In the World of Western Literature — When the Orphan Becomes a Father..!

In the world of Western literature

The narrator said:

People tell delightful tales about abandoned little ones, about their sweetness, and about their stinging answers that come as though "engraved and inlaid."

But Johnny — our son by adoption — was not like other children. He was a "street tough"; his talk was like that of alley boys, and his movements were so violent that at first we feared to let him share in the life of our three children.

Before he came to our house he used to "run wild" with a gang of idlers older than himself. One day they laid stones on a railway line and threw a freight train off the track. The older ones were sent to the "reformatory," and the judges began asking themselves what they were to do with Johnny, who was only ten years old.

His mother was dead; as for his father, he was in the ranks of those who can find no work. When we heard his story we came forward and asked to take him to our summer place on the seashore for two weeks, until his case could be arranged and he sent to a suitable orphanage.

And so Johnny arrived at our house carrying a few belongings in a paper bag. He set his bundle on the floor, and his eyes traveled to the table laid for supper.

He shouted:

— What? Is that meat?? And on a Wednesday! "You monkey"!! Do you always eat like this??

I served him a "heaping" plate of meat and vegetables, and he plunged into it with both hands, without fork or knife, and gulped down all that was in it; then he added a second plate. He gorged himself to the point of sickness, so I called in a doctor for him, and when he had examined him he said:

— This is a boy all but dead of hunger. Feed him — only — a teaspoon of milk with a crust of soaked bread every hour, until his stomach is able to receive the other kinds of food.

I put Johnny to bed. The "pajamas" of my six-year-old son hung slack around that skeleton. It was easy to count his ribs one by one, and his shoulder-blades stuck out like those pasteboard wings children wear on Christmas Eve.

And I fell to communing with myself, while I fed the little starveling spoonful after spoonful of bread soaked in milk:

— What has come over me, that I should have sunk myself into this "plunge-bath"?

After this Johnny improved; he became able to eat three meals a day, but he remained strange in face and figure. The sight of his "lifeless" skin was truly painful. And that drooping mouth, and that forehead wrinkled "like an accordion" — and there was in his voice a deep hoarseness, as if rising from the tombs, that made us fear consumption for him.

Johnny knew that he was in our house for fifteen days only, and when the time came for him to go he was seized with violent vomiting. I put him to bed, and while I was dosing him he began to implore me, in the grip of a mad terror:

— Oh! Oh... let me stay with you, if you will. I'll do everything you want me to do, if it pleases you to keep me with you.

I said:

— And how am I to keep you?? You never stop hitting the children, and you cheat at every game, so that not one child will play with you, and you never speak one word of truth, so that we do not even know what to believe.

He said, begging and imploring:

— I promise you — if you keep me — to become a sensible boy.

And my heart softened. And I promised him that I would keep him. In the evening he ran to meet "Papa," to carry him the glad news... I was uneasy, asking myself how the matter would strike my husband... and my mind was set at rest when he came in and said with the utmost simplicity:

— It appears we have been blessed with a new boy.

A nervous cough seized me, and my husband said:

— There is a little room up under the roof-tiles; what use is it to us?

I said:

— But it is crammed with boxes and suitcases.

He said:

— That's just it! Put Johnny in it!

*

A few days later Johnny said to me:

— May I call you "Mama" like the others?

And the next day, before dawn had broken, we heard the cry "Mama!" echoing in the hallway. My husband sighed and said:

— There you are! That's he! Answer him — perhaps he wants to make sure you haven't flown away in the night.

So I cried:

— Johnny, Johnny, here I am — what do you want?

And he wanted nothing... He had been longing to shout "Mama." So he said, stammering, as if hunting for something to say:

— M... M... Mama, I've put my shirt on!

At the end of the summer Johnny changed from one state to another. After an operation on his nose he breathed naturally with his mouth closed; his cheeks glowed with a bright color, and the wrinkles vanished from his forehead. His head was finely formed, and his black eyes gleamed under thick black hair..

From the spiritual side, however, Johnny was a grave problem... I quickly understood why he resorted to lying: he lied for fear of punishment, like all children exposed to harsh treatment. And he lied to raise himself in the eyes of the fortunate children... telling them — for instance — of a trip he made in an airplane and the acrobatic stunts he performed.

One day, when we were out fishing, we caught a fish of the "balloon-fish" kind — the kind which, if touched ever so lightly, swells and swells, and does not return to its natural state unless you bring down a little tap upon it, whereupon it begins to shrink until it comes back to its first size. I performed the experiment before the children, and from that day on they teased Johnny whenever he told a lying story, shouting in his face:

— Balloon-fish! Balloon-fish!

And these simple words worked upon Johnny more than all the sermons of the grown-ups.

Johnny took his great step forward at the piano, the day we returned from the summer place to our house in the city. Until that hour we had not known that he was one of the gifted. Scarcely had we entered the house and he caught sight of the piano when he cried out:

— A piano! A piano too! May I play?

And while we were unpacking the bags he sat down at the piano, trying to play a tune he knew. He hunted for the notes, and when he went wrong he began again. He did not come to the table at supper time, so I brought him his food on a tray and said to him:

— Eat whenever you like.

His eyes shone. The clock struck ten and he was still at the tune, and early in the morning he was back at the attempt. My husband sighed, hiding his head under the pillow:

— Do you hear? Is your son a Mozart??

At five o'clock in the afternoon Johnny shouted:

— Mama! Mama! Listen — I've found the tune!

He had truly found the tune, and he began playing it with both hands together. And so we gave him music lessons, and he became the only one among the children who forced me to say:

— For heaven's sake, Johnny, stop a little; you have worked quite enough.

Thus his artistic gifts gave him confidence in himself, and he stopped lying.

Music, however, had no power to root out his second failing: he was cowardly and craven, not daring even to play ball. So we bought him the equipment for base-ball, and he took it joyfully to school; in the evening he came back weeping and complaining:

— Not one of the boys will play with me. They all say I'm afraid of the ball!

I took him out to the yard of the house to play with him, and I had hardly thrown the ball when he panicked and covered his head with his hands. And then I understood! How often he had been beaten! So that the least motion of the arms made him shrink back in terror.

My husband set about playing with him with patience and forbearance — first with a rubber ball, then with a hard ball. And one day our little daughter was "riding" a wall — as small children will — and her father threw her the ball; she caught it deftly and threw it at Johnny, who was astonished that a little girl could play with such skill. He caught the ball in flight without any fear, and when night fell and he went into his room he shouted in triumph:

— Tonight I'm going to put out the light! Now that I'm no longer afraid of the ball, I shall never be afraid of anything again!

And he feared nothing any more. At school he joined the players' team and became leader of the students' band. By his diligence he won a scholarship for four years at the university, and all the while he earned his living by working in stores or restaurants, or by playing in the bands of dance halls. At last he obtained a "pilot's" certificate at the aviation center, and today he is in the naval air fleet.

Before he left for his service, I entered the hospital for a dangerous operation, after which I needed a quantity of blood. Johnny gave me the quantity required. And when his blood was in my veins he said to me, beaming:

— There, Mama! Now we are mother and son truly and in fact, for one and the same blood runs in our veins!

*

Footnote: The translator, poor and in need of God's mercy, Salma Sayegh, says:

I have rendered into Arabic, for the dear women readers, this tale, which shows the longing of deprived children for love... and here I present it to them without any comment....