The Jungle
eleven o’clock at night, and black as the pit, but still they got home.
That blizzard knocked many a man out, for the crowd outside begging for
work was never greater, and the packers would not wait long for any
one. When it was over, the soul of Jurgis was a song, for he had met
the enemy and conquered, and felt himself the master of his fate.—So it
might be with some monarch of the forest that has vanquished his foes
in fair fight, and then falls into some cowardly trap in the
night-time.
A time of peril on the killing beds was when a steer broke loose.
Sometimes, in the haste of speeding-up, they would dump one of the
animals out on the floor before it was fully stunned, and it would get
upon its feet and run amuck. Then there would be a yell of warning—the
men would drop everything and dash for the nearest pillar, slipping
here and there on the floor, and tumbling over each other. This was bad
enough in the summer, when a man could see; in wintertime it was enough
to make your hair stand up, for the room would be so full of steam that
you could not make anything out five feet in front of you. To be sure,
the steer was generally blind and frantic, and not especially bent on
hurting any one; but think of the chances of running upon a knife,
while nearly every man had one in his hand! And then, to cap the
climax, the floor boss would come rushing up with a rifle and begin
blazing away!
It was in one of these mêlées that Jurgis fell into his trap. That is
the only word to describe it; it was so cruel, and so utterly not to be
foreseen. At first he hardly noticed it, it was such a slight
accident—simply that in leaping out of the way he turned his ankle.
There was a twinge of pain, but Jurgis was used to pain, and did not
coddle himself. When he came to walk home, however, he realized that it
was hurting him a great deal; and in the morning his ankle was swollen
out nearly double its size, and he could not get his foot into his
shoe. Still, even then, he did nothing more than swear a little, and
wrapped his foot in old rags, and hobbled out to take the car. It
chanced to be a rush day at Durham’s, and all the long morning he
limped about with his aching foot; by noontime the pain was so great
that it made him faint, and after a couple of hours in the afternoon he
was fairly beaten, and had to tell the boss. They sent for the company
doctor, and he examined the foot and told Jurgis to go home to bed,
adding that he had probably laid himself up for months by his folly.
The injury was not one that Durham and Company could be held
responsible for, and so that was all there was to it, so far as the
doctor was concerned.
Jurgis got home somehow, scarcely able to see for the pain, and with an
awful terror in his soul, Elzbieta helped him into bed and bandaged his
injured foot with cold water and tried hard not to let him see her
dismay; when the rest came home at night she met them outside and told
them, and they, too, put on a cheerful face, saying it would only be
for a week or two, and that they would pull him through.
When they had gotten him to sleep, however, they sat by the kitchen
fire and talked it over in frightened whispers. They were in for a
siege, that was plainly to be seen. Jurgis had only about sixty dollars
in the bank, and the slack season was upon them. Both Jonas and Marija
might soon be earning no more than enough to pay their board, and
besides that there were only the wages of Ona and the pittance of the
little boy. There was the rent to pay, and still some on the furniture;
there was the insurance just due, and every month there was sack after
sack of coal. It was January, midwinter, an awful time to have to face
privation. Deep snows would come again, and who would carry Ona to her
work now? She might lose her place—she was almost certain to lose it.
And then little Stanislovas began to whimper—who would take care of
him?
It was dreadful that an accident of this sort, that no man can help,
should have meant such suffering. The bitterness of it was the daily
food and drink of Jurgis. It was of no use for them to try to deceive
him; he knew as much about the situation as they did, and he knew that
the family might literally starve to death. The worry of it fairly ate
him up—he began to look haggard the first two or three days of it. In
truth, it was almost maddening for a strong man like him, a fighter, to
have to lie there helpless on his back. It was for all the world the
old story of Prometheus bound. As Jurgis lay on his bed, hour after
hour there came to him emotions that he had never known before. Before
this he had met life with a welcome—it had its trials, but none that a
man could not face. But now, in the nighttime, when he lay tossing
about, there would come stalking into his chamber a grisly phantom, the
sight of which made his flesh curl and his hair to bristle up. It was
like seeing the world fall away from underneath his feet; like plunging
down into a bottomless abyss into yawning caverns of despair. It might
be true, then, after all, what others had told him about life, that the
best powers of a man might not be equal to it! It might be true that,
strive as he would, toil as he would, he might fail, and go down and be
destroyed! The thought of this was like an icy hand at his heart; the
thought that here, in this ghastly home of all horror, he and all those
who were dear to him might lie and perish of starvation and cold, and
there would be no ear to hear their cry, no hand to help them! It was
true, it was true,—that here in this huge city, with its stores of
heaped-up wealth, human creatures might be hunted down and destroyed by
the wild-beast powers of nature, just as truly as ever they were in the
days of the cave men!
