STUDY QUESTIONS

I.J. Singer, "Sender Praguer" in The River Breaks Up: A Volume of Stories trans. Maurice Samuel (New York, 1966): 138-76

With the break of day the beggars of Warsaw began to assemble at the door of the red-painted restaurant Praga, the hang-out of the cattle-dealers.

As a rule there was nothing to be seen in the window of the Praga but a roast goose lying on its back with a small wooden stake driven into its stomach, like a flag-pole, at the end of which waved a ticket with the word "Kosher," and a large dish containing several fish-heads, into the mouths of which were thrust red carrots; but this morning the window contained an announcement which brought joy to the hearts of Warsaw's poor. Black on white, big, crooked handpainted letters declared as follows:

"It is hereby announced that in celebration of the happy and fortunate wedding of the owner of this restaurant, Sender Praguer, to his bride Edye Barenbaum, which is to take place in the Venezia Assembly Rooms, I, Sender Praguer, hereby donate a free dinner to all the poor people of this neighbourhood, men and women alike, which dinner will be served between two and four o'clock on the afternoon of the wedding. Each person will receive a plate of hot cabbage, a large since of bread, likewise a portion of stuffed intestine. The public is asked not to come before the announced hour, and not to crowd and push, because there will be enough for everyone. By me, Sender Praguer, the bridegroom."

In spite of the definite request contained in the announcement, that no one should come before two o'clock, the poor and the beggars were already milling round the window in the early hours of the morning and standing on tiptoe to catch a glimpse, above the painted half of the door, of what was going on inside.

The day was cold and snow was falling; the tombstones in the near-by cemeteries were already covered with heavy white mantles. On such a day, the beggars knew, no one came on pious missions to the graves of relatives, and the only visitors were the black crows, from whom nothing could be begged. They therefore clung around the door of the redpainted restaurant like flies around the last plate on a table.

Whenever the door of the restaurant opened to admit a customer, one of the beggar-women would poke in her head and call out ingratiatingly: "Mazel-tov, good luck to you. Sender darling!" and the same would happen when a customer came out, bringing with him a cloud of steam heavy with the odour of cooking: "Mazel-tov, and may our Father in heaven make you happy all the days of your life! "

Briton, a powerful, shaggy dog, kept guard at the door, and whenever the bell tinkled, his drooping ears started up and his red eyes flamed at the beggars who wanted to thrust their way in. Long years of service in the restaurant, comb ined with instinct, had made him even quicker than the waiters at distinguishing between a customer and a beggar. He had never liked these ragged creatures with outstretched hands and whining voices who came to collect copper coins; and now, seeing them in droves at the door, he snarled more ferociously than ever, drawing back his quivering, dripping lips and revealing four white, pointed fangs. The Tong, filthy gabardines of the men and the tattered skirts of the beggarwomen were a sore temptation to him; it would have been so easy to rip long strips from them. But his master, Sender Praguer the bridegroom, thickset, short-necked like Briton himself, with the same quivering lips, had warned him, with many slaps and pinches, to behave himself:

"Briton, be good to the poor; this is my wedding day, do you hear?"

And so Briton's fury subsided into a snarl; the spittle ran down his jaws, and his throat twitched.

In the restaurant kitchen, which lay in the cellar at the bottom of a flight of crooked and slippery steps, the steam was so thick that the electric lights, which burned throughout the day, were scarcely visible. All the regular cooks, Jewish and gentile, perspired over the vast cauldrons, and special ones for the day worked with them. They threw vast bales of sliced cabbage and huge dishes of stuffed intestine into the cauldrons, and, enraged because they had to work like this for a bunch of beggars, they neither cleaned out the intestines properly nor sorted the cabbages for decayed patches.

"They'll eat anything, those filthy paupers," they growled. "Even a pestilence can't carry them off."

The Jewish girls in the kitchen wiped their streaming eyes with the corners of their skirts and threw bitter words at each other:

"You thought you were going to be the one to meet him under the canopy, didn't you--your Sender? Now you can stand here all day and cook for the other's wedding...."

The gentile girls, who had worked so long in Jewish houses that they spoke Yiddish just as well as the others laughed loudly. Yellow-faced Manka, a bony Polish girl with green, half-crazy eyes, put up her hands in front of her face with the gesture of a Jewish mother blessing the Sabbath candles, and sang at the Jewish girls in imitation of the wedding jester bewail ing the vanished girlhood of the bride.

"Oh, little bride, little darling bride, what a life waits for you, what food!" she wailed. "A potful of horse-radish-- weep, my little one. .

Although they had had to do with Sender Praguer not less than the Jewish servants, they were not disillusioned or heartbroken when Sender married someone else. They had always been servants, and they knew from of old that men are swine, who promise a servant-girl everything, get what they want, then tell her to go to the devil--that is, if they deign to talk to her at all afterwards. "That's how men are, like street dogs, and there's nothing to cry about." Expecting nothing, they had not been disappointed. But it was different with the Jewish servant-girls. They knew Sender's reputation; they knew that he had made love to every one of the servant-girls in turn; and yet each one of them hoped that she would be the one finally to meet him under the wedding canopy, that to her he would keep the promise which he would break to all the others. And this hope lived in each of them till the last moment: the hope that one day Sender would take her out of the kitchen and seat her at the cash-desk near the door of the restaurant. Now the announcement hung in the window of the Praga: that night Sender Praguer would marry Edye Barenbaum at the Venezia Assembly Rooms; and there would be, that day, a free dinner for the poor of the neighbourhood, stuffed intestine and hot cabbage, which they, the servant-girls, had to prepare, while tears of rage, envy, and shame ran down their cheeks into the cauldrons.

"God in heaven," they prayed, lifting their eyes to the roof, from which, as if in sympathy, drops of condensed steam were also falling, "reward him, as only Thou canst,, for our shame."

Sender himself did not show up that day in the kitchen, did not come down even once to see how the work was coming along.

In the first place, he was dressed in his holiday clothes. A stiff, snow-white collar stood off from his thick neck, with its sprinkling of blackheads. His fat red cheeks had been shaved so close that they had taken on a bluish tinge. His shock of black hair, thickly plastered down, shone with oils and pomades, and his face and neck had been bathed in Eau de Cologne. And this was one reason why Sender did not want to go down in the dirty, steaming kitchen. A second reason was that on this, the day of his nuptials, he was fasting according to the law. But the third reason was the strongest; he did not want to face his servants, the girls standing in the kitchen and preparing the meal for the poor on his wedding day. He did not want to see them, and he did not want to see his "office."

The name "office" had been given, half facetiously, half for the sake of decency, to the other, small cellar, to which a passage led from the kitchen. It contained neither desk nor ledgers nor bookcase. Instead there was a red plush sofa, and over the sofa a coloured lithograph of a very blonde and very naked lady. There was a table with bottles and glasses, there were easy chairs. No writing or reckoning was ever done in the office, for Sender could scarcely add up two and two in his head, and as for writing, he could with great effort just about sign his name. What he lacked in learning he more than made up in virility, and every servant or cook he had ever employed had known the purposes to which he put his "office." Jewish and non-Jewish, young and middle-aged, they had all been there and submitted to this energetic elderly bachelor. And not they alone, but others, gay wives of the vicinity, young women who found something irresistible in his blazing cheeks, his black eyes, and his bull-neck.

