Hungry Hearts
walked among the haggling pushcart venders, relaxing and swimming in
the warm waves of her old familiar past.
A fish-peddler held up a large carp in his black, hairy hand and waved
it dramatically:
"Women! Women! Fourteen cents a pound!"
He ceased his raucous shouting as he saw Hanneh Breineh in her rich
attire approach his cart.
"How much?" she asked, pointing to the fattest carp.
"Fifteen cents, lady," said the peddler, smirking as he raised his
price.
"Swindler! Didn't I hear you call fourteen cents?" shrieked
Hanneh Breineh, exultingly, the spirit of the penny chase surging in
her blood. Diplomatically, Hanneh Breineh turned as if to go, and the
fisherman seized her basket in frantic fear.
"I should live; I'm losing money on the fish, lady," whined the
peddler. "I'll let it down to thirteen cents for you only."
"Two pounds for a quarter, and not a penny more," said Hanneh
Breineh, thrilling again with the rare sport of bargaining, which had
been her chief joy in the good old days of poverty.
"Nu, I want to make the first sale for good luck." The peddler
threw the fish on the scale.
As he wrapped up the fish, Hanneh Breineh saw the driven look of
worry in his haggard eyes, and when he counted out the change from her
dollar, she waved it aside. "Keep it for your luck," she said, and
hurried off to strike a new bargain at a pushcart of onions.
Hanneh Breineh returned triumphantly with her purchases. The basket
under her arm gave forth the old, homelike odors of herring and
garlic, while the scaly tail of a four-pound carp protruded from its
newspaper wrapping. A gilded placard on the door of the apartment-house
proclaimed that all merchandise must be delivered through the trade
entrance in the rear; but Hanneh Breineh with her basket strode proudly
through the marble-paneled hall and rang nonchalantly for the elevator.
The uniformed hall-man, erect, expressionless, frigid with dignity,
stepped forward:
"Just a minute, madam. I'll call a boy to take up your basket for
you."
Hanneh Breineh, glaring at him, jerked the basket savagely from his
hands. "Mind your own business!" she retorted. "I'll take it
up myself. Do you think you're a Russian policeman to boss me in my
own house?"
Angry lines appeared on the countenance of the representative of social
decorum.
"It is against the rules, madam," he said, stiffly.
"You should sink into the earth with all your rules and brass
buttons. Ain't this America? Ain't this a free country? Can't I
take up in my own house what I buy with my own money?" cried Hanneh
Breineh, reveling in the opportunity to shower forth the volley of
invectives that had been suppressed in her for the weeks of deadly
dignity of Riverside Drive.
In the midst of this uproar Fanny came in with Mrs. Van Suyden. Hanneh
Breineh rushed over to her, crying:
"This bossy policeman won't let me take up my basket in the
elevator."
The daughter, unnerved with shame and confusion, took the basket in
her white-gloved hand and ordered the hall-boy to take it around to the
regular delivery entrance.
Hanneh Breineh was so hurt by her daughter's apparent defense of
the hall-man's rules that she utterly ignored Mrs. Van Suyden's
greeting and walked up the seven flights of stairs out of sheer spite.
"You see the tragedy of my life?" broke out Fanny, turning to
Mrs. Van Suyden.
"You poor child! You go right up to your dear, old lady mother, and
I'll come some other time."
Instantly Fanny regretted her words. Mrs. Van Suyden's pity only
roused her wrath the more against her mother.
Breathless from climbing the stairs, Hanneh Breineh entered the
apartment just as Fanny tore the faultless millinery creation from her
head and threw it on the floor in a rage.
"Mother, you are the ruination of my life! You have driven away
Mrs. Van Suyden, as you have driven away all my best friends. What do
you think we got this apartment for but to get rid of your fish smells
and your brawls with the servants? And here you come with a basket on
your arm as if you just landed from steerage! And this afternoon, of
all times, when Benny is bringing his leading man to tea. When will you
ever stop disgracing us?"
"When I'm dead," said Hanneh Breineh, grimly. "When the earth
will cover me up, then you'll be free to go your American way. I'm
not going to make myself over for a lady on Riverside Drive. I hate
you and all your swell friends. I'll not let myself be choked up here
by you or by that hall-boss policeman that is higher in your eyes than
your own mother."
"So that's your thanks for all we've done for you?" cried the
daughter.
"All you've done for me!" shouted Hanneh Breineh. "What have
you done for me? You hold me like a dog on a chain! It stands in the
Talmud; some children give their mothers dry bread and water and go to
heaven for it, and some give their mother roast duck and go to Gehenna
because it's not given with love."
"You want me to love you yet?" raged the daughter. "You knocked
every bit of love out of me when I was yet a kid. All the memories of
childhood I have is your everlasting cursing and yelling that we were
gluttons."
The bell rang sharply, and Hanneh Breineh flung open the door.
"Your groceries, ma'am," said the boy.
Hanneh Breineh seized the basket from him, and with a vicious fling
sent it rolling across the room, strewing its contents over the Persian
rugs and inlaid floor. Then seizing her hat and coat, she stormed out
of the apartment and down the stairs.
Mr. and Mrs. Pelz sat crouched and shivering over their meager supper
when the door opened, and Hanneh Breineh in fur coat and plumed hat
charged into the room.
"I come to cry out to you my bitter heart," she sobbed. "Woe is
me! It is so black for my eyes!"
