They reached Carter Lane to find that the crowd had dispersed and that the old man had been taken inside, where he was lying on a couch in Mr. Israels’ parlour. He was moaning loudly and attempting to lay his skinny, mittened hands on Moses’ glossy black curls, as if to bless him.
A doctor had been called but had been unable to discover anything, as old Levy had howled in agony at the very thought of being examined; so he’d gone away after diagnosing that the old man must have been as fragile as a dried stick and that it was probably wisest to leave him where he was.
The rabbi gazed thoughtfully down at him.
“Shall I pray for you, Levy?” he asked rather dryly.
A superstitious gleam flickered in Levy’s bleary eyes.
“Oy—oy—oy!” he moaned.
The rabbi shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll come back again when he’s made up his mind,” he said to Mr. Israels, and went on to console the master clockmaker by saying that it was a worthy and righteous thing to take in the needy and the unfortunate, especially at the time of the Passover.
“The needy—yes! The unfortunate—yes! But the schnorrer—no! I’d have taken in any poor man from the street and fed him till he burst—even as the Almighty tells us. But now I have a pair of schnorrers in the house . . . thanks to that schlemiel Bunting!”
This was said in the hall, out of Bunting’s hearing. He had been left in the parlour with old Levy and his boy, and he gazed in unhappy fascination at the tragedy he’d so unthinkingly brought about.
Curiously the old man and the boy watched him, while the mahogany cupboard case, propped up in a corner, emitted a rapid, insectival ticking, as if mocking the stillness of the room.
“I—I’m sorry, sir,” muttered Bunting. “I never meant anything.”
“Oy—oy—oy!” said old Levy, and his ragged beard twitched and shifted as his unimaginable lips made a smile. “We are all in the hand of the Almighty. . . .”
“Blessed be His name,” added Moses, dragging and limping to his master’s side.
He smiled his bright martyr’s smile at Bunting, and his full red lips moved in what Bunting took to be a Hebrew blessing; but to someone quicker than Bunting might equally well have been, “April Fool!” But Bunting was slow, so he took the blessing.
The sun had set and, in strict accordance with holy law, all manner of work was put aside. As Mr. Israels was a clockmaker, the clocks had been stopped; now was the time of the Almighty.
In the oily, gleaming workshop, poised pendulums shivered in the tickless air, and the clock faces stared at one another as if expecting a judgment.
Bunting, scraping an egg stain from his velvet cap, felt uncanny without the remorseless hammering of seconds to fix and rivet him. His mind peered about in surprise as huge fragments of thought rolled through it—of Rachel, of his stern uncle, of his father and mother, who’d already arrived in a frantic bustle of belongings. His mother had anointed him with scented affection, and his father had given him the shilling he always gave on Passover night. Then they’d whisked away to their room, and all had been uproar. . . .
More than ever Bunting felt like a tree that is condemned to watch men twinkling through their lives while it yawns and stretches and climbs out of bed an inch a year. His thoughts roamed over past Passovers . . . and they all seemed like a watch in the night, coming and going in the blinking of an eye.
He picked up his gold-tooled Haggadah, and a loose page fell out, together with crumbs of last year’s unleavened bread, which somehow had found their way inside the book.
He bent to retrieve the page on which were the quaint coloured drawings of the four sons to whom the good man must, each year, tell the old, old story of the escape from the taskmasters of Egypt.
He gazed at them: the wise son looked older than his father; wisdom had aged him frightfully. The wicked son, beetle-browed and moustachioed, was dashingly depicted as a soldier. Bunting had always had a soft spot for the wicked son. Then there was the son who was too young to ask questions, and he looked like a chamber pot in wrappings. Last of all was the foolish son, with hands raised in perpetual amazement. Someone—and it wasn’t hard to guess who—had written “Bunting” underneath. He sighed and wondered if Rachel would have liked him better as a soldier.
