Читать книгу Bread Givers - Anzia Yezierska - Страница 9

Something happened in our house again!

Mashah, the “empty-head,” showed signs that there was something in her. She was no more just a doll in a show window. She was no more just something lost in the looking glass of her pretty face.

For the first time in her life, Mashah showed signs of interest in someone outside herself. No longer was the one reason for her living to make prettier her pretty face. Now it was a man that was the beginning and end of her existence.

The man put new light in her eyes, new life in her face, and such a wonder-working joy in her heart that it changed the “empty-head” into a singing sunshine. The pretty doll became overnight a feeling person—a person with a heart.

We still didn’t believe it—the miracle! Mashah in love!

His name was Jacob Novak and he was a piano player. He lived in the first-floor front room of a private house on the corner. His rich father paid ten dollars a lesson a week to a professor up town who was teaching him and getting him ready for a concert, to play it all by himself for a hall full of people.

One day, as Mashah passed the corner private house, she heard playing such as she never heard before. She stood looking up at the open window from where the playing came, even after the music stopped. Then a face came to the window. It was a young man’s face. Music was in his eyes and high feelings breathed from his face.

“Play again,” Mashah begged.

The man looked on Mashah, and then he went back and played more beautifully than before. This time when Mashah still looked up after the music stopped, the man himself came out.

And that’s how Mashah’s love began.

Mashah had always liked to hear free music in the park. Now she was all music herself. It sang itself from her, the music of love, from the time she got up in the morning till she went to bed at night.

New life hummed in our house. Every day the house was swept from out of the corners and from under the beds. Before the rest were up, Mashah had scrubbed the house as for a holiday.

Before, Mashah was interested only in hanging up her own clothes. But now she told us that “Chairs were made to sit on, not to throw things on.” And she saw to it that everybody’s clothes were hung up on hangers as good as her own.

In these days, when Mashah got home from work it was no longer to play with her pretty golden hair, combing it in a dozen different styles. Jacob Novak was expected for supper. And now she saw to it that his place at the table was set as perfect as in a restaurant. The tablecloth and napkins glistened with the fresh-ironed whiteness, as if just out from the store laundry. The steel knife and the tin fork and spoon were polished and polished till they shone bright as silver.

No longer were the cracked penny cups used for evening’s tea, but whole cups with handles were taken down from the Passover set and used for every day. When Bessie was excited about a man, we thought it was riches to have a white oilcloth for the table. When love came to Mashah, she covered up the oilcloth with a real tablecloth. And more yet—when Mashah’s lover came for dinner, he had to have a napkin because he always had it. And we each had to have a napkin also, so as not to make him feel funny with a napkin by himself alone.

When roses and lilacs became cheap, Mashah went without her lunch to buy flowers for the table, in honor of Jacob. She managed to find out just what eating he liked and just the salt and pepper to please his taste. Mother always said that, with her bitter heart, what were such little things as too much or too little salt in the soup. But now, because of Jacob, we all had food cooked and salted as it was never cooked and salted before.

Mashah found out that Jacob liked American cooking, like salad and spinach and other vegetables. And right away Mashah joined the cooking class in the settlement, one evening a week, to learn the American way of cooking vegetables and fixing salads. And soon we all had American salad and American-cooked vegetables instead of fried potato lotkes and the greasy lokshen kugel that Mother used to make.

Jacob had a tailor to keep fixed his clothes. But Mashah’s eyes were so much on him that once she found a button loose before the tailor did. And after that, I believe yet, he worked the buttons loose on purpose, only to have the pleasure of Mashah’s happiness when she sewed them on.

The bunch of other men that used to buzz around Mashah now dropped away when they saw how Mashah had fallen in love with Jacob Novak.

His father owned a big department store on Grand Street and Jacob looked like from rich people. It didn’t shout from his clothes, the money they cost, as it did from Berel Bernstein. He did not wear a checked vest, nor on a red necktie a gold horseshoe pin. But it breathed from his quiet things, the solid richness from the rich who didn’t have to show it off any more. Maybe that was the reason Father didn’t question out Jacob as he did Bessie’s man, because there was about Jacob Novak the sure richness of the higher-up that shut out all questions of how he spent his money. Or maybe Father didn’t waste time asking the man, because Mashah always used out her wages on herself. Father said the sooner Mashah got married the better for us all. And there would only be more room in the house if she was gone.

Anyhow, Father only objected that he played the piano on the Sabbath. But he said he’d better wait till Jacob was tight married to the family before he’d begin to hold up to him the light of the Holy Torah.

One day, Mashah came home, all burning up with the great big news that Jacob’s father, who had been away all this time to Chicago on business, was coming home. He was coming special to meet Mashah and us all because Jacob had written to him about us, and also he had to finish the arrangements of the concert that was to come off in a few weeks.

All day long, Jacob played on his piano, as long hours as other people work who have to go to work. And for years and years he had done this, to learn how to play so the whole world should listen to him. This concert was to show up all the long years of his learning that now he was ready for the ears of the world and no more to play only to the deaf walls of his room on Essex Street. This concert was to Jacob the great day of his life, the way the wedding day is to a girl in love.

