Israel Joshua Singer, "Pearls" in The River Breaks Up: A Volume of Stories Trans. from the Yiddish by Maurice Samuel (New York, 1966): 25-67

"Pearls"

"Izak, is the sun good and warm outside, Izak?"

"It's good and warm, Uncle Moritz."

"Izak, have they carried all the snow away to the Vistula?"

"Yes, all, Uncle Moritz."

"Izak, listen carefully: that little cough of mine is all cleared up, isn't it?"

"It's all cleared up, Uncle Moritz."

"Izak, did you get the clothes ready for me to go out?"

"I'm going right now, Uncle Moritz."

Izak goes away into the other rooms to look for Uncle Moritz's clothes, and Moritz Spielrein lifts up the cotton quilt and timidly thrusts his long, lean legs out of the warm bed.

The sun of the approaching summer has forced its way violently into the locked apartment. A narrow patch of it, four-square, pours past the edge of the blinds, which are never lifted, and lies on the floor near Spielrein, like a lazy, stretched-out cat. The dilapidated furniture, dust-covered, seems to long for an open window. And a solitary fly, gigantic and green, awakens suddenly and goes buzzing up and down the length of the pane. Spielrein is still suspicious of the light and the warmth and the intentions of the spring, and for a while he keeps his uncovered legs on the edge of the bed and will not trust them completely to the air and the floor. After all, he knows himself to be a sick man, a very sick man, a man practically without lungs. Such a man risks his life every time he exposes himself to a breath of wind, to a touch of damp air. That is why he has made it his habit to spend the whole winter in bed, six months from beginning to end. And he is afraid to put his foot down, like a little child taking its first step. So he crawls out, one leg at a time, puts his right foot thoughtfully on the soft rug, and lets it get used to the air. And after a pause he puts his left foot down, too. A grin of self-satisfaction expands his lean, hairy face, as if he had just performed an act of great difficulty and daring, and coughing thinly, softly, he murmurs to himself so gently that it is impossible to know whether he is smiling or sighing:

"Heh! Heh! Heh! That's another winter in my pocket! Heh! Heh! Heh! Stole it right out of the bag!"

It is quiet in Spielrein's apartment. It is always quiet there. The dust sleeps thick and undisturbed on every little thing, secure in the knowledge that no one will come to remove it. Big-bellied spiders doze comfortably in the depths of their massive webs, dreaming of soft and fleshy flies. Izak, the young seeing man, crawls about on all fours in the neighbouring rooms and looks for Uncle Moritz's shoes and galoshes. It is every bit of six months that Uncle Moritz hasn't used his clothes, six months that they've been lying somewhere, superfluous and forgotten, like a dead man's things. And Izak turns his big, loony head this way and that as he crawls on all fours under dusty sofas and wardrobes. Spielrein sits on the edge of the bed and listens with sharp-pointed ears to the dragging sounds of Izak's heavy feet; his face takes on deep, dark folds, like the face of a man who wants to say something, but is meditating gloomily.

"Shall I say it or shan't I?"

Every year, as he remembers, it is the same. Every year that big fool forgets where he threw the shoes at the beginning of the winter. Uncle Moritz takes out slowly from under the cushion the ivory snuff-box, taps with it against the head of the bed, and calls out in a breathless, damp voice:

"Well, idiot, where are you? Come here, lazybones."

Izak comes in covered with patches of dust from head to foot and trailing after him ragged edges of spiders' webs. From a distance he fixes his big, round, fishy eyes on Uncle Moritz. In all the years of his service it has never happened that Uncle Moritz has lifted a hand to him; nevertheless Izak is profoundly and permanently convinced that when Uncle Moritz calls him over to the bed, it is for the purpose of beating him. So, being called, he hesitates, and lingers at a distance, like an obstinate boy who is used to being whipped.

Splelrein is irritated by this manner of Izak's, and just because the lad is frightened he insists on making him come near the bed to listen to him. For a few minutes this dumb play continues between them. Spielrein looks hard at his servant out of his narrow, piercing eyes and keeps beckoning to him with his finger; Izak shuffles slowly forward by almost imperceptible steps. But it takes too long; Spielrein loses patience and in his impotent irritations begins to cough, then he snatches with both hands at the rubber spit-bottle, and Izak stands staring at him, now completely paralysed.

Uncle Moritz always keeps the spit-bottle ready; it is slung over one of his bony shoulders, where he can get at it without delay. The bottle is short and has a fat belly and a thin neck; a red rubber cork fits tight into the neck. Always when Uncle Moritz becomes irritated he begins to cough; the cough chokes him and he snatches at the bottle. He pulls out the cork with shivering hands. Slowly and accurately he spits into the narrow neck of the bottle and then fixes an anxious eye on its interior. He peers down for a long time; then he closes the bottle and feels with slow, careful fingers at the cork, to make sure that it is securely fastened.

Izak stares with his huge, chilly fish-eyes at the silent and industrious Uncle Moritz, then shuffles from the room before the latter has had time to wipe his bluish lips. He takes refuge in the last of the six big empty rooms; he hides himself in a low, soft armchair and for a long time he utters no sound, he does not stir, so that Uncle Moritz becomes uneasy and listens in vain for his voice or his footstep.

Spielrein is filled with an indescribable excitement. He feels quite certain in his own heart that although he has been lying in bed for six months, without interruption, he knows every little thing that has been happening in his apartment. If he were only a little healthier, he would get up, he would take that big loon by the ear, he would lead him into the fourth room, and he would point under the dresser:

"Look, that's where they are, that's where my shoes are, idiot! "

But what's the good of it all if he daren't get out of his bed without putting on his shoes first? Besides, the boy has disappeared completely, and Spielrein can't make up his mind what to do. Should he give in and tap with his snuff box on the head of the bed, to call the boy back, or should he ignore him and pretend he doesn't miss him.

Spielrein is always restless when Izak goes off into the farthest room and acts as if he were dead. It is a queer restlessness. First, he knows the lad's habits: whenever Uncle Moritz has given him a scolding or has bossed him about harshly, Izak falls into a state of blind terror, runs to the other end of the apartment, and collapses in an epileptic fit. And then Spielrein has to take the rubber hot-water bottles and tie them carefully round his ankles; he must crawl out of his warm bed, find the lad, and stand bent over him for a long time, with a cold key in his hand, until Izak comes to. Spielrein detests it; he can't bear the way Izak drums with his feet in a fit. Besides, his hand becomes weary and cold from holding the key, and he has to wait till he gets warm again. But it isn't this that frightens him so much. He knows that when Izak comes to, he remembers nothing of what has happened, not even that Uncle Moritz shouted at him. He goes back to his bed, takes out from under his cushion a warmed-up silver coin, and gives it to Izak to buy himself roast apples. Then Izak kisses his hairy hand with wet, slobbering lips and mumbles, over and over again:

"Thank you very much, Uncle Moritz, thank you very much."

What frightens Spielrein is something else entirely. In his apartment there are six big empty rooms, all in a row, and in the last room there is a door which is covered on the outside with yellow skins and fastened on the inside with iron bars and big brass nails. The door is vast and massive, surrounded by bolts and bars. But Spielrein always has the feeling that someone is tampering with the door. He is for ever sending Izak to see who it is. But the minutes pass and there is no sign of life from Izak. Spielrein isn't quite certain that some day Izak won't pack up and go, and leave him alone in the six huge empty rooms. And when this fear comes over him, Spielrein feels lonely and forlorn, like a child which a mother has left on a stranger's doorstep.

