IN THE METROPOLIS[19]
Reading edition
IN THE METROPOLIS[19]
BENJAMIN ROSENBLATT
By BENJAMIN ROSENBLATT
(From Brief Stories)
She sat in a show window of a large department store.
“A prize to those who make her laugh,” read a conspicuous sign over her head. An American flag was wrapped around her slim figure; a sword which she clutched with both hands rested on her lap with its point towards a placard announcing a bargain sale.
She sat motionless, her eyes wide open, her face hardly betraying a trace of life.
All day long she sat there, while multitudes passing on the sidewalk turned their heads towards her and wondered: “Is it a living woman or a wax figure?” It was this puzzle which held the pedestrian, and caused the manager of the store to chuckle at his own cleverness. When he saw in the morning this bashful country girl shuffling into the store and asking inaudibly for a job, he caught at the chance for novelty in the advertising of his sale. Her features were so immobile; she appeared, on the whole, so lifeless that his agile mind had promptly pictured her in her present setting.
Unceasingly the crowd surged before the window. Newsboys with bundles under their arms, messengers in uniform, girls with lunch boxes in their hands, even trim-looking business men—all forgot their errands for a few minutes, and directed their mingled breath towards that window. Some of the boys stood for hours, sticking out their tongues, puffing up their cheeks, grinning and grimacing in a vain effort to get a smile from that grim apparition.
Though she was alone inside the window, still it seemed to her as if she were thrown into that seething mass before her, as if jostled and mercilessly kicked about. How strange everything! How confusing to her!
In the morning, when she learned there was work for her at the store, she was so happy that she thought of writing home at once about her good luck. But in the evening, after her first day’s work, she was so exhausted that the girls of the establishment who took her to their boarding house, had to lead her under her arms. She walked and wondered: the manager had said there was absolutely no work attached to her job.
At the supper-table, the girls, good naturedly, poked fun at her; and she grew livelier. Later, some of them had a romp, and decided that the feet of the uncouth lass were surely more used to follow the cows to pasture, than to dance.
The next morning the girls hurried feverishly. They paid little attention to the “rustic clown.” Some had slept too late; they looked anxious and careworn. Last evening’s warmth had all evaporated, and the “wax figure” felt a strange chill and a sinking at the heart.
Again she took her seat in the show window. She was faint, not having been in the mood for breakfast, and before long dizziness overtook her. She felt as if she looked into some deep water from which a wave suddenly emerged—a huge wave that roared, groaned, moved towards her, striving to engulf her, to carry her away.
Still, she appeared on that second day conscious of things she had not observed at first. The cars that thundered back and forth seemed new, and she noted the elevated overhead. The crowds were again as large and again as busy making “faces” which frightened her into immobility, so that it became harder for the people to get her attention, and most of them wondered: “Will she ever smile?”
In the afternoon it rained. The electric lights began to twinkle early, and a sea of umbrellas moved, moved endlessly before the motionless figure in the window.
She stared at the rumbling taxis that splashed hither and thither; at the zig-zag drizzle, the steady downpour, and her eyes suddenly filled. Thoughts of home were awakened within her by the rain. Her brain and heart, hitherto as if congealed by the terror of the strange world before her, now thawed and filled her with a gnawing sadness and self-pity. How is it at home now? her thoughts ran. How is it at home? It rains. There is the muddy road, the ruts and the pools. Father is indoors now, back from the field. The gray dusk falls. Mother sits with folded arms by the window and gazes longingly out into the dark.
“Are you looking for me?” the figure in the window, forgetting herself, suddenly wailed. “Mother, mother dear, take me to you. I ain’t used to this; I’m so lonely and afraid.”
Her lips trembled visibly. A spasm shot across her face and contracted it—and many of the crowd outside who made “mouths” at her, burst into a triumphant hurrah. “She laughed!” roared a colored man so loud that it reached the manager, who forthwith decided to discharge the “figure.” “I get the prize,” yelled others. “I made her laugh! I made her laugh!”