by Joseph Roth
“Oh, yes! I forgot! But you’ll eat a banana, Father!” And he had a banana brought to his father. “About Miriam,” he resumed, in the midst of eating, “she’s doing well. She’s the most beautiful girl here in the store. If she were working for a stranger, she’d have been offered a job as a model long ago. But I wouldn’t want my sister to lend her figure to strange clothes. And Mac doesn’t want it either!” He waited to see whether his father would say something about Mac. But Mendel Singer was silent. He wasn’t suspicious. He had scarcely heard the last sentence. He abandoned himself to his deep admiration for his children, especially for Shemariah. How clever he was, how quickly he thought, how fluently he spoke English, how he could press bell pushes, bawl out errand boys, he was a boss.
He went into the shirts and ties department to see his daughter. “Good day, Father!” she called, in the midst of serving someone. She showed him respect, at home it had been different. She probably didn’t love him, but it wasn’t written: Love thy father and mother! but: Honor thy father and mother! He nodded to her and left again. He went home. He was calm, he walked slowly in the middle of the street, greeted the neighbors, took pleasure in the children. He still wore his cap of black silk rep and the half-long caftan and the high boots. But the skirts of his coat no longer knocked with a hasty wing-beat against the rawhide shafts. For in America, where everything hurried, Mendel Singer had first learned to walk slowly. Thus he walked through time toward old age, from the morning prayer to the evening prayer, from breakfast to dinner, from awakening to sleep. In the afternoon, at the hour when his pupils had come at home, he lay down on the horsehair sofa, slept an hour and dreamed of Menuchim. Then he read the newspaper a bit. Then he went to the shop of the Skovronnek family, where gramophones, records, music books and song lyrics were sold, played and sung. All the older people of the neighborhood gathered there. They spoke about politics and told anecdotes from the old country. Sometimes, when it had grown late, they went to the Skovronneks’ living room and very quickly prayed an evening prayer.
On the way home, which Mendel sought to prolong a little, he abandoned himself to the idea that a letter was waiting for him at home. The letter said clearly and explicitly first: that Menuchim had grown completely healthy and rational; second: that Jonas had left the service due to a minor affliction and wanted to come to America. Mendel Singer knew that this letter had not yet come. But he tried, so to speak, to give the letter a favorable opportunity, so that it would wish to arrive. And with a softly pounding heart he rang the bell. The instant he glimpses Deborah it’s over. The letter was not yet there. It will be an evening like every other.
One day, when he made a detour on his way home, he saw on the corner of the street an adolescent boy, who appeared familiar to him from a distance. The boy was leaning in a doorway and weeping. Mendel heard a thin whimper; as soft as it was, it reached Mendel on the opposite side of the street. Mendel recognized this sound. He stopped. He decided to approach the boy, ask him what was wrong, console him. He started toward him. Suddenly the whimper grew louder, Mendel faltered in the middle of the street. In the shadow of the evening and the doorway in which the boy was crouching, he seemed to take on Menuchim’s outline and posture. Yes, thus, on the threshold of his house in Zuchnow, had Menuchim crouched and whimpered. Mendel took a few more steps. Then the boy scurried into the house. Mendel walked up to the door. The dark hallway had already swallowed the boy.
Even more slowly than before Mendel went home.
It wasn’t Deborah who came to the door when he rang, but his son Sam. Mendel remained at the threshold for a moment. Even though he had been prepared for nothing but a pleasurable surprise, fear seized him, a misfortune might have occurred. Yes, his heart was so accustomed to misfortune that he still became frightened, even after a long preparation for good luck. What joyful surprise, he thought, can befall a man like me? Everything sudden is evil, and the good creeps slowly.
