Children of the Ghetto

by Израэль Зангвилл

  Pinchas put his finger to his nose and smiled reassuringly.

  "It shall be all besom," he said.

  "And when wilt thou read it to me?"

  "Will to-morrow this time suit thee?"

  "As honey a bear."

  "Good, then!" said Pinchas; "I shall not fail."

  The door closed upon him. In another moment it reopened a bit and he thrust his grinning face through the aperture.

  "Ten per cent. of the receipts!" he said with his cajoling digito-nasal gesture.

  "Certainly," rejoined the actor-manager briskly. "After paying the expenses-ten per cent. of the receipts."

  "Thou wilt not forget?"

  "I shall not forget."

  Pinchas strode forth into the street and lit a new cigar in his exultation. How lucky the play was not yet written! Now he would be able to make it all turn round the axis of the besom. "It shall be all besom!" His own phrase rang in his ears like voluptuous marriage bells. Yes, it should, indeed, be all besom. With that besom he would sweep all his enemies-all the foul conspirators-in one clean sweep, down, down to Sheol. He would sweep them along the floor with it-so-and grin; he would beat time to their yells of agony-so-and laugh; he would beat them over the heads-so-and roar; he would lean upon it in statuesque greatness-so-and thrill; he would sweep away their remains with it-so-and weep for joy of countermining and quelling the long persecution.

  All night he wrote the play at railway speed, like a night express-puffing out volumes of smoke as he panted along. "I dip my pen in their blood," he said from time to time, and threw back his head and laughed aloud in the silence of the small hours.

  Pinchas had a good deal to do to explain the next day to the actor-manager where the fun came in. "Thou dost not grasp all the allusions, the back-handed slaps, the hidden poniards; perhaps not," the author acknowledged. "But the great heart of the people-it will understand."

  The actor-manager was unconvinced, but he admitted there was a good deal of besom, and in consideration of the poet bating his terms to five per cent. of the receipts he agreed to give it a chance. The piece was billed widely in several streets under the title of "The Hornet of Judah," and the name of Melchitsedek Pinchas appeared in letters of the size stipulated by the finger on the nose.

  But the leading actress threw up her part at the last moment, disgusted by the poet's amorous advances; Pinchas volunteered to play the part himself and, although his offer was rejected, he attired himself in skirts and streaked his complexion with red and white to replace the promoted second actress, and shaved off his beard.

  But in spite of this heroic sacrifice, the gods were unpropitious. They chaffed the poet in polished Yiddish throughout the first two acts. There was only a sprinkling of audience (most of it paper) in the dimly-lit hall, for the fame of the great writer had not spread from Berlin, Mogadore, Constantinople and the rest of the universe.

  No one could make head or tail of the piece with its incessant play of occult satire against clergymen with four mistresses, Rabbis who sold their daughters, stockbrokers ignorant of Hebrew and destitute of English, greengrocers blowing Messianic and their own trumpets, labor-leaders embezzling funds, and the like. In vain the actor-manager swept the floor with the besom, beat time with the besom, beat his mother-in-law with the besom, leaned on the besom, swept bits of white paper with the besom. The hall, empty of its usual crowd, was fuller of derisive laughter. At last the spectators tired of laughter and the rafters re-echoed with hoots. At the end of the second act, Melchitsedek Pinchas addressed the audience from the stage, in his ample petticoats, his brow streaming with paint and perspiration. He spoke of the great English conspiracy and expressed his grief and astonishment at finding it had infected the entire Ghetto.

  There was no third act. It was the poet's first-and last-appearance on any stage.

  CHAPTER XXII. "FOR AULD LANG SYNE, MY DEAR."

