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It’s an insult to my
soul.What kinship have I with these two lumps of ignorance and
superstition? They’re ugly and gross and stupid. I’m all sensitive
nerves.They want to wallow in dirt.”
She closed her eyes to shut out the sight of her parents as they
silently ate together, unmindful of the dirt and confusion. “How is it possible that I lived with them and like them only four
years ago?What is it in me that so quickly gets accustomed to the
best? Beauty and cleanliness are as natural to me as if I’d been born
on Fifth Avenue instead of in the dirt of Essex Street.”
A vision of Frank Baker passed before her.Her last long talk with him
out under the trees in college still lingered in her heart. She felt
that she had only to be with him again to carry forward the beautiful
friendship that had sprung up between them.He had promised to come
shortly to New York. How could she possibly introduce such a born and
bred American to her low, ignorant, dirty parents? “I might as well tear the thought of Frank Baker out of my heart,” she
told herself.“If he just once sees the pigsty of a home I come from,
if he just sees the table manners of my father and mother, he’ll fly
through the ceiling.”
Timidly, Mrs. Ravinsky turned to her daughter.“Ain’t you going to give a taste the eating?”
No answer. “I fried the _lotkes_ special for you----”
“I can’t stand your fried, greasy stuff.”
“Ain’t even my cooking good no more neither?” Her gnarled, hard-worked
hands clutched at her breast.“God from the world, for what do I need
yet any more my life? Nothing I do for my child is no use no more.”
Her head sank; her whole body seemed to shrivel and grow old with the
sense of her own futility.“How I was hurrying to run by the butcher before everybody else, so as
to pick out the grandest, fattest piece of _brust_!” she wailed, tears
streaming down her face.“And I put my hand away from my heart and put
a whole fresh egg into the _lotkes_, and I stuffed the stove full of
coal like a millionaire so as to get the _lotkes_ fried so nice and
brown; and now you give a kick on everything I done----”
“Fool woman,” shouted her husband, “stop laying yourself on the ground
for your daughter to step on you!What more can you expect from a
child raised up in America? What more can you expect but that she
should spit in your face and make dirt from you?” His eyes, hot and
dry under their lids, flashed from his wife to his daughter.“The old
Jewish eating is poison to her; she must have _treifah_ ham--only
forbidden food.”
Bitter laughter shook him.“Woman, how you patted yourself with pride before all the neighbours,
boasting of our great American daughter coming home from college! This
is our daughter, our pride, our hope, our pillow for our old age that
we were dreaming about.This is our American _teacherin_! A Jew-hater,
an anti-Semite we brought into the world, a betrayer of our race who
hates her own father and mother like the Russian Tsar once hated a Jew.She makes herself so refined, she can’t stand it when we use the knife
or fork the wrong way; but her heart is that of a brutal Cossack, and
she spills her own father’s and mother’s blood like water.”
Every word he uttered seared Rachel’s soul like burning acid.She
felt herself becoming a witch, a she-devil, under the spell of his
accusations. “You want me to love you yet?” She turned upon her father like an
avenging fury.“If there’s any evil hatred in my soul, you have roused
it with your cursed preaching.”
“_Oi-i-i!_ Highest One! pity Yourself on us!” Mrs. Ravinsky wrung her
hands. “Rachel, Yankev, let there be an end to this knife-stabbing!_Gottuniu!_ my flesh is torn to pieces!”
Unheeding her mother’s pleading, Rachel rushed to the closet where she
kept her things.“I was a crazy idiot to think that I could live with you people under
one roof.” She flung on her hat and coat and bolted for the door. Mrs. Ravinsky seized Rachel’s arm in passionate entreaty. “My child, my heart, my life, what do you mean?Where are you going?”
“I mean to get out of this hell of a home this very minute,” she said,
tearing loose from her mother’s clutching hands. “Woe is me! My child! We’ll be to shame and to laughter by the whole
world.What will people say?”
“Let them say! My life is my own; I’ll live as I please.” She slammed
the door in her mother’s face.“They want me to love them yet,” ran the mad thoughts in Rachel’s brain
as she hurried through the streets, not knowing where she was going,
not caring. “Vampires, bloodsuckers fastened on my flesh!Black shadow
blighting every ray of light that ever came my way!Other parents
scheme and plan and wear themselves out to give their child a chance,
but they put dead stones in front of every chance I made for myself.”
With the cruelty of youth to everything not youth, Rachel reasoned:
“They have no rights, no claims over me, like other parents who do
things for their children.It was my own brains, my own courage, my
own iron will that forced my way out of the sweatshop to my present
position in the public schools.I owe them nothing, nothing, nothing.”
§ 2
Two weeks already away from home, Rachel looked about her room. It was
spotlessly clean.She had often said to herself while at home with her
parents: “All I want is an empty room, with a bed and table and chair. As long as it is clean and away from them, I’ll be happy.”
But was she happy?A distant door closed, followed by the retreating sound of descending
footsteps. Then all was still, the stifling stillness of a
lodging-house. The white, empty walls pressed in upon her, suffocated
her.She listened acutely for any stir of life, but the continued
silence was unbroken save for the insistent ticking of her watch.“I ran away from home burning for life,” she mused, “and all I’ve
found is the loneliness that’s death.” A wave of self-pity weakened
her almost to the point of tears. “I’m alone! I’m alone!” she moaned,
crumpling into a heap.“Must it always be with me like this,” her soul cried in terror,
“either to live among those who drag me down or in the awful isolation
of a hall bed-room? Oh, I’ll die of loneliness among these frozen,
each-shut-in-himself Americans!It’s one thing to break away, but, oh,
the strength to go on alone! How can I ever do it? The love instinct is
so strong in me; I cannot live without love, without people.”
The thought of a letter from Frank Baker suddenly lightened her
spirits.That very evening she was to meet him for dinner. Here was
hope, more than hope. Just seeing him again would surely bring the
certainty.This new rush of light upon her dark horizon so softened her heart that
she could almost tolerate her superfluous parents. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
“If I could only have love and my own life, I could almost forgive
them for bringing me into the world.I don’t really hate them; I only
hate them when they stand between me and the new America that I’m to
conquer.”
Answering her impulse, her feet led her to the familiar Ghetto streets.On the corner of the block where her parents lived she paused, torn
between the desire to see her people and the fear of their nagging
reproaches.The old Jewish proverb came to her mind: “The wolf is not
afraid of the dog, but he hates his bark.” “I’m not afraid of their
black curses for sin.It’s nothing to me if they accuse me of being an
anti-Semite or a murderer, and yet why does it hurt me so?”
Rachel had prepared herself to face the usual hail-storm of reproaches
and accusations, but as she entered the dark hallway of the tenement,
she heard her father’s voice chanting the old familiar Hebrew psalm of
“The Race of Sorrows”:
“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto Thee.“For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an
hearth. “I am like a pelican of the wilderness. “I am like an owl of the desert. “I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping.”
A faintness came over her.The sobbing strains of the lyric song melted
into her veins like a magic sap, making her warm and human again. All
her strength seethed to flow out of her in pity for her people.She
longed to throw herself on the dirty, ill-smelling tenement stairs and
weep: “Nothing is real but love--love.Nothing so false as ambition.”
Since her early childhood she remembered often waking up in the middle
of the night and hearing her father chant this age-old song of woe.There flashed before her a vivid picture of him, huddled in the corner
beside the table piled high with Hebrew books, swaying to the rhythm
of his jeremiad, the sputtering light of the candle stuck in a bottle
throwing uncanny shadows over his gaunt face.The skull-cap, the
side-locks, and the long grey beard made him seem like some mystic
stranger from a far-off world and not a father.The father of the
daylight who ate with a knife, spat on the floor, and who was forever
denouncing America and Americans was different from this stranger of
the mystic spirit who could thrill with such impassioned rapture.Thousands of years of exile, thousands of years of hunger, loneliness,
and want swept over her as she listened to her father’s voice. Something seemed to be crying out to her to run in and seize her father
and mother in her arms and hold them close.“Love, love--nothing is true between us but love,” she thought. But why couldn’t she do what she longed to do? Why, with all her
passionate sympathy for them, should any actual contact with her people
seem so impossible?No, she couldn’t go in just yet. Instead, she ran
up on the roof, where she could be alone. She stationed herself at the
air-shaft opposite their kitchen window, where for the first time since
she had left in a rage she could see her old home._Ach!_ what sickening disorder! In the sink were the dirty dishes
stacked high, untouched, it looked, for days. The table still held
the remains of the last meal. Clothes were strewn about the chairs.The bureau-drawers were open, and their contents brimmed over in mad
confusion. “I couldn’t endure it, this terrible dirt!” Her nails dug into her
palms, shaking with the futility of her visit. “It would be worse than
death to go back to them.It would mean giving up order, cleanliness,
sanity, everything that I’ve striven all these years to attain.It
would mean giving up the hope of my new world--the hope of Frank Baker.”
The sound of the creaking door reached her where she crouched against
the air-shaft. She looked again into the murky depths of the room. Her
mother had entered.With arms full of paper bags of provisions, the
old woman paused on the threshold, her eyes dwelling on the dim figure
of her husband. A look of pathetic tenderness illumined her wrinkled
features.“I’ll make something good to eat for you, yes?”
Reb Ravinsky only dropped his head on his breast. His eyes were red and
dry, sandy with sorrow that could find no release in tears. Good God! never had Rachel seen such profound despair.For the first time she
noticed the grooved tracings of withering age knotted on his face and
the growing hump on her mother’s back. “Already the shadow of death hangs over them,” she thought as she
watched them.“They’re already with one foot in the grave. Why can’t I
be human to them before they’re dead? Why can’t I?”
Rachel blotted away the picture of the sordid room with both hands over
her eyes. “To death with my soul!I wish I were a plain human being with a heart
instead of a monster of selfishness with a soul.”
But the pity she felt for her parents began now to be swept away in a
wave of pity for herself. “How every step in advance costs me my heart’s blood!My greatest
tragedy in life is that I always see the two opposite sides at the same
time. What seems to me right one day seems all wrong the next. Not only
that, but many things seem right and wrong at the same time.I feel I
have a right to my own life, and yet I feel just as strongly that I owe
my father and mother something. Even if I don’t love them, I have no
right to step over them. I’m drawn to them by something more compelling
than love.It is the cry of their dumb, wasted lives.”
Again Rachel looked into the dimly lighted room below. Her mother
placed food upon the table.With a self-effacing stoop of humility, she
entreated, “Eat only while it is hot yet.”
With his eyes fixed almost unknowingly, Reb Ravinsky sat down.Her
mother took the chair opposite him, but she only pretended to eat the
slender portion of the food she had given herself. Rachel’s heart swelled. Yes, it had always been like that.Her mother
had taken the smallest portion of everything for herself.Complaints,
reproaches, upbraidings, abuse, yes, all these had been heaped by her
upon her mother; but always the juiciest piece of meat was placed on
her plate, the thickest slice of bread; the warmest covering was given
to her, while her mother shivered through the night.“Ah, I don’t want to abandon them!” she thought; “I only want to get
to the place where I belong.I only want to get to the mountain-tops
and view the world from the heights, and then I’ll give them everything
I’ve achieved.”
Her thoughts were sharply broken in upon by the loud sound of her
father’s eating.Bent over the table, he chewed with noisy gulps a
piece of herring, his temples working to the motion of his jaws. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
With each audible swallow and smacking of the lips, Rachel’s heart
tightened with loathing.“Their dirty ways turn all my pity into hate.” She felt her toes and
her fingers curl inward with disgust.“I’ll never amount to anything
if I’m not strong enough to break away from them once and for all.”
Hypnotizing herself into her line of self-defence, her thoughts raced
on: “I’m only cruel to be kind.If I went back to them now, it would
not be out of love, but because of weakness--because of doubt and
unfaith in myself.”
Rachel bluntly turned her back. Her head lifted. There was iron will in
her jaws.“If I haven’t the strength to tear free from the old, I can never
conquer the new. Every new step a man makes is a tearing away from
those clinging to him. I must get tight and hard as rock inside of me
if I’m ever to do the things I set out to do.I must learn to suffer
and suffer, walk through blood and fire, and not bend from my course.”
For the last time she looked at her parents.The terrible loneliness of
their abandoned old age, their sorrowful eyes, the wrung-dry weariness
on their faces, the whole black picture of her ruined, desolate
home, burned into her flesh.She knew all the pain of one unjustly
condemned, and the guilt of one with the spilt blood of helpless lives
upon his hands. Then came tears, blinding, wrenching tears that tore at
her heart until it seemed that they would rend her body into shreds.“God! God!” she sobbed as she turned her head away from them, “if all
this suffering were at least for something worth while, for something
outside myself!But to have to break them and crush them merely because
I have a fastidious soul that can’t stomach their table manners, merely
because I can’t strangle my aching ambitions to rise in the world!”
She could no longer sustain the conflict which raged within her higher
and higher at every moment.With a sudden tension of all her nerves she
pulled herself together and stumbled blindly down the stairs and out
of the house. And she felt as if she had torn away from the flesh and
blood of her own body.§ 3
Out in the street she struggled to get hold of herself again. Despite
the tumult and upheaval that racked her soul, an intoxicating lure
still held her up--the hope of seeing Frank Baker that evening.She
was indeed a storm-racked ship, but within sight of shore. She need
but throw out the signal, and help was nigh. She need but confide to
Frank Baker of her break with her people, and all the dormant sympathy
between them would surge up.His understanding would widen and deepen
because of her great need for his understanding. He would love her the
more because of her great need for his love.Forcing back her tears, stepping over her heartbreak, she hurried to
the hotel where she was to meet him. Her father’s impassioned rapture
when he chanted the psalms of David lit up the visionary face of the
young Jewess.“After all, love is the beginning of the real life,” she thought as
Frank Baker’s dark, handsome face flashed before her.“With him to hold
on to, I’ll begin my new world.”
Borne higher and higher by the intoxicating illusion of her great
destiny, she cried:
“A person all alone is but a futile cry in an unheeding wilderness.One
alone is but a shadow, an echo of reality. It takes two together to
create reality.Two together can pioneer a new world.”
With a vision of herself and Frank Baker marching side by side to the
conquest of her heart’s desire, she added:
“No wonder a man’s love means so little to the American woman.They
belong to the world in which they are born. They belong to their
fathers and mothers; they belong to their relatives and friends. They
are human even without a man’s love. I don’t belong; I’m not human.Only a man’s love can save me and make me human again.”
It was the busy dinner-hour at the fashionable restaurant. Pausing at
the doorway with searching eyes and lips eagerly parted, Rachel’s swift
glance circled the lobby.Those seated in the dining-room beyond who
were not too absorbed in one another, noticed a slim, vivid figure of
ardent youth, but with dark, age-old eyes that told of the restless
seeking of her homeless race.With nervous little movements of anxiety, Rachel sat down, got up, then
started across the lobby. Half-way, she stopped, and her breath caught. “Mr. Baker,” she murmured, her hands fluttering toward him with
famished eagerness.His smooth, athletic figure had a cocksureness that
to the girl’s worshipping gaze seemed the perfection of male strength.“You must be doing wonderful things,” came from her admiringly, “you
look so happy, so shining with life.”
“Yes”--he shook her hand vigorously--“I’ve been living for the first
time since I was a kid. I’m full of such interesting experiences.I’m
actually working in an East Side settlement.”
Dazed by his glamorous success, Rachel stammered soft phrases of
congratulation as he led her to a table.But seated opposite him, the
face of this untried youth, flushed with the health and happiness of
another world than that of the poverty-crushed Ghetto, struck her
almost as an insincerity. “You in an East Side settlement?” she interrupted sharply.“What
reality can there be in that work for you?”
“Oh,” he cried, his shoulders squaring with the assurance of his
master’s degree in sociology, “it’s great to get under the surface
and see how the other half live. It’s so picturesque!My conception
of these people has greatly changed since I’ve been visiting their
homes.” He launched into a glowing account of the East Side as seen by
a twenty-five-year-old college graduate.“I thought them mostly immersed in hard labour, digging subways or
slaving in sweatshops,” he went on.“But think of the poetry which the
immigrant is daily living!”
“But they’re so sunk in the dirt of poverty, what poetry do you see
there?”
“It’s their beautiful home life, the poetic devotion between parents
and children, the sacrifices they make for one another----”
“Beautiful home life?Sacrifices? Why, all I know of is the battle to
the knife between parents and children.It’s black tragedy that boils
there, not the pretty sentiments that you imagine.”
“My dear child”--he waved aside her objection--“you’re too close to
judge dispassionately.This very afternoon, on one of my friendly
visits, I came upon a dear old man who peered up at me through
horn-rimmed glasses behind his pile of Hebrew books.He was hardly able
to speak English, but I found him a great scholar.”
“Yes, a lazy old do-nothing, a bloodsucker on his wife and children.”
Too shocked for remonstrance, Frank Baker stared at her.“How else could he have time in the middle of the afternoon to pore
over his books?” Rachel’s voice was hard with bitterness. “Did you
see his wife? | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
I’ll bet she was slaving for him in the kitchen.And his
children slaving for him in the sweatshop.”
“Even so, think of the fine devotion that the women and children show
in making the lives of your Hebrew scholars possible.It’s a fine
contribution to America, where our tendency is to forget idealism.”
“Give me better a plain American man who supports his wife and
children, and I’ll give you all those dreamers of the Talmud.”
He smiled tolerantly at her vehemence.“Nevertheless,” he insisted, “I’ve found wonderful material for my new
book in all this. I think I’ve got a new angle on the social types of
your East Side.”
An icy band tightened about her heart. “Social types,” her lips formed.How could she possibly confide to this man of the terrible tragedy that
she had been through that very day?Instead of the understanding and
sympathy that she had hoped to find, there were only smooth platitudes,
the sight-seer’s surface interest in curious “social types.”
Frank Baker talked on.Rachel seemed to be listening, but her eyes had
a far-off, abstracted look. She was quiet as a spinning-top is quiet,
her thoughts and emotions revolving within her at high speed. “That man in love with me? Why, he doesn’t see me or feel me.I don’t
exist to him. He’s only stuck on himself, blowing his own horn. Will
he never stop with his ‘I,’ ‘I,’ ‘I’?Why, I was a crazy lunatic to
think that just because we took the same courses in college he would
understand me out in the real world.”
All the fire suddenly went out of her eyes.She looked a thousand years
old as she sank back wearily in her chair. “Oh, but I’m boring you with all my heavy talk on sociology.” Frank
Baker’s words seemed to come to her from afar.“I have tickets for a
fine musical comedy that will cheer you up, Miss Ravinsky----”
“Thanks, thanks,” she cut in hurriedly. Spend a whole evening sitting
beside him in a theatre when her heart was breaking? No.All she wanted
was to get away--away where she could be alone. “I have work to do,”
she heard herself say. “I’ve got to get home.”
Frank Baker murmured words of polite disappointment and escorted her
back to her door.She watched the sure swing of his athletic figure as
he strode away down the street, then she rushed upstairs. Back in her little room, stunned, bewildered, blinded with her
disillusion, she sat staring at her four empty walls.Hours passed, but she made no move, she uttered no sound. Doubled fists
thrust between her knees, she sat there, staring blindly at her empty
walls. “I can’t live with the old world, and I’m yet too green for the new.I don’t belong to those who gave me birth or to those with whom I was
educated.”
Was this to be the end of all her struggles to rise in America, she
asked herself, this crushing daze of loneliness?Her driving thirst
for an education, her desperate battle for a little cleanliness, for a
breath of beauty, the tearing away from her own flesh and blood to free
herself from the yoke of her parents--what was it all worth now? Where
did it lead to?Was loneliness to be the fruit of it all? Night was melting away like a fog; through the open window the first
lights of dawn were appearing. Rachel felt the sudden touch of the sun
upon her face, which was bathed in tears.Overcome by her sorrow, she
shuddered and put her hand over her eyes as though to shut out the
unwelcome contact. But the light shone through her fingers.Despite her weariness, the renewing breath of the fresh morning entered
her heart like a sunbeam. A mad longing for life filled her veins. “I want to live,” her youth cried. “I want to live, even at the worst.”
Live how? Live for what?She did not know. She only felt she must
struggle against her loneliness and weariness as she had once struggled
against dirt, against the squalor and ugliness of her Ghetto home.Turning from the window, she concentrated her mind, her poor tired
mind, on one idea. “I have broken away from the old world; I’m through with it. It’s
already behind me. I must face this loneliness till I get to the new
world.Frank Baker can’t help me; I must hope for no help from the
outside. I’m alone; I’m alone till I get there. “But am I really alone in my seeking?I’m one of the millions of
immigrant children, children of loneliness, wandering between worlds
that are at once too old and too new to live in.”
BROTHERS
I had just begun to unpack and arrange my things in my new quarters
when Hanneh Breineh edged herself confidingly into my room and started
to tell me the next chapter in the history of all her lodgers.“And this last one what sleeps in the kitchen,” she finished, “he’s
such a stingy--Moisheh the Schnorrer they call him. He washes himself
his own shirts and sews together the holes from his socks to save a
penny. Think only!He cooks himself his own meat once a week for the
Sabbath and the rest of the time it’s cabbage and potatoes or bread and
herring. And the herring what he buys are the squashed and smashed ones
from the bottom of the barrel.And the bread he gets is so old and hard
he’s got to break it with a hammer.For why should such a stingy grouch
live in this world if he don’t allow himself the bite in the mouth?”
It was no surprise to me that Hanneh Breineh knew all this, for
everybody in her household cooked and washed in the same kitchen, and
everybody knew what everybody else ate and what everybody else wore
down to the number of patches on their underwear.“And by what do you work for a living?” she asked, as she settled
herself on my cot. “I study at college by day and I give English lessons and write letters
for the people in the evening.”
“Ach!So you are learning for a _teacherin_?” She rose, and looked
at me up and down and down and up, her red-lidded eyes big with awe. “So that’s why you wanted so particular a room to yourself? Nobody in
my house has a room by herself alone just like you.They all got to
squeeze themselves together to make it come out cheaper.”
By the evening everybody in that house knew I was a _teacherin_, and
Moisheh the Schnorrer was among my first applicants for instruction.“How much will you charge me for learning me English, a lesson?” he
blurted, abrupt because of his painful bashfulness.I looked up at the tall, ungainly creature with round, stooping
shoulders, and massive, shaggy head--physically a veritable giant, yet
so timid, so diffident, afraid almost of his own shadow. “I wanna learn how to sign myself my name,” he went on.“Only--you’ll
make it for me a little cheaper--yes?”
“Fifty cents an hour,” I answered, drawn by the dumb, hunted look that
cried to me out of his eyes. Moisheh scratched his shaggy head and bit the nails of his huge,
toil-worn hand.“Maybe--could you yet--perhaps--make it a little
cheaper?” he fumbled. “Aren’t you working?”
His furrowed face coloured with confusion. “Yes--but--but my family. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
I
got to save myself together a penny to a penny for them.”
“Oh!So you’re already married?”
“No--not married.My family in Russia--_mein_ old mother and Feivel,
_mein_ doctor brother, and Berel the baby, he was already learning for
a book-keeper before the war.”
The coarse peasant features were transformed with tenderness as he
started to tell me the story of his loved ones in Russia.“Seven years ago I came to America. I thought only to make quick money
to send the ship tickets for them all, but I fell into the hands of a
cockroach boss. “You know a cockroach boss is a _landsman_ that comes to meet the
greenhorns by the ship.He made out he wanted to help me, but he only
wanted to sweat me into my grave. Then came the war and I began to earn
big wages; but they were driven away from their village and my money
didn’t get to them at all.And for more than a year I didn’t know if my
people were yet alive in the world.”
He took a much-fingered, greasy envelope from his pocket. “That’s the
first letter I got from them in months.The book-keeper boarder read it
for me already till he’s sick from it. Only read it for me over again,”
he begged as he handed it to me upside down. The letter was from Smirsk, Poland, where the two brothers
and their old mother had fled for refuge.It was the cry of
despair--food--clothes--shoes--the cry of hunger and nakedness. His
eyes filled and unheeding tears fell on his rough, trembling hands as I
read. “That I should have bread three times a day and them starving!” he
gulped.“By each bite it chokes me. And when I put myself on my warm
coat, it shivers in me when I think how they’re without a shirt on
their backs.I already sent them a big package of things, but until I
hear from them I’m like without air in my lungs.”
I wondered how, in their great need and in his great anxiety to supply
it, he could think of English lessons or spare the little money to pay
for his tuition.He divined my thoughts. “Already seven years I’m here and I didn’t
take for myself the time to go night school,” he explained.“Now
they’ll come soon and I don’t want them to shame themselves from their
_Amerikaner_ brother what can’t sign his own name, and they in Russia
write me such smart letters in English.”
“Didn’t you go to school like your brothers?”
“Me--school?” He shrugged his toil-stooped shoulders.“I was the only
breadgiver after my father he died. And with my nose in the earth on a
farm how could I take myself the time to learn?”
His queer, bulging eyes with their yearning, passionate look seemed
to cling to something beyond--out of reach.“But my brothers--_ach_! my brothers! They’re so high-educated!I worked the nails from off my
fingers, but only they should learn--they should become people in the
world.”
And he deluged me with questions as to the rules of immigrant admission
and how long it would take for him to learn to sign his name so that
he would be a competent leader when his family would arrive.“I ain’t so dumb like I look on my face.” He nudged me confidentially. “I already found out from myself which picture means where the train
goes.If it’s for Brooklyn Bridge, then the hooks go this way”--he
clumsily drew in the air with his thick fingers--“and if it’s for the
South Ferry, then the words twist the other way around.”
I marvelled at his frank revelation of himself.“What is your work?” I asked, more and more drawn by some hidden power
of this simple peasant. “I’m a presser by pants.”
Now I understood the cause of the stooped, rounded shoulders.It must
have come from pounding away with a heavy iron at an ironing board,
day after day, year after year. But for all the ravages of poverty,
of mean, soul-crushing drudgery that marked this man, something big
and indomitable in him fascinated me.His was the strength knitted and
knotted from the hardiest roots of the earth. Filled with awe, I looked
up at him.Here was a man submerged in the darkness of illiteracy--of
pinch and scraping and want--yet untouched--unspoiled, with the same
simplicity of spirit that was his as a wide-eyed, dreamy youth in the
green fields of Russia.We had our first lesson, and, though I needed every cent I could earn,
I felt like a thief taking his precious pennies. But he would pay.“It’s worth to me more than a quarter only to learn how to hold up the
pencil,” he exulted as he gripped the pencil upright in his thick fist. All the yearning, the intense desire for education were in the big,
bulging eyes that he raised towards me.“No wonder I could never make
those little black hooks for words; I was always grabbing my pencil
like a fork for sticking up meat.”
With what sublime absorption he studied me as I showed him how to
shape the letters for his name!Eyes wide--mouth open--his huge,
stoop-shouldered body leaning forward--quivering with hunger to grasp
the secret turnings of “the little black hooks” that signified his name. “M-o-i-s-h-e-h,” he repeated after me as I guided his pencil.“Now do it alone,” I urged. Moisheh rolled up his sleeve like one ready for a fray. The sweat
dripped from his face as he struggled for the muscular control of his
clumsy fingers.Night after night he wrestled heroically with the “little black hooks.”
At last his efforts were rewarded. He learned how to shape the letters
without any help.“God from the world!” he cried with childishly pathetic joy as he wrote
his name for the first time.“This is me--Moisheh!” He lifted the paper
and held it off and then held it close, drunk with the wonder of the
“little black hooks.” They seemed so mysterious to him, and his eyes
loomed large--transfigured with the miracle of seeing himself for the
first time in script.It was the week after that he asked me to write his letter, and this
time it was from my eyes that the unheeding tears dropped as I wrote
the words he dictated.“To my dear Loving Mother, and to my worthy Honourable Brother Feivel,
the Doctor, and to my youngest brother, the joy from my life, the
light from mine eyes, Berel the Book-keeper! “Long years and good luck to you all.Thanks the highest One in Heaven
that you are alive. Don’t worry for nothing. So long I have yet my
two strong hands to work you will yet live to have from everything
plenty.For all those starving days in Russia, you will live to have
joy in America. “You, Feivel, will yet have a grand doctor’s office, with an electric
dentist sign over your door, and a gold tooth to pull in the richest
customers.And you, Berel, my honourable book-keeper, will yet live to
wear a white starched collar like all the higher-ups in America. And
you, my loving mother, will yet shine up the block with the joy from
your children.“I am sending you another box of things, and so soon as I get from you
the word, I’ll send for you the ship tickets, even if it costs the
money from all the banks in America. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
“What are they holding them so long?” he cried, mad with
anxiety to reach those for whom he had so long waited and hungered.I had to shake him roughly before I could make him aware of my
presence, and immediately he was again lost in his eager search of the
mob that crowded the gates.The faces of the immigrants, from the tiniest babe at its mother’s
breast to the most decrepit old grey-haired man, were all stamped with
the same transfigured look--a look of those who gazed for the first
time upon the radiance of the dawn.The bosoms of the women heaved
with excitement. The men seemed to be expanding, growing with the surge
of realized hopes, of dreams come true.They inhaled deeply, eager to
fill their stifled bodies and souls with the first life-giving breath
of free air. Their eyes were luminous with hope, bewildered joy and
vague forebodings.A voice was heard above the shouted orders and
shuffling feet--above the clamour of the pressing crowds--“_Gott sei
dank!_” The pæan of thanksgiving was echoed and re-echoed--a pæan of
nations released--America.I had to hold tight to the bars not to be trampled underfoot by the
crowd that surged through the gates. Suddenly a wild animal cry
tore from Moisheh’s throat. “_Mammeniu!Mammeniu!_” And a pair of
gorilla-like arms infolded a gaunt, wasted little figure wrapped in a
shawl. “Moisheh! my heart!” she sobbed, devouring him with hunger-ravaged eyes. “_Ach!_” She trembled--drawing back to survey her first-born.“From
the bare feet and rags of Smirsk to leather shoes and a suit like a
Rothschild!” she cried in Yiddish.“_Ach!_--I lived to see America!”
A dumb thing laughing and crying he stood there, a primitive figure,
pathetic, yet sublime in the purity of his passionate love, his first
love--his love for his mother.The toil-worn little hand pulled at his neck as she whispered in
Moisheh’s ear, and as in a dream he turned with outstretched arms to
greet his brothers. “Feivel--_mein_ doctor!” he cried.“Yes, yes, we’re here,” said the high-browed young doctor in a tone
that I thought was a little impatient. “Now let’s divide up these
bundles and get started.” Moisheh’s willing arms reached out for the
heaviest sack.“And here is my _teacherin_!” Moisheh’s grin was that of a small boy
displaying his most prized possession. Berel, the baby, with the first down of young manhood still soft on his
cheeks, shyly enveloped my hand in his long, sensitive fingers.“How
nice for you to come--a _teacherin_--an _Amerikanerin_!”
“Well--are we going?” came imperiously from the doctor. “Yeh--yeh!” answered Moisheh.“I’m so out of my head from joy, my
feet don’t work.” And, gathering the few remaining lighter packages
together, we threaded our way through the crowded streets--the two
newly arrived brothers walking silently together.“Has Moisheh changed much?” I asked the doctor as I watched the big man
help his mother tenderly across the car tracks. “The same Moisheh,” he said, with an amused, slightly superior air.I looked at Berel to see if he was of the same cloth as the doctor, but
he was lost in dreamy contemplation of the towering sky-scrapers. “Like granite mountains--the tower of Babel,” Berel mused aloud.“How do they ever walk up to the top?” asked the bewildered old mother. “Walk!” cried Moisheh, overjoyed at the chance to hand out information. “There are elevators in America.You push a button and up you fly like
on wings.”
Elated with this opportunity to show off his superior knowledge, he
went on: “I learned myself to sign my name in America.Stop only and
I’ll read for you the sign from the lamp-post,” and he spelled aloud,
“W-a-l-l--Wall.”
“And what street is this?” asked the doctor, as we came to another
corner.Moisheh coloured with confusion, and the eyes he raised to his brother
were like the eyes of a trapped deer pleading to be spared. “L-i-b----”
He stopped. “Oh, _weh_!” he groaned, “the word is too long for me.”
“Liberty,” scorned the doctor.“You are an _Amerikaner_ already and you
don’t know Liberty?”
His own humiliation forgot in pride of his brother’s knowledge, Moisheh
nodded his head humbly. “Yeh--yeh! You a _greener_ and yet you know Liberty.And I, an
_Amerikaner_, is stuck by the word.” He turned to me with a pride that
brought tears to his eyes. “Didn’t I tell you my brothers were high
educated?Never mind--they won’t shame me in America.”
A look of adoration drank in the wonder of his beloved family.Overcome
with a sense of his own unworthiness, he exclaimed, “Look only on me--a
nothing and a nobody.” He breathed in my ear, “And such brothers!” With
a new, deeper tenderness, he pressed his mother’s slight form more
closely to him.“More Bolsheviki!” scoffed a passer-by. “Trotzky’s ambassadors,” sneered another. And the ridicule was taken up by a number of jeering voices. “Poor devils!” came from a richly dressed Hebrew, resplendent in
his fur collar and a diamond stud.There was in his eyes a wistful,
reminiscent look. Perhaps the sight of these immigrants brought back to
him the day he himself had landed, barefoot and in rags, with nothing
but his dreams of America.The street was thronged with hurrying lunch seekers as we reached
lower Broadway.I glanced at Moisheh’s brothers, and I could not help
noticing how different was the calm and carefree expression of their
faces from the furtive, frantic acquisitive look of the men in the
financial district.But the moment we reached our block the people from the stoops and
windows waved their welcome. Hanneh Breineh and all the boarders,
dressed up in their best, ran to meet us. “Home!” cried the glowing Moisheh.“_Mazel-tuff!_ Good luck!” answered
Hanneh Breineh. Instantly we were surrounded by the excited neighbours whose voices of
welcome rose above the familiar cries of the hucksters and pedlars that
lined the street.“Give a help!” commanded Hanneh Breineh as she seized the bundles from
Moisheh’s numbed arms and divided them among the boarders. Then she led
the procession triumphantly into her kitchen.The table, with a profusion of festive dishes, sang aloud its welcome. “Rockefeller’s only daughter couldn’t wish herself grander eatings
by her own wedding,” bragged the hostess as she waved the travellers
to the feast.A brass pot filled with _gefulte_ fish was under the
festooned chandelier. A tin platter heaped high with chopped liver
and onions sent forth its inviting aroma._Tzimmes_--_blintzes_--a
golden-roasted goose swimming in its own fat ravished the senses. Eyes
and mouths watered at sight of such luscious plenty. “White bread!--_Ach!_--white bread!” gasped the hunger-ravaged old
mother.Reaching across the table, she seized the loaf in her trembling
hands. “All those starving years--all those years!” she moaned, kissing
its flaky whiteness as though it were a living thing.“Sit yourself down--_mutterel_!” Hanneh Breineh soothed the old woman
and helped her into the chair of honour. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
“My head is on fire thinking and dreaming from Lincoln.It shines
before my face so real, I feel myself almost talking to him.”
Moisheh’s eyes were alive with light, and as I looked at him I felt
for the first time a strange psychic resemblance between Moisheh and
Lincoln.Could it be that the love for his hero had so transformed him
as to make him almost resemble him?“Lincoln started life as a nothing and a nobody,” Moisheh went on,
dreamily, “and he made himself for the President from America--maybe
there’s yet a chance for me to make something from myself?”
“Sure there is.Show only what’s in you and all America reaches out to
help you.”
“I used to think that I’d die a presser by pants. But since I read
from Lincoln, something happened in me. I feel I got something for
America--only I don’t know how to give it out.I’m yet too much of a
dummox----”
“What’s in us must come out. I feel America needs you and me as much as
she needs her Rockefellers and Morgans.Rockefellers and Morgans only
pile up mountains of money; we bring to America the dreams and desires
of ages--the youth that never had a chance to be young--the choked
lives that never had a chance to live.”
A shadow filmed Moisheh’s brooding eyes.“I can’t begin yet to think
from myself for a few years. First comes my brothers. If only Feivel
would work for himself up for a big doctor and Berel for a big writer
then I’ll feel myself free to do something....
“Shah!I got great news for you,” Moisheh announced. “Feivel has
already his doctor’s office.”
“Where did he get all the money?”
“On the instalment plan I got him the chair and the office things.Now
he’s beginning to earn already enough to pay almost half his rent.”
“Soon he’ll be for dinner.” The old lady jumped up. “I got to get his
eating ready before he comes.” And she hastened back to the kitchen
stove.“And Berel--what does he do?” I inquired. “Berel ain’t working yet. He’s still writing from his head,” explained
Moisheh. “Wait only and I’ll call him.He’s locked himself up in his
bedroom; nobody should bother him.”
“Berel!” he called, tapping respectfully at the door. “_Yuk!_” came in a voice of nervous irritation. “What is it?”
“The _teacherin_ is here,” replied Moisheh.“Only a minute.”
“It’s me,” I added. “I’d like to see you.”
Berel came out, hair dishevelled, with dreamy, absent look, holding
pencil and paper in his hand. “I was just finishing a poem,” he said in
greeting to me.“I have been looking for your name in the magazines. Have you published
anything yet?”
“I--publish in the American magazines?” he flung, hurt beyond words.“I
wouldn’t mix my art with their empty drivel.”
“But, surely, there are some better magazines,” I protested. “Pshah! Their best magazines--the pink-and-white jingles that they call
poetry are not worth the paper they’re printed on.America don’t want
poets. She wants plumbers.”
“But what will you do with the poetry you write?”
“I’ll publish it myself. Art should be free, like sunlight and beauty. The only compensation for the artist is the chance to feed hungry
hearts.If only Moisheh could give me the hundred dollars I’d have my
volume printed at once.”
“But how can I raise all that money when I’m not yet paid out with
Feivel’s doctor’s office?” remonstrated Moisheh.“Don’t you think
if--maybe you’d get a little job?”
An expression of abstraction came over Betel’s face, and he snapped,
impatiently: “Yes--yes--I told you that I would look for a job.But I
must write this while I have the inspiration.”
“Can’t you write your inspiration out in the evening?” faltered
Moisheh.“If you could only bring in a few dollars a week to help pay
ourselves out to the instalment man.”
Berel looked at his brother with compassionate tolerance. “What are to
you the things of the soul? All you care for is money--money--money!You’d want me to sell my soul, my poetry, my creative fire--to hand you
a few dirty dollars.”
The postman’s whistle and the cry, “Berel Cinski!”
Moisheh hurried downstairs and brought back a large return envelope.“Another one of those letters back,” deplored the mother, untactfully. “You’re only for making the post office rich with the stamps from
Moisheh’s blood money.”
“Dammit!” Defeat enraged the young poet to the point of brutality.“Stop nagging me and mixing in with things you don’t understand!” He
struck the rude table with his clenched fist.“It’s impossible to live
with you thickheads--numskulls--money-grubbing worms.”
He threw on his hat and coat and paused for a moment glowering in the
doorway. “Moisheh,” he demanded, “give me a quarter for car fare.I
have to go uptown to the library.” Silently the big brother handed him
the money, and Berel flung himself out of the room. The door had no sooner closed on the poet than the doctor sauntered
into the room.After a hasty “Hallo!” he turned to Moisheh. “I’ve had a
wonderful opportunity offered me--but I can’t take advantage of it.”
“What!” cried Moisheh, his face brightening.“My landlord invited me to his house to-night, to meet his only
daughter.”
“Why not go?” demanded Moisheh. “Sure you got to go,” urged the mother, as she placed the food before
him.“The landlord only got to see how smart you are and he’ll pull
you in the richest customers from uptown.”
Feivel looked at his clothes with resigned contempt. “H--m,” he smiled
bitterly. “Go in this shabby suit?I have too much respect for myself.”
There was troubled silence. Both brother and mother were miserable that
their dear one should be so deprived. Moisheh moved over to the window, a worried look on his face. Presently
he turned to his brother.“I’d give you the blood from under my nails
for you but I’m yet so behind with the instalment man.”
The doctor stamped his foot impatiently. “I simply have to have a suit! It’s a question of life and death.... Think of the chance!The landlord
took a liking to me--rich as Rockefeller--and an only daughter. If he
gives me a start in an uptown office I could _coin_ money. All I need
is a chance--the right location. Ten--twenty--fifty dollars an hour.There’s no limit to a dentist’s fee. If he sets me up on Riverside
Drive I could charge a hundred dollars for work I get five for in
Rutgers Street!”
“Can I tear myself in pieces?Squeeze the money from my flesh?”
“But do you realize that, once I get uptown, I could earn more in an
hour than you could in a month? I’ll pay you back every penny a hundred
times over.”
“_Nu_--tell me only--what can I do?Anything you’ll say----”
“Why--you have your gold watch.”
Moisheh’s hand leaped to the watch in his vest pocket. “My gold
watch! My prize from the night school?” he pleaded.“It ain’t just a
watch--it’s given me by the principal for never being absent for a
whole year.”
“Oh, rot!--you, with your sentimentality! Try to understand something
once.” The doctor waved his objections aside.“Once I get my start in
an uptown office I can buy you a dozen watches. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
I’m telling you my
whole future depends on the front I put up at the landlord’s house, and
still you hesitate!”
Moisheh looked at his watch, fingering it.His eyes filled with tears. “_Oi weh!_” he groaned. “It’s like a piece from my heart.My prize from
the night school,” he mumbled, brokenly; “but take it if you got to
have it.”
“You’ll get it back,” confidently promised the doctor, “get it back
a hundred times over.” And as he slipped the watch into his pocket,
Moisheh’s eyes followed it doggedly.“So long, _mammeniu_; no dinner
for me to-day.” Feivel bestowed a hasty good-bye caress upon his old
mother. * * * * *
The doctor was now living in an uptown boarding-house, having moved
some weeks before, giving the excuse that for his business it was
necessary to cultivate an uptown acquaintance.But he still kept up his
office in Rutgers Street. One morning after he had finished treating my teeth, he took up a
cigarette, nervously lit it, attempted to smoke, and then threw
it away.I had never seen the suave, complacent man so unnerved
and fidgety. Abruptly he stopped in front of me and smiled almost
affectionately.“You are the very person I want to speak to this morning--you are the
only person I want to speak to,” he repeated. I was a little startled, for his manner was most unlike him.Seldom did
he even notice me, just as he did not notice most of Moisheh’s friends.But his exuberant joyousness called out my instinctive response, and
before I knew it I was saying, “If there’s anything I can do for you
I’ll be only too happy.”
He took a bill from his pocket, placed it in my hand, and said, with
repressed excitement: “I want you to take my mother and Moisheh to see
‘Welcome Stranger.’ It’s a great show.It’s going to be a big night
with me, and I want them to be happy, too.”
I must have looked puzzled, for he narrowed his eyes and studied me,
twice starting to speak, and both times stopping himself.“You must have thought me a selfish brute all this time,” he began. “But I’ve only been biding my time.I must make the most of myself, and
now is my only chance--to rise in the world.”
He stopped again, paced the floor several times, placed a chair before
me, and said: “Please sit down.I want to talk to you.”
There was a wistful pleading in his voice that none could resist, and
for the first time I was aware of the compelling humanness of this
arrogant intellectual. “I’ll tell you everything just as it is,” he started.And then he
stopped again. “_Ach!_” he groaned. “There’s something I would like
to talk over with you--but I just can’t. You wouldn’t understand....
A great thing is happening in my life to-night--but I can’t confide
it to anyone--none can understand.But--I ask of you just this: will
you give Moisheh and my mother a good time?Let the poor devils enjoy
themselves for once?”
As I walked out of the office, the bill still crumpled in my hand,
I reproached myself for my former harsh condemnation of the doctor.Perhaps all those months, when I had thought him so brutally selfish,
he had been building for the future. But what was this mysterious good fortune that he could not confide to
anyone--and that none could understand?“Doctor Feivel gave me money to take you to the theatre,” I announced
as I entered the house. “Theatre!” chorused Moisheh and his mother, excitedly. “Yes,” I said.“Feivel seemed so happy to-day, and he wanted you to
share his happiness.”
“Feivel, the golden heart!” The old mother’s eyes were misty with
emotion.“_Ach!_ Didn’t I tell you even if my brother is high-educated, he
won’t shame himself from us?” Moisheh faced me triumphantly.“I was so
afraid since he moved himself into an uptown boarding-house that maybe
we are losing him, even though he still kept up his office on Rutgers
Street.” Moisheh’s eyes shone with delight.“I’ll tell you a little secret,” said he, leaning forward
confidentially. “I’m planning to give a surprise to Feivel. In another
month I’ll pay myself out for the last of Feivel’s office things.And
for days and nights I’m going around thinking and dreaming about buying
him an electric sign. Already I made the price with the instalment man
for it.” By this time his recital was ecstatic.“And think only--what
_mein_ doctor will say, when he’ll come one morning from his uptown
boarding-house and find my grand surprise waiting for him over his
office door!”
All the way to the theatre Moisheh and his mother drank in the glamour
and the glitter of the electric signs of Broadway.“_Gottuniu!_ If I only had the money for such a sign for Feivel,”
Moisheh sighed, pointing to the chewing-gum advertisement on the roof
of a building near the Astor.“If I only had Rockefeller’s money, I’d
light up America with Feivel’s doctor sign!”
When we reached the theatre, we found we had come almost an hour too
early. “Never mind--_mammeniu_!” Moisheh took his mother’s arm tenderly.“We’ll have time now to walk ourselves along and see the riches and
lights from America.”
“I should live so,” he said, surveying his mother affectionately.“That
red velvet waist and this new shawl over your head makes your face so
shine, everybody stops to give a look on you.”
“Yeh--yeh!You’re always saying love words to every woman you see.”
“But this time it’s my mother, so I mean it from my heart.”
Moisheh nudged me confidentially. “_Teacherin!_ See only how a little
holiday lifts up my _mammeniu_!Don’t it dance from her eyes the joy
like from a young girl?”
“Stop already making fun from your old mother.”
“You old?” Moisheh put his strong arm around his mother’s waist.“Why,
people think we’re a young couple on our honeymoon.”
“Honeymoon--_ach_!” The faded face shone with inward visioning. “My
only wish is to see for my eyes my sons marry themselves in good luck.What’s my life--but only the little hope from my children? To dance
with the bride on my son’s wedding will make me the happiest mother
from America.”
“Feivel will soon give you that happiness,” responded Moisheh.“You
know how the richest American-born girls are trying to catch on to him.And no matter how grand the girl he’ll marry himself to, you’ll have
the first place of honour by the wedding.”
As we turned in at Forty-fifth Street a curious crowd blocked our path.A row of sleek limousines stood before the arched entrance of the Van
Suydden Hotel. “Look only--a wedding! Let’s give a look on the bride!” exclaimed
Moisheh’s mother, eagerly. A wedding was, in her religion, the most
significant ceremony in life.And for her sake we elbowed our way
towards the front. A procession of bridesmaids in shimmering chiffons, bedecked with
flowers, were the first to tread the carpeted steps. Then we saw the bride.... And then----Good God!--was it possible?Moisheh clutched his mother’s hand convulsively. Could it really be
their Feivel? The two stood gaping blindly, paralysed by the scene before them. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Suddenly--roused by the terrible betrayal--the mother uttered a
distorted sob of grief.“Feivel--son _mein_! What have you done to me?”
Moisheh grasped the old woman more firmly as the bride tossed her head
coquettishly and turned possessive eyes on her husband--their son and
brother.The onlookers murmured appreciatively, thrilled by the pretty romance. Enraged by the stupid joy of the crowd which mocked her misery, the old
mother broke from Moisheh’s hold with wiry strength and clawed wildly
at the people around her.“Feivel--black curses----!” she hissed--and then she crumpled,
fainting, into Moisheh’s arms. Unaware of the disturbance outside, the happy couple passed into the
festive reception hall.With quick self-control, Moisheh motioned to a taxicab out of which had
just emerged another wedding guest. Then he gently lifted the fainting
form of the little mother in beside him.And all through the night the bitter tears of betrayed motherhood
poured over the shrunken bosom where Feivel, as a suckling infant, had
once helped himself to life.TO THE STARS
§ 1
“There are too many writers and too few cooks.” The dean laughed at her
outright. His superior glance placed her. “The trouble with you is that
you are a Russian Jewess.You want the impossible.”
Sophie Sapinsky’s mouth quivered at the corners, and her teeth bit into
the lower lip to still its trembling. “How can you tell what’s possible in me before I had a chance?” she
said.“My dear child”--Dean Lawrence tried to be kind--“the magazine world is
overcrowded with native-born writers who do not earn their salt. What
chance is there for you, with your immigrant English? You could never
get rid of your foreign idiom.Quite frankly, I think you are too old
to begin.”
“I’m not so old like I look.” Sophie heard a voice that seemed to
come from somewhere within her speak for her. “I’m only old from the
crushed-in things that burn me up.It dies in me, my heart, if I don’t
give out what’s in me.”
“My dear young woman”--the dean’s broad tolerance broke forth into
another laugh--“you are only one of the many who think that they have
something to say that the world is languishing to hear.” His easy
facetiousness stung her into further vehemence.“But I’m telling you I ain’t everybody.” With her fist she struck his
desk, oblivious of what she was doing. “I’m smart from myself, not from
books.I never had a chance when I was young, so I got to _make my
chance_ when I’m ‘too old.’ I feel I could yet be younger than youth if
I could only catch on to the work I love.”
“Take my advice. Retain the position that assures you a living.Apply yourself earnestly to it, and you will secure a measure of
satisfaction.”
The dean turned to the mahogany clock on his desk. Sophie Sapinsky was
quick to take the hint.She had taken up too much of his time, but she
could not give up without another effort. “I can’t make good at work that chokes me.”
“Well, then see the head of the English department,” he said, with a
gesture of dismissal.The professor of English greeted Sophie with a tired, lifeless smile
that fell like ashes on her heart. A chill went through her as she
looked at his bloodless face. But the courage of despair drove her to
speak.“I wasted all my youth slaving for bread, but now I got to do what I
want to do. For me--oh, you can’t understand--but for me, it’s a case
of life or death.I got to be a writer, and I want to take every course
in English and literature from the beginning to the end.”
The professor did not laugh at Sophie Sapinsky as the dean had done. He
had no life left for laughter.But his cold scrutiny condemned her. “I know,” she pleaded, “I ain’t up to those who had a chance to learn
from school, but inside me I’m always thinking from life, just like
Emerson. I understand Emerson like he was my own brother.And he says:
‘Trust yourself. Hold on to the thoughts that fly through your head,
and the world has got to listen to you even if you’re a nobody.’ Ideas
I got plenty.What I want to learn from the college is only the words,
the quick language to give out what thinks itself in me--just like
Emerson.”
The preposterous assumption of this ignorant immigrant girl in
likening herself to the revered sage of Concord staggered the
professor.He coughed. “Well--er”--he paused to get the exact phrase to set her
right--“Emerson, in his philosophy, assumed a tolerant attitude that,
unfortunately, the world does not emulate.Perhaps you remember the
unhappy outcome of your English entrance examination.”
Sophie Sapinsky reddened painfully. The wound of her failure was still
fresh.“In order to be eligible for our regular college courses, you would
have to spend two or three years in preparation.”
Blindly, Sophie turned to go. She reached for the door. The professor’s
perfunctory good-bye fell on deaf ears.She swung the door open. The president of the college stood before her. She remembered it was he who had welcomed the extension students on the
evening of her first attendance. He moved deferentially aside for her
to pass.For one swift instant Sophie looked into kindly eyes. “Could
he understand? Should I cry out to him to help me?” flashed through
her mind. But before she could say a word he passed and the door had
closed. Sophie stopped in the hall.Had she the courage to wait until he
came out? “He’s got feelings,” her instincts urged her.“He’s not an
_all-rightnik_, a stone heart like the rest of them.”
“_Ach!_” cried her shattered spirit, “what would he, the head of them
all, have to do with me?He wouldn’t even want to stop to listen.”
Too crushed to endure another rebuff, she dragged her leaden feet down
the stairs and out into the street. All the light went out of her eyes,
the strength out of her arms and fingers.She could think or feel
nothing but the choked sense of her defeat. That night she lay awake staring into the darkness. Every nerve within
her cried aloud with the gnawing ache of her unlived life.Out of the
dim corners the spectre of her stunted girlhood rose to mock her--the
wasted, poverty-stricken years smothered in the steaming pots of other
people’s kitchens. “Must I always remain buried alive in the black
prison of my dumbness?Can’t I never learn to give out what’s in me? Must I choke myself in the smoke of my own fire?”
Centuries of suppression, generations of illiterates, clamoured in her:
“Show them what’s in you!If you can’t write in college English, write
in ‘immigrant English.’”
She flung from her the college catalogue. About to trample on it,
she stopped. The catalogue had fallen open at the photograph of the
president.There looked up at her the one kind face in that heartless
college world. The president’s eyes gazed once more steadily into hers.Sophie hesitated; but not to be thwarted of her vengeance, she tore out
his picture and laid it on the table, then she ripped the catalogue,
and stuffed the crumpled pages into the stove. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
It roared up the chimney
like the song of the Valkyrie.She threw back her head with triumph,
and once more her eyes met the president’s. “Let them burn, these dead-heads. Who are they, the bosses of
education? What are they that got the say over me if I’m fit to learn
or not fit to learn?Dust and ashes, ashes and dust. But you,” she
picked up the picture, “you still got some life.But if you got life,
don’t their dry dust choke you?”
The wrestlings of her sleepless night only strengthened her resolve to
do the impossible, just because it seemed impossible.“I can’t tear
the stars out of heaven if it wills itself in me,” her youth cried in
her.“Whether I know how to write or don’t know how to write, I’ll be a
writer.”
§ 2
She was at the steaming stove of the restaurant at the usual hour the
next morning.She stewed the same _tzimmas_, fried the same _blintzee_,
stuffed the same _miltz_. But she was no longer the same. Her head was
in a whirl with golden dreams of her visionary future. All at once a scream rent the air.“_Koosh!_ where in goodness’ name is your head?” thundered her
employer. “The _blintzee_ burning in front of her nose, and she stands
there like a _yok_ with her eyes in the air!”
“Excuse me,” she mumbled in confusion, setting down the pan.“I was
only thinking for a minute.”
“Thinking!” His greasy face purpled with rage. “Do I pay you to think
or to cook? For what do I give you such wages? What’s the world coming
to?_Pfui!_ A cook, a greenhorn, a nothing--also me a thinker!”
Sophie’s eyes flamed. “Maybe in Smyrna, from where you come, a cook is a nothing. In America
everybody is a person.”
“Bolshevik!” he yelled.“Look only what fresh mouths the unions make
from them! Y’understand me, in my restaurant one thing on a time: you
cook or you think. If you wan’ to think, you’ll think outside.”
“All right, then; give me my wages!” she retorted, flaring up.“The
Tsar is dead. In America cooks are also people.”
Sophie tore off her apron, and thrust it at the man. To the cheapest part of the East Side she went in her search for a
room.Through the back alleys and yards she sought for a place that
promised to be within her means. And then a smeared square of cardboard
held between the iron grating of a basement window caught her eye.“Room to let--a bargain--cheap!”
“Only three dollars a month,” said the woman in answer to Sophie’s
inquiry. The girl opened a grimy window that faced a blank wall.“_Oi, weh!_ not a bit of air!”
“What do you need yet air for the winter?” cried Hanneh Breineh. “When
the cold comes, the less air that blows into your room, the warmer you
can keep yourself.And when it gets hot in summer you can take your
mattress up on the roof. Everybody sleeps on the roof in summer.”
“But there’s so little light,” said Sophie. “What more light do you yet need? A room is only for to sleep by night.When you come home from work, it’s dark, anyway. _Gottuniu!_ it’s so
dark on my heart with trouble, what difference does it make a little
darkness in the room?”
“But I have to work in my room all day.I must have it light.”
“_Nu_, I’ll let you keep the gas lighted all day long,” Hanneh Breineh
promised. “Three dollars a month,” deliberated Sophie. The cheapness would give
her a sense of freedom that would make up for the lack of light and
air.She paid down her first month’s rent. _Her_ house, securely hers. Yet with the flash of triumph came a stab
of bitterness. All that was hers was so wretched and so ugly!Had her
eager spirit, eager to give, no claim to a bit of beauty, a shred of
comfort? Over the potato-barrel she flung a red shawl, once her mother’s, and
looked through her bag for something to cover an ugly break in the
plaster.She could find nothing but the page torn from the college
catalogue.“It’s not so sunny and airy here as in your college office,” she said,
tacking the photograph on the wall; “but maybe you’d be a realer man if
once in your life you had to put up with a hole like this for a room.”
Sophie spread her papers on the cot beside her.With tense fingers she
wrote down the title of her story, then stopped, and stared wildly at
the ceiling. Where was the vision that had haunted her all these days? Where were
the thoughts and feelings that surged like torrents through her soul?Merely the act of putting her pencil to paper, her thoughts became a
blur, her feelings a dumb ache in her heart. _Ach_, why must she kill herself to say what can never be said in
words? But how did Emerson and Shakespeare seize hold of their vision?What was the source of their deathless power? The rusty clock struck six. “I ought to run out now for the stale bread, or it will be all sold
out, and I will have to pay twice as much for the fresh,” flashed
through her mind.“_Oi weh!_” she wailed, covering her eyes, “it’s a stomach slave I am,
not a writer.I forget my story, I forget everything, thinking only of
saving a few pennies.”
She dragged herself back to the page in front of her and resumed her
task with renewed vigour. “Sarah Lubin was sixteen years old when she came to America.She came
to get an education, but she had to go to a factory for bread,” she
wrote laboriously, and then drew back to study her work. The sentences
were wooden, dead, inanimate things. The words laughed up at her,
mockingly.Perhaps she was not a writer, after all. Writers never started stories
in this way. Her eyes wandered over to the bed, a hard, meagre cot. “I
must remember to fix the leg, or it will tip to-night,” she mused.“Here I am,” she cried despairingly, “thinking of my comforts again! And I thought I’d want nothing; I’d live only to write.” Her head sank
to the rough edge of the potato-barrel.“Perhaps I was a fool to give
up all for this writing.”
“Too many writers and too few cooks”: the dean’s words closed like a
noose around her anguished soul. When she looked up, the kind face of the college president smiled down
at her.“Then what is it in me that’s tearing and gnawing and won’t let me
rest?” she pleaded. The calm faith of the eyes levelled steadily at
her seemed to rebuke her despair. The sure faith of that lofty face
lifted her out of herself.She was humble before such unwavering power. “_Ach!_” she prayed, “how can I be so sure like you? Help me!”
Sophie became a creature possessed. She lived for one idea, was driven
by one resistless passion, to write.As the weeks and months passed and
her savings began to dwindle, her cheeks grew paler and thinner, the
shadows under her restless eyes were black hollows of fear. There came a day more deadly than death, when she had to face failure.She took out the thinning wad from her stocking and counted out her
remaining cash: one, two, three dollars, and some nickels and dimes. How long before the final surrender?If she kept up her rigorous ration
of dry bread and oatmeal, two or three weeks more at most. And then? An end to dreams. An end to ambition. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Back to the cook-stove, back to
the stifling smells of _tzimmas_, hash, and _miltz_.No, she would never let herself sink back to the kitchen. But where
could she run from the terror of starvation? The bitterest barb of her agony was her inability to surrender. She was
crushed, beaten, but she could not give up the battle.The unvoiced
dream in her still clamoured and ached and strained to find voice. A
resistless something in her that transcended reason rose up in defiance
of defeat. § 3
“A black year on the landlord!” screamed Hanneh Breineh through the
partition.“The rent he raised, so what does he need to worry yet if
the gas freezes? _Gottuniu!_ freeze should only the marrow from his
bones!”
Sophie turned back to the little stove in an attempt to light the gas
under the pan of oatmeal.The feeble flame flickered and with a faint
protest went out. Hanneh Breineh poked in her tousled head for sympathy. “Woe is me!Woe on the poor what ain’t yet sick enough for the
hospital!”
As the chill of the gathering dusk intensified, Sophie seemed to see
herself carried out on a stretcher to the hospital, numb, frozen. “God from the world!better a quick death than this slow freezing!”
With the perpetual gnawing of hunger sapping her strength, Sophie had
not the courage to face another night of torment. Drawing her shabby
shawl more tightly around her, she hurried out.“Where now?” she asked
as a wave of stinging snow blinded her. Hanneh Breineh’s words came
back to her: “the hospital!” Why not? Surely they couldn’t refuse to
shelter her just overnight in a storm like this.But when she reached the Beth Israel her heart sank. She looked in
timidly at the warm, beckoning lights. “_Ach!_ how can I have the gall to ask them to take me in?They’ll
think I’m only a beggar from the street.”
She paced the driveway of the building, back and forth and up and down,
in envy of the sick who enjoyed the luxury of warmth. “To the earth with my healthy body!” she cursed.“Why can’t I only
break a bone or something?”
With a sudden courage of despair she mounted the steps to the
superintendent’s office; but one glance of the man’s well-fed face
robbed her of her nerve.She sank down on the bench of the waiting applicants, glancing
stealthily at the others, feeling all the guilt of a condemned criminal. When her turn came, the blood in her ears pounded from terror and
humiliation.She could not lift her eyes from the floor to face this
feelingless judge of the sick and the suffering. “I’m so killed with the cold,” she stammered, twisting the fringes of
her shawl.“If I could only warm myself up in a bed for the night----”
The man looked at her suspiciously. “If we fill up our place with people like you, we’ll have no room left
for the sick.We have a ’flu epidemic.”
“So much you’re doing for the ’flu people, why can’t you help me before
I get it?” She spoke with that suppressed energy which was the keynote
of her whole personality.“Have you a fever?” he asked, his professional eye arrested by the
unnatural flush on her face. “Fever?” she mumbled.“A person has got to be already dead in his
coffin before you’d lift a finger to help.” She sped from the office
into the dreary reception-hall.On her way out her eye was caught by the black-faced type on the cover
of a magazine that lay on the centre-table.SHORT-STORY COMPETITION
_A Five-Hundred-Dollar Prize for the Best Love-Story of a Working-Girl_
As she read the magical words, the colour rushed to her cheeks.Forgotten was the humiliation of the superintendent’s refusal to take
her in, forgotten were the cold, the hunger.Her whole being leaped at
the words:
“Write your own love-story, but if you have never lived love, let it
be your dream of love.”
“Your dream of love.” The words were as wine in her blood.Was there
ever a girl who hungered and dreamed of love as she? It was as though
in the depths of her poverty and want the fates had challenged her to
give substance to her dreams.She stumbled out of the huge building,
her feet in the snow, her mind in the clouds. “God from the world! the gas is burning again!” cried Hanneh Breineh as
she groped her way back into her cellar-room.“The children are dancing
over the fire like for a holiday. All day they had nothing to warm in
their bellies, and the coffee tastes like wine from heaven.”
“Wine from heaven!” repeated the girl.“What wine but love from
heaven?” and she clutched the magazine more tightly to her shrunken
chest. In the flicker of the gas-jet the photograph on the wall greeted her
like a living thing.With the feel of the steady gaze upon her, she
re-read the message that was to her an invitation and a challenge;
and as she read, the dingy little room became alive with light. The
understanding eyes seemed to pour vision into her soul.What was the
purpose of all the harsh experiences that had been hers till now but
to make her see just this, that love, and love only, was the one vital
force of life?What was the purpose of all the privation and want she
had endured but to make her see more poignantly this ethereal essence
of love? The walls of her little room dissolved.The longing for love
that lay dumb within her all her years took shape in human form. More real than life, closer than the beat within her heart, was this
radiant, all-consuming vision that possessed her.She groped for pencil and paper and wrote, unaware that she was
writing. It was as though a hand stronger than her own was laid upon
hers. Her power seemed to come from some vast, fathomless source.The starved passions of all the starved ages poured through her in
rhythmic torrent of words--words that flashed and leaped with the
resistless fire of youth burning through generations of suppression.Not until daylight filtered through the grating of her window did the
writing cease, nor was she aware of any fatigue. An ethereal lightness,
a sense of having escaped from the trammels of her body, lifted her as
on wings.Her radiant face met the responsive glow of understanding
that shone down on her from the wall. “It’s your light shining through
me,” she exulted.“It’s your kind eyes looking into mine that made my
dumbness speak.”
For the moment the contest was forgotten. She was seized by an
irresistible impulse to take her outpourings to the man who had
inspired her.“Let him only see what music he made of me.” Gathering
tightly to her heart the scribbled sheets of paper, she hurried to the
university. A whole hour she waited at his office door. As she saw him coming, she
could wait no longer, but ran towards him.“Read it only,” she said, thrusting the manuscript at the bewildered
man. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“What exotic creature was this, with her scattered pages of scrawling
script and eager eyes?” President Irvine wondered.He concluded she was
one of the immigrant group before which he had lectured. § 4
She returned, to find the manuscript still in his hand. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
“Tell me,” he asked with an enthusiasm new to him, “where did you get
all this?”
“From the hunger in me.I was born to beat out the meaning of things
out of my own heart.”
Puzzled, he studied her. She was thin, gaunt, with a wasting power of
frustrated passion in young flesh. There was the shadow of blank nights
staring out of her eyes.Here was a personality, he thought, who might
reveal to him those intangible qualities of the immigrant--qualities he
could not grasp, which baffled, fascinated him. He questioned her, and she poured out her story to him with eager
abandon.“I couldn’t be an actress or a singer, because you got to be young and
pretty for that; but for a writer nobody cares who or what you are so
long as the thoughts you give out are beautiful.”
He laughed, and it was an appreciative, genial laugh.“You ain’t at all like a professor, cold and hard like ice. You are a
person so real,” she naïvely said, interrupting the tale of her early
struggles, her ambitions, and the repulse that had been hers in this
very university of his.And then in sudden apprehension she cried out:
“Maybe the dean and the English professor were right. Maybe only those
with a long education get a hearing in America.If you would only fix
this up for me--change the immigrant English.”
“Fix it up?” he protested. “There are things in life bigger than rules
of grammar. The thing that makes art live and stand out throughout the
ages is sincerity.Unfortunately, education robs many of us of the
power to give spontaneously, as mother earth gives, as the child gives. “You have poured out not a part, but the whole of yourself. That’s why
it can’t be measured by any of the prescribed standards.It’s uniquely
you.”
Her face lighted with joy at his understanding. “I never knew why I hated to be Americanized. I was always burning to
dig out the thoughts from my own mind.”
“Yes, your power lies in that you are yourself.Your message is that of
your people, and it is all the stronger because you are not a so-called
assimilated immigrant.”
_Ach!_ just to hear him talk! It was like the realization of a power in
life itself to hold her up and carry her to the heights.“Will you leave this manuscript here, so I can have my secretary type
it for you?” he asked as he took her to the door. “I can have it done
easily.And I shall write you when I’ll have time for another long talk
about your work.”
Only after she had left did she fully realize the wonder of this man’s
kindness. “That’s America,” she whispered.“Where but in America could something
so beautiful happen? A crazy, choked-in thing like me and him such
a gentleman talking together about art and life like born equals.I
poverty, and he plenty; I ignorance, and he knowledge; I from the
bottom, and he from the top, and yet he making me feel like we were
from always friends.”
A few days later the promised note came.How quick he was with his
help, as if she were his only concern! Bare-headed, uncoated, she ran
to him, this prince of kindness, repeating over and over again the
words of the letter.Her spirit crashed to the ground when she learned that he had been
suddenly called to a conference at Washington. “He would return in a
fortnight,” said the model-mannered secretary who answered her feverish
questions. Wait a fortnight? She couldn’t.Why, the contest would be over by
that time. Then it struck her, the next best thing--the professor of
English. With a typewritten manuscript in her hand, he must listen to
her.And just to be admitted to his short-story class for one criticism
was all she would ask. But small a favour as it seemed to her, it was greater than the
professor was in a position to grant.“To concede to your request would establish a precedent that would be
at variance with the university regulations,” he vouchsafed. “University regulations, precedents?What are you talking?” And
clutching at his sleeve, hysterically, she pleaded: “Just this once,
my life hangs on getting this story perfect, and you can save me by
this one criticism.”
Her burning desire knew no barrier, recognized no higher authority.And the professor, contrary to his reason, contrary to his experienced
judgment, yielded without knowing why to the preposterous demands of
this immigrant girl.In the end of the last row of the lecture-hall Sophie waited
breathlessly for the professor to get to her story. After a lifetime of
waiting it came. As from a great distance she heard him announce the
title.“This was not written by a member of the class,” he went on, “but
is the attempt of a very ambitious young person.Its lack of form
demonstrates the importance of the fundamentals of technique in which
we have drilled.”
His reading aloud of the manuscript was followed by a chorus of
criticism--criticism that echoed the professor’s own sentiments:
“It’s not a story; it has no plot”; “feeling without form”; “erotic,
over-emotional.”
She could hardly wait for the hour to be over to get back this living
thing of hers that they were killing.When she left the class all the
air seemed to have gone out of her lungs. She dragged her leaden feet
back to her room and sank on her cot a heap of despair. All at once she jumped up.“What do they know, they, with only their book-learning?” If the
president had understood her story, there might be others who would
understand.She must have faith enough in herself to send it forth for
a judgment of a world free from rules of grammar. In a fury of defiance
she mailed the story.§ 5
Weeks of tortuous waiting for news of the contest followed--weeks when
she dogged the postman’s footsteps and paced the lonely streets in
restless suspense. How could she ever have hoped to win the prize?Why
was she so starving for the golden hills on the sky? If only for one
day she could stop wasting her heart for the impossible!Exhausted, spent, she lay on her cot when Hanneh Breineh, more than
usually disturbed by the girl’s driven look, opened the door softly. “Here you got it, a letter.I hope it’s such good luck in it as the
paper is fine.”
“What’s the matter?” cried Hanneh Breineh in alarm at the girl’s
sudden pallor as the empty envelope fluttered from limp fingers. For answer Sophie held up the cheque.“Five hundred dollars,” she cried, “and the winner of the first prize!”
Hanneh Breineh felt the cheque. She read it. It was actually true. Five
hundred dollars!In a flurry of excitement she called the neighbours
in the hall-ways, and then hurried to the butcher, pushing through the
babbling women who crowded around the counter. “People listen only!My
_roomerkeh_ got a five-hundred-dollar prize!”
“Five hundred dollars?” The words leaped from lips to lips like fire
in the air. “_Ach!_ only the little bit of luck! | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Did she win it on the
lotteree?”
“Not from the lottery.Just wrote something from her head.And you
ought to see her, only a dried-up bone of a girl, and yet so smart.”
In a few moments Sophie was mobbed in her cellar by the gesticulating
crowd of women who hurried in to gaze upon the miracle of good luck.With breathless awe hands felt her, and, reverently, the cheque. Yes,
even mouths watered with an envy that was almost worship. They fell on
her neck and kissed her. “May we all live to have such luck to get rich quick!” they chorused.The following day Sophie’s picture was in the Jewish evening paper. The
Ghetto was drunk with pride because one of their number, and “only a
dried-up bone of a girl,” had written a story good enough to be printed
in a magazine of America.Their dreams of romance had found expression
in the overwhelming success of this greenhorn cook. In one day Sophie was elevated to a position of social importance by
her achievement.When she walked in the street, people pointed at her
with their fingers. She was deluged with requests “to give a taste” of
the neighbours’ cooking. When she went to the baker for her usual stale bread, the man picked
out the finest loaf.“Fresh bread for you in honour of your good luck. And here’s yet an
apple _strudel_ for good measure.” Nor would he take the money she
offered. “Only eat it with good health.I’m paid enough with the honour
that somebody with such luck steps into my store.”
“Of course,” explained Hanneh Breineh. “People will give you the last
bite from their mouth when you’re lucky, because you don’t need their
favours.But if you’re poor, they’re afraid to be good to you, so you
should not hang on their necks for help.”
But the greatest surprise that awaited Sophie was the letter from the
professor congratulating her upon her success.“The students have unanimously voted you to be their guest of honour
at luncheon on Saturday,” it read.“May we hope for the honour of your
company on that occasion?”
