Children of the Ghetto

by Израэль Зангвилл

  Esther flushed and shook her head.

  "There's no use coming to me. I'm not a rich woman, far from it; and I have been blessed with Kinder who are helpless without me. It's as I always said to your father. 'Meshe,' I said, 'you're a Schnorrer and your children'll grow up Schnorrers.'"

  Esther turned white, but the dwindling of Malka's semi-divinity had diminished the old woman's power of annoying her.

  "I want to earn my own living," she said, with a smile that was almost contemptuous. "Do you call that being a Schnorrer?"

  "Don't argue with me. You're just like your poor mother, peace be upon him!" cried the irate old woman. "You God's fool! You were provided for in life and you have no right to come upon the family."

  "But isn't it Schnorring to be dependent on strangers?" inquired Esther with bitter amusement.

  "Don't stand there with your impudence-face!" cried Malka, her eyes blazing fire. "You know as well as I do that a Schnorrer is a person you give sixpences to. When a rich family takes in a motherless girl like you and clothes her and feeds her, why it's mocking Heaven to run away and want to earn your own living. Earn your living. Pooh! What living can you earn, you with your gloves? You're all by yourself in the world now; your father can't help you any more. He did enough for you when you were little, keeping you at school when you ought to have been out selling matches. You'll starve and come to me, that's what you'll do."

  "I may starve, but I'll never come to you," said Esther, now really irritated by the truth in Malka's words. What living, indeed, could she earn! She turned her back haughtily on the old woman; not without a recollection of a similar scene in her childhood. History was repeating itself on a smaller scale than seemed consistent with its dignity. When she got outside she saw Milly in conversation with a young lady at the door of her little house, diagonally opposite. Milly had noticed the strange visitor to her mother, for the rival camps carried on a system of espionage from behind their respective gauze blinds, and she had come to the door to catch a better glimpse of her when she left. Esther was passing through Zachariah Square without any intention of recognizing Milly. The daughter's flaccid personality was not so attractive as the mother's; besides, a visit to her might be construed into a mean revenge on the old woman. But, as if in response to a remark of Milly's, the young lady turned her face to look at Esther, and then Esther saw that it was Hannah Jacobs. She felt hot and uncomfortable, and half reluctant to renew acquaintance with Levi's family, but with another impulse she crossed over to the group, and went through the inevitable formulae. Then, refusing Milly's warm-hearted invitation to have a cup of tea, she shook hands and walked away.

  "Wait a minute, Miss Ansell," said Hannah. "I'll come with you."

  Milly gave her a shilling, with a facetious grimace, and she rejoined Esther.

  "I'm collecting money for a poor family of Greeners just landed," she said. "They had a few roubles, but they fell among the usual sharks at the docks, and the cabman took all the rest of their money to drive them to the Lane. I left them all crying and rocking themselves to and fro in the street while I ran round to collect a little to get them a lodging."

  "Poor things!" said Esther.

  "Ah, I can see you've been away from the Jews," said Hannah smiling. "In the olden days you would have said Achi-nebbich."

  "Should I?" said Esther, smiling in return and beginning to like Hannah. She had seen very little of her in those olden days, for Hannah had been an adult and well-to-do as long as Esther could remember; it seemed amusing now to walk side by side with her in perfect equality and apparently little younger. For Hannah's appearance had not aged perceptibly, which was perhaps why Esther recognized her at once. She had not become angular like her mother, nor coarse and stout like other mothers. She remained slim and graceful, with a virginal charm of expression. But the pretty face had gained in refinement; it looked earnest, almost spiritual, telling of suffering and patience, not unblent with peace.

  Esther silently extracted half-a-crown from her purse and handed it to Hannah.

  "I didn't mean to ask you, indeed I didn't," said Hannah.

  "Oh, I am glad you told me," said Esther tremulously.

  The idea of her giving charity, after the account of herself she had just heard, seemed ironical enough. She wished the transfer of the coin had taken place within eyeshot of Malka; then dismissed the thought as unworthy.

  "You'll come in and have a cup of tea with us, won't you, after we've lodged the Greeners?" said Hannah. "Now don't say no. It'll brighten up my father to see 'Reb Moshe's little girl.'"

  Esther tacitly assented.

