Jewish fiction; Jews -- New York (State) -- New York -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
[11] It is on the window, I meant to say.
She blushed as she said it, but at the moment she attached no
importance to the matter and took no more notice of it. Now, however,
Jake's tone of voice, as he had rebuked her backwardness in picking up
American Yiddish, came back to her and she grew dejected.
She was getting used to her husband, in whom her own Yekl and Jake the
stranger were by degrees merging themselves into one undivided being.
When the hour of his coming from work drew near she would every little
while consult the clock and become impatient with the slow progress of
its hands; although mixed with this impatience there was a feeling of
apprehension lest the supper, prepared as it was under culinary
conditions entirely new to her, should fail to please Jake and the
boarders. She had even become accustomed to address her husband as Jake
without reddening in the face; and, what is more, was getting to
tolerate herself being called by him Goitie (Gertie)--a word
phonetically akin to Yiddish for Gentile. For the rest she was too
inexperienced and too simple-hearted naturally to comment upon his
manner toward her. She had not altogether overcome her awe of him, but
as he showed her occasional marks of kindness she was upon the whole
rather content with her new situation. Now, however, as she thus sat in
solitude, with his harsh voice ringing in her ears and his icy look
before her, a feeling of suspicion darkened her soul. She recalled
other scenes where he had looked and spoken as he had done the night
before. "He must hate me! A pain upon me!" she concluded with a fallen
heart. She wondered whether his demeanour toward her was like that of
other people who hated their wives. She remembered a woman of her
native village who was known to be thus afflicted, and she dropped her
head in a fit of despair. At one moment she took a firm resolve to
pluck up courage and cast away the kerchief and the wig; but at the
next she reflected that God would be sure to punish her for the
terrible sin, so that instead of winning Jake's love the change would
increase his hatred for her. It flashed upon her mind to call upon some
"good Jew" to pray for the return of his favour, or to seek some old
Polish beggar woman who could prescribe a love potion. But then, alas!
who knows whether there are in this terrible America any good Jews or
beggar women with love potions at all! Better she had never known this
"black year" of a country! Here everybody says she is green. What an
ugly word to apply to people! She had never been green at home, and
here she had suddenly become so. What do they mean by it, anyhow?
Verily, one might turn green and yellow and gray while young in such a
dreadful place. Her heart was wrung with the most excruciating pangs of
homesickness. And as she thus sat brooding and listlessly surveying her
new surroundings--the iron stove, the stationary washtubs, the window
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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