The Book of Daniel Read Online Free PDF Page A

in his heels. The grip broke. He fought his way back, pushing between the bodies that were like trees, immovable boulders. “Susan!”
    Faces looked down angrily. “Shhh!” People muttered to him to keep quiet. The amplified voice filled the sky over his head: “Is this our so-called American justice? Is this an example to the world of American fair play and justice?”
    “Those are the children!” he heard Ascher cry out. “But those are the children!” He ran into Susan before he saw her—clutching his hat with both hands, with no more room around her than her body made, her arms jammed against her chest. He put his arm around her shoulder and tried to regain his sense of direction. The heat was unbearable. He looked up, saw the sky, saw the roofline of buildings to his left. He decided if they were to cut through to his right they would reach the sidewalk and could follow the curb back toward the beginnings of the crowd. He knew how to get home.
    “I don’t like this,” Susan said. “I can’t move!”
    “Here they are!” A man standing next to him peered down. “I’ve got them.”
    And then Ascher was there and they were being pulled forward once more. “These are the children,” Ascher kept saying. “Let us through, please. I’ve got the children.” Eventually this was understood by people in the crowd. “He’s got the children!”they called to each other. Daniel could see a banner stretched on poles across the top of the platform ahead. FREE THEM! Someone lifted him up and he found himself being passed over the heads of the people, propelled sinuously like something on the top of the sea. He was terrified. He heard Susan’s voice behind him. “Let me down!” she was saying. “Help! Danny!”
    And finally it was the amplified voice that was booming out over Broadway: “Here are the children!” And a great roaring filled his ears as he and Susan were raised, tottering, onto the platform. He was dizzy. He grabbed Susan’s hand. Flushed and breathless, dizzied by the motion of heads and the thousands of voices in motion like the roar of the sea, they stared out at the crowd, a vast hideous being of millions of eyes that seemed to undulate in the canyon of the street, splashing life and sound and outrage in great waves up on the platform. Islanded, he felt the wind in his eyes. He felt for a moment that he and Susan had been betrayed and that the great mass would flood over them and carry them away. But the roar, though directed at them, was not meant for them; it was meant for others who dwelt in a realm so mysteriously symbolic that it defied his understanding. At the foot of the platform, at his feet, Ascher’s face stared up from the street, triumphant, beatific. He was shouting something but Daniel couldn’t hear. The man who had been speaking put one arm around his shoulder and one arm around Susan’s, gently, but with unmistakable authority, arranging himself between them. Still they held hands. And the roaring of the crowd had become a chant, a great choir echoing against the buildings until it was continuous: Free them, free them, free them! And he and Susan were transfixed by the placards, the oversized pictures of their mother and father everywhere above the crowd, going up and down in rhythm as the crowd roared Free them, free them, free them.
    Oh, baby, you know it now. We done played enough games for you, ain’t we. You a smart lil fucker. You know where it’s at now, don’ you big daddy. You got the picture. This thestory of a fucking, right? You pullin’ out yo lit-er-ary map, mutha? You know where we goin’, right muthafuck?
AN INTERESTING PHENOMENON
        Many historians have noted an interesting phenomenon in American life in the years immediately after a war. In the councils of government fierce partisanship replaces the necessary political coalitions of wartime. In the greater arena of social relations—business, labor, the community—violence rises, fear and