He took the glasses down from his face. Now he could see less clearly than ever and his eyes roved dizzily for a moment. He walked weak-kneed out of the bathroom along the corridor to the closet where he hung up his jacket, then down the stairs into the living room. His mother, with the Brooklyn Eagle in her lap, had turned on the bridge lamp behind her, which she did only after he came in at night, and sat looking at him in the doorway waiting to start the short evening conversation that was equivalent to hello.

He could smell his dinner on the stove. He knew where every piece of furniture stood and how much it had cost and how long it would be before he would have to paint the ceiling again. It was his house, his home, and this old woman sitting in the wheelchair by the silent radio was his mother, and yet he moved as stiffly as if he were a stranger here. He sat on the couch before her and they talked.

‘Did you hang up your jacket? Was it very hot in the city today? Did they push you in the train? Were you busy? How is Mr Gargan?’

And he answered the questions and went in and ate his supper which the day maid had left for him. Tasting nothing and digesting nothing, he finished nothing. When he was through he washed his face at the kitchen sink and dried it with a towel which he kept down there for that purpose. Strangely, all he could think of was how clearly he had seen the bristles of his toothbrush. He took his paper of the previous night which he had not finished – he always finished last night’s before starting on tonight’s – and sat again on the couch under the lamp, and put on his glasses. Feeling pressure around his arms he slipped off his black sleeve garters and placed them beside him. His mother called his name. He looked up and turned his full face to her. She studied him, gradually leaning forward in her chair. He smiled weakly, just as he did when he bought a new suit.

‘Why,’ she laughed at last,’ you almost look like a Jew.’

He laughed with her, feeling that his teeth were sticking out.

‘Couldn’t you get the rimless kind?’

‘I tried them on. They all do the same thing to me. These are better than any on that account.’

‘I don’t suppose anyone will notice,’ she said, and picked up her Eagle and held it high to catch the light.

‘I guess not,’ he said, and picked up his Eagle. His body was wet and his face dry and cool. A breeze was moving through the house from the back yard. From the street came a quick swell of children’s shouts which faded as they chased each other away. Annoyed, he exchanged a scandalized look with his mother at this infraction of the block’s peaceful tone. The traditional feel of the moment was like a breath of sanity, reassuring him. He turned to his paper and for the first time ever, it seemed, he could read it comfortably. Ordinarily, because his eyes had tired so quickly, he studied through little else but the lead story about the war, often losing his way among memories of his own bleak year in France. Tonight, however, he even delved into the little squibs at the bottom of the pages. And one of these he read perhaps five times. It was a short note. It said that vandals had invaded a Jewish cemetery the night before and overturned three headstones and marked the swastika over others. Reading it engrossed him as detective stories once had. There was a tang of violence to the story, the same threat of dark deeds and ruthless force that flowed out to him from the subway pillars. His eyes kept massaging the two paragraphs as though to draw out the last wave of emotion from them.