Humming, he paraded down to the buffet, where small
beer and smaller tobacco were sold, to buy another pound of
striped candy for the offspring of the Russian Jews.
The children knew he was coming. "Fat rascals," he chuckled,
touching their dark cheeks, pretending to be frightened as they
pounded soft fists against the iron side of the ship or rolled
unregarded in the scuppers. Their shawled mothers knew him,
too, and as he shyly handed about the candy the chattering
stately line of Jewish elders nodded their beards like the
forest primeval in a breeze, saying words of blessing in a
strange tongue.
He smiled back and made gestures, and shouted "Land! Land!" with
several variations in key, to make it sound foreign.
But he withdrew for the sacred moment of seeing the Land of
Promise he was newly discovering--the Long Island shore; the
grass-clad redouts at Fort Wadsworth; the vast pile of New York
sky-scrapers, standing in a mist like an enormous burned forest.
"Singer Tower.... Butterick Building," he murmured, as they
proceeded toward their dock.
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