The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Part 18

"I came for my husband's--for Mr. Breddan's dress suit. Mr. Lanich told him it would be ready at seven?"

Esther Lanich moved, Sophie Breddan stood. Between slow dark curve, swift dark stroke of these two women, under a tailor's table the burn of a dirty child, mumbling intent with scizzors between her soiled frail legs, at play with loose hair.

"Is this the one?"

The curve and the stroke came near across the table.

"Yes."

Eyes met.--She is tidy and fresh, less beautiful, though, than I. She has no child. She has a flat with Sun and a swell husband who wears a swallow-tail and takes her out to parties. She has a diamond ring, her corsets are sweet. She has things to put into her time like candies into her mouth, like loved kisses into my mouth. She is all new with her smooth skin going below the collar of her suit.

--She has a child, and she lets her play dirty with scizzors under a tailor table. "How much is it?"--After a decent bedtime.

--Does she think I care about this? "Oh, no hurry. Better come in and pay my--Mr. Lanich. Any time."

The clang of the bell.

Esther is seated. Her grey tilted eyes seem sudden to stand upon the farther wall of her husband's shop, and to look upon her. Her eyes speak soft warm words that touch her hair, touch her lips, lie like caressing fingers upon the soft cloth that lies upon her breast.

--Less beautiful than I, though. My flesh is soft and sweat, it is the colour of cream. What for? My hair is like an autumn tree gleaming with sun. I can let it fall through the high channel of my breast against my stomach that does not bulge but lies soft and low like a cus.h.i.+on of silk. What for? My eyes see beauty. What for? O there is no G.o.d. If there is G.o.d, what for?--He will come back and work. He will eat and work. He is kind and good. What for? When he is excited with love, doesn't he make an ugly noise with his nose? What else does he make with his love?--Another like Flora? G.o.d forbid. What for?

She did not pull down the wide yellow shade, though it was night. The street was a ribbon of velvet blackness laid beside the hurting and sharp brightness of the store. The yellow light was hard like grains of sand under the quick of her nails. She was afraid of the street. She was hurt in the store. But the brightness clamped her. She did not move.--O let no more customers come! "Keep quiet, Flora." I can not move.--She was clamped.

But the store moved, moved.

There was a black wheel with a gleaming axle--the Sun--that sent light dimming down its spokes as it spun. From the rim of the wheel where it was black, bright dust flung away as it spun. The store was a speck of bright dust. It flung straight. It moved along the velvet path of the street, touching, not merging with its night. It moved, it moved, she sat still in its moving. The store caught up with Meyer. He entered the store. He was there. He was there, scooped up from the path of the street by the store. Now her work was over. He was there. The store was a still store, fixed in a dirty house. Its brightness the spurt of two jets of gas. He was back from _Schul_.--That is all.

A man with blond hair, flat feet that shuffled, small tender hands. A man with a mouth gentle, slow; with eyes timid to see. "Come dear: that is no place."--Why she lets the child play with my shears!

Tender hands pull Flora from beneath the table. Flora comes blinking, unprotesting. Where her father's hands leave off from her, she stays.

She sinks back to the floor. She looks at her little fists from which the scizzors are gone. She misses hard gleaming steel. She opens and shuts her fists and looks at them: she cries. But she does not move.--Her mother does not move.--Her father does not move. He squats on the table. His head sways with his thoughts. He knows that Flora will stop--what can he do?--in perhaps half an hour. It is a weak cry. Grows weaker. He is used to it. There is work.

He sews. 'A woman of valour who can find? For her price is far above rubies'--She will stay here, stay here silent. Flora should be in bed.

Who to put his child in bed? Hard gas-light on her beloved hair? A wither, a wilt--'She is like the merchant s.h.i.+ps; she bringeth her food from afar'--He sews and rips.--What, Lord, have I left undone? I love my Esther.--He sews.--I love my little girl. Lord, I fear the Lord--'She looketh well to the ways of the household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.'--Lighten me, Lord, give me light. There is my daughter crying, who should sleep: and my wife sitting, who will not, who will never without me go home. She is afraid. She says she is afraid. She is sullen and silent. She is so fair and sweet against my heart. Lord! why did her hands that held my head speak a lie? and her silent lips that she let press upon my mouth, why were they lies? Lord, I cannot understand. Lord, I pray. I must sew bread for Esther and for my child.

I go to _Schul_ at least once each _Shabbas_, Lord--Do I not fill the deep ten Penitential Days from _Rosh Ha Shonoh_ to _Yom Ha Kippurim_ with seeking out of heart?--He sews, he rips. The weeping of his child is done. Long st.i.tches, here. She has found a chair's leg to play with.