The sky is falling to the earth--she a guest of honour of a well-fed,
well-dressed world! She to break bread with those high up in rules of
grammar!Sophie laughed aloud for the first time in months. Lunch at
the hotel! A vision of snowy tablecloths, silver forks, delicate china,
and sparkling glasses dazzled her. Yes, she would go, and go as she
was.The clothes that had been good enough to starve and struggle in
must be good enough to be feasted and congratulated in. She was surprised at the sense of cold detachment with which she
entered the hotel lobby.“Maybe it’s my excuse to myself for going that makes me feel that I’m
so above it,” she told herself. The grandeur, the lights, the lustre,
and glamour of the magnificent hotel--she took it all in, her nose in
the air.At the entrance of the banquet-hall stood the professor, smiling,
smiling. And all these people in silks and furs and broadcloth wanted
to shake hands with her. Again, without knowing why, she longed to
laugh aloud.Not until Professor ----, smiling more graciously than ever, reached
the close of his speech, not until he referred to her for the third
time as having reached “the stars through difficulties,” did she
realize that she who had looked on, she who had listened, she who had
wanted so to laugh, was a person quite different from the uncouth girl
with the shabby sweater and broken shoes whom the higher-ups were
toasting and flattering.“I’ve never made a talk yet in my life,” she said in answer to the
calls for “Speech!speech!” “But these are grand words from the
professor, ‘to the stars through difficulties.’” She looked around on
these stars of the college world whom, after all her struggles, she had
reached.“Yes, ‘to the stars through difficulties.’” She nodded with a
queer little smile, and sat down amidst a shower of applause. § 6
In a daze Sophie left the heated banquet-hall. She walked blindly,
struggling to get hold of herself, struggling in vain.Every reality,
every human stay, seemed to slip from her. A stifled sense of emptiness
weighed her down like a dead weight. “What’s the matter with me?” she cried. “Why do the higher-ups crush me
so with nothing?Why is their smiling politeness only a hidden hurt in
my heart?”
The flattering voices, the puppet-like smiles, the congratulations that
sounded like mockery, were now so distant, so unreal as was the girl
with her nose in the air.What cared these people wrapped in furs that
the winter wind pierced through her shabby sweater? What cared they if
her heart died in her from loneliness?An aching need for human fellowship pressed upon her, a need for
someone who cared for her regardless of failure or success. In a sudden
dimming of vision she saw the only real look of sympathy that had ever
warmed her soul.Of them all, this man with the understanding eyes had
known that what she wanted to say was worth saying before it got into
print. If she could only see him--him himself!If she could only pass the building where he was she would feel calm
and serene again! All her bitterness and resentment would dissolve, all
her doubts turn to faith. Who knows? Perhaps he had come back already.Her feet seemed winged as they flew without her will, almost without
her consciousness, towards the place where she thought he might be. As she ran up the steps she knew he was there without being told.Even
as she sent her name in, the door opened, and he stood there, the
living light of the late afternoon glow. He wasn’t a bit startled by her sudden appearance. He merely greeted
her, and led her in silence to his inner study.But there was a quality
about the silence that made her feel at ease, as though he had been
expecting her. “I have things to say to you,” she faltered.“Do you have time?”
For answer he pushed closer to the blazing logs an easy chair, and
motioned her into it. There no longer seemed any need to say what she had planned. His mere
presence filled her with a healing peace.“And it was so black for my eyes only a while before!” She spoke aloud
her thought and paused, embarrassed. “Black for your eyes?” he repeated, leaning towards her with an
inviting interest.“You know I was first on the table by the hotel?”
His eyebrows lifted whimsically. “Tell me about it,” he urged. “All those higher-ups what didn’t care a pinch of salt for me myself
making such a fuss over a little accident of good luck!”
“Accident!You have won your way inch by inch grappling with life.”
His calm, compelling look seemed to flood her with strength. “You have
what our colleges cannot give, the courage to face yourself, the power
to think.And now all your past experiences are so much capital to be
utilized. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Do you see the turning-point I mean?”
“The turning-point in my life is to know I got a friend.I owe it
to the world to do something, to be something, after this miracle
of your kindness.” And at his deepening smile, “But you are not
kind in a leaning-down sort of kindness.You got none of that
what-can-I-do-for-you-my-poor-child-look in you.”
Her effusiveness embarrassed him. “You make too much out of nothing.”
“Nothing?” Her eyes were misty with emotion.“I was something wild up
in the air, and I couldn’t get hold of myself all alone, and you--you
made me for a person.”
“I cannot tell you how it affects me that in some way I do not
understand I have been the means of bringing release to you.Of
course,” he added quickly, “I was only an instrument, not a cause. Just
as a spade which digs the ground is not a cause of the fertility of the
soil or of the lovely flowers which spring forth.I cannot get away
from the poetic, the religious experience which has so unexpectedly
overtaken me.”
She listened to him in silent wonder. How different he was from the
college people she had met at luncheon that day!“I can’t put it in words,” she fumbled, “but I owe it to you, this
confession. I can’t help it. I used to hate so the educated! ‘Why
should they know everything, and me nothing?’ it cried in me.‘Here
I’m dying to learn, to be something, and they holding tight all the
learning like misers hiding gold.’”
§ 7
President Irvine did not answer.After a while he began talking in his
calm voice of his dream of democracy in education, of the plans under
way for the founding of the new school. “I see it all!” She leaped to her feet under the inspiration of his
words.“This new school is not to be only for the higher-ups by the
higher-ups. It’s to be for everybody--the tailor and the fish-pedlar
and the butcher.And the teachers are not to be professors, talking
to us down from their heads, but living people, talking out of their
hearts.It’s to be what there never yet was in this country--a school
for the people.”
President Irvine had the sensation of being swept out of himself
upon strange, sunlit shores. The bleak land of merely intellectual
perception lay behind him.Her ardour, her earnestness broke through
the habitual restraint of the Anglo-Saxon. “Let me read you part of my lecture on the new school,” he said, the
contagion of her enthusiasm vibrant in his low voice.“Teachers, above
all others, have occasion to be distressed when the earlier idealism
of welcome to the oppressed is treated as a weak sentimentalism,
when sympathy for the unfortunate and those who have not had a fair
chance is regarded as a weak indulgence fatal to efficiency.The new
school must aim to make up to the disinherited masses by conscious
instruction, by the development of personal power for the loss of
external opportunities consequent upon the passing of our pioneer days.Otherwise, power is likely to pass more and more into the hands of the
wealthy, and we shall end with the same alliance between intellectual
and artistic culture and economic power due to riches which has been
the curse of every civilization in the past, and which our fathers in
their democratic idealism thought this nation was to put an end to.”
“Grand!” she cried, clapping her hands ecstatically.“Your language is
a little too high over my head for me to understand what you’re talking
about, but I feel I know what you mean to say. You mean, in the new
school, America is to be America, after all.” Eyes tense, brilliant,
held his.“I’ll give you an advice,” she went on. “Translate your
lecture in plain words like they translate things from Russian into
English, or English into Russian.If you want your new school to be for
the people, so you got to begin by talking in the plain words of the
people.You got to feel out your thoughts from the heart and not from
the head.”
Her words were like bullets that shot through the static security of
his traditional past. “Perhaps I can learn from you how to be simple.”
“Sure!I feel I can learn you how to put flesh and blood into your
words so that everybody can feel your thoughts close to the heart.”
The gesticulating hands swam before him like waves of living flame.“Stand before your eyes the people, the dumb, hungry people--hungry
for knowledge. You got that knowledge.And when you talk in that
high-headed lecture language, it’s like you threw stones to those who
are hungry for bread.”
Then they were both silent, lost in their thoughts.There was a new
light in her eyes, new strength in her arms and fingers, when she rose
to go. “I shall never see the America which is to be,” he said as he took her
hand in parting; “it will not come in my day.But I have seen its soul
like a free wild bird, beating its wings not against bars, but against
the skies that the light might come through and reveal the earth to be.”
She walked down the corridor and out of the building still under the
spell of his presence.“Like a free wild bird! like a free wild bird!”
sang in her heart. She had nearly reached home when she became aware that tears were
running down her cheeks, but they were tears of a soul filled to the
brim--tears of vision and revelation.The glow of the setting sun
illuminated the whole earth. She saw the soul beneath the starved,
penny-pinched faces of the Ghetto.The raucous voices of the hucksters,
the haggling women, the shrill cries of the children--all seemed to
blend and fuse into one song of new dawn, of hope, of faith fulfilled.“After all,” she breathed in prayerful gratitude, “it is ‘to the stars
through difficulties.’ A _meshugeneh_ like me, a cook from Rosinsky’s
Restaurant burning her way up to the president for a friend!”
AN IMMIGRANT AMONG THE EDITORS
Ever since I began to read the American magazines one burning question
has consumed me: why is it that only the thoughts of educated people
are written up?Why shouldn’t sometimes a servant girl or a janitress
or a coal-heaver give his thoughts to the world?We who are forced to
do the drudgery of the world, and who are considered ignorant because
we have no time for school, could say a lot of new and different
things, if only we had a chance to get a hearing.Very rarely I’d come across a story about a shop-girl or a washerwoman. But they weren’t real stories. They were twisted pictures of the way
the higher-ups see us people. They weren’t as we are.They were as
unreal as the knowledge of the rich about the poor.Often I’d read
those smooth-flowing stories about nothing at all, and I’d ask myself:
why is it that so many of the educated, with nothing to say, know how
to say that nothing with such an easy flow of words, while I, with
something so aching to be said, can say nothing?I was like a prison world full of choked-in voices, all beating in my
brain to be heard. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
The minute I’d listen to one voice a million other
voices would rush in crying for a hearing, till I’d get too excited and
mixed up to know what or where.Sometimes I’d see my brain as a sort of Hester Street junk-shop, where
a million different things--rich up-town silks and velvets and the
cheapest kind of rags--were thrown around in bunches.It seemed to me
if I struggled from morning till night all my years I could never put
order in my junk-shop brain. Ach! If I only had an education, I used to think.It seemed to me
that educated people were those who had their hearts and their heads
so settled down in order that they could go on with quiet stillness
to do anything they set out to do.They could take up one thought,
one feeling at a time without getting the rest of themselves mixed up
and excited over it. They had each thought, each feeling, laid out in
separate shelves in their heads.So they could draw out one shelf of
ideas while the rest of their ideas remained quiet and still in the
orderly place inside of them. With me my thoughts were not up in my head.They were in my hands and
feet, in the thinnest nerves of my hair, in the flesh and blood of my
whole body.Everything hurt in me when I tried to think; it was like
struggling up towards something over me that I could never reach--like
tearing myself out inch by inch from the roots of the earth--like
suffering all pain of dying and being born.And when I’d really work out a thought in words, I’d want to say it
over and over a million times, for fear maybe I wasn’t saying it
strong enough. And I’d clutch at my few little words as a starving man
clutches at crumbs.I could never sit back with the feeling that I had
said what I wanted to say, like the educated people, who are sure of
themselves when they say something.The real thing I meant remained
inside of me for want of deeper, more burning words than I had yet
found in the cold English language. With all the confused unsureness of myself, I was absolutely sure I had
great things in me.I felt that all I needed was the chance to reach
the educated higher-ups, and all the big things in me would leap out
quicker than lightning. But how was I to reach these American-born
higher-ups when they were so much above me?I could never get into
their colleges because I could never take the time to learn all the
beginnings from school to pass their entrance examinations.And even if
I had the time to study, I wasn’t interested in grammar and arithmetic
and dry history and still drier and deader literature about Chaucer and
Marlowe.I was too much on fire trying to think out my own thoughts to
get interested in the dust and ashes of dead and gone ones.And yet I
was so crazy to reach those who had all that book-learning from school
in their heads that I was always dreaming of the wonderful educated
world that was over me.Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and stare through
the darkness at an imaginary world of educated people that would
invite me in to share with them their feast of learning.I saw them
sitting around a table talking high thoughts, all the wisdom of the
ages flowing from lip to lip like living light. I saw just how they
talked and how they looked, because once I had worked as a waitress in
a professor’s house.Their words were over my head, but the sound of
their low voices went through me like music of all that I longed and
dreamed and desired to be. I used to hold myself tight-in, like a wooden dummy, when I passed them
the food.My lips were tight together, my eyes half-closed, like a
Chinaman’s, as though I didn’t see or hear anything but my one business
of waiting on them.But all the time something in the choked stillness
of me was crying out to them: “I’m no dummy of a servant. I want to be
like you. I could be like all of you if I only had a chance.”
“If I only had a chance” kept going round and round in my head.“Make your chance,” a still voice goaded me. “If I could only write out my wonderful thoughts that fly away in the
air I’d get myself a first place in America.”
“No, go ahead. Think connectedly for one minute.Catch your crazy wild
birds and bring them down to earth.”
And so I pushed myself on to begin the adventure of writing out my
thoughts. But who’ll print what I write? was my next bother.In my evenings off I used to go to the library and kept looking and
looking through all the magazines to see where I could get a start. At last I picked out three magazines that stood out plainly for their
special interest in working people.I will call them _The Reformer_,
_The People_ and _Free Mankind_. _Free Mankind_ was a thin, white, educated-looking magazine, without
covers, without pictures, without any advertising.It gave me the
feeling when I looked through the pages that it was a head without a
body. Most of the articles were high words in the air. I couldn’t make
out what they were talking about, but some of the editorials talked
against paying rent.This at once got me on fire with interest, because
all my life the people I knew were wearing out their years worrying
for the rent. If this magazine was trying to put the landlords out of
business, I was with it.So, fired by the inspiration of the moment, I
rushed to see the editor of _Free Mankind_.I don’t remember how I ever pushed myself past the telephone girl and
secretary, but I found myself talking face to face with a clean, cold,
high-thinking head, Mr. Alfred Nott, editor-boss of _Free Mankind_.My
burning enthusiasm turned into ice through all my bones as I looked
into the terrible, clean face and cold eyes of this clean cold
higher-up.But I heard my words rushing right to him like the words of
a soap-box speaker who is so on fire with his thoughts that even the
cold ones from up-town are forced to listen to him. “I can put a lot of new life into your magazine,” I said.“I have in me
great new ideas about life, and I’m crazy to give them out to you. Your
magazine is too much up in the head and not enough down on earth. It’s
all words, words, long-winded empty words in emptiness.Your articles
are something like those long sermons about nothing, that put people
to sleep. I can wake up your readers like lightning. I can make your
magazine mean living things to living people.”
The man fell back in his chair as if frightened.His mouth opened to
speak, but no words came from his lips. “What you tell us about not paying rent is good enough,” I went on. “But you should tell us how to put an end to all that.I know enough
about not having a place to sleep in to write you something that will
wake up the dead. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
“I thought New York
was a den of thieves.The landlord robbing you with the rent, and
the restaurants cheating the strength out of every bite of food you
buy.And I thought the college higher-ups were only educated cowards
with dish-water in their veins, scared to death of hungry people like
me, scared to look at the face of suffering.Their logic and their
reason--only how to use their book-learning brains to shut out their
hearts--to make themselves deaf, dumb and blind to the cry of hunger
and want knocking at their doors.”
“Just because you felt all that so deeply you were able to put fire in
your words.”
A thousand windows of light burst open in me as I listened to him.I
was like something choked for ages in the tight chains of ignorance and
fear, breathing the first breath of free air. For the first time my
eyes began to see, my ears began to hear, my heart began to understand
the world’s wonder and the beauty.A great pity welled up in my heart for the Alfred Notts and the John
Blairs whom I had so mercilessly condemned. Poor little-educated
ones! Why did I fear them and envy them and hate them so for nothing?They were only little children putting on a long wooden face, playing
teacher to the world. And I was a little scared child afraid of
teacher--afraid they were grown-ups with the power to hurt me and shut
me out from the fun of life.Why wasn’t I scared of Robert Reeves from the first minute? It was
because he didn’t frighten people with his highness. He didn’t wear a
wooden face of dignity. He was no reformer, no holy social worker--only
a human being who loved people.That one flash of understanding from Robert Reeves filled me with such
enthusiasm for work that I shut myself off from the rest of the world
and began turning out story after story. Years passed.The only sign of success I became aware of was the
increasing flood of mail that poured in on me. People who wanted to be
writers asked me for literary help. People who imagined I was rolling
in money sent me begging letters for aid.At the beginning I wanted
to help them all. But I soon saw that I’d have to spend all my time
answering the demands of foolish self-seekers who had nothing in common
with me. And so I had to harden my heart against these time-wasting
intruders.One day, as I walked out of my house absorbed in one of the characters
that I was writing about, someone stopped me. I looked up.A pale,
thin, hungry-eyed young man asked timidly: “May I speak to you for
a minute?” Then he told me that he had written a book, and that the
publishers had turned it down, so he had printed it himself.“And I
want your opinion,” he pleaded, “because none of the critics would
listen to me.”
“I’m too busy,” I said irritably.“If you had to print the book
yourself it means it’s no good.”
“I thought you, who once had such a hard struggle, would
remember--would understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand except that you killed yourself with the
public.” And I walked off.I tried to resume the trend of my thoughts, but I could not think. The
pale face, the hungry eyes, followed me accusingly in the street. “You
who once struggled would understand” rang in my ears. And suddenly I
realized how brutal I had been.“But it’s the merciless truth,” I defended. Nobody could help him till
he finds himself. Nobody helped me till I had found myself. “No, I’m all wrong,” another voice cried. “Robert Reeves helped me. I
could never have helped myself all alone.You can only help yourself
half the way. The other half is some Hand of God in the shape of a
human contact.”
Something hurt so deep in me I couldn’t work that day. I couldn’t
sleep that night.The pale face and the hungry eyes kept staring at
me through the darkness. I, who judged the Alfred Notts and the John
Blairs--I saw myself condemned as one of them.I had let myself get so
absorbed with the thoughts in my head that I ceased to have a heart for
the people about me.What would I not have given to see that young man and tell him how I
suffered for my inhuman busy-business, which had shut my eyes to the
hungry hands reaching up to me. But I never saw him again.And yet that
man whom I had turned away like a beggar had brought me the life of a
new awakening.He had made me aware that I could never contribute my
deepest to America if I lost the friendly understanding of humanity
that Robert Reeves had given me, if I lost the one precious thing that
makes life real--the love for people, even if they are lost, wandering,
crazy people.AMERICA AND I
As one of the dumb, voiceless ones I speak. One of the millions of
immigrants beating, beating out their hearts at your gates for a breath
of understanding. Ach! America!From the other end of the earth from where I came,
America was a land of living hope, woven of dreams, aflame with longing
and desire.Choked for ages in the airless oppression of Russia, the Promised Land
rose up--wings for my stifled spirit--sunlight burning through my
darkness--freedom singing to me in my prison--deathless songs tuning
prison bars into strings of a beautiful violin.I arrived in America. My young, strong body, my heart and soul pregnant
with the unlived lives of generations clamouring for expression.What my mother and father and their mother and father never had
a chance to give out in Russia, I would give out in America.The
hidden sap of centuries would find release; colours that never saw
light--songs that died unvoiced--romance that never had a chance to
blossom in the black life of the Old World.In the golden land of flowing opportunity I was to find my work that
was denied me in the sterile village of my forefathers. Here I was to
be free from the dead drudgery for bread that held me down in Russia.For the first time in America I’d cease to be a slave of the belly. I’d
be a creator, a giver, a human being! My work would be the living joy
of fullest self-expression. But from my high visions, my golden hopes, I had to put my feet down on
earth.I had to have food and shelter. I had to have the money to pay
for it. I was in America, among the Americans, but not of them.No speech, no
common language, no way to win a smile of understanding from them, only
my young, strong body and my untried faith. Only my eager, empty hands,
and my full heart shining from my eyes! God from the world!Here I was with so much richness in me, but my mind
was not wanted without the language. And my body, unskilled, untrained,
was not even wanted in the factory. Only one of two chances was left
open to me: the kitchen, or minding babies.My first job was as a servant in an Americanized family. Once, long
ago, they came from the same village from where I came. But they were
so well dressed, so well fed, so successful in America, that they were
ashamed to remember their mother tongue.“What were to be my wages?” I ventured timidly, as I looked up to the
well-fed, well-dressed “American” man and woman. They looked at me with a sudden coldness. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
What have I said to draw away
from me their warmth?Was it so low from me to talk of wages? I shrank
back into myself like a low-down bargainer. Maybe they’re so high up in
well-being they can’t any more understand my low thoughts for money.From his rich height the man preached down to me that I must not be so
grabbing for wages.Only just landed from the ship and already thinking
about money when I should be thankful to associate with “Americans.”
The woman, out of her smooth, smiling fatness, assured me that this
was my chance for a summer vacation in the country with her two lovely
children.My great chance to learn to be a civilized being, to become
an American by living with them.So, made to feel that I was in the hands of American friends, invited
to share with them their home, their plenty, their happiness, I pushed
out from my head the worry for wages.Here was my first chance to begin
my life in the sunshine after my long darkness. My laugh was all over
my face as I said to them: “I’ll trust myself to you. What I’m worth
you’ll give me.” And I entered their house like a child by the hand.The best of me I gave them. Their house cares were my house cares. I
got up early. I worked till late. All that my soul hungered to give I
put into the passion with which I scrubbed floors, scoured pots, and
washed clothes.I was so grateful to mingle with the American people,
to hear the music of the American language, that I never knew tiredness.There was such a freshness in my brains and such a willingness in my
heart that I could go on and on--not only with the work of the house,
but work with my head--learning new words from the children, the
grocer, the butcher, the iceman.I was not even afraid to ask for words
from the policeman on the street. And every new word made me see new
American things with American eyes. I felt like a Columbus, finding new
worlds through every new word.But words alone were only for the inside of me. The outside of me
still branded me for a steerage immigrant. I had to have clothes to
forget myself that I’m a stranger yet. And so I had to have money to
buy these clothes. The month was up.I was so happy! Now I’d have money. _My own, earned_
money. Money to buy a new shirt on my back, shoes on my feet. Maybe yet
an American dress and hat! Ach! How high rose my dreams!How plainly I saw all that I would do
with my visionary wages shining like a light over my head! In my imagination I already walked in my new American clothes. How
beautiful I looked as I saw myself like a picture before my eyes!I saw
how I would throw away my immigrant rags tied up in my immigrant shawl. With money to buy--free money in my hands--I’d show them that I could
look like an American in a day.Like a prisoner in his last night in prison, counting the seconds that
will free him from his chains, I trembled breathlessly for the minute
I’d get the wages in my hand. Before dawn I rose. I shined up the house like a jewel-box.I prepared breakfast and waited with my heart in my mouth for my lady
and gentleman to rise. At last I heard them stirring. My eyes were
jumping out of my head to them when I saw them coming in and seating
themselves by the table.Like a hungry cat rubbing up to its boss for meat, so I edged and
simpered around them as I passed them the food. Without my will, like a
beggar, my hand reached out to them. The breakfast was over. And no word yet from my wages.“Gottuniu!” I thought to myself. “Maybe they’re so busy with their
own things they forgot it’s the day for my wages. Could they who have
everything know what I was to do with my first American dollars?How
could they, soaking in plenty, how could they feel the longing and the
fierce hunger in me, pressing up through each visionary dollar? How
could they know the gnawing ache of my avid fingers for the feel of
my own, earned dollars?_My_ dollars that I could spend like a free
person. _My_ dollars that would make me feel with everybody alike!”
Breakfast was long past. Lunch came. Lunch past. Oi-i weh! Not a word yet about my money. It was near dinner.And not a word yet about my wages. I began to set the table. But my head--it swam away from me. I broke
a glass. The silver dropped from my nervous fingers. I couldn’t stand
it any longer.I dropped everything and rushed over to my American lady
and gentleman. “Oi weh! The money--my money--my wages!” I cried breathlessly. Four cold eyes turned on me. “Wages? Money?” The four eyes turned into hard stone as they looked me
up and down.“Haven’t you a comfortable bed to sleep, and three good
meals a day? You’re only a month here. Just came to America. And you
already think about money. Wait till you’re worth any money. What use
are you without knowing English?You should be glad we keep you here. It’s like a vacation for you. Other girls pay money yet to be in the
country.”
It went black for my eyes. I was so choked no words came to my lips. Even the tears went dry in my throat. I left.Not a dollar for all my work! For a long, long time my heart ached and ached like a sore wound. If
murderers would have robbed me and killed me it wouldn’t have hurt me
so much. I couldn’t think through my pain.The minute I’d see before
me how they looked at me, the words they said to me--then everything
began to bleed in me. And I was helpless.For a long, long time the thought of ever working in an “American”
family made me tremble with fear, like the fear of wild wolves.No--never again would I trust myself to an “American” family, no matter
how fine their language and how sweet their smile. It was blotted out in me, all trust in friendship from “Americans.” But
the life in me still burned to live.The hope in me still craved to
hope. In darkness, in dirt, in hunger and want, but only to live on! There had been no end to my day--working for the “American” family.Now rejecting false friendships from higher-ups in America, I turned
back to the ghetto. I worked on a hard bench with my own kind on either
side of me. I knew before I began what my wages were to be. I knew what
my hours were to be.And I knew the feeling of the end of the day. From the outside my second job seemed worse than the first. It was in a
sweat-shop of a Delancey Street basement, kept up by an old, wrinkled
woman that looked like a black witch of greed.My work was sewing
on buttons. While the morning was still dark I walked into a dark
basement. And darkness met me when I turned out of the basement. Day after day, week after week, all the contact I got with America
was handling dead buttons.The money I earned was hardly enough to
pay for bread and rent. I didn’t have a room to myself. I didn’t even
have a bed. I slept on a mattress on the floor in a rat-hole of a room
occupied by a dozen other immigrants.I was always hungry--oh, so
hungry! The scant meals I could afford only sharpened my appetite for
real food. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
But I felt myself better off than working in the “American”
family, where I had three good meals a day and a bed to myself.With
all the hunger and darkness of the sweat-shop, I had at least the
evening to myself. And all night was mine. When all were asleep, I
used to creep up on the roof of the tenement and talk out my heart in
silence to the stars in the sky. “Who am I?What am I? What do I want with my life? Where is America? Is
there an America? What is this wilderness in which I’m lost?”
I’d hurl my questions and then think and think.And I could not tear it
out of me, the feeling that America must be somewhere, somehow--only I
couldn’t find it--_my America_, where I would work for love and not for
a living. I was like a thing following blindly after something far off
in the dark!“Oi weh!” I’d stretch out my hand up in the air. “My head is so lost
in America! What’s the use of all my working if I’m not in it? Dead
buttons is not me.”
Then the busy season started in the shop. The mounds of buttons grew
and grew.The long day stretched out longer. I had to begin with the
buttons earlier and stay with them till later in the night. The old
witch turned into a huge greedy maw for wanting more and more buttons.For a glass of tea, for a slice of herring over black bread, she would
buy us up to stay another and another hour, till there seemed no end to
her demands. One day, the light of self-assertion broke into my cellar darkness. “I don’t want the tea.I don’t want your herring,” I said with terrible
boldness. “I only want to go home. I only want the evening to myself!”
“You fresh mouth, you!” cried the old witch. “You learned already too
much in America. I want no clock-watchers in my shop.Out you go!”
I was driven out to cold and hunger. I could no longer pay for my
mattress on the floor. I no longer could buy the bite in the mouth. I
walked the streets. I knew what it is to be alone in a strange city
among strangers.But I laughed through my tears. So I learned too much already in
America because I wanted the whole evening to myself?Well, America has
yet to teach me still more: how to get not only the whole evening to
myself, but a whole day a week like the American workers. That sweat-shop was a bitter memory but a good school. It fitted me
for a regular factory.I could walk in boldly and say I could work at
something, even if it was only sewing on buttons. Gradually, I became a trained worker. I worked in a light, airy
factory, only eight hours a day. My boss was no longer a sweater and a
blood-squeezer.The first freshness of the morning was mine. And the
whole evening was mine. All day Sunday was mine. Now I had better food to eat. I slept on a better bed. Now, I even
looked dressed up like the American-born.But inside of me I knew
that I was not yet an American. I choked with longing when I met an
American-born, and I couldn’t say nothing. Something cried dumb in me. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what it
was I wanted. I only knew I wanted. I wanted.Like the hunger in the
heart that never gets food. An English class for foreigners started in our factory. The teacher had
such a good, friendly face, her eyes looked so understanding, as though
she could see right into my heart.So I went to her one day for an
advice:
“I don’t know what is with me the matter,” I began. “I have no rest in
me. I never yet done what I want.”
“What is it you want to do, child?” she asked me. “I want to do something with my head, my feelings.All day long, only
with my hands I work.”
“First you must learn English.” She patted me as though I was not yet
grown up. “Put your mind on that, and then we’ll see.”
So for a time I learned the language.I could almost begin to think
with English words in my head. But in my heart still hurt the
emptiness. I burned to give, to give something, to do something, to
be something. The dead work with my hands was killing me.My work left
only hard stones on my heart. Again I went to our factory teacher and cried out to her: “I know
already to read and write the English language, but I can’t put it into
words what I want.What is it in me so different that can’t come out?”
She smiled at me down from her calmness as if I were a little bit out
of my head. “What _do you want_ to do?”
“I feel. I see. I hear. And I want to think it out. But I’m like dumb
in me.I only feel I’m different--different from everybody.”
She looked at me close and said nothing for a minute. “You ought to
join one of the social clubs of the Women’s Association,” she advised. “What’s the Women’s Association?” I implored greedily.“A group of American women who are trying to help the working-girl find
herself. They have a special department for immigrant girls like you.”
I joined the Women’s Association.On my first evening there they
announced a lecture: “The Happy Worker and His Work,” by the Welfare
director of the United Mills Corporation. “Is there such a thing as a happy worker at his work?” I wondered.“Happiness is only by working at what you love. And what poor girl can
ever find it to work at what she loves?” My old dreams about my America
rushed through my mind. Once I thought that in America everybody works
for love.Nobody has to worry for a living. Maybe this welfare man came
to show me the _real_ America that till now I sought in vain.With a lot of polite words the head lady of the Women’s Association
introduced a higher-up that looked like the king of kings of business.Never before in my life did I ever see a man with such a sureness in
his step, such power in his face, such friendly positiveness in his eye
as when he smiled upon us. “Efficiency is the new religion of business,” he began.“In big
business houses, even in up-to-date factories, they no longer take
the first comer and give him any job that happens to stand empty. Efficiency begins at the employment office.Experts are hired for the
one purpose, to find out how best to fit the worker to his work. It’s
economy for the boss to make the worker happy.” And then he talked a
lot more on efficiency in educated language that was over my head.I didn’t know exactly what it meant--efficiency--but if it was to make
the worker happy at his work, then that’s what I had been looking
for since I came to America. I only felt from watching him that he
was happy by his job.And as I looked on this clean, well-dressed,
successful one, who wasn’t ashamed to say he rose from an office-boy,
it made me feel that I, too, could lift myself up for a person.He finished his lecture, telling us about the Vocational Guidance
Centre that the Women’s Association started. The very next evening I was at the Vocational Guidance Centre. There I
found a young, college-looking woman.Smartness and health shining from
her eyes! She, too, looked as if she knew her way in America. I could
tell at the first glance: here is a person that is happy by what she
does. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
“I feel you’ll understand me,” I said right away.She leaned over with pleasure in her face: “I hope I can.”
“I want to work by what’s in me. Only, I don’t know what’s in me. I
only feel I’m different.”
She gave me a quick, puzzled look from the corner of her eyes.“What
are you doing now?”
“I’m the quickest shirtwaist hand on the floor. But my heart wastes
away by such work. I think and think, and my thoughts can’t come out.”
“Why don’t you think out your thoughts in shirtwaists?You could learn
to be a designer. Earn more money.”
“I don’t want to look on waists.If my hands are sick from waists, how
could my head learn to put beauty into them?”
“But you must earn your living at what you know, and rise slowly from
job to job.”
I looked at her office sign: “Vocational Guidance.” “What’s your
vocational guidance?” I asked.“How to rise from job to job--how to
earn more money?”
The smile went out from her eyes. But she tried to be kind yet. “What
_do_ you want?” she asked, with a sigh of lost patience.“I want America to want me.”
She fell back in her chair, thunderstruck with my boldness.But yet, in
a low voice of educated self-control, she tried to reason with me:
“You have to _show_ that you have something special for America before
America has need of you.”
“But I never had a chance to find out what’s in me, because I always
had to work for a living.Only, I feel it’s efficiency for America to
find out what’s in me so different, so I could give it out by my work.”
Her eyes half closed as they bored through me. Her mouth opened to
speak, but no words came from her lips.So I flamed up with all that
was choking in me like a house on fire:
“America gives free bread and rent to criminals in prison. They got
grand houses, with sunshine, fresh air, doctors and teachers, even
for the crazy ones.Why don’t they have free boarding-schools for
immigrants--strong people--willing people? Here you see us burning up
with something different, and America turns its head away from us.”
Her brows lifted and dropped down.She shrugged her shoulders away from
me with the look of pity we give to cripples and hopeless lunatics. “America is no Utopia.First you must become efficient in earning a
living before you can indulge in your poetic dreams.”
I went away from the vocational guidance office with all the air out of
my lungs. All the light out of my eyes.My feet dragged after me like
dead wood. Till now there had always lingered a rosy veil of hope over my
emptiness, a hope that a miracle would happen. I would open up my eyes
some day and suddenly find the America of my dreams.As a young girl
hungry for love sees always before her eyes the picture of lover’s arms
around her, so I saw always in my heart the vision of Utopian America. But now I felt that the America of my dreams never was and never could
be.Reality had hit me on the head as with a club. I felt that the
America that I sought was nothing but a shadow--an echo--a chimera of
lunatics and crazy immigrants. Stripped of all illusion, I looked about me.The long desert of wasting
days of drudgery stared me in the face. The drudgery that I had lived
through, and the endless drudgery still ahead of me rose over me like
a withering wilderness of sand.In vain were all my cryings, in vain
were all frantic efforts of my spirit to find the living waters of
understanding for my perishing lips. Sand, sand was everywhere.With
every seeking, every reaching out I only lost myself deeper and deeper
in a vast sea of sand. I knew now the American language.And I knew now, if I talked to the
Americans from morning till night, they could not understand what the
Russian soul of me wanted. They could not understand _me_ any more than
if I talked to them in Chinese.Between my soul and the American soul
were worlds of difference that no words could bridge over. What was
that difference? What made the Americans so far apart from me? I began to read the American history.I found from the first pages that
America started with a band of courageous Pilgrims. They had left their
native country as I had left mine. They had crossed an unknown ocean
and landed in an unknown country, as I.But the great difference between the first Pilgrims and me was that
they expected to make America, build America, create their own world of
liberty. I wanted to find it ready-made. I read on. I delved deeper down into the American history.I saw how
the Pilgrim Fathers came to a rocky desert country, surrounded by
Indian savages on all sides. But undaunted, they pressed on--through
danger--through famine, pestilence, and want--they pressed on.They
did not ask the Indians for sympathy, for understanding. They made no
demands on anybody, but on their own indomitable spirit of persistence.And I--I was for ever begging a crumb of sympathy, a gleam of
understanding from strangers who could not sympathize, who could not
understand.I, when I encountered a few savage Indian scalpers, like the old witch
of the sweat-shop, like my “Americanized” countryman, who cheated me of
my wages--I, when I found myself on the lonely, untrodden path through
which all seekers of the new world must pass, I lost heart and said:
“There is no America!”
Then came a light--a great revelation!I saw America--a big idea--a
deathless hope--a world still in the making. I saw that it was the
glory of America that it was not yet finished.And I, the last comer,
had her share to give, small or great, to the making of America, like
those Pilgrims who came in the _Mayflower_. Fired up by this revealing light, I began to build a bridge of
understanding between the American-born and myself.Since their life
was shut out from such as me, I began to open up my life and the lives
of my people to them. And life draws life. In only writing about the
Ghetto I found America. Great chances have come to me.But in my heart is always a deep
sadness. I feel like a man who is sitting down to a secret table
of plenty, while his near ones and dear ones are perishing before
his eyes.My very joy in doing the work I love hurts me like secret
guilt, because all about me I see so many with my longings, my burning
eagerness, to do and to be, wasting their days in drudgery they hate,
merely to buy bread and pay rent.And America is losing all that
richness of the soul.The Americans of to-morrow, the America that is every day nearer coming
to be, will be too wise, too open-hearted, too friendly-handed, to
let the least last-comer at their gates knock in vain with his gifts
unwanted.A BED FOR THE NIGHT
A drizzling rain had begun to fall. I was wet and chilled to the bone. I had just left the free ward of a hospital, where I had been taken
when ill with the flu. It was good to be home again!Even though what I
called home were but the dim, narrow halls of a lodging-house. With a
sigh of relief, I dropped my suitcase in the vestibule. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
As the door swung open, the landlady met me with: “Your room is taken.Your things are in the cellar.”
“My room?” I stammered, white with fear. “Oh no--please, Mrs. Pelz!”
“I got a chance to rent your room at such a good price, I couldn’t
afford to hold it.”
“But you promised to keep it for me while I was away.And I paid you
for it----”
“The landlord raised me my rent and I got to get it out from the
roomers,” she defended. “I got four hungry mouths to feed----”
“But maybe I would have paid you a little more,” I pleaded. “If you had
only told me.I have to go back to work to-day. How can I get another
room at a moment’s notice?”
“We all got to look out for ourselves. I am getting more than twice as
much as you paid me from this new lodger,” she finished triumphantly.“And no housekeeping privileges.”
“You must give me time!” My voice rose into a shriek. “You can’t put
a girl out into the street at a moment’s notice.There are laws in
America----”
“There are no laws for roomers.”
“No law for roomers?” All my weakness and helplessness rushed out of me
in a fury of rebellion.“No law for roomers?”
“I could have put your things out in the street when your week was up. But being you were sick, I was kind enough to keep them in the cellar. But your room is taken,” she said with finality.“I got to let my rooms
to them as pay the most. I got to feed my own children first. I can’t
carry the whole world on my back.”
I tried to speak. But no voice came to my lips. I felt struck with
a club on the head. I could only stare at her.And I must have been
staring for some time without seeing her, for I had not noticed she had
gone till I heard a voice from the upper stairs, “Are you still here?”
“Oh--yes--yes--I--I--am--going--go-ing.” I tried to rouse my stunned
senses, which seemed struck to the earth.“There’s no money in letting rooms to girls,” my landlady continued,
as she came down to open the door for me. “They’re always cooking, or
washing, or ironing and using out my gas.This new roomer I never hear
nor see except in the morning when he goes to work and at night when he
comes to sleep.”
I staggered out in a bewildered daze. I leaned against the cold iron
lamp-post. It seemed so kind, so warm.Even the chill, drizzling rain
beating on my face was almost human. Slowly, my numbed brain began to
recollect where I was. Where should I turn? To whom? I faced an endless
maze of endless streets. All about me strangers--seas of jostling
strangers.I was alone--shelterless! All that I had suffered in lodging-houses rushed over me. I had never
really lived or breathed like a free, human being. My closed door
assured me no privacy.I lived in constant dread of any moment being
pounced upon by my landlady for daring to be alive. I dared not hang
out my clothes on a line in the fresh air. I was forced to wash and dry
them stealthily, at night, over chairs and on my trunk.I was under
the same restraint when I did my simple cooking although I paid dearly
for the gas I used. This ceaseless strain of don’t move here and don’t step there was far
from my idea of home. But still it was shelter from the streets.I had
almost become used to it. I had almost learned not to be crushed by it. Now, I was shut out--kicked out like a homeless dog. All thought of reporting at my office left my mind. I walked and
walked, driven by despair.Tears pressed in my throat, but my eyes were
dry as sand. I tried to struggle out of my depression. I looked through the
furnished room sections of the city. There were no cheap rooms to be
had.The prices asked for the few left were ten, twelve and fifteen
dollars a week. I earn twenty-five dollars a week as a stenographer. I am compelled to
dress neatly to hold down my job.And with clothes and food so high,
how could I possibly pay more than one-third of my salary for rent? In my darkness I saw a light--a vision of the settlement.As an
immigrant I had joined one of the social clubs there, and I remembered
there was a residence somewhere in that building for the workers. Surely they would take me in till I had found a place to live.“I’m in such trouble!” I stammered, as I entered the office of the head
resident. “My landlady put me out because I couldn’t pay the raise in
rent.”
“The housing problem is appalling,” Miss Ward agreed with her usual
professional friendliness.“I wish I could let you stay with us, my
child, but our place is only for social workers.”
“Where should I go?” I struggled to keep back my tears. “I’m so
terribly alone.”
“Now--now, dear child,” Miss Ward patted my shoulder encouragingly.“You mustn’t give way like that. Of course, I’ll give you the addresses
of mothers of our neighbourhood.”
One swift glance at the calm, well-fed face and I felt instantly that
Miss Ward had never known the terror of homelessness.“You know, dear, I want to help you all I can,” smiled Miss Ward,
trying to be kind, “and I’m always glad when my girls come to me.”
“What was the use of my coming to you?” I was in no mood for her
make-believe settlement smile.“If you don’t take me in, aren’t you
pushing me in the street--joining hands with my landlady?”
“Why--my dear!” The mask of smiling kindness dropped from Miss Ward’s
face. Her voice cooled.“Surely you will find a room in this long list
of addresses I am giving you.”
I went to a dozen places. It was the same everywhere. No rooms were to
be had at the price I could afford. Crushed again and again, the habit of hope still asserted itself.I
suddenly remembered there was one person from whom I was almost sure
of getting help--an American woman who had befriended me while still
an immigrant in the factory. Her money had made it possible for me to
take up the stenographic course.Full of renewed hope, I sped along the
streets. My buoyant faith ever expectant could think of one outcome
only. Mrs. Olney had just finished dictating to her secretary, when the maid
ushered me into the luxurious library. “How good it is to see you!What can I do for you?” The touch of Mrs.
Olney’s fine hand, the sound of her lovely voice was like the warming
breath of sunshine to a frozen thing. A choking came in my throat. Tears blinded me.“If it wasn’t a case of life and death, I wouldn’t have bothered you so
early in the morning.”
“What’s the trouble, my child?” Mrs. Olney was all concern. “I can’t stand it any longer!Get me a place to live!” And I told her
of my experiences with my landlady and my hopeless room-hunting. “I have many young friends who are in just your plight,” Mrs. Olney
consoled.“And I’m sending them all to the Better Housing Bureau.”
I felt as though a powerful lamp went out suddenly within my soul. A
sharp chill seized me. The chasm that divides those who have and those
who have not yawned between us.The face I had loved and worshipped
receded and grew dim under my searching gaze. Here was a childless woman with a houseful of rooms to herself. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Here was a philanthropist who gave thousands of dollars to help the
poor.And here I tried to tell her that I was driven out into the
street--shelterless. And her answer to my aching need was, “The Better
Housing Bureau.”
Again I turned to the unfeeling glare of the streets. A terrible
loneliness bled in my heart.Such tearing, grinding pain was dragging
me to the earth! I could barely hold myself up on my feet. “Ach! Only
for a room to rest!” And I staggered like a dizzy drunkard to the
Better Housing Bureau.At the waiting-room I paused in breathless admiration. The soft greys
and blues of the walls and hangings, the deep-seated divans, the
flowers scattered in effective profusion, soothed and rested me like
silent music.Even the smoothly fitting gown of the housing specialist
seemed almost part of the colour scheme. As I approached the mahogany desk I felt shabby--uncomfortable in
this flawless atmosphere, but I managed somehow to tell of my need.I
had no sooner explained the kind of room I could afford than the lady
requested the twenty-five cents registration fee. “I want to see the room first,” I demanded.“All our applicants pay in advance.”
“I have only a two-dollar bill, and I don’t get my pay till Monday.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll change it,” she offered obligingly. And she
took my one remaining bill. “Where were you born?What is your religion?”
“I came for a room and not to be inquisitioned,” I retorted.“We are compelled to keep statistics of all our applicants.”
Resentfully, I gave her the desired information, and with the addresses
she had given me I recommenced my search.At the end of another
futile hour of room-hunting there was added to the twenty-five cents
registration fee an expense of fifteen cents for car fare. And I was
still homeless.I had been expecting to hear from my sister who had married a
prosperous merchant and whom I hadn’t seen for years. In my agitation
I had forgotten to ask for my mail, and I went back to see about it.A
telegram had come, stating my sister was staying at the Astor and I was
to meet her there for lunch. I hastened to her. For although she was now rich and comfortable, I
felt that after all she was my sister and she would help me out.“How shabby you look!” She cast a disapproving glance at me from head
to foot. “Couldn’t you dress decently to meet me, when you knew I was
staying at this fashionable hotel?”
I told her of my plight.“Why not go to a hotel till you find a suitable room?” she blandly
advised.My laughter sounded unreal so loud it was, as I reminded her, “Before
the French Revolution, when the starving people came to the queen’s
palace clamouring for bread, the queen innocently exclaimed, ‘Why don’t
they eat cake?’”
“How disagreeable you are!You think of no one but yourself.I’ve come
here for a little change, to get away from my own troubles, and here
you come with your hatefulness.”
I hadn’t known the relief of laughter, but now that I was started I
couldn’t stop, no more than I could stop staring at her.I tried to
associate this new being of silks and jewels with her who had worked
side by side with me in the factory. “How you act! I think you’re crazy,” she admonished, and glanced at her
wrist-watch. “I’m late for my appointment with the manicurist.I have
to have my nails done after this dusty railway trip.”
And I had been surprised at the insensate settlement worker, at my
uncomprehending American friend who knew not the meaning of want.Yet
here was my own sister, my own flesh and blood, reared in the same
ghetto, nurtured in the same poverty, ground in the same sweat-shop
treadmill, and because she had a few years of prosperity, because she
ate well and dressed well and was secure, she was deaf to my cry.Where I could hope for understanding, where I could turn for shelter,
where I was to lay my head that very night, I knew not. But this much
suddenly came to me, I was due to report for work that day.I was shut
out on every side, but there in my office at least awaited me the
warmth and sunshine of an assured welcome. My employer would understand
and let me take off the remainder of the day to continue my search.I found him out, and instead awaiting me was a pile of mail which he
had left word I should attend to. The next hour was torture. My power
of concentration had deserted me.I tapped the keys of my typewriter
with my fingers, but my brain was torn with worry, my nerves ready to
snap. The day was nearly spent. Night was coming on and I had no place
to lay my head. I was finishing the last of the letters when he came.After a friendly
greeting he turned to the letters. I dared not interrupt until the
mail was signed. “Girl! What’s wrong? That’s not like you!” He stared at me. “There are
a dozen mistakes in each letter.”
A blur.Everything seemed to twist and turn around me. Red and black
spots blinded me. A clenched hand pounded his desk, and I heard a voice
that seemed to come from me--scream like a lunatic.“I have no home--no
home--not even a bed for the night!”
Then all I remember is the man’s kindly tone as he handed me a glass of
water. “Are you feeling better?” he asked. “My landlady put me out,” I said between laboured breaths.“Oh-h, I’m
so lonely! Not a place to lay my head!”
I saw him fumble for his pocket-book and look at me strangely. His
burning gaze seemed to strip me naked--pierce me through and through
from head to foot. Something hurt so deep I choked with shame.I seized
my hat and coat and ran out. It was getting dark when I reached the entrance of Central Park. Exhausted, I dropped to the nearest bench. I didn’t even know I was
crying.“Are you lonely, little one?” A hand slipped around my waist and a
dapper young chap moved closer. “Are you lonely?” he repeated. I let him talk.I knew he had nothing real to offer, but I was so
tired, so ready to drop the burden of my weary body that I had no
resistance in me. “There’s no place for me,” I thought to myself. “Everyone shuts me out. What difference what becomes of me?Who cares?”
My head dropped to his shoulder. And the cry broke from me, “I have no
place to sleep to-night.”
“Sleep?” I could feel him draw in his breath and a blood-shot gleam
leaped into his eyes. “You should worry.I’ll take care of that.”
He flashed a roll of bills tauntingly. “How about it, kiddo? Can you
change me a twenty-dollar bill?”
As his other hand reached for me, I wrenched loose from him as from the
cloying touch of pitch. “I wish I were that kind!I wish I were your
kind! But I’m not!”
His hands dropped from the touch of me as though his flesh was
scorched, and I found I was alone. I walked again. At the nearest public telephone office I called up the
women’s hotels.None had a room left for less than two dollars. My
remaining cash was forty cents short. The Better Housing Bureau had
robbed me of my last hope of shelter. I passed Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue mansions. Many were closed,
standing empty.I began counting the windows, the rooms. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Hundreds and
hundreds of empty rooms, hundreds and hundreds of luxuriously furnished
homes, and I homeless--shut out. I felt I was abandoned by God and man
and no one cared if I perished or went mad.I had a fresh sense why the
spirit of revolution was abroad in the land. Blindly I retraced my steps to the park bench. I saw and felt nothing
but a devouring sense of fear.It suddenly came over me that I was
not living in a world of human beings, but in a jungle of savages who
gorged themselves with food, gorged themselves with rooms, while I
implored only a bed for the night. And I implored in vain.I felt the chaos and destruction of the good and the beautiful within
me and around me. The sight of people who lived in homes and ate three
meals a day filled me with the fury of hate.The wrongs and injustices
of the hungry and the homeless of all past ages burst from my soul like
the smouldering lava of a blazing volcano. Earth-quakes of rebellion
raced through my body and brain.I fell prone against the bench and
wept, not tears, but blood. “Move along! No loitering here!” The policeman’s club tapped me on the
shoulder. Then a woman stopped and bent over me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t lift my head.“Tell your friend to cut out the sob-stuff,” the officer continued,
flourishing his club authoritatively. “On your way, both of youse.Y’know better than to loaf around here, Mag.”
The woman put her hand on mine in a friendly little gesture of
protection. “Leave her alone! Can’t you see she’s all in? I’ll take
care of her.”
Her touch filled me with the warmth of shelter.I didn’t know who or
what she was, but I trusted her. “Poor kid! What ails her? It’s a rough world all alone.”
There was no pity in her tone, but comprehension, fellowship. From
childhood I’d had my friendships and many were dear to me.But this
woman, without a word, without a greeting, had sounded the depths of
understanding that I never knew existed. Even as I looked up at her
she lifted me from the bench and almost carried me through the arbour
of trees to the park entrance.My own mother couldn’t have been more
gentle. For a moment it seemed to me as though the spirit of my dead
mother had risen from her grave in the guise of this unknown friend. Only once the silence between us was broken.“Down in your luck, kid?”
Her grip tightened on my arm. “I’ve been there myself. I know all about
it.”
She knew so well, what need had she of answer.The refrain came back to
me: “Only themselves understand themselves and the likes of themselves,
as souls only understand souls.”
In a darkened side street we paused in front of a brown stone house
with shutters drawn. “Here we are!Now for some grub! I’ll bet a nickel you ain’t ate all
day.” She vaulted the rickety stairs two at a time and led the way into
her little room.With a gay assertiveness she planted me into her one
comfortable chair, attempting no apology for her poverty--a poverty
that winked from every corner and could not be concealed.Flinging off
her street clothes, she donned a crimson kimono, and rummaged through
her soap-box in which her cooking things were kept. She wrung her hands
with despair as though she suffered because she couldn’t change herself
into food. Ah!the magic of love! It was only tea and toast and an outer crust of
cheese she offered--but she offered it with the bounty of a princess.Only the kind look in her face and the smell of the steaming tray as
she handed it to me--and I was filled before I touched the food to my
lips. Somehow this woman who had so little had fed me as people with
stuffed larders never could.Under the spell of a hospitality so real that it hurt like divine,
beautiful things hurt, I felt ashamed of my hysterical worries. I
looked up at her and marvelled. She was so full of God-like grace--and
so unconscious of it!Not until she had tucked the covers warmly around me did I realize that
I was occupying the only couch she had. “But where will you sleep?” I questioned. A funny little laugh broke from her.“I should worry where I sleep.”
“It’s so snug and comfy,” I yawned, my eyes heavy with fatigue. “It’s
good to take from you----”
“Take? Aw, dry up, kid! You ain’t taking nothing,” she protested,
embarrassed.“Tear off some sleep and forget it.”
“I’ll get close to the wall and make room for you,” I murmured as I
dropped off to sleep.When I woke up I found, to my surprise, the woman was sleeping in a
chair with a shawl wrapped around her like a huge statue. The half of
the bed which she had left for me had remained untouched.“You were sleeping so sound I didn’t want to wake you,” she said as she
hurried to prepare the breakfast. I rose, refreshed, restored--sane. It was more than gratitude that
rushed out of my heart to her.I felt I belonged to someone, I had
found home at last. As I was ready to leave for work I turned to her. “I am coming back
to-night,” I said. She fell back of a sudden as though I had struck her.From the quick
pain that shone in her face I knew I had hurt something deep within
her. Her eyes met mine in a fixed gaze but she did not see me, but
stared through me into the vacancy of space.She seemed to have
forgotten my presence, and when she spoke her voice was like that of
one in a trance. “You don’t know what you’re asking. I--ain’t--no good.”
“You no good? God from the world! Where would I have been without you?Even my own sister shut me out. Of them all, you alone opened the door
and spread for me all you had.”
“I ain’t so stuck on myself as the _good_ people, although I was
as good as any of them at the start.But the first time I got into
trouble, instead of helping me, they gave me the marble stare and the
frozen heart and drove me to the bad.”
I looked closely at her, at the dyed hair, the rouged lips, the
defiant look of the woman driven by the Pharisees from the steps of
the temple.Then I saw beneath. It was as though her body dropped away
from her and there stood revealed her soul--the sorrows that gave her
understanding--the shame and the heartbreak that she turned into love. “What is good or bad?” I challenged.“All I know is that I was hungry
and you fed me. Shelterless and you sheltered me. Broken in spirit and
you made me whole----”
“That stuff’s all right, but you’re better off out of here.”
I started towards her in mute protest.“Don’t touch me,” she cried. “Can’t you see--the smut all over me? Ain’t it in my face?”
Her voice broke. And like one possessed of sudden fury, she seized me
by the shoulder and shoved me out.As the door slammed I heard sobbing--loosened torrents of woe. I sank
to my knees. A light not of this earth poured through the door that had
shut on me. A holiness enveloped me. This woman had changed the world for me.I could love the people I
had hated yesterday. There was that something new in me, a light that
the dingiest rooming house could not dim nor all the tyranny of the
landlady shut out. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Vague, half remembered words flashed before me in letters of fire.“Despised and rejected of men: a woman of sorrows acquainted with
grief.”
DREAMS AND DOLLARS
Spring was in the air. But such radiant, joyous spring as one coming
out of the dark shadows of the ghetto never could dream.Earth and sky
seemed to sing with the joy of an unceasing holiday. Rebecca Yudelson
felt as though she had suddenly stepped into fairyland, where the
shadow of sorrow or sickness, where the black blight of poverty had
never been.An ecstasy of wonder and longing shone from her hungry, young eyes as
she gazed at the luxurious dwellings. Such radiance of colour! Fruits,
flowers and real orange-trees! Beauty and plenty! Each house outshone
the other in beauty and plenty.Fresh from the East Side tenements, worn from the nerve-racking grind
of selling ribbons at the Five and Ten Cent Store, the residential
section of Los Angeles was like a magic world of romance too perfect to
be real.She had often seen the Fifth Avenue palaces of the New York
millionaires when she had treated herself to a bus ride on a holiday. But nothing she had ever seen before compared with this glowing
splendour.“And in one of these mansions of sunshine and roses my own sister
lives!” she breathed. “How could Minnie get used to so much free space
and sunshine for every day?”
Ten years since Minnie had left Delancey Street.Ten years’ freedom
from the black worry for bread. There must have come a new sureness in
her step, a new joy of life in her every movement. And to think that
Abe Shmukler from cloaks and suits had bought her and brought her to
this new world!Rebecca wondered if her sister ever thought back to Felix Weinberg, the
poet who had loved her and whom she had given up to marry this bank
account man.With the passionate ardour of adolescence Rebecca had woven an idyll
for herself out of her sister’s love affair. Felix Weinberg had become
for her the symbol of beauty and romance.His voice, his face, the
lines he had written to Minnie, coloured Rebecca’s longings and dreams. With the love cadence of the poet’s voice still stirring in her heart,
she put her finger on the door bell.The door was opened by a trim maid in black, whose superior scrutiny
left Rebecca speechless. Her own sister Minnie with a stiff lady for a servant! “My sister, is she in?I just came from New York.”
“Rebecca!” cried a familiar voice, as she was smothered in hungry arms. “_Oi weh!_ How many years! You were yet so little then.Now you’re a
grown-up person.” And overcome by the memories of their ghetto days
together, they sobbed in one another’s arms. Rebecca had been prepared for a change in Minnie. Ten years of plenty.But to think that Abe Shmukler with his cloaks and suits could have
blotted out the fine sensitiveness of the sister she had loved and left
in its place his own gross imprint! Minnie’s thin long fingers were now
heavy and weighted with diamonds.The slender lines of her figure had
grown bulky with fat. “And to think that you who used to shine up the street like a princess
in your home-mades are such a fashion-plate now?” Rebecca laughed
reproachfully.They drew apart and gazed achingly at one another. Rebecca’s soul grew
faint within her as though her own flesh and blood had grown alien to
her. Why couldn’t Minnie have lifted Abe to her high thoughts?Why did
she let him drag her down to his cloaks and suits--make her a thing of
store-bought style? “Minnie--Minnie!” the younger sister wept, bewildered. “Where have you
gone?What have you done with yourself?”
Minnie brushed away her tears and laughed away her sister’s reproach. “Did you want me to remain always an East Side _venteh_?”
Then she hugged the young sister with a fresh burst of affection.“Rebecca, you little witch! All you need is a little style.I’ll take
you to the best stores, and when I get through with you no one will
guess that you came from Delancey Street.”
“You have the same old heart, Minnie, although you shine like a born
Mrs. Vanderbilt.”
“No wonder you have no luck for a man with these clothes,” Minnie
harped back to the thing uppermost in her mind.“But you weren’t fixed up in style when Felix Weinberg was so crazy
about you.”
“Do you ever see him?” came eagerly.“Yes, I meet him every once in a while, but his thoughts are far away
when he talks to me.” She paused, overcome by a rush of feeling. “Sometimes, in my dreams, I feel myself crying out to him, ‘Look at
me!Can’t you see I’m here?’”
“Don’t be a little fool and let yourself fall in love with a poet. He’s
all right for poetry, but to get married you need a man who can make a
living.I sent for you not only because I was lonesome and wanted you
near, but because I have a man who’ll be a great catch for you. He’s
full of money and crazy to marry himself.”
“Aren’t there plenty of girls in California for him?”
“But he’s like Abe.He wants the plain, settled down kind.”
“Am I the plain, settled-down kind like my sister?” thought Rebecca. And so the whole afternoon sped by in reminiscence of the past and
golden plans for the future.Minnie told with pride that her children
were sent to a swell camp, where they rubbed sleeves with the
millionaires’ children of California.Abe had sold out the greater
share of his cloaks and suits business to Moe Mirsky--this very man
whom Minnie had picked out for Rebecca. “And if we have the luck to land him, I’ll charge you nothing for the
matchmaking.My commission will be to have you live near me.”
Before Rebecca could answer there was a footstep in the outer hall and
a hearty voice called: “So your sister has come!No wonder you’re not
standing by the door waiting to kiss your husband.”
Abe Shmukler, fatter and more prosperous than ten years ago, filled
the doorway with his bulk. “Now there’ll be peace in the house,” he
exploded genially.“I’ve had nothing from my wife but cryings from
lonesomeness since I brought her here. You’ll have to keep my wife
company till we get you a man.”
Instinctively Rebecca responded to the fulsomeness of Abe’s greeting.His sincerity, his simple joy in welcoming her, touched her. She
wondered if her sister had been quite fair to this big, happy-hearted
man. And even as she wondered the vision of Felix Weinberg stood before her.This man of fire and romance and dreams, against Abe Shmukler, was like
sunrise and moonrise and song against cloaks and suits. How could any
woman who had known the fiery wonder of the poet be content with this
tame, ox-like husband?“I’ve already picked out a man for you, so you can settle near us for
good,” said Abe, giving Rebecca another affectionate hug. Again her heart warmed to him. He was so well intentioned, so
lovable. The world needed these plain, bread-and-butter men.Their
affection-craving natures, their generous instincts, kept the home
fires burning. Abe fulfilled the great essentials of life. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
He was a good provider, a
good husband, a good father and a genial host.But though he could feed
her sister with the fat of the land, what nourishment could this stolid
bread-giver provide for the heart, the soul, the mind? Rebecca’s reverie was interrupted by the jangle of the telephone.“I’ll bet it’s already that man asking if you arrived.” Abe winked at
his wife and twitted his sister-in-law under the chin as he picked up
the receiver. “Yes, she’s here,” Rebecca heard Abe say.And turning to his wife:
“Minnie, our friend Moe is coming for dinner.”
“Coming right for dinner,” cried Minnie. “Quickly we must fix you up.I
can’t have that man see you looking like a greenhorn just off the ship.”
Rebecca surveyed herself critically in the gilt mirror. The excitement
of the arrival had brought a faint flush to her cheeks.Her hair had
become softer, wavier in the moist California air. “Why can’t I see your Rockefeller prince as I am?” Rebecca was not
aware that her charm was enhanced by the very simplicity of her attire.“Is he so high tone that plain me is not good enough for him?”
Her sister cut short her objections and hurried her upstairs, where she
tried on one gown after another. But they were all too big.Then on a sudden thought she snatched a long, fillet scarf, which she
draped loosely around Rebecca’s neck.“Why, you look like a picture for a painter.” Even Minnie, accustomed
now to the last word in style, recognized that the little sister had a
charm of personality that needed no store-bought clothes to set it off.Awaiting them at the foot of the stairs was the smiling Abe. Behind him
with one hand grasping the banisters stood a short stocky young man. Under his arm he held tightly to his side a heart-shaped box of candy
tied with a flowing red ribbon.“My, look him over, kid! Ain’t he the swellest feller you ever set
your eyes on? Ain’t you glad you left your ribbon counter for your
California prince?”
Moe’s colour outshone the red ribbon which tied his box of candy.With
a clumsy flourish, he bowed and offered it to the girl. In a panic of
confusion, Rebecca let the box slip from her nervous fingers. And Moe
stooped jerkily to recover it. And Abe burst into loud laughter. “On!Solemiel!” Minnie cried, shaking him by the arm. “You’re a grand
brother-in-law.” And led the way to the dining-room. Never had Rebecca seen such a rich spread of luxuries.Roast squabs,
a silver platter of _gerfulta_ fish, shimmering cut glass containing
chopped chicken livers and spiced jellies. The under-nourished girl saw
for the first time a feast of plenty fit for millionaires.“What’s this--a holiday?” she asked, recovering her voice. “Don’t think you’re yet in Delancey Street,” admonished the host.“In
California the fat of the land is for every day.”
As they fell to the food Rebecca understood the over-fed look of those
about her.She wondered if she would have sufficient self-control not
to make a pig of herself with such delicious plenty, making the eyes
glisten, the mouth water, and the heart glad as with song.Rebecca, watching Moe as he smacked his lips in enjoyment of every
mouthful, understood why he wanted the plain, settled-down kind of
girl.A home, a wife, and fat dimpling babies belonged to him as
flowers and all green-growing things belong to the earth.“Nu, could you tell on my sister-in-law that she never had meat
except on a holiday the way she eats like a bird?” Abe began anew his
raillery.And it was not until after dinner, when Minnie dragged her
Abe away to a neighbour, that Moe and Rebecca had a chance to talk
together. “I got something grand to show you,” Moe burst out once the road was
clear.Why waste time and words in the slow love-making of cheap skates
who haven’t the shekels to show? His money could talk. And he led her
out proudly to see his red-lacquered limousine.“Swellest car in the
market, and I got it the minute your sister said you were coming.”
Rebecca was thrilled with this obvious flattery. It was the first time
she had had a man so on his knees to her.“To-morrow I take you for a ride,” he said with the sure tone that
came into his voice when he concluded a good sale of cloaks and suits. She nodded happily as they walked back to the parlour. Moe continued
his eager questions.Was she crazy for the movies? Did they have good
vaudeville out there on the East Side? Why did she not come sooner to
California? His eyes travelled over the girl with thick satisfaction.“How becoming it would be to your diamonds on your neck!” And he rubbed
his palms ecstatically. It was good to be made love to even though the man was not a poet. Till now she had only eaten out her heart for a look, a word, from
Felix Weinberg.What a fool she was not to have come to California a
year ago as Minnie had begged her. “I was so scared I’d be lonesome here, so far away from what I’m used
to,” she said, with a look that told him that a woman’s home is where
love is.“Now I wonder how I’ll ever be able to go back,” she finished
softly. “Go back! You got to stay!” he commanded masterfully. “And I’ll see
that you shouldn’t be so skinny.You got to eat more.” And suiting his
action to his word, he forced more candy upon the already over-filled
girl. Then he offered to teach her how to play cards. “Minnie and Abe are
such grand poker players,” he explained.“My sister Minnie playing cards?”
“Shah! Little queen, you’ll have to learn cards, too.There ain’t
no other pleasure for women here, except cards or the movies or
vaudeville, and the bills don’t change more than once a week.” And he
told her that it was the custom in their group to play every night in a
different house.A sudden pity gripped him. He longed to brighten the lonely look of
this little greenhorn, put roses into her pale thin cheeks. “Tell me what is your best pleasure,” he asked with the sweeping manner
of a Rothschild. “Ach!How I love music!” The glow of an inner sun lit up her face. “I can’t afford a seat in the opera, but even if I have to stand all
evening and save the pennies from my mouth, music I’ve got to have.”
“Hah--ha!” He laughed in advance of his own humour.“My sweetest music
is the click of the cash register. The ring of the dollars I make is
grander to me than the best songs on the phonograph.”
His face became suddenly alive.For the first time she saw Moe
galvanized into a man of action, a man of power. The light that burned
throughout the ages in the eyes of poets and prophets burned also in
the eyes of the traders of her race.“When I was a little hungry boy in the gutters of the ghetto, the
only songs I heard were the bargaining cries over pennies.Even when
I worked myself up to a clothing store in Division Street they were
still tearing my flesh in pieces, squeezing out cheaper, another dime,
another nickel from a suit.” But the eloquent story of his rise in the
world till now--here he was king of clothing--fell upon deaf ears.Rebecca had ceased to listen. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
She saw again their kitchen on Sunday night.Felix Weinberg’s pale
face under the sputtering gas jet, her sister leaning eagerly forward,
her hand instinctively reaching towards him across the table, her face
alight with the inner radiance that glowed from him like a burning
sun.She, Rebecca, close to him, at his feet, all a-tremble with the
nearness of him. The children on his knees, clutching at his neck,
peering from behind his shoulder.The eternal cadences of Keats and
Shelley, the surging rhythm of their song playing upon their hearts,
holding them enthralled with a music that they felt all the more deeply
because they did not understand.Even mother, clattering busily with the pots at the stove, would pause
in her work, drawn by the magic of the enraptured group.“_Nu_, with a clean apron I’m also a person to listen,” she said as
she tore from her the soiled rag which she wore around the stove and
reached for a clean blue-checked apron that she wore only for holidays. “Ah, _Mammeniu_!” Felix would respond.“In honour of this shining
beautifulness, I’ll read something special for you,” and he would,
opening his Browning. At the words Rabbi Ben Ezra, _Mammeniu’s_ sigh
was the joy of a child in fairyland. “Grow old along with me.The best is yet to be,
The last of life for which the first was made.”
Then like a child repeating its well-loved lesson for the hundredth
time, “_Nu_, I didn’t yet live out my years,” she would breathe
happily.“It will only begin my real life when my children work
themselves up in America.”
What matter if they had only potato-soup for supper--only the flavour
of fried onions in a little suet to take the place of meat?What
matter if the only two chairs were patched with boards and the rickety
table had for its support a potato barrel? Wonder and beauty filled the
room. Voices of poets and prophets of all time were singing in their
hearts.And all that Minnie had given up. For what? For silver platters with
_gefulta_ fish. For roast squabs. For spiced jellies. And the dollar
music from cash registers. Yes, Minnie, like this blustering Moe, had worked herself up in
America.She had a rich house, a Rolls-Royce car, a lady servant to
wait on her body. But what had happened to her spirit, her soul--the
soul that had once been watered and flowered with the love songs of a
poet?“You see, in California nobody worries for bread,” broke in the heavy
guttural voice of Moe Mirsky. “People’s only trouble is how to enjoy
themselves.”
Excited, high-pitched voices from the hallway, and Minnie and Abe
entered.“So much your sister is crazy for you that she tore herself
away from the cards to be with you the first night,” said Abe with an
inquisitive, quizzical look at the young couple. “And I was winning at the first shot, too,” Minnie added.“My wife is the best poker player in the bunch,” Abe asserted.“Wait,
you’ll see Friday night when they come around.” And turning back to
Moe: “You’ve got to teach her quick the cards so she can join the
company.”
“Cards don’t go in her head at all.” Moe looked with unconcealed
proprietorship at his future wife.“I guess she ain’t yet used to a
little pleasure. Let’s only introduce her to our society, and she’ll
soon learn what it is in good time.”
The next few days were spent in a wild orgy of shopping.Not only was
Rebecca to be made presentable to the higher society in which generous
Abe was anxious she should shine, but Minnie was also preparing herself
for a month’s vacation in Cataline Islands with some of Abe’s new
real estate friends.As Abe’s wife it was a matter of business that
she should be more richly dressed than the wives of his prosperous
competitors.For the first time in her life Rebecca saw things bought, not because
they were needed, but because they appealed to her sister’s insatiable
eye. “When will you ever have enough things?” Rebecca remonstrated.“Why are
we going from store to store like a couple of drunkards from bar to
bar? The more you buy, the more drunk you get to buy more.”
“Just only this one dress. That’s the newest thing in style and so
becoming.”
“But you have so much already.Your closet is so stacked full.”
“I saw Mrs. Rosenbaum wear something like it. And Abe wouldn’t want she
should come dressed better than I.”
At last Rebecca was to meet her sister’s society friends.Although
Minnie and Abe despaired of making little Rebecca stylish, they were
satisfied by Friday night that at least she could be introduced without
her Delancey Street background too evident.The dining-room table covered with green baize was piled high with
pyramids of poker chips. Packs of cards were on the table. A mahogany
cellarette laden with Scotch, cognac, bottles of White Rock and
high-ball glasses stood near by.Minnie was radiant in a black-and-gold spangled dress. The shine of
Abe’s cheeks outshone the diamond that glistened from his shirt front.Moe, who had arrived before the rest of the guests, had brought Rebecca
another heart-shaped gift, containing “the most smelly perfume in the
whole drug store.”
Before the guests arrived Moe devoted himself to showing Rebecca the
sequence of the cards, but try as she would she could make no sense out
of it.“It’s such a waste of time. It’s so foolish, so brainless....”
“Is it foolish, brainless, to win five hundred, a thousand, in one
little night?” cried Moe, the ring of the cash register in his voice. “It’s not only to win money,” broke in Minnie.“Cards are life to me. When I play I get so excited I forget about everything. There’s no
past, no future--only the now, the life of the game.”
“Just the same,” put in Abe doggedly.“When you win you’re crazy to
grab in more, and when you lose you’re crazy to stake it all to win
again.”
Dimly Rebecca began to see the lure of gambling. It was as contagious
as small-pox. Minnie had caught the poison from Abe and his friends.In a world where there was no music, no books, no spiritual stimulus,
where people had nothing but money, what else was there to fill the
eternal emptiness but excitement? The guests arrived.Mrs. Rosenbaum and her husband, the biggest
department store owner of Los Angeles. Mr. and Mrs. Soikolsky, real
estate owners of half of Hollywood. Mr. Einstein, the Tecla of
California, whose wife and children had just sailed for the Orient.As Rebecca was introduced to one solid citizen after another, she was
unable to distinguish between them. The repellently prosperous look of
the “all-rightnik” stamped them all.The vulgar boastfulness of the
man who had forced his way up in the world only to look down with smug
superiority upon his own people. “Always with your thoughts in the air,” chuckled Moe, a stubby hand
tenderly reaching towards her.The sad eyes of the little greenhorn stirred vague memories in
his heart. Warming things welled up in him to say to her. But Abe
interrupted by calling the guests to their places.A wave of expectancy swept over the gathering as they elbowed
themselves about the table. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Eyes sharp. Measuring glances shot from one
to the other. A business-like air settled upon the group. Abe poured a generous drink of whisky for each.“_Nu_, my friends, only
get yourself drunk enough so I can have a chance to win once from you.”
