Part 15

Under Karl’s eyes was the black face of the long-nosed man. All of it that was not under hair was under grime of coal, save the huge nose that was white and the eyes that were clean and hard like a clear, black sky.

He spoke: “My name is Theophilus Larch. Thank you, Theophilus.”

His quick hand delved into the cuff of Theophilus-Karl’s trouser. It held up the dead cockroach. The long-nosed man had teeth very white; they closed on the cockroach with a joyous crack.

The little man of the red mouth was in Karl’s eyes.

“My name is Martin Lounton. Call me Lounton, Martin.... And permit me....”

He seized Martin-Karl’s hand. He smoothed it with feverish fingers. His lean eyes sought the palm of it and read. He tossed it from him, and was gone, feverishly peering under bench, in grass, for scraps of paper.

The black dwarf bowed under Karl’s eyes.

“My name is Cæsar Dott. Call me Dott, Cæsar. And allow me to congratulate you upon your wedding. Your bride gave me a favor, from her own hands she gave it. Look, Cæsar....” He raised his trouser leg and there against the obscene mass of blackish flesh was an iron bar, toothed and clamped in the flesh.

“It makes my foot go to sleep. I have to wriggle my toes.”...

Karl sat still.

The strong boy and the idiot who played tether-ball for ever, for ever; the eater of dirt, the dwarf, the picker and reader of scraps ... joined hands. They were unknown to one another. But they knew Karl. They joined hands. They danced.

A heavy shattering measure. It made the glow of the gone sun tremble, bounce up, join in. It shook the trees until their branches with little leaves like bells reached down into the park and the trees danced also. It broke into the sheerness of the house walls and they rose stiffly and danced. All danced ... moveless in Karl sitting upon the bench beside the bearded tramp.

He breathed in measure. A row of houses swung into the park and the park swung into the river; and the river suddenly straightened up and thrust like a lance, quivering white, to the sky. The sky came down in a great gust of wind and lifted the beating feet and garlanded the trees among the dancing legs of men, and stuck branches into the windows of the rollicking houses. Karl breathed in measure.

The stillness was very thick like a night without clouds and with neither moon nor stars.

Now, in the dancing stillness like a single star, a voice:

“Think!”

The tramp was moveless beside him. His voice: “Think! for the time is not yet.”

The star-voice neared, no longer the moveless tramp’s. It pierced, it was a shriek.... “Think! Think!”

Karl jumped up from the bench. “Think, think!” he echoed.

He thought. He beat with his thought against the dancing world. He lunged and thrust: he hewed with his thought and beat. He beat the sky up. He beat the houses back. He thrust the trees down. The strong boy and the idiot boy, the eater of dirt, the dwarf, the picker and reader of scraps he hewed and beat apart from their thick dance. He trampled with his thought the park into the ground....

Then all was as it should be.... And it was as if he had fallen an unfathomable distance.

* * * * *

He sat upon his bench under the darkling sky, alone, beside the bearded man whom he had seen so often.

He turned to him and nodded.

The tramp’s reticent blue eyes nodded and turned away.

“It’s getting late,” said Karl.

He was tingling, as from a mighty fall that had not killed him, that had made him drunk. It was as if an infinitude of space coursed through his veins, as he had coursed through an infinitude of space. He was daring as never before.

“Would you mind,” he turned again, very courteous, very quiet, towards the tramp, “would you mind, sir, telling me who you are?”

The look of the frail man was steady and far beyond him. His words came very still, very far away through the straight gold beard.

“You have seen me often,” he said, “and asked me nothing. You have thought. What did it seem to you, I was?”

Karl was light with the abandon of his infinite flight, sitting so commonly upon a bench. He was brave and clear, for his mind held one memory--what this strange man, the first time, had seemed to him to be. The words came unhindered.

“It seemed,” he stopped ... he began again, “the first time that I saw you, I said to myself: ‘He looks like a ridiculous Jesus.’”

