Job by Joseph Roth Page B

away in America, where at this hour it was perhaps night or morning. For a short while, all forgot Mac’s presence. It was as if he had become invisible behind the distant Shemariah, like a mailman who delivers a letter, goes on and disappears. He himself, the American, had to remind them of hispresence. He rose and reached into his pants pocket like a magician about to perform a trick. He pulled out a wallet, took out of it ten dollars and photographs, one of Shemariah with his wife Vega on a bench surrounded by greenery and another of him alone in a swimsuit on a beach, one body and one face among a dozen strange bodies and faces, no longer a Shemariah but a Sam. The stranger handed the ten-dollar bill and the pictures to Deborah, after he had briefly scrutinized them all, as if to check the trustworthiness of each one. She crumpled the bill in one hand, with the other she laid the pictures on the table next to the letter. All this lasted a few minutes, in which they remained silent. Finally Mendel Singer placed his index finger on the photograph and said: “That is Shemariah!” “Shemariah!” repeated the others, and even Menuchim, who now already reached above the table, uttered a high whinny and cast one of his shy glances with peering cautiousness at the pictures.
    All of a sudden Mendel Singer felt as if the stranger were no longer a stranger, and as if he understood the man’s peculiar language. “Tell me something!” he said to Mac. And the American, as if he had understood Mendel’s words, began to move his large mouth and relate incomprehensible things with cheerful enthusiasm, and it was as if he were chewing up many a tasty dish with a healthy appetite. He told the Singers that he had come to Russia because of some business with hops – he was planning to build breweries in Chicago. But the Singers didn’t understand him. Now that he was here, he definitely didn’t want to miss visitingthe Caucasus and especially climbing Mount Ararat, which he had read all about in the Bible. As the audience listened to Mac’s story with strained hearkening gestures so as to catch out of the whole ranting jumble perhaps one tiny, comprehensible syllable, their hearts trembled at the word “Ararat,” which seemed to them strangely familiar but also dismayingly altered, and which rolled out of Mac with a dangerous and terrible rumble. Mendel Singer alone smiled incessantly. He found it pleasant to hear the language that had now become that of his son Shemariah too, and as Mac talked, Mendel tried to imagine how his son looked when he spoke the same words. And soon he felt as if the voice of his own son were speaking from the cheerfully chomping mouth of the stranger. The American finished his talk, went around the table and squeezed everyone’s hand heartily and firmly. Menuchim he swept swiftly into the air, observed the sloping head, the thin neck, the blue lifeless hands and the curved legs, and set him on the floor with a tender and pensive contempt, as if he wanted thus to express that strange creatures ought to crouch on the ground and not stand at tables. Then he walked, broad, tall and swaying a little, his hands in his pants pockets, out the open door, and the whole family jostled after him. All shaded their eyes with their hands as they looked into the sunny street, in the middle of which Mac strode away and at the end of which he stopped once more to give a brief wave back.
    For a long time they stayed outside, even after Mac had disappeared. They held their hands over their eyes and looked into thedusty radiance of the empty street. Finally Deborah said: “Now he’s gone!” And as if the stranger had only then disappeared, they all turned around and stood, each with an arm around the other’s shoulder, in front of the photographs on the table. “How much are ten dollars?” Miriam asked, and began to calculate. “It doesn’t