Finkel

AS THE TAXI slowed to a stop in front of the building on West 115th Street, there was suddenly a great commotion on the sidewalk. The boys and girls who had been sitting there drawing with chalk darted and scattered—some of them toward Broadway, some toward the river, some into buildings. “It’s Finkel!” a small boy shouted, sounding the alarm. “Finkel! Finkel!” cried the others as they picked up their belongings and hurried to safety. From the cellar of the building, taking two steps at a time, charged Finkel, a German police dog ahead of him. The dog bounded forward, held back only by a silver leash. “Raus mait euchl!” Finkel shouted as he reached the street level and looked about for stragglers. “Raus, Läuse! Raus!” The dog barked sharply and strained at the leash, the metal cutting into its neck. “I will teach you to mark up the sidewalks!” Finkel yelled, and though he could see nobody to right or left of him, he ran several yards toward the river. “Devils! If I lay my hands on you—” he threatened, shaking a fist at his invisible opponents. Across the street two boys crouched behind a row of garbage cans, terrified. The dog struggled to get away from its master; it snarled, baring its teeth, and with this, the two boys jumped from behind the garbage cans and streaked downhill. Finkel shouted curses after them, his dog barked, but he did not move from in front of the house.

The door of the taxi started to open and Finkel was there at once, holding it, pushing his hand into that of the man who was getting out. “Professor Perlman!” he exclaimed. “I recognize you from your pictures. I am Hyman Finkel, superintendent.” Professor Perlman looked at the dog and hesitated. Finkel laughed and patted its head affectionately. “This is Sasha, named for my oldest brother, he should rest in peace, destroyed on the other side. Do not fear him. At his age, I can assure you, the saying about the bark and the bite is true. Sasha—say hello to Professor Perlman.” At this the dog began wagging its tail furiously, rubbing its heavy body against Professor Perlman’s leg. “Sasha is almost fourteen years old,” Finkel said. The professor looked down at the dog, noticing its huge stomach, which sagged toward the gutter. He paid the driver and then, with Finkel’s help, carried his luggage inside. The lobby was dark and cool.

“Ah, Sasha,” Finkel said as the dog trotted behind them. “When will you die? When? Already this year you have cost me in the hundreds for doctor’s fees. Two tumors removed—like honeydew melons. I’ll tell you something, Professor—I am glad you saw Sasha and I in action. Ha! Do you know why we chase the children—?” He laughed again and pushed the professor in front of him into the elevator. As they rose, he explained. “To give them a sense of terror, that is why!” Cramped in the small elevator, the professor held one valise waist-high. Sweat trickled down his back and Finkel’s stale breath annoyed him. “Do you understand what I mean?” He pushed his face toward the professor’s. “Now I hope you won’t take this personally, Professor Perlman, but my clients in this building, so many of them, like yourself, in the academic profession—their children live in a protected world. Insulated. A world of ideas, of theories, books, abstractions. Between them and Harlem are parks, private schools, music lessons, fancy summer camps—and so it goes, if you know what I mean.” The elevator stopped and the door slid open. Finkel led the way down the hall. Sasha and the professor followed him. Finkel turned back, stopping so abruptly that the professor almost knocked into him, and under his stained Dutch Boy painter’s hat, Finkel’s eyes were shining. “So I terrorize them! You see? I create for them a sense of reality, of evil. In my own time I am a legend—Finkel the former SS officer. Ha! Twenty years ago I planted the rumor, but with that one rumor—what stories they have been able to fabricate. If you could hear of the things I have done to countless women and children, Professor, it would make your hair fall out.” He laughed again, to himself this time, and shook his head. “Here we are,” he said. From his overalls he took a ring of keys and flipped through them, finding the right one.

Finkel showed the professor around the three rooms, pointing out the improvements he had put in, the special items—extra bookcases, a used television set, a large oak rolltop desk. Professor Perlman thanked him and handed him a ten-dollar bill. “For your troubles,” he said.