  The learned say that Passover was a Spring festival even before it was associated with the Redemption from Egypt, but there is not much Nature to worship in the Ghetto and the historical elements of the Festival swamp all the others. Passover still remains the most picturesque of the "Three Festivals" with its entire transmogrification of things culinary, its thorough taboo of leaven. The audacious archaeologist of the thirtieth century may trace back the origin of the festival to the Spring Cleaning, the annual revel of the English housewife, for it is now that the Ghetto whitewashes itself and scrubs itself and paints itself and pranks itself and purifies its pans in a baptism of fire. Now, too, the publican gets unto himself a white sheet and suspends it at his door and proclaims that he sells Kosher rum by permission of the Chief Rabbi. Now the confectioner exchanges his "stuffed monkeys," and his bolas and his jam-puffs, and his cheese-cakes for unleavened "palavas," and worsted balls and almond cakes. Time was when the Passover dietary was restricted to fruit and meat and vegetables, but year by year the circle is expanding, and it should not be beyond the reach of ingenuity to make bread itself Passoverian. It is now that the pious shopkeeper whose store is tainted with leaven sells his business to a friendly Christian, buying it back at the conclusion of the festival. Now the Shalotten Shammos is busy from morning to night filling up charity-forms, artistically multiplying the poor man's children and dividing his rooms. Now is holocaust made of a people's bread-crumbs, and now is the national salutation changed to "How do the Motsos agree with you?" half of the race growing facetious, and the other half finical over the spotted Passover cakes.

  It was on the evening preceding the opening of Passover that Esther Ansell set forth to purchase a shilling's worth of fish in Petticoat Lane, involuntarily storing up in her mind vivid impressions of the bustling scene. It is one of the compensations of poverty that it allows no time for mourning. Daily duty is the poor man's nepenthe.

  Esther and her father were the only two members of the family upon whom the death of Benjamin made a deep impression. He had been so long away from home that he was the merest shadow to the rest. But Moses bore the loss with resignation, his emotions discharging themselves in the daily Kaddish. Blent with his personal grief was a sorrow for the commentaries lost to Hebrew literature by his boy's premature transference to Paradise. Esther's grief was more bitter and defiant. All the children were delicate, but it was the first time death had taken one. The meaningless tragedy of Benjamin's end shook the child's soul to its depths. Poor lad! How horrible to be lying cold and ghastly beneath the winter snow! What had been the use of all his long prepay rations to write great novels? The name of Ansell would now become ingloriously extinct. She wondered whether Our Own would collapse and secretly felt it must. And then what of the hopes of worldly wealth she had built on Benjamin's genius? Alas! the emancipation of the Ansells from the yoke of poverty was clearly postponed. To her and her alone must the family now look for deliverance. Well, she would take up the mantle of the dead boy, and fill it as best she might. She clenched her little hands in iron determination. Moses Ansell knew nothing either of her doubts or her ambitions. Work was still plentiful three days a week, and he was unconscious he was not supporting his family in comparative affluence. But even with Esther the incessant grind of school-life and quasi-motherhood speedily rubbed away the sharper edges of sorrow, though the custom prohibiting obvious pleasures during the year of mourning went in no danger of transgression, for poor little Esther gadded neither to children's balls nor to theatres. Her thoughts were full of the prospects of piscine bargains, as she pushed her way through a crowd so closely wedged, and lit up by such a flare of gas from the shops and such streamers of flame from the barrows that the cold wind of early April lost its sting.

  Two opposing currents of heavy-laden pedestrians were endeavoring in their progress to occupy the same strip of pavement at the same moment, and the laws of space kept them blocked till they yielded to its remorseless conditions. Rich and poor elbowed one another, ladies in satins and furs were jammed against wretched looking foreign women with their heads swa
thed in dirty handkerchiefs; rough, red-faced English betting men struggled good-humoredly with their greasy kindred from over the North Sea; and a sprinkling of Christian yokels surveyed the Jewish hucksters and chapmen with amused superiority.

  For this was the night of nights, when the purchases were made for the festival, and great ladies of the West, leaving behind their daughters who played the piano and had a subscription at Mudie's, came down again to the beloved Lane to throw off the veneer of refinement, and plunge gloveless hands in barrels where pickled cucumbers weltered in their own "russell," and to pick fat juicy olives from the rich-heaped tubs. Ah, me! what tragic comedy lay behind the transient happiness of these sensuous faces, laughing and munching with the shamelessness of school-girls! For to-night they need not hanker in silence after the flesh-pots of Egypt. To-night they could laugh and talk over Olov hasholom times-"Peace be upon him" times-with their old cronies, and loosen the stays of social ambition, even while they dazzled the Ghetto with the splendors of their get-up and the halo of the West End whence they came. It was a scene without parallel in the history of the world-this phantasmagoria of grubs and butterflies, met together for auld lang syne in their beloved hatching-place. Such violent contrasts of wealth and poverty as might be looked for in romantic gold-fields, or in unsettled countries were evolved quite naturally amid a colorless civilization by a people with an incurable talent for the picturesque.