His thoughts rolled on to old Levy and the lame boy and how angry everyone had been over the way it had all happened. Again and again he’d tried to explain to his uncle and aunt, but they wouldn’t listen, and they pushed him aside while old Levy had been carted upstairs and laid in Bunting’s room. He’d been told to sleep under the bench in the workshop until the smelly old schnorrer should recover or die. There was no doubt he did stink—of old clothes, old food, old sweat, and old age. . . .
So Bunting, motionless in the silent workshop, with his velvet cap perched on his head like an egg cosy, brooded away. Solemnly he tried to assemble all the fragments of his thought, even as a philosopher might seek to construct the curve of the world from a flowerbed in his garden. . . .
“Bunting!”
He jumped with alarm as his uncle’s voice shouted from the dining room.
“What are you doing, boy? Hurry! Must you keep even the Almighty waiting?”
The company was all seated and impatiently waiting to begin the prayers. A host of flushed faces turned to regard him, but the long, gleaming magnificence of Mrs. Israels’ Passover table quite obscured them.
It was like a vessel—a white and silver vessel—floating in candlelight. Tall silver candlesticks stood up like masts, and bright wine glasses stood by rolled napkins like angel gunners waiting to discharge their pieces at the moving shadows on the walls.
Sweet and sharp savours hovered in the air, filling the nose and pricking the tongue with countless dreamy memories. . . .
“Sit down, boy! Don’t just stand there. Sit down.”
Mr. Israels was frowning impatiently from his place at the head of the table. He was fidgeting among an immense pile of cushions; for was it not commanded that on this night all must eat at their ease, in memory of the escape from the house of bondage?
Mrs. Bunting looked at her son from under lowered lids as he took his place, but Bunting’s pa beamed like a quarter to three, for he had been sampling the Passover wine.
The other places at the table were taken up by two neighbours from Shoemaker’s Row, and by Mrs. Israels’ sister and her husband, who was a respectable broker in Cheapside. And there was, of course, the empty chair for Elijah the Tishbite—if he should come.
The broker and his wife were not staying for the night. They had employed a linkboy to light them home after the ceremony and had left him at a nearby inn. They were paying him by the hour, and the broker kept looking critically at Mr. Israels, who, he felt, ought to be getting on with the service. One had to bear in mind that, however pleasant the circumstance, time was money.
At last Mr. Israels opened his book; the broker sighed with relief, and Mrs. Bunting said importantly, “Ssh!”, which was her chief contribution to the festivities, as the Passover cake she’d made had been unaccountably left behind in the rush of getting to Carter Lane in good time.
Mr. Israels drew a deep breath and launched the Passover service at a rate of knots that warmed the broker’s heart; if he kept it up, and if there were no interruptions, they’d be away by ten o’clock. . . . Little Moses, who had been placed next to Rachel, helped her to follow the text, while Bunting, who sat on her other side, gazed hopelessly into space. His eyes drifted towards the empty chair. What if Elijah did come that night? What would the mysterious prophet say after all his wanderings over the face of the world in search of the open door to announce the Messiah?
“Schlemiel!” whispered Rachel. “It’s time to drink the wine!”
Bunting blushed and reached for his glass. There was a moment’s silence round the table.
“Oy—oy—oy!”
Quite distinctly, the moan came floating down from aloft. It was
quite amazing that old Levy’s voice should carry so well. Little Moses smiled pleadingly round the table and asked if he might take a glass of wine up to his old master so that he, too, might join in celebrating the Passover.
There was no gainsaying the little schnorrer when he turned his brightly suffering face to each of the company in turn. Some children are gifted in music, some in painting; little Moses was gifted in the art of begging. He had a real genius for it.
The broker frowned, but like everyone else he had to sit and wait while the lame boy ticked and tocked up and down the stairs like a pendulum out of balance.
Bunting tried to hold Rachel’s hand under the table, but she was exceedingly angry. She would not be allowed to ask the Four Questions—for which she was to have been given a present—as little Moses was now the youngest at the table. She dug her nails fiercely into Bunting’s finger, so that he squealed in fright and pain.
“Sshi” said Mrs. Bunting, and Moses came back, full of smiles and apologies, to ask, in his slightly stammering Hebrew, wherefore this night, with its unleavened bread, its bitter herbs, and its enforced reclining at table, was different from all other nights.