“Let me tell you something, Professor,” Finkel said, pocketing the money without comment. They were in the living room now and Finkel sat down in a large easy chair, Sasha at his feet. “You did the right thing. Don’t let anybody tell you no. It is not easy for old men to live alone. When Professor Hafer telephoned me and explained the situation, what with the commuting, the upkeep of a large house—believe me, I know the chores that go into mamtaining even a modest piece of property—I agreed with him that this was the wisest thing you could do. Give it up now.” He cleared his throat. “Sit down please, Professor,” he said. “Rest a little. You’re entitled—you’ve had a long trip, your apartment is in order, what is there for you to do?” The professor sat; Finkel leaned forward, his face suddenly intent. “And before we leave the subject, I hope you will accept my condolences upon the loss of your wife. Although I did not have the good fortune to know her, I understand from Professor Hafer and others that she was a fine woman. And the years. All those years spent together, Professor. Oh, the years, the years—”

Finkel paused and, not knowing what else to do, Professor Perlman started to thank him. “Please,” Finkel said, putting up his hand. “There is no need to say anything. What are we to do at times like these? When my own wife died—that was three years ago this August—did words console me? Bah! Death is death.” He sat back. “Tell me, Professor, what are your plans?”

“My plans?”

“Now that you are alone. Let’s face it, a young man you’re not—how much longer will you teach?” The professor looked at him quizzically. “Come,” Finkel said. “Talk to me. It will do you good—you and me, Professor—two old men like us, despite the difference in our vocations, we have much in common. I can tell. You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”

The professor nodded.

“Tell me, are you a practicing Jew?”

“No,” the professor said, and as he replied he could hear the antagonism in his own voice. “No, I’m not.”

Finkel smiled. “The same for me,” he said. “You and me, we are psychological Jews, eh?—Like Freud, if you know what I mean. We hate the religion yet we are proud of our Jewishness. And why not? Why not, Professor Perlman?” His question was loud, belligerent—but before the professor could reply, Finkel was chuckling. “The way he was jealous of his wife before they were married—one day there was no letter in his mailbox and he was half insane! He picked her to pieces. That is Jewish. Martha, she was a good wife to him, very baia-batish, if you know what I mean.” Finkel paused, hoping for a reaction, but there was none. “That means that she was the queen of his household,” he said. “That the home was everything to her, that she was a good Jewish wife.”

“I know what the word means,” Professor Perlman said sharply. Finkel looked away, smoothing Sasha’s fur. “Freud himself was quite haimisheh, you know,” the professor added quickly, and as Finkel’s face broke into a warm smile the professor wondered what had prompted his comment, the use of Yiddish…

“Ah—” Finkel said. “You are quite right, of course. The way that man loved his children, his sisters, his wife. I thank God for one thing—that he died before the war. If he had known that he had left his four old sisters behind only to have them all incinerated like Sasha—” He raised both his hands toward the ceiling, his fingers trembling, outstretched. “I thank God for that, Professor Perlman. The man had suffered enough for one lifetime—betrayed by his followers, forced to leave his beloved Vienna, the endless pain and operations! Year after year they hacked and sawed at his mouth and jaw, removing everything. As if the first operation didn’t cause enough pain, eh? For how long, Professor, I ask you, for how many years did he suffer his cancer?”

“Sixteen, I believe.”

“I know, I know,” wailed Finkel. “And did anyone ever hear him complain? Not Freud. He was a man, Professor, I’ll tell you that. A human being and a Jew, if you know what I mean. Thirty-three operations he endured. The number is significant, eh, Professor Perlman?” His voice dropped. “But why do you think—why was such suffering brought to him? Why—?” Finkel was leaning forward, excited. “Anyone who has read your books would know the mystery in such a question, Professor. I ask you, did Moses get to enter the Promised Land? Why did Freud love Moses so? Because he too was Jewish, Professor. Moses and Monotheism. Moses the Egyptian, Moses the Gentile—but passionate, suffering, moral.” Finkel stood up, hovering above the professor, shaking his fist. “What does it matter how a man is born? Like you and me, Professor, like the great Freud himself, Moses was a psychological Jew—” He laughed then and, quite suddenly, bent over and shook the professor’s hand. “I must be going,” he said. “Though I have certainly enjoyed our talk. We will continue it—yes? As I said, we have a lot in common, you and me.” At the door he reminded the professor to call him the minute he had need of anything. “For minor electrical repairs I am merely competent,” Finkel said. “But as a plumber I am first-rate—I can assure you of that.” Sasha brushed against Professor Perlman’s leg, and then he was alone.

