Read Online Job by Joseph Roth - Free Book Online

matter,” said Deborah, “how much ten dollars are, we’re certainly not going to buy ourselves anything with it.”
    â€œWhy not?” replied Miriam, “shall we travel in our rags?”
    â€œWho is traveling and where?” cried the mother.
    â€œTo America,” Miriam said with a smile, “Sam himself wrote it.”
    For the first time a member of the family had called Shemariah “Sam,” and it was as if Miriam had intentionally spoken her brother’s American name to lend emphasis to his demand that the family should travel to America.
    â€œSam!” cried Mendel Singer, “who is Sam?”
    â€œYes,” repeated Deborah, “who is Sam?”
    â€œSam!” said Miriam, still smiling, “is my brother in America and your son!”
    The parents were silent.
    Menuchim’s voice suddenly rang out shrilly from the corner into which he had crawled.
    â€œMenuchim can’t go!” Deborah said softly, as if she feared that the sick child could understand her.
    â€œMenuchim can’t go!” repeated, just as softly, Mendel Singer.
    The sun seemed to sink rapidly. On the wall of the house acrossthe street, at which they all stared through the open window, the black shadow rose visibly higher, as the sea climbs up its shoreline bluffs with the approach of the flood. A faint wind stirred, and the window creaked in its hinges.
    â€œClose the door, there’s a draft!” said Deborah.
    Miriam went to the door. Before she touched the latch, she stood still for a moment and stuck her head out the doorframe in the direction in which Mac had disappeared. Then Miriam closed the door with a hard slam and said: “That’s the wind!”
    Mendel stood at the window. He watched as the shadow of evening crept up the wall. He raised his head and contemplated the gold-gleaming rooftop of the house across the street. He stood for a long time thus, the room, his wife, his daughter Miriam and the sick Menuchim at his back. He felt them all and sensed each of their movements. He knew that Deborah laid her head on the table to weep, that Miriam turned her face toward the stove and that her shoulders now and then jerked, even though she wasn’t weeping at all. He knew that his wife was only waiting for the moment when he would reach for his prayer book to go to the temple and say the evening prayer, and Miriam would take the yellow shawl to hurry over to the neighbors. Then Deborah would bury the ten-dollar bill, which she still held in her hand, under the floorboard. He knew the floorboard, Mendel Singer. Whenever he stepped on it, it creakingly betrayed to him the secret it covered and reminded him of the growling of the dogs Sameshkin kept tethered outside his stable. He knew the board,Mendel Singer. And so he wouldn’t have to think of Sameshkin’s black dogs, which were unearthly to him, living figures of sin, he avoided stepping on the board when he wasn’t being forgetful and wandering through the room in the enthusiasm of teaching. As he saw the golden streak of the sun grow ever narrower and glide from the top ridge of the house onto the roof and from there onto the white chimney, he believed he felt distinctly for the first time in his life the soundless and wily creeping of the days, the deceptive treachery of the eternal alternation of day and night and summer and winter, and the stream of life, steady, despite all anticipated and unexpected terrors. They grew only on the changeful banks, Mendel Singer drifted past them. A man came from America, laughed, brought a letter, dollars and pictures of Shemariah and disappeared again into the veiled regions of the distance. The sons disappeared: Jonas served the Tsar in Pskov and was no longer Jonas. Shemariah bathed on the shores of the ocean and was no longer called Shemariah. Miriam gazed after the American and wanted to go to America too. Only Menuchim remained what he had been since