“What is dearer to you, your music or me?” Mashah asked her lover once.

“I love my music more because of you, and I love you more, because of my music.”

A vague, far-off sadness darkened Mashah’s face.

“All these hours and hours that you practice your piano, you see nothing before your eyes but your notes. But no matter what I do, you are always before my eyes.”

“You jealous dear.” He kissed her eyelids tenderly. “Even my business-like father would have to love you.”

“Yes, I am jealous—jealous of your music.” Mashah’s eyes burned into his. “The more you have to practice for that concert, the less time you have for me.”

“But, dearest! My whole life hangs on this concert. Think what it has cost my father. I must at least show him what’s in me.”

At last it happened. Jacob came with his father.

The minute his father stepped in, we saw it was the richest man that had ever been in our house. From him it hollered money, like a hundred cash registers ringing up the dollars. The riches from his grand clothes so much outshined all the little riches that we shined up for him that in a minute it shrank into blackness the white tablecloth and the white napkins. And like a sun in the desert, the glitter of his diamonds withered and faded the poor little flowers on the table.

One look he gave on all of us. Then for a minute his eyes burned over Mashah. Even though his lips answered politely the introduction, we saw Mashah shrink and fade under his eyes as the flowers faded under the glitter of his diamonds. From Mashah, he gave the house another look over. And all Mashah’s beauty couldn’t stop the cash-register look in his eyes, that we and our whole house weren’t worth one of his cuff buttons.

He didn’t stop even to sit down in our house. But as quick as he could say it politely, he asked Jacob to go out for a walk with him.

And he didn’t ask Mashah to go along.

When Jacob didn’t come back that evening, Mashah tried to push it aside and tell us it was so much business about the concert that he couldn’t come back. But we ourselves had heard him tell her at the door that he would be sure back that evening. And we knew it was a bad sign if he didn’t come.

The next evening was the evening of the concert. And Mashah rushed into the house with a frightened, worried look and asked anxiously if Jacob had come. She looked at the clock. From six it went over to seven and then to eight. As the hours passed, she grew more and more excited.

No Jacob. No letter. No message.

I had heard Jacob tell Mashah where he was to give his concert, and I stole out of the house and took the car to the concert hall. At the front door I stopped, shaking with excitement. There was Jacob Novak’s picture, as big as life, and under his picture, his name, in big printed letters.

I had no money for the ticket, so I stood at the side of the man who was collecting the tickets, watching the crowd go in. When the first sounds of the music started, I ran from that place as one runs from a house on fire. The hurt of the great wrong burned my flesh. How could that concert go on and Mashah not there!

When I got back home Mashah was still waiting for Novak.

The clock went on ticking the seconds, the minutes, the hours. Everyone went to sleep. But still Mashah waited. At every sound, she listened for him.

It was midnight. But Mashah still sat waiting for Jacob to come. “He will come. He must come,” she kept talking to herself.

Suddenly, when everyone was sound asleep, a terrible cry tore through the air—the cry of somebody murdered with a knife—the choked bleeding wail of a dying, broken heart.

In one leap we rushed out of bed. We found Mashah with her head on the window sill, her whole body shaking with sobs—sobs that could not cease—and could not be consoled. Like dumb things, we all cried with her—all through the night.

With so many women weeping in the house, Father could not sleep any more.

“It’s all because I let a man who plays on the Sabbath into my door that my house is so full of woe and wailing,” said my father. And he opened his book of Jeremiah, and began chanting about the fall of Jerusalem.

Another day, and still another day, passed and Jacob did not come. And Mashah sat still, not stirring, not speaking. With glazed eyes she sat, as one watching her best loved one dead in a coffin.

Only when the whistle of the letter-carrier was heard, Mashah stirred and asked in a voice that barely breathed, “Is there a letter? Is there a letter for me?”

But no letter came.

Three more days and three more nights passed. Mashah did not eat. Mashah did not sleep. Mashah just sat still in one place at the window with staring eyes that saw nothing.

Then she called me over and said, “Write for me a letter. My fingers can’t write anymore.” And so I wrote as she said it to me.

JACOB:

It’s the last time you will hear from me. I’m not throwing up anything to you. I only wanted to tell you that you robbed me of my belief in love and truth. In you I believed. You I loved. You and your music were everything of truth and beauty there was in the world. And if you could leave me, then music is only ugly noise, and words of love, all lies. And there is no truth, no beauty, and no love in the world.

MASHAH.

As soon as I wrote this letter, she sent me over with it to the place he lived.

I found him walking up and down his room, like something caged, his thoughts far away. “What a suffering face—what worried eyes,” I thought, as I stood at his open door for some time, before he noticed me. Then he jumped at me and seized the letter I held in my hand.

“Oh, my poor dear Mashah!” he groaned, shutting his eyes with the hurt of his guilt. “I’ve been a brute—a criminal!”

Like one in a fever, he began talking to himself and fighting with the air around him.

“He’ll not keep me from her another minute! To hell with Father! I will see her. How can a storekeeper’s brain know her heart!” And grabbing me by the hand, he rushed with me to Mashah.

