by Joseph Roth
An hour later he glimpsed the first foreign town, the blue smoke from the first diligent chimneys, a man with a yellow armband who received the arrivals. A tower clock struck six.
The Singers’ wall clock also struck six. Mendel rose, gargled, cleared his throat, murmured a prayer, Deborah already stood at the stove and blew into the samovar, Menuchim babbled from his corner something incomprehensible, Miriam combed her hair in front of the murky mirror. Then Deborah slurped the hot tea, still standing at the stove. “Where is Shemariah now?” she said suddenly. All had been thinking of him.
“God will help him!” said Mendel Singer. And thus dawned the day.
And thus dawned the days that followed, empty days, miserable days. A house without children, thought Deborah. I bore them all, I suckled them all, a wind has blown them away. She looked around for Miriam, she rarely found her daughter at home. Menuchim alone remained with his mother. He always stretched out his arms when she passed his corner. And when she kissed him, he sought her breast like an infant. Reproachfully she thought of the blessing that was so slow in its fulfillment, and she doubted whether she would live to see Menuchim’s health.
The house was silent when the singsong of the studying boys ceased. It was silent and dark. It was winter again. They saved petroleum. They lay down early to sleep. They sank thankfully into the kind night. From time to time Jonas sent a greeting. He served in Pskov, enjoyed his usual good health and had no difficulties with his superiors.
Thus the years passed.
VI
On a late summer afternoon a stranger entered the house of Mendel Singer. Door and window stood open. The flies clung still, black and sated to the hot sunlit walls, and the singsong of the pupils streamed from the open house into the white street. Suddenly they noticed the strange man in the doorframe and fell silent. Deborah rose from her stool. From the other side of the street Miriam hurried over, holding the wobbling Menuchim firmly by the hand. Mendel Singer stood before the stranger and scrutinized him. He was an extraordinary man. He wore a mighty black high-crowned hat, wide light-colored flapping pants, sturdy yellow boots, and like a flag a bright red tie fluttered over his deep green shirt. Without moving, he said something, apparently a greeting, in an incomprehensible language. It sounded as if he were speaking with a cherry in his mouth. Green stems were sticking out of his coat pockets, anyhow. His smooth, very long upper lip rose slowly like a curtain and revealed a strong, yellow set of teeth reminiscent of horses. The children laughed, and even Mendel Singer smiled. The stranger pulled out a letter folded lengthwise and read the address and name of the Singers in his peculiar fashion, so that everyone laughed again. “America!” the man then said, and handed Mendel Singer the letter. A happy suspicion arose in Mendel and lit up his face. “Shemariah,” he said. With a motion of his hand he sent off his pupils as one waves away flies. They ran out. The stranger sat down. Deborah set tea, sweets and soda on the table. Mendel opened the letter. Deborah and Miriam sat down too. And Singer began to read aloud the following:
Dear Father, dear Mother, precious Miriam and good Menuchim!
I don’t address Jonas, because he is in the military. I also ask you not to send him this letter directly, because he might end up in adverse circumstances if he corresponds with a brother who is a deserter. That’s also why I have waited so long and not written to you by mail until I finally had the opportunity to send you this letter with my good friend Mac. He knows all of you from my stories, but he won’t be able to speak a word with you, because not only is he an American, but his parents were born in America too, and he’s not a Jew either. But he’s better than ten Jews.
And so I’ll tell you everything, from the beginning until today: At first, when I crossed the border, I had nothing to eat, only two rubles in my pocket, but I thought, God will help. From a Trieste shipping company a man with an official cap came to the border to pick us up. We were twelve men, the other eleven all had money, they bought false papers and ship tickets, and the agent of the shipping company brought them to the train. I went along. I thought, it can’t do any harm. I’ll go along, in any case I’ll see how it is when you journey to America. So I stay behind alone with the agent, and he’s surprised that I’m not going too. ‘I don’t have any kopecks,’ I say to the agent. He asks whether I read and write. ‘A little bit,’ I say, ‘but maybe it’s enough.’ Well, to be brief, the man had a job for me: every day, when the deserters arrive, go to the border, pick them up and buy them everything and persuade them that in America milk and honey flow. Well: I begin to work and give fifty percent of my earnings to the agent, because I’m only a sub-agent. He wears a cap with a gold-embroidered firm, I have only an armband. After two months I tell him I need sixty percent, or else I’ll quit the job. He gives sixty. To make a long story short, I meet a pretty girl at my lodging, her name is Vega, and now she’s your daughter-in-law. Her father gave me some money to start a business, but I can never forget how the eleven went to America, and how I alone stayed behind. So I take leave of Vega, I know all about ships, it’s my trade after all – and so I go to America. And here I am, two months ago Vega came here, we got married and are very happy. Mac has the pictures in his pocket. At first I sewed buttons on pants, then I ironed pants, then I sewed linings in sleeves, and I almost would have become a tailor, like all Jews in America. But then I met Mac on an excursion to Long Island, right at Fort Lafayette. When you’re here, I’ll show you the place. From then on I began to work with him, all sorts of businesses. Until we took up insurance. I insure the Jews and he the Irish, I’ve even insured a few Christians. Mac will give you ten dollars from me, buy yourselves something with it, for the journey. Because soon I will send you ship tickets, with God’s help.
