"A good story! How do you know? I ain't come to the point yet. But never mind, if you like it so much you don't need any point." "The point, Feodor. Excuse me." "Well, the point is that Pitzela and the way he treats his son is a scandal. You know why? Because he uses his son as an advertisement. Pitzela's son, mind you, is so weak and old that he can hardly walk and he carries a heavy cane and his hands shake like leaves. And Pitzela drags him around all over. To banquets. To political meetings. To the Yiddish theater. All over. He holds him by the arm and brings him into the hall and sits him down in a chair. And Pitzela's son sits so tired and almost dead he can't move. And then Pitzela jumps up and gets excited and says: 'Look at him. A fine son, for you! Look, he's almost dead. Tell me if you wouldn't think he was my father and I was his son? Instead of the other way around? I ask you.'" "And what does Pitzela's son say, Feodor?" "Say? What can he say? He looks up and shakes his head some more. He can hardly see. And when the banquet talking begins he falls asleep and Pitzela has to hold him up from falling out of the chair. And when the food is done and the dessert comes Pitzela leans over and says to his son: 'Listen. I got a treat for you. Here.' And he reaches into his pocket and brings out a handful of hickory nuts. 'Crack them with your teeth,' he says, 'like your father.' And when his son looks at him and strokes his white beard and sighs, Pitzela jumps up and laughs so you can hear him all over the banquet hall. But the point of the story is that two weeks ago Pitzela went to his grandson's funeral. It was Pitzela's son's son and he was a man almost 70 years old. And it was a scandal at the funeral. Why? Because Pitzela laughed and coming back from the grave he said: 'Look at me, my grandson dies and I go to his funeral and if he had a son I would go to his, too, and I would dance jigs both times.'" PANDORA'S BOX A dark afternoon with summer thunder in the sky. The fan-shaped skyscrapers spread a checkerboard of window lights through the gloom. It rains. People seem to grow vaguely elate on the dark wet pavements. They hurry along, their eyes saying to one another, "We have something in common. We are all getting wet in the rain." The crowd is no longer quite so enigmatic a stranger to itself. An errand boy from Market Street advances with leaps through the downpour, a high chant on his lips, "It's raining ... it's raining." The rain mutters and the pavements, like darkened mirrors, grow alive with impressionistic cartoons of the city.