Davita's Harp by Chaim Potok

looked pasted to her forehead. She kept looking straight ahead and blinking her eyes.
    Mrs. Greenwood asked my father if he would say a few words to the meeting. My father rose and faced the group. He was an awkward and halting speaker, unable to carry over his normal joviality into the formality of a public talk. He never knew what to do with his hands; he kept moving them in and out of the pockets of his pants. He cleared his throat and said he would try to fill everyone in on the latest news. Telephone service between Spain andParis had been cut, he said. This was true also of telephone service between Spain and London as well as Spain and Lisbon. There were reports that a revolt had broken out. No one knew as yet how serious it was. “My own feeling is that we’re seeing the start of a long civil war. I think that Germany and Italy will probably come in on the side of Franco. The only power that will stand against the Fascists will be Russia. The British, the French, the Americans won’t lift a finger to help Spain. The alternatives are going to be an active alliance either with communism or with fascism, or neutrality—which will be the same as a passive alliance with fascism. And we know what choice decent people will make. That’s the way things look to me. I’ll be happy to try to answer your questions.”
    There were some questions. After a while he sat down. I saw he was sweating. My mother put her fingers on his arm. He slumped back in his chair.
    Mrs. Greenwood was introducing my mother and talking about a man called Angelo Herndon and some people named Scottsboro and about the Unemployment Insurance Bill and the Social Workers Conference. “Here is our own very special Anne Chandal,” she said.
    My mother stood and faced the audience.
    I almost never understood anything my mother said when she spoke before a group. She would be seated in a chair or, like tonight, be standing, and she would start by saying something like, “Capitalism and humanism are contradictory concepts,” or, “Marx states that the bourgeoisie tends to regard the wife as an instrument of production,” or, “Engels makes the point that the modern family is based on the domestic enslavement of the woman”—and I would be unable to follow her words. My father, normally effusive and gregarious, talked dully and drily about facts; my mother, normally gentle-voiced and reticent, talked dramatically and excitedly about ideas.
    My mother had begun to speak. I glanced at Teresa. She sat stiffly with her hands in her lap, her face impassive. Her eyes hadceased their nervous blinking. What was it like, guns and screams and shooting and your cousin dead on the street? I could not imagine it. I put my fingers on her arm and pressed gently. She stared at me in sudden alarm and jerked her arm away.
    I looked at my mother. “Let no one misunderstand us,” she was saying. “When the proper time comes we will be as prompt with action as we are now with words. Thank you for your attention.”
    There was a loud burst of applause. My mother returned to her chair, her face flushed. The applause went on for another minute or two, then came to an end.
    Mrs. Greenwood introduced Jakob Daw. “He has come to America from Europe on a special mission to raise funds for an international anti-Fascist organization which he and other writers are establishing to help writers whose lives have been shattered by Hitler. Mr. Jakob Daw.”
    Jakob Daw rose slowly and stood before the group. He put on his silver-rimmed spectacles and removed from an inside pocket of his jacket a sheaf of papers.
    “I am a writer of stories,” he said quietly in his raspy voice. “A writer is a strange instrument of our species, a harp of sorts, fine-tuned to the dark contradictions of life. A writer is uncomfortable making speeches. I have made many speeches these past weeks. You will please forgive me if tonight, instead of making another speech, I read you a story I have just