The bearded man gazed on beyond him. His head moved dreaming. His hands floated underneath his beard.

“You were right in what you said to yourself,” he spoke. “For I am John the Baptist.”

[11] Copyright, 1922, by The Dial Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright, 1922, by Waldo Frank.

MENDEL MARANTZ-- HOUSEWIFE[12]

By DAVID FREEDMAN

(From _The Pictorial Review_)

“What is a landlord? A bore! He asks you one question all the time--Rent! What is rent? A fine you pay for being poor. What is poverty? Dirt--on the surface. What is riches? More dirt--under the surface. Everybody wants money. Money! What is money? A disease we like to catch but not to spread. Just wait, Zelde! The time will come! I’ll be a landlord on Riverside Drive! We’ll have our own home----”

“In the cemetery!” Zelde said bitterly.

“Not so fast,” Mendel replied, sipping his tea. “Cheer up, Zelde! What is pessimism? A match. It burns the fingers. What is hope? A candle. It lights the way. You never can tell yet! What is life? A see-saw. Today you’re poor and tomorrow----”

“You starve!” Zelde muttered, as she rubbed a shirt vigorously against the wash-board.

With a sudden impulse she slapped the shirt into the tub, dried her hands on the apron, and, resting her fists on her hips, turned to Mendel.

“Why shouldn’t I be mad?” she began, replying to a previous question. “Here I stand like a fool scrubbing my life away, from morning till night-time, working like a horse, cooking, washing, sewing, cleaning and everything. And for what? For this I eloped with you from a rich father? Did you marry me--or hire me?”

“I stole you. Now I got to pay the penalty. What is love? A conquest. What is marriage? An inquest. Don’t worry; your father was no fool. He made believe he didn’t see us run away. We felt romantic--and he got off cheap! What is romance? Soap-bubbles. They look nice, but taste rotten.”

“Never mind! Mister Mendel Marantz, I know you too good. You talk a lot to make me forget what I was saying. But this whole business must come to a finish right here and there!

“You talked into yourself you’re a great man, so you don’t want to work and you don’t want to listen. Sarah sweats in the factory, Hymie peddles papers, Nathan works by the telegrams. And what do you do? You sit like a king and drink tea and make jokes--and nothing! I betcha you’re waiting Jakie, Lena and Sammy should grow up so you’ll send them to work for you too!”

Mendel shrugged his shoulders.

“What’s a woman’s tongue? A little dog’s tail. It wags too much!”

“I know what I talk. You hate work like poison. You like better to smoke a cigaret and close your eyes and invent schemes how to get rich quick. But you’ll get crazy quicker!”

“Zelde, you’re a old woman. You don’t understand. All I need is one drop of luck and that drop will sweeten our whole ocean of troubles. If only one of my inventions succeeds, none of us will have to work. Then Sarah will have dowry. What is dowry? Every man’s price. And we’ll move out of the fish-market. What is success? Fifth Avenue. What is failure? Fifth floor.

“Some day, you’ll see. I’ll be president of the Refillable Can Company and save the world millions in tin. Just wait!”

“And who’ll buy bread in the meantime? Mendel, remember what I tell you. Knock out this craziness from your head. Forget about this can business!”

Mendel’s dignity was roused.

“Crazy! That’s what you all are! You and all your relatives think I got water on the brain!” He pointed with conviction to his brow. “But up here is the refillable can. Zelde, you see it? It’s in the brain, the whole scheme. Up here is full with ideas, plans and machinery. Thinking, scheming, planning all the time. It don’t let me sleep. It don’t let me eat. It don’t let me work. And I should forget it--ah?

“You’re all jealous because God was good to me. He gave your brother Morris a shoe factory, your cousin Joe He gave a real estate, your sister Dora a rich husband. But God gave me _brains_--and that none of you got!”

Mendel paced the floor excitedly.

Zelde stood silent and bit her lip. For years she had heard the same flow of rhetoric, the same boast of intellect, and the same trust in luck. The net result was always an evasion of work, and the responsibility shifted back to her and the children.