  "I heard of all of you recently," she said, when they had hurried on a little further. "I met your brother at the theatre."

  Hannah's face lit up.

  "How long was that ago?" she said anxiously.

  "I remember exactly. It was the night before the first Seder night."

  "Was he well?"

  "Perfectly."

  "Oh, I am so glad."

  She told Esther of Levi's strange failure to appear at the annual family festival. "My father went out to look for him. Our anxiety was intolerable. He did not return until half-past one in the morning. He was in a terrible state. 'Well,' we asked, 'have you seen him?' 'I have seen him,' he answered. 'He is dead.'"

  Esther grew pallid. Was this the sequel to the strange episode in Mr. Henry Goldsmith's library?

  "Of course he wasn't really dead," pursued Hannah to Esther's relief. "My father would hardly speak a word more, but we gathered he had seen him doing something very dreadful, and that henceforth Levi would be dead to him. Since then we dare not speak his name. Please don't refer to him at tea. I went to his rooms on the sly a few days afterwards, but he had left them, and since then I haven't been able to hear anything of him. Sometimes I fancy he's gone off to the Cape."

  "More likely to the provinces with a band of strolling players. He told me he thought of throwing up the law for the boards, and I know you cannot make a beginning in London."

  "Do you think that's it?" said Hannah, looking relieved in her turn.

  "I feel sure that's the explanation, if he's not in London. But what in Heaven's name can your father have seen him doing?"

  "Nothing very dreadful, depend upon it," said Hannah, a slight shade of bitterness crossing her wistful features. "I know he's inclined to be wild, and he should never have been allowed to get the bit between his teeth, but I dare say it was only some ceremonial crime Levi was caught committing."

  "Certainly. That would be it," said Esther. "He confessed to me that he was very link. Judging by your tone, you seem rather inclined that way yourself," she said, smiling and a little surprised.

  "Do I? I don't know," said Hannah, simply. "Sometimes I think I'm very froom."

  "Surely you know what you are?" persisted Esther. Hannah shook her head.

  "Well, you know whether you believe in Judaism or not?"

  "I don't know what I believe. I do everything a Jewess ought to do, I suppose. And yet-oh, I don't know."

  Esther's smile faded; she looked at her companion with fresh interest. Hannah's face was full of brooding thought, and she had unconsciously come to a standstill. "I wonder whether anybody understands herself," she said reflectively. "Do you?"

  Esther flushed at the abrupt question without knowing why. "I-I don't know," she stammered.

  "No, I don't think anybody does, quite," Hannah answered. "I feel sure I don't. And yet-yes, I do. I must be a good Jewess. I must believe my life."

  Somehow the tears came into her eyes; her face had the look of a saint. Esther's eyes met hers in a strange subtle glance. Then their souls were knit. They walked on rapidly.

  "Well, I do hope you'll hear from him soon," said Esther.

  "It's cruel of him not to write," replied Hannah, knowing she meant Levi; "he might easily send me a line in a disguised hand. But then, as Miriam Hyams always says, brothers are so selfish."

  "Oh, how is Miss Hyams?
I used to be in her class."

  "I could guess that from your still calling her Miss," said Hannah with a gentle smile.

  "Why, is she married?"

  "No, no; I don't mean that. She still lives with her brother and his wife; he married Sugarman the Shadchan's daughter, you know."

  "Bessie, wasn't it?"

  "Yes; they are a devoted couple, and I suspect Miriam is a little jealous; but she seems to enjoy herself anyway. I don't think there is a piece at the theatres she can't tell you about, and she makes Daniel take her to all the dances going."

  "Is she still as pretty?" asked Esther. "I know all her girls used to rave over her and throw her in the faces of girls with ugly teachers. She certainly knew how to dress."

  "She dresses better than ever," said Hannah evasively.

  "That sounds ominous," observed Esther, laughingly.

  "Oh, she's good-looking enough! Her nose seems to have turned up more; but perhaps that's an optical illusion; she talks so sarcastically now-a-days that I seem to see it." Hannah smiled a little. "She doesn't think much of Jewish young men. By the way, are you engaged yet, Esther?"

  "What an idea!" murmured Esther, blushing beneath her spotted veil.

