human essence was in no way offensive to him. In this environment Jocheved sometimes felt she might even relax a bit her tenacious secrecy; she might steal a peek on occasion from behind the mask of Max Feinshmeker, as if the world were not such a daunting place after all. This isn’t to say the girl didn’t sometimes have second thoughts about sharing such close quarters with a bunchbacked companion, involving as it did a moral compromise that Shmerl was not even aware of; there were nights when she lay awake on the flock-stuffed mattress acutely conscious of the fact that the creature lying next to her was male. Men, she must never forget, were the enemy, though this one, this luftmensch Shmerl, seemed of an entirely different breed; and in the end all her reservations with respect to their proximity were overruled by her host’s assurances that Max’s presence was a great relief from loneliness.
Still, they preserved between them a chummy formality, addressing one another as Feinshmeker and Karp, though each had been known on occasion to let slip the other’s given name. Naturally their honeymoon period couldn’t last indefinitely, nor did Max, now that his mental acumen was reawakening, wish to maintain much longer the purposeless status quo. Eager to repay his host’s generosity, he had begun to get ideas. One evening, a few hours before the start of the nightwalking circuit, at the time when they were accustomed to making their rambles, Max—or was it Jocheved? because it was getting harder to determine whence derived his lapses of voice into a reedy soprano—asked Shmerl to explain again how he had renewed Rabbi ben Zephyr’s compartment of ice.
“Zol zayn azoy!” replied Shmerl; “was a trifle.” He became abruptly animated as