Chapter IX: Part 9

Then came the night, that glorious time of affection and good humor, when every Italian of this neighborhood is at his best. The moon was on high, a new moon, shining with all the thin delicacy of a pearl. Soft airs were blowing, clear voices singing; from every window streamed lamplight and laughter. It seemed as if all the beauty of spring had been crowded into a single hour.

On this occasion the fair Maria was lounging in front of her own doorstep when the lovesick Antonio came along. He was dressed in his best. A new red handkerchief was fastened about his neck, a soft crush hat set jauntily upon his forehead. Upon his hand was a ring, in the handkerchief a bright pin, and he was in his most cavalier mood. Together they talked, and as they observed the beauty of the night they decided to stroll to the little park a block away.

Somewhere in this thoroughfare, however, stood the jealous Vincenzo brooding. It was evident that he must have been concealed somewhere, watching, for when the two strolled toward the corner he was seen to appear and follow. At the corner, where the evening crowd was the thickest and the merriest--summer pleasure at its height, as it were--he suddenly confronted Antonio and drew his revolver.

“Ha!”

The astonished Antonio had no time to defend himself. He drew his knife, of course, but before he could act Vincenzo had fired a bullet into his breast and sent him reeling on his last journey.

Maria screamed. The crowd gathered. Friends of Antonio and Vincenzo drew knives and revolvers, and for a few moments it looked as if a feud were on. Then came the police, and with them the prosaic ambulance and patrol wagon--and another tragedy was recorded. Antonio was dead and Vincenzo severely cut and bruised.

And so it goes. They love desperately. They quarrel dramatically, and in the end they often fight and die, as we have seen. The brief, practical accounts of the newspapers give no least suggestion of the color, the emotion, the sorrow, the rage--in a way, the dramatic beauty--that attends them, nearly all.

CHRISTMAS IN THE TENEMENTS

They are infatuated with the rush and roar of a great metropolis. They are fascinated by the illusion of pleasure. Broadway, Fifth Avenue, the mansions, the lights, the beauty. A fever of living is in their blood. An unnatural hunger and thirst for excitement is burning them up. For this they labor. For this they endure a hard, unnatural existence. For this they crowd themselves in stifling, inhuman quarters, and for this they die.

The joys of the Christmas tide are no illusion with most of us, the strange exhibition of fancy, of which it is the name, no mockery of our dreams. Far over the wide land the waves of expectation and sympathetic appreciation constantly oscillate one with the other in the human breast, and in the closing season of the year are at last given definite expression. Rings and pins, the art of the jeweler and the skill of the dress-maker, pictures, books, ornaments and knickknacks--these with one great purpose are consecrated, and in the material lavishness of the season is seen the dreams of the world come true.

There is one region, however, where, in the terrific drag of the struggle for existence, the softer phases of this halcyon mood are at first glance obscure. It is a region of tall tenements and narrow streets where, crowded into an area of a few square miles, live and labor a million and a half of people. It is the old-time tenement area, leading almost unbrokenly north from Franklin Square to Fourteenth Street. Here, during these late December evenings, the holiday atmosphere is beginning to make itself felt. It is a region of narrow streets with tall five-story, even seven-story, tenements lining either side of the way and running thick as a river with a busy and toilsome throng.

The ways are already lined with carts of special Christmas goods, such as toys, candies, Christmas tree ornaments, feathers, ribbons, jewelry, purses, fruit, and in a few wagons small Christmas greens such as holly and hemlock wreaths, crosses of fir, balsam, tamarack pine and sprigs of mistletoe. Work has not stopped in the factories or stores, and yet these streets are literally packed with people, of all ages, sizes and nationalities, and the buying is lively. One man, who looks as though he might be a Bowery tough rather than a denizen of this particular neighborhood, is offering little three-, five- and ten-inch dolls which he announces as “genuine American beauties here. Three, five and ten.” Another, a pale, full-bearded Jew, is selling little Christmas tree ornaments of paste or glass for a penny each, and in the glare of the newly-turned-on electric lights, it is not difficult to perceive that they are the broken or imperfect lots of the toy manufacturers who are having them hawked about during the eleventh hour before Christmas as the best way of getting rid of them. Other dusty, grim and raucous denizens are offering candy, mixed nuts, and other forms of special confections, at ten cents a pound, a price at which those who are used to the more expensive brands may instructively ponder.

