The Featherbed. Джон Миллер

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СКАЧАТЬ thank you, Mr. Ignatow. There were quite a few accounts to type up this afternoon.”

      Rebecca rolled her eyes.

      “Don’t you make your eyes like that, Rebecca. You could be earning the better wages too if you took that secretarial course like Ida did. Get a job in a nice accounting firm.”

      The previous fall, a week after Mr. Vanderholtz increased their rent, Ida Eisenstein announced at synagogue that she had graduated from a course given by the Henry Street Settlement and was looking for a family with whom to board. Rebecca’s parents took her in the following Monday, and by Sabbath dinner, Rebecca was already hating her. Ida was a wispy, bird-like creature with long, reedy arms, high cheekbones, and wide, bony shoulders. Her hair was a dull, mousy brown, but Rebecca was jealous of how straight it was, of how easily she could tie it into a bun. And she had to admit that Ida had beautiful skin. Her own hair had an unmanageable wave to it, not curly enough to be considered beautiful, and her skin still suffered from frequent blemishes. Ida was a year younger, but acted as though she knew the world inside out. And when they were alone, she never shut up.

      “That’s a good job you have, Ida,” her father continued.

      “Be careful, work hard, and they could promote you!”

      Her mother looked amused. “To what, Sholem?” she asked. “Senior typist?” Then turning to Ida, “I don’t mean offence, dear — it is only that my husband thinks if we simply worked a little harder, we would all be rich as the Astors by Pesach.” Ida gave her a weak smile.

      Her father slurped his soup, then said, “Maybe that boss of hers needs a personal secretary some day. Maybe that’s what.” He tapped his piece of bread on the table for emphasis. Now Ida’s smile broadened, and she beamed it in Rebecca’s direction.

      “Yes, Ida,” countered Rebecca, “I’m sure you could find a way to prove to him that you’re right for the job...” She got up to bring her bowl to the wash basin. When she turned around again, Ida still had that stupid smile on her face, but it soon faded as she grasped Rebecca’s meaning.

      “Sure! Of course you will! Such a smart girl, that Ida!” her father shouted to his daughter. Then to his wife, “Fania, more soup!”

      She poured the last ladle-full into her husband’s bowl, then put the ladle down and squeezed her daughter’s arm.

      “And how was your work today, Beckeleh?”

      “The same.”

      “Oh, Beckeleh, come now. Always I ask you, always you say the same. Nu, what’s this same? Same good? Or same bad?”

      “I go to work, I sit on a bench, I sew shirtwaists, I come home. What do you want to know, Mama? I bring home my wages, don’t I?”

      “Oh, such a long face. You have been lucky to have such a job.” She wagged her finger.

      “Did I say I wasn’t lucky? I’m glad to help out. I’m glad to have a job so we can eat. It doesn’t mean I have to love my work.”

      Her father pointed his piece of challah at her. “You’re glad to have a job so you can have a dowry and not be an old maid.” He raised his eyebrows to her mother and nodded.

      Her mother shrugged. “That’s what this country does to our young people, Papa. Never they are happy with what they do. Too much fanciness right in front of them in the store window. Everyone thinking like a millionaire.”

      He grunted. He was busy chewing.

      “Mama, you raised the subject and now you’re making me feel guilty about it. You have no idea what it’s like at the factory.”

      She saw Ida look nervously around herself to find dishes she could clear, obviously sensing there was a family argument brewing. She wanted to go to the bedroom, where she would overhear but not have to participate, no doubt. “May I be excused, Mrs. Ignatow?” she said meekly, and then left at her mother’s nod.

      “Coward,” Rebecca whispered to her under her breath. Ida took a plate to the wash basin, turned around, and smiled at her from behind her mother’s back. Rebecca glowered back at her and waited for her mother’s onslaught.

      “So.” Her mother’s eyebrows joined to form a single line.

      “I don’t know what it’s like at the factory, do I? I have it so easy, do I?”

      “No, Mama, I didn’t say that...”

      “I sit around eating poppy-seed cakes all day, do I?”

      “Oh Mama, you asked me good or bad — I said bad, and you think I’m saying your life is easy. All I meant is that it’s different, and you’re not there with me in the factory.”

      “You think it was for nothing we came to this country? You think I would let my own daughter suffer in a factory if I thought a life in Poland or in Russia was so good?” Her open palm slapped the table. “You think I don’t wish we were millionaires that you could sit around in a fur coat or go shopping all day? You think it is easy running a household? Well, you will soon know different.”

      “What is that supposed to mean, Mama? I don’t think your life is easy. I know how hard your life is here.”

      “So hard here. Do I complain like you do? Compared to back home, compared to what we left, this place is Paradise. You children have no idea...”

      Her mother paused, her face hard, her lips pursed together. When eventually she spoke, she switched to Yiddish, and her voice became very soft.

      “When I left Kovel, I was nineteen years old...” She breathed in and out several times through her nose, opened her mouth and made a noise to begin to speak, but then closed it. Her eyes opened wide, calling to her husband for help. Sholem stopped his chewing and smiled encouragement to her.

      “My parents, your bubbe and zayde, they had moved from Poland to Bechcin, in Bohemia, when they were young. They had seven children already when the pogrom came through in sixty-six. The village was devastated, and they lost their eldest child to the knife of a crazy soldier. After that, they decided to move back to Kovel. My parents decided to have another child to replace the one who was lost. But my parents still had six children. So you see, Beckeleh, I was a replacement for a dead brother.”

      Rebecca leaned over to touch her mother. “Oh, Mama, I’m sure that’s not true.”

      “It is true. It didn’t mean they didn’t love me, though I thought, until I got older and understood, that this was exactly what it meant. In such a village of poverty I grew up, you can’t imagine. My mother and father had potatoes, bread, and cabbage, sometimes only potatoes to eat. And we had more than most people because my older brothers and sisters worked. When I was very young I didn’t know any different, and I laughed and laughed with the other children my age. But as I got older, then I knew.

      “I worked in the summertime from the age of eleven years old, bringing in six cents a day. Work in the fields, weeding, digging potatoes, planting. In the winter, I helped my mama with some sewing for a tailor. This work we had because there was nothing else. But because we all worked in the family, between us, we just had enough to eat. Most of the time. Sometimes, if one of my brothers lost work, we went hungry.”

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