Children of the Ghetto

by Израэль Зангвилл

  "Bran-new book!" he said contemptuously. "'Esther Ansell-For improvement!' When a book's spiled like that, what can you expect for it?"

  "Why, it's the inscription that makes it valuable," said Esther tearfully.

  "Maybe," said the rubicund man gruffly. "But d'yer suppose I should just find a buyer named Esther Ansell?" Do you suppose everybody in the world's named Esther Ansell or is capable of improvement?"

  "No," breathed Esther dolefully. "But I shall take it out myself soon."

  "In this world," said the rubicund man, shaking his head sceptically, "there ain't never no knowing. Well, how much d'yer want?"

  "I only want a shilling," said Esther, "and threepence," she added as a happy thought.

  "All right," said the rubicund man softened. "I won't 'aggle this mornen. You look quite knocked up. Here you are!" and Esther darted out of the shop with the money clasped tightly in her palm.

  Moses had folded his phylacteries with pious primness and put them away in a little bag, and he was hastily swallowing a cup of coffee.

  "Here is the shilling," she cried. "And twopence extra for the 'bus to London Bridge. Quick!" She put the ticket away carefully among its companions in a discolored leather purse her father had once picked up in the street, and hurried him off. When his steps ceased on the stairs, she yearned to run after him and go with him, but Ikey was clamoring for breakfast and the children had to run off to school. She remained at home herself, for the grandmother groaned heavily. When the other children had gone off she tidied up the vacant bed and smoothed the old woman's pillows. Suddenly Benjamin's reluctance to have his father exhibited before his new companions recurred to her; she hoped Moses would not be needlessly obtrusive and felt that if she had gone with him she might have supplied tact in this direction. She reproached herself for not having made him a bit more presentable. She should have spared another halfpenny for a new collar, and seen that he was washed; but in the rush and alarm all thoughts of propriety had been submerged. Then her thoughts went off at a tangent and she saw her class-room, where new things were being taught, and new marks gained. It galled her to think she was missing both. She felt so lonely in the company of her grandmother, she could have gone downstairs and cried on Dutch Debby's musty lap. Then she strove to picture the room where Benjy was lying, but her imagination lacked the data. She would not let herself think the brilliant Benjamin was dead, that he would be sewn up in a shroud just like his poor mother, who had no literary talent whatever, but she wondered whether he was groaning like the grandmother. And so, half distracted, pricking up her ears at the slightest creak on the stairs, Esther waited for news of her Benjy. The hours dragged on and on, and the children coming home at one found dinner ready but Esther still waiting. A dusty sunbeam streamed in through the garret window as though to give her hope.

  Benjamin had been beguiled from his books into an unaccustomed game of ball in the cold March air. He had taken off his jacket and had got very hot with his unwonted exertions. A reactionary chill followed. Benjamin had a slight cold, which being ignored, developed rapidly into a heavy one, still without inducing the energetic lad to ask to be put upon the sick list. Was not the publishing day of Our Own at hand?

  The cold became graver with the same rapidity, and almost as soon as the boy had made complaint he was in a high fever, and the official doctor declared that pneumonia had set in. In the night Benjamin was delirious, and the nurse summoned the doctor, and next morning his condition was so critical that his father was telegraphed for. There was little to be done by science-all depended on the patient's constitution. Alas! the four years of plenty and country breezes had not counteracted the eight and three-quarter years of privation and foul air, especially in a lad more intent on emulating Dickens and Thackeray than on profiting by the advantages of his situation.

  When Moses arrived he found his boy tossing restlessly in a little bed, in a private little room away from the great dormitories. "The matron"-a sweet-faced young lady-was bending tenderly over him, and a nurse sat at the bedside. The doctor stood-waiting-at the foot of the bed. Moses took his boy's hand. The matron silently stepped aside. Benjamin stared at him with wide, unrecognizing eyes.

  "Nu, how goes it, Benjamin?" cried Moses in Yiddish, with mock heartiness.

  "Thank you, old Four-Eyes. It's very good of you to come. I always said there mustn't be any hits at you in the paper. I always told the fellows you were a very decent chap."

  "What says he?" asked Moses, turning to the company. "I cannot understand English."

