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.
"Hello, 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 prick.
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 breasts 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."
Mrs. Rabinowich puts an anxious finger to her lips.
"Don't," she whispers. "If he wants to, he should. It is lovely that he
wants to. There's money enough for such lovely wants.--Well, darling.
Won't you come home to bed?"
Herbert does not attend.
His mother sighed--a sigh of great appeasement and of content.--This is
my son! She turned to where Esther sat with brooding eyes. Her face was
serious now, grey ever, warm with a grey sorrow. Her lips moved: they
knew not what to say.
"How are you, Esther?"
"Oh, I am well, Mrs. Rabinowich. Thank you." A voice resonant and deep,
a voice mellowed by long keeping in the breast of a woman.
"Why don't you come round, some time, Esther? You know, I should always
be so glad to see you."
"Thank you, Mrs. Rabinowich."
"You know--we're just next door," the older woman smiled. "You got time,
I think. More time than I."
"Oh, she got time all right!" The sharp words flash from the soft mouth
of Meyer, who sews and seems in no way one with the sharp words of his
mouth. Esther does not look. She takes the words as if like stones they
had fallen in her lap. She smiles away. She is still. And Lotte
Rabinowich is still, looking at her with a deep wonder, shaking her
head, unappeased in her search.
She turns at last to her boy: relieved.
"Come Herbert, now. Now we really got to go."
She takes his hand that he lets limply rise. She pulls him gently.
"Good night, dear ones.--Do come, some time, Esther--yes?"
"Thank you, Mrs. Rabinowich."