He wanted to laugh but found that he couldn’t. Had the conversation really taken place? The professor shook his head, to clear it. He moved around the apartment slowly, purposefully—unpacking, arranging books and clothing, sorting papers—but he tired quickly, and lay down in the bedroom to rest. His right leg was hurting again and he massaged the calf. And now what, Professor Perlman, he wondered. Now what?

As if in answer to the question, he heard somebody laugh. He sat up. It was a girl’s laugh, and it was followed by giggling, then some words, then more giggling. When the girl screamed, he swung his feet to the floor and listened carefully. The giggling started again, from the bathroom. “Not now, John,” the girl said. “Stop, please…John…Oh you!…” Above the toilet bowl, the professor saw, was a grating about ten inches square, and the sounds came from it. An air shaft, an exhaust?—Finkel could have told him its exact purpose. He closed the toilet and sat on the seat, listening. “I really have to study…John…I mean it…that tickles…Stop!…” Silence, heavy breathing, a low moan. The professor thought of his daughter, Barbara, in her senior year at Barnard. A thump against the wall. “Ow…watch it…that hurt…” Giggling. “I mean it, John, I have a test…” For the first time, words from the man “Okay, I have to go over some stuff for Perlman’s course…” The professor stood up. “Do you still like it?”…“Oh, yeah—he’s not too dynamic…I mean, you have to pay close attention, but he’s good, especially when he forgets his notes and just rambles about things—music or science. You should have heard him the other day, going on about Freud’s idea of the death wish!” Professor Perlman tried to place the voice, but it vanished in a sudden scraping of the wall, an “Ouch!” and furious laughter.

He walked out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. He telephoned his daughter and asked if she would like to have dinner with him at the faculty club, but she said no, she had a surprise for him, he was to come to her apartment. “Oh,” she said. “I almost forgot. How’s your apartment?”

“It’s all right. Fine, really.”

“Good,” she said. “I have to do something now, okay, Daddy? Come over soon. Bye.”

Downstairs, Finkel was waiting for him. Professor Perlman nodded, smiled weakly, and tried to pass, but Finkel stopped him, gripping his arm above the elbow. Sasha was at his feet, his head on his paws. The fur around his neck was gray; his eyes, the professor noticed, were outlined with a sticky white substance. “Ah, Professor,” Finkel said. “I was hoping you would come by. Have you eaten dinner yet?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps you would like to join me in my apartment. Roast leg of lamb!” He kissed his fingertips. “Very fine, if I must say so myself.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Finkel,” the professor said. “But I already have a dinner engagement.”

“Ah,” Finkel said. “A dinner engagement.—Is that different from dinner?” He laughed good-naturedly. “Don’t mind an old fool like me. But I mean it—when you are free some evening I will cook for us, all right?” He came closer. “Why not? Two old men like us, living in the same building, why shouldn’t we be friends, companions? We are both Jews, no?”

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Professor Perlman said, pulling his arm from Finkel’s grip and hurrying from the building. He cut across the Columbia campus, vowing to speak to Fred Hafer in the morning about moving out of the building—but Fred would ask him why, he knew, and if he tried to explain about Finkel, Fred would only suggest again that he needed to relax, that perhaps he should consider taking a leave of absence for the rest of the semester.

Barbara lived along Morningside Drive with another girl from Barnard, in one of the university-owned buildings, but when he arrived the girl was gone—to a concert, Barbara said—and in her place was a young man named David Shapiro. “I trust I’m not intruding.”

“Don’t be silly—take your jacket off. David’s been helping me with the surprise. Guess what it is?” He said he didn’t know. “Roast duck!” she exclaimed proudly. “With orange—the way you like it.” She turned to go into the kitchen. “You and David talk while I get things ready. Dave, fix Father a drink—bourbon, straight. You know where everything is.”