Meats are selling in some of the cheaper butcher shops for ten, fifteen and twenty cents a pound, picked chickens in barrels at fifteen and twenty. A whole section of Elizabeth Street is given up to the sale of stale fish at ten and fifteen cents a pound, and the crowd of Italians, Jews and Bohemians who are taking advantage of these modest prices is swarming over the sidewalk and into the gutters. A four- or five-pound fish at fifteen cents a pound will make an excellent Christmas dinner for four, five or six. A thin, ice-packed and chemically-preserved chicken at fifteen or twenty cents a pound will do as much for another family. Onions, garlic, old cast-off preserves, pickles and condiments that the wholesale houses uptown have seen grow stale and musty on their shelves, can be had here for five, ten and fifteen cents a bottle, and although the combination is unwholesome it will be worked over as Christmas dinners for the morrow. Cheap, unsalable, stale, adulterated--these are the words that should be stamped on every bottle, basket and barrel that is here being scrambled over. And yet the purchasers would not be benefited any thereby. They must buy what they can afford. What they can afford is this.

The street, with its mass of life, lingers in this condition until six o’clock, when the great shops and factories turn loose their horde of workers. Then into the glare of these electric-lighted streets the army of shop girls and boys begins to pour. Here is a spectacle interesting and provocative of thought at all seasons, but trebly so on this particular evening. It is a shabby throng at best, commonplace in garb and physical appearance, but rich in the qualities of youth and enthusiasm, than which the world holds nothing more valuable.

Youth in all the glory of its illusions and its ambitions. Youth, in whom the cold insistence of life’s physical limitations and the law have not as yet worked any permanent depression. Thousands are hurrying in every direction. The street cars which ply this area are packed as only the New York street car companies can pack their patrons, and that in cold, old, dirty and even vile cars. There are girls with black hair, and girls with brown. Some have even, white teeth, some shapely figures, some a touch of that persuasive charm which is indicated by the flash of an eye. There are poor dresses, poor taste, and poor manners mingled with good dresses, good taste and good manners. In the glow of the many lights and shadows of the evening they are hurrying away, with that lightness of spirit and movement which is the evidence of a long strain of labor suddenly relaxed.

“Do you think Santa Claus will have enough to fill that?” asks an officer, who is standing in the glare of a balsam- and pine-trimmed cigar store window, to a smartly dressed political heeler or detective who is looking on with him at the mass of shop-girls hurrying past. A shop-girl had gone by with her skirt cut to an inch or two below her knee, revealing a trim little calf and ankle.

“Eee yo! I hope so! Isn’t she the candy?”

“Don’t get fresh,” comes quickly from the hurrying figure as she disappears in the throng with a toss of her head. She has enjoyed the comment well enough, and the rebuke is more mischievous than angry.

“A goldfish! A goldfish! Only one cent!” cries a pushcart vendor, who is one of a thousand lining the pavements to-night, and at his behest another shop-girl, equally budding and youthful, stops to extract a penny from her small purse and carries away a thin, transparent prize of golden paste, for a younger brother, probably.

Others like her are being pushed and jostled the whole length of this crowded section. They are being nudged and admired as well as sought and schemed for. Whatever affections or attachments they have will be manifesting themselves to-night, as may be seen by the little expenditures they themselves are making. A goldfish of transparent paste or a half pound of candy, a cheap gold-plated stickpin, brooch or ring, or a handkerchief, collar or necktie bought of one of the many pushcart men, tell the story plainly enough. Sympathy, love, affection and passion are running their errant ways among this vast unspoken horde no less than among the more pretentious and well-remembered of the world.