He sits on the edge of the bed awhile and thinks. There's a lot of work for him to do before he ventures for the first time into the street. First, he must prepare fresh cotton stopples for his ears. Second, he must work some cotton padding round the ear-pieces of his spectacles, because they hurt him. Third, he must take a careful look at his merchandise. Under his woollen singlet, which he never takes off, certain tiny little treasures wrapped in white tissue paper lie nestling against his skin: unchipped raw stones, which Spielrein now takes out from their hiding-place with trembling fingers; and as he does so, the dark, dusty room sparkles into life and there is a suggestion of Amsterdam and Antwerp and the lucid levels of the sea-floor. Today, for the first time in six months, Spielrein will be going to the jewellery market. There will be waiting for him merchants, connoisseurs, whose eyes—in one of them a magnifying glass is always screwed—light up with understanding at the sight of a genuine titbit. But besides these raw stones he has several strings of pearls, soft, sweet, faintly dull pearls, which glisten like the tears of a child. Throughout the winter he has been wearing the strings wound several times round his thin, scraggy neck. It is possible that the knots in the strings have become loosened; he must see to it that they are tightened, lest one of the strings come undone and the pearls spill on the floor, or perhaps in the middle of the street; and so he fumbles with stiff, bluish fingers among the limpid, sparkling treasures.

He forces himself to be calm and deliberate as he works, sitting on the edge of the bed in his night-clothes. His long, lean legs are thrust into white woollen stockings which reach up as far as his thighs. To his sunken belly is tied a small cushion, and his torso is wrapped in a thick woollen singlet. On his head is a red nightcap which can come down over his face like a visor. In his left eye he has, at this moment, a small black tube with lenses, the kind of instrument worn by watch-makers and goldsmiths.

He has tried every knot in every string of pearls and assured himself that it is firm. The cotton on the ends of the ear-pieces of his spectacles makes the frame sit comfortably. Only of Izak there is not a sign. And Spielrein begins to tap once more with his snuff-box on the head of the bed. He knocks and listens to the sounds echoing through the big idle rooms. Still Izak does not show himself. Then he beams to call in his thin, damp voice, setting up an alarm among innumerable echoes:

"Izak, that's enough now.... Izak, where are you?"

Now at last Izak comes crawling out of his hiding-place, dragging his heavy feet slowly from room to room, till he stands by Uncle Moritz's bed. With trembling hands Spielrein reaches under the cushion and takes out the warmed-up silver coin. He holds it out, at the same time offering his hairy, heavily veined hand for a kiss. He keeps the lad near the bed for several minutes, looks straight into his eyes, and keeps on repeating:

"Here, buy yourself something, Izak. But don't stop on the way to talk with anybody. Do you hear?"

Izak kisses the hairy hand with full, slobbering lips and nods: no, he won't stop on the way to talk with anybody.

His face is red and round; it makes one think sometimes of a winter apple, and at other times of a soft rose. Like a eunuch's, it has no sign of hair on it. And every time when he goes down and through Uncle Moritz's yard—that is, the yard round which Uncle Moritz's big apartment house is built—the girls come running out. The stocking-weavers and the cigarette-makers come running out of their cellars; they surround him, they tickle him with quick fingers under his armpits, and they shout into his ears:

"Little Izak, would you like me for a bride? Izak darling!"

 At such times Spielrein lies in his bed and strains himself anxiously to hear every sound that comes from the yard. His yard is a big one; the house has five storeys and many cellar apartments; in the cellars there are mostly stockingweavers and cigarette-makers. There the dirty windows covered with wire netting are for ever atremble. The reddish electric lights burn in the day-time too, and passers-by are seen only as far up as the knees. But the girls recognize them by the shoes and by the step. The cellars run round the entire yard, and the light shining out of them day and night makes it appear that the big wales are reared above some hollow, blazing limbo. Along one of the walls, on the second floor, runs Spielrein's own apartment, staring down with blank, covered windows into the yard.

It is lively in Spielrein's yard. There is a spinning of wheels and a rattling of cogs; the hoarse voices of the working girls come up from the cellars and are lost somewhere without an echo. Street conjurors and acrobats come into the yard sometimes; they spread out a mangy carpet on the ground and they clash together their metal trays. Only Spielrein's windows never open. Never is a curtain or a blind lifted, never does a pair of eyes peep out. The blinds, perpetually lowered as if to cover a mystery, are lined with dust; the windows are high, narrow, and set close together, as if they wanted each other's company and no one else's. In the cellars below and opposite they are always talking about the dusty windows that never open.

"They say it's ten years since anybody gave those rooms a cleaning."

"They say that nobody ever comes to see him, except the agent."

"They say he's made out his will and left everything to Izak."

Izak himself hardly knows what they say about him in the yard, and if he understands it he has no idea whether it is true. Uncle Moritz has never said a word about it to him. Uncle Moritz told him not to stop and talk with anybody so he drags his heavy legs as hastily as he can through the yard, and the colour comes into his face as he stares foolishly and in fear on every side. He goes as fast as he can, but the girls in the cellars recognize his feet and his steps; they leave the eyelets of their socks and their cigarette-filling maclunes, they pour out, they make a circle round Izak, they tickle him under the armpits, and they squeal and scream hysterically into his ears:

"Izak darling, would you like me for a bride?"

Spielrein in his bed hears the shrill sound of the voices, and he feels an odd, rocking restlessness somewhere in the innermost recess of his heart.

He lets Izak out into the yard as seldom as possible; he sends him only to the restaurant, to bring him food, and to buy baked apples for himself after he's been shouted at and Uncle Moritz has made up to him again. He knows that Izak won't get into trouble with those loose girls; he tries to avoid them, in fact; but when they've been at him, Izak always comes up into the apartment red with fear and trembling with excitement. His big round fish-eyes have a queer glitter in them, and his lips are fuller and wetter than ever. Then Spielrein calls him over to the bed, puts both hands on him, and looks narrowly into his eyes. He is not at all sure that some day one of those girls won't get hold of Izak and turn him against Spielrein. And he clings with bony fingers to Izak's soft hand, he eats into him with his close, suspicious look, and finally he lets him go suddenly, thrusting him away, so that Izak trembles.

Izak can't make Uncle Moritz out. Besides, he is all excited because the girls tickled him under the armpits. He feels tired and sleepy and goes to lie down for a while on a small divan which stands against the other wall, opposite the uncle's bed. Spielrein sits quietly, looks around him with wide-open eyes, puts a hand behind his ear and tries to catch far-off noises. He does not like to see Izak sleeping. He would like to have him always awake; he wants to hear Izak's voice and wants to know that he is not alone. But as if on purpose, Izak loves to sleep, loves to lie down and doze, even in the middle of the day. And Spielrein lies for hours then, listening with great intentness to the little noises about him and afraid to cough lest he should miss something.

During the day it is still tolerable; Spielrein does not let Izak sleep too much of it away. If Izak lies down or makes off to another room, Spielrein taps sternly with the ivory snuff-box on the head of the bed:

"That's enough now, Izak. You've slept enough."

"Izak, come here. We're going to read Lessing."

Then Izak produces from somewhere an old copy of Nathan the Wise, with tattered pages. He sits down near Uncle Moritz's bed and reads page after page in his thin, slightly hoarse, weak voice. This is the only book to be found in Uncle Moritz's apartment. Spielrein already knows it almost by heart. He knows every dialogue between the clever Nathan and the pretended dervish. But, for all that, he listens with the closest attention to every word which Izak reads out. His face breaks into a grin of pleasure with every clever retort which Nadhan makes to the rescuer of his beautiful Rachel; sometimes he even gets a fit of coughing from sheer pleasure; and then he makes a sign to Izak to stop awhile, and afterwards he makes him read the passage over again:

"Izak, again, right from the beginning."

But all this is during the day. In the night Izak becomes so sleepy that there is no keeping him on his feet. Then Spielrein, awake, keeps his eyes fixed on the fingers of the clock, and watches with the utmost intentness, as if to convince himself that they actually do move. The house is silent, the inside shutters are closed, the lamp throws a patch of light around the bed and leaves everything outside that steeped in darkness; and then Spielrein often pokes his lone, scraggy neck from under the warm quilt and stares grimly at the-half-closed shadowy door. Behind it are the rooms, the empty, closed rooms, each of them strange to the other, their doors seldom opened. Only once a week Deiches, Spielrein's agent, comes to see him. That is on Saturday night, when he brings the rent which he has collected from the several hundred tenants in the big apartment house. He carries the money in a heavy linen sack, and always he walks on tiptoe, like one who is not certain of the ground under his feet. He walks with bowed shoulders, his head down; he does not speak a word, as if he were afraid of interrupting someone.

