I looked at him. 'I thought he might be sick. I thought your sister said -, '

'He's not sick,' Danny broke in. He lowered his hand. 'I – I really don't want to talk about it.'

'All right,' I said quietly. 'But I don't think I want to study any Talmud this morning. I'm going to take a long walk.'

He didn't say anything. But his face was sad and brooding as I went out of his room.

When I saw Reb Saunders again at lunch, he seemed to have forgotten the incident completely. But I found myself thinking carefully now before I said anything to him. And I was constantly on my guard with him from that time on.

During an afternoon in the last week of July, Danny began talking about his brother. We were sitting in the library, reading, when he suddenly looked up, rested his head in the palm of his right hand, the elbow-on the table, and said his eyes were bothering him again and that he wouldn't be at all surprised if he ended up wearing glasses soon, his brother was having glasses made and he was only nine. I told him his brother didn't seem to be doing much reading, what did he need glasses for.

'It has nothing to do with reading,' Danny said. 'His eyes are just plain bad, that's all.'

'Your eyes look bloodshot,' I told him.

'They are bloodshot,' he said.

'Your eyes look as if you've been reading Freud: 'Ha – ha,' Danny said.

'What does Freud say about an ordinary thing like bloodshot eyes?'

'He says to rest them.'

'A genius,' I said.

'You know, my brother's a good kid,' Danny said. 'His sickness is quite a handicap, but everything considered he's a good kid.'

'He's quiet, I'll say that for him. Does he study at all?'

'Oh, sure. He's bright, too. But he has to be careful. My father can't pressure him.'

'Lucky boy.'

'I don't know. I wouldn't want to be sick all my life. I'd much rather be pressured. He's a nice kid, though.'

'Your sister's pretty nice, too,' I said.

Danny didn't seem to have heard me – or if he had, he chose to ignore my words completely. He went on talking about his brother. 'It must really be hell to walk around sick all the time and have to depend upon pills. He's really a sweet kid. And bright, too.' He seemed to be rambling, and I wasn't sure I knew what he was trying to say. His next words jarred me. 'He'd probably make a fine tzaddik,' he said.

I looked at him. 'How's that again?'

'I said my brother would probably make a fine tzaddik,' Danny said quietly. 'It occurred to me recently that if I didn't take my father's place I wouldn't be breaking the dynasty after all. My brother could take over. I had talked myself into believing that if I didn't take his place I would break the dynasty. I think I had to justify to myself having to become a tzaddik.'

I was frightened and said tightly, 'Your home hasn't blown up recently, so I take it you haven't told your father.'

'No, I haven't. And I'm not going to, either. Not yet.'

'When will you tell him? Because I'm going to be out of town that day.'

'No,' he said quietly. 'I'm going to need you around that day.'

'I was only kidding,' I told him, feeling sick with dread.

'It also occurred to me recently that all my concern about my brother's health was a fake. I don't have much of a relationship with him at all He's such a kid. I pity him a little, that's all. I was really concerned about his health because all along I've wanted him to be able to take my father's place. That was something all right, when I realized that. How am I doing? Are you bored yet?'

'I'm bored stiff,' I said. 'I can't wait until the day you tell your father.'

'You'll wait,' Danny said tightly, blinking his eyes. 'You'll wait, and you'll be around, too, because I'm going to need you.'

'Let's talk about your sister for a change,' I said.

'I heard you the first time. Let's not talk about my sister, if you don't mind. Let's talk about my father. You want to know how I feel about my father? I admire him. I don't know what he's trying to do to me with this weird silence that he's established between us, but I admire him. I think he's a great man. I respect him and trust him completely, which is why I think I can live with his silence. I don't know why I trust him, but I do. And I pity him, too. Intellectually, he's trapped. He was born trapped. I don't ever want to be trapped the way he's trapped. I want to be able to breathe, to think what I want to think, to say the things I want to say. I'm trapped now, too. Do you know what it's like to be trapped?'

I shook my head slowly.

'How could you possibly know?' Danny said. 'It's the most hellish, choking, constricting feeling in the world. I scream with every bone in my body to get out of it. My mind cries to get out of it. But I can't. Not now. One day I will, though. I'll want you around on that day, friend. I'll need you around on that day.'

I didn't say anything. We sat in silence a long time. Then Danny slowly closed the Freud book he had been reading. 'My sister's been promised,' he told me quietly.

'What?'

'My father promised my sister to the son of one of his followers when she was two years old. It's an old Hasidic custom to promise children away. She'll be married when she reaches eighteen. I think we ought to go over and visit your father now.'

That was the only time Danny and I ever talked about his sister.

A week later. I went up with my father to our cottage near Peekskill. While we were there, America destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, and the war with Japan came to an end.

I didn't tell my father about that last conversation I had with Danny, and I had many nightmares that year in which Reb Saunders screamed at me that I had poisoned his son's mind.

That September Danny and I entered Hirsch College. I had grown to five feet nine inches, an inch shorter than Danny, and I was shaving. Danny hadn't changed much physically during his last year in high school. The only thing different about him was that he was now wearing glasses.

By the end of our first week in college, Danny was feeling thoroughly miserable. He had discovered that psychology in the Samson Raphael Hirsch Seminary and College meant experimental psychology only, and that the chairman of the department, Professor Nathan Appleman, had an intense distaste for psychoanalysis in general and for Freud in particular.

Danny was quite vocal about his feelings toward Professor Appleman and experimental psychology. We would meet in the mornings in front of my synagogue and walk from there to the trolley, and for two months he did nothing during those morning trolley rides except talk about the psychological textbook he was reading – he didn't say 'studying', he said 'reading' – and the rats and mazes in the psychology laboratory. 'The next thing you know they'll stick me with a behaviourist.' he lamented. 'What do rats and mazes have to do with the mind?'

I wasn't sure I knew what a behaviorist was, and I didn't want to make him more miserable by asking him. I felt a little sorry for him, mostly because I had found college to be exciting and was thoroughly enjoying my books and my teachers, while he seemed to be going deeper and deeper into misery.

The building that housed the college stood on Bedford Avenue.

It was a six-story building, and it occupied half a block of a busy store filled street. The noise of the traffic on the street came clearly through the windows and into our classrooms. Behind the college was a massive brownstone armory, and a block away, across the street, was a Catholic church with a huge cross on its lawn upon which was the crucified figure of Jesus. In the evenings, a green spotlight shone upon the cross, and we could see it clearly from the stone stairs in front of the college.