‘Come on,’ he said, shaking.

At his touch, Finkelstein rose. His heavy arm was quivering and wet. The blood was even spreading the stain that covered the whole front of his shirt. Newman held onto his arm and they walked to the door and out of the store. Finkelstein waited dumbly on the sidewalk while Newman snapped the lock and pulled the door shut. The lights stayed on. Newman led his friend along the sidewalk and up the path of his house and onto the porch, where he opened the front door for him.

‘Isn’t your wife home?’ he asked.

Finkelstein shook his head. ‘She took the boy and the old man to the Bronx. The relatives.’

Newman took him into the kitchen and turned on the light. The shirt was too soaked to unbutton, so they ripped it off and dropped it out on the back porch. From the refrigerator Newman took a tray of cubes and emptied them into a dishtowel and held them against Finkelstein’s forehead. Holding them that way he made the Jew sit on a chair with his head leaning back against the white-pine table top.

Newman looked around the kitchen as he stood with his hand holding down the compress. The room was astonishingly clean. It’s true, he thought, the Jews are a sanitary people. And then it occurred to him that they were supposed to be dirty. And with the side of his head throbbing and his hands still shaking he looked down at the discolored face of Finkelstein. As he turned to look his eye caught a mirror hanging beside the door and he found his image there. His cheekbone was blue. His tie was gone completely. He remembered his overcoat. The nose-piece of his glasses was dug way into his flesh … he must have been pressing them against his face all the time, he realized. He walked around Finkelstein’s feet and changed hands holding the compress, and got close to the mirror and blinked dreamily at his face.

In all his life he had never known such calm, despite the torrent of blood rushing through him. Within his raging body a stillness had grown very wide and very deep and he stared at his image feeling the texture of this peace. It was almost a tone he seemed to be hearing, level and low and far away. He stood there listening to it.

When he had put Finkelstein to bed, he walked out of the house and went into the store and turned out the lights. Again the tone of that calm sang low in his ears and he stood in the dark store as though to draw the sound out clearer, trying to fathom why it made him feel so assured and empty of fear. He went out the door and tested it to see that it was locked and then went back in the house and left the store key on the telephone table. With his hand on the light switch of the living room he paused a moment and looked about the room. His nostrils studied the air. Again and again he turned his eyes on every piece of furniture in the room as though expecting to discover something strange.