Before him was a brown-walled room with bare steam pipes running along the walls. There were bare brown tables and a desk. It was quiet and smelled of steam and dust. One policeman in shirtsleeves was sitting at the desk in the glow of a green gooseneck lamp. Prepared and composed, he looked up from his newspaper.

Newman walked up to the desk and looked into his wind-burned face. The policeman covered him with one vertical sweep of his eyes. ‘Have some trouble?’ he asked, doubtfully.

‘My name is Lawrence Newman. I live on 68th Street.’

‘What’s the trouble?’ the policeman insisted.

‘I was attacked and beaten up a little while ago.’

‘He rob you?’

‘No. It was six of them. Five young fellows and an older man. The Christian Front Gang.’

The policeman did not move. His forehead wrinkled. ‘How do you know?’

‘They’ve been threatening to do it a long time now.’

‘You got any of their names?’

‘No, but I’d recognize two or three of them, especially the older man.’

‘Well, that don’t help me much. We can’t go looking for people without names.’

‘Well they’ve got to be caught, that’s all I can tell you.’

‘What street was that you said?’

‘68th.’

The policeman thought, then made an O of his mouth. ‘That’s the street with the candy store on the corner.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Yeh,’ he recalled, staring vacantly at the desk, ’that’s a bad street.’ He looked up. ‘You need a doctor, or can you talk?’

‘I can talk. I’m all right, thanks.’

The policeman studied the edge of the desk, formulating his questions. Newman watched his broad Irish face. ‘How many of you people are there on that street?’ the policeman began, trying to make a plan.

‘What’s that?’ Newman whispered faintly.

‘On that street,’ the policeman said once more. ‘How many of you people live there?’

‘Well,’ said Newman, wetting his lips … and stopped.

The policeman waited for the information, looking up at him. Mr Newman searched his face for the slightest trace of animosity but found none. So it would not be quailing if he corrected the man, he felt, for the truth was he was not a Jew. But the officer had assumed he was, and it seemed now that to make the denial was to repudiate and soil his own cleansing fury of a few moments ago. As he stood there about to reply, he longed deeply for a swift charge of lightning that would with a fiery stroke break away the categories of people and change them so that it would not be important to them what tribe they sprang from. It must not be important any more, he swore, even though in his life it had been of highest importance. And as though the words would join him forever to his fury of a few moments past, and separate him forever from those he hated now, he said.

‘There are the Finkelsteins on the corner …’

‘Just them and yourself?’ the policeman interrupted.