Slack Times They Sleep
: ABRAHAM RAISINDespite the fact of the winter nights being long and dark as the Jewish
exile, the Breklins go to bed at dusk.
But you may as well know that when it is dusk outside in the street, the
Breklins are already "way on" in the night, because they live in a
basement, separated from the rest of the world by an air-shaft, and when
the sun gathers his beams round him before setting, the first to be
summoned are tho
required for them to struggle out again.
The same thing in the morning, only reversed. People don't usually get
up, if they can help it, before it is really light, and so it comes to
pass that when other people have left their beds, and are going about
their business, the Breklins are still asleep and making the long, long
night longer yet.
If you ask me, "How is it they don't wear their sides out with lying in
bed?" I shall reply: They do rise with aching sides, and if you say,
"How can people be so lazy?" I can tell you, They don't do it out of
laziness, and they lie awake a great part of the time.
What's the good of lying in bed if one isn't asleep?
There you have it in a nutshell--it's a question of the economic
conditions. The Breklins are very poor, their life is a never-ending
struggle with poverty, and they have come to the conclusion that the
cheapest way of waging it, and especially in winter, is to lie in bed
under a great heap of old clothes and rags of every description.
Breklin is a house-painter, and from Christmas to Purim (I beg to
distinguish!) work is dreadfully slack. When you're not earning a
crooked penny, what are you to do?
In the first place, you must live on "cash," that is, on the few dollars
scraped together and put by during the "season," and in the second
place, you must cut down your domestic expenses, otherwise the money
won't hold out, and then you might as well keep your teeth in a drawer.
But you may neither eat nor drink, nor live at all to mention--if it's
winter, the money goes all the same: it's bitterly cold, and you can't
do without the stove, and the nights are long, and you want a lamp.
And the Breklins saw that their money would not hold out till
Purim--that their Fast of Esther would be too long. Coal was beyond
them, and kerosene as dear as wine, and yet how could they possibly
spend less? How could they do without a fire when it was so cold?
Without a lamp when it was so dark? And the Breklins had an "idea"!
Why sit up at night and watch the stove and the lamp burning away their
money, when they might get into bed, bury themselves in rags, and defy
both poverty and cold? There is nothing in particular to do, anyhow.
What should there be, a long winter evening through? Nothing! They only
sat and poured out the bitterness in their heart one upon the other,
quarrelled, and scolded. They could do that in bed just as well, and
save firing and light into the bargain.
So, at the first approach of darkness, the bed was made ready for Mr.
Breklin, and his wife put to sleep their only, three-year-old child.
Avremele did not understand why he was put to bed so early, but he asked
no questions. The room began to feel cold, and the poor little thing was
glad to nestle deep into the bedcoverings.
The lamp and the fire were extinguished, the stove would soon go out of
itself, and the Breklin family slept.
They slept, and fought against poverty by lying in bed.
It was waging cheap warfare.
* * * * *
Having had his first sleep out, Breklin turns to his wife:
"What do you suppose the time to be now, Yudith?"
Yudith listens attentively.
"It must be past eight o'clock," she says.
"What makes you think so?" asks Breklin.
"Don't you hear the clatter of knives and forks? Well-to-do folk are
having supper."
"We also used to have supper about this time, in the Tsisin," said
Breklin, and he gave a deep sigh of longing.
"We shall soon forget the good times altogether," says Yudith, and
husband and wife set sail once more for the land of dreams.
A few hours later Breklin wakes with a groan.
"What is the matter?" inquires Yudith.
"My sides ache with lying."
"Mine, too," says Yudith, and they both begin yawning.
"What o'clock would it be now?" wonders Breklin, and Yudith listens
again.
"About ten o'clock," she tells him.
"No later? I don't believe it. It must be a great deal later than that."
"Well, listen for yourself," persists Yudith, "and you'll hear the
housekeeper upstairs scolding somebody. She's putting out the gas in the
hall."
"Oi, weh is mir! How the night drags!" sighs Breklin, and turns over
onto his other side.
Yudith goes on talking, but as much to herself as to him:
"Upstairs they are still all alive, and we are asleep in bed."
"Weh is mir, weh is mir!" sighs Breklin over and over, and once more
there is silence.
The night wears on.
"Are you asleep?" asks Breklin, suddenly.
"I wish I were! Who could sleep through such a long night? I'm lying
awake and racking my brains."
"What over?" asks Breklin, interested.
"I'm trying to think," explains Yudith, "what we can have for dinner
to-morrow that will cost nothing, and yet be satisfying."
"Oi, weh is mir!" sighs Breklin again, and is at a loss what to advise.
"I wonder" (this time it is Yudith) "what o'clock it is now!"
"It will soon be morning," is Breklin's opinion.
"Morning? Nonsense!" Yudith knows better.
"It must be morning soon!" He holds to it.
"You are very anxious for the morning," says Yudith, good-naturedly,
"and so you think it will soon be here, and I tell you, it's not
midnight yet."
"What are you talking about? You don't know what you're saying! I shall
go out of my mind."
"You know," says Yudith, "that Avremele always wakes at midnight and
cries, and he's still fast asleep."
"No, Mame," comes from under Avremele's heap of rags.
"Come to me, my beauty! So he was awake after all!" and Yudith reaches
out her arms for the child.
"Perhaps he's cold," says Breklin.
"Are you cold, sonny?" asks Yudith.
"Cold, Mame!" replies Avremele.
Yudith wraps the coverlets closer and closer round him, and presses him
to her side.
And the night wears on.
"O my sides!" groans Breklin.
"Mine, too!" moans Yudith, and they start another conversation.
One time they discuss their neighbors; another time the Breklins try to
calculate how long it is since they married, how much they spend a week
on an average, and what was the cost of Yudith's confinement.
It is seldom they calculate anything right, but talking helps to while
away time, till the basement begins to lighten, whereupon the Breklins
jump out of bed, as though it were some perilous hiding-place, and set
to work in a great hurry to kindle the stove.
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