I embrace and kiss you all. Your son, Shemariah
(here my name is Sam)
After Mendel Singer had finished the letter, there was a ringing silence in the room, which seemed to mingle with the stillness of the late summer day and out of which all the members of the family thought they heard the voice of the emigrated son. Yes, Shemariah himself spoke, over there, worlds away in America, where at this hour it was perhaps night or morning. For a short while, all forgot Mac’s presence. It was as if he had become invisible behind the distant Shemariah, like a mailman who delivers a letter, goes on and disappears. He himself, the American, had to remind them of his presence. He rose and reached into his pants pocket like a magician about to perform a trick. He pulled out a wallet, took out of it ten dollars and photographs, one of Shemariah with his wife Vega on a bench surrounded by greenery and another of him alone in a swimsuit on a beach, one body and one face among a dozen strange bodies and faces, no longer a Shemariah but a Sam. The stranger handed the ten-dollar bill and the pictures to Deborah, after he had briefly scrutinized them all, as if to check the trustworthiness of each one. She crumpled the bill in one hand, with the other she laid the pictures on the table next to the letter. All this lasted a few minutes, in which they remained silent. Finally Mendel Singer placed his index finger on the photograph and said: “That is Shemariah!” “Shemariah!” repeated the others, and even Menuchim, who now already reached above the table, uttered a high whinny and cast one of his shy glances with peering cautiousness at the pictures.
All of a sudden Mendel Singer felt as if the stranger were no longer a stranger, and as if he understood the man’s peculiar language. “Tell me something!” he said to Mac. And the American, as if he had understood Mendel’s words, began to move his large mouth and relate incomprehensible things with cheerful enthusiasm, and it was as if he were chewing up many a tasty dish with a healthy appetite. He told the Singers that he had come to Russia because of some business with hops – he was planning to build breweries in Chicago. But the Singers didn’t understand him. Now that he was here, he definitely didn’t want to miss visiting the Caucasus and especially climbing Mount Ararat, which he had read all about in the Bible. As the audience listened to Mac’s story with straine
d hearkening gestures so as to catch out of the whole ranting jumble perhaps one tiny, comprehensible syllable, their hearts trembled at the word “Ararat,” which seemed to them strangely familiar but also dismayingly altered, and which rolled out of Mac with a dangerous and terrible rumble. Mendel Singer alone smiled incessantly. He found it pleasant to hear the language that had now become that of his son Shemariah too, and as Mac talked, Mendel tried to imagine how his son looked when he spoke the same words. And soon he felt as if the voice of his own son were speaking from the cheerfully chomping mouth of the stranger. The American finished his talk, went around the table and squeezed everyone’s hand heartily and firmly. Menuchim he swept swiftly into the air, observed the sloping head, the thin neck, the blue lifeless hands and the curved legs, and set him on the floor with a tender and pensive contempt, as if he wanted thus to express that strange creatures ought to crouch on the ground and not stand at tables. Then he walked, broad, tall and swaying a little, his hands in his pants pockets, out the open door, and the whole family jostled after him. All shaded their eyes with their hands as they looked into the sunny street, in the middle of which Mac strode away and at the end of which he stopped once more to give a brief wave back.
