"Avroomkely (dear little Abraham) take lebbenpence!"
"Elevenpence! By G--," cried Uncle Abe, desperately tearing his hair. "I knew it!" And seizing a huge plaice by the tail he whirled it round and struck Mrs. Shmendrik full in the face, shouting, "Take that, you old witch! Sling your hook or I'll murder you."
"Thou dog!" shrieked Mrs. Shmendrik, falling back on the more copious resources of her native idiom. "A black year on thee! Mayest thou swell and die! May the hand that struck me rot away! Mayest thou be burned alive! Thy father was a Gonof and thou art a Gonof and thy whole family are Gonovim. May Pharaoh's ten plagues-"
There was little malice at the back of it all-the mere imaginative exuberance of a race whose early poetry consisted in saying things twice over.
Uncle Abraham menacingly caught up the plaice, crying:
"May I be struck dead on the spot, if you ain't gone in one second I won't answer for the consequences. Now, then, clear off!"
"Come, Avroomkely," said Mrs. Shmendrik, dropping suddenly from invective to insinuativeness. "Take fourteenpence. Shemah, beni! Fourteen Shtibbur's a lot of Gelt."
"Are you a-going?" cried Abraham in a terrible rage. "Ten bob's my price now."
"Avroomkely, noo, zoog (say now)! Fourteenpence 'apenny. I am a poor voman. Here, fifteenpence."
Abraham seized her by the shoulders and pushed her towards the wall, where she cursed picturesquely. Esther thought it was a bad time to attempt to get her own shilling's worth-she fought her way towards another fishmonger.
There was a kindly, weather-beaten old fellow with whom Esther had often chaffered job-lots when fortune smiled on the Ansells. Him, to her joy, Esther perceived-she saw a stack of gurnards on his improvised slab, and in imagination smelt herself frying them. Then a great shock as of a sudden icy douche traversed her frame, her heart seemed to stand still. For when she put her hand to her pocket to get her purse, she found but a thimble and a slate-pencil and a cotton handkerchief. It was some minutes before she could or would realize the truth that the four and sevenpence halfpenny on which so much depended was gone. Groceries and unleavened cakes Charity had given, raisin wine had been preparing for days, but fish and meat and all the minor accessories of a well-ordered Passover table-these were the prey of the pickpocket. A blank sense of desolation overcame the child, infinitely more horrible than that which she felt when she spilled the soup; the gurnards she could have touched with her finger seemed far off, inaccessible; in a moment more they and all things were blotted out by a hot rush of tears, and she was jostled as in a dream hither and thither by the double stream of crowd. Nothing since the death of Benjamin had given her so poignant a sense of the hollowness and uncertainty of existence. What would her father say, whose triumphant conviction that Providence had provided for his Passover was to be so rudely dispelled at the eleventh hour. Poor Moses! He had been so proud of having earned enough money to make a good Yontov, and was more convinced than ever that given a little capital to start with he could build up a colossal business! And now she would have to go home and spoil everybody's Yontov, and see the sour faces of her little ones round a barren Seder table. Oh, it was terrible! and the child wept piteously, unheeded in the block, unheard amid the Babel.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE DEAD MONKEY.
