Children of the Ghetto

by Израэль Зангвилл

  "No, no; thou shall not face the first hardships, I will front them alone; I am strong, I am a man."

  "And thou hast the heart to leave me?" She looked piteously into his face, but hers was still hidden from him in the mist. But through the darkness the flash passed again. His hand groped for her waist, he drew her again towards him and put the arms he had unlaced round his neck and stooped his wet cheek to hers. The past was a void, the forty years of joint housekeeping, since the morning each had seen a strange face on the pillow, faded to a point. For fifteen years they had been drifting towards each other, drifting nearer, nearer in dual loneliness; driven together by common suffering and growing alienation from the children they had begotten in common; drifting nearer, nearer in silence, almost in unconsciousness. And now they had met. The supreme moment of their lives had come. The silence of forty years was broken. His withered lips sought hers and love flooded their souls at last.

  When the first delicious instants were over, Mendel drew a chair to the table and wrote a letter in Hebrew script and posted it and Beenah picked up Miriam's jacket. The crackling flames had subsided to a steady glow, the clock ticked on quietly as before, but something new and sweet and sacred had come into her life, and Beenah no longer wished to die.

  When Miriam came home, she brought a little blast of cold air into the room. Beenah rose and shut the door and put out Miriam's supper; she did not drag her feet now.

  "Was it a nice play, Miriam?" said Beenah softly.

  "The usual stuff and nonsense!" said Miriam peevishly. "Love and all that sort of thing, as if the world never got any older."

  At breakfast next morning old Hyams received a letter by the first post. He carefully took his spectacles off and donned his reading-glasses to read it, throwing the envelope carelessly into the fire. When he had scanned a few lines he uttered an exclamation of surprise and dropped the letter.

  "What's the matter, father?" said Daniel, while Miriam tilted her snub nose curiously.

  "Praised be God!" was all the old man could say.

  "Well, what is it? Speak!" said Beenah, with unusual animation, while a flush of excitement lit up Miriam's face and made it beautiful.

  "My brother in America has won a thousand pounds on the lotter_ee and he invites me and Beenah to come and live with him."

  "Your brother in America!" repeated his children staring.

  "Why, I didn't know you had a brother in America," added Miriam.

  "No, while he was poor, I didn't mention him," replied Mendel, with unintentional sarcasm. "But I've heard from him several times. We both came over from Poland together, but the Board of Guardians sent him and a lot of others on to New York."

  "But you won't go, father!" said Daniel.

  "Why not? I should like to see my brother before I die. We were very thick as boys."

  "But a thousand pounds isn't so very much," Miriam could not refrain from saying.

  Old Hyams had thought it boundless opulence and was now sorry he had not done his brother a better turn.

  "It will be enough for us all to live upon, he and Beenah and me. You see his wife died and he has no children."

  "You don't really mean to go?" gasped Daniel, unable to grasp the situation suddenly sprung upon him. "How will you get the money to travel with?"

  "Read here!" said Mendel, quietly passing him the letter. "He offers to send it."

  "But it's written in Hebrew!" cried Daniel, turning it upside down hopelessly.

  "You can read Hebrew writing surely," said his father.

  "I could, years and years ago. I remember you taught me the letters. But my Hebrew correspondence has been so scanty-" He broke off with a laugh and handed the letter to Miriam, who surveyed it with mock comprehension. There was a look of relief in her eyes as she returned it to her father.

  "He might have sent something to his nephew and his niece," she said half seriously.

  "Perhaps he will when I get to America and tell him how pretty you are," said Mendel oracularly. He looked quite joyous and even ventured to pinch Miriam's flushed cheek roguishly, and she submitted to the indignity without a murmur.

  "Why you're looking as pleased as Punch too, mother," said Daniel, in half-rueful amazement. "You seem delighted at the idea of leaving us."

  "I always wanted to see America," the old woman admitted with a smile. "I also shall renew an old friendship in New York." She looked meaningly at her husband, and in his eye was an answering love-light.

  "Well, that's cool!" Daniel burst forth. "But she doesn't mean it, does she, father?"

  "I mean it." Hyams answered.

  "But it can't be true," persisted Daniel, in ever-growing bewilderment. "I believe it's all a hoax."