For a long time they stayed outside, even after Mac had disappeared. They held their hands over their eyes and looked into the dusty radiance of the empty street. Finally Deborah said: “Now he’s gone!” And as if the stranger had only then disappeared, they all turned around and stood, each with an arm around the other’s shoulder, in front of the photographs on the table. “How much are ten dollars?” Miriam asked, and began to calculate. “It doesn’t matter,” said Deborah, “how much ten dollars are, we’re certainly not going to buy ourselves anything with it.”
“Why not?” replied Miriam, “shall we travel in our rags?”
“Who is traveling and where?” cried the mother.
“To America,” Miriam said with a smile, “Sam himself wrote it.”
For the first time a member of the family had called Shemariah “Sam,” and it was as if Miriam had intentionally spoken her brother’s American name to lend emphasis to his demand that the family should travel to America.
“Sam!” cried Mendel Singer, “who is Sam?”
“Yes,” repeated Deborah, “who is Sam?”
“Sam!” said Miriam, still smiling, “is my brother in America and your son!”
The parents were silent.
Menuchim’s voice suddenly rang out shrilly from the corner into which he had crawled.
“Menuchim can’t go!” Deborah said softly, as if she feared that the sick child could understand her.
“Menuchim can’t go!” repeated, just as softly, Mendel Singer.
The sun seemed to sink rapidly. On the wall of the house across the street, at which they all stared through the open window, the black shadow rose visibly higher, as the sea climbs up its shoreline bluffs with the approach of the flood. A faint wind stirred, and the window creaked in its hinges.
“Close the door, there’s a draft!” said Deborah.
Miriam went to the door. Before she touched the latch, she stood still for a moment and stuck her head out the doorframe in the direction in which Mac had disappeared. Then Miriam closed the door with a hard slam and said: “That’s the wind!”
Mendel stood at the window. He watched as the shadow of evening crept up the wall. He raised his head and contemplated the gold-gleaming rooftop of the house across the street. He stood for a long time thus, the room, his wife, his daughter Miriam and the sick Menuchim at his back. He felt them all and sensed each of their movements. He knew that Deborah laid her head on the table to weep, that Miriam turned her face toward the stove and that her shoulders now and then jerked, even though she wasn’t weeping at all. He knew that his wife was only waiting for the moment when he would reach for his prayer book to go to the temple and say the evening prayer, and Miriam would take the yellow shawl to hurry over to the neighbors. Then Deborah would bury the ten-dollar bill, which she still held in her hand, under the floorboard. He knew the floorboard, Mendel Singer. Whenever he stepped on it, it creakingly betrayed to him the secret it covered and reminded him of the growling of the dogs Sameshkin kept tethered outside his stable. He knew the board, Mendel Singer. And so he wouldn’t have to think of Sameshkin’s black dogs, which were unearthly to him, living figures of sin, he avoided stepping on the board when he wasn’t being forgetful and wandering through the room in the enthusiasm of teaching. As he saw the golden streak of the sun grow ever narrower and glide from the top ridge of the house onto the roof and from there onto the white chimney, he believed he felt distinctly for the first time in his life the soundless and wily creeping of the days, the deceptive treachery of the eternal alternation of day and night and summer and winter, and the stream of life, steady, despite all anticipated and unexpected terrors. They grew only on the changeful banks, Mendel Singer drifted past them. A man came from America, laughed, brought a letter, dollars and pictures of Shemariah and disappeared again into the veiled regions of the distance. The sons disappeared: Jonas served the Tsar in Pskov and was no longer Jonas. Shemariah bathed on the shores of the ocean and was no longer called Shemariah. Miriam gazed after the American and wanted to go to America too. Only Menuchim remained what he had been since the day of his birth: a cripple. And Mendel Singer himself remained what he had always been: a teacher.
The narrow street darkened completely and came to life at the same time. The fat wife of the glazier Chaim and the ninety-year-old grandmother of the long dead locksmith Yossel Kopp brought chairs out of their houses to sit down outside the doors and enjoy the fresh evening hour. The Jews rushed, black and hurried and with hastily murmured greetings, to the temple. Then Mendel Singer turned around, he wanted to set off too. He passed Deborah, whose head still lay on the hard table. Her face, which Mendel had not been able to bear for years, was now buried, as if embedded in the hard wood, and the darkness that began to fill the room also covered Mendel’s hardness and shyness. His hand glided over his wife’s broad back, this flesh had once been familiar to him, now it was strange to him. She rose and said: “You go to pray!” And because she was thinking of something else, she modified the sentence with a distant voice and repeated: “To pray you go!”
