The Jungle
She heard him, and glanced around; then she shrank back and half sprang
to her feet in amazement. “Jurgis!” she gasped.
For a second or two they stood staring at each other. “How did you come
here?” Marija exclaimed.
“I came to see you,” he answered.
“When?”
“Just now.”
“But how did you know—who told you I was here?”
“Alena Jasaityte. I met her on the street.”
Again there was a silence, while they gazed at each other. The rest of
the crowd was watching them, and so Marija got up and came closer to
him. “And you?” Jurgis asked. “You live here?”
“Yes,” said Marija, “I live here.” Then suddenly came a hail from
below: “Get your clothes on now, girls, and come along. You’d best
begin, or you’ll be sorry—it’s raining outside.”
“Br-r-r!” shivered some one, and the women got up and entered the
various doors which lined the hallway.
“Come,” said Marija, and took Jurgis into her room, which was a tiny
place about eight by six, with a cot and a chair and a dressing stand
and some dresses hanging behind the door. There were clothes scattered
about on the floor, and hopeless confusion everywhere—boxes of rouge
and bottles of perfume mixed with hats and soiled dishes on the
dresser, and a pair of slippers and a clock and a whisky bottle on a
chair.
Marija had nothing on but a kimono and a pair of stockings; yet she
proceeded to dress before Jurgis, and without even taking the trouble
to close the door. He had by this time divined what sort of a place he
was in; and he had seen a great deal of the world since he had left
home, and was not easy to shock—and yet it gave him a painful start
that Marija should do this. They had always been decent people at home,
and it seemed to him that the memory of old times ought to have ruled
her. But then he laughed at himself for a fool. What was he, to be
pretending to decency!
“How long have you been living here?” he asked.
“Nearly a year,” she answered.
“Why did you come?”
“I had to live,” she said; “and I couldn’t see the children starve.”
He paused for a moment, watching her. “You were out of work?” he asked,
finally.
“I got sick,” she replied, “and after that I had no money. And then
Stanislovas died—”
“Stanislovas dead!”
“Yes,” said Marija, “I forgot. You didn’t know about it.”
“How did he die?”
“Rats killed him,” she answered.
Jurgis gave a gasp. “_Rats_ killed him!”
“Yes,” said the other; she was bending over, lacing her shoes as she
spoke. “He was working in an oil factory—at least he was hired by the
men to get their beer. He used to carry cans on a long pole; and he’d
drink a little out of each can, and one day he drank too much, and fell
asleep in a corner, and got locked up in the place all night. When they
found him the rats had killed him and eaten him nearly all up.”
Jurgis sat, frozen with horror. Marija went on lacing up her shoes.
There was a long silence.
Suddenly a big policeman came to the door. “Hurry up, there,” he said.
“As quick as I can,” said Marija, and she stood up and began putting on
her corsets with feverish haste.
“Are the rest of the people alive?” asked Jurgis, finally.
“Yes,” she said.
“Where are they?”
“They live not far from here. They’re all right now.”
“They are working?” he inquired.
“Elzbieta is,” said Marija, “when she can. I take care of them most of
the time—I’m making plenty of money now.”
Jurgis was silent for a moment. “Do they know you live here—how you
live?” he asked.
“Elzbieta knows,” answered Marija. “I couldn’t lie to her. And maybe
the children have found out by this time. It’s nothing to be ashamed
of—we can’t help it.”
“And Tamoszius?” he asked. “Does _he_ know?”
Marija shrugged her shoulders. “How do I know?” she said. “I haven’t
seen him for over a year. He got blood poisoning and lost one finger,
and couldn’t play the violin any more; and then he went away.”
Marija was standing in front of the glass fastening her dress. Jurgis
sat staring at her. He could hardly believe that she was the same woman
he had known in the old days; she was so quiet—so hard! It struck fear
to his heart to watch her.
Then suddenly she gave a glance at him. “You look as if you had been
having a rough time of it yourself,” she said.
“I have,” he answered. “I haven’t a cent in my pockets, and nothing to
do.”
“Where have you been?”
“All over. I’ve been hoboing it. Then I went back to the yards—just
before the strike.” He paused for a moment, hesitating. “I asked for
you,” he added. “I found you had gone away, no one knew where. Perhaps
you think I did you a dirty trick running away as I did, Marija—”
“No,” she answered, “I don’t blame you. We never have—any of us. You
did your best—the job was too much for us.” She paused a moment, then
added: “We were too ignorant—that was the trouble. We didn’t stand any
chance. If I’d known what I know now we’d have won out.”
“You’d have come here?” said Jurgis.
“Yes,” she answered; “but that’s not what I meant. I meant you—how
differently you would have behaved—about Ona.”
Jurgis was silent; he had never thought of that aspect of it.
“When people are starving,” the other continued, “and they have
anything with a price, they ought to sell it, I say. I guess you
realize it now when it’s too late. Ona could have taken care of us all,
in the beginning.” Marija spoke without emotion, as one who had come to
regard things from the business point of view.
“I—yes, I guess so,” Jurgis answered hesitatingly. He did not add that
he had paid three hundred dollars, and a foreman’s job, for the
satisfaction of knocking down “Phil” Connor a second time.