Mendel Marantz had brains, all right. Otherwise, how could he have existed so long without working?

He always confused her with clever phrases and blurred the issue by creating fictitious ones. And he always succeeded in infecting her with his dreams, until she let him dream on while she did the work. It was that way when they had the candy-stand which her brother Gershon bought for them; it was that way when they kept a vegetable-store which sister Dora financed and later reduced to a push-cart; and it was that way now when they had nothing.

By trade a mechanic, by inclination an inventor, and by nature a dreamer, Mendel abhorred the sordid commonplaces of labor and dreaded the yoke of routine. He had been everything from an insurance agent to a night watchman in rapid succession, and had invented at least a hundred different devices for the betterment of civilization while changing jobs. None of these inventions had as yet received proper recognition, least of all from Zelde. But that could not discourage him to such a point as to drive him to work.

He really believed in his powers. That was the tragedy of it. All geniuses have an unalterable faith in their greatness. But so have most cranks. And Zelde was not sure as to which of the two species Mendel belonged.

She was sure of one thing--that the family was hovering perilously near the brink. A single feather added to its burdens and it would topple over. Mendel might take it lightly, but she knew better. She had seen families in that neighborhood crumble to ruin over night. She had known many who--like Mendel--started as harmless dreamers, hopeful idlers, and ended--God forbid--as gamblers, drunkards, and worse.

“How was it with Reznick? Every day he had a scheme to make millions while his wife got sick working in the shop. She died working, and the children went to a orphan asylum and he still wanted to make millions. So he made a corner on the coffee-market and he lost everything what everybody else had, and the only way they could stop him from signing checks with Rockefeller’s name was to send him to Bellevue.

“Or Dittenfass? Wasn’t he the picture of Mendel? Didn’t he hate work like poison, and didn’t he pay for it? He thought he was smarter from the rest. Didn’t his wife used to told him, ‘Dittenfass, look out!’? But he laughed only. He looked out for himself only. And one day she threw in his eyes vitriol! That’s what she threw in his eyes, and then he couldn’t look any more!

“You can’t be too smart. Didn’t Karneol try? And it’s two years she’s waitin’ already with swollen eyes he should come back. But he’s got to serve three more.

“The best smartness is to do a day’s work. If you wait it shall happen miracles--it happens! But the wrong way!”

Zelde knew. She wished she didn’t know.

“Maybe you can invent something to make you work,” she offered as a possible solution. “Somebody else with your brains could make a fortune. Why don’t you make at least a living?”

“Brains make ideas; fools can make money. That’s why your relatives are rich. What is business. Blind man’s bluff. They shut your eyes and open your pockets!”

“Again you mix me up,” she said warily, sensing this new attempt to befuddle the issue. “What’s the result from all this? You joke and we starve. It’s lucky Sarah works. If not, we would all be thrown out in the street, already.”

At this moment Sarah entered. She was pale and tired from the climb of stairs. She dropped her hat languidly on the couch and sank into a chair.

Zelde was too surprised to speak. It was only one-thirty. She never expected Sarah before six. An ominous thought flitted through her mind. She looked anxiously at her daughter. Sarah’s gaze shifted to the floor.

An oppressive silence gathered over them. Then Sarah tried to mumble something. But Zelde understood without hearing. Her heart had told her.

“It’s slack! Everybody laid off. Sarah, too!”

What she had dreaded most had happened. The family of Marantz was now over the brink. Zelde stood crushed by the thought of the morrow. Sarah sat staring vacantly, her chin against her clenched hand. Mendel stopped smoking to appear less conspicuous.

Four female eyes detected him, however, and scorched him with their gaze.

The handwriting on the wall was unnecessarily large.

Mendel Marantz knew that his crisis was at hand.

Zelde spoke.

“That settles it. Either tomorrow you go to work or go altogether! Yessir! You, I mean, mister!”

