“Can’t you say veenda?” he had growled. “What a peasant head! Other greenhornsh learn to speak American shtyle very fast; and she—one might tell her the same word eighty thousand times, and it is nu used.”
“Es is of’n veenda mein ich,”[11] ] she hastened to set herself right.
She blushed as she said it, but at the moment she attached no importance to the matter and took no more notice of it. Now, however, Jake’s tone of voice, as he had rebuked her backwardness in picking up American Yiddish, came back to her and she grew dejected.
She was getting used to her husband, in whom her own Yekl and Jake the stranger were by degrees merging themselves into one undivided being. When the hour of his coming from work drew near she would every little while consult the clock and become impatient with the slow progress of its hands; although mixed with this impatience there was a feeling of apprehension lest the supper, prepared as it was under culinary conditions entirely new to her, should fail to please Jake and the boarders. She had even become accustomed to address her husband as Jake without reddening in the face; and, what is more, was getting to tolerate herself being called by him Goitie (Gertie)—a word phonetically akin to Yiddish for Gentile. For the rest she was too inexperienced and too simple-hearted naturally to comment upon his manner toward her. She had not altogether overcome her awe of him, but as he showed her occasional marks of kindness she was upon the whole rather content with her new situation. Now, however, as she thus sat in solitude, with his harsh voice ringing in her ears and his icy look before her, a feeling of suspicion darkened her soul. She recalled other scenes where he had looked and spoken as he had done the night before. “He must hate me! A pain upon me!” she concluded with a fallen heart. She wondered whether his demeanour toward her was like that of other people who hated their wives. She remembered a woman of her native village who was known to be thus afflicted, and she dropped her head in a fit of despair. At one moment she took a firm resolve to pluck up courage and cast away the kerchief and the wig; but at the next she reflected that God would be sure to punish her for the terrible sin, so that instead of winning Jake’s love the change would increase his hatred for her. It flashed upon her mind to call upon some “good Jew” to pray for the return of his favour, or to seek some old Polish beggar woman who could prescribe a love potion. But then, alas! who knows whether there are in this terrible America any good Jews or beggar women with love potions at all! Better she had never known this “black year” of a country! Here everybody says she is green. What an ugly word to apply to people! She had never been green at home, and here she had suddenly become so. What do they mean by it, anyhow? Verily, one might turn green and yellow and gray while young in such a dreadful place. Her heart was wrung with the most excruciating pangs of homesickness. And as she thus sat brooding and listlessly surveying her new surroundings—the iron stove, the stationary washtubs, the window opening vertically, the fire escape, the yellowish broom with its painted handle—things which she had never dreamed of at her birthplace—these objects seemed to stare at her haughtily and inspired her with fright. Even the burnished cup of the electric bell knob looked contemptuously and seemed to call her “Greenhorn! greenhorn!” “Lord of the world! Where am I?” she whispered with tears in her voice.
The dreary solitude terrified her, and she instinctively rose to take refuge at Yosselé’s bedside. As she got up, a vague doubt came over her whether she should find there her child at all. But Yosselé was found safe and sound enough. He was rubbing his eyes and announcing the advent of his famous appetite. She seized him in her arms and covered his warm cheeks with fervent kisses which did her aching heart good. And by-and-bye, as she admiringly watched the boy making savage inroads into a generous slice of rye bread, she thought of Jake’s affection for the child; whereupon things began to assume a brighter aspect, and she presently set about preparing supper with a lighter heart, although her countenance for some time retained its mournful woe-begone expression.
Meanwhile Jake sat at his machine merrily pushing away at a cloak and singing to it some of the popular American songs of the day.
The sensation caused by the arrival of his wife and child had nearly blown over. Peltner’s dancing school he had not visited since a week or two previous to Gitl’s landing. As to the scene which had greeted him in the shop after the stirring news had first reached it, he had faced it out with much more courage and got over it with much less difficulty than he had anticipated.
“Did I ever tell you I was a tzingle man?” he laughingly defended himself, though blushing crimson, against his shopmates’ taunts. “And am I obliged to give you a report whether my wife has come or not? You are not worth mentioning her name to, anyhoy.”
The boss then suggested that Jake celebrate the event with two pints of beer, the motion being seconded by the presser, who volunteered to fetch the beverage. Jake obeyed with alacrity, and if there had still lingered any trace of awkwardness in his position it was soon washed away by the foaming liquid.