A fresh pack of cards was opened. The deal fell to the tight-laced,
high-bosomed Mrs. Rosenbaum, whose fat fingers flashed with diamonds as
she dealt.“You got to sit here, by me, all evening to bring me luck,” Moe
whispered in Rebecca’s ear, and drew a chair for her alongside of him. An audible silence pervaded the room. The serious business of the game
began.Unconsciously Rebecca was caught by the contagion of their excitement. She even began to hope that Minnie would win, that she would bring luck
to the well-meaning Moe. “Usual limit five dollars,” Abe declared.Moe explained that the white chips represented one dollar, the blue
two, the red five, and the yellow ten. Slowly the air became filled with smoke and the smell of alcohol. The
betting rose higher and higher.Rebecca could stand it no longer and
rushed from the room to the parlour. She looked with sharp distaste at
the gaudy furnishings. Till now she had been taken in by the glamour
of her sister’s wealth.But now the crowded riches of the place choked
her. Who had chosen all this? Her sister or her sister’s husband?Here
and there was a beautiful pillow or finely woven rug, but its beauty
was killed by the loud clash of colour, the harsh glare of cheap gilt. Cheapness and showiness stuck like varnish over the costly fabrics of
the room.It was a sort of furniture display Rebecca had often seen in
department stores. It smelled cloaks and suits.The vivid pale face of the poet, with eyes that burned with the fire of
beauty, gazed accusingly at the rich velvet hangings and overstuffed
furniture that had won Minnie away from him.How different Minnie’s home would have been if she had married the
poet! A small room in a tenement. A bare floor. A bare table. A room
that lacked beautiful things but was filled with beautiful thoughts.Felix Weinberg’s flaming presence, the books he read, the dreams he
dreamed, the high thoughts that lit up his face would have filled the
poorest room with sunshine. The shrill voices of the dining-room startled her. “Ach!What’s the matter?” Rebecca gasped in a panic. “Are they killing
themselves?” and hurried in. She could hardly distinguish the faces, so thick was the air with smoke
and whisky fumes. The look of wild animals distorted their features.Mrs. Rosenbaum’s hair had slipped from its net. Her own sister was
flushed, dishevelled. Moe’s face was set in sullen, bitter lines as he
called for more money. A scoffing devil of greed seemed to possess them
all. It was Bedlam let loose.“No use showing that you come from Division Street, even if you did
lose a couple of hundred,” Minnie shrilled savagely at Moe. “You’re worse than that push-cart, Kike,” leered the half-drunken Abe. “What a wife! What a wife!She’d steal the whites out from my eyes. She’d grab the gold out of my teeth.”
There followed an avalanche of abuse between her sister, her husband
and the sodden Moe. Rebecca had never heard such language used. “They’re only drunk.They don’t know what they’re saying,” she
apologized for them herself. Thank God, her mother, her father couldn’t see what cloaks and suits
had made of Minnie. Her own sister a common card-player!Where was that
gentle bud of a girl that Felix had loved? How was that fine spirit
of hers lost in this wild lust for excitement? And these people whom
she called friends, this very Moe whom she had picked out for her to
marry--what were they?All-rightniks--the curse of their people, the
shame of their race, Jews dehumanized, destroyed by their riches. Glutted stomachs--starved souls, escaped from the prison of poverty to
smother themselves in the fleshpots of plenty.It was towards noon the next day that Minnie with dull, puffy eyes and
aching head stumbled into Rebecca’s room. The half-filled valise was
on the bed, clothes were piled on chairs, and the trunk open as though
ready for packing. “What’s this?Are you eloping with Moe?” Minnie was too spent from the
night of excitement to be surprised at anything, but a closer look at
Rebecca’s tear-stained face aroused her from her apathy. “_Yok!_ Can’t
you speak?” she demanded irritably. “My God!How can you stand it here--this life of the flesh? What have
you here, in this land of plenty, but overeating, oversleeping----”
“Why shouldn’t I over-eat?” Minnie hurled back. “I was starved enough
all my youth.Never knew the taste of meat or milk till I came here. I
slaved long enough in the sweat-shop. The world owes me a little rest.”
Her face grew hard with bitter memories.“I don’t know how I stood it
there, in the dirt of Delancey Street, ten people in three rooms, like
herrings in a barrel, without a bath-tub, without----”
“Marble bath-tubs--bathing yourself morning and night don’t yet keep
your soul alive.How could you have sunk yourself into such drunken
card-playing?”
“If not for cards I’d be dead from loneliness. Are there any people
to talk to here?” She threw out bediamonded hands in a gesture of
helplessness.“I hate Abe like poison when he’s home so much of the
time. Cards and clothes help me run away from myself--help me forget
my terrible emptiness.” Minnie reached out imploringly to her sister.“Here you see how I’m dying before your eyes, and yet you want to leave
me.”
Rebecca felt herself growing hard and inhuman. Didn’t she love her
sister enough to respond to her cry of loneliness?But the next moment
she knew that though it tore the heart out of her body she could never
stand this bloated ease of the flesh into which Minnie was trying to
beguile her.“Would you want me to marry Moe and bury myself alive in cloaks and
suits like you? I’d rather starve on dry crusts where life is real,
where there’s still hope for higher things. It would kill me to stay
here another day.Your fine food, your fresh air, your velvet limousine
smothers me.... It’s all a desert of emptiness painted over with money. Nothing is real. The sky is too blue. The grass is too green. This
beauty is all false paint, hiding dry rot.There’s only one hope for
you. Leave your killing comforts and come with me.”
“And what about the children?” Minnie leaped to her feet in quick
defence. “I want them to have a chance in life.I couldn’t bear to have
them go through the misery and dirt that nearly killed me. You’re not a
mother. You don’t know a mother’s heart.”
“Your mother’s heart--it’s only selfishness!You’re only trying to save
yourself the pain of seeing your children go through the struggle that
made you what you are.No,” she corrected, “that made you what you once
were.”
Rebecca towered over her sister like the living spirit of struggle
revolting against the deadening inertia of ease. “What is this chance that you are giving your children?To rub sleeves
with millionaire children? | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Will that feed their hungry young hearts? Fire their spirits for higher things? Children’s hands reach out for
struggle.Their youth is hungry for hardships, for danger, for the
rough fight with life even more than their bodies are hungry for bread.”
Minnie looked at her little sister. From where came that fire, that
passion?She saw again Felix Weinberg’s flaming eyes. She heard again
his biting truths, the very cadence of his voice. Minnie buried her throbbing head in the pillows.As surely as Rebecca
sold ribbons over the counter at ten cents a yard, so surely Minnie
knew that she had sold her own soul for the luxuries which Abe’s money
had bought. And now it was out of her power to call this real part of
her back.The virus of luxury had eaten into her body and soul till she
could no longer exist without it.“If I could only go back with you,” she sobbed impotently, “if I could
only go back.”
* * * * *
Love and hate tore at Rebecca’s heart--love of Minnie and hatred of
the fleshpots that were destroying her sister.The days and nights
of journey home were spent in tortured groping for the light. Ach--sisters! Flesh of one flesh, blood of one blood, aching to help
one another in the loneliness of life, yet doomed like strangers to
meet only to part again.If she could only talk out her confusion to someone. Felix Weinberg! How he could make her clear! And suddenly she knew--knew with burning
certainty that after ten years of worshipping him at a distance she
must come to him face to face.Truth itself was driving her to him. As she got off the train, her feet instinctively led her to the cellar
café on East Broadway, where far into the morning hours Felix Weinberg
and his high-thinking friends were to be found.Even before she caught sight of him at a corner table surrounded by his
followers, she felt a vast release. She looked in through the grated
window. How different these--her own people--from the dollar-chasers
she had just left!The dirt, the very squalor of the place was life to
her, as the arrogant cleanliness, the strutting shirt-fronts of cloaks
and suits had deadened her. Here rags talked high thoughts and world
philosophies, like princes at a royal court.Here only what was in your
heart and head counted, not your bank account or the shine of your
diamonds. Even the torn wall-plaster in this palace of dreams had a magic all its
own.The pictures, the poems, the fragmentary bits of self-expression
that were scribbled everywhere were marks of the vivid life that surged
about--clamouring to be heard.She never knew how she got inside, but as in a dream she heard herself
talking to _him_--looking straight into Felix’s eyes in a miraculously
natural way as though her whole life was but a leading up to this grand
moment.The youth who used to light up their little kitchen with his flaming
presence was gone. In his place had come a man grown strong with
suffering. Fine as silk and strong as steel shone every feature.He
was scarred with all the hurts of the world--hurts that lay like whip
lashes on the furrows of his face. She felt nothing would be too small
or too big for him to understand.“Years ago when I was only that big at your feet,” Rebecca measured the
table height with her hand, “your words were life to me.Now I come
three thousand miles to talk my heart out with you.” And she told him
everything, her doubt of herself, her hard intolerance of the plain
bread-and-butter people, her revolt against her own flesh and blood.His face lit with quick comprehension. He stopped sipping his glass
of tea and leaned towards her across the table. With every word, with
every gesture she revealed herself as one of his own kind!This girl
of whose existence he had scarcely been aware all these years seemed
suddenly to have grown up under his very eyes, and he had not seen her
till now. “Don’t you see, little heart,” he responded warmly, “the dollars are
their dreams.They eat the fleshpots with the same passionate intensity
that they once fasted in faith on the Day of Atonement. They’ve been
hungry for so many centuries. Let them eat! Give them only a chance
for a few generations. They’ll find their souls again.The deeper down
under the surface you get, the more you see that the dollar-chasers are
also pursuing a dream, but their dream is different from ours, that is
all.”
“Where did you get to feel and know so much?” she breathed adoringly.He did not answer. But his eyes dwelt on her in ardent reverie,
marvelling at the gift of the gods that she was.Through unceasing
frustration of the things for which he had striven, he had come to a
point of understanding the materialists no less than the dreamers. He
had learned to forgive even Minnie who had turned from his love for the
security of wealth.But here was the glowing innocence of a girl with
the heart and brain of a woman--a woman in his own poet’s world, one
who had rejected the fleshpots of her own free will.It was as though
after years of parching thirst life had suddenly brought him a draught
of wine, a heady vintage of youth, of living poetry, of love perhaps.Straining closer to her, he abandoned himself to the exaltation that
swept him and kissed her hand. “No--no! It was Minnie you always loved,” Rebecca gasped, frightened at
his ardour.“Minnie I loved as a dreaming youth, a half-fledged poet,” he flashed
back at her.“But you--you----”
She knew now why she had come back home again--back to the naked
struggle for bread--back to the crooked, narrow streets filled
with shouting children, the haggling push-carts and bargaining
housewives--back to the relentless, penny-pinched poverty--but a
poverty rich in romance, in dreams--rich in its very hunger of
unuttered, unsung beauty.THE SONG TRIUMPHANT
_The Story of Beret Pinsky, Poet of the People, who Sold his Soul for
Wealth_
§ 1
“Where went your week’s wages?” demanded Hanneh Breineh, her bony back
humping like an angry cat’s as she bent over the washtub.Terrified, Moisheh gazed wildly at the ceiling, then dropped his eyes
to the floor. “Your whole week’s wages--where went it?” insisted Hanneh. She turned from the tub and brandished her hands in his face.“The shoes--Berel’s shoes,” Moisheh stumblingly explained. “I--I had to
buy him shoes for his feet--not new shoes--only second-hand.”
“Shoes yet for such a loafer? I’d drive him out naked--barefoot.Let
him get the chills--the fever--only to get rid from him quick!”
None of the roomers of Hanneh Breineh’s lodging-house could escape her
tyrannous inquisition.Had she not been a second mother to Moisheh,
the pants presser, and to Berel, his younger brother? Did she not cook
their supper for them every night, without any extra charge?In return
for this motherly service she demanded a precise account of their
expenditures of money or time, and of every little personal detail of
their lives. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Red glints shot from Hanneh Breineh’s sunken eyes.“And for what more did you waste out my rent money?”
“Books--he got to have ’em--more’n eating--more’n life!”
“Got to have books?” she shrieked.“Beggars--_schnorrers_--their rent
not paid--their clothes falling from them in rags--and yet they buy
themselves books!” Viciously slapping the board with the shirt she had
been rubbing, she straightened and faced Moisheh menacingly.“I been
too good to you. I cooked and washed for you, and killed myself away to
help you for nothing. So that’s my thanks!”
The door opened. A lean youth with shining eyes and a dishevelled mass
of black hair rushed in. “_Ach_, Moisheh!Already back from the shop? My good luck--I’m choking
to tell you!”
The two drab figures huddled in the dim kitchen between the washtub
and the stove gazed speechless at the boy.Even Hanneh Breineh was
galvanized for the moment by the ecstatic, guileless face, the erect,
live figure poised bird-like with desire. “_Oi_, golden heart!” The boy grasped Moisheh’s arm impetuously. “A
typewriter!It’s worth fifty dollars--maybe more yet--and I can get it
for ten, if I grab it quick for cash!”
Moisheh glanced from the glowering landlady to his ardent brother.His
gentle heart sank as he looked into Berel’s face, with its undoubting
confidence that so reasonable a want would not be denied him.“Don’t you think--maybe--ain’t there something you could do to earn the
money?”
“What more can I do than I’m already doing? You think only pressing
pants is work?”
“Berel,” said Moisheh, with frank downrightness, “you got your
education.Why don’t you take up a night school? They’re looking for
teachers.”
“Me a teacher? Me in that treadmill of deadness?Why, the dullest hand
in a shop got more chance to use his brains than a teacher in their
schools!”
“Well, then, go to work in a shop--only half-days--the rest of the time
give yourself over to your dreams in the air.”
“Brother, are you gone crazy?” Berel gesticulated wildly.“I should go
into that terrible sweat and grind of the machines? All the fire that
creates in me would die in a day!”
The poet looked at the toil-scarred face of his peasant brother.For
all his crude attempts at sympathy, how could he, with the stink of
steam soaked into his clothes, with his poverty-crushed, sweatshop
mind--how could he understand the anguish of thwarted creation, of
high-hearted hopes that died unvoiced?“But everybody got to work,” Moisheh went on. “All your poetry is
grand, but it don’t pay nothing.”
“Is my heart cry nothing, then?Nothing to struggle by day and by night
for the right word in this strange English, till I bleed away from the
torture of thoughts that can’t come out?”
Berel stopped, and his eyes seemed transfigured with an inner light.His voice grew low and tense. Each word came deliberately, with the
precision he used when swayed by poetic feeling. “_Ach_, if I could only tell you of the visions that come to me! They
flash like burning rockets over the city by night.Lips, eyes, a
smile--they whisper to me a thousand secrets. The feelings that leap in
my heart are like rainbow-coloured playthings. I toss them and wrestle
with them; and yet I must harness them.Only then can they utter the
truth, when they are clear and simple so that a young child could
understand.”
Turning swiftly, the words hissed from the poet’s lips. “Why do I have to bite the dirt for every little crumb you give me?I,
who give my life, the beat of my heart, the blood of my veins, to bring
beauty into the world--why do I have to beg--beg!”
He buried his face in his hands, utterly overcome.Moisheh, with an accusing glance at Hanneh Breineh, as if she was in
some measure to blame for this painful outburst, soothed the trembling
Berel as one would a child. “_Shah!_” He took from his pocket all his money.“Two dollars is all I
yet got left, and on this I must stick out till my wages next Monday.But here, Berel, take half.”
Shamed by Moisheh’s generosity, and embittered by the inadequacy of the
sum, Berel’s mood of passionate pleading gave way to sullenness. “Keep it!” he flung over his shoulder, and left the room.§ 2
Berel’s thoughts surged wildly as he raced through the streets. “Why am I damned and despised by them all? What is my crime? That I
can’t compromise?That I fight with the last breath to do my work--the
work for which I was born?”
Instinctively his feet led him to the public library, his one sanctuary
of escape from the sordidness of the world. But now there seemed no
peace for him even here.“Money--money!” kept pounding and hammering in his ears. “Get money or
be blotted out!”
A tap on his shoulder. Berel turned and looked into a genial face,
sleeked and barbered into the latest mould of fashion. “Jake Shapiro!” cried the poet.Five years ago these two had met on the ship bound for America. What
dreams they had dreamed together on that voyage--Berel Pinsky, the
poet, and Shapiro, the musician! “What are you doing for a living?Still writing poetry?” asked Shapiro,
as he glanced appraisingly at the haggard-eyed youth. In one swift
look he took in the shabby garments that covered the thin body, the
pride and the eagerness of the pale, hungry face.“I guess,” added the
musician, “your poetry ain’t a very paying proposition!”
Incensed at the unconscious gibe, Berel turned with a supercilious curl
of his lips.“What’s a sport like you doing here in the library?”
Shapiro pointed to a big pile of books from the copyright office. “Chasing song titles,” he said. “I’m a melody writer.I got some
wonderful tunes, and I thought I’d get a suggestion for a theme from
these catalogues.”
“_Oi weh_, if for ideas you have to go to copyright catalogues!”
“Man, you should see the bunch of lyric plumbers I have to work with.They give me jingles and rhymes, but nothing with a real heart
thrill.” He turned on Berel with sudden interest. “Show us some of your
soul stuff.”
Berel handed several pages to the composer. One after another, Shapiro
read.“Highbrow--over the heads of the crowd,” was his invariable comment. Suddenly he stopped. “By heck, there’s a good idea for a sob song! What a title--‘Aching
Hearts’!” He grasped Berel’s hand with genuine friendliness.“Your
lines have the swing I’ve been looking for. Only a little more zip, a
change here and there, and----”
“Change this?” Berel snatched the verses and put them back in his
pocket.“There’s my heart’s blood in every letter of it!”
“Yes, it’s heart stuff all right,” placated the composer, realizing
a good thing, and impatient as a hound on the scent. “Come along!”
He took Berel by the arm.“I want to read your sob stuff to a little
friend.”
Flattered, but vaguely apprehensive, Berel followed Shapiro to the
delectable locality known as Tin Pan Alley, and into the inner shrine
of one of the many song houses to be found there.“Maizie!” cried Shapiro to a vaudeville star who had been waiting none
too patiently for his return. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
“I’ve found an honest-to-God poet!”
He introduced Berel, who blushed like a shy young girl. “So you’re a poet?” said Maizie.Her eyes were pools of dancing lights as she laughed, aware of her
effect on the transfixed youth. Berel stared in dazzled wonder at
the sudden apparition of loveliness, of joy, of life. Soft, feminine
perfume enveloped his senses.Like a narcotic, it stole over him. It
was the first time he had ever been touched by the seductive lure of
woman. Shapiro sat down at a piano, and his hands brought from the tortured
instrument a smashing medley of syncopated tunes.“This needs lyric stuff with a heartbeat in it,” he flung over his
shoulder; “and you have just the dope.”
His eyes met Maizie’s significantly, and then veered almost
imperceptibly in the direction of Berel. “Go ahead, kid--vamp him!We’ve got to have him,” was the message they
conveyed to her. Maizie put her hand prettily on the youth’s arm.“With an air like that, and the right lines--oh, boy, I’d flood
Broadway with tears!”
Berel stood bewildered under the spell of her showy beauty. Unconsciously his hand went to his pocket, where lay his precious
verses.“I--I can’t change my lines for the mob,” he stammered. But Maizie’s little hand crept down his arm until it, too, reached his
pocket, while her face was raised alluringly to his. “Let’s see it, Mr.Poet--do, please!”
Suddenly, with a triumphant ripple of laughter, she snatched the pages
and glanced rapidly through the song.Then, with her highly manicured
fingers, she grasped the lapels of Berel’s coat, her eyes dancing with
a coquettish little twinkle. “It’s wonderful!” she flattered.“Just give me the chance to put it
over, and all the skirts from here to Denver will be singing it!”
Shapiro placed himself in front of Berel and said with businesslike
directness:
“I’ll advance you two hundred bucks on this song, if you’ll put a kick
in it.”
Two hundred dollars!The suddenness of the overwhelming offer left
Berel stunned and speechless. “Money--_ach_, money! To get a breath of release from want!” he
thought. “Just a few weeks away from Hanneh Breineh’s cursing and
swearing!A chance to be quiet and alone--a place where I can have a
little beauty!”
Shapiro, through narrowed lids, watched the struggle that was going on
in the boy. He called for his secretary. “Write out a contract,” he ordered.“Words by Berel Pinsky--my melody.”
Then he turned to the poet, who stood nervously biting his lips. “If this song goes over, it’ll mean a big piece of change for you. You
get a cent and a half on every copy. A hit sometimes goes a million
copies.Figure it out for yourself. I’m not counting the mechanical end
of it--phonograph records--pianola rolls--hurdy-gurdies.”
At the word “hurdy-gurdy” an aching fear shot through the poet’s heart.His pale face grew paler as he met the smooth smile of the composer. “Only to get a start,” he told himself, strengthening his resolve to
sell his poem with an equal resolve never to do so again. “Well?” chuckled Shapiro.He drew out a thick wallet from his pocket, and began counting out the
fresh, green bills. “I’ll do it this once,” said Berel, in a scarcely audible voice, as he
pocketed the money. “Gassed with gold!” exulted Shapiro to Maizie after Berel left.“He’s
ours body and soul--bought and paid for!”
§ 3
Hanneh Breineh’s lodging-house was in a hubbub of excitement.A
limousine had stopped before the dingy tenement, and Berel--a Berel
from another world--stepped into the crowded kitchen. How he was dressed! His suit was of the latest cut. The very quality
of his necktie told of the last word in grooming.The ebony cane
hanging on his arm raised him in the eyes of the admiring boarders to
undreamed-of heights of wealth. There was a new look in his eyes--the look of the man who has arrived
and who knows that he has.Gone was the gloom of the insulted and the
injured. Success had blotted out the ethereal, longing gaze of the
hungry ghetto youth. Nevertheless, to a discerning eye, a lurking
discontent, like a ghost at a feast, still cast its shadow on Berel’s
face.“He’s not happy. He’s only putting on,” thought Moisheh, casting
sidelong glances at his brother. “You got enough to eat, and it shows on you so quick,” purred Hanneh
Breineh, awed into ingratiating gentleness by Berel’s new prosperity.With a large-hearted gesture, Berel threw a handful of change into the
air for the children. There was a wild scramble of tangled legs and
arms, and then a rush to the street for the nearest pushcart.“Oi weh!” Hanneh Breineh touched Berel with reverent gratitude. “Give a
look only how he throws himself around with his money!”
Berel laughed gleefully, a warm glow coming to his heart at this
bubbling appreciation of his generosity.“Hanneh Breineh,” he said, with an impressive note in his voice, “did
you ever have a twenty-dollar gold piece in your hand?”
An intake of breath was the only answer.“Here it is.”
Berel took from his pocket a little satin case and handed it to her,
his face beaming with the lavishness of the gift. Hanneh Breineh gazed at the gold piece, which glistened with
unbelievable solidity before her enraptured eyes.Then she fell on
Berel’s neck. “You diamond prince!” she gushed. “Always I stood for your part when
they all said you was crazy!”
The lean, hungry-faced boarders drank him in, envious worship in their
eyes.“Rockefeller--Vanderbilt!”
Exclamations of wonder and awe leaped from lip to lip as they gazed at
this Midas who was once a _schnorrer_ in their midst.Basking in their adulation like a bright lizard in the sun, Berel, with
feigned indifference, lighted a thick cigar. He began to hum airily one
of his latest successes.“Ten thousand dollars for my last song!” he announced casually, as he
puffed big rings of smoke to the ceiling. “Riches rains on you!” Hanneh Breineh threw up her hands in an abandon
of amazement.“Sing to me only that millionaires’ song!”
Lifting her ragged skirts, she began to step in time to the tune that
Berel hummed. Out of all the acclaimers Moisheh remained the only unresponsive figure
in the room.“Why your long face?” Hanneh Breineh shrieked. “What thunder fell on
you?”
Moisheh shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know what is with me the matter. I don’t get no feelings from
the words.It’s only boom--boom--nothing!”
“Is ten thousand dollars nothing?” demanded the outraged Hanneh
Breineh. “Are a million people crazy? All America sings his songs, and
you turn up your nose on them. What do you know from life?You sweat
from morning till night pressing out your heart’s blood on your ironing
board, and what do you get from it? A crooked back--a dried out herring
face!”
“‘The prosperity of fools slayeth them,’” quoted Moisheh in Hebrew.Berel turned swiftly on his brother. “It’s the poets who are slain and the fools who are exalted. Before I
used to spend three months polishing one little cry from the heart. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Sometimes I sold it for five dollars, but most of the time I didn’t.Now I shoot out a song in a day, and it nets me a fortune!”
“But I would better give you the blood from under my nails than you
should sell yourself for dollars,” replied Moisheh.“Would you want me to come back to this hell of dirt and beg from you
again for every galling bite of bread?” cried Berel, flaring into
rage.“Your gall should burst, you dirt-eating muzhik!” he shouted with
unreasoning fury, and fled headlong from the room. This unaccountable anger from the new millionaire left all but Hanneh
Breineh in a stupor of bewilderment. “Muzhik!Are we all muzhiks, then?” she cried. A biting doubt of the
generosity of her diamond prince rushed through her. “Twenty dollars
only from so many thousands?What if he did dress out his stingy
present in a satin box?”
She passed the gold piece around disdainfully. “After all, I can’t live on the shine from it. What’ll it buy me--only
twenty dollars?I done enough for him when he was a starving beggar
that he shouldn’t be such a piker to me!”
§ 4
A night of carousing had just ended. Berel Pinsky looked about his
studio. Wineglasses were strewn about.Hairpins and cigarette ashes
littered the floor. A woman’s rainbow-coloured scarf, reeking with
tobacco smoke and perfume, lay wantonly across the piano keys. He strode to the window and raised the shade, but quickly pulled it
down again.The sunlight hurt him. The innocent freshness of the
morning blew accusingly against his hot brow. He threw himself on the couch, but he could not rest. Like a distorted
mirror, his mind reflected the happenings of the night before.A table decked with flowers and glittering with silver and glass swam
in vinous streaks of purple and amber. Berel saw white shoulders and
sinuous arms--women’s soft flesh against the black background of men’s
dress coats.One mocking moment rose out of the reeling picture. A bright head
pressed against his breast. His arms encircled a slender silken body.Pinnacled high above the devouring faces of his guests, hectic verses
sputtered from his lips with automatic fluency. It was this scene, spurting out of his blurred vision, that stabbed him
like a hidden enemy within his soul.He had prostituted the divine in
him for the swinish applause of the mob! “God help me! God help me!” His body swayed back and forth in dumb,
driven helplessness. “My sin!” he moaned, and sank to his knees.Unconsciously he recalled the ritual chant of the Hebrews on the Day
of Atonement--a chant he had not heard since he was a little child in
Russia. “‘My sin--the sin I committed wilfully and the sin without will.Behold, I am like a vessel filled with shame and confusion!’”
As he repeated the chant, beating his breast, his heart began to swell
and heave with the old racial hunger for purging, for cleanness. “My sin!” he cried.“I took my virgin gift of song and dragged it
through the mud of Broadway!”
His turbulent penance burst into sobs--broke through the parched waste
within him. From afar off a phrase fragrant as dew, but vague and
formless, trembled before him.With a surge of joy, he seized pencil
and paper. Only to catch and voice the first gush of his returning
spirit! “Wake up, you nut!”
Shapiro had come in unobserved, and stood before him like a grinning
Mephistopheles. Berel looked up, startled.The air boiled before him. “See here--we got the chance of our life!” Shapiro, in his enthusiasm,
did not notice Berel’s grim mood. He shook the poet by the shoulder. “Ten thousand bucks, and not a worry in your bean!Just sign your name
to this.”
With a shudder of shame, Berel glanced at the manuscript and flung it
from him. “Sign my name to this trash?”
“Huh! You’re mighty squeamish all of a sudden!”
“I can’t choke no more my conscience.”
“Conscience, rot!If we can’t get the dope from you, I tell you, we got
to get it from somebody else till you get back on the job!”
A cloud seemed to thicken Berel’s glance.“Here,” he said, taking from his desk his last typewritten songs, “I’ve
done my level best to grind this out.”
Shapiro grasped the sheets with quickening interest. He read, and then
shook his head with grieved finality. “It’s no use.It’s not in you any more. You’ve lost the punch.”
“You mean to tell me that my verses wouldn’t go?”
Berel’s eyes shone like hot coals out of his blanched face. “Look here, old pal,” replied Shapiro, with patronizing pity.“You’ve
just gone dry.”
“You ghoul!” Berel lifted his fist threateningly.“It’s you who worked
me dry--made of my name nothing but a trade-mark!”
“So that’s what I get for all I done for you!” Revulsion at the boy’s
ingratitude swept through Shapiro like a fury. “What do you think I am? Business is business.If you ain’t got the dope no more, why, you ain’t
better than the bunch of plumbers that I chucked!”
With a guttural cry, Berel hurled himself forward like a tiger. “You bloodsucker, you!”
A shriek from Maizie standing in the doorway.A whirling figure in
chiffon and furs thrust itself between them, the impact pushing Shapiro
back. “Baby darling, you’re killing me!” Soft arms clung about Berel’s neck.“You don’t want to hurt nobody--you know you don’t--and you make me
cry!”
Savagely Berel thrust the girl’s head back and looked into her eyes. His face flashed with the shame of the betrayed manhood in him.“I was a poet before you smothered my fire with your jazz!”
For an instant Maizie’s features froze, terrified by an anger that she
could not comprehend. Then she threw herself on his shoulder again. “But it’s in rehearsal--booked to the coast.It’s all up with me unless
you sign!”
He felt her sobs pounding away his anger. A hated tenderness slowly
displaced his fury. Unwillingly, his arms clasped her closer. “This once, but never again,” he breathed in her ear as he crushed her
to him.Gently Maizie extricated herself, with a smile shining through her
tear-daubed face. “You darling old pet! I’ll be grateful till I die,” she said, thrusting
the pen into Berel’s hand.With tragic acceptance of his weakness, Berel scrawled his well-known
signature on one sheet after another. With a beaten look of hatred he
handed them to Shapiro, now pacified and smiling. * * * * *
Long after they had gone, Berel still sat in the same chair. He made no
move. He uttered no sound. With doubled fists thrust between his knees,
he sat there, his head sunk on his breast.In the depths of his anguish a sudden light flashed. He picked up the
rejected songs and read them with regained understanding. All the cheap
triteness, the jazz vulgarity of the lines, leaped at him and hit him
in the face.“Pfui!” he laughed with bitter loathing, as he flung the tawdry verses
from him. Like a prisoner unbound, he sprang to his feet. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
He would shake himself
free from the shackles of his riches!All this clutter of things about
him--this huge, stuffy house with its useless rooms--the servants--his
limousine--each added luxury was only another bar shutting him out from
the light.For an instant he pondered how to get rid of his stifling wealth. Should he leave it to Moisheh or Hanneh Breineh? No--they should not be
choked under this mantle of treasure that had nearly choked the life in
him. A flash of inspiration--Maizie!God help her, poor life-loving Maizie! He would give it to her outright--everything, down to the last kitchen
pot--only to be a free man again! As quick as thought Berel scribbled a note to his lawyer, directing him
to carry out this reckless whim.Then he went to the closet where, out
of some strange, whimsical sentiment, he still kept his shabby old coat
and hat. In a moment he was the old Berel again. Still in his frenzy,
he strode towards the door.“Back--back to Hanneh Breineh--to Moisheh--back to my own people! Free--free!”
He waved his hands exultantly. The walls resounded with his triumphant
laughter.Grasping his shabby old cap in his hand, he raised it high
over his head and slammed the gold-panelled door behind him with a
thundering crash. § 5
“Last lot cheap!Apples sweet like honey!”
“Fish, live, fresh fish!”
“Shoe laces, matches, pins!”
The raucous orchestra of voices rose and fell in whining, blatant
discord. Into the myriad sounds the rumbling Elevated bored its roaring
thunder.Dirty, multi-coloured rags--the pinions of poverty--fluttered
from the crowded windows. Streams of human atoms surged up and down the
side-walk littered with filth. Horses and humans pounded and scuttled
through the middle of the street.Berel’s face shone exultant out of the crowd. In the quickening warmth
of this old, familiar poverty his being expanded and breathed in huge
drafts of air.The jostling mass of humanity that pressed about him
was like the close embrace of countless friends. _Ach_, here in this elemental struggle for existence was the reality he
was seeking! It cried to him out of the dirty, driven faces.Here was
the life that has never yet been fully lived. Here were the songs that
have not yet been adequately sung. “A black year on you, robber, swindler!If I go to buy rotten apples,
should you charge me for fruit from heaven?”
The familiar voice shot like a bolt to his awakening heart.He looked
up to see Hanneh Breineh’s ragged figure wedged in between two
pushcarts, her face ecstatic with the zest of bargaining.“Hanneh Breineh!” he cried, seizing her market basket, and almost
throwing himself on her neck in a rush of exuberant affection. “I’ve
come back to you and Moisheh!”
“God from the world!What’s this--you in rags?” A quick look of
suspicion crept into her face. “Did you lose your money?Did you maybe
play cards?”
“I left it all to her--you know--every cent of the ill-gotten money.”
“Left your money to that doll’s face?”
Hanneh clutched her head and peered at him out of her red-lidded eyes. “Where’s Moisheh?” Berel asked.He came closer to her, his whole face expressing the most childlike
faith in her acceptance of his helplessness, in the assurance of her
welcome.“Don’t you yet know the pants pressers was on a strike, and he owed me
the rent for so long he went away from shame?”
“But where is he--my brother?” cried Berel in despair. “The devil knows, not me.I only know he owes me the rent!”
“Moisheh gone?” He felt the earth slipping from under him. He seized
Hanneh Breineh’s hand imploringly. “You can squeeze me in with the
other boarders--put me up on chairs--over the washtub--anywhere.I got
no one but you!”
“No one but me?” Thrusting him down to his knees, she towered above
him like some serpent-headed fury. “What did you ever done for me when
you had it good that I should take pity on you now?Why was you such a
stingy to me when you were rolling yourself in riches?”
Her voice came in thick gusts of passion, as the smouldering feeling
of past neglect burst from her in volcanic wrath.“You black-hearted
_schnorrer_, you!”
A crowd of neighbours and passers-by, who had gathered at her first
cursing screams, now surged closer.With her passion for harangue,
she was lifted to sublime heights of vituperative eloquence by her
sensation-hungry audience. “People! Give a look only!This soft idiot throws away all his money
on a doll’s face, and then wants me to take the bread from the mouths
of my own children to feed him!” She shook her fist in Berel’s face. “Loafer--liar!I was always telling you your bad end!”
A hoarse voice rose from the crowd. “Pfui!the rotten rich one!”
“He used to blow from himself like a Vanderbilt!”
“Came riding around in automobiles!”
All the pent-up envy that they never dared express while he was in
power suddenly found voice.“He’s crazy--_meshugeh_!”
The mob took up the abuse and began to press closer. A thick piece of
mud from an unknown hand flattened itself on the ashen cheek of the
shaken poet. Instantly the lust for persecution swept the crowd.Mud
rained on the crouching figure in their midst. Hoarse invectives,
shrieks, infamous laughter rose from the mob, now losing all control. With the look of a hunted beast, Berel drove his way through the
merciless crowd.His clothing swirled in streaming rags behind him as
he fled on, driven by the one instinct to escape alive. When he had outdistanced those who pursued, he dropped in a dark
hallway of an alley.Utter exhaustion drained him of all thought, all
feeling. Dawn came. Still Berel slept. From the near-by street the clattering of
a morning milk wagon roused him slightly. He stirred painfully, then
sank back into a dream which grew as vivid as life.He saw himself a tiny, black ant in an ant-hill. While plodding
toilfully with the teeming hive, he suddenly ventured on a path of his
own.Then a huge, destroying force overwhelmed and crushed him, to the
applause of the other ants, slaves of their traditional routine. The pounding of a hammer rang above his head. He opened his eyes.A
man was nailing a sign to the doorway into which he had sunk the night
before. Berel rubbed his heavy-lidded eyes and, blinking, read the
words:
MACHINE HANDS WANTED
“Food! _Oi weh_, a bite to eat!A job should I take?”
The disjointed thoughts of his tired brain urged him to move. He tried
to rise, but he ached in every limb. The pain in his stiff body brought
back to him the terror through which he had lived the day before.More
than starvation, he feared the abyss of madness that yawned before him. “Machine hand--anything,” he told himself. “Only to be sane--only to be
like the rest--only to have peace!”
This new humility gave him strength.He mounted the stairs of the
factory and took his place in the waiting line of applicants for work. § 6
For weeks Berel Pinsky worked, dull and inanimate as the machines he
had learned to drive. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Work, eat, sleep--eat, sleep, work.Day after day
he went to and from his hall bedroom, day after day to and from the
shop. He had ceased to struggle. He had ceased to be an individual, a soul
apart. He was a piece of a mass, a cog of a machine, an ant of an ant
hill.Individually he was nothing--they were nothing. Together they
made up the shop. So he went on. Inert, dumb as a beast in a yoke, he brushed against
his neighbours. He never talked.As if in a dream, he heard the shrill
babble of the other shop hands rise above the roaring noises of the
machines. One day, while eating his scanty lunch, lost in a dull, wandering
daydream, he felt a movement at his elbow.Looking up, he saw Sosheh,
the finisher, furtively reaching for a crust that had dropped from his
thick slice of bread. “You don’t want it yet?” she questioned, her face colouring with
confusion. “No,” he answered, surprised out of his silence.“But didn’t you have
any lunch?”
“I’m saving myself from my lunches to buy me a red feather on my new
spring hat.”
He looked at Sosheh curiously, and noticed for the first time the
pinched look of the pale young face.“Red over that olive paleness!” he mused. “How bright and singing that
colour would be!”
Moved by an impulse of friendliness, he pushed an apple towards her. “Take it,” he said.“I had one for my lunch already.”
He watched her with smiling interest as she bit hungrily into the juicy
fruit. “Will your feather be as red as this apple?” he asked. “_Ach!_” she said, with her mouth full.“If you could only give a look
how that feather is to me becoming! The redness waves over my black
hair like waves from red wine!”
“Why, that girl is a poet!” he thought, thrilled by the way her mind
leaped in her dumb yearning for beauty.The next noon she appeared with a paper bag in her hand. Reverently she
drew forth a bright red cock’s feather. “Nu, ain’t it grand? For two weeks my lunch money it is.”
“How they want to shine, the driven things, even in the shop!” he
mused.“Starving for a bit of bright colour--denying themselves food
for the shimmering touch of a little beauty!”
One morning, when he had risen to go to work in the grey dawn, he
found his landlady bending over an ironing board in the dim gaslight,
pressing a child’s white dress.She put down the iron to give Berel his
breakfast. “My little Gittel is going to speak a piece to-day.” Her face glowed as
she showed him the frock. “Give a look only on those flowers I stitched
out myself on the sash.Don’t they smell almost the fields to you?”
He gazed in wonder at the mother’s face beaming down at him. How could
Tzipeh Yenteh still sense the perfume of the fields in this dead grind
of work?How could his care-crushed landlady, with seven hungry mouths
to feed--how could she still reach out for the beautiful? His path to
work was lit up by Tzipeh Yenteh’s face as she showed him her Gittel’s
dress in all its freshness.Little by little he found himself becoming interested in the people
about him. Each had his own hidden craving. Each one longed for
something beautiful that was his and no one else’s. Beauty--beauty! _Ach_, the lure of it, the tender hope of it!How it
filled every heart with its quickening breath! It made no difference
what form it took--whether it was the craving for a bright feather, a
passion for an ideal, or the love of man for woman.Behind it all was
the same flaming hope, the same deathless outreaching for the higher
life! God, what a song to sing!The imperishable glamour of beauty, painting
the darkest sweatshop in rainbow colours of heaven, splashing the gloom
of the human ant-hill with the golden pigments of sunrise and sunset!Lifted to winged heights by the onrush of this new vision, Berel swept
home with the other toilers pouring from shops and factories. How thankful he was for the joy of his bleak little room! He shut the
door, secure in his solitude.Voices began to speak to him. Faces began
to shine for him--the dumb, the oppressed, the toil-driven multitudes
who lived and breathed unconscious of the cryings-out in them.All the
thwarted longings of their lives, all the baffled feelings of their
hearts, all the aching dumbness of their lips, rose to his sympathetic
lips, singing the song of the imperishable soul in them.Berel thought how Beethoven lay prone on the ground, his deaf ears
hearing the beat of insects’ wings, the rustle of grass, the bloom of
buds, all the myriad voices of the pregnant earth.For the first time
since the loss of his gift in the jazz pit of Tin Pan Alley, the young
poet heard the rhythm of divine creation. He drew a sheet of white paper before his eyes.From his trembling
fingers flowed a poem that wrote its own music--every line a song--the
whole a symphony of his regeneration. “To think that I once despised them--my own people!” he mused.“_Ach_,
I was too dense with young pride to see them then!”
His thoughts digging down into the soil of his awakened spirit, he
cried aloud:
“Beauty is everywhere, but I can sing it only of my own people.Some
one will find it even in Tin Pan Alley--among Maizie’s life-loving
crowd; but I, in this life, must be the poet of the factories--of my
own East Side!”
§ 7
“It’s me--Hanneh Breineh!”
A loud thumping at the door and a shrill chatter of voices broke in
upon Berel’s meditations.“Me--Moisheh!”
“Come in!” he cried, welcoming this human inbreak after his long vigil. “Here we got him!” Berel was smothered in Hanneh Breineh’s gushing
embrace. “Where did you run away that time, you crazy? Don’t you yet
know my bitter heart?I never mean nothing when I curse.”
“For months it dried out our eyes from our heads looking for you,”
gulped Moisheh, tearing him from Hanneh’s greedy arms.Berel fell on his brother’s neck, weeping out the whole rush and tide
of his new-born humility. “Mine own brother, with the old shine from his eyes!”
Moisheh held Berel off, then crushed him in another long hug.Hanneh
Breineh, with ostentatious importance, held up her capacious market
basket and drew forth a greasy bundle. “Let’s make from it a holiday, for good luck.It’s only a bargain, this
apple strudel,” she said apologetically, breaking it in pieces and
giving one to each. Berel’s tears rang out in laughter.“My own hearts--my own people!”
“_Mazeltuf!_ Good luck!” chanted Hanneh Breineh, sipping hungrily the
last drops of luscious juice that oozed from the apple strudel.Raising his piece on high, Moisheh chimed in:
“Good luck and the new life!”
THE LORD GIVETH
One glance at his wife’s tight-drawn mouth warned Reb Ravinsky of the
torrent of wrath about to burst over his head.“Nu, my bread-giver? | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Did you bring me the rent?” she hurled at him
between clenched teeth.Reb Ravinsky had promised to borrow money that morning to ward off
their impending eviction for unpaid rent, but no sooner had he
stepped out of his house than all thought of it fled from his mind.Instinctively, he turned to the synagogue where he had remained all
day absorbed in the sacred script. It was easier to pray and soar the
heights with the prophets of his race than to wrestle with sordid,
earthly cares. “Holy Jew!Why didn’t you stay away a little longer?” She tore at her
wig in her fury. “Are you a man like other men? Does your wife or your
child lay in your head at all? I got to worry for rent. I got to worry
for bread. If you got to eat you eat.If you ain’t got to eat you ain’t
hungry. You fill yourself only with high thoughts. You hold yourself
only with God. Your wife and your child can be thrown in the street to
shame and to laughter. But what do you care?You live only for the next
world. You got heaven in your head. The rest of your family can rot in
the streets.”
Reb Ravinsky stood mute and helpless under the lash of her tongue.But
when she had exhausted her store of abuse, he cast upon her a look of
scorn and condemnation. “_Ishah Rah!_ Evil woman!” he turned upon her like an ancient prophet
denouncing ungodliness. “_Ishah Rah!_” he repeated.His voice of icy passion sent shivers up
and down her spine. “_Ishah Rah!_” came for the third time with the mystic solemnity that
subdued her instantly into worshipful subjection. “Tear away your man
from God! Tear him away from the holy Torah!Lose the one precious
thing in life, the one thing that makes a Jew stand out over all other
nations of the world, the one thing that the Tsar’s _pogroms_ and all
the sufferings and murders of the Jews could not kill in the Jew--the
hope for the next world!”
Like a towering spirit of righteousness afire with the Word of God he
loomed over her.“I ask you by your conscience, should I give up the real life, the true
life, for good eating, good sleeping, for a life in the body like the
_Amoratzim_ here in America?Should I make from the Torah a pick with
which to dig for you the rent?”
Adjusting his velvet skull-cap, the last relic of his rabbinical days,
he caught the woman’s adoring look. Memories of his past splendour in
Russia surged over him.He saw his people coming to him from far and
near to learn wisdom from his lips. Drawing himself to his full height,
he strode across the room and faced her.“Why didn’t you marry yourself to a tailor, a shoemaker, a thick-head,
a money-maker--to a man of the flesh--a rabbi who can sell his religion
over the counter as a butcher sells meat?”
Mrs. Ravinsky gazed with fear and contrition at her husband’s
God-kindled face.She loved him because he was _not_ a man of this
world. Her darkest moments were lit up with pride in him, with the hope
that in the next world the reflected glory of his piety might exalt her.It wrung her heart to realize that against her will she was dragging
him down with her ceaseless demands for bread and rent. Ach! Why was
there such an evil thing as money in this world?Why did she have to
torture her husband with earthly needs when all she longed for was to
help him win a higher place in heaven? Tears fell from her faded eyes. He could have wept with her--it hurt
him so to make her suffer.But once and for all he must put a stop to
her nagging. He must cast out the evil spirit of worry that possessed
her lest it turn and rend him. “Why are you killing yourself so for this life? _Ut!_ See, death is
already standing over you.One foot is already in the grave. Do you
know what you’ll get for making nothing from the Torah? The fires of
hell are waiting for you! Wait--wait!I warn you!”
And as though to ward off the evil that threatened his house, he rushed
to his shrine of sacred books and pulled from its niche a volume of his
beloved Talmud.With reverence he caressed its worn and yellowed pages
as he drank in hungrily the inspired words. For a few blessed moments
he took refuge from all earthly storms. * * * * *
In Schnipishock, Reb Ravinsky had been a _porush_, a pensioned scholar.The Jews of the village so deeply appreciated his learning and piety
that they granted him an allowance, so as to free the man of God from
all earthly cares.Arrived in the new world, he soon learned that there was no honoured
pension forthcoming to free him from the world of the flesh. For a time
he eked out a bare living by teaching Hebrew to private scholars.But
the opening of the Free Hebrew Schools resulted in the loss of most of
his pupils. He had been chosen by God to spread the light of the Torah--and
a living must come to him, somehow, somewhere, if he only served
faithfully.In the meantime, how glorious it was to suffer hunger and want, even
shame and derision, yet rise through it all as Job had risen and
proclaim to the world: “I know that my Redeemer liveth!”
Reb Ravinsky was roused from his ecstasy by his wife’s loud sobbing.Thrust out from the haven of his Torah, he closed the book and began to
pace the floor. “Can fire and water go together? Neither can godliness and an easy
life. If you have eyes of flesh and are blind, should I fall into your
blindness?You care only for what you can put in your mouth or wear on
your back; I struggle for the life that is together with God!”
“My rent--have you my rent?I warned you!” The landlord pushed through
the half-open door flaunting his final dispossess notice under Reb
Ravinsky’s nose. “I got orders to put you out,” he gloated, as he
motioned to his men to proceed with the eviction.Reb Ravinsky gripped the back of a chair for support. “Oi-i-i! Black is me! Bitter is me!” groaned his wife, leaning limply
against the wall. For weeks she had been living in momentary dread of this catastrophe.Now, when the burly moving men actually broke into her home, she
surrendered herself to the anguish of utter defeat. She watched
them disconnect the rusty stove and carry it into the street.They
took the bed, the Passover dishes prayerfully wrapped to avoid the
soil of leavened bread. They took the brass samovar and the Sabbath
candlesticks. And she stood mutely by--defenceless--impotent! “What did I sin?” The cry broke from her. “God!God! Is there a God
over us and sees all this?”
The men and the things they touched were to Reb Ravinsky’s far-seeing
eyes as shadows of the substanceless dream of life in the flesh.With
vision focused on the next world, he saw in dim blurs the drama enacted
in this world. Smash to the floor went the sacred Sabbath wineglass! Reb Ravinsky
turned sharply, in time to see a man tumble ruthlessly the sacred
Hebrew books to the floor.A flame of holy wrath leaped from the old man’s eyes. His breath came
in convulsive gasps as he clutched with emaciated fingers at his heart. The sacrilege of the ruffians! | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
He rushed to pick up the books, kissing
each volume with pious reverence.As he gathered them in his trembling
arms, he looked about confusedly for a safe hiding-place.In his
anxiety for the safety of his holy treasure, he forgot the existence
of his wife and ran with his books to the synagogue as one runs from
a house on fire. So overwrought was he that he nearly fell over his
little daughter running up the stairs.“Murderer!” screamed Mrs. Ravinsky, after him. “Run, run to the
synagogue! Holy Jew! See where your religion has brought us. Run--ask
God to pay your rent!”
She turned to her little Rachel who burst into the room terrified. “See, my heart!See what they’ve done to us! And your father ran to
hide himself in the synagogue. You got no father--nobody to give you
bread. A lost orphan you are.”
“Will the charity lady have to bring us eating again?” asked Rachel,
her eyes dilated with dread.“Wait only till I get old enough to go
to the shop and earn money.” And she reached up little helpless arms
protectingly. The child’s sympathy was as salt on the mother’s wounds.“For what did we come to America?”
The four walls of her broken home stared back their answer. Only the bundles of bedding remained, which Rachel guarded with fierce
defiance as though she would save it from the wreckage.Pushing the child roughly aside, the man slung it over his shoulder. Mrs. Ravinsky, with Rachel holding on to her skirts, felt her way after
him down the dark stairway. “My life! My blood!My feather bed!” she cried, as he tossed the
family heirloom into the gutter. “Gevalt!” prostrate, she fell on it. “How many winters it took my mother to pick together the feathers!My
mother’s wedding present....”
From the stoops, the alleys and the doorways the neighbours gathered. Hanneh Breineh, followed by her clinging brood, pushed through the
throng, her red-lidded eyes big with compassion.“Come the while in by
me.”
She helped the grief-stricken woman to her feet. “We’re packed like
herrings in a barrel, but there’s always room for a push-in of a few
more.”
Lifting the feather bed under her arm she led the way to her house.“In a few more years your Rachel will be old enough to get her working
papers and all your worries for bread will be over,” she encouraged, as
she opened the door of her stuffy little rooms.The commotion on the street corner broke in upon the babble of
gossiping women in the butcher shop. Mr. Sopkin paused in cutting the
meat. “Who did they make to move?” he asked, joining the gesticulating mob at
the doorway.“_Oi weh!_ Reb Ravinsky?”
“God from the sky! Such a good Jew! Such a light for the world!”
“Home, in Russia, they kissed the ground on which he walked, and in
America they throw him in the street!”
“Who cares in America for religion?In America everybody has his head
in his belly.”
“Poor little Rachel! Such a smart child! Writes letters for everybody
on the block.”
“Such a lazy do-nothing!All day in the synagogue!” flung the
pawnbroker’s wife, a big-bosomed woman, her thick fingers covered with
diamonds. “Why don’t he go to work in a shop?”
A neighbour turned upon her. “Hear! Hear her only! Such a pig-eater! Such a fat-head!She dares take Reb Ravinsky’s name in her mouth.”
“Who was she from home? A water-carrier’s wife, a cook!And in America
she makes herself for a person--shines up the street with her diamonds.”
“Then leave somebody let know the charities.” With a gesture of
self-defence, the pawnbroker’s wife fingered her gold beads.“I’m a
lady-member from the charities.”
“The charities? A black year on them!” came a chorus of angry voices.“All my enemies should have to go to the charities for help.”
“Woe to anyone who falls into the charities’ hands!”
“One poor man with a heart can help more than the charities with all
their money.”
Mr. Sopkin hammered on his chopping-block, his face purple with
excitement.“_Weiber!_ with talk alone you can’t fill up the pot.”
“_Takeh! Takeh!_” Eager faces strained forward.“Let’s put ourselves
together for a collection.”
“I’m not yet making Rockefeller’s millions from the butcher business,
but still, here’s my beginning for good luck.” And Mr. Sopkin tossed a
dollar bill into the basket on the counter.A woman, a ragged shawl over her head, clutched a quarter in her gaunt
hand. “God is my witness! To tear out this from my pocket is like
tearing off my right hand.I need every cent to keep the breath in the
bodies of my _kinder_, but how can we let such a holy Jew fall in the
street?”
“My enemies should have to slave with such bitter sweat for every penny
as me.” Hannah Hayyeh flung out her arms still wet with soapsuds and
kissed the ten-cent piece she dropped into the collection.Mr. Sopkin walked to the sidewalk and shook the basket in front of the
passers-by. “Take your hand out from your pocket! Take your bite away
from your mouth! Who will help the poor if not the poor?”
A shower of coins came pouring in.It seemed not money--but the flesh
and blood of the people--each coin a part of a living heart.The pawnbroker’s wife, shamed by the surging generosity of the crowd,
grudgingly peeled a dollar from the roll of bills in her stocking and
started to put it into the collection. A dozen hands lifted in protest. “No--no!Your money and our money can’t mix together!”
“Our money is us--our bodies! Yours is the profits from the pawnshop!Hold your _trefah_ dollar for the charities!”
* * * * *
Only when the Shammes, the caretaker of the synagogue, rattling his
keys, shook Reb Ravinsky gently and reminded him that it was past
closing time did he remember that somewhere waiting for him--perhaps
still in the street--were his wife and child.The happening of the day had only deepened the intensity with which he
clung to God and His Torah.His lips still moved in habitual prayer as
with the guidance of neighbours he sought the new flat which had been
rented for a month with the collection money. Bread, butter, milk and eggs greeted his gaze as he opened the door. “_Nu_, my wife?Is there a God over us?” His face kindled with
guileless faith. “The God that feeds the little fishes in the sea and
the birds in the air, has He not fed us? You see, the Highest One
takes care of our earthly needs.Our only business here is to pray for
holiness to see His light!”
A cloud of gloom stared up at him out of his wife’s darkening eyes. “Why are you still so black with worry?” he admonished.“If you would
only trust yourself on God, all good would come to us yet.”
“On my enemies should fall the good that has come to us,” groaned Mrs.
Ravinsky.“Better already death than to be helped again by the pity
from kind people.”
“What difference how the help comes, so long we can keep up our souls
to praise God for His mercy on us?”
Despair was in the look she fixed upon her husband’s lofty brow--a brow
untouched by time or care, smooth, calm and seamless as a child’s.“No wonder people think that I’m your mother. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
The years make you
younger. You got no blood in your body--no feelings in your heart.I
got to close my eyes with shame to pass in the street the people what
helped me, while you--you--shame cannot shame you--poverty cannot crush
you----”
“Poverty?It stands in the Talmud that poverty is an ornament on a Jew
like a red ribbon on a white horse. Those whom God chooses for His next
world can’t have it good here.”
“Stop feeding me with the next world!” she flung at him in her
exasperation.“Give me something on this world.”
“Wait only till our American daughter will grow up. That child has my
head on her,” he boasted with a father’s pride. “Wait only, you’ll see
the world will ring from her yet.With the Hebrew learning I gave her,
she’ll shine out from all other American children.”
“But how will she be able to lift up her head with other people alike
if you depend yourself on the charities?”
“Woman! Worry yourself not for our Rachel!It stands in the Holy Book,
the world is a wheel, always turning. Those who are rich get poor; if
not they, then their children or children’s children. And those who
are poor like us, go up higher and higher.Our daughter will yet be so
rich, she’ll give away money to the charities that helped us. Isaiah
said----”
“Enough--enough!” broke in Mrs. Ravinsky, thrilled in spite of herself
by the prophecies of her holy man. “I know already all your smartness.Go, go, sit yourself down and eat something. You fasted all day.”
* * * * *
Mrs. Ravinsky hoarded for her husband and child the groceries the
neighbours had donated.For herself she allowed only the left-overs,
the crumbs and crusts.The following noon, after finishing her meagre meal, she still felt the
habitual gnawing of her under-nourished body, so she took a sour pickle
and cut off another slice of bread from the dwindling loaf.But this
morsel only sharpened her craving for more food. The lingering savour of the butter and eggs which she had saved for her
family tantalized her starved nerves.Faint and weak from the struggle
to repress her hunger, she grew reckless and for once in her life
abandoned herself to the gluttonous indulgence of the best in her scant
larder.With shaking hand she stealthily opened the cupboard, pilfered a
knife-load of butter and spread it thickly on a second slice of bread. Cramming the whole into her mouth, she snatched two eggs and broke them
into the frying-pan.The smell of the sizzling eggs filled the air with
the sweet fragrance of the Sabbath. “Ach!How the sun would shine in my
heart if I could only allow myself the bite in my mouth!”
Memories of _gefüllte_ fish and the odour of freshly-baked apple
strudel dilated her nostrils.She saw herself back in Russia setting
the Sabbath table when she was the honoured wife of Reb Ravinsky. The sudden holiday feeling that thrilled her senses smote her
conscience. “Oi weh! Sinner that I am!Why should it will itself in me
to eat like a person when my man don’t earn enough for dry bread? What
will we do when this is used up?Suppose the charities should catch me
feasting myself with such a full hand?”
Bent ravenously over the eggs--one eye on the door--she lifted the
first spoonful to her watering mouth as Rachel flew in, eyes wide with
excitement. “Mamma!The charity lady is coming! She’s asking the fish-pedlar on
the stoop where we live now.”
“Quick! Hide the frying-pan in the oven! Woe is me! The house not
swept--dishes not washed--everything thrown around! Rachel!Quick
only--sweep together the dirt in a corner. Throw those rags under the
bed! _Oi weh_--quick--hide all those dirty things behind the trunk!”
In her haste to tidy up, she remembered the food in the cupboard.She
stuffed it--broken eggshells and all--into the bureau drawer. “Oi
weh! The charity lady should only not catch us with all these holiday
eatings....”
Footsteps in the hallway and Miss Naughton’s cheery voice: “Here I am,
Mrs. Ravinsky!What can I do to help now?”
With the trained eye of the investigator, she took in the wretched
furniture, scant bedding, the under-nourished mother and child. “What seems to be wrong?” Miss Naughton drew up a three-legged stool.“Won’t you tell me, so we can get at the root of the trouble?” She put
her hand on the woman’s apron with a friendly little gesture. Mrs. Ravinsky bit her lips to force back the choking pressure of tears.The life, the buoyancy, the very kindness of the “charity lady”
stabbed deeper the barb of her wretchedness. “Woe is me! On all my enemies my black heart!So many babies and young
people die every day, but no death comes to hide me from my shame.”
“Don’t give way like that,” pleaded Miss Naughton, pained by the
bitterness that she tried in vain to understand.“If you will only tell
me a few things so I may the better know how to help you.”
“Again tear me in pieces with questions?” Mrs. Ravinsky pulled at the
shrunken skin of her neck.“I don’t like to pry into your personal affairs, but if you only knew
how often we’re imposed upon. Last week we had a case of a woman who
asked us to pay her rent.When I called to investigate, I found her
cooking chicken for dinner!”
The cot on which Mrs. Ravinsky sat creaked under her swaying body.“You see, we have only a small amount of money,” went on the
unconscious inquisitor, “and it is but fair it should go to the most
deserving cases.”
Entering a few preliminary notes, Miss Naughton looked up inquiringly.“Where is Mr. Ravinsky?”
“In the synagogue.”
“Has he no work?”
“He can’t do no work. His head is on the next world.”
Miss Naughton frowned. She was accustomed to this kind of excuse.“People who are not lazy can always find employment.”
Seeing Mrs. Ravinsky’s sudden pallor, she added kindly: “You have not
eaten to-day. Is there no food in the house?”
Mrs. Ravinsky staggered blindly to her feet.“No--nothing--I didn’t yet
eat nothing.”
The brooding grey of Rachel’s eyes darkened with shame as she clutched
protectingly at her mother’s apron.The uncanny, old look of the
solemn little face seemed to brush against Miss Naughton’s very
heartstrings--to reproach the rich vigour of her own glowing youth.“Have you had any lunch, dear?” The “charity lady’s” hand rested softly
on the tangled mat of hair. “N-nothing--nothing,” the child echoed her mother’s words. Miss Naughton rose abruptly. She dared not let her feelings get the
better of her.“I am going to get some groceries.” She sought for an
excuse to get away for a moment from the misery that overwhelmed her. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Bitter is me!” wailed Mrs. Ravinsky, as the “charity lady” left the
room.“I can never lift up my head with other people alike. I feel
myself lower than a thief, just because I got a husband who holds
himself with God all day.”
She cracked the knuckles of her bony fingers. “_Gottuniu!_ Listen
better to my prayer!Send on him only a quick death. | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Maybe if I was a
widow, people would take pity on me and save me from this gehenna of
charity.”
* * * * *
Ten minutes later Miss Naughton returned with a bag of supplies.“I am
going to fix some lunch for you.” She measured cocoa into a battered
saucepan. “And soon the boy will come with enough groceries for the
whole week.”
“Please, please,” begged Mrs. Ravinsky. “I can’t eat now--I can’t.”
“But the child?She needs nutritious food at once.”
Rachel’s sunken little chest rose and fell with her frightened
heartbeat as she hid her face in her mother’s lap. “Small as she is, she already feels how it hurts to swallow charity
eating,” defended Mrs. Ravinsky.Miss Naughton could understand the woman’s dislike of accepting
charity. She had coped with this pride of the poor before. But she
had no sympathy with this mother who fostered resentment in her
child towards the help that was so urgently needed.Miss Naughton’s
long-suffering patience broke. She turned from the stove and resolutely
continued her questioning. “Has your husband tried our employment bureau?”
“No.”
“Then send him to our office to-morrow at nine.He can be a janitor--or
a porter----”
“My man? My man a janitor or a porter?” Her eyes flamed. “Do you know
who was my man in Russia? The fat of the land they brought him just for
the pleasure to listen to his learning.Barrels full of meat, pots full
of chicken fat stood packed in my cellar. I used to make boilers of
jelly at a time.The _gefüllte_ fish only I gave away is more than the
charities give out to the poor in a month.”
Miss Naughton could not suppress a smile. “Why did you leave it, then,
if it was all so perfect?”
“My _gefüllte_ fish! Oi-i-i! Oi-i! !My apple strudel!” she kept
repeating, unable to tear herself away from the dream of the past. “Can you live on the apple strudel you had in Russia?In America a man
must work to support his family----”
“All thick-heads support their families,” defended Reb Ravinsky’s wife. “Any fat-belly can make money. My man is a light for the world.He
works for God who feeds even the worms under the stone.”
“You send your husband to my office. I want to have a talk with him.”
“To your office? _Gottuniu!_ He won’t go. In Schnipishock they came to
him from the four ends of the world.The whole town blessed itself with
his religiousness.”
“The first principle of religion is for a man to provide for his
family. You must do exactly as we say--or we cannot help you.”
“Please, please!” Mrs. Ravinsky entreated, cringing and begging.“We
got no help from nobody now but you. I’ll bring him to your office
to-morrow.”
The investigator now proceeded with the irk-some duty of her more
formal questions. “How much rent do you pay? Do you keep any boarders?Does your husband belong to any society or lodge? Have you relatives
who are able to help you?”
“Oi-i-i! What more do you want from me?” shrieked the distracted woman. Having completed her questions, Miss Naughton looked about the room.“I
am sorry to speak of it, but why is your flat in such disorder?”
“I only moved in yesterday. I didn’t get yet time to fix it up.”
“But it was just as bad in the last place. If you want our help you
must do your part. Soap and water are cheap.Anyone can be clean.”
The woman’s knees gave way under her, as Miss Naughton lifted the lids
from the pots on the stove. And then--_gevalt_! It grew black before Mrs. Ravinsky’s eyes. She
collapsed into a pathetic heap to the floor.The “charity lady” opened
the oven door and exposed the tell-tale frying-pan and the two eggs! Eyes of silent condemnation scorched through the terror-stricken
creature whose teeth chattered in a vain struggle to defend herself.But no voice came from her tortured throat. She could only clutch at
her child in a panic of helplessness.Without a word, the investigator began to search through every nook
and corner and at last she came to the bureau drawer and found butter,
eggs, cheese, bread and even a jar of jelly.“For shame!” broke from the wounded heart of the betrayed Miss
Naughton. “You--you ask for charity!”
* * * * *
In the hall below Reb Ravinsky, returning from the synagogue,
encountered a delivery boy.“Where live the Ravinskys?” the lad questioned. “I’m Reb Ravinsky,” he said, leading the way, as he saw the box of
groceries. Followed by the boy, Reb Ravinsky flung open the door and strode
joyfully into the room. “Look only!How the manna is falling from the
sky!”
Ignoring Reb Ravinsky, Miss Naughton motioned to the box. “Take those
things right back,” she commanded the boy. “How you took me in with your hungry look!” There was more of sorrow
than scorn in her voice.“Even teaching your child to lie--and your
husband a rabbi!--a religious man--too holy to work!What would be left
for deserving cases if we allowed such as you to defraud legitimate
charity?”
With bowed head, Reb Ravinsky closed the door after the departing
visitor. The upbraidings of the woman were like a whip-lash on his
naked flesh.His heart ached for his helpless family. Darkness
suffocated him. “My hungry little lamb,” wailed his wife, clinging to Rachel. “Where
now can we turn for bread?”
Compassionate hands reached out in prayer over the grief-stricken
mother and child.Reb Ravinsky stood again as he did before his flight
to America, facing his sorrowing people.His wife’s wailing for their
lost store of bread brought back to him the bereaved survivors of the
_pogrom_--the _pogrom_ that snatched away their sons and daughters.Afire with the faith of his race, he chanted the age-old consolation:
“The Lord giveth; the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the
Lord.”
PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON E.C.4.Transcriber’s Notes
A few minor punctuation errors/omissions were silently corrected. Page 7: “or consisten” changed to “or consistent” | Yezierska, Anzia - Children of loneliness |
Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries. )[ Transcriber's Notes:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully
as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made.They
are listed at the end of the text. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. ]HUNGRY HEARTS
BY
ANZIA YEZIERSKA
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ANZIA YEZIERSKA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S .A
To Mrs. Henry Ollesheimer
CONTENTS
Wings 1
Hunger 35
The Lost "Beautifulness" 65
The Free Vacation House 97
The Miracle 114
Where Lovers Dream 142
Soap and Water 163
"The Fat of the Land" 178
My Own People 224
How I found America 250
HUNGRY HEARTS
WINGS
"My heart chokes in me like in a prison!I'm dying for a little
love and I got nobody--nobody!" wailed Shenah Pessah, as she looked
out of the dismal basement window.It was a bright Sunday afternoon in May, and into the gray, cheerless,
janitor's basement a timid ray of sunlight announced the dawn of
spring. "Oi weh! Light!" breathed Shenah Pessah, excitedly, throwing open
the sash. "A little light in the room for the first time!" And she
stretched out her hands hungrily for the warming bit of sun.The happy laughter of the shopgirls standing on the stoop with their
beaux and the sight of the young mothers with their husbands and babies
fanned anew the consuming fire in her breast. "I'm not jealous!" she gasped, chokingly. "My heart hurts too
deep to want to tear from them their luck to happiness. But why should
they live and enjoy life and why must I only _look on_ how they are
happy?" She clutched at her throat like one stifled for want of air. "What
is the matter with you? Are you going out of your head? For what is
your crying? Who will listen to you? Who gives a care what's going to
become from you?" Crushed by her loneliness, she sank into a chair.For a long time she
sat motionless, finding drear fascination in the mocking faces traced
in the patches of the torn plaster. Gradually, she became aware of a
tingling warmth playing upon her cheeks.And with a revived breath, she
drank in the miracle of the sunlit wall. "Ach!" she sighed. "Once a year the sun comes to light up even
this dark cellar, so why shouldn't the High One send on me too a
little brightness? "This new wave of hope swept aside the fact that she was the
"greenhorn" janitress, that she was twenty-two and dowryless, and,
according to the traditions of her people, condemned to be shelved
aside as an unmated thing--a creature of pity and ridicule. "I can't help it how old I am or how poor I am!" she burst out to
the deaf and dumb air. "I want a little life! I want a little joy! "The bell rang sharply, and as she turned to answer the call, she saw a
young man at the doorway--a framed picture of her innermost dreams. The stranger spoke. Shenah Pessah did not hear the words, she heard only the music of his
voice.She gazed fascinated at his clothes--the loose Scotch tweeds,
the pongee shirt, a bit open at the neck, but she did not see him or
the things he wore. She only felt an irresistible presence seize her
soul.It was as though the god of her innermost longings had suddenly
taken shape in human form and lifted her in mid-air. "Does the janitor live here?" the stranger repeated. Shenah Pessah nodded. "Can you show me the room to let? ""Yes, right away, but wait only a minute," stammered Shenah Pessah,
fumbling for the key on the shelf. "Don't fly into the air!" She tried to reason with her wild,
throbbing heart, as she walked upstairs with him.In an effort to
down the chaos of emotion that shook her she began to talk nervously:
"Mrs. Stein who rents out the room ain't going to be back till
the evening, but I can tell you the price and anything you want to
know.She's a grand cook and you can eat by her your breakfast and
dinner--" She did not have the slightest notion of what she was
saying, but talked on in a breathless stream lest he should hear the
loud beating of her heart. "Could I have a drop-light put in here?" the man asked, as he
looked about the room. Shenah Pessah stole a quick, shy glance at him. "Are you maybe a
teacher or a writing man? ""Yes, sometimes I teach," he said, studying her, drawn by the
struggling soul of her that cried aloud to him out of her eyes. "I could tell right away that you must be some kind of a somebody,"
she said, looking up with wistful worship in her eyes. "Ach, how
grand it must be to live only for learning and thinking." "Is this your home?" "I never had a home since I was eight years old. I was living by
strangers even in Russia." "Russia?" he repeated with quickened attention.So he was in their
midst, the people he had come to study. The girl with her hungry eyes
and intense eagerness now held a new interest for him.John Barnes, the youngest instructor of sociology in his university,
congratulated himself at his good fortune in encountering such a
splendid type for his research.He was preparing his thesis on the
"Educational Problems of the Russian Jews," and in order to get
into closer touch with his subject, he had determined to live on the
East Side during his spring and summer vacation.He went on questioning her, unconsciously using all the compelling
power that made people open their hearts to him. "And how long have
you been here?" "Two years already." "You seem to be fond of study. I suppose you go to night-school? ""I never yet stepped into a night-school since I came to
America. From where could I get the time? My uncle is such an old man
he can't do much and he got already used to leave the whole house
on me." "You stay with your uncle, then? ""Yes, my uncle sent for me the ticket for America when my aunt was
yet living. She got herself sick. And what could an old man like him do
with only two hands?" "Was that sufficient reason for you to leave your homeland? ""What did I have out there in Savel that I should be afraid to
lose? The cows that I used to milk had it better than me. They got at
least enough to eat and me slaving from morning till night went around
hungry." "You poor child! "broke from the heart of the man, the scientific
inquisition of the sociologist momentarily swept away by his human
sympathy. Who had ever said "poor child" to her--and in such a voice? Tears
gathered in Shenah Pessah's eyes.For the first time she mustered
the courage to look straight at him. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
The man's face, his voice, his
bearing, so different from any one she had ever known, and yet what was
there about him that made her so strangely at ease with him?She went
on talking, led irresistibly by the friendly glow in his eyes. "I got yet a lot of luck. I learned myself English from a Jewish
English reader, and one of the boarders left me a grand book.When I
only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings
with high thoughts." Her whole face and figure lit up with animation
as she poured herself out to him. "So even in the midst of these sordid surroundings were 'wings'
and 'high thoughts,'" he mused. Again the gleam of the visionary--the
eternal desire to reach out and up, which was the predominant
racial trait of the Russian immigrant. "What is the name of your book?" he continued, taking advantage of
this providential encounter. "The book is 'Dreams,' by Olive Schreiner." "H--m," he reflected. "So these are the 'wings' and 'high
thoughts.' No wonder the blushes--the tremulousness.What an
opportunity for a psychological test-case, and at the same time I could
help her by pointing the way out of her nebulous emotionalism and place
her feet firmly on earth. "He made a quick, mental note of certain
books that he would place in her hands and wondered how she would
respond to them. "Do you belong to a library?" "Library? How? Where?" Her lack of contact with Americanizing agencies appalled him. "I'll have to introduce you to the library when I come to live
here," he said. "Oi-i! You really like it, the room?" Shenah Pessah clapped her
hands in a burst of uncontrollable delight. "I like the room very much, and I shall be glad to take it if you can
get it ready for me by next week." Shenah Pessah looked up at the man. "Do you mean it? You really
want to come and live here, in this place? The sky is falling to the
earth! ""Live here?" Most decidedly he would live here. He became suddenly
enthusiastic. But it was the enthusiasm of the scientist for the
specimen of his experimentation--of the sculptor for the clay that
would take form under his touch. "I'm coming here to live--" He was surprised at the eager
note in his voice, the sudden leaven of joy that surged through his
veins. "And I'm going to teach you to read sensible books, the kind
that will help you more than your dream book. "Shenah Pessah drank in his words with a joy that struck back as
fear lest this man--the visible sign of her answered prayer--would
any moment be snatched up and disappear in the heavens where he
belonged.With a quick leap toward him she seized his hand in both
her own. "Oi, mister! Would you like to learn me English lessons
too? I'll wash for you your shirts for it.If you would even only
talk to me, it would be more to me than all the books in the world." He instinctively recoiled at this outburst of demonstrativeness. His
eyes narrowed and his answer was deliberate. "Yes, you ought to learn
English," he said, resuming his professional tone, but the girl was
too overwrought to notice the change in his manner. "There it is," he thought to himself on his way out. "The whole
gamut of the Russian Jew--the pendulum swinging from abject servility
to boldest aggressiveness." Shenah Pessah remained standing and smiling to herself after Mr. Barnes
left. She did not remember a thing she had said.She only felt herself
whirling in space, millions of miles beyond the earth. The god of
dreams had arrived and nothing on earth could any longer hold her down.Then she hurried back to the basement and took up the broken piece
of mirror that stood on the shelf over the sink and gazed at her face
trying to see herself through his eyes. "Was it only pity that made
him stop to talk to me?Or can it be that he saw what's inside me?" Her eyes looked inward as she continued to talk to herself in the
mirror. "God from the world!" she prayed. "I'm nothing and nobody now,
but ach!How beautiful I would become if only the light from his eyes
would fall on me!" Covering her flushed face with her hands as if to push back the tumult
of desire that surged within her, she leaned against the wall. "Who
are you to want such a man? "she sobbed. "But no one is too low to love God, the Highest One. There is no
high in love and there is no low in love. Then why am I too low to love
him?" "Shenah Pessah!" called her uncle angrily. "What are you standing
there like a yok, dreaming in the air? Don't you hear the tenants
knocking on the pipes? They are hollering for the hot water. You let
the fire go out." At the sound of her uncle's voice all her "high thoughts"
fled.The mere reminder of the furnace with its ashes and cinders
smothered her buoyant spirits and again she was weighed down by the
strangling yoke of her hateful, daily round. It was evening when she got through with her work.To her surprise she
did not feel any of the old weariness. It was as if her feet danced
under her. Then from the open doorway of their kitchen she overheard
Mrs. Melker, the matchmaker, talking to her uncle. "Motkeh, the fish-peddler, is looking for a wife to cook him his
eating and take care on his children," she was saying in her shrill,
grating voice. "So I thought to myself this is a golden chance for
Shenah Pessah to grab.You know a girl in her years and without money,
a single man wouldn't give a look on her." Shenah Pessah shuddered. She wanted to run away from the branding
torture of their low talk, but an unreasoning curiosity drew her to
listen. "Living is so high," went on Mrs. Melker, "that single men
don't want to marry themselves even to _young_ girls, except if
they can get themselves into a family with money to start them up
in business.It is Shenah Pessah's luck yet that Motkeh likes good
eating and he can't stand it any more the meals in a restaurant.He
heard from people what a good cook and housekeeper Shenah Pessah is, so
he sent me around to tell you he would take her as she stands without
a cent." Mrs. Melker dramatically beat her breast. "I swear I shouldn't live
to go away from here alive, I shouldn't live to see my own children
married if I'm talking this match for the few dollars that Motkeh
will pay me for it, but because I want to do something good for a poor
orphan.I'm a mother, and it weeps in me my heart to see a girl in
her years and not married." "And who'll cook for me my eating, if I'll let her go?" broke
out her uncle angrily. "And who'll do me my work?Didn't I spend
out fifty dollars to send for her the ticket to America? Oughtn't I
have a little use from her for so many dollars I laid out on her?" "Think on God!" remonstrated Mrs. Melker. "The girl is an orphan
and time is pushing itself on her.Do you want her to sit till her
braids grow gray, before you'll let her get herself a man? | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
It stands
in the Talmud that a man should take the last bite away from his mouth
to help an orphan get married.You'd beg yourself out a place in
heaven in the next world--"
"In America a person can't live on hopes for the next world. In
America everybody got to look out for himself.I'd have to give up
the janitor's work to let her go, and then where would I be?" "You lived already your life. Give her also a chance to lift up
her head in the world. Couldn't you get yourself in an old man's
home? ""These times you got to have money even in an old man's home. You
know how they say, if you oil the wheels you can ride. With dry hands
you can't get nothing in America." "So you got no pity on an orphan and your own relation?All her young
years she choked herself in darkness and now comes already a little
light for her, a man that can make a good living wants her--"
"And who'll have pity on me if I'll let her out from my
hands? Who is this Motkeh, anyway? Is he good off?Would I also
have a place where to lay my old head? Where stands he out with his
pushcart?" "On Essex Street near Delancey." "Oi-i! You mean Motkeh Pelz? Why, I know him yet from years ago. They
say his wife died him from hunger.She had to chew the earth before she
could beg herself out a cent from him. By me Shenah Pessah has at least
enough to eat and shoes on her feet. I ask you only is it worth already
to grab a man if you got to die from hunger for it? "Shenah Pessah could listen no longer. "Don't you worry yourself for me," she commanded, charging into
the room. "Don't take pity on my years. I'm living in America,
not in Russia. I'm not hanging on anybody's neck to support me.In
America, if a girl earns her living, she can be fifty years old and
without a man, and nobody pities her." Seizing her shawl, she ran out into the street. She did not know where
her feet carried her. She had only one desire--to get away.A fierce
rebellion against everything and everybody raged within her and goaded
her on until she felt herself choked with hate. All at once she visioned a face and heard a voice.The blacker, the
more stifling the ugliness of her prison, the more luminous became the
light of the miraculous stranger who had stopped for a moment to talk
to her.It was as though inside a pit of darkness the heavens opened
and hidden hopes began to sing. Her uncle was asleep when she returned. In the dim gaslight she
looked at his yellow, care-crushed face with new compassion in
her heart. "Poor old man! "she thought, as she turned to her
room. "Nothing beautiful never happened to him. What did he have in
life outside the worry for bread and rent?Who knows, maybe if such a
god of men would have shined on him--" She fell asleep and she awoke
with visions opening upon visions of new, gleaming worlds of joy and
hope.She leaped out of bed singing a song she had not heard since she
was a little child in her mother's home.Several times during the day, she found herself, at the broken mirror,
arranging and rearranging her dark mass of unkempt hair with fumbling
fingers.She was all a-tremble with breathless excitement to imitate
the fluffy style of the much-courted landlady's daughter. For the first time she realized how shabby and impossible her clothes
were. "Oi weh!" she wrung her hands. "I'd give away everything
in the world only to have something pretty to wear for him. My whole
life hangs on how I'll look in his eyes. I got to have a hat and a
new dress. I can't no more wear my 'greenhorn' shawl going out
with an American. "But from where can I get the money for new clothes? Oi weh! How
bitter it is not to have the dollar! Woe is me! No mother, no friend,
nobody to help me lift myself out of my greenhorn rags." "Why not pawn the feather bed your mother left you? "She jumped at
the thought. "What? Have you no heart? No feelings? Pawn the only one thing left
from your dead mother? "Why not? Nothing is too dear for him.If your mother could stand up
from her grave, she'd cut herself in pieces, she'd tear the sun and
stars out from the sky to make you beautiful for him. "Late one evening Zaretsky sat in his pawnshop, absorbed in counting the
money of his day's sales, when Shenah Pessah, with a shawl over her
head and a huge bundle over her shoulder, edged her way hesitantly into
the store.Laying her sacrifice down on the counter, she stood dumbly
and nervously fingered the fringes of her shawl. The pawnbroker lifted his miserly face from the cash-box and shot a
quick glance at the girl's trembling figure. "Nu? "said Zaretsky, in his cracked voice, cutting the twine from
the bundle and unfolding a feather bed. His appraising hand felt that
it was of the finest down. "How much ask you for it?" The fiendish gleam of his shrewd eyes paralyzed her with terror.A lump
came in her throat and she wavered speechless. "I'll give you five dollars," said Zaretsky. "Five dollars?" gasped Shenah Pessah. Her hands rushed back
anxiously to the feather bed and her fingers clung to it as if it
were a living thing.She gazed panic-stricken at the gloomy interior
of the pawnshop with its tawdry jewels in the cases; the stacks of
second-hand clothing hanging overhead, back to the grisly face of the
pawnbroker.The weird tickings that came from the cheap clocks on the
shelves behind Zaretsky, seemed to her like the smothered heart-beats
of people who like herself had been driven to barter their last
precious belongings for a few dollars. "Is it for yourself that you come?" he asked, strangely stirred by
the mute anguish in the girl's eyes. This morgue of dead belongings
had taken its toll of many a pitiful victim of want. But never
before had Zaretsky been so affected.People bargained and rebelled
and struggled with him on his own plane. But the dumb helplessness of
this girl and her coming to him at such a late hour touched the man's
heart. "Is it for yourself?" he repeated, in a softened tone.The new note of feeling in his voice made her look up. The hard, crafty
expression on his face had given place to a look of sympathy. "Yes, it's mine, from my mother," she stammered, brokenly. "The
last memory from Russia.How many winters it took my mother to pick
together the feathers. She began it when I was yet a little baby in the
cradle--and--" She covered her face with her shawl and sobbed. "Any one sick? Why do you got to pawn it? "She raised her tear-stained face and mutely looked at him. How could
she explain and how could he possibly understand her sudden savage
desire for clothes?Zaretsky, feeling that he had been clumsy and tactless, hastened to
add, "Nu--I'll give you--a--a--a--ten dollars," he finished with
a motion of his hand, as if driving from him the onrush of generosity
that seized him. "Oi, mister! "cried Shenah Pessah, as the man handed her the
bill. "You're saving me my life! God will pay you for this
goodness." | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
And crumpling the money in her hand, she hurried back home
elated.The following evening, as soon as her work was over, Shenah Pessah
scurried through the ghetto streets, seeking in the myriad-colored shop
windows the one hat and the one dress that would voice the desire of
her innermost self.At last she espied a shining straw with cherries so
red, so luscious, that they cried out to her, "Bite me!" That was
the hat she bought. The magic of those cherries on her hat brought back to her the green
fields and orchards of her native Russia.Yes, a green dress was what
she craved. And she picked out the greenest, crispest organdie.That night, as she put on her beloved colors, she vainly tried to see
herself from head to foot, but the broken bit of a mirror that she
owned could only show her glorious parts of her.Her clothes seemed
to enfold her in flames of desire leaping upon desire. "Only to be
beautiful! Only to be beautiful!" she murmured breathlessly. "Not
for myself, but only for him. "Time stood still for Shenah Pessah as she counted the days, the hours,
and the minutes for the arrival of John Barnes. At last, through her
basement window, she saw him walk up the front steps.She longed to go
over to him and fling herself at his feet and cry out to him with what
hunger of heart she awaited his coming. But the very intensity of her
longing left her faint and dumb. He passed to his room.Later, she saw him walk out without even
stopping to look at her. The next day and the day after, she watched
him from her hidden corner pass in and out of the house, but still he
did not come to her.Oh, how sweet it was to suffer the very hurt of his oblivion of
her! She gloried in his great height that made him so utterly unaware
of her existence. It was enough for her worshiping eyes just to glimpse
him from afar. What was she to him?Could she expect him to greet
the stairs on which he stepped? Or take notice of the door that swung
open for him? After all, she was nothing but part of the house. So why
should he take notice of her? She was the steps on which he walked.She
was the door that swung open for him. And he did not know it. For four evenings in succession, ever since John Barnes had come to
live in the house, Shenah Pessah arrayed herself in her new things
and waited.Was it not a miracle that he came the first time when
she did not even dream that he was on earth? So why shouldn't the
miracle happen again?This evening, however, she was so spent with the
hopelessness of her longing that she had no energy left to put on her
adornments. All at once she was startled out of her apathy by a quick tap on her
window-pane. "How about going to the library, to-morrow evening?" asked John Barnes. "Oi-i-i! Yes! Thanks--" she stammered in confusion. "Well, to-morrow night, then, at seven. Thank you. "He hurried out
embarrassed by the grateful look that shone to him out of her eyes. The
gaze haunted him and hurt him. It was the beseeching look of a homeless
dog, begging to be noticed. "Poor little immigrant," he thought,
"how lonely she must be! ""So he didn't forget," rejoiced Shenah Pessah. "How only the
sound from his voice opens the sky in my heart! How the deadness and
emptiness in me flames up into life! Ach! The sun is again beginning
to shine! "An hour before the appointed time, Shenah Pessah dressed herself in
all her finery for John Barnes. She swung open the door and stood in
readiness watching the little clock on the mantel-shelf.The ticking
thing seemed to throb with the unutterable hopes compressed in her
heart, all the mute years of her stifled life. Each little thud of time
sang a wild song of released joy--the joy of his coming nearer.For the tenth time Shenah Pessah went over in her mind what she would
say to him when he'd come. "It was so kind from you to take from your dear time--to--"
"No--that sounds not good. I'll begin like this--Mr. Barnes!I
can't give it out in words your kindness, to stop from your high
thoughts to--to--"
"No--no! Oi weh! God from the world! Why should it be so hard for
me to say to him what I mean? Why shouldn't I be able to say to him
plain out--Mr. Barnes!You are an angel from the sky! You are saving me
my life to let me only give a look on you!I'm happier than a bird in
the air when I think only that such goodness like you--"
The sudden ring of the bell shattered all her carefully rehearsed
phrases and she met his greeting in a flutter of confusion. "My!Haven't you blossomed out since last night!" exclaimed
Mr. Barnes, startled by Shenah Pessah's sudden display of color. "Yes," she flushed, raising to him her radiant face. "I'm
through for always with old women's shawls.This is my first American
dress-up." "Splendid! So you want to be an American! The next step will be to
take up some work that will bring you in touch with American people." "Yes. You'll help me? Yes? "Her eyes sought his with an appeal of
unquestioning reliance. "Have you ever thought what kind of work you would like to take
up?" he asked, when they got out into the street. "No--I want only to get away from the basement. I'm crazy for
people. ""Would you like to learn a trade in a factory?" "Anything--anything! I'm burning to learn. Give me only an
advice. What?" "What can you do best with your hands?" "With the hands the best? It's all the same what I do with the
hands.Think you not maybe now, I could begin already something with
the head? Yes?" "We'll soon talk this over together, after you have read a book
that will tell you how to find out what you are best fitted for. "When they entered the library, Shenah Pessah halted in awe. "What
a stillness full from thinking! So beautiful, it comes on me like
music!" "Yes. This is quite a place," he acquiesced, seeing again the
public library in a new light through her eyes. "Some of the best
minds have worked to give us just this." "How the book-ladies look so quiet like the things." "Yes," he replied, with a tell-tale glance at her. "I too like to
see a woman's face above her clothes. "The approach of the librarian cut off further comment. As Mr. Barnes
filled out the application card, Shenah Pessah noted the librarian's
simple attire. "What means he a woman's face above her clothes?" she wondered.And the first shadow of a doubt crossed her mind as to
whether her dearly bought apparel was pleasing to his eyes.In the
few brief words that passed between Mr. Barnes and the librarian,
Shenah Pessah sensed that these two were of the same world and that
she was different.Her first contact with him in a well-lighted room
made her aware that "there were other things to the person besides
the dress-up." She had noticed their well-kept hands on the desk and
she became aware that her own were calloused and rough.That is why she
felt her dirty finger-nails curl in awkwardly to hide themselves as she
held the pen to sign her name. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
When they were out in the street again, he turned to her and said,
"If you don't mind, I'd prefer to walk back.The night is so fine
and I've been in the stuffy office all day." "I don't mind"--the words echoed within her. If he only knew how
above all else she wanted this walk. "It was grand in there, but the electric lights are like so many eyes
looking you over. In the street it is easier for me. The dark covers
you up so good." He laughed, refreshed by her unconscious self-revelation. "As long as you feel in your element let's walk on to the pier." "Like for a holiday, it feels itself in me," she bubbled, as he
took her arm in crossing the street. "Now see I America for the first
time! "It was all so wonderful to Barnes that in the dirt and noise of the
overcrowded ghetto, this erstwhile drudge could be transfigured into
such a vibrant creature of joy.Even her clothes that had seemed so
bold and garish awhile ago, were now inexplicably in keeping with the
carnival spirit that he felt steal over him.As they neared the pier, he reflected strangely upon the fact that
out of the thousands of needy, immigrant girls whom he might have
befriended, this eager young being at his side was ordained by some
peculiar providence to come under his personal protection. "How long did you say you have been in this country, Shenah
Pessah?" "How long?" She echoed his words as though waking from a
dream. "It's two years already. But that didn't count life. From
now on I live. ""And you mean to tell me that in all this time, no one has taken you
by the hand and shown you the ways of our country? The pity of it!" "I never had nothing, nor nobody. But now--it dances under me the
whole earth!It feels in me grander than dreams!" He drank in the pure joy out of her eyes. For the moment, the girl
beside him was the living flame of incarnate Spring. "He feels for me," she rejoiced, as they walked on in silence.The
tenderness of his sympathy enfolded her like some blessed warmth. When they reached the end of the pier, they paused and watched the
moonlight playing on the water.In the shelter of a truck they felt
benignly screened from any stray glances of the loiterers near by. How big seemed his strength as he stood silhouetted against the
blue night!For the first time Shenah Pessah noticed the splendid
straightness of his shoulders. The clean glowing youth of him drew her
like a spell. "Ach!Only to keep always inside my heart the kindness, the
gentlemanness that shines from his face," thought Shenah Pessah,
instinctively nestling closer. "Poor little immigrant!" murmured John Barnes. "How lonely, how
barren your life must have been till--" In an impulse of compassion,
his arms opened and Shenah Pessah felt her soul swoon in ecstasy as he
drew her toward him. * * * * *
It was three days since the eventful evening on the pier and Shenah
Pessah had not seen John Barnes since. He had vanished like a dream,
and yet he was not a dream.He was the only thing real in the unreal
emptiness of her unlived life. She closed her eyes and she saw again
his face with its joy-giving smile. She heard again his voice and felt
again his arms around her as he kissed her lips.Then in the midst of
her sweetest visioning a gnawing emptiness seized her and the cruel
ache of withheld love sucked dry all those beautiful feelings his
presence inspired.Sometimes there flashed across her fevered senses
the memory of his compassionate endearments: "Poor lonely little
immigrant!" And she felt his sweet words smite her flesh with their
cruel mockery. She went about her work with restlessness.At each step, at each
sound, she started, "Maybe it's him! Maybe!" She could not fall
asleep at night, but sat up in bed writing and tearing up letters to
him.The only lull to the storm that uprooted her being was in trying
to tell him how every throb within her clamored for him, but the most
heart-piercing cry that she could utter only stabbed her heart with the
futility of words.In the course of the week it was Shenah Pessah's duty to clean
Mrs. Stein's floor. This brought her to Mr. Barnes's den in his
absence. She gazed about her, calling up his presence at the sight of
his belongings. "How fine to the touch is the feel from everything his," she
sighed, tenderly resting her cheek on his dressing-gown. With a timid
hand she picked up a slipper that stood beside his bed and she pressed
it to her heart reverently. "I wish I was this leather thing only
to hold his feet!" Then she turned to his dresser and passed her
hands caressingly over the ivory things on it. "Ach! You lucky
brush--smoothing his hair every day! "All at once she heard footsteps, and before she could collect her
thoughts, he entered. Her whole being lit up with the joy of his
coming. But one glance at him revealed to her the changed expression
that darkened his face.His arms hung limply at his side--the arms she
expected to stretch out to her and enfold her. As if struck in the face
by his heartless rebuff, she rushed out blindly. "Just a minute, please," he managed to detain her. "As a
gentleman, I owe you an apology. That night--it was a passing moment of
forgetfulness. It's not to happen again--"
Before he had finished, she had run out scorched with shame by his
words. "Good Lord!" he ejaculated, when he found he was alone. "Who'd
ever think that she would take it so? I suppose there is no use trying
to explain to her." For some time he sat on his bed, staring ruefully. Then, springing
to his feet, he threw his things together in a valise. "You'd
be a cad if you did not clear out of here at once," he muttered to
himself. "No matter how valuable the scientific inquiry might prove
to be, you can't let the girl run away with herself. "Shenah Pessah was at the window when she saw John Barnes go out with
his suitcases. "In God's name, don't leave me!" she longed to cry out. "You
are the only bit of light that I ever had, and now it will be darker
and emptier for my eyes than ever before!" But no voice could rise
out of her parched lips.She felt a faintness stunning her senses as
though some one had cut open the arteries of her wrists and all the
blood rushed out of her body. "Oi weh!" she moaned. "Then it was all nothing to him.Why did
he make bitter to me the little sweetness that was dearer to me than my
life? What means he a gentleman? "Why did he make me to shame telling me he didn't mean nothing? Is
it because I'm not a lady alike to him?Is a gentleman only a
make-believe man?" With a defiant resolve she seized hold of herself and rose to her
feet. "Show him what's in you. If it takes a year, or a million
years, you got to show him you're a person. From now on, you got
why to live.You got to work not with the strength of one body and
one brain, but with the strength of a million bodies and a million
brains. By day and by night, you got to push, push yourself up till you
get to him and can look him in his face eye to eye. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
"Spent by the fervor of this new exaltation, she sat with her head in
her hands in a dull stupor. Little by little the darkness cleared from
her soul and a wistful serenity crept over her.She raised her face
toward the solitary ray of sunlight that stole into her basement room. "After all, he done for you more than you could do for him. You owe
it to him the deepest, the highest he waked up in you. He opened the
wings of your soul. "HUNGER
Shenah Pessah paused in the midst of scrubbing the stairs of the
tenement. "Ach!" she sighed. "How can his face still burn so in
me when he is so long gone? How the deadness in me flames up with life
at the thought of him! "The dark hallway seemed flooded with white radiance. She closed her
eyes that she might see more vividly the beloved features. The glowing
smile that healed all ills of life and changed her from the weary
drudge into the vibrant creature of joy.It was all a miracle--his coming, this young professor from one of
the big colleges. He had rented a room in the very house where she was
janitress so as to be near the people he was writing about.But more
wonderful than all was the way he stopped to talk to her, to question
her about herself as though she were his equal. What warm friendliness
had prompted him to take her out of her dark basement to the library
where there were books to read!And then--that unforgettable night on the way home, when the air was
poignant with spring! Only a moment--a kiss--a pressure of hands! And
the world shone with light--the empty, unlived years filled with love!She was lost in dreams of her one hour of romance when a woman elbowed
her way through the dim passage, leaving behind her the smell of
herring and onions. Shenah Pessah gripped the scrubbing-brush with suppressed
fury. "Meshugeneh!Did you not swear to yourself that you would tear
his memory out from your heart? If he would have been only a man I
could have forgotten him. But he was not a man! He was God Himself! On
whatever I look shines his face! "The white radiance again suffused her. The brush dropped from her
hand. "He--he is the beating in my heart! He is the life in me--the
hope in me--the breath of prayer in me! If not for him in me, then
what am I? Deadness--emptiness--nothingness!You are going out of your
head. You are living only on rainbows. He is no more real--
"What is real? These rags I wear? This pail? This black hole? Or
him and the dreams of him?" She flung her challenge to the murky
darkness. "Shenah Pessah!A black year on you!" came the answer from the
cellar below. It was the voice of her uncle, Moisheh Rifkin. "Oi weh!" she shrugged young shoulders, wearied by joyless
toil. "He's beginning with his hollering already." And she
hurried down. "You piece of earth! Worms should eat you! How long does it take
you to wash up the stairs?" he stormed. "Yesterday, the eating was
burned to coal; and to-day you forget the salt." "What a fuss over a little less salt! ""In the Talmud it stands a man has a right to divorce his wife for
only forgetting him the salt in his soup." "Maybe that's why Aunt Gittel went to the grave before her
time--worrying how to please your taste in the mouth. "The old man's yellow, shriveled face stared up at her out of the
gloom. "What has he from life? Only his pleasure in eating and going
to the synagogue. How long will he live yet?" And moved by a surge of
pity, "Why can't I be a little kind to him? ""Did you chop me some herring and onions?" he interrupted harshly. She flushed with conscious guilt. Again she wondered why ugly things
and ugly smells so sickened her. "What don't you forget?" His voice hammered upon her ears. "No
care lays in your head. You're only dreaming in the air." Her compassion was swept away in a wave of revolt that left her
trembling. "I can't no more stand it from you! Get yourself
somebody else!" She was surprised at her sudden spirit. "You big mouth, you! That's your thanks for saving you from
hunger." "Two years already I'm working the nails off my fingers and you
didn't give me a cent." "Beggerin! Money yet, you want?The minute you get enough to eat
you turn up your head with freshness. Are you used to anything from
home? What were you out there in Savel? The dirt under people's
feet.You're already forgetting how you came off from the ship--a
bundle of rags full of holes. If you lived in Russia a hundred years
would you have lived to wear a pair of new shoes on your feet? ""Other girls come naked and with nothing to America and they work
themselves up. Everybody gets wages in America--"
"Americanerin! Didn't I spend out enough money on your ship-ticket
to have a little use from you? A thunder should strike you! "Shenah Pessah's eyes flamed. Her broken finger-nails pierced the
callous flesh of her hands. So this was the end--the awakening of her
dreams of America! Her memory went back to the time her ship-ticket
came.In her simple faith she had really believed that they wanted
her--her father's brother and his wife who had come to the new
world before ever she was born. She thought they wanted to give her a
chance for happiness, for life and love.And then she came--to find
the paralytic aunt--housework--janitor's drudgery. Even after her
aunt's death, she had gone on uncomplainingly, till her uncle's
nagging had worn down her last shred of self-control. "It's the last time you'll holler on me!" she cried. "You'll
never see my face again if I got to go begging in the street." Seizing her shawl, she rushed out. "Woe is me! Bitter is
me! For what is my life?Why didn't the ship go under and drown me
before I came to America?" Through the streets, like a maddened thing, she raced, not knowing
where she was going, not caring. "For what should I keep on
suffering? Who needs me? Who wants me?I got nobody--nobody!" And then the vision of the face she worshiped flashed before her. His
beautiful kindness that had once warmed her into new life breathed over
her again. "Why did he ever come but to lift me out of my darkness
into his light? "Instinctively her eyes sought the rift of blue above the tenement roofs
and were caught by a boldly printed placard: "HANDS WANTED." It
was as though the sign swung open on its hinges like a door and arms
stretched out inviting her to enter.From the sign she looked to her
own hands--vigorous, young hands--made strong through toil. Hope leaped within her. "Maybe I got yet luck to have it good in this
world. Ach! God from the sky! I'm so burning to live--to work myself
up for a somebody!And why not?" With clenched fist she smote her
bosom. "Ain't everything possible in the new world? Why is America
but to give me the chance to lift up my head with everybody alike?" Her feet scarcely touched the steps as she ran up.But when she reached
the huge, iron door of Cohen Brothers, a terror seized her. "Oi
weh! They'll give a look on my greenhorn rags, and down I go--For
what are you afraid, you fool?" she commanded herself. "You come
not to beg. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
They need hands.Don't the sign say so? And you got good,
strong hands that can turn over the earth with their strength. America
is before you. You'll begin to earn money.You'll dress yourself
up like a person and men will fall on their knees to make love to
you--even him--himself!" All fear had left her.She flung open the door and beheld the wonder
of a factory--people--people--seas of bent heads and busy hands of
people--the whirr of machinery--flying belts--the clicking clatter of
whirling wheels--all seemed to blend and fuse into one surging song of
hope--of new life--a new world--America!A man, his arms heaped with a bundle of shirts, paused at sight of the
radiant face. Her ruddy cheeks, the film of innocence shining out of
eyes that knew no guile, carried him back to the green fields and open
plains of his native Russia. "Her mother's milk is still fresh on her lips," he murmured, as
his gaze enveloped her. The bundle slipped and fell to her feet. Their eyes met in spontaneous
recognition of common race. With an embarrassed laugh they stooped to
gather up the shirts. "I seen downstairs hands wanted," came in a faltering voice. "Then you're looking for work?" he questioned with keen
interest. She was so different from the others he had known in his five
years in this country.He was seized with curiosity to know more. "You ain't been long in America?" His tone was an unconscious
caress. "Two years already," she confessed. "But I ain't so green like
I look," she added quickly, overcome by the old anxiety. "Trust yourself on me," Sam Arkin assured her. "I'm a feller
that knows himself on a person first off. I'll take you to the office
myself. Wait only till I put away these things. "Grinning with eagerness, he returned and together they sought the
foreman. "Good luck to you! I hope you'll be pushed up soon to my floor,"
Sam Arkin encouraged, as he hurried back to his machine.Because of the rush of work and the scarcity of help, Shenah Pessah was
hired without delay. Atremble with excitement, she tiptoed after the
foreman as he led the way into the workroom. "Here, Sadie Kranz, is another learner for you. "He addressed a
big-bosomed girl, the most skillful worker in the place. "Another greenhorn with a wooden head!" she whispered to her
neighbor as Shenah Pessah removed her shawl. "Gevalt!All these
greenhorn hands tear the bread from our mouths by begging to work so
cheap." But the dumb appeal of the immigrant stirred vague memories in Sadie
Kranz. As she watched her run her first seam, she marveled at her
speed. "I got to give it to you, you have a quick head." There was
conscious condescension in her praise. Shenah Pessah lifted a beaming face. "How kind it was from you to
learn me! You good heart!" No one had ever before called Sadie Kranz "good heart. "The words
lingered pleasantly. "Ut! I like to help anybody, so long it don't cost me nothing. I
get paid by the week anyhow," she half apologized.Shenah Pessah was so thrilled with the novelty of the work, the
excitement of mastering the intricacies of her machine, that she
did not realize that the day was passed until the bell rang, the
machines came to a halt, and the "hands" made a wild rush for the
cloak-room. "Oi weh! Is it a fire?" Shenah Pessah blanched with dread. Loud laughter quelled her fears. "Greenie! It's six o'clock. Time
to go home," chorused the voices. "Home?" The cry broke from her. "Where will I go? I got
no home. "She stood bewildered, in the fast-dwindling crowd of
workers. Each jostling by her had a place to go. Of them all, she alone
was friendless, shelterless! "Help me find a place to sleep! "she implored, seizing Sadie Kranz
by the sleeve of her velvet coat. "I got no people. I ran away." Sadie Kranz narrowed her eyes at the girl. A feeling of pity crept over
her at sight of the outstretched, hungry hands. "I'll fix you by me for the while." And taking the shawl off the
shelf, she tossed it to the forlorn bundle of rags. "Come along. You
must be starved for some eating. "As Shenah Pessah entered the dingy hall-room which Sadie Kranz called
home, its chill and squalor carried her back to the janitor's
basement she had left that morning.In silence she watched her
companion prepare the hot dogs and potatoes on the oil-stove atop the
trunk. Such pressing sadness weighed upon her that she turned from even
the smell of food. "My heart pulls me so to go back to my uncle. "She swallowed
hard her crust of black bread. "He's so used to have me help
him. What'll he do--alone?" "You got to look out for yourself in this world." Sadie Kranz
gesticulated with a hot potato. "With your quickness, you got a
chance to make money and buy clothes. You can go to shows--dances. And
who knows--maybe meet a man to get married." "Married?You know how it burns in every girl to get herself
married--that's how it burns in me to work myself up for a person." "Ut! For what need you to work yourself up. Better marry yourself up
to a rich feller and you're fixed for life. ""But him I want--he ain't just a man. He is--" She paused
seeking for words and a mist of longing softened the heavy peasant
features. "He is the golden hills on the sky. I'm as far from him
as the earth is from the stars." "Yok!Why wills itself in you the stars?" her companion ridiculed
between swallows. Shenah Pessah flung out her hands with Jewish fervor. "Can I help
it what's in my heart? It always longs in me for the higher.Maybe
he has long ago forgotten me, but only one hope drives in me like
madness--to make myself alike to him." "I'll tell you the truth," laughed Sadie Kranz, fishing in
the pot for the last frankfurter. "You are a little out of your
head--plain mehsugeh." "Mehsugeh?" Shenah Pessah rose to her feet vibrant with new
resolve. "Mehsugeh?" she challenged, her peasant youth afire with
ambition. "I'll yet show the world what's in me.I'll not go
back to my uncle--till it rings with my name in America." She entered the factory, the next day, with a light in her face, a
sureness in her step that made all pause in wonder. "Look only! How
high she holds herself her head!Has the matchmaker promised her a
man?" Then came her first real triumph. Shenah Pessah was raised above old
hands who had been in the shop for years and made assistant to Sam
Arkin, the man who had welcomed her that first day in the factory.As
she was shown to the bench beside him, she waited expectantly for a
word of welcome. None came. Instead, he bent the closer to his machine
and the hand that held the shirt trembled as though he were cold,
though the hot color flooded his face.Resolutely, she turned to her work. She would show him how skillful she
had become in those few weeks. The seams sped under her lightning touch
when a sudden clatter startled her. She jumped up terror-stricken. "The belt! The belt slipped!But it's nothing, little bird," Sam
Arkin hastened to assure her. "I'll fix it." And then the quick
warning, "Sh-h! The foreman is coming!" | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Accustomed to her uncle's harsh bickering, this man's gentleness
overwhelmed her.There was something she longed to say that trembled on
her lips, but her voice refused to come. Sam Arkin, too, was inarticulate. He felt he must talk to
her, must know more of her. Timidly he touched her sleeve. "Lunch-time--here--wait for me," he whispered, as the foreman
approached. * * * * *
A shrill whistle--the switch thrown--the slowing-down of the machines,
then the deafening hush proclaiming noon.Followed the scraping of
chairs, raucous voices, laughter, and the rush on the line to reach
the steaming cauldron. One by one, as their cups of tea were filled,
the hungry workers dispersed into groups.Seated on window-sills,
table-tops, machines, and bales of shirts, they munched black bread and
herring and sipped tea from saucers. And over all rioted the acrid odor
of garlic and onions.Rebecca Feist, the belle of the shop, pulled up the sleeve of
her Georgette waist and glanced down at her fifty-nine-cent silk
stocking. "A lot it pays for a girl to kill herself to dress
stylish.Give only a look on Sam Arkin, how stuck he is on that new
hand." There followed a chorus of voices. "Such freshness! We been in the
shop so long and she just gives a come-in and grabs the cream as if
it's coming to her. ""It's her innocent-looking baby eyes that fools him in--"
"Innocent! Pfui! These make-believe innocent girls! Leave it to
them! They know how to shine themselves up to a feller! "Bleemah Levine, a stoop-shouldered, old hand, grown gray with
the grayness of unrelieved drudgery, cast a furtive look in the
direction of the couple. "Ach! The little bit of luck!Not looks, not
smartness, but only luck, and the world falls to your feet." Her lips
tightened with envy. "It's her greenhorn, red cheeks--"
Rebecca Feist glanced at herself in the mirror of her vanity
bag.It was a pretty, young face, but pale and thin from
undernourishment. Adroitly applying a lip-stick, she cried indignantly:
"I wish I could be such a false thing like her. But only, I'm too
natural--the hypocrite! "Sadie Kranz rose to her friend's defense. "What are you falling on
her like a pack of wild dogs, just because Sam Arkin gives a smile on
her? He ain't marrying her yet, is he? ""We don't say nothing against her," retorted Rebecca Feist,
tapping her diamond-buckled foot, "only, she pushes herself too
much. Give her a finger and she'll grab your whole hand. Is there a
limit to the pushings of such a green animal?Only a while ago, she was
a learner, a nobody, and soon she'll jump over all our heads and make
herself for a forelady." Sam Arkin, seated beside Shenah Pessah on the window-sill, had
forgotten that it was lunch-hour and that he was savagely hungry. "It
shines so from your eyes," he beamed. "What happy thoughts lay in
your head?" "Ach! When I give myself a look around on all the people laughing and
talking, it makes me so happy I'm one of them." "Ut! These Americanerins!Their heads is only on ice-cream soda and
style." "But it makes me feel so grand to be with all these hands
alike. It's as if I just got out from the choking prison into the
open air of my own people. "She paused for breath--a host of memories overpowering her. "I
can't give it out in words," she went on. "But just as there
ain't no bottom to being poor, there ain't no bottom to being
lonely. Before, everything I done was alone, by myself.My heart hurt
so with hunger for people. But here, in the factory, I feel I'm with
everybody together. Just the sight of people lifts me on wings in the
air. "Opening her bag of lunch which had lain unheeded in her lap, she turned
to him with a queer, little laugh, "I don't know why I'm so
talking myself out to you--"
"Only talk more. I want to know everything about yourself. "An
aching tenderness rushed out of his heart to her, and in his grave
simplicity he told her how he had overheard one of the girls say that
she, Shenah Pessah, looked like a "greeneh yenteh," just landed
from the ship, so that he cried out, "Gottuniu!If only the doves
from the sky were as beautiful!" They looked at each other solemnly--the girl's lips parted, her eyes
wide and serious. "That first day I came to the shop, the minute I gave a look on you,
I felt right away, here's somebody from home. I used to tremble so
to talk to a man, but you--you--I could talk myself out to you like
thinking in myself. ""You're all soft silk and fine velvet," he breathed reverently. "In this hard world, how could such fineness be?" An embarrassed silence fell between them as she knotted and unknotted
her colored kerchief. "I'll take you home? Yes? "he found voice at last. Under lowered lashes she smiled her consent. "I'll wait for you downstairs, closing time." And he was gone. The noon hour was not yet over, but Shenah Pessah returned to her
machine. "Shall I tell him?" she mused. "Sam Arkin understands so
much, shall I tell him of this man that burns in me? If I could only
give out to some one about him in my heart--it would make me a little
clear in the head." She glanced at Sam Arkin furtively. "He's
kind, but could he understand? I only made a fool from myself trying to
tell Sadie Kranz." All at once she began to sob without reason. She
ran to the cloak-room and hid from prying eyes, behind the shawls
and wraps.The emptiness of all for which she struggled pressed upon
her like a dead weight, dragging her down, down--the reaction of her
ecstasy. As the gong sounded, she made a desperate effort to pull herself
together and returned to her work.The six o'clock whistles still reverberated when Sam Arkin hurried
down the factory stairs and out to the corner where he was to meet
Shenah Pessah. He cleared his throat to greet her as she came, but all
he managed was a bashful grin.She was so near, so real, and he had so
much to say--if he only knew how to begin. He cracked his knuckles and bit his finger-tips, but no words
came. "Ach! You yok! Why ain't you saying something?" He wrestled
with his shyness in vain.The tense silence remained unbroken till they
reached her house. "I'm sorry"--Shenah Pessah colored apologetically--"But I got
no place to invite you. My room is hardly big enough for a push-in of
one person. ""What say you to a bite of eating with me?" he blurted. She thought of her scant supper upstairs and would have responded
eagerly, but glancing down at her clothes, she hesitated. "Could I go
dressed like this in a restaurant? ""You look grander plain, like you are, than those twisted up with
style. I'll take you to the swellest restaurant on Grand Street and
be proud with you!" She flushed with pleasure. "Nu, come on, then.It's good to have a
friend that knows himself on what's in you and not what's on you,
but still, when I go to a place, I like to be dressed like a person so
I can feel like a person. ""You'll yet live to wear diamonds that will shine up the street
when you pass!" he cried. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Through streets growing black with swarming crowds of toil-released
workers they made their way.Sam Arkin's thick hand rested with a
lightness new to him upon the little arm tucked under his.The haggling
pushcart peddlers, the newsboys screaming, "Tageblatt, Abendblatt,
Herold," the roaring noises of the elevated trains resounded the
pæan of joy swelling his heart. "America was good to me, but I never guessed how good till now. "The words were out before he knew it. "Tell me only, what pulled you
to this country?" "What pulls anybody here? The hope for the better. People who got it
good in the old world don't hunger for the new. "A mist filled her eyes at memory of her native village. "How I
suffered in Savel. I never had enough to eat. I never had shoes on
my feet. I had to go barefoot even in the freezing winter. But still
I love it. I was born there.I love the houses and the straw roofs,
the mud streets, the cows, the chickens and the goats. My heart always
hurts me for what is no more." The brilliant lights of Levy's Café brought her back to Grand
Street. "Here is it. "He led her in and over to a corner table. "Chopped
herring and onions for two," he ordered with a flourish. "Ain't there some American eating on the card?" interposed Shenah
Pessah. He laughed indulgently. "If I lived in America for a hundred years I
couldn't get used to the American eating. What can make the mouth so
water like the taste and the smell from herring and onions? ""There's something in me--I can't help--that so quickly takes on
to the American taste. It's as if my outside skin only was Russian;
the heart in me is for everything of the new world--even the eating." "Nu, I got nothing to complain against America.I don't like
the American eating, but I like the American dollar. Look only
on me!" He expanded his chest. "I came to America a ragged
nothing--and--see--" He exhibited a bank-book in four figures,
gesticulating grandly, "And I learned in America how to sign my
name!" "Did it come hard to learn?" she asked under her breath. "Hard? "His face purpled with excitement. "It would be easier for
me to lift up this whole house on my shoulders than to make one little
dot of a letter. When I took my pencil--Oi weh! The sweat would break
out on my face! 'I can't, I can't! 'I cried, but something
in me jumped up. 'You can--you yok--you must!' --Six months, night
after night, I stuck to it--and I learned to twist around the little
black hooks till it means--me--Sam Arkin. "He had the rough-hewn features of the common people, but he lifted his
head with the pride of a king. "Since I can write out my name, I feel
I can do anything. I can sign checks, put money in the bank, or take it
out without nobody to help me. "As Shenah Pessah listened, unconsciously she compared Sam Arkin,
glowing with the frank conceit of the self-made man, his neglected
teeth, thick, red lips, with that of the Other One--made ever more
beautiful with longings and dreams. "But in all these black years, I was always hoping to get to the
golden country," Sam Arkin's voice went on, but she heard it as
from afar. "Before my eyes was always the shine of the high wages
and the easy money and I kept pushing myself from one city to another,
and saving and saving till I saved up enough for my ship-ticket to
the new world.And then when I landed here, I fell into the hands of a
cockroach boss." "A cockroach boss?" she questioned absently and reproached herself
for her inattention. "A black year on him! He was a landsman, that's how he fooled me
in.He used to come to the ship with a smiling face of welcome to all
the greenhorns what had nobody to go to. And then he'd put them to
work in his sweatshop and sweat them into their grave." "Don't I know it?" she cried with quickened understanding. "Just like my uncle, Moisheh Rifkin." "The blood-sucker!" he gasped. "When I think how I slaved for him
sixteen hours a day--for what? Nothing!" She gently stroked his hand as one might a child in pain. He looked up
and smiled gratefully. "I want to forget what's already over. I got enough money now to
start for myself--maybe a tailor-shop--and soon--I--I want to marry
myself--but none of those crazy chickens for me." And he seemed to
draw her unto himself by the intensity of his gaze.Growing bolder, he exclaimed: "I got a grand idea. It's Monday
and the bank is open yet till nine o'clock. I'll write over my
bank-book on your name? Yes?" "My name?" She fell back, dumbstruck. "Yes--you--everything I only got--you--" he mumbled. "I'll give
you dove's milk to drink--silks and diamonds to wear--you'll hold
all my money." She was shaken by this supreme proof of his devotion. "But I--I can't--I got to work myself up for a person. I got
a head. I got ideas.I can catch on to the Americans quicker'n
lightning." "My money can buy you everything. I'll buy you teachers. I'll
buy you a piano. I'll make you for a lady. Right away you can stop
from work. "He leaned toward her, his eyes welling with tears of
earnestness. "Take your hard-earned money? Could I be such a beggerin?" "God from the world! You are dearer to me than the eyes from my
head! I'd give the blood from under my nails for you!I want only to
work for you--to live for you--to die for you--" He was spent with
the surge of his emotion. Ach! To be loved as Sam Arkin loved! She covered her eyes, but it only
pressed upon her the more.Home, husband, babies, a bread-giver for
life! And the Other--a dream--a madness that burns you up alive. "You might
as well want to marry yourself to the President of America as to want
him. But I can't help it. _Him and him only_ I want. "She looked up again. "No--no!" she cried, cruel in the self-absorption
of youth and ambition. "You can't make me for a person. It's not only that I got to go up higher, but I got to push
myself up by myself, by my own strength--"
"Nu, nu," he sobbed. "I'll not bother you with me--only give
you my everything. My bank-book is more than my flesh and blood--only
take it, to do what you want with it." Her eyes deepened with humility. "I know your goodness--but there's
something like a wall around me--him in my heart." "Him?" The word hurled itself at him like a bomb-shell. He went
white with pain.And even she, immersed in her own thoughts, lowered
her head before the dumb suffering on his face. She felt she owed it to
him to tell him. "I wanted to talk myself out to you about him yet before.--He ain't
just a man.He is all that I want to be and am not yet. He is the
hunger of me for the life that ain't just eating and sleeping and
slaving for bread." She pushed back her chair and rose abruptly. "I can't be inside
walls when I talk of him.I need the earth, the whole free sky to
breathe when I think of him. Come out in the air." They walked for a time before either spoke. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Sam Arkin followed where
she led through the crooked labyrinth of streets.The sight of the
young mothers with their nursing infants pressed to their bared bosoms
stabbed anew his hurt. Shenah Pessah, blind to all but the vision that obsessed her, talked
on. "All that my mother and father and my mother's mother and
father ever wanted to be is in him. This fire in me, it's not just
the hunger of a woman for a man--it's the hunger of all my people
back of me, from all ages, for light, for the life higher! "A veil of silence fell between them. She felt almost as if it were a
sacrilege to have spoken of that which was so deeply centered within
her. Sam Arkin's face became lifeless as clay. Bowed like an
old man, he dragged his leaden feet after him.The world was
dead--cold--meaningless. Bank-book, money--of what use were they
now? All his years of saving couldn't win her. He was suffocated in
emptiness. * * * * *
On they walked till they reached a deserted spot in the park. So spent
was he by his sorrow that he lost the sense of time or place or that
she was near.Leaning against a tree, he stood, dumb, motionless, unutterable
bewilderment in his sunken eyes. "I lived over the hunger for bread--but this--" He clutched at his
aching bosom. "Highest One, help me!" With his face to the ground
he sank, prostrate. "Sam Arkin!" She bent over him tenderly. "I feel the emptiness of
words--but I got to get it out. All that you suffer I have suffered,
and must yet go on suffering. I see no end.But only--there is
a something--a hope--a help out--it lifts me on top of my hungry
body--the hunger to make from myself a person that can't be crushed
by nothing nor nobody--the life higher! "Slowly, he rose to his feet, drawn from his weakness by the spell of
her. "With one hand you throw me down and with the other you lift
me up to life again. Say to me only again, your words," he pleaded,
helplessly. "Sam Arkin!Give yourself your own strength!" She shook him
roughly. "I got no pity on you, no more than I got pity on me." He saw her eyes fill with light as though she were seeing something far
beyond them both. "This," she breathed, "is only the beginning
of the hunger that will make from you a person who'll yet ring in
America." THE LOST "BEAUTIFULNESS"
"Oi weh! How it shines the beautifulness!" exulted Hanneh Hayyeh
over her newly painted kitchen.She cast a glance full of worship and
adoration at the picture of her son in uniform; eyes like her own,
shining with eagerness, with joy of life, looked back at her. "Aby will not have to shame himself to come back to his old home,"
she rejoiced, clapping her hands--hands blistered from the paintbrush
and calloused from rough toil. "Now he'll be able to invite all the
grandest friends he made in the army. "The smell of the paint was suffocating, but she inhaled in it huge
draughts of hidden beauty.For weeks she had dreamed of it and felt in
each tin of paint she was able to buy, in each stroke of the brush, the
ecstasy of loving service for the son she idolized.Ever since she first began to wash the fine silks and linens for
Mrs. Preston, years ago, it had been Hanneh Hayyeh's ambition to have
a white-painted kitchen exactly like that in the old Stuyvesant Square
mansion.Now her own kitchen was a dream come true. Hanneh Hayyeh ran in to her husband, a stoop-shouldered, care-crushed
man who was leaning against the bed, his swollen feet outstretched,
counting the pennies that totaled his day's earnings. "Jake Safransky!" she cried excitedly, "you got to come in and
give a look on my painting before you go to sleep." "Oi, let me alone. Give me only a rest. "Too intoxicated with the joy of achievement to take no for an answer,
she dragged him into the doorway. "Nu? How do you like it? Do I know
what beautiful is?" "But how much money did you spend out on that paint? ""It was my own money," she said, wiping the perspiration off her
face with a corner of her apron. "Every penny I earned myself from
the extra washing." "But you had ought save it up for the bad times.What'll you do
when the cold weather starts in and the pushcart will not wheel itself
out?" "I save and pinch enough for myself. This I done in honor for my
son. I want my Aby to lift up his head in the world.I want him to be
able to invite even the President from America to his home and shame
himself." "You'd pull the bananas off a blind man's pushcart to bring to
your Aby.You know nothing from holding tight to a dollar and saving a
penny to a penny like poor people should." "What do I got from living if I can't have a little beautifulness
in my life?I don't allow for myself the ten cents to go to a moving
picture that I'm crazy to see. I never yet treated myself to an
ice-cream soda even for a holiday. Shining up the house for Aby is my
only pleasure." "Yah, but it ain't your house.It's the landlord's." "Don't I live in it? I soak in pleasure from every inch of my
kitchen. Why, I could kiss the grand white color on the walls. It
lights up my eyes like sunshine in the room. "Her glance traveled from the newly painted walls to the geranium on the
window-sill, and back to her husband's face. "Jake!" she cried, shaking him, "ain't you got eyes?How can
you look on the way it dances the beautifulness from every corner and
not jump in the air from happiness?" "I'm only thinking on the money you spent out on the landlord's
house. Look only on me!I'm black from worry, but no care lays on
your head. It only dreams itself in you how to make yourself for an
American and lay in every penny you got on fixing out the house like
the rich. ""I'm sick of living like a pig with my nose to the earth, all the
time only pinching and scraping for bread and rent. So long my Aby is
with America, I want to make myself for an American. I could tear the
stars out from heaven for my Aby's wish. "Her sunken cheeks were flushed and her eyes glowed with light as she
gazed about her. "When I see myself around the house how I fixed it up with my own
hands, I forget I'm only a nobody. It makes me feel I'm also a
person like Mrs. Preston.It lifts me with high thoughts." "Why didn't you marry yourself to a millionaire? You always want to
make yourself like Mrs. Preston who got millions laying in the bank. ""But Mrs. Preston does make me feel that I'm alike with her,"
returned Hanneh Hayyeh, proudly. "Don't she talk herself out to me
like I was her friend? Mrs. Preston says this war is to give everybody
a chance to lift up his head like a person.It is to bring together the
people on top who got everything and the people on the bottom who got
nothing. She's been telling me about a new word--democracy. It got me
on fire.Democracy means that everybody in America is going to be with
everybody alike." "Och! Stop your dreaming out of your head. Close up your mouth from
your foolishness. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Women got long hair and small brains," he finished,
muttering as he went to bed.At the busy gossiping hour of the following morning when the
butcher-shop was crowded with women in dressing-sacks and wrappers
covered over with shawls, Hanneh Hayyeh elbowed her way into the
clamorous babel of her neighbors. "What are you so burning? What are you so flaming?" "She's always on fire with the wonders of her son." "The whole world must stop still to listen to what news her son
writes to her." "She thinks her son is the only one soldier by the American army. ""My Benny is also one great wonder from smartness, but I ain't such
a crazy mother like she." The voices of her neighbors rose from every corner, but Hanneh Hayyeh,
deaf to all, projected herself forward. "What are you pushing yourself so wild?You ain't going to get your
meat first. Ain't it, Mr. Sopkin, all got to wait their turn?" Mr. Sopkin glanced up in the midst of cutting apart a quarter of
meat. He wiped his knife on his greasy apron and leaned across the
counter. "Nu?Hanneh Hayyeh?" his ruddy face beamed. "Have you another
letter from little Aby in France? What good news have you got to tell
us?" "No--it's not a letter," she retorted, with a gesture of
impatience. "The good news is that I got done with the painting of
my kitchen--and you all got to come and give a look how it shines in my
house like in a palace." Mr. Sopkin resumed cutting the meat. "Oi weh! "clamored Hanneh Hayyeh, with feverish breathlessness. "Stop with your meat already and quick come. The store ain't
going to run away from you! It will take only a minute. With one step you are upstairs in my house." She flung out
her hands. "And everybody got to come along." "Do you think I can make a living from looking on the wonders you
turn over in your house?" remonstrated the butcher, with a twinkle in
his eye. "Making money ain't everything in life.My new-painted kitchen will
light up your heart with joy." Seeing that Mr. Sopkin still made no move, she began to coax and
wheedle, woman-fashion. "Oi weh! Mr. Sopkin! Don't be so mean. Come
only. Your customers ain't going to run away from you.If they do,
they only got to come back, because you ain't a skinner. You weigh
the meat honest." How could Mr. Sopkin resist such seductive flattery? "Hanneh Hayyeh!" he laughed. "You're crazy up in the air, but
nobody can say no to anything you take into your head." He tossed his knife down on the counter. "Everybody!" he called;
"let us do her the pleasure and give a look on what she got to show
us." "Oi weh!I ain't got no time," protested one. "I left my baby
alone in the house locked in." "And I left a pot of eating on the stove boiling. It must be all
burned away by this time. ""But you all got time to stand around here and chatter like a box of
monkeys, for hours," admonished Mr. Sopkin. "This will only take a
minute. You know Hanneh Hayyeh. We can't tear ourselves away from her
till we do what wills itself in her mind. "Protesting and gesticulating, they all followed Mr. Sopkin as Hanneh
Hayyeh led the way. Through the hallway of a dark, ill-smelling
tenement, up two flights of crooked, rickety stairs, they filed.When
Hanneh Hayyeh opened the door there were exclamations of wonder and
joy: "Oi! Oi!" and "Ay! Ay! Takeh! Takeh!" "Gold is shining from every corner!" "Like for a holiday!" "You don't need to light up the gas, so it shines! ""I wish I could only have it so grand!" "You ain't got worries on your head, so it lays in your mind to
make it so fancy." Mr. Sopkin stood with mouth open, stunned with wonder at the
transformation. Hanneh Hayyeh shook him by the sleeve exultantly."Nu? Why ain't
you saying something?" "Grand ain't the word for it! What a whiteness! And what a
cleanliness! It tears out the eyes from the head! Such a tenant the
landlord ought to give out a medal or let down the rent free.I saw
the rooms before and I see them now. What a difference from one house
to another." "Ain't you coming in?" Hanneh Hayyeh besought her neighbors. "God from the world! To step with our feet on this new painted
floor?" "Shah! "said the butcher, taking off his apron and spreading it
on the floor. "You can all give a step on my apron. It's dirty,
anyhow." They crowded in on the outspread apron and vied with one another in
their words of praise. "May you live to see your son married from this kitchen, and may we
all be invited to the wedding!" "May you live to eat here cake and wine on the feasts of your
grandchildren! ""May you have the luck to get rich and move from here into your own
bought house!" "Amen!" breathed Hanneh Hayyeh. "May we all forget from our
worries for rent! "* * * * *
Mrs. Preston followed with keen delight Hanneh Hayyeh's every
movement as she lifted the wash from the basket and spread it on the
bed.Hanneh Hayyeh's rough, toil-worn hands lingered lovingly,
caressingly over each garment. It was as though the fabrics held
something subtly animate in their texture that penetrated to her very
finger-tips. "Hanneh Hayyeh! You're an artist! "There was reverence in
Mrs. Preston's low voice that pierced the other woman's inmost
being. "You do my laces and batistes as no one else ever has. It's
as if you breathed part of your soul into it. "The hungry-eyed, ghetto woman drank in thirstily the beauty and
goodness that radiated from Mrs. Preston's person. None of the
cultured elegance of her adored friend escaped Hanneh Hayyeh.Her
glance traveled from the exquisite shoes to the flawless hair of the
well-poised head. "Your things got so much fineness. I'm crazy for the feel from
them. I do them up so light in my hands like it was thin air I was
handling. "Hanneh Hayyeh pantomimed as she spoke and Mrs. Preston, roused from her
habitual reserve, put her fine, white hand affectionately over Hanneh
Hayyeh's gnarled, roughened ones. "Oi-i-i-i! Mrs. Preston! You always make me feel so grand! "said
Hanneh Hayyeh, a mist of tears in her wistful eyes. "When I go away
from you I could just sit down and cry. I can't give it out in words
what it is. It chokes me so--how good you are to me--You ain't at all
like a rich lady.You're so plain from the heart. You make the lowest
nobody feel he's somebody." "You are not a 'nobody,' Hanneh Hayyeh. You are an artist--an
artist laundress." "What mean you an artist? ""An artist is so filled with love for the beautiful that he has
to express it in some way. You express it in your washing just as a
painter paints it in a picture." "Paint?" exclaimed Hanneh Hayyeh. "If you could only give a look
how I painted up my kitchen! It lights up the whole tenement house for
blocks around. The grocer and the butcher and all the neighbors were
jumping in the air from wonder and joy when they seen how I shined up
my house. ""And all in honor of Aby's home-coming?" Mrs. Preston smiled,
her thoughts for a moment on her own son, the youngest captain in his
regiment whose home-coming had been delayed from week to week. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
"Everything I do is done for my Aby," breathed Hanneh Hayyeh,
her hands clasping her bosom as if feeling again the throb of his
babyhood at her heart. "But this painting was already dreaming itself
in my head for years.You remember the time the hot iron fell on my
foot and you came to see me and brought me a red flower-pot wrapped
around with green crêpe paper? That flower-pot opened up the sky in
my kitchen." The words surged from the seething soul of her. "Right
away I saw before my eyes how I could shine up my kitchen like a parlor
by painting the walls and sewing up new curtains for the window. It was
like seeing before me your face every time I looked on your flowers.I
used to talk to it like it could hear and feel and see. And I said to
it: 'I'll show you what's in me. I'll show you that I know what
beautiful is.'" Her face was aglow with an enthusiasm that made it seem young, like a
young girl's face. "I begged myself by the landlord to paint up my kitchen, but he
wouldn't listen to me. So I seen that if I ever hoped to fix up my
house, I'd have to spend out my own money. And I began to save a
penny to a penny to have for the paint.And when I seen the painters,
I always stopped them to ask where and how to buy it so that it
should come out the cheapest. By day and by night it burned in me the
picture--my kitchen shining all white like yours, till I couldn't
rest till I done it. "With all her breeding, with all the restraint of her Anglo-Saxon
forbears, Mrs. Preston was strangely shaken by Hanneh Hayyeh's
consuming passion for beauty.She looked deep into the eyes of the
Russian Jewess as if drinking in the secret of their hidden glow. "I am eager to see that wonderful kitchen of yours," she said, as
Hanneh Hayyeh bade her good-bye.Hanneh Hayyeh walked home, her thoughts in a whirl with the glad
anticipation of Mrs. Preston's promised visit. She wondered how she
might share the joy of Mrs. Preston's presence with the butcher and
all the neighbors. "I'll bake up a shtrudel cake," she thought to
herself. "They will all want to come to get a taste of the cake and
then they'll give a look on Mrs. Preston." Thus smiling and talking to herself she went about her work.As she
bent over the wash-tub rubbing the clothes, she visualized the hot,
steaming shtrudel just out of the oven and the exclamations of pleasure
as Mrs. Preston and the neighbors tasted it. All at once there was a
knock at the door.Wiping her soapy hands on the corner of her apron,
she hastened to open it. "Oi! Mr. Landlord! Come only inside," she urged. "I got the
rent for you, but I want you to give a look around how I shined up my
flat. "The Prince Albert that bound the protruding stomach of Mr. Benjamin
Rosenblatt was no tighter than the skin that encased the smooth-shaven
face. His mouth was tight. Even the small, popping eyes held a tight
gleam. "I got no time.The minutes is money," he said, extending a
claw-like hand for the rent. "But I only want you for a half a minute." And Hanneh Hayyeh
dragged the owner of her palace across the threshold. "Nu? Ain't
I a good painter?And all this I done while other people were sleeping
themselves, after I'd come home from my day's work." "Very nice," condescended Mr. Benjamin Rosenblatt, with a hasty
glance around the room. "You certainly done a good job. But I got
to go.Here's your receipt." And the fingers that seized Hanneh
Hayyeh's rent-money seemed like pincers for grasping molars. Two weeks later Jake Safransky and his wife Hanneh Hayyeh sat eating
their dinner, when the janitor came in with a note. "From the landlord," he said, handing it to Hanneh Hayyeh, and
walked out. "The landlord?" she cried, excitedly. "What for can it be?" With trembling fingers she tore open the note. The slip dropped from
her hand.Her face grew livid, her eyes bulged with terror. "Oi
weh!" she exclaimed, as she fell back against the wall. "Gewalt!" cried her husband, seizing her limp hand, "you look
like struck dead." "Oi-i-i! The murderer!He raised me the rent five dollars a month." "Good for you! I told you to listen to me. Maybe he thinks we got
money laying in the bank when you got so many dollars to give out on
paint." She turned savagely on her husband. "What are you tearing yet my
flesh? Such a money-grabber! How could I imagine for myself that so he
would thank me for laying in my money to painting up his house?" She seized her shawl, threw it over her head, and rushed to the
landlord's office. "Oi weh! Mr. Landlord! Where is your heart? How could you raise me
my rent when you know my son is yet in France? And even with the extra
washing I take in I don't get enough when the eating is so dear? ""The flat is worth five dollars more," answered Mr. Rosenblatt,
impatiently. "I can get another tenant any minute." "Have pity on me! I beg you! From where I can squeeze out the five
dollars more for you?" "That don't concern me.If you can't pay, somebody else will. I
got to look out for myself. In America everybody looks out for
himself." "Is it nothing by you how I painted up your house with my own
blood-money?" "You didn't do it for me.You done it for yourself," he
sneered. "It's nothing to me how the house looks, so long as I
get my rent in time. You wanted to have a swell house, so you painted
it. That's all." With a wave of his hand he dismissed her. "I beg by your conscience!Think on God!" Hanneh Hayyeh wrung her
hands. "Ain't your house worth more to you to have a tenant clean
it out and paint it out so beautiful like I done?" "Certainly," snarled the landlord. "Because the flat is painted
new, I can get more money for it. I got no more time for you." He turned to his stenographer and resumed the dictation of his letters. Dazedly Hanneh Hayyeh left the office.A choking dryness contracted her
throat as she staggered blindly, gesticulating and talking to herself. "Oi weh! The sweat, the money I laid into my flat and it should
all go to the devil. And I should be turned out and leave all my
beautifulness.And from where will I get the money for moving? When
I begin to break myself up to move, I got to pay out money for the
moving man, money for putting up new lines, money for new shelves
and new hooks besides money for the rent.I got to remain where
I am. But from where can I get together the five dollars for the
robber? Should I go to Moisheh Itzek, the pawnbroker, or should I maybe
ask Mrs. Preston? No--She shouldn't think I got her for a friend only
to help me. Oi weh!Where should I turn with my bitter heart?" Mechanically she halted at the butcher-shop. Throwing herself on the
vacant bench, she buried her face in her shawl and burst out in a loud,
heart-piercing wail: "Woe is me! Bitter is me!" "Hanneh Hayyeh!What to you happened?" cried Mr. Sopkin in alarm. His sympathy unlocked the bottom depths of her misery. "Oi-i-i! Black is my luck! Dark is for my eyes!" The butcher and the neighbors pressed close in upon her. "Gewalt! What is it?Bad news from Aby in France?" | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
"Oi-i-i! The murderer! The thief! His gall should burst as mine is
bursting! His heart should break as mine is breaking! It remains for
me nothing but to be thrown out in the gutter.The landlord raised me
five dollars a month rent. And he ripped yet my wounds by telling me he
raised me the rent because my painted-up flat is so much more worth." "The dogs! The blood-sucking landlords! They are the new czars from
America! ""What are you going to do?" "What should I do? Aby is coming from France any day, and he's got
to have a home to come to. I will have to take out from my eating the
meat and the milk to save together the extra five dollars. People! Give
me an advice!What else can I do? If a wild wolf falls on you in the
black night, will crying help you?" With a gesture of abject despair, she fell prone upon the
bench. "Gottuniu!If there is any justice and mercy on this earth,
then may the landlord be tortured like he is torturing me! May the
fires burn him and the waters drown him! May his flesh be torn from him
in pieces and his bones be ground in the teeth of wild dogs! "Two months later, a wasted, haggard Hanneh Hayyeh stood in the kitchen,
folding Mrs. Preston's wash in her basket, when the janitor--the
servant of her oppressor--handed her another note. "From the landlord," he said in his toneless voice.Hanneh Hayyeh paled. She could tell from his smirking sneer that it was
a second notice of increased rental. It grew black before her eyes. She was too stunned to think.Her first
instinct was to run to her husband; but she needed sympathy--not
nagging. And then in her darkness she saw a light--the face of her
friend, Mrs. Preston. She hurried to her. "Oi--friend!The landlord raised me my rent again," she gasped,
dashing into the room like a thing hounded by wild beasts. Mrs. Preston was shocked by Hanneh Hayyeh's distraught appearance. For the first time she noticed the ravages of worry and
hunger. "Hanneh Hayyeh! Try to calm yourself. It is really quite inexcusable
the way the landlords are taking advantage of the situation. There must
be a way out. We'll fix it up somehow." "How fix it up?" Hanneh Hayyeh flared. "We'll see that you get the rent you need." There was reassurance
and confidence in Mrs. Preston's tone. Hanneh Hayyeh's eyes flamed. Too choked for utterance, her breath
ceased for a moment. "I want no charity! You think maybe I came to beg?No--I want
justice!" She shrank in upon herself, as though to ward off the raised whip of
her persecutor. "You know how I feel?" Her voice came from the
terrified depths of her. "It's as if the landlord pushed me in a
corner and said to me: 'I want money, or I'll squeeze from you your
life!' I have no money, so he takes my life. "Last time, when he raised me my rent, I done without meat and
without milk.What more can I do without?" The piercing cry stirred Mrs. Preston as no mere words had done. "Sometimes I get so weak for a piece of meat, I could tear the world
to pieces. Hunger and bitterness are making a wild animal out of me.I
ain't no more the same Hanneh Hayyeh I used to be." The shudder that shook Hanneh Hayyeh communicated itself to
Mrs. Preston. "I know the prices are hard to bear," she stammered,
appalled. "There used to be a time when poor people could eat cheap things,"
the toneless voice went on. "But now there ain't no more cheap
things. Potatoes--rice--fish--even dry bread is dear. Look on my
shoes! And I who used to be so neat with myself.I can't no more have
my torn shoes fixed up. A pair of shoes or a little patch is only for
millionaires." "Something must be done," broke in Mrs. Preston, distraught for the
first time in her life. "But in the meantime, Hanneh Hayyeh, you must
accept this to tide you over." She spoke with finality as she handed
her a bill. Hanneh Hayyeh thrust back the money. "Ain't I hurt enough without
you having to hurt me yet with charity?You want to give me hush money
to swallow down an unrightness that burns my flesh? I want justice." The woman's words were like bullets that shot through the static
security of Mrs. Preston's life.She realized with a guilty pang that
while strawberries and cream were being served at her table in January,
Hanneh Hayyeh had doubtless gone without a square meal in months. "We can't change the order of things overnight," faltered
Mrs. Preston, baffled and bewildered by Hanneh Hayyeh's defiance of
