Job by Joseph Roth Page A

home, waited awhile under the overhang as if it were possible to get dry in a short minute. She decided to enter the room. It was dark, everyone was already asleep. She lay down softly, wet as she was, she let her clothes dry on her body and didn’t move. Outside the rain roared. Everyone knew already that Mendel was going to America, one pupil after another stopped coming to the lessons. Now there were only five boys left, and they didn’t come at regular times either. The papers Kapturak had not yet brought, the ship tickets Sam had not yet sent. But the houseof Mendel Singer already began to decay. How rotten it must have been, thought Mendel. It has been rotten, and we haven’t known it. He who cannot pay attention is like a deaf man, and is worse off than a deaf man – so it is written somewhere. Here my grandfather was a teacher; here my father was a teacher, here I was a teacher. Now I am going to America. My son Jonas the Cossacks have taken, Miriam they want to take from me too. Menuchim-what will become of Menuchim?
    On the evening of that same day he visited the Billes family. It was a happy family, it seemed to Mendel Singer that they had much undeserved luck; all the daughters were married, down to the youngest, to whom he now wanted to offer his house, all three sons had escaped the military and gone out into the world, one to Hamburg, another to California, the third to Paris. It was a happy family, God’s hand rested over it, it lay cozily bedded in God’s broad hand. Old Billes was always cheerful. Mendel Singer had taught all his sons. Old Billes had been a pupil of the old Singer. Because they had already known each other so long, Mendel believed he had a small right to the luck of the strangers.
    The Billes family – they did not live in affluence – was pleased with Mendel Singer’s proposal. Good! – the young couple will take over the house and Menuchim with it. “He’s no work at all,” said Mendel Singer. “And he does better from year to year. Soon, with God’s help, he will be healthy. Then my older son, Shemariah, will come over or he will send someone and bring Menuchim to America.”
    â€œAnd what do you hear from Jonas?” asked old Billes. Mendel hadn’t heard anything for a long time from his Cossack, as he inwardly called him – not without contempt, but also not without pride. Nonetheless, he answered: “Nothing but good things! He’s learned to read and write, and he has been promoted. If he weren’t a Jew, who knows, maybe he’d already be an officer!” It was impossible for Mendel to stand there in the face of this lucky family with the heavy burden of his great misfortune on his back. That’s why he stretched his back and feigned a bit of joy.
    It was arranged that Mendel Singer would turn over the use of his house to the Billes family before simple witnesses, not before officials, because that cost money. Three or four respectable Jews sufficed as witnesses. In the meantime Mendel got an advance of thirty rubles, because his pupils no longer came and the money at home was running out.
    A week later Kapturak rolled once again in his small light yellow wagon through the little town. Everything was there: the money, the ship tickets, the passports, the visa, the head tax for each of them and even the fee for Kapturak. “A punctual payer,” said Kapturak. “Your son Shemariah, known as Sam, is a punctual payer. A gentleman, they say over there . . .”
    Kapturak would accompany the Singer family as far as the border. In four weeks the steamer “Neptune” was leaving from Bremen to New York.
    The Billes family came to take inventory. The bedding, sixpillows, six sheets, six red and blue checkered covers Deborah was taking along, they were leaving behind the straw sacks and the sparse bedding for Menuchim.
    Though Deborah didn’t have much to pack, and though she kept