She screamed; it was the cry of a wounded deer. She rushed to the door, but her legs gave way beneath her. She stretched her hands out against the closed door, groaning and bemoaning her great misfortune. She could not speak. Her throat was as if clamped, and her tongue could not move. Only later was she able to whisper the name scarce audibly: “Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel!” Only his name could she murmur, and nothing more. Then she threw herself upon the bed, her hands pressed to her face, and her body in a heap, and it seemed to her as if some one had slapped her.

And Zerubbabel strode on through the night and the gloom, far beyond the city, into deep solitude, to the place where a huge cliff rose high above a deep abyss.

DRABKIN
A Novelette of Proletarian Life

DRABKIN

A Novelette of Proletarian Life

I

Drabkin was an excellent workman,—a pocketbook maker whose handiwork was the talk of the town. Folks praised him in his presence and in his absence; he knew his worth and held his head proudly erect. It seemed to him that he had been created for the express purpose of speaking the truth to all employers right before their very faces, and upon the slightest provocation he would let them know that they were living off his sweat and blood,—that they were exploiters, bloodsuckers, cannibals, and so forth and so on. So that he never could find a steady place, and through the year he spent more days idle than at his employment.

The bosses pitied him. “He’s a devil with claws,” they would say. “May no good Jew know him!... But he has golden hands!”

“If it weren’t for his crazy notions he’d be rolling in money. Such a workman! His fingers fly, as if by magic!”

Yet they could not suffer him in their shops. They even feared him. He was as widely known as a bad shilling, yet he was hired in the hope that perhaps he had changed for the better; perhaps he had calmed down and become quieter. Moreover, it was a pity to let a hand go around idle, when he could do more work in twelve hours than another could accomplish in twenty-four. But in a couple of days the employer would have to confess with a groan that Drabkin was the same insolent chap as ever, that it was dangerous to have him in a Jewish shop, because he would spoil the rest of the men. So he was shown the door.