THE MEETING.
A few weeks later, on a Saturday morning, Jake, with an unfolded
telegram in his hand, stood in front of one of the desks at the
Immigration Bureau of Ellis Island. He was freshly shaven and clipped,
smartly dressed in his best clothes and ball shoes, and, in spite of
the sickly expression of shamefacedness and anxiety which distorted his
features, he looked younger than usual.
All the way to the island he had been in a flurry of joyous
anticipation. The prospect of meeting his dear wife and child, and,
incidentally, of showing off his swell attire to her, had thrown him
into a fever of impatience. But on entering the big shed he had caught
a distant glimpse of Gitl and Yosselé through the railing separating
the detained immigrants from their visitors, and his heart had sunk at
the sight of his wife's uncouth and un-American appearance. She was
slovenly dressed in a brown jacket and skirt of grotesque cut, and her
hair was concealed under a voluminous wig of a pitch-black hue. This
she had put on just before leaving the steamer, both "in honour of the
Sabbath" and by way of sprucing herself up for the great event. Since
Yekl had left home she had gained considerably in the measurement of
her waist. The wig, however, made her seem stouter and as though
shorter than she would have appeared without it. It also added at least
five years to her looks. But she was aware neither of this nor of the
fact that in New York even a Jewess of her station and orthodox
breeding is accustomed to blink at the wickedness of displaying her
natural hair, and that none but an elderly matron may wear a wig
without being the occasional target for snowballs or stones. She was
naturally dark of complexion, and the nine or ten days spent at sea had
covered her face with a deep bronze, which combined with her prominent
cheek bones, inky little eyes, and, above all, the smooth black wig, to
lend her resemblance to a squaw.
Jake had no sooner caught sight of her than he had averted his face, as
if loth to rest his eyes on her, in the presence of the surging crowd
around him, before it was inevitable. He dared not even survey that
crowd to see whether it contained any acquaintance of his, and he
vaguely wished that her release were delayed indefinitely.
Presently the officer behind the desk took the telegram from him, and
in another little while Gitl, hugging Yosselé with one arm and a
bulging parcel with the other, emerged from a side door.
"Yekl!" she screamed out in a piteous high key, as if crying for mercy.
"Dot'sh alla right!" he returned in English, with a wan smile and
unconscious of what he was saying. His wandering eyes and dazed mind
were striving to fix themselves upon the stern functionary and the
questions he bethought himself of asking before finally releasing his
prisoners. The contrast between Gitl and Jake was so striking that the
officer wanted to make sure--partly as a matter of official duty and
partly for the fun of the thing--that the two were actually man and
wife.
"_Oi_ a lamentation upon me! He shaves his beard!" Gitl ejaculated to
herself as she scrutinized her husband. "Yosselé, look! Here is
_taté_!"
But Yosselé did not care to look at taté. Instead, he turned his
frightened little eyes--precise copies of Jake's--and buried them in
his mother's cheek.
When Gitl was finally discharged she made to fling herself on Jake. But
he checked her by seizing both loads from her arms. He started for a
distant and deserted corner of the room, bidding her follow. For a
moment the boy looked stunned, then he burst out crying and fell to
kicking his father's chest with might and main, his reddened little
face appealingly turned to Gitl. Jake continuing his way tried to kiss
his son into toleration, but the little fellow proved too nimble for
him. It was in vain that Gitl, scurrying behind, kept expostulating
with Yosselé: "Why, it is taté!" Taté was forced to capitulate before
the march was brought to its end.
At length, when the secluded corner had been reached, and Jake and Gitl
had set down their burdens, husband and wife flew into mutual embrace
and fell to kissing each other. The performance had an effect of
something done to order, which, it must be owned, was far from being
belied by the state of their minds at the moment. Their kisses imparted
the taste of mutual estrangement to both. In Jake's case the sensation
was quickened by the strong steerage odours which were emitted by
Gitl's person, and he involuntarily recoiled.
"You look like a _poritz_,"[7] she said shyly.
[7] Yiddish for nobleman.
"How are you? How is mother?"
"How should she be? So, so. She sends you her love," Gitl mumbled out.
"How long was father ill?"
"Maybe a month. He cost us health enough."