An old Maaseh the grandmother had told her came back to her fevered brain. In a town in Russia lived an old Jew who earned scarce enough to eat, and half of what he did earn was stolen from him in bribes to the officials to let him be. Persecuted and spat upon, he yet trusted in his God and praised His name. And it came on towards Passover and the winter was severe and the Jew was nigh starving and his wife had made no preparations for the Festival. And in the bitterness of her soul she derided her husband's faith and made mock of him, but he said, "Have patience, my wife! Our Seder board shall be spread as in the days of yore and as in former years." But the Festival drew nearer and nearer and there was nothing in the house. And the wife taunted her husband yet further, saying, "Dost thou think that Elijah the prophet will call upon thee or that the Messiah will come?" But he answered: "Elijah the prophet walketh the earth, never having died; who knows but that he will cast an eye my way?" Whereat his wife laughed outright. And the days wore on to within a few hours of Passover and the larder was still empty of provender and the old Jew still full of faith. Now it befell that the Governor of the City, a hard and cruel man, sat counting out piles of gold into packets for the payment of the salaries of the officials and at his side sat his pet monkey, and as he heaped up the pieces, so his monkey imitated him, making little packets of its own to the amusement of the Governor. And when the Governor could not pick up a piece easily, he moistened his forefinger, putting it to his mouth, whereupon the monkey followed suit each time; only deeming its master was devouring the gold, it swallowed a coin every time he put his finger to his lips. So that of a sudden it was taken ill and died. And one of his men said, "Lo, the creature is dead. What shall we do with it?" And the Governor was sorely vexed in spirit, because he could not make his accounts straight and he answered gruffly, "Trouble me not! Throw it into the house of the old Jew down the street." So the man took the carcass and threw it with thunderous violence into the passage of the Jew's house and ran off as hard as he could. And the good wife came bustling out in alarm and saw a carcass hanging over an iron bucket that stood in the passage. And she knew that it was the act of a Christian and she took up the carrion to bury it when Lo! a rain of gold-pieces came from the stomach ripped up by the sharp rim of the vessel. And she called to her husband. "Hasten! See what Elijah the prophet hath sent us." And she scurried into the market-place and bought wine and unleavened bread, and bitter herbs and all things necessary for the Seder table, and a little fish therewith which might be hastily cooked before the Festival came in, and the old couple were happy and gave the monkey honorable burial and sang blithely of the deliverance at the Red Sea and filled Elijah's goblet to the brim till the wine ran over upon the white cloth.
Esther gave a scornful little sniff as the thought of this happy denouement flashed upon her. No miracle like that would happen to her or hers, nobody was likely to leave a dead monkey on the stairs of the garret-hardly even the "stuffed monkey" of contemporary confectionery. And then her queer little brain forgot its grief in sudden speculations as to what she would think if her four and sevenpence halfpenny came back. She had never yet doubted the existence of the Unseen Power; only its workings seemed so incomprehensibly indifferent to human joys and sorrows. Would she believe that her father was right in holding that a special Providence watched over him? The spirit of her brother Solomon came upon her and she felt that she would. Speculation had checked her sobs; she dried her tears in stony scepticism and, looking up, saw Malka's gipsy-like face bending over her, breathing peppermint.
"What weepest thou, Esther?" she said not unkindly. "I did not know thou wast a gusher with the eyes."
"I've lost my purse," sobbed Esther, softened afresh by the sight of a friendly face.
"Ah, thou Schlemihl! Thou art like thy father. How much was in it?"
"Four and sevenpence halfpenny!" sobbed Esther.
"Tu, tu, tu, tu, tu!" ejaculated Malka in horror. "Thou art the ruin of thy father." Then turning to the fishmonger with whom she had just completed a purchase, she counted out thirty-five shillings into his hand. "Here, Esther," she said, "thou shalt carry my fish and I will give thee a shilling."
A small slimy boy who stood expectant by scowled at Esther as she painfully lifted the heavy basket and followed in the wake of her relative whose heart was swelling with self-approbation.
Fortunately Zachariah Square was near and Esther soon received her shilling with a proportionate sense of Providence. The fish was deposited at Milly's house, which was brightly illuminated and seemed to poor Esther a magnificent palace of light and luxury. Malka's own house, diagonally across the Square, was dark and gloomy. The two families being at peace, Milly's house was the headquarters of t
he clan and the clothes-brush. Everybody was home for Yomtov. Malka's husband, Michael, and Milly's husband, Ephraim, were sitting at the table smoking big cigars and playing Loo with Sam Levine and David Brandon, who had been seduced into making a fourth. The two young husbands had but that day returned from the country, for you cannot get unleavened bread at commercial hotels, and David in spite of a stormy crossing had arrived from Germany an hour earlier than he had expected, and not knowing what to do with himself had been surveying the humors of the Festival Fair till Sam met him and dragged him round to Zachariah Square. It was too late to call that night on Hannah to be introduced to her parents, especially as he had wired he would come the next day. There was no chance of Hannah being at the club, it was too busy a night for all angels of the hearth; even to-morrow, the even of the Festival, would be an awkward time for a young man to thrust his love-affairs upon a household given over to the more important matters of dietary preparation. Still David could not consent to live another whole day without seeing the light of his eyes.