her proffered aid. "Change things? There's got to be a change!" cried Hanneh Hayyeh
with renewed intensity. "The world as it is is not to live in any
longer. If only my Aby would get back quick. But until he comes,
I'll fight till all America will have to stop and listen to me.You
was always telling me that the lowest nobody got something to give to
America. And that's what I got to give to America--the last breath in
my body for justice. I'll wake up America from its sleep.I'll go
myself to the President with my Aby's soldier picture and ask him was
all this war to let loose a bunch of blood-suckers to suck the marrow
out from the people? ""Hanneh Hayyeh," said Mrs. Preston, with feeling, "these laws are
far from just, but they are all we have so far. Give us time. We are
young. We are still learning. We're doing our best. "Numb with suffering the woman of the ghetto looked straight into the
eyes of Mrs. Preston. "And you too--you too hold by the landlord's
side?--Oi--I see! Perhaps you too got property out by agents. "A sigh that had in it the resignation of utter hopelessness escaped
from her. "Nothing can hurt me no more--And you always stood out to
me in my dreams as the angel from love and beautifulness.You always
made-believe to me that you're only for democracy." Tears came to Mrs. Preston's eyes. But she made no move to defend
herself or reply and Hanneh Hayyeh walked out in silence.A few days later the whole block was astir with the news that Hanneh
Hayyeh had gone to court to answer her dispossess summons.From the windows, the stoop, from the hallway, and the doorway of the
butcher-shop the neighbors were talking and gesticulating while waiting
for Hanneh Hayyeh's return. Hopeless and dead, Hanneh Hayyeh dragged herself to the
butcher-shop.All made way for her to sit on the bench. She collapsed
in a heap, not uttering a single sound, nor making a single move. The butcher produced a bottle of brandy and, hastily filling a small
glass, brought it to Hanneh Hayyeh. "Quick, take it to your lips," he commanded. Weak from lack of food
and exhausted by the ordeal of the court-room, Hanneh Hayyeh obeyed
like a child.Soon one neighbor came in with a cup of hot coffee; another brought
bread and herring with onion over it.Tense, breathless, with suppressed curiosity quivering on their lips,
they waited till Hanneh Hayyeh swallowed the coffee and ate enough to
regain a little strength. "Nu? What became in the court?" "What said the judge? ""Did they let you talk yourself out like you said you would?" "Was the murderer there to say something?" | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Hanneh Hayyeh wagged her head and began talking to herself in a low,
toneless voice as if continuing her inward thought. "The judge said
the same as Mrs. Preston said: the landlord has the right to raise our
rent or put us out." "Oi weh! If Hanneh Hayyeh with her fire in her mouth couldn't get
her rights, then where are we?" "To whom should we go?Who more will talk for us now?" "Our life lays in their hands." "They can choke us so much as they like!" "Nobody cares. Nobody hears our cry! "Out of this babel of voices there flashed across Hanneh Hayyeh's
deadened senses the chimera that to her was the one reality of her
aspiring soul--"Oi-i-i-i! My beautiful kitchen!" she sighed as in
a dream. The butcher's face grew red with wrath.His eyes gleamed like sharp,
darting steel. "I wouldn't give that robber the satisfaction
to leave your grand painted house," he said, turning to Hanneh
Hayyeh. "I'd smash down everything for spite. You got nothing to
lose. Such a murderer!I would learn him a lesson! 'An eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth.'" Hanneh Hayyeh, hair disheveled, clothes awry, the nails of her
fingers dug in her scalp, stared with the glazed, impotent stare of a
madwoman.With unseeing eyes she rose and blindly made her way to her
house. As she entered her kitchen she encountered her husband hurrying in. "Oi weh! Oi weh!" he whined. "I was always telling you your bad
end.Everybody is already pointing their fingers on me! and all because
you, a meshugeneh yideneh, a starved beggerin, talked it into your
head that you got to have for yourself a white-painted kitchen alike
to Mrs. Preston.Now you'll remember to listen to your husband. Now,
when you'll be laying in the street to shame and to laughter for the
whole world." "Out! Out from my sight! Out from my house!" shrieked Hanneh
Hayyeh.In her rage she seized a flat-iron and Jake heard her hurl it
at the slammed door as he fled downstairs. It was the last night before the eviction. Hanneh Hayyeh gazed about
her kitchen with tear-glazed eyes. "Some one who got nothing but
only money will come in here and get the pleasure from all this
beautifulness that cost me the blood from my heart. Is this already
America? What for was my Aby fighting?Was it then only a dream--all
these millions people from all lands and from all times, wishing and
hoping and praying that America is? Did I wake myself from my dreaming
to see myself back in the black times of Russia under the czar? "Her eager, beauty-loving face became distorted with hate. "No--the
landlord ain't going to get the best from me! I'll learn him a
lesson. 'An eye for an eye'--"
With savage fury, she seized the chopping-axe and began to scratch
down the paint, breaking the plaster on the walls. She tore up the
floor-boards.She unscrewed the gas-jets, turned on the gas full force
so as to blacken the white-painted ceiling. The night through she raged
with the frenzy of destruction. Utterly spent she flung herself on the lounge, but she could not close
her eyes.Her nerves quivered. Her body ached, and she felt her soul
ache there--inside her--like a thing killed that could not die. The first grayness of dawn filtered through the air-shaft window of
the kitchen.The room was faintly lighted, and as the rays of dawn got
stronger and reached farther, one by one the things she had mutilated
in the night started, as it were, into consciousness.She looked at
her dish-closet, once precious, that she had scratched and defaced;
the uprooted geranium-box on the window-sill; the marred walls. It was
unbearable all this waste and desolation that stared at her. "Can it
be I who done all this? "she asked herself. "What devil got boiling
in me?" What had she gained by her rage for vengeance? She had thought to
spite the landlord, but it was her own soul she had killed. These
walls that stared at her in their ruin were not just walls.They were
animate--they throbbed with the pulse of her own flesh. For every inch
of the broken plaster there was a scar on her heart. She had destroyed
that which had taken her so many years of prayer and longing to build
up.But this demolished beauty like her own soul, though killed, still
quivered and ached with the unstilled pain of life. "Oi weh!" she
moaned, swaying to and fro. "So much lost beautifulness--"
* * * * *
Private Abraham Safransky, with the look in his eyes and the swing of
his shoulders of all the boys who come back from overseas, edged his
way through the wet Delancey Street crowds with the skill of one born
to these streets and the assurance of the United States Army.Fresh
from the ship, with a twenty-four-hour leave stowed safely in his
pocket, he hastened to see his people after nearly two years'
separation. On Private Safransky's left shoulder was the insignia of the Statue
of Liberty.The three gold service stripes on his left arm and the two
wound stripes of his right were supplemented by the Distinguished
Service Medal on his left breast bestowed by the United States
Government.As he pictured his mother's joy when he would surprise her in her
spotless kitchen, the soldier broke into the double-quick.All at once he stopped; on the sidewalk before their house was a heap
of household things that seemed familiar and there on the curbstone
a woman huddled, cowering, broken.--Good God--his mother!His own
mother--and all their worldly belongings dumped there in the rain.THE FREE VACATION HOUSE
How came it that I went to the free vacation house was like this:
One day the visiting teacher from the school comes to find out for why
don't I get the children ready for school in time; for why are they
so often late.I let out on her my whole bitter heart. I told her my head was on
wheels from worrying. When I get up in the morning, I don't know on
what to turn first: should I nurse the baby, or make Sam's breakfast,
or attend on the older children.I only got two hands. "My dear woman," she says, "you are about to have a nervous
breakdown. You need to get away to the country for a rest and
vacation." "Gott im Himmel!" says I. "Don't I know I need a rest? But
how?On what money can I go to the country?" "I know of a nice country place for mothers and children that will
not cost you anything. It is free." "Free! I never heard from it." "Some kind people have made arrangements so no one need pay," she
explains.Later, in a few days, I just finished up with Masha and Mendel and
Frieda and Sonya to send them to school, and I was getting Aby ready
for kindergarten, when I hear a knock on the door, and a lady comes
in.She had a white starched dress like a nurse and carried a black
satchel in her hand. "I am from the Social Betterment Society," she tells me. "You
want to go to the country? "Before I could say something, she goes over to the baby and pulls out
the rubber nipple from her mouth, and to me, she says, "You must not
get the child used to sucking this; it is very unsanitary." "Gott im Himmel!" | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
I beg the lady. "Please don't begin with that
child, or she'll holler my head off. She must have the nipple. I'm
too nervous to hear her scream like that. "When I put the nipple back again in the baby's mouth, the lady
takes herself a seat, and then takes out a big black book from her
satchel. Then she begins to question me. What is my first name? How old
I am? From where come I?How long I'm already in this country? Do
I keep any boarders? What is my husband's first name? How old he
is? How long he is in this country? By what trade he works? How much
wages he gets for a week? How much money do I spend out for rent?How
old are the children, and everything about them. "My goodness!" I cry out. "For why is it necessary all this to
know? For why must I tell you all my business? What difference does it
make already if I keep boarders, or I don't keep boarders?If Masha
had the whooping-cough or Sonya had the measles? Or whether I spend out
for my rent ten dollars or twenty? Or whether I come from Schnipishock
or Kovner Gubernie? ""We must make a record of all the applicants, and investigate each
case," she tells me. "There are so many who apply to the charities,
we can help only those who are most worthy." "Charities!" I scream out. "Ain't the charities those who
help the beggars out? I ain't no beggar. I'm not asking for no
charity. My husband, he works. ""Miss Holcomb, the visiting teacher, said that you wanted to go to
the country, and I had to make out this report before investigating
your case." "Oh! Oh!" I choke and bit my lips. "Is the free country from
which Miss Holcomb told me, is it from the charities? She was telling
me some kind people made arrangements for any mother what needs to go
there. ""If your application is approved, you will be notified," she says
to me, and out she goes. When she is gone I think to myself, I'd better knock out from my
head this idea about the country.For so long I lived, I didn't
know nothing about the charities. For why should I come down among the
beggars now? Then I looked around me in the kitchen.On one side was the big
wash-tub with clothes, waiting for me to wash. On the table was a pile
of breakfast dishes yet. In the sink was the potatoes, waiting to be
peeled. The baby was beginning to cry for the bottle.Aby was hollering
and pulling me to take him to kindergarten. I felt if I didn't get
away from here for a little while, I would land in a crazy house, or
from the window jump down.Which was worser, to land in a crazy house,
jump from the window down, or go to the country from the charities? In about two weeks later around comes the same lady with the satchel
again in my house. "You can go to the country to-morrow," she tells me. "And
you must come to the charity building to-morrow at nine o'clock
sharp. Here is a card with the address. Don't lose it, because you
must hand it to the lady in the office. "I look on the card, and there I see my name wrote; and by it, in big
printed letters, that word "CHARITY." "Must I go to the charity office?" I ask, feeling my heart to
sink. "For why must I come there? ""It is the rule that everybody comes to the office first, and from
there they are taken to the country." I shivered to think how I would feel, suppose somebody from my friends
should see me walking into the charity office with my children.They
wouldn't know that it is only for the country I go there. They
might think I go to beg. Have I come down so low as to be seen by the
charities? But what's the use? Should I knock my head on the walls? I
had to go.When I come to the office, I already found a crowd of women and
children sitting on long benches and waiting.I took myself a
seat with them, and we were sitting and sitting and looking on one
another, sideways and crosswise, and with lowered eyes, like guilty
criminals. Each one felt like hiding herself from all the rest.Each
one felt black with shame in the face. We may have been sitting and waiting for an hour or more. But
every second was seeming years to me. The children began to get
restless. Mendel wanted water. The baby on my arms was falling
asleep.Aby was crying for something to eat. "For why are we sittin' here like fat cats?" says the woman next
to me. "Ain't we going to the country to-day yet?" At last a lady comes to the desk and begins calling us our names, one
by one.I nearly dropped to the floor when over she begins to ask: Do
you keep boarders? How much do you spend out for rent? How much wages
does your man get for a week? Didn't the nurse tell them all about us already?It was bitter enough
to have to tell the nurse everything, but in my own house nobody was
hearing my troubles, only the nurse. But in the office there was so
many strangers all around me. For why should everybody have to know my
business?At every question I wanted to holler out: "Stop! Stop! I
don't want no vacations! I'll better run home with my children." At every question I felt like she was stabbing a knife into my
heart.And she kept on stabbing me more and more, but I could not help
it, and they were all looking at me. I couldn't move from her. I had
to answer everything. When she got through with me, my face was red like fire. I was burning
with hurts and wounds.I felt like everything was bleeding in me. When all the names was already called, a man doctor with a nurse comes
in, and tells us to form a line, to be examined.I wish I could ease
out my heart a little, and tell in words how that doctor looked on
us, just because we were poor and had no money to pay. He only used
the ends from his finger-tips to examine us with.From the way he was
afraid to touch us or come near us, he made us feel like we had some
catching sickness that he was trying not to get on him. The doctor got finished with us in about five minutes, so quick he
worked.Then we was told to walk after the nurse, who was leading the
way for us through the street to the car. Everybody what passed us in
the street turned around to look on us.I kept down my eyes and held
down my head and I felt like sinking into the sidewalk. All the time
I was trembling for fear somebody what knows me might yet pass and see
me.For why did they make us walk through the street, after the nurse,
like stupid cows? Weren't all of us smart enough to find our way
without the nurse? Why should the whole world have to see that we are
from the charities?When we got into the train, I opened my eyes, and lifted up my head,
and straightened out my chest, and again began to breathe. It was
a beautiful, sunshiny day.I knocked open the window from the train,
and the fresh-smelling country air rushed upon my face and made me feel
so fine!I looked out from the window and instead of seeing the iron
fire-escapes with garbage-cans and bedclothes, that I always seen when
from my flat I looked--instead of seeing only walls and wash-lines
between walls, I saw the blue sky, and green grass and trees and
flowers.Ah, how grand I felt, just on the sky to look! | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Ah, how grand I felt
just to see the green grass--and the free space--and no houses! "Get away from me, my troubles!" I said. "Leave me rest a
minute. Leave me breathe and straighten out my bones.Forget the
unpaid butcher's bill. Forget the rent. Forget the wash-tub and the
cook-stove and the pots and pans. Forget the charities!" "Tickets, please," calls the train conductor. I felt knocked out from heaven all at once.I had to point to the nurse
what held our tickets, and I was feeling the conductor looking on me as
if to say, "Oh, you are only from the charities." By the time we came to the vacation house I already forgot all about
my knock-down.I was again filled with the beauty of the country. I
never in all my life yet seen such a swell house like that vacation
house. Like the grandest palace it looked. All round the front, flowers
from all colors was smelling out the sweetest perfume.Here and there
was shady trees with comfortable chairs under them to sit down on. When I only came inside, my mouth opened wide and my breathing
stopped still from wonder. I never yet seen such an order and such a
cleanliness.From all the corners from the room, the cleanliness was
shining like a looking-glass. The floor was so white scrubbed you could
eat on it. You couldn't find a speck of dust on nothing, if you was
looking for it with eye-glasses on.I was beginning to feel happy and glad that I come, when, Gott im
Himmel! again a lady begins to ask us out the same questions what the
nurse already asked me in my home and what was asked over again in the
charity office.How much wages my husband makes out for a week? How
much money I spend out for rent? Do I keep boarders? We were hungry enough to faint.So worn out was I from excitement, and
from the long ride, that my knees were bending under me ready to break
from tiredness. The children were pulling me to pieces, nagging me for
a drink, for something to eat and such like.But still we had to stand
out the whole list of questionings. When she already got through asking
us out everything, she gave to each of us a tag with our name written
on it. She told us to tie the tag on our hand.Then like tagged horses
at a horse sale in the street, they marched us into the dining-room. There was rows of long tables, covered with pure-white oil-cloth. A
vase with bought flowers was standing on the middle from each
table.Each person got a clean napkin for himself. Laid out by the side
from each person's plate was a silver knife and fork and spoon and
teaspoon. When we only sat ourselves down, girls with white starched
aprons was passing around the eatings.I soon forgot again all my troubles. For the first time in ten years I
sat down to a meal what I did not have to cook or worry about. For the
first time in ten years I sat down to the table like a somebody.Ah,
how grand it feels, to have handed you over the eatings and everything
you need. Just as I was beginning to like it and let myself feel good,
in comes a fat lady all in white, with a teacher's look on her
face.I could tell already, right away by the way she looked on us,
that she was the boss from this place. "I want to read you the rules from this house, before you leave this
room," says she to us.Then she began like this: We dassen't stand on the front grass where
the flowers are. We dassen't stay on the front porch. We dassen't
sit on the chairs under the shady trees. We must stay always in the
back and sit on those long wooden benches there.We dassen't come in
the front sitting-room or walk on the front steps what have carpet on
it--we must walk on the back iron steps. Everything on the front from
the house must be kept perfect for the show for visitors.We dassen't
lay down on the beds in the daytime, the beds must always be made up
perfect for the show for visitors. "Gott im Himmel!" thinks I to myself; "ain't there going to be
no end to the things we dassen't do in this place? "But still she went on. The children over two years dassen't stay
around by the mothers. They must stay by the nurse in the play-room. By
the meal-times, they can see their mothers.The children dassen't
run around the house or tear up flowers or do anything. They dassen't
holler or play rough in the play-room. They must always behave and obey
the nurse. We must always listen to the bells. Bell one was for getting
up.Bell two, for getting babies' bottles. Bell three, for coming
to breakfast. Bell four, for bathing the babies. If we come later,
after the ring from the bell, then we'll not get what we need.If
the bottle bell rings and we don't come right away for the bottle,
then the baby don't get no bottle. If the breakfast bell rings, and
we don't come right away down to the breakfast, then there won't be
no breakfast for us.When she got through with reading the rules, I was wondering which
side of the house I was to walk on. At every step was some rule what
said don't move here, and don't go there, don't stand there, and
don't sit there.If I tried to remember the endless rules, it would
only make me dizzy in the head. I was thinking for why, with so many
rules, didn't they also have already another rule, about how much air
in our lungs to breathe.On every few days there came to the house swell ladies in
automobiles. It was for them that the front from the house had to be
always perfect. For them was all the beautiful smelling flowers.For
them the front porch, the front sitting-room, and the easy stairs with
the carpet on it. Always when the rich ladies came the fat lady, what was the boss from
the vacation house, showed off to them the front.Then she took them
over to the back to look on us, where we was sitting together, on long
wooden benches, like prisoners. I was always feeling cheap like dirt,
and mad that I had to be there, when they smiled down on us. "How nice for these poor creatures to have a restful place like
this," I heard one lady say. The next day I already felt like going back. The children what had to
stay by the nurse in the play-room didn't like it neither. "Mamma," says Mendel to me, "I wisht I was home and out in
the street. They don't let us do nothing here. It's worser than
school." "Ain't it a play-room?" asks I. "Don't they let you play?" "Gee wiss! play-room, they call it!The nurse hollers on us all the
time. She don't let us do nothing." The reason why I stayed out the whole two weeks is this: I think to
myself, so much shame in the face I suffered to come here, let me at
least make the best from it already.Let me at least save up for two
weeks what I got to spend out for grocery and butcher for my back bills
to pay out.And then also think I to myself, if I go back on Monday,
I got to do the big washing; on Tuesday waits for me the ironing; on
Wednesday, the scrubbing and cleaning, and so goes it on.How bad it is
already in this place, it's a change from the very same sameness of
what I'm having day in and day out at home. And so I stayed out this
vacation to the bitter end. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
But at last the day for going out from this prison came.On the way
riding back, I kept thinking to myself: "This is such a beautiful
vacation house. For why do they make it so hard for us?When a mother
needs a vacation, why must they tear the insides out from her first,
by making her come down to the charity office? Why drag us from the
charity office through the streets?And when we live through the shame
of the charities and when we come already to the vacation house, for
why do they boss the life out of us with so many rules and bells? For
why don't they let us lay down our heads on the bed when we are
tired?For why must we always stick in the back, like dogs what have
got to be chained in one spot? If they would let us walk around free,
would we bite off something from the front part of the house? "If the best part of the house what is comfortable is made up for a
show for visitors, why ain't they keeping the whole business for a
show for visitors? For why do they have to fool in worn-out mothers, to
make them think they'll give them a rest?Do they need the worn-out
mothers as part of the show? I guess that is it, already." When I got back in my home, so happy and thankful I was I could cry
from thankfulness.How good it was feeling for me to be able to move
around my own house, like I pleased. I was always kicking that my
rooms was small and narrow, but now my small rooms seemed to grow so
big like the park.I looked out from my window on the fire-escapes,
full with bedding and garbage-cans, and on the wash-lines full with
the clothes. All these ugly things was grand in my eyes.Even the high
brick walls all around made me feel like a bird what just jumped out
from a cage. And I cried out, "Gott sei dank! Gott sei dank!" THE MIRACLE
Like all people who have nothing, I lived on dreams.With nothing but
my longing for love, I burned my way through stone walls till I got to
America. And what happened to me when I became an American is more than
I can picture before my eyes, even in a dream.I was a poor Melamid's daughter in Savel, Poland. In my village,
a girl without a dowry was a dead one. The only kind of a man that
would give a look on a girl without money was a widower with a dozen
children, or some one with a hump or on crutches.There was the village water-carrier with red, teary eyes, and warts
on his cracked lip. There was the janitor of the bath-house, with a
squash nose, and long, black nails with all the dirt of the world under
them.Maybe one of these uglinesses might yet take pity on me and do me
the favor to marry me. I shivered and grew cold through all my bones at
the thought of them. Like the hunger for bread was my hunger for love. My life was nothing
to me.My heart was empty. Nothing I did was real without love. I used
to spend nights crying on my pillow, praying to God: "I want love! I
want love! I can't live--I can't breathe without love!" And all day long I'd ask myself: "Why was I born?What is the
use of dragging on day after day, wasting myself eating, sleeping,
dressing? What is the meaning of anything without love? "And my heart
was so hungry I couldn't help feeling and dreaming that somehow,
somewhere, there must be a lover waiting for me. But how and where
could I find my lover was the one longing that burned in my heart by
day and by night.Then came the letter from Hanneh Hayyeh, Zlata's daughter, that fired
me up to go to America for my lover. "America is a lover's land," said Hanneh Hayyeh's letter. "In
America millionaires fall in love with poorest girls.Matchmakers are
out of style, and a girl can get herself married to a man without the
worries for a dowry." "God from the world!" began knocking my heart. "How grand to live
where the kind of a man you get don't depend on how much money your
father can put down! If I could only go to America! There--there waits
my lover for me." That letter made a holiday all over Savel.The butcher, the grocer, the
shoemaker, everybody stopped his work and rushed to our house to hear
my father read the news from the Golden Country. "Stand out your ears to hear my great happiness," began Hanneh
Hayyeh's letter. "I, Hanneh Hayyeh, will marry myself to Solomon
Cohen, the boss from the shirtwaist factory, where all day I was
working sewing on buttons. If you could only see how the man is melting
away his heart for me! He kisses me after each step I walk.The
only wish from his heart is to make me for a lady. Think only, he
is buying me a piano! I should learn piano lessons as if I were from
millionaires." Fire and lightning burst through the crowd. "Hanneh Hayyeh a lady! "They nudged and winked one to the other as they looked on the loose
fatness of Zlata, her mother, and saw before their eyes Hanneh Hayyeh,
with her thick, red lips, and her shape so fat like a puffed-out barrel
of yeast. "In America is a law called 'ladies first,'" the letter went
on. "In the cars the men must get up to give their seats to the
women. The men hold the babies on their hands and carry the bundles for
the women, and even help with the dishes.There are not enough women to
go around in America. And the men run after the women, and not like in
Poland, the women running after the men." Gewalt! What an excitement began to burn through the whole village when
they heard of Hanneh Hayyeh's luck!The ticket agents from the ship companies seeing how Hanneh Hayyeh's
letter was working like yeast in the air for America, posted up big
signs by all the market fairs: "Go to America, the New World. Fifty
rubles a ticket." "Fifty rubles!Only fifty rubles! And there waits your lover!" cried my heart. Oi weh! How I was hungering to go to America after that! By day and by
night I was tearing and turning over the earth, how to get to my lover
on the other side of the world. "Nu, Zalmon? "said my mother, twisting my father around to what I
wanted. "It's not so far from sense what Sara Reisel is saying. In
Savel, without a dowry, she had no chance to get a man, and if we got
to wait much longer she will be too old to get one anywhere. ""But from where can we get together the fifty rubles?" asked my
father. "Why don't it will itself in you to give your daughter the
moon?" I could no more think on how to get the money than they.But I was so
dying to go, I felt I could draw the money out from the sky. One night I could not fall asleep. I lay in the darkness and stillness,
my wild, beating heart on fire with dreams of my lover.I put out my
hungry hands and prayed to my lover through the darkness: "Oh, love,
love! How can I get the fifty rubles to come to you?" In the morning I got up like one choking for air.We were sitting down
to eat breakfast, but I couldn't taste nothing. I felt my head drop
into my hands from weakness. "Why don't you try to eat something?" begged my mother, going
over to me. "Eat?" I cried, jumping up like one mad. "How can I eat?How can
I sleep? How can I breathe in this deadness? I want to go to America. I
_must_ go, and I _will_ go!" | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
My mother began wringing her hands. "Oi weh! Mine heart! The knife
is on our neck.The landlord is hollering for the unpaid rent, and it
wills itself in you America?" "Are you out of your head?" cried my father. "What are you dreaming of golden hills on the sky? How can we get
together the fifty rubles for a ticket? "I stole a look at Yosef, my younger brother. Nothing that was sensible
ever laid in his head to do; but if there was anything wild, up in
the air that willed itself in him, he could break through stone walls
to get it.Yosef gave a look around the house. Everything was old
and poor, and not a thing to get money on--nothing except father's
Saifer Torah--the Holy Scrolls--and mother's silver candlesticks, her
wedding present from our grandmother. "Why not sell the Saifer Torah and the candlesticks?" said Yosef. Nobody but my brother would have dared to breathe such a thing. "What? A Jew sell the Saifer Torah or the Sabbath candlesticks? "My father fixed on us his burning eyes like flaming wells. His hands
tightened over his heart. He couldn't speak. He just looked on the
Saifer Torah, and then on us with a look that burned like live coals on
our naked bodies. "What?" he gasped. "Should I sell my life, my
soul from generation and generation? Sell my Saifer Torah? Not if the
world goes under!" There was a stillness of thunder about to break. Everybody heard
everybody's heart beating. "Did I live to see this black day? "moaned my father, choking from
quick breathing. "Mine own son, mine Kadish--mine Kadish tells me to
sell the Holy Book that our forefathers shed rivers of blood to hand
down to us." "What are you taking it so terrible?" said my brother. "Doesn't
it stand in the Talmud that to help marry his daughter a man may sell
the holiest thing--even the Holy Book?" "_Are there miracles in America?_ Can she yet get there a man at her
age and without a dowry? ""If Hanneh Hayyeh, who is older than Sara Reisel and not half as
good-looking," said my brother, "could get a boss from a factory,
then whom cannot Sara Reisel pick out? And with her luck all of us will
be lifted over to America. "My father did not answer. I waited, but still he did not answer. At last I burst out with all the tears choking in me for years: "Is
your old Saifer Torah that hangs on the wall dearer to you than that I
should marry?The Talmud tells you to sell the holiest thing to help
marry your daughter, but you--you love yourself more than your own
child!" Then I turned to my mother.I hit my hands on the table and cried in
a voice that made her tremble and grow frightened: "Maybe you love
your silver candlesticks more than your daughter's happiness?To
whom can I marry myself here, I ask you, only--to the bath janitor, to
the water-carrier? I tell you I'll kill myself if you don't help
me get away! I can't stand no more this deadness here. I must get
away.And you must give up everything to help me get away. All I need
is a chance. I can do a million times better than Hanneh Hayyeh. I got
a head. I got brains. I feel I can marry myself to the greatest man in
America. "My mother stopped crying, took up the candlesticks from the mantelpiece
and passed her hands over them. "It's like a piece from my
flesh," she said. "We grew up with this, you children and I, and my
mother and my mother's mother.This and the Saifer Torah are the only
things that shine up the house for the Sabbath." She couldn't go on, her words choked in her so. I am seeing yet
how she looked, holding the candlesticks in her hands, and her eyes
that she turned on us.But then I didn't see anything but to go to
America. She walked over to my father, who sat with his head in his hands,
stoned with sadness. "Zalmon!" she sobbed. "The blood from under
my nails I'll give away, only my child should have a chance to marry
herself well. I'll give away my candlesticks--"
Even my brother Yosef's eyes filled with tears, so he quick jumped
up and began to whistle and move around. "You don't have to sell
them," he cried, trying to make it light in the air. "You can pawn
them by Moisheh Itzek, the usurer, and as soon as Sara Reisel will get
herself married, she'll send us the money to get them out again, and
we'll yet live to take them over with us to America." I never saw my father look so sad.He looked like a man from whom
the life is bleeding away. "I'll not stand myself against your
happiness," he said, in a still voice. "I only hope this will be to
your luck and that you'll get married quick, so we could take out the
Saifer Torah from the pawn." In less than a week the Saifer Torah and the candlesticks were pawned
and the ticket bought.The whole village was ringing with the news that
I am going to America. When I walked in the street people pointed on me
with their fingers as if I were no more the same Sara Reisel. Everybody asked me different questions. "Tell me how it feels to go to America? Can you yet sleep nights like
other people?" "When you'll marry yourself in America, will you yet remember
us?" God from the world! That last Friday night before I went to
America!Maybe it is the last time we are together was in everybody's
eyes. Everything that happened seemed so different from all other
times. I felt I was getting ready to tear my life out from my body. Without the Saifer Torah the house was dark and empty.The sun, the
sky, the whole heaven shined from that Holy Book on the wall, and
when it was taken out it left an aching emptiness on the heart, as if
something beautiful passed out of our lives.I yet see before me my father in the Rabbi's cap, with eyes that look
far away into things; the way he sang the prayer over the wine when he
passed around the glass for every one to give a sip.The tears rolled
out from my little sister's eyes down her cheeks and fell into the
wine. On that my mother, who was all the time wiping her tears, burst
out crying. "Shah! Shah! "commanded my father, rising up from his
chair and beginning to walk around the room. "It's Sabbath night,
when every Jew should be happy. Is this the way you give honor to God
on His one day that He set aside for you? "On the next day, that was Sabbath, father as if held us up in his
hands, and everybody behaved himself.A stranger coming in couldn't
see anything that was going on, except that we walked so still and each
one by himself, as if somebody dying was in the air over us.On the going-away morning, everybody was around our house waiting
to take me to the station. Everybody wanted to give a help with the
bundles. The moving along to the station was like a funeral. Nobody
could hold in their feelings any longer.Everybody fell on my neck to
kiss me, as if it was my last day on earth. "Remember you come from Jews. Remember to pray every day," said my
father, putting his hands over my head, like in blessing on the day of
Atonement. "Only try that we should be together soon again," were the last
words from my mother as she wiped her eyes with the corner of her
shawl. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
"Only don't forget that I want to study, and send for me as quick
as you marry yourself," said Yosef, smiling good-bye with tears in
his eyes. As I saw the train coming, what wouldn't I have given to stay back
with the people in Savel forever!I wanted to cry out: "Take only
away my ticket! I don't want any more America! I don't want any
more my lover! "But as soon as I got into the train, although my eyes were still
looking back to the left-behind faces, and my ears were yet hearing the
good-byes and the partings, the thoughts of America began stealing into
my heart.I was thinking how soon I'd have my lover and be rich like
Hanneh Hayyeh. And with my luck, everybody was going to be happy in
Savel. The dead people will stop dying and all the sorrows and troubles
of the world will be wiped away with my happiness.I didn't see the day. I didn't see the night. I didn't see the
ocean. I didn't see the sky. I only saw my lover in America, coming
nearer and nearer to me, till I could feel his eyes bending on me so
near that I got frightened and began to tremble.My heart ached so with
the joy of his nearness that I quick drew back and turned away, and
began to talk to the people that were pushing and crowding themselves
on the deck. Nu, I got to America.Ten hours I pushed a machine in a shirt-waist factory, when I was
yet lucky to get work. And always my head was drying up with saving
and pinching and worrying to send home a little from the little I
earned.All that my face saw all day long was girls and machines--and
nothing else. And even when I came already home from work, I could
only talk to the girls in the working-girls' boarding-house, or shut
myself up in my dark, lonesome bedroom.No family, no friends, nobody
to get me acquainted with nobody! The only men I saw were what passed
me by in the street and in cars. "Is this 'lovers' land'?" was calling in my heart. "Where
are my dreams that were so real to me in the old country? "Often in the middle of the work I felt like stopping all the
machines and crying out to the world the heaviness that pressed on my
heart.Sometimes when I walked in the street I felt like going over to
the first man I met and cry out to him: "Oh, I'm so lonely! I'm
so lonely!" One day I read in the Jewish "Tageblatt" the advertisement from
Zaretzky, the matchmaker. "What harm is it if I try my luck?" I said to myself. "I can't die away an old maid. Too much love
burns in my heart to stand back like a stone and only see how other
people are happy. I want to tear myself out from my deadness. I'm in
a living grave.I've got to lift myself up. I have nobody to try for
me, and maybe the matchmaker will help." As I walked up Delancey Street to Mr. Zaretzky, the street was
turning with me. I didn't see the crowds.I didn't see the
pushcart peddlers with their bargains. I didn't hear the noises or
anything. My eyes were on the sky, praying: "Gottuniu! Send me only
the little bit of luck!" "Nu? Nu? What need you?" asked Mr. Zaretzky when I entered.I got red with shame in the face the way he looked at me. I turned up
my head. I was too proud to tell him for what I came. Before I walked
in I thought to tell him everything.But when I looked on his face
and saw his hard eyes, I couldn't say a word. I stood like a yok
unable to move my tongue. I went to the matchmaker with my heart, and
I saw before me a stone. The stone was talking to me--but--but--he was
a stone! "Are you looking for a shidduch?" he asked. "Yes," I said, proud, but crushed. "You know I charge five dollars for the stepping in," he bargained. It got cold by my heart.It wasn't only to give him the five dollars,
nearly a whole week's wages, but his thick-skinness for being only
after the money. But I couldn't help myself--I was like in his fists
hypnotized. And I gave him the five dollars.I let myself go to the door, but he called me back. "Wait, wait. Come in and sit down. I didn't question you yet." "About what?" "I got to know how much money you got saved before I can introduce
you to anybody." "Oh--h--h!Is it only depending on the _money_?" "Certainly. No move in this world without money," he said, taking
a pinch of snuff in his black, hairy fingers and sniffing it up in
his nose. I glanced on his thick neck and greasy, red face. "And to him people
come looking for love," I said to myself, shuddering. Oh, how it
burned in my heart, but still I went on, "Can't I get a man in
America without money?" He gave a look on me with his sharp eyes. Gottuniu! What a look!I
thought I was sinking into the floor. "There are plenty of _young_ girls with money that are begging
themselves the men to take them. So what can you expect?_Not young,
not lively, and without money, too?_ But, anyhow, I'll see what I can
do for you." He took out a little book from his vest-pocket and looked through the
names. "What trade do you go on your hands?" he asked, turning to
me. "Sometimes a dressmaker or a hairdresser that can help make a
living for a man, maybe--"
I couldn't hear any more. It got black before my eyes, my voice
stopped inside of me. "If you want to listen to sense from a friend, so I have a good
match for you," he said, following me to the door. "I have on
my list a widower with not more than five or six children. He has a
grand business, a herring-stand on Hester Street.He don't ask for
no money, and he don't make an objection if the girl is in years, so
long as she knows how to cook well for him." How I got myself back to my room I don't know.But for two days and
for two nights I lay still on my bed, unable to move. I looked around
on my empty walls, thinking, thinking, "Where am I? Is this the
world? Is this America?" Suddenly I sprang up from bed. "What can come from pitying
yourself? "I cried. "If the world kicks you down and makes nothing
of you, you bounce yourself up and make something of yourself." A
fire blazed up in me to rise over the world because I was downed by
the world. "Make a person of yourself," I said. "Begin to learn English. Make yourself for an American if you want to live in America. American girls don't go to matchmakers.American girls don't
run after a man: if they don't get a husband they don't
think the world is over; they turn their mind to something else. "Wake up!" I said to myself. "You want love to come to you? Why
don't you give it out to other people?Love the women and children,
everybody in the street and the shop. Love the rag-picker and the
drunkard, the bad and the ugly. All those whom the world kicks down you
pick up and press to your heart with love. "As I said this I felt wells of love that choked in me all my life
flowing out of me and over me. A strange, wonderful light like a
lover's smile melted over me, and the sweetness of lover's arms
stole around me.The first night I went to school I felt like falling on everybody's
neck and kissing them. I felt like kissing the books and the
benches. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
It was such great happiness to learn to read and write the
English words.Because I started a few weeks after the beginning of the term, my
teacher said I might stay after the class to help me catch up with my
back lessons. The minute I looked on him I felt that grand feeling:
"Here is a person! Here is America! "His face just shined with high
thoughts. There was such a beautiful light in his eyes that it warmed
my heart to steal a look on him.At first, when it came my turn to say something in the class, I got so
excited the words stuck and twisted in my mouth and I couldn't give
out my thoughts. But the teacher didn't see my nervousness.He only
saw that I had something to say, and he helped me say it. How or what
he did I don't know. I only felt his look of understanding flowing
into me like draughts of air to one who is choking.Long after I already felt free and easy to talk to him alone after the
class, I looked at all the books on his desk. "Oi weh!" I said to
him, "if I only knew half of what is in your books, I couldn't any
more sit still in the chair like you.I'd fly in the air with the joy
of so much knowledge." "Why are you so eager for learning?" he asked me. "Because I want to make a person of myself," I answered. "Since
I got to work for low wages and I can't be young any more, I'm
burning to get among people where it's not against a girl if she is
in years and without money." His hand went out to me. "I'll help you," he said. "But you
must first learn to get hold of yourself." Such a beautiful kindness went out of his heart to me with his
words!His voice, and the goodness that shone from his eyes, made
me want to burst out crying, but I choked back my tears till I got
home. And all night long I wept on my pillow: "Fool! What is the
matter with you? Why are you crying? "But I said, "I can't help
it. He is so beautiful!" My teacher was so much above me that he wasn't a man to me at all. He
was a God. His face lighted up the shop for me, and his voice sang
itself in me everywhere I went.It was like healing medicine to the
flaming fever within me to listen to his voice. And then I'd repeat
to myself his words and live in them as if they were religion. Often as I sat at the machine sewing the waists I'd forget what I
was doing.I'd find myself dreaming in the air. "Ach!" I asked
myself, "what was that beautifulness in his eyes that made the lowest
nobody feel like a somebody?What was that about him that when his
smile fell on me I felt lifted up to the sky away from all the coldness
and the ugliness of the world? Gottunui!" I prayed, "if I could
only always hold on to the light of high thoughts that shined from
him.If I could only always hear in my heart the sound of his voice
I would need nothing more in life. I would be happier than a bird in
the air. "Friend," I said to him once, "if you could but teach me how to
get cold in the heart and clear in the head like you are!" He only smiled at me and looked far away. His calmness was like the
sureness of money in the bank.Then he turned and looked on me, and
said: "I am not so cold in the heart and clear in the head as I
make-believe. I am bound. I am a prisoner of convention." "You make-believe--you bound?" I burst out. "You who do not
have foreladies or bosses--you who do not have to sell yourself for
wages--you who only work for love and truth--you a prisoner?" "True, I do not have bosses just as you do," he said. "But
still I am not free.I am bound by formal education and conventional
traditions. Though you work in a shop, you are really freer than I. You
are not repressed as I am by the fear and shame of feeling. You could
teach me more than I could teach you.You could teach me how to be
natural." "I'm not so natural like you think," I said. "I'm afraid." He smiled at me out of his eyes. "What are you afraid of?" "I'm afraid of my heart," I said, trying to hold back the blood
rushing to my face. "I'm burning to get calm and sensible like the
born Americans. But how can I help it? My heart flies away from me like
a wild bird. How can I learn to keep myself down on earth like the born
Americans? ""But I don't want you to get down on earth like the Americans. That
is just the beauty and the wonder of you. We Americans are too much on
earth; we need more of your power to fly. If you would only know how
much you can teach us Americans.You are the promise of the centuries
to come. You are the heart, the creative pulse of America to be." I walked home on wings. My teacher said that I could help him; that I
had something to give to Americans. "But how could I teach him? "I
wondered; "I who had never had a chance to learn anything except what
he taught me. And what had I to give to the Americans, I who am nothing
but dreams and longings and hunger for love? "When school closed down for vacation, it seemed to me all life stopped
in the world. I had no more class to look forward to, no more chance
of seeing my teacher.As I faced the emptiness of my long vacation,
all the light went out of my eyes, and all the strength out of my arms
and fingers. For nearly a week I was like without air. There was no school.One
night I came home from the shop and threw myself down on the bed. I
wanted to cry, to let out the heavy weight that pressed on my heart,
but I couldn't cry. My tears felt like hot, burning sand in my eyes. "Oi-i-i!I can't stand it no more, this emptiness," I groaned. "Why don't I kill myself? Why don't something happen to
me? No consumption, no fever, no plague or death ever comes to save me
from this terrible world.I have to go on suffering and choking inside
myself till I grow mad." I jumped up from the bed, threw open the window, and began fighting
with the deaf-and-dumb air in the air-shaft. "What is the matter with you?" I cried. "You are going out
of your head. You are sinking back into the old ways from which you
dragged yourself out with your studies. Studies! What did I get from
all my studies? Nothing. Nothing. I am still in the same shop with
the same shirt-waists.A lot my teacher cares for me once the class
is over." A fire burned up in me that he was already forgetting me. And I shot
out a letter to him:
"You call yourself a teacher? A friend?How can you go off in the
country and drop me out of your heart and out of your head like a
read-over book you left on the shelf of your shut-down classroom? How
can you enjoy your vacation in the country while I'm in the
sweatshop?You learned me nothing. You only broke my heart. What
good are all the books you ever gave me? They don't tell me how
to be happy in a factory.They don't tell me how to keep alive in
emptiness, or how to find something beautiful in the dirt and ugliness
in which I got to waste away. I want life. I want people. I can't
live inside my head as you do. "I sent the letter off in the madness in which I wrote it, without
stopping to think; but the minute after I dropped it in the mail-box my
reason came again to my head. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
I went back tearing my hair. "What have
I done? Meshugeneh! "Walking up the stairs I saw my door open. I went in. The sky is
falling to the earth! Am I dreaming? There was my teacher sitting on my
trunk! My teacher come to see me? Me, in my dingy room?For a minute it
got blind before my eyes, and I didn't know where I was any more. "I had to come," he said, the light of heaven shining on me out of
his eyes. "I was so desolate without you.I tried to say something to
you before I left for my vacation, but the words wouldn't come. Since
I have been away I have written you many letters, but I did not
mail them, for they were like my old self from which I want to break
away. "He put his cool, strong hand into mine. "You can save me," he
said. "You can free me from the bondage of age-long repressions. You
can lift me out of the dead grooves of sterile intellectuality. Without
you I am the dry dust of hopes unrealized.You are fire and sunshine
and desire. You make life changeable and beautiful and full of daily
wonder." I couldn't speak. I was so on fire with his words.Then, like
whirlwinds in my brain, rushed out the burning words of the matchmaker:
"Not young, not lively, and without money, too!" "You are younger than youth," he said, kissing my hands. "Every
day of your unlived youth shall be relived with love, but such a love
as youth could never know." And then how it happened I don't know; but his arms were around
me. "Sara Reisel, tell me, do you love me," he said, kissing me on
my hair and on my eyes and on my lips. I could only weep and tremble with joy at his touch. "The miracle!" cried my heart; "the miracle of America come true! "WHERE LOVERS DREAM
For years I was saying to myself--Just so you will act when you meet
him. Just so you will stand. So will you look on him. These words you
will say to him.I wanted to show him that what he had done to me could not down me;
that his leaving me the way he left me, that his breaking my heart
the way he broke it, didn't crush me; that his grand life and my
pinched-in life, his having learning and my not having learning--that
the difference didn't count so much like it seemed; that on the
bottom I was the same like him.But he came upon me so sudden, all my plannings for years smashed to
the wall. The sight of him was like an earthquake shaking me to pieces.I can't yet see nothing in front of me and can't get my head
together to anything, so torn up I am from the shock. It was at Yetta Solomon's wedding I met him again. She was after me
for weeks I should only come. "How can I come to such a swell hall? "I told her. "You know I
ain't got nothing decent to wear." "Like you are without no dressing-up, I want you to come. You are the
kind what people look in your eyes and not on what you got on.Ain't
you yourself the one what helped me with my love troubles? And now,
when everything is turning out happy, you mean to tell me that you
ain't going to be there?" She gave me a grab over and kissed me in a way that I couldn't say
"No" to her.So I shined myself up in the best I had and went to the wedding. I was in the middle from giving my congratulations to Yetta and her new
husband, when--Gott! Gott im Himmel! The sky is falling to the earth!I
see him--him, and his wife leaning on his arm, coming over. I gave a fall back, like something sharp hit me. My head got dizzy, and
my eyes got blind. I wanted to run away from him, but, ach! everything in me rushed to
him.I was feeling like struck deaf, dumb, and blind all in one. He must have said something to me, and I must have answered back
something to him, but how? What? I only remember like in a dream my
getting to the cloakroom.Such a tearing, grinding pain was dragging me
down to the floor that I had to hold on to the wall not to fall. All of a sudden I feel a pull on my arm. It was the janitor with the
broom in his hand. "Lady, are you sick?The wedding people is all gone, and I swept up
already." But I couldn't wake up from myself. "Lady, the lights is going out," he says, looking on me queer. "I think I ain't well," I said. And I went out. * * * * *
Ach, I see again the time when we was lovers! How beautiful the world
was then! "Maybe there never was such love like ours, and never will be," we
was always telling one another.When we was together there was like a light shining around us, the
light from his heart on mine, and from my heart on his. People began to
look happy just looking on us.When we was walking we didn't feel we was touching the earth but
flying high up through the air.We looked on the rest of the people
with pity, because it was seeming to us that we was the only two
persons awake, and all the rest was hurrying and pushing and slaving
and crowding one on the other without the splendidness of feeling for
what it was all for, like we was feeling it.David was learning for a doctor. Daytimes he went to college,
and nights he was in a drug-store. I was working in a factory on
shirt-waists. We was poor. But we didn't feel poor.The waists I was
sewing flyed like white birds through my fingers, because his face was
shining out of everything I touched. David was always trying to learn me how to make myself over for
an American.Sometimes he would spend out fifteen cents to buy me
the "Ladies' Home Journal" to read about American life, and my
whole head was put away on how to look neat and be up-to-date like the
American girls.Till long hours in the night I used to stay up brushing
and pressing my plain blue suit with the white collar what David liked,
and washing my waists, and fixing up my hat like the pattern magazines
show you.On holidays he took me out for a dinner by a restaurant, to learn me
how the Americans eat, with napkins, and use up so many plates--the
butter by itself, and the bread by itself, and the meat by itself, and
the potatoes by itself.Always when the six o'clock whistle blowed, he was waiting for me on
the corner from the shop to take me home. "Ut, there waits Sara's doctor feller," the girls were nudging
one to the other, as we went out from the shop. "Ain't she the
lucky one! "All the way as we walked along he was learning me how to throw off my
greenhorn talk, and say out the words in the American. He used to stop me in the middle of the pavement and laugh from me,
shaking me: "No t'ink or t'ank or t'ought, now.You're an
American," he would say to me. And then he would fix my tongue
and teeth together and make me say after him: "th-think, th-thank,
th-thought; this, that, there." And if I said the words right, he
kissed me in the hall when we got home.And if I said them wrong, he
kissed me anyhow. He moved next door to us, so we shouldn't lose the sweetness from one
little minute that we could be together.There was only the thin wall
between our kitchen and his room, and the first thing in the morning,
we would knock in one to the other to begin the day together. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
"See what I got for you, Hertzele," he said to me one day, holding
up a grand printed card. I gave a read. It was the ticket invitation for his graduation from
college. I gave it a touch, with pride melting over in my heart. "Only one week more, and you'll be a doctor for the world!" "And then, heart of mine," he said, drawing me over to him and
kissing me on the lips, "when I get my office fixed up, you will
marry me? ""Ach, such a happiness," I answered, "to be together all the
time, and wait on you and cook for you, and do everything for you, like
if I was your mother!" "Uncle Rosenberg is coming special from Boston for my graduation. ""The one what helped out your chance for college?" I asked. "Yes, and he's going to start me up the doctor's office, he
says. Like his son he looks on me, because he only got daughters in his
family." "Ach, the good heart!He'll yet have joy and good luck from
us! What is he saying about me?" I ask. "I want him to see you first, darling. You can't help going to his
heart, when he'll only give a look on you. ""Think only, Mammele--David is graduating for a doctor in a week!" I gave a hurry in to my mother that night. "And his Uncle Rosenberg
is coming special from Boston and says he'll start him up in his
doctor's office. ""Oi weh, the uncle is going to give a come, you say? Look how the
house looks! And the children in rags and no shoes on their feet! "The whole week before the uncle came, my mother and I was busy nights
buying and fixing up, and painting the chairs, and nailing together
solid the table, and hanging up calendar pictures to cover up the
broken plaster on the wall, and fixing the springs from the sleeping
lounge so it didn't sink in, and scrubbing up everything, and even
washing the windows, like before Passover.I stopped away from the shop, on the day David was graduating. Everything in the house was like for a holiday. The children
shined up like rich people's children, with their faces
washed clean and their hair brushed and new shoes on their feet.I made
my father put away his black shirt and dress up in an American white
shirt and starched collar.I fixed out my mother in a new white waist
and a blue checked apron, and I blowed myself to dress up the baby
in everything new, like a doll in a window. Her round, laughing face
lighted up the house, so beautiful she was.By the time we got finished the rush to fix ourselves out, the
children's cheeks was red with excitement and our eyes was bulging
bright, like ready to start for a picnic.When David came in with his uncle, my father and mother and all the
children gave a stand up. But the "Boruch Chabo" and the hot words of welcome, what was
rushing from us to say, froze up on our lips by the stiff look the
uncle throwed on us.David's uncle didn't look like David. He had a thick neck and a red
face and the breathing of a man what eats plenty.--But his eyes looked
smart like David's. He wouldn't take no seat and didn't seem to want to let go from
the door.David laughed and talked fast, and moved around nervous, trying to
cover up the ice. But he didn't get no answers from nobody. And he
didn't look in my eyes, and I was feeling myself ashamed, like I did
something wrong which I didn't understand.My father started up to say something to the uncle--"Our David--"
But I quick pulled him by the sleeve to stop. And nobody after that
could say nothing, nobody except David.I couldn't get up the heart to ask them to give a taste from the cake
and the wine what we made ready special for them on the table.The baby started crying for a cake, and I quick went over to take her
up, because I wanted to hide myself with being busy with her. But only
the crying and nothing else happening made my heart give a shiver, like
bad luck was in the air.And right away the uncle and him said good-bye and walked out. When the door was shut the children gave a rush for the cakes, and then
burst out in the street. "Come, Schmuel," said my mother, "I got to say something with
you. "And she gave my father a pull in the other room and closed
the door. I felt they was trying not to look on me, and was shrinking away from
the shame that was throwed on me. "Och, what's the matter with me! Nothing can come between David and
me.His uncle ain't everything," I said, trying to pull up my head. I sat myself down by the table to cool down my nervousness. "Brace
yourself up," I said to myself, jumping up from the chair and
beginning to walk around again. "Nothing has happened.Stop off
nagging yourself." Just then I hear loud voices through the wall. I go nearer. Ut, it's
his uncle! The plaster from the wall was broken on our side by the door. "Lay
your ear in this crack, and you can hear plain the words," I say to
myself. "What's getting over you? You ain't that kind to do such a
thing," I say. But still I do it. Oi weh, I hear the uncle plainly! "What's all this mean, these
neighbors? Who's the pretty girl what made such eyes on you?" "Ain't she beautiful?Do you like her?" I hear David. "What? What's that matter to you?" "I'll marry myself to her," says David. "Marry! Marry yourself into that beggar house! Are you crazy?" "A man could get to anywhere with such a beautiful girl." "Koosh!Pretty faces is cheap like dirt. What has she got to bring
you in for your future? An empty pocketbook? A starving family to hang
over your neck?" "You don't know nothing about her. You don't know what you're
saying.She comes from fine people in Russia. You can see her father is
a learned man." "Ach! You make me a disgust with your calf talk! Poverty winking from
every corner of the house! Hunger hollering from all their starved
faces!I got too much sense to waste my love on beggars. And all
the time I was planning for you an American family, people which are
somebodies in this world, which could help you work up a practice! For
why did I waste my good dollars on you?" "Gott!Ain't David answering?" my heart cries out. "Why don't
he throw him out of the house?" "Perhaps I can't hear him," I think, and with my finger-nails I
pick thinner the broken plaster. I push myself back to get away and not to do it.But it did itself with
my hands. "Don't let me hear nothing," I pray, and yet I strain
more to hear. The uncle was still hollering. And David wasn't saying nothing for
me. "Gazlen! You want to sink your life in a family of beggars?" "But I love her.We're so happy together. Don't that count for
something? I can't live without her." "Koosh! Love her! Do you want to plan your future with your heart
or with your head? Take for your wife an ignorant shopgirl without a
cent!Can two dead people start up a dance together?" "So you mean not to help me with the office?" "Yah-yah-yah! I'll run on all fours to do it! The impudence from
such penniless nobodies wanting to pull in a young man with a future
for a doctor!Nobody but such a yok like you would be such an easy
mark." "Well, I got to live my own life, and I love her." | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
"That's all I got to say.--Where's my hat?Throw yourself away on
the pretty face, make yourself to shame and to laughter with a ragged
Melamid for a father-in-law, and I wash my hands from you for the rest
of your life. "* * * * *
A change came over David from that day. For the first time we was no
more one person together. We couldn't no more laugh and talk like we
used to.When I tried to look him in the eyes, he gave them a turn away
from me.I used to lie awake nights turning over in my head David's looks,
David's words, and it made me frightened like something black rising
over me and pushing me out from David's heart. I could feel he was
blaming me for something I couldn't understand.Once David asked me, "Don't you love me no more?" I tried to tell him that there wasn't no change in my love, but I
couldn't no more talk out to him what was in my mind, like I used. "I didn't want to worry you before with my worries," he said to
me at last. "Worry me, David! What am I here for?" "My uncle is acting like a stingy grouch," he answered me, "and I
can't stand no more his bossing me. ""Why didn't you speak yourself out to me what was on your mind,
David?" I asked him. "You don't know how my plans is smashed to pieces," he said, with
a worried look on his face. "I don't see how I'll ever be able to
open my doctor's office.And how can we get married with your people
hanging on for your wages?" "Ah, David, don't you no longer feel that love can find a way
out?" He looked on me, down and up, and up and down, till I drawed myself
back, frightened.But he grabbed me back to him. "I love you. I love you, heart
of mine," he said, kissing me on the neck, on my hair and my
eyes. "And nothing else matters, does it, does it?" and he kissed
me again and again, as if he wanted to swallow me up.Next day I go out from the shop and down the steps to meet him, like on
every day. I give a look around. "Gott! Where is he? He wasn't never late before," gave a knock
my heart.I waited out till all the girls was gone, and the streets was getting
empty, but David didn't come yet. "Maybe an accident happened to him, and I standing round here like a
dummy," and I gave a quick hurry home. But nobody had heard nothing. "He's coming! He _must_ come!" I fighted back my fear. But by
evening he hadn't come yet. I sent in my brother next door to see if he could find him. "He moved to-day," comes in my brother to tell me. "My God! David left me? It ain't possible! "I walk around the house, waiting and listening. "Don't let nobody
see your nervousness. Don't let yourself out. Don't break down." It got late and everybody was gone to bed. I couldn't take my clothes off.Any minute he'll come up the steps
or knock on the wall. Any minute a telegram will come. It's twelve o'clock. It's one. Two! Every time I hear footsteps in the empty street, I am by the
window--"Maybe it's him." It's beginning the day.The sun is rising. Oi weh, how can the sun rise and he not here? Mein Gott! He ain't coming! I sit myself down on the floor by the window with my head on the sill. Everybody is sleeping. I can't sleep. And I'm so tired.Next day I go, like pushed on, to the shop, glad to be swallowed up by
my work. The noise of the knocking machines is like a sleeping-medicine to the
cryings inside of me. All day I watched my hands push the waists up and
down the machine.I wasn't with my hands. It was like my breathing
stopped and I was sitting inside of myself, waiting for David. The six o'clock whistle blowed. I go out from the shop. I can't help it--I look for him. "Oi, Gott! Do something for me once!Send him only!" I hold on to the iron fence of the shop, because I feel my heart
bleeding away. I can't go away. The girls all come out from the shops, and the
streets get empty and still.But at the end of the block once in a
while somebody crosses and goes out from sight. I watch them. I begin counting, "One, two, three--"
Underneath my mind is saying, "Maybe it's him. Maybe the next
one!" My eyes shut themselves.I feel the end from everything. "Ah, David! David! Gott! Mein Gott!" I fall on the steps and clinch the stones with the twistings of my
body. A terrible cry breaks out from me--"David! David!" My soul is
tearing itself out from my body. It is gone.Next day I got news--David opened a doctor's office uptown. Nothing could hurt me no more. I didn't hope for nothing. Even if he
wanted me back, I couldn't go to him no more. I was like something
dying what wants to be left alone in darkness.But still something inside of me wanted to see for itself how all is
dead between us, and I write him:
"David Novak: You killed me. You killed my love. Why did you leave me
yet living? Why must I yet drag on the deadness from me? "I don't know why I wrote him. I just wanted to give a look on him. I
wanted to fill up my eyes with him before I turned them away forever.I was sitting by the table in the kitchen, wanting to sew, but my hands
was lying dead on the table, when the door back of me burst open. "O God! What have I done? Your face is like ashes! You look like you
are dying!" David gave a rush in.His hair wasn't combed, his face wasn't shaved, his clothes was all
wrinkled. My letter he was holding crushed in his hand. "I killed you! I left you! But I didn't rest a minute since I went
away! Heart of mine, forgive me! "He gave a take my hand, and fell down kneeling by me. "Sarale, speak to me!" "False dog! Coward!" cried my father, breaking in on us. "Get
up! Get out! Don't dare touch my child again! May your name and
memory be blotted out! "David covered up his head with his arm and fell back to the wall like
my father had hit him. "You yet listen to him?" cried my father, grabbing me by the arm
and shaking me. "Didn't I tell you he's a Meshumid, a denier of
God?" "Have pity!Speak to me! Give me only a word!" David begged me. I wanted to speak to him, to stretch out my hands to him and call him
over, but I couldn't move my body. No voice came from my lips no more
than if I was locked in my grave.I was dead, and the David I loved was dead. I married Sam because he came along and wanted me, and I didn't care
about nothing no more.But for long after, even when the children began coming, my head was
still far away in the dream of the time when love was. Before my eyes
was always his face, drawing me on. In my ears was always his voice,
but thin, like from far away.I was like a person following after something in the dark. For years when I went out into the street or got into a car, it gave a
knock my heart--"Maybe I'll see him yet to-day. "When I heard he got himself engaged, I hunted up where she lived,
and with Sammy in the carriage and the three other children hanging on
to my skirts, I stayed around for hours to look up at the grand stone
house where she lived, just to take a minute's look on her.When I seen her go by, it stabbed awake in me the old days. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
It ain't that I still love him, but nothing don't seem real to me
no more.For the little while when we was lovers I breathed the air
from the high places where love comes from, and I can't no more come
down. SOAP AND WATER
What I so greatly feared, happened! Miss Whiteside, the dean of our
college, withheld my diploma.When I came to her office, and asked her
why she did not pass me, she said that she could not recommend me as a
teacher because of my personal appearance. She told me that my skin looked oily, my hair unkempt, and my
finger-nails sadly neglected.She told me that I was utterly unmindful
of the little niceties of the well-groomed lady. She pointed out that
my collar did not set evenly, my belt was awry, and there was a lack
of freshness in my dress.And she ended with: "Soap and water are
cheap. Any one can be clean." In those four years while I was under her supervision, I was always
timid and diffident. I shrank and trembled when I had to come near
her.When I had to say something to her, I mumbled and stuttered, and
grew red and white in the face with fear.Every time I had to come to the dean's office for a private
conference, I prepared for the ordeal of her cold scrutiny, as a
patient prepares for a surgical operation.I watched her gimlet eyes
searching for a stray pin, for a spot on my dress, for my unpolished
shoes, for my uncared-for finger-nails, as one strapped on the
operating table watches the surgeon approaching with his tray of
sterilized knives.She never looked into my eyes. She never perceived that I had a
soul. She did not see how I longed for beauty and cleanliness. How I
strained and struggled to lift myself from the dead toil and exhaustion
that weighed me down.She could see nothing in people like me, except
the dirt and the stains on the outside. But this last time when she threatened to withhold my diploma, because
of my appearance, this last time when she reminded me that "Soap and
water are cheap.Any one can be clean," this last time, something
burst within me. I felt the suppressed wrath of all the unwashed of the earth break
loose within me. My eyes blazed fire. I didn't care for myself, nor
the dean, nor the whole laundered world.I had suffered the cruelty
of their cleanliness and the tyranny of their culture to the breaking
point. I was too frenzied to know what I said or did.But I saw clean,
immaculate, spotless Miss Whiteside shrivel and tremble and cower
before me, as I had shriveled and trembled and cowered before her for
so many years. Why did she give me my diploma? Was it pity?Or can it be that in my
outburst of fury, at the climax of indignities that I had suffered, the
barriers broke, and she saw into the world below from where I came? Miss Whiteside had no particular reason for hounding and persecuting
me.Personally, she didn't give a hang if I was clean or dirty. She
was merely one of the agents of clean society, delegated to judge who
is fit and who is unfit to teach.While they condemned me as unfit to be a teacher, because of my
appearance, I was slaving to keep them clean.I was slaving in a
laundry from five to eight in the morning, before going to college, and
from six to eleven at night, after coming from college. Eight hours of
work a day, outside my studies.Where was the time and the strength for
the "little niceties of the well-groomed lady"?At the time when they rose and took their morning bath, and put on
their fresh-laundered linen that somebody had made ready for them, when
they were being served with their breakfast, I had already toiled for
three hours in a laundry.When college hours were over, they went for a walk in the fresh
air. They had time to rest, and bathe again, and put on fresh clothes
for dinner.But I, after college hours, had only time to bolt a soggy
meal, and rush back to the grind of the laundry till eleven at night. At the hour when they came from the theater or musicale, I came from
the laundry.But I was so bathed in the sweat of exhaustion that I
could not think of a bath of soap and water. I had only strength to
drag myself home, and fall down on the bed and sleep.Even if I had had
the desire and the energy to take a bath, there were no such things as
bathtubs in the house where I lived.Often as I stood at my board at the laundry, I thought of Miss
Whiteside, and her clean world, clothed in the snowy shirt-waists
I had ironed.I was thinking--I, soaking in the foul vapors of the
steaming laundry, I, with my dirty, tired hands, I am ironing the
clean, immaculate shirt-waists of clean, immaculate society.I, the
unclean one, am actually fashioning the pedestal of their cleanliness,
from which they reach down, hoping to lift me to the height that I have
created for them. I look back at my sweatshop childhood.One day, when I was about
sixteen, some one gave me Rosenfeld's poem, "The Machine," to
read. Like a spark thrown among oily rags, it set my whole being aflame
with longing for self-expression. But I was dumb. I had nothing but
blind, aching feeling.For days I went about with agonies of feeling,
yet utterly at sea how to fathom and voice those feelings--birth-throes
of infinite worlds, and yet dumb. Suddenly, there came upon me this inspiration. I can go to
college!There I shall learn to express myself, to voice my
thoughts. But I was not prepared to go to college. The girl in the
cigar factory, in the next block, had gone first to a preparatory
school. Why shouldn't I find a way, too?Going to college seemed as impossible for me, at that time, as for an
ignorant Russian shopgirl to attempt to write poetry in English. But I
was sixteen then, and the impossible was a magnet to draw the dreams
that had no outlet.Besides, the actual was so barren, so narrow,
so strangling, that the dream of the unattainable was the only air in
which the soul could survive. The ideal of going to college was like the birth of a new religion in
my soul.It put new fire in my eyes, and new strength in my tired arms
and fingers. For six years I worked daytimes and went at night to a preparatory
school.For six years I went about nursing the illusion that college
was a place where I should find self-expression, and vague, pent-up
feelings could live as thoughts and grow as ideas. At last I came to college.I rushed for it with the outstretched
arms of youth's aching hunger to give and take of life's deepest
and highest, and I came against the solid wall of the well-fed,
well-dressed world--the frigid whitewashed wall of cleanliness.Until I came to college I had been unconscious of my clothes. Suddenly
I felt people looking at me at arm's length, as if I were crooked
or crippled, as if I had come to a place where I didn't belong, and
would never be taken in.How I pinched, and scraped, and starved myself, to save enough to come
to college! Every cent of the tuition fee I paid was drops of sweat and
blood from underpaid laundry work. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
And what did I get for it?A crushed
spirit, a broken heart, a stinging sense of poverty that I never felt
before. The courses of study I had to swallow to get my diploma were utterly
barren of interest to me. I didn't come to college to get dull
learning from dead books.I didn't come for that dry, inanimate
stuff that can be hammered out in lectures. I came because I longed
for the larger life, for the stimulus of intellectual associations. I
came because my whole being clamored for more vision, more light.But
everywhere I went I saw big fences put up against me, with the brutal
signs: "No trespassing. Get off the grass. "I experienced at college the same feeling of years ago when I came to
this country, when after months of shut-in-ness, in dark tenements
and stifling sweatshops, I had come to Central Park for the first
time.Like a bird just out from a cage, I stretched out my arms, and
then flung myself in ecstatic abandon on the grass.Just as I began to
breathe in the fresh-smelling earth, and lift up my eyes to the sky, a
big, fat policeman with a club in his hand, seized me, with: "Can't
you read the sign? Get off the grass! "Miss Whiteside, the dean of
the college, the representative of the clean, the educated world, for
all her external refinement, was to me like that big, brutal policeman,
with the club in his hand, that drove me off the grass.The death-blows to all aspiration began when I graduated from college
and tried to get a start at the work for which I had struggled so hard
to fit myself.I soon found other agents of clean society, who had
the power of giving or withholding the positions I sought, judging
me as Miss Whiteside judged me.One glance at my shabby clothes, the
desperate anguish that glazed and dulled my eyes and I felt myself
condemned by them before I opened my lips to speak. Starvation forced me to accept the lowest-paid substitute position.And
because my wages were so low and so unsteady, I could never get the
money for the clothes to make an appearance to secure a position with
better pay. I was tricked and foiled.I was considered unfit to get
decent pay for my work because of my appearance, and it was to the
advantage of those who used me that my appearance should damn me, so as
to get me to work for the low wages I was forced to accept.It seemed
to me the whole vicious circle of society's injustices was thrust
like a noose around my neck to strangle me. The insults and injuries I had suffered at college had so eaten into
my flesh that I could not bear to get near it.I shuddered with horror
whenever I had to pass the place blocks away. The hate which I felt
for Miss Whiteside spread like poison inside my soul, into hate for all
clean society. The whole clean world was massed against me.Whenever I
met a well-dressed person, I felt the secret stab of a hidden enemy. I was so obsessed and consumed with my grievances that I could not get
away from myself and think things out in the light.I was in the grip
of that blinding, destructive, terrible thing--righteous indignation. I
could not rest.I wanted the whole world to know that the college
was against democracy in education, that clothes form the basis of
class distinctions, that after graduation the opportunities for the
best positions are passed out to those who are best-dressed, and the
students too poor to put up a front are pigeon-holed and marked unfit
and abandoned to the mercy of the wind.A wild desire raged in the corner of my brain. I knew that the dean
gave dinners to the faculty at regular intervals.I longed to burst
in at one of those feasts, in the midst of their grand speech-making,
and tear down the fine clothes from these well-groomed ladies and
gentlemen, and trample them under my feet, and scream like a lunatic:
"Soap and water are cheap!Soap and water are cheap! Look at me! See
how cheap it is!" There seemed but three avenues of escape to the torments of my wasted
life, madness, suicide, or a heart-to-heart confession to some one who
understood. I had not energy enough for suicide.Besides, in my darkest
moments of despair, hope clamored loudest. Oh, I longed so to live, to
dream my way up on the heights, above the unreal realities that ground
me and dragged me down to earth.Inside the ruin of my thwarted life, the _unlived_ visionary immigrant
hungered and thirsted for America. I had come a refugee from the
Russian pogroms, aflame with dreams of America.I did not find America
in the sweatshops, much less in the schools and colleges. But for
hundreds of years the persecuted races all over the world were nurtured
on hopes of America.When a little baby in my mother's arms, before I
was old enough to speak, I saw all around me weary faces light up with
thrilling tales of the far-off "golden country. "And so, though my
faith in this so-called America was shattered, yet underneath, in the
sap and roots of my soul, burned the deathless faith that America is,
must be, somehow, somewhere.In the midst of my bitterest hates and
rebellions, visions of America rose over me, like songs of freedom of
an oppressed people.My body was worn to the bone from overwork, my footsteps dragged with
exhaustion, but my eyes still sought the sky, praying, ceaselessly
praying, the dumb, inarticulate prayer of the lost immigrant:
"America! Ach, America! Where is America? "It seemed to me if I could only find some human being to whom I
could unburden my heart, I would have new strength to begin again my
insatiable search for America. But to whom could I speak? The people in the laundry? They never
understood me.They had a grudge against me because I left them when I
tried to work myself up. Could I speak to the college people? What did
these icebergs of convention know about the vital things of the heart?And yet, I remembered, in the freshman year, in one of the courses in
chemistry, there was an instructor, a woman, who drew me strangely. I
felt she was the only real teacher among all the teachers and
professors I met.I didn't care for the chemistry, but I liked to
look at her. She gave me life, air, the unconscious emanation of
her beautiful spirit.I had not spoken a word to her, outside the
experiments in chemistry, but I knew her more than the people around
her who were of her own class.I felt in the throb of her voice, in the
subtle shading around the corner of her eyes, the color and texture of
her dreams. Often in the midst of our work in chemistry I felt like crying out to
her: "Oh, please be my friend. I'm so lonely. "But something
choked me. I couldn't speak. The very intensity of my longing for
her friendship made me run away from her in confusion the minute she
approached me.I was so conscious of my shabbiness that I was afraid
maybe she was only trying to be kind. I couldn't bear kindness. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
I
wanted from her love, understanding, or nothing.About ten years after I left college, as I walked the streets bowed
and beaten with the shame of having to go around begging for work, I
met Miss Van Ness. She not only recognized me, but stopped to ask how I
was, and what I was doing.I had begun to think that my only comrades in this world were the
homeless and abandoned cats and dogs of the street, whom everybody
gives another kick, as they slam the door on them. And here was one
from the clean world human enough to be friendly.Here was one of the
well-dressed, with a look in her eyes and a sound in her voice that was
like healing oil over the bruises of my soul. The mere touch of that
woman's hand in mine so overwhelmed me, that I burst out crying in
the street.The next morning I came to Miss Van Ness at her office. In those ten
years she had risen to a professorship. But I was not in the least
intimidated by her high office. I felt as natural in her presence as
if she were my own sister.I heard myself telling her the whole story
of my life, but I felt that even if I had not said a word she would