  Mendel hastily drained his coffee-cup.

  "A hoax!" he murmured, from behind the cup.

  "Yes, I believe some one is having a lark with you."

  "Nonsense!" cried Mendel vehemently, as he put down his coffee-cup and picked up the letter from the table. "Don't I know my own brother Yankov's writing. Besides, who else would know all the little things he writes about?"

  Daniel was silenced, but lingered on after Miriam had departed to her wearisome duties.

  "I shall write at once, accepting Yankov's offer," said his father. "Fortunately we took the house by the week, so you can always move out if it is too large for you and Miriam. I can trust you to look after Miriam, I know, Daniel." Daniel expostulated yet further, but Mendel answered:

  "He is so lonely. He cannot well come over here by himself because he is half paralyzed. After all, what have I to do in England? And the mother naturally does not care to leave me. Perhaps I shall get my brother to travel with me to the land of Israel, and then we shall all end our days in Jerusalem, which you know has always been my heart's desire."

  Neither mentioned Bessie Sugarman.

  "Why do you make so much bother?" Miriam said to Daniel in the evening. "It's the best thing that could have happened. Who'd have dreamed at this hour of the day of coming into possession of a relative who might actually have something to leave us. It'll be a good story to tell, too."

  After Shool next morning Mendel spoke to the President.

  "Can you lend me six pounds?" he asked.

  Belcovitch staggered.

  "Six pounds!" he repeated, dazed.

  "Yes. I wish to go to America with my wife. And I want you moreover to give your hand as a countryman that you will not breathe a word of this, whatever you hear. Beenah and I have sold a few little trinkets which our children gave us, and we have reckoned that with six pounds more we shall be able to take steerage passages and just exist till I get work."

  "But six pounds is a very great sum-without sureties," said Belcovitch, rubbing his time-worn workaday high hat in his agitation.

  "I know it is!" answered Mendel, "but God is my witness that I mean to pay you. And if I die before I can do so I vow to send word to my son Daniel, who will pay you the balance. You know my son Daniel. His word is an oath."

  "But where shall I get six pounds from?" said Bear helplessly. "I am only a poor tailor, and my daughter gets married soon. It is a great sum. By my honorable word, it is. I have never lent so much in my life, nor even been security for such an amount."

  Mendel dropped his head. There was a moment of anxious silence. Bear thought deeply.

  "I tell you what I'll do," said Bear at last. "I'll lend you five if you can manage to come out with that."

  Mendel gave a great sigh of relief. "God shall bless you," he said. He wrung the sweater's hand passionately. "I dare say we shall find another sovereign's-worth to sell." Mendel clinched the borrowing by standing the lender a glass of rum, and Bear felt secure against the graver shocks of doom. If the worst come to the worst now, he had still had something for his money.

  And so Mendel and Beenah sailed away over the Atlantic. Daniel accompanied them to Liverpool, but Miriam said she could not get a day's holiday-perhaps she remembered the rebuke Esther Ansell
had drawn down on herself, and was chary of asking.

  At the dock in the chill dawn, Mendel Hyams kissed his son Daniel on the forehead and said in a broken voice:

  "Good-bye. God bless you." He dared not add and God bless your Bessie, my daughter-in-law to be; but the benediction was in his heart.

  Daniel turned away heavy-hearted, but the old man touched him on the shoulder and said in a low tremulous voice:

  "Won't you forgive me for putting you into the fancy goods?"

  "Father! What do you mean?" said Daniel choking. "Surely you are not thinking of the wild words I spoke years and years ago. I have long forgotten them."

  "Then you will remain a good Jew," said Mendel, trembling all over, "even when we are far away?"

  "With God's help," said Daniel. And then Mendel turned to Beenah and kissed her, weeping, and the faces of the old couple were radiant behind their tears.

  Daniel stood on the clamorous hustling wharf, watching the ship move slowly from her moorings towards the open river, and neither he nor any one in the world but the happy pair knew that Mendel and Beenah were on their honeymoon.

  * * * * *

  Mrs. Hyams died two years after her honeymoon, and old Hyams laid a lover's kiss upon her sealed eyelids. Then, being absolutely alone in the world, he sold off his scanty furniture, sent the balance of the debt with a sovereign of undemanded interest to Bear Belcovitch, and girded up his loins for the journey to Jerusalem, which had been the dream of his life.