Everybody knew about Sender's "office"; not only the servants and the other visitors to it, and not only the customers of Sender's restaurant. Poultrymen, greengrocers, butchers, and fish-dealers never permitted their wives to make deliveries in person to Sender the restaurateur. They were afraid of the "office." Women quarrelling in the courtyards of apartment houses yelled at each other the accusation that they had worked once for Sender and had been in his "office." The cattle-dealers who made up the bulk of Sender's clientele had their own name for the "office"; they called it Sender's private slaughter-house.

So Sender avoided his "office" on the day of his marriage. The cattle-dealers seated at the marble-covered tables, eating, drinking, smoking, and making their calculations on the tablecloths, called Sender over to them:

"Hey, Sender, take a little drink with us, and cut out the piety; You can take one glass even if you think you have to est.

Others cracked the coarse jokes which among some people are inseparable from weddings.

"Sender, did your best man tell you all about the facts of life? Do you think you'll know what to do? "

A massive woman--the only woman in the room, and the only woman cattle-dealer in these parts--red-faced from the whiskies she drank to celebrate each sale, hoarse with yelling at cattle and buyers, insisted on finding out what Sender intended to do with his "office".

"Sender, darling," she yelled, "have you closed your little 'office' for good? Are you going to turn it into a private synagogue? "

Sender, who had never refused a drink and who never failed to sit down with his customers, was adamant this day. He would neither break his fast nor listen to the coarse jests of his customers nor hear anything that had to do with his sinful past. He was going to take no food and no drink on his wedding day; he was repenting earnestly and determinedly.

"Moritz," he said in low tones to his waiter, a red-haired young man with a pimply face, wearing a dirty apron under his shiny black coat, "go down into the kitchen and see that the cabbage for the poor people is good and fat. Tell them to throw in plenty of marrowbones. And see that they don't spare the stuffed intestine."

Moritz was not incapable of transmitting this simple message to the kitchen, but, knowing well why Sender refused to go down himself, pretended suddenly to be helpless, in the hope of forcing his employer to face the cooks in the cellar.

"I think you ought to go down yourself, boss," he said meekly. "You know they won't listen to me. They'll chase me out with their wet handkerchiefs. They're all crying, I don't know why. I think you ought to go down and console them, boss."

"Moritz," said his employer, gently, "go down and see that the food is prepared right and that there's plenty of it."

He felt that if he only gave the paupers and beggars of the neighbourhood a good enough and big enough meal, he would be atoning in large measure for his sinful life.

After speaking to Moritz he went over to the bar at one end of the restaurant, where, in a sack of red velvet, lay his new silken prayer-shawl. He took it out, opened it, counted all the ritual fringes carefully and thoughtfully, and was satisfied. He refolded the shawl and put it back, he passed his fingers gently over the red velvet of the phylactery-sack which his bride, after the fashion of all good Jewish brides, had sewn and embroidered for him as a wedding gift. He felt the gold-thread Hebrew letters on the velvet and read them over laboriously; he admired the Shield of David and the little flowers with which she had adorned the sack. The velvet and the gold lettering sent a warm feeling through him. He thought of his bride, a girl of decent family, who was young enough to be his daughter, and he was filled with happiness and fear, remembering that in a few hours he would meet her under the bridal canopy, and that a new and respectable life was now beginning for him.

He looked up suddenly and called to the waiter again:

"Moritz! Let the poor people come in."

Moritz lifted his eyes protestingly to the dock on the wall:

"Boss, it's only one o'clock."

"No matter," answered Sender. "Let them come in earlier. I don't want them to stand outside in the cold."

Moritz pulled Briton away from the door and opened it wide. A flood of rags poured into the restaurant.

II

In all the forty-four years of his life Sender Praguer had never been so helpless, so uncertain inwardly, as in the few weeks of his engagement to Edye Barenbaum, a girl whose years numbered one half of his.

He had become a bridegroom suddenly and unexpectedly The general habits of this forty-four-year-old bachelor, his behaviour with the women in his restaurant and elsewhere, had combined to give him anything but a high opinion of the female sex. He had no faith in women, whether as wives or girls, and he had been on the alert against all traps. His neighbours had always been in a conspiracy to marry him off. The husbands who considered him a perennial danger and who envied him his loose and irresponsible life had always s been finding matches for him; and the wives, who looked on his unmarried status as a sort of insult to their lot, were even more active. To them Sender's reluctance to assume the responsibilities of matrimony was a form of open rebellion, a repudiation of their rights, a discouragement to their husbands, a blow at the foundations of their lives.

"He wants the sweet cream," they said angrily, "but he won't take the sour with it. We won't stand for that."

The professional marriage-brokers had their own approach to Sender's unmarried condition. To them he was an unfulfilled contract, a threat to their livelihood. "Sender," they said, reproachfully, "we have wives and children to feed. How much shoe-leather do you expect us to waste on you?"

Sender had listened to neither blandishments nor reproaches. "Why should I keep a wife for others," he asked, derisively, "if others are keeping wives for me?"

There were young widows and divorcees, plume, jolly, and lively, who had acquired from former husbands, dead or alive, small fortunes in ready money, jewellery, clothes, furniture, bedding, great baskets of expensive linens, and, finally, much experience in love; these turned upon Sender the batteries of their desires and ambitions, which were, to be sure, directed not less at his restaurant than at him. Still, it was not just a sordid financial motive which fired them with a longing to be mistress of the place. The two of them, Sender and the restaurant, somehow made an attractive combination. They thought alternately, and with equal delight, of possessing this thickset, powerful, black-haired man and of standing as mistress behind the bar, with its bottles of whiskey, its jars of pickles, and its roast fowl; of listening to the daylong noise of thick, masculine laughter, and of counting out the coins as they clinked into the till, letting them slip sensuously through their plump, bejewelled fingers. They put on their best clothes, they painted and rouged and powdered, they walked provocatively, they made eyes, all for Sender; languishing, they showed him their white teeth behind their crimson lips, they hinted and they invited; and Sender took whatever he could--without committing himself to the fatal step.

In the end they had begun to despair of him. The word was: "Sender Praguer will be buried in the little ritual fringes of a boy, not in the full-size prayer-shawl of a man." It was said half resentfully, half admiringly for the obstinacy of Sender.

But in his forty-fourth year, when he had almost been given up and when he himself felt quite secure, he suddenly became a bridegroom--and that through a marriage-broker, like the veriest bumpkin. Not an ordinary professional broker, to be sure, for the man who intervened was none other than the Yartchev Rabbi, who lived opposite Sender's restaurant. And yet an intermediary, after all. It was the Yartchev Rabbi who took Sender in hand and achieved in one day what others had failed to achieve in years.