have understood all I had to say as if I had spoken.It was all so
unutterable, to find one from the other side of the world who was so
simply and naturally that miraculous thing--a friend.Just as contact
with Miss Whiteside had tied and bound all my thinking processes, so
Miss Van Ness unbound and freed me and suffused me with light. I felt the joy of one breathing on the mountain-tops for the first
time.I looked down at the world below. I was changed and the world was
changed. My past was the forgotten night. Sunrise was all around me. I went out from Miss Van Ness's office, singing a song of new life:
"America! I found America. ""THE FAT OF THE LAND"
In an air-shaft so narrow that you could touch the next wall with your
bare hands, Hanneh Breineh leaned out and knocked on her neighbor's
window. "Can you loan me your wash-boiler for the clothes?" she called.Mrs. Pelz threw up the sash. "The boiler? What's the matter with yours again? Didn't you tell
me you had it fixed already last week?" "A black year on him, the robber, the way he fixed it!If you have
no luck in this world, then it's better not to live. There I spent
out fifteen cents to stop up one hole, and it runs out another. How I
ate out my gall bargaining with him he should let it down to fifteen
cents!He wanted yet a quarter, the swindler. Gottuniu! My bitter heart
on him for every penny he took from me for nothing!" "You got to watch all those swindlers, or they'll steal the whites
out of your eyes," admonished Mrs. Pelz. "You should have tried
out your boiler before you paid him. Wait a minute till I empty out my
dirty clothes in a pillow-case; then I'll hand it to you."Mrs. Pelz returned with the boiler and tried to hand it across to
Hanneh Breineh, but the soap-box refrigerator on the window-sill was in
the way. "You got to come in for the boiler yourself," said Mrs. Pelz. "Wait only till I tie my Sammy on to the high-chair he shouldn't
fall on me again. He's so wild that ropes won't hold him." Hanneh Breineh tied the child in the chair, stuck a pacifier in his
mouth, and went in to her neighbor.As she took the boiler Mrs. Pelz
said:
"Do you know Mrs. Melker ordered fifty pounds of chicken for her
daughter's wedding? And such grand chickens! Shining like gold! My
heart melted in me just looking at the flowing fatness of those
chickens. "Hanneh Breineh smacked her thin, dry lips, a hungry gleam in her sunken
eyes. "Fifty pounds!" she gasped. "It ain't possible. How do you
know?" "I heard her with my own ears. I saw them with my own eyes.And she
said she will chop up the chicken livers with onions and eggs for an
appetizer, and then she will buy twenty-five pounds of fish, and cook
it sweet and sour with raisins, and she said she will bake all her
shtrudels on pure chicken fat. ""Some people work themselves up in the world," sighed Hanneh
Breineh. "For them is America flowing with milk and honey. In Savel
Mrs. Melker used to get shriveled up from hunger.She and her children
used to live on potato-peelings and crusts of dry bread picked out
from the barrels; and in America she lives to eat chicken, and apple
shtrudels soaking in fat." "The world is a wheel always turning," philosophized Mrs. Pelz. "Those who were high go down low, and those who've been
low go up higher. Who will believe me here in America that in Poland
I was a cook in a banker's house? I handled ducks and geese every
day.I used to bake coffee-cake with cream so thick you could cut it
with a knife." "And do you think I was a nobody in Poland?" broke in Hanneh
Breineh, tears welling in her eyes as the memories of her past
rushed over her. "But what's the use of talking?In America
money is everything. Who cares who my father or grandfather was in
Poland? Without money I'm a living dead one. My head dries out
worrying how to get for the children the eating a penny cheaper."Mrs. Pelz wagged her head, a gnawing envy contracting her features. "Mrs. Melker had it good from the day she came," she said,
begrudgingly. "Right away she sent all her children to the
factory, and she began to cook meat for dinner every day.She and her
children have eggs and buttered rolls for breakfast each morning like
millionaires." A sudden fall and a baby's scream, and the boiler dropped from Hanneh
Breineh's hands as she rushed into her kitchen, Mrs. Pelz after
her.They found the high-chair turned on top of the baby. "Gewalt! Save me! Run for a doctor!" cried Hanneh Breineh, as she
dragged the child from under the high-chair. "He's killed! He's
killed! My only child! My precious lamb! "she shrieked as she ran
back and forth with the screaming infant. Mrs. Pelz snatched little Sammy from the mother's hands. "Meshugneh! What are you running around like a crazy, frightening
the child? Let me see. Let me tend to him.He ain't killed yet." She hastened to the sink to wash the child's face, and discovered a
swelling lump on his forehead. "Have you a quarter in your house?" she asked. "Yes, I got one," replied Hanneh Breineh, climbing on a chair. "I
got to keep it on a high shelf where the children can't get it." Mrs. Pelz seized the quarter Hanneh Breineh handed down to her. "Now pull your left eyelid three times while I'm pressing the
quarter, and you'll see the swelling go down. "Hanneh Breineh took the child again in her arms, shaking and cooing
over it and caressing it. "Ah-ah-ah, Sammy! Ah-ah-ah-ah, little lamb! Ah-ah-ah, little
bird! Ah-ah-ah-ah, precious heart!Oh, you saved my life; I thought he
was killed," gasped Hanneh Breineh, turning to Mrs. Pelz. "Oi-i!" she sighed, "a mother's heart! Always in fear over her children. The minute anything happens to them all life goes out of
me.I lose my head and I don't know where I am any more." "No wonder the child fell," admonished Mrs. Pelz. "You should
have a red ribbon or red beads on his neck to keep away the evil
eye. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Wait. I got something in my machine-drawer."Mrs. Pelz returned, bringing the boiler and a red string, which she
tied about the child's neck while the mother proceeded to fill the
boiler.A little later Hanneh Breineh again came into Mrs. Pelz's
kitchen, holding Sammy in one arm and in the other an apronful of
potatoes.Putting the child down on the floor, she seated herself on
the unmade kitchen-bed and began to peel the potatoes in her apron. "Woe to me!" sobbed Hanneh Breineh. "To my bitter luck there
ain't no end. With all my other troubles, the stove got broke.I
lighted the fire to boil the clothes, and it's to get choked with
smoke. I paid rent only a week ago, and the agent don't want to fix
it. A thunder should strike him!He only comes for the rent, and if
anything has to be fixed, then he don't want to hear nothing. "Why comes it to me so hard?" went on Hanneh Breineh, the tears
streaming down her cheeks. "I can't stand it no more.I came into
you for a minute to run away from my troubles. It's only when I sit
myself down to peel potatoes or nurse the baby that I take time to draw
a breath, and beg only for death."Mrs. Pelz, accustomed to Hanneh Breineh's bitter outbursts, continued
her scrubbing. "Ut!" exclaimed Hanneh Breineh, irritated at her neighbor's
silence, "what are you tearing up the world with your cleaning?What's the use to clean up when everything only gets dirty
again?" "I got to shine up my house for the holidays." "You've got it so good nothing lays on your mind but to clean
your house.Look on this little blood-sucker," said Hanneh Breineh,
pointing to the wizened child, made prematurely solemn from starvation
and neglect. "Could anybody keep that brat clean? I wash him
one minute, and he is dirty the minute after. "Little Sammy grew
frightened and began to cry. "Shut up!" ordered the mother, picking
up the child to nurse it again. "Can't you see me take a rest for
a minute?" The hungry child began to cry at the top of its weakened lungs. "Na, na, you glutton. "Hanneh Breineh took out a dirty pacifier
from her pocket and stuffed it into the baby's mouth. The grave,
pasty-faced infant shrank into a panic of fear, and chewed the nipple
nervously, clinging to it with both his thin little hands. "For what did I need yet the sixth one?" groaned Hanneh Breineh,
turning to Mrs. Pelz. "Wasn't it enough five mouths to feed? If
I didn't have this child on my neck, I could turn myself around
and earn a few cents. "She wrung her hands in a passion of
despair. "Gottuniu! The earth should only take it before it grows
up!" "Shah! Shah!" reproved Mrs. Pelz. "Pity yourself on the
child. Let it grow up already so long as it is here.See how frightened
it looks on you." Mrs. Pelz took the child in her arms and petted
it. "The poor little lamb! What did it done you should hate it so?" Hanneh Breineh pushed Mrs. Pelz away from her. "To whom can I open the wounds of my heart? "she moaned. "Nobody
has pity on me. You don't believe me, nobody believes me until
I'll fall down like a horse in the middle of the street. Oi weh! Mine
life is so black for my eyes! Some mothers got luck.A child gets run
over by a car, some fall from a window, some burn themselves up with
a match, some get choked with diphtheria; but no death takes mine
away." "God from the world, stop cursing!" admonished Mrs. Pelz. "What
do you want from the poor children? Is it their fault that their father
makes small wages? Why do you let it all out on them?" Mrs. Pelz sat
down beside Hanneh Breineh. "Wait only till your children get old
enough to go to the shop and earn money," she consoled. "Push only
through those few years while they are yet small; your sun will begin
to shine; you will live on the fat of the land, when they begin to
bring you in the wages each week." Hanneh Breineh refused to be comforted. "Till they are old enough to go to the shop and earn money they'll
eat the head off my bones," she wailed. "If you only knew the
fights I got by each meal. Maybe I gave Abe a bigger piece of bread
than Fanny.Maybe Fanny got a little more soup in her plate than
Jake. Eating is dearer than diamonds. Potatoes went up a cent on a
pound, and milk is only for millionaires.And once a week, when I buy
a little meat for the Sabbath, the butcher weighs it for me like gold,
with all the bones in it. When I come to lay the meat out on a plate
and divide it up, there ain't nothing to it but bones.Before, he
used to throw me in a piece of fat extra or a piece of lung, but now
you got to pay for everything, even for a bone to the soup." "Never mind; you'll yet come out from all your troubles.Just as
soon as your children get old enough to get their working papers the
more children you got, the more money you'll have." "Why should I fool myself with the false shine of hope?Don't I
know it's already my black luck not to have it good in this world? Do
you think American children will right away give everything they earn
to their mother?" "I know what is with you the matter," said Mrs. Pelz. "You
didn't eat yet to-day.When it is empty in the stomach, the whole
world looks black. Come, only let me give you something good to
taste in the mouth; that will freshen you up."Mrs. Pelz went to
the cupboard and brought out the saucepan of gefülte fish that she
had cooked for dinner and placed it on the table in front of Hanneh
Breineh. "Give a taste my fish," she said, taking one slice on a
spoon, and handing it to Hanneh Breineh with a piece of bread. "I
wouldn't give it to you on a plate because I just cleaned up my
house, and I don't want to dirty up more dishes. ""What, am I a stranger you should have to serve me on a plate yet!" cried Hanneh Breineh, snatching the fish in her trembling fingers. "Oi weh! How it melts through all the bones!" she exclaimed,
brightening as she ate. "May it be for good luck to us all!" she
exulted, waving aloft the last precious bite. Mrs. Pelz was so flattered that she even ladled up a spoonful of gravy. "There is a bit of onion and carrot in it," she said, as she handed
it to her neighbor.Hanneh Breineh sipped the gravy drop by drop, like a connoisseur
sipping wine. "Ah-h-h! A taste of that gravy lifts me up to heaven!" As she
disposed leisurely of the slice of onion and carrot she relaxed and
expanded and even grew jovial. "Let us wish all our troubles on the
Russian Czar! Let him burst with our worries for rent! Let him get
shriveled with our hunger for bread! Let his eyes dry out of his head
looking for work! "Shah!I'm forgetting from everything," she exclaimed, jumping
up. "It must be eleven or soon twelve, and my children will be
right away out of school and fall on me like a pack of wild wolves.I
better quick run to the market and see what cheaper I can get for a
quarter. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
"Because of the lateness of her coming, the stale bread at the nearest
bakeshop was sold out, and Hanneh Breineh had to trudge from shop to
shop in search of the usual bargain, and spent nearly an hour to save
two cents.In the meantime the children returned from school, and, finding the
door locked, climbed through the fire-escape, and entered the house
through the window. Seeing nothing on the table, they rushed to the
stove.Abe pulled a steaming potato out of the boiling pot, and so
scalded his fingers that the potato fell to the floor; where upon the
three others pounced on it. "It was my potato," cried Abe, blowing his burned fingers, while
with the other hand and his foot he cuffed and kicked the three who
were struggling on the floor.A wild fight ensued, and the potato was
smashed under Abe's foot amid shouts and screams. Hanneh Breineh,
on the stairs, heard the noise of her famished brood, and topped their
cries with curses and invectives. "They are here already, the savages!They are here already to shorten
my life! They heard you all over the hall, in all the houses around!" The children, disregarding her words, pounced on her market-basket,
shouting ravenously: "Mamma, I'm hungry! What more do you got to
eat? "They tore the bread and herring out of Hanneh Breineh's basket and
devoured it in starved savagery, clamoring for more. "Murderers!" screamed Hanneh Breineh, goaded beyond endurance. "What are you tearing from me my flesh?From where should
I steal to give you more? Here I had already a pot of potatoes and a
whole loaf of bread and two herrings, and you swallowed it down in the
wink of an eye. I have to have Rockefeller's millions to fill your
stomachs. "All at once Hanneh Breineh became aware that Benny was missing. "Oi
weh!" she burst out, wringing her hands in a new wave of woe,
"where is Benny? Didn't he come home yet from school? "She ran out into the hall, opened the grime-coated window, and looked
up and down the street; but Benny was nowhere in sight. "Abe, Jake, Fanny, quick, find Benny!" entreated Hanneh Breineh, as
she rushed back into the kitchen.But the children, anxious to snatch a
few minutes' play before the school-call, dodged past her and hurried
out. With the baby on her arm, Hanneh Breineh hastened to the kindergarten. "Why are you keeping Benny here so long? "she shouted at the
teacher as she flung open the door. "If you had my bitter heart,
you would send him home long ago and not wait till I got to come for
him." The teacher turned calmly and consulted her record-cards. "Benny Safron?He wasn't present this morning." "Not here?" shrieked Hanneh Breineh. "I pushed him out myself
he should go. The children didn't want to take him, and I had no
time. Woe is me! Where is my child? "She began pulling her hair and
beating her breast as she ran into the street. Mrs. Pelz was busy at a pushcart, picking over some spotted apples,
when she heard the clamor of an approaching crowd.A block off she
recognized Hanneh Breineh, her hair disheveled, her clothes awry,
running toward her with her yelling baby in her arms, the crowd
following. "Friend mine," cried Hanneh Breineh, falling on Mrs. Pelz's
neck, "I lost my Benny, the best child of all my children." Tears
streamed down her red, swollen eyes as she sobbed. "Benny! mine
heart, mine life! Oi-i-i!"Mrs. Pelz took the frightened baby out of the mother's arms. "Still yourself a little! See how you're frightening your child." "Woe to me! Where is my Benny? Maybe he's killed already by a
car. Maybe he fainted away from hunger.He didn't eat nothing all day
long. Gottuniu! Pity yourself on me!" She lifted her hands full of tragic entreaty. "People, my child! Get me my child! I'll go crazy out of my
head! Get me my child, or I'll take poison before your eyes! ""Still yourself a little!" pleaded Mrs. Pelz. "Talk not to me!" cried Hanneh Breineh, wringing her hands. "You're having all your children. I lost mine. Every good
luck comes to other people. But I didn't live yet to see a good day
in my life.Mine only joy, mine Benny, is lost away from me." The crowd followed Hanneh Breineh as she wailed through the streets,
leaning on Mrs. Pelz.By the time she returned to her house the
children were back from school; but seeing that Benny was not there,
she chased them out in the street, crying:
"Out of here, you robbers, gluttons! Go find Benny! "Hanneh
Breineh crumpled into a chair in utter prostration. "Oi weh! he's
lost! Mine life; my little bird; mine only joy! How many nights I
spent nursing him when he had the measles!And all that I suffered for
weeks and months when he had the whooping-cough! How the eyes went out
of my head till I learned him how to walk, till I learned him how to
talk! And such a smart child!If I lost all the others, it wouldn't
tear me so by the heart." She worked herself up into such a hysteria, crying, and tearing her
hair, and hitting her head with her knuckles, that at last she fell
into a faint.It took some time before Mrs. Pelz, with the aid of
neighbors, revived her. "Benny, mine angel!" she moaned as she opened her eyes. Just then a policeman came in with the lost Benny. "Na, na, here you got him already!" said Mrs. Pelz. "Why did you
carry on so for nothing? Why did you tear up the world like a crazy?" The child's face was streaked with tears as he cowered, frightened
and forlorn.Hanneh Breineh sprang toward him, slapping his cheeks,
boxing his ears, before the neighbors could rescue him from her. "Woe on your head!" cried the mother. "Where did you lost
yourself?Ain't I got enough worries on my head than to go around
looking for you? I didn't have yet a minute's peace from that child
since he was born!" "See a crazy mother!" remonstrated Mrs. Pelz, rescuing Benny from
another beating. "Such a mouth!With one breath she blesses him
when he is lost, and with the other breath she curses him when he is
found. "Hanneh Breineh took from the window-sill a piece of herring covered
with swarming flies, and putting it on a slice of dry bread, she filled
a cup of tea that had been stewing all day, and dragged Benny over to
the table to eat.But the child, choking with tears, was unable to touch the food. "Go eat!" commanded Hanneh Breineh. "Eat and choke yourself
eating!" * * * * *
"Maybe she won't remember me no more.Maybe the servant won't
let me in," thought Mrs. Pelz, as she walked by the brownstone
house on Eighty-Fourth Street where she had been told Hanneh Breineh
now lived. At last she summoned up enough courage to climb the
steps.She was all out of breath as she rang the bell with trembling
fingers. "Oi weh! even the outside smells riches and plenty! Such
curtains! And shades on all windows like by millionaires!Twenty years
ago she used to eat from the pot to the hand, and now she lives in such
a palace. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
"A whiff of steam-heated warmth swept over Mrs. Pelz as the door opened,
and she saw her old friend of the tenements dressed in silk and
diamonds like a being from another world. "Mrs. Pelz, is it you! "cried Hanneh Breineh, overjoyed at the
sight of her former neighbor. "Come right in. Since when are you back
in New York?" "We came last week," mumbled Mrs. Pelz, as she was led into a
richly carpeted reception-room. "Make yourself comfortable.Take off your shawl," urged Hanneh
Breineh. But Mrs. Pelz only drew her shawl more tightly around her, a keen sense
of her poverty gripping her as she gazed, abashed by the luxurious
wealth that shone from every corner. "This shawl covers up my rags," she said, trying to hide her shabby
sweater. "I'll tell you what; come right into the kitchen," suggested
Hanneh Breineh. "The servant is away for this afternoon, and we can
feel more comfortable there.I can breathe like a free person in my
kitchen when the girl has her day out." Mrs. Pelz glanced about her in an excited daze.Never in her life
had she seen anything so wonderful as a white-tiled kitchen, with its
glistening porcelain sink and the aluminum pots and pans that shone
like silver. "Where are you staying now? "asked Hanneh Breineh, as she pinned an
apron over her silk dress. "I moved back to Delancey Street, where we used to live," replied
Mrs. Pelz, as she seated herself cautiously in a white enameled chair. "Oi weh!What grand times we had in that old house when we were
neighbors!" sighed Hanneh Breineh, looking at her old friend with
misty eyes. "You still think on Delancey Street? Haven't you more high-class
neighbors uptown here? ""A good neighbor is not to be found every day," deplored
Hanneh Breineh. "Uptown here, where each lives in his own house,
nobody cares if the person next door is dying or going crazy from
loneliness.It ain't anything like we used to have it in Delancey
Street, when we could walk into one another's rooms without knocking,
and borrow a pinch of salt or a pot to cook in." Hanneh Breineh went over to the pantry-shelf. "We are going to have a bite right here on the kitchen-table like on
Delancey Street. So long there's no servant to watch us we can eat
what we please." "Oi! How it waters my mouth with appetite, the smell of the herring
and onion! "chuckled Mrs. Pelz, sniffing the welcome odors with
greedy pleasure. Hanneh Breineh pulled a dish-towel from the rack and threw one end of
it to Mrs. Pelz. "So long there's no servant around, we can use it together for
a napkin. It's dirty, anyhow.How it freshens up my heart to see
you!" she rejoiced as she poured out her tea into a saucer. "If you
would only know how I used to beg my daughter to write for me a letter
to you; but these American children, what is to them a mother's
feelings? ""What are you talking!" cried Mrs. Pelz. "The whole world rings
with you and your children. Everybody is envying you. Tell me how began
your luck?" "You heard how my husband died with consumption," replied Hanneh
Breineh. "The five hundred dollars lodge money gave me the first
lift in life, and I opened a little grocery store. Then my son Abe
married himself to a girl with a thousand dollars.That started him
in business, and now he has the biggest shirt-waist factory on West
Twenty-Ninth Street." "Yes, I heard your son had a factory." Mrs. Pelz hesitated and
stammered; "I'll tell you the truth.What I came to ask you--I
thought maybe you would beg your son Abe if he would give my husband
a job." "Why not?" said Hanneh Breineh. "He keeps more than five hundred
hands. I'll ask him if he should take in Mr. Pelz. ""Long years on you, Hanneh Breineh! You'll save my life if you
could only help my husband get work." "Of course my son will help him. All my children like to do good.My
daughter Fanny is a milliner on Fifth Avenue, and she takes in the
poorest girls in her shop and even pays them sometimes while they learn
the trade. "Hanneh Breineh's face lit up, and her chest filled with
pride as she enumerated the successes of her children. "And my son
Benny he wrote a play on Broadway and he gave away more than a hundred
free tickets for the first night." "Benny?The one who used to get lost from home all the time? You
always did love that child more than all the rest. And what is Sammy
your baby doing?" "He ain't a baby no longer. He goes to college and quarterbacks the
football team.They can't get along without him. "And my son Jake, I nearly forgot him. He began collecting rent
in Delancey Street, and now he is boss of renting the swellest
apartment-houses on Riverside Drive." "What did I tell you?In America children are like money in the
bank," purred Mrs. Pelz, as she pinched and patted Hanneh Breineh's
silk sleeve. "Oi weh! How it shines from you! You ought to kiss the
air and dance for joy and happiness.It is such a bitter frost outside;
a pail of coal is so dear, and you got it so warm with steam heat. I
had to pawn my feather bed to have enough for the rent, and you are
rolling in money. ""Yes, I got it good in some ways, but money ain't everything,"
sighed Hanneh Breineh. "You ain't yet satisfied?" "But here I got no friends," complained Hanneh Breineh. "Friends?" queried Mrs. Pelz. "What greater friend is there on
earth than the dollar?" "Oi! Mrs. Pelz; if you could only look into my heart! I'm so choked
up! You know they say a cow has a long tongue, but can't talk. "Hanneh Breineh shook her head wistfully, and her eyes filmed with
inward brooding. "My children give me everything from the best. When
I was sick, they got me a nurse by day and one by night. They bought
me the best wine.If I asked for dove's milk, they would buy it for
me; but--but--I can't talk myself out in their language. They want
to make me over for an American lady, and I'm different. "Tears
cut their way under her eyelids with a pricking pain as she went
on: "When I was poor, I was free, and could holler and do what I
like in my own house. Here I got to lie still like a mouse under a
broom.Between living up to my Fifth-Avenue daughter and keeping up
with the servants, I am like a sinner in the next world that is thrown
from one hell to another." The doorbell rang, and Hanneh Breineh
jumped up with a start. "Oi weh!It must be the servant back already!" she exclaimed,
as she tore off her apron. "Oi weh! Let's quickly put the dishes
together in a dish-pan. If she sees I eat on the kitchen table, she
will look on me like the dirt under her feet."Mrs. Pelz seized her shawl in haste. "I better run home quick in my rags before your servant sees me." "I'll speak to Abe about the job," said Hanneh Breineh, as she
pushed a bill into the hand of Mrs. Pelz, who edged out as the servant
entered. * * * * *
"I'm having fried potato lotkes special for you, Benny," said
Hanneh Breineh, as the children gathered about the table for the family
dinner given in honor of Benny's success with his new play. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
"Do you
remember how you used to lick the fingers from them?" "Oh, mother!" reproved Fanny. "Anyone hearing you would think we
were still in the pushcart district. ""Stop your nagging, sis, and let ma alone," commanded Benny,
patting his mother's arm affectionately. "I'm home only once a
month. Let her feed me what she pleases. My stomach is bomb-proof." "Do I hear that the President is coming to your play? "said Abe,
as he stuffed a napkin over his diamond-studded shirt-front. "Why shouldn't he come?" returned Benny. "The critics say
it's the greatest antidote for the race hatred created by the war.If
you want to know, he is coming to-night; and what's more, our box is
next to the President's." "Nu, mammeh," sallied Jake, "did you ever dream in Delancey
Street that we should rub sleeves with the President? ""I always said that Benny had more head than the rest of you,"
replied the mother. As the laughter died away, Jake went on:
"Honor you are getting plenty; but how much mezummen does this play
bring you? Can I invest any of it in real estate for you? ""I'm getting ten per cent royalties of the gross receipts,"
replied the youthful playwright. "How much is that?" queried Hanneh Breineh. "Enough to buy up all your fish-markets in Delancey Street,"
laughed Abe in good-natured raillery at his mother.Her son's jest cut like a knife-thrust in her heart. She felt
her heart ache with the pain that she was shut out from their
successes. Each added triumph only widened the gulf.And when she tried
to bridge this gulf by asking questions, they only thrust her back upon
herself. "Your fame has even helped me get my hat trade solid with the Four
Hundred," put in Fanny. "You bet I let Mrs. Van Suyden know that
our box is next to the President's. She said she would drop in to
meet you. Of course she let on to me that she hadn't seen the play
yet, though my designer said she saw her there on the opening night. ""Oh, Gosh, the toadies!" sneered Benny. "Nothing so sickens you
with success as the way people who once shoved you off the sidewalk
come crawling to you on their stomachs begging you to dine with
them. ""Say, that leading man of yours he's some class!" cried
Fanny. "That's the man I'm looking for. Will you invite him to
supper after the theater?" The playwright turned to his mother. "Say, ma," he said, laughingly, "how would you like a real actor
for a son-in-law?" "She should worry," mocked Sam. "She'll be discussing with
him the future of the Greek drama.Too bad it doesn't happen to be
Warfield, or mother could give him tips on the 'Auctioneer.'" Jake turned to his mother with a covert grin. "I guess you'd have no objection if Fanny got next to Benny's
leading man.He makes at least fifteen hundred a week. That wouldn't
be such a bad addition to the family, would it?" Again the bantering tone stabbed Hanneh Breineh. Everything in her
began to tremble and break loose. "Why do you ask me? "she cried, throwing her napkin into her
plate. "Do I count for a person in this house? If I'll say
something, will you even listen to me? What is to me the grandest man
that my daughter could pick out? Another enemy in my house!Another
person to shame himself from me!" She swept in her children in one
glance of despairing anguish as she rose from the table. "What worth
is an old mother to American children?The President is coming to-night
to the theater, and none of you asked me to go." Unable to check the
rising tears, she fled toward the kitchen and banged the door. They all looked at one another guiltily. "Say, sis," Benny called out sharply, "what sort of frame-up is
this? Haven't you told mother that she was to go with us to-night?" "Yes--I--" Fanny bit her lips as she fumbled evasively for
words. "I asked her if she wouldn't mind my taking her some other
time." "Now you have made a mess of it!" fumed Benny. "Mother'll be
too hurt to go now." "Well, I don't care," snapped Fanny. "I can't appear with
mother in a box at the theater.Can I introduce her to Mrs. Van
Suyden? And suppose your leading man should ask to meet me?" "Take your time, sis. He hasn't asked yet," scoffed Benny. "The more reason I shouldn't spoil my chances. You know
mother.She'll spill the beans that we come from Delancey Street the
minute we introduce her anywhere. Must I always have the black shadow
of my past trailing after me?" "But have you no feelings for mother?" admonished Abe. "I've tried harder than all of you to do my duty. I've _lived_
with her." She turned angrily upon them. "I've borne the shame
of mother while you bought her off with a present and a treat here and
there.God knows how hard I tried to civilize her so as not to have to
blush with shame when I take her anywhere. I dressed her in the most
stylish Paris models, but Delancey Street sticks out from every inch of
her.Whenever she opens her mouth, I'm done for.You fellows had your
chance to rise in the world because a man is free to go up as high as
he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man
my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother. "They were silenced by her vehemence, and unconsciously turned to Benny. "I guess we all tried to do our best for mother," said Benny,
thoughtfully. "But wherever there is growth, there is pain and
heartbreak.The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages
and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof,
and--"
A sound of crashing dishes came from the kitchen, and the voice of
Hanneh Breineh resounded through the dining-room as she wreaked her
pent-up fury on the helpless servant. "Oh, my nerves! I can't stand it any more! There will be no girl
again for another week!" cried Fanny. "Oh, let up on the old lady," protested Abe. "Since she
can't take it out on us any more, what harm is it if she cusses the
servants? ""If you fellows had to chase around employment agencies, you
wouldn't see anything funny about it. Why can't we move into a
hotel that will do away with the need of servants altogether? ""I got it better," said Jake, consulting a notebook from his
pocket. "I have on my list an apartment on Riverside Drive where
there's only a small kitchenette; but we can do away with the
cooking, for there is a dining service in the building. "* * * * *
The new Riverside apartment to which Hanneh Breineh was removed by
her socially ambitious children was for the habitually active mother
an empty desert of enforced idleness.Deprived of her kitchen, Hanneh
Breineh felt robbed of the last reason for her existence. Cooking and
marketing and puttering busily with pots and pans gave her an excuse
for living and struggling and bearing up with her children.The lonely
idleness of Riverside Drive stunned all her senses and arrested all
her thoughts. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
It gave her that choked sense of being cut off from air,
from life, from everything warm and human.The cold indifference, the
each-for-himself look in the eyes of the people about her were like
stinging slaps in the face. Even the children had nothing real or human
in them. They were starched and stiff miniatures of their elders.But the most unendurable part of the stifling life on Riverside Drive
was being forced to eat in the public dining-room.No matter how
hard she tried to learn polite table manners, she always found people
staring at her, and her daughter rebuking her for eating with the wrong
fork or guzzling the soup or staining the cloth.In a fit of rebellion Hanneh Breineh resolved never to go down to
the public dining-room again, but to make use of the gas-stove in
the kitchenette to cook her own meals.That very day she rode down to
Delancey Street and purchased a new market-basket. For some time she
walked among the haggling pushcart venders, relaxing and swimming in
the warm waves of her old familiar past.A fish-peddler held up a large carp in his black, hairy hand and waved
it dramatically:
"Women! Women! Fourteen cents a pound!" He ceased his raucous shouting as he saw Hanneh Breineh in her rich
attire approach his cart. "How much? "she asked, pointing to the fattest carp. "Fifteen cents, lady," said the peddler, smirking as he raised his
price. "Swindler! Didn't I hear you call fourteen cents? "shrieked
Hanneh Breineh, exultingly, the spirit of the penny chase surging in
her blood. Diplomatically, Hanneh Breineh turned as if to go, and the
fisherman seized her basket in frantic fear. "I should live; I'm losing money on the fish, lady," whined the
peddler. "I'll let it down to thirteen cents for you only. ""Two pounds for a quarter, and not a penny more," said Hanneh
Breineh, thrilling again with the rare sport of bargaining, which had
been her chief joy in the good old days of poverty. "Nu, I want to make the first sale for good luck. "The peddler
threw the fish on the scale. As he wrapped up the fish, Hanneh Breineh saw the driven look of
worry in his haggard eyes, and when he counted out the change from her
dollar, she waved it aside. "Keep it for your luck," she said, and
hurried off to strike a new bargain at a pushcart of onions. Hanneh Breineh returned triumphantly with her purchases.The basket
under her arm gave forth the old, homelike odors of herring and
garlic, while the scaly tail of a four-pound carp protruded from its
newspaper wrapping.A gilded placard on the door of the apartment-house
proclaimed that all merchandise must be delivered through the trade
entrance in the rear; but Hanneh Breineh with her basket strode proudly
through the marble-paneled hall and rang nonchalantly for the elevator.The uniformed hall-man, erect, expressionless, frigid with dignity,
stepped forward:
"Just a minute, madam. I'll call a boy to take up your basket for
you." Hanneh Breineh, glaring at him, jerked the basket savagely from his
hands. "Mind your own business!" she retorted. "I'll take it
up myself. Do you think you're a Russian policeman to boss me in my
own house?" Angry lines appeared on the countenance of the representative of social
decorum. "It is against the rules, madam," he said, stiffly. "You should sink into the earth with all your rules and brass
buttons. Ain't this America? Ain't this a free country? Can't I
take up in my own house what I buy with my own money? "cried Hanneh
Breineh, reveling in the opportunity to shower forth the volley of
invectives that had been suppressed in her for the weeks of deadly
dignity of Riverside Drive. In the midst of this uproar Fanny came in with Mrs. Van Suyden.Hanneh
Breineh rushed over to her, crying:
"This bossy policeman won't let me take up my basket in the
elevator. "The daughter, unnerved with shame and confusion, took the basket in
her white-gloved hand and ordered the hall-boy to take it around to the
regular delivery entrance.Hanneh Breineh was so hurt by her daughter's apparent defense of
the hall-man's rules that she utterly ignored Mrs. Van Suyden's
greeting and walked up the seven flights of stairs out of sheer spite. "You see the tragedy of my life? "broke out Fanny, turning to
Mrs. Van Suyden. "You poor child! You go right up to your dear, old lady mother, and
I'll come some other time." Instantly Fanny regretted her words. Mrs. Van Suyden's pity only
roused her wrath the more against her mother.Breathless from climbing the stairs, Hanneh Breineh entered the
apartment just as Fanny tore the faultless millinery creation from her
head and threw it on the floor in a rage. "Mother, you are the ruination of my life!You have driven away
Mrs. Van Suyden, as you have driven away all my best friends. What do
you think we got this apartment for but to get rid of your fish smells
and your brawls with the servants?And here you come with a basket on
your arm as if you just landed from steerage! And this afternoon, of
all times, when Benny is bringing his leading man to tea. When will you
ever stop disgracing us?" "When I'm dead," said Hanneh Breineh, grimly. "When the earth
will cover me up, then you'll be free to go your American way. I'm
not going to make myself over for a lady on Riverside Drive. I hate
you and all your swell friends.I'll not let myself be choked up here
by you or by that hall-boss policeman that is higher in your eyes than
your own mother." "So that's your thanks for all we've done for you?" cried the
daughter. "All you've done for me!" shouted Hanneh Breineh. "What have
you done for me? You hold me like a dog on a chain!It stands in the
Talmud; some children give their mothers dry bread and water and go to
heaven for it, and some give their mother roast duck and go to Gehenna
because it's not given with love." "You want me to love you yet?" raged the daughter. "You knocked
every bit of love out of me when I was yet a kid. All the memories of
childhood I have is your everlasting cursing and yelling that we were
gluttons." The bell rang sharply, and Hanneh Breineh flung open the door. "Your groceries, ma'am," said the boy. Hanneh Breineh seized the basket from him, and with a vicious fling
sent it rolling across the room, strewing its contents over the Persian
rugs and inlaid floor.Then seizing her hat and coat, she stormed out
of the apartment and down the stairs. Mr. and Mrs. Pelz sat crouched and shivering over their meager supper
when the door opened, and Hanneh Breineh in fur coat and plumed hat
charged into the room. "I come to cry out to you my bitter heart," she sobbed. "Woe is
me! It is so black for my eyes!" "What is the matter with you, Hanneh Breineh?" cried Mrs. Pelz in
bewildered alarm. "I am turned out of my own house by the brass-buttoned policeman that
bosses the elevator. Oi-i-i-i! Weh-h-h-h! What have I from my life? The
whole world rings with my son's play.Even the President came to see
it, and I, his mother, have not seen it yet. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
My heart is dying in me
like in a prison," she went on wailing. "I am starved out for a
piece of real eating.In that swell restaurant is nothing but napkins
and forks and lettuce-leaves. There are a dozen plates to every bite of
food. And it looks so fancy on the plate, but it's nothing but straw
in the mouth.I'm starving, but I can't swallow down their American
eating." "Hanneh Breineh," said Mrs. Pelz, "you are sinning before
God. Look on your fur coat; it alone would feed a whole family for a
year.I never had yet a piece of fur trimming on a coat, and you are in
fur from the neck to the feet. I never had yet a piece of feather on a
hat, and your hat is all feathers." "What are you envying me?" protested Hanneh Breineh. "What have
I from all my fine furs and feathers when my children are strangers
to me? All the fur coats in the world can't warm up the loneliness
inside my heart.All the grandest feathers can't hide the bitter
shame in my face that my children shame themselves from me." Hanneh Breineh suddenly loomed over them like some ancient, heroic
figure of the Bible condemning unrighteousness. "Why should my children shame themselves from me? From where did they
get the stuff to work themselves up in the world? Did they get it from
the air? How did they get all their smartness to rise over the people
around them?Why don't the children of born American mothers write
my Benny's plays? It is I, who never had a chance to be a person,
who gave him the fire in his head. If I would have had a chance to go
to school and learn the language, what couldn't I have been?It is
I and my mother and my mother's mother and my father and father's
father who had such a black life in Poland; it is our choked thoughts
and feelings that are flaming up in my children and making them great
in America.And yet they shame themselves from me!" For a moment Mr. and Mrs. Pelz were hypnotized by the sweep of her
words. Then Hanneh Breineh sank into a chair in utter exhaustion. She
began to weep bitterly, her body shaking with sobs. "Woe is me!For what did I suffer and hope on my children? A bitter
old age--my end. I'm so lonely!" All the dramatic fire seemed to have left her. The spell was
broken.They saw the Hanneh Breineh of old, ever discontented, ever
complaining even in the midst of riches and plenty. "Hanneh Breineh," said Mrs. Pelz, "the only trouble with you is
that you got it too good.People will tear the eyes out of your head
because you're complaining yet. If I only had your fur coat! If I
only had your diamonds! I have nothing. You have everything. You are
living on the fat of the land.You go right back home and thank God
that you don't have my bitter lot." "You got to let me stay here with you," insisted Hanneh
Breineh. "I'll not go back to my children except when they bury
me.When they will see my dead face, they will understand how they
killed me." Mrs. Pelz glanced nervously at her husband. They barely had enough
covering for their one bed; how could they possibly lodge a visitor? "I don't want to take up your bed," said Hanneh Breineh. "I
don't care if I have to sleep on the floor or on the chairs, but
I'll stay here for the night. "Seeing that she was bent on staying, Mr. Pelz prepared to sleep by
putting a few chairs next to the trunk, and Hanneh Breineh was invited
to share the rickety bed with Mrs. Pelz. The mattress was full of lumps and hollows.Hanneh Breineh lay cramped
and miserable, unable to stretch out her limbs. For years she had been
accustomed to hair mattresses and ample woolen blankets, so that though
she covered herself with her fur coat, she was too cold to sleep.But
worse than the cold were the creeping things on the wall. And as the
lights were turned low, the mice came through the broken plaster and
raced across the floor. The foul odors of the kitchen-sink added to the
night of horrors. "Are you going back home?" asked Mrs. Pelz, as Hanneh Breineh put
on her hat and coat the next morning. "I don't know where I'm going," she replied, as she put a bill
into Mrs. Pelz's hand.For hours Hanneh Breineh walked through the crowded ghetto streets. She
realized that she no longer could endure the sordid ugliness of her
past, and yet she could not go home to her children. She only felt that
she must go on and on.In the afternoon a cold, drizzling rain set in. She was worn out from
the sleepless night and hours of tramping. With a piercing pain in her
heart she at last turned back and boarded the subway for Riverside
Drive.She had fled from the marble sepulcher of the Riverside
apartment to her old home in the ghetto; but now she knew that she
could not live there again.She had outgrown her past by the habits of
years of physical comforts, and these material comforts that she could
no longer do without choked and crushed the life within her.A cold shudder went through Hanneh Breineh as she approached the
apartment-house. Peering through the plate glass of the door she
saw the face of the uniformed hall-man.For a hesitating moment she
remained standing in the drizzling rain, unable to enter, and yet
knowing full well that she would have to enter. Then suddenly Hanneh Breineh began to laugh.She realized that it was
the first time she had laughed since her children had become rich. But
it was the hard laugh of bitter sorrow. Tears streamed down her
furrowed cheeks as she walked slowly up the granite steps. "The fat of the land! "muttered Hanneh Breineh, with a choking
sob as the hall-man with immobile face deferentially swung open the
door--"the fat of the land! "MY OWN PEOPLE
With the suitcase containing all her worldly possessions under
her arm, Sophie Sapinsky elbowed her way through the noisy
ghetto crowds. Pushcart peddlers and pullers-in shouted and
gesticulated.Women with market-baskets pushed and shoved one another,
eyes straining with the one thought--how to get the food a penny
cheaper.With the same strained intentness, Sophie scanned each
tenement, searching for a room cheap enough for her dwindling means.In a dingy basement window a crooked sign, in straggling, penciled
letters, caught Sophie's eye: "Room to let, a bargain, cheap." The exuberant phrasing was quite in keeping with the extravagant
dilapidation of the surroundings. "This is the very place," thought
Sophie. "There couldn't be nothing cheaper in all New York." At the foot of the basement steps she knocked. "Come in!" a voice answered.As she opened the door she saw an old man bending over a pot of
potatoes on a shoemaker's bench. A group of children in all degrees
of rags surrounded him, greedily snatching at the potatoes he handed
out.Sophie paused for an instant, but her absorption in her own problem was
too great to halt the question: "Is there a room to let?" "Hanneh Breineh, in the back, has a room. "The old man was so
preoccupied filling the hungry hands that he did not even look up. Sophie groped her way to the rear hall. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
A gaunt-faced woman answered
her inquiry with loquacious enthusiasm. "A grand room for the
money.I'll let it down to you only for three dollars a month. In the
whole block is no bigger bargain. I should live so." As she talked, the woman led her through the dark hall into an airshaft
room.A narrow window looked out into the bottom of a chimney-like pit,
where lay the accumulated refuse from a score of crowded kitchens. "Oi weh!" gasped Sophie, throwing open the sash. "No air and no
light. Outside shines the sun and here it's so dark. ""It ain't so dark. It's only a little shady. Let me only
turn up the gas for you and you'll quick see everything like with
sunshine. "The claw-fingered flame revealed a rusty, iron cot, an inverted potato
barrel that served for a table, and two soap-boxes for chairs. Sophie felt of the cot. It sagged and flopped under her touch. "The
bed has only three feet! "she exclaimed in dismay. "You can't have Rockefeller's palace for three dollars a
month," defended Hanneh Breineh, as she shoved one of the boxes
under the legless corner of the cot. "If the bed ain't so steady,
so you got good neighbors.Upstairs lives Shprintzeh Gittle, the
herring-woman. You can buy by her the biggest bargains in fish,
a few days older.... What she got left over from the Sabbath, she
sells to the neighbors cheap.... In the front lives Shmendrik, the
shoemaker.I'll tell you the truth, he ain't no real shoemaker. He
never yet made a pair of whole shoes in his life.He's a learner
from the old country--a tzadik, a saint; but every time he sees in
the street a child with torn feet, he calls them in and patches them
up. His own eating, the last bite from his mouth, he divides up with
them. ""Three dollars," deliberated Sophie, scarcely hearing Hanneh
Breineh's chatter. "I will never find anything cheaper. It has a
door to lock and I can shut this woman out ... I'll take it," she
said, handing her the money.Hanneh Breineh kissed the greasy bills gloatingly. "I'll treat you
like a mother! You'll have it good by me like in your own home." "Thanks--but I got no time to shmoos. I got to be alone to get my
work done. "The rebuff could not penetrate Hanneh Breineh's joy over the sudden
possession of three dollars. "Long years on you! May we be to good luck to one another!" was
Hanneh Breineh's blessing as she closed the door.Alone in her room--_her_ room, securely hers--yet with the flash of
triumph, a stab of bitterness. All that was hers--so wretched and so
ugly! Had her eager spirit, eager to give and give, no claim to a bit
of beauty--a shred of comfort?Perhaps her family was right in condemning her rashness. Was it
worth while to give up the peace of home, the security of a regular
job--suffer hunger, loneliness, and want--for what? For something she
knew in her heart was beyond her reach.Would her writing ever amount
to enough to vindicate the uprooting of her past? Would she ever become
articulate enough to express beautifully what she saw and felt?What
had she, after all, but a stifling, sweatshop experience, a meager,
night-school education, and this wild, blind hunger to release the
dumbness that choked her? Sophie spread her papers on the cot beside her.Resting her elbows on
the potato barrel, she clutched her pencil with tense fingers. In the
notebook before her were a hundred beginnings, essays, abstractions,
outbursts of chaotic moods.She glanced through the titles: "Believe
in Yourself," "The Quest of the Ideal." Meaningless tracings on the paper, her words seemed to her now--a
restless spirit pawing at the air.The intensity of experience,
the surge of emotion that had been hers when she wrote--where were
they? The words had failed to catch the life-beat--had failed to
register the passion she had poured into them. Perhaps she was not a writer, after all.Had the years and years of
night-study been in vain? Choked with discouragement, the cry broke
from her, "O--God--God help me! I feel--I see, but it all dies in
me--dumb!" * * * * *
Tedious days passed into weeks.Again Sophie sat staring into her
notebook. "There's nothing here that's alive. Not a word yet says
what's in me ...
"But it _is_ in me!" With clenched fist she smote her bosom. "It
must be in me! I believe in it!I got to get it out--even if it tears
my flesh in pieces--even if it kills me!... "But these words--these flat, dead words ...
"Whether I can write or can't write--I can't stop writing. I
can't rest. I can't breathe.There's no peace, no running away
for me on earth except in the struggle to give out what's in me. The
beat from my heart--the blood from my veins--must flow out into my
words." She returned to her unfinished essay, "Believe in Yourself. "Her
mind groping--clutching at the misty incoherence that clouded her
thoughts--she wrote on. "These sentences are yet only wood--lead; but I can't help
it--I'll push on--on--I'll not eat--I'll not sleep--I'll not
move from this spot till I get it to say on the paper what I got in my
heart!" Slowly the dead words seemed to begin to breathe.Her eyes
brightened. Her cheeks flushed. Her very pencil trembled with the eager
onrush of words. Then a sharp rap sounded on her door.With a gesture of irritation
Sophie put down her pencil and looked into the burning, sunken eyes of
her neighbor, Hanneh Breineh. "I got yourself a glass of tea, good friend. It ain't much I got to
give away, but it's warm even if it's nothing. "Sophie scowled. "You mustn't bother yourself with me. I'm so
busy--thanks." "Don't thank me yet so quick. I got no sugar." Hanneh Breineh
edged herself into the room confidingly. "At home, in Poland, I not
only had sugar for tea--but even jelly--a jelly that would lift you up
to heaven. I thought in America everything would be so plenty, I could
drink the tea out from my sugar-bowl. But ach!Not in Poland did my
children starve like in America!" Hanneh Breineh, in a friendly manner, settled herself on the sound end
of the bed, and began her jeremiad. "Yosef, my man, ain't no bread-giver. Already he got consumption
the second year.One week he works and nine weeks he lays sick." In despair Sophie gathered her papers, wondering how to get the woman
out of her room. She glanced through the page she had written, but
Hanneh Breineh, unconscious of her indifference, went right on. "How many times it is tearing the heart out from my body--should I
take Yosef's milk to give to the baby, or the baby's milk to give
to Yosef? If he was dead the pensions they give to widows would help
feed my children.Now I got only the charities to help me. A black year
on them! They should only have to feed their own children on what they
give me. "Resolved not to listen to the intruder, Sophie debated within
herself: "Should I call my essay 'Believe in Yourself,' or
wouldn't it be stronger to say, 'Trust Yourself'?But if I say,
'Trust Yourself,' wouldn't they think that I got the words from
Emerson?" | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Hanneh Breineh's voice went on, but it sounded to Sophie like a faint
buzzing from afar. "Gotteniu!How much did it cost me my life to go
and swear myself that my little Fannie--only skin and bones--that she
is already fourteen!How it chokes me the tears every morning when
I got to wake her and push her out to the shop when her eyes are yet
shutting themselves with sleep!" Sophie glanced at her wrist-watch as it ticked away the precious
minutes.She must get rid of the woman! Had she not left her own
sister, sacrificed all comfort, all association, for solitude and its
golden possibilities? For the first time in her life she had the chance
to be by herself and think.And now, the thoughts which a moment ago
had seemed like a flock of fluttering birds had come so close--and this
woman with her sordid wailing had scattered them. "I'm a savage, a beast, but I got to ask her to get out--this very
minute," resolved Sophie.But before she could summon the courage to
do what she wanted to do, there was a timid knock at the door, and the
wizened little Fannie, her face streaked with tears, stumbled in. "The inspector said it's a lie. I ain't yet fourteen," she
whimpered.Hanneh Breineh paled. "Woe is me! Sent back from the shop? God
from the world--is there no end to my troubles? Why didn't you hide
yourself when you saw the inspector come? ""I was running to hide myself under the table, but she caught me and
she said she'll take me to the Children's Society and arrest me and
my mother for sending me to work too soon." "Arrest me?" shrieked Hanneh Breineh, beating her breast. "Let
them only come and arrest me! I'll show America who I am! Let
them only begin themselves with me!... Black is for my eyes ... the
groceryman will not give us another bread till we pay him the bill! ""The inspector said ..." The child's brow puckered in an effort
to recall the words. "What did the inspector said? Gotteniu!" Hanneh Breineh wrung her
hands in passionate entreaty. "Listen only once to my prayer!Send
on the inspector only a quick death! I only wish her to have her own
house with twenty-four rooms and each of the twenty-four rooms should
be twenty-four beds and the chills and the fever should throw her from
one bed to another! ""Hanneh Breineh, still yourself a little," entreated Sophie. "How can I still myself without Fannie's wages? Bitter is me! Why
do I have to live so long?" "The inspector said ..."
"What did the inspector said? A thunder should strike the
inspector!Ain't I as good a mother as other mothers? Wouldn't I
better send my children to school? But who'll give us to eat? And
who'll pay us the rent?" Hanneh Breineh wiped her red-lidded eyes with the corner of her apron. "The president from America should only come to my bitter heart. Let
him go fighting himself with the pushcarts how to get the eating
a penny cheaper.Let him try to feed his children on the money the
charities give me and we'd see if he wouldn't better send his
littlest ones to the shop better than to let them starve before
his eyes. Woe is me! What for did I come to America?What's my
life--nothing but one terrible, never-stopping fight with the grocer
and the butcher and the landlord ..."
Suddenly Sophie's resentment for her lost morning was forgotten.The
crying waste of Hanneh Breineh's life lay open before her eyes
like pictures in a book. She saw her own life in Hanneh Breineh's
life. Her efforts to write were like Hanneh Breineh's efforts to feed
her children.Behind her life and Hanneh Breineh's life she saw the
massed ghosts of thousands upon thousands beating--beating out their
hearts against rock barriers. "The inspector said ..." Fannie timidly attempted again to
explain. "The inspector! "shrieked Hanneh Breineh, as she seized hold of
Fannie in a rage. "Hellfire should burn the inspector! Tell me again
about the inspector and I'll choke the life out from you--"
Sophie sprang forward to protect the child from the mother. "She's
only trying to tell you something." "Why should she yet throw salt on my wounds? If there was enough
bread in the house would I need an inspector to tell me to send her to
school?If America is so interested in poor people's children, then
why don't they give them to eat till they should go to work? What
learning can come into a child's head when the stomach is empty? "A clutter of feet down the creaking cellar steps, a scuffle of broken
shoes, and a chorus of shrill voices, as the younger children rushed in
from school. "Mamma--what's to eat?" "It smells potatoes!" "Pfui! The pot is empty!It smells over from Cohen's." "Jake grabbed all the bread!" "Mamma--he kicked the piece out from my hands!" "Mamma--it's so empty in my stomach! Ain't there nothing?" "Gluttons--wolves--thieves!" Hanneh Breineh shrieked. "I should
only live to bury you all in one day!" The children, regardless of Hanneh Breineh's invectives, swarmed
around her like hungry bees, tearing at her apron, her skirt.Their
voices rose in increased clamor, topped only by their mother's
imprecations. "Gotteniu! Tear me away from these leeches on my
neck! Send on them only a quick death!... Only a minute's peace
before I die!" "Hanneh Breineh--children!What's the matter?" Shmendrik stood at
the door. The sweet quiet of the old man stilled the raucous voices as
the coming of evening stills the noises of the day. "There's no end to my troubles!Hear them hollering for bread,
and the grocer stopped to give till the bill is paid. Woe is me! Fannie
sent home by the inspector and not a crumb in the house!" "I got something. "The old man put his hands over the heads of the
children in silent benediction. "All come in by me. I got sent me a
box of cake." "Cake!" The children cried, catching at the kind hands and
snuggling about the shabby coat. "Yes.Cake and nuts and raisins and even a bottle of wine." The children leaped and danced around him in their wild burst of joy. "Cake and wine--a box--to you? Have the charities gone crazy?" Hanneh Breineh's eyes sparkled with light and laughter. "No--no," Shmendrik explained hastily. "Not from the charities--from
a friend--for the holidays." Shmendrik nodded invitingly to Sophie, who was standing in the door of
her room. "The roomerkeh will also give a taste with us our party? ""Sure will she!" Hanneh Breineh took Sophie by the arm. "Who'll
say no in this black life to cake and wine?" Young throats burst into shrill cries: "Cake and wine--wine and
cake--raisins and nuts--nuts and raisins! "The words rose in a
triumphant chorus. The children leaped and danced in time to their
chant, almost carrying the old man bodily into his room in the wildness
of their joy.The contagion of this sudden hilarity erased from Sophie's mind the
last thought of work and she found herself seated with the others on
the cobbler's bench. From under his cot the old man drew forth a wooden box.Lifting the
cover he held up before wondering eyes a large frosted cake embedded in
raisins and nuts. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Amid the shouts of glee Shmendrik now waved aloft a large bottle of
grape-juice. The children could contain themselves no longer and dashed forward."Shah--shah! Wait only!" He gently halted their onrush and waved
them back to their seats. "The glasses for the wine!" Hanneh Breineh rushed about hither and
thither in happy confusion.From the sink, the shelf, the window-sill,
she gathered cracked glasses, cups without handles--anything that would
hold even a few drops of the yellow wine.Sacrificial solemnity filled the basement as the children breathlessly
watched Shmendrik cut the precious cake. Mouths--even eyes--watered
with the intensity of their emotion.With almost religious fervor Hanneh Breineh poured the grape-juice
into the glasses held in the trembling hands of the children. So
overwhelming was the occasion that none dared to taste till the ritual
was completed.The suspense was agonizing as one and all waited for
Shmendrik's signal. "Hanneh Breineh--you drink from my Sabbath wine-glass!" Hanneh Breineh clinked glasses with Schmendrik. "Long years on
you--long years on us all! "Then she turned to Sophie, clinked
glasses once more. "May you yet marry yourself from our basement to a
millionaire!" Then she lifted the glass to her lips. The spell was broken.With a yell of triumph the children gobbled the
cake in huge mouthfuls and sucked the golden liquid.All the traditions
of wealth and joy that ever sparkled from the bubbles of champagne
smiled at Hanneh Breineh from her glass of California grape-juice. "Ach!" she sighed. "How good it is to forget your troubles, and
only those that's got troubles have the chance to forget them!" She sipped the grape-juice leisurely, thrilled into ecstacy with each
lingering drop. "How it laughs yet in me, the life, the minute I turn
my head from my worries!" With growing wonder in her eyes, Sophie watched Hanneh Breineh. This
ragged wreck of a woman--how passionately she clung to every atom of
life!Hungrily, she burned through the depths of every experience. How
she flared against wrongs--and how every tiny spark of pleasure blazed
into joy!Within a half-hour this woman had touched the whole range of human
emotions, from bitterest agony to dancing joy. The terrible despair
at the onrush of her starving children when she cried out, "O that
I should only bury you all in one day! "And now the leaping light of
the words: "How it laughs yet in me, the life, the minute I turn my
head from my worries." "Ach, if I could only write like Hanneh Breineh talks!" thought
Sophie. "Her words dance with a thousand colors.Like a rainbow it
flows from her lips." Sentences from her own essays marched before
her, stiff and wooden. How clumsy, how unreal, were her most labored
phrases compared to Hanneh Breineh's spontaneity.Fascinated, she
listened to Hanneh Breineh, drinking her words as a thirst-perishing
man drinks water. Every bubbling phrase filled her with a drunken
rapture to create. "Up till now I was only trying to write from my head.It wasn't
real--it wasn't life. Hanneh Breineh is real. Hanneh Breineh is
life." "Ach! What do the rich people got but dried-up dollars? Pfui
on them and their money!" Hanneh Breineh held up her glass to be
refilled. "Let me only win a fortune on the lotteree and move myself
in my own bought house. Let me only have my first hundred dollars
in the bank and I'll lift up my head like a person and tell the
charities to eat their own cornmeal.I'll get myself an automobile
like the kind rich ladies and ride up to their houses on Fifth Avenue
and feed them only once on the eating they like so good for me and my
children. "With a smile of benediction Shmendrik refilled the glasses and cut for
each of his guests another slice of cake. Then came the handful of nuts
and raisins.As the children were scurrying about for hammers and iron lasts with
which to crack their nuts, the basement door creaked. Unannounced, a
woman entered--the "friendly visitor" of the charities.Her look of
awful amazement swept the group of merrymakers. "Mr. Shmendrik!--Hanneh Breineh!" Indignation seethed in her
voice. "What's this? A feast--a birthday?" Gasps--bewildered glances--a struggle for utterance! "I came to make my monthly visit--evidently I'm not needed." Shmendrik faced the accusing eyes of the "friendly visitor." "Holiday eating ..."
"Oh--I'm glad you're so prosperous. "Before any one had gained presence of mind enough to explain things,
the door had clanked. The "friendly visitor" had vanished. "Pfui!" Hanneh Breineh snatched up her glass and drained its
contents. "What will she do now?Will we get no more dry bread from
the charities because once we ate cake?" "What for did she come?" asked Sophie. "To see that we don't over-eat ourselves!" returned Hanneh
Breineh. "She's a 'friendly visitor'! She learns us how to cook
cornmeal.By pictures and lectures she shows us how the poor people
should live without meat, without milk, without butter, and without
eggs.Always it's on the end of my tongue to ask her, 'You learned
us to do without so much, why can't you yet learn us how to eat
without eating?'" The children seized the last crumbs of cake that Shmendrik handed them
and rushed for the street. "What a killing look was on her face," said Sophie. "Couldn't
she be a little glad for your gladness?" "Charity ladies--gladness?" The joy of the grape-wine still
rippled in Hanneh Breineh's laughter. "For poor people is only
cornmeal.Ten cents a day--to feed my children!" Still in her rollicking mood Hanneh Breineh picked up the baby and
tossed it like a Bacchante. "Could you be happy a lot with ten cents
in your stomach?Ten cents--half a can of condensed milk--then fill
yourself the rest with water!... Maybe yet feed you with all water and
save the ten-cent pieces to buy you a carriage like the Fifth Avenue
babies!... "The soft sound of a limousine purred through the area grating and two
well-fed figures in seal-skin coats, led by the "friendly visitor,"
appeared at the door. "Mr. Bernstein, you can see for yourself." The "friendly
visitor" pointed to the table.The merry group shrank back. It was as if a gust of icy wind had swept
all the joy and laughter from the basement. "You are charged with intent to deceive and obtain assistance by
dishonest means," said Mr. Bernstein. "Dishonest?" Shmendrik paled.Sophie's throat strained with passionate protest, but no words came
to her release. "A friend--a friend"--stammered Shmendrik--"sent me the holiday
eating." The superintendent of the Social Betterment Society faced him
accusingly. "You told us that you had no friends when you applied to
us for assistance." "My friend--he knew me in my better time." Shmendrik flushed
painfully. "I was once a scholar--respected. I wanted by this one
friend to hold myself like I was."Mr. Bernstein had taken from the bookshelf a number of letters, glanced
through them rapidly and handed them one by one to the deferential
superintendent. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Shmendrik clutched at his heart in an agony of humiliation. Suddenly
his bent body straightened.His eyes dilated. "My letters--my
life--you dare?" "Of course we dare!" The superintendent returned Shmendrik's
livid gaze, made bold by the confidence that what he was doing was the
only scientific method of administering philanthropy. "These dollars,
so generously given, must go to those most worthy.... I find in these
letters references to gifts of fruit and other luxuries you did not
report at our office." "He never kept nothing for himself!" Hanneh Breineh broke in
defensively. "He gave it all for the children." Ignoring the interruption Mr. Bernstein turned to the "friendly
visitor." "I'm glad you brought my attention to this case. It's
but one of the many impositions on our charity ... Come ..."
"Kossacks! Pogromschiks! "Sophie's rage broke at last. "You
call yourselves Americans? You dare call yourselves Jews? You bosses of
the poor!This man Shmendrik, whose house you broke into, whom you made
to shame like a beggar--he is the one Jew from whom the Jews can be
proud! He gives all he is--all he has--as God gives. _He is_ charity. "But you--you are the greed--the shame of the Jews!_All-right-niks_--fat
bellies in fur coats! What do you give from yourselves? You may eat and bust eating! Nothing you give till you've
stuffed yourselves so full that your hearts are dead!" The door closed in her face.Her wrath fell on indifferent backs as the
visitors mounted the steps to the street. Shmendrik groped blindly for the Bible. In a low, quavering voice,
he began the chant of the oppressed--the wail of the downtrodden. "I
am afraid, and a trembling taketh hold of my flesh. Wherefore do the
wicked live, become old, yea, mighty in power?" Hanneh Breineh and the children drew close around the old man.They
were weeping--unconscious of their weeping--deep-buried memories roused
by the music, the age-old music of the Hebrew race. Through the grating Sophie saw the limousine pass.The chant flowed
on: "Their houses are safe from fear; neither is the rod of God upon
them." Silently Sophie stole back to her room. She flung herself on the cot,
pressed her fingers to her burning eyeballs.For a long time she lay
rigid, clenched--listening to the drumming of her heart like the sea
against rock barriers. Presently the barriers burst. Something in her
began pouring itself out. She felt for her pencil--paper--and began
to write.Whether she reached out to God or man she knew not, but she
wrote on and on all through that night. The gray light entering her grated window told her that beyond was
dawn. Sophie looked up: "Ach! At last it writes itself in me! "she whispered triumphantly. "It's not me--it's their cries--my
own people--crying in me! Hanneh Breineh, Shmendrik, they will not be
stilled in me, till all America stops to listen. "HOW I FOUND AMERICA
Part I
Every breath I drew was a breath of fear, every shadow a stifling
shock, every footfall struck on my heart like the heavy boot of the
Cossack.On a low stool in the middle of the only room in our mud hut sat my
father--his red beard falling over the Book of Isaiah open before
him.On the tile stove, on the benches that were our beds, even on the
earthen floor, sat the neighbors' children, learning from him the
ancient poetry of the Hebrew race.As he chanted, the children repeated:
"The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness,
Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. "Every valley shall be exalted,
And every mountain and hill shall be made low,
And the crooked shall be made straight,
And the rough places plain. "And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together. "Undisturbed by the swaying and chanting of teacher and pupils, old
Kakah, our speckled hen, with her brood of chicks, strutted and pecked
at the potato-peelings which fell from my mother's lap, as she
prepared our noon meal.I stood at the window watching the road, lest the Cossack come upon us
unawares to enforce the ukaz of the Czar, which would tear the bread
from our mouths: "No Chadir shall be held in a room
used for cooking and sleeping. "With one eye I watched ravenously my mother cutting chunks of black
bread. At last the potatoes were ready. She poured them out of the iron
pot into a wooden bowl and placed them in the center of the table.Instantly the swaying and chanting ceased, the children rushed
forward. The fear of the Cossacks was swept away from my heart by the
fear that the children would get my potato. The sentry deserted his post.With a shout of joy I seized my portion
and bit a huge mouthful of mealy delight. At that moment the door was driven open by the blow of an iron
heel. The Cossack's whip swished through the air. Screaming, we
scattered.The children ran out--our livelihood gone with them. "Oi weh," wailed my mother, clutching her breast, "is there a God
over us--and sees all this? "With grief-glazed eyes my father muttered a broken prayer as the
Cossack thundered the ukaz: "A thousand rubles fine or a year in
prison if you are ever found again teaching children where you're
eating and sleeping." "Gottuniu! "pleaded my mother, "would you tear the last skin from
our bones? Where else can we be eating and sleeping? Or should we keep
chadir in the middle of the road? Have we houses with separate rooms
like the Czar? "Ignoring my mother's entreaties the Cossack strode out of the hut. My
father sank into a chair, his head bowed in the silent grief of the
helpless. "God from the world"--my mother wrung her hands--"is there no end
to our troubles?When will the earth cover me and my woes?" I watched the Cossack disappear down the road. All at once I saw the
whole village running toward us. I dragged my mother to the window to
see the approaching crowd. "Gewalt!What more is falling over our heads?" she cried in alarm. Masheh Mindel, the water-carrier's wife, headed a wild procession.The baker, the butcher, the shoemaker, the tailor, the goat-herd,
the workers of the fields, with their wives and children,
pressed toward us through a cloud of dust. Masheh Mindel, almost fainting, fell in front of the doorway. "A
letter from America!" she gasped. "A letter from America!" echoed the crowd, as they snatched the
letter from her and thrust it into my father's hands. "Read! Read!" they shouted tumultuously.My father looked through the letter, his lips uttering no sound. In
breathless suspense the crowd gazed at him. Their eyes shone with
wonder and reverence for the only man in the village who could read.Masheh Mindel crouched at his feet, her neck stretched toward him to
catch each precious word of the letter. "To my worthy wife, Masheh Mindel, and to my loving son, Susha
Feifel, and to my precious darling daughter, the apple of my eye, the
pride of my life, Tzipkeleh! | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
"Long years and good luck on you!May the blessings from heaven fall
over your beloved heads and save you from all harm! "First I come to tell you that I am well and in good health. May I
hear the same from you. "Secondly, I am telling you that my sun is beginning to shine in
America.I am becoming a person--a business man. "I have for myself a stand in the most crowded part of America,
where people are as thick as flies and every day is like market-day
by a fair. My business is from bananas and apples.The day begins
with my pushcart full of fruit, and the day never ends before I count
up at least $2.00 profit--that means four rubles. Stand before your
eyes ... I ... Gedalyeh Mindel, four rubles a day, twenty-four rubles
a week! "* * * * *
"Gedalyeh Mindel, the water-carrier, twenty-four roubles a
week ..." The words leaped like fire in the air. We gazed at his wife, Masheh Mindel--a dried-out bone of a woman. "Masheh Mindel, with a husband in America--Masheh Mindel, the wife of
a man earning twenty-four rubles a week!" We looked at her with new reverence. Already she was a being from
another world. The dead, sunken eyes became alive with light.The worry
for bread that had tightened the skin of her cheek-bones was gone. The
sudden surge of happiness filled out her features, flushing her face as
with wine.The two starved children clinging to her skirts, dazed with excitement,
only dimly realized their good fortune by the envious glances of the
others. "Thirdly, I come to tell you," the letter went on, "white bread
and meat I eat every day just like the millionaires. "Fourthly, I have to tell you that I am no more Gedalyeh
Mindel--_Mister_ Mindel they call me in America. "Fifthly, Masheh Mindel and my dear children, in America there are no
mud huts where cows and chickens and people live all together.I have
for myself a separate room with a closed door, and before any one can
come to me, I can give a say, 'Come in,' or 'Stay out,' like a
king in a palace. "Lastly, my darling family and people of the Village of Sukovoly,
there is no Czar in America." * * * * *
My father paused; the hush was stifling. No Czar--no Czar in
America!Even the little babies repeated the chant: "No Czar in
America! "* * * * *
"In America they ask everybody who should be the President, and I,
Gedalyeh Mindel, when I take out my Citizens papers, will have as much
to say who shall be the next President in America, as Mr. Rockefeller
the greatest millionaire. "Fifty rubles I am sending you for your ship-ticket to America. And
may all Jews who suffer in Goluth from ukazes and pogroms live yet to
lift up their heads like me, Gedalyeh Mindel, in America." * * * * *
Fifty rubles!A ship-ticket to America! That so much good luck should
fall on one head! A savage envy bit me. Gloomy darts from narrowed eyes
stabbed Masheh Mindel. Why should not we too have a chance to get away from this dark
land?Has not every heart the same hunger for America? The same longing
to live and laugh and breathe like a free human being? America is for
all. Why should only Masheh Mindel and her children have a chance to
the new world?Murmuring and gesticulating the crowd dispersed. Each one knew every one else's thought: How to get to America. What
could they pawn? From where could they borrow for a ship-ticket?Silently we followed my father back into the hut from which the Cossack
had driven us a while before. We children looked from mother to father and from father to mother. "Gottuniu! The Czar himself is pushing us to America by this last
ukaz. "My mother's face lighted up the hut like a lamp. "Meshugeneh Yidini!" admonished my father. "Always your head in
the air. What--where--America? With what money? Can dead people lift
themselves up to dance?" "Dance? "The samovar and the brass pots rang and reëchoed with
my mother's laughter. "I could dance myself over the waves of the
ocean to America." In amazed delight at my mother's joy we children rippled and chuckled
with her.My father paced the room--his face dark with dread for the morrow. "Empty hands--empty pockets--yet it dreams itself in you America." "Who is poor who has hopes on America?" flaunted my mother. "Sell my red quilted petticoat that grandmother left for my dowry,"
I urged in excitement. "Sell the feather beds, sell the samovar," chorused the children. "Sure we can sell everything--the goat and all the winter things,"
added my mother; "it must be always summer in America." I flung my arms around my brother and he seized Bessie by the curls,
and we danced about the room crazy with joy. "Beggars! "laughed my mother, "why are you so happy with
yourselves? How will you go to America without a shirt on your
back--without shoes on your feet?" But we ran out into the road, shouting and singing: "We'll sell
everything we got--we'll go to America. ""White bread and meat we'll eat every day--in America! In
America!" That very evening we fetched Berel Zalman, the usurer, and showed him
all our treasures, piled up in the middle of the hut. "Look, all these fine feather beds, Berel Zalman," urged my mother;
"this grand fur coat came from Nijny itself. My grandfather bought it
at the fair." I held up my red quilted petticoat, the supreme sacrifice of my
ten-year-old life.Even my father shyly pushed forward the samovar. "It can hold enough
tea for the whole village." "Only a hundred rubles for them all," pleaded my mother; "only
enough to lift us to America. Only one hundred little rubles." "A hundred rubles? Pfui! "sniffed the pawnbroker. "Forty is
overpaid. Not even thirty is it worth." But coaxing and cajoling my mother got a hundred rubles out of him. * * * * *
Steerage--dirty bundles--foul odors--seasick humanity--but I saw and
heard nothing of the foulness and ugliness around me. I floated in
showers of sunshine; visions upon visions of the new world opened
before me.From lips to lips flowed the golden legend of the golden country:
"In America you can say what you feel--you can voice your thoughts in
the open streets without fear of a Cossack." "In America is a home for everybody. The land is your land.Not like
in Russia where you feel yourself a stranger in the village where you
were born and raised--the village in which your father and grandfather
lie buried." "Everybody is with everybody alike, in America.Christians and Jews
are brothers together." "An end to the worry for bread. An end to the fear of the bosses over
you. Everybody can do what he wants with his life in America." "There are no high or low in America.Even the President holds hands
with Gedalyeh Mindel." "Plenty for all. Learning flows free like milk and honey." * * * * *
"Learning flows free." The words painted pictures in my mind.I saw before me free schools,
free colleges, free libraries, where I could learn and learn and keep
on learning. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
In our village was a school, but only for Christian children.In the
schools of America I'd lift up my head and laugh and dance--a child
with other children. Like a bird in the air, from sky to sky, from star
to star, I'd soar and soar. "Land! Land!" came the joyous shout. "America! We're in America! "cried my mother, almost smothering
us in her rapture. All crowded and pushed on deck. They strained and stretched to get the
first glimpse of the "golden country," lifting their children on
their shoulders that they might see beyond them.Men fell on their knees to pray. Women hugged their babies and
wept. Children danced. Strangers embraced and kissed like old
friends. Old men and women had in their eyes a look of young people
in love.Age-old visions sang themselves in me--songs of freedom of an oppressed
people. America!--America! Part II
Between buildings that loomed like mountains, we struggled with our
bundles, spreading around us the smell of the steerage.Up Broadway,
under the bridge, and through the swarming streets of the ghetto, we
followed Gedalyeh Mindel.I looked about the narrow streets of squeezed-in stores and houses,
ragged clothes, dirty bedding oozing out of the windows, ash-cans and
garbage-cans cluttering the side-walks. A vague sadness pressed down my
heart--the first doubt of America. "Where are the green fields and open spaces in America?" cried my
heart. "Where is the golden country of my dreams? "A loneliness for the fragrant silence of the woods that lay beyond our
mud hut welled up in my heart, a longing for the soft, responsive earth
of our village streets.All about me was the hardness of brick and
stone, the stinking smells of crowded poverty. "Here's your house with separate rooms like in a palace." Gedalyeh Mindel flung open the door of a dingy, airless flat. "Oi weh!" my mother cried in dismay. "Where's the sunshine in
America?" She went to the window and looked out at the blank wall of the next
house. "Gottuniu! Like in a grave so dark ..."
"It ain't so dark, it's only a little shady." Gedalyeh Mindel
lighted the gas. "Look only"--he pointed with pride to the dim
gaslight. "No candles, no kerosene lamps in America, you turn on a
screw and put to it a match and you got it light like with sunshine." Again the shadow fell over me, again the doubt of America!In America were rooms without sunlight, rooms to sleep in, to eat in,
to cook in, but without sunshine. And Gedalyeh Mindel was happy.Could
I be satisfied with just a place to sleep and eat in, and a door to
shut people out--to take the place of sunlight? Or would I always need
the sunlight to be happy? And where was there a place in America for me to play?I looked out
into the alley below and saw pale-faced children scrambling in the
gutter. "Where is America?" cried my heart. * * * * *
My eyes were shutting themselves with sleep.Blindly, I felt for the
buttons on my dress, and buttoning I sank back in sleep again--the
deadweight sleep of utter exhaustion. "Heart of mine!" my mother's voice moaned above me. "Father is
already gone an hour.You know how they'll squeeze from you a nickel
for every minute you're late. Quick only!" I seized my bread and herring and tumbled down the stairs and out
into the street.I ate running, blindly pressing through the hurrying
throngs of workers--my haste and fear choking each mouthful.I felt a strangling in my throat as I neared the sweatshop prison;
all my nerves screwed together into iron hardness to endure the day's
torture.For an instant I hesitated as I faced the grated window of the old
dilapidated building--dirt and decay cried out from every crumbling
brick.In the maw of the shop, raging around me the roar and the clatter,
the clatter and the roar, the merciless grind of the pounding
machines. Half maddened, half deadened, I struggled to think, to feel,
to remember--what am I--who am I--why was I here?I struggled in vain--bewildered and lost in a whirlpool of noise. "America--America--where was America?" it cried in my heart. The factory whistle--the slowing-down of the machines--the shout of
release hailing the noon hour.I woke as from a tense nightmare--a weary waking to pain. In the dark chaos of my brain reason began to dawn. In my stifled
heart feelings began to pulse. The wound of my wasted life began to
throb and ache.My childhood choked with drudgery--must my youth too
die--unlived? The odor of herring and garlic--the ravenous munching of food--laughter
and loud, vulgar jokes. Was it only I who was so wretched? I looked
at those around me.Were they happy or only insensible to their
slavery? How could they laugh and joke? Why were they not torn with
rebellion against this galling grind--the crushing, deadening movements
of the body, where only hands live and hearts and brains must die?A touch on my shoulder. I looked up. It was Yetta Solomon from the
machine next to mine. "Here's your tea." I stared at her, half hearing. "Ain't you going to eat nothing?" "Oi weh! Yetta! I can't stand it!" The cry broke from me. "I
didn't come to America to turn into a machine. I came to America to
make from myself a person. Does America want only my hands--only the
strength of my body--not my heart--not my feelings--my thoughts? ""Our heads ain't smart enough," said Yetta, practically. "We
ain't been to school like the American-born." "What for did I come to America but to go to school--to learn--to
think--to make something beautiful from my life ..."