Scarcely were the words out of his mouth than Mr. Israels was off again, trying to make up for lost time. He prided himself in knocking minutes off anyone else’s time for the service and felt it a point of honour not to depart from his own high standards.
The broker noted with approval the diminishing number of pages ahead, while Bunting struggled in the rear and was, in fact, still laboriously reading the Four Questions to himself, long after most of them had been answered. He raised his eyes, and there was the empty chair for Elijah, and Bunting wondered if the prophet was as far behind as he, and was that why he’d never yet turned up to announce the coming of the Messiah?
At last Mr. Israels arrived at the mention of bitter herbs, which stood for the days of bitterness in Egypt; he pointed jovially at his wife, and that was considered something of a humorous peak in the evening and always made Mr. Bunting laugh.
“Ssh!” said Mrs. Bunting, after which everyone was given a helping of the bitter herb—which was not really bitter at all but was horseradish agreeably flavoured—on a small piece of unleavened bread. Time went backwards as the children of Israel in Carter Lane partook of the bitter herbs and the bread of affliction like their forebears in the house of bondage.
“Very nice,” said Mrs. Bunting, and old Levy, smelling the pleasant aroma through two closed doors, moaned loudly.
“Go see what he wants now,” said Mr. Israels to Bunting, whose presence, he felt, could most easily be dispensed with.
Bunting, his eyes watering from the horseradish, rose slowly. He was reluctant to leave Rachel to the charms of little Moses.
“Hurry, my boy!” urged the broker. “The old man may really be in need!”
Bunting went and mounted the stairs, though his heart remained below. He entered what had been his own room, and the oppressive smell of the eleventh plague smote him.
Old Levy, still in his stained blue coat and old boots, lay stretched upon Bunting’s bed. His sharp features, half buried in the tangle of his dirty beard, looked worn and anxious.
“Oy—oy—oy!” he said.
“What’s wrong, sir?”
Old Levy groaned again and lifted up his head.
“Tell me—tell me, my boy . . . are we still in Egypt? Are we still slaves with the whips on our backs? Ain’t the Almighty brought us forth yet from the house of bondage?”
He panted for breath, and Bunting wondered if he’d gone off his head and was imagining himself in ancient Egypt.
“Oy—oy—oy! Let me live long enough on this Passover night to come to that blessed time! Don’t let me die in the darkness of Egypt. Don’t let me pass away before I’ve tasted Thy blessed manna, O Lord, and Mrs. Israels’ stuffed fish! Tell me, my boy, did I smell horseradish?”
Bunting nodded. “We’ve just got to the bitter herbs. Would you like some, sir, on a piece of matzo?”
“Schlemiel!” muttered old Levy; then he smiled sadly. “Bitter herbs are to remind us of a bitter time. What need have I to bring into my mouth what already plagues me every night of the year? And matzo! The bread of affliction. Ain’t I afflicted enough with sore gums and no teeth? Oy—oy—oy! Still, he’s got to the bitter herbs at last—thank God! Maybe I’ll be spared long enough for the stuffed fish?”
“I’ll bring you some, sir—”
“With a little horseradish!” croaked old Levy anxiously as the boy departed. “I want to remember again my days in the brickyards with the taskmasters’ whips on my back!”
Downstairs, the feast was already on the table, and the shadows were dancing on the walls as everyone leaned this way and that to admire the splendour of Mrs. Israels’ stuffed carp.
“It’s like a whale!” exclaimed Mr. Bunting, and the neighbours from Shoemaker’s Row wondered where such a fish had been caught.
It had been stuffed to suffocation with raisins, chopped herbs, and hard-boiled eggs, and reclined, in an exhausted fashion, in a plated tureen from which its head emerged to rest upon the rim, with the expression of one who has just awakened to its nightmare plight.
Bunting, his attention divided between the radiant Rachel and the immense fish, passed on old Levy’s requirements and waited to be given the old man’s portion. Mr. Israels told Bunting to stop staring and sit down.
