Simply call the police …

It came sharp and quiet, and he knew it for the sound that had awakened him. Sliding his legs off the bed he found his slippers and then his glasses and tiptoed out of the room, along the corridor, and down the stairs. There … again. He took long tiptoed strides past his mother who was snoring in the living room, and stopped at the windows and peered through the slats of the blinds.

They were finishing. Two men … they moved athletically like boys. One of them was shaking out a paper bag onto the lawn, the other quietly kicking the garbage about. In the middle of the street the big coupé stood without lights. The garbage can lay overturned right in the middle of the sidewalk.

Damning the street lamp for being on the other side of the street he peered to catch a glimpse of their faces. They both wore sweaters. He planted the sweaters in his memory, and breathlessly searched for their faces. The taller boy threw the empty bag down and wiped his hands and loped toward the coupé. The other boy gave something on the grass one final kick and followed. As he passed under Newman’s tree he reached up and ripped a twig from a low branch and flung it toward the house as if it were a stone.

Newman discovered himself with his hand on the knob of the door. What was required? He could not be expected to fight two of them – perhaps a third was sitting behind the wheel of the car, waiting. And yet they were spitting in his face. They were spitting at him. What was dignified, what in God’s name was dignified!

Outside the motor was turning over with the grinding of the starter. He turned the knob and walked out on the porch, having timed his appearance with the speeding away of the car.

He stood watching it roar down the street, then saw the tail light flash on as it swung around the corner and disappeared, leaving the night’s hum of silence upon the air. White and clean in his pajamas on the porch, he stared down the stoop at the glistening of some wet food leavings that were scattered in the grass. Descending the steps he pulled up his sleeves and bent over a clump of chop bones, touched them and withdrew his hands, for the bones were cold and revolted him. He stood erect.

For an instant he saw himself standing on the public street in his pajamas, surrounded by garbage. It was like a dream’s continuation and he felt the torpor of one watching his own dream. The torn, three-leafed twig caught his attention and he went to it and took it from the lawn to the curb where he dropped it. Then coming erect he looked left and right along the street and stopped moving as his eye held on a form in white near the corner. Finkelstein was standing watching him from under the street lamp there. In his hand Mr Newman could make out a garbage-pail cover. A hot sense of embarrassment pressed him toward his house and yet he could not get himself moving. It was as though to move away would confirm his demonstrated cowardice. Mr Finkelstein had set the cover down and was coming toward him, walking measuredly along the center of the street. Newman stood still. I am not afraid of him, he said to himself. For a moment it was as though the Jew had been the one to spread the garbage, for it was the Jew approaching now, and Newman had only to cope with him. He stood motionless, watching the man bearing down on him along the middle of the cambered asphalt, heard his slippers hissing, saw his belly outlined under the pajamas, and felt as though the world had stopped and left him pajamaed in the night in the open air alone with this Jew.