§ 3
Hanneh Breineh’s lodging-house was in a hubbub of excitement. A limousine had stopped before the dingy tenement, and Berel—a Berel from another world—stepped into the crowded kitchen.
How he was dressed! His suit was of the latest cut. The very quality of his necktie told of the last word in grooming. The ebony cane hanging on his arm raised him in the eyes of the admiring boarders to undreamed-of heights of wealth.
There was a new look in his eyes—the look of the man who has arrived and who knows that he has. Gone was the gloom of the insulted and the injured. Success had blotted out the ethereal, longing gaze of the hungry ghetto youth. Nevertheless, to a discerning eye, a lurking discontent, like a ghost at a feast, still cast its shadow on Berel’s face.
“He’s not happy. He’s only putting on,” thought Moisheh, casting sidelong glances at his brother.
“You got enough to eat, and it shows on you so quick,” purred Hanneh Breineh, awed into ingratiating gentleness by Berel’s new prosperity.
With a large-hearted gesture, Berel threw a handful of change into the air for the children. There was a wild scramble of tangled legs and arms, and then a rush to the street for the nearest pushcart.
“Oi weh!” Hanneh Breineh touched Berel with reverent gratitude. “Give a look only how he throws himself around with his money!”
Berel laughed gleefully, a warm glow coming to his heart at this bubbling appreciation of his generosity.
“Hanneh Breineh,” he said, with an impressive note in his voice, “did you ever have a twenty-dollar gold piece in your hand?”
An intake of breath was the only answer.
“Here it is.”
Berel took from his pocket a little satin case and handed it to her, his face beaming with the lavishness of the gift.
Hanneh Breineh gazed at the gold piece, which glistened with unbelievable solidity before her enraptured eyes. Then she fell on Berel’s neck.
“You diamond prince!” she gushed. “Always I stood for your part when they all said you was crazy!”
The lean, hungry-faced boarders drank him in, envious worship in their eyes.
“Rockefeller—Vanderbilt!”
Exclamations of wonder and awe leaped from lip to lip as they gazed at this Midas who was once a schnorrer in their midst.
Basking in their adulation like a bright lizard in the sun, Berel, with feigned indifference, lighted a thick cigar. He began to hum airily one of his latest successes.
“Ten thousand dollars for my last song!” he announced casually, as he puffed big rings of smoke to the ceiling.
“Riches rains on you!” Hanneh Breineh threw up her hands in an abandon of amazement. “Sing to me only that millionaires’ song!”
Lifting her ragged skirts, she began to step in time to the tune that Berel hummed.
Out of all the acclaimers Moisheh remained the only unresponsive figure in the room.
“Why your long face?” Hanneh Breineh shrieked. “What thunder fell on you?”
Moisheh shifted uncomfortably.
“I don’t know what is with me the matter. I don’t get no feelings from the words. It’s only boom—boom—nothing!”
“Is ten thousand dollars nothing?” demanded the outraged Hanneh Breineh. “Are a million people crazy? All America sings his songs, and you turn up your nose on them. What do you know from life? You sweat from morning till night pressing out your heart’s blood on your ironing board, and what do you get from it? A crooked back—a dried out herring face!”
“‘The prosperity of fools slayeth them,’” quoted Moisheh in Hebrew.
Berel turned swiftly on his brother.
“It’s the poets who are slain and the fools who are exalted. Before I used to spend three months polishing one little cry from the heart. Sometimes I sold it for five dollars, but most of the time I didn’t. Now I shoot out a song in a day, and it nets me a fortune!”
“But I would better give you the blood from under my nails than you should sell yourself for dollars,” replied Moisheh.
“Would you want me to come back to this hell of dirt and beg from you again for every galling bite of bread?” cried Berel, flaring into rage. “Your gall should burst, you dirt-eating muzhik!” he shouted with unreasoning fury, and fled headlong from the room.
This unaccountable anger from the new millionaire left all but Hanneh Breineh in a stupor of bewilderment.
“Muzhik! Are we all muzhiks, then?” she cried. A biting doubt of the generosity of her diamond prince rushed through her. “Twenty dollars only from so many thousands? What if he did dress out his stingy present in a satin box?”
She passed the gold piece around disdainfully.
“After all, I can’t live on the shine from it. What’ll it buy me—only twenty dollars? I done enough for him when he was a starving beggar that he shouldn’t be such a piker to me!”