The head master hurried in, quelled the class, went on with the lesson where it had been interrupted. Mendel could not attend. He was bewildered by a sudden realization of life outside himself. It was no longer a procession of events, figures, scenes, colours, shapes, light and darkness passing before his eyes, always charming, sometimes terrifying, but something violent which met another something in himself with a fearful impact. It could hurt him, and he knew that it was merciless, for the thing in himself that answered to it and rushed out to meet it was wild and knew no mercy either. He had heard of a thing called the maelstrom in the sea, a kind of spout, with whirling sides, down which great ships were sucked. And he felt that he was being sucked down such a spout, in which he could see all that he had ever known, the mountain and the river in Austria, the train, the telegraph wires, towns, buses, faces, the street, the school, Artie Beech, Abramovich, his father. . . . Only his mother stood firm, and from her came a force to counteract that other force which was dragging him towards the whirlpool.
He became conscious of the discomfort in which he lived and was acutely aware of the people by whom he was surrounded.
THIS time in America Jacob had fared better, and by dint of half-starving himself and sleeping when he had nothing to do, he had managed to save over fifty pounds. Abramovich borrowed another fifty, and once again they set up in business as furriers. They took one of the old Georgian houses off Bishopsgate, started a workshop in the top rooms, and in the lower rooms the Kühler family lived, with Abramovich in lodgings round the corner. They were only twenty yards from the synagogue and Golda was happy; Jacob too, for in such a house he felt a solid man. And, indeed, amid the extreme poverty with which they were surrounded he could pass for wealthy. He had his name on a brass plate on the door and was always proud when he wrote it on a cheque. He took his eldest son into his workshop to rescue him from the fate of working for another master, and he assumed a patriarchal authority over his family. His sons were never allowed out after half-past nine, and, tall youths though they were, if they crossed his will he thrashed them. The girls were forbidden to go out alone. They were kept at home to await their fate.