The Bomb | Page 8

supper, as it was called, I returned to my room, which was still like an oven, and studied in my shirt-sleeves at the open window till nearly midnight, when Henschel burst in with the news that he had got work in a great restaurant, and had wonderful prospects. I did not grudge him his good luck, but the contrast seemed to make my forlorn state more miserable. I told him how I had been received; but he had no counsel to give, no hope; he was lost in his own good fortune. He had taken ten dollars in tips. It all went into the "tronk" he told me, or common stock, and the waiters and headwaiters shared it at the end of the week, according to a fixed ratio. He would certainly earn, he calculated, between forty and fifty dollars a week. The thought that I, who had spent seven years in study, could not get anything at all to do was not pleasant.
When he left me I went to bed; but I tossed about a long time, unable to sleep. It seemed to me that it would have been better for me if I had been taught any trade or handicraft, instead of being given an education which no one appeared to want. I found out afterwards that had I been trained as a bricklayer, or carpenter, or plumber, or house painter, I should probably have got work, as Henschel got it, as soon as I reached New York. The educated man without money or a profession is not much thought of in America.
Next day I got up and went to look for work as before, with just as little success, and so the hunt continued for six or seven days, till my first week had come to an end, and I had to pay another week's board--five dollars-- out of my scanty stock of forty-five. Eight more weeks, I said to myself, and then--fear came to me, humiliating fear, and gnawed at my self-esteem.
The second week passed like the first. At the end of it, however, Henschel had a Sunday morning off, and took me with him on the steamer to Jersey City; we had a great talk. I told him what I had done, and how hard I had tried to get work--all in vain. He assured me he would keep his eyes and ears open and as soon as he came across a writer or an editor he would speak for me to him and let me know. With this small crumb of comfort I was fain to be content. But the outing and rest had given me fresh courage, and when we came back I told Henschel that as I had exhausted all the newspaper offices, I would try next day to get work on the elevated railways, or on the streetcar lines, or in some German house where English was spoken. Another week or two fleeted by. I had been in hundreds of offices and met nothing but refusals, and generally rude refusals. I had called at every tram centre, visited every railroad depot--in vain. And now there were only thirty dollars in my purse. Fear of the future began to turn into sour rage in me, and infect my blood. Strangely enough, a little talk I had with Glueckstein on board the ship often came back to me. I asked him one morning how he intended to begin to get rich. "Get into a big office," he said.
"But how--where?" I asked.
"Go about and ask," he replied. "There is some office in New York wants me as badly as I want it, and I'm going to find it."
This speech stuck in my memory and strengthened my determination to persevere at all costs.
One fact I noted which is a little difficult to explain. I learned more English in the three or four weeks I spent looking for work in New York than in all the months, or indeed years, I had studied it. Memory seemed to receive impressions more deeply as the tension of anxiety increased. I spoke quite fluently at the end of the first month, though no doubt with a German accent. I had already read a good many novels, too, of Thackeray and others, and half a dozen of Shakespeare's plays. Week after week slipped past; my little stock of dollar bills dwindled away; at length I was at the end of my poor capital, and as far from work as ever. I shall never be able to give an idea of what I suffered in disappointment and sheer misery. Fortunately for my reason the humiliations filled me with rage, and this rage and fear fermented in me into bitterness which bred all-hating thoughts. When I saw rich men entering a restaurant,