Knowing that Deiches hates to utter one word more than is absolutely necessary, Spielrein also remains silent. Deiches silently shoves a little table over to his employer's bed, sits down on a low stool, and unties the linen sack. They work a long, long time. Deiches adds silver to silver, gold to gold, paper to paper. Spielrein lies on one side, holding in his hand a pair of bright scissors; he cuts little squares of paper, all the same size, and rolls the piles of coins, silver and gold, into containers. With trembling fingers he writes on each roll the value of its contents. Hours pass, and they still sit there, the lustre of their bald heads above the lustre of the gold; they do not speak a word; it is as if they were occupied in some sacred and silent ritual.

But all this takes up only a few hours of the week. When Deiches leaves, Spielrein binds the hot-water bottles round his ankles, crawls out of bed, carries the packages of gold and silver and notes to the iron safe, and hangs the little key of the safe round his neck. And then comes the long procession of the night hours, empty and sleepy, an interminable emptiness. The gate of the yard outside is locked and bolted every night, but the silence itself has a sibilant, intermittens voice, and queer, unidentifiable noises go up mysteriously from every corner in the house. Something moves whisperingly within the thick walls, as though these were hollow and something were being poured into them, as though something were scratching about inside. There is a faint scratching under the carpets, and between the wallpaper and, the wall, invisible claws. Spielrein feels with petrified fingers at his scraggy chest and throat, but his collar-bone and shoulder-blades and ribs stick out so that sometimes the pearls and precious stones are lost in the hollows and he cannot find them. He turns his head toward where Izak lies sleeping, but vast, massive shadows have poured themselves over everything. Spielrein takes out his snuff-box and taps. He taps faintly and hears how the brief, broken echoes die away in the empty rooms. Frightened mice run back to their holes. Fat-bellied sated spiders scuttle back to the interior of their webs. Spielrein is suddenly terrified by the sound of his own tapping and he crawls out of bed uncertainly. On uncertain legs he stumbles across the big room, hitting into something at every step. Finally he reaches Izak's little divan. He wants to see him, take one look at him, and return to bed. But Izak has rolled himself into the quilt, has hidden himself, and nothing of him is to be seen. And Spielrein pulls with stiff fingers at the quilt, fastens on Izak's round shoulders, and calls to him with his dull, damp voice:

"Izak, is it you? Izak, stick your head out, Izak."

"Oh, ah, a-a-h! Good morning to you, Mr. Spielrein." "Good morning to all of you, good people." "It's good to see you up again, Mr. Landlord!" "Thank you all, my dear friends." "That's another winter, landlord!"

"Yes, yes, good people, another winter in my pocket! Stole it right out of the bag."

Spielrein stands in the centre of his big yard. He bows to every side and touches with his stiff fingers the old-fashioned fur headgear which he has put on in honour of his tenants.

They greet him on every hand. That is his custom from of old—to come down from his hibernation when the pleasant Passover weather begins and when there is in the air a smell of late spring and Passover dishes. He is wrapped in a long, woollen gaberdine edged with yellow fox fur and buttoning right up to his throat. His bony feet are thrust loosely into soft leather galoshes trimmed with thick sheepskin borders. A big shawl hides his throat and ears. But in spite of his wintry appearance, they greet him tumultuously in the yard as the harbinger of summer. The birds which are harbingers everywhere else seldom penetrate into the yard, walled around by five storeys, and when Spielrèin comes down, it is as though a stork had perched on the high roof.

There is a joyous tumult in the big square yard. Masons bespattered with whitewash shout with raw, echoing voices to their assistants somewhere in the topmost attics. Lean Galician gentiles in greasy clothes stump about the yard pots and pans, new and ready for Passover use, dangle from their shoulders; in their provincial dialect they sing out their wares:

"Rondelei, rondel, pots, pans."

Even a dusty ray of sunshine has managed to break through between two walls. It falls in a patch near the filthy, pitchy garbage box, and lights up a group of mangy digs and cats and dancing children.

Spielrein stands in the middle of the yard and looks with narrowed eyes into the big spaces above him. He coughs so thinly, so uncertainly, that it is hard to know whether he is coughing or giggling or sighing.

 He has a great task before him. He has to show his tenants and neighbours that though he meets them seldom and though he has just spent six months in bed, he remembers them, each one by name. So he stands amid the gathering circle of men and women and children, looks at them narrowly, and utters one name after another with immense satisfaction.

"Heh, heh, heh! Grunvortzel from the fourth floor, a purse-maker, am I right?"

"Absolutely right, Mr. Landlord," the whole circle repeats, and waits till Spielrein has finished coughing with gratification.

"And you, my dear lady, are Mrs. Gluskin, the capmaker's widow, aren't you? '

"Absolutely right, Mr. Landlord!"

The circle grows. Children come sliding with the speed of arrows down the balustrades of the five storeys and stand on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of Spielrein and Izak.

Izak stands there sullen, red-faced. As always, he holds in one hand a mat of woven straw, ready to put it down if the ground should be damp, so that Uncle Moritz can take refuge on it as on an island. In the other hand he holds a bag of netting filled with cakes and biscuits and bottles of milk, in case Uncle Moritz should suddenly be assailed by hunger. Spielrein bends down to the children, too. He pinches their smooth cheeks with his bony fingers and chokes with satisfaction:

"Heh, heh, heh, you're the one who scratches the plaster off the walls, you rascal, you.... "

The children hold in their laughter with difficulty. They love the way Spielrein walks and talks, they love to hear him say: "You rascal, you," and they pinch themselves hard to prevent themselves from bursting out laughing in his face.

It's very pleasant in the yard just now. The sun is shining, the last mounds of frozen snow have been carted out. Even Joe the janitor, who spends half his time chasing the children with a broom, stands peacefully at one side, leaning on his broom. In his free hand he holds the pinch of snuff with which Mr. Spielrein has honoured him. He carries it carefully to his big, fleshy nostrils as if he begrudged himself the joy of taking it all in with a single sniff. Even Deiches, the agent and rent-collector, who is so loath to give away a single word more than is absolutely necessary and never opens his mouth except to ask for rent, has joined the circle and stands staring straight into Spielrein's mouth, and whenever his employer forgets, he prompts him, like a schoolmaster helping out a pupil:

"Lentchner of 59, a box-maker. Beder, from the right wmg, a carpenter."

The yard becomes friendly, and people begin to forget who is tenant and who landlord; it is as though the building has become common property and the big circle is just one contented creature. And then suddenly something comes cutting through the wall of flesh, something that pants and screams and spreads on every side the blast of its hot breath; the circle dissolves and scatters, like a cluster of chickens when a stone falls in its midst.

"It's Keile! She's got him!" the scattered circle mutters, and people stand back against the wall to see what will happen.

"It's Keile the widow, and she's got him in her claws!"

The story of Keile the widow is an old one: ever since her husband, the tinsmith, fell down from the roof of Spielrein's house and left her a widow with orphans, she, Keile the widow, has been suing her landlord, and it's years since she paid a kopeck of rent. Deiches keeps saying that he has long since finished with her and that he has paid out everything according to the court ruling. So every month he quietly brings policemen to her cellar apartment, and he exposes in the yard all her household possessions dilapidated beds stuffed with straw. Then he hangs a rusted lock on her door. But hardly is he gone when the lock has disappeared and she's in her cellar again. Latterly he has adopted new methods against her. He has had the door and the windows removed, and he has had the water-tap screwed out of the wall—all of it done without speaking a word.

When he did that, the yard was filled with astonishment and admiration.

"That's something only a Deiches could think up," they said.

But Keile the widow also adopted new tactics. Every morning, with the first peep of light, she gathered her children and stationed herself with them outside Spielrein's door. Then she bade them hammer with their bare fists at the skins nailed to the door, while she herself screamed, over and over again:

"Robbers, murderers, let me in!"