  But the dream of his life had better have remained a dream Mendel saw the hills of Palestine and the holy Jordan and Mount Moriah, the site of the Temple, and the tombs of Absalom and Melchitsedek, and the gate of Zion and the aqueduct built by Solomon, and all that he had longed to see from boyhood. But somehow it was not his Jerusalem-scarce more than his London Ghetto transplanted, only grown filthier and narrower and more ragged, with cripples for beggars and lepers in lieu of hawkers. The magic of his dream-city was not here. This was something prosaic, almost sordid. It made his heart sink as he thought of the sacred splendors of the Zion he had imaged in his suffering soul. The rainbows builded of his bitter tears did not span the firmament of this dingy Eastern city, set amid sterile hills. Where were the roses and lilies, the cedars and the fountains? Mount Moriah was here indeed, but it bore the Mosque of Omar, and the Temple of Jehovah was but one ruined wall. The Shechinah, the Divine Glory, had faded into cold sunshine. "Who shall go up into the Mount of Jehovah." Lo, the Moslem worshipper and the Christian tourist. Barracks and convents stood on Zion's hill. His brethren, rulers by divine right of the soil they trod, were lost in the chaos of populations-Syrians, Armenians, Turks, Copts, Abyssinians, Europeans-as their synagogues were lost amid the domes and minarets of the Gentiles. The city was full of venerated relics of the Christ his people had lived-and died-to deny, and over all flew the crescent flag of the Mussulman.

  And so every Friday, heedless of scoffing on-lookers, Mendel Hyams kissed the stones of the Wailing Place, bedewing their barrenness with tears; and every year at Passover, until he was gathered to his fathers, he continued to pray: "Next year-in Jerusalem!"

  CHAPTER XVIII. THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT.

  "Ah, the Men-of-the-Earth!" said Pinchas to Reb Shemuel, "ignorant fanatics, how shall a movement prosper in their hands? They have not the poetic vision, their ideas are as the mole's; they wish to make Messiahs out of half-pence. What inspiration for the soul is there in the sight of snuffy collectors that have the air of Schnorrers? with Karlkammer's red hair for a flag and the sound of Gradkoski's nose blowing for a trumpet-peal. But I have written an acrostic against Guedalyah the greengrocer, virulent as serpent's gall. He the Redeemer, indeed, with his diseased potatoes and his flat ginger-beer! Not thus did the great prophets and teachers in Israel figure the Return. Let a great signal-fire be lit in Israel and lo! the beacons will leap up on every mountain and tongue of flame shall call to tongue. Yea, I, even I, Melchitsedek Pinchas, will light the fire forthwith."

  "Nay, not to-day," said Reb Shemuel, with his humorous twinkle; "it is the Sabbath."

  The Rabbi was returning from synagogue and Pinchas was giving him his company on the short homeward journey. At their heels trudged Levi and on the other side of Reb Shemuel walked Eliphaz Chowchoski, a miserable-looking Pole whom Reb Shemuel was taking home to supper. In those days Reb Shemuel was not alone in taking to his hearth "the Sabbath guest"-some forlorn starveling or other-to sit at the table in like honor with the master. It was an object lesson in equality and fraternity for the children of many a well-to-do household, nor did it fail altogether in the homes of the poor. "All Israel are brothers," and how better honor the Sabbath than by making the lip-babble a reality?

  "You will speak to your daughter?" said Pinchas, changing the subject abruptly. "You will tell her that what I wrote to her is not a millionth part of what I feel-that she is my sun by day and my moon and stars by night, that I must marry her at once or die, that I think of nothing in the world but her, that I can do, write, plan, nothing without her, that once she smiles on me I will write her great love-poems, greater than Byron's, greater than Heine's-the real Song of Songs, which is Pinchas's-that I will make her immortal as Dante made Beatrice, as Petrarch made Laura, that I walk about wretched, bedewing the pavements with my tears, that I sleep not by night nor eat by day-you will tell her this?" He laid his finger pleadingly on his nose.

