“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.
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 numb
er of letters, glanced through them rapidly and handed them one by one to the deferential superintendent.
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 [Hebrew school] 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!
“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 li
ke 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?
Hungry Hearts Page 14