And the homes to which they are hurrying, the places which are dignified by that title, but which here should have another name! Thousands upon thousands of them are turning into entry ways, the gloom or dirtiness or poverty of which should bar them from the steps of any human being. Up the dark stairways they are pouring into tier upon tier of human hives, in some instances not less than seven stories high and, of course, without an elevator, and by grimy landings they are sorted out and at last distributed each into his own cranny. Small, dark one-, two- and three-room apartments, where yet on this Christmas evening, one, and sometimes three, four and five are still at work sewing pants, making flowers, curling feathers, or doing any other of a hundred tenement tasks to help out the income supplied by the one or two who work out. Miserable one- and two-room spaces where ignorance and poverty and sickness, rather than greed or immorality, have made veritable pens out of what would ordinarily be bad enough. Many hundreds or thousands of others there are where thrift and shrewdness are making the best of very unfortunate conditions, and a hundred or two where actual abundance prevails. These are the homes. Let us enter.

Zorg is a Bohemian, and has a little two-room apartment. The windows of the only one which has windows looks into Elizabeth Street. It is a dingy apartment, unswept and unwhitewashed at present, where on this hearty Christmas Eve, himself, his wife, his wife’s mother, and his little twelve-year-old son are laboring at a fair-sized deal table curling feathers. The latter is a simple task, once you understand it, dull, tedious, unprofitable. It consists in taking a feather in one hand, a knife in the other, and drawing the fronds quickly over the knife’s edge. This gives them a very sprightly curl and can be administered, if the worker be an expert, by a single movement of the hand. It is paid for by the dozen, as such work is usually paid for in this region, and the ability to earn much more than sixty cents a day is not within the range of human possibility. Forty cents would be a much more probable average, and this is approximately the wages which these several individuals earn. Rent uses up three of the twelve dollars weekly income; food, dress, coal and light six more. Three dollars, when work is steady, is the sum laid aside for all other purposes and pleasures, and this sum, if no amusements were indulged in and no sickness or slackness of work befell, might annually grow to the tidy sum of one hundred and fifty-six dollars; but it has never done so. Illness invariably takes one part, lack of work a greater part still. In the long drag of weary labor the pleasure-loving instincts of man cannot be wholly restrained, and so it comes about that the present Christmas season finds the funds of the family treasury low.

It is in such a family as this that the merry Christmas time comes with a peculiar emphasis, and although the conditions may be discouraging, the efforts to meet it are almost always commensurate with the means.

However, on this Christmas Eve it has been deemed a duty to have some diversion, and so, although the round of weary labor may not be thus easily relaxed, the wife has been deputed to do the Christmas shopping and has gone forth into the crowded East Side street, from which she has returned with a meat bone, a cut from a butcher’s at twelve cents a pound, green pickles, three turnips, a carrot, a half-dozen small candles, and two or three toys, which, together with a small three-foot branch of hemlock, purchased earlier in the day, completes the Christmas preparation for the morrow. Arba, the youngest, although like the others she will work until ten this Christmas Eve, is to have a pair of new shoes; Zicka, the next older, a belt for her dress. Mrs. Zorg, although she may not suspect, will receive a new market basket with a lid on it. Zorg--grim, silent, weary of soul and body--is to have a new fifteen-cent tie. There will be a tree, a small sprig of a tree, upon which will hang colored glass or paste balls of red and blue and green, with threads of popcorn and sprays of flitter-gold, all saved from the years before. In the light of early dawn to-morrow the youngest of the children will dance about these, and the richness of their beauty will be enjoyed as if they had not been so presented for the seventh and eighth time.

Thus it runs, mostly, throughout the entire region on this joyous occasion, a wealth of feeling and desire expressing itself through the thinnest and most meager material forms. About the shops and stores where the windows are filled with cheap displays of all that is considered luxury, are hosts of other children scarcely so satisfactorily supplied, peering earnestly into the world of make-believe and illusion, the wonder of it not yet eradicated from their unsophisticated hearts. Joy, joy--not a tithe of all that is represented by the expenditures of the wealthy, but only such as may be encompassed in a paper puff-ball or a tinsel fish, is here sought for and dreamed over, an earnest, child-heart-longing which may never again be gratified if not now. Horses, wagons, fire engines, dolls--these are what the thousands upon thousands of children whose faces are pressed closely against the commonplace window panes are dreaming about, and the longing that is thereby expressed is the strongest evidence of the indissoluble link which binds these weakest and most wretched elements of society to the best and most successful.