The policeman came to the door again just then. “Come on, now,” he
said. “Lively!”
“All right,” said Marija, reaching for her hat, which was big enough to
be a drum major’s, and full of ostrich feathers. She went out into the
hall and Jurgis followed, the policeman remaining to look under the bed
and behind the door.
“What’s going to come of this?” Jurgis asked, as they started down the
steps.
“The raid, you mean? Oh, nothing—it happens to us every now and then.
The madame’s having some sort of time with the police; I don’t know
what it is, but maybe they’ll come to terms before morning. Anyhow,
they won’t do anything to you. They always let the men off.”
“Maybe so,” he responded, “but not me—I’m afraid I’m in for it.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m wanted by the police,” he said, lowering his voice, though of
course their conversation was in Lithuanian. “They’ll send me up for a
year or two, I’m afraid.”
“Hell!” said Marija. “That’s too bad. I’ll see if I can’t get you off.”
Downstairs, where the greater part of the prisoners were now massed,
she sought out the stout personage with the diamond earrings, and had a
few whispered words with her. The latter then approached the police
sergeant who was in charge of the raid. “Billy,” she said, pointing to
Jurgis, “there’s a fellow who came in to see his sister. He’d just got
in the door when you knocked. You aren’t taking hoboes, are you?”
The sergeant laughed as he looked at Jurgis. “Sorry,” he said, “but the
orders are every one but the servants.”
So Jurgis slunk in among the rest of the men, who kept dodging behind
each other like sheep that have smelled a wolf. There were old men and
young men, college boys and gray-beards old enough to be their
grandfathers; some of them wore evening dress—there was no one among
them save Jurgis who showed any signs of poverty.
When the roundup was completed, the doors were opened and the party
marched out. Three patrol wagons were drawn up at the curb, and the
whole neighborhood had turned out to see the sport; there was much
chaffing, and a universal craning of necks. The women stared about them
with defiant eyes, or laughed and joked, while the men kept their heads
bowed, and their hats pulled over their faces. They were crowded into
the patrol wagons as if into streetcars, and then off they went amid a
din of cheers. At the station house Jurgis gave a Polish name and was
put into a cell with half a dozen others; and while these sat and
talked in whispers, he lay down in a corner and gave himself up to his
thoughts.
Jurgis had looked into the deepest reaches of the social pit, and grown
used to the sights in them. Yet when he had thought of all humanity as
vile and hideous, he had somehow always excepted his own family that he
had loved; and now this sudden horrible discovery—Marija a whore, and
Elzbieta and the children living off her shame! Jurgis might argue with
himself all he chose, that he had done worse, and was a fool for
caring—but still he could not get over the shock of that sudden
unveiling, he could not help being sunk in grief because of it. The
depths of him were troubled and shaken, memories were stirred in him
that had been sleeping so long he had counted them dead. Memories of
the old life—his old hopes and his old yearnings, his old dreams of
decency and independence! He saw Ona again, he heard her gentle voice
pleading with him. He saw little Antanas, whom he had meant to make a
man. He saw his trembling old father, who had blessed them all with his
wonderful love. He lived again through that day of horror when he had
discovered Ona’s shame—God, how he had suffered, what a madman he had
been! How dreadful it had all seemed to him; and now, today, he had sat
and listened, and half agreed when Marija told him he had been a fool!
Yes—told him that he ought to have sold his wife’s honor and lived by
it!—And then there was Stanislovas and his awful fate—that brief story
which Marija had narrated so calmly, with such dull indifference! The
poor little fellow, with his frostbitten fingers and his terror of the
snow—his wailing voice rang in Jurgis’s ears, as he lay there in the
darkness, until the sweat started on his forehead. Now and then he
would quiver with a sudden spasm of horror, at the picture of little
Stanislovas shut up in the deserted building and fighting for his life
with the rats!
All these emotions had become strangers to the soul of Jurgis; it was
so long since they had troubled him that he had ceased to think they
might ever trouble him again. Helpless, trapped, as he was, what good
did they do him—why should he ever have allowed them to torment him? It
had been the task of his recent life to fight them down, to crush them
out of him; never in his life would he have suffered from them again,
save that they had caught him unawares, and overwhelmed him before he
could protect himself. He heard the old voices of his soul, he saw its
old ghosts beckoning to him, stretching out their arms to him! But they
were far-off and shadowy, and the gulf between them was black and
bottomless; they would fade away into the mists of the past once more.
Their voices would die, and never again would he hear them—and so the
last faint spark of manhood in his soul would flicker out.
CHAPTER XXVIII
After breakfast Jurgis was driven to the court, which was crowded with
the prisoners and those who had come out of curiosity or in the hope of
recognizing one of the men and getting a case for blackmail. The men
were called up first, and reprimanded in a bunch, and then dismissed;
but, Jurgis, to his terror, was called separately, as being a
suspicious-looking case. It was in this very same court that he had
been tried, that time when his sentence had been “suspended”; it was
the same judge, and the same clerk. The latter now stared at Jurgis, as
if he half thought that he knew him; but the judge had no
suspicions—just then his thoughts were upon a telephone message he was
expecting from a friend of the police captain of the district, telling
what disposition he should make of the case of “Polly” Simpson, as the