In this chap­ter titled “A New Prob­lem,” we find Moshe grap­pling with the after­math of Malachi’s abrupt depar­ture from Pottstown, which has left him trou­bled. A month after Malachi’s depar­ture, Moshe is work­ing in the the­ater when Nate approach­es him for a con­ver­sa­tion. Moshe reflects on Malachi’s dis­ap­pear­ance, which led to the sale of his bak­ery, a sit­u­a­tion he finds cum­ber­some. He recalls receiv­ing let­ters from Malachi, instruct­ing him on the sale and dis­po­si­tion of the bak­ery and its tools.

Amidst his thoughts, Moshe reveals his dis­dain for Malachi’s neg­a­tive view of Amer­i­ca, which he per­ceives as ungrate­ful giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed here com­pared to Europe. The crux of Moshe’s con­cern lies in Malachi’s com­ment about African Amer­i­cans, express­ing that they have a bet­ter sense of iden­ti­ty in this coun­try than they do.

Nate inter­rupts Moshe’s train of thought, express­ing his desire to intro­duce his nephew, Dodo, who is deaf and has had chal­lenges due to an acci­dent. Despite his sig­nif­i­cant wor­ry regard­ing the town’s doc­tors, espe­cial­ly Doc Roberts—known for his ties with the Klan—Nate insists that Dodo doesn’t need a doc­tor and wish­es to bring him to help at the the­ater.

The con­ver­sa­tion deep­ens as Nate explains that Dodo’s moth­er recent­ly passed away and the boy cur­rent­ly lives with him and his wife. He seeks Moshe’s per­mis­sion for Dodo to stay in the the­ater tem­porar­i­ly, at least until a state rep­re­sen­ta­tive can take him to a spe­cial school. Nate reas­sures Moshe that Dodo will not dis­turb any­one and sug­gests he can spend the night in the base­ment.

Moshe con­tem­plates Nate’s request but feels a surge of appre­hen­sion at the prospect of gov­ern­ment involve­ment. How­ev­er, dri­ven by mem­o­ries of com­pas­sion shown by oth­ers, he oblig­es to dis­cuss it with his wife, Chona. Upon shar­ing this deci­sion with Chona, she express­es her dis­plea­sure, empha­siz­ing the neglect Dodo might face in the cold base­ment.

Chona chal­lenges Moshe on his lack of under­stand­ing of chil­dren’s needs, espe­cial­ly Dodo’s emo­tion­al dis­tress from his cir­cum­stances. In a com­mand­ing tone, she insists that Moshe should bring Dodo home, high­light­ing the warmth of a real home ver­sus the cold, lone­ly alter­na­tive he pro­posed .