In the yard they laughed at her.

"Don't you understand," they explained, "that no one has ever been admitted, no one?"

In spite of that, she got up every morning and marched her children over to Spielrein's apartment. Of late she had lost all hope of ever getting to speak with "him." To her screaming and knocking there came no more reply than from the interior of a tomb. But now she has caught him! She has caught him in the light of day and in the presence of the whole yard. She has him and and he won't escape so easily. With one hand she holds fiercely to the two fur lapels of his gabardine, with the other she points furiously to her cellar, to the empty window-frames, which stare at them like blinded eyes. In a stern, sure voice, which is like the voice of a judge, she shouts:

"Come with me, take a look at my grave! "

At first Spielrein is terrified by her. He feels as though he were a prisoner in the hands of this woman. His legs tremble, he casts frightened glances on every side of the yard, as if he were imploring help. He stammers, half audibly:

"Speak to him, to Deiches, my dear. Leave me alone, I never interfere in these things."

But she doesn't let go, she pulls Spielrein with all her strength toward her "grave," and then Spielrein begins to cough, and he turns and snatches with both hands at the spit bottle dangling from his shoulder.

The yard is silent. All of them, the men and women back against the wall, the children, even Joe the janitor, stand open-mouthed and motionless. They stare while Spielrein unscrews the cap of the bottle and spits slowly and accurately into the interior. They stare while he looks anxiously down the neck of the bottle, they watch closely every little motion, they hardly dare to breathe; it is as if they were frightened of interrupting Spielrein's silent preoccupation. It is only when he has wiped his toothless mouth that the yard starts out of its paralysis and begins to understand what is happening. Deiches has run out of the yard to call a droshky, while Joe the janitor has grabbed Keile the widow and is dragging her away. Spielrein and Izak stand, pale and trembling with fright, to one side, watching; Joe has his arms round Keile, while she has grabbed his long whiskers in both her hands, and tugs. The tenants, who have been petrified, come to when the droshky drives into the yard, and Izak spreads out the straw mat for Uncle Moritz to step on as he climbs into the droshky. Then it is that the stocking-weavers realize that something funny is happening, realize also that Izak is here and that in a minute he'll be gone. They press back against the wall, and they begin to call to him in their squeaky, hysterical voices:

"Little Izak, would you like me for a bride?"

Spielrein wraps himself still more closely in his woollen shawl, to keep out the shrilling of the girls, and he signals to the driver to put up the big leather top.

Outside the yard the air is mild. The sky is cloudless, and the sunlight lies everywhere, under the feet of the passers-by and the hoofs of the horses and on the top of the church cupolas and on the puddles of muddy rain-water. Men walk lightly, with fresh, springing steps; they seem to be borne by the air; their eyes are bright with renewed youthfulness. Only Speilrein pulls the shawl tighter about him and lets the world see only the end of his nose. Not for a moment does he stop poking the driver with the tip of his stick and calling out:

"Quicker, my dear, quicker.... "

The streets are filled with traffic, the sidewalks are packed. Men and horses get in the way and hold up Spielrein's droshky. Spielrein fidgets in his seat, he looks blackly around him, and painful thoughts eat into his heart:

"A whole world with nothing but healthy people! Look at them, strong as oxen! And all of them have something against me. I'm a sick man, I'm liable to die any moment. I've got no lungs. They won't even let me pass."

In less than half an hour Spielrein is seated at a table in the restaurant which is the jewellery exchange, and he feels contented and at peace once more. The jewellery exchange received him with a great ovation. Merchants rose to their feet at a dozen tables, and loud applause filled the room.

'Bravo! Welcome back! It's Mr. Spielrein himself."

Now Spielrein sits, a contented man, at the marble-topped table. Under his feet Izak has laid the straw mat; from the innumerable folds of his face shines the contentment of his soul.

He feels good now. The proprietor of the café himself came forward and asked him if he might warm up one of the bottles of milk he brought with him. Now he sits and sips, one mouthful after another. The floor under him is dry. He has tried it out several times with the tip of his stick. The sun, shining in through the window, warms him. The merchants have put out their cigars and dispersed the smoke with their handkerchiefs. He draws deep draughts of air and repeats happily:

"Heh, heh, heh! Another winter in my pocket! Snatched it right out of the bag! "

The café is busy. Outside, in the street, the air is filled with the odour of old casks of wine; everywhere a suggestion of hazel nuts, which children play with in the Passover week, and exchanges of presents between brides and bridegrooms, also proper to this season. Dark, lean young men, swift of gesture and motion, crowd the café and swarm about the yellow tables like flies round honey-pots.

Here in the café everyone carries about little jewellery boxes, square-shaped, bedded inside with red and blue plush. In every box lies concealed some human being's anguish, some bride's happiness~reat treasures in such small compass that they can be heId between forefinger and thumb. Everyone carries, likewise, a small microscope which he can screw into his left eye. The treasures are not there to be concealed, but to be displayed. Everyone is in a hurry. Even while a man is looking through his microscope at one of the treasures, another has impatiently snatched it from him, eager to scrutinize it. The treasures are small, but the eyes which focus on them are big and watchful. Treasures have been known to vanish even while they circulate. Eyes dart from one man to another, from treasure to treasure.

Spielrein sits surrounded by merchants. He looks penetratingly at the lean, black, mobile young men, and a light flame fllckers in his gloomy eyes. Among these young fellows he knows scarcely one he, the oldest of the merchants on the exchange. These are all newcomers, these black-eyed, mercurial young men, with their dreams of unexpected fortunes. They hunt sudden riches in the rays of these precious stones and the lustre of gold. Spielrein fixes a green glance on their faces, and chokes between irritation and self-satisfaction.

"Heh, heh, heh," he sniggers to the old, accepted merchants who surround him. "Look at them, my dear friends. Before long they'll have us all out of here. Heh, heh, heh— don't you think it's time we took them in hand and soaped them up a little?"

"The two merchants, one on each side of Spielrein, feel his finger on their knees, to indicate that he wants to tell them something. They crowd closer to him, as if they were shielding him and themselves from the new generation of adventurers. Spielrein coughs several times and begins to tell them his story, speaking slowly and interrupting himself to utter little contented coughs.

He tells them of the old time, when he was passionately absorbed in the jewellery business and used to travel several times a year to Amsterdam to get new stuff. In those days the Warsaw jewellery exchange had another location: to . . . on the Street of the Three Crosses. There was only a handful of merchants in those days, and Spielrein had launched the proposal that they should form a closed corporation and admit no one else to the trade. He remembers them, those first jewellery-dealers, as if they were sitting opposite him. Not one of them is alive today. The whole of Crown Poland was in their hands. Toward them ultimately drifted the loveliest pearls of old dowager countesses, the most dazzling stones given to actresses and cocottes. And every pearl, every stone, was known to the merchants long before it came into their possession; its history was known, its appearance and its worth. And when it was put up for auction or offered for sale in the ordinary way, they felt that in acquiring it they were acquiring their own property, something which by its nature belonged to them and would always return to them.

"Because a precious stone," says Spielrein, "loves the connoisseur. It wanders around from hand to hand, but in the end it has to come back to the merchant."

Golden times those were, says Spielrein, and his voice becomes calmer, his utterance slower; but people on the outside became envious and they finally broke in on the business. He remembers how they did it, too; as if it had happened yesterday. One of these new men, one of these climbers, would present himself as a buyer, ask after a certain jewel. And he would buy one, too. But it was never sold to him by one of the regular merchants. They had a special man for that, an elderly goldsmith, who was an expert cardsharp and sleight-of-hand man. Afterwards the young man would hang around the exchange, day and night. He would show his acquisition to the merchants, and each of them would look long at the stone in its velvet bed and say commiseratingly to the young man: "Too bad, my dear boy, you've been soaped up.

