THE DEAREST WISH
HE read--and the shining Orient burst upon him!
It was as if the most delicate of gossamer curtains had been brushed
aside so that he could look at a new world. What he saw there rooted him
to his chair, holding him spellbound. Yet not so much because it
contrasted sharply with his own little world, this bare flat of Barber's
in the lower East Side, as that it seemed to fit in perfectly with his
own experiences.
Aladdin was a boy like himself, who was scolded, and cuffed on the ears.
The African magician was just another as wicked and cruel as the
longshoreman. As for that Slave of the Ring, Johnnie considered him no
more wonderful than Buckle. In fact, there was nothing impossible, or
even improbable, about the story. It held him by its sheer reality. Its
drama enthralled him, too. And he gloried in all its beauty of golden
dishes, gorgeous dress, fountain-fed gardens, jewel-fruited trees and
prancing steeds.
He read carefully, one forefinger traveling to and fro across the wide
pages, while his lips moved silently, and he dragged at his hair.
Sometimes he came to words he did not understand--_chastisement_,
_incorrigible_, _physiognomist_, _handicraft_, _equipped_, _mosques_,
_liberality_. He went over them and pressed on, just as he might have
climbed one wall after the other if these barred his way. He could come
back to the hard words later--and he would. But first he must know how
things fared with this other boy.
When Grandpa wakened, Johnnie fairly wrenched his look from beautiful
Cathay to face the demands which the Borough of Manhattan made upon him.
Tucking his book under the wide neckband of the big shirt, he let it
slip down to rest at his belt. The old soldier was hungry. He was
supplied with milk toast so speedily that it was the next thing to
magic. Then Johnnie discovered a hollow feeling which centered in his
own anatomy, whereupon he ate several, cold boiled potatoes well spiced
with mustard.
Their late lunch over, Grandpa was strong in his appeals for a journey
as far south as Island Number 10. But now Johnnie had no heart for any
trip into distant country. The realm of China was about him. He wheeled
the chair up and down, but he sang to soothe Grandpa to sleep. And this
time his song was all of his great new happiness:
"Oh, I got a book! I got a book! I got a book!
Oh, Mrs. Kukor, she give it t' me!
And it's awful grand!
Once it was a man's, and his name was Hunter--
I wonder if he lost it, or maybe somebody sold it on him.
I'm goin' t' read it till I know ev'ry word!
I'm goin' t' read it ev'ry day--ev'ry day!
Go t' sleep, 'cause I want t' read some more!
Go t' sleep! Go t' sleep! Go t' sleep!"
On and on he caroled, like a bird on a branch. At last Grandpa, after
some mild protesting, was lulled by the rhapsody, and dozed once more;
when Johnnie adroitly tapered off his song, brought the chair to a
cautious stop, drew the book from its warm hiding place, sank into the
morris chair, and again there swept into the kitchen, as on the crest
of a stream, the glorious, the enchanting East.
He saw the dull, old lamp rubbed for the first time, and the genie come.
And he rejoiced with Aladdin as the poor Chinese boy attained the
knowledge of the lamp's peculiar virtue. Only once did he emerge from
the thralldom of the tale by his own will. That was when he read of the
wonderful Buddir al Buddoor: "_The princess was the most beautiful
brunette in the world; her eyes were large, lively, and sparkling; her
looks sweet and modest; her nose was of a just proportion and without a
fault, her mouth small, her lips of a vermilion red and charmingly
agreeable symmetry_----"
Here he paused, lifting farseeing, shining eyes. Many a time he had
spied a slim little girl who came out upon one of the fire escapes
opposite. The little girl's hair was black and wavy, and the wind tossed
it upon her shoulders as she looked around. She seldom glanced over at
Johnnie, and to gain her attention he had to Hoo-hoo to her. Once he had
shown her that pillow so cherished by Cis, which was covered with bright
cretonne. He had seen the little girl's white teeth flash then, and knew
that she was smiling.