Then she was gone to prepare the dishes she had taken from her mother’s recipes, and he was left with her young man. David seemed very much at home. Too much so? He sat down and lectured himself silently for the thought. Let the girl lead her own life. Don’t judge. Don’t advise. For God’s sake, don’t pressure her! Naomi’s death was no easy thing to adjust to. She was an only child. They had been very close. Then too, hadn’t he and Naomi lived together for two years before marriage? He smiled, remembering. She had been a student of his in a graduate seminar. The boy seemed nice enough. He asked him what he did. “Don’t you remember me?” David asked. “I was in your seminar on Elizabethan poetry last year.”

“Of course,” he said, laughing. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m a little distracted this evening—what with moving—and—”

“That’s all right,” David said, and began telling the professor about his graduate courses, his ideas for papers, his projects. Professor Perlman tried to appear attentive. His lecture classes were large, but the seminar had had only twelve students. Why didn’t he remember the boy?

“Are you retiring this year?”

“Am I what?”

“Retiring—I’d heard you might.” “Don’t be silly.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the boy said. “I know you can retire at sixty-three if you want, that’s why—”

“No, no—I intend to teach to the end,” he said. “To the end.”

They ate quietly and the professor enjoyed listening to their gentle teasing, their intense opinions. David asked him if he had ever written about something they had discussed once in the seminar. “Eros, entropy, and the Elizabethans,” David explained to Barbara. “That was the phrase your father used—the affinities between the Elizabethan notion of the love-death relationship and Freud’s. Your father pointed out that just as the seventeenth-century belief in the unity of love and death was related to their belief in the decay of the world, so Freud’s notion of the union of Eros and Thanatos was allied to the modern idea of entropy—” He held a fork in front of him, pieces of duck impaled on its prongs, and talked on. Professor Perlman pretended to listen but found himself annoyed. After dinner, saying he had more unpacking to do, he left. Barbara said she would call him the next day, that she wanted to make curtains for his apartment.

He walked across the campus and down Broadway to 115th Street, but once he was in the building he could not remember which floor he lived on. His name was not listed on the register above the mailboxes—but on three of the boxes—8A, 8F, and 9C—names were missing, and he assumed one of the three was his. He rode the elevator to the eighth floor and listened at the door of 8A. Voices. He tried 8F. Voices again. He walked up a flight of stairs, found 9C, and, hearing nothing, tried the key in the lock. The door opened and he turned on the light. At his feet, he saw, was an envelope. It had his name typed on it and, relieved to discover that he was in the right apartment, he opened it.

“Received from Professor Jerold M. Perlman the Sum of Ten Dollars ($10) for Services Rendered.” It was signed, “Hy-man Finkel, Superintendent.”

In the bathroom, brushing his teeth, he looked at the grating and, as he did, the giggling resumed. “Stop! Jesus, John, I mean it…” Silence, then softly: “Please, John…please…oh…” He rinsed his mouth. At least, he thought, looking at his teeth in the mirror, he didn’t have to use dentures yet. “Honest,” came the boy’s voice. “It’ll help you relax for your test…” He closed the door quickly and made up his bed with clean sheets; he undressed, locked his door, tried to sleep. He thought of Naomi. Naomi and Finkel and then Sasha. In his old age, he recalled, Freud had come to love dogs, had become dreadfully attached to them. When one of them died—a chow, if he remembered correctly—he had written to Jones that he’d felt the loss more deeply than that of most human beings.

He was up at eight the next morning. To his surprise, he felt good—vigorous, fresh—and he busied himself with notes for the day’s classes. At half past ten he left the apartment. Finkel was in the lobby, repairing a light fixture. He climbed down from his ladder.

“Ah, Professor,” he said, stopping Perlman. “I was hoping I would catch you this morning. As you see, I am alone. Sasha is not feeling well—he spent a restless night. Very restless.”

“I really must be going,” Professor Perlman said, walking away. “I have a class.”

