Chapter V: Part 5

“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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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? 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.

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!”