  "I will tell her," said Reb Shemuel. "You are a son-in-law to gladden the heart of any man. But I fear the maiden looks but coldly on wooers. Besides you are fourteen years older than she."

  "Then I love her twice as much as Jacob loved Rachel-for it is written 'seven years were but as a day in his love for her.' To me fourteen years are but as a day in my love for Hannah."

  The Rabbi laughed at the quibble and said:

  "You are like the man who when he was accused of being twenty years older than the maiden he desired, replied 'but when I look at her I shall become ten years younger, and when she looks at me she will become ten years older, and thus we shall be even.'"

  Pinchas laughed enthusiastically in his turn, but replied:

  "Surely you will plead my cause, you whose motto is the Hebrew saying-'the husband help the housewife, God help the bachelor.'"

  "But have you the wherewithal to support her?"

  "Shall my writings not suffice? If there are none to protect literature in England, we will go abroad-to your birthplace, Reb Shemuel, the cradle of great scholars."

  The poet spoke yet more, but in the end his excited stridulous accents fell on Reb Shemuel's ears as a storm without on the ears of the slippered reader by the fireside. He had dropped into a delicious reverie-tasting in advance the Sabbath peace. The work of the week was over. The faithful Jew could enter on his rest-the narrow, miry streets faded before the brighter image of his brain. "Come, my beloved, to meet the Bride, the face of the Sabbath let us welcome. "

  To-night his sweetheart would wear her Sabbath face, putting off the mask of the shrew, which hid not from him the angel countenance. To-night he could in very truth call his wife (as the Rabbi in the Talmud did) "not wife, but home." To-night she would be in very truth Simcha-rejoicing. A cheerful warmth glowed at his heart, love for all the wonderful Creation dissolved him in tenderness. As he approached the door, cheerful lights gleamed on him like a heavenly smile. He invited Pinchas to enter, but the poet in view of his passion thought it prudent to let others plead for him and went off with his finger to his nose in final reminder. The Reb kissed the Mezuzah on the outside of the door and his daughter, who met him, on the inside. Everything was as he had pictured it-the two tall wax candles in quaint heavy silver candlesticks, the spotless table-cloth, the dish of fried fish made picturesque with sprigs of parsley, the Sabbath loaves shaped like boys' tip-cats, with a curious plait of crust from point to point and thickly sprinkled with a drift of poppy-seed, and covered with a velvet cloth embroidered with Hebrew words; the flask of wine and the sil
ver goblet. The sight was familiar yet it always struck the simple old Reb anew, with a sense of special blessing.

  "Good Shabbos, Simcha," said Reb Shemuel.

  "Good Shabbos, Shemuel." said Simcha. The light of love was in her eyes, and in her hair her newest comb. Her sharp features shone with peace and good-will and the consciousness of having duly lit the Sabbath candles and thrown the morsel of dough into the fire. Shemuel kissed her, then he laid his hands upon Hannah's head and murmured:

  "May God make thee as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah," and upon Levi's, murmuring: "May God make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh."

  Even the callous Levi felt the breath of sanctity in the air and had a vague restful sense of his Sabbath Angel hovering about and causing him to cast two shadows on the wall while his Evil Angel shivered impotent on the door-step.

  Then Reb Shemuel repeated three times a series of sentences commencing: "Peace be unto you, ye ministering Angels," and thereupon the wonderful picture of an ideal woman from Proverbs, looking affectionately at Simcha the while. "A woman of worth, whoso findeth her, her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband trusteth in her; good and not evil will she do him all the days of her life; she riseth, while it is yet night, giveth food to her household and a task to her maidens. She putteth her own hands to the spindle; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor-strength and honor are her clothing and she looketh forth smilingly to the morrow; she openeth her mouth with wisdom and the law of kindness is on her tongue-she looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness. Deceitful is favor and vain is beauty, but the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."

  Then, washing his hands with the due benediction, he filled the goblet with wine, and while every one reverently stood he "made Kiddish," in a traditional joyous recitative "... blessed art thou, O Lord, our God! King of the Universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine, who doth sanctify us with His commandments and hath delight in us.... Thou hast chosen and sanctified us above all peoples and with love and favor hast made us to inherit Thy holy Sabbath...."