  They could not understand his own question, but the matron guessed it. She tapped her forehead and shook her head for reply. Benjamin closed his eyes and there was silence. Presently he opened them and looked straight at his father. A deeper crimson mantled on the flushed cheek as Benjamin beheld the dingy stooping being to whom he owed birth. Moses wore a dirty red scarf below his untrimmed beard, his clothes were greasy, his face had not yet been washed, and-for a climax-he had not removed his hat, which other considerations than those of etiquette should have impelled him to keep out of sight.

  "I thought you were old Four-Eyes," the boy murmured in confusion-"Wasn't he here just now?"

  "Go and fetch Mr. Coleman," said the matron, to the nurse, half-smiling through tears at her own knowledge of the teacher's nickname and wondering what endearing term she was herself known by.

  "Cheer up, Benjamin," said his father, seeing his boy had become sensible of his presence. "Thou wilt be all right soon. Thou hast been much worse than this."

  "What does he say?" asked Benjamin, turning his eyes towards the matron.

  "He says he is sorry to see you so bad," said the matron, at a venture.

  "But I shall be up soon, won't I? I can't have Our Own delayed," whispered Benjamin.

  "Don't worry about Our Own, my poor boy," murmured the matron, pressing his forehead. Moses respectfully made way for her.

  "What says he?" he asked. The matron repeated the words, but Moses could not understand the English.

  Old Four-Eyes arrived-a mild spectacled young man. He looked at the doctor, and the doctor's eye told him all.

  "Ah, Mr. Coleman," said Benjamin, with joyous huskiness, "you'll see that Our Own comes out this week as usual. Tell Jack Simmonds he must not forget to rule black lines around the page containing Bruno's epitaph. Bony-nose-I-I mean Mr. Bernstein, wrote it for us in dog-Latin. Isn't it a lark? Thick, black lines, tell him. He was a good dog and only bit one boy in his life."

  "All right. I'll see to it," old Four-Eyes assured him with answering huskiness.

  "What says he?" helplessly inquired Moses, addressing himself to the newcomer.

  "Isn't it a sad case, Mr. Coleman?" said the matron, in a low tone. "They can't understand each other."

  "You ought to keep an interpreter on the premises," said the doctor, blowing his nose. Coleman struggled with himself. He knew the jargon to perfection, for his parents spoke it still, but he had always posed as being ignorant of it.

  "Tell my father to go home, and not to bother; I'm all right-only a little weak," whispered Benjamin.

  Coleman was deeply perturbed. He was wondering whether he should plead guilty to a little knowledge, when a change of expression came over the wan face on the pillow. The doctor came and felt the boy's pulse.

  "No, I don't want to hear that Maaseh," cried Benjamin. "Tell me about the Sambatyon, father, which refuses to flow on Shabbos."

  He spoke Yiddish, grown a child again. Moses's face lit up with joy. His eldest born had returned to intelligibility. There was hope still then. A sudden burst of sunshine flooded the room. In London the sun would not break through the clouds for some hours. Moses leaned over the pillow, his face working with blended emotions. Me let a hot tear fall on his boy's upturned face.

  "Hush, hush, my little Benjamin, don't cry," said Benjamin, and began to sing in his mothers jargon:

  "Sleep, little father, sleep,

  Thy father shall be a Rav
,

  Thy mother shall bring little apples,

  Blessings on thy little head,"

  Moses saw his dead Gittel lulling his boy to sleep. Blinded by his tears, he did not see that they were falling thick upon the little white face.

  "Nay, dry thy tears, I tell thee, my little Benjamin," said Benjamin, in tones more tender and soothing, and launched into the strange wailing melody:

  "Alas, woe is me!

  How wretched to be

  Driven away and banished,

  Yet so young, from thee."

  "And Joseph's mother called to him from the grave: Be comforted, my son, a great future shall be thine."

  "The end is near," old Four-Eyes whispered to the father in jargon. Moses trembled from head to foot. "My poor lamb! My poor Benjamin," he wailed. "I thought thou wouldst say Kaddish after me, not I for thee." Then he began to recite quietly the Hebrew prayers. The hat he should have removed was appropriate enough now.

  Benjamin sat up excitedly in bed: "There's mother, Esther!" he cried in English. "Coming back with my coat. But what's the use of it now?"

  His head fell back again. Presently a look of yearning came over the face so full of boyish beauty. "Esther," he said. "Wouldn't you like to be in the green country to-day? Look how the sun shines."

