Breakfast In The Ruins Part 6

When his father eventually came out of the cell, weeping and asking to be pardoned and justifying himself and calling upon G.o.d and cursing his son all at the same time, Karl had gone. He was walking steadily, walking on his little legs towards the outskirts of the city, on his way to find the insurgents still at liberty.

He intended to offer them his services.

-And why do you dislike Americans?

-I don't like the way some of them think they own the world.

- But didn't your people think that for centuries? Don't they still?

- It's different.

-And why do you collect model soldiers?

-I just do. It's relaxing. A hobby.

- Because you can't manipulate real people so easily?

- Think what you like. Karl turns over on the bed and immediately regrets it. But he lies there.

He feels the expected touch on his spine. Now you are feeling altogether more yourself, aren't you, Karl?

Karl's face is pressed into the pillow. He cannot speak.

The man's body presses down on his and for a moment he smiles. Is this what they mean by the White Man's Burden?

- Sssssshhhhh, says the black man.

What Would You Do? (5) You have three children.

One is eight years old. A girl.

One is six years old. A girl.

One is a few months old. A boy.

You are told that you can save any two of them from death, but not all three. You are given five minutes to choose.

Which one would you sacrifice?

6.

London Sewing Circle: 1905: A Message One would have thought that the meaning of the word "sweating" as applied to work was sufficiently obvious. But when "the Sweating System" was inquired into by the Committee of the House of Lords, the meaning became suddenly involved. As a matter of fact the sweater was originally a man who kept his people at work for long hours. A schoolboy who "sweats" for his examination studies for many hours beyond his usual working day. The schoolboy meaning of the word was originally the trade meaning.

But of late years the sweating system has come to mean an unhappy combination of long hours and low pay. "The sweater's den" is a workshop - often a dwelling room as well - in which, under the most unhealthy conditions, men and women toil for from sixteen to eighteen hours a day for a wage barely sufficient to keep body and soul together.

The sweating system, as far as London is concerned, exists chiefly at the East End, but it flourishes also in the West, notably in Soho, where the princ.i.p.al "sweating trade", tailoring, is now largely carried on. Let us visit the East End first, for here we can see the cla.s.s which has largely contributed to the evil - the dest.i.tute foreign Jew - place his alien foot for the first time upon the free soil of England.

LIVING LONDON, by George R. Sims Ca.s.sell & Co. Ltd., 1902.

Karl turns onto his side. He is aching. He is weeping.

- Did I promise you pleasure? asks the tall, black man as he wipes his hands on a hotel towel and then stretches and then yawns. - Did I?

- No. Karl's voice is m.u.f.fled and small.

- You can leave whenever you wish.

- Like this?

- You'll get used to it. After all, millions of others have...

- Have you known them all?

The black man parts the curtain. It is now pitch dark outside and it is silent. - Now that's a leading question, he says. - The fact is, Karl, you are intrigued by all these new experiences. You welcome them. Why be a hypocrite?

- I'm not the hypocrite.

The black man grins and wags a chiding finger. Don't take it out on me, man. That wouldn't be very liberal, would it?

-I never was very liberal.

- You've been very liberal to me. The black man rolls his eyes in a comic grimace. Karl has seen the expression earlier. He begins to tremble again. He looks at his own brown hands and he tries to make his brain see all this in a proper, normal light.

He is eleven. A dark, filthy room. Many little sounds.

The black man says from beside the window:. Come here, Karl.

Automatically Karl hauls himself from the bed and begins to make his way across the floor.

He remembers his mother and the tin of paint she threw at him which missed and ruined her wallpaper. You don't love me, he had said. Why should I? she had replied. He had been fourteen, perhaps, and ashamed of the question once he had asked it.

He is eleven. Many little regular sounds.

He approaches the black man. - That will do, Karl, says the black man.

Karl stops.

The black man approaches him. Under his breath he is humming "Old Folks At Home". Kneeling on the carpet, Karl begins to sing the words in an exaggerated minstrel accent.

