When the Pogrom Came to
Fannie Hurst in Her Latest Book, 'Tlje Vertical City," Paints a Thrilling and Vivid Picture of the Bloody Horror and Terror of a Pogrom.
By FANNIE HURST
A True Daughter of Israel
Through the courtesy of Harper \d Brothers, publishers, this extract from "Roulette," one of the remarkable stories in Miss Hurst's latest book, "The Vertical City," is
��� herewith presented. It depicts the horror, the terror, the bloodiness of a pogrom in the vivid, dramatic styl* thai has made its author one of the foremost short story writers in America. It is a style sustained throughout the six stories of tragedy and comedy in New York life, which compose "The Vertical City." This moving extract from "Roulette," shows the . deep race consciousness of Miss Hurst, even more than "flumor-
'� esque" for it is a passionate Jewish outburst against the age-long sufferings and sorrows of her race. Miss Hurst is now in Europe, gathering material for the work which is to follow "The Vertical City," already Proclaimed as her best effort. When
in New .t ork, she spends, tnvck, of, her time on the East Side, for _ she loves, nothing .belter titan minting with her people in their Ghttto,
t _ , . /* - * � ' f
� Snow in the Village '6f Vodna. can have the quality of hot. white pluafc of enormous nap, so dryly thick it packs into s the angles where fences cross, sealing up the windward sidea of houses, rippling in great seas across open places, flaming in brilliancy against tne boles of ever so occasional trees, and tucking in the houses up to; the sills and down over the eaves.
Out in the wide places, it is like a smile on a dead face, this sjnpw hush, grateful that peace can be so utter. It is the silence of a broody God, and out of that Jrozen pause, in a house tucked up to the sills and down to the eaves, Sara Turkletaub was prematurely taken with the pangs of childbirth, and in the thin dawn, without even benefit of midwife, twin sons were born. ^
Sturdy sons, with something even in their first crescendo wails that bespoke the good heritage of a father's love-of-life and a mother's life-of-love.
No Sicilian sunrise was ever more glossy with the patina of hope than
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ty^of Sar* .:Tujl�- _ _ ,. . , .,
her BQns to the rmraclfr of her full brtast�, ' her hair/ ^tiil ftinTbled jwith'' the agony pf deliverance,. So :&we�tly 'mbkt net eyes that Mofch^r Turkletawb, hi$ own browj damp from swea� of her. writhinga, was ful| ;of heartbeat, even to his temples, V. } . '
- JUrag before'mpWtfrnfe, as if by -magic-of'the .brittle air, the tidings had spread through the village^ .ancf that; night, until t�e hand'heVn' rafters ran#, ^ trie
Chouse of Turkletaub% heralded with twofold and world-old fervor the;,ad-\ vent of the man-child. ' And through' it all�the steaming warmth, the laugTi-ter through bughy bearoX the mm-istering 01 women "wise and foolish with the memory of'their own pangs, the shouts of vodka-stirred men, sheej>-
. isfc that they, too, were part custodians of the miracle of life-r-through it all. Sara Turkletaub lay. back against her coarse bed, ao rich�^o rich that the coves of her arms trembled each of its burden and h�ld tighter'for fear somehow God might repent of his prodigality.
That year the soil came out from under the snow rich and malmy to the plow, and Mosher started heavy with v his peddler's pack and returned light. It was no trick now^for Sara to tie her sons to an iron ring in the door jamb and, her strong legs straining and her sweat willing, undertake household chores of watet�Jugging, furniture heaving, marketing with baskets that strained her arms from the sockets as she carted them from the open square to their house on the"outskirts, her massive silhouette moving as solemnly as a caravan against the sky line.
Rich months these were and easy to bear because they were backed by a dream that each day, however relentless in its toil, brought closer to reality "America!"
The long evenings full of the smelL of tallow, maps that curled under the fingers; the well-thumbed letters from Aaron Turkletaub, elder brother to Mosher and already a successful pieceworker on skirts in Brooklyn. The picture postcards from him of the Statue of Liberty! Of the three of them, Aaron, Gussie, his wife, and little Leo, with donkey bodies sporting down a beach labeled "Coney." A horrific tintype of little Leo in tiny velveteen knickerbockers that fastened with large, ruble-sized, mother-of-peirl buttons up to an embroidered sailor blouse.
It was those mother-of-pearl buttons that captured Sara's imagination so that she loved and wept over the tintype untfl little Leo quite disappeared under t^ie rust of her tears. Long after young Mosher, who loved his Talmud, had retired to sway over it, Sara could yearn at this tintype.
Her sons in little knickerbockers that fastened to the waistband with large pearl buttons!
Her black-eyed Nikolai with the strong black hair and the virile little profile that hooked against the pillow ae, he slept.
4 Her red-headed Schmulka with the tight curb, golden eyes, and even more thrusting profile. So different of feature her twins and yet so temperamentally of a key. Flaming to the same childish passions, often too bitter, she thought, and, trembling with an unnamed fear, would tear them apart.
Full of the cruelties and the horrible torture complex of the young male, they had j>6ce burned a cat alive, and the passion of their father and their cries under flaying had beat about in her brain for veeks after. Jealousies, each pf the other, bunjed fiercely, and, - aged three, they scratched blood from onfr an&ther over the favor of the shoemaker's tot of a girl. And once, to her soul-sickness, Nikolai, the blade one, had found out the vodka and drunk of it until she discovered him in a littk stupor beside the cupboard.
Y�t�and -Sara would recount with
her eye* full of'more^ tears than they
. 'couM bc4d, the often-told tale of hov
, Schmulka, who could bear no injustice.
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