- Luckily, Danny and Reuven get to hang out together almost every day for the first month of the summer when they aren’t studying Talmud with their respective fathers, sometimes together, sometimes alone.
- It’s a little disturbing to Reuven that Danny keeps refusing all his invitations to meals. He’s not supposed to eat food prepared outside of the sect.
- They can do whatever they want to in the nights.
- Well, Reuven can anyway – Danny can’t even go to the movies, or, rather, he’s afraid to.
- Reuven and David follow the war news religiously, and don’t think things are happening fast enough.
- In the third week of July, Danny starts reading Freud in the original German, and it’s not going well. He’s frustrated by the technical terminology and the inconsistencies in translations.
- Eventually, though, he works out a system and starts studying Freud intensely.
- Reuven and David are scheduled to leave for their Peekskill, New York cabin, and he gives Danny some books about Jewish history.
- Since they are only going to be apart for a month, they decide it would be silly to write to each other.
- And that’s the last they see each other until Labor Day, when the Malters return from their vacation and Reuven calls Danny right away.
- Danny’s been getting deep into Freud, and has read a Freudian paper on sexuality that has him freaked out.
- He can only talk Reuven about it, but they never do.
- When the school year starts, Reuven is way too busy to even think about Freud.