The Jungle
years; it is high-waisted—almost under her arms, and not very
becoming,—but that does not trouble Jadvyga, who is dancing with her
Mikolas. She is small, while he is big and powerful; she nestles in his
arms as if she would hide herself from view, and leans her head upon
his shoulder. He in turn has clasped his arms tightly around her, as if
he would carry her away; and so she dances, and will dance the entire
evening, and would dance forever, in ecstasy of bliss. You would smile,
perhaps, to see them—but you would not smile if you knew all the story.
This is the fifth year, now, that Jadvyga has been engaged to Mikolas,
and her heart is sick. They would have been married in the beginning,
only Mikolas has a father who is drunk all day, and he is the only
other man in a large family. Even so they might have managed it (for
Mikolas is a skilled man) but for cruel accidents which have almost
taken the heart out of them. He is a beef-boner, and that is a
dangerous trade, especially when you are on piecework and trying to
earn a bride. Your hands are slippery, and your knife is slippery, and
you are toiling like mad, when somebody happens to speak to you, or you
strike a bone. Then your hand slips up on the blade, and there is a
fearful gash. And that would not be so bad, only for the deadly
contagion. The cut may heal, but you never can tell. Twice now; within
the last three years, Mikolas has been lying at home with blood
poisoning—once for three months and once for nearly seven. The last
time, too, he lost his job, and that meant six weeks more of standing
at the doors of the packing houses, at six o’clock on bitter winter
mornings, with a foot of snow on the ground and more in the air. There
are learned people who can tell you out of the statistics that
beef-boners make forty cents an hour, but, perhaps, these people have
never looked into a beef-boner’s hands.
When Tamoszius and his companions stop for a rest, as perforce they
must, now and then, the dancers halt where they are and wait patiently.
They never seem to tire; and there is no place for them to sit down if
they did. It is only for a minute, anyway, for the leader starts up
again, in spite of all the protests of the other two. This time it is
another sort of a dance, a Lithuanian dance. Those who prefer to, go on
with the two-step, but the majority go through an intricate series of
motions, resembling more fancy skating than a dance. The climax of it
is a furious _prestissimo_, at which the couples seize hands and begin
a mad whirling. This is quite irresistible, and every one in the room
joins in, until the place becomes a maze of flying skirts and bodies
quite dazzling to look upon. But the sight of sights at this moment is
Tamoszius Kuszleika. The old fiddle squeaks and shrieks in protest, but
Tamoszius has no mercy. The sweat starts out on his forehead, and he
bends over like a cyclist on the last lap of a race. His body shakes
and throbs like a runaway steam engine, and the ear cannot follow the
flying showers of notes—there is a pale blue mist where you look to see
his bowing arm. With a most wonderful rush he comes to the end of the
tune, and flings up his hands and staggers back exhausted; and with a
final shout of delight the dancers fly apart, reeling here and there,
bringing up against the walls of the room.
After this there is beer for every one, the musicians included, and the
revelers take a long breath and prepare for the great event of the
evening, which is the _acziavimas_. The _acziavimas_ is a ceremony
which, once begun, will continue for three or four hours, and it
involves one uninterrupted dance. The guests form a great ring, locking
hands, and, when the music starts up, begin to move around in a circle.
In the center stands the bride, and, one by one, the men step into the
enclosure and dance with her. Each dances for several minutes—as long
as he pleases; it is a very merry proceeding, with laughter and
singing, and when the guest has finished, he finds himself face to face
with Teta Elzbieta, who holds the hat. Into it he drops a sum of
money—a dollar, or perhaps five dollars, according to his power, and
his estimate of the value of the privilege. The guests are expected to
pay for this entertainment; if they be proper guests, they will see
that there is a neat sum left over for the bride and bridegroom to
start life upon.
Most fearful they are to contemplate, the expenses of this
entertainment. They will certainly be over two hundred dollars and
maybe three hundred; and three hundred dollars is more than the year’s
income of many a person in this room. There are able-bodied men here
who work from early morning until late at night, in ice-cold cellars
with a quarter of an inch of water on the floor—men who for six or
seven months in the year never see the sunlight from Sunday afternoon
till the next Sunday morning—and who cannot earn three hundred dollars
in a year. There are little children here, scarce in their teens, who
can hardly see the top of the work benches—whose parents have lied to
get them their places—and who do not make the half of three hundred
dollars a year, and perhaps not even the third of it. And then to spend
such a sum, all in a single day of your life, at a wedding feast! (For
obviously it is the same thing, whether you spend it at once for your
own wedding, or in a long time, at the weddings of all your friends.)