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

A
7
A New Prob­lem
month after Malachi left Pottstown, Moshe was inside the the­ater
mov­ing tables on the dance floor after clean­ing up the rem­nants of
last night’s blues sock hop star­ring Jay McShann when Nate put down his
broom and approached Moshe.
“Can I have a word?”
Moshe almost didn’t hear him. He was still trou­bled by Malachi’s sud­den
dis­ap­pear­ance. He had sent Nate over to the bak­ery a few days lat­er, and
Nate report­ed that the bak­ery was shut and the apart­ment over­head was
dark. A few days after that, Moshe received a let­ter, post­marked Chica­go,
then two days lat­er, a sec­ond, post­marked Des Moines, Iowa, both in
Malachi’s beau­ti­ful cur­sive hand, giv­ing instruc­tions on the sale of the
bak­ery, what should be done with all the tools and uten­sils, and where to
send the mon­ey once the sale was com­plete. It was a headache Moshe was
not anx­ious to get involved in.
Moshe wait­ed a week, hop­ing some­how that Malachi might change his
mind, then he final­ly moved on Malachi’s request. After he made a few
inquiries, his father-in-law in Read­ing pro­duced two Jew­ish broth­ers from
Lithua­nia who were hap­py to buy the bak­ery. They were gree­nies, fresh­ly
arrived and not cog­nizant of Amer­i­can ways. It meant Moshe had to go
down to city hall and deal with the goy­im and their snide ques­tions and
puz­zling forms. Isaac offered to send a Jew­ish lawyer from Read­ing to
assist, but Moshe declined. He knew all the town employ­ees. He could get
it done quick­ly. Besides, Malachi was a friend even if he believed in things
that he, Moshe, now that he was an Amer­i­can, did not. Malachi, he decid­ed,
was part of the past. The old ways sim­ply didn’t fit in Amer­i­ca. Still, what
Malachi had said both­ered him. “This coun­try is too dirty for me,” he’d
said. How dare he! Amer­i­ca was clean, clean, clean—far clean­er than
Europe. What’s wrong with him, that he should speak this way about this
great coun­try? Look what it had done for him!
It was what Malachi said about the Negro, how­ev­er, that both­ered Moshe
most. “I think the Negroes have the advan­tage in this coun­try. At least they
know who they are.”
“That’s ridicu­lous,” Moshe had said.
He looked up to find Nate star­ing at him. “What’s that for?” Nate asked,
star­ing down at Moshe’s hand.
Moshe found that he was hold­ing a ten-dol­lar bill. It was a tip he’d
planned to give to Nate for his han­dling of the McShann band with his
usu­al grace. He always tipped Nate. Nate was his man.
He blankly held the mon­ey out. “For you.”
Nate stared at him. “You all right, Mr. Moshe?”
Moshe looked around the the­ater. At the back, two of Nate’s work­ers,
includ­ing the boy Malachi had noticed a month ear­li­er, had returned. He
nod­ded at the boy. “Who’s that?” he asked.
Nate’s soft eyes smoothed into con­cern. “That’s who I come to talk to
you about. That there’s my nephew, Dodo.”
“What kind of name is that for a child?”
“That’s what we call him. He’s a good boy. He’s deaf and dumb … well,
not dumb.”
“Fee­ble­mind­ed?”
Nate shrugged. “No … He had an acci­dent, well … Addie’s sister’s
stove blowed up one day and some­thing got in his eye. He couldn’t see out
of it for a while and he still can’t hear good. But he talks okay.”
“Did you take him to Doc Roberts?”
Nate smiled. It was, Moshe noticed, a bit­ter smile. Doc Roberts marched
every year in the local Klan parade. It was Chona who had called him out
about it. Her let­ters to the news­pa­per protest­ing the men who marched
down Main Street in white sheets, forc­ing the Jew­ish mer­chants to close,
caused more trou­ble than they were worth as far as Moshe was con­cerned.
Then fol­low­ing it up with a let­ter point­ing out the exclu­sion of Jews from
the Pottstown Ten­nis Club and the ice-skat­ing rink, which the Pottstown
Mer­cury was bold enough to print, didn’t help. That caused a stir not just in
the town but in the shul as well. Most of the sev­en­teen orig­i­nal Jew­ish
fam­i­lies on Chick­en Hill were Ger­man and liked get­ting along. But the
new­er Jews from East­ern Europe were impa­tient and hard to con­trol. The
Hun­gar­i­ans were prone to pan­ic, the Poles grew sullen, the Lithua­ni­ans
were furi­ous and unpre­dictable, and the Roma­ni­ans, well, that would be
Moshe—the sole Romanian—he did what­ev­er his wife told him to do, even
though they didn’t agree on every­thing. But the rel­a­tive­ly new Jew­ish
new­com­ers were not afraid to fight back. They seemed to oper­ate with the
tac­it under­stand­ing that while fights were bad for busi­ness, if the Jews of
Pottstown quit their jobs and busi­ness­es, Pottstown would break down in
