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By Root 9137 0

said. Goldstein was remembering an episode which had occurred that afternoon. Several soldiers had been talking to a truck driver and he had heard their conversation. The truck driver was a big fellow with a round red face, and he had been telling the replacements which companies were good and which were not. As he meshed his gears and started to pull away he had shouted back, "Just hope you all don't get in F Company, that's where they stick the goddam Jewboys." There had been a roar of laughter, and someone had yelled after him, "If they stick me there, I'm resigning plumb out of the Army." And there had been more laughter. Goldstein flushed with anger recalling it. But more, he felt a hopelessness even in his rage, for he knew it would do him no good. He wished he had said something to the boy who had answered the truck driver, but the boy didn't matter. He was only trying to be smart, Goldstein thought. It was the truck driver. Goldstein saw again his brutal red face, and despite himself he felt fear. That grobe jung, that peasant, he said to himself. He felt an awful depression: that kind of face was behind all the pogroms against the Jews.

He sat down beside Roth and looked off moodily at the ocean. When Roth finished talking, Goldstein nodded his head. "Why are they like that?" he asked.

"Who?"

"The Anti-Semiten. Why don't they ever learn? Why does God permit it?"

Roth sneered. "God is a luxury I don't give myself." Goldstein struck the palm of his hand with his fist. "No, I just don't understand it. How can God look down on it and permit it? We're supposed to be the chosen people." He snorted. "Chosen! Chosen for tsoris!"

"Personally, I'm an agnostic," Roth said. For a time Goldstein stared at his hands, and then he smiled sadly. The lines deepened about his mouth, and he had a sarcastic indrawn look on his lips. "When the time comes," he said solemnly, "they won't ask you what kind of Jew you are."

"I think you worry too much about those things," Roth said. Why was it, he asked himself, that so many Jews were filled with all kinds of old wives' tales? His parents at least were modern, but Goldstein was like an old grandfather full of mutterings and curses, certain he would die a violent death. "The Jews worry too much about themselves," Roth said. He rubbed his long sad nose. Goldstein was an odd fellow, he told himself; he was enthusiastic about almost everything to the point of being a moron, and yet just start talking about politics or economics or about anything that was current affairs, and like all Jews he would turn the conversation to the same topic.

"If we don't worry," Goldstein said bitterly, "no one else will."

Roth was irritated. Just because he was a Jew too, they always assumed he felt the same way about things. It made him feel a little frustrated. No doubt some of his bad luck had come because he was one, but that was unfair; it wasn't as if he took an interest, it was just an accident of birth. "Well, let's stop talking about it," he said.

They sat watching the final brilliant striations of the sunset. After a time, Goldstein looked at his watch and squinted at the sun, which was almost entirely below the horizon. "It's two minutes later than last night," he told Roth, "I like to keep track of things like that."

"I had a friend once," Roth said, "who used to work at the weather bureau in New York."

"Did he?" Goldstein asked. "You know I always wanted to do work like that, but you need a good education for it. I understand it takes a lot of calculus."

"He did go to college," Roth admitted. He preferred a conversation like this. It was less controversial. "Yes, he went to college," Roth repeated, "but just the same he was more lucky than most of us. I'm a graduate of CCNY and it never did me any good."

"How can you say that?" Goldstein asked. "For years I wanted to be an engineer. Think of what a wonderful thing it is to be able to design anything you want." He sighed a little wistfully and then smiled. "Still I can't complain. I've been pretty lucky."

"You're better off," Roth assured