Mendel had faced crises before. Some he had overcome with a jest, others with a promise, still others with a pretence at work until the novelty wore off. But there was a grimness in Zelde’s manner this time that looked fatal. Nothing but a permanent job and lifelong drudgery could save him now. But that would also destroy him.

Tying him down to a position was like hitching a lion to a cart. His mind could not travel on tracks. It was too restive and spirited. He could never repeat an act without discovering how much easier it might be done by machinery, and immediately he set himself to invent the necessary machine. That was why he could not be a tailor. After he once threaded a needle, he started to devise a simple instrument for doing it, and in the meantime lost his job. And that happened in every case.

His head was so full of ideas that he often had to stand still to keep his balance. His mind sapped all of his powers and left him powerless for work. In order to work he would have to stop thinking. He might just as well stop living. Idleness was as essential a part of his make-up as industry was of Zelde’s.

“I wasn’t made for work,” he said with finality. “I mean--for just plain work. Some people work with their feet, others with their hands. I work with my head. You don’t expect I shall sit like Simon, the shoemaker, every day, and hit nails till I get consumption. One--two--three, I invent a machinery which hits nails, cuts leather, fits heels, makes patches, and I sit down and laugh on the world. I can’t work like others, just as others can’t work like me!”

“You can make me believe night is day and black is white, but it won’t help you. It’s a new rule in this house from today on--those who work, eat; those who don’t, don’t. If you think you can invent food, go ahead. So long I live my children is not going to starve. From today on I’m the father from this family. If you don’t want to go to work--I will!”

Mendel was skeptical.

“What is a woman?” he thought. “A lot of thunder, but a little rain.”

Still, the shower was more drenching than he supposed.

“Tomorrow morning I go back to be a dressmaker by fancy dresses. Sarah, you come with me. I learn you a real trade.”

Then she turned to Mendel with a sneer.

“You thought I play around in the house, didn’t you? All right! Now you stay home and play like I did. You want to eat? Cook, yourself. You think in the house it’s easy? You’ll find out different. Send the children to school, go up on the roof to hang clothes, run down with the garbage five floors, buy groceries, wash underwear, mend stockings, press shirts, scrub floors--go on! Have a good time, and I’ll pay the bills!”

Mendel admitted that Zelde had worn for some time the family trousers, but he believed that he still wore the belt. However, her inexorable decision disillusioned him. He admitted having been caught slightly off his guard. He had never suspected that a type of work existed so near him, into which he might be forced out of sheer necessity. Not that he intended to do it! But still----

“What is a woman?” he reconsidered. “Lightning. It’s nice and bright till it hits you.”

The next morning Mendel discovered perpetual motion. The children had taken possession of the house. He dodged flying pillows, tripped over upset furniture, slipped on greasy garbage from an overturned can, found salt in his coffee and something sharper on his seat. He kept constantly moving to avoid falling objects and fell into others. He had planned to have nothing to do with the house, but the house was having a great deal to do with him.

The youngsters seemed to be under the impression that with Zelde all law and order had passed away. Mendel found it hard work to change their minds. It was monotonous to spank Lena, then Jakie, then Sammy. Then over again. It would be better to send them off to school. But they had to be dressed and fed and washed for that!

He was tempted to snatch his hat and coat and leave the house. But what would he do in the streets?

He hesitated, gritted his teeth, and set to work by scrubbing Jakie’s face till it resembled a carrot.

“What’s a wife?” he muttered, and Lena started at the question. “A telescope! She makes you see stars!” And some soap got into his eye.

“Sammy, don’t you never marry!” he exclaimed with a profound look of warning at the frightened little boy. “What is marriage? First a ring on the finger and later--on the neck. Lena, stop pulling Jakie’s hair. She’s like her mother. Don’t do that, Sammy. A table-cloth ain’t a handkerchief! Ai! Little children, little troubles; big children, big troubles. What is children? Life insurance. Some day they pay you back--when you’re dead. But you like them anyhow. Such is life! You know it’s tough, but you try it once, anyway.