No one had ever accused Sender of a leaning toward piety. The nearest he came to it was an obscure and nameless fear of the Somebody who inhabited the smoky sky above the Jewish quarter of Warsaw, a fear which came upon him with disturbing force on certain evenings when the sun went down like a torch and seemed to be setting the world on fire It made Sender think of hell, of brimstone, of sinners scream ing amid the flames. And on such evenings Sender would steal across the street and pay a visit to the little man with the long grey beard, the Yartchev Rabbi, whom he held to be all-holy and all-knowing. The grey beard and the yellow fur--the Yartchev Rabbi had fur on his big hat and on the lapels, collar, and borders of his gaberdine--were for Sender symbols of sanctity, and from the Yartchev Rabbi Sender learned his duties: the dates when he had to say the Sanctificat~on in memory of his parents, the right prayers for High Holy Days, the times for the Remembrance of Souls, and other necessary ritual. In return he would make generous presents in money, and often send Moritz across with dishes of roast goose and stuffed carp.

The little Rabbi of Yartchev--he was so short that when he sat comfortably in his armchair his feet were off the floor --closed his eyes to all of Sender's transgressions. He never reproached him for shaving his face like a gentile, for omitting the phylacteries every morning, or even for keeping his restaurant open on the holy Sabbath. He was a jolly little man, the Rabbi of Yartchev, red-checked, merry-eyed; he did not like denunciations and reproaches; he wanted to see his flock, which consisted of plain people, teamsters, butchers, servant-girls, cheerful like himself, and therefore he spared the lash. But one thing he found intolerable-- and that was Sender's unmarried state. The Yartchev Rabbi was a believer in joyful occasions and celebrations, in weddings, betrothals, circumcision banquets, confirmations, and the like. And as often as Sender came to him he would lift up his little old hand and shake a finger:

"Sender, Sender, it is written that it is not well for man to be alone. God said that as soon as He had created Adam. A Jew should have a wife and children. Sender, what is going to become of you?"

Sender answered the Rabbi as he answered all others: "Rabbi, there isn't one decent one among them all."

But the Rabbi of Yartchev would not take this answer. He put the yellow fur of the sleeves against his ears in sign of disapproval and said:

"Sender, it is forbidden to speak evil of the daughters of your people. They are holy and pure, of the seed of Israel."

"Rabbi," answered Sender, respectfully, "on that question I happen to know something. Really it would be better for the Rabbi not to talk about it."

But the Yartchev Rabbi insisted on talking about it, and he returned to the charge:

"Sender, how will it be if you die and--God forbid-- there is not even a son to remember you in prayer. Don't think that you can laugh everything away. There is a place of fire and torture over there, on the other side-- flames, sulphur. Only the prayers of a son can avail to pull you out. Sender, Sender, for your own sake, give me your and and promise me that you will get married soon."

The mention of hell and its fires made Sender tremble, but the thought of marriage made him tremble still more, and he would not give the Rabbi his hand.

"Rabbi," he implored, "let's wait a little. When I'm older I'm still young and I don't want to get into trouble. Time enough when I'm fifty."

But in the midst of his forty-fourth year Sender suddenly became aware that he could no longer call himself young The nights became, without warning, reminders of the years; there were, for no reason that he knew of, shooting pains in the back, a stitch in his side, cramps in the stomach. When he mentioned these things to his customers, the cattledealers, they knew of only one remedy: a good stiff glass of whisky. The remedy was welcome in itself, but it did not seem to help much. The pains persisted; they even multiplied; and alone in his bachelor quarters, surrounded by the cushions and slips and covers which feminine hands had prepared for him, Sender would feel a profound distress over and above the pain. Mornings, looking at himself in the mirror, he would catch here and there in his head the glint of a silver hair. He never failed to tear it out. The next morning another would be there--or two in its place. "No good tearing," he muttered. "I can tear the hair, but not the years. You're getting old, Sender."

There used to be a time when sleep was no problem; he had only to lie down, stretch himself out, and dose his eyes; then he would know nothing more till morning. Now it took him lone to fall asleep, and he woke up a dozen times before the light came. He could not read; that is, he could make out words in print, but he could get no pleasure from the exercise. Between snatches of sleep there was nothing for him to do but lie there and think. It occurred to him more than once that if he were suddenly taken bad, there was not a soul at hand to do him the simplest service. When his back hurt, he thought at once of death and the world beyond. He remembered the words of the Rabbi, and he saw before him long tongues of fire, vats of smoking brimstone, and naked, screaming sinners who were being shoved into the flames and the vats by stern angels. If he were suddenly to die, where would they put him if not among these naked sinners? And what would happen to his restaurant? Strangers would inherit it, quarrel about it, divide it up, and reduce it to nothing. Nothing would remain for the world to remember him by, and his name would never be mentioned. No one would put him into a prayer, neither a Sanctification nor a Remembrance of Souls on the High Holy Days; there would not even be a tombstone to mark the place where his body was laid.

After one such night, more sleepless and terrifying than any that had preceded it, he went to the Yartchev Rabbi for counsel. The Rabbi pushed his fur hat to the back of his head and pointed with solemn finger toward the roof, on which swarms of flies clustered and buzzed.

"It is a sign from heaven," he said piously. "Take my advice, Sender; give me your hand on it, that you'll look for a wife."

"Rabbi, I don't believe any of them," murmured Sender. "I tell you, I know them."

"Don't interrupt me," cried the little Rabbi, trying to tap with his foot on the floor, but failing to reach it. "There are still faithful daughters of Israel, God be praised; may I be granted golden rubles in the same number. I'll be the one to get you such a wife--I myself. Give me your hand on it, I say, and promise to obey me."

This time, exhausted by the sleepless night, bewildered by his meditations, Sender did not have the strength to ignore the Rabbi's outstretched hand. Frightened of himself, he put two fingers into the Rabbi's grip, and it was done. The Rabbi was so delighted that he took three pinches of snuff one after another, blew his nose loudly as if announcing victory to the world, and without an instant's delay called for his beadle, to whom he said: "Go at once to Hannah, the widow of the slaughterer, and tell her to come to me as soon as she can, God willing; for I have something which must not wait, and it is of the greatest importance to many people."

Then, turning to Sender: "I am giving you in marriage the daughter of a decent Jewish family. Her father, may he rest in peace, was a learned man and a chicken-slaughterer for the community. You will be happy with her. But remember, she is an orphan, poor, but pure. Treat her accordingly, do you hear?"

And that week-end, when the Sabbath night had fallen, Sender put on his best suit of clothes, plastered down his black hair, brushed his hat carefully, and climbed four flights of dirty stairs to the attic of Hannah, the slaughterer's widow. A tall, dark woman, bent with years, and wearing an old fashioned dress which hinted at the remains of a wedding trousseau, opened the door for him and admitted him into a poor room on which lay the neatness of the Sabbath; the air was filled with the sour-sweet odour of the Sabbath meal, of tea and fruit.

The table was already prepared for the guest. Near the brass candlesticks, to which still clung the dripped wax of the Sabbath lights, lay a few blue-ringed plates holding winter apples, raisins and pieces of apple-cake. A stumpy girl with a high bosom and a pair of black eyes which were wide open, as though unable to recover from the shock of an extraordinary event, put out a bluish hand to Sender, and said:

"I have the honour to introduce myself; my name is Edye Barenbaum."

