The Jungle
“Come off!” said the boy; then suddenly the door upstairs opened, and
he called: “Hey, ma! Here’s a fellow says he owns this house.”
A stout Irishwoman came to the top of the steps. “What’s that?” she
demanded.
Jurgis turned toward her. “Where is my family?” he cried, wildly. “I
left them here! This is my home! What are you doing in my home?”
The woman stared at him in frightened wonder, she must have thought she
was dealing with a maniac—Jurgis looked like one. “Your home!” she
echoed.
“My home!” he half shrieked. “I lived here, I tell you.”
“You must be mistaken,” she answered him. “No one ever lived here. This
is a new house. They told us so. They—”
“What have they done with my family?” shouted Jurgis, frantically.
A light had begun to break upon the woman; perhaps she had had doubts
of what “they” had told her. “I don’t know where your family is,” she
said. “I bought the house only three days ago, and there was nobody
here, and they told me it was all new. Do you really mean you had ever
rented it?”
“Rented it!” panted Jurgis. “I bought it! I paid for it! I own it! And
they—my God, can’t you tell me where my people went?”
She made him understand at last that she knew nothing. Jurgis’ brain
was so confused that he could not grasp the situation. It was as if his
family had been wiped out of existence; as if they were proving to be
dream people, who never had existed at all. He was quite lost—but then
suddenly he thought of Grandmother Majauszkiene, who lived in the next
block. She would know! He turned and started at a run.
Grandmother Majauszkiene came to the door herself. She cried out when
she saw Jurgis, wild-eyed and shaking. Yes, yes, she could tell him.
The family had moved; they had not been able to pay the rent and they
had been turned out into the snow, and the house had been repainted and
sold again the next week. No, she had not heard how they were, but she
could tell him that they had gone back to Aniele Jukniene, with whom
they had stayed when they first came to the yards. Wouldn’t Jurgis come
in and rest? It was certainly too bad—if only he had not got into jail—
And so Jurgis turned and staggered away. He did not go very far round
the corner he gave out completely, and sat down on the steps of a
saloon, and hid his face in his hands, and shook all over with dry,
racking sobs.
Their home! Their home! They had lost it! Grief, despair, rage,
overwhelmed him—what was any imagination of the thing to this
heartbreaking, crushing reality of it—to the sight of strange people
living in his house, hanging their curtains to his windows, staring at
him with hostile eyes! It was monstrous, it was unthinkable—they could
not do it—it could not be true! Only think what he had suffered for
that house—what miseries they had all suffered for it—the price they
had paid for it!
The whole long agony came back to him. Their sacrifices in the
beginning, their three hundred dollars that they had scraped together,
all they owned in the world, all that stood between them and
starvation! And then their toil, month by month, to get together the
twelve dollars, and the interest as well, and now and then the taxes,
and the other charges, and the repairs, and what not! Why, they had put
their very souls into their payments on that house, they had paid for
it with their sweat and tears—yes, more, with their very lifeblood.
Dede Antanas had died of the struggle to earn that money—he would have
been alive and strong today if he had not had to work in Durham’s dark
cellars to earn his share. And Ona, too, had given her health and
strength to pay for it—she was wrecked and ruined because of it; and so
was he, who had been a big, strong man three years ago, and now sat
here shivering, broken, cowed, weeping like a hysterical child. Ah!
they had cast their all into the fight; and they had lost, they had
lost! All that they had paid was gone—every cent of it. And their house
was gone—they were back where they had started from, flung out into the
cold to starve and freeze!
Jurgis could see all the truth now—could see himself, through the whole
long course of events, the victim of ravenous vultures that had torn
into his vitals and devoured him; of fiends that had racked and
tortured him, mocking him, meantime, jeering in his face. Ah, God, the
horror of it, the monstrous, hideous, demoniacal wickedness of it! He
and his family, helpless women and children, struggling to live,
ignorant and defenseless and forlorn as they were—and the enemies that
had been lurking for them, crouching upon their trail and thirsting for
their blood! That first lying circular, that smooth-tongued slippery
agent! That trap of the extra payments, the interest, and all the other
charges that they had not the means to pay, and would never have
attempted to pay! And then all the tricks of the packers, their
masters, the tyrants who ruled them—the shutdowns and the scarcity of
work, the irregular hours and the cruel speeding-up, the lowering of
wages, the raising of prices! The mercilessness of nature about them,
of heat and cold, rain and snow; the mercilessness of the city, of the
country in which they lived, of its laws and customs that they did not
understand! All of these things had worked together for the company
that had marked them for its prey and was waiting for its chance. And
now, with this last hideous injustice, its time had come, and it had
turned them out bag and baggage, and taken their house and sold it
again! And they could do nothing, they were tied hand and foot—the law
was against them, the whole machinery of society was at their
oppressors’ command! If Jurgis so much as raised a hand against them,
back he would go into that wild-beast pen from which he had just
escaped!
To get up and go away was to give up, to acknowledge defeat, to leave
the strange family in possession; and Jurgis might have sat shivering
in the rain for hours before he could do that, had it not been for the
thought of his family. It might be that he had worse things yet to
learn—and so he got to his feet and started away, walking on, wearily,
half-dazed.