“After all, what is life? A journey. What is death? The goal. What is man? A passenger. What is woman? Freight.

“Jakie, you bad boy! Don’t cry, Lena. He didn’t mean it. Here’s an apple. Go to school. Sammy, get off the banister! Look out, children! It’s a step missing down there! Who’s crying? Jakie, give her back the apple! Did you ever hear such excitements? My goodness!”

Mendel, perspired, exhausted, sank into a chair.

“I’m working, after all,” he noted with surprise. “If this lasts, I don’t.”

But the trials of Mendel Marantz had only begun. The sensation of womanhood did not thrill his bosom, and the charms of housekeeping failed to allure him. A home like a warehouse on moving-day tumbled about him. The beds were upset, the table and floor were littered with breakfast leavings, the cupboard was bare, the dishes were piled in the sink, the dust had gathered already as if cleaning were a lost art, and the general atmosphere was one of dejection, confusion, chaos. The magic touch of the housewife revealed itself by its absence.

Zelde had now proved to him conclusively that her presence and service were essential to his comfort. As if he had ever questioned the fact. Why did she go to all this trouble to drive home a point?

“Zelde, a glass tea,” he used to say, and the tea stood steaming hot before him. “Zelde, it’s a draft. Shut up the window,” and presently the draft was gone.

“Zelde--” he would call, leaning back in his chair, but why torture himself with things that were no more?

That night when Zelde arrived, masculine and businesslike, through with work and ready for supper, she beheld a pitiful spectacle.

The house was in hopeless disorder. The children had managed that. The cat was on the table and Jakie was under it, while Lena kept him there with her foot. Sammy’s eye had been darkened by a flying saucer which Hymie let go in a moment of abandon. Everything was where it should not be. The kitchen furniture had been moved into the dining room and the feather beds were in the wash-tub.

Mendel was nowhere within the range of Zelde’s call.

“Where is papa?” she asked sharply, after calming the youngsters with her two convincing hands. “Everything is upside down. I betcha he didn’t do a thing all day. My goodness, that man will make me crazy!”

A crashing sound as of dishes in hasty descent issued from the next room.

Zelde and her retinue rushed to the scene of disaster. With one foot in the sink and the other on the wash-tub Mendel Marantz was poised on high, searching through the closet. Dishes, pans, bottles and rags lay scattered in ruined fragments beneath him.

Zelde blazed.

“Gozlen!” she almost shrieked. “What do you want up there!”

Mendel steadied himself. His heart having missed a beat, he waited a moment, then answered quietly, “Iodin.”

“What for iodin, what for?” She was still furious, but also a little anxious.

“A small scratch,” he explained without moving. “My finger got caught--under the meat-chopper.”

“Oi! You clumsy! And what’s all the rags and the water on the floor?”

“To put by my side and my leg. I--slipped and--the gas-range fell on me. My ankle turned around. The soup was good and hot. Maybe you got something for burns?”

Zelde was a little less furious and a little more anxious.

“Then what are you climbing on the walls for? Go in bed. Go--you look broken in pieces!”

She sighed heavily and shook her head.

“After all, he’s only a man,” she soliloquized. “What can you expect? He don’t know if he’s alive!”

She continued to scold, but nursed him tenderly.

“How is it? You’re a inventor, and you don’t know how to light the gas without blowing up the house? A man who can’t help nobody else can’t help himself!”

After a pause she said, “Maybe I should stay home? Ah?”

“Maybe,” he murmured weakly.

Zelde vacillated.

“So what’ll be if I stay home?” she prodded.

“It’ll be better.”

“That I know, but what’ll be with you?”

“I’ll get well.”

“And--?” She expected him not only to recover, but to reform.

“And if I get well I’ll feel good. What is health? A garden. What is sickness? A grave. What is a good wife? A gardener. What is a bad wife? A grave-digger.”

“He’s as bad as ever,” she thought.