Hungry Hearts
It was evening when she got through with her work. To her surprise she
did not feel any of the old weariness. It was as if her feet danced
under her. Then from the open doorway of their kitchen she overheard
Mrs. Melker, the matchmaker, talking to her uncle.
"Motkeh, the fish-peddler, is looking for a wife to cook him his
eating and take care on his children," she was saying in her shrill,
grating voice. "So I thought to myself this is a golden chance for
Shenah Pessah to grab. You know a girl in her years and without money,
a single man wouldn't give a look on her."
Shenah Pessah shuddered. She wanted to run away from the branding
torture of their low talk, but an unreasoning curiosity drew her to
listen.
"Living is so high," went on Mrs. Melker, "that single men
don't want to marry themselves even to _young_ girls, except if
they can get themselves into a family with money to start them up
in business. It is Shenah Pessah's luck yet that Motkeh likes good
eating and he can't stand it any more the meals in a restaurant. He
heard from people what a good cook and housekeeper Shenah Pessah is, so
he sent me around to tell you he would take her as she stands without
a cent."
Mrs. Melker dramatically beat her breast. "I swear I shouldn't live
to go away from here alive, I shouldn't live to see my own children
married if I'm talking this match for the few dollars that Motkeh
will pay me for it, but because I want to do something good for a poor
orphan. I'm a mother, and it weeps in me my heart to see a girl in
her years and not married."
"And who'll cook for me my eating, if I'll let her go?" broke
out her uncle angrily. "And who'll do me my work? Didn't I spend
out fifty dollars to send for her the ticket to America? Oughtn't I
have a little use from her for so many dollars I laid out on her?"
"Think on God!" remonstrated Mrs. Melker. "The girl is an orphan
and time is pushing itself on her. Do you want her to sit till her
braids grow gray, before you'll let her get herself a man? It stands
in the Talmud that a man should take the last bite away from his mouth
to help an orphan get married. You'd beg yourself out a place in
heaven in the next world--"
"In America a person can't live on hopes for the next world. In
America everybody got to look out for himself. I'd have to give up
the janitor's work to let her go, and then where would I be?"
"You lived already your life. Give her also a chance to lift up
her head in the world. Couldn't you get yourself in an old man's
home?"
"These times you got to have money even in an old man's home. You
know how they say, if you oil the wheels you can ride. With dry hands
you can't get nothing in America."
"So you got no pity on an orphan and your own relation? All her young
years she choked herself in darkness and now comes already a little
light for her, a man that can make a good living wants her--"
"And who'll have pity on me if I'll let her out from my
hands? Who is this Motkeh, anyway? Is he good off? Would I also
have a place where to lay my old head? Where stands he out with his
pushcart?"
"On Essex Street near Delancey."
"Oi-i! You mean Motkeh Pelz? Why, I know him yet from years ago. They
say his wife died him from hunger. She had to chew the earth before she
could beg herself out a cent from him. By me Shenah Pessah has at least
enough to eat and shoes on her feet. I ask you only is it worth already
to grab a man if you got to die from hunger for it?"
Shenah Pessah could listen no longer.
"Don't you worry yourself for me," she commanded, charging into
the room. "Don't take pity on my years. I'm living in America,
not in Russia. I'm not hanging on anybody's neck to support me. In
America, if a girl earns her living, she can be fifty years old and
without a man, and nobody pities her."
Seizing her shawl, she ran out into the street. She did not know where
her feet carried her. She had only one desire--to get away. A fierce
rebellion against everything and everybody raged within her and goaded
her on until she felt herself choked with hate.
All at once she visioned a face and heard a voice. The blacker, the
more stifling the ugliness of her prison, the more luminous became the
light of the miraculous stranger who had stopped for a moment to talk
to her. It was as though inside a pit of darkness the heavens opened
and hidden hopes began to sing.
Her uncle was asleep when she returned. In the dim gaslight she
looked at his yellow, care-crushed face with new compassion in
her heart. "Poor old man!" she thought, as she turned to her
room. "Nothing beautiful never happened to him. What did he have in
life outside the worry for bread and rent? Who knows, maybe if such a
god of men would have shined on him--" She fell asleep and she awoke
with visions opening upon visions of new, gleaming worlds of joy and
hope. She leaped out of bed singing a song she had not heard since she
was a little child in her mother's home.
Several times during the day, she found herself, at the broken mirror,
arranging and rearranging her dark mass of unkempt hair with fumbling
fingers. She was all a-tremble with breathless excitement to imitate
the fluffy style of the much-courted landlady's daughter.
For the first time she realized how shabby and impossible her clothes
were. "Oi weh!" she wrung her hands. "I'd give away everything
in the world only to have something pretty to wear for him. My whole
life hangs on how I'll look in his eyes. I got to have a hat and a
new dress. I can't no more wear my 'greenhorn' shawl going out
with an American.
"But from where can I get the money for new clothes? Oi weh! How
bitter it is not to have the dollar! Woe is me! No mother, no friend,
nobody to help me lift myself out of my greenhorn rags."
"Why not pawn the feather bed your mother left you?" She jumped at
the thought.
