Breakfast in the Ruins kg-2 Read online

  The man's body presses down on his and for a moment he smiles. Is this what they mean by the White Man's Burden?

  — Sssssshhhhh, says the black man.

  What Would You Do? (5)

  You have three children.

  One is eight years old. A girl.

  One is six years old. A girl.

  One is a few months old. A boy.

  You are told that you can save any two of them from death, but not all three. You are given five minutes to choose.

  Which one would you sacrifice?

  6

  London Sewing Circle: 1905:

  A Message

  One would have thought that the meaning of the word "sweating" as applied to work was sufficiently obvious. But when "the Sweating System" was inquired into by the Committee of the House of Lords, the meaning became suddenly involved. As a matter of fact the sweater was originally a man who kept his people at work for long hours. A schoolboy who "sweats" for his examination studies for many hours beyond his usual working day. The schoolboy meaning of the word was originally the trade meaning.

  But of late years the sweating system has come to mean an unhappy combination of long hours and low pay. "The sweater's den" is a workshop—often a dwelling room as well—in which, under the most unhealthy conditions, men and women toil for from sixteen to eighteen hours a day for a wage barely sufficient to keep body and soul together.

  The sweating system, as far as London is concerned, exists chiefly at the East End, but it flourishes also in the West, notably in Soho, where the principal "sweating trade", tailoring, is now largely carried on. Let us visit the East End first, for here we can see the class which has largely contributed to the evil—the destitute foreign Jew—place his alien foot for the first time upon the free soil of England.

  LIVING LONDON, by George R. Sims Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1902.

  Karl turns onto his side. He is aching. He is weeping.

  — Did I promise you pleasure? asks the tall, black man as he wipes his hands on a hotel towel and then stretches and then yawns.—Did I?

  — No. Karl's voice is muffled and small.

  — You can leave whenever you wish.

  — Like this?

  — You'll get used to it. After all, millions of others have...

  — Have you known them all?

  The black man parts the curtain. It is now pitch dark outside and it is silent.—Now that's a leading question, he says.—The fact is, Karl, you are intrigued by all these new experiences. You welcome them. Why be a hypocrite?

  — I'm not the hypocrite.

  The black man grins and wags a chiding finger. Don't take it out on me, man. That wouldn't be very liberal, would it?

  — I never was very liberal.

  — You've been very liberal to me. The black man rolls his eyes in a comic grimace. Karl has seen the expression earlier. He begins to tremble again. He looks at his own brown hands and he tries to make his brain see all this in a proper, normal light.

  He is eleven. A dark, filthy room. Many little sounds.

  The black man says from beside the window:. Come here, Karl.

  Automatically Karl hauls himself from the bed and begins to make his way across the floor.

  He remembers his mother and the tin of paint she threw at him which missed and ruined her wallpaper. You don't love me, he had said. Why should I? she had replied. He had been fourteen, perhaps, and ashamed of the question once he had asked it.

  He is eleven. Many little regular sounds.

  He approaches the black man.—That will do, Karl, says the black man.

  Karl stops.

  The black man approaches him. Under his breath he is humming "Old Folks At Home". Kneeling on the carpet, Karl begins to sing the words in an exaggerated minstrel accent.

  KARL WAS ELEVEN. His mother was thirty. His father was thirty five. They lived in London. They had come to London from Poland three years earlier. They had been escaping a. pogrom. On their way, they had been robbed of most of their money by their countrymen. When they had arrived at the dockside, they had been met by a Jew who said he was from the same district as Karl's father and would help them. He had taken them to lodgings which had proved poor and expensive. When Karl's father ran out of money the man had loaned him a few shillings on his luggage and, when Karl's father could not pay him back, had kept the luggage and turned them out onto the street. Since then, Karl's father had found work. Now they all worked, Karl, his mother and his father. They worked for a tailor. Karl's father had been a printer in Poland, an educated man. But there was not enough work for Polish printers in London. One day Karl's father hoped that a job would become vacant on a Polish or Russian newspaper. Then they would become respectable again, as they had been in Poland.

