"The cells, Senor Glogauer. This is where we question prisoners and so on."
"You are not -I am not -?"
"Of course not. You are a private citizen. We only seek your help, I assure you. Your own loyalty is not in question."
Into one of the cells. There was a table in it. On the table was a flickering oil lamp. The lamp cast shadows which danced sluggishly. There was a strong smell of damp, of sweat, of urine. One of the shadows groaned. Senor Glogauer started and peered at it. "Mother of God!"
"I am afraid it is your son, senor. As you see. He was captured only about twenty miles from the city. He claimed that he was a small planter from the other side of the island. But we found his name in his wallet and someone had heard of you—your cigars, you know, which are so good. We put two and two together and then you—thank you very much—confirmed that your son was an insurgent. But we wanted to be sure this was your son, naturally, and not someone who had managed merely to get hold of his papers. And again, we thank you."
"Karl. Leave," said Senor Glogauer, remembering his other son. His voice was shaking. "At once."
"The sergeant at the door," said the officer, "perhaps he will give you a drink."
But Karl had already seen the dirty steel butcher's hooks on which Willi's wrists had been impaled, had seen the blue and yellow flesh around the wounds, the drying blood. He had seen Willi's poor, beaten face, his scarred body, his beast's eyes. Calmly, he came to a decision. He looked up the corridor. It was deserted.
When his father eventually came out of the cell, weeping and asking to be pardoned and justifying himself and calling upon God and cursing his son all at the same time, Karl had gone. He was walking steadily, walking on his little legs towards the outskirts of the city, on his way to find the insurgents still at liberty.
He intended to offer them his services.
— And why do you dislike Americans?
— I don't like the way some of them think they own the world.
— But didn't your people think that for centuries? Don't they still?
— It's different.
— And why do you collect model soldiers?
— I just do. It's relaxing. A hobby.
— Because you can't manipulate real people so easily?
— Think what you like. — Karl turns over on the bed and immediately regrets it. But he lies there.
He feels the expected touch on his spine. Now you are feeling altogether more yourself, aren't you, Karl?
Karl's face is pressed into the pillow. He cannot speak.
The man's body presses down on his and for a moment he smiles. Is this what they mean by the White Man's Burden?
— Sssssshhhhh, says the black man.
You have three children.
One is eight years old. A girl.
One is six years old. A girl.
One is a few months old. A boy.
You are told that you can save any two of them from death, but not all three. You are given five minutes to choose.
Which one would you sacrifice?
6
London Sewing Circle: 1905:
A Message
One would have thought that the meaning of the word "sweating" as applied to work was sufficiently obvious. But when "the Sweating System" was inquired into by the Committee of the House of Lords, the meaning became suddenly involved. As a matter of fact the sweater was originally a man who kept his people at work for long hours. A schoolboy who "sweats" for his examination studies for many hours beyond his usual working day. The schoolboy meaning of the word was originally the trade meaning.
But of late years the sweating system has come to mean an unhappy combination of long hours and low pay. "The sweater's den" is a workshop—often a dwelling room as well—in which, under the most unhealthy conditions, men and women toil for from sixteen to eighteen hours a day for a wage barely sufficient to keep body and soul together.
The sweating system, as far as London is concerned, exists chiefly at the East End, but it flourishes also in the West, notably in Soho, where the principal "sweating trade", tailoring, is now largely carried on. Let us visit the East End first, for here we can see the class which has largely contributed to the evil—the destitute foreign Jew—place his alien foot for the first time upon the free soil of England.
Karl turns onto his side. He is aching. He is weeping.
— Did I promise you pleasure? asks the tall, black man as he wipes his hands on a hotel towel and then stretches and then yawns.—Did I?
— No. Karl's voice is muffled and small.
— You can leave whenever you wish.
— Like this?
— You'll get used to it. After all, millions of others have...
— Have you known them all?
The black man parts the curtain. It is now pitch dark outside and it is silent.—Now that's a leading question, he says.—The fact is, Karl, you are intrigued by all these new experiences. You welcome them. Why be a hypocrite?
— I'm not the hypocrite.
The black man grins and wags a chiding finger. Don't take it out on me, man. That wouldn't be very liberal, would it?
— I never was very liberal.
— You've been very liberal to me. The black man rolls his eyes in a comic grimace. Karl has seen the expression earlier. He begins to tremble again. He looks at his own brown hands and he tries to make his brain see all this in a proper, normal light.
He is eleven. A dark, filthy room. Many little sounds.
The black man says from beside the window:. Come here, Karl.
Automatically Karl hauls himself from the bed and begins to make his way across the floor.
He remembers his mother and the tin of paint she threw at him which missed and ruined her wallpaper. You don't love me, he had said. Why should I? she had replied. He had been fourteen, perhaps, and ashamed of the question once he had asked it.
He is eleven. Many little regular sounds.
He approaches the black man.—That will do, Karl, says the black man.
Karl stops.
The black man approaches him. Under his breath he is humming "Old Folks At Home". Kneeling on the carpet, Karl begins to sing the words in an exaggerated minstrel accent.
KARL WAS ELEVEN. His mother was thirty. His father was thirty five. They lived in London. They had come to London from Poland three years earlier. They had been escaping a. pogrom. On their way, they had been robbed of most of their money by their countrymen. When they had arrived at the dockside, they had been met by a Jew who said he was from the same district as Karl's father and would help them. He had taken them to lodgings which had proved poor and expensive. When Karl's father ran out of money the man had loaned him a few shillings on his luggage and, when Karl's father could not pay him back, had kept the luggage and turned them out onto the street. Since then, Karl's father had found work. Now they all worked, Karl, his mother and his father. They worked for a tailor. Karl's father had been a printer in Poland, an educated man. But there was not enough work for Polish printers in London. One day Karl's father hoped that a job would become vacant on a Polish or Russian newspaper. Then they would become respectable again, as they had been in Poland.
At present, both Karl, his mother and his father all looked rather older than their respective ages. They sat together at one corner of the long table. Karl's mother worked a sewing machine. Karl's father sewed the lapel of a jacket. Around the table sat other groups—a man and a wife, three sisters, a mother and daughter, a father and son, two brothers. They all had the same appearance, were dressed in threadbare clothes of black and brown. The women's mouths were tight shut. The men mostly had thin, straggly beards. They were not all Polish. Some were from other countries: Russia, Bohemia, Germany and elsewhere. Some could not even speak Yiddish and were therefore incapable of conversing with anyone not from their own country.