Finkel caught up with him at the door. “Please. It will only be a minute—and quite useful to you, you will see. Quite useful.” Finkel stopped and looked back into the lobby, to be sure they were not overheard. Professor Perlman found him particularly repulsive; he noticed the yellow teeth, long hairs protruding from the nostrils, a mole. Finkel wiped some mucus away with the back of his hand and spoke. “I meant to ask you this yesterday, when we were talking about your wife, but for some reason it slipped my mind. A slip of the mind—that is significant, no?” He laughed and came closer. “I am very curious about something, if it is not too personal, Professor. Tell me—your wife, how was she disposed of?”

Perlman pushed him away and jerked the door open. Finkel clasped his hand on the back of Perlman’s and pushed on it, closing the door. “Of course, if this is very personal to you, I will respect your privacy. Let me be direct, Professor. What I am after is this—was she buried or was she cremated?”

“Buried.”

“Ts, ts, ts,” Finkel said. “Very bad. But,” he added, shrugging, “that may have been her wish. What I am most interested in, really—what I can be of service to you for, is this—here is why I stopped you: what are your plans for yourself?”

“Mr. Finkel, if you don’t mind, I must hurry to class.” The professor tried to get away but Finkel barred the door with his body.

“I ask only this of an important thinker like yourself, Professor Perlman. That you give the idea of cremation your serious consideration. I have some literature in my apartment which I will leave for you in your mailbox—but is there really need for it? Bah! Did not Freud himself specify his own cremation? And do not his ashes now he collected in one of his favorite Grecian urns?” Finkel opened the door and the professor welcomed the fresh air. “Go to your class, Professor. But I beg of you—give the matter your consideration. Death is no insignificant thing. It is something to think about.”

When Professor Perlman returned from class that afternoon the literature was, as Finkel had promised, in his mailbox. He tore it to shreds without looking at it, and tried to figure out what to do. It was a convenience, living near the campus, true, near Barbara—and he did not relish returning to the empty house Naomi and he had spent the last twenty years in. Even if he did, the agent said he already had a buyer.

He had, though, to avoid Finkel. For the next few days he was successful. If, when he left the building, Finkel was in the lobby, he would go down to the basement and exit through the cellar; if he saw Finkel in front of the building when he returned home, he would go back to his office and work there. Such games made him feel ludicrous but he felt he had no choice. For perhaps a week he evaded Finkel, and Finkel, for his part, did not seem to pursue him. He felt better. One afternoon, however, he returned home to discover that he had locked himself out and forgotten the key. Such forgetfulness, he knew, was no mere accident. He sighed, went into the basement, and roused Finkel from his apartment. “Ah, Professor,” Finkel said as they rode up in the elevator, Sasha nuzzling against Perl-man’s leg. “Have you considered the literature I gave to you? I have been so busy since the last time we spoke that I did not have a chance to get back to our discussions—first the oil burner went crazy, then there was a fire in Mrs. Gottbaum’s gas range. When things begin, they do not stop, I’ll tell you that.” When Finkel had opened the door, he walked into the apartment and sat down. “So,” he said. “What is your decision?” Perlman told him that he hadn’t given the matter much thought. “All right, all right,” Finkel said, wagging his finger at Perlman, “but don’t say I didn’t give you a chance! Time is time, Professor. It goes.” Then suddenly he was on his feet, inspecting the bookcases. “A fine library,” he said. “Let me ask you something—what is your opinion of the relation of art to death?”

“Of what—?”

“Forgive me. I do not always put these things well, but I have been thinking. I read your new book on Freud last week—very, very fine, Professor—and it led me to some thoughts of my own. Vague, of course. But here: the relations of pleasure and pain, love and hate, and even, as you point out so magnificently, of pleasure and death—does this not lead one to contemplate the alliance of death with art? Does—”

Perlman cut him off. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Finkel—I have a great deal of work to do.”

“Of course, of course. Why you even bother with an old fool like me, I don’t know—a man like yourself!” He went to the door and opened it. “But we are old men and we are Jews. We know. We know, don’t we?” Then he winked and smiled broadly. “Beyond the pleasure principle, eh, Professor Perlman? Beyond the pleasure principle!”