  "Hullo! Can that be you, Betsy?" some grizzled shabby old man would observe in innocent delight to Mrs. Arthur Montmorenci; "Why so it is! I never would have believed my eyes! Lord, what a fine woman you've grown! And so you're little Betsy who used to bring her father's coffee in a brown jug when he and I stood side by side in the Lane! He used to sell slippers next to my cutlery stall for eleven years-Dear, dear, how time flies to be sure."

  Then Betsy Montmorenci's creamy face would grow scarlet under the gas-jets, and she would glower and draw her sables around her, and look round involuntarily, to see if any of her Kensington friends were within earshot.

  Another Betsy Montmorenci would feel Bohemian for this occasion only, and would receive old acquaintances' greeting effusively, and pass the old phrases and by-words with a strange sense of stolen sweets; while yet a third Betsy Montmorenci, a finer spirit this, and worthier of the name, would cry to a Betsy Jacobs:

  "Is that you, Betsy, how are you? How are you? I'm so glad to see you. Won't you come and treat me to a cup of chocolate at Bonn's, just to show you haven't forgot Olov hasholom times?"

  And then, having thus thrown the responsibility of stand-offishness on the poorer Betsy, the Montmorenci would launch into recollections of those good old "Peace be upon him" times till the grub forgot the splendors of the caterpillar in a joyous resurrection of ancient scandals. But few of the Montmorencis, whatever their species, left the Ghetto without pressing bits of gold into half-reluctant palms in shabby back-rooms where old friends or poor relatives mouldered.

  Overhead, the stars burned silently, but no one looked up at them. Underfoot, lay the thick, black veil of mud, which the Lane never lifted, but none looked down on it. It was impossible to think of aught but humanity in the bustle and confusion, in the cram and crush, in the wedge and the jam, in the squeezing and shouting, in the hubbub and medley. Such a jolly, rampant, screaming, fighting, maddening, jostling, polyglot, quarrelling, laughing broth of a Vanity Fair! Mendicants, vendors, buyers, gossips, showmen, all swelled the roar.

  "Here's your cakes! All yontovdik (for the festival)! Yontovdik-"

  "Braces, best braces, all-"

  "Yontovdik! Only one shilling-"

  "It's the Rav's orders, mum; all legs of mutton must be porged or my license-"

  "Cowcumbers! Cowcumbers!"

  "Now's your chance-"

  "The best trousers, gentlemen. Corst me as sure as I stand-"

  "On your own head, you old-"

  "Arbah Kanfus (four fringes)! Arbah-"

  "My old man's been under an operation-"

  "Hokey Pokey! Yontovdik! Hokey-"

  "Get out of the way, can't you-"

  "By your life and mine, Betsy-"

  "Gord blesh you, mishter, a toisand year shall ye live."

  "Eat the best Motsos. Only fourpence-"

  "The bones must go with, marm. I've cut it as lean as possible."

  "Charoises (a sweet mixture). Charoises! Moroire (bitter herb)! Chraine (horseradish)! Pesachdik (for Passover)."

  "Come and have a glass of Old Tom, along o' me, sonny."

  "Fine plaice! Here y'are! Hi! where's yer pluck! S'elp me-"

  "Bob! Yontovdik! Yontovdik! Only a bob!"

  "Chuck steak and half a pound of fat."

  "A slap in the eye, if you-"

  "Gord bless you. Remember me to Jacob."

  "Shaink (spare) meer a 'apenny, missis lieben, missis croin (dear)-"

  "An unnatural death on you, you-"

  "Lord! Sal, how you've altered!"

  "Ladies, here you are-"

  "I give you my word, sir, the fish will be home before you."

  "Painted in the best style, for a tanner-"

  "A spoonge, mister?"

  "I'll cut a slice of this melon for you for-"

  "She's dead, poor thing, peace be upon him."

  "Yontovdik! Three bob for one purse containing-"

  "The real live tattooed Hindian, born in the African Harchipellygo. Walk up."

