But as soon as I got into the train, although my eyes were still looking back to the left-behind faces, and my ears were yet hearing the good-byes and the partings, the thoughts of America began stealing into my heart. I was thinking how soon I’d have my lover and be rich like Hanneh Hayyeh. And with my luck, everybody was going to be happy in Savel. The dead people will stop dying and all the sorrows and troubles of the world will be wiped away with my happiness.
I didn’t see the day. I didn’t see the night. I didn’t see the ocean. I didn’t see the sky. I only saw my lover in America, coming nearer and nearer to me, till I could feel his eyes bending on me so near that I got frightened and began to tremble. My heart ached so with the joy of his nearness that I quick drew back and turned away, and began to talk to the people that were pushing and crowding themselves on the deck.
Nu, I got to America.
Ten hours I pushed a machine in a shirt-waist factory, when I was yet lucky to get work. And always my head was drying up with saving and pinching and worrying to send home a little from the little I earned. All that my face saw all day long was girls and machines—and nothing else. And even when I came already home from work, I could only talk to the girls in the working-girls’ boarding-house, or shut myself up in my dark, lonesome bedroom. No family, no friends, nobody to get me acquainted with nobody! The only men I saw were what passed me by in the street and in cars.
“Is this ‘lovers’ land’?” was calling in my heart. “Where are my dreams that were so real to me in the old country?”
Often in the middle of the work I felt like stopping all the machines and crying out to the world the heaviness that pressed on my heart. Sometimes when I walked in the street I felt like going over to the first man I met and cry out to him: “Oh, I’m so lonely! I’m so lonely!”
One day I read in the Jewish “Tageblatt” the advertisement from Zaretzky, the matchmaker. “What harm is it if I try my luck?” I said to myself. “I can’t die away an old maid. Too much love burns in my heart to stand back like a stone and only see how other people are happy. I want to tear myself out from my deadness. I’m in a living grave. I’ve got to lift myself up. I have nobody to try for me, and maybe the matchmaker will help.”
As I walked up Delancey Street to Mr. Zaretzky, the street was turning with me. I didn’t see the crowds. I didn’t see the pushcart peddlers with their bargains. I didn’t hear the noises or anything. My eyes were on the sky, praying: “Gottuniu! Send me only the little bit of luck!”
“Nu? Nu? What need you?” asked Mr. Zaretzky when I entered.
I got red with shame in the face the way he looked at me. I turned up my head. I was too proud to tell him for what I came. Before I walked in I thought to tell him everything. But when I looked on his face and saw his hard eyes, I couldn’t say a word. I stood like a yok unable to move my tongue. I went to the matchmaker with my heart, and I saw before me a stone. The stone was talking to me—but—but—he was a stone!