The Jungle
pay him. And we owe Aniele for two weeks’ rent, and she is nearly
starving, and is afraid of being turned out. We have been borrowing and
begging to keep alive, and there is nothing more we can do—”
“And the children?” cried Jurgis.
“The children have not been home for three days, the weather has been
so bad. They could not know what is happening—it came suddenly, two
months before we expected it.”
Jurgis was standing by the table, and he caught himself with his hand;
his head sank and his arms shook—it looked as if he were going to
collapse. Then suddenly Aniele got up and came hobbling toward him,
fumbling in her skirt pocket. She drew out a dirty rag, in one corner
of which she had something tied.
“Here, Jurgis!” she said, “I have some money. _Palauk!_ See!”
She unwrapped it and counted it out—thirty-four cents. “You go, now,”
she said, “and try and get somebody yourself. And maybe the rest can
help—give him some money, you; he will pay you back some day, and it
will do him good to have something to think about, even if he doesn’t
succeed. When he comes back, maybe it will be over.”
And so the other women turned out the contents of their pocketbooks;
most of them had only pennies and nickels, but they gave him all. Mrs.
Olszewski, who lived next door, and had a husband who was a skilled
cattle butcher, but a drinking man, gave nearly half a dollar, enough
to raise the whole sum to a dollar and a quarter. Then Jurgis thrust it
into his pocket, still holding it tightly in his fist, and started away
at a run.
CHAPTER XIX
“Madame Haupt Hebamme”, ran a sign, swinging from a second-story window
over a saloon on the avenue; at a side door was another sign, with a
hand pointing up a dingy flight of stairs. Jurgis went up them, three
at a time.
Madame Haupt was frying pork and onions, and had her door half open to
let out the smoke. When he tried to knock upon it, it swung open the
rest of the way, and he had a glimpse of her, with a black bottle
turned up to her lips. Then he knocked louder, and she started and put
it away. She was a Dutchwoman, enormously fat—when she walked she
rolled like a small boat on the ocean, and the dishes in the cupboard
jostled each other. She wore a filthy blue wrapper, and her teeth were
black.
“Vot is it?” she said, when she saw Jurgis.
He had run like mad all the way and was so out of breath he could
hardly speak. His hair was flying and his eyes wild—he looked like a
man that had risen from the tomb. “My wife!” he panted. “Come quickly!”
Madame Haupt set the frying pan to one side and wiped her hands on her
wrapper.
“You vant me to come for a case?” she inquired.
“Yes,” gasped Jurgis.
“I haf yust come back from a case,” she said. “I haf had no time to eat
my dinner. Still—if it is so bad—”
“Yes—it is!” cried he.
“Vell, den, perhaps—vot you pay?”
“I—I—how much do you want?” Jurgis stammered.
“Tventy-five dollars.” His face fell. “I can’t pay that,” he said.
The woman was watching him narrowly. “How much do you pay?” she
demanded.
“Must I pay now—right away?”
“Yes; all my customers do.”
“I—I haven’t much money,” Jurgis began in an agony of dread. “I’ve been
in—in trouble—and my money is gone. But I’ll pay you—every cent—just as
soon as I can; I can work—”
“Vot is your work?”
“I have no place now. I must get one. But I—”
“How much haf you got now?”
He could hardly bring himself to reply. When he said “A dollar and a
quarter,” the woman laughed in his face.
“I vould not put on my hat for a dollar and a quarter,” she said.
“It’s all I’ve got,” he pleaded, his voice breaking. “I must get some
one—my wife will die. I can’t help it—I—”
Madame Haupt had put back her pork and onions on the stove. She turned
to him and answered, out of the steam and noise: “Git me ten dollars
cash, und so you can pay me the rest next mont’.”
“I can’t do it—I haven’t got it!” Jurgis protested. “I tell you I have
only a dollar and a quarter.”
The woman turned to her work. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “Dot is
all to try to sheat me. Vot is de reason a big man like you has got
only a dollar und a quarter?”
“I’ve just been in jail,” Jurgis cried—he was ready to get down upon
his knees to the woman—“and I had no money before, and my family has
almost starved.”
“Vere is your friends, dot ought to help you?”
“They are all poor,” he answered. “They gave me this. I have done
everything I can—”
“Haven’t you got notting you can sell?”
“I have nothing, I tell you—I have nothing,” he cried, frantically.
“Can’t you borrow it, den? Don’t your store people trust you?” Then, as
he shook his head, she went on: “Listen to me—if you git me you vill be
glad of it. I vill save your wife und baby for you, and it vill not
seem like mooch to you in de end. If you loose dem now how you tink you
feel den? Und here is a lady dot knows her business—I could send you to
people in dis block, und dey vould tell you—”
Madame Haupt was pointing her cooking-fork at Jurgis persuasively; but
her words were more than he could bear. He flung up his hands with a
gesture of despair and turned and started away. “It’s no use,” he
exclaimed—but suddenly he heard the woman’s voice behind him again—
“I vill make it five dollars for you.”
She followed behind him, arguing with him. “You vill be foolish not to
take such an offer,” she said. “You von’t find nobody go out on a rainy
day like dis for less. Vy, I haf never took a case in my life so sheap
as dot. I couldn’t pay mine room rent—”
Jurgis interrupted her with an oath of rage. “If I haven’t got it,” he
shouted, “how can I pay it? Damn it, I would pay you if I could, but I
tell you I haven’t got it. I haven’t got it! Do you hear me—_I haven’t
got it!_”
He turned and started away again. He was halfway down the stairs before
Madame Haupt could shout to him: “Vait! I vill go mit you! Come back!”
