The Party at Jack's: A Novella

MORNING

•   •   •

Hartmann!

Hier, Herr Professor.

"Das wort für garten."

"Hortus, Herr Professor."

Deklination?

Zweite.

Geschlecht?

Maskulinum, Herr Professor.

Deklinieren!

Hartmann stiffened his shoulders slightly, drew a deep breath, and, looking straight before him with a wooden expression, rapidly recited in an expressionless sing-song tone:

Hortus, horti, horto, hortum, horte, horto; horti, hortorum, hortis, hortos, horti, hortis.

So. Setzen sie, Hartmann.

Hartmann sat down blowing slightly at the corners of his thick mouth. For a moment he held his rigid posture, then he relaxed warily, his little eyes wavered craftily from side to side, he stole a look of triumph and of satisfaction at his comrades.

He was only a child in years, but his limbs and features held in miniature the mature lineaments of a man. He seemed never to have been young or child-like. His face was tough, sallow and colorless: the skin looked as thick and rough as a man’s and it was covered unpleasantly with thick white hair which was not visible until one came close to him. His eyes were small, red, and watery looking and thickly lashed and browed with the same silken, unpleasantly white, hair. His features were small, blunted, and brutal: the nose small and turned up and flattened at the tip, so that the nostrils had a wide flaring appearance, the mouth was coarse, blurred and indefinite, and the cheekbones also had a blunted flattened-out appearance.

Hartmann’s head was shaved, a bluish stubble of hair covered it evenly, and the structure of the skull was ugly, mean, and somehow repellent: it seemed to slant forward and downward from the bony cage at the back of the brain to a pinched and painful brow. Finally Hartmann’s body was meagre and stringy looking, but immensely tough, his hands were disproportionately large and raw, and dangled crudely and clumsily at his sides. Brutal in mind and body, neither his person nor his character was pleasing, and Frederick hated him. And this hatred Hartmann returned on him with cordial measure.

Jack!

Frederick did not hear that word of harsh command. His dark eye brooded into vacancy, his mind was fixed and lost in stellar distances, his spirit was soaring far away across the surging blue, the immense and shiny wink of an ocean that washed the shores of all the earth. And a channel of bright water led him straight to the goal of all his dreaming. Upon the decks of clean white river-steamers he went down the river Rhine. He went from Koblenz on to Bonn, from Bonn, to Köln, from Köln to Düsseldorf, and then through Holland to the sea. And then he put out to sea upon another mightier ship. The sea was blue and shining, but there was also gold upon it: it was never grey. The great ship foamed and lifted with a lordly prancing motion, like a horse, he felt the rock and swell, the infinite plangent undulance of the sea beneath that foaming keel, and the great ship rushed onward day by day into the west.

And now, after many days, Frederick saw before him the outposts of the land. He smelled the brave familiar fragrance of the land, the spermy sea-wrack and the warmth of earth, and he saw before him first pale streaks of sand, a low coast, and then faint pallid greens, and little towns and houses. Now, the ship entered the narrow gateways of the harbor, and now Frederick saw before him a great harbor busy with the play and traffic of a thousand boats. And he saw before him, at the harbor’s base, a fabulous city, built upon an island. It swept upward from an opalescent cloud, from which it seemed to grow, on which it was upborne lightly, and as magical as a vision, and yet it was real and shining, and as solid as the rock on which it had been founded. And by the city flowed a river—ein Fluss viel schoner als den Rhein—a thing almost incredible, and yet it must be so, for Uncle Max had seen it, and sworn just the night before that it was true. Beyond the city was an immense, fertile, and enchanted land—ein Land von unbegrenzte möglich keiten, Uncle Max had sworn, and surely Uncle Max had known, for he had come back from that country speaking its strange nasal accents, wearing its strange garments, rich with the tribute of its enormous bounty. And he had said that some day he would come and take Frederick back with him, and Frederick, dreaming of the wealth, the gold, the glory and the magic of that far shining city that floated upward from its cloud of mist hoped for this more than for anything on earth.

Jack! Jack! 1st Friedrich Jack hier?

He came to with a sharp start of confusion as that harsh and choleric voice broke in upon his revery, and the class whose attention had been riveted for some seconds on his dreaming face burst into a sharp and sudden yelp of glee as he scrambled frantically to his feet, straightened his shoulders, and stammered out confusedly,

Hier, bitte. Ja. Ich bin hier.

That high and hateful face, hairless, skull-like, seamed and parchment dry, scarred hideously upon one sallow cheek, with its livid scorpion of saber wounds, and with thin convulsive lips drawn back above a row of big yellow teeth, now peered at him above its glasses with a stare of wall-eyed fury. In a moment the stringy tendons of the neck craned hideously above the choker collar, and the harsh voice rasped with fury as old Kugel’s ramrod form bowed with a slightly ironic courtesy in its frock coat sheathing of funereal black.

Wenn sie sind fertig, Excellenz, he said.

Ja—Ja—fertig, Frederick stammered foolishly and incoherently, wondering desperately what the question was, and if it had already been asked. The class tittered with expectancy, and already unnerved by his shock and confusion, Frederick blurted out with no sense at all of what he was saying: Ich meine—Ich bin fertig—Onkel!