Sender looked in astonishment at the dark walls of the attic, steeped in the dreariness of the dying week, and at the low, dilapidated window through which stared all the crooked chimneys of the neighbourhood. He did not know what to say. He had never been in such a home before, and he had never met such a girl. He could not quite make out whether she was pretty or plain. He had not the slightest idea what sort of conversation to begin. Embarrassed, he fixed his eyes at last on a faded photograph of a Jew whose head was crowned with a skull-cap and whose huge, bulbous nose stuck out from a wilderness of beard and whiskers.

"That's my daddy, may he rest in peace," said the girl. "He didn't want to be photographed. He was a chickenslaughterer, and very pious. One day we took a picture of him when he didn't know it."

"A very fine Jew, may no evil eye strike him," said Sender, not knowing that the invocation against the evil eye was never applied to the dead.

"I don't mean to praise myself," said the girl, one hand on her bosom, "but I've been told I look very much like my father. Won't you please have something?"

The widow m the old-fashioned dress brought the guest a glass of tea and said, tearfully:

"Of course, if my husband had been living, I should have sought out a teacher as my daughter's husband. But God punished us, and He knows best." Her eyes began to brim.

The girl's eyes opened wider and looked more frightened than ever. "Mother! Are you crying again? And a stranger in the house, too."

The widow wiped the tears from her eyes, but not from her voice. She began to tell Sender of the happiness which had been hers in the possession of such a husband, and shaking her head, she pointed to her daughter:

"If my poor husband had known that his daughter would have to work as a clerk in a grocery store and to carry packages of groceries to people's homes . . ."

She was about to burst into tears when she caught her daughter's eye; she broke off her conversation and plunged into the Sabbath-night prayers, which she recited like a lament for the dead. The girl pushed the plates of raisins and apple-cakes still closer to Sender, and said:

"You aren't tasting anything. I'm afraid it doesn't please you."

The very next day the engagement was celebrated, and after the traditional fashion, plates were broken for good luck. The wedding was arranged for a month later.

"There's no sense in delay," said the little Yartchev Rabbi, as he wrote the marriage contract "You're not a schoolboy any more, Sender."

Once he had given way, Sender obeyed the Rabbi in all things. He bought his bride a trousseau, linen and bedclothes. He gave her the money to buy him the regulation bridal present of a prayer-shawl and phylactery-sack. For the bride's mother he ordered a new wig, and even a dress for the wedding.

When he was done with these preliminaries, Sender paid a visit to his neighbour Shaiah Isaac the healer, who was both barber and surgeon; to him Sender always went when he needed a haircut and when he had contracted something uncomfortable in his irregular life. Shaiah no sooner saw him than he left a customer with one side of his face still soaped, and led Sender into his dusty little reception room, with its bottles of medicine, its jars, and its pincers. He PUt on his glasses, stuck out his lower lip, and grinned at sender. "Did somebody catch you again, Sender, boy? " he asked.

"Not the first time, eh? We'll see what we can do for you." He tickled Sender in the ribs and made an obscene joke. But Sender's face was grim.

"Reb Shaiah," he said, "there's nothing wrong with me. I mean I feel all right. But I'm going to marry a decent girl, you understand. And I want to know if I may. You know me, Reb Shaiah, and you can tell me."

Shaiah Isaac wiped the grin off his face and began to feel Sender's powerful, shaggy body.

"Sender," he said, "you're fit to marry anybody even a rabbi's daughter. You can take my word for it."

From Shaiah Isaac the healer, Sender went out to hire the biggest wedding hall in the neighbourhood. Then he dropped in at the printer's and ordered the invitations, specifying gold lettering and the traditional design of two turtledoves exchanging a kiss with their little beaks. He also had a dignified frock-coat made for himself, as became a respectable bridegroom. Everything was as it should be--and yet Sender was restless and afraid. What frightened and yet excited him, repelled and yet attracted him, was this unwonted world in which he was now involved--the attic with its suggestion of sanctity in poverty; his prospective mother-in-law, pious and tearful, the memory of her husband for ever on her lips; the relatives of the dead man, bearded Jews whose language was thickly interspersed with words in the sacred tongue, their wives, who could not utter a sentence without calling on the name of God; and then the bride herself, young enough to be his daughter. He had never before come in contact with the children of pious homes, and she, with her wide-open, frightened eyes, struck fear into him.

"I'll be glad when it's all over," he said more than once to his friends the cattle-dealers.

III

The wedding in the big Venezia Assembly Rooms lasted through the long winter night into the small hours of the morning and almost till dawn.

Dressed in his stiff new frock-coat, Sender had sat at home till late evening, waiting for the relatives of the bride who according to custom, were to come for him and conduct him to the wedding hall. The distance was very short, but they insisted that he take a droshky, so that he might be seen arriving in style. They added, further, that it was not proper for a bridegroom to go on foot to his wedding, however short the distance might be.

"Faster, faster, bridegroom," they said to him, though they themselves had taken their time about coming for him. There s no time to be lost "

They squeezed themselves, three in a row, into the droshky, Sender in between the two bearded men in their satin gaberdines and their velvet hats. Sender had never had anything to do with Jews of this kind. All the way to the hall they kept up a fire of advice, admonition, and instruction; they spoke of the laws of the sacred books, of the duties of bridegrooms and husbands, of custom and tradition; and their speech was sown thick with Hebrew phrases, so that Sender hardly understood anything. But he did manage to understand when they asked him whether he was fasting on the nuptial day, whether he had prepared a white robe for himself, whether he had lately examined the fringes on his praying-shawl. They also asked to see his wedding ring, to make sure that it was smooth and round and of the right weight. And throughout all they were in a terrific hurry though they could not have said why.

"Oh my, oh my, it's late," they kept interrupting themselves. "You just wouldn't believe how late it is."

Squeezed in between these two pietists, Sender felt himself growing smaller and smaller. And he felt very small indeed by the time they led him up the red velvet carpet of the wedding hall, between the rows of guests.

"Good luck, bridegroom, may this be a happy hour in your life, welcome! " So the bearded Jews greeted him, and stuck their flabby, white, sinewless hands into his. Sender was even more confused when the wedding jester suddenly descended on him and, at the top of his voice, began to weave his name into comical and laudatory rhymes.

There was hardly anyone to represent Sender's side in the union. His father and mother had long been dead. He had no relatives in the big city in which he had started, many years ago, as an errand-boy in a restaurant. Most of his friends, such as they were, he had been afraid to invite; God alone knew what scandalous things they were capable of saying and doing if they took a drop too much. And, for that matter, the cattle-dealers had not been over-anxious to rub shoulders with the velvet and satin gabardines of the pious, whose contempt for teamsters, butchers, cattledealers, and similar ignorant folk was a byword. The wedding was therefore in the hands of the bride's family, and Sender did not see one friendly, familiar face around him. One after another the relatives of the bride approached the bridegroom, looked him over from head to foot, and said:

"Well, so this is the bridegroom. Well, well. I suppose it'll be all right. Let's hope this is a lucky hour."

Sender flushed anew as often as these or similar words were repeated. The womenfolk of the bride's family, wives in curled wigs and loops of jewellery, drew in their many chins and walked round Sender like pouter-pigeons. It would have been visible to a blind man that they resented the come-down--the lack of distinction in the bridegroom, and the reflection on the family as a whole.

"It's God's will, of course,' they said, pursing their lips.

"Let's hope this is a lucky hour."