KARL WAS ELEVEN. His mother was thirty. His father was thirty five. They lived in London. They had come to London from Poland three years earlier. They had been escaping a. pogrom. On their way, they had been robbed of most of their money by their countrymen. When they had arrived at the dockside, they had been met by a Jew who said he was from the same district as Karl's father and would help them. He had taken them to lodgings which had proved poor and expensive. When Karl's father ran out of money the man had loaned him a few s.h.i.+llings on his luggage and, when Karl's father could not pay him back, had kept the luggage and turned them out onto the street. Since then, Karl's father had found work. Now they all worked, Karl, his mother and his father. They worked for a tailor. Karl's father had been a printer in Poland, an educated man. But there was not enough work for Polish printers in London. One day Karl's father hoped that a job would become vacant on a Polish or Russian newspaper. Then they would become respectable again, as they had been in Poland.

At present, both Karl, his mother and his father all looked rather older than their respective ages. They sat together at one corner of the long table. Karl's mother worked a sewing machine. Karl's father sewed the lapel of a jacket. Around the table sat other groups - a man and a wife, three sisters, a mother and daughter, a father and son, two brothers. They all had the same appearance, were dressed in threadbare clothes of black and brown. The women's mouths were tight shut. The men mostly had thin, straggly beards. They were not all Polish. Some were from other countries: Russia, Bohemia, Germany and elsewhere. Some could not even speak Yiddish and were therefore incapable of conversing with anyone not from their own country.

The room in which they worked was lit by a single gas jet in the centre of the low ceiling. There was a small window, but it had been nailed up. The walls were of naked plaster through which could be seen patches of damp brick. Although it was winter, there was no fire in the room and the only heat came from the bodies of the workers. There was a fireplace in the room, but this was used to store the sc.r.a.ps of discarded material which could be re-used for padding. The smell of the people was very strong, but now few of them really noticed it, unless they left the room and came back in again, which was rarely. Some people would stay there for days at a time, sleeping in a corner and eating a bowl of soup someone would bring them, before starting work again.

A week ago, Karl had been there when they had discovered that the man whose coughing they had all complained about had not woken up for seven hours. Another man had knelt down and listened at the sleeping man's chest. He had nodded to the sleeping man's wife and sister-in-law and together they had carried him from the room. Neither the wife nor the sister-in-law came back for the rest of the day and it seemed to Karl that when they did return the wife's whole soul had not been in her work and her eyes were redder than usual, but the sister-in-law seemed much the same. The coughing man had not returned at all and, of course, Karl reasoned, it was because he was dead.

Karl's father laid down the coat. It was time to eat. He left the room and returned shortly with a small bundle wrapped in newspaper, a single large jug of hot tea. Karl's mother left her sewing machine and signed to Karl. The three of them sat in the corner of the room near the window while Karl's father unwrapped the newspaper and produced three cooked herrings. He handed one to each of them. They took turns to sip from the tea-jug. The meal lasted ten minutes and was eaten in silence. Then they went back to their place at the table, having carefully cleaned their fingers on the newspaper, for Mr. Armfelt would fine them if he discovered any grease spots on the clothes they were making.

Karl looked at his mother's thin, red fingers, at his father's lined face. They were no worse off than the rest.

That was the phrase his father always used when he and his mother crawled into their end of the bed. Once he had prayed every night. Now that phrase was the nearest he came to a prayer.

The door opened and the room became a little more chill. The door closed. A short young man wearing a black bowler hat and a long overcoat stood there, blowing on his fingers. He spoke in Russian, his eyes wandering from face to face. Few looked up. Only Karl stared at him.

"Any lad like to do a job for me?" said the young man. "Urgent. Good money."

Several of the workers had his attention now, but Karl had already raised his hand. His father looked concerned, but said nothing.

"You'll do fine," said the young man. "Five s.h.i.+llings, And it won't take you long, probably. A message."