She was like the Princess Buddir al Buddoor, dark, and red-lipped. And
how kind she was! For she had never seemed to notice anything wrong with
either his hair or his clothes. He could understand how Aladdin felt
about the sultan's daughter, who was so lovely--all but her name!
He was deep in the story again when a plump hand interrupted by covering
his page. So shut were his ears against every sound, inside and out,
that he had not heard Mrs. Kukor enter. Now she held up something before
his face. It was the alarm clock.
Next after Big Tom and his own hair he hated the clock most. It was
forever rousing him of a morning when he longed to sleep. Also, the
clock acted as a sort of vicar to Barber. Its round, flat, bald face
stared hard at Johnnie as its rasping staccato warned him boldly. More
than once he had gone up to the noisy timepiece, taken it from its place
on the cupboard shelf, and given it a good shaking.
"So!" exclaimed Mrs. Kukor. She set the clock down and reached for the
book. "I keeps him by me. To-morrow, sooner you wass finish mit your
work, he comes down again by the basket."
"Oh, but I can hide it!" urged Johnnie, illustrating his argument at the
same time. "And, oh, gee, Mrs. Kukor! I'm the luckiest kid in N'York!"
"Supper," pronounced Mrs. Kukor, seeing that the book was indeed well
hidden and would bring no fresh troubles upon that yellow head that day.
And it did not. For at suppertime, when Barber loomed in the doorway
once more, the teakettle was on the stove, and waddling from side to
side very much in the manner of Mrs. Kukor, the kitchen was filled with
the fruity aroma of stewing prunes, and Johnnie, with several saucers of
bright-hued beads before him, was busy at his stringing--a task which,
being mechanical, could be performed without conscious effort. And he
was so engrossed over his saucers that Barber had to speak to him twice
before the boy started up from his chair, letting the beads impaled on
his long needle slip off and patter upon the floor like so much
gay-colored sleet.
Barber gave a satisfied look around. "All right--set your table," he
commanded.
Johnnie obeyed. But this was a task which was not mechanical. And with
his thoughts still on the high hopes and plans of that other boy, he put
two knives at one plate, two forks at another. But it was all done with
such promptness, with such a quick, light step and eager, smiling eye,
that Barber, remarking the swiftness and the spirit Johnnie showed, for
once omitted to harangue him for his mistakes.
Cis was more discerning than her stepfather. When she came slipping in,
the boy's rapt expression told her that his thoughts were on something
outside the flat. She was not curious, being used to seeing him look so
detached. However, supper done with, and Barber out of the kitchen,
putting his father to bed, she gleaned that something unusual had
happened. For as they were washing and setting away the dishes, he
leaned close to ask her the strangest question.
"Cis," he whispered, "what's p-h-y-s-i-o-g-n-o-m-i-s-t?"
She turned her head to stare; and knit her young brows, wondering and
puzzled, not at the question itself, but at what lay behind it. The
bedroom door was open. She dared not venture a counter question. "Start
it again," she whispered back.
He named the letters through a second time. "It's a long word," he
conceded. "It takes all of my fingers, and then one thumb and two
fingers over. What does it spell?"
Cis's lips were pressed tight. They twitched a bit, to keep back with
some effort what she had on her mind. When they parted at last, she
nodded wisely. "You never got that word out of my speller," she
declared; "nor off of any paper bag from the grocer's." Which was to say
that she did not know what all those letters spelled, but that she was
fully aware he had a good deal to tell her.
Johnnie had already made up his mind that he would not share his
precious secret with her. He feared to. Barber had never allowed Cis to
bring home books, regarding all printed matter as a waste of time. And
Cis had a way of obeying Barber strictly; also she often pleaded
conscience and duty in matters of this kind. And to Johnnie any
consideration for Barber's wishes or opinions, except the little that
was forced by fear of the strap, was silly, girlish, and terribly
trying.