  It shone, indeed, with deceptive warmth, bathing in gold the green country that stretched beyond, and dazzling the eyes of the dying boy. The birds twittered outside the window. "Esther!" he said, wistfully, "do you think there'll be another funeral soon?".

  The matron burst into tears and turned away.

  "Benjamin," cried the father, frantically, thinking the end had come, "say the Shemang."

  The boy stared at him, a clearer look in his eyes.

  "Say the Shemang!" said Moses peremptorily. The word Shemang, the old authoritative tone, penetrated the consciousness of the dying boy.

  "Yes, father, I was just going to," he grumbled, submissively.

  They repeated the last declaration of the dying Israelite together. It was in Hebrew. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." Both understood that.

  Benjamin lingered on a few more minutes, and died in a painless torpor.

  "He is dead," said the doctor.

  "Blessed be the true Judge," said Moses. He rent his coat, and closed the staring eyes. Then he went to the toilet table and turned the looking-glass to the wall, and opened the window and emptied the jug of water upon the green sunlit grass.

  CHAPTER XXI. THE JARGON PLAYERS.

  "No, don't stop me, Pinchas," said Gabriel Hamburg. "I'm packing up, and I shall spend my Passover in Stockholm. The Chief Rabbi there has discovered a manuscript which I am anxious to see, and as I have saved up a little money I shall speed thither."

  "Ah, he pays well, that boy-fool, Raphael Leon," said Pinchas, emitting a lazy ring of smoke.

  "What do you mean?" cried Gabriel, flushing angrily. "Do you mean, perhaps, that you have been getting money out of him?"

  "Precisely. That is what I do mean," said the poet naively. "What else?"

  "Well, don't let me hear you call him a fool. He is one to send you money, but then it is for others to call him so. That boy will be a great man in Israel. The son of rich English Jews-a Harrow-boy, yet he already writes Hebrew almost grammatically."

  Pinchas was aware of this fact: had he not written to the lad (in response to a crude Hebrew eulogium and a crisp Bank of England note): "I and thou are the only two people in England who write the Holy Tongue grammatically."

  He replied now: "It is true; soon he will vie with me and you."

  The old scholar took snuff impatiently. The humors of Pinchas were beginning to pall upon him.

  "Good-bye," he said again.

  "No, wait, yet a little," said Pinchas, buttonholing him resolutely. "I want to show you my acrostic on Simon Wolf; ah! I will shoot him, the miserable labor-leader, the wretch who embezzles the money of the Socialist fools who trust him. Aha! it will sting like Juvenal, that acrostic."

  "I haven't time," said the gentle savant, beginning to lose his temper.

  "Well, have I time? I have to compose a three-act comedy by to-morrow at noon. I expect I shall have to sit up all night to get it done in time." Then, anxious to complete the conciliation of the old snuff-and-pepper-box, as he mentally christened him for his next acrostic, he added: "If there is anything in this manuscript that you cannot decipher or understand, a letter to me, care of Reb Shemuel, will always find me. Somehow I have a special genius for filling up lacunae in manuscripts. You remember the famous discovery that I made by rewriting the six lines torn out of the first page of that Midrash I discovered in Cyprus."

  "Yes, those six lines proved it thoroughly," sneered the savant.

  "Aha! You see!" said the poet, a gratified smile pervading his dusky features. "But I must tell you of this comedy-it will be a satirical picture (in the style of Moliere, only sharper) of Anglo-Jewish Society. The Rev. Elkan Benjamin, with his four mistresses, they will all be there, and Gideon, the Man-of-the-Earth, M.P.,-ah, it will be terrible. If I could only get them to see it performed, they should have free passes."

  "No, shoot them first; it would be more merciful. But where is this comedy to be played?" asked Hamburg curiously.

  "At the Jargon Theatre, the great theatre in Prince's Street, the only real national theatre in England. The English stage-Drury Lane-pooh! It is not in harmony with the people; it does not express them."

  Hamburg could not help smiling. He knew the wretched little hall, since tragically famous for a massacre of innocents, victims to the fatal cry of fire-more deadly than fiercest flame.

  "But how will your audience understand it?" he asked.

