WHAT SHOULD A JEWESS NEED?
We go from house to house, from number to number. I can see for myself which houses are inhabited by Jews and which by non-Jews; I have only to look in the window. Dingy windows are a sure sign of "Thou hast chosen us," still more so broken panes replaced by cushions and sacking. On the other hand, flower-pots and curtains portray the presence of those who have no such right to poverty as the others.
One meets with exceptions—here lives, not a Jew, but a drunkard—and here again—flowers and curtains, but they read Hazefirah.[63]
The worst impression I receive is that made upon me by a great, weird, wooden house. It is larger, but blacker and dirtier than all the other houses. The frontage leans heavily over and looks down upon its likeness—also an old, blackened ruin—upon an old, dried up, bent and tottering Jewess, who is haggling with her customer—a sallow, frowzy maid-servant—over an addition to a pound of salt. The beadle points the old woman out to me:
"That is the mistress of the house."
I was astonished: the Jewess is too poor for such a house.
"The house," explains the beadle, "is not exactly hers. She pays only one-sixth of the rent—she is a widow—but the heirs, her children, do not live here—so she is called the mistress."
"How much does the house bring in?"
"Nothing at all."
"And it's worth?"
"About fifteen hundred rubles."
"And nothing is made by it?"
"It stands empty. Who should live there?"
"How do you mean, who?"
"Well, just who? Nearly everybody here has his own house, and if any one hires a lodging, he doesn't want to have to heat a special room. The custom here is for a tenant to pay a few rubles a year for the heating of a corner. Who wants such large rooms?"
"Why did they build such a house?"
"Ba!—once upon a time! It isn't wanted nowadays."
"Why 'poor thing?' She has a stall with salt, earns a few rubles a week. Out of that she pays twenty-eight rubles a year house-tax and lives on the rest—what should a Jewess need? What can she want more? She has her winding-sheet."
I gave another look at the old woman, and really it seemed to me that she was not in need of anything. Her wrinkled skin appeared to smile at me: What should a Jewess need?
——