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Hartwell Garment Company
Manufacturers of
MEN'S and BOYS'
WORK CLOTHING
SPORTSWEAR, PANTS, SHIRTS
and SPORT SETS
HARTWELL, GEORGIA
New York Office
350 Fifth Avenue
Empire State Bldg.
A Gnat flame la Cictkln$
Schvvob! 1 i
"SUITS THE SOUTH"
PROTECT WHAT YOU HAVE •
Pennington Insurance Agency
221 West Crawford Street, Dalton, Georgia
Phone BR. 8-2121
BOB JOHNSTON & CO.
Mechanical Contractors & Engineers
Heating, Plumbing, Air Conditioning, Boiler Plant Equipment
P.O. Box 17 300 Bishop St. Phone BR. 8-4305
DALTON, GEORGIA
Authorized Dealer
GASTON and SMITH
Plumbing, Heating and Wiring
Phone BR. 8-8501
600 S. McCAMY ST.
DALTON, GEORGIA
46
Period of Change
(a short story)
by MARTIN MANTEL*
Pierre Mwambe stirred, feeling
the corrugated surface of the tin
sidings chill his back. Slowly his
eyes grew accustomed to the sick
ly dawn glow filtering past the
cracks and he began to wonder
what he was doing beneath the
tin shack. Then, seeing the even,
surrounding carpet of grey dust,
he was easy. Thinking seemed to
depend on seeing for Pierre. Ly
ing on his back and staring wide-
eyed at the dirty, plank floor
overhead he began to remember ..
Pierre had Ilonga blood accord
ing to his mother but he could
never be sure; she, with her half-
sister, had left the tribe early to
find servant work with the whites.
His mother was twelve then, but
by the time Pierre was born she
was twenty-eight and an old hag
with swollen spittle-colored gums
that emerged sickeningly from
between her few teeth as she
grinned (he supposed now that
she was happy with the whining
bundle that sucked at her shri
veled teats—that was always the
way with her between the babies).
Pierre thought: ‘‘If she couldn’t
remember how many of them she
buried, then how could she re
member her tribe?” And then
you had to add the fact that she
left when she was only twelve.
Time makes everything dim. That
is why he couldn’t picture his
father, who ran off when Pierre
was eight to find work in a dis
tant factory.
But his mother continued to
have babies nonetheless with an
indefinite succession of transient
workers when she referred to as
“mes bonhommes” all with her
open mouthed good-humor. Pierre
recalled the grin well as he did
the way her thin and slack
breasts hung limply against her
chest. “She is a wicked witch,”
he thought, and two years after
his father ran away he followed
suit, leaving behind a noisy brood
of children and the last clinging
bundle that seemed to glow from
the sallow flesh drawn taut across
his mother’s scrawny frame.
A sudden shiver made the mus
cles of his face twitch and he
shifted fitfully from his position.
“Why do these thoughts haunt
me?” He relived the bitter days
spent straying in the village
gnawed by hunger until he col
lapsed senseless in the dusty filth
paving the dirt gutter, days of
his quivering vision yearning des-
*The author, a student of
Yeshiva University, is winner of
the Jerome Robbins Memorial
Prize for best short story.
perately after the delirious in,
ages that floated by unconcerned
ly. Those few days of starvin.
desolation, of ravenous searching
through the striking garbage
heaps were more to Pierre than
events to be remembered. They
were part of his identity. They
had made him practical.
Such was Pierre’s condition
that when a group of French
travelling missionaries caught
sight of the child’s bloated form
drawing thin gasps of stale gut
ter air and rescued him from
sure death, the boy was too
hungry to know the compassion
ate hands that laid him gently on
the back of the motor lorry, too
hurt also to feel thankful for his
miraculous salvation. But Pierre
was obedient if not grateful and
in the course of two or three
weeks he learned the rudiments of
being a good houseboy to Pere
Moriot and M. Reyne. The Pere
in turn allowed him to become
a member of the party and was
civil enough. Once, in fact, dur
ing a short and painful interview
Moriot questioned Pierre about
his family and home but he turn
ed away and didn’t answer.
“It’s quite obvious,” said Rey
ne, “that he is content with his
most recent adventure, the young
scamp. I’m not sure we are right
in keeping him along.”
Pierre had kept facing the wall,
for all his childish impudence;
there was a murderous threat he
imagined, an omen of something
terrible emerging from the shal
low blue pools sunk in M. Reyne’s
face.
Even when he grew older, leav
ing thej priests to serve the fami
lies which took him in for short
periods, Pierre could not rid him
self of these earliest traces of
terror. In the classrooms, too,
where, on occasion, because of
overcrowded schools the boy was
allowed to sit in the back and
discovered that he was superior
in his studies to many of the
colonist children — even as he
learned to hate the chattering
mass of fair-skinned Europeans—
the same mysterious awe lurked
within him, damming back the
hot-tempered outbursts he might
have blurted out against the in
justices he endured. Here the boy
ironically succeeded, for his tense
restraint was taken by everyone
for stupid docility. So convincing
was Pierre’s air of dull servility
that his instructors never bother
ed to probe his sensitive intelli
gence although they were continu
ously amazed by the quality of
his work. Instead, they tacitly as
sumed that he received help from
the other students although he
The Southern Israelite