A sickening wave of shame and mortification swept over him the moment that he spoke the words, and as the instant roar of the class brought to him the knowledge of his hideous blunder. Onkel! Would he ever hear the end of this? And how could he have been such a fool as to identify, even in a moment of forgetfulness, this cruel and ugly old ape with the princely and heroic figure of his Uncle Max. Tears of shame welled in his eyes, he stammered out incoherent apologies and explanations that went unheard in the furious uproar of the class, but he could have bitten his tongue out for rage and mortification.

As for Kugel, he stood stock still, his eyes staring with horror, like a man who has just received a paralytic stroke. In a moment, recovering his powers of speech, and torn with fury between the roaring class and the culprit who stood trembling before him, he snatched up a heavy book, lifted it high above his head in two dry, freckled hands, and smashed it down upon the table with terrific force.

Schweig! he yelled. Schweigen sie! a command that was no longer necessary, since all of them had subsided instantly into a stunned cowed silence.

He tried to speak but could not find the words he wanted. In a moment, pointing a parched trembling finger at Frederick, he said in a small choked whisper of a voice:

Das wort—das wort—für Bauer. He craned convulsively above his collar as if he was strangling.

Frederick gulped, opened his mouth and gaped wordlessly.

Was? screamed Kugel taking a step toward him.

Ag-ag-ag! he stuttered like a miserable idiot.

Was!

He had known the word a moment before—he knew it still, he tried frantically to recall it, but now, his fright, shame, and confusion were so great that he could not have pronounced it if he had had it written out before him on a piece of paper.

Desperately he tried again.

Ag-ag-ag, but at the titter of laughter that began to run across the class again, he subsided helplessly, completely disorganized and unable to continue.

Kugel stared at him a moment over the rims of his thick glasses, his yellow bulging eyeballs fixed in an expression of hatred and contempt.

Ag-ag-ag! he sneered, with hateful mimicry. "Erst es war onkel—und jetzt müsst er den Schlucken haben!"

He regarded Frederick a moment longer with cold hate, and then dismissed him.

Schafskopf! Setzen sie, he said.

Frederick sat down.

*   *   *   *   *

That day as the children were going away from school, he heard steps pounding after him and a voice calling to him, a word of command and warning raucous, surly, hoarse. He knew it was Albert Hartmann, and he did not stop. He quickened his step a little and walked on doggedly. Hartmann called again, this time with menace in his voice.

Hey—Jack! Frederick did not pause. Excellenz! Onkel! it cried with a jeering note.

Ag—ag! Schafskopf! At the last word, Frederick stopped abruptly and turned, his face flushed with anger. He was a small neat figure of a boy, well-kept, round-featured, with straight black hair and the dark liquid eyes of his race. His somewhat chubby face was ruddy and fresh colored, his neat blue jacket and his flat student’s cap were of far better cut and quality than Albert Hartmann’s, which were poorly made and of mean material, and his firm plump features had in them a touch of the worldly assurance and scornful complacency, the sense of material appraisal that the children of wealthy merchants sometimes have.

Hartmann pounded up, breathing thickly and noisily through the corners of his blunt ugly mouth. Then he seized Frederick roughly by the sleeve, and said:

Well, Ag-ag, do you think you’ll know the word next time he asks you? Have you learned your lesson? Hey?

Frederick detached his sleeve from Albert Hartmann’s grasp, and surveyed him coldly. He did not answer him. At this moment, Walter Grauschmidt, another of the boys in the class, came up and joined them. Albert Hartmann turned and spoke to him with an ugly grin.

I was asking Ag—Ag here if he’d know the word for farmer the next time Kugel calls on him, he said.

No. He’ll never know the word for farmer, Walter Grauschmidt answered calmly, and with assurance. He’ll know the word for money. He’ll know the word for cash. He’ll know the word for interest and loan in every language in the world. But he’ll never know the word for farmer.

Why? said Albert Hartmann looking at his more gifted and intelligent companion with a stupid stare.

Why, said Walter Grauschmidt deliberately, because he is a Jew, that’s why. A farmer has to work hard with his hands. And there never was a Jew who would work hard with his hands if he could help it. He lets the others do that sort of work, while he sits back and takes the money in. They are a race of pawnbrokers and money lenders. My father told me. He turned to Frederick and spoke quietly and insultingly to him. That’s right, isn’t it? You don’t deny it, do you?

Ja! Ja! cried Albert Hartmann excitedly, now furnished with the words and reasons he had not wit enough to contrive himself. That’s it! That’s the way it is! A Jew! That’s what you are! he cried to Frederick. You never worked with your hands in your life! You wouldn’t know a farmer if you saw one!

Frederick looked at them both silently, and with contempt. Then he turned and walked away from them.

Yah! Pawnbroker! Your people got their start by cheating other people out of money! Yah!

The hoarse and inept jibes followed him until he turned the corner of the street in which he lived. It was a narrow cobbled street of ancient gabled houses, some of which hung out with such a crazy Gothic overhang that they almost touched each other across the street. But the street was always neat and tidy. The houses were painted with bright rich colors and there were little shops with faded Gothic signs above them. The old irregular cobbles had a clean swept appearance, and the old houses were spotless in their appearance. The stones and brasses seemed always to have been freshly scrubbed and polished, the windows glittered like flat polished mirrors, and the curtains in the windows were always crisp, fresh and dainty looking. In Spring and Summer, the window ledges were gay with flower boxes of bright geraniums.

In an old four-story house half way down this little street, Frederick lived with his mother, a sister, his uncle and his aunt. His father had died several years before, and had left his family a comfortable, although not a great, inheritance. And now his uncle carried on the family