The Chosen

'Well,' my father said, sipping his tea again, 'you had some day, Reuven.'

'It was an experience, abba. The way Da

My father shook his head. 'It is not terrible, Reuven. Not for Da

'But in public like that, abba!'

'Yes, Reuven. In public like that. How else would Reb Saunders' people know that Da

'It just seemed so cruel to me.'

My father nodded. 'It is a little cruel, Reuven. But that is the way the world is. If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste. But the business about the mistakes I never heard before. That is something new. That is Reb Saunders' i

'Da

'Perhaps,' my' father said. 'A man can do whatever he wishes to test his son's knowledge. But there are other ways than the way of Reb Saunders. At any rate, Reuven, it is good training for Da

'Reb Saunders is a very complicated man, abba. I can't make him out. One minute he's hard and angry, the next minute he's soft and gentle. I don't understand him.'

'Reb Saunders is a great man, Reuven. Great men are always difficult to understand. He carries the burden of many people on his shoulders. I do not care for his Hasidism very much, but it is not a simple task to be a leader of people. Reb Saunders is not a fraud. 'He would be a great man even if he had not inherited his post from his father. It is a pity he occupies his mind only with Talmud. If he were not a tzaddik he could make a great contribution to the world. But he lives only in his own world. It is a great pity. Da

My father sipped his tea again, and we sat quietly for a while.

'I am very proud of the way you handled yourself today,' my father said, looking at me over the rim of the glass. 'I am glad Reb Saunders will let you be Da

'I'm awfully sorry I came back so late, abba.' My father nodded. 'I am not angry,' he said. 'But next time you will be so late, you will call, yes?'

'Yes, abba.'

My father glanced at the clock on the shelf over the refrigerator. 'Reuven, it is late, and tomorrow you are going to school. You should go to sleep now.'

'Yes, abba.'

'Remember, you must not read. I will read to you in the evenings and we will see if we can study that way. But you must not read by yourself.'

'Yes, abba. Good night.'

'Good night, Reuven.'

I left him sitting at the kitchen table over his glass of tea and went to bed. I lay awake a long time before I was able to sleep.

Chapter 8

When I got back to school the next morning, I found I had become a hero, and during the fifteen-minute morning recess my friends, and even some boys I did not know, all crowded around me, wanting to know how I was and telling me what a great game I had played. Near the end of the recess, I went over to the pitcher's position and stood on the exact spot where I had been hit by the ball. I looked – tried to look; the yard was crowded with students – at home plate and imagined Da

Sidney Goldberg came over to me and started talking about the game, and then Davey Cantor joined us and added his opinion about those murderers'. I nodded at what they were saying without really listening. It seemed silly to me, the way they kept talking about the game, they both sounded so childish, and I got a little angry when Davey Cantor started talking about 'that snooty Da

I got out of school at two o'clock and took a trolley car over to the public library where I was supposed to meet Da

On the other wall there was a mural showing Homer, Dante, Tolstoi, Balzac, and Shakespeare engaged in conversation. They were beautiful murals, done in bright colors, and the great men in them looked alive. Probably because I had become so sensitive about eyes in the past week, I noticed for the first time that Homer's eyes seemed glazed, almost without pupils, as if the artist had been trying to show that he had been blind. I had never noticed that before, and it frightened me a little to see it now.

I went quickly through the first floor, with its marble floors, its marble pillars, its tall bookcases, its long reference tables, its huge windows through which the sun streamed, and its glass topped desks at which the librarians sat. I found Da

There were not many people on this floor; its stacks were filled mostly with bound volumes of scholarly journals and pamphlets. It was a large floor, and the closely set stacks gave it a mazelike appearance. They went from floor to ceiling, and. they seemed to me to contain everything of importance that had ever been written on any subject in the world. There were journals in English, French, German, Russian, Italian, and even one collection in Chinese. Some of the English journals had names I couldn't pronounce. This was the one floor of the three-floored library I did not know well. I had been up here once to find an article in the Journal of Symbolic Logic which had been recommended to me by my mathematics teacher, an article which I had only dimly understood, and once to meet my father. Now was the third time in all the years I had belonged to this library that I was on its third floor.

I stood near a bookcase a few feet away from the table at which Da