Leah, inwardly projecting an orgie of comic operas and dances, was assisting Milly in the kitchen. Both young women were covered with flour and oil and grease, and their coarse handsome faces were flushed, for they had been busy all day drawing fowls, stewing prunes and pippins, gutting fish, melting fat, changing the crockery and doing the thousand and one things necessitated by gratitude for the discomfiture of Pharaoh at the Red Sea; Ezekiel slumbered upstairs in his crib.
"Mother," said Michael, pulling pensively at his whisker as he looked at his card. "This is Mr. Brandon, a friend of Sam's. Don't get up, Brandon, we don't make ceremonies here. Turn up yours-ah, the nine of trumps."
"Lucky men!" said Malka with festival flippancy. "While I must hurry off my supper so as to buy the fish, and Milly and Leah must sweat in the kitchen, you can squat yourselves down and play cards."
"Yes," laughed Sam, looking up and adding in Hebrew, "Blessed art thou, O Lord, who hath not made me a woman."
"Now, now," said David, putting his hand jocosely across the young man's mouth. "No more Hebrew. Remember what happened last time. Perhaps there's some mysterious significance even in that, and you'll find yourself let in for something before you know where you are."
"You're not going to prevent me talking the language of my Fathers," gurgled Sam, bursting into a merry operatic whistle when the pressure was removed.
"Milly! Leah!" cried Malka. "Come and look at my fish! Such a Metsiah! See, they're alive yet."
"They are beauties, mother," said Leah, entering with her sleeves half tucked up, showing the finely-moulded white arms in curious juxtaposition with the coarse red hands.
"O, mother, they're alive!" said Milly, peering over her younger sister's shoulder.
Both knew by bitter experience that their mother considered herself a connoisseur in the purchase of fish.
"And how much do you think I gave for them?" went on Malka triumphantly.
"Two pounds ten," said Milly.
Malka's eyes twinkled and she shook her head.
"Two pounds fifteen," said Leah, with the air of hitting it now.
Still Malka shook her head.
"Here, Michael, what do you think I gave for all this lot?"
"Diamonds!" said Michael.
"Be not a fool, Michael," said Malka sternly. "Look here a minute."
"Eh? Oh!" said Michael looking up from his cards. "Don't bother, mother. My game!"
"Michael!" thundered Malka. "Will you look at this fish? How much do you think I gave for this splendid lot? here, look at 'em, alive yet."
"H'm-Ha!" said Michael, taking his complex corkscrew combination out of his pocket and putting it back again. "Three guineas?"
"Three guineas!" laughed Malka, in good-humored scorn. "Lucky I don't let you do my marketing."
"Yes, he'd be a nice fishy customer!" said Sam Levine with a guffaw.
"Ephraim, what think you I got this fish for? Cheap now, you know?"
"I don't know, mother," replied the twinkling-eyed Pole obediently. "Three pounds, perhaps, if you got it cheap."
Samuel and David duly appealed to, reduced the amount to two pounds five and two pounds respectively. Then, having got everybody's attention fixed upon her, she exclaimed:
"Thirty shillings!"
She could not resist nibbling off the five shillings. Everybody drew a long breath.
"Tu! Tu!" they ejaculated in chorus. "What a Metsiah!"
"Sam," said Ephraim immediately afterwards, "You turned up the ace."
Milly and Leah went back into the kitchen.
It was rather too quick a relapse into the common things of life and made Malka suspect the admiration was but superficial.
She turned, with a spice of ill-humor, and saw Esther still standing timidly behind her. Her face flushed for she knew the child had overheard her in a lie.
"What art thou waiting about for?" she said roughly in Yiddish. "Na! there's a peppermint."
"I thought you might want me for something else," said Esther, blushing but accepting the peppermint for Ikey. "And I-I-"
"Well, speak up! I won't bite thee." Malka continued to talk in Yiddish though the child answered her in English. "I-I-nothing," said Esther, turning away.
