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Updated: June 23, 2025
Under the lamps she was the embodiment of all that was coarse and greasy. Even the pitiful slenderness of Irena seemed attractive when compared with her billowing charms, which she kept in a continual commotion that was almost terrifying. "Hadj is nearly dead with fear," whispered Batouch, complacently. Domini's lips curled.
The family have felt able to afford for her a new dress costing $11, and material for a suit, costing $6. A friend, a neighbor, made this for Irena as a present. Among the older workers of more skill than Irena, Anna Klotin, who sent $120 home to her family last year, has now, however, only $6, $7, and $8 a week, and very poor and uncertain work, instead of her former $12 a week.
Batouch noticed it and looked angry, but Domini had forgotten both the comedy of the two cousins and the tragedy of Irena's love for Hadj. She was completely under the fascination of this dance and of the music that accompanied it. Now that Irena was near she was able to see that, without her genius, there would have been no beauty in her face. It was painfully thin, painfully long and haggard.
She was a very beautiful girl, short, but heavily built, with grave dark eyes, a square face, and a manner more mature and responsible than that of many women of forty. Irena Kovalova had not been out of work for one whole week in the year she described. She had never done night work; but she had almost always worked half a day on Sunday except in slack weeks.
In it Mr. Carvugal says I sez to Josiah, "I guess if Mr. Carvugal was sot down here to-day, and see what he would see here, he would be apt to think indeed they wuz Fortunate Islands." But as I said that I heard a voice a-sayin' "Who is Mr. Carvugal, Samantha?" I recognized the voice, and I sez, "Why, Irena Flanders, is it you? I have been to see you; I hearn you wuz sick."
She was not certain how many of these there had been; but there had been enough slack time to reduce her income for her family for the year to $450. They had paid $207 rent for four rooms on the East Side, and had lived on the remaining $243, all of which Irena had given to her mother.
Domini gave it with an abstracted carelessness that evidently hurt his pride, and was passing into the hotel when he said: "Irena is going to marry Hadj, Madame." Since the fracas at the dancing-house both the dancer and her victim had been under lock and key. "To marry her after she tried to kill him!" said Domini. "Yes, Madame. He loves her as the palm tree loves the sun.
The poet's calm and unimpassioned way of alluding to the most horrible crimes as if they were perfectly natural, and in no way to be condemned or wondered at, amazed Domini even more than his statement about Irena. "Why do they murder the dancers?" she asked quickly. "For their jewels. At night, in those little rooms with the balconies which Madame has seen, it is easy.
Here are the budgets of some shirt-waist operatives earning from $7 to $10 a week, less skilled than the workers described above, but more skilled than Natalya. Irena Kovalova, a girl of sixteen, supported herself and three other people, her mother and her younger brother and sister, on her slight wage of $9 a week.
She began to feel a sort of terror mingled with the most extraordinary attraction she had ever known. Hadj crouched right back against the wall. The voice of the Jewess ceased in a shout. The hautboys stopped playing. Only the tomtoms roared. "Hadj can be happy now," observed Batouch in a voice of almost satisfaction, "for Irena is going to dance. Look!
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