"Sh-sh! Sh-sh!The boss--the boss!" came the warning whisper. A sudden hush fell over the shop as the boss entered. He raised his
hand. Breathless silence. The hard, red face with pig's eyes held us under its sickening
spell.Again I saw the Cossack and heard him thunder the ukaz. Prepared for disaster, the girls paled as they cast at each other
sidelong, frightened glances. "Hands," he addressed us, fingering the gold watch-chain that
spread across his fat belly, "it's slack in the other trades and I
can get plenty girls begging themselves to work for half what you're
getting--only I ain't a skinner.I always give my hands a show to
earn their bread. From now on, I'll give you fifty cents a dozen
shirts instead of seventy-five, but I'll give you night-work, so you
needn't lose nothing." And he was gone. The stillness of death filled the shop.Each one felt the heart of the
other bleed with her own helplessness. A sudden sound broke the silence. A woman sobbed chokingly. It was
Balah Rifkin, a widow with three children. "Oi weh!" She tore at her scrawny neck. "The blood-sucker--the
thief!How will I give them to eat--my babies--my babies--my hungry
little lambs!" "Why do we let him choke us?" "Twenty-five cents less on a dozen--how will we be able to live?" "He tears the last skin from our bones!" "Why didn't nobody speak up to him? ""Tell him he couldn't crush us down to worse than we had in
Russia?" "Can we help ourselves? Our life lies in his hands." Something in me forced me forward. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
Rage at the bitter greed tore
me. Our desperate helplessness drove me to strength. "I'll go to the boss!" I cried, my nerves quivering with fierce
excitement. "I'll tell him Balah Rifkin has three hungry mouths
to feed. "Pale, hungry faces thrust themselves toward me, thin, knotted hands
reached out, starved bodies pressed close about me. "Long years on you!" cried Balah Rifkin, drying her eyes with a
corner of her shawl. "Tell him about my old father and me, his only bread-giver," came
from Bessie Sopolsky, a gaunt-faced girl with a hacking cough. "And I got no father or mother and four of them younger than me
hanging on my neck. "Jennie Feist's beautiful young face was
already scarred with the gray worries of age. America, as the oppressed of all lands have dreamed America to be, and
America _as it is_, flashed before me--a banner of fire!Behind me I
felt masses pressing--thousands of immigrants--thousands upon thousands
crushed by injustice, lifted me as on wings. I entered the boss's office without a shadow of fear.I was not
I--the wrongs of my people burned through me till I felt the very flesh
of my body a living flame of rebellion. I faced the boss. "We can't stand it!" I cried. "Even as it is we're hungry. Fifty cents a dozen would starve us.Can you, a Jew, tear the
bread from another Jew's mouth?" "You, fresh mouth, you! Who are you to learn me my business?" "Weren't you yourself once a machine slave--your life in the hands
of your boss?" "You--loaferin--money for nothing you want!The minute they begin
to talk English they get flies in their nose.... A black year on
you--trouble-maker! I'll have no smart heads in my shop! Such
freshness! Out you get ... out from my shop! "Stunned and hopeless, the wings of my courage broken, I groped my way
back to them--back to the eager, waiting faces--back to the crushed
hearts aching with mine. As I opened the door they read our defeat in my face. "Girls!" I held out my hands. "He's fired me." My voice died in the silence. Not a girl stirred. Their heads only bent
closer over their machines. "Here, you! Get yourself out of here!" The boss thundered at
me. "Bessie Sopolsky and you, Balah Rifkin, take out her machine into
the hall.... I want no big-mouthed Americanerins in my shop." Bessie Sopolsky and Balah Rifkin, their eyes black with tragedy,
carried out my machine.Not a hand was held out to me, not a face met mine. I felt them shrink
from me as I passed them on my way out. In the street I found I was crying. The new hope that had flowed
in me so strong bled out of my veins.A moment before, our
togetherness had made me believe us so strong--and now I saw each
alone--crushed--broken. What were they all but crawling worms, servile
grubbers for bread?I wept not so much because the girls had deserted me, but because I saw
for the first time how mean, how vile, were the creatures with whom I
had to work. How the fear for bread had dehumanized their last shred
of humanity!I felt I had not been working among human beings, but in a
jungle of savages who had to eat one another alive in order to survive. And then, in the very bitterness of my resentment, the hardness broke
in me.I saw the girls through their own eyes as if I were inside of
them. What else could they have done? Was not an immediate crust of
bread for Balah Rifkin's children more urgent than truth--more vital
than honor?Could it be that they ever had dreamed of America as I had dreamed? Had
their faith in America wholly died in them? Could my faith be killed as
theirs had been? Gasping from running, Yetta Solomon flung her arms around me. "You golden heart!I sneaked myself out from the shop--only to tell
you I'll come to see you to-night.I'd give the blood from under
my nails for you--only I got to run back--I got to hold my job--my
mother--"
I hardly saw or heard her--my senses stunned with my defeat.I walked
on in a blind daze--feeling that any moment I would drop in the middle
of the street from sheer exhaustion. Every hope I had clung to--every human stay--every reality was torn
from under me. I sank in bottomless blackness.I had only one wish
left--to die. Was it then only a dream--a mirage of the hungry-hearted people in the
desert lands of oppression--this age-old faith in America--the beloved,
the prayed-for "golden country"?Had the starved villagers of Sukovoly lifted above their sorrows a mere
rainbow vision that led them--where--where? To the stifling submission
of the sweatshop or the desperation of the streets! "O God! What is there beyond this hell? "my soul cried in
me. "Why can't I make a quick end to myself? "A thousand voices within me and about me answered:
"My faith is dead, but in my blood their faith still clamors and
aches for fulfillment--_dead generations whose faith though beaten back
still presses on--a resistless, deathless force!_
"In this America that crushes and kills me, their spirit drives me
on--to struggle--to suffer--but never to submit. "In my desperate darkness their lost lives loomed--a living flame of
light.Again I saw the mob of dusty villagers crowding around my father
as he read the letter from America--their eager faces thrust out--their
eyes blazing with the same hope, the same age-old faith that drove
me on--
A sudden crash against my back.Dizzy with pain I fell--then all was
darkness and quiet. * * * * *
I opened my eyes. A white-clad figure bent over me. Had I died? Was I
in the heaven of the new world--in America? My eyes closed again.A misty happiness filled my being. "Learning flows free like milk and honey," it dreamed itself in me. I was in my heaven--in the schools of America--in open, sunny fields--a
child with other children.Our lesson-books were singing birds and
whispering trees--chanting brooks and beckoning skies. We breathed in
learning and wisdom as naturally as flowers breathe in sunlight.After our lessons were over, we all joined hands skipping about like a
picture of dancing fairies I had once seen in a shop-window. I was so full of the joy of togetherness--the great wonder of the new
world; it pressed on my heart like sorrow.Slowly, I stole away from
the other children into silent solitude, wrestling and praying to give
out what surged in me into some form of beauty. And out of my struggle
to shape my thoughts beautifully, a great song filled the world. "Soon she's all right to come back to the shop--yes, nurse?" The
voice of Yetta Solomon broke into my dreaming. Wearily I opened my eyes. I saw I was still on earth. Yetta's broad, generous face smiled anxiously at me. "Lucky yet the
car that run you over didn't break your hands or your feet. So long
you got yet good hands you'll soon be back by the machine." "Machine?" I shuddered. "I can't go back to the shop again.I
got so used to sunlight and quiet in the hospital I'll not be able to
stand the hell again." "Shah!--Shah!" soothed Yetta. "Why don't you learn yourself
to take life like it is? | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
What's got to be, got to be.In Russia, you
could hope to run away from your troubles to America. But from America
where can you go?" "Yes," I sighed. "In the blackest days of Russia, there was
always the hope from America.In Russia we had only a mud hut; not
enough to eat and always the fear from the Cossack, but still we
managed to look up to the sky, to dream, to think of the new world
where we'll have a chance to be people, not slaves. ""What's the use to think so much? It only eats up the flesh from
your bones. Better rest ..."
"How can I rest when my choked-in thoughts tear me to pieces? I need
school more than a starving man needs bread." Yetta's eyes brooded over me.Suddenly a light broke. "I got an
idea. There's a new school for greenhorns where they learn them
anything they want ..."
"What--where?" I raised myself quickly, hot with eagerness. "How
do you know from it--tell me only--quick--since when--"
"The girl next door by my house--she used to work by cigars--and now
she learns there." "What does she learn?" "Don't get yourself so excited. Your eyes are jumping out from your
head. "I fell back weakly: "Oi weh! Tell me!" I begged. "All I know is that she likes what she learns better than rolling
cigars. And it's called 'School for Immigrant Girls.'" "Your time is up. Another visitor is waiting to come in," said the
nurse.As Yetta walked out, my mother, with the shawl over her head, rushed in
and fell on my bed kissing me. "Oi weh! Oi weh! Half my life is out from me from fright. How did all
happen?" "Don't worry yourself so.I'm nearly well already and will go
back to work soon." "Talk not work. Get only a little flesh on your bones. They say they
send from the hospital people to the country. Maybe they'll send
you." "But how will you live without my wages? ""Davy is already peddling with papers and Bessie is selling
lolly-pops after school in the park. Yesterday she brought home already
twenty-eight cents. "For all her efforts to be cheerful, I looked at her pinched face and
wondered if she had eaten that day. Released from the hospital, I started home. As I neared Allen Street,
the terror of the dark rooms swept over me. "No--no--I can't
yet go back to the darkness and the stinking smells," I said to
myself. "So long they're getting along without my wages, let
them think I went to the country and let me try out that school for
immigrants that Yetta told me about. "So I went to the Immigrant School. A tall, gracious woman received me, not an employee, but a
benefactress. The love that had rushed from my heart toward the Statue in the
Bay, rushed out to Mrs. Olney. She seemed to me the living spirit of
America.All that I had ever dreamed America to be shone to me out of
the kindness of her brown eyes. She would save me from the sordidness
that was crushing me I felt the moment I looked at her.Sympathy and
understanding seemed to breathe from her serene presence. I longed to open my heart to her, but I was so excited I didn't know
where to begin. "I'm crazy to learn! "I gasped breathlessly, and then the very
pressure of the things I had to say choked me. An encouraging smile warmed the fine features. "What trade would you like to learn--sewing-machine operating?" "Sewing-machine operating?" I cried. "Oi weh! "I shuddered. "Only the thought 'machine' kills me. Even when I only look
on clothes, it weeps in me when I think how the seams from
everything people wear is sweated in the shop. ""Well, then"--putting a kind hand on my shoulder--"how would you
like to learn to cook? There's a great need for trained servants and
you'd get good wages and a pleasant home." "Me--a servant?" I flung back her hand. "Did I come to America to
make from myself a cook?" Mrs. Olney stood abashed a moment. "Well, my dear," she said
deliberately, "what would you like to take up?" "I got ideas how to make America better, only I don't know how to
say it out.Ain't there a place I can learn?" A startled woman stared at me. For a moment not a word came. Then she
proceeded with the same kind smile. "It's nice of you to want to
help America, but I think the best way would be for you to learn a
trade.That's what this school is for, to help girls find themselves,
and the best way to do is to learn something useful." "Ain't thoughts useful? Does America want only the work from my
body, my hands? Ain't it thoughts that turn over the world?" "Ah!But we don't want to turn over the world." Her voice cooled. "But there's got to be a change in America!" I cried. "Us
immigrants want to be people--not 'hands'--not slaves of the
belly! And it's the chance to think out thoughts that makes
people. ""My child, thought requires leisure. The time will come for
that. First you must learn to earn a good living." "Did I come to America for a living?" "What did you come for?" "I came to give out all the fine things that was choked in me in
Russia.I came to help America make the new world.... They said, in
America I could open up my heart and fly free in the air--to sing--to
dance--to live--to love.... Here I got all those grand things in me,
and America won't let me give nothing. ""Perhaps you made a mistake in coming to this country. Your own land
might appreciate you more." A quick glance took me in from head to
foot. "I'm afraid that you have come to the wrong place. We only
teach trades here. "She turned to her papers and spoke over her shoulder. "I think you
will have to go elsewhere if you want to set the world on fire." Part III
Blind passion swayed me as I walked out of the Immigrant School,
not knowing where I was going, not caring.One moment I was swept
with the fury of indignation, the next moment bent under the burden
of despair.But out of this surging conflict one thought--one truth
gradually grew clearer and clearer to me: Without comprehension, the
immigrant would forever remain shut out--a stranger in America.Until
America can release the heart as well as train the hand of the
immigrant, he would forever remain driven back upon himself, corroded
by the very richness of the unused gifts within his soul.I longed for a friend--a real American friend--some one different from
Mrs. Olney, some one who would understand this vague, blind hunger for
release that consumed me. But how, where could I find such a friend?As I neared the house we lived in, I paused terror-stricken. On the
sidewalk stood a jumbled pile of ragged house-furnishings that looked
familiar--chairs, dishes, kitchen pans. Amidst bundles of bedding and
broken furniture stood my mother.Oblivious of the curious crowd, she
lit the Sabbath candles and prayed over them. In a flash I understood it all. Because of the loss of my wages while
I was in the hospital, we had been evicted for unpaid rent. It was
Sabbath eve.My father was in the synagogue praying and my mother,
defiant of disgrace, had gone on with the ceremony of the Sabbath. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
All the romance of our race was in the light of those Sabbath
candles.Homeless, abandoned by God and man, yet in the very desolation
of the streets my mother's faith burned--a challenge to all America. "Mammeh!" I cried, pushing through the crowd. Bessie and Dave
darted forward.In a moment the four of us stood clinging to one
another, amid the ruins of our broken home. * * * * *
A neighbor invited us into her house for supper.No sooner had
we sat down at the table than there was a knock at the door and a
square-figured young woman entered, asking to see my mother. "I am from the Social Betterment Society," she said. "I hear
you've been dispossessed.What's the trouble here?" "Oi weh! My bitter heart!" I yet see before me the anguish of my
mother's face as she turned her head away from the charity lady. My father's eyes sank to the floor. I could feel him shrink in upon
himself like one condemned.The bite of food turned to gall in my throat. "How long have you been in America? Where were you born?" She
questioned by rote, taking out pad and pencil. The silence of the room was terrible.The woman who had invited us for
supper slunk into the bedroom, unable to bear our shame. "How long have you been in America?" repeated the charity lady. Choked silence. "Is there any one here who can speak?" She translated her question
into Yiddish. "A black year on Gedalyeh Mindel, the liar!" my mother burst out
at last. "Why did we leave our home? We were among our own. We were
people there. But what are we here? Nobodies--nobodies! Cats and dogs
at home ain't thrown in the street.Such things could only happen in
America--the land without a heart--the land without a God!" "For goodness' sakes! Is there any one here intelligent enough to
answer a straight question? "The charity lady turned with disgusted
impatience from my mother to me. "Can you tell me how long you have
been in this country? Where were you born?" "None of your business!" I struck out blindly, not aware of what I
was saying. "Why so bold?We are only trying to help you and you are so
resentful." "To the Devil with your help! I'm sick no longer. I can take care
of my mother--without your charity! "The next day I went back to the shop--to the same long hours--to
the same low wages--to the same pig-eyed, fat-bellied boss. But I
was no longer the same. For the first time in my life I bent to the
inevitable. I accepted my defeat.But something in me, stronger than I,
rose triumphant even in my surrender. "Yes, I must submit to the shop," I thought. "But the shop shall
not crush me. Only my body I must sell into slavery--not my heart--not
my soul. "To any one who sees me from without, I am only a dirt-eating worm,
a grub in the ground, but I know that above this dark earth-place in
which I am sunk is the green grass--and beyond the green grass, the sun
and sky.Alone, unaided, I must dig my way up to the light!" * * * * *
Lunch-hour at the factory. My book of Shelley's poems before me and
I was soon millions of miles beyond the raucous voices of the hungry
eaters. "Did you already hear the last news?" Yetta tore my book from me in
her excitement. "What news?" I scowled at her for waking me from my dreams. "We're going to have electricity by the machines.And the
forelady says that the new boss will give us ten cents more on a dozen
waists!" "God from the world! How did it happen--electricity--better pay?" I asked in amazement. For that was the first I had heard of improved
conditions of work.But little by little, step by step, the sanitation improved. Open
windows, swept floors, clean wash-rooms, individual drinking-cups
introduced a new era of factory hygiene.Our shop was caught up in the
general movement for social betterment that stirred the country. It was not all done in a day.Weary years of struggle passed before the
workers emerged from the each-for-himself existence into an organized
togetherness for mutual improvement.At last, with the shortened hours of work, I had enough vitality
left at the end of the day to join the night-school. Again my
dream flamed. Again America beckoned. In the school there would be
education--air, life for my cramped-in spirit.I would learn to form
the thoughts that surged formless in me. I would find the teacher that
would make me articulate. Shelley was English literature. So I joined the literature class. The course began with the "De
Coverley Papers. "Filled with insatiate thirst, I drank in every line
with the feeling that any minute I would get to the fountain-heart of
revelation. Night after night I read with tireless devotion. But of what?The
manners and customs of the eighteenth century, of people two hundred
years dead.One evening after a month's attendance, when the class had dwindled
from fifty to four and the teacher began scolding us who were left for
those who were absent, my bitterness broke. "Do you know why all the girls are dropping away from the
class?It's because they have too much sense to waste themselves
on the 'De Coverley Papers.' Us four girls are four fools. We
could learn more in the streets. It's dirty and wrong, but it's
life. What are the 'De Coverley Papers'?Dry dust fit for the ash
can." "Perhaps you had better tell the board of education your ideas of the
standard classics," she scoffed, white with rage. "Classics?If all the classics are as dead as the 'De Coverley
Papers,' I'd rather read the ads in the papers. How can I learn
from this old man that's dead two hundred years how to live my
life?" That was the first of many schools I had tried.And they were all the
same. A dull course of study and the lifeless, tired teachers--no
more interested in their pupils than in the wooden benches before
them--chilled all my faith in the American schools.More and more the all-consuming need for a friend possessed me. In the
street, in the cars, in the subways, I was always seeking, ceaselessly
seeking, for eyes, a face, the flash of a smile that would be light in
my darkness.I felt sometimes that I was only burning out my heart for a shadow,
an echo, a wild dream. But I couldn't help it. Nothing was real to me
but my hope of finding a friend.One day my sister Bessie came home much excited over her new
high-school teacher. "Miss Latham makes it so interesting!" she
exclaimed. "She stops in the middle of the lesson and tells us
things. She ain't like a teacher. She's like a real person. "At supper next evening, Bessie related more wonder stories of
her beloved teacher. "She's so different!She's friends with
us.... To-day, when she gave us out our composition, Mamie Cohen asked
from what book we should read up and she said, 'Just take it out of
your heart and say it.'" "Just take it out of your heart and say it. "The simple words
lingered in my mind, stirring a whirl of hidden thoughts and
feelings. It seemed as if they had been said directly to me. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
A few days later Bessie ran in from school, her cheeks flushed, her
eyes dancing with excitement. "Give a look at the new poem teacher
gave me to learn! "It was a quotation from Kipling:
"Then only the Master shall praise us,
And only the Master shall blame,
And no one shall work for money,
And no one shall work for fame;
But each for the joy of the working,
And each in his separate Star,
Shall draw the thing as he sees it
For the God of things as they are. "Only a few brief lines, but in their music the pulses of my being
leaped into life. And so it was from day to day. Miss Latham's
sayings kept turning themselves in my mind like a lingering melody that
could not be shaken off.Something irresistible seemed to draw me to
her. She beckoned to me almost as strongly as America had on the way
over in the boat. I wondered, "Should I go to see her and talk myself out from my heart
to her? "Meshugeneh! Where--what?How come you to her? What will you say for
your reason? "What's the difference what I'll say! I only want to give a look
on her ..."
And so I kept on restlessly debating. Should I follow my heart and go
to her, or should I have a little sense?Finally the desire to see her became so strong that I could no longer
reason about it. I left the factory in the middle of the day to seek
her out. All the way to her school I prayed: "God--God!If I could only find
one human soul that cared ..."
I found her bending over her desk. Her hair was gray, but she did not
look tired like the other teachers. She was correcting papers and was
absorbed in her task.I watched her, not daring to interrupt. Presently
she threw back her head and gave a little laugh. Then she saw me. "Why, how do you do?" She rose. "Come and sit
down." I felt she was as glad to see me as though she had expected me. "I feel you can help me," I groped toward her. "I hope I can." She grasped my outstretched hands and led me to a
chair which seemed to be waiting for me. A strange gladness filled me. "Bessie showed me the poem you told her to learn ..." I paused
bewildered. "Yes?" Her friendly eyes urged me to speak. "From what Bessie told me I felt I could talk myself out to you
what's bothering me." I stopped again.She leaned forward with an inviting interest. "Go on! Tell me all." "I'm an immigrant many years already here, but I'm still
seeking America. My dream America is more far from me than it was
in the old country.Always something comes between the immigrant
and the American," I went on blindly. "They see only his skin,
his outside--not what's in his heart. They don't care if he has a
heart.... I wanted to find some one that would look on me--myself ...I
thought you'd know yourself on a person first off." Abashed at my boldness I lowered my eyes to the floor. "Do go on ... I want to hear." With renewed courage I continued my confessional. "Life is too big for me.I'm lost in this each-for-himself world. I
feel shut out from everything that's going on.... I'm always
fighting--fighting--with myself and everything around me....I hate
when I want to love and I make people hate me when I want to make them
love me." She gave me a quick nod. "I know--I know what you mean. Go on." "I don't know what is with me the matter.I'm so choked....
Sundays and holidays when the other girls go out to enjoy
themselves, I walk around by myself--thinking--thinking.... My thoughts
tear in me and I can't tell them to no one! I want to do something
with my life and I don't know what. ""I'm glad you came," she said. And after a pause, "You can help
me." "Help you?" I cried. It was the first time that an American
suggested that I could help her. "Yes, indeed!I have always wanted to know more of that mysterious
vibrant life--the immigrant. You can help me know my girls." The repression of centuries seemed to rush out of my heart.I told
her everything--of the mud hut in Sukovoly where I was born, of the
Czar's pogroms, of the constant fear of the Cossack, of Gedalyeh
Mindel's letter and of our hopes in coming to America.After I had talked myself out, I felt suddenly ashamed for having
exposed so much, and I cried out to her: "Do you think like the
others that I'm all wrapped up in self? "For some minutes she studied me, and her serenity seemed to project
itself into me. And then she said, as if she too were groping,
"No--no--but too intense." "I hate to be so all the time intense. But how can I help
it?Everything always drives me back in myself. How can I get myself
out into the free air?" "Don't fight yourself." Her calm, gray eyes penetrated to the
very soul in me. "You are burning up too much vitality....
"You know some of us," she went on--"not many, unfortunately--have
a sort of divine fire which if it does not find expression
turns into smoke.This egoism and self-centeredness which
troubles you is only the smoke of repression." She put her hand over mine. "You have had no one to talk to--no one
to share your thoughts." I marveled at the simplicity with which she explained me to myself.I
couldn't speak. I just looked at her. "But now," she said, gently, "you have some one. Come to me
whenever you wish." "I have a friend," it sang itself in me. "I have a friend." "And you are a born American?" I asked.There was none of that
sure, all-right look of the Americans about her. "Yes, indeed! My mother, like so many mothers,"--and her eyebrows
lifted humorously whimsical,--"claims we're descendants of the
Pilgrim fathers.And that one of our lineal ancestors came over in the
Mayflower." "For all your mother's pride in the Pilgrim fathers, you yourself
are as plain from the heart as an immigrant." "Weren't the Pilgrim fathers immigrants two hundred years ago? "She took from her desk a book called "Our America," by Waldo Frank,
and read to me: "We go forth all to seek America. And in the seeking
we create her. In the quality of our search shall be the nature of the
America that we create." "Ach, friend!Your words are life to me! You make it light for my
eyes!" She opened her arms to me and breathlessly I felt myself drawn to
her. Bonds seemed to burst. A suffusion of light filled my being. Great
choirings lifted me in space. I walked out unseeingly.All the way home the words she read flamed before me: "We go forth
all to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality
of our search shall be the nature of the America that we create. "So all those lonely years of seeking and praying were not in vain! How
glad I was that I had not stopped at the husk--a good job--a good
living--but pressed on, through the barriers of materialism.Through my inarticulate groping and reaching-out I had found the
soul--the spirit--of America! THE END
[ Transcriber's Note:
The following changes have been made to the original text.The first
line presents the text as printed in the original, the second the
amended text. "Ci-i! You really like it, the room?" Shenah Pessah clapped her
"Oi-i! | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
You really like it, the room? "Shenah Pessah clapped her
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. | Yezierska, Anzia - Hungry Hearts |
A morte perpetua,
Libera nos, Domine.So rang forth the supplication, echoing from rock and fell, as the
people of Claudiodunum streamed forth in the May sunshine to invoke
a blessing on the cornlands, olives, and vineyards that won vantage-
ground on the terraces carefully kept up on the slopes of the
wonderful needle-shaped hills of Auvergne.Very recently had the Church of Gaul commenced the custom of going
forth, on the days preceding the Ascension feast, to chant Litanies,
calling down the Divine protection on field and fold, corn and wine,
basket and store.It had been begun in a time of deadly peril from
famine and earthquake, wild beast and wilder foes, and it had been
adopted in the neighbouring dioceses as a regular habit, as indeed
it continued throughout the Western Church during the fourteen
subsequent centuries.One great procession was formed by different bands.The children
were in two troops, a motley collection of all shades; the deep
olive and the rolling black eye betraying Ethiopian or Moorish slave
ancestry, the soft dark complexion and deep brown eye showing the
Roman, and the rufous hair and freckled skin the lower grade of
Cymric Kelt, while a few had the more stately pose, violet eye, and
black hair of the Gael.The boys were marshalled with extreme
difficulty by two or three young monks; their sisters walked far
more orderly, under the care of some consecrated virgin of mature
age.The men formed another troop, the hardy mountaineers still
wearing the Gallic trousers and plaid, though the artisans and
mechanics from the town were clad in the tunic and cloak that were
the later Roman dress, and such as could claim the right folded over
them the white, purple-edged scarf to which the toga had dwindled.Among the women there was the same scale of decreasing nationality
of costume according to rank, though the culmination was in
resemblance to the graceful classic robe of Rome instead of the last
Parisian mode.The poorer women wore bright, dark crimson, or blue
in gown or wrapping veil; the ladies were mostly in white or black,
as were also the clergy, excepting such as had officiated at the
previous Eucharist, and who wore their brilliant priestly vestments,
heavy with gold and embroidery.Beautiful alike to eye and ear was the procession, above all from a
distance, now filing round a delicate young green wheatfield, now
lost behind a rising hill, now glancing through a vineyard, or
contrasting with the gray tints of the olive, all that was
incongruous or disorderly unseen, and all that was discordant
unheard, as only the harmonious cadence of the united response was
wafted fitfully on the breeze to the two elderly men who, unable to
scale the wild mountain paths in the procession, had, after the
previous service in the basilica and the blessing of the nearer
lands, returned to the villa, where they sat watching its progress.It was as entirely a Roman villa as the form of the ground and the
need of security would permit.Lying on the slope of a steep hill,
which ran up above into a fantastic column or needle piercing the
sky, the courts of the villa were necessarily a succession of
terraces, levelled and paved with steps of stone or marble leading
from one to the other.A strong stone wall enclosed the whole,
cloistered, as a protection from sun and storm.The lowest court
had a gateway strongly protected, and thence a broad walk with box-
trees on either side, trimmed into fantastic shapes, led through a
lawn laid out in regular flower-beds to the second court, which was
paved with polished marble, and had a fountain in the midst, with
vases of flowers, and seats around.Above was another broad flight
of stone steps, leading to a portico running along the whole front
of the house, with the principal chambers opening into it.Behind
lay another court, serving as stables for the horses and mules, as
farmyard, and with the quarters of the slaves around it, and higher
up there stretched a dense pine forest protecting the whole
establishment from avalanches and torrents of stones from the
mountain peak above.Under the portico, whose pillars were cut from the richly-coloured
native marbles, reposed the two friends on low couches.One was a fine-looking man, with a grand bald forehead, encircled
with a wreath of oak, showing that in his time he had rescued a
Roman's life.He also wore a richly-embroidered purple toga, the
token of high civic rank, for he had put on his full insignia as a
senator and of consular rank to do honour to the ceremonial.Indeed
he would not have abstained from accompanying the procession, but
that his guest, though no more aged than himself, was manifestly
unequal to the rugged expedition, begun fasting in the morning chill
and concluded, likewise fasting, in the noonday heat.Still, it
would scarcely have distressed those sturdy limbs, well developed
and preserved by Roman training, never permitted by him to
degenerate into effeminacy.And as his fine countenance and well-
knit frame testified, Marcus AEmilius Victorinus inherited no small
share of genuine Roman blood.His noble name might be derived
through clientela, and his lineage had a Gallic intermixture; but
the true Quirite predominated in his character and temperament.The
citizenship of his family dated back beyond the first establishment
of the colony, and rank, property, and personal qualities alike
rendered him the first man in the district, its chief magistrate,
and protector from the Visigoths, who claimed it as part of their
kingdom of Aquitania.So much of the spirit of Vercingetorix survived among the remnant of
his tribe that Arvernia had never been overrun and conquered, but
had held out until actually ceded by one of the degenerate Augusti
at Ravenna, and then favourable terms had been negotiated, partly by
AEmilius the Senator, as he was commonly called, and partly by the
honoured friend who sat beside him, another relic of the good old
times when Southern Gaul enjoyed perfect peace as a favoured
province of the Empire.This guest was a man of less personal
beauty than the Senator, and more bowed and aged, but with care and
ill-health more than years, for the two had been comrades in school,
fellow-soldiers and magistrates, working simultaneously, and with
firm, mutual trust all their days.The dress of the visitor was shaped like that of the senator, but of
somewhat richer and finer texture.He too wore the TOGA
PRAETEXTATA, but he had a large gold cross hanging on his breast and
an episcopal ring on his finger; and instead of the wreath of bay he
might have worn, and which encircled his bust in the Capitol, the
scanty hair on his finely-moulded head showed the marks of the
tonsure.His brow was a grand and expansive one; his gray eyes were
full of varied expression, keen humour, and sagacity; a lofty
devotion sometimes changing his countenance in a wonderful manner,
even in the present wreck of his former self, when the cheeks showed
furrows worn by care and suffering, and the once flexible and
resolute mouth had fallen in from loss of teeth.For this was the
scholar, soldier, poet, gentleman, letter-writer, statesman,
Sidonius Apollinaris, who had stood on the steps of the Imperial
throne of the West, had been crowned as an orator in the Capitol,
and then had been called by the exigences of his country to give up
his learned ease and become the protector of the Arvernii as a
patriot Bishop, where he had well and nobly served his God and his
country, and had won the respect, not only of the Catholic Gauls but
of the Arian Goths.Jealousy and evil tongues had, however,
prevailed to cause his banishment from his beloved hills, and when
he repaired to the court of King Euric to solicit permission to
return, he was long detained there, and had only just obtained
license to go back to his See.He had arrived only a day or two
previously at the villa, exhausted by his journey, and though
declaring that his dear mountain breezes must needs restore him, and
that it was a joy to inhale them, yet, as he heard of the
oppressions that were coming on his people, the mountain gales could
only 'a momentary bliss bestow,' and AEmilius justly feared that the
decay of his health had gone too far for even the breezes and baths
of Arvernia to reinvigorate him.His own mountain estate, where dwelt his son, was of difficult
access early in the year, and AEmilius hoped to persuade him to rest
in the villa till after Pentecost, and then to bless the nuptials of
Columba AEmilia, the last unwedded daughter of the house, with Titus
Julius Verronax, a young Arvernian chief of the lineage of
Vercingetorix, highly educated in all Latin and Greek culture, and a
Roman citizen much as a Highland chieftain is an Englishman.His
home was on an almost inaccessible peak, or PUY, which the Senator
pointed out to the Bishop, saying--
"I would fain secure such a refuge for my family in case the tyranny
of the barbarians should increase." | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"Are there any within the city? "asked the Bishop. "I rejoice to
see that thou art free from the indignity of having any quartered
upon thee." "For which I thank Heaven," responded the Senator. "The nearest are
on the farm of Deodatus, in the valley.There is a stout old
warrior named Meinhard who calls himself of the King's Trust; not a
bad old fellow in himself to deal with, but with endless sons,
followers, and guests, whom poor Deodatus and Julitta have to keep
supplied with whatever they choose to call for, being forced to
witness their riotous orgies night after night. ""Even so, we are far better off than our countrymen who have the
heathen Franks for their lords." "That Heaven forbid!" said AEmilius. "These Goths are at least
Christians, though heretics, yet I shall be heartily glad when the
circuit of Deodatus's fields is over.The good man would not have
them left unblest, but the heretical barbarians make it a point of
honour not to hear the Blessed Name invoked without mockery, such as
our youths may hardly brook." "They are unarmed," said the Bishop. "True; but, as none knows better than thou dost, dear father and
friend, the Arvernian blood has not cooled since the days of Caius
Julius Caesar, and offences are frequent among the young men.So
often has our community had to pay 'wehrgeld,' as the barbarians
call the price they lay upon blood, that I swore at last that I
would never pay it again, were my own son the culprit." "Such oaths are perilous," said Sidonius. "Hast thou never had
cause to regret this?" "My father, thou wouldst have thought it time to take strong
measures to check the swaggering of our young men and the foolish
provocations that cost more than one life.One would stick a
peacock's feather in his cap and go strutting along with folded arms
and swelling breast, and when the Goths scowled at him and called
him by well-deserved names, a challenge would lead to a deadly
combat.Another such fight was caused by no greater offence than
the treading on a dog's tail; but in that it was the Roman, or more
truly the Gaul, who was slain, and I must say the 'wehrgeld' was
honourably paid.It is time, however, that such groundless
conflicts should cease; and, in truth, only a barbarian could be
satisfied to let gold atone for life." "It is certainly neither Divine law nor human equity," said the
Bishop. "Yet where no distinction can be made between the
deliberate murder and the hasty blow, I have seen cause to be
thankful for the means of escaping the utmost penalty. Has this
oath had the desired effect? ""There has been only one case since it was taken," replied AEmilius. "That was a veritable murder. A vicious, dissolute lad stabbed a
wounded Goth in a lonely place, out of vengeful spite.I readily
delivered him up to the kinsfolk for justice, and as this proved me
to be in earnest, these wanton outrages have become much more rare.Unfortunately, however, the fellow was son to one of the widows of
the Church--a holy woman, and a favourite of my little Columba, who
daily feeds and tends the poor thing, and thinks her old father very
cruel." "Alas!from the beginning the doom of the guilty has struck the
innocent," said the Bishop. "In due retribution, as even the heathen knew. "Perfect
familiarity with the great Greek tragedians was still the mark of a
gentleman, and then Sidonius quoted from Sophocles--
Compass'd with dazzling light,
Throned on Olympus's height,
His front the Eternal God uprears
By toils unwearied, and unaged by years;
Far back, through ages past,
Far on, through time to come,
Hath been, and still must last,
Sin's never-changing doom.AEmilius capped it from AEschylus--
But Justice holds her equal scales
With ever-waking eye;
O'er some her vengeful might prevails
When their life's sun is high;
On some her vigorous judgments light
In that dread pause 'twixt day and night,
Life's closing, twilight hour.But soon as once the genial plain
Has drunk the life-blood of the slain,
Indelible the spots remain,
And aye for vengeance call. "Yea," said the Bishop, "such was the universal law given to Noah
ere the parting of the nations--blood for blood!And yet, where
should we be did not Mercy rejoice against Justice, and the Blood of
Sprinkling speak better things than the blood of Abel? Nay, think
not that I blame thee, my dear brother.Thou art the judge of thy
people, and well do I know that one act of stern justice often, as
in this instance, prevents innumerable deeds of senseless violence. ""Moreover," returned the Senator, "it was by the relaxing of the
ancient Roman sternness of discipline and resolution that the
horrors of the Triumvirate began, and that, later on, spirit decayed
and brought us to our present fallen state. "By this time the procession, which had long since passed from their
sight, was beginning to break up and disperse.A flock of little
children first appeared, all of whom went aside to the slaves'
quarters except one, who came running up the path between the box-
trees.He was the eldest grandson and namesake of the Senator, a
dark-eyed, brown-haired boy of seven, with the golden bulla hanging
round his neck.Up he came to the old man's knee, proud to tell how
he had scaled every rock, and never needed any help from the
pedagogue slave who had watched over him. "Sawest thou any barbarians, my Victorinus?" asked his grandfather. "They stood thickly about Deodatus's door, and Publius said they
were going to mock; but we looked so bold and sang so loud that they
durst not.And Verronax is come down, papa, with Celer; and Celer
wanted to sing too, but they would not let him, and he was so good
that he was silent the moment his master showed him the leash." "Then is Celer a hound?" asked the Bishop, amused. "A hound of the old stock that used to fight battles for Bituitus,"
returned the child. "Oh, papa, I am so hungry." He really did say 'papa,' the fond domestic name which passed from
the patriarch of the household to the Father of the Roman Church. "Thy mother is watching for thee. Run to her, and she will give
thee a cake--aye, and a bath before thy dinner. So Verronax is
come. I am glad thou wilt see him, my father.The youth has grown
up with my own children, and is as dear to me as my own son. Ah,
here comes my Columba! "For the maidens were by this time returning, and Columba, robed in
white, with a black veil, worn mantilla fashion over her raven hair,
so as to shade her soft, liquid, dark eyes, came up the steps, and
with a graceful obeisance to her father and the Bishop, took the
seat to which the former drew her beside them. "Has all gone well, my little dove?" asked her father. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"Perfectly well so far, my father," she replied; but there was
anxiety in her eyes until the gate again opened and admitted the
male contingent of the procession.No sooner had she seen them
safely advancing up the box avenue than she murmured something about
preparing for the meal, and, desiring a dismissal from her father,
disappeared into the women's apartments, while the old man smiled at
her pretty maidenly modesty.Of the three men who were advancing, one, Marcus AEmilius, about
seven or eight and twenty years of age, was much what the Senator
must have been at his age--sturdy, resolute, with keen eyes, and
crisp, curled, short black hair.His younger brother, Lucius, was
taller, slighter, more delicately made, with the same pensive
Italian eyes as his sister, and a gentle, thoughtful countenance.The tonsure had not yet touched his soft, dark brown locks; but it
was the last time he would march among the laity, for, both by his
own desire and that of his dead mother, he was destined to the
priesthood.Beside these two brothers came a much taller figure. The Arvernii seem to have been Gael rather than Cymri, and the
mountain chief, Titus Julius Verronax, as the Romans rendered his
name of Fearnagh, was of the purest descent.He had thick, wavy
chestnut hair, not cut so short as that of the Romans, though kept
with the same care.His eyebrows were dark, his eyes, both in hue
and brightness, like a hawk's, his features nobly moulded, and his
tall form, though large and stately, was in perfect symmetry, and
had the free bearing and light springiness befitting a mountaineer.He wore the toga as an official scarf, but was in his national garb
of the loose trousers and short coat, and the gold torq round his
neck had come to him from prehistoric ages.He had the short Roman
sword in his belt, and carried in his hand a long hunting-spear,
without which he seldom stirred abroad, as it served him both as
alpenstock and as defence against the wolves and bears of the
mountains.Behind him stalked a magnificent dog, of a kind
approaching the Irish wolfhound, a perfect picture of graceful
outline and of strength, swiftness, and dignity, slightly shaggy,
and of tawny colouring--in all respects curiously like his master.In language, learning, and manners Verronax the Arvernian was,
however, a highly cultivated Roman, as Sidonius perceived in the
first word of respectful welcome that he spoke when presented to the
Bishop. All had gone off well.Old Meinhard had been on the watch, and had
restrained any insult, if such had been intended, by the other
Goths, who had stood watching in silence the blessing of the fields
and vineyards of Deodatus.The peril over, the AEmilian household partook cheerfully of the
social meal. Marina, the wife of Marcus, and Columba sat on carved
chairs, the men of the family reclining on the couches constructed
to hold three.The bright wit of Sidonius, an eminent
conversationalist, shone the more brightly for his rejoicing at his
return to his beloved country and flock, and to the friend of his
youth.There were such gleams in the storms that were overwhelming
the tottering Empire, to which indeed these men belonged only in
heart and in name.The meal was for a fast day, and consisted of preparations of eggs,
milk, flour, and fish from the mountain streams, but daintily
cooked, for the traditions of the old Roman gastronomy survived, and
Marina, though half a Gaul, was anxious that her housekeeping should
shine in the eyes of the Bishop, who in his secular days had been
known to have a full appreciation of the refinements of the table.When the family rose and the benediction had been pronounced,
Columba was seen collecting some of the remnants in a basket. "Thou surely dost not intend going to that widow of thine to-day,"
exclaimed her sister-in-law, Marina, "after such a walk on the
mountain? ""Indeed I must, sister," replied Columba; "she was in much pain and
weakness yesterday, and needs me more than usual. ""And it is close to the farm of Deodatus," Marina continued to
object, "where, the slaves tell me, there are I know not how many
fresh barbarian guests!" "I shall of course take Stentor and Athenais," said Columba. "A pair of slaves can be of no use.Marcus, dost thou hear? Forbid
thy sister's folly." "I will guard my sister," said Lucius, becoming aware of what was
passing. "Who should escort her save myself? "said the graceful Verronax,
turning at the same moment from replying to some inquiries from the
Bishop. "I doubt whether his escort be not the most perilous thing of all,"
sighed Marina. "Come, Marina," said her husband good-humouredly, "be not always a
boder of ill. Thou deemest a Goth worse than a gorgon or hydra,
whereas, I assure you, they are very good fellows after all, if you
stand up to them like a man, and trust their word.Old Meinhard is
a capital hunting comrade. "Wherewith the worthy Marcus went off with his little son at his
heels to inspect the doings of the slaves in the farm-court in the
rear, having no taste for the occupation of his father and the
Bishop, who composed themselves to listen to a MS. of the letters of
S. Gregory Nazianzen, which Sidonius had lately acquired, and which
was read aloud to them by a secretary slave.Some time had thus passed when a confused sound made the Senator
start up. He beheld his daughter and her escort within the lower
court, but the slaves were hastily barring the gates behind them,
and loud cries of "Justice! Vengeance! "in the Gothic tongue,
struck his only too well-accustomed ears. Columba flung herself before him, crying--
"O father, have pity! It was for our holy faith." "He blasphemed," was all that was uttered by Verronax, on whose
dress there was blood. "Open the gates," called out the Senator, as the cry outside waxed
louder. "None shall cry for justice in vain at the gate of an
AEmilius. Go, Marcus, admit such as have a right to enter and be
heard.Rise, my daughter, show thyself a true Roman and Christian
maiden before these barbarians. And thou, my son, alas, what hast
thou done? "he added, turning to Verronax, and taking his arm while
walking towards the tribunal, where he did justice as chief
magistrate of the Roman settlement. A few words told all.While Columba was engaged with her sick
widow, a young stranger Goth strolled up, one who had stood combing
his long fair hair, and making contemptuous gestures as the Rogation
procession passed in the morning.He and his comrades began
offensively to scoff at the two young men for having taken part in
the procession, uttering the blasphemies which the invocation of our
Blessed Lord was wont to call forth.Verronax turned wrathfully round, a hasty challenge passed, a rapid
exchange of blows; and while the Arvernian received only a slight
scratch, the Goth fell slain before the hovel. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
His comrades were
unarmed and intimidated.They rushed back to fetch weapons from the
house of Deodatus, and there had been full time to take Columba
safely home, Verronax and his dog stalking statelily in the rear as
her guardians. "Thou shouldst have sought thine impregnable crag, my son," said the
Senator sadly. "To bring the barbarian vengeance upon this house?" responded
Verronax. "Alas, my son, thou know'st mine oath." "I know it, my father. ""It forbids not thy ransoming thyself." Verronax smiled slightly, and touched the collar at his throat. "This is all the gold that I possess." The Senator rapidly appraised it with his eye.There was a regular
tariff on the lives of free Romans, free Goths, guests, and trusted
men of the King; and if the deceased were merely a LITE, or freeman
of the lowest rank, it was just possible that the gold collar might
purchase its master's life, provided he were not too proud to part
with the ancestral badge.By this time the tribunal had been reached--a special portion of the
peristyle, with a curule chair, inlaid with ivory, placed on a
tesselated pavement, as in the old days of the Republic, and a
servant on each side held the lictor's axe and bundle of rods, which
betokened stern Roman justice, wellnigh a mockery now.The forum of
the city would have been the regular place, but since an earthquake
had done much damage there, and some tumults had taken place among
the citizens, the seat of judgment had by general consent been
placed in the AEmilian household as the place of chief security, and
as he was the accredited magistrate with their Gothic masters, as
Sidonius had been before his banishment.As Sidonius looked at the grave face of the Senator, set like a
rock, but deadly pale, he thought it was no unworthy representative
of Brutus or Manlius of old who sat on that seat. Alas!would he not be bound by his fatal oath to be only too true a
representative of their relentless justice?On one side of the judgment-seat stood Verronax, towering above all
around; behind him Marina and Columba, clinging together, trembling
and tearful, but their weeping restrained by the looks of the
Senator, and by a certain remnant of hope.To the other side advanced the Goths, all much larger and taller men
than any one except the young Gaulish chieftain. The foremost was a
rugged-looking veteran, with grizzled locks and beard, and a
sunburnt face.This was Meinhard, the head of the garrison on
Deodatus's farm, a man well known to AEmilius, and able to speak
Latin enough to hold communication with the Romans.Several younger
men pressed rudely behind him, but they were evidently impressed by
the dignity of the tribunal, though it was with a loud and fierce
shout that they recognised Verronax standing so still and unmoved. "Silence! "exclaimed the Senator, lifting his ivory staff. Meinhard likewise made gestures to hush them, and they ceased, while
the Senator, greeting Meinhard and inviting him to share his seat of
authority, demanded what they asked. "Right!" was their cry. "Right on the slayer of Odorik, the son of
Odo, of the lineage of Odin, our guest, and of the King's trust." "Right shall ye have, O Goths," returned AEmilius. "A Roman never
flinches from justice. Who are witnesses to the deed?Didst thou
behold it, O Meinhard, son of Thorulf?" "No, noble AEmilius. It had not been wrought had I been present;
but here are those who can avouch it. Stand forth, Egilulf, son of
Amalrik." "It needs not," said Verronax. "I acknowledge the deed.The Goth
scoffed at us for invoking a created Man. I could not stand by to
hear my Master insulted, and I smote him, but in open fight, whereof
I bear the token." "That is true," said Meinhard. "I know that Verronax, the
Arvernian, would strike no coward blow.Therefore did I withhold
these comrades of Odorik from rushing on thee in their fury; but
none the less art thou in feud with Odo, the father of Odorik, who
will require of thee either thy blood or the wehrgeld. ""Wehrgeld I have none to pay," returned Verronax, in the same calm
voice. "I have sworn!" said AEmilius in a clear low voice, steady but full
of suppressed anguish.A shriek was heard among the women, and
Sidonius stepped forth and demanded the amount of wehrgeld. "That must be for King Euric to decide," returned Meinhard. "He
will fix the amount, and it will be for Odo to choose whether he
will accept it.The mulct will be high, for the youth was of high
Baltic blood, and had but lately arrived with his father from the
north!" "Enough," said Verronax. "Listen, Meinhard. Thou knowest me, and
the Arvernian faith.Leave me this night to make my peace with
Heaven and my parting with man. At the hour of six to-morrow
morning, I swear that I will surrender myself into thine hands to be
dealt with as it may please the father of this young man. ""So let it be, Meinhard," said AEmilius, in a stifled voice. "I know AEmilius, and I know Verronax," returned the Goth.They grasped hands, and then Meinhard drew off his followers,
leaving two, at the request of Marcus, to act as sentinels at the
gate.The Senator sat with his hands clasped over his face in unutterable
grief, Columba threw herself into the arms of her betrothed, Marina
tore her hair, and shrieked out--
"I will not hold my peace! It is cruel! It is wicked! It is
barbarous! ""Silence, Marina," said Verronax. "It is just! I am no ignorant
child. I knew the penalty when I incurred it! My Columba,
remember, though it was a hasty blow, it was in defence of our
Master's Name. "The thought might comfort her by and by; as yet it could not. The Senator rose and took his hand. "Thou dost forgive me, my son?" he said. "I should find it hard to forgive one who lessened my respect for
the AEmilian constancy," returned Verronax.Then he led Marcus aside to make arrangements with him respecting
his small mountain estate and the remnant of his tribe, since Marina
was his nearest relative, and her little son would, if he were cut
off, be the sole heir to the ancestral glories of Vercingetorix. "And I cannot stir to save such a youth as that!" cried the Senator
in a tone of agony as he wrung the hand of Sidonius. "I have bound
mine own hands, when I would sell all I have to save him.O my
friend and father, well mightest thou blame my rashness, and doubt
the justice that could be stern where the heart was not touched." "But I am not bound by thine oath, my friend," said Sidonius. "True
it is that the Master would not be served by the temporal sword, yet
such zeal as that of this youth merits that we should strive to
deliver him. Utmost justice would here be utmost wrong.May I send
one of your slaves as a messenger to my son to see what he can
raise? Though I fear me gold and silver is more scarce than it was
in our younger days. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"This was done, and young Lucius also took a summons from the Bishop
to the deacons of the Church in the town, authorising the use of the
sacred vessels to raise the ransom, but almost all of these had been
already parted with in the time of a terrible famine which had
ravaged Arvernia a few years previously, and had denuded all the
wealthy and charitable families of their plate and jewels.Indeed
Verronax shrank from the treasure of the Church being thus applied.Columba might indeed weep for him exultingly as a martyr, but, as he
well knew, martyrs do not begin as murderers, and passion,
pugnacity, and national hatred had been uppermost with him.It was
the hap of war, and he was ready to take it patiently, and prepare
himself for death as a brave Christian man, but not a hero or a
martyr; and there was little hope either that a ransom so
considerable as the rank of the parties would require could be
raised without the aid of the AEmilii, or that, even if it were, the
fierce old father would accept it.The more civilised Goths, whose
families had ranged Italy, Spain, and Aquitaine for two or three
generations, made murder the matter of bargain that had shocked
AEmilius; but this was an old man from the mountain cradle of the
race, unsophisticated, and but lately converted.In the dawn of the summer morning Bishop Sidonius celebrated the
Holy Eucharist for the mournful family in the oratory, a vaulted
chamber underground, which had served the same purpose in the days
of persecution, and had the ashes of two tortured martyrs of the
AEmilian household, mistress and slave, enshrined together beneath
the altar, which had since been richly inlaid with coloured marble.Afterwards a morning meal was served for Verronax and for the elder
AEmilius, who intended to accompany him on his sad journey to
Bordigala, where the King and the father of Odorik were known to be
at the time.Sidonius, who knew himself to have some interest with
Euric, would fain have gone with them, but his broken health
rendered a rapid journey impossible, and he hoped to serve the
friends better by remaining to console the two women, and to
endeavour to collect the wehrgeld in case it should be accepted.The farewells, owing to the Roman dignity of AEmilius and the proud
self-respect of the Arvernian, were more calm than had been feared.Even thus, thought Sidonius, must Vercingetorix have looked when he
mounted his horse and rode from his lines at Alesia to save his
people, by swelling Caesar's triumph and dying beneath the Capitol. Oh, ABSIT OMEN!Columba was borne up by hopes which Verronax would
not dash to the ground, and she received his embrace with steadfast,
though brimming eyes, and an assurance that she would pray without
ceasing.Lucius was not to be found, having no doubt gone forward, intending
to direct his friend on his journey, and there part with him; but
the saddest part of the whole was the passionate wailings and
bemoanings of the remnants of his clan.One of his attendants had
carried the tidings; wild Keltic men and women had come down for one
last sight of their Fearnagh MacFearccadorigh, as they called him by
his true Gaulish name--passionately kissing his hands and the hem of
his mantle, beating their breasts amid howls of lamentation, and
throwing themselves in his path, as, with the high spirit which
could not brook to be fetched as a criminal, he made his way to the
gate.Mounted on two strong mules, the only animals serviceable in the
mountain paths, the Senator and Verronax passed the gate, Marcus
walking beside them. "We are beforehand with the Goth," said Verronax, as he came out. "Lazy hounds!" said Marcus. "Their sentinels have vanished. It
would serve them right if thou didst speed over the border to the
Burgundians!" "I shall have a laugh at old Meinhard," said Verronax. "Little he
knows of discipline. ""No doubt they have had a great lyke wake, as they barbarously call
their obsequies," said the Senator, "and are sleeping off their
liquor." "We will rouse them," said the Arvernian; "it will be better than
startling poor Columba. "So on they moved, the wildly-clad, barefooted Gauls, with locks
streaming in the wind, still keeping in the rear.They reached the
long, low farm-buildings belonging to Deodatus, a half-bred Roman
Gaul, with a large vineyard and numerous herds of cattle. The place
was wonderfully quiet.The Goths seemed to be indulging in very
sound slumbers after their carouse, for nothing was to be seen but
the slaves coming in with bowls of milk from the cattle.Some of
them must have given notice of the approach of the Senator, for
Deodatus came to his door with the salutation, "AVE CLARISSIME! "and
then stood staring at Verronax, apparently petrified with wonder;
and as the young chief demanded where was Meinhard, he broke forth--
"Does his nobility ask me?It is two hours since every Goth quitted
the place, except the dead man in the house of the widow Dubhina,
and we are breathing freely for once in our lives.Up they went
towards the AEmilian villa with clamour and threats enough to make
one's blood run cold, and they must be far on their way to Bordigala
Gergovia by this time." "His nobility must have passed through their midst unseen and
unheard! "cried old Julitta, a hardworking, dried-up woman, clasping
her sinewy, wrinkled hands; "a miracle, and no wonder, since our
holy Bishop has returned. "The excitable household was on the point of breaking out into
acclamation, but Verronax exclaimed: "Silence, children! Miracles
are not for the bloodguilty.If it be, as I fear, they have met
Lucius and seized him in my stead, we must push on at once to save
him. ""Meinhard could not mistake your persons," returned AEmilius; but
while he was speaking, a messenger came up and put into his hand one
of the waxen tablets on which notes were written--
L. AEM. VIC. TO M. AEM. VIC. S. Q.,--Pardon and bless thy son.Meinhard assures me that I shall be accepted as equal in birth and
accessory to the deed. Remember Columba and the value of Verronax's
life, and let me save him. Consent and hold him back. Greet all
the dear ones.--VALE.The little tablet could hold no more than this--almost every word
curtailed. The Senator's firm lip quivered at last as he exclaimed,
"My brave son. Thus does he redeem his father's rash oath! "Verronax, whose Roman breeding had held his impulsive Keltic nature
in check as long as it was only himself that was in danger, now
broke into loud weeping--
"My Lucius! my brother beloved!and didst thou deem Arvernian honour
fallen so low that I could brook such a sacrifice? Let us hasten on
instantly, my father, while yet it is time! | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"It would have been impossible to withhold him, and Marcus returned
with the strange tidings, while his father and Verronax set forth
with a few servants, mounted like themselves on mules, to reach the
broad Roman road that led from Gergovia to Bordigala.Three wild,
barefooted Gauls of Verronax's clan shook their heads at all his
attempts to send them home, and went running along after him with
the same fidelity as poor Celer, whom he had left tied up at the
villa as his parting gift to little Victorinus, but who had broken
loose, and came bounding to his master, caressing him with nose and
tongue at their first halt.There had been, as in all Roman roads, regular posting stations at
intervals along the way, where horses and mules could be hired, but
the troubles of the Empire, invasion, and scarcity had greatly
disturbed the system.Many of the stations were deserted, and at
others either the whole of the animals, or all the fleeter ones, had
been taken up by Meinhard and his convoy.Indeed it almost seemed
that not only Lucius was anxious not to be overtaken, but that
Meinhard was forwarding his endeavours to consummate his sacrifice
before the Arvernian could prevent it. Hotly did Verronax chafe at each hindrance.He would have dashed
onwards with feverish head-long speed, using his own fleet limbs
when he could not obtain a horse, but AEmilius feared to trust him
alone, lest, coming too late to rescue Lucius, he should bring on
himself the fury of the Goths, strike perhaps in revenge, and not
only lose his own life and render the sacrifice vain, but imperil
many more.So, while making all possible speed, he bound the young Arvernian,
by all the ties of paternal guardianship and authority, to give his
word not to use his lighter weight and youthful vigour to outstrip
the rest of the party.The Senator himself hardly knew what was his own wish, for if his
fatherly affection yearned over his gentle, dutiful, studious
Lucius, yet Columba's desolation, and the importance of Verronax as
a protector for his family, so weighed down the other scale, that he
could only take refuge in 'committing his way unto the Lord. 'The last halting-place was at a villa belonging to a Roman, where
they heard that an assembly was being held in the fields near
Bordigala for judgment on the slaughter of a young Goth of high
rank.On learning how deeply they were concerned, their host lent
them two horses, and rode with them himself, as they hastened on in
speechless anxiety.These early Teutonic nations all had their solemn assemblies in the
open air, and the Goths had not yet abandoned the custom, so that as
the Senator and the chieftain turned the summit of the last low hill
they could see the plain beneath swarming like an ant-hill with
people, and as they pressed onward they could see a glittering tent,
woven with cloth of gold, a throne erected in front, and around it a
space cleared and guarded by a huge circle of warriors (LITES),
whose shields joined so as to form a wall.Near the throne stood the men of higher degree, all alike to join
the King in his judgment, like the Homeric warriors of old, as
indeed Sidonius had often said that there was no better comment on
the ILIAD than the meetings of the barbarians.By the time AEmilius and Verronax had reached the spot, and gained
an entrance in virtue of their rank and concern in the matter, Euric
sat enthroned in the midst of the assembly.He was far removed from
being a savage, though he had won his crown by the murder of his
brother.He and the counts (comrades) around him wore the Roman
garb, and used by preference the Latin speech, learning, arms, and
habits, just as European civilisation is adopted by the Egyptian or
Japanese of the present day.He understood Roman jurisprudence, and
was the author of a code for the Goths, but in a case like this he
was obliged to conform to national customs.There he sat, a small, light-complexioned man, of slighter make than
those around him, holding in his hand a scroll.It was a letter
from Sidonius, sent beforehand by a swift-footed mountaineer, and
containing a guarantee for 1200 soldi, twice the price for a Goth of
ordinary rank.On the one side stood, unbound and unguarded, the
slender form of Lucius; on the other a gigantic old Visigoth, blind,
and with long streaming snowy hair and beard, his face stern with
grief and passion, and both his knotted hands crossed upon the
handle of a mighty battle-axe.The King had evidently been explaining to him the terms of the
Bishop's letter, for the first words that met the ear of AEmilius
were--
"Nay, I say nay, King Euric.Were I to receive treble the weight of
gold, how should that enable me to face my son in the halls of Odin,
with his blood unavenged?" There was a murmur, and the King exclaimed--
"Now, now, Odo, we know no more of Odin. ""Odin knows us no more," retorted the old man, "since we have washed
ourselves in the Name of another than the mighty Thor, and taken up
the weakly worship of the conquered. So my son would have it!He
talked of a new Valhal of the Christian; but let him meet me where
he will, he shall not reproach me that he only of all his brethren
died unavenged. Where is the slayer? Set him before me that I may
strike him dead with one blow! "Lucius crossed himself, looked upwards, and was stepping forwards,
when Verronax with a shout of 'Hold!' leapt into the midst, full
before the avenger's uplifted weapon, crying--
"Slay me, old man!It was I who killed thy son, I, Fearnagh the
Arvernian!" "Ho!" said Odo. "Give me thine hand. Let me feel thee. Yea, these
be sinews! It is well.I marvelled how my Odorik should have
fallen by the soft Roman hand of yonder stripling; but thou art a
worthy foe. What made the priestling thrust himself between me and
my prey? ""His generous love," returned Verronax, as Lucius flung himself on
his neck, crying--
"O my Verronax, why hast thou come? The bitterness of death was
past! The gates were opening. "Meanwhile AEmilius had reached Euric, and had made him understand
the substitution.Old Odo knew no Latin, and it was the King, an
able orator in both tongues, who expounded all in Gothic, showing
how Lucius AEmilius had offered his life in the stead of his friend,
and how Verronax had hurried to prevent the sacrifice, reiterating,
almost in a tone of command, the alternative of the wehrgeld.The lites all burst into acclamations at the nobility of the two
young men, and some muttered that they had not thought these Romans
had so much spirit. Euric made no decision.He did full justice to the courage and
friendship of the youths, and likewise to the fact that Odorik had
provoked the quarrel, and had been slain in fair fight; but the
choice lay with the father, and perhaps in his heart the politic
Visigoth could not regret that Arvernia should lose a champion sure
to stand up for Roman or national claims.Odo listened in silence, leaning on his axe. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
Then he turned his
face to the bystanders, and demanded of them--
"Which of them is the bolder? Which of them flinched at my axe?" The spectators were unanimous that neither had blenched.The
slender lad had presented himself as resolutely as the stately
warrior. "It is well," said Odo. "Either way my son will be worthily
avenged. I leave the choice to you, young men. "A brief debate ended in an appeal to the Senator, who, in spite of
all his fortitude, could not restrain himself from groaning aloud,
hiding his face in his hands, and hoarsely saying, "Draw lots." "Yes," said Euric; "commit the judgment to Heaven. "It was hailed as a relief; but Lucius stipulated that the lots
should be blessed by a Catholic priest, and Verronax muttered
impatiently--
"What matters it? Let us make an end as quickly as may be! "He had scarcely spoken when shouts were heard, the throng made way,
the circle of lites opened, as, waving an olive branch, a wearied,
exhausted rider and horse appeared, and staggering to the foot of
the throne, there went down entirely spent, the words being just
audible, "He lives!Odorik lives!" It was Marcus AEmilius, covered with dust, and at first unable to
utter another word, as he sat on the ground, supported by his
brother, while his father made haste to administer the wine handed
to him by an attendant. "Am I in time? "he asked. "In time, my son," replied his father, repeating his announcement in
Gothic. "Odorik lives!" "He lives, he will live," repeated Marcus, reviving. "I came not
away till his life was secure." "Is it truth?" demanded the old Goth. "Romans have slippery ways." Meinhard was quick to bear testimony that no man in Arvernia doubted
the word of an AEmilius; but Marcus, taking a small dagger from his
belt, held it out, saying--
"His son said that he would know this token. "Odo felt it. "It is my son's knife," he said, still cautiously;
"but it cannot speak to say how it was taken from him." "The old barbarian heathen," quoth Verronax, under his breath; "he
would rather lose his son than his vengeance. "Marcus had gathered breath and memory to add, "Tell him Odorik said
he would know the token of the red-breast that nested in the winged
helm of Helgund." "I own the token," said Odo. "My son lives. He needs no
vengeance. "He turned the handle of his axe downwards, passed it to
his left hand, and stretched the right to Verronax, saying, "Young
man, thou art brave. There is no blood feud between us.Odo, son
of Helgund, would swear friendship with you, though ye be Romans." "Compensation is still due according to the amount of the injury,"
said the Senator scrupulously. "Is it not so, O King?" Euric assented, but Odo exclaimed--
"No gold for me!When Odo, son of Helgund, forgives, he forgives
outright. Where is my son?" Food had by this time been brought by the King's order, and after
swallowing a few mouthfuls Marcus could stand and speak.Odorik, apparently dead, had been dragged by the Goths into the hut
of the widow Dubhina to await his father's decision as to the
burial, and the poor woman had been sheltered by her neighbour,
Julitta, leaving the hovel deserted.Columba, not allowing her grief and suspense to interfere with her
visits of mercy to the poor woman, had come down as usual on the
evening of the day on which her father and her betrothed had started
on their sad journey.Groans, not likely to be emitted by her
regular patient, had startled her, and she had found the floor
occupied by the huge figure of a young Goth, his face and hair
covered with blood from a deep wound on his head, insensible, but
his moans and the motion of his limbs betraying life.Knowing the bitter hatred in Claudiodunum for everything Gothic, the
brave girl would not seek for aid nearer than the villa.Thither
she despatched her male slave, while with her old nurse she did all
in her power for the relief of the wounded man, with no
inconsiderable skill.Marcus had brought the Greek physician of the
place, but he had done nothing but declare the patient a dead man by
all the laws of Galen and Hippocrates.However, the skull and
constitution of a vigorous young Goth, fresh from the mountains,
were tougher than could be imagined by a member of one of the
exhausted races of the Levant.Bishop Sidonius had brought his
science and sagacity to the rescue, and under his treatment Odorik
had been restored to his senses, and was on the fair way to
recovery.On the first gleam of hope, Marcus had sent off a messenger, but so
many of his household and dependents were absent that he had no
great choice; so that as soon as hope had become security, he had
set forth himself; and it was well he had done so, for he had
overtaken the messenger at what was reckoned as three days' journey
from Bordigala.He had ridden ever since without rest, only
dismounting to change his steed, scarcely snatching even then a
morsel of food, and that morning neither he nor the horse he rode
had relaxed for a moment the desperate speed with which he rode
against time; so that he had no cause for the shame and vexation
that he felt at his utter collapse before the barbarians.King
Euric himself declared that he wished he had a Goth who could
perform such a feat of endurance.While Marcus slept, AEmilius and the two young men offered their
heartfelt thanks in the Catholic church of Bordigala, and then Euric
would not be refused their presence at a great feast of
reconciliation on the following day, two of Verronax's speedy-footed
followers having been sent off at once to bear home tidings that his
intelligence had been in time.The feast was served in the old proconsular house, with the Roman
paraphernalia, arranged with the amount of correct imitation that is
to be found at an English dinner-party in the abode of an Indian
Rajah.It began with Roman etiquette, but ended in a Gothic revel,
which the sober and refined AEmilii could hardly endure.They were to set off on their return early on the morrow, Meinhard
and Odo with them; but when they at length escaped from the
barbarian orgies, they had little expectation that their companions
would join them in the morning.However, the two Goths and their followers were on the alert as soon
as they, and as cool-headed as if they had touched no drop of wine. Old Odo disdained a mule, and would let no hand save his own guide
his horse.Verronax and Lucius constituted themselves his guides,
and whenever he permitted the slightest assistance, it was always
from the Arvernian, whom he seemed to regard as a sort of adopted
son.He felt over his weapons, and told him long stories, of which
Verronax understood only a word or two here and there, though the
old man seemed little concerned thereat.Now and then he rode along
chanting to himself an extemporary song, which ran somewhat thus--
Maids who choose the slain,
Disappointed now. The Hawk of the Mountain,
The Wolf of the West,
Meet in fierce combat.Sinks the bold Wolf-cub,
Folds his wing the Falcon! | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
DE FACTO AND DE JURE
I.DE FACTO
The later summer sunbeams lay on an expanse of slightly broken
ground where purple and crimson heather were relieved by the golden
blossoms of the dwarf gorse, interspersed with white stars of
stitch-wort.Here and there, on the slopes, grew stunted oaks and
hollies, whose polished leaves gleamed white with the reflection of
the light; but there was not a trace of human habitation save a
track, as if trodden by horses' feet, clear of the furze and heath,
and bordered by soft bent grass, beginning to grow brown.Near this track--for path it could hardly be called--stood a slender
lad waiting and watching, a little round cap covering his short-cut
brown hair, a crimson tunic reaching to his knee, leggings and shoes
of deerhide, and a sword at his side, fastened by a belt of the like
skin, guarded and clasped with silver.His features were delicate,
though sunburnt, and his eyes were riveted on the distance, where
the path had disappeared amid the luxuriant spires of ling.A hunting-horn sounded, and the youth drew himself together into an
attitude of eager attention; the baying of hounds and trampling of
horses' hoofs came nearer and nearer, and by and by there came in
view the ends of boar-spears, the tall points of bows, a cluster of
heads of men and horses--strong, sturdy, shaggy, sure-footed
creatures, almost ponies, but the only steeds fit to pursue the
chase on this rough and encumbered ground.Foremost rode, with ivory and gold hunting-horn slung in a rich
Spanish baldrick, and a slender gilt circlet round his green
hunting-cap, a stout figure, with a face tanned to a fiery colour,
keen eyes of a dark auburn tint, and a shock of hair of the same
deep red.At sight of him, the lad flung himself on his knees on the path,
with the cry, "Haro! Haro! Justice, Sir King!" "Out of my way, English hound!" cried the King. "This is no time
for thy Haro." "Nay, but one word, good fair King!I am French--French by my
father's side!" cried the lad, as there was a halt, more from the
instinct of the horse than the will of the King. 'Bertram de
Maisonforte!My father married the Lady of Boyatt, and her
inheritance was confirmed to him by your father, brave King William,
my Lord; but now he is dead, and his kinsman, Roger de Maisonforte,
hath ousted her and me, her son and lawful heir, from house and
home, and we pray for justice, Sir King? ''Ha, Roger, thou there! What say'st thou to this bold beggar!' shouted the Red King. 'I say,' returned a black, bronzed hunter, pressing to the front,
'that what I hold of thee, King William, on tenure of homage, and of
two good horses and staunch hounds yearly, I yield to no English
mongrel churl, who dares to meddle with me. ''Thou hear'st, lad,' said Rufus, with his accustomed oath, 'homage
hath been done to us for the land, nor may it be taken back. Out of
our way, or--'
'Sir! sir! 'entreated the lad, grasping the bridle, 'if no more
might be, we would be content if Sir Roger would but leave my mother
enough for her maintenance among the nuns of Romsey, and give me a
horse and suit of mail to go on the Holy War with Duke Robert.''Ho! ho! a modest request for a beggarly English clown!' cried the
King, aiming a blow at the lad with his whip, and pushing on his
horse, so as almost to throw him back on the heath. 'Ho! ho! fit
him out for a fool's errand!' 'We'll fit him!We'll teach him to take the cross at other men's
expense!' shouted the followers, seizing on the boy. 'Nay; we'll bestow his cross on him for a free gift!' exclaimed
Roger de Maisonforte.And Bertram, struggling desperately in vain among the band of
ruffians, found his left arm bared, and two long and painful
slashes, in the form of the Crusader's cross, inflicted, amid loud
laughter, as the blood sprang forth. 'There, Sir Crusader,' said Roger, grinding his teeth over him. 'Go
on thy way now--as a horse-boy, if so please thee, and know better
than to throw thy mean false English pretension in the face of a
gentle Norman. 'Men, horses, dogs, all seemed to trample and scoff at Bertram as he
fell back on the elastic stems of the heath and gorse, whose
prickles seemed to renew the insults by scratching his face.When
the King's horn, the calls, the brutal laughter, and the baying of
the dogs had begun to die away in the distance, he gathered himself
together, sat up, and tried to find some means of stanching the
blood.Not only was the wound in a place hard to reach, but it had
been ploughed with the point of a boar-spear, and was grievously
torn.He could do nothing with it, and, as he perceived, he had
further been robbed of his sword, his last possession, his father's
sword.The large tears of mingled rage, grief, and pain might well spring
from the poor boy's eyes in his utter loneliness, as he clenched his
hand with powerless wrath, and regained his feet, to retrace, as
best he might, his way to where his widowed mother had found a
temporary shelter in a small religious house.The sun grew hotter and hotter, Bertram's wound bled, though not
profusely, the smart grew upon him, his tongue was parched with
thirst, and though he kept resolutely on, his breath came panting,
his head grew dizzy, his eyes dim, his feet faltered, and at last,
just as he attained a wider and more trodden way, he dropped
insensible by the side of the path, his dry lips trying to utter the
cry, "Lord, have mercy on me! "II.DE JURE
When Bertram de Maisonforte opened his eyes again cold waters were
on his face, wine was moistening his lips, the burning of his wound
was assuaged by cooling oil, while a bandage was being applied, and
he was supported on a breast and in arms, clad indeed in a hauberk,
but as tenderly kind as the full deep voice that spoke in English,
"He comes round.How now, my child?" "Father," murmured Bertram, with dreamy senses. "Better now; another sup from the flask, David," again said the kind
voice, and looking up, he became aware of the beautiful benignant
face, deep blue eyes, and long light locks of the man in early
middle age who had laid him on his knee, while a priest was binding
his arm, and a fair and graceful boy, a little younger than himself,
was standing by with the flask of wine in his hand, and a face of
such girlish beauty that as he knelt to hold the wine to his lips,
Bertram asked--
"Am I among the Angels? ""Not yet," said the elder man. "Art thou near thine home?" "Alack!I have no home, kind sir," said Bertram, now able to raise
himself and to perceive that he was in the midst of a small hand of
armed men, such as every knight or noble necessarily carried about
with him for protection.There was a standard with a dragon, and
their leader himself was armed, all save his head, and, as Bertram
saw, was a man of massive strength, noble stature, and kingly
appearance. "What shall we do for thee?" he asked. "Who hath put thee in this
evil case?" Bertram gave his name, and at its Norman sound there was a start of
repulsion from the boy. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
But the wonder of all was the Atheling.After an absence of more
than a year, there was much to be adjusted, and his authority on his
own lands was thoroughly judicial even for life or death, since even
under Norman sway he held the power of an earl.Seated in a high-backed, cross-legged chair--his majestic form
commanding honour and respect--he heard one after another causes
that came before him, reserved for his judgment, questions of
heirship, disputes about cattle, complaints of thievery,
encroachments on land; and Bertram, listening with the interest that
judgment never fails to excite, was deeply impressed with the clear-
headedness, the ready thought, and the justice of the decision, even
when the dispute lay between Saxon and Norman, always with reference
to the laws of Alfred and Edward which he seemed to carry in his
head.Indeed, ere long, two Norman knights, hearing of the Atheling's
return, came to congratulate him, and lay before him a dispute of
boundaries which they declared they would rather entrust to him than
to any other.And they treated him far more as a prince than as a
Saxon churl.They willingly accepted his invitation to go in to the feast of
welcome, and a noble one it was, with music and minstrelsy,
hospitality to all around, plenty and joy, wassail bowls going
round, and the Atheling presiding over it, and with a strange and