Worst among them all were the bride's uncle and aunt, wealthy and much respected burghers, the shining lights of the family.

He had heard a great deal about them, long before he encountered them at the wedding. At his second meeting with his bride and her mother the names of Uncle Samuel Leib and Auntie Pessie had swum into the conversation, and they had practically never disappeared from it. This same Uncle Samuel Leib, a fat, slow-moving man, with a vast opinion of himself, had not contributed a cracked groschen to the wedding expenses, but he took charge of the ceremonies and dominated the hall. His wife accompanied him like a lean and lachrymose aide-de-camp, with a lorgnette instead of a monocle. They arrived last among the guests, as became their importance, and at once took the first places. The orchestra broke off when they stepped into the hall, and greeted them with a tremendous fanfare. The wedding jester turned his attention from the small fry and burst into a devastating eulogy of the new arrivals. No sooner had Uncle Samuel Leib subsided into the chair on the right-hand side of the bridegroom than he launched upon a cross-examination.

"Now, Sender," he said, slowly, "I know that you're not supposed to be much of a scholar. We'll forget that. But even an ignorant man can be pious and observe all the holy laws. How is it with you, Sender?"

And without waiting for a general answer, he went into specifications. Was the restaurant kosher in every respect? Did he keep the place closed on the Sabbath? Did he don the phylacteries on arm and brow every morning? Did he know enough to ask a proper question of a rabbi in case of doubt? Did he care about these things?

"You no doubt know, bridegroom, that your father-in-law, may he rest in peace, was not a nobody. He was a slaughterer, a learned and a pious man. A splendid Jew. . . "

"Oh, what a splendid Jew he was! " sighed Auntie Pessie, and she peered at Sender through her lorgnette as though he were at a great distance from her. "There aren't any more Jews like him these days." She uttered a heart-broken sigh, as if she were contrasting in her mind the brilliance of the dead father-in-law with the disgrace of the new alliance.

Sender, the big boss in his restaurant and among his friends the cattle-dealers, sat like a timid schoolboy among these feeble Jews in their satin gabardines. His stiff collar was rasping his skin and choking him. The hard hat he was wearing pressed like steel on his temples. Accustomed to sitting bareheaded at table, he more than once lifted his hand to remove the hat, remembered suddenly where he was--namely, among Jews who considered bareheadedness a sin and a sign of heathendom--and let his hand fall.

"It's hot," he mumbled, feeling that he had to say something.

"Here, put a skull-cap on," said Uncle Samuel Leib, and without waiting for permission took Sender's stiff hat from his head and substituted a greasy skull-cap which went down to Sender's eyes.

Sender drew easier breath when finally the Rabbi of Yartchev arrived on the scene, as representing the bridegroom's side. The little,, long-bearded man, wrapped in yellow fur from head to foot, brought a note of hominess into the gathering of pompous relatives. He dipped his piece of cake in the glass of whisky, just like a woman, and clapped his hands gaily.

"Well, bridegroom," he asked cheerily, "are you hungry after the long fast? Just a little while longer, I'll tie the knot, I'll make you a married man, then you can eat to your heart's content, eh?"

Uncle Samuel Leib stared with cold, dignified hostility at the cheerful little cleric. Like every Jew of standing who was attached to the court of some famous Rabbi in another city, and visited him in state at the proper seasons, Reb Samuel Leib looked with contempt on all other Rabbis, and in particular at the small rabbinic rabble whose following was made up of ignorant workers and womenfolk. He was, moreover, incensed that this obscure person should have been chosen to officiate at the wedding of a member of his family. Accustomed to the highest honours in the synagogue, at circumcisions, confirmations, and all other ceremonial places and occasions, Reb Samuel Leib had expected that, if the great Rabbi he followed were not invited to unite the pair, the task should devolve upon him. He was a learned man; he had the standing of a Rabbi; he knew all the details of the ritual, from the drawing up of the marriage contract, through the wedding ceremony, up to the repetition of the Seven Blessings. He had, in fact, intimated to various people that he was going to act in the rabbinic capacity at the wedding, and when he was informed that this man Sender had a Rabbi of his own, he was not less enraged than astounded.

"And you, ah," he said to the little man, "are Sender's Rabbi--ah--that is, he is one of your followers, I take it." And to show who he was, he plunged at once into a cross-examination of the Yartchev Rabbi, and, as was customary when scholars met, tested him with quotations and interpretations from the great thinkers of the past.

The Yartchev Rabbi, with no stomach for a battle of wits, tried to wriggle out of the discussion with homely talk. "My grandfather, his memory for a blessing," he began, but Reb Samuel Leib was not interested in the blessed memory of the Yartchev Rabbi's dead grandfather.

"Leave your grandfather in peace," he said, crossly; "we're not interested in what he had to say. We would like to know what you say on these questions."

Sender, faint with hunger, listened in vain for one sentence which conveyed any meaning to him. The war of words dragged on, and he felt his stomach sinking lower and lower. Yet, hungry as he was, he longed to see his little Rabbi lay Uncle Samuel Leib out. Nothing of the sort happened. The little Yartchev Rabbi shrank from the combat and became even more insignificant.

"I believe," he said, meekly, "it's time to proceed to the bridal canopy. Bride and bridegroom are hungry, they've been fasting all day.... Two Jewish children, you understand, we must think of them--"

Standing under the canopy next to his bride, Sender was so frightened that the short formula which he had rehearsed daily for the last few weeks: "Behold, thou art consecrated unto me according to the faith of Moses and of Israel," went out of his mind, and he stumbled and stammered as though he had never heard the words, or anything like them, before. The Jews clustering about the canopy sighed wretchedly, and the loudest sigh of lamentation and humiliation came from Uncle Samuel Leib.

"Now, Sender, repeat after me," said the Yartchev Rabbi: "Arei at . . ."

The wedding banquet lasted for hours. Uncle Samuel Leib led the company in many loud, ecstatic Chasidic songs. He did not sing plainly, but with many artistic variations, flourishes, and interpolations. He put a hand to his ear, as if to listen better to his own music, and he licked himself as though the sound were edible and had deposited delicious crumbs on his whiskers. When he was not singing, he was pouring out learned commentaries on Biblical verses.

The singing and the praying and the display of sacred learning endured without end, but the gifts given at the table for the bridegroom could all be gathered up in a minute; piety and generosity were in inverse proportion, and the bride's family made the wedding very cheap for itself. Reb Samuel Leib got his chance when the honour of leading in the Seven Blessings fell to him, and he took revenge for his exclusion from the more glorious ceremony of the marriage itself. He spent enough time on the Blessings and the Grace to set up a dozen weddings. Only to have to listen to it was such an effort for Sender that all his body was bathed in perspiration. And when that was finished, Reb Samuel Leib and his Chasidic friends still had to enter, one by one, into the Dance of Piety with the bride; the piety consisted in the absence of contact between the dancers, the man holding in his hand a corner of a kerchief, the opposite corner of which was held by the bride.

Morning was at hand when Sender, having out of his own pocket paid off the musicians, the waiters, the wedding jester, the servants, and the hosts of hangers-on which are a common feature of these weddings, led his bride from the hall and set out for the new apartment which he had rented not far from the Praga restaurant

The cold air of the morning twilight washed Sender's face and he began to feel himself again. He took his bride's hand as the two of them sat side by side rocking with the motion of the droshky on the ill-paved street.

