Nothing but the Truth by Richard Parrish

Author:Richard Parrish
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Hanna got home at a little before five o’clock. Magdalena had two chickens roasting in the oven and a large pot of asparagus simmering on the stove. Hanna peeled a sack of potatoes, and then she set the kitchen table, even covering it with the white tablecloth that Magdalena had washed and ironed.

Joshua and Adam were in the living room. Adam was listening to the radio. His father was reading Siddhartha again. Herman Hesse had won the Nobel prize for peace last year, and Siddhartha was his best-known work. It hadn’t been translated into English yet, so Joshua was reading it in German. His father had been a high school German teacher in Brooklyn for thirty years, and Joshua had been reared speaking German and Yiddish as well as English at home.

Siddhartha was magnificent prose, lofty, lyrical. Joshua was completely absorbed in it.

“Dad, you been thinking about a TV set?” Adam said.

“Huh?”

“You know, we were talking about a TV set.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I haven’t had a chance to think about it.” He returned to his book.

Minutes later. “Chris’s dad said they were getting one.”

“One what?”

“You know, a TV set.”

“Oh, that’s nice. You can watch his.”

Adam ignored the brush-off. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pants pocket and read, “It’s an RCA model 630TS. Chris’s dad wrote it down for me.” He held up the piece of paper for his father to see. “He said it’s a real good one. It has a ten-inch picture, and it only costs $350.”

“Only?” Joshua said.

“Yeah, he said most of the others cost a lot more, so $350 isn’t much.”

“What’s Chris’s father do, print money?”

“Naw, he’s a superintendent down at the mines.”

“Well, then he can afford it a lot better than I can. Lawyers don’t make much money.” He got up from the couch. “I’d better put on my arm.” He walked into his bedroom and closed the door. He had put the thousand dollars into his savings account at the Bank of Douglas yesterday. That way it wouldn’t burn a hole in his pocket. Anyway, he had figured it out and decided that a TV set wasn’t worth the money. He had looked at them at Goldberg’s Department Store, and the RCA for $330 was touted by the salesman as the best for less. But it wasn’t even as good as going to a movie, if you really wanted entertainment. A movie cost twenty-five cents. If he and Hanna and Adam went to a movie every Sunday, they could go for nine full years for the three hundred fifty bucks. Spending it on a TV set would be a waste.

Joshua sat on his bed for a half hour, escaping from Adam, reading Siddhartha. Then he strapped on his arm and changed into a long-sleeve dark blue cowboy shirt, freshly laundered Levis, and his tan loafers. As he went into the living room and sat on the sofa, Magdalena emerged from the bathroom. She looked like a dusky oriental

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