He went back into the room again.
“It is not goot to tink of anybody suffering,” she said, in a
melancholy voice. “I might as vell go mit you for noffing as vot you
offer me, but I vill try to help you. How far is it?”
“Three or four blocks from here.”
“Tree or four! Und so I shall get soaked! Gott in Himmel, it ought to
be vorth more! Vun dollar und a quarter, und a day like dis!—But you
understand now—you vill pay me de rest of twenty-five dollars soon?”
“As soon as I can.”
“Some time dis mont’?”
“Yes, within a month,” said poor Jurgis. “Anything! Hurry up!”
“Vere is de dollar und a quarter?” persisted Madame Haupt,
relentlessly.
Jurgis put the money on the table and the woman counted it and stowed
it away. Then she wiped her greasy hands again and proceeded to get
ready, complaining all the time; she was so fat that it was painful for
her to move, and she grunted and gasped at every step. She took off her
wrapper without even taking the trouble to turn her back to Jurgis, and
put on her corsets and dress. Then there was a black bonnet which had
to be adjusted carefully, and an umbrella which was mislaid, and a bag
full of necessaries which had to be collected from here and there—the
man being nearly crazy with anxiety in the meantime. When they were on
the street he kept about four paces ahead of her, turning now and then,
as if he could hurry her on by the force of his desire. But Madame
Haupt could only go so far at a step, and it took all her attention to
get the needed breath for that.
They came at last to the house, and to the group of frightened women in
the kitchen. It was not over yet, Jurgis learned—he heard Ona crying
still; and meantime Madame Haupt removed her bonnet and laid it on the
mantelpiece, and got out of her bag, first an old dress and then a
saucer of goose grease, which she proceeded to rub upon her hands. The
more cases this goose grease is used in, the better luck it brings to
the midwife, and so she keeps it upon her kitchen mantelpiece or stowed
away in a cupboard with her dirty clothes, for months, and sometimes
even for years.
Then they escorted her to the ladder, and Jurgis heard her give an
exclamation of dismay. “Gott in Himmel, vot for haf you brought me to a
place like dis? I could not climb up dot ladder. I could not git troo a
trap door! I vill not try it—vy, I might kill myself already. Vot sort
of a place is dot for a woman to bear a child in—up in a garret, mit
only a ladder to it? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” Jurgis
stood in the doorway and listened to her scolding, half drowning out
the horrible moans and screams of Ona.
At last Aniele succeeded in pacifying her, and she essayed the ascent;
then, however, she had to be stopped while the old woman cautioned her
about the floor of the garret. They had no real floor—they had laid old
boards in one part to make a place for the family to live; it was all
right and safe there, but the other part of the garret had only the
joists of the floor, and the lath and plaster of the ceiling below, and
if one stepped on this there would be a catastrophe. As it was half
dark up above, perhaps one of the others had best go up first with a
candle. Then there were more outcries and threatening, until at last
Jurgis had a vision of a pair of elephantine legs disappearing through
the trap door, and felt the house shake as Madame Haupt started to
walk. Then suddenly Aniele came to him and took him by the arm.
“Now,” she said, “you go away. Do as I tell you—you have done all you
can, and you are only in the way. Go away and stay away.”
“But where shall I go?” Jurgis asked, helplessly.
“I don’t know where,” she answered. “Go on the street, if there is no
other place—only go! And stay all night!”
In the end she and Marija pushed him out of the door and shut it behind
him. It was just about sundown, and it was turning cold—the rain had
changed to snow, and the slush was freezing. Jurgis shivered in his
thin clothing, and put his hands into his pockets and started away. He
had not eaten since morning, and he felt weak and ill; with a sudden
throb of hope he recollected he was only a few blocks from the saloon
where he had been wont to eat his dinner. They might have mercy on him
there, or he might meet a friend. He set out for the place as fast as
he could walk.
“Hello, Jack,” said the saloon-keeper, when he entered—they call all
foreigners and unskilled men “Jack” in Packingtown. “Where’ve you
been?”
Jurgis went straight to the bar. “I’ve been in jail,” he said, “and
I’ve just got out. I walked home all the way, and I’ve not a cent, and
had nothing to eat since this morning. And I’ve lost my home, and my
wife’s ill, and I’m done up.”
The saloon-keeper gazed at him, with his haggard white face and his
blue trembling lips. Then he pushed a big bottle toward him. “Fill her
up!” he said.
Jurgis could hardly hold the bottle, his hands shook so.
“Don’t be afraid,” said the saloon-keeper, “fill her up!”
So Jurgis drank a large glass of whisky, and then turned to the lunch
counter, in obedience to the other’s suggestion. He ate all he dared,
stuffing it in as fast as he could; and then, after trying to speak his
gratitude, he went and sat down by the big red stove in the middle of
the room.
It was too good to last, however—like all things in this hard world.
His soaked clothing began to steam, and the horrible stench of
fertilizer to fill the room. In an hour or so the packing houses would
be closing and the men coming in from their work; and they would not
come into a place that smelt of Jurgis. Also it was Saturday night, and
in a couple of hours would come a violin and a cornet, and in the rear
part of the saloon the families of the neighborhood would dance and
feast upon wienerwurst and lager, until two or three o’clock in the