The Dream by Harry Bernstein

eyes were on it and we were wondering what it contained.
    He had come, he said, to say goodbye. He was going back to New York. My mother made him welcome, even though she may have had reservations about the visit and would have preferred that he had not come. Very little had been spoken about him all these past weeks since we left my grandmother’s house and I don’t think my mother felt comfortable.
    She offered to make him a cup of tea and he accepted with alacrity. He was rubbing his hands to thaw out the cold and he did not take off the worn overcoat that he had on, nor did my mother ask him to. In New York, he said, it was less bitter, but it was cold there too.
    ‘So why do you go?’ my mother asked politely.
    He chuckled, but there was no amusement in it. ‘Why do I go?’ he said and shrugged. ‘What else is there for me to do?’
    The question didn’t seem to require any answer and my mother said nothing. We all knew by now how unwelcome he was among his family. The uncles and aunts had stayed away from my grandmother’s house while he was there, and once they knew that we had discovered the old man’s business they had asked us not to tell their children. They did not want them to know that their grandfather was a street beggar and they were all uneasy while he was in Chicago.
    My mother had made the tea, pouring it for him in a glass and handing it to him with a lump of sugar. He took it gratefully, nibbled off a bit of sugar, took a small sip and sighed with pleasure. He looked across at me and asked, ‘So how is school?’
    ‘Good,’ I said.
    He nodded, holding the glass in both hands and blowing on it slightly. ‘He’ll be a big man some day,’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ my mother agreed. ‘He’s doing well at school. He gets good marks. They put him in the top grade and next year he’ll go to high school.’ She spoke proudly.
    ‘You’ll not be sorry that you came to America,’ he said.
    ‘I’ll never be sorry for that,’ my mother said. ‘The only thing I’m sorry for is that you sent me the tickets to come. If I had known who sent them I would not have come.’
    ‘And what is wrong with who sent them?’
    ‘Father’ – it sounded strange to me to hear her call him that, but what else could she have said? – ‘I must tell you, I must be honest, I can’t find fault with you, I know you are a good man, but it is the way you make your money that is not good and I want to tell you that I will pay back every cent of what you spent on the tickets.’
    ‘I can’t help the way I make my money. I used to be a roofer. From the time I was ten years old I mended roofs. In Poland, then in England, then America. I was a good roofer, but no matter how good you are age has the last say. So I fell off a roof and I was in the hospital four months and my roofing days were over. So what was left? My voice was left. I could sing songs. So I sang songs and people liked it and they gave me money. So what’s wrong? People go on the stage and sing for a living. I could not go on the stage, but I could sing, so what is terrible about that?’
    ‘I didn’t know about that,’ my mother said with genuine sympathy in her voice. ‘I didn’t know you fell off a roof and were in the hospital for four months. They never wrote to us about that. You must have been hurt very badly and I’m sorry. But it’s the way you dress up with those blue glasses and pretend you’re blind and hold up a tin cup to them and they toss money into it. That’s begging, Father.’
    My grandfather sipped his tea and thought a moment. ‘So what do people do when they’re on the stage?’ he asked. ‘They dress up in all sorts of costumes and pretend they’re somebody else. Even Caruso puts on a costume.’ He laughed. He could not be serious for long. ‘Of course, I’m not Caruso, although when I was younger I used to think I was as good as he was.’
    But my mother was not laughing. ‘What they do on the stage and what you