"Here, turn thy face round, child," said Malka, putting her hand on the girl's forcibly averted head. "Be not so sullen, thy mother was like that, she'd want to bite my head off if I hinted thy father was not the man for her, and then she'd schmull and sulk for a week after. Thank God, we have no one like that in this house. I couldn't live for a day with people with such nasty tempers. Her temper worried her into the grave, though, if thy father had not brought his mother over from Poland my poor cousin might have carried home my fish to-night instead of thee. Poor Gittel, peace be upon him! Come tell me what ails thee, or thy dead mother will be cross with thee."
Esther turned her head and murmured: "I thought you might lend me the three and sevenpence halfpenny!"
"Lend thee-?" exclaimed Malka. "Why, how canst thou ever repay it?"
"Oh yes," affirmed Esther earnestly. "I have lots of money in the bank."
"Eh! what? In the bank!" gasped Malka.
"Yes. I won five pounds in the school and I'll pay you out of that."
"Thy father never told me that!" said Malka. "He kept that dark. Ah, he is a regular Schnorrer!"
"My father hasn't seen you since," retorted Esther hotly. "If you had come round when he was sitting shiva for Benjamin, peace be upon him, you would have known."
Malka got as red as fire. Moses had sent Solomon round to inform the Mishpocha of his affliction, but at a period when the most casual acquaintance thinks it his duty to call (armed with hard boiled eggs, a pound of sugar, or an ounce of tea) on the mourners condemned to sit on the floor for a week, no representative of the "family" had made an appearance. Moses took it meekly enough, but his mother insisted that such a slight from Zachariah Square would never have been received if he had married another woman, and Esther for once agreed with her grandmother's sentiments if not with her Hibernian expression of them.
But that the child should now dare to twit the head of the family with bad behavior was intolerable to Malka, the more so as she had no defence.
"Thou impudent of face!" she cried sharply. "Dost thou forget whom thou talkest to?"
"No," retorted Esther. "You are my father's cousin-that is why you ought to have come to see him."
"I am not thy father's cousin, God forbid!" cried Malka. "I was thy mother's cousin, God have mercy on her, and I wonder not you drove her into the grave between the lot of you. I am no relative of any of you, thank God, and from this day forwards I wash my hands of the lot of you, you ungrateful pack! Let thy father send you into the streets, with matches, not another thing will I do for thee."
"Ungrateful!" said Esther hotly. "Why, what have you ever done for us? When my poor mother was alive you made her scrub your floors and clean your windows, as if she was an Irishwo
man."
"Impudent of face!" cried Malka, almost choking with rage. "What have I done for you? Why-why-I-I-shameless hussy! And this is what Judaism's coming to in England! This is the manners and religion they teach thee at thy school, eh? What have I-? Impudent of face! At this very moment thou holdest one of my shillings in thy hand."
"Take it!" said Esther. And threw the coin passionately to the floor, where it rolled about pleasantly for a terrible minute of human silence. The smoke-wreathed card-players looked up at last.
"Eh? Eh? What's this, my little girl." said Michael genially. "What makes you so naughty?"
A hysterical fit of sobbing was the only reply. In the bitterness of that moment Esther hated the whole world.
"Don't cry like that! Don't!" said David Brandon kindly.
Esther, her little shoulders heaving convulsively, put her hand on the latch.
"What's the matter with the girl, mother?" said Michael.
"She's meshugga!" said Malka. "Raving mad!" Her face was white and she spoke as if in self-defence. "She's such a Schlemihl that she lost her purse in the Lane, and I found her gushing with the eyes, and I let her carry home my fish and gave her a shilling and a peppermint, and thou seest how she turns on me, thou seest."
"Poor little thing!" said David impulsively. "Here, come here, my child."'
Esther refused to budge.
"Come here," he repeated gently. "See, I will make up the loss to you. Take the pool. I've just won it, so I shan't miss it."
Esther sobbed louder, but she did not move.
David rose, emptied the heap of silver into his palm, walked over to Esther, and pushed it into her pocket. Michael got up and added half a crown to it, and the other two men followed suit. Then David opened the door, put her outside gently and said: "There! Run away, my little dear, and be more careful of pickpockets."
All this while Malka had stood frozen to the stony dignity of a dingy terra-cotta statue. But ere the door could close again on the child, she darted forward and seized her by the collar of her frock.
Children of the Ghetto Page 31