  "This way for the dwarf that will speak, dance, and sing."

  "Tree lemons a penny. Tree lemons-"

  "A Shtibbur (penny) for a poor blind man-"

  "Yontovdik! Yontovdik! Yontovdik! Yontovdik!"

  And in this last roar, common to so many of the mongers, the whole Babel would often blend for a moment and be swallowed up, re-emerging anon in its broken multiplicity.

  Everybody Esther knew was in the crowd-she met them all sooner or later. In Wentworth Street, amid dead cabbage-leaves, and mud, and refuse, and orts, and offal, stood the woe-begone Meckisch, offering his puny sponges, and wooing the charitable with grinning grimaces tempered by epileptic fits at judicious intervals. A few inches off, his wife in costly sealskin jacket, purchased salmon with a Maida Vale manner. Compressed in a corner was Shosshi Shmendrik, his coat-tails yellow with the yolks of dissolving eggs from a bag in his pocket. He asked her frantically, if she had seen a boy whom he had hired to carry home his codfish and his fowls, and explained that his missus was busy in the shop, and had delegated to him the domestic duties. It is probable, that if Mrs. Shmendrik, formerly the widow Finkelstein, ever received these dainties, she found her good man had purchased fish artificially inflated with air, and fowls fattened with brown paper. Hearty Sam Abrahams, the bass chorister, whose genial countenance spread sunshine for yards around, stopped Esther and gave her a penny. Further, she met her teacher, Miss Miriam Hyams, and curtseyed to her, for Esther was not of those who jeeringly called "teacher" and "master" according to sex after her superiors, till the victims longed for Elisha's influence over bears. Later on, she was shocked to see her teacher's brother piloting bonny Bessie Sugarman through the thick of the ferment. Crushed between two barrows, she found Mrs. Belcovitch and Fanny, who were shopping together, attended by Pesach Weingott, all carrying piles of purchases.

  "Esther, if you should see my Becky in the crowd, tell her where I am," said Mrs. Belcovitch. "She is with one of her chosen young men. I am so feeble, I can hardly crawl around, and my Becky ought to carry home the cabbages. She has well-matched legs, not one a thick one and one a thin one."'

  Around the fishmongers the press was great. The fish-trade was almost monopolized by English Jews-blonde, healthy-looking fellows, with brawny, bare arms, who were approached with dread by all but the bravest foreign Jewesses. Their scale of prices and politeness varied with the status of the buyer. Esther, who had an observant eye and ear for such things, often found amusement standing unobtrusively by. To-night there was the usual comedy awaiting her enjoyment. A well-dressed da
me came up to "Uncle Abe's" stall, where half a dozen lots of fishy miscellanaea were spread out.

  "Good evening, madam. Cold night but fine. That lot? Well, you're an old customer and fish are cheap to-day, so I can let you have 'em for a sovereign. Eighteen? Well, it's hard, but-boy! take the lady's fish. Thank you. Good evening."

  "How much that?" says a neatly dressed woman, pointing to a precisely similar lot.

  "Can't take less than nine bob. Fish are dear to-day. You won't get anything cheaper in the Lane, by G--you won't. Five shillings! By my life and by my children's life, they cost me more than that. So sure as I stand here and-well, come, gie's seven and six and they're yours. You can't afford more? Well, 'old up your apron, old gal. I'll make it up out of the rich. By your life and mine, you've got a Metsiah (bargain) there!"

  Here old Mrs. Shmendrik, Shosshi's mother, came up, a rich Paisley shawl over her head in lieu of a bonnet. Lane women who went out without bonnets were on the same plane as Lane men who went out without collars.

  One of the terrors of the English fishmongers was that they required the customer to speak English, thus fulfilling an important educative function in the community. They allowed a certain percentage of jargon-words, for they themselves took licenses in this direction, but they professed not to understand pure Yiddish.

  "Abraham, 'ow mosh for dees lot," said old Mrs. Shmendrik, turning over a third similar heap and feeling the fish all over.

  "Paws off!" said Abraham roughly. "Look here! I know the tricks of you Polakinties. I'll name you the lowest price and won't stand a farthing's bating. I'll lose by you, but you ain't, going to worry me. Eight bob! There!"