The café grows livelier. A young bridegroom in foppish clothes comes in with his bride; he is going to buy her a present. In his home town the young man is the leading wheat merchant and ranks as a cattle expert. But he became engaged, he has to buy his bride presents, and he stands in the midst of the jewellers helpless and ashamed, his face crimson; his eyes wander among the microscopes; he feels that he, not the jewels, is under their scrutiny.

A young woman comes in with a brooch to sell; she has taken it from her bosom, where she has always kept it warm. She offers it for sale with as timid and shy a gesture as if she were offering herself. Before she knows it she is surrounded by the microscopes, and the brooch, her last consolation, still warm from her bosom, is slipping from hand to hand, passes under one microscope after another, passes out of her sight....

The place is in an uproar, but now Spielrein pays no attention. Even in these days, when he has, as it were, retired from business, when he is sick, a man without lungs, the merchants know that he carries around with him more than one string of pearls which can swallow up all the precious stones circulating on the exchange. He laughs in their faces. There's one stone, he hints, one stone in particular, the like of which, he says, will not be found throughout the length and breadth of Crown Poland—and perhaps not even in Amsterdam, either. He knows that there isn't a man here who can buy it. And he doesn't need purchasers; that isn't what he came for. He came to be among his own kind, among merchants, the sort of people who will understand him. And he wants to show them what a man like Spielrein has up his sleeve... .

A quiet, mysterious mood falls on the merchants who surround Spielrein; it is as though a piece of black magic were about to be performed, and they screw their microscopes into their eyes betimes. With trembling hands Spielrein opens first his gabardine, then his vest, then his shirt, then his singlet. He pokes his fingers around on his naked body, and slowly, as if he wanted to stretch their patience to the breaking-point, he draws out a little something wrapped in a piece of paper. He fumbles around, and suddenly, from between his bluish, bony fingers, a bright ray darts out.

"Heh, heh, heh, what?"

For a few minutes there is a paralysed silence. The merchants start back involuntarily, as though they could not stand up to Spielrein's penetrating look, as though they had something to be ashamed of in his presence. But when Spielrein sees another group of gazers, the black, mercurial young men, growing up outside the circle of his ovm friends, he clenches his fist with a shiver of nervousness.

He had seen the glitter of his treasure reflected from a score of black eyes—and something had begun to rock with fear in the recesses of his heart.

III

Every morning, when the first ray of sunlight forces its way between the blinds and lays a bright finger on the dust, Spielrein stands bent over Izak's little divan and tugs persistently at his quilt.

"Wake up, lazybones. You've slept enough."

He has been awake long; he was up before the first blue glimmer showed between the blinds. Without any help he has boiled himself some milk; he has read through a whole act of Nathan the Wise; he has listened to the whistles of all the factories, recognizing each one separately as it broke through the air, naming it by name, naming the factory owner. He has let Izak sleep on. In those early hours the dew still lies on the streets, the air is soaked through and through with a greenish dampness, and Spielrein is afraid to venture into the streets then. But now the sun has been shining long. It’s time to go into the Saxony Gardens and drink the mineral waters. He tugs at the quilt, he shakes his servant, and he reproaches him with the words of Ecclesiastes:

"Arise, sluggard! How long will you sleep yet?"

The city streets are filled with motion and excitement Along the freshly swept sidewalks stream endless proces signs of young men and women; in their hands is a package of lunch, on their lips a perpetual "Pardon me!" as they rush careening into one another.

These are not the workers who are called by the factory whistles; those have long since disappeared behind the . . . walls. They hurded through the streets long ago, as soon as the first shrilling blast broke through the air; and whosoever among them arrived ten seconds late found in front of him a little, green-painted door, closed, and on it a sign, in black letters: "No Admittance." And he stood there and felt that he was wholly superfluous in the world. These are very different workers pouring through the streets now, workers in ateliers, shop clerks, and secretaries. They don't give their names when they come to work, they don't have to let themselves be searched when they leave it. For which reasons they are able to go out walking at night and to hide themselves, in pairs, sweethearts, in dark paths lined with trees. Mornings they are late by about a quarter of an hour, and as they hurry through the streets, they encounter everywhere the silent reproach of the city clocks. They hate these clocks, with their accuracy, their imperturbability, their exact hours and minutes and seconds. They hasten along the sidewalks, they collide, they pass one another or drop behind, muttering but not hearing the "Pardon me's" with which the air is thick.

Spielrein crawls slowly along the sidewalk. He sends in front of every step his white ebony stick; his bony knees follow close behind, and every few moments he gives vent to a little discontented cough. He knows that sooner or later someone will step on his toes, someone from among these scurrying young people, and he calls mockingly after them:

"Heh, heh, heh, pardon me, pardon me."

When he reaches the eleven gates of the Saxony Gardens, he is relieved and happy. Everything is quiet and peaceful here. Long lines of railings separate the gardens from the city and make a place of quiet. The paths between the trees are swept clean, and water has been sprinkled on them. The evidences of nocturnal love passages—from a lost hairpin to a caramel wrapper—have been gathered up and swept into the dust heaps. At this hour it is only the elderly, dignified folk who walk here, the kind who dislike noise and who don't drop things. They don't even care for the band which is there to amuse them, and at the sound of it they look up, dissatisfied, like rich wedding guests who are offended when the musicians play something for their special benefit.

Spielrein walks slowly along the freshly swept path, the clean pebbles crunching under his feet, and from time to time he lifts his hand to the shiny four-cornered peak of his silken, foreign kept.

Nearly all of these folk are acquaintances of his. They greet him from every side, in Polish too.

"Good morning, Mr. Spielrein. Your good health, Mr. Spielrein!"

He has several things to do now. First he has to drink a few glasses of the mineral waters. After that he has to walk over to the barometer and clock, to see what the weather is going to be like and to adjust his watch. In addition, he has not yet read the fresh morning papers, and this weighs on his conscience.

Spielrein has to see the newspapers every day. Not for the sake of politics and not for the sake of communal affairs, for, after all, he is a man dangerously sick, a man without lungs, in fact, and he has not the strength for such strenuous interests. What he looks for in the papers is quite different. Apart from the brief section on the last page containing the foreign exchanges and the announcements of foreclosures, he has to look through the obituaries.

The reading of the obituaries and the editorial tributes has long been a matter of habit with Spielrein. It began when he came back many years ago from a journey to Amsterdam, with a bad cold. Ever since then he has considered himself an invalid who may go under any moment. True, a great many years have passed since then, but Spielrein continues to feel insecure. He knows that men with their health as undermined as his can be carried off by just one nasty little wind, one breath of damp air; so he is always prepared for the worst. He carries about with him, in the pocket of his singlet, near the little packages of precious stones, a parchment document, his will. Everything he possesses is entered there and every eventuality is provided for. No one knows what is written in his will, he never talks about it to anyone, and he grins to himself when he hears of the guesses which circulate as to its contents. Heh, heh, heh—he knows. And every time a new house or piece of land falls to him by foredosure, every time a pledge is forfeited, he goes to see his notary and adds a cod'lcil: "Being of sound mind, I, Moritz (that is, Meyer) Spielrein, do hereby direct of my own free will . . ."

On top of all this, he has his own grave all ready. Even the monument is finished and erected. It stands in the front path in the old cemetery, surrounded by grass and flowers and countless tombs in polished marble and granite. It is fenced off by high iron railings, and the gate is fastened with a heavy English lock. It is a huge monument, which Spielrein had executed years ago. On the top of the vast block two hands are lifted in benediction, and under them sits a dove. On the front of the monument the inscription apnears, cut deep in Hebrew lettering: "Here lies the wise and learned man Meyer (Moritz) son of Moses Ha-Kohen Spielrein." Beneath that, in Polish: "In Memory of Moritz Spielrein, merchant and citizen of Warsaw." When he ordered this monument,he gave the mason exact instructions and wrote out the words for him, only leaving a blank space for the date of his demise.

