The Dream Merchants Read Online Free PDF Page A

ordered, which hadn’t come yet, and at the door stood Grandma, the fortune-telling machine.
    He stopped and looked through the glass at her. Her head was covered with a white shawl from which dangled peculiarly shaped coins and symbols. In the dark she seemed almost alive, her painted eyes staring out at him.
    He fished in his pocket for a coin. Finding one, he placed it in the slot and pushed the lever. “Let’s hear what you got to say about it, old girl,” he said.
    There was a whir of machinery, then her arm lifted and her thin iron fingers went skimming over the rows of neatly stacked white cards in front of her. The noise of the machine grew louder as she selected a card and laboriously turned her body and dropped it into the chute. The noise stopped as she turned back to face him. The card came out of the chute in front of him. He picked it up. At the same moment he heard a train whistle in the darkness.
    “Golly,” he said to himself, “I gotta run.” Frantically he shoved the card in his jacket pocket, picked up his valise, and went out into the street.
    For a second he looked up at Peter’s windows. All the lights were out. The family had gone to sleep. A chill had come into the night air. He put his coat on, turned the collar up, and started walking rapidly to the station.
    ***
    Upstairs in her bed Doris suddenly woke up. Her eyes opened; the room was dark. Uneasily she turned on her side toward the window. In the light of the street lamp she could see a man walking up the street. He was carrying a valise. “Uncle Johnny,” she murmured vaguely as she drifted back to sleep. By morning she had forgotten all about it, but her pillow was damp as if she had wept in her sleep.
    ***
    Johnny stood on the platform as the train rolled in. He reached in his pocket for a cigarette and found the card. He took it out and read it.
    You are going on a journey from which you think you will never return, but you will come back. Sooner than you think. The Gypsy Grandma Knows All.
    Johnny laughed aloud as he climbed up the steps of the train. “You came pretty close to it that time, old girl. But you’re wrong about my coming back.” He threw the card into the night.
    But it was Johnny who was wrong. Grandma was right.

2
    Peter opened his eyes. He lay still on the great double bed, the mists of slumber sluggishly clearing from his mind. He stretched out his hands. His right hand hit the dent of the pillow where Esther had lain beside him. It was still warm from her. The sound of her voice in the kitchen telling Doris to hurry up and eat or she’d be late to school completed his awakening. He got out of bed, his long nightshirt trailing the floor, and made his way to the chair over which his clothes were thrown.
    He took the nightshirt off and got into his union suit, then into his trousers. Sitting down in the chair he pulled on his stockings and his shoes, and then proceeded to the bathroom. He turned the water on in the tap, took down his shaving-mug, and began to mix up a lather. He began to hum. It was an old German song he remembered from his youth.
    Mark came toddling into the bathroom. “Daddy, I gotta make pee,” he said.
    His father looked down at him. “Well, go ahead, you’re a big boy now.”
    Mark finished his business, then looked up at his father, who was stropping his razor. “Can I get a shave today?” he asked.
    Peter looked at him seriously. “When did you shave last?”
    Mark rubbed his fingers over his face as he had seen his father do many times. “Day before yesterday,” he said, “but my beard grows fast.”
    “All right,” Peter said as he finished stropping the razor. He handed Mark the shaving-cup and brush. “Put on the lather while I finish.” He began to shave.
    Mark covered his face with lather and then waited patiently for his father to finish. He didn’t speak while his father was shaving, for he knew that shaving was a very important and delicate act and if you were