Ona was now making about thirty dollars a month, and Stanislovas about
thirteen. To add to this there was the board of Jonas and Marija, about
forty-five dollars. Deducting from this the rent, interest, and
installments on the furniture, they had left sixty dollars, and
deducting the coal, they had fifty. They did without everything that
human beings could do without; they went in old and ragged clothing,
that left them at the mercy of the cold, and when the children’s shoes
wore out, they tied them up with string. Half invalid as she was, Ona
would do herself harm by walking in the rain and cold when she ought to
have ridden; they bought literally nothing but food—and still they
could not keep alive on fifty dollars a month. They might have done it,
if only they could have gotten pure food, and at fair prices; or if
only they had known what to get—if they had not been so pitifully
ignorant! But they had come to a new country, where everything was
different, including the food. They had always been accustomed to eat a
great deal of smoked sausage, and how could they know that what they
bought in America was not the same—that its color was made by
chemicals, and its smoky flavor by more chemicals, and that it was full
of “potato flour” besides? Potato flour is the waste of potato after
the starch and alcohol have been extracted; it has no more food value
than so much wood, and as its use as a food adulterant is a penal
offense in Europe, thousands of tons of it are shipped to America every
year. It was amazing what quantities of food such as this were needed
every day, by eleven hungry persons. A dollar sixty-five a day was
simply not enough to feed them, and there was no use trying; and so
each week they made an inroad upon the pitiful little bank account that
Ona had begun. Because the account was in her name, it was possible for
her to keep this a secret from her husband, and to keep the
heartsickness of it for her own.
It would have been better if Jurgis had been really ill; if he had not
been able to think. For he had no resources such as most invalids have;
all he could do was to lie there and toss about from side to side. Now
and then he would break into cursing, regardless of everything; and now
and then his impatience would get the better of him, and he would try
to get up, and poor Teta Elzbieta would have to plead with him in a
frenzy. Elzbieta was all alone with him the greater part of the time.
She would sit and smooth his forehead by the hour, and talk to him and
try to make him forget. Sometimes it would be too cold for the children
to go to school, and they would have to play in the kitchen, where
Jurgis was, because it was the only room that was half warm. These were
dreadful times, for Jurgis would get as cross as any bear; he was
scarcely to be blamed, for he had enough to worry him, and it was hard
when he was trying to take a nap to be kept awake by noisy and peevish
children.
Elzbieta’s only resource in those times was little Antanas; indeed, it
would be hard to say how they could have gotten along at all if it had
not been for little Antanas. It was the one consolation of Jurgis’ long
imprisonment that now he had time to look at his baby. Teta Elzbieta
would put the clothes-basket in which the baby slept alongside of his
mattress, and Jurgis would lie upon one elbow and watch him by the
hour, imagining things. Then little Antanas would open his eyes—he was
beginning to take notice of things now; and he would smile—how he would
smile! So Jurgis would begin to forget and be happy because he was in a
world where there was a thing so beautiful as the smile of little
Antanas, and because such a world could not but be good at the heart of
it. He looked more like his father every hour, Elzbieta would say, and
said it many times a day, because she saw that it pleased Jurgis; the
poor little terror-stricken woman was planning all day and all night to
soothe the prisoned giant who was intrusted to her care. Jurgis, who
knew nothing about the age-long and everlasting hypocrisy of woman,
would take the bait and grin with delight; and then he would hold his
finger in front of little Antanas’ eyes, and move it this way and that,
and laugh with glee to see the baby follow it. There is no pet quite so
fascinating as a baby; he would look into Jurgis’ face with such
uncanny seriousness, and Jurgis would start and cry: “_Palauk!_ Look,
Muma, he knows his papa! He does, he does! _Tu mano szirdele_, the
little rascal!”
CHAPTER XII
For three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got up from bed. It was a
very obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down, and the pain
still continued. At the end of that time, however, he could contain
himself no longer, and began trying to walk a little every day,
laboring to persuade himself that he was better. No arguments could
stop him, and three or four days later he declared that he was going
back to work. He limped to the cars and got to Brown’s, where he found
that the boss had kept his place—that is, was willing to turn out into
the snow the poor devil he had hired in the meantime. Every now and
then the pain would force Jurgis to stop work, but he stuck it out till
nearly an hour before closing. Then he was forced to acknowledge that
he could not go on without fainting; it almost broke his heart to do
it, and he stood leaning against a pillar and weeping like a child. Two
of the men had to help him to the car, and when he got out he had to
sit down and wait in the snow till some one came along.
So they put him to bed again, and sent for the doctor, as they ought to
have done in the beginning. It transpired that he had twisted a tendon
out of place, and could never have gotten well without attention. Then
he gripped the sides of the bed, and shut his teeth together, and
turned white with agony, while the doctor pulled and wrenched away at
his swollen ankle. When finally the doctor left, he told him that he