For about a week after that, Perlman managed to avoid Finkel; then, in the apartment, things suddenly began going wrong—the lock jammed, a fuse blew, a fire started in an electrical outlet. Every day something required Finkel’s service, and Perlman was certain that, while he was teaching, Finkel was going through the apartment, arranging the accidents. Perhaps, he thought, if he could prove that Finkel was plotting, if he could embarrass him with the evidence…Every morning he left a matchstick standing inconspicuously against the door. When he returned home, however, the matchstick was still standing and, invariably, something was awry in the apartment—no hot water, a broken window, a jammed buzzer, another fuse blown, the toilet overflowing. Perlman remembered a movie he’d seen; he plucked a hair from his head and, with saliva, pressed it across the crack separating the door from its jamb. It remained intact. He continued to need Finkel’s service.

At night he hardly slept, and when he did he dreamed and woke, one dream after the other. He kept a pad on the nighttable and wrote some of the dreams down, hoping, by analyzing them, to obtain the objectivity which would make them cease, but it was useless, and he soon gave it up. In the bathroom, between dreams, he listened to the young lovers, and each day he grew more tired, more tense, more run down. Naomi was with him more and more. He dreamt of her almost every night; in the dreams they were always young and they would kiss endlessly, sweetly, warmly.

Then, during finals week—he had been living in the apartment for almost two months—he woke up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe, terrified. He was lying on his side and behind him, he was certain, in the bed, was Naomi. He could hear her breathing. Something heavy lay on his chest; pains worked their way up his right arm. Had he been dreaming about her again? He couldn’t remember. Things were confused. He only knew that he felt her in the room with him and that he would not turn to see if she was, in fact, really in the bed. He gagged on something, coughed. A hundred years from now they would be able to freeze him, he thought, to preserve his quarter inch of cortex. He felt that he was falling swiftly into a moonless black, deep in the brain, far back. The rhyme stirred him to a vague consciousness. He concentrated and after a moment placed it—from “Night Crow” by Theodore Roethke—and this seemed to help. He rose and stumbled into the bathroom, drinking hungrily from the faucet. Then he sat on the edge of the bathtub. What time was it? His young lovers were busy. “I really have to go,” she said. “I mean it…oh, stop that…” Laughter, coaxing from the boy. Perlman inhaled deeply. “Naomi, Naomi,” he said. “Oh, Naomi…”

From the grating the girl moaned, then yelped. “Don’t bite…damn it, I told you I didn’t like that…Oh, come on, baby…I’m not your baby…Come on, baby…” Was it the same boy, or a new one? He wanted to return to bed but he was desperately afraid he would find Naomi there. The laughter and moaning had been replaced by what sounded like a struggle. “Stop—you’ll tear it…Oh, damn! See!…C’mon, baby, it won’t hurt…I told you to stop…Oh, please don’t, don’t…” Perlman exhaled, put the plastic drinking cup down above the sink, and rubbed his arm. The pain was still there. The girl’s voice was louder. “Don’t…I don’t want to. I mean it!” They thudded against a wall, the floor, the girl was crying. “Please…oh, my Godl Stop!…I mean it…I can’t…Oh, oh…” Perlman lifted himself, stepping onto the toilet seat to get closer to the grating. The girl was crying hysterically. Then she was screaming. “You’re hurting me…stop…please, for God’s sake, please…” He heard something that sounded like slapping, then heavy breathing, then the girl’s tears, and a sudden scream which tore through his skull. He had to do something, but which apartment was the sound coming from—above? below? next door? Finkel would know. “Please…please, please…Oh, God, stop…Stop!” He walked back to the bedroom and, looking at the bed, he felt his heart jump—the cluttered blankets, he realized, looked like the shape of a woman. He switched on the light. The room was empty. He put on his robe and slippers and raced from the room into the hallway. He heard his heart galloping. The elevator was waiting for him and he took it to the basement. He rushed down the corridor, pushing against the wall to support himself. His legs were terribly weak and he realized that he could not see well. He had forgotten his glasses. The floor and walls seemed to pulsate forward and back, forward and back. He turned the corner. Finkel’s apartment was at the end of the corridor, near the garbage cans. He heard a low sound, a growling. He stopped, then continued. A shape rose up from behind the garbage cans. It was Sasha, but he seemed neither old nor friendly nor feeble. Did he think Perlman was a prowler? He snarled viciously—then he streaked toward the professor and, his eyes blazing with fire, leapt for the throat.

