Hungry Hearts
crying waste of Hanneh Breineh's life lay open before her eyes
like pictures in a book. She saw her own life in Hanneh Breineh's
life. Her efforts to write were like Hanneh Breineh's efforts to feed
her children. Behind her life and Hanneh Breineh's life she saw the
massed ghosts of thousands upon thousands beating--beating out their
hearts against rock barriers.
"The inspector said ..." Fannie timidly attempted again to
explain.
"The inspector!" shrieked Hanneh Breineh, as she seized hold of
Fannie in a rage. "Hellfire should burn the inspector! Tell me again
about the inspector and I'll choke the life out from you--"
Sophie sprang forward to protect the child from the mother. "She's
only trying to tell you something."
"Why should she yet throw salt on my wounds? If there was enough
bread in the house would I need an inspector to tell me to send her to
school? If America is so interested in poor people's children, then
why don't they give them to eat till they should go to work? What
learning can come into a child's head when the stomach is empty?"
A clutter of feet down the creaking cellar steps, a scuffle of broken
shoes, and a chorus of shrill voices, as the younger children rushed in
from school.
"Mamma--what's to eat?"
"It smells potatoes!"
"Pfui! The pot is empty! It smells over from Cohen's."
"Jake grabbed all the bread!"
"Mamma--he kicked the piece out from my hands!"
"Mamma--it's so empty in my stomach! Ain't there nothing?"
"Gluttons--wolves--thieves!" Hanneh Breineh shrieked. "I should
only live to bury you all in one day!"
The children, regardless of Hanneh Breineh's invectives, swarmed
around her like hungry bees, tearing at her apron, her skirt. Their
voices rose in increased clamor, topped only by their mother's
imprecations. "Gotteniu! Tear me away from these leeches on my
neck! Send on them only a quick death!... Only a minute's peace
before I die!"
"Hanneh Breineh--children! What's the matter?" Shmendrik stood at
the door. The sweet quiet of the old man stilled the raucous voices as
the coming of evening stills the noises of the day.
"There's no end to my troubles! Hear them hollering for bread,
and the grocer stopped to give till the bill is paid. Woe is me! Fannie
sent home by the inspector and not a crumb in the house!"
"I got something." The old man put his hands over the heads of the
children in silent benediction. "All come in by me. I got sent me a
box of cake."
"Cake!" The children cried, catching at the kind hands and
snuggling about the shabby coat.
"Yes. Cake and nuts and raisins and even a bottle of wine."
The children leaped and danced around him in their wild burst of joy.
"Cake and wine--a box--to you? Have the charities gone crazy?"
Hanneh Breineh's eyes sparkled with light and laughter.
"No--no," Shmendrik explained hastily. "Not from the charities--from
a friend--for the holidays."
Shmendrik nodded invitingly to Sophie, who was standing in the door of
her room. "The roomerkeh will also give a taste with us our party?"
"Sure will she!" Hanneh Breineh took Sophie by the arm. "Who'll
say no in this black life to cake and wine?"
Young throats burst into shrill cries: "Cake and wine--wine and
cake--raisins and nuts--nuts and raisins!" The words rose in a
triumphant chorus. The children leaped and danced in time to their
chant, almost carrying the old man bodily into his room in the wildness
of their joy.
The contagion of this sudden hilarity erased from Sophie's mind the
last thought of work and she found herself seated with the others on
the cobbler's bench.
From under his cot the old man drew forth a wooden box. Lifting the
cover he held up before wondering eyes a large frosted cake embedded in
raisins and nuts.
Amid the shouts of glee Shmendrik now waved aloft a large bottle of
grape-juice.
The children could contain themselves no longer and dashed forward.
"Shah--shah! Wait only!" He gently halted their onrush and waved
them back to their seats.
"The glasses for the wine!" Hanneh Breineh rushed about hither and
thither in happy confusion. From the sink, the shelf, the window-sill,
she gathered cracked glasses, cups without handles--anything that would
hold even a few drops of the yellow wine.
Sacrificial solemnity filled the basement as the children breathlessly
watched Shmendrik cut the precious cake. Mouths--even eyes--watered
with the intensity of their emotion.
With almost religious fervor Hanneh Breineh poured the grape-juice
into the glasses held in the trembling hands of the children. So
overwhelming was the occasion that none dared to taste till the ritual
was completed. The suspense was agonizing as one and all waited for
Shmendrik's signal.
"Hanneh Breineh--you drink from my Sabbath wine-glass!"
Hanneh Breineh clinked glasses with Schmendrik. "Long years on
you--long years on us all!" Then she turned to Sophie, clinked
glasses once more. "May you yet marry yourself from our basement to a
millionaire!" Then she lifted the glass to her lips.
The spell was broken. With a yell of triumph the children gobbled the
cake in huge mouthfuls and sucked the golden liquid. All the traditions
of wealth and joy that ever sparkled from the bubbles of champagne
smiled at Hanneh Breineh from her glass of California grape-juice.
"Ach!" she sighed. "How good it is to forget your troubles, and
only those that's got troubles have the chance to forget them!"
She sipped the grape-juice leisurely, thrilled into ecstacy with each
lingering drop. "How it laughs yet in me, the life, the minute I turn
my head from my worries!"
With growing wonder in her eyes, Sophie watched Hanneh Breineh. This
ragged wreck of a woman--how passionately she clung to every atom of
life! Hungrily, she burned through the depths of every experience. How
she flared against wrongs--and how every tiny spark of pleasure blazed
into joy!