But Shemariah’s voice soon calmed him. “Come in!” said Sam. He pulled his father by the hand into the room. Deborah had lit two lamps. His daughter-in-law Vega, Miriam and Mac were sitting around the table. The whole house seemed to Mendel to have changed. The two lamps – they were of the same kind – looked like twins, and they illuminated the room less than they did each other. It was as if they were laughing at each other, one lamp at the other, and that cheered Mendel especially. “Sit down, Father!” said Sam. He wasn’t curious, Mendel, he already feared that one of those American stories was now coming, which made the whole world joyful and in which he could find no pleasure. What will have happened? he thought. They will have given me a gramophone. Or they’ve decided to celebrate a wedding. He sat down very awkwardly. All were silent. Then Sam said – and it was as if he were lighting a third lamp in the room: “Father, we’ve earned fifteen thousand dollars at one stroke.”
Mendel rose and offered everyone present his hand. He came to Mac last. To him Mendel said: “I thank you.” Sam immediately translated the three words into English. Mac now rose too and embraced Mendel. Then he began to speak. He didn’t stop again. For the rest of the evening no one spoke but Mac. Deborah began converting the sum into rubles and didn’t finish. Vega thought of new furniture in the new apartment, especially of a piano. Her son should take piano lessons. Mendel thought of a trip home. Miriam only heard Mac talking and strained to understand as much as possible. Because she didn’t understand his language, she believed that Mac spoke too cleverly to be understood. Sam wondered whether he should put all the money into his department store. Only Mac thought little, didn’t worry, made no plans. He said what came to his mind.
The next day they went to Atlantic City. “Beautiful nature!” said Deborah. Mendel saw only the water. And he remembered that wild night at home when he had lain with Sameshkin in the roadside ditch. And he heard the chirping of the crickets and the croaking of the frogs. “At home,” he said suddenly, “the earth is as wide as the water in America.” He hadn’t wanted to say that at all. “Do you hear what your father is saying?” Deborah declared. “He’s getting old!”
Yes, yes, I’m getting old, thought Mendel.
When they returned home, there was a thick, bulging letter in the crack of the door, which the mailman hadn’t been able to push through. “You see,” said Mendel, bending down, “this letter is a good letter. The good luck has begun. One stroke of luck brings another, praised be God. May he help us further.”
It was a letter from the Billes family. And it was indeed a good letter. It contained the news that Menuchim had suddenly begun to talk.
“Dr. Soltysiuk has seen him,” wrote the Billes family. “He couldn’t believe it. They want to send Menuchim to Petersburg, the great doctors want to rack their brains over him. One day, it was Thursday afternoon, he was home alone, and there was a fire in the stove, like every Thursday, a burning log fell out, and now the whole floor is burnt, and the walls have to be lime-washed. It costs a pretty little sum. Menuchim ran into the street, he can also run quite well now, and cried: ‘It’s burning!’And since then he can say a few words.
Too bad, though, that it was a week after Jonas’s departure. For your Jonas was here, on furlough, he is really already a great soldier, and he didn’t even know that you are in America. He writes to you here too, on the other side.”
Mendel turned the page over and read:
Dear Father, dear mother, dear brother and dear sister!
So you’re in America, it struck me like lightning. It’s actually my fault, because I never, or, I recall, only once, wrote to you, but still, as I said, it struck me like lightning. Don’t worry about it. I’m doing very well. Everyone is good to me, and I’m good to everyone. I’m especially good to the horses. I can ride like the best Cossack and pick up a handkerchief from the ground with my teeth at a gallop. I love such things, and the military too. I will stay, even when I’ve completed my service. Here you’re provided for, you have food, everything that’s necessary is ordered fr
om above, you don’t need to think yourself. I don’t know whether I’m writing it in a way that you can completely understand. Maybe you can’t understand it at all. In the stable it’s very warm, and I love horses. If one of you should come over at some point, you could see me. My captain has said that if I remain such a good soldier, I can petition the Tsar, that is, his noble Majesty, so that my brother’s desertion is forgiven and forgotten. That would be my greatest joy, to see Shemariah again in this life, we grew up together after all.
Sameshkin sends his greetings, he’s doing well. People here sometimes say that a war is going to come. If it should really come, you have to be prepared for me to die, just as I am prepared for it, because I am a soldier.
In case that should happen I embrace you once and for all and forever. But don’t be sad, perhaps I will stay alive.
