Chapter V: Introduction (4)

“Everything! When you’re a Jew your family works for you ... your father, your mother, sisters even ... and you study. And all the time they look at you so hungry, so impatient, demanding that you hurry, hurry, through college, through all your years. That you make money. That’s what they want. And then they’ve got their damned pride, too. You must become a professional man. A lawyer, a doctor.... God, their rotten selfishness! Always driving you, hungry, exacting....”

The other was frightened. Emmanuel knew that and he grinned with pleasure. He was flattered. Frightened--of him. That was good! He heard the uncertain tone:

“Well, what would you like to do instead?”

Ah.... It had come! Emmanuel stopped. Under his feet a yellow patch of light, on his hair, uncovered now as he snatched off his hat, the notes of the piano rested for a moment before rushing along the street. Emmanuel could see the chords in the air, he told himself. They glowed. There were flames in them. He threw out his arms, indicating the street:

“This! This is what I’d like to do!”

His companion also had to stop. Out of bewildered gray eyes he looked at Emmanuel. He didn’t understand, of course.

“This?”

“This! You hear that music ...?” He stepped closer to the man, grabbed his lapels. “You hear it? I could do that!”

“Do it?” Absolutely terrified! Emmanuel grinned with satisfaction. He released him. “Why, do you play an instrument?”

“No ... no....” What a fool! But why should he understand?

“Oh, you compose....”

Idiot!

“I don’t have to compose! I don’t have to play!” Snarling: “I said I could _do_ it. You don’t have to know a note to do it.... It’s just got to be in you....” His hands dropped. A silly smile came into his face. What’s the use? “I guess I can’t explain. I don’t know myself exactly what I mean. Take the sky, for instance. It’s like a banner. That’s it, a torn banner. Well, I could do that, too! Not paint it, or write about it, though. Something else....”

The other had left him. Emmanuel looked after the hurrying man and he knew that an empty papier-mâché figure was going there, a papier-mâché figure made of flesh, curiously, and that terror was dogging the steps of that figure. Let him run! Let him think that he, Emmanuel Wolkowitz, is a lunatic! Let him run. Now, now he was not afraid of the street. He turned and shouted into it:

“I won’t be a doctor!”

He shook his fist into the face of the houses:

“I won’t be a doctor!”

Blood rushed to his face. He coughed. Perspiration stood on his forehead. He felt tired, spent. How would he ever get home? The Subway.... He turned into the station. But the music, although that had been blocks beyond, kept on following him. He muttered.

“That’s Rachmaninoff.... No, it isn’t.... I don’t know what it is.... I don’t know one piece from another.... Why don’t I?”