  "Well, you're very young," said Hannah, glancing down at the smaller figure with a sweet matronly smile.

  "I shall never marry," Esther said in low tones.

  "Don't be ridiculous, Esther! There's no happiness for a woman without it. You needn't talk like Miriam Hyams-at least not yet. Oh yes, I know what you're thinking-"

  "No, I'm not," faintly protested Esther

  "Yes, you are," said Hannah, smiling at the paradoxical denial. "But who'd have me? Ah, here are the Greeners!" and her smile softened to angelic tenderness.

  It was a frowzy, unsightly group that sat on the pavement, surrounded by a semi-sympathetic crowd-the father in a long grimy coat, the mother covered, as to her head, with a shawl, which also contained the baby. But the elders were naively childish and the children uncannily elderly; and something in Esther's breast seemed to stir with a strange sense of kinship. The race instinct awoke to consciousness of itself. Dulled by contact with cultured Jews, transformed almost to repulsion by the spectacle of the coarsely prosperous, it leaped into life at the appeal of squalor and misery. In the morning the Ghetto had simply chilled her; her heart had turned to it as to a haven, and the reality was dismal. Now that the first ugliness had worn off, she felt her heart warming. Her eyes moistened. She thrilled from head to foot with the sense of a mission-of a niche in the temple of human service which she had been predestined to fill. Who could comprehend as she these stunted souls, limited in all save suffering? Happiness was not for her; but service remained. Penetrated by the new emotion, she seemed to herself to have found the key to Hannah's holy calm.

  With the money now in hand, the two girls sought a lodging for the poor waifs. Esther suddenly remembered the empty back garret in No. 1 Royal Street, and here, after due negotiations with the pickled-herring dealer next door, the family was installed. Esther's emotions at the sight of the old place were poignant; happily the bustle of installation, of laying down a couple of mattresses, of borrowing Dutch Debby's tea-things, and of getting ready a meal, allayed their intensity. That little figure with the masculine boots showed itself but by fits and flashes. But the strangeness of the episode formed the undercurrent of all her thoughts; it seemed to carry to a climax the irony of her initial gift to Hannah.

  Escaping from the blessings of the Greeners, she accompanied her new friend to Reb Shemuel's. She was shocked to see the change in the venerable old man; he looked quite broken up. But he was chivalrous as of yore: the vein of quiet humor was still there, though his voice was charged with gentle melancholy. The Rebbitzin's nose had grown sharper than ever; her soul seemed to have fed on vinegar. Even in the presence of a stranger the Rebbitzin could not quite conceal her dominant thought. It hardly needed a woman to divine how it fretted Mrs. Jacobs that Hannah was an old maid; it needed a woman like Esther to divine that Hannah's renunciation was voluntary, though even Esther could not divine her history nor understand that her mother's daily nagging was the greater because the pettier part of her martyrdom.

  * * * * *

  They all jumbled themselves into grotesque combinations, the things of to-day and the things of endless yesterdays, as Esther slept in the narrow little bed next to Dutch Debby, who squeezed herself into the wall, pretending to revel in exuberant spaciousness. It was long before she could get to sleep. The excitement of the day had brought on her headache; she was depressed by restriking the courses of so many narrow lives; the glow of her new-found mission had already faded in the thought that she was herself a pauper, and she wished she had let the dead past lie in its halo, not peered into the crude face of reality. But at bottom she felt a subtle melancholy joy in understanding herself at last, despite Hannah's scepticism; in penetrating the secret of her pessimism, in knowing herself a Child of the Ghetto.

  And yet Pesach Weingott played the fiddle merrily enough when she went to Becky's engagement-party in her dreams, and galoped with Shosshi Shmendrik, disregarding the terrible eyes of the bride to be: when Hannah, wearing an aureole like a bridal veil, paired off with Meckisch, frothing at the mouth with soap, and Mrs. Belcovitch, whirling a medicine-bottle, went down the middle on a pair of huge stilts, one a thick one and one a thin one, while Malka spun round like a teetotum, throwing Ezekiel in long clothes through a hoop; what time Moses Ansell waltzed superbly with the dazzling Addie Leon, quite cutting out Levi and Miriam Hyams, and Raphael awkwardly twisted the Widow Finkelstein, to the evident delight of Sugarman the Shadchan, who had effected the introduction. It was wonderful how agile they all were, and how dexterously they avoided treading on her brother Benjamin, who lay unconcernedly in the centre of the floor, taking assiduous notes in a little copy-book for incorporation in a great novel, while Mrs. Henry Goldsmith stooped down to pat his brown hair patronizingly.