The apartment into which they came was new and fresh and still smelled of paint. The doors, windows, and floors shone in the faint light, and the new furniture shone, too. The beds, the carpets, and the linens gave out an odour of cleanliness. For Sender had thought of everything, and his new home was as perfectly appointed as if he had been an old householder. He had bought pictures for the walls, and pretty china figures for the dressers and mantelpieces. There was also a big phonograph and a case full of records by famous cantors and actors. The beds were prepared for the bride and bridegroom, and a rosy light fell from the shaded lamps on the sheets and cushions.

"How new everything is," the bride murmured, "how new and beautiful! "

"And our life will be new, too," answered Sender in a burst of happiness. "New and beautiful."

From the gilded cage which hung by a green cord near the window a canary, startled out of its sleep by the intrusion of voices, burst into sudden song. With a timid, trembling hand Sender took off the wedding dress of his bride, and in his heart was the same fear, the same exaltation, as when, in the synagogue of the Yartchev Rabbi, he was permitted to remove the velvet mantle from the Scroll of the Law.

IV

When Sender had convinced himself that his bride was far from being the chaste, unspotted daughter of Israel which his Rabbi had told him she was, he asked her no questions, did not once raise his voice, did not utter a single complaint. He simply slapped her face once, as he would have slapped the face of any man who had played a foul trick on him. Then he turned from her, left the house, and made his way toward the Praga restaurant.

Passing through the open-air market, which was filled with the screeching of women's voices, he was suddenly aware of an odour of decaying fish. He followed the trail to one of the stands and picked out the most malodorous carp he could find. He had it wrapped in newspaper, then carried it under his arm to the restaurant. The first thing he did there was to go down into the kitchen and turn over his purchase to Manka.

The big, bony, yellow-faced Polish cook, who was equally fond of Sender and his cognacs, opened her half-crazy eyes at him, love and astonishment shining alike from them.

"Panic Sender," she asked, "how could you let yourself be swindled so? I'll throw the thing out at once."

Sender made a gesture enjoining silence. "Listen," he said in low tones. "Stuff this fish with ginger and pepper so you can't get the smell or taste of it. And, Manka, don't you say a word to anyone.

"Boss, I won't! " Manka's face lit up with delight to have been given something confidential by her employer. Her eyes roved over him longingly and expectantly.

When the fish was ready, Sender put it into a handsome dish, adorned it with fresh carrots, onions, and other greens, and sent it by Moritz the waiter as a bridegroom's present to the Yartchev Rabbi across the street.

All day long Sender stood at the door of the restaurant staring above the painted half of the window at the Rabbi's house. He was as impatient as a boy. Toward evening he had his reward. The Rabbi's beadle came rushing out of the house, his face distorted, shouting so loudly that the words were audible through the closed door of the restaurant:

"Help! Where is Reb Shaiah Isaac the healer? Our Rabbi! He's sick, he's in convulsions, he's dying! Help, quick, he's bringing his intestines up! "

Sender turned from the window contentedly and took several cognacs in rapid succession.

He went home late that night, long after the last customer had left. His wife was waiting for him, and she followed him from room to room, her big, frightened eyes imploring a word from him. He did not speak to her.

At last she said: "Mother is here. She's waiting in the kitchen. She's been waiting all day. She wants to speak to you."

"I've got nothing to say to her," answered Sender. "It's best for er to keep out of my way. If she doesn't, there's going to be a scandal."

He turned his back on Edye and went over to the canary. He whistled to it several times, to encourage it to sing, but

the canary was not in the mood for song. Thereupon Sender sat down and drew Briton's muzzle into his lap. The dog growled with gratitude. In place of his young wife Sender had the huge dog in his bed that night.

The next morning, before he left for the restaurant, there came to him a delegation of uncles, aunts, and other relatives of his wife, dignified and respectable Jews all.

"Sender," they begged him, "let's talk about this thing. You're slandering a Jewish girl, an orphan."

"You can't sell me a cat in a bag," answered Sender, curtly. "I'm not one of your Talmudic students."

"Sender," they argued, "let's go to one of the Rabbis. Let him look into this, and we'll abide by his decision."

"To hell with your Rabbis," answered Sender. "I know them."

A hubbub of protest rose from the delegation.

"Sender! Have you no fear of God? Have you no fear of the world to come?"

"I don't care a rotten onion about the world to come," shouted Sender.

He believed in nothing now. He believed neither in this world nor in the world to come; he was no longer afraid of the skies which turned red with the evening sun, or of God's elect, the pious men in the satin gabardines. If these had been able to swindle him, there was nothing left in the world.

During the first few days that followed kits marriage Sender ate his heart out with rage and humiliation. To think that he, Sender, had been trapped like an unworldly, helpless student! And who had done it to him? These pietists who had always inspired him with awe, who had walked all over him at the wedding, had groaned with the shame of his entry into the family! The money he had spent! The quarrels he had had with his good friends the cattle-dealers, the coarse jokes he had endured! All for the sake of these snuggling saints and their snobbish wives in wigs. The weeks of self-abasement tortured him in retrospect; a thousand little incidents recurred to him in the nights.

"Idiot!" he howled at himself when he looked into the mirror. "Bumpkin! Ox!"

In those first days he felt that only one course would relieve his feelings: liberation! He would take this wife of his, this daughter of Chasidim, by the neck, and pitch her out of the house, fling her down the steps, and forbid her to approach him again. Let her know, let her family know, that Sender Praguer was not the man to be taken in. Stronger men than they had learned a lesson from him, and these whining, sanctimonious synagogue beggars were not the kind to succeed where strong-fisted cattle-dealers had failed. And as for the house, the clothes, the furniture, the wedding expenses--he would let all that go.

Then his disgust with the helpless, witless creature who had been foisted on him became so intense that he lost all hatred for her and only wanted her out of the way. Let her keep whatever he had bought her. Let her take her trousseau and her other presents with her back to her attic at the top of the filthy steps. He would even give her a few rubles, if only to be rid of the sight of her. The furniture he would sell for a song and forget the whole loathsome incident. He would go back to his bachelor quarters; he would resume the old, loose, carefree life which he had loved so much.

And yet something held him back. The thought of the laughter in the city, in the restaurant, in every place where his name was known, stung him into impotence. Once this story became public--as it would if he threw Edye out of his house there would be no peace for him. The cooks in the kitchen would howl with joy. The young widows and divorcees who had tempted him in vain with their bodies and their fortunes would smile maliciously at him when they passed him in the street. The cattle-dealers would grin at him from the tables. Gradually the terror of this disgrace overbore the blind rage of his resentment. Oh, no. That satisfaction he would never permit his enemies or his friends. It was better to keep the thing a secret in the family, to let things run their course. Let the cowy woman remain where she was; let her hang around like a servant.

