Bread Givers. Anzia Yezierska
quick as he could say it politely, he asked Jacob to go out for a walk with him.
And he didn’t ask Mashah to go along.
When Jacob didn’t come back that evening, Mashah tried to push it aside and tell us it was so much business about the concert that he couldn’t come back. But we ourselves had heard him tell her at the door that he would be sure back that evening. And we knew it was a bad sign if he didn’t come.
The next evening was the evening of the concert. And Mashah rushed into the house with a frightened, worried look and asked anxiously if Jacob had come. She looked at the clock. From six it went over to seven and then to eight. As the hours passed, she grew more and more excited.
No Jacob. No letter. No message.
I had heard Jacob tell Mashah where he was to give his concert, and I stole out of the house and took the car to the concert hall. At the front door I stopped, shaking with excitement. There was Jacob Novak’s picture, as big as life, and under his picture, his name, in big printed letters.
I had no money for the ticket, so I stood at the side of the man who was collecting the tickets, watching the crowd go in. When the first sounds of the music started, I ran from that place as one runs from a house on fire. The hurt of the great wrong burned my flesh. How could that concert go on and Mashah not there!
When I got back home Mashah was still waiting for Novak.
The clock went on ticking the seconds, the minutes, the hours. Everyone went to sleep. But still Mashah waited. At every sound, she listened for him.
It was midnight. But Mashah still sat waiting for Jacob to come. “He will come. He must come,” she kept talking to herself.
Suddenly, when everyone was sound asleep, a terrible cry tore through the air—the cry of somebody murdered with a knife—the choked bleeding wail of a dying, broken heart.
In one leap we rushed out of bed. We found Mashah with her head on the window sill, her whole body shaking with sobs—sobs that could not cease—and could not be consoled. Like dumb things, we all cried with her—all through the night.
With so many women weeping in the house, Father could not sleep any more.
“It’s all because I let a man who plays on the Sabbath into my door that my house is so full of woe and wailing,” said my father. And he opened his book of Jeremiah, and began chanting about the fall of Jerusalem.
Another day, and still another day, passed and Jacob did not come. And Mashah sat still, not stirring, not speaking. With glazed eyes she sat, as one watching her best loved one dead in a coffin.
Only when the whistle of the letter-carrier was heard, Mashah stirred and asked in a voice that barely breathed, “Is there a letter? Is there a letter for me?”
But no letter came.
Three more days and three more nights passed. Mashah did not eat. Mashah did not sleep. Mashah just sat still in one place at the window with staring eyes that saw nothing.
Then she called me over and said, “Write for me a letter. My fingers can’t write anymore.” And so I wrote as she said it to me.
JACOB:
It’s the last time you will hear from me. I’m not throwing up anything to you. I only wanted to tell you that you robbed me of my belief in love and truth. In you I believed. You I loved. You and your music were everything of truth and beauty there was in the world. And if you could leave me, then music is only ugly noise, and words of love, all lies. And there is no truth, no beauty, and no love in the world.
MASHAH.
As soon as I wrote this letter, she sent me over with it to the place he lived.
I found him walking up and down his room, like something caged, his thoughts far away. “What a suffering face—what worried eyes,” I thought, as I stood at his open door for some time, before he noticed me. Then he jumped at me and seized the letter I held in my hand.
“Oh, my poor dear Mashah!” he groaned, shutting his eyes with the hurt of his guilt. “I’ve been a brute—a criminal!”
Like one in a fever, he began talking to himself and fighting with the air around him.
“He’ll not keep me from her another minute! To hell with Father! I will see her. How can a storekeeper’s brain know her heart!” And grabbing me by the hand, he rushed with me to Mashah.
In the hall, he stopped, frightened. “Will she see me? Please ask her to come down,” he begged like a child. “I’ll wait here.”
I bounded up the stairs and into the kitchen. It was like death in the house since Novak had stopped coming. And I thought my words would bring life back to Mashah’s dead face. And she would run down to meet him as always before.
“He’s waiting for you, downstairs,” I gasped, breathless.
She drew herself up tall and proud as a queen. “I go to him? No——”
“But he must see you. He’s afraid to come up. You ought to see him. He looks terrible.”
Slowly she rose and came down. Cold as a stone statue, she looked at him. “What brought you here? Is it pity? I need no pity.”
“Mashah!” His hands reached out to her, pleadingly. “I’ve been a coward—bullied by my father. I listened to him because of the concert—but no more. You’re everything to me!”
He drew her up in his arms and kissed her with burning lips.
“Mashah! Speak to me. Tell me only you forgive me. See how I suffered since I left you.”
“Come upstairs,” she said, coldly.
Was this the same Mashah whose face lit up like a living sun at the sound of Jacob’s footsteps? Where had gone the light of her eyes, the life that sang and danced when he was near? It seemed to me that something deep down in her had broken and it would never again be fixed. She was like something still walking and talking, but inside she was frozen into something colder than death.
As they entered the house, his hand clinging to hers, Father came in.
“Empty-head!” shouted Father, tearing Mashah away from Jacob. “You yet speak to this liar, this denier of God! Didn’t I tell you once a man who plays the piano on the Sabbath, a man without religion, can’t be trusted? As he left you once, he’ll leave you again.”
“Listen to me just once, I beg you,” Jacob pleaded. “It was that concert—my father——”
“I’ll not listen to a meshumid who plays on the Sabbath!” Father pushed his hand from his arm. “It says in the Torah that when you see a meshumid drowning you must sink him deeper into the water. And if you see him burning, you must add yet fuel to the flames.” Father opened the door and pushed Jacob out.
The next day, Jacob tried to see Mashah again. And this time Father slammed the door in his face. Then he turned to Mashah.
“I give you the last warning, never to see that man again. If you do, I’ll turn you out of the house. You must choose between that scoundrel and your father.”
And so Mashah, weak, dumb, helpless with the first great sorrow of her life, gave in to Father’s will. She let go her chance of fixing up her happiness because of Father’s unforgiving pride. And Jacob was never seen in the house again.
Mashah went back to work. She still dressed neatly, and was even beautiful in her quiet silence. But she dressed mechanically. A sad, far-off look of something for ever gone had come into her eyes. She was like a bird with its song for ever stilled.
In her weakness and dumbness and helplessness, Father began letting out all his preaching on her poor head. “I always told you your bad end. I told you with your empty head and pretty face no good could come to you. Any man who falls in love with a pretty face don’t think to marry himself. If a man wants