  At present, both Karl, his mother and his father all looked rather older than their respective ages. They sat together at one corner of the long table. Karl's mother worked a sewing machine. Karl's father sewed the lapel of a jacket. Around the table sat other groups—a man and a wife, three sisters, a mother and daughter, a father and son, two brothers. They all had the same appearance, were dressed in threadbare clothes of black and brown. The women's mouths were tight shut. The men mostly had thin, straggly beards. They were not all Polish. Some were from other countries: Russia, Bohemia, Germany and elsewhere. Some could not even speak Yiddish and were therefore incapable of conversing with anyone not from their own country.

  The room in which they worked was lit by a single gas jet in the centre of the low ceiling. There was a small window, but it had been nailed up. The walls were of naked plaster through which could be seen patches of damp brick. Although it was winter, there was no fire in the room and the only heat came from the bodies of the workers. There was a fireplace in the room, but this was used to store the scraps of discarded material which could be re-used for padding. The smell of the people was very strong, but now few of them really noticed it, unless they left the room and came back in again, which was rarely. Some people would stay there for days at a time, sleeping in a corner and eating a bowl of soup someone would bring them, before starting work again.

  A week ago, Karl had been there when they had discovered that the man whose coughing they had all complained about had not woken up for seven hours. Another man had knelt down and listened at the sleeping man's chest. He had nodded to the sleeping man's wife and sister-in-law and together they had carried him from the room. Neither the wife nor the sister-in-law came back for the rest of the day and it seemed to Karl that when they did return the wife's whole soul had not been in her work and her eyes were redder than usual, but the sister-in-law seemed much the same. The coughing man had not returned at all and, of course, Karl reasoned, it was because he was dead.

  Karl's father laid down the coat. It was time to eat. He left the room and returned shortly with a small bundle wrapped in newspaper, a single large jug of hot tea. Karl's mother left her sewing machine and signed to Karl. The three of them sat in the corner of the room near the window while Karl's father unwrapped the newspaper and produced three cooked herrings. He handed one to each of them. They took turns to sip from the tea-jug. The meal lasted ten minutes and was eaten in silence. Then they went back to their place at the table, having carefully cleaned their fingers on the newspaper, for Mr. Armfelt would fine them if he discovered any grease spots on the clothes they were making.

  Karl looked at his mother's thin, red fingers, at his father's lined face. They were no worse off than the rest.

  That was the phrase his father always used when he and his mother crawled into their end of the bed. Once he had prayed every night. Now that phrase was the nearest he came to a prayer.

  The door opened and the room became a little more chill. The door closed. A short young man wearing a black bowler hat and a long overcoat stood there, blowing on his fingers. He spoke in Russian, his eyes wandering from face to face. Few looked up. Only Karl stared at him.

  "Any lad like to do a job for me
?" said the young man. "Urgent. Good money."

  Several of the workers had his attention now, but Karl had already raised his hand. His father looked concerned, but said nothing.

  "You'll do fine," said the young man. "Five shillings, And it won't take you long, probably. A message."

  "A message where?" Like Karl, Karl's father spoke Russian as well as he spoke Polish.

  "Just down to the docks. Not far. I'm busy, or I'd go myself. But I need someone who knows a bit of English, as well as Russian."

  "I speak English," said Karl in English.

  "Then you're definitely the lad I need. Is that all right?" glancing at Karl's father. "You've no objection? "

  "I suppose not. Come back as soon as you can, Karl. And don't let anybody take your money from you." Karl's father began to sew again. His mother turned the handle of the sewing-machine a trifle faster, but that was all.

  "Come on, then," said the young man.

  Karl got up.

  "It's pelting down out there," said the young man.

  "Take the blanket, Karl," said his father.

  Karl went to the corner and picked up the thin scrap of blanket. He draped it round his shoulders. The young man was already clumping down the stairs. Karl followed.