"What? Have you no heart? No feelings? Pawn the only one thing left
from your dead mother?
"Why not? Nothing is too dear for him. If your mother could stand up
from her grave, she'd cut herself in pieces, she'd tear the sun and
stars out from the sky to make you beautiful for him."
Late one evening Zaretsky sat in his pawnshop, absorbed in counting the
money of his day's sales, when Shenah Pessah, with a shawl over her
head and a huge bundle over her shoulder, edged her way hesitantly into
the store. Laying her sacrifice down on the counter, she stood dumbly
and nervously fingered the fringes of her shawl.
The pawnbroker lifted his miserly face from the cash-box and shot a
quick glance at the girl's trembling figure.
"Nu?" said Zaretsky, in his cracked voice, cutting the twine from
the bundle and unfolding a feather bed. His appraising hand felt that
it was of the finest down. "How much ask you for it?"
The fiendish gleam of his shrewd eyes paralyzed her with terror. A lump
came in her throat and she wavered speechless.
"I'll give you five dollars," said Zaretsky.
"Five dollars?" gasped Shenah Pessah. Her hands rushed back
anxiously to the feather bed and her fingers clung to it as if it
were a living thing. She gazed panic-stricken at the gloomy interior
of the pawnshop with its tawdry jewels in the cases; the stacks of
second-hand clothing hanging overhead, back to the grisly face of the
pawnbroker. The weird tickings that came from the cheap clocks on the
shelves behind Zaretsky, seemed to her like the smothered heart-beats
of people who like herself had been driven to barter their last
precious belongings for a few dollars.
"Is it for yourself that you come?" he asked, strangely stirred by
the mute anguish in the girl's eyes. This morgue of dead belongings
had taken its toll of many a pitiful victim of want. But never
before had Zaretsky been so affected. People bargained and rebelled
and struggled with him on his own plane. But the dumb helplessness of
this girl and her coming to him at such a late hour touched the man's
heart.
"Is it for yourself?" he repeated, in a softened tone.
The new note of feeling in his voice made her look up. The hard, crafty
expression on his face had given place to a look of sympathy.
"Yes, it's mine, from my mother," she stammered, brokenly. "The
last memory from Russia. How many winters it took my mother to pick
together the feathers. She began it when I was yet a little baby in the
cradle--and--" She covered her face with her shawl and sobbed.
"Any one sick? Why do you got to pawn it?"
She raised her tear-stained face and mutely looked at him. How could
she explain and how could he possibly understand her sudden savage
desire for clothes?
Zaretsky, feeling that he had been clumsy and tactless, hastened to
add, "Nu--I'll give you--a--a--a--ten dollars," he finished with
a motion of his hand, as if driving from him the onrush of generosity
that seized him.
"Oi, mister!" cried Shenah Pessah, as the man handed her the
bill. "You're saving me my life! God will pay you for this
goodness." And crumpling the money in her hand, she hurried back home
elated.
The following evening, as soon as her work was over, Shenah Pessah
scurried through the ghetto streets, seeking in the myriad-colored shop
windows the one hat and the one dress that would voice the desire of
her innermost self. At last she espied a shining straw with cherries so
red, so luscious, that they cried out to her, "Bite me!" That was
the hat she bought.
The magic of those cherries on her hat brought back to her the green
fields and orchards of her native Russia. Yes, a green dress was what
she craved. And she picked out the greenest, crispest organdie.
That night, as she put on her beloved colors, she vainly tried to see
herself from head to foot, but the broken bit of a mirror that she
owned could only show her glorious parts of her. Her clothes seemed
to enfold her in flames of desire leaping upon desire. "Only to be
beautiful! Only to be beautiful!" she murmured breathlessly. "Not
for myself, but only for him."
Time stood still for Shenah Pessah as she counted the days, the hours,
and the minutes for the arrival of John Barnes. At last, through her
basement window, she saw him walk up the front steps. She longed to go
over to him and fling herself at his feet and cry out to him with what
hunger of heart she awaited his coming. But the very intensity of her
longing left her faint and dumb.
He passed to his room. Later, she saw him walk out without even
stopping to look at her. The next day and the day after, she watched
him from her hidden corner pass in and out of the house, but still he
did not come to her.
Oh, how sweet it was to suffer the very hurt of his oblivion of
her! She gloried in his great height that made him so utterly unaware
of her existence. It was enough for her worshiping eyes just to glimpse
him from afar. What was she to him? Could she expect him to greet
the stairs on which he stepped? Or take notice of the door that swung
open for him? After all, she was nothing but part of the house. So why
should he take notice of her? She was the steps on which he walked. She
was the door that swung open for him. And he did not know it.
For four evenings in succession, ever since John Barnes had come to
live in the house, Shenah Pessah arrayed herself in her new things
and waited. Was it not a miracle that he came the first time when
she did not even dream that he was on earth? So why shouldn't the
miracle happen again? This evening, however, she was so spent with the
hopelessness of her longing that she had no energy left to put on her
adornments.
All at once she was startled out of her apathy by a quick tap on her
window-pane. "How about going to the library, to-morrow evening?"
asked John Barnes.
"Oi-i-i! Yes! Thanks--" she stammered in confusion.