Her moist fingers clasp at the shrill wood. The wooden chair and her soft flesh wrestle. Esther sits still. He sews.

'Her children arise, and call her blessed; Her husband also, and he praiseth her; --Many daughters have done valiantly, But thou excellest them all.-- Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain; But a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.

Give her of the fruit of her hands; And let her works praise her in the gates.'

II

In the door and the clang again of the bell, a boy with them. A boy they knew--son of their neighbours--big for his years and heavy, with fat lips, eyes clouded, hair black and low over his clouded eyes. Esther alone saw, as he lurched in, one foot dragging always slightly.

He went for little Flora with no greeting for them: familiarly as he knew he would find her, had come so, often.--He loves her. The man who squats on the table and sews smiles on the boy who loves and plays with his child.

"h.e.l.lo, kid," voice of a thick throat, "look--what I got for you here."

Flora lets the chair of her late love lurch against her back, strike her forward. She does not care. She watches two hands--grey-caked over red--unwrap from paper a dazzle of colours, place it to her eyes on the floor, pull with a string: it has little wheels, it moves!

"Quackle-duck," he announces.

Flora spreads out her hands, sinks on her rump, feels its green head that bobs with purple bill, feels its yellow tail.

"Quackle-duck--yours," says the boy.

She takes the string from his hand. With shoulder and stomach she swings her arm backward and pulls. The duck spurts, bobbing its green long head against her leg.

She plays. The boy on his knees with soiled thick drawers showing between his stockings and his pants plays with her.--

Meyer Lanich did not cease from work, nor his woman from silence. His face was warm in pleasure, watching his child who had a toy and a playmate.--I am all warm and full of love for Herbert Rabinowich: perhaps some day I can show him, or do something for his father. Now there was no way but to go on working, and smile so the pins in his mouth did not p.r.i.c.k.

The eyes of Esther drew a line from these two children back to the birth of the one that was hers. She dwelt in a world about the bright small room like the night: in a world that roared and wailed, that reeled with despair of her hope.

She had borne this dirty child all clean beneath her heart. Her belly was sweet and white, it had borne her: her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were high and proud, they had emptied, they had come to sag for this dirty child on the floor--face and red lips on a floor that any shoes might step.

Had she not borne a Glory through the world, bearing this stir of perfect flesh? Had she not borne a song through the harsh city? Had she not borne another mite of pain, another fleck of dirt upon the city's shame-heaps?

She lies in her bed burned in sweet pain. Pain wrings her body, wrings her soul like the word of the Lord within lips of Deborah. Her bed with white sheets, her bed with its pool of blood is an altar where she lays forth her Glory which she has walking carried like a song through the harsh city.--What have I mothered but dirt?--

A transfigured world she knows she will soon see. Yes: it is a flat of little light--and the bugs seep in from the other flats no matter how one cleans--it is a man of small grace, it is a world of few windows.

But her child will be borne to smite life open wide. Her child shall leap above its father and its mother as the sun above forlorn fields.--She arose from her bed. She held her child in her arms. She walked through the reeling block with feet aflame. She entered the shop.--There--squatting with feet so wide to see--her man: his needle pressed by the selfsame finger. The world was not changed for her child.

Behold her child changing--let her sit for ever upon her seat of tears--let her lay like fire to her breast this endless vision of her child changing unto the world.--

--I have no voice, I have no eyes. I am a woman who has lain with the world.

The world's voice upon my lips gave my mouth gladness.

The world's arms about my flanks gave my flesh glory.

I was big with gladness and glory.

Joyful I lost in love of my vision my eyes, in love of my song my voice.

I have borne another misery into the world.--

Meyer Lanich moves, putting away the trousers he has patched.--O Lord, why must I sew so many hours in order to reap my pain? Why must I work so long, heap the hard wither of so many hours upon my child who can not sleep till I do, in order that all of us may be unhappy?

The clang and the door open. The mother of the boy.

"Oh, here you are! Excuse me, friends. I was worrying over Herbert.--Well, how goes it?"

She smiled and stepped into the room: saw them all.

"All well, Mrs. Rabinowich," said Meyer. "We are so glad when your Herbert comes to play with Florchen."

Mrs. Rabinowich turns the love of her face upon the children who do not attend her. A grey long face, bitterly pock-marked, in a glow of love.

"Look what your Herbert brought her," Meyer sews and smiles. "A toy. He shouldn't, now. Such a thing costs money."