At the same time as her father, Miriam left the house in her yellow shawl and proceeded to the neighbors.
It was the first week in the month of Av. The Jews gathered after the evening prayer to greet the new moon, and because the night was pleasant and refreshing after the hot day, they followed more willingly than usual their devout hearts and God’s commandment to greet the rebirth of the moon in an open place over which the sky arched more widely and vastly than over the narrow streets of the little town. And they hastened, silent and black, in disorderly little groups, behind the houses, saw in the distance the forest, which was black and silent like them, but eternal in its rooted persistence, saw the veils of night over the wide fields and finally stopped. They looked to the sky and sought the curved silver of the new heavenly body that today was born once again as on the day of its creation. They formed a tight group, opened their prayer books, white shimmered the pages, black stared the angular letters before their eyes in the night’s bluish clearness, and they began to murmur the greeting to the moon and to rock their upper bodies back and forth so that they looked as if shaken by an invisible storm. Ever faster they rocked, ever louder they prayed, with warlike courage they cast to the distant heaven their foreign words. Alien to them was the earth on which they stood, hostile the forest, which stared back at them, spiteful the yapping of the dogs, whose mistrustful ears they had awakened, and familiar only the moon, which was born today in this world as in the land of the fathers, and the Lord, who was everywhere watching over, at home and in exile.
With a loud “Amen” they concluded the blessing, shook hands with each other and wished each other a happy month, prosperity for the businesses and health for the
sick. They parted, walked home singly, disappeared in the narrow passages behind the little doors of their slanting huts. Only one Jew stayed behind, Mendel Singer.
His companions might have left only a few minutes earlier, but he felt as if he had already been standing there for an hour. He breathed the undisturbed peace in the open, took a few steps, felt weary, had an urge to lie down on the ground and was afraid of the unknown earth and the dangerous worms it most likely harbored. His lost son Jonas came to his mind. Jonas now slept in barracks, on the hay, in a stable, perhaps next to horses. His son Shemariah lived on the other side of the water: Who was farther, Jonas or Shemariah? Deborah had already buried the dollars at home, and Miriam was now telling the neighbors the story of the American’s visit.
The young crescent moon was already shedding a strong silver glow, faithfully accompanied by the brightest star of the sky it glided through the night. Occasionally the dogs howled and frightened Mendel. They rent the peace of the earth and increased Mendel Singer’s unease. Though he was scarcely five minutes away from the houses of the little town, he felt infinitely far from the inhabited world of the Jews, inexpressibly alone, threatened by dangers and yet incapable of going back. He turned northward: there the forest breathed darkly. On the right the swamps, with scattered silver willows, stretched for many versts. On the left the fields lay under opalescent veils. Sometimes Mendel thought he heard a human sound from an indeterminable direction. He heard familiar people talking, and he felt as if he understood them. Then he remembered that he had heard those voices long ago. He realized that he was now only hearing them again, merely their echo, which had been waiting so long in his memory. All of a sudden there was a rustling to the left in the grain, even though no wind had stirred. The rustling came closer and closer, now Mendel could also see the head-high grain moving, a person must be creeping through, if not a gigantic animal, a monster. To run away would probably have been right, but Mendel waited and prepared for death. A peasant or a soldier would now emerge from the grain, accuse Mendel of theft and beat him to death on the spot – with a stone perhaps. It could also be a tramp, a murderer, a criminal, who doesn’t want to be heard and seen. “Holy God!” whispered Mendel. Then he heard voices. It was two people walking through the grain, and that it wasn’t one calmed the Jew, even though he told himself at the same time that it could be two murderers. No, it wasn’t murderers, it was lovers. A girl’s voice spoke, a man laughed. Even lovers could be dangerous, there was many an example of a man flying into a rage when he caught a witness to his love. Soon the two would emerge from the field. Mendel Singer overcame his fearful disgust for the worms of the earth and lay down quietly, his eyes directed at the grain. Then the grain parted, the man emerged first, a man in uniform, a soldier with a dark blue cap, booted and spurred, the metal flashed and rang softly. Behind him a yellow shawl gleamed, a yellow shawl, a yellow shawl. A voice sounded, the voice of the girl. The soldier turned around, put his arm around her shoulders, now the shawl opened, the soldier went behind the girl, he held his hands on her breast, the girl embedded herself in the soldier.