In the hall, he stopped, frightened. “Will she see me? Please ask her to come down,” he begged like a child. “I’ll wait here.”

I bounded up the stairs and into the kitchen. It was like death in the house since Novak had stopped coming. And I thought my words would bring life back to Mashah’s dead face. And she would run down to meet him as always before.

“He’s waiting for you, downstairs,” I gasped, breathless.

She drew herself up tall and proud as a queen. “I go to him? No——”

“But he must see you. He’s afraid to come up. You ought to see him. He looks terrible.”

Slowly she rose and came down. Cold as a stone statue, she looked at him. “What brought you here? Is it pity? I need no pity.”

“Mashah!” His hands reached out to her, pleadingly. “I’ve been a coward—bullied by my father. I listened to him because of the concert—but no more. You’re everything to me!”

He drew her up in his arms and kissed her with burning lips.

“Mashah! Speak to me. Tell me only you forgive me. See how I suffered since I left you.”

“Come upstairs,” she said, coldly.

Was this the same Mashah whose face lit up like a living sun at the sound of Jacob’s footsteps? Where had gone the light of her eyes, the life that sang and danced when he was near? It seemed to me that something deep down in her had broken and it would never again be fixed. She was like something still walking and talking, but inside she was frozen into something colder than death.

As they entered the house, his hand clinging to hers, Father came in.

“Empty-head!” shouted Father, tearing Mashah away from Jacob. “You yet speak to this liar, this denier of God! Didn’t I tell you once a man who plays the piano on the Sabbath, a man without religion, can’t be trusted? As he left you once, he’ll leave you again.”

“Listen to me just once, I beg you,” Jacob pleaded. “It was that concert—my father——”

“I’ll not listen to a meshumid who plays on the Sabbath!” Father pushed his hand from his arm. “It says in the Torah that when you see a meshumid drowning you must sink him deeper into the water. And if you see him burning, you must add yet fuel to the flames.” Father opened the door and pushed Jacob out.

The next day, Jacob tried to see Mashah again. And this time Father slammed the door in his face. Then he turned to Mashah.

“I give you the last warning, never to see that man again. If you do, I’ll turn you out of the house. You must choose between that scoundrel and your father.”

And so Mashah, weak, dumb, helpless with the first great sorrow of her life, gave in to Father’s will. She let go her chance of fixing up her happiness because of Father’s unforgiving pride. And Jacob was never seen in the house again.

Mashah went back to work. She still dressed neatly, and was even beautiful in her quiet silence. But she dressed mechanically. A sad, far-off look of something for ever gone had come into her eyes. She was like a bird with its song for ever stilled.

In her weakness and dumbness and helplessness, Father began letting out all his preaching on her poor head. “I always told you your bad end. I told you with your empty head and pretty face no good could come to you. Any man who falls in love with a pretty face don’t think to marry himself. If a man wants a wife, he looks for one who can cook for him, and wash for him, and carry the burden of his house for him. I always told you that a man who plays on the Sabbath has no fear of God. And if he don’t fear God, then how could you trust him anything he said?”

More and more I began to see that Father, in his innocent craziness to hold up the Light of the Law to his children, was as a tyrant more terrible than the Tsar from Russia. As he drove away Bessie’s man, so he drove away Mashah’s lover. And each time he killed the heart from one of his children, he grew louder with his preaching on us all.

We’d come home worn and tired from working hard all day and there was Father with a clear head from his dreams of the Holy Torah, and he’d begin to preach to each and every one of us our different sins that would land us in hell. He remembered the littlest fault of each and every one of us, from the time we were born. And he’d begin hammering these faults into us till it got black and red for our eyes.

Sometimes when I’d come home, the mere sound of Father’s voice would get me so nervous that I’d want to scream and pull my hair and cry out like a lunatic, “I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it anymore in this house!”

I began to feel I was different from my sisters. They couldn’t stand Father’s preaching any more than I, but they could suffer to listen to him, like dutiful children who honor and obey and respect their father, whether they like him or not. If they ever had times when they hated Father, they were too frightened of themselves to confess their hate.

I too was frightened the first time I felt I hated my father. I felt like a criminal. But could I help it what was inside of me? I had to feel what I felt even if it killed me.

I’d wake up in the middle of the night when all were asleep, and cry into the deaf, dumb darkness, “I hate my father. And I hate God most of all for bringing me into such a terrible house.”

More and more I began to think inside myself, I don’t want to sell herring for the rest of my days. I want to learn something. I want to do something. I want some day to make myself for a person and come among people. But how can I do it if I live in this hell house of Father’s preaching and Mother’s complaining?

And when I get a lover I don’t want Father questioning out his wages, or calling him a meshumid because he played the piano on the Sabbath.

And then I thought, what kind of a man could I get if I smell from selling herring? A son from Zalmon the fish-peddler?

No! No one from Essex or Hester Street for me. I don’t want a man like Berel Bernstein whose head was all day on making money from the sweatshop. No, I wouldn’t even want one like Jacob Novak, even if he was a piano-player, if he ate the bread of his father who bossed him. I’d want an American-born man who was his own boss. And would let me be my boss. And no fathers, and no mothers, and no sweatshops, and no herring!