He proceeded to make advances to Yosselé, she appealing to the child in
his behalf. For a moment the sight of her, as they were both crouching
before the boy, precipitated a wave of thrilling memories on Jake and
made him feel in his old environment. Presently, however, the illusion
took wing and here he was, Jake the Yankee, with this bonnetless,
wigged, dowdyish little greenhorn by his side! That she was his wife,
nay, that he was a married man at all, seemed incredible to him. The
sturdy, thriving urchin had at first inspired him with pride; but as he
now cast another side glance at Gitl's wig he lost all interest in him,
and began to regard him, together with his mother, as one great
obstacle dropped from heaven, as it were, in his way.
Gitl, on her part, was overcome with a feeling akin to awe. She, too,
could not get herself to realize that this stylish young man--shaved
and dressed as in Povodye is only some young nobleman--was Yekl, her
own Yekl, who had all these three years never been absent from her
mind. And while she was once more examining Jake's blue diagonal
cutaway, glossy stand-up collar, the white four-in-hand necktie,
coquettishly tucked away in the bosom of his starched shirt, and, above
all, his patent leather shoes, she was at the same time mentally
scanning the Yekl of three years before. The latter alone was hers, and
she felt like crying to the image to come back to her and let her be
_his_ wife.
Presently, when they had got up and Jake was plying her with
perfunctory questions, she chanced to recognise a certain movement of
his upper lip--an old trick of his. It was as if she had suddenly
discovered her own Yekl in an apparent stranger, and, with another
pitiful outcry, she fell on his breast.
"Don't!" he said, with patient gentleness, pushing away her arms. "Here
everything is so different."
She coloured deeply.
"They don't wear wigs here," he ventured to add.
"What then?" she asked, perplexedly.
"You will see. It is quite another world."
"Shall I take it off, then? I have a nice Saturday kerchief," she
faltered. "It is of silk--I bought it at Kalmen's for a bargain. It is
still brand new."
"Here one does not wear even a kerchief."
"How then? Do they go about with their own hair?" she queried in
ill-disguised bewilderment.
"_Vell, alla right_, put it on, quick!"
As she set about undoing her parcel, she bade him face about and screen
her, so that neither he nor any stranger could see her bareheaded while
she was replacing the wig by the kerchief. He obeyed. All the while the
operation lasted he stood with his gaze on the floor, gnashing his
teeth with disgust and shame, or hissing some Bowery oath.
"Is this better?" she asked bashfully, when her hair and part of her
forehead were hidden under a kerchief of flaming blue and yellow, whose
end dangled down her back.
The kerchief had a rejuvenating effect. But Jake thought that it made
her look like an Italian woman of Mulberry Street on Sunday.
"_Alla right_, leave it be for the present," he said in despair,
reflecting that the wig would have been the lesser evil of the two.
* * * * *
When they reached the city Gitl was shocked to see him lead the way to
a horse car.
"_Oi_ woe is me! Why, it is Sabbath!" she gasped.
He irately essayed to explain that a car, being an uncommon sort of
vehicle, riding in it implied no violation of the holy day. But this
she sturdily met by reference to railroads. Besides, she had seen horse
cars while stopping in Hamburg, and knew that no orthodox Jew would use
them on the seventh day. At length Jake, losing all self-control,
fiercely commanded her not to make him the laughing-stock of the people
on the street and to get in without further ado. As to the sin of the
matter he was willing to take it all upon himself. Completely dismayed
by his stern manner, amid the strange, uproarious, forbidding
surroundings, Gitl yielded.
As the horses started she uttered a groan of consternation and remained
looking aghast and with a violently throbbing heart. If she had been a
culprit on the way to the gallows she could not have been more
terrified than she was now at this her first ride on the day of rest.
The conductor came up for their fares. Jake handed him a ten-cent
piece, and raising two fingers, he roared out: "Two! He ain' no maur as
tree years, de liddle feller!" And so great was the impression which
his dashing manner and his English produced on Gitl, that for some time
it relieved her mind and she even forgot to be shocked by the sight of
her husband handling coin on the Sabbath.
Having thus paraded himself before his wife, Jake all at once grew
kindly disposed toward her.
"You must be hungry?" he asked.
"Not at all! Where do you eat your _varimess_?"[8]
[8] Yiddish for dinner.
"Don't say varimess," he corrected her complaisantly; "here it is
called _dinner_!"
"_Dinner?_[9] And what if one becomes fatter?" she confusedly ventured
an irresistible pun.
[9] Yiddish for thinner.
This was the way in which Gitl came to receive her first lesson in the
five or six score English words and phrases which the omnivorous Jewish
jargon has absorbed in the Ghettos of English-speaking countries.