And from that time on, Spielrein felt that, in addition to his houses and mortgages in various parts of the city, he owned a special properey, a front lot in the old cemetery. He developed in this, as in every one of his other possessions, an intimate interest. He began to study the surroundings of this property, he wanted to know who his neighbours were, and he kept abreast of the additions to the local population. So every morning he buys the newspaper and turns eagerly to the page with the blg black letters and the announcements in framed borders.

The line of black boxes is a long one. Those at the top are expensively large, the borders especially thick. Then the boxes become smaller and the frames thinner. But Spielrein must read all of them, big and small, thick and thin. He puts on his glasses, the ear-pieces of which are wrapped in cotton, and walks expectantly over to his own bench in the Imperial Alley.

There his friends are assembled, respected elderly burghers taking their rest after the morning stroll and the imbibing of the mineral waters. Most of them are one-time students of the former Rabbinical Academy, men who know Schiller's Robbers by heart, have read Moses Mendelssohn's Commentaries on the Bible, and intersperse their Yiddish with many German words. They know the family record of every frequenter of the Alley and are at least on nodding terms with the latest financiers and Mæcenases, just as they remember the family records of the old dowager countesses with whom they used to do business long ago. Spielrein, too, knows each one of them, and when they see him from a distance, they make room for him. Those who are smoking put out their cigars, and every bench calls to him:

"Here, Mr. Spielrein, come and sit with us."

"I thank you, gentlemen."

He takes a seat at a bench, and for a time the conversation is commonplace. There is much courteous mutual questioning about states of health, the questions and answers being repeated several times. They also ask each other whether they are sitting comfortably on the bench. These ceremonies settled, Spielrein unfolds the Courier and, having looked at the first announcement among the obituaries,  turns to his companions and beams at them:

"Heh, heh, heh, gentlemen! What do you think of this? Old Goldthaler has taken it into his head to die."

"Goldthaler!"

Universal astonishment. Only a few days ago old Goldthaler was seen on the exchange. Spielrein looks around him vastly contented. He was afraid that someone might have anticipated him with a copy of the Courier. Well, well, apparently no one knew. They've just got the news from him. They refuse to believe him; and although they know that Spielrein is not lying, they keep on repeating, for no particular reason:

"But for God's sake, Mr. Spielrein . . . "

"But, Mr. Moritz, it's impossible.... "

To which Spielrein does not answer with words. He only opens wider, with trembling hands, the fresh page of the Courier and invites them to look.

"Heh, heh, heh, what?"

"There's no denying it. There it is, black on white. "After a brief illness . . . friends and acquaintances are requested to attend the obsequies . . . " What is incomprehensible, however, is the statement "at the age of sixty-three." There isn't a man in the assembly who would not vouch that old Goldthaler had reached his seventieth year— oh, at least his seventieth. Here Spielrein breaks into a cough, and taps his neighbours on the knees, to indicate that he has something to tell them.

"Now, gentlemen, let me—I know all about the case."

The folds on his face grow deeper. His companions stare into his mouth.

They are ready to admit that Spielrein has all the information, down to the slightest detail. "A head of iron," is the description applied to him, and it is known that in all the years of his business activity he never kept books, but relied solely on his massive memory. Spielrein thinks awhile, gives them the exact reckoning, and adds:

"Heh, heh, heh, those young Goldthalers, ignoramuses, every one of them. He was sixty-eight, exactly sixty-eight."

The assembly does not argue with him. They know that Spielrein does not like to be argued with. But it would be interesting to hear from Spielrein whether, in his opinion, the young Goldthalers will continue the business. They are looked upon, these heirs, as profligates; and it is known that the old man left them a fat fortune.

"A fat fortune?"

Spielrein won't listen to such talk. He is so offended that he breaks into a violent fit of coughing; meanwhile he keeps his hand on his neighbour, to prevent him from saying anything, and when he recovers he says:

"Now, gentlemen, don't speak about things you know nothing about.... Fat fortune, heh, heh, heh—in the words of Nathan the Wise—"

He does not give the quotation, but cackles again. "Let me tell you that what he left his heirs won't buy them a pinch of snuff. I know. I held his first and second mortgages myself."

The air in the gardens grows warmer. Two young lovers stroll up and down the Imperial Alley and cannot find a place to sit down. The sun is very bright now, and what they are looking fbr is a shadowed place. . . . Children, fatcheeked and brown, run up and down the Alley, their shrill laughter ringing above the talk of the old people. They chase butterflies, they play ball. Yelping dogs jump with them. A few dogs have gathered round a washed Pekinese and refuse to be chased away by the shamefaced young woman who holds it in leash. But the old men on the bench pay no attention to all this and go on with their absorbing conversation.

The black boxes spill over from one page into the next— the long trail of the little boxes with the thin frames. But no box is too small for Spielrein. He knows everyone. He chokes with self-satisfaction, and he is continually tapping his neighbours on the knee to tell them to be quiet because he knows the whole story.

In the afternoon Spielrein puts on an old-fashioned overcoat which comes down to his ankles and pinches tight about the waist. On his head he perches a greenish top hat. He leaves his ebony stick at home and takes along an umbrella in its place. Thus changed, he looks like some old synagogue cantor who has long since had to give up the practice of his profession. He has put on this uniform in order to attend old Goldthaler's funeral; he feels that nothing less stately will answer to the occasion. The funeral will not take place till late in the afternoon, and to pass the time Spielrein goes again to the café which is the jewellery exchange.

Now the café is practically empty; the chairs and tables are steeped in a dozing silence.

The days are hot. This is not the season for weddings. Wealthy citizens are all out of town, in the German health resorts and watering-places. There are no actresses in the city, for the theatres are closed. A few jewellery merchants bore themselves at the tables in the café; without interest they tell stories of remarkable gems which they have seen or heard about. They talk likewise about the police raid, and everyone wishes that he had in cash the money that changed hands then.

Searches of this sort are frequent on the exchange. Every accredited merchant is supposed to have a permit; he must likewise have books and accounts in which are entered all his purchases, without exception. This is the law, and its purpose the big books. The young fellows, black, lean, mercurial, haven’t the time or the inclination for such things. They buy what and where they can; they sell in the same way. Besides, is to hunt down dealers in stolen goods. But only merchants those who buy in Amsterdam, keep more than one of them knows what it is to steal across the frontier with a "parcel." They slip over to Switzerland, lay in a stock of cheap gold-plated watches, and sell them for solid gold. These watches are very popular with women entertainers in cheap cafés and the lazy, beefy wives of small merchants and minor officials. The police descend frequently, suddenly, and silently on the exchange; there is a swift, wordless warning, a running to and fro of figures, a pitting of craft against craft.

There is always a glitter of imitation gold in the café. The eyes of the black young men shoot red sparks; the eyes of the police answer with green and grey.

Spielrein sits on the edge of his chair, stiff in his long, narrowold-fashioned overcoat. He looks around him when the search is being made, and he cackles inwardly. Young men come sidling up to him. They want to unload their watches on him, they want to stuff his pockets with their possessions. He is a member of the guild, he has a permit, the police won't even approach him. But he waves them away.

"Heh, heh, heh, my dear boys, I don't even know you. . . . My business is with merchants, not with pedlars."

Later that day a long, mournful, symmetrical procession black clothes glittering in the hot sun, draws through the streets of the city. The mourners are few in number. The greater part of the friends and acquaintances who have been bidden to the last rites are abroad, and yet the procession is long. For the heirs have ordered a great number of carriages, so that they stretch an entire block and hold up the traffic as they pass; but most of them are empty. In the last one sits Spielrein, with Izak, and the two of them rock comfortably on the velvet seats.

Spielrein is in a contented mood, though he did have a little incident with the driver. Izak wanted to lay the straw mat on the floor for Spielrein's feet. The driver took offence and told Izak to take that filthy thing out of his car.The driver just did not know. He saw an old man in an old-fashioned overcoat, so he took him for a poor relative or some distant acquaintance—the kind of man who hangs around the funerals of the rich in order to make the acquaintance of the survivors. Now he knows that the old man in the old-fashioned overcoat is a somebody. But he cannot get it into his driver's head; he does not understand why rich old men must dress and act like that. Turning round in his seat, he repeats to Spielrein:

"I beg your pardon, sir, excuse me, sir."