It is very imprudent, it is tragic—but, ah, it is so beautiful! Bit by
bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this they
cling with all the power of their souls—they cannot give up the
_veselija!_ To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to
acknowledge defeat—and the difference between these two things is what
keeps the world going. The _veselija_ has come down to them from a
far-off time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the
cave and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he
could break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun;
provided that once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that
life, with all its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after
all, but merely a bubble upon the surface of a river, a thing that one
may toss about and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a
thing that one may quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having
known himself for the master of things, a man could go back to his toil
and live upon the memory all his days.
Endlessly the dancers swung round and round—when they were dizzy they
swung the other way. Hour after hour this had continued—the darkness
had fallen and the room was dim from the light of two smoky oil lamps.
The musicians had spent all their fine frenzy by now, and played only
one tune, wearily, ploddingly. There were twenty bars or so of it, and
when they came to the end they began again. Once every ten minutes or
so they would fail to begin again, but instead would sink back
exhausted; a circumstance which invariably brought on a painful and
terrifying scene, that made the fat policeman stir uneasily in his
sleeping place behind the door.
It was all Marija Berczynskas. Marija was one of those hungry souls who
cling with desperation to the skirts of the retreating muse. All day
long she had been in a state of wonderful exaltation; and now it was
leaving—and she would not let it go. Her soul cried out in the words of
Faust, “Stay, thou art fair!” Whether it was by beer, or by shouting,
or by music, or by motion, she meant that it should not go. And she
would go back to the chase of it—and no sooner be fairly started than
her chariot would be thrown off the track, so to speak, by the
stupidity of those thrice accursed musicians. Each time, Marija would
emit a howl and fly at them, shaking her fists in their faces, stamping
upon the floor, purple and incoherent with rage. In vain the frightened
Tamoszius would attempt to speak, to plead the limitations of the
flesh; in vain would the puffing and breathless ponas Jokubas insist,
in vain would Teta Elzbieta implore. “Szalin!” Marija would scream.
“Palauk! isz kelio! What are you paid for, children of hell?” And so,
in sheer terror, the orchestra would strike up again, and Marija would
return to her place and take up her task.
She bore all the burden of the festivities now. Ona was kept up by her
excitement, but all of the women and most of the men were tired—the
soul of Marija was alone unconquered. She drove on the dancers—what had
once been the ring had now the shape of a pear, with Marija at the
stem, pulling one way and pushing the other, shouting, stamping,
singing, a very volcano of energy. Now and then some one coming in or
out would leave the door open, and the night air was chill; Marija as
she passed would stretch out her foot and kick the doorknob, and slam
would go the door! Once this procedure was the cause of a calamity of
which Sebastijonas Szedvilas was the hapless victim. Little
Sebastijonas, aged three, had been wandering about oblivious to all
things, holding turned up over his mouth a bottle of liquid known as
“pop,” pink-colored, ice-cold, and delicious. Passing through the
doorway the door smote him full, and the shriek which followed brought
the dancing to a halt. Marija, who threatened horrid murder a hundred
times a day, and would weep over the injury of a fly, seized little
Sebastijonas in her arms and bid fair to smother him with kisses. There
was a long rest for the orchestra, and plenty of refreshments, while
Marija was making her peace with her victim, seating him upon the bar,
and standing beside him and holding to his lips a foaming schooner of
beer.
In the meantime there was going on in another corner of the room an
anxious conference between Teta Elzbieta and Dede Antanas, and a few of
the more intimate friends of the family. A trouble was come upon them.
The _veselija_ is a compact, a compact not expressed, but therefore
only the more binding upon all. Every one’s share was different—and yet
every one knew perfectly well what his share was, and strove to give a
little more. Now, however, since they had come to the new country, all
this was changing; it seemed as if there must be some subtle poison in
the air that one breathed here—it was affecting all the young men at
once. They would come in crowds and fill themselves with a fine dinner,
and then sneak off. One would throw another’s hat out of the window,
and both would go out to get it, and neither could be seen again. Or
now and then half a dozen of them would get together and march out
openly, staring at you, and making fun of you to your face. Still
others, worse yet, would crowd about the bar, and at the expense of the
host drink themselves sodden, paying not the least attention to any
one, and leaving it to be thought that either they had danced with the
bride already, or meant to later on.
All these things were going on now, and the family was helpless with
dismay. So long they had toiled, and such an outlay they had made! Ona
stood by, her eyes wide with terror. Those frightful bills—how they had
haunted her, each item gnawing at her soul all day and spoiling her
rest at night. How often she had named them over one by one and figured
on them as she went to work—fifteen dollars for the hall, twenty-two
dollars and a quarter for the ducks, twelve dollars for the musicians,
five dollars at the church, and a blessing of the Virgin besides—and so
on without an end! Worst of all was the frightful bill that was still
to come from Graiczunas for the beer and liquor that might be consumed.
One could never get in advance more than a guess as to this from a
saloon-keeper—and then, when the time came he always came to you