  Esther thought it very proper of the grateful Greeners to go about offering the dancers rum from Dutch Debby's tea-kettle, and very selfish of Sidney to stand in a corner, refusing to join in the dance and making cynical remarks about the whole thing for the amusement of the earnest little figure she had met on the stairs.

  CHAPTER XIII. THE DEAD MONKEY AGAIN.

  Esther woke early, little refreshed. The mattress was hard, and in her restricted allowance of space she had to deny herself the luxury of tossing and turning lest she should arouse Debby. To open one's eyes on a new day is not pleasant when situations have to be faced. Esther felt this disagreeable duty could no longer be shirked. Malka's words rang in her ears. How, indeed, could she earn a living? Literature had failed her; with journalism she had no point of contact save The Flag of Judah, and that journal was out of the question. Teaching-the last resort of the hopeless-alone remained. Maybe even in the Ghetto there were parents who wanted their children to learn the piano, and who would find Esther's mediocre digital ability good enough. She might teach as of old in an elementary school. But she would not go back to her own-all the human nature in her revolted at the thought of exposing herself to the sympathy of her former colleagues. Nothing was to be gained by lying sleepless in bed, gazing at the discolored wallpaper and the forlorn furniture. She slipped out gently and dressed herself, the absence of any apparatus for a bath making her heart heavier with reminders of the realities of poverty. It was not easy to avert her thoughts from her dainty bedroom of yesterday. But she succeeded; the cheerlessness of the little chamber turned her thoughts backwards to the years of girlhood, and when she had finished dressing she almost mechanically lit the fire and put the kettle to boil. Her childish dexterity returned, unimpaired by disuse. When Debby awoke, she awoke to a cup of tea ready for her to drink in bed-an unprecedented luxury, which she received with infinite consternation and pleasure.

  "Why, it's like the duchesses who have lady's-maids," she said, "and read French novels before getting up." To
complete the picture, her hand dived underneath the bed and extracted a London Journal, at the risk of upsetting the tea. "But it's you who ought to be in bed, not me."

  "I've been a sluggard too often," laughed Esther, catching the contagion of good spirits from Debby's radiant delight. Perhaps the capacity for simple pleasures would come back to her, too.

  At breakfast they discussed the situation.

  "I'm afraid the bed's too small," said Esther, when Debby kindly suggested a continuance of hospitality.

  "Perhaps I took up too much room," said the hostess.

  "No, dear; you took up too little. We should have to have a wider bed and, as it is, the bed is almost as big as the room."

  "There's the back garret overhead! It's bigger, and it looks on the back yard just as well. I wouldn't mind moving there," said Debby, "though I wouldn't let old Guggenheim know that I value the view of the back yard, or else he'd raise the rent."

  "You forget the Greeners who moved in yesterday."

  "Oh, so I do!" answered Debby with a sigh.

  "Strange," said Esther, musingly, "that I should have shut myself out of my old home."

  The postman's knuckles rapping at the door interrupted her reflections. In Royal Street the poor postmen had to mount to each room separately; fortunately, the tenants got few letters. Debby was intensely surprised to get one.

  "It isn't for me at all," she cried, at last, after a protracted examination of the envelope; "it's for you, care of me."

  "But that's stranger still." said Esther. "Nobody in the world knows my address."

  The mystery was not lessened by the contents. There was simply a blank sheet of paper, and when this was unfolded a half-sovereign rolled out. The postmark was Houndsditch. After puzzling herself in vain, and examining at length the beautiful copy-book penmanship of the address, Esther gave up the enigma. But it reminded her that it would be advisable to apprise her publishers of her departure from the old address, and to ask them to keep any chance letter till she called. She betook herself to their offices, walking. The day was bright, but Esther walked in gloom, scarcely daring to think of her position. She entered the office, apathetically hopeless. The junior partner welcomed her heartily.