about five min­utes. Chona, an Amer­i­can-born Bul­gar­i­an, had clout, her
Amer­i­can pedi­gree giv­ing her sta­tus with the high­brow Jews at social
ser­vice agen­cies who looked down their noses at their new­er Jew­ish
brethren who arrived in smelly clothes fresh off the boat speak­ing only
Yid­dish. Her father had start­ed the shul. Her hus­band was the rich­est
mer­chant in town even though he traf­ficked in Yid­dish plays and nig­ger
shows, and her husband’s cousin was the biggest the­ater own­er in
Philadel­phia with con­tacts all the way to Hol­ly­wood. Isaac’s appear­ance at
the chevry, where he defend­ed Moshe’s deci­sion to open his the­ater to the
col­ored, had gone a long way. So no one chal­lenged her open­ly. Chona was
a crip­ple any­way. Who could argue with a crip­ple? Let her rant, they
seemed to say. But the town’s old­er Jews observed her move­ments with
fear­ful watch­ful­ness.
Her ill­ness com­pli­cat­ed mat­ters, because Chona refused to allow Doc
Roberts to treat her. He was the town’s pride, a home­town boy made good,
and the sto­ry of her long trips to doc­tors in far-off places was an
embar­rass­ment. Doc Roberts had even sent word that he would come up to
the Hill to see her and had been ignored. Moshe sought to avoid the
con­fronta­tion by claim­ing that Chona’s ill­ness required spe­cial­ists, which
was to some degree true—if there had been a diag­no­sis. But there was none,
real­ly. Her turn­around came, she was hap­py to tell peo­ple, when Malachi
showed up and prayed for her out of his thick mach­zor. And wouldn’t you
know it, she declared, the poor man didn’t last five min­utes in Pottstown.
Because peo­ple did not sup­port him. Now he’s out some­where heal­ing the
world. Pottstown be damned! And we are stuck with Doc Roberts march­ing
in his sil­ly white clown cos­tume every year. Where did he learn to be a
doc­tor any­way?
Moshe heard these things at his house and thanked his lucky stars that
Chona’s phys­i­cal trou­bles made going down­town dif­fi­cult. But that still did
not solve the Doc Roberts prob­lem. He was sor­ry every time the sub­ject of
Doc came up.
Nate, as if to affirm the trou­ble, imme­di­ate­ly dis­missed the Doc Roberts
sug­ges­tion. “Dodo don’t need no doc­tor,” he said. “He had an acci­dent. He
got sick. Then he got bet­ter. He’s all right.”
“So what’s the prob­lem?” Moshe asked.
Nate’s hands slid ner­vous­ly on the broom han­dle as he spoke. “I been
mean­ing to ask you … if it’s okay to bring him round to help out, cheer up
the tide and all.”
“You can bring whomev­er you want,” Moshe said.
“Yes, but I won­der if I could, as they say … get your bless­ing on the
mat­ter.”
Moshe looked at the young­ster, who drift­ed clos­er, clean­ing the floor. He
was a beau­ti­ful boy. He had the smoothest, most glow­ing dark skin Moshe
had ever seen. He shone like a light. Moshe smiled at him. The young­ster
glanced at him, then looked away, busy­ing him­self with pick­ing up trash.
A thought struck Moshe and he recalled Malachi’s words about the boy.
He glanced at his watch. It was near­ly 1 p.m. “How old is he?”
“Round ’bout ten.”
“Isn’t he sup­posed to be in school?”
Nate leaned on his broom. “Well, that’s just it,” Nate said. “Dodo’s
Addie’s sis­ter Thelma’s boy. Remem­ber Thel­ma?”
Moshe faint­ly remem­bered a qui­et Negro woman Nate had called on
from time to time to help in the the­ater. “I think so.”
“Thel­ma got her wings last month.”
“Got her wings?”
“Passed away.”
“Oh.”
Nate’s brow fur­rowed and his old hands moved up and down the broom
han­dle slow­ly. He said soft­ly, “Me and my wife’s got him.”
Moshe looked down at the floor a moment, embar­rassed. It rarely
occurred to him that he and Nate shared one com­mon­al­i­ty. Nei­ther of their
wives could bear chil­dren. They had worked in the the­ater all day side by
side for twelve years but rarely dis­cussed their wives or mat­ters of home.
Why both­er? Their wives did all the talk­ing any­way. Chona’s ill­ness had
shak­en them all, and her recov­ery had giv­en them some­thing to be hap­py
about. Or did it? He real­ized then that he’d always avoid­ed ask­ing Nate
about his home life. It was bet­ter that way, a throw­back to his own fus­gey­er
child­hood, when he befriend­ed chil­dren whose fam­i­lies joined the the­ater
troupe, and then one day the friends sud­den­ly depart­ed, some were adopt­ed,
oth­ers car­ried off by sick­ness, dis­ease, bad luck, death, or, in rare cas­es,
oppor­tu­ni­ty. Food was scarce. Life was cheap. A Jew’s life in the old
coun­try was worth­less. Bet­ter to not make friends at all. How dare Malachi
call this coun­try dirty! It was so much bet­ter here.
“Well, I think that’s fine,” Moshe said. “You can run things as you like.”