Your son Jonas
Mendel Singer took off his glasses, saw that Deborah was weeping and grasped her two hands for the first time in long years. He drew her hands away from her tear-streaked face and said almost solemnly: “Well, Deborah, the Lord has helped us. Take your shawl, go down and bring a bottle of mead.”
They sat at the table and drank the mead from tea glasses, looked at each other and thought the same thing. “The Rabbi is right,” said Deborah. Her memory clearly dictated to her the words that had long slept in her: “Pain will make him wise, ugliness kind, bitterness gentle, and illness strong.”
“You never told me that,” remarked Mendel.
“I’d forgotten it.”
“We should have gone to Kluczýsk with Jonas too. He loves the horses more than us.”
“He’s still young,” Deborah consoled. “Maybe it’s good that he loves horses.” And because she let no opportunity to be malicious pass, she added: “He doesn’t get the love of horses from you.”
“No,” said Mendel, smiling peaceably.
He began to think of returning home. Now they could perhaps bring Menuchim to America soon. He lit a candle, extinguished the lamp and said: “Go to sleep, Deborah! When Miriam comes home, I’ll show her the letter. I’m staying awake tonight.” He took from the suitcase his old prayer book, it was at home in his hand, he opened to the psalms with a single stroke and sang one after another. The singing poured out of him. He had experienced grace and joy. Over him too arched God’s broad vast kind hand. Sheltered by it and in honor of it he sang one psalm after another. The candle flickered in the soft but tireless wind, which Mendel’s swaying upper body aroused. With his feet he beat time to the verses of the psalms. His heart rejoiced, and his body had to dance.
XI
Now the worries left the house of Mendel Singer for the first time. They had grown familiar to him, like detested siblings. He now turned fifty-nine years old. For fifty-eight years he had known them. The worries left him, death approached him. His beard was white, his eyes were weak. His back bent, and his hands trembled. His sleep was light, and the night was long. He wore contentment like strange borrowed clothing. His son moved into the area of the rich, Mendel remained on his street, in his apartment, with the blue petroleum lamps, in the neighborhood of the poor, the cats and the mice. He was pious, God-fearing and ordinary, an entirely everyday Jew. Few paid attention to him. Some didn’t notice him at all. He visited a few old friends during the day: Menkes, the fruit seller, Skovronnek, the music shop owner, Rottenberg, the Bible scribe, Groschel, the shoemaker. His three children, his grandson and Mac came once a week. He had nothing at all to say to them. They told stories of the theater, of society and of politics. He listened and fell asleep. When Deborah woke him, he opened his eyes. “I wasn’t asleep!” he assured them. Mac laughed. Sam smiled. Miriam whispered with Deborah. Mendel stayed awake for a while and nodded off again. He dreamed immediately: events from the old country and things he’d only heard about in America, theater, acrobats and dancers in gold and red, the President of the United States, the White House, the billionaire Vanderbilt and, again and again, Menuchim. The little cripple mingled with the red and gold of the singers, and before the pale radiance of the White House he clung as a poor gray blot. Mendel was too old to look at this and that with wakeful eyes. He took his children at their word that America was God’s country, New York the city of miracles and English the most beautiful language. Americans were healthy, the American women beautiful, sports important, time precious, poverty a vice, wealth a merit, virtue half of success, belief in oneself the whole of it, dance hygienic, roller-skating a duty, charity an investment, anarchism a crime, strikers the enemies of mankind, agitators in league with the devil, modern machines blessings of heaven, Edison the greatest genius. Soon people will fly like birds, swim like fish, see the future like prophets, live in eternal peace and in perfect harmony build skyscrapers to the stars. The world will be very beautiful, thought Mendel, how lucky my grandson! He will live to see it all! Nonetheless, mingled with his admiration for the future was homesickness for Russia, and it calmed him to know that he would be a dead man before the triumphs of the living. He didn’t know why. It calmed him. He was already too old for the new and too weak for triumphs. He had only one hope left: to see Menuchim. Sam or Mac would go over to fetch him. Perhaps Deborah would go too.
