Polytechnic High School - Polytechnic Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

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THE JOURNAL 29 With flying fingers the Elf sorted the last rag in his box, grabbed his hat, and scurried out past the towering walls. Through alley, down street, over lot, the little fellow ran to- ward home. So happy was he that the driving wind, the biting cold had no effect upon him. He arrived, panting, at a tiny alley down which he plunged. “Home” was the former stable of a deceased butcher's horse. The horse had gone the way of all butcher’s horses, but the stable had remained; and the Elf, through divine right of possession and a soft spot in the heart of the butcher’s widow, had taken it as his abode. Entering, he dived beneath his bed, a little bunk made from boxes, and withdrew a small cake destined for the welcoming dinner. Giving the table, likewise made from boxes, a few finishing touches, and placing his precious cake on his brother’s plate, he departed for the station. It was dark when he arrived at the station,which was crowded with a variety of people: the haughty rich impatiently waiting for friends, officers of the Imperial Guards there to welcome some high official. At the very end of the station was a different group, for the most part ragged and pale. They were watching with painful eagerness the long line of prison arrivals. Every now and then one would rush forward and, after searching the face of some wan arrival, would claim him as kin or friend. Off to one side a number of officials stood in a group.The object of their attention was a great tall fellow, wasted to the point of emaciation and evidently blind. They were ques' tioning him, and the guard was making out the dismissal report. “Blind from a fall, the man read on the card the prisoner held out to him. There was a moment's hesitation. “Yes,” said the prisoner, “blind from a fall—the fall of a club in the hands of a drunken guard. The questioner reddened and hastened on. “Have you any relatives? If so—” He looked up, his question answered, for the two relatives were locked in an embrace that shut out the world. Down the wind-swept street walked the two brothers. The elder asked the Elf countless questions about himself but carefully avoided any reference to his own experiences in Siberia. The Elf was busily thinking, thinking as he had never done before. The shock of seeing his brother thus had not stunned him too much to ask the prison doctor at the station if the blindness was curable, and the words of the physician were ringing in his ears: “His eyes may be saved by an operation if it is performed within the year. It will cost four hundred kopeks.” And then the doctor had gone, little realizing how large a sum four hundred kopeks seemed to a rag-picker whose yearly wages totaled barely half that amount. The Elf, gently guiding his companion, reached their humble home. Together they sat down at the little feast, in very different mood from what the boy had planned. But the brother was so cheerful that the Elf held back the sobs that kept choking him. Late that evening when Ivan had gone to bed and the Elf had said his prayers, he chanced to burn himself on an oil-soaked rag that served as a candle. He gasped and, clutch- ing the hot rag, stared into the darkness. An idea was coming to him. Rags! Right where he worked they bought rags! Running to the table, he noiselessly relit the candle, and sat down with a board and a piece of charcoal. For an hour he laboriously ciphered and calculated, and then he went to bed. The darkness concealed the despair in the little fellow's eyes.

