‘I got a little cut,’ Newman said. ‘And they did manage to twist my glasses.’ His voice sang just a little.

Fred seemed to realize it was not going to be as easy as he had at first imagined. ‘Well what do you want, Larry? I couldn’t help it, could I?’

‘We’ll forget that. I’m not saying you could’ve or you couldn’t’ve. We’ll forget it. I just don’t want to be molested again, Fred.’

‘Mistakes happen. They get excited, Larry.’

‘That’s what I figure. But they aren’t excited when they spill over my garbage can.’

‘Did they do that?’ Hollowly the voice rose in astonishment.

‘Let’s stop fooling around, Fred. I told you about it.’

‘Yeh, but you don’t want to keep accusing a fella, Larry, I didn’t know any thing about …’

‘Well you must’ve known, Fred. The garbage was all over the grass both times.’

‘All right, so what do you want me to do?’

‘I want to be left alone, Fred. I want you to tell them to leave me alone.’

Fred did not answer. In the dark Mr Newman could not see his expression, and so he waited, and he felt that anything could happen. It was clear to him now that he hated Fred with a bloody hate. The man was a slimy liar, the man was a snake.

‘Well? What do you say, Fred?’ Mr Newman insisted. He was very stiff in his chair.

‘You talk like I was the leader of the outfit, Larry.’

‘You’re leader enough to have them take my name off their list.’

‘What list?’

‘The list of Jews.’

‘Who told you we got a list?’

‘I know you have a list and I want you to take my name off it.’

‘How’m I going to do that, Larry?’

‘That’s something you know, I don’t.’ It was too bad, but he had to say it, he had to. Nothing could proceed, he knew, unless he said it. ‘You ought to have more sense than to make a Jew out of me, Fred.’

‘Nobody’s making a Jew out of you, Larry.’

‘They don’t attack a man twice unless they think he’s a Jew. Not twice they don’t.’

‘Tonight they just got excited.’

‘And somebody there didn’t get excited, Fred. That rough-housing was as easy to stop as it was to start.’

‘I said I wasn’t there when it happened.’

‘I say you were, Fred.’

‘Well OK, then, I’m a liar.’

‘Nobody called you a liar. Sit down, will you, I want to talk to you.’

‘I got to go in.’

‘No, I want to talk to you, Fred. Sit down.’

‘All right, but I wasn’t there.’

They sat in silence for a moment. And the silence was threatening to seal over Newman’s ebbing flow of speech, so he spoke again before he would have liked to.

‘I want you to tell me something frankly. Do they think I’m really Jewish?’

Fred took a moment. It was good, Mr Newman thought again, that it was happening in the dark this way.