To Aniele’s house, in back of the yards, was a good two miles; the
distance had never seemed longer to Jurgis, and when he saw the
familiar dingy-gray shanty his heart was beating fast. He ran up the
steps and began to hammer upon the door.
The old woman herself came to open it. She had shrunk all up with her
rheumatism since Jurgis had seen her last, and her yellow parchment
face stared up at him from a little above the level of the doorknob.
She gave a start when she saw him. “Is Ona here?” he cried,
breathlessly.
“Yes,” was the answer, “she’s here.”
“How—” Jurgis began, and then stopped short, clutching convulsively at
the side of the door. From somewhere within the house had come a sudden
cry, a wild, horrible scream of anguish. And the voice was Ona’s. For a
moment Jurgis stood half-paralyzed with fright; then he bounded past
the old woman and into the room.
It was Aniele’s kitchen, and huddled round the stove were half a dozen
women, pale and frightened. One of them started to her feet as Jurgis
entered; she was haggard and frightfully thin, with one arm tied up in
bandages—he hardly realized that it was Marija. He looked first for
Ona; then, not seeing her, he stared at the women, expecting them to
speak. But they sat dumb, gazing back at him, panic-stricken; and a
second later came another piercing scream.
It was from the rear of the house, and upstairs. Jurgis bounded to a
door of the room and flung it open; there was a ladder leading through
a trap door to the garret, and he was at the foot of it when suddenly
he heard a voice behind him, and saw Marija at his heels. She seized
him by the sleeve with her good hand, panting wildly, “No, no, Jurgis!
Stop!”
“What do you mean?” he gasped.
“You mustn’t go up,” she cried.
Jurgis was half-crazed with bewilderment and fright. “What’s the
matter?” he shouted. “What is it?”
Marija clung to him tightly; he could hear Ona sobbing and moaning
above, and he fought to get away and climb up, without waiting for her
reply. “No, no,” she rushed on. “Jurgis! You mustn’t go up! It’s—it’s
the child!”
“The child?” he echoed in perplexity. “Antanas?”
Marija answered him, in a whisper: “The new one!”
And then Jurgis went limp, and caught himself on the ladder. He stared
at her as if she were a ghost. “The new one!” he gasped. “But it isn’t
time,” he added, wildly.
Marija nodded. “I know,” she said; “but it’s come.”
And then again came Ona’s scream, smiting him like a blow in the face,
making him wince and turn white. Her voice died away into a wail—then
he heard her sobbing again, “My God—let me die, let me die!” And Marija
hung her arms about him, crying: “Come out! Come away!”
She dragged him back into the kitchen, half carrying him, for he had
gone all to pieces. It was as if the pillars of his soul had fallen
in—he was blasted with horror. In the room he sank into a chair,
trembling like a leaf, Marija still holding him, and the women staring
at him in dumb, helpless fright.
And then again Ona cried out; he could hear it nearly as plainly here,
and he staggered to his feet. “How long has this been going on?” he
panted.
“Not very long,” Marija answered, and then, at a signal from Aniele,
she rushed on: “You go away, Jurgis you can’t help—go away and come
back later. It’s all right—it’s—”
“Who’s with her?” Jurgis demanded; and then, seeing Marija hesitating,
he cried again, “Who’s with her?”
“She’s—she’s all right,” she answered. “Elzbieta’s with her.”
“But the doctor!” he panted. “Some one who knows!”
He seized Marija by the arm; she trembled, and her voice sank beneath a
whisper as she replied, “We—we have no money.” Then, frightened at the
look on his face, she exclaimed: “It’s all right, Jurgis! You don’t
understand—go away—go away! Ah, if you only had waited!”
Above her protests Jurgis heard Ona again; he was almost out of his
mind. It was all new to him, raw and horrible—it had fallen upon him
like a lightning stroke. When little Antanas was born he had been at
work, and had known nothing about it until it was over; and now he was
not to be controlled. The frightened women were at their wits’ end; one
after another they tried to reason with him, to make him understand
that this was the lot of woman. In the end they half drove him out into
the rain, where he began to pace up and down, bareheaded and frantic.
Because he could hear Ona from the street, he would first go away to
escape the sounds, and then come back because he could not help it. At
the end of a quarter of an hour he rushed up the steps again, and for
fear that he would break in the door they had to open it and let him
in.
There was no arguing with him. They could not tell him that all was
going well—how could they know, he cried—why, she was dying, she was
being torn to pieces! Listen to her—listen! Why, it was monstrous—it
could not be allowed—there must be some help for it! Had they tried to
get a doctor? They might pay him afterward—they could promise—
“We couldn’t promise, Jurgis,” protested Marija. “We had no money—we
have scarcely been able to keep alive.”
“But I can work,” Jurgis exclaimed. “I can earn money!”
“Yes,” she answered—“but we thought you were in jail. How could we know
when you would return? They will not work for nothing.”
Marija went on to tell how she had tried to find a midwife, and how
they had demanded ten, fifteen, even twenty-five dollars, and that in
cash. “And I had only a quarter,” she said. “I have spent every cent of
my money—all that I had in the bank; and I owe the doctor who has been
coming to see me, and he has stopped because he thinks I don’t mean to