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Sunday, January 31st, 2010

    Time Event
    12:53a
    In a few seconds Goldstein had joined him The...
    In a few seconds Goldstein had joined him

    The platoon reached the end of the jungle after five hours of cutting trailThe jungle was bordered by another stream, and on the other side yellow hills covered only with kunai grass or an occasional grove of shrubbery rolled away toward the northThe sunlight was brilliant, reflected with an incredible glare from all the bare hills and the clear blazing arch of the skyThe men, accustomed to the gloom of the jungle, blinked their eyes, were uncertain, a little afraid of the vast open spaces before themIt was all so bare, so painful
    All that space!


    The Time Machine:
    JOEY GOLDSTEIN
    THE COVE OF BROOKLYN

    A sturdy man about twenty-seven, perhaps, with blond straight hair and eager blue eyesHis nose is sharp, and there are deep sad lines which extend from his nose to the corners of his mouthIf it were not for this, he would look very youngHis speech is quick and sincere and a little breathless as if afraid he will not be permitted to finish

    The candy store is small and dirty as are all the stores on the cobblestoned streetWhen it louis vuitton hangbags drizzles the cobblestones wash bare and gleaming on top, and the manhole covers puff forth their shapeless gouts of mistThe night fogs cloak the muggings, the gangs who wander raucously through the darkness, the prostitutes, and the lovers mating in the dark bedrooms with the sweating stained wallpaper of brownThe walls of the street fester in summer, are clammy in winter; there is an aged odor in this part of the city, a compact of food scraps, of shredded dung balls in the cracks of the cobblestones, of tar, smoke, the sour damp scent of city people, and the smell of coal stoves and gas stoves in the cold-water flatsAll of them blend and lose identity
    In the daytime, the peddlers stand at the curb and hawk their fruit and vegetablesMiddle-aged women in black shapeless coats pluck at the food with shrewd grudging fingers, probing it to the marrowCautiously, the women step out from the sidewalk to avoid the water in the gutters, stare with temptation at the fish heads that the owner of the fish store has just cast into the streetThe blood gives a sheen to the cobblestone at first, fades, watch replicas cartier becomes pink, and then is lost in the sewer waterOnly the smell of fish remains together with the dung balls, the tar, the rich uncertain odors of the smoked meats in the delicatessen windows
    The candy store is at the end of the street, a tiny place with grease in the ledges of the window, and rust replacing the paintThe front window slides open doubtfully to make a counter where people can buy things from the street, but the window is cracked and dust settles on the candyInside there is a narrow marble counter and an aisle about two feet wide for the customers who stand on the eroded oilclothIn the summer it is sticky, and the pitch comes off on one's shoesOn the counter are two glass jars with metal covers and a bent ladling spoon containing essence of cherry, essence of orange(Coca-Cola is not yet in vogue Between them is a tan moist cube of halvah on a block of woodThe flies are sluggish, and one has to prod them before they fly away
    There is no way to keep the place cleanGoldstein, Joey's mother, is an industrious woman, and every morning and night she sweeps out the place, washes the omega speedmaster leather counter, dusts the candy, and scrubs the floor, but the grime is too ancient, it has bedded into the deepest crevices of the store, the house next door, the street beyond, it has spread into the pores and cells of everything alive and unaliveThe store cannot remain clean, and every week it is a little dirtier, a little more suppurated with the caries of the street

    The old man Moshe Sefardnick sits in the rear of the place on a camp stoolThere is never any work for him to do and indeed he is too old for it, too bewilderedThe old man has never been able to understand AmericaIt is too large, too fast, the ordered suppressed castes of centuries wither here; people are always in fluxHis neighbors become wealthier, move away from the East Side to Brooklyn, to the Bronx, to the upper West Side; some of them lose their little businesses, drift farther down the street to another hovel, or migrate to the countryHe has been a peddler himself; in the spring before the first World War, he has carried his goods on his back, tramped the dirt roads through small New Jersey towns, selling scissors and new louis vuitton handbags thread and needlesBut he has never understood it and now in his sixties he is prematurely senile, an old man relegated to the back of a tiny candy store, drifting in Talmudic halls of thought(If a man hath a worm on his brain, it may be removed by laying a cabbage leaf near the orifice onto which the worm will crawl
    His grandson, Joey, now seven, comes home from school weeping, a bruise on his faceMa, they beat me up, they beat me up, they called me sheenie
    Who did, who was it?
    It was the Italian kids, a whole gang, they beat me up
    The sounds move in the old man's mind, alter his thought streamAn undependable people; in the Inquisition they let the Jews in at Genoa, but at Naples
    He shrugs, watches the mother wash the blood away, fit a patch of adhesive to the cut
    The old man laughs to himself, the delicate filtered laughter of a pessimist who is reassured that things have turned out badlyNu, this America is not so differentThe old man sees the goy faces staring at the victims
    Joey, he calls in a harsh cracked voice
    What is it, zaydee?
    The goyim, what did they call cheap replica rolex you?
    Sheen

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