Spielrein forgives him and beams with satisfaction. The carriages are free, being included in the expenses of the funeral. It is only now that he appreciates the difference between the rattling droshkies he always takes and the comfort of a good carriage.

It is a long business at the cemetery.

The preacher speaks long, earnestly, with much sorrow in his voice, as if no one knew that he utters exactly the same words for every rich corpse brought into the cemetery. The cantor intones verses from the Psalms, in the bassoprofundo manner of a church choir leader, and the mourners stand stiffly round the corpse. Spielrein stands in a corner with the old cemetery beadle Jeroham Getzel, and they nod their heads to the words of the preacher, which they already know by heart.

They meet at all the important funerals.

Jeroham Getzel has been many years in the business. He fias a long, thick white beard, thick white eyebrows, and a red and jolly face, so that, all in all, he looks like a painted gnome. They say of him that he has more money than he knows what to do with; likewise that he does not refuse to eat at the tables of the German Jews, though he knows that their food is not kosher. But if you ask him, he will answer that he has no use for these half-Jews, who are as good as apostathized. He knows them. He has buried hundreds of them. He has buried, in fact, nearly the whole of Warsaw —that part of it which is dead. And he looks on all human beings merely as material to be buried. It is his firm belief that he never meets a man whom he will not outlive, But of Spielrein he is afraid. That man has a bad habit of frequenting the cemetery too often; he has put up his own monument, he is always there to bury others; he is for ever talking about death, and never as if he were afraid. And there he is, standing on his feet. Jeroham does not feel the same security in the presence of this perennial invalid, and he looks at him suspiciously.

As they are returning from the burial, Spielrein stops in front of his monument, and the others stop with him. It is silent in the cemetery. The grass is high and uncut the black and white marble sends chilly shadows through the air. Only the birds, chasing each other in flocks from ranch to branch, from mausoleum to mausoleum, are merry. Spielrien looks round at the crowded graves and then at his own with radiant satisfaction.

They are talking about the price of Goldthaler's plot: fifteen thousand rubles, and it is in the fifth path. Spielrein’s is right in the front, among the very best, and coughing slightly, he asks:

"Well, gentlemen, what do you think I paid for mine?" nobody dares hazard a guess. Spielrein cackles joyously:

"Heh, heh, heh, one thousand rubles, gentlemen, exactly one thousand rubles."

IV

 In the jewellery exchange the long rows of tables stand clean and lonely, staring shamefaced at the long, empty room. They are neatly covered with ash-trays and pink table-napkins which no one is there to use. A few waiters doze in a dark corner and send heavy yawns through the hot atmosphere. The flies move in groups from marble top to marble top. They crawl here and there, look for nourishment, find none, move to another marble top.

This is the time of the auctions for forfeited jewellery. The auctions take place, not in the jewellery exchange, but in the special sales building, an old one-storey structurein a narrow, crooked street near the Vistula. The pawned jewels have been accumulating in the municipal pawnshop for months, and the sales will take every bit of a week. The sales-room is long and low, with an ancient arched ceiling. The attendants have worked there for many years, and with their long whiskers they seem to be as aged as their surroundings. Trifles are not bought and sold in this place— only larger valuables. Sometimes a working man comes to the building, his Sunday clothes done up in a neat bundle; or perhaps he brings an old silver watch to pawn. Then the old, clever attendants smile tolerantly and answer in very low voices:

"This isn't the place, my good man. We take only expensive jewellery here."

Now the big fire-proof safes are filled to overflowing, and the buyers have assembled with their microscopes screwed into their eyes; they wait with bated breath for the familiar hoarse voice:

"A brooch with a large stone in the centre, twelve small stones around, opening at a thousand rubles."

"A string of pearls, clear, very pure, opening at one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five fifty."

Dark, mercurial young men rise in a group, as if an electric current had shot through them.

"A brooch with a large stone in the centre, twelve small stones around.... "

They must take a look at that brooch. Quite true that the sum mentioned represents what the pawnshop lent on the piece, plus accumulated interest; but the piece is known. Loan and interest have nothing to do with its value. They want to take a look at it. Is lt possible that someone has akeady talked with the old public auctioneer? Is there an arrangement?"

A voice is heard: "One thousand one hundred."

Another: "One thousand four hundred."

Those who don't know the piece crowd forward. Is there a bargain to be snatched up? If so, one must act quickly, get in ahead with a decent bid

"One thousand eight hundred."

But then, on the other hand, the bidding up may have been fixed in advance. Perhaps a good "soaping up" has been planned here. You can't judge without a long scrutiny of the goods. They press forward, sweaty body against sweaty body. Some reach the front, others get strong elbows in their ribs and are pushed back. Besides, the old, hoarse public auctioneer is very careful about the hands stretched to him. He won't give the piece to just anyone. Only the old ones are safe, the Amsterdam dealers. There they are, seated at the green table in front, near the auctioneer and the city pawnshop official. Spielrein is in their midst, showing his long, scraggy neck as he cranes this way and that. A sickly excitement agitates his wrinkled face.

The room is filled with the delirium of treasure, blind treasure; there is hope, there is a chance for a big killing; there is wealth for the asking, but you must act quickly, you must make up your mind; in another minute it will be too late. The air chokes them; there is a longing to scream —anything, just to be in it, not to feel excluded, to be part of the hope. But most of them are afraid; they don't know what to scream into the hot atmosphere.

"Two thousand."

"Two thousand three hundred."

Then pent-up silence.

Two invisible, bodiless figures move through the low room under the arched ceiling, fortune and misfortune. They move about and their fingers touch every man, but no one can identify them and tell which is which. Hot desire pours into the room, starts of daring, chills of fear. To snatch at fortune and to hold it, to thrust misfortune into someone else's arms. Fiery rays dart from the treasure at the green table. They are hotter and brighter than the rays of the sun. The mind melts under them, the sham, friendship, enmity everything melts and fuses in the heat of lust.

"Three thousand."

"Three thousand five hundred."

A loud murmur, then silence again. A thin voice cuts through the room, finds its way across the heat, across the thickness which fills the air; it is a thin, choking voice, the voice of a woman crying. She came here—what for? To take a last look at her treasure, to remember, to weep. For a moment or two they let the sound of her mourning take precedence, and then the tumult of hoarse voices breaks out again and her lament is swallowed up without an echo.

It is a familiar sound, that lament. It will be heard again at future sales. They have not too much time for it.

"Four thousand eight hundred and seventy-five." Stop!

For an instant the tenseness is sharper than the assembled buyers can stand; then everything relaxes. This one incident is over, and the men pour into the yard for a five-minute rest. Now everything is known. The big men, the "Amsterdam" merchants, have been forcing up the price on the brooch. Not with their own money, but with the dowry of a young man who came to them to buy something good. They do not buy the brooch. Into their hands, however, fell the string of pearls which the voice of the unseen woman had lamented. That string of pearls must be a beauty, for as they go out a second time the "Amsterdamers" look particularly contented. They form a phalanx round Spielrein every one of them anxious to hear what he has to say

"Heh, heh, heh, gentlemen, it wasn't the money at all. Just a matter of pride. Just to show you."

But he looks cautiously on every side and signals to a droshky.

Sometimes it happens that a young wife who has trusted too much to her husband's business acumen and luck comes running to the auction hall of the pawnshop looking for Spielrein. She finds him and in the presence of the whole assembly begins to scream at him:

"Murderer! Bloodsucker! "

Perhaps this is what Spielrein is thinking of now as he pokes the driver in the back and murmurs:

Faster, my good man, faster."

Spielrein's vast five-storey apartment house is filled with tumult.