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28 THE ELF JOURNAL PRIZE STORY Robert McClelland THE JOURNAL IT WAS closing time. True, the great wheels still showed no signs of diminishing their speed, nor did the huge hammers slacken in their pounding, hut the long line of workers kept glancing at the burly foreman, whose pudgy fingers would soon ring the bell that marked the end of the long day. For this was a paper mill, the largest in Moscow. Daily, enormous piles of rags entered the gloomy building and there, by the magic of machinery and the toil of many hands, they were transformed into paper. At the end of a long corridor, sorting rags as they came down an endless chain, was a boy. And such a boy! Two brown eyes set in a face remarkable for the perfection of its oval form, and almost hidden by a great mass of brown hair that fell about his shoulders. The workers called him The Elf. An indefinable sense of deformity hovered about him, but it was not until he moved that one noticed that he was a hunchback. Daily, for three years he had sat there, his tiny hands sorting the rags as they came, noticing no one, seemingly as devoid of feeling as his partner in labor, the chain. Today, had one listened, a remarkable change would have been apparent. The hunchback was humming, a tuneless hum that kept time with the rhythm of the chain. His eyes, usually dull, were dancing with pure happiness, and the little hands were trembling with excitement. He was very happy, for he had a brother, and the brother, after six years’ absence, was coming back to him. Thoughts of the past came pulsing through his brain. He could just remember the brother, a big blond fellow, who used to toss him in the air and catch him. Then there had been a father, a silent, brooding father, who held secret meetings in their home with other wilddooking fellows. How his mother had hated these meetings! The Elf, sensing this, had feared these men, especially when they drank and, becoming careless, raved of aristocracy and tyranny and revolution. The meetings had continued for a long time. Then like a flash of lightning came the dreadful night when the door had been smashed open and uniformed soldiers of the Tsar had rushed in. The mother had screamed; so had the dark, wild men. There had been oaths and dull thuds and shots. Some one had thrown a club, and the Elf’s back had received it. Then there was a lapse of time during which his only remembrances had been those of pain and fever and calling for a mother who never came. Weeks later he had awakened on a neighbor's cot, a hunchback. His mother had been killed outright; his father, less fortunate, had lived long enough to feel the vengeance of the Tsar's officers. The brother, because of his youth, had been sent to Siberia for six years. That was now six years ago. Only the Elf knew the sorrows of those years. But why think of that? The time was up, and, if the bulletin outside the courthouse was correct, his brother was coming home tonight. The Elf's reveries ceased abruptly. Would the bell never ring? The minutes seemed weighted with lead; the foreman seemed oblivious of time. Then, when further waiting seemed unendurable, the bell rang.

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30 THEJOURHAL And well he might despair. Rags sold at a kopek for tour bundles. To get four hundred kopeks meant sixteen hundred bundles and he had but a year to get them; that meant four and a half bundles a day. There were in Moscow some three hundred and fifty rag gatherers, each one of whom held lawful license for respective districts where rags were gathered. No wonder the little body sagged and the brown eyes were moist. Yet when a stray shaft of morning light fell upon the box table, it disclosed five neatly folded sacks. Battles have been fought against unequal odds. That year there raged a battle between three hundred and fifty ragmen on one side and a hunchback on the other. If ever the odds were unequal, they were in this instance. When the ragmen found their districts poached upon, their rage was boundless. Through back alleys, lots, basements.it raged: a battle of wits. Early dawn found the Elf scurrying through the streets gathering rags. A thousand times the battle seemed lost for him. At such times he would drag his aching body to some dark spot and there in the pelting rain would cry by himself. But these spells were short. The brown eyes would glint with determination, and away would go a bent shadow, stooping here and there and inspecting every corner, with eyes peeled for the burly ragman in whose district he was trespassing. Each day, twice, when the time for his work in the mill approached and when the blackness of night called a halt, he secreted the rags in the basement of a great warehouse. The warehouse belonged to Athel Murl, a creature whose craftiness and hatred for man- kind were proverbial in the business centers of Moscow. In payment for the lease, the Elf gave Murl one sack of rags from every five. That meant getting an extra sack every day in order to maintain his necessary average. A year passed by and Christmas Eve arrived. Up the street walked the little hunch- back carrying a huge bundle of rags. But it was the sixteen-hundredth bundle. The hunchback had changed greatly. The brown hair was tangled and unkempt; the eyes were sunken deeply in the sockets; the bent body was sagged and weary. Only the eyes themselves had remained unchanged; they glowed like stars. Tonight, in spite of the deadly weariness of his body, his spirit soared, for he had won the unequal battle. To- morrow he would get the agent from the paper mill and sell the rags, and then there would be an operation and brother would see again. Soon they would move to the country and have some cows. Three cows they would have, and a big white goat with horns to draw a little cart. The Elf would buy a suit, a real new suit with pearl buttons, too. In the midst of his daydreaming, the Elf chanced to glance at the sky. It was red, a dull glowing red. He dimly wondered at this as he turned down the street towards the ware- house. Suddenly there was a great clanging. A man ran by yelling “Fire!” and the street soon became alive with people. As the Elf ran, a hot ember stung him in the face. Firemen were running here and there and a great crowd stood watching his warehouse and his rags burn- ing.The Elf,screaming, ran wildly toward the basement,where the flames were most violent; he must save some of his precious rags. A thick brown hand clutched him; it belonged to a worker in the mill. “You little fool,” he shouted, “you put oily rags in the warehouse, and they caught fire. Just wait till Murl catches you!