Bernard Malamud
A Summer's Reading
©by Yolanda Gilad
Ort Motzkin
july
Hi,
My name is George. George Stoyonovich.
My sister says I’m a bum.
Maybe she is right.
I’m twenty years
old. I don’t
learn, I don’t
work.
Mind you, it’s not that I don’t want to I’m waiting for a job .
But what job can I get? These days, you
can’t get anything worthy if you have no
education. And besides, it’s a hard time for
jobs, too.
If you ask me, education eht si
,llew( efil ni gniht tnatropmi tsom
uoy dna )txen dnoces eht ebyam
?yhw wonk
Because it leads to respect. And
respect.TCEPSER .drow eht si
What can you do in life
if people don’t respect
you? What?
As for my education, I must confess I left school
some four years ago. I didn’t like it. Who needs
teachers telling you what to do?
Who do they think they are? They didn’t respect
me.
So, one day when I
had enough of it, I
left. Just like this. I
got up and left school.
But I can’t say I
didn’t try. I really did.
I tried to go
back to school,
but I was older
than the other
kids.
I tried to work, but, well,
what excitement can you
get from a job like stock
clerk, or delivery boy, or
factory worker!?
Don’t look at me like this! There is still
something I like to do. Or, maybe I should
say, I used to like: carpentry.
I was good at
carpentry years
ago. But where
could I get a job
to work at it?
So, here I am.
George, the
neighbourhood boy.
If you ask me what I’m doing all day long,
well, I could say more or less,
nothing.
I sit at home. I like to sit in my
room, listening to the radio. (We
haven’t discovered TV or The
Internet yet). Sometimes I even
mop the room and besides, I
have some magazines from my
sister.
Wait a minute, I haven’t
told you about my sister.
Where are my manners!
Please meet my sister Sophie.She is 23
years old. She is just gorgeous.
She works in a cafeteria in Bronx. She
brings me magazines from her work,
sometimes a book or two.
Sophie keeps the
family: me and my
father. My mother
died .
My father works
in the fish
market. He
doesn’t do much
talking. He’s a
quiet man.
Back to me. It’s summer now, and
it’s tough being at home all day
long.
In the evenings I go out. I go to
the park where I’m alone, nobody
asks me questions. Who needs
them, anyway ?
I like to sit in the park,
imagining myself with a
nice house, a sports car and
a great chick.
What do you
need for all this?
Right you are:
dough, and lots
of it!
Well, it’s late.Stop
dreaming! Let’s get back
home!
Have you met Mr. Cattanzara?
You should. Because Mr Cattanzara, or,
as I call him, Mr. C.nam laiceps a si ,
You may well ask me what makes
him so special. He’s not like the
others in the neighbourhood.
Mr. C works at the I.R.T. station. He sells
tickets.
Mr. C reads the newspaper,
The New York Times eh gniog si tahw wonk ot sekil
sksa eh dnA .dlrow eht ni no
,snoitseuq tnereffid ,snoitseuq
eht lla morf tnereffid s’eh
.doohruobhgien eht ni srehto
And he likes his
bottle.
And when he is
drunk, his eyes
are wet, his walk
is tight.
Now , Mr. C’s wife is quite another story .
Big, fat, white, she sits all day at the window,
her arms folded under her enormous, loose
breasts.
She likes to see what’s
happening in the street.
Gossip, poor people’s
entertainment.
Our neighbourhood.
Our neighbourhood is poor.
Stony neighbourhood, with
only one park at the end of the
street. Cheap, railroad flats
above the stores: a butcher’s
store, a shoemaker’s and all
the rest.
And the people? Well, the people
who live in our neighbourhood are
gathered from many places across
the sea. All came to America to
follow the American dream .
still july
Nothing much happens in our neighbourhood. One day
I met Mr. C in the street.
“What are you doing with yourself this
summer,George?” he asks me
And me, trying to save my skin:
“I’m reading a lot to pick up my
education.”
What is a lot, you will ask me.
Now, the first thing that came
to my mind (or rather, to my
lips) was 100 books .
100
books!
And Mr . C who
wants to “shoot
the breeze” about
my 100 books!
Suddenly, life doesn’t seem so tough.
It’s nice to get out in the street, meet the neighbours.
Though we don’t talk, I see them smiling, looking up at
me.
I even talked with the
shoemaker one night. I
reckon Mr. C must have
given them a clue about my
reading.