He admired Mrs. Kukor's stand. Backed by her, he meant to keep the book
and read it every minute he could. So with Big Tom once more in the
kitchen, having an after-supper pipe in the morris chair, Johnnie
ignored Cis's silent invitation to join her in the window, and brought
his bedding from her room, spreading it out ostentatiously beside the
stove. Then having filled the teakettle and stirred the breakfast cereal
into the big, black pot, he flung himself down upon his mattress with a
weary grunt.
Barber smiled. The boy was tired. For once some real work had been done
around the place. "You better git t' bed early, too," he remarked to
Cis. As advice from him always amounted to a command, she disappeared at
once. Presently Big Tom got up, stretched his gorilla arms, yawned with
a descending scale of Oh's, and went lumbering to bed.
A wait--which to Johnnie seemed interminable, while dusk thickened to
darkness; then snores. The snoring continued all the while he was
counting up to four hundred. Also it achieved a regularity and loudness
that guaranteed it to be genuine. Still Johnnie did not open his eyes.
There were little movements in Cis's room, and he felt sure she was not
asleep. Soon he had proof of it. For peering up carefully from under
lowered lids, he saw her door slowly open; next, she came to stand in
it, dimly outlined in her faded cotton kimono.
She had something white in one hand. This she waved up and down in a
noiseless signal. He did not stir. She stole forward, bent down, and
touched him. He went on breathing deep and steadily. She tiptoed back to
her bed.
As patiently as possible he waited till the sound of her regular
breathing could be heard between Barber's rasping snores. Then he sat
up. So long as he had been able to read, he had thought of nothing but
reading. But with the book put away there had come to him a wonderful
plan--a plan that made his bony little spine gooseflesh: _He would rub
Barber's old kitchen lamp!_
Seldom used, it stood on a cupboard shelf beside the clock. Fairly
holding his breath, he got to his feet and crept across the floor. Inch
by inch, cautiously, his hand felt its way to the right shelf, found the
lamp, grasped the glass standard. But the table was the only proper
place for the experiment. He carried the lamp there and set it down, his
heart beating hard under the pleats of his shirt.
Then he considered what his course of action should be. If Big Tom's old
lamp chanced to possess even a scrap of that power peculiar to the lamp
of Aladdin: if, when he rubbed the none too clean glass base, some genie
were to appear, asking for orders--what should he command?
It came to him then that what he wanted most in all the world was not
bags of money, not dishes of massy gold, or rich robes, or slaves, but
only freedom. He wanted to get away from the flat; to leave behind him
forever the hated longshoreman.
"If the great big feller comes when I rub," he told himself, "I'll say
t' him, 'Take Grandpa and Cis and me as far away as--as Central Park'"
(this a region of delight into which he had peeped when he was three or
four years old, under escort of his Aunt Sophie). "'And leave us in a
flat as good as this one.'"
With Big Tom out of his life, oh, how he would work!--violet-making,
bead-stringing, and, yes, boarders! He could fetch Grandpa's bed out
into the new kitchen, and put three roomers into the little bedroom,
just as several tenants in this building did. And what he could earn,
added to Cis's wages at some factory, and Grandpa's pension (this a
princely income which was now regularly drawn and spent by Big Tom)
would take care of the three splendidly.
Having settled upon the supreme wish, and fairly holding his breath, he
reached out in the darkness and rubbed the lamp.
Nothing happened.
He waited a little. In this lamp business perhaps time figured
prominently; though his own friends--Buckle, the four millionaires,
David, Goliath, the Prince, and any number of others always appeared in
the kitchen promptly.
But no genie of the lamp arrived. To make sure that his test was fair,
he rubbed the lamp a second time, all the way around. Still no huge,
hideous, helpful figure loomed out of the dark.
He grinned sheepishly, tugged at his hair a few times, then went back to
his mattress and sat down. He was not disappointed, for though he had
been hopeful, he had not been over-sure. And, anyhow, he had his book.
He lifted it out, placed it upon his knees, and rested his forehead upon
it. And the next moment, as if whisked to him by a genie all his own,
Cathay was about him; and he was with the boy, Aladdin, plunging down a
flight of steps on his way to a garden that yielded fruit which was all
diamonds and rubies and pearls.