"What is the matter with you, Hanneh Breineh?" cried Mrs. Pelz in
bewildered alarm.
"I am turned out of my own house by the brass-buttoned policeman that
bosses the elevator. Oi-i-i-i! Weh-h-h-h! What have I from my life? The
whole world rings with my son's play. Even the President came to see
it, and I, his mother, have not seen it yet. My heart is dying in me
like in a prison," she went on wailing. "I am starved out for a
piece of real eating. In that swell restaurant is nothing but napkins
and forks and lettuce-leaves. There are a dozen plates to every bite of
food. And it looks so fancy on the plate, but it's nothing but straw
in the mouth. I'm starving, but I can't swallow down their American
eating."
"Hanneh Breineh," said Mrs. Pelz, "you are sinning before
God. Look on your fur coat; it alone would feed a whole family for a
year. I never had yet a piece of fur trimming on a coat, and you are in
fur from the neck to the feet. I never had yet a piece of feather on a
hat, and your hat is all feathers."
"What are you envying me?" protested Hanneh Breineh. "What have
I from all my fine furs and feathers when my children are strangers
to me? All the fur coats in the world can't warm up the loneliness
inside my heart. All the grandest feathers can't hide the bitter
shame in my face that my children shame themselves from me."
Hanneh Breineh suddenly loomed over them like some ancient, heroic
figure of the Bible condemning unrighteousness.
"Why should my children shame themselves from me? From where did they
get the stuff to work themselves up in the world? Did they get it from
the air? How did they get all their smartness to rise over the people
around them? Why don't the children of born American mothers write
my Benny's plays? It is I, who never had a chance to be a person,
who gave him the fire in his head. If I would have had a chance to go
to school and learn the language, what couldn't I have been? It is
I and my mother and my mother's mother and my father and father's
father who had such a black life in Poland; it is our choked thoughts
and feelings that are flaming up in my children and making them great
in America. And yet they shame themselves from me!"
For a moment Mr. and Mrs. Pelz were hypnotized by the sweep of her
words. Then Hanneh Breineh sank into a chair in utter exhaustion. She
began to weep bitterly, her body shaking with sobs.
"Woe is me! For what did I suffer and hope on my children? A bitter
old age--my end. I'm so lonely!"
All the dramatic fire seemed to have left her. The spell was
broken. They saw the Hanneh Breineh of old, ever discontented, ever
complaining even in the midst of riches and plenty.
"Hanneh Breineh," said Mrs. Pelz, "the only trouble with you is
that you got it too good. People will tear the eyes out of your head
because you're complaining yet. If I only had your fur coat! If I
only had your diamonds! I have nothing. You have everything. You are
living on the fat of the land. You go right back home and thank God
that you don't have my bitter lot."
"You got to let me stay here with you," insisted Hanneh
Breineh. "I'll not go back to my children except when they bury
me. When they will see my dead face, they will understand how they
killed me."
Mrs. Pelz glanced nervously at her husband. They barely had enough
covering for their one bed; how could they possibly lodge a visitor?
"I don't want to take up your bed," said Hanneh Breineh. "I
don't care if I have to sleep on the floor or on the chairs, but
I'll stay here for the night."
Seeing that she was bent on staying, Mr. Pelz prepared to sleep by
putting a few chairs next to the trunk, and Hanneh Breineh was invited
to share the rickety bed with Mrs. Pelz.
The mattress was full of lumps and hollows. Hanneh Breineh lay cramped
and miserable, unable to stretch out her limbs. For years she had been
accustomed to hair mattresses and ample woolen blankets, so that though
she covered herself with her fur coat, she was too cold to sleep. But
worse than the cold were the creeping things on the wall. And as the
lights were turned low, the mice came through the broken plaster and
raced across the floor. The foul odors of the kitchen-sink added to the
night of horrors.
"Are you going back home?" asked Mrs. Pelz, as Hanneh Breineh put
on her hat and coat the next morning.
"I don't know where I'm going," she replied, as she put a bill
into Mrs. Pelz's hand.
For hours Hanneh Breineh walked through the crowded ghetto streets. She
realized that she no longer could endure the sordid ugliness of her
past, and yet she could not go home to her children. She only felt that
she must go on and on.
In the afternoon a cold, drizzling rain set in. She was worn out from
the sleepless night and hours of tramping. With a piercing pain in her
heart she at last turned back and boarded the subway for Riverside
Drive. She had fled from the marble sepulcher of the Riverside
apartment to her old home in the ghetto; but now she knew that she
could not live there again. She had outgrown her past by the habits of
years of physical comforts, and these material comforts that she could
no longer do without choked and crushed the life within her.
A cold shudder went through Hanneh Breineh as she approached the
apartment-house. Peering through the plate glass of the door she
saw the face of the uniformed hall-man. For a hesitating moment she
remained standing in the drizzling rain, unable to enter, and yet
knowing full well that she would have to enter.
Then suddenly Hanneh Breineh began to laugh. She realized that it was
the first time she had laughed since her children had become rich. But
it was the hard laugh of bitter sorrow. Tears streamed down her
furrowed cheeks as she walked slowly up the granite steps.
"The fat of the land!" muttered Hanneh Breineh, with a choking
sob as the hall-man with immobile face deferentially swung open the
door--"the fat of the land!"
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