  "Aha!" said the poet, laying his finger on his nose and grinning. "They will understand. They know the corruptions of our society. All this conspiracy to crush me, to hound me out of England so that ignoramuses may prosper and hypocrites wax fat-do you think it is not the talk of the Ghetto? What! Shall it be the talk of Berlin, of Constantinople, of Mogadore, of Jerusalem, of Paris, and here it shall not be known? Besides, the leading actress will speak a prologue. Ah! she is beautiful, beautiful as Lilith, as the Queen of Sheba, as Cleopatra! And how she acts! She and Rachel-both Jewesses! Think of it! Ah, we are a great people. If I could tell you the secrets of her eyes as she looks at me-but no, you are dry as dust, a creature of prose! And there will be an orchestra, too, for Pesach Weingott has promised to play the overture on his fiddle. How he stirs the soul! It is like David playing before Saul."

  "Yes, but it won't be javelins the people will throw," murmured Hamburg, adding aloud: "I suppose you have written the music of this overture."

  "No, I cannot write music," said Pinchas.

  "Good heavens! You don't say so?" gasped Gabriel Hamburg. "Let that be my last recollection of you! No! Don't say another word! Don't spoil it! Good-bye." And he tore himself away, leaving the poet bewildered.

  "Mad! Mad!" said Pinchas, tapping his brow significantly; "mad, the old snuff-and-pepper-box." He smiled at the recollection of his latest phrase. "These scholars stagnate so. They see not enough of the women. Ha! I will go and see my actress."

  He threw out his chest, puffed out a volume of smoke, and took his way to Petticoat Lane. The compatriot of Rachel was wrapping up a scrag of mutton. She was a butcher's daughter and did not even wield the chopper, as Mrs. Siddons is reputed to have flourished the domestic table-knife. She was a simple, amiable girl, who had stepped into the position of lead in the stock jargon company as a way of eking out her pocket-money, and because there was no one else who wanted the post. She was rather plain except when be-rouged and be-pencilled. The company included several tailors and tailoresses of talent, and the low comedian was a Dutchman who sold herrings. They all had the gift of improvisation more developed than memory, and consequently availed themselves of the faculty that worked easier. The repertory was written by goodness knew whom, and was very extensive. It embraced al
l the species enumerated by Polonius, including comic opera, which was not known to the Danish saw-monger. There was nothing the company would not have undertaken to play or have come out of with a fair measure of success. Some of the plays were on Biblical subjects, but only a minority. There were also plays in rhyme, though Yiddish knows not blank verse. Melchitsedek accosted his interpretess and made sheep's-eyes at her. But an actress who serves in a butcher's shop is doubly accustomed to such, and being busy the girl paid no attention to the poet, though the poet was paying marked attention to her.

  "Kiss me, thou beauteous one, the gems of whose crown are foot-lights," said the poet, when the custom ebbed for a moment.

  "If thou comest near me," said the actress whirling the chopper, "I'll chop thy ugly little head off."

  "Unless thou lendest me thy lips thou shalt not play in my comedy," said Pinchas angrily.

  "My trouble!" said the leading lady, shrugging her shoulders.

  Pinchas made several reappearances outside the open shop, with his insinuative finger on his nose and his insinuative smile on his face, but in the end went away with a flea in his ear and hunted up the actor-manager, the only person who made any money, to speak of, out of the performances. That gentleman had not yet consented to produce the play that Pinchas had ready in manuscript and which had been coveted by all the great theatres in the world, but which he, Pinchas, had reserved for the use of the only actor in Europe. The result of this interview was that the actor-manager yielded to Pinchas's solicitations, backed by frequent applications of poetic finger to poetic nose.

  "But," said the actor-manager, with a sudden recollection, "how about the besom?"

  "The besom!" repeated Pinchas, nonplussed for once.

  "Yes, thou sayest thou hast seen all the plays I have produced. Hast thou not noticed that I have a besom in all my plays?"

  "Aha! Yes, I remember," said Pinchas.

  "An old garden-besom it is," said the actor-manager. "And it is the cause of all my luck." He took up a house-broom that stood in the corner. "In comedy I sweep the floor with it-so-and the people grin; in comic-opera I beat time with it as I sing-so-and the people laugh; in farce I beat my mother-in-law with it-so-and the people roar; in tragedy I lean upon it-so-and the people thrill; in melodrama I sweep away the snow with it-so-and the people burst into tears. Usually I have my plays written beforehand and the authors are aware of the besom. Dost thou think," he concluded doubtfully, "that thou hast sufficient ingenuity to work in the besom now that the play is written?"