  Outside in the alley it was almost as dark as night. Heavy rain swished down and filled the broken street with black pools in which it seemed you could fall and drown. A dog leaned in a doorway, shivering. At the far end of the alley were the lights of the pub. Blinds were drawn in half the windows of the buildings lining both sides of the street. In some of the remaining windows could be seen faint, ghostly lights. A voice was shouting, but whether it was in this alley or the next one, Karl couldn't tell. The shouting stopped. He huddled deeper into the blanket.

  "You know Irongate Stairs?" The young man looked rapidly up and down the alley.

  "Where the boats come ashore?" said Karl.

  "That's right. Well, I want you to take this envelope to someone who's landing from the Solchester in an hour or so. Tell no one you have the envelope, save this man. And mention the man's name as little as you can. He may want your help. Do whatever he asks."

  "And when will you pay me?"

  "When you have done the work."

  "How will I find you?"

  "I'll come back here. Don't worry, I'm not like your damned masters! I won't go back on my word." The young man lifted his head almost proudly. "This day's work could see an end to what you people have to suffer."

  He handed Karl the envelope. On it, in Russian, was written a single word, a name: KOVRIN.

  "Kovrin," said Karl, rolling his r. "This is the man?"

  "He's very tall and thin," said his new employer. "Probably wearing a Russian cap. You know the sort of thing people wear when they first come over. A very striking face, I'm told."

  "You've not met him?"

  "A relative, come to look for work," said the young man somewhat hastily. "That's enough. Go, before you're too late. And tell no one save him that you have met me, or there'll be no money for you. Get it?"

  Karl nodded. The rain was already soaking through his blanket. He tucked the envelope into his shirt and began to trot along the alley, avoiding the worst of the puddles. As he passed the pub, a piano began to play and he heard a cracked voice singing: Don't stop me 'arf a pint o' beer, It's the only fing what's keepin' me alive. I don't mind yer stoppin' of me corfee and me tea, But 'arf a pint o' beer a day is medicine to me.

  I don't want no bloomin' milk or eggs, And to buy them I'll find it very dear. If you want to see me 'appy and contented all me life, Don't stop me 'arf a pint o' beer!

  Now I'm a chap what's moderate in all I 'ave to drink, And if that's wrong, then tell me what is right...

  Karl did not hear all the words properly. Besides, such songs all sounded the same to him, with virtually the same tunes and the same sentiments. He found the English rather crude and stupid, particularly in their musical tastes. He wished he were somewhere else. Whenever he wasn't working, when he could daydream quite cheerfully as he sewed pads into jackets, this feeling overwhelmed him. He longed for the little town in Poland he could barely remember, for the sun and the cornfields, the snows and the pines. He had never been clear about why they had had to leave so hastily.

  Water filled his ruined shoes and made the cloth of his trousers stick to his thin legs. He crossed another alley. There were two or three English boys there. They were scuffling about on the wet cobbles. He hoped they wouldn't see him. There was nothing that cheered bored English boys up so much as the prospect of baiting Karl Glogauer. And it was important that he shouldn't lose the letter, or fail to deliver it. Five shillings was worth nearly two days work. In an hour he would make as much as he would normally make in thirty-six. They hadn't seen him. He reached the broader streets and entered Commercial Street which was crowded with slow-moving traffic. Everything, even the cabs, seemed beaten down by the grey rain. The world was a place of blacks and dirty whites, spattered with the yellow of gas-lamps in the windows of the pie-and-mash shops, the second-hand clothes shops, the pubs and the pawnshops. Plodding drey horses threatened to smash their heads against the curved green fronts of the trams or the omnibuses; carters swore at their beasts, their rivals and themselves. Swathed in rubber, or canvas, or gabardine, crouching beneath umbrellas, men and women stumbled into each other or stepped aside just in time. Through all these dodged Karl with his message in his shirt, crossing Aldgate and running down the dismal length of Leman Street, past more pubs, a few dismal shops, crumbling houses, brick walls which seemed to have no function but to block light from the street, a police station with a blue lamp gleaming over its door, another wall plastered with advertisements for meat-drinks, soaps, bicycles, nerve tonics, beers, money-lenders, political parties, newspapers, music-halls, jobs (No Irish or Aliens Need Apply), furniture on easy terms, the Army. The rain washed them down and made some of them look fresh again. Across Cable Street, down Dock Street, through another maze of alleys, even darker than the others, to Wapping Lane.