Even my father and Sophie
are nicer to me. How the
rumour spreads!
You know what? I don’t
even go to the park.
There’s no one there.
When I don’t clean the
house (I do this every day
for Sophie, she deserves it,
she gives me a weekly
allowance from her
salary), I go out in the
street, buy myself a beer,
some cigarettes, go to the
movies. What! Life can be
great!
I have bought a couple of books
besides the magazines from Sophie,
but, to tell you the truth, I don’t have
the patience to read them; they get on
my nerves.
Almanac
I prefer The World Almanac - though it’s
not the latest, at least it brings you
interesting things about the world, not
made up stories which are boring.
BORING!
And the books pile
up in my room .
But what happened to Mc. C?
Have we forgotten him?
Not a word about my books. Nothing.
To tell you the truth, I kind of try to
avoid him in the street, he makes me
feel uneasy. Why? Well, what if, just
fihe asks me about my reading? He’d
make me feel like a dirty rat, so, let’s
cross the street , and maybe his wife,
who’s reading the news over his
shoulder from her window, won’t
notice me either .
august
I think I’ll stay way from Mr. C Until I finish my
reading.Why is everybody worried about my books?
Sophie too asked me about
them the other day. I don’t
know what she has on her
mind, but she still gives me
my extra buck, and that’s
what counts.
.So, why don’t I
feel great like last
month? Anyway,
the night walks
still make me feel
good.
Last week I met Mr. C in the street. Well,
“met” is not the right word. I saw him coming,
drunk as usual, and my heart missed a beat .
I hoped he wouldn’t stop me - and I was right.
But suddenly (God knows what made him
do it), he turns back and guess what he
does: he gives me a nickel. “Georgie, he
says, go buy yourself a lemon ice!” and
asks me about the books.
First, all my blood was drawn from
my veins. Then, it crawled slowly
up my neck; my face, my ears ,
everything was on fire. I think I was
looking passable on my outside but
you may be sure inside I was
crumbling apart.
His eyes.. Mr. C
has small, blue
eyes which can be
like knife blades.
And they can hurt.
God, can they hurt!
He kept on talking. He wanted to
know about the books, about one
book, any book: “Who can tell, if
it’s a good book maybe I wanna
read it myself.”
What could I do? I couldn’t
just vanish though I wanted to,
so I made Mr. C and the whole
world disappear.
I closed my eyes.
It seemed like eternity. I
was paralyzed. Couldn’t
talk, couldn’t move,
couldn’t open my eyes.
But I could hear.
And what I heard, I
think I’ll never
forget as long as I
live. He said:
George, don’t
do what I did!
And in his voice I could here regret; the
regret of a man who missed his life, who
could have done great things but didn’t
have the means, who had to give up his
dreams because he had to thrive to make
a living at a time of hardship for
America. A man trapped in a life without
a future.
I heard in his voice the regret of all
America and a warning for my future.
I opened my eyes. He
was gone. He must have
felt pity for me.
I went home and shut
myself to the world.
I didn’t want to see
anyone for a week.
end of august
This last week has been the worst that I
can remember.
I didn’t want to see anybody. Sophie railed
at me, my father wept (what else could he
do?) Sophie stopped my allowance, and for
good reason.
Everything turned against me:
the weather was terrible, my
room stifling and I even think
I lost some weight.
Two days ago I couldn’t take it anymore. I
got out and went to the park.
It was 1 o’clock in the morning. The heat
must have thrown the people out into the
streets, because they were all there, wilted
and listless, waiting for a breeze.
I hoped nobody would notice
me. But they did; and they
smiled at me! My neighbour at
the corner asked me if I had
really finished reading one
hundred books.
You want to know what I
said, don’t you? Come
on, tell the truth! What
would you say?
I said “Yeah! And I
felt good! On second
thought, not great, just
relieved.
Yesterday I met Mr. C. We
talked; he didn’t say
anything about the books. I
got an idea: maybe eh
spread the rumour about
me finishing all the
hundred books.
september
Today is the first day of fall. Summer is
over. I can smell the rainy days to
come. I feel better. In fact, I feel
strange, excited.
I think we’ll have to say Good Bye.
I’m going out. I’m going - listen,
you won’t believe it, I'm going to the
library to read my hundred books!
Bye!
Before we part I
have a question
for you.
Yeah,
you’ve
guessed:
AM I GOING TO READ
100 BOOKS?
And here, dear students is your task:
answer the question that George asked