When Perlman opened his eyes, Barbara was sitting on the bed next to him, rubbing her hand gently across his forehead. Finkel stood behind her, his brow wrinkled with worry. Perlman was in his own room. “Naomi was here with me,” he said to Barbara. She told him to lie quietly, to rest. “Not really, of course, but I felt her here, in the room with me—”

“And who is to say she wasn’t here?” Finkel said. “Why not? Who is—”

Perlman sat up. “Get out,” he said. “Get out—”

“But, Daddy, it was Mr. Finkel who found you lying in the basement and telephoned me.”

“Not me—Sasha. He came for me,” Finkel said. “He is old—but he is a good dog. Who knows how long he licked your face and watched over you?”

“Get out—!” Perlman repeated.

“But, Daddy—”

“Shah!” Finkel said to her. “I will go. He is not himself, but he will be all right. It is nothing. Why, the great Freud himself was subject to periodic fainting spells.”

“Get out!” Perlman was screaming. “Get out! Get out!”

Finkel stood at the door, Sasha with him, looking old, mournful. “Still, we must make plans, Professor. We—”

Perlman started from the bed, but he was weak and Barbara held him back. “Out!” he screamed. “Out, out, out…”

The door closed. “If not for Mr. Finkel, you might be dead by now,” Barbara said. “Sometimes I don’t understand you, Daddy. Honestly.” She paused. “And the man admires you so much, the least you could do—”

“All right, all right,” Perlman said, closing his eyes. “Peace, Barbara. Some peace.”

He stayed in bed the next day. Barbara made his meals and insisted on being with him. She slept in the living room and studied for her examinations. The following day Perlman resumed his activities and, strangely enough, he felt better than he had at any time since Naomi’s illness had begun the year before. He did not try to avoid Finkel, but he did not see him either. Was Finkel avoiding him? Once, when he met him at the mailbox at noon, Finkel merely said hello and asked how he was feeling. He was quiet. He told Perlman that Sasha was very ill. “The end is in sight, Professor.”

Two afternoons later, returning from a committee meeting, Perlman saw a truck in front of the building. Two men in white carried a stretcher into it. Finkel leaned against the gray concrete. He wore no hat. Perlman watched him from across the street. The men closed the door of the truck and drove away. Finkel did not move. Then Perlman saw the children approaching. They seemed to come from everywhere—from up and down the street, from the building, the cellar—there must have been twenty to thirty of them, and they came cautiously. Finkel’s chin was at his chest. He looked at the children and smiled. They moved closer. An instant later, following the lead of the older ones, they had formed a ring around him, and as they skipped in the circle, holding hands, they sang:

“Firikel’s dog is dead…Finkel’s dog is dead…
Hi-ho the cherrio…Finkel’s dog is dead…”

Perlman watched for a few minutes, unable to move. Then he crossed the street, pushed the children aside, and entered the circle. “Mr. Finkel,” he began. “Let—”

“Ah, Professor—what are words at times like these? Bah! Death is death. They will return the ashes to me tomorrow.”

Perlman felt his stomach turn, but he did not move away. The children continued around the two men, chanting. “FirikeTs dog is dead…FirikeTs dog is dead…” A crowd was gathering—students, mothers with baby carriages, people from the building.

“Now that school is over,” Perlman said, “I’ll be leaving for the summer. To Italy—Florence, Venice…Barbara is coming with me.” Finkel nodded. The voices of the children grew louder, entering Perlman’s brain and resting there. Perlman considered, but it did not matter. Finkel was right. “I’ll send the rent checks by mail.” Finkel looked at him from his old face, puzzled. “And I’ll see you again in the fall, I hope.”

Finkel gazed at him intensely, his eyes screwed up, searching the professor’s face; Perlman could not bear it, he realized, and he moved away quickly. Finkel followed him from the circle, pushing the children aside roughly. “I will look forward to it,” he called. His voice was strong. “Have a pleasant trip, Professor Perlman!—Have a pleasant trip!”