The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Part 19

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 appeas.e.m.e.nt 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."

Meyer says: "Let the boy come when he wants. We love to have him."

His mother smiles.--Of course: who would not love to have him? Good heart, fine boy, dear child. "It's long past bedtime. Naughty!" She kisses him.

Herbert, a little like a horse, swings away his heavy head.

They are gone in the bell's jangle.

"What a good boy: what a big-hearted boy!" Meyer said aloud. "I like the boy. He will be strong and a success, you see."

Her words, "I saw him lift the skirt of Flora and peep up," she could not utter. She was silent, seeing the dull boy with the dirty mind, and his mother and Meyer through love thinking him good. What she saw in her silence hurt her.

Her hurt flowed out in fear. She saw her child: a great fear came on Esther.--Flora is small and white, the world is full of men with thick lips, hairy hands, of men who will lift her skirt and kiss her, of men who will press their hairiness against her whiteness.

--There is a Magic, Love, whereby this shame is sweet. Where is it? A world of men with hair and lips against her whiteness. Where is the magic against them? Esther was very afraid. She hated her daughter.

III

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 s.p.a.ce. Let her not stir where the walls and the roof of the black small trap will smite her!

IV

The room moves up the dimension of time. Hour and hour and hour. Bearing its freight toward sleep. Thick hot room, torn by the burr of two lights, choked by the strain of two bound souls, moving along the night.

Writhing in dream. Singing.--

--My flesh sings for silk and rich jewels; My flesh cries for the mouth of a king.

My hair, why is it not a canopy of love, Why does it not cover sweet secrets of love?

My hair cries to be laid upon white linen.

I have brought misery into the world.-- I have lived with a small man and my dreams have shrunk him, Who in my dreams enlarged the glory of princes.

He looks upon me with soft eyes, and my flesh is hard against them.

He beats upon me with warm heart, and my b.r.e.a.s.t.s do not rise up for him.

They are soft and forgetful of his beating heart.

My b.r.e.a.s.t.s dream far when he is near to them-- They droop, they die.

His hands are a tearful prayer upon my body-- I sit: there is no way between my man and my dream, There is no way between my life and life, There is no way between my love and my child.

I lie: and my eyes are shut. I sleep: and they open.

A world of mountains Plunges against my sleep.--

--Lord, Lord: this is my daughter before me, her cheeks that have not bloomed are wilting. Preserve her, Lord. This is my wife before me, her love that has not lived is dead.--Time is a barren field that has no end. I see no horizon. My feet walk endlessly, I see no horizon.--I am faithful, Lord.--

The tailor-shop is black. It has moved up three hours into midnight. It is black.