“I rather fancy,” he said, with a dryly ironical smile round the table, “that the Almighty will spare Mr. Levy till we’ve finished our meal. Time enough, my boy . . .”
Bunting sat down, shaking his head. What if the old man should really die before he was out of Egypt that night? He glanced towards little Moses, but the lame one was too busy fascinating Rachel to think of anything else. He looked at the empty place. What would Elijah the Tishbite say if he should come? He looked at the carp, and the carp looked at Bunting, and its open mouth framed the single word, “Schlemiel!”
Accompanied by laughter and a joyous jingling of spoons and forks, the great fish began its last journey round the table, and deep inroads were made in its shining flanks. It came to little Moses, and the lame boy’s eyes sparkled with merriment as he performed a clever conjuring trick and seemed to draw, from the carp’s gaping mouth, a pretty trinket on a thin silver chain.
Rachel cried out in admiration and delight, and everyone praised the little schnorrer’s skill. Indeed, it had been so well done that Bunting couldn’t help poking his finger into the cold wet hole when the fish came to him to see if anything else might be found inside.
He drew out half a hard-boiled egg and looked so surprised that everyone glanced expressively at one another; but no one said anything, and the meal proceeded in the utmost good humour.
At the head of the table, according to custom, the gentlemen disputed keenly on details of the Passover and went pretty deeply into history.
“How long would you say it was?” asked Mr. Bunting, smiling intelligently down the table at his wife as if to say. You see, I know how to conduct myself on such occasions! “How long would you say we were in Egypt? I mean altogether . . . since the days of Joseph?”
Mr. Israels frowned, trying to remember. “I believe it was a little more than four hundred years.”
“You surprise me,” said Mr. Bunting. “I’d no idea it was so long. Time goes by so quickly. Four hundred years!”
“Four hundred years,” said the broker meditatively. “Have you ever thought that if one of Joseph’s children had invested, say, a shilling at two per cent per annum, compound interest, there would have been a nice nest egg for the family? A very nice nest egg . . .”
“Do it again! Do it again!” said Rachel, giggling, to the little conjuror, and longed to be given the trinket. “Once more!”
“Ssh!” said Mrs. Bunting. “Listen to what’s being said. Learn something from your uncles and your father!”
‘Several millions of pounds, I shouldn’t
wonder,” said the broker, and wondered how much he already owed the linkboy and whether the lad would have been drinking and unfit to guide them.
“That’s astonishing!” said Mr. Bunting. Only a shilling, and in four hundred years. “Did you hear that, my son?” he called down the table. “Your shilling in four hundred years might be worth . . . millions!”
Bunting nodded vaguely. He had heard but, as usual, had not understood. His thoughts were elsewhere. He’d put aside a portion of fish for old Levy on his own plate. All he longed for now was for the meal to end so that he could go upstairs again. He’d heard no further sound from the old man and he was worried.
He became aware that his mother was pointing reproachfully at his plate and asking why he’d taken a second helping and wasn’t eating it. He tried to explain, but she lost patience and turned away. The only creature in the room that still seemed interested in him was the carp, now reduced to a ruin of its former self. And its head, lying in the tureen, still said, “Schlemiel!”
I know . . . I know, thought Bunting wearily. But what if he should really die? It could happen, you know. . . .
At last the meal came to an end, and Bunting stood up.
“Where are you going, my boy?”
“To take Mr. Levy some fish—”
“I rather fancy,” said Mr. Israels, with another ironic smile round the table, “that he can wait for Elijah. After all, we are all waiting for Elijah, so I’m sure the Almighty will spare Mr. Levy for a little longer, eh?”
Everyone laughed appreciatively over how neatly Mr. Israels had brought in the solemn occasion that was still to come; only Bunting gazed at the empty place and wondered what the ghostly prophet would have said.
Grace was said, and the Cup of Elijah was filled to the brim with the dark Passover wine and put before the empty place.
“I hope,” said Mr. Israels, pointing to the large pewter goblet, “that Elijah has a good head for wine!”
The Apprentices Page 16
