Panait Istrati

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Panait Istrati On the docks in Braila Opening pages (from the translation by John Penuel) That summer day in 1898—when I decided to hire out as an apprentice in the workshops on the Braila docks—a great heartbreak had just afflicted my poor mother: our cow Doumana had died tragically, killed by the knife of a healer who was trying only to bleed it. The evening before, Doumana had come back from grazing in low spirits. My mother wasn’t overly worried: “Yes, it’s my fault, I sold your calf,” she went, petting its head. “But you’ll soon have another. Look at your belly!” She drummed her fingers on its belly, and the cow turned its lovely damp eyes on her. That was all, that evening. We went to bed early, as usual, as my mother struggled mightily with her exhausting days as a washerwoman. Still, before she fell asleep, she brought up the cow again: “As long as it’s not sick… My God, it’s so young, on just its third calf. And what milk? I could sell ten times more of it. It’s all we have… Are you asleep, Adrien?” I wasn’t asleep, but I wasn’t thinking about Doumana anymore. I was think- ing about Mr. Nicolau, the director at the docks, at whose house my mother worked one day a week. It wasn’t a good house: a big family, a lot of laundry, sordid miserliness. My mother never brought anything home in the evenings from this house: not a piece of firewood or soap, not a handful of flour or the slightest rag. Two francs and mediocre food for fourteen hours a day, whereas from “the Jews’ place” she would come back with her hands full: “Take this, poor Zoitza, take that, and this, too; you have a son, and no husband.” But one day when I happened to be at the director’s house, he deigned to ask me what I was going to be, and right away my mother came to tell him, from the pit of her stomach, how wretched we were—which bothered me, because one shouldn’t be so open with selfish people. All the same, Mr. Nicolau had said: “Have him give me an application to be an apprentice at the tool workshops. I’ll approve it. And the young man will have a future.” A future! And on the docks! Since the Germans had built those great tech- nical installations in Braila you wouldn’t have found a single family of wretches within a radius of a hundred leagues that wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to get one of their brood a job there. So my mother rushed over to the Director’s thick hands, kissed them, and, with tears in her eyes, said: “May the Lord bless you!” Yes: “God bless you…” And to hell with you! I had added to myself, cause, at fourteen, I knew the docks better than my mother. I knew, too, whether they were hired at the docks or elsewhere, the “future” of those whose name was Adrien and whose mothers were washerwomen. You didn’t need to be a great philosopher to appraise the fair value of that future: it was in front of everybody’s eyes and it spoke eloquently. I wasn’t the slightest bit crazy for it. You’ll see why soon enough. All the same, my mother was taken aback. And as I was prey to gloomy premonitions that evening, I told myself that if we lost our cow the only way to cheer my mother up was to talk to her about my joy at being hired on the docks, at the prospect of staying there four years, emerging as a “mechanic,” and getting myself of future of ninety francs a month, at which time a wife and her prodigious fertility are waiting for you to cover you with kisses, debts, and shit. That was the better future, because there was another one: to lose an arm, a leg, both at the same time, or your life, to the notorious belts and cogwheels, like the many wretches who, every day, got themselves squashed like flies, since we are a people as familiar with machinery as your shoemaker is with pharmaceutical science. I was thinking of all this while the summer awoke the frogs, and the children from outside town grilled ears of green corn, the good smell of which reached me through our open windows.

On the docks in Braila

Opening pages (from the translation by John Penuel)

That summer day in 1898—when I decided to hire out as an apprentice in the workshops on the Braila docks—a great heartbreak had just afflicted my poor mother: our cow Doumana had died tragically, killed by the knife of a healer who was trying only to bleed it.

The evening before, Doumana had come back from grazing in low spirits.

My mother wasn’t overly worried:

“Yes, it’s my fault, I sold your calf,” she went, petting its head. “But you’ll soon have another. Look at your belly!”

She drummed her fingers on its belly, and the cow turned its lovely damp eyes on her. That was all, that evening. We went to bed early, as usual, as my mother struggled mightily with her exhausting days as a washerwoman. Still, before she fell asleep, she brought up the cow again:

“As long as it’s not sick… My God, it’s so young, on just its third calf. And what milk? I could sell ten times more of it. It’s all we have… Are you asleep, Adrien?”

I wasn’t asleep, but I wasn’t thinking about Doumana anymore. I was think- ing about Mr. Nicolau, the director at the docks, at whose house my mother worked one day a week. It wasn’t a good house: a big family, a lot of laundry, sordid miserliness. My mother never brought anything home in the evenings from this house: not a piece of firewood or soap, not a handful of flour or the slightest rag.

Two francs and mediocre food for fourteen hours a day, whereas from “the Jews’ place” she would come back with her hands full: “Take this, poor Zoitza, take that, and this, too; you have a son, and no husband.”

But one day when I happened to be at the director’s house, he deigned to ask me what I was going to be, and right away my mother came to tell him, from the pit of her stomach, how wretched we were—which bothered me, because one shouldn’t be so open with selfish people. All the same, Mr. Nicolau had said:

“Have him give me an application to be an apprentice at the tool workshops. I’ll approve it. And the young man will have a future.”

A future! And on the docks! Since the Germans had built those great tech- nical installations in Braila you wouldn’t have found a single family of wretches within a radius of a hundred leagues that wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to get one of their brood a job there. So my mother rushed over to the Director’s thick hands, kissed them, and, with tears in her eyes, said:

“May the Lord bless you!”

Yes: “God bless you…” And to hell with you! I had added to myself, cause, at fourteen, I knew the docks better than my mother. I knew, too, whether they were hired at the docks or elsewhere, the “future” of those whose name was Adrien and whose mothers were washerwomen. You didn’t need to be a great philosopher to appraise the fair value of that future: it was in front of everybody’s eyes and it spoke eloquently. I wasn’t the slightest bit crazy for it. You’ll see why soon enough.

All the same, my mother was taken aback. And as I was prey to gloomy premonitions that evening, I told myself that if we lost our cow the only way to cheer my mother up was to talk to her about my joy at being hired on the docks, at the prospect of staying there four years, emerging as a “mechanic,” and getting myself of future of ninety francs a month, at which time a wife and her prodigious fertility are waiting for you to cover you with kisses, debts, and shit. That was the better future, because there was another one: to lose an arm, a leg, both at the same time, or your life, to the notorious belts and cogwheels, like the many wretches who, every day, got themselves squashed like flies, since we are a people as familiar with machinery as your shoemaker is with pharmaceutical science.

I was thinking of all this while the summer awoke the frogs, and the children from outside town grilled ears of green corn, the good smell of which reached me through our open windows.