quiet influence, breaking up the entertainment in all good will, by
the memory of his sweet sister Margaret's grace-cup, ere mirth had
become madness, or the English could incur their reproach of coarse
revelry. "And," as the Norman knight who had prevailed said to Bertram, "Sir
Edgar the Atheling had thus shown himself truly an uncrowned King." IV. WHO SHALL BE KING?The noble cloisters of Romsey, with the grand church rising in their
midst, had a lodging-place, strictly cut off from the nunnery, for
male visitors.Into this Edgar Atheling rode with his armed train, and as they
entered, some strange expression in the faces of the porters and
guards met them. "Had my lord heard the news?" demanded a priest, who hastened
forward, bowing low. "No, Holy Father.No ill of my sister?" anxiously inquired the
Prince. "The Mother Abbess is well, my Lord Atheling; but the King--William
the Red--is gone to his account. He was found two eves ago pierced
to the heart with an arrow beneath an oak in Malwood Chace. ""God have mercy on his poor soul!" ejaculated Edgar, crossing
himself. "No moment vouchsafed for penitence! Alas! Who did the
deed, Father Dunstan? ""That is not known," returned the priest, "save that Walter Tyrrel
is fled like a hunted felon beyond seas, and my Lord Henry to
Winchester." Young David pressed up to his uncle's side. "Sir, sir," he said, "what a time is this!Duke Robert absent, none
know where; our men used to war, all ready to gather round you. This rule will be ended, the old race restored. Say but the word,
and I will ride back and raise our franklins as one man. Thou wilt,
too, Bertram! ""With all mine heart!" cried Bertram. "Let me be the first to do
mine homage. "And as Edgar Atheling stood in the outer court, with lofty head and
noble thoughtful face, pure-complexioned and high-browed, each who
beheld him felt that there stood a king of men. A shout of "King
Edgar!Edgar, King of England," echoed through the buildings; and
priests, men-at-arms, and peasants began to press forward to do him
homage. But he raised his hand--
"Hold, children," he said. "I thank you all; but much must come ere
ye imperil yourselves by making oaths to me that ye might soon have
to break! Let me pass on and see my sister. "Abbeys were not strictly cloistered then, and the Abbess Christina
was at the door, a tall woman, older than her brother, and somewhat
hard-featured, and beside her was a lovely fair girl, with peach-
like cheeks and bright blue eyes, who threw herself into David's
arms, full of delight. "Brother," said Christina, "did I hear aright? And have they hailed
thee King? Are the years of cruel wrong ended at last? Victor for
others, wilt thou be victor for thyself? ""What is consistent with God's will, and with mine oaths, that I
hope to do," was Edgar's reply.But even as he stood beside the Abbess in the porch, without having
yet entered, there was a clattering and trampling of horse, and
through the gate came hastily a young man in a hauberk, with a ring
of gold about his helmet, holding out his hands as he saw the
Atheling. "Sire Edgar," he said, "I knew not I should find you here, when I
came to pay my first DEVOIRS as a King to the Lady Mother Abbess"
(he kissed her unwilling hand) "and the Lady Edith. "Edith turned away a blushing face, and the Abbess faltered--
"As a King?" "Yea, lady. As such have I been owned by all at Winchester.I
should be at Westminster for my Coronation, save that I turned from
my course to win her who shall share my crown." "Is it even thus, Henry?" said Edgar. "Hast not thought of other
rights?" "Of that crazed fellow Robert's?" demanded Henry. "Trouble not
thine head for him! Even if he came back living from this Holy War
in the East, my father had too much mercy on England to leave it to
the like of him." "There be other and older rights, Sir Henry," said the Abbess.Henry looked up for a moment in some consternation. "Ho! Sir
Edgar, thou hast been so long a peaceful man that I had forgotten. Thou knowest thy day went by with Hereward le Wake. See, fair Edith
and I know one another--she shall be my Queen. ""Veiled and vowed," began the Abbess. "Oh, not yet! Tell her not yet!" whispered Edith in David's ear. "Thou little traitress! Wed thy house's foe, who takes thine
uncle's place? Nay!I will none of thee," said David, shaking her
off roughly; but her uncle threw his arm round her kindly.At that moment a Norman knight spurred up to Henry with some
communication that made him look uneasy, and Christina, laying her
hand on Edgar's arm, said: "Brother, we have vaults. Thy troop
outnumbers his.The people of good old Wessex are with thee! Now
is thy time! Save thy country. Restore the line and laws of Alfred
and Edward." "Thou know'st not what thou wouldst have, Christina," said Edgar. "One sea of blood wherever a Norman castle rises!I love my people
too well to lead them to a fruitless struggle with all the might of
Normandy unless I saw better hope than lies before me now!Mind
thee, I swore to Duke William that I would withstand neither him nor
any son of his whom the English duly hailed. Yet, I will see how it
is with this young man," he added, as she fell back muttering,
"Craven! Who ever won throne without blood? "Henry had an anxious face when he turned from his knight, who, no
doubt, had told him how completely he was in the Atheling's power. "Sir Edgar," he said, "a word with you.Winchester is not far off--
nor Porchester--nor my brother William's Free companies, and his
treasure. Normans will scarce see Duke William's son tampered with,
nor bow their heads to the English! | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
""Belike, Henry of Normandy," said Edgar, rising above him in his
grave majesty. "Yet have I a question or two to put to thee. Thou
art a graver, more scholarly man than thy brother, less like to be
led away by furies.Have the people of England and Normandy sworn
to thee willingly as their King?" "Even so, in the Minster," Henry began, and would have said more,
but Edgar again made his gesture of authority. "Wilt thou grant them the charter of Alfred and Edward, with copies
spread throughout the land?" "I will." "Wilt thou do equal justice between English and Norman?" "To the best of my power. ""Wilt thou bring home the Archbishop, fill up the dioceses, do thy
part by the Church?" "So help me God, I will." "Then, Henry of Normandy, I, Edgar Atheling, kiss thine hand, and
become thy man; and may God deal with thee, as thou dost with
England. "The noble form of Edgar bent before the slighter younger figure of
Henry, who burst into tears, genuine at the moment, and vowed most
earnestly to be a good King to the entire people. No doubt, he
meant it--then.And now--far more humbly, he made his suit to the Atheling for the
hand of his niece. Edgar took her apart. "Edith, canst thou brook this man?" "Uncle, he was good to me when we were children together at the old
King's Court.I have made no vows, I tore the veil mine aunt threw
over me from mine head. Methinks with me beside him he would never
be hard to our people." "So be it then, Edith.If he holds to this purpose when he hath
been crowned at Westminster, he shall have thee, though I fear thou
hast chosen a hard lot, and wilt rue the day when thou didst quit
these peaceful walls. "And one more stipulation was made by Edgar the Atheling, ere he rode
to own Henry as King in the face of the English people at
Westminster--namely, that Boyatt should be restored to the true
heiress the Lady Elftrud.And to Roger, compensation was secretly
made at the Atheling's expense, ere departing with Bertram in his
train for the Holy War.For Bertram could not look at the scar
without feeling himself a Crusader; and Edgar judged it better for
England to remove himself for awhile, while he laid all earthly
aspirations at the Feet of the King of kings.The little English troop arrived just in time to share in the
capture of the Holy City, to join in the eager procession of
conquerors to the Holy Sepulchre, and to hear Godfrey de Bouillon
elected to defend the sacred possession, refusing to wear a crown
where the King of Saints and Lord of Heaven and Earth had worn a
Crown of Thorns.SIGBERT'S GUERDON
A feudal castle, of massive stone, with donjon keep and high
crenellated wall, gateway tower, moat and drawbridge, was a strange,
incongruous sight in one of the purple-red stony slopes of
Palestine, with Hermon's snowy peak rising high above.It was
accounted for, however, by the golden crosses of the kingdom of
Jerusalem waving above the watch-tower, that rose like a pointing
finger above the keep, in company with a lesser ensign bearing a
couchant hound, sable.It was a narrow rocky pass that the Castle of Gebel-Aroun guarded,
overlooking a winding ravine between the spurs of the hills,
descending into the fertile plain of Esdraelon from the heights of
Galilee Hills, noted in many an Israelite battle, and now held by
the Crusaders.Bare, hard, and rocky were the hills around--the slopes and the
valley itself, which in the earlier season had been filled with rich
grass, Calvary clover, blood-red anemones, and pale yellow
amaryllis, only showed their arid brown or gray remnants.The moat
had become a deep waterless cleft; and beneath, on the accessible
sides towards the glen, clustered a collection of black horsehair
tents, the foremost surmounted by the ill-omened crescent.The burning sun had driven every creature under shelter, and no one
was visible; but well was it known that watch and ward was closely
kept from beneath those dark tents, that to the eyes within had the
air of couching beasts of prey.Yes, couching to devour what could
not fail to be theirs, in spite of the mighty walls of rock and
impregnable keep, for those deadly and insidious foes, hunger and
thirst, were within, gaining the battle for the Saracens without,
who had merely to wait in patience for the result.Some years previously, Sir William de Hundberg, a Norman knight, had
been expelled from his English castle by the partisans of Stephen,
and with wife and children had followed Count Fulk of Anjou to his
kingdom of Palestine, and had been endowed by him with one of the
fortresses which guarded the passes of Galilee, under that
exaggeration of the feudal system which prevailed in the crusading
kingdom of Jerusalem.Climate speedily did its work with the lady, warfare with two of her
sons, and there only remained of the family a youth of seventeen,
Walter, and his sister Mabel, fourteen, who was already betrothed to
the young Baron of Courtwood, then about to return to England.The
treaty with Stephen and the success of young Henry of Anjou gave Sir
William hopes of restitution; but just as he was about to conduct
her to Jerusalem for the wedding, before going back to England, he
fell sick of one of the recurring fevers of the country; and almost
at the same time the castle was beleaguered by a troop of Arabs,
under the command of a much-dreaded Sheik.His constitution was already much shaken, and Sir William, after a
few days of alternate torpor and delirium, passed away, without
having been conscious enough to leave any counsel to his children,
or any directions to Father Philip, the chaplain, or Sigbert, his
English squire.At the moment, sorrow was not disturbed by any great alarm, for the
castle was well victualled, and had a good well, supplied by springs
from the mountains; and Father Philip, after performing the funeral
rites for his lord, undertook to make his way to Tiberias, or to
Jerusalem, with tidings of their need; and it was fully anticipated
that succour would arrive long before the stores in the castle had
been exhausted.But time went on, and, though food was not absolutely lacking, the
spring of water which had hitherto supplied the garrison began to
fail.Whether through summer heats, or whether the wily enemy had
succeeded in cutting off the source, where once there had been a
clear crystal pool in the rock, cold as the snow from which it came,
there only dribbled a few scanty drops, caught with difficulty, and
only imbibed from utter necessity, so great was the suspicion of
their being poisoned by the enemy.The wine was entirely gone, and the salted provision, which alone
remained, made the misery of thirst almost unbearable.On the cushions, richly embroidered in dainty Eastern colouring, lay
Mabel de Hundberg, with dry lips half opened and panting, too weary
to move, yet listening all intent.Another moment, and in chamois leather coat, his helmet in hand,
entered her brother from the turret stair, and threw himself down
hopelessly, answering her gesture. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"No, no, of course no.The dust was only from another swarm of
those hateful Saracens. I knew it would be so. Pah! it has made my
tongue more like old boot leather than ever. Have no more drops
been squeezed from the well? It's time the cup was filled! ""It was Roger's turn. Sigbert said he should have the next," said
Mabel. Walter uttered an imprecation upon Roger, and a still stronger one
on Sigbert's meddling. But instantly the cry was, "Where is
Sigbert? "Walter even took the trouble to shout up and down the stair for
Sigbert, and to demand hotly of the weary, dejected men-at-arms
where Sigbert was; but no one could tell. "Gone over to the enemy, the old traitor," said Walter, again
dropping on the divan. "Never! Sigbert is no traitor," returned his sister. "He is an English churl, and all churls are traitors," responded
Walter.The old nurse, who was fitfully fanning Mabel with a dried palm-
leaf, made a growl of utter dissent, and Mabel exclaimed, "None was
ever so faithful as good old Sigbert. "It was a promising quarrel, but their lips were too dry to keep it
up for more than a snarl or two. Walter cast himself down, and bade
old Tata fan him; why should Mabel have it all to herself?Then sounds of wrangling were heard below, and Walter roused himself
to go down and interfere. The men were disputing over some
miserable dregs of wine at the bottom of a skin. Walter shouted to
call them to order, but they paid little heed. "Do not meddle and make, young sir," said a low-browed, swarthy
fellow. "There's plenty of cool drink of the right sort out there." "Traitor!" cried Walter; "better die than yield. ""If one have no mind for dying like an old crab in a rock," said the
man. "They would think nought of making an end of us out there," said
another. "I'd as lief be choked at once by a cord as by thirst," was the
answer. "That you are like to be, if you talk such treason," threatened
Walter. "Seize him, Richard--Martin. "Richard and Martin, however, hung back, one muttering that Gil had
done nothing, and the other that he might be in the right of it; and
when Walter burst out in angry threats he was answered in a gruff
voice that he had better take care what he said, "There was no
standing not only wasting with thirst and hunger, but besides being
blustered at by a hot-headed lad, that scarce knew a hauberk from a
helmet. "Walter, in his rage, threw himself with drawn sword on the mutineer,
but was seized and dragged back by half a dozen stalwart arms, such
as he had no power to resist, and he was held fast amid rude laughs
and brutal questions whether he should thus be carried to the
Saracens, and his sister with him. "The old Sheik would give a round sum for a fair young damsel like
her! "were the words that maddened her brother into a desperate
struggle, baffled with a hoarse laugh by the men-at-arms, who were
keeping him down, hand and foot, when a new voice sounded: "How
now, fellows! What's this? "In one moment Walter was released and on his feet, and the men fell
back, ashamed and gloomy, as a sturdy figure, with sun-browned face,
light locks worn away by the helmet, and slightly grizzled, stood
among them, in a much-rubbed and soiled chamois leather garment.Walter broke out into passionate exclamations; the men, evidently
ashamed, met them with murmurs and growls. "Bad enough, bad
enough!" broke in Sigbert; "but there's no need to make it worse.Better to waste with hunger and thirst than be a nidering fellow--
rising against your lord in his distress." "We would never have done it if he would have kept a civil tongue." "Civility's hard to a tongue dried up," returned Sigbert. "But look
you here, comrades, leave me a word with my young lord here, and I
plight my faith that you shall have enow to quench your thirst
within six hours at the least. "There was an attempt at a cheer, broken by the murmur, "We have
heard enough of that! It is always six hours and six hours." "And the Saracen hounds outside would at least give us a draught of
water ere they made away with us," said another. "Saracens, forsooth!" said Sigbert. "You shall leave the Saracens
far behind you. A few words first with my lord, and you shall hear. Meanwhile, you, John Cook, take all the beef remaining; make it in
small fardels, such as a man may easily carry. ""That's soon done," muttered the cook. "The entire weight would
scarce bow a lad's shoulders." "The rest of you put together what you would save from the enemy,
and is not too heavy to carry. "One man made some attempt at
growling at a mere lad being consulted, while the stout warriors
were kept in ignorance; but the spirit of discipline and confidence
had returned with Sigbert, and no one heeded the murmur.Meantime,
Sigbert followed the young Lord Walter up the rough winding stairs
to the chamber where Mabel lay on her cushions. "What! what!" demanded the boy, pausing to enter. Sigbert, by way of answer,
quietly produced from some hidden pouch two figs.Walter snatched
at one with a cry of joy. Mabel held out her hand, then, with a
gasp, drew it back. "Has Roger had one? "Sigbert signed in the affirmative, and Mabel took a bite of the
luscious fruit with a gasp of pleasure, yet paused once more to hold
the remainder to her nurse. "The Saints bless you, my sweet lamb!" exclaimed the old woman;
"finish it yourself.I could not." "If you don't want it, give it to me," put in Walter. "For shame, my lord," Sigbert did not scruple to say, nor could the
thirsty girl help finishing the refreshing morsel, while Walter,
with some scanty murmur of excuse, demanded where it came from, and
what Sigbert had meant by promises of safety. "Sir," said Sigbert, "you may remember how some time back your
honoured father threw one of the fellaheen into the dungeon for
maiming old Leo." "The villain! I remember. I thought he was hanged." "No, sir. He escaped.I went to take him food, and he was gone! I
then found an opening in the vault, of which I spoke to none, save
your father, for fear of mischief; but I built it up with stones.Now, in our extremity, I bethought me of it, and resolved to try
whether the prisoner had truly escaped, for where he went, we might
go.Long and darksome is the way underground, but it opens at last
through one of the old burial-places of the Jews into the thickets
upon the bank of the Jordan." "The Jordan! Little short of a league!" exclaimed Walter. "A league, underground, and in the dark," sighed Mabel. "Better than starving here like a rat in a trap," returned her
brother. "Ah yes; oh yes! I will think of the cool river and the trees at
the end. ""You will find chill enough, lady, long ere you reach the river,"
said Sigbert. "You must wrap yourself well. 'Tis an ugsome
passage; but your heart must not fail you, for it is the only hope
left us. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
but the sun was low.Five hours
at least had been spent in that dismal transit, before the
exhausted, soiled, and chilled company stepped forth into a green
thicket with the Jordan rushing far below.Five weeks' siege in a
narrow fortress, then the two miles of subterranean struggle--these
might well make the grass beneath the wild sycamore, the cork-tree,
the long reeds, the willows, above all, the sound of the flowing
water, absolute ecstasy.There was an instant rush for the river,
impeded by many a thorn-bush and creeper; but almost anything green
was welcome at the moment, and the only disappointment was at the
height and steepness of the banks of rock.However, at last one
happy man found a place where it was possible to climb down to the
shingly bed of the river, close to a great mass of the branching
headed papyrus reed.Into the muddy but eminently sweet water most
of them waded; helmets became cups, hands scooped up the water,
there were gasps of joy and refreshment and blessing on the cool
wave so long needed.Sigbert and Walter between them helped down Mabel and her nurse, and
found a secure spot for them, where weary faces, feet, and hands
might be laved in the pool beneath a rock.Then, taking up a bow and arrows laid down by one of the men,
Sigbert applied himself to the endeavour to shoot some of the water-
fowl which were flying wildly about over the reeds in the unwonted
disturbance caused by the bathers.He brought down two or three of
the duck kind, and another of the party had bethought him of angling
with a string and one of the only too numerous insects, and had
caught sundry of the unsuspecting and excellent fish.He had also
carefully preserved a little fire, and, setting his boy to collect
fuel, he produced embers enough to cook both fish and birds
sufficiently to form an appetising meal for those who had been
reduced to scraps of salt food for full a fortnight. "All is well so far," said Walter, with his little lordly air. "We
have arranged our retreat with great skill. The only regret is that
I have been forced to leave the castle to the enemy! the castle we
were bound to defend. ""Nay, sir, if it be your will," said Sigbert, "the tables might yet
be turned on the Saracen. "With great eagerness Walter asked how this could be, and Sigbert
reminded him that many a time it had been observed from the tower
that, though the Saracens kept careful watch on the gates of the
besieged so as to prevent a sally, they left the rear of their camp
absolutely undefended, after the ordinary Eastern fashion, and
Sigbert, with some dim recollection of rhymed chronicles of Gideon
and of Jonathan, believed that these enemies might be surprised
after the same fashion as theirs.Walter leapt up for joy, but
Sigbert had to remind him that the sun was scarcely set, and that
time must be given for the Saracens to fall asleep before the
attack; besides that, his own men needed repose. "There is all the distance to be traversed," said Walter. "Barely a league, sir. "It was hard to believe that the space, so endless underground, was
so short above, and Walter was utterly incredulous, till, climbing
the side of the ravine so high as to be above the trees, Sigbert
showed him the familiar landmarks known in hunting excursions with
his father.He was all eagerness; but Sigbert insisted on waiting
till past midnight before moving, that the men might have time to
regain their vigour by sleep, and also that there might be time for
the Saracens to fall into the deepest of all slumbers in full
security.The moon was low in the West when Sigbert roused the party, having
calculated that it would light them on the way, but would be set by
the time the attack was to be made.For Mabel's security it was arranged that a small and most unwilling
guard should remain with her, near enough to be able to perceive how
matters went; and if there appeared to be defeat and danger for her
brother, there would probably be full time to reach Tiberias even on
foot.However, the men of the party had little fear that flight would be
needed, for, though perhaps no one would have thought of the scheme
for himself, there was a general sense that what Sigbert devised was
prudent, and that he would not imperil his young lord and lady upon
a desperate venture.Keeping well and compactly together, the little band moved on, along
arid, rocky paths, starting now and then at the howls of the jackals
which gradually gathered into a pack, and began to follow, as if--
some one whispered--they scented prey, "On whom? "was the question.On a cliff looking down on the Arab camp, and above it on the dark
mass of the castle, where, in the watch-tower, Sigbert had left a
lamp burning, they halted just as the half-moon was dipping below
the heights towards the Mediterranean.Here the Lady Mabel and her
guard were to wait until they heard the sounds which to their
practised ears would show how the fight went.The Arab shout of victory they knew only too well, and it was to be
the signal of flight towards Tiberias; but if success was with the
assailants, the war-cry 'Deus vult,' and 'St.Hubert for Hundberg,'
were to be followed by the hymn of victory as the token that it was
safe to descend.All was dark, save for the magnificent stars of an Eastern night, as
Mabel, her nurse, and the five men, commanded by the wounded Roger,
stood silently praying while listening intently to the muffled tramp
of their own people, descending on the blacker mass denoting the
Saracen tents.The sounds of feet died away, only the jackal's whine and moan, were
heard.Then suddenly came a flash of lights in different
directions, and shouts here, there, everywhere, cries, yells,
darkness, an undistinguishable medley of noise, the shrill shriek of
the Moslem, and the exulting war-cry of the Christian ringing
farther and farther off, in the long valley leading towards the
Jordan fords.Dawn began to break--overthrown tents could be seen.Mabel had time
to wonder whether she was forgotten, when the hymn began to sound,
pealing on her ears up the pass, and she had not had time for more
than an earnest thanksgiving, and a few steps down the rocky
pathway, before a horse's tread was heard, and a man-at-arms came
towards her leading a slender, beautiful Arab horse. "All well! the
young lord and all. The Saracens, surprised, fled without ever
guessing the number of their foes. The Sheik made prisoner in his
tent.Ay, and a greater still, the Emir Hussein Bey, who had
arrived to take possession of the castle only that very evening. What a ransom he would pay!Horses and all were taken, the spoil of
the country round, and Master Sigbert had sent this palfrey for Lady
Mabel to ride down. "Perhaps Sigbert, in all his haste and occupation, had been able to
discern that the gentle little mare was not likely to display the
Arab steed's perilous attachment to a master, for Mabel was safely
mounted, and ere sunrise was greeted by her joyous and victorious
brother. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"Is not this noble, sister? Down went the Pagan dogs
before my good sword! There are a score of them dragged off to the
dead man's hollow for the jackals and vultures; but I kept one
fellow uppermost to show you the gash I made! Come and see. "Roger here observed that the horse might grow restive at the
carcase, and Mabel was excused the sight, though Walter continued to
relate his exploits, and demand whether he had not won his spurs by
so grand a ruse and victory. "Truly I think Sigbert has," said his sister. "It was all his
doing." "Sigbert, an English churl! What are you thinking of, Mabel?" "I am thinking to whom the honour is due." "You are a mere child, sister, or you would know better.Sigbert is
a very fair squire; but what is a squire's business but to put his
master in the way of honour? Do not talk such folly. "Mabel was silenced, and after being conducted across the bare
trampled ground among the tents of the Arabs, she re-entered the
castle, where in the court groups of disarmed Arabs stood, their
bournouses pulled over their brows, their long lances heaped in a
corner, grim and disconsolate at their discomfiture and captivity.A repast of stewed kid, fruit, and sherbet was prepared for her and
her brother from the spoil, after which both were weary enough to
throw themselves on their cushions for a long sound sleep.Mabel slept the longer, and when she awoke, she found that the sun
was setting, and that supper was nearly ready.Walter met her just as she had arranged her dress, to bid nurse make
ready her bales, for they were to start at dawn on the morrow for
Tiberias. It was quite possible that the enemy might return in
force to deliver their Emir.A small garrison, freshly provisioned,
could hold out the castle until relief could be sent; but it would
be best to conduct the two important prisoners direct to the King,
to say nothing of Walter's desire to present them and to display
these testimonies of his prowess before the Court of Jerusalem.The Emir was a tall, slim, courteous Arab, with the exquisite
manners of the desert. Both he and the Sheik were invited to the
meal.Both looked startled and shocked at the entrance of the fair-
haired damsel, and the Sheik crouched in a corner, with a savage
glare in his eye like a freshly caught wild beast, though the Emir
sat cross-legged on the couch eating, and talking in the LINGUA
FRANCA, which was almost a native tongue, to the son and daughter of
the Crusader.From him Walter learnt that King Fulk was probably at
Tiberias, and this quickened the eagerness of all for a start. It
took place in the earliest morning, so as to avoid the heat of the
day.How different from the departure in the dark underground
passage!Horses enough had been captured to afford the Emir and the Sheik
each his own beautiful steed (the more readily that the creatures
could hardly have been ridden by any one else), and their parole was
trusted not to attempt to escape.Walter, Mabel, Sigbert, and Roger
were also mounted, and asses were found in the camp for the nurse,
and the men who had been hurt in the night's surprise.The only mischance on the way was that in the noontide halt, just as
the shimmer of the Lake of Galilee met their eyes, under a huge
terebinth-tree, growing on a rock, when all, except Sigbert, had
composed themselves to a siesta, there was a sudden sound of loud
and angry altercation, and, as the sleepers started up, the Emir was
seen grasping the bridle of the horse on which the Sheik sat
downcast and abject under the storm of fierce indignant words hurled
at him for thus degrading his tribe and all Islam by breaking his
plighted word to the Christian.This was in Arabic, and the Emir further insisted on his prostrating
himself to ask pardon, while he himself in LINGUA FRANCA explained
that the man was of a low and savage tribe of Bedouins, who knew not
how to keep faith.Walter broke out in loud threats, declaring that the traitor dog
ought to be hung up at once on the tree, or dragged along with hands
tied behind him; but Sigbert contented himself with placing a man at
each side of his horse's head, as they proceeded on their way to the
strongly fortified town of the ancient Herods, perched at the head
of the dark gray Lake of Galilee, shut in by mountain peaks.The
second part of the journey was necessarily begun in glowing heat,
for it was most undesirable to have to spend a night in the open
country, and it was needful to push on to a fortified hospice or
monastery of St. John, which formed a half-way house.Weary, dusty, athirst, they came in sight of it in the evening; and
Walter and Roger rode forward to request admittance. The porter
begged them to wait when he heard that the party included women and
Saracen prisoners; and Walter began to storm.However, a few
moments more brought a tall old Knight Hospitalier to the gate, and
he made no difficulties as to lodging the Saracens in a building at
the end of the Court, where they could be well guarded; and Mabel
and her nurse were received in a part of the precincts appropriated
to female pilgrims.It was a bare and empty place, a round turret over the gateway, with
a stone floor, and a few mats rolled up in the corner, mats which
former pilgrims had not left in an inviting condition.However, the notions of comfort of the twelfth century were not
exacting. Water to wash away the dust of travel was brought to the
door, and was followed by a substantial meal on roasted kid and thin
cakes of bread.Sigbert came up with permission for the women to
attend compline, though only strictly veiled; and Mabel knelt in the
little cool cryptlike chapel, almost like the late place of her
escape, and returned thanks for the deliverance from their recent
peril.Then, fresh mats and cushions having been supplied, the damsel and
her nurse slept profoundly, and were only roused by a bell for a
mass in the darkness just before dawn, after which they again set
forth, the commander of the Hospice himself, and three or four
knights, accompanying them, and conversing familiarly with the Emir
on the current interests of Palestine.About half-way onward, the glint and glitter of spears was seen amid
a cloud of dust on the hill-path opposite. The troop drew together
on their guard, though, as the Hospitalier observed, from the side
of Tiberias an enemy could scarcely come.A scout was sent forward
to reconnoitre; but, even before he came spurring joyously back, the
golden crosses of Jerusalem had been recognised, and confirmed his
tidings that it was the rearguard of the army, commanded by King
Fulk himself, on the way to the relief of the Castle of Gebel-Aroun.In a brief half-hour more, young Walter de Hundberg, with his sister
by his side, was kneeling before an alert, slender, wiry figure in
plain chamois leather, with a worn sunburnt face and keen blue eyes--
Fulk of Anjou--who had resigned his French county to lead the
crusading cause in Palestine. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"Stand up, fair youth, and tell thy tale, and how thou hast
forestalled our succour. "Walter told his tale of the blockaded castle, the underground
passage, and the dexterous surprise of the besiegers, ending by
presenting, not ungracefully, his captives to the pleasure of the
King. "Why, this is well done!" exclaimed Fulk. "Thou art a youth of
promise, and wilt well be a prop to our grandson's English throne. Thou shalt take knighthood from mine own hand as thy prowess well
deserveth.And thou, fair damsel, here is one whom we could scarce
hold back from rushing with single hand to deliver his betrothed. Sir Raymond of Courtwood, you are balked of winning thy lady at the
sword's point, but thou wilt scarce rejoice the less. "A dark-eyed, slender young knight, in bright armour, drew towards
Mabel, and she let him take her hand; but she was intent on
something else, and exclaimed--
"Oh, sir, Sir King, let me speak one word! The guerdon should not
be only my brother's.The device that served us was--our squire's." The Baron of Courtwood uttered a fierce exclamation. Walter
muttered, "Mabel, do not be such a meddling fool"; but the King
asked, "And who may this same squire be? ""An old English churl," said Walter impatiently. "My father took
him as his squire for want of a better." "And he has been like a father to us," added Mabel
"Silence, sister! It is not for you to speak!" petulantly cried
Walter. "Not that the Baron of Courtwood need be jealous," added
he, laughing somewhat rudely. "Where is the fellow? Stand forth,
Sigbert. "Travel and heat-soiled, sunburnt, gray, and ragged, armour rusted,
leathern garment stained, the rugged figure came forward, footsore
and lame, for he had given up his horse to an exhausted man-at-arms.A laugh went round at the bare idea of the young lady's preferring
such a form to the splendid young knight, her destined bridegroom. "Is this the esquire who hath done such good service, according to
the young lady?" asked the King. "Ay, sir," returned Walter; "he is true and faithful enough, though
nothing to be proud of in looks; and he served us well in my sally
and attack." "It was his--" Mabel tried to say, but Sigbert hushed her. "Let be, let be, my sweet lady; it was but my bounden duty." "What's that? Speak out what passes there," demanded young
Courtwood, half-jealously still. "A mere English villein, little better than a valet of the camp!" were the exclamations around. "A noble damsel take note of him! Fie for shame!" "He has been true and brave," said the King. "Dost ask a guerdon
for him, young sir?" he added to Walter. "What wouldst have, old Sigbert?" asked Walter, in a patronising
voice. "I ask nothing, sir," returned the old squire. "To have seen my
lord's children in safety is all I wish. I have but done my duty. "King Fulk, who saw through the whole more clearly than some of those
around, yet still had the true Angevin and Norman contempt for a
Saxon, here said: "Old man, thou art trusty and shrewd, and mayst
be useful.Wilt thou take service as one of my men-at-arms?" "Thou mayst," said Walter; "thou art not bound to me. England hath
enough of Saxon churls without thee, and I shall purvey myself an
esquire of youthful grace and noble blood. "Mabel looked at her betrothed and began to speak. "No, no, sweet lady, I will have none of that rough, old masterful
sort about me." "Sir King," said Sigbert, "I thank thee heartily.I would still
serve the Cross; but my vow has been, when my young lord and lady
should need me no more, to take the Cross of St. John with the
Hospitaliers." "As a lay brother? Bethink thee," said Fulk of Anjou. "Noble blood
is needed for a Knight of the Order." Sigbert smiled slightly, in spite of all the sadness of his face,
and the Knight Commander who had ridden with them, a Fleming by
birth, said--
"For that matter, Sir King, we are satisfied.Sigbert, the son of
Sigfrid, hath proved his descent from the old English kings of the
East Saxons, and the Order will rejoice to enrol in the novitiate so
experienced a warrior." "Is this indeed so?" asked Fulk. "A good lineage, even if English! ""But rebel," muttered Courtwood. "It is so, Sir King," said Sigbert. "My father was disseised of the
lands of Hundberg, and died in the fens fighting under Hereward le
Wake.My mother dwelt under the protection of the Abbey of
Colchester, and, by and by, I served under our Atheling, and, when
King Henry's wars in Normandy were over, I followed the Lord of
Hundberg's banner, because the men-at-arms were mine own neighbours,
and his lady my kinswoman.Roger can testify to my birth and
lineage." "So, thou art true heir of Hundberg, if that be the name of thine
English castle?" "Ay, sir, save for the Norman!But I would not, if I could, meddle
with thee, my young lord, though thou dost look at me askance, spite
of having learnt of me to ride and use thy lance.I am the last of
the English line of old Sigfrid the Wormbane, and a childless man,
and I trust the land and the serfs will be well with thee, who art
English born, and son to Wulfrida of Lexden.And I trust that thou,
my sweet Lady Mabel, will be a happy bride and wife. All I look for
is to end my days under the Cross, in the cause of the Holy
Sepulchre, whether as warrior or lay brother. Yes, dear lady, that
is enough for old Sigbert. "And Mabel had to acquiesce and believe that her old friend found
peace and gladness beneath the eight-pointed Cross, when she and her
brother sailed for England, where she would behold the green fields
and purple heather of which he had told her amid the rocks of
Palestine.Moreover, she thought of him when on her way through France, she
heard the young monk Bernard, then rising into fame, preach on the
beleaguered city, saved by the poor wise man; and tell how, when the
city was safe, none remembered the poor man.True, the preacher
gave it a mystic meaning, and interpreted it as meaning the
emphatically Poor Man by Whom Salvation came, and Whom too few bear
in mind.Yet such a higher meaning did not exclude the thought of
one whose deserts surpassed his honours here on earth.THE BEGGAR'S LEGACY
An Alderman bold, Henry Smith was enrolled,
Of the Silversmiths' Company;
Highly praised was his name, his skill had high fame,
And a prosperous man was he.Knights drank to his health, and lauded his wealth;
Sailors came from the Western Main,
Their prizes they sold, of ingots of gold,
Or plate from the galleys of Spain.Then beakers full fine, to hold the red wine,
Were cast in his furnace's mould,
Or tankards rich chased, in intricate taste,
Gimmal rings of the purest gold.On each New Year's morn, no man thought it scorn--
Whether statesman, or warrior brave--
The choicest device, of costliest price,
For a royal off'ring to crave. "Bring here such a toy as the most may joy
The eyes of our gracious Queen,
Rows of orient pearls, gold pins for her curls,
Silver network, all glistening sheen. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"Each buyer who came--lord, squire, or dame--
Behaved in most courteous guise,
Showing honour due, as to one they knew
To be at once wealthy and wise.In London Guild Hall, the citizens all,
Esteemed him their future Lord Mayor;
Not one did he meet, in market or street,
But made him a reverence fair. "Ho," said Master Smith, "I will try the pith
Of this smooth-faced courtesy;
Do they prize myself, do they prize my pelf,
Do they value what's mine or me? "His gold chain of pride he hath laid aside,
And furred gown of the scarlet red;
He set on his back a fardel and pack,
And a hood on his grizzled head.His 'prentices all he hath left in stall,
But running right close by his side,
In spite of his rags, guarding well his bags,
His small Messan dog would abide.So thus, up and down, through village and town,
In rain or in sunny weather,
Through Surrey's fair land, his staff in his hand,
Went he and the dog together. "Good folk, hear my prayer, of your bounty spare,
Help a wanderer in his need;
Better days I have seen, a rich man I have been,
Esteemed both in word and deed. "In the first long street, certain forms he did meet,
But scarce might behold their faces;
From matted elf-locks eyes stared like an ox,
And shambling were their paces!Not one gave him cheer, nor would one come near,
As he turned him away to go,
Then a heavy stone at the dog was thrown,
To deal a right cowardly blow.In Mitcham's fair vale, the men 'gan to rail,
"Not a vagabond may come near;"
Each mother's son ran, each boy and each man,
To summon the constable here.The cart's tail behind, the beggar they bind,
They flogged him full long and full sore;
They hunted him out, did that rabble rout,
And bade him come thither no more!All weary and bruised, and scurvily used,
He went trudging along his track;
The lesson was stern he had come to learn,
And yet he disdained to turn back.Where Walton-on-Thames gleams fair through the stems
Of its tufted willow palms,
There were loitering folk who most vilely spoke,
Nor would give him one groat in alms. "Dog Smith," was the cry, "behold him go by,
The fool who hath lost all he had!" For only to tease can delight and can please
The ill-nurtured village lad. Behold, in Betchworth was a blazing hearth
With a hospitable door. "Thou art tired and lame," quoth a kindly dame,
"Come taste of our humble store. "Though scant be our fare, thou art welcome to share;
We rejoice to give thee our best;
Come sit by our fire, thou weary old sire,
Come in, little doggie, and rest. "And where Mole the slow doth by Cobham go,
He beheld a small village maiden;
Of loose flocks of wool her lap was quite full,
With a bundle her arms were laden. "What seekest thou, child, 'mid the bushes wild,
Thy face and thine arms that thus tear?" "The wool the sheep leave, to spin and to weave;
It makes us our clothes to wear. "Then she led him in, where her mother did spin,
And make barley bannocks to eat;
They gave him enough, though the food was rough--
The kindliness made it most sweet. Many years had past, report ran at last,
The rich Alderman Smith was dead.Then each knight and dame, and each merchant came,
To hear his last testament read. I, Harry Smith, found of mind clear and sound,
Thus make and devise my last will:
While England shall stand, I bequeath my land,
My last legacies to fulfil. "To the muddy spot, where they cleaned them not,
When amongst their fields I did roam;
To every one there with the unkempt hair
I bequeath a small-toothed comb. "Next, to Mitcham proud, and the gaping crowd,
Who for nobody's sorrows grieve;
With a lash double-thong, plaited firm and strong,
A horsewhip full stout do I leave. "To Walton-on-Thames, where, 'mid willow stems,
The lads and the lasses idle;
To restrain their tongues, and breath of their lungs,
I bequeath a bit and a bridle. "To Betchworth so fair, and the households there
Who so well did the stranger cheer,
I leave as my doles to the pious souls,
Full seventy pounds by the year. "To Cobham the thrifty I leave a good fifty,
To be laid out in cloth dyed dark;
On Sabbath-day to be given away,
And known by Smith's badge and mark. "To Leatherhead too my gratitude's due,
For a welcome most freely given;
Let my bounty remain, for each village to gain,
Whence the poor man was never driven. "So in each sweet dale, and bright sunny vale,
In the garden of England blest;
Those have found a friend, whose gifts do not end,
Who gave to that stranger a rest! Henry Smith's history is literally true.He was a silversmith of
immense wealth in London in the latter part of the sixteenth
century, but in his later years he chose to perambulate the county
of Surrey as a beggar, and was known as 'Dog Smith. 'He met with
various fortune in different parishes, and at Mitcham was flogged at
the cart's tail.On his death, apparently in 1627, he was found to
have left bequests to almost every place in Surrey, according to the
manners of the inhabitants--to Mitcham a horsewhip, to Walton-on-
Thames a bridle, to Betchworth, Leatherhead, and many more,
endowments which produce from 50 to 75 pounds a year, and to Cobham
a sum to be spent annually in woollen cloth of a uniform colour,
bearing Smith's badge, to be given away in church to the poor and
impotent, as the following tablet still records:--
1627
ITEM--That the Gift to the impotent and aged poor people, shall be
bestowed in Apparell of one Coulour, with some Badge or other Mark,
that it may be known to be the Gift of the said Henry Smith, or else
in Bread, flesh, or fish on the Sabbath-day publickly in the Church.In Witness whereof the said Henry Smith did put to his Hand and seal
the Twenty-first day of January in the Second Year of the Reign of
our most gracious Sovereign Lord King Charles the First.A REVIEW OF NIECES
GENERAL SIR EDWARD FULFORD, K.G.C., TO HIS SISTER MISS FULFORD
UNITED SERVICE CLUB, 29TH JUNE.My Dear Charlotte,--I find I shall need at least a month to get
through the necessary business; so that I shall only have a week at
last for my dear mother and the party collected at New Cove.You
will have ample time to decide which of the nieces shall be asked to
accompany us, but you had better give no hint of the plan till you
have studied them thoroughly.After all the years that you have
accompanied me on all my stations, you know how much depends on the
young lady of our house being one able to make things pleasant to
the strange varieties who will claim our hospitality in a place like
Malta, yet not likely to flag if left in solitude with you.She
must be used enough to society to do the honours genially and
gracefully, and not have her head turned by being the chief young
lady in the place.She ought to be well bred, if not high bred,
enough to give a tone to the society of her contemporaries, and
above all she must not flirt. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"Isa, poor girl, seems to need our
care most, and would be the most obliging and attentive.Metelill
would be the prettiest and sweetest ornament of our drawing-room,
and would amuse you the most; Pica, with her scholarly tastes, would
be the best and most appreciative fellow-traveller; and Jane, if she
could or would go, would perhaps benefit the most by being freed
from a heavy strain, and having her views enlarged.10.--A worthy girl is Jane Druce, but I fear the Vicarage is no
school of manners.Her mother is sitting with us, and has been
discoursing to grandmamma on her Jane's wonderful helpfulness and
activity in house and parish, and how everything hinged on her last
winter when they had whooping-cough everywhere in and out of doors;
indeed she doubts whether the girl has ever quite thrown off the
effects of all her exertions then.Suddenly comes a trampling, a
bounce and a rush, and in dashes Miss Jane, fiercely demanding
whether the children had leave to go to the cove. Poor Margaret
meekly responds that she had consented. "And didn't you know,"
exclaims the damsel, "that all their everyday boots are in that
unlucky trunk?" There is a humble murmur that Chattie had promised
to be very careful, but it produces a hotter reply. "As if
Chattie's promises of that kind could be trusted! And I had _TOLD_
them that they were to keep with baby on the cliff! "Then came a
real apology for interfering with Jane's plans, to which we listened
aghast, and Margaret was actually getting up to go and look after
her amphibious offspring herself, when her daughter cut her off
short with, "Nonsense, mamma, you know you are not to do any such
thing!I must go, that's all, or they won't have a decent boot or
stocking left among them. "Off she went with another bang, while
her mother began blaming herself for having yielded in haste to the
persuasions of the little ones, oblivious of the boots, thus
sacrificing Jane's happy morning with Avice.My mother showed
herself shocked by the tone in which Margaret had let herself be
hectored, and this brought a torrent of almost tearful apologies
from the poor dear thing, knowing she did not keep up her authority
or make herself respected as would be good for her girl, but if we
only knew how devoted Jane was, and how much there was to grind and
try her temper, we should not wonder that it gave way sometimes.Indeed it was needful to turn away the subject, as Margaret was the
last person we wished to distress.Jane could have shown no temper to the children, for at dinner a
roly-poly person of five years old, who seems to absorb all the fat
in the family, made known that he had had a very jolly day, and he
loved cousin Avice very much indeed, and sister Janie very much
indeeder, and he could with difficulty be restrained from an
expedition to kiss them both then and there.The lost box was announced while we were at dinner, and Jane is gone
with her faithful Avice to unpack it.Her mother would have done it
and sent her boating with the rest, but submitted as usual when
commanded to adhere to the former plan of driving with grandmamma.These Druce children must be excellent, according to their mother,
but they are terribly brusque and bearish. They are either seen and
not heard, or not seen and heard a great deal too much.Even Jane
and Meg, who ought to know better, keep up a perpetual undercurrent
of chatter and giggle, whatever is going on, with any one who will
share it with them. 10.--I am more and more puzzled about the new reading of the Fifth
Commandment.None seem to understand it as we used to do. The
parents are content to be used as equals, and to be called by all
sorts of absurd names; and though grandmamma is always kindly and
attentively treated, there is no reverence for the relationship.I
heard Charley call her 'a jolly old party,' and Metelill respond
that she was 'a sweet old thing. 'Why, we should have thought such
expressions about our grandmother a sort of sacrilege, but when I
ventured to hint as much Charley flippantly answered, "Gracious me,
we are not going back to buckram"; and Metelill, with her caressing
way, declared that she loved dear granny too much to be so stiff and
formal.I quoted--
"If I be a Father, where is My honour?" And one of them taking it, I am sorry to say, for a line of secular
poetry, exclaimed at the stiffness and coldness.Pica then put in
her oar, and began to argue that honour must be earned, and that it
was absurd and illogical to claim it for the mere accident of
seniority or relationship.Jane, not at all conscious of being an
offender, howled at her that this was her horrible liberalism and
neology, while Metelill asked what was become of loyalty. "That
depends on what you mean by it," returned our girl graduate. "LOI-
AUTE, steadfastness to principle, is noble, but personal loyalty, to
some mere puppet or the bush the crown hangs on, is a pernicious
figment." Charley shouted that this was the No.1 letter A point in
Pie's prize essay, and there the discussion ended, Isa only sighing
to herself, "Ah, if I had any one to be loyal to!" "How you would jockey them! "cried Charley, turning upon her so
roughly that the tears came into her eyes; and I must have put on
what you call my Government-house look, for Charley subsided
instantly. 11.--Here was a test as to this same obedience.The pupils, who are
by this time familiars of the party, had devised a boating and
fishing expedition for all the enterprising, which was satisfactory
to the elders because it was to include both the fathers.Unluckily, however, this morning's post brought a summons to Martyn
and Mary to fulfil an engagement they have long made to meet an
American professor at ---, and they had to start off at eleven
o'clock; and at the same time the Hollyford clergyman, an old
fellow-curate of Horace Druce, sent a note imploring him to take a
funeral.So the voice of the seniors was for putting off the
expedition, but the voice of the juniors was quite the other way. The three families took different lines.The Druces show obedience
though not respect; they growled and grumbled horribly, but
submitted, though with ill grace, to the explicit prohibition.Non-
interference is professedly Mary's principle, but even she said,
with entreaty veiled beneath the playfulness, when it was pleaded
that two of the youths had oars at Cambridge, "Freshwater fish, my
dears. I wish you would wait for us!I don't want you to attend
the submarine wedding of our old friends Tame and Isis." To which
Pica rejoined, likewise talking out of Spenser, that Proteus would
provide a nice ancient nymph to tend on them.Her father then
chimed in, saying, "You will spare our nerves by keeping to dry land
unless you can secure the ancient mariner who was with us
yesterday. ""Come, come, most illustrious," said Pica good-humouredly, "I'm not
going to encourage you to set up for nerves. You are much better
without them, and I must get some medusae. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"It ended with, "I beg you will not go without that old man," the
most authoritative speech I have heard either Martyn or Mary make to
their daughters; but it was so much breath wasted on Pica, who
maintains her right to judge for herself.The ancient mariner had
been voted an encumbrance and exchanged for a jolly young waterman.Our other mother, Edith, implored, and was laughed down by Charley,
who declared she could swim, and that she did not think Uncle Martyn
would have been so old-womanish.Metelill was so tender and
caressing with her frightened mother that I thought here at last was
submission, and with a good grace.But after a turn on the
esplanade among the pupils, back came Metelill in a hurry to say,
"Dear mother, will you very much _MIND_ if I go?They will be so
disappointed, and there will be such a fuss if I don't; and Charley
really ought to have some one with her besides Pie, who will heed
nothing but magnifying medusae. "I am afraid it is true, as Isa
says, that it was all owing to the walk with that young Mr Horne.Poor Edith fell into such a state of nervous anxiety that I could
not leave her, and she confided to me how Charley had caught her
foolish masculine affectations in the family of this very Bertie
Elwood, and told me of the danger of an attachment between Metelill
and a young government clerk who is always on the look-out for her. "And dear Metelill is so gentle and gracious that she cannot bear to
repel any one," says the mother, who would, I see, be thankful to
part with either daughter to our keeping in hopes of breaking off
perilous habits.I was saved, however, from committing myself by
the coming in of Isabel. That child follows me about like a tame
cat, and seems so to need mothering that I cannot bear to snub her.She came to propound to me a notion that has risen among these
Oxford girls, namely, that I should take out their convalescent
dressmaker as my maid instead of poor Amelie.She is quite well
now, and going back next week; but a few years in a warm climate
might be the saving of her health. So I agreed to go with Isa to
look at her, and judge whether the charming account I heard was all
youthful enthusiasm.Edith went out driving with my mother, and we
began our TETE-A-TETE walk, in which I heard a great deal of the
difficulties of that free-and-easy house at Oxford, and how often
Isa wishes for some one who would be a real guide and helper,
instead of only giving a playful, slap-dash answer, like good-
natured mockery.The treatment may suit Mary's own daughters, but
'Just as you please, my dear,' is not good for sensitive, anxious
spirits.We passed Jane and Avice reading together under a rock; I
was much inclined to ask them to join us, but Isa was sure they were
much happier undisturbed, and she was so unwilling to share me with
any one that I let them alone.I was much pleased with the
dressmaker, Maude Harris, who is a nice, modest, refined girl, and
if the accounts I get from her employers bear out what I hear of
her, I shall engage her; I shall be glad, for the niece's sake, to
have that sort of young woman about the place.She speaks most
warmly of what the Misses Fulford have done for her. Jane will be disappointed if I cannot have her rival candidate--a
pet schoolgirl who works under the Bourne Parva dressmaker. "What a
recommendation! "cries Pica, and there is a burst of mirth, at which
Jane looks round and says, "What is there to laugh at?Miss
Dadworthy is a real good woman, and a real old Bourne Parva person,
so that you may be quite sure Martha will have learnt no nonsense to
begin with." "No," says Pica, "from all such pomps and vanities as style, she
will be quite clear. "While Avice's friendship goes as far as to say that if Aunt
Charlotte cannot have Maude, perhaps Martha could get a little more
training.Whereupon Jane runs off by the yard explanations of the
admirable training--religious, moral, and intellectual--of Bourne
Parva, illustrated by the best answers of her favourite scholars,
anecdotes of them, and the reports of the inspectors, religious and
secular; and Avice listens with patience, nay, with respectful
sympathy.12.--We miss Mary and Martyn more than I expected. Careless and
easy-going as they seem, they made a difference in the ways of the
young people; they were always about with them, not as dragons, but
for their own pleasure.The presence of a professor must needs
impose upon young men, and Mary, with her brilliant wit and charming
manners, was a check without knowing it.The boating party came
back gay and triumphant, and the young men joined in our late meal;
and oh, what a noise there was! though I must confess that it was
not they who made the most.Metelill was not guilty of the noise,
but she was--I fear I must say it--flirting with all her might with
a youth on each side of her, and teasing a third; I am afraid she is
one of those girls who are charming to all, and doubly charming to
your sex, and that it will never do to have her among the staff.I
don't think it is old-maidish in us to be scandalised at her walking
up and down the esplanade with young Horne till ten o'clock last
night; Charley was behind with Bertie Elwood, and, I grieve to say,
was smoking.It lasted till Horace Druce went out to tell them that
Metelill must come in at once, as it was time to shut up the house.The Oxford girls were safe indoors; Isa working chess problems with
another of the lads, Avice keeping Jane company over the putting the
little ones to sleep--in Mount Lebanon, as they call the Druce
lodging--and Pica preserving microscopic objects. "Isn't she
awful?" said one of those pupils. "She's worse than all the dons in
Cambridge. She wants to be at it all day long, and all through the
vacation." They perfectly flee from her.They say she is always whipping out a
microscope and lecturing upon protoplasms--and there is some truth
in the accusation.She is almost as bad on the emancipation of
women, on which there is a standing battle, in earnest with Jane--in
joke with Metelill; but it has, by special orders, to be hushed at
dinner, because it almost terrifies grandmamma.I fear Pica tries
to despise her! This morning the girls are all out on the beach in pairs and threes,
the pupils being all happily shut up with their tutor.I see the
invalid lady creep out with her beach-rest from the intermediate
house, and come down to her usual morning station in the shade of a
rock, unaware, poor thing, that it has been monopolised by Isa and
Metelill. Oh, girls!why don't you get up and make room for her? No; she moves on to the next shady place, but there Pica has a
perfect fortification of books spread on her rug, and Charley is
sketching on the outskirts, and the fox-terrier barks loudly.Will
she go on to the third seat? where I can see, though she cannot,
Jane and Avice sitting together, and Freddy shovelling sand at their
feet. Ah! at last she is made welcome. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
Good girls!They have
seated her and her things, planted a parasol to shelter her from the
wind, and lingered long enough not to make her feel herself turning
them out before making another settlement out of my sight.THREE O'CLOCK.--I am sorry to say Charley's sketch turned into a
caricature of the unprotected female wandering in vain in search of
a bit of shelter, with a torn parasol, a limp dress, and dragging
rug, and altogether unspeakably forlorn.It was exhibited at the
dinner-table, and elicited peals of merriment, so that we elders
begged to see the cause of the young people's amusement.My blood
was up, and when I saw what it was, I said--
"I wonder you like to record your own discourtesy, to call it
nothing worse." "But, Aunt Charlotte," said Metelill in her pretty pleading way, "we
did not know her." "Well, what of that?" I said. "Oh, you know it is only abroad that people expect that sort of
things from strangers." "One of the worst imputations on English manners I ever heard," I
said. "But she was such a guy!" cried Charley. "Mother said she was sure
she was not a lady. ""And therefore you did not show yourself one," I could not but
return.There her mother put in a gentle entreaty that Charley would not
distress grandmamma with these loud arguments with her aunt, and I
added, seeing that Horace Druce's attention was attracted, that I
should like to have added another drawing called 'Courtesy,' and
shown that there was _SOME_ hospitality _EVEN_ to strangers, and
then I asked the two girls about her.They had joined company
again, and carried her beach-rest home for her, finding out by the
way that she was a poor homeless governess who had come down to stay
in cheap lodgings with an old nurse to try to recruit herself till
she could go out again.My mother became immediately interested,
and has sent Emily to call on her, and to try and find out whether
she is properly taken care of. Isa was very much upset at my displeasure.She came to me
afterwards and said she was greatly grieved; but Metelill would not
move, and she had always supposed it wrong to make acquaintance with
strangers in that chance way.I represented that making room was
not picking up acquaintance, and she owned it, and was really
grateful for the reproof; but, as I told her, no doubt such a rule
must be necessary in a place like Oxford.How curiously Christian courtesy and polished manners sometimes
separate themselves! and how conceit interferes with both! I acquit
Metelill and Isa of all but thoughtless habit, and Pica was
absorbed.She can be well mannered enough when she is not defending
the rights of woman, or hotly dogmatical on the crude theories she
has caught--and suppose she has thought out, poor child!And Jane,
though high-principled, kind, and self-sacrificing, is too narrow
and--not exactly conceited--but exclusive and Bourne Parvaish, not
to be as bad in her way, though it is the sound one.The wars of
the Druces and Maronites, as Martyn calls them, sometimes rage
beyond the bounds of good humour. TEN P.M.--I am vexed too on another score.I must tell you that
this hotel does not shine in puddings and sweets, and Charley has
not been ashamed to grumble beyond the bounds of good manners. I
heard some laughing and joking going on between the girls and the
pupils, Metelill with her "Oh no!You won't! Nonsense!" in just
that tone which means "I wish, I would, but I cannot bid you,"--the
tone I do not like to hear in a maiden of any degree.And behold three of those foolish lads have brought her gilt and
painted boxes of bon-bons, over which there was a prodigious
giggling and semi-refusing and bantering among the young folks,
worrying Emily and me excessively, though we knew it would not do to
interfere.There is a sea-fog this evening unfavourable to the usual
promenades, and we elders, including the tutor, were sitting with my
mother, when, in her whirlwind fashion, in burst Jane, dragging her
little sister Chattie with her, and breathlessly exclaiming,
"Father, father, come and help!They are gambling, and I can't get
Meg away! "When the nervous ones had been convinced that no one had been caught
by the tide or fallen off the rocks, Jane explained that Metelill
had given one box of bon-bons to the children, who were to be served
with one apiece all round every day.And the others were put up by
Metelill to serve as prizes in the 'racing game,' which some one had
routed out, left behind in the lodging, and which was now spread on
the dining-table, with all the young people playing in high glee,
and with immense noise. "Betting too!" said Jane in horror. "Mr. Elwood betted three
chocolate creams upon Charley, and Pica took it! Father! Come and
call Meg away. "She spoke exactly as if she were summoning him to snatch her sister
from ROUGE ET NOIR at Monaco; and her face was indescribable when
her aunt Edith set us all off laughing by saying, "Fearful
depravity, my dear." "Won't you come, father? "continued Jane; "Mr. Methuen, won't you
come and stop those young men?" Mr. Methuen smiled a little and looked at Horace, who said--
"Hush, Janie; these are not things in which to interfere. ""Then," quoth Jane sententiously, "I am not astonished at the
dissipation of the university." And away she flounced in tears of wrath.Her mother went after her,
and we laughed a little, it was impossible to help it, at the bathos
of the chocolate creams; but, as Mr. Methuen said, she was really
right, the amusement was undesirable, as savouring of evil.Edith,
to my vexation, saw no harm in it; but Horace said very decidedly he
hoped it would not happen again; and Margaret presently returned,
saying she hoped that she had pacified Jane, and shown her that to
descend as if there were an uproar in the school would only do much
more harm than was likely to happen in that one evening; and she
said to me afterwards, "I see what has been wanting in our training.We have let children's loyalty run into intolerance and rudeness." But Meg was quite innocent of there being any harm in it, and only
needed reproof for being too much charmed by the pleasure for once
to obey her dictatorial sister.13, TEN A.M.--Horace has had it out with sundry of the young ladies,
so as to prevent any more betting. Several had regretted it. "Only
they did so want to get rid of the bon-bons! And Jane did make such
an uproar. "After all, nobody did really bet but Charley and the
young Elwood, and Pica only that once. Jane candidly owns that a
little gentleness would have made a difference. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
Again I see this obtuseness to courtesy towards strangers.Our
despised church has become popular, and so many of the young folks
choose to accompany us that they overflowed into the free seats in
the aisle, where I had a full view of them from above.These
benches are long, and I was sorry to see the girls planting
themselves fast at the outer end, and making themselves square, so
as to hinder any one else from getting in, till the verger came and
spoke to them, when Charley giggled offensively; and even then they
did not make room, but forced the people to squeeze past.Isa could
not help herself, not being the outermost; but she was much
distressed, and does not shelter herself under Charley's plea that
it was so hot that the verger should have been indicted for cruelty
to animals.Certainly they all did come home very hot from walking
back with the pupils. Pica and Avice were not among them, having joined the Druces in
going to Hollyford, where Horace preached this morning.Their gray
serges and sailor hats were, as they said, "not adapted to the town
congregation." "It is the congregation you dress for? "said their uncle dryly,
whereupon Pica upbraided him with inconsistency in telling his poor
people not to use the excuse of 'no clothes,' and that the heart,
not the dress, is regarded.He said it was true, but that he should
still advocate the poor man's coming in his cleanest and best. "There are manners towards God as well as towards man," he said.I was too much tired by the heat to go to church again this evening,
and am sitting with my mother, who is dozing. Where the young
people are I do not know exactly, but I am afraid I hear Charley's
shrill laugh on the beach.14.--Who do you think has found us out? Our dear old Governor-
General, "in all his laurels," as enthusiastic little Avice was
heard saying, which made Freddy stare hard and vainly in search of
them.He is staying at Hollybridge Park, and seeing our name in the
S. Clements' list of visitors, he made Lady Hollybridge drive him
over to call, and was much disappointed to find that you could not
be here during his visit.He was as kind and warm-hearted as ever,
and paid our dear mother such compliments on her son, that we tell
her the bows on her cap are starting upright with pride. Lady Hollybridge already knew Edith.She made herself very
pleasant, and insisted on our coming EN MASSE to a great garden
party which they are giving to-morrow.Hollybridge is the S.
Clements' lion, with splendid grounds and gardens, and some fine old
pictures, so it is a fine chance for the young people; and we are
going to hire one of the large excursion waggonettes, which will
hold all who have age, dress, and will for gaieties.The pupils, as
Mr. Methuen is a friend of the Hollybridge people, will attend us as
outriders on their bicycles. I am rather delighted at thus catching
out the young ladies who did not think it worth while to bring a
Sunday bonnet.They have all rushed into S. Clements to furbish
themselves for the occasion, and we are left to the company of the
small Druces. Neither Margaret nor Emily chooses to go, and will
keep my mother company.I ventured on administering a sovereign apiece to Isa and Jane
Druce. The first blushed and owned that it was very welcome, as her
wardrobe had never recovered a great thunderstorm at Oxford.Jane's
awkwardness made her seem as if it were an offence on my part, but
her mother tells me it made her very happy.Her father says that
she tells him he was hard on Avice, a great favourite of his, and
that I must ask Jane to explain, for it is beyond him. It is all
right about the Oxford girl. I have engaged her, and she goes home
to-morrow to prepare herself.This afternoon she is delighted to
assist her young ladies in their preparations. I liked her much in
the private interview.I was rather surprised to find that it was
'Miss Avice,' of whom she spoke with the greatest fervour, as having
first made friends with her, and then having constantly lent her
books and read to her in her illness. 15.--S.Swithun is evidently going to be merciful to us to-day, and
the damsels have been indefatigable--all, that is to say, but the
two Londoners, who have lawn tennis dresses, and their mother's maid
to turn them out complete.Isa brought home some tulle and white
jessamine with which she is deftly freshening the pretty compromise
between a bonnet and a hat which she wears on Sunday; also a
charming parasol, with a china knob and a wreath of roses at the
side.She hopes I shall not think her extravagant, but she had a
little money of her own.Jane Druce displays two pairs of gloves and two neckties for herself
and her sister; and after all Meg will not go; she is so uncouth
that her mother does not like her to go without her own supervision;
and she with true Bourne Parva self-appreciation and exclusiveness
says--
"I'm sure I don't want to go among a lot of stupid people, who care
for nothing but fine clothes and lawn tennis. "There was a light till one o'clock last night in the room where
Avice sleeps with Charley and the dog; and I scarcely saw either of
the Oxford sisters or Jane all this morning till dinner-time, when
Pica appeared very appropriately to her name, turned out in an old
black silk dress left behind by her mother, and adorned with white
tulle in all sorts of folds, also a pretty white bonnet made up by
Avice's clever fingers, and adorned with some soft gray sea-birds'
feathers and white down.Isa and Metelill were very well got up and
nice. Metelill looks charming, but I am afraid her bouquet is from
one of those foolish pupils. She, as usual, has shared it with Isa,
who has taken half to prevent her cousin being remarkable.And,
after all, poor Avice is to be left behind. There was no time to
make up things for two, and being in mourning, she could not borrow,
though Metelill would have been too happy to lend.She says she
shall be very happy with the children, but I can't help thinking
there was a tear in her eye when she ran to fetch her dress cloak
for Jane, whom, by the bye, Avice has made wonderfully more like
other people.Here is the waggonette, and I must finish to-morrow. 16.--We have had a successful day. The drive each way was a treat
in itself, and the moon rising over the sea on our way home was a
sight never to be forgotten. Hollybridge is charming in itself.Those grounds with their sea-board are unique, and I never saw such
Spanish chestnuts in England. Then the gardens and the turf!One
must have lived as long in foreign parts as we have to appreciate
the perfect finish and well-tended look of such places. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
Your dear
old chief does not quite agree.He says he wants space, and is
oppressed with the sense of hedges and fences, except when he looks
to the sea, and even there the rocks look polished off, and treated
by landscape gardeners!He walked me about to see the show places,
and look at the pictures, saying he had been so well lionised that
he wanted some one to discharge his information upon.It was great
fun to hear him criticising the impossibilities of a battle-piece--
Blenheim, I think--the anachronisms of the firearms and uniforms,
and the want of discipline around Marlborough, who would never have
won a battle at that rate.You know how his hawk's eye takes note
of everything. He looked at Metelill and said, "Uncommonly pretty
girl that, and knows it," but when I asked what he thought of
Isabel's looks, he said, "Pretty, yes; but are you sure she is quite
aboveboard?There's something I don't like about her eyes." I wish
he had not said so. I know there is a kind of unfriendly feeling
towards her among some of the girls, especially the Druces and
Charley.I have heard Charley openly call her a humbug, but I have
thought much of this was dislike to the softer manners, and perhaps
jealousy of my notice, and the expression that the old lord noticed
is often the consequence of living in an uncongenial home.Of course my monopoly of the hero soon ended, and as I had no
acquaintances there, and the young ones had been absorbed into
games, or had fraternised with some one, I betook myself to
explorations in company with Jane, who had likewise been left out.After we had wandered along a dazzling stand of calceolarias, she
said, "Aunt Charlotte, papa says I ought to tell you something; I
mean, why Avice could not come to-day, and why she has nothing to
wear but her round hat.It is because she and Pica spent all they
had in paying for that Maude Harris at the Convalescent Home.They
had some kind of flimsy gauzy bonnets that were faded and utterly
done for after Commemoration week; and as Uncle Martyn is always
growling about ladies' luggage, they thought it would be a capital
plan to go without all the time they are down here, till another
quarter is due.Avice never thought of its not being right to go to
Church such a figure, and now she finds that papa thinks the command
to "have power on her head" really may apply to that sort of
fashion, we are going to contrive something for Sunday, but it could
not be done in time for to-day.Besides, she had no dress but a
serge." "She preferred dressing her sister to dressing herself," I answered;
and Jane began assuring me that no one knew how unselfish that dear
old Bird is.The little money she had, she added to Pica's small
remnant, and thus enough had been provided to fit the elder sister
out. "I suppose," I said, "that Isa manages better, for she does not seem
to be reduced to the same extremities, though I suppose she has less
allowance than her cousins." "She has exactly the same. I know it. "And Jane caught herself up,
evidently checking something I might have thought ill-natured, which
made me respond something intended to be moralising, but which was
perhaps foolish, about good habits of economy, and how this
disappointment, taken so good-humouredly, would be a lesson to
Avice. "A lesson? I should think so," said Jane bluntly. "A
lesson not to lend her money to Isa"; and then, when I asked what
she meant, she blurted out that all Isa's so-called share of the
subscription for Maude Harris had been advanced by Avice--Pica had
told her so, with comments on her sister's folly in lending what she
well knew would never be repaid; and Alice could not deny it, only
defending herself by saying, she could not sacrifice the girl.It
was a very uncomfortable revelation, considering that Isa might have
given her cousin my sovereign, but no doubt she did not think that
proper, as I had meant it to be spent for this outing.I will at least give her the benefit of the doubt, and I would not
encourage Jane to say any more about her.Indeed, the girl herself
did not seem so desirous of dwelling on Isa as of doing justice to
Avice, whom, she told me very truly, I did not know. "She is always
the one to give way and be put aside for Pie and Isa," said Jane.And now I think over the time we have had together, I believe it has
often been so. "You are very fond of her," I said; and Jane
answered, "I should _THINK_ so!Why, she spent eight months with us
once at Bourne Parva, just after the great row with Miss Hurlstone. Oh, didn't you know?They had a bad governess, who used to meet a
lover--a German musician, I think he was--when they were out
walking, and bullied Avice because she was honest.When it all came
to light, Pica came out and Isa was sent to school, but Avice had
got into a low state of health, and they said Oxford was not good
for her, so she came to us.And papa prepared her for Confirmation,
and she did everything with us, and she really is just like one of
ourselves," said Jane, as the highest praise imaginable, though any
one who contrasted poor Jane's stiff PIQUE (Miss Dadsworth's turn-
out) with the grace even of the gray serge, might not think it a
compliment.Jane was just beginning to tell me that Avice always
wrote to her to lay before her father the difficulties about right
and wrong faith and practice that their way of life and habits of
society bring before the poor child, when Isa descended upon us with
"Oh!Aunt Charlotte, I could not think what had become of you, when
I saw the great man without you." I begin to wonder whether she is really so very fond of me, or
whether she does not like to see me with one of the others.However, I shall be able to take Jane's hint, and cultivate Avice,
for, as my mother did not come yesterday, Lady Hollybridge has most
kindly insisted on her going over to-day.The carriage is taking
some one to the station, and is to call for her and me to bring us
to luncheon, the kind people promising likewise to send us back.So
I asked whether I might bring a niece who had not been able to come
yesterday, and as the young people had, as usual, become enamoured
of Metelill, they begged for her likewise.Avice looks very well in
the dress she made up for Pica, and being sisters and in mourning,
the identity will only be natural.She is very much pleased and
very grateful, and declares that she shall see everything she cares
about much more pleasantly than in the larger party, and perhaps
'really hear the hero talk. 'And Uncle Horace says, "True, you
Bird, you are not like some young folk, who had rather hear
themselves talk than Socrates and S. Ambrose both at once." "Oh! "said saucy Pica, "now we know what Uncle Horace thinks of his own
conversations with father! | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |
"By the bye, Martyn and Mary come home
to-morrow, and I am very glad of it, for those evening diversions on
the beach go on in full force, and though there is nothing tangible,
except Charley's smoke, to object to, and it is the present way of
young people, there is something unsatisfactory in it.Edith does
not seem to mind what her daughters do.Margaret has no occasion to
be uneasy about Jane, who always stays with the little ones while
the maids are at supper, and generally takes with her the devoted
Avice, who has some delicacy of throat forbidding these evening
excursions.Meg gets more boisterous and noisy every day, Uchtred
being her chief companion; but as she is merely a tomboy, I believe
her parents think it inexpedient to give her hints that might only
put fancies in her head.So they have only prohibited learning to
smoke, staying out later than nine o'clock, and shrieking louder
than a steam whistle! 17.--Yesterday was a great success.Avice was silent at first, but
Metelill drew her out, and she had become quite at her ease before
we arrived. You would have been enchanted to see how much was made
of our dear mother.Lord Hollybridge came out himself to give her
his arm up the stone steps and across the slippery hall. The good
old chief talked to her by the hour about you, and Avice's eyes
shone all the time.After luncheon our kind hostess arranged that
dear mother should have half an hour's perfect rest, in a charming
little room fitted like a tent, and then had a low chair with two
little fairy ponies in it to drive her about the gardens, while I
walked with the two gentlemen and saw things much better than in the
former hurly-burly, though that was a beautiful spectacle in its
way.Avice, who has seen scores of FETES in college grounds, much
preferred the scenery, etc., in their natural state to a crowd of
strangers.The young people took possession of the two girls, and
when we all met for the five o'clock tea, before going home, Lady
Georgina eagerly told her father that Miss Fulford had made out the
subject of 'that picture. 'It was a very beautiful Pre-Raffaelite,
of a lady gathering flowers in a meadow, and another in
contemplation, while a mysterious shape was at the back; the ladies
stiff-limbed but lovely faced, and the flowers--irises, anemones,
violets, and even the grass-blossom, done with botanical accuracy.A friend of Lord Hollybridge had picked it up for him in some
obscure place in Northern Italy, and had not yet submitted it to an
expert.Avice, it appeared, had recognised it as representing Leah
and Rachel, as Action and Contemplation in the last books of Dante's
PURGATORIO, with the mystic griffin car in the distance.Our hosts
were very much delighted; we all repaired to the picture, where she
very quietly and modestly pointed out the details.A Dante was
hunted up, but Lady Hollybridge and I were the only elders who knew
any Italian, and when the catalogue was brought, Avice knew all the
names of the translators, but as none were to be found, Lord
Hollybridge asked if she would make him understand the passage,
which she did, blushing a little, but rendering it in very good
fluent English, so that he thanked her, and complimented her so much
that she was obliged to answer that she had got it up when they were
hearing some lectures on Dante; and besides it was mentioned by
Ruskin; whereupon she was also made to find the reference, and mark
both it and Dante. "I like that girl," said the old Governor-General, "she is
intelligent and modest both. There is something fine about the
shape of her head. "When we went home, Metelill was as proud and delighted as possible
at what she called the Bird's triumph; but Avice did not seem at all
elated, but to take her knowledge as a mere outcome of her ordinary
Oxford life, where allusions, especially Ruskinese and Dantesque,
came naturally.And then, as grandmamma went to sleep in her
corner, the two girls and I fell into a conversation on that whole
question of Action and Contemplation.At least Metelill asked the
explanation, but I doubt whether she listened much while Avice and I
talked out the matter, and I felt myself a girl again, holding the
old interminable talks with the first dear Avice, before you made
her my sister for those two happy years, and--Well, it is no use
paining you and myself with going back to those days, though there
was something in the earnest thoughtfulness and depth of her young
namesake and godchild that carried me back to the choicest day of
companionship before you came on the scene.And to think what a
jewel I have missed all this time! 18.--I am deeply grieved, and am almost ashamed to write what I have
to tell you.I had been out to see my mother with Margaret and
Emily settle in their favourite resort on the beach, and was coming
in to write my letters, when, in the sitting-room, which has open
French windows down to the ground, I heard an angry voice--
"I tell you it was no joke.It's no use saying so," and I beheld
Charley and Isa in the midst of a violent quarrel. "I've looked on
at plenty of your dodges, sucking up to Aunt Charlotte to get taken
out with her; but when it comes to playing spiteful tricks on my
sister I will speak out. "By this time I was on the window-step, checking Charley's very
improper tone, and asking what was the matter. Isa sprang to me,
declaring that it was all Charley's absurd suspicion and
misconstruction.At last, amid hot words on both sides, I found
that Charley had just found, shut into a small album which Metelill
keeps upon the drawing-room table, a newly taken photograph of young
Horne, one of the pupils, with a foolish devoted inscription upon
the envelope, directed to Miss Fulford.Isa protested that she had only popped it in to keep it safe until
she could return it. Charley broke out. "As if I did not know
better than that! Didn't you make him give you that parasol and
promise him your photo? Ay, and give it him in return?You thought
he would keep your secret, I suppose, but he tells everything, like
a donkey as he is, to Bertie Elwood, and Bertie and I have such fun
over him.And now, because you are jealous of poor Metelill, and
think Aunt Charlotte may take a fancy to you instead of her, you are
sticking his photo into her book just to do her harm with the aunts. I'm not strait-laced.I wouldn't mind having the photos of a
hundred and fifty young men, only they would be horrid guys and all
just alike; but Aunt Charlotte is--is--well--a regular old maid
about it, and you knew she would mind it, and so you did it on
purpose to upset Metelill's chances. | Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary) - More Bywords |