§ 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!”
“Got to have books?” she shrieked. “Beggars—schnorrers—their rent not paid—their clothes falling from them in rags—and yet they buy themselves books!” Viciously slapping the board with the shirt she had been rubbing, she straightened and faced Moisheh menacingly. “I been too good to you. I cooked and washed for you, and killed myself away to help you for nothing. So that’s my thanks!”
The door opened. A lean youth with shining eyes and a dishevelled mass of black hair rushed in.
“Ach, Moisheh! Already back from the shop? My good luck—I’m choking to tell you!”
The two drab figures huddled in the dim kitchen between the washtub and the stove gazed speechless at the boy. Even Hanneh Breineh was galvanized for the moment by the ecstatic, guileless face, the erect, live figure poised bird-like with desire.
“Oi, golden heart!” The boy grasped Moisheh’s arm impetuously. “A typewriter! It’s worth fifty dollars—maybe more yet—and I can get it for ten, if I grab it quick for cash!”
Moisheh glanced from the glowering landlady to his ardent brother. His gentle heart sank as he looked into Berel’s face, with its undoubting confidence that so reasonable a want would not be denied him.
“Don’t you think—maybe—ain’t there something you could do to earn the money?”
“What more can I do than I’m already doing? You think only pressing pants is work?”
“Berel,” said Moisheh, with frank downrightness, “you got your education. Why don’t you take up a night school? They’re looking for teachers.”
“Me a teacher? Me in that treadmill of deadness? Why, the dullest hand in a shop got more chance to use his brains than a teacher in their schools!”
“Well, then, go to work in a shop—only half-days—the rest of the time give yourself over to your dreams in the air.”
“Brother, are you gone crazy?” Berel gesticulated wildly. “I should go into that terrible sweat and grind of the machines? All the fire that creates in me would die in a day!”
The poet looked at the toil-scarred face of his peasant brother. For all his crude attempts at sympathy, how could he, with the stink of steam soaked into his clothes, with his poverty-crushed, sweatshop mind—how could he understand the anguish of thwarted creation, of high-hearted hopes that died unvoiced?
“But everybody got to work,” Moisheh went on. “All your poetry is grand, but it don’t pay nothing.”
“Is my heart cry nothing, then? Nothing to struggle by day and by night for the right word in this strange English, till I bleed away from the torture of thoughts that can’t come out?”
Berel stopped, and his eyes seemed transfigured with an inner light. His voice grew low and tense. Each word came deliberately, with the precision he used when swayed by poetic feeling.
“Ach, if I could only tell you of the visions that come to me! They flash like burning rockets over the city by night. Lips, eyes, a smile—they whisper to me a thousand secrets. The feelings that leap in my heart are like rainbow-coloured playthings. I toss them and wrestle with them; and yet I must harness them. Only then can they utter the truth, when they are clear and simple so that a young child could understand.”
Turning swiftly, the words hissed from the poet’s lips.
“Why do I have to bite the dirt for every little crumb you give me? I, who give my life, the beat of my heart, the blood of my veins, to bring beauty into the world—why do I have to beg—beg!”
He buried his face in his hands, utterly overcome.
Moisheh, with an accusing glance at Hanneh Breineh, as if she was in some measure to blame for this painful outburst, soothed the trembling Berel as one would a child.
“Shah!” He took from his pocket all his money. “Two dollars is all I yet got left, and on this I must stick out till my wages next Monday. But here, Berel, take half.”
Shamed by Moisheh’s generosity, and embittered by the inadequacy of the sum, Berel’s mood of passionate pleading gave way to sullenness.
“Keep it!” he flung over his shoulder, and left the room.