To this decision Sender clung consistently. He never spoke to the woman. He neither uttered nor looked reproaches. She did not exist for him. He had the grocer, the butcher, the fish-dealer, and the other shopkeepers send up whatever was needed in the house; but he left his wife alone in the newly furnished home and returned to his bachelor life with more than the old relish. He took to drinking heavily. Not that he had been a particularly light drinker before; he had seldom refused a glass from one of his customers or failed to return the courtesy. But he had always known when to stop. Now the bars were down, and if drinks were not offered, he brought the bottle himself. He seldom got up from the little tables, but sat with any customer who happened to be in the restaurant. From morning to evening he ate and drank and smoked, and the cards were seldom out of his hands. The cattle-dealers and the gay young men of the neighbourhood were delighted. Their old Sender was back.

"You can't ruin a good man," they said, and admitted that they had feared for him; it had looked as though Sender the high liver was going to become a meek little husband and respectable householder.

Very soon after his return to freedom Sender gave instructions to Manka to put his "office" in order. Delighted to render this service, Manka banged away at the red plush sofa to get the dust out, washed the floor, wiped the cobwebs from the very blonde and very naked lady, and even spent a little money of her own on paper flowers with which to adorn her boss's den. When Sender came down to look at the room she was there; she had rouged her thin lips and her sallow cheeks, and she had drenched herself with cheap perfume. She asked coquettishly

"Do you like it now, boss?"

"Let's have a couple of glasses," said Sender. "You deserve a cognac."

She drank more than one cognac. At the fifth she flung herself at Sender and implored him not to send her away:

"Do what you like, Panie Sender, hit me, kick me like a dog! But I won't go away from here."

But Sender had never intended to send her away. He kept her there and he made her come back. And she was followed by others, old ones and new ones. The traffic on the stairs became heavier than ever before. The gay young widows and divorcees soon discovered that the road was open again, and they still found Sender, with his heavy, sturdy body, his bull-neck, and his hair plastered down on his skull, attractive. It did not take long for all of them to learn that Sender was not happy with the pious bride he had taken; they came flocking back, thinking that perhaps there was a chance after all.

Sender had a coarse hatred of these and of all women. He had never trusted them. Now his distrust had taken on a bitter edge. He spoke vilely to them, treated them basely, all but struck them. He took revenge for the humiliation which had been visited on him. But the more brutal his words and acts, the more the women clung to him.

He would come home late in the night to the bed which his wife had prepared for him. Tired out, half drunk, he would lie down alone, Briton at his feet. In the morning he would leave without a word spoken to Edye.

When she felt that she could stand it no longer, she tried to force his attention. One morning, as he was about to leave, she said, timidly:

"Sender, I've made breakfast for you."

"I eat in the restaurant," he answered, taken off his guard.

"Sender, you groaned in the night. You're sick."

"If you don't like it, you can sleep in the other room."

Edye burst out crying. "Hit me, curse me, do anything, but don't go around like that, without saying a word to me. I'm like a lost dog in the house. I wait all day, and I stay awake all night."

"If you don't like it, you can go back to your mother," snarled Sender, and flung from the room.

He took to staying out nights. When he locked his restaurant in the late evening, he would often go to one of the big all-night club-cafés in the centre of the town. There he took a table for himself and drank glass after glass of cognac. When he was drunk, he would begin to show the waiter how to serve.

"This is the way, my man," he hiccuped; and picking up the tray and glasses, he gave the waiter a lesson in deportment and service.

The hostesses and singers took him for a rich out-of-towner and flocked to his table. Sender ordered innumerable drinks, like rich officers on leave, and like them smashed the glasses on the floor.

"Put it on the bill," he shouted.

When closing-time arrived with the dawn, Sender would go to his restaurant and sleep a few hours in his "office," without undressing or changing his clothes.

He no longer went to the Yartchev Rabbi; but he was a frequent visitor to Shaiah Isaac the healer, and it was the latter who now took over the role of moral adviser. Every time he shaved Sender or changed the plasters on his bull-neck, he would look reprovingly into his face. Then he would take out his heavy watch, place two fingers on Sender's pulse, and murmur:

"Sender, too fast. I don't like it."

Reluctantly Sender let himself be dragged into Shaiah Isaac's reception room, and there the healer opened Sender's coat and shirt and put his ear to Sender's hairy chest

"Don't drink and smoke and play around so much, Sender," he said. "You aren't a boy any more."

Sender lit a fresh cigarette from the glowing stub of the old.

"Goats only die once," he said, hoarsely.

The grey hairs in Sender's head multiplied with extraordinary rapidity. They seemed to blossom among the black in the night. Sender looked at them in the mirror, spat, and turned away. And as his hair lost its lustre, his eyes lost theirs.. The merry black sparkle gave way to a dull stare. They watered a great deal after nights of drunkenness and lust. The whites turned faintly yellow and then blood-red.

The pains in his back multiplied, and he tried to drown them in drink. He ate spiced and smoked meats, salted fish, and all sorts of highly seasoned foods, though he could feel them turning sour in his stomach. He tried to put out his heart-burn with whisky. He became a confirmed and ceaseless chain smoker, inhaling from morning till night.

His clothes became tighter on his bloated body, and the buttons of his vest began to fly off under the pressure of his belly. His nose began to look like a red, shapeless fruit, delicately streaked with bluish veins. Just as he neglected his body, so he neglected his clothes. He had never been a dandy, but his clothes had been neat. Now he went about with buttons missing, with cigarette ash on his lapels, with dirty shoes. He even stopped shaving regularly, and half the time there was a thick, dirty stubble on his cheeks. The gay young women began to avoid him.

When he tried to make up to one of them he would often meet with a rebuff. They became outspoken: "Sender, you'd better stop. You're getting to be an old man, and your face feels like a grater."

Even the cooks in the kitchen stopped fighting among themselves for his favours. Sender became aware of their indifference and turned his attention to the street girls who hung around the corner near the restaurant. Often before closing the restaurant he would send Moritz the waiter to bring one of the girls down to the "office."

"The first one you find," he said; "they're all the same."

He began to neglect the restaurant, turning the cash register over to Moritz the waiter. Evenings, when the time came for an accounting, Sender would bang wildly on the desk and accuse Moritz of robbing him. Moritz swore by the grave of his parents that he had not put a groschen into his pocket. Sender, beside himself, would smack Moritz's face and scream that the next day he would get himself another head waiter, and that he would see Moritz dead before he would let him touch the cash register again. But the next morning Sender would be snoring on the red plush sofa in the "office," and Moritz would be back at the cash register.

There came a morning--and, oddly enough, he was at home for once--when Sender could not get out of bed. He lay there cursing at the top of his voice.

His frightened wife approached him again:

"Sender, I'm going to call a doctor."

"I don't need a doctor," he howled.

"Sender, please, let me rub you with alcohol," she begged, and rolled up her sleeves.

"I don't want anything from you."

"Well, what do you want?"

"I want the cognac on the sideboard there."

Afraid to gainsay him, she handed him the cognac and a glass and watched him drink one glass after another.

"Sender," she murmured, "the restaurant. There's no one to look after it."

"Don't be scared," he snarled. "There'll be enough left for you when I'm dead. And don't dare to go to the restaurant."

He waited till she left the room, found a pencil and paper, and with great difficulty wrote down the name "Manka." Then he called over Briton and tied the note to his neck.

"Go to Manka," he repeated several times. "Manka! And go slowly through the streets, so you won't be run over."