Nate’s brow fur­rowed. “A man from the state come to the house last
week. Says he’s gonna car­ry Dodo off to a spe­cial school over in Spring
City. Dodo don’t wan­na go to no spe­cial school. He’s all right here with
us.”
Moshe’s heart quick­ened. He felt a request com­ing, but Nate con­tin­ued.
“The man says he’s com­ing back to fetch him next week. I’m won­der­ing if
you might let me slip Dodo into the the­ater here tonight, just for a few days
till the man goes away. The boy’s qui­et. Can’t hear noth­ing. Won’t be
scared or make no noise. He can work good, clean up and so forth.”
“For how long?”
“Just a cou­ple of days till the man’s gone.”
“But there’s nowhere to sleep,” Moshe protest­ed. “It’s too cold.”
“He can sleep in the base­ment. We got a couch down there and the old
brick fire­place. He’ll be all right.”
“What about the man from the state?”
“The gov­ern­ment ain’t gonna trou­ble they­self too much about a lil old
col­ored boy, Mr. Moshe.”
Moshe felt a flash of fear well up inside at the men­tion of the word
“gov­ern­ment.” The USA. The law. Only the thought of Addie stand­ing over
his wife, Addie’s tears falling from her face, tend­ing to Chona long after
Chona slept, wak­ing up in his chair and still see­ing Addie there in the
morn­ing, fight­ing off the sick­ness, fight­ing off the dev­il that was try­ing to
deprive him of the love of the woman who had giv­en him so much. Only
that image gave him the courage to ignore the naked ter­ror that surged in his
throat and across his spine as he uttered, “I have to talk to my mis­sus,
Nate.”
“All right then.”
But Moshe already knew the answer even as he walked into his kitchen
that night. He hadn’t expect­ed a dif­fer­ent answer, real­ly, for Chona had no
fear of the gov­ern­ment. When her father had moved to Read­ing and had
insist­ed that Moshe sell his the­ater and move to be near him, Chona insist­ed
they stay behind. “We are build­ing our own future,” she said. Unlike
Moshe, who was ter­ri­fied of the police, Chona was unafraid to chal­lenge
them. When the farmer whose well was clos­est to the syn­a­gogue refused to
sell water to the shul for the women’s month­ly rit­u­al bath, Chona called the
police. When the police refused to act, claim­ing that their cars could not
make it up the dirt roads of the Hill, she walked to the sta­tion and gave
them a piece of her mind about the mat­ter. Then, with­out ask­ing any­one in
the shul, she hired a col­ored man with a horse and cart, rode in the back as
the man drove the cart to town, filled bar­rels from the town’s water spig­ot
her­self, and had the col­ored man walk the bar­rels into the unoc­cu­pied
mik­vah and pour the water into the baths. The lead­ers of the shul were so
out­raged they threat­ened to drop Moshe and Chona from the rolls. The bad
feel­ings last­ed years, the upshot being that Moshe was cer­tain that when he
and Chona died, they would not be buried in the shul’s ceme­tery next to her
grand­par­ents who had pre­ced­ed them but on a slen­der slice of Jew­ish land
owned by the shtetl near Hanover Street next to the ceme­tery used by the
town’s col­ored and poor.
Chona shrugged it off. “When I was dying, where were they?” She
chuck­led. “Busy try­ing to make a dol­lar change pock­ets is where they were.
They call me the kolyekeh, the sick one. I’ll out­last them all.”
When he walked into the house that night, Moshe found her stand­ing
over the stove cook­ing gefilte fish and onions, and hum­ming to her­self. He
told her the lit­tle deaf boy’s moth­er had died, how Nate and his Addie had
tak­en him in, and how he had allowed the boy to sleep in the base­ment of
the All-Amer­i­can Dance Hall and The­ater that night so the state
gov­ern­ment couldn’t take him away from the only fam­i­ly he had.
Chona had her back to him, stir­ring the pot with one hand, with the oth­er
lean­ing on the coun­ter­top to keep her bal­ance. She glanced at him over her
shoul­der, and one look at her bright, shin­ing eyes cloud­ed in irri­ta­tion told
him every­thing. Then she turned to her pot and spoke with her back to him.
“What’s the mat­ter with you?” she said.
“I said yes.”
“You sent him to sleep in the cold the­ater base­ment? With the rats?”
“There’s a stove down there. Nate and I fired it for him.”
“So?”
“It’s trou­ble, Chona. The gov­ern­ment wants him.”
“For what?”
“To put him in a spe­cial place.”
“What kind of place?”
“A place for chil­dren like him.”
He could see, and almost feel, the back of her neck red­den. She was
silent a moment, then said, “Chil­dren like him.” She said it in Yid­dish,
which meant she was mad.
“But I allowed it,” he said. “I even had Nate put some extra coals in the
stove to keep it warm.”