Meyer Lanich came down from his table and drew down the wide yellow
shade and shut out the night. No more stray customers to enter. He
turned the key of the door. He had his back to the door, seeing his work
and his child who now sat vacant upon the floor and grimed her eyes with
her fists too sleepy to hunt play--seeing his wife. He sought to see
this woman who was his wife. To this end came his words, old words, old
words he had tried often, often failed with, words that would come again
since they were the words of his seeking to find the woman his wife.
"Esther," he said, "it is nine o'clock and I have much work to do--a
couple of hours of work.--"--I could work faster alone, it will be
midnight so with this pain for ever in my eyes. "Esther won't you go
home and put Florchen to bed?"
She looked at him with her full lovely eyes. Why since he saw them
lovely could he not see them loving? He had said these words before, so
often before. She looked at him.
"Esther," he said, "it is bad for a baby of four to be up so late. It is
bad for her to sit around on the floor under the gas--smelling the gas
and the gasoline and the steam of the clothes. Can't you consider
Flora?"
"I am afraid."
"What is there to be afraid of? Can't you see? Why aren't you afraid of
what will happen to Flora? Eh--that don't frighten you, does it? She's a
baby. If my Mother could see--"
"Meyer, I can't. Meyer, I can't. You know that I can't."
He waved his hands. She was stiff. They came no nearer one to the other.
About them each, two poles, swirled thoughts and feeling--a world that
did not touch the other.
He clambered back to his work. The room was hot. The gaslight burned.
Against his temples it beat harsh air, harsh light, the acrid smells of
his work--against her temples.
Esther sat. The words of her man seeking the woman she was had not found
for him but had stirred her. Her breast moved fast, but all else of her
was stiff. Stiff, all she moved like a thick river drawn against its
flow, drawn mounting to its head.--I cannot go home alone, to the empty
hall alone, into the black rooms alone. Against their black the flicker
of a match that may go out, the dare of a gas-light that is all white
and shrieking with its fear of the black world it is in. She could not
go home alone.--For, Esther, in your loneliness you will find your life.
I am afraid of my life.
She was caught, she was trapped.--I am miserable. Let me only not
move.--Since to move was to break against walls of a trap. Here in the
heart of movelessness a little space. Let her not stir where the walls
and the roof of the black small trap will smite her!