In a few minutes the bony, yellow-faced Polish girl, rouged and powdered as if she were going to a ball, appeared at the door. She swept Edye aside and took charge of the apartment. She did not wait for instructions; she did not need them. She went through the rooms, opened the dressers, examined the linen, took the pots and pans in her hand, and, her examination over, proceeded to the kitchen to prepare a meal. She fed Sender where he lay in bed, she rubbed his body with alcohol and vinegar, she kissed him brazenly before Edye, slapped him on the hands, and said, dictatorially:

"And now go to sleep, do you hear? Go to sleep or I'll punish you."

She looked tauntingly out of the corner of her greenish eyes at Edye, who stared at her, unable to believe herself. Then, when Manka strolled over to a mirror and began to adjust her curls before it, Edye ran sobbing into the kitchen.

At the end of a few days Sender left his bed, and Manka went back to the restaurant kitchen. The incident changed nothing in Sender's life. He drank, smoked, sent Moritz to the corner for girls, and quarrelled with him every evening over the cash in the register.

"A goat dies only once," he repeated to the cattle-dealers at the tables.

Toward the end of a day in the late winter, when a thaw had set in and the gutters in the streets were overflowing, Sender, about to leave the restaurant, felt a great heaviness in his feet and a frightful weight in his head. He groped his way back to the head of the stone steps leading to the "office," but no sooner had he lowered a foot than he lost control of himself and tumbled to the bottom of the stairs. Moritz the waiter, at the back of the restaurant, heard the dull crack with which the heavy body landed on the stone floor. He ran down, bent over the body, and began to pull Sender by the shoulders.

"Get up boss," he shouted, thinking that Sender was only drunk. "Here, give me your hand."

But Sender made no gesture.

At a loss, Moritz began to curse.

"Come on, you fat old slob," he shouted angrily. "Get a move on, I can't stand here all night."

As Sender still refused to move, Moritz, half in a rage, half frightened, began to kick the prostrate body, to bring it to. But Sender did not come to, and after a few minutes of thumping and kicking, Moritz flew up the steps and went in search of Shaiah Isaac the healer.

The two of them worked hard to drag the clumsy body of Sender to the plush sofa in the "office." It was heavy, with the peculiar, dragging heaviness of a corpse.

"Look, blood," whispered Moritz, pointing to Sender's temple.

"That's nothing," said Shaiah Isaac. "I'm afraid of something else. Here, help me to take off his shoes and stockings."

They bared Sender's feet; then Shaiah Isaac took a needle from the lapel of his coat and began to stick it into the toes and heels. Sender neither moved nor uttered a sound. Shaiah Isaac put the needle back in his lapel, and his face contracted, so that the long nose nearly touched the stuckout lower lip.

"That's the end of Sender," he croaked.

Moritz's eyes bulged.

"Isn't he alive, Reb Shaiah Isaac?"

"Oh, he's alive all right. But he's paralysed. He can't move a limb. Send for his wife."

Lost, bewildered, her frightened eyes fixed on the motionless face of her husband, Edye stood helpless by the sofa

"Sender! It's me! Say something!"

But Sender's eyes, as wide open as her own, looked back glassily. His mouth, half opened in a crooked smile, dribbled, as if he were still trying to spit in derision at the world. Edye did not know what to do. -This was the first time she had set foot in the restaurant about which she had heard so much, and in the "office," the rumours of which had long since reached her ears. A silk chemise hung by a shoulderstrap from a nail in the wall. The blonde naked lady stared down boldly into Edye's eyes. Edye turned away in embarrassment.

"What shall I do now?" she asked. She felt that something important had happened in her life; she did not know exactly what it was and what was to be done about it But Moritz the waiter knew, and the more helpless she showed herself, the more self-certain he became. Without offering any explanation he began to empty Sender's pockets, took out some crumpled banknotes and his gold watch, then slipped the rings off the helpless hands.

"Here, lady, you take these," he said peremptorily to Edye. "And now let's put his shoes and stockings on again."

I-his done, Moritz turned to Shaiah Isaac and ordered rather than requested him to go for an ambulance to have Sender taken to the hospital.

Shaiah Isaac objected at first. "His home would be better," he suggested, and looked at Edye. But Moritz answered roughly for her:

"What's the good of taking him home? He can't get the attention he needs there. The hospital's best, I tell you."

Shaiah Isaac looked again at Edye, waiting for a word, but Edye was looking straight into Moritz's mouth. Shaiah Isaac wrapped himself up in his fur coat and went out into the night. Before long the ambulance arrived and Sender was loaded into it. Moritz and Edye followed in a carriage. It was Moritz who gave the clerk at the desk all the particulars: the name, age, profession, and address of the sick man.

"Who is that lady? " the clerk asked, indicating Edye, who had not uttered a word.

"That's his wife."

The clerk looked at her with some astonishment, then yawned.

"Well, you understand about the payments--every week, on the same day, and in advance," he said. "You can visit the patient only at the regular hours."

Edye nodded feebly, still looking for instructions to Moritz. It was only as she was going out that it occurred to her to ask about Sender's condition. She turned back and addressed the clerk:

"How is he?" she asked. "Is it dangerous?"

The clerk pulled down the corners of his mouth.

"Looks bad," he said. "It's going to be a long business. He's as paralysed as a stone."

Still alert, still sure of himself, Moritz the waiter hailed another droshky, handed Edye in, and climbed in after her. When they arrived at her house he dismissed the droshky, went up the stairs with her, and followed her into the apartment. He closed the door behind him and said curtly:

"Make some tea, Edye."

She showed neither surprise nor resentment that he should address her thus. She obeyed him.

Moritz took down the bottle of cognac and two glasses from the sideboard. He poured out for himself and Edye

"I don't like cognac," said Edye.

"Do as I tell you," he answered. "It's good for you. It warms you up."

She drank, and Moritz refilled his own glass and hers. After he had swallowed several glasses he went up to her, put his arms round her, and pressed her close.

"You mustn't do that, it's wrong," murmured Edye. Moritz did not answer. He pulled her over toward the bedroom, and she did not resist.

In the morning Moritz put on Sender's dressing-gown, which hung at the head of the bed, and his slippers, which stood at its foot. He went into the bathroom and shaved himself with Sender's razor.

"Edye, darling," he called from the bathroom, "I like my tea with milk, and my eggs fried, not boiled."

When they had eaten he took the keys of the house and made Edye accompany him to the restaurant. They arrived to find the servant-girls and cooks assembled in the diningroom; the place was in disorder, nothing had been begun. There was loud crying and quarrelling. Moritz did not even wait to throw off his coat.

"Get down to your places," he shouted. "Every one of you.

The girls looked at Moritz and then at Edye. Then they went slowly to the head of the cellar stairs and trooped down.

Moritz took his waiter's apron from the cupboard, called over his assistant, and fastened the apron round him. Then he took Edye over to the cash register. "This'll be your place," he said, and he showed her how to ring up the receipts. "Just press here," he explained. "That's all you have to do." And when the first customers arrived that morning, they found Moritz himself installed behind the bar, from which he could shout his orders down into the kitchen.

Briton sat on his haunches near the door of the restaurant. His jaws were wide open, and from them issued, together with his spittle, a thin, mournful howling.