A Book of Great Worth Read Online Free PDF

by side. They even had cocktails together, nightcaps, really, every evening before bed.
    Everyone called each other by their first names – Robert, Hillary, which was Mrs. Pearlman’s name, Benjy and Esther, of course, Betty and Harry, the name my father had begun to call himself a few years earlier. Even Schmidt, whose first name was Ernst, though my father continued to think of him as Schmidt. The two men definitely didn’t like each other – when they were introduced, Schmidt frowned when he shook my fa ther’s hand and felt the softness of his palm. “You should be in the army, young man,” he said, sizing my father up. “There will be war in Europe soon. Any day, in fact. You’ll want to be prepared.” He routinely pronounced my father’s name, Harry, with a mixture of amusement and contempt, as if it were a girl’s name or, at any rate, one he considered unsuitable for a man.
    Schmidt often strutted around the farm carrying an ugly-looking over-and-under shotgun, claiming to have killed a chicken-thieving fox on a number of oc casions, and laughed contemptuously at my father’s aversion to guns.
    Despite this enmity, the two men were thrown together in the chores of the farm. As a condition of his employment, my father was expected to spend a couple of hours a day helping Schmidt, who always reverted to calling my father by his last name once the others were beyond earshot. This meant herding in the cows morning and evening and actually helping with the milking; forking out the stalls afterwards; and, as the crops progressed – soybeans and clover for the cows, and corn for sale and the family’s own use – more chores related to cultivating, fertilizing and harvest. When they were together, Schmidt would bark out or ders – and occasionally indulge in a short, sharp dis play of temper – but otherwise they would work in si lence. Occasionally a simple-minded but powerfully built man from the nearby village would come to help out. He was called Oscar.
    My father’s days quickly fell into a routine. Up at six, chores in the barn, breakfast with the children, back to the barn briefly, the rest of the day with the children, chores in the evening, helping to put the children to bed, a nightcap with Hillary, Betty, Schmidt and, on weekends, Robert, then to his room in the attic for a few minutes with a book – he was reading a collection of Poe stories and Leaves of Grass that summer, books that would become lifelong favourites – before falling into a motionless, exhausted sleep.
    At the same time that he excused himself, Schmidt and Betty would also withdraw to their own home, leaving the Pearlmans or, on weekdays, Hillary alone. My father would sometimes awaken from feverish dreams, and lie motionless in his damp bed thinking of Hillary, alone in her own bed a floor below. Or, on weekends, he would imagine her in Robert Pearlman’s arms, and his cheeks would burn. At times, too, his thoughts would turn to Betty, a vivacious brunette who was not much older than he was, but my father would shake his head violently before a picture of the pleasant young woman in the arms of her brutish husband came into focus.
    Although the children were my father’s chief concern, and they dominated his time and attention, it was that hour after the children went to bed that he soon found himself most looking forward to in the day, most cherishing afterwards. Unless it was cool and rainy, in which case cocktails were served in the living room, in front of a fire, the adults would meet on the screened-in porch, which faced west to the meadow and pond, and from which splendid sunsets could be observed safe from mosquitoes. Hillary mixed martinis and, pouring a glass for my father, her hands always brushed against his, deliberately, he was sure. When Robert Pearlman was at home, of course, his position as head of the household was clear, and he set the tone and dominated the conversation. But in his absence, anarchy