The Children Read Online Free PDF Page B

clever as I. Maybe I doze a little in the hot sun, it’s so good and quiet up on the roof.
    And Shomake?’ And the magic garden? I have forgotten them entirely.

SIX

    N OW, HOW IS IT THAT I, ISHKY, HAD NEVER THOUGHT OF this before? Was there something about that morning, that day—that my dreams should all vanish then?
    You see, I am on the roof, basking in the sun, healing the hurts I have just gathered in my fight with Ollie. What a fight that was! But I heal quickly, and curling in the sun like a big cat, I am all pleasure and happiness. That’s how it is with one, first battle and struggle, and the next moment ease and pleasure. Sometimes at night, with the gas turned very low, my mother sobs bitterly, rocking back and forth. “Oh, such a life,” she moans in Yiddish. “Oh, what a life for one to be thrust into! Why and what for? From the pains of labor to the dusk of death there is nothing but pain and horror. What for? What for?”
    But I am not like that. Most of the time I am very happy living, and why shouldn’t I be, with all the good things in life? So how did this idea occur to me?
    He sat on the roof in the sun, a bundle of not-too-good clothes, with his legs curled way up. He was a Very small boy, with thin legs and thin hands and large brown eyes and freckles, and he began to think again of the magic garden.
    Whenever there was nothing else to think of, he could think of the magic garden. He could think of how it would be only a matter of time until he was large enough to climb over the fence, and then—why, the magic garden would be his. But might it not be too late then? One grew up, and if he were to rock back and forth like his mother, then—?
    He made a face at the thought of his mother, she was so fat and ugly. He shouldn’t hate her; God would not like that. Up in the sun, maybe behind the sun, was God. God knew everything. God would disapprove, if he thought that his mother was ugly. Still, he would never be like his mother.
    Downstairs in the yard, it was cool and gray, and the fence that closed in the magic garden cast a long shadow. But there was grass growing from beneath the fence, and that grass gave a faint, fascinating suggestion of what lay in the garden itself.
    And now the thought struck him. The roof—what about the roof? But what a little fool he was, never to have thought of that before! Surely, it was plain enough—he had only to look over the back of the roof to see behind the fence, to gaze into the garden. And he had never thought of it before—
    â€œOh—wunnerful,” he whispered. “Dat’s what I shoulda done long ago.”
    Rising to his feet, carefully, cautiously, he began to move, trembling a little, he was that excited.
    Stalking like a red Indian, he approached the back of the roof, and he looked over. For a moment, he stared, and then he sank back to the roof, shaking, with short, dry sobs.
    Because, in the garden, there was nothing but piles of rubbish.

SEVEN

    S O YOU SEE HOW IT WAS WITH ME, THAT I WAS LEFT ALL alone on the roof, trying to make something out of nothing. I would never be happy again; how could I ever be happy again? How could I be sure that everything in life wouldn’t be like this, an illusion that would pass away as soon as you probed into it? Well, the secret garden was gone, Marie was gone; indeed, everything had been taken away from me, and anyway, what was the use of going on?
    I heard my mother calling from the window. “Ishky—Ishky, vare are you?”
    I tried to bury myself in the hot tar of the roof. So soon, I would have to go down and eat my lunch. I made little balls of the tar, and threw them away from me, watching the way they bounced, and finally stuck to the roof. And then in the middle of my crying, I managed to smile a little—because one of the pellets remained fastened to a clothesline where it had struck, just remained fastened like that. And