Nobody was paying any attention to Selina. All
at once she began to giggle hysterically again, then
cried out with a peal of laughter:
“Oh, what a way for our picnic to end!”
“Now, then, Maria,” said Zerkow, his cracked,
strained voice just rising above a whisper, hitching
his chair closer to the table, “now, then, my
girl, let’s have it all over again. Tell
us about the gold plate—the service.
Begin with, ’There were over a hundred pieces
and every one of them gold.’”
“I don’t know what you’re talking
about, Zerkow,” answered Maria. “There
never was no gold plate, no gold service. I guess
you must have dreamed it.”
Maria and the red-headed Polish Jew had been married
about a month after the McTeague’s picnic which
had ended in such lamentable fashion. Zerkow
had taken Maria home to his wretched hovel in the alley
back of the flat, and the flat had been obliged to
get another maid of all work. Time passed, a
month, six months, a whole year went by. At length
Maria gave birth to a child, a wretched, sickly child,
with not even strength enough nor wits enough to cry.
At the time of its birth Maria was out of her mind,
and continued in a state of dementia for nearly ten
days. She recovered just in time to make the
arrangements for the baby’s burial. Neither
Zerkow nor Maria was much affected by either the birth
or the death of this little child. Zerkow had
welcomed it with pronounced disfavor, since it had
a mouth to be fed and wants to be provided for.
Maria was out of her head so much of the time that
she could scarcely remember how it looked when alive.
The child was a mere incident in their lives, a thing
that had come undesired and had gone unregretted.
It had not even a name; a strange, hybrid little being,
come and gone within a fortnight’s time, yet
combining in its puny little body the blood of the
Hebrew, the Pole, and the Spaniard.
But the birth of this child had peculiar consequences.
Maria came out of her dementia, and in a few days
the household settled itself again to its sordid regime
and Maria went about her duties as usual. Then
one evening, about a week after the child’s
burial, Zerkow had asked Maria to tell him the story
of the famous service of gold plate for the hundredth
time.
Zerkow had come to believe in this story infallibly.
He was immovably persuaded that at one time Maria
or Maria’s people had possessed these hundred
golden dishes. In his perverted mind the hallucination
had developed still further. Not only had that
service of gold plate once existed, but it existed
now, entire, intact; not a single burnished golden
piece of it was missing. It was somewhere, somebody
had it, locked away in that leather trunk with its
quilted lining and round brass locks. It was
to be searched for and secured, to be fought for,
to be gained at all hazards. Maria must know where