Within a half-hour this woman had touched the whole range of human
emotions, from bitterest agony to dancing joy. The terrible despair
at the onrush of her starving children when she cried out, "O that
I should only bury you all in one day!" And now the leaping light of
the words: "How it laughs yet in me, the life, the minute I turn my
head from my worries."
"Ach, if I could only write like Hanneh Breineh talks!" thought
Sophie. "Her words dance with a thousand colors. Like a rainbow it
flows from her lips." Sentences from her own essays marched before
her, stiff and wooden. How clumsy, how unreal, were her most labored
phrases compared to Hanneh Breineh's spontaneity. Fascinated, she
listened to Hanneh Breineh, drinking her words as a thirst-perishing
man drinks water. Every bubbling phrase filled her with a drunken
rapture to create.
"Up till now I was only trying to write from my head. It wasn't
real--it wasn't life. Hanneh Breineh is real. Hanneh Breineh is
life."
"Ach! What do the rich people got but dried-up dollars? Pfui
on them and their money!" Hanneh Breineh held up her glass to be
refilled. "Let me only win a fortune on the lotteree and move myself
in my own bought house. Let me only have my first hundred dollars
in the bank and I'll lift up my head like a person and tell the
charities to eat their own cornmeal. I'll get myself an automobile
like the kind rich ladies and ride up to their houses on Fifth Avenue
and feed them only once on the eating they like so good for me and my
children."
With a smile of benediction Shmendrik refilled the glasses and cut for
each of his guests another slice of cake. Then came the handful of nuts
and raisins.
As the children were scurrying about for hammers and iron lasts with
which to crack their nuts, the basement door creaked. Unannounced, a
woman entered--the "friendly visitor" of the charities. Her look of
awful amazement swept the group of merrymakers.
"Mr. Shmendrik!--Hanneh Breineh!" Indignation seethed in her
voice. "What's this? A feast--a birthday?"
Gasps--bewildered glances--a struggle for utterance!
"I came to make my monthly visit--evidently I'm not needed."
Shmendrik faced the accusing eyes of the "friendly visitor."
"Holiday eating ..."
"Oh--I'm glad you're so prosperous."
Before any one had gained presence of mind enough to explain things,
the door had clanked. The "friendly visitor" had vanished.
"Pfui!" Hanneh Breineh snatched up her glass and drained its
contents. "What will she do now? Will we get no more dry bread from
the charities because once we ate cake?"
"What for did she come?" asked Sophie.
"To see that we don't over-eat ourselves!" returned Hanneh
Breineh. "She's a 'friendly visitor'! She learns us how to cook
cornmeal. By pictures and lectures she shows us how the poor people
should live without meat, without milk, without butter, and without
eggs. Always it's on the end of my tongue to ask her, 'You learned
us to do without so much, why can't you yet learn us how to eat
without eating?'"
The children seized the last crumbs of cake that Shmendrik handed them
and rushed for the street.
"What a killing look was on her face," said Sophie. "Couldn't
she be a little glad for your gladness?"
"Charity ladies--gladness?" The joy of the grape-wine still
rippled in Hanneh Breineh's laughter. "For poor people is only
cornmeal. Ten cents a day--to feed my children!"
Still in her rollicking mood Hanneh Breineh picked up the baby and
tossed it like a Bacchante. "Could you be happy a lot with ten cents
in your stomach? Ten cents--half a can of condensed milk--then fill
yourself the rest with water!... Maybe yet feed you with all water and
save the ten-cent pieces to buy you a carriage like the Fifth Avenue
babies!..."
The soft sound of a limousine purred through the area grating and two
well-fed figures in seal-skin coats, led by the "friendly visitor,"
appeared at the door.
"Mr. Bernstein, you can see for yourself." The "friendly
visitor" pointed to the table.
The merry group shrank back. It was as if a gust of icy wind had swept
all the joy and laughter from the basement.
"You are charged with intent to deceive and obtain assistance by
dishonest means," said Mr. Bernstein.
"Dishonest?" Shmendrik paled.
Sophie's throat strained with passionate protest, but no words came
to her release.
"A friend--a friend"--stammered Shmendrik--"sent me the holiday
eating."
The superintendent of the Social Betterment Society faced him
accusingly. "You told us that you had no friends when you applied to
us for assistance."
"My friend--he knew me in my better time." Shmendrik flushed
painfully. "I was once a scholar--respected. I wanted by this one
friend to hold myself like I was."
Mr. Bernstein had taken from the bookshelf a number of letters, glanced
through them rapidly and handed them one by one to the deferential
superintendent.
Shmendrik clutched at his heart in an agony of humiliation. Suddenly
his bent body straightened. His eyes dilated. "My letters--my
life--you dare?"
"Of course we dare!" The superintendent returned Shmendrik's
livid gaze, made bold by the confidence that what he was doing was the
only scientific method of administering philanthropy. "These dollars,
so generously given, must go to those most worthy.... I find in these
letters references to gifts of fruit and other luxuries you did not
report at our office."
"He never kept nothing for himself!" Hanneh Breineh broke in
defensively. "He gave it all for the children."
Ignoring the interruption Mr. Bernstein turned to the "friendly
visitor." "I'm glad you brought my attention to this case. It's
but one of the many impositions on our charity ... Come ..."
"Kossacks! Pogromschiks!" Sophie's rage broke at last. "You
call yourselves Americans? You dare call yourselves Jews? You bosses of