  When he reached the River, Karl had to ask his way, for, in fact, he had lied when he had told the man he knew Iron-gate Stairs. People found his guttural accent hard to understand and lost patience with him quickly, but one old man gave him the direction. It was still some distance off. He broke into a trot again, the blanket drawn up over his head, so that he looked like some supernatural creature, a body without a skull, running mindlessly through the cold streets.

  When he reached Irongate Stairs, the first boats were already bringing the immigrants ashore, for the ship itself could not tie up at the wharf. He saw that it was the right ship, a mass of red and black, belching oily smoke over the oily river, smoke which also seemed pressed down by the rain and which would not rise. The Solchester was a regular caller at Irongate Stairs, sailing twice a week from Hamburg with its cargo of Jews and political exiles. Karl had seen many identical people in his three years in White-chapel. They were thin and there was hunger in their eyes; bewildered, bare-headed women, with shawls round their shoulders more threadbare than Karl's blanket, dragged their bundles from the boats to the wharf, trying at the same time to keep control of their scrawny children. A number of the men were quarrelling with the boatman, refusing to pay the sixpence which was his standard charge. They had been cheated so often on their journey that they were certain they were being cheated yet again. Others were staring in miserable astonishment at the blurred and blotted line of wharves and grim buildings which seemed to make up the entire city, hesitating before entering the dark archway which protected this particular wharf. The archway was crowded with loafers and touts all busily trying to confuse them, to seize their luggage, almost fighting to get possession of it.

  Two policemen stood near the exit to Irongate Stairs, refusing to take part in any of the many arguments which broke out, unable to understand the many questions which the refugees put to them, simply smiling patronizingly and shaking their heads,
pointing to the reasonably well-dressed man who moved anxiously amongst the people and asking questions in Yiddish or Lettish. Chiefly he wanted to know if the people had an address to go to. Karl recognized him. This was Mr. Somper, the Superintendent of the Poor Jews' Temporary Shelter. Mr. Somper had met them three years before. At that time Karl's father had been confident that he needed no such assistance. Karl saw that many of the newcomers were as confident as his father had been. Mr. Somper did his best to listen sympathetically to all the tales they told him—of robbery at the frontier, of the travel agent who told them they would easily find a good job in England, of the oppression they had suffered in their own countries. Many waved pieces of crumpled paper on which addresses were written in English—the names of friends or relatives who had already settled in London. Mr. Somper, his dark face clouded with care, saw to it that their baggage was loaded on to the waiting carts, assured those who tried to hang on to their bundles that they would not be stolen, united mothers with stray children and husbands with wives. Some of the people did not need his help and they looked as relieved as he did. These were going on to America and were merely transferring from one boat to another.

  Karl could see no one of Kovrin's description. He was jostled back and forth as the Germans and the Romanians and the Russians, many of them still wearing the embroidered smocks of their homeland, crowded around him, shrieking at each other, at the loafers and the officials, terrified by the oppressive skies and the gloomy darkness of the archway.

  Another boat pulled in and a tall man stepped from it. He carried only a small bundle and was somewhat better dressed than those around him. He wore a long overcoat which was buttoned to the neck, a peaked Russian cap and there were high boots on his feet. Karl knew immediately that this was Kovrin. As the man moved through the crowd, making for the exit where the officials were checking the few papers the immigrants had, Karl ran up to him and tugged at his sleeve.