A little while ago Spielrein purchased the neighbouring house; now part of the left wing of the first house is being broken through, and a passage is being constructed from one house to the other. The masons hammering at the wall and prying loose the bricks spread a red dust over the yard; the dust gets into their lungs and keeps them coughing dryly. Huge muscular carpenters stride around, thick pencils stuck into their boots. They test the new beams, tap them with their fingernails, listening expertly, guessing whether they come from sound trees and are not worm eaten under their solid-looking exteriors and therefore unfit for Spielrein's structure. Spielrein sits on a pile of fresh lumber. He watches eagerly every motion of the builders, and whenever a chip falls too far from the block, he reaches out with his long stick and works the chip back toward the pile, grunting softly and contentedly.

A week or so ago he had something of a quarrel here. The tenants on this part of the second floor, where the wall was being pulled down, would not move. They made a terrible fuss; here they were, all fixed up and comfortable, and they would not get out. But Deiches quietly brought the police and had the tenants removed. Now the other tenants are happy that the newly acquired building does not adjoin their apartments. The children in the yard, to whom the smell of trees and forests is a novelty, never leave the logs and planks. Spielrein smiles at them, as he always does when he is contented. He lets one of them come near him, pinches his cheek, and cackles:

"You rascal, you. You scrape the plaster off the walls, don't you? "

He would be wholly happy now but for one little thing. The idea of driving a passage through from one house to the other was a brilliant one. The young architect who has the job in hand just can't get over it. It will be possible to put a sixth storey on top of the two buildings. The walls are thick and powerful. They could, as a matter of fact, carry two or three storeys more. The little thing that now torments Spielrein has nothing to do with his houses. It has to do with his sister, who is liable to arrive any day now.

At the close of every summer, when the school term begins, his sister arrives from Lodz and exposes him to all sorts of public insult. She has a large number of children, boys and girls; all of them are at school, none of them brings a kopeck into the house. His sister is a woman who thinks of the future, and she wants all her children to receive a complete education. She knows that Spielrein does not want to see her, will close the doors of his apartment against her but she refuses to be discouraged, and every year she comes to her brother Moritz and occasions the most dreadful scandals.

Spielrein knows she is due any moment now, and his ears are on the alert. She won't get anything out of him; that's certain, he says to himself. Didn't he warn her, when she was a girl, not to marry that school-teacher? But no, she would not listen to him. What claim has she on him, then. Yes, she'll come, and she will bang away at his door, so that all the tenants in the house will assemble. He knows her habits. He knows what she will tell the tenants:

"Wait, friends, you'll see what kind of landlord I'll be when my turn comes."

Spielrein cackles inwardly over her foolish words, and he feels involuntarily for the woollen singlet next to his skin.

"Heh, heh, heh, I’ve got a little piece of parchment there together with the raw stones."

The sun has stopped breaking through into Spielrein's yard; the cellar apartments are darker than ever. Now the factory whistles sound in darkness, and the rains never give over humming on the leaden roofs. Spielrein, lying in bed and listening, feels a tiny draught about his knees, and he realizes that one big quilt is not enough at this season of the year.

The nights are longer and quieter. The morning twilight lingers into late hours. And Spiekein has a new series of tasks. He has to go over all his hot-water bottles, to make sure that the mice haven't got at them during the summer. Once or twice he missed little holes eaten out in corners and he got warm water on his bare legs. He has to have his long white stockings darned; and it wouldn't be a bad idea to send Nathan the Wise to a bookbinder, to put new covers on it.

On rare occasions the sun still manages to break through and its rays are hot, as only the rays of a late autumn sun can be. Then Spielrein goes out for a walk, basks in the warmth, and murmurs:

"Stolen days, stolen sunlight.... "

Then suddenly, one day, there is a great tumult in the yard and on the second floor. The door with the skins nailed to its outside opens and closes violently. Closed carriages drive swiftly into the yard. The dusty windows on the second floor, closed for so many years, are flung open. A head covered with a shock of silver hair, a professorial head, appears at one of the open windows. Deiches and Izak run up and down the yard, tap at doors and windows, ask people to make less noise, to stop the machines.

"Stop, good people, whispers Deiches, "he's done for."

There is sudden, frightened silence in the yard. The girls leave the stocking-weaving machines, run to the windows, and stare up at the second floor. They wait and wait, as if something portentous was about to present itself at the windows up there.

Under its silence the yard is restless.

It is three days since the sun has been seen. A thin, dirty drizzle comes down from the skies and pours through the gutters and pipes of the five-storey building. The air in the streets is heavy with the sweetish odour of rotted fruit. A fog goes up out of the big black garbage boxes. Wandering cats and dogs have become so daring that they beleaguer the doors. Children with white faces, soft bodies, and swollen bellies wander about in the yard.

The stink of pestilence is in the air. Hardly a night passes now but some mother gets up, screams hysterically, and runs to waken the druggist. Death broods over the yard; it breathes on the peeling walls of the yard, it gurgles in the dirty, infected water pouring through the gutters, it lurks in the corridors and seeks a way through the cracks of the doors.

Almost every day now the double gate swings wide open to admit a pair of huge black-draped horses, followed by the hearse. They come in slowly and turn their blinkers to right and left. The tenants in the yard peep out and draw back, frightened lest the blinkers should turn toward them. Therefore mothers pull down the blinds and gather their children about them and cover their faces, as if the baleful glitter of the blinkers could penetrate through walls and blinds and windows.

More days of rain—and then at last one morning dawns clear and windless, and the sun breaks out, warm and friendly, as if to make repayment for all the ghastly days that have gone before. The threat lifts with the bad weather, the pestilence passes as swiftly as it came, the five storey apartment house resumes its accustomed appearance. The wheels and cogs begin to whirr and rattle in the cellars. Only on that morning the double gate swings wide open again, and the black horses come in slowly. Jeroham Getzel cliimbs down from the hearse and rubs his hands, as if he were coming home from a long journey.

The yard is silent again, faces are at the windows, and a murmur passes from door to door:

"So—we heard nothing—we must have slept very heavily.... "

The red-nosed officers of the Burial Brotherhood fix the trappings of the horses, and Jeroham Getzel strides back and forth slowly, tugging at his beard.

It is a long time since he himself has been in this yard; the last occasion was when some tenants whom Spielrein had thrown out reported to Jeroham Getzel that Spielrein was dead, and sent him here on a fool's errand. That was in the middle of the night—a pleasant awakening planned for Spielrein. And Jeroham Getzel had hurried. First, he made it a point of honour to attend in person the burials of all rich men; second, he had been waiting a long time for Spielrein, and he was impatient to be at him. So he had taken up his lantern and had set out in the middle of the night. He had arrived with hearse and black box, ready. But no one had opened the gates for him. No one had been awake. And he had had to drive back several miles to the old cemetery.

He had been ashamed to show himself round the yard for [ ] a time. But now the High Holy Days had come, the festivals of the New Year and of the Day of Atonement. Every day thousands of women went out to the cemeteries, to pray at the graves and to beg the intercession of the dead at the throne of mercy. Jeroham had been in great demand, and the terror of the pestilence still hung over the city. During those days Getzel had looked upon every living person with a special proprietorial air, and when he had walked through the city streets he had winked at the young men and had hummed under his breath, with a melody taken from a Sabbath prayer:

"And when the carriage of Reb Jeroham shall appear beneath thy windows."

Who is it Reb Jeroham Getzel has come for now? For some unknown reason all the faces at the windows are turned up to the second floor. They wait. It has happened at last, if Jeroham Getzel in person is here. But then suddenly a white ivory stick flashes in the yard, and a pair of thin bony knees follow close behind, and a familiar little cough is heard:

"Heh, heh, heh, good morning to you, Reb Jeroham Getzel. How are you this morning, Reb Jeroham? "

Clustered heads shiver, wide-open eyes turn from the familiar figure to the walls of the apartment house.

Jeroham Getzel takes the reins of the horses and pulls the hearse over to a corner of the yard. And now a window not in the expected second storey, has opened, and a thin wailing, woman's voice is heard as from afar:

"Oh, my little one, my young one, my hope, my support, my breadwinner. . ."