Читать книгу We're in America Now - Fred Amram - Страница 21

XIV. THE BROWNSHIRTS ARE COMING

WHEN MY PARENTS have a little more income we can sometimes afford a double feature at the neighborhood cinema. The theater provides a few hours of relief from the summer heat. Of course our tenement has no air conditioning in the summer of 1941. Windows at both ends of our flat offer just a little circulation, thanks to a fan at the living room end.

The front door opens into the kitchen. We have a ritual for entering our dark apartment and this Saturday night is no different. Mutti unlocks the door with her key and steps back. Papa takes off his right shoe and holds it as if he would hammer a nail with the heel. The seven-year-old that is me hides behind Papa. We all take a deep breath in anticipation.

Suddenly Papa opens the door, reaches around for the light switch and bam, wham, bam. He is pounding roaches.

Thousands scurry for shelter in the baseboard and the cupboards. They’re on the walls and floor and ceiling—everywhere. Roaches flee from the table and the chairs. Skwoosh, skwoosh, skwoosh as one after another is crushed by Papa’s heavy rubber heel. Sometimes Papa accidentally steps on one or two of the disoriented, frightened beasts with his stockinged foot. Brown, stiff-backed, multi-legged, monster-faced roaches who had been in total control of the darkened apartment are now escaping my father’s wrath. Fat bugs, some over two inches long, seem to fly short distances, or are they hopping? I hold on to Papa’s belt and hide my face in his back.

When no more live roaches can be seen, Papa cleans up. On a good night Papa kills more than thirty. When each living roach has found shelter from Papa’s shoe and each dead roach has been dropped into the garbage can, Mutti enters the room as if nothing has happened. My heart races. I am terrified. Surely these roaches reproduce faster than Papa can kill them.

The cockroach chase fills my mind, even replacing the memory of the movie. Before undressing, I check under the sheets and inside the pillowcase. I know that once the lights are turned off for the night, our creepy tenants will reappear. I fear I will dream about the roaches—and I do. Do I dream that they walk on me during the night or do they really?

In the morning I check my body and inside my pajamas. I turn my slippers upside down and bang them, individually and carefully, against the bed frame. Too often a roach falls to the floor and scampers away.

Concern about roach droppings becomes an obsession and prompts careful daily washing and inspection of my body. I welcome my weekly bath and I wipe each dish before I allow it to cradle my food.

There are cockroaches everywhere. I don’t mean just everywhere in the apartment. I mean all over the city. New York is a city of roaches. We have been living in the United States about sixteen months, escaping from Germany via Holland and Belgium, a step ahead of the Nazis. The next-door commercial bakery, where Papa works, provides food for much of the big city and for the roaches. Poison around the baseboard does not have a big impact. There are way too many millions of them to control. Surely, I imagine, there are at least 1,000 roaches for each of New York’s seven million residents.

My dreams become ever more frightening and, as the weeks pass, the roaches seem to grow larger. And they feel heavier when they walk on me. In one dream they have hot feet and burn my skin as they wander aimlessly on my chest and arms. When I awake, Mutti is holding me. I’ve been screaming and I ripped the buttons from my pajama top.