She told Christian about her brother.
Michael was taciturn. He never laughed; he had no friend, sought no diversions, and avoided the society of men. He suffered from his Jewishness, shrank nervously from the hatred that he suspected everywhere, repelled every advance, and felt all activity to be futile. During the forenoon he would lie on his bed for hours with his hands behind his head and smoke cigarettes; then he strolled to the little restaurant where he met his father for their midday meal. When he returned he would loiter in the yard and the alleys and at the factory gates, beside fences or public-houses. With hat pulled down and hunched shoulders, he observed life. Then he returned home and sat around, brooding and smoking. He tried to avoid being seen in the evening, when Ruth sat down to her work or their father sighed with weariness.
His eyes, which seemed to lift their gaze from a great depth, were of a golden brown, and their irises, like Ruth’s, contrasted strongly with the brilliant whiteness of the eye-ball.
Ruth said: “The other day I happened to come up when half a dozen street Arabs were following him and crying: ‘Sheeny!’ He slunk along with bowed back and lowered head. His face was terribly white; he twitched every time he heard the word. I took him by the hand, but he thrust me back. That evening father complained that business had been poor. Michael suddenly leaped up, and said: ‘What does it matter? Why do you try to do anything in such a world as this? It is too loathsome to touch. Let’s starve to death and be done with it. Why torment ourselves?’ Father was horrified, and did not answer. He thinks that Michael hates him because he has not been able to keep us from poverty and want. I do my best to talk him out of it, but he feels himself guilty, guilty toward us, his children; and that is hard, harder than penury.”
She felt it to be her duty to try to sustain the poor man, who tormented himself with reproaches, and to renew his hope. She consoled him with her lovely serenity. It was her pleasure to clear difficulties from his path, and then to declare that they had been negligible.
When she had been a little girl of seven she had nursed her mother through her last illness. She had done the work of a servant, and cooked at the great stove, when she could hardly reach the lids of the pots. She had watched over her brother, gone errands, put off creditors, and gained respite from sheriffs. She had collected money that was due; and at each change of dwelling she had created order in the house, and won the good-will of those on whom her family would be dependent. She had mended linen and brushed clothes, driven care away, caused insults to be forgotten, and brought some cheer into the darkest hours. She had found some sweetness in life, even when bitterness rose to the very brim.
Christian asked her what she was working at. She answered that she was preparing herself to take her degree. She had been relieved of all fees at the gymnasium. To help her father, whose earnings decreased steadily, she gave private lessons. To prolong her efforts far into the night cost her no struggle; five hours of sleep refreshed her and renewed her strength. In the morning she would get breakfast, set the room and kitchen to rights, and then start upon her path of work and duty with an air and mien as though it were a pleasure trip. She carried her dinner in her pocket. If it was too frugal, she would run to an automatic restaurant late in the afternoon.
One evening she returned from a charity kitchen, where twice a week she helped for half an hour to serve the meals. She told Christian about the people whom she was accustomed to see there—those whom the great city had conquered. She imitated gestures and expressions, and reported fragments of overheard speech. She communicated to him the greed, disgust, contempt, and shame that she had seen. Her observation was of a marvellous precision. Christian accompanied her on the next occasion, and saw little, almost nothing. He was aware of people in torn and shabby garments, who devoured a stingy meal without pleasure, dipped the crusts of bread into soup, and surreptitiously licked the spoon that had conveyed their last mouthful. There were hollow faces and dim eyes, foreheads that seemed to have been flattened by hydraulic pressure, and over it all a lifelessness as of scrapped machinery. Christian was teased as by a letter in an unknown tongue, and he began to understand how little he had learned to feel and see.
Although he had tried in no way to call attention to his presence, and had seemed at first glance but another wanderer from the street, a strange movement had passed through the hall. It had lasted no longer than three seconds, but Ruth, too, had felt the vibration. She was just filling one hundred and twenty plates, set in a fourfold circle, with vegetables from a huge cauldron. She looked up in surprise. She caught sight of the distinguished, almost absurdly courteous face of Christian, and she was startled. With mystical clarity she perceived the radiation of a power that wandered through the air without aim and lay buried in a soul. She bent her head over the steaming cauldron, so that her hair fell forward over her cheeks, and went on ladling out the vegetables. But she thought of the many unhappy creatures who waited for her on some hour of some day—suffering, confused, broken men and women—whom she desired so passionately to help, but to whom she could never be or give the miracle which had suddenly been revealed in that all but momentary vibration.
In a wild enthusiasm that was foreign to her nature she thought: “One must kneel and gather up all one’s soul....”