THE RIVERS OF THE NAMELESS DEAD

The body of a man was found yesterday in the North River at Twenty-fifth Street. A brass check, No. 21,600, of the New York Registry Company, was found on the body.--N. Y. Daily Paper.

There is an island surrounded by rivers, and about it the tide scurries fast and deep. It is a beautiful island, long, narrow, magnificently populated, and with such a wealth of life and interest as no island in the whole world before has ever possessed. Long lines of vessels of every description nose its banks. Enormous buildings and many splendid mansions line its streets.

It is filled with a vast population, millions coming and going, and is the scene of so much life and enthusiasm and ambition that its fame is, as the sound of a bell, heard afar.

And the interest which this island has for the world is that it is seemingly a place of opportunity and happiness. If you were to listen to the tales of its glory carried the land over and see the picture which it presents to the incoming eye, you would assume that it was all that it seemed. Glory for those who enter its walls seeking glory. Happiness for those who come seeking happiness. A world of comfort and satisfaction for all who take up their abode within it--an island of beauty and delight.

The sad part of it is, however, that the island and its beauty are, to a certain extent, a snare. Its seeming loveliness, which promises so much to the innocent eye, is not always easy of realization. Thousands come, it is true; thousands venture to reconnoiter its mysterious shores. From the villages and hamlets of the land is streaming a constant procession of pilgrims who feel that here is the place where their dreams are to be realized; here is the spot where they are to be at peace. That their hopes are not, in so many cases, to be realized, is the thing which gives a poignant tang to their coming. The beautiful island is not compact of happiness for all.

And the exceptional tragedy of it is that the waters which surround the beautiful island are forever giving evidence of the futility of the dreams of so many. If you were to stand upon any of its shores, where the tide scurries past in its never-ending hurry, or were to idle for a time upon its many docks and piers, which reach far out into the water and give lovely views of the sky and the gulls and the boats, you might see drifting past upon the bosom of the current some member of all the ambitious throng who, in time past, set his face toward the city, and who entered only to find that there was more of sorrow than of joy. Sad, white-faced maidens; grim, bearded, time-worn men; strange, strife-worn, grief-stricken women; and, saddest of all, children--soft, wan, tender children--floating in the waters which wash the shores of the island city.

And such waters! How green they look, how graceful, how mysterious! From far seas they come--strange, errant, peculiar waters--prying along the shores of the magnificent island; sucking and sipping at the rocks which form its walls; whispering and gurgling about the docks and piers, and flowing, flowing, flowing. Such waters seem to be kind, and yet they are not so. They seem to be cruel, and yet they are not so; merely indifferent these waters are--dark, strong, deep, indifferent.

And curiously the children of men who come to seek the joys of the city realize the indifference and the impartiality of the waters. When the vast and beautiful island has been reconnoitered, when its palaces have been viewed, its streets disentangled, its joys and its difficulties discovered, then the waters, which are neither for nor against, seem inviting. Here, when the great struggle has been ended, when the years have slipped by and the hopes of youth have not been realized; when the dreams of fortune, the delights of tenderness, the bliss of love and the hopes of peace have all been abandoned--the weary heart may come and find surcease. Peace in the waters, rest in the depths and the silence of the hurrying tide; surcease and an end in the chalice of the waters which wash the shores of the beautiful island.

And they do come, these defeated ones? Not one, nor a dozen, nor a score every year, but hundreds and hundreds. Scarcely a day passes but one, and sometimes many, go down from the light and the show and the merriment of the island to the shores of the waters where peace may be found. They stop on its banks; they reflect, perhaps, on the joys which they somehow have missed; they give a last, despairing glance at the wonderful scene which once seemed so joyous and full of promise, and then yield themselves unresistingly to the unswerving strength of the powerful current and are borne away. Out past the docks and the piers of the wonderful city. Out past its streets, its palaces, its great institutions. Out past its lights, its colors, the sound of its merriment and its seeking, and then the sea has them and they are no more. They have accomplished their journey, the island its tragedy. They have come down to the rivers of the nameless dead. They have yielded themselves as a sacrifice to the variety of life. They have proved the uncharitableness of the island of beauty.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.

Transcriber removed duplicate book title on page before first chapter.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Color of a Great City, by Theodore Dreiser