It was summer. The vermin in Mendel Singer’s apartment multiplied unstoppably, even though the little brass wheels on the feet of the bed stood day and night in bowls full of petroleum and Deborah, with a soft chicken feather dipped in turpentine, brushed all the cracks in the furniture. The bedbugs crawled in long orderly rows down the walls, along the ceiling, waited in bloodthirsty malice for nightfall and fell onto the beds of the sleeping. The fleas jumped out of the black gaps between the floorboards into the clothes, onto the pillows, onto the blankets. The nights were hot and heavy. Through the open window came from time to time the distant roar of unknown trains, the brief regular thunder of a busy world stretching for miles and the murky haze from the neighbors’ houses, dung heaps and open sewers. The cats made noise, the stray dogs howled, infants screamed through the night, and over Mendel Singer’s head shuffled the footsteps of the sleepless, resounded the sneezes of those who had caught cold, meowed the weary in agonizing yawns. Mendel Singer lit the candle in the green bottle next to the bed and went to the window. There he saw the reddish reflection of the living American night, which was taking place somewhere, and the regular silver shadow of a searchlight that seemed to be desperately searching the night sky for God. Yes, and Mendel saw a few stars too, a few miserable stars, mutilated constellations. Mendel remembered the bright starry nights at home, the deep blue of the widely spanning sky, the gently curved sickle of the moon, the dark rustle of the pines in the forest, the voices of the crickets and frogs. It seemed to him that it would be easy now, as he was, to leave the house and wander on foot, the whole night, until he was again under the open sky and could hear the frogs and the crickets and Menuchim’s whimper. Here, in America, that whimper joined the many voices in which the old country sang and spoke, along with the chirping of the crickets and the croaking of the frogs. Between them lay the ocean, thought Mendel. One had to board a ship, another ship, journey another twenty days and nights. Then he would be at home, with Menuchim.
The children urged him to finally leave the neighborhood. He was afraid. He didn’t want to be rash. Now, when everything was beginning to go well, one didn’t want to provoke God’s wrath. When had things ever gone better for him? Why move to other areas? What good did that do? The few years in which he still intended to live he could spend in the company of the vermin.
He turned around. There slept Deborah. Once she had slept here in the room with Miriam. Now Miriam lived with her brother. Or with Mac, thought Mendel, quickly and furtively. Deborah slept quietly, half covered, a broad smile on her broad face. What does she have to do with me? thought Mendel. Why are we still living together? Our desire is over, our children are grown and provided for, why am I with her? To eat what she has cooked! It is written that it’s not good for a perso
n to be alone. So we live together. For a very long time they had been living together, now it was a matter of who would die first. Probably I, thought Mendel. She is healthy and has few worries. She still hides money under some floorboard. She doesn’t know that it’s a sin. Let her hide it!
The candle in the bottleneck has burned to its end. The night has passed. One already hears the first sounds of the morning, even before one sees the sun. Somewhere someone is opening creaking doors, thumping footsteps can be heard on the stairs, the sky is pale gray, and from the earth a yellowish haze rises, dust and sulfur from the sewers.
Deborah awakes, sighs and says: “It’s going to rain! The sewer stinks, close the windows!”
Thus begin the summer days. In the afternoon Mendel can’t sleep at home. He goes to the children’s playground. He takes pleasure in the song of the rare blackbirds, sits for a long time on a bench, draws jumbled lines in the sand with his umbrella. The sound of the water sprayed by a long rubber hose over the small lawn cools Mendel Singer’s face, he believes he feels the water, and he falls asleep. He dreams of the theater, of acrobats in red and gold, of the White House, of the President of the United States, of the billionaire Vanderbilt and of Menuchim.
One day Mac comes. He says (Miriam accompanies him and translates) that he’s going to Russia at the end of July or in August to fetch Menuchim.
Mendel suspects why Mac wants to go. He would probably like to marry Miriam. He’s doing everything he can for the Singer family.
If I died, thinks Mendel, Mac would marry Miriam. Both of them are waiting for my death. I have time. I’m waiting for Menuchim.
It’s June, a hot and especially long month. When will July finally come?
At the end of July Mac orders a ship ticket. They write to the Billes family. Mendel goes to the Skovronneks’ shop to tell his friends that his youngest son is coming to America too.
