There were three Ages of Man in Hârl?u, my home town in northern Rumania. The first began on the fourth birthday, when we entered cheder, or Hebrew school, and ended at eleven. For a while, the periods of study were short, and we children spent most of the time playing in the yard. Our play did not take the form of athletic games. We just ran about and fought with each other. As we grew older, the periods of study grew longer and the intervals of play shorter, and then they disappeared altogether. At the secular school, which we began to attend when we were seven, the opportunities for outdoor activity were a little better. The school was situated on a hill at the edge of the crowded town and it had a larger yard than the cheder. Yet there were no organized athletics. During the luncheon period we improvised running contests or matches that mixed boxing and wrestling.

The fact was we had no time for sports. We attended cheder both before and after secular school hours. That left only the Sabbath. But the Sabbath was holy to the sports-haters, that is, to the whole world of adults. You were not supposed to do anything strenuous. If you got far enough away from the center of town, a ball game—we played a kind of stickball—might be arranged. The appearance of an adult in the distance broke the game up immediately.

From the beginning, I was poor at games. My schoolmates nicknamed me der tsekrochener, which means the disintegrated or unraveled one. I was left to myself. I took to reading and spent a very happy childhood.

The first Age of Man ended, officially, at Bar Mitzvah. But long before we were confirmed, at thirteen, our elders began to woo us from the childishness of play by treating us en égal. “Look at him,” they would say, “still playing ball and he will be Bar Mitzvah in two years!” Bicycling, however, was not considered improper for boys in their teens. Those of us who went to the lycée had to take easy tests in minor exercises, such as bending or rope climbing. Then life began in earnest. Marriage inaugurated the third, and last, Age of Man. I do not remember a married man—and people married young—engaging in any sport or athletic activity. It was just not done.

When my family migrated to the United States, I was sixteen years old. That is to say, I was fully an adult. Play and games were behind me. My brother Samuel was only nine and he shifted promptly from Rumanian stickball to baseball. American boys played ball right out in the open. Adults did not interfere. Indeed, they often stopped to watch with envy. My father did not understand it. Despite his protests, Samuel refused to grow up and stop playing. But I, der tsekrochener of cheder days, was a “good boy.” I did not take up American sports. I had trouble with my knees—later, psychoanalysts tried to persuade me, unsuccessfully, that the trouble lay somewhere else—and this caused me to give up even bicycling, which I had learned in Hârl?u.

_____________

Such was my athletic history when I came up against the swimming requirement at City College in New York. You had to know how to swim in order to graduate. Only a physical disability could excuse a student from fulfilling this iron requirement. My academic standing was good, but diplomas had been denied to excellent students, or so it was rumored. The test was given in the sophomore year, at the end of the long compulsory hygiene course. It was a mere formality for the majority of students.

But swimming was another of the sports I had missed out on in Hârl?u. At the lycée, music, drawing, and gymnastics were classified as “minor” subjects. No student was failed if he did badly in any or even all of them. However, if he failed in one of the five or six major subjects, such as history, science, or Rumanian literature, he had to repeat the whole year. In the United States, a college diploma hinged on a single sport!

This seemed so unnatural to me that I made no effort to learn to swim. Besides, I was terrified of water. About two weeks before the day of the test, after a “hygiene” class in the gymnasium, I went down to the pool and asked the instructor in charge to give me a lesson. He must have thought I was joking. “Just jump in there”—he pointed to the shallow end—“and swim!” He turned away.

I jumped in and drowned. Or so it seemed. I stood up and began to splash about. After a few afternoons of trying, I experienced that miraculous moment when you realize that, while you aren’t swimming, you aren’t walking either. Evidently swimming was possible. From that moment, things went faster. I was soon able to move a few yards without grabbing the railing or standing up. Nobody told me that one could breathe out, or open one’s eyes, under water, or that one could float. I had to jerk my head out constantly. Nobody had shown me how to coordinate the movements of arms and legs or how to keep the body in alignment. My swimming was a wild flailing of limbs, and alternate sinking and bobbing. With this /?/ode of locomotion, I was at last able to do the whole length of the pool. I kept near the railing, however, just in case. But doing a whole length exhausted me, and I had to rest afterwards.

One dull morning, my gym class took the test. Perhaps a hundred students walked down to the pool, in double file. I asked my partner what distance we had to swim. He said, four lengths of the pool. I stopped in my tracks. I said I could swim only one lap. I turned back. I could not pass the test; I could not graduate from City College. My partner pulled me forward.

“Go in and do what you can,” he insisted. “It makes a better impression if you try.”

“I can’t do four laps,” I repeated.

We were now in the basement, and the instructor called upon four students to line up at the deep end of the pool. The students dived in, swam the length of the pool quickly, turned around, did a second lap, turned again, and again, and then practically leaped out of the water. One, two, three, four! Four others dived in. One, two, three, four, and they were out. Suddenly I was standing at the end of the pool. The instructor gave the signal. Three students dived in, and I fell in and did a belly-flop. When I came up I made for the railing, but was careful not to touch it. The others had turned about twice and came up from behind as I was laboring through my first lap. I approached the end of the pool, which was also the end of my college career. I saw the face of my mother. How could I tell her that I had failed to graduate because I could not swim? I decided to turn around, come what may. For the first time, I was starting on a second lap. Bobbing up and down, and zigzagging toward the railing, I dodged heavy traffic. Another group of swimmers was flying past me. I caught a glimpse of the instructor: he had noticed that I had not returned with my group. I was becoming exhausted as I neared the end of my second lap. Desperately, I turned back again. I was full of water, out of breath, and stayed longer under water than above it.

_____________

The class gathered around the pool to watch me, mostly in amusement. As I struggled toward the end of the third lap, I heard them cheering me on. I arrived at the end of the pool more dead than alive. Nevertheless I turned around again. I preferred drowning—which I feared but could not conceive—to failing. I will not get out of this pool, I kept thinking, until I pass the test. Another group of swimmers dashed past, and I made more often for the railing. Nothing in the world could make me touch it and invalidate the test. The instructor had, by then, become concerned. He cleared the pool. Several good swimmers dived in and began to circle around me. I swam away from them. They must not touch me! My movements were feeble and my progress all but invisible. I must have covered twice as much ground as necessary, since I could not keep a straight line.

Finally, I went under, but with a last spurt of will rose and came to the end of the pool. I could not raise myself out by my own efforts. A few powerful arms helped me, and I collapsed on the tile floor. I saw a drainage hole near me, and into it, so it seemed, my last bits of energy oozed along with the water. I lay prone and gasped.

The instructor leaned over me:

That’s very good, Bloom. You get an A.

I didn’t understand.

You had to do two laps to get C and pass. For four laps you get A.

I was stunned. I heard the instructor say:

Bloom, why did you try so hard? It’s plain you can’t swim. Why must you have an A in swimming?

I was too exhausted to explain. Swimming and A’s had nothing to do with it.

The A in swimming was my only perfect grade in athletics, with one exception. I always earned an A in rope-climbing. You could not reach the hayloft above our stable back in Hârl?u unless you climbed up a rope.

_____________