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The Amulet
by Jacob WassermanWhen you think of the lives some people have to live, lives of nothing but want and care, destitute of all joy, without a moment's repose, without beauty and almost without hope, it makes you wonder why they do not simply go out, like flames with nothing to feed them. Man is a patient creature, born to suffering, and what he endures is often out of all proportion to the resources nature has endowed him with. And many endure it without even grumbling. Is it because they do not know that others have a different lot, or are they too much preoccupied by their own fate? What is it prevents them from resigning themselves in silent passivity to the dark, inevitable end, and taking the path to the grave -- to death which they understand as little as they do their wretched existence?
Christine Schierling grew up in the brimy back streets of a large town and had never known father or mother. She began her life in an orphanage; then her guardian took her to live with him; then her guardian died; then she had to go into service with a rent-collector. She had to carry water, wash clothes, light fires, look after children, scrub floors -- that was her life from early in the morning until late at night.
Innumerable were the houses in which she toiled, the families whose bread she ate, the stairs she ran up and down, the scoldings she was given by her mistresses. She was always changing situations, not because of the hardships she suffered, for these she could not escape wherever she went, but because every now and then the thought came to her that she might better herself.
But this turned out to be an illusory hope. The mistress of a prosperous household looked askance at a girl who came from a poor one and so she always had to seek refuge again with lower class people. Sometimes they were good people, sometimes bad. Just as it might happen. Sometimes her wages were in arrear, sometimes she was half-starved. In one place there were ill-natured children who tormented her, in others, lodgers who took liberties when they came home at night. In one place the wife was in poor health, in another she was termagant, for whom you could do nothing right; and sometimes the husband was a drunkard, who deceived his wife with other women and there was everlasting quarreling and bickering.
She got to know every sort of person and every sort of family life. She knew the shamefaced brand of poverty which is slovenly, and the industrious brand which defies every assault of fate. She had seen love under the piteous ruins of lost happiness and hate that infests the air with its pestilence, hate between father and son, between man and wife, between brother and sister. She knew the language of envy, the poison of scandal, the rage of despair, tongue-tied melancholy and the horrors that bring crime to birth. She had been with a confectioner, a shoemaker, a procuress, a bankrupt manufacturer, a midwife, a woman who kept a tobacconist's shop, a retailer of brandy. She often dreamed of the houses in which she had sojourned, but she did not see them one after the other, or now one and now another, but all at once in a nightmare conglomeration -- like the cells of a honeycomb. She saw steps without end and innumerable doors. She smelt a smell of beds, fat and bad coffee. She heard a ceaseless noise, noise everywhere, singing, whistling, hammering, shouting and laughing; the crying of children, the barking of dogs, thumping and shoveling, cursing and groaning. And all without a sun and without a sky.
She had only rarely slept in a bed, usually on a sack of straw or a mattress beside the kitchen fire. Vermin crawled over her hands and face as soon as it was dark. It was only when she was with the manufacturer that she had a room to herself, but it was a cupboard in the attic where the wind blew in and on cold nights she froze to the marrow of her bones.
Between her twentieth add twenty-first year she was with a Major. He was addressed as Major, but in reality he was a dilapidated old man who made his living out of petty agencies eked out with a scanty pension. As long as he was well she never had a kind word from him, but when he was taken bad and Christine had to look after him he got down in the mouth and as soon as she left the room he whined until she came back. Christine heard his moans and complaints and saw that it was all up with him. When he felt that he was at death's door he called the girl to his bedside and said: "May God reward you for all you have done for me. I cannot. But, so that you shan't go away empty-handed from my deathbed, I will give you the amulet my mother, now with God, hung round my neck when I went to fight against the Italians. Perhaps it will bring you better luck than it has me." Saying this he felt under his woolen nightshirt and after undoing the catch he brought out a steel chain with a coin attached to it. It was as large as a florin piece and the color of verdigris. Christine thanked him. Immediately afterwards the Major breathed his last.
Ever after she always wore the chain round her neck. Ten years later she at last reached a higher station in life: she went into service with a Jewish couple. The man's name was Simon Laubeseder and he had originally been a rag-and-bone man; then he started an old clothes shop in the outskirts of the town, where he supplied the artisans with cheap clothing, and it was not long before he opened a business in the Stiftgasse, which boasted the name of Warehouse of the Emperor of Austria. They were a childless couple and the work was not too hard; also they were quiet people and Christine learned from them what decent ways were. But the most important thing of all was that she had a bedroom of her own.
She decorated the bare walls with illustrations from newspapers. There were the Crown Prince Rudolph, Prince Bismarck with his dog, Tyras, and a picture of the battle of Trafalgar; the pictures were tacked up and fir twigs and dried flowers were stuck in behind them. The photograph of the Major hung over her bed; it showed him as a young lieutenant and it likewise was framed in foliage. A long-legged table, covered with a tablecloth displayed in loving array all kinds of mementoes and presents collected during her past life -- a wax peach, a thimble in a red silk case, a china dwarf crouching under a toadstool, a prayer book with a gilt cross and a necklace of glass beads. Sometimes when she went out shopping she met a soldier in the passage or on the stairs, a corporal of the German Masters of the Teutonic Order. He had a black, turned-up moustache, thick lips, a close-shaven round chin and a merry gleam in his eye. The second time she encountered him he gave her a salute; the third time he laughed; the fourth time he entered into conversation and she learned that he was paying a visit to his sister who lived in the house and was married to Grieshacker, the haulage contractor. The corporal's name was Kalixtus Zoff and he had got himself put on the active list of his regiment and hoped soon to be promoted sergeant major.
By degrees Christine became friendly with him and they agreed to go for a walk together one Sunday. They took the train to Sieyering, walked through the Fruhlingswald to Weidling and returned on foot to the town as dusk was falling. The corporal was going to meet his sister and her husband and they went to a small public house and sat down at a table at which eight or ten people were already seated. Christine knew Frau Grieshacker by sight and she sat down beside her and shyly said good evening. The corporal soon began to talk big and got into a violent argument with Grieshacker about whether the Salzburg express stopped at Neulengbach or not.
Kalixtus Zoff gave Christine his arm on the way home and made a few clumsy advances under cover of the darkness. But Christine was tired. It was the first time in years she had been for a long walk. Her eyes were dropping before she got in, and when the corporal asked for a kiss as he said good night she complied without thinking much about it. She kissed him on his thick lips and his moustache tickled her under her nose. Frau Grieshacker laughed and the lorryman whistled meaningly.
Translated by Basil Creighton. Excerpted from Tellers of Tales by W. Somerset Maugham, 1939 Doubleday. For the rest of this story, check out your local library.