by Bob Biderman
As he studied the face so near, yet so far – the eyes, both gentle and forbidding; the countenance, both kindly and severe; the beard, so grimly redolent of the biblical prophets yet disarmingly avuncular – Z thought there was something about the man he both feared and admired. Not that he saw Rev Singer as fearsome in himself. Rather it was something strange and unsettling that Singer brought out in Z; something Z couldn’t determine and would have been loath to analyse even if he could.
Certainly there were similarities between the two men along with their differences. Though Z was in his early twenties while Singer was nearly twice his age and though one could trace his ancestry to the shtetls of the Russian Pale while the other was rooted in Germandom, both had suffered deprivation in their youth, both were products of Jewish Free School grants and, significantly, both saw their salvation (or escape from economic degradation) in books and learning.
But Rev Singer was the minister of the gigantic New West End Synagogue, built in1877 under the auspices of Baron de Rothschild, with its great red Gothic arches flanked by two square turrets rising a hundred feet high, between which was set a magnificent circular window that let in God’s light with as much grandeur and drama as any Anglican cathedral could muster.
And Z was merely a writer and a journalist.
Still, Z admired Rev Singer because Singer spoke out where others stayed silent. He spoke out for tolerance, forbearance and sanctuary when many who saw themselves as guardians of Anglo-Jewry simply wanted to protect their status and hard-won privileges without having an army of Russified immigrants try to sup in their kitchen (even if some of them could read and write Hebrew along with their bastard Yiddish).
And yet – what was it? Could it have been Rev Singer’s buoyant optimism which kept repeating itself in various forms and seemingly boiled down to a simple equation: that we live in glorious land at a glorious time so we must count our blessings and celebrate our good fortune. Thus we owe a duty to the nation that has nurtured and protected us – as well as a duty to our people. One without the other is neither satisfactory nor sufficient.
Their paths had crossed many times before. There was the Jewish Free School and Jews College, of course, but later there were all the events that Z had covered in his role as either journalist or participant-observer where Singer had raised his melodious voice, inspiring his audience to do God’s work on behalf of God’s people and Queen Victoria, whom he so loved and admired.
‘You expressed some urgency in your note,’ said Rev Singer. ‘But you weren’t explicit.’
‘Time is running out,’ Z told him.
‘For what?’ asked Rev Singer.
‘For a man who is about to die,’ said Z.
‘We are all about to die,’ replied Rev Singer. ‘The real question is whether we will die in heaven’s grace. But I suppose you’re referring to that unfortunate young man, Lipski, who is presently in my pastoral care. You understand, of course, that my conversations with anyone who confides in me are sacrosanct.’ A gentle smile crossed the Rabbi’s face. ‘And you, my friend, are a journalist ...’
Z said, ‘I fear the young man has been unjustly convicted.’
Rev Singer said nothing but stroked his beard. ‘The Bible reminds us that none is without sin,’ he said finally. ‘There is the perceived guilt of a man and the perceived guilt of a people. We see things through multiple visions. But there was a trial and a man was found to be guilty by a jury of his peers.’
‘There was a trial,’ said Z. ‘But there was no justice.’
‘The process of law is cumbersome,’ Rev Singer replied. ‘It always was and most likely always will be. But in parts of the world, not so very far away, there is no process at all. I hardly need remind you of that.’
‘And if the young man you now counsel is innocent?’
‘If he is innocent, then two Jews are guilty – not one. And they claim the same rights both as Jews and as Englishmen.’
‘Look at him and look at them,’ said Z.
Rev Singer looked at Z instead. There was a note of compassion in his voice as he spoke. ‘If we are to judge guilt or innocence on outward appearances then we are all in serious trouble, my dear friend …’
That evening several newspapers reported yet another gang of youths attacking Jews while shouting ‘England for the English!’ and calling out Lipski’s name as they pummelled
CHAPTER 48
MYERS, SOME DAYS before, had created a calendar of sorts – simply sheets of paper tacked together in descending order that announced the days remaining till Lipski’s appointment with the hangman. The young messenger boy employed by Hayward to deliver important letters and documents at a moment’s notice, was given the job of tearing off a page from this do-it-yourself device each morning – a task he accomplished with a combination of ceremonial decorum and childish zeal, fixing his gaze on each new page as it was exposed – ‘Seven Days to Go’, ‘Six Days Remaining!’, ‘Five Days Left!’ – as if he were God’s own agent of the apocalypse.
Z had taken a liking to the young lad, who claimed to be twelve years old though he looked to be ten. He walked with a slight limp, which hardly impinged on his duties, and was so short that he had to stand on tiptoes in order to reach anything over five feet from the ground. But he was game for all that was given him, rarely complained, and had eyes that sometimes were solemn and sometimes could twinkle.
In order to keep their spirits high, if for nothing else, Myers had the boy hang multicoloured bunting from the cornices (which he accomplished by standing on a wobbly stool further heightened by a thick stack of directories) along with plastering the walls with headlines from the Pall Mall Gazette, so that anyone who entered could hardly miss the point of this makeshift operation:
‘JUSTICE AND THE JUBILEE’
‘A LEGAL MURDER!’
‘HANGING OF AN INNOCENT MAN!’
‘FATE OF LIPSKI!’
‘LIPSKI’S REPRIEVE AND ITS MORAL’
‘WILL LIPSKI OR THE HOME SECRETARY SURVIVE?’
‘DARE WE HANG LIPSKI?’
‘THE RACE FOR LIPSKI’S LIFE!’
‘SPARE THE MAN!’
Today as Z enters the office he steps over past signs which have been torn from that somewhat morbid almanac (which no one has bothered to sweep up as there had been so many other things to do) and notices only one page is left hanging limply from its mooring. But he hardly gives it a second glance as it has already lost the meaning Myers had intended when he first constructed this catalogue of descending days. For time now has a different flow – rapidly compressing itself into a tight continuum with no beginning and no end – even though the fight for commutation has reached its final hours in the world of clocks and calendars.
Just yesterday Cunningham Graham informed them there were over a hundred MPs who had signed a petition demanding a stay of execution which was to be presented to this amazingly long session of Parliament even though many MPs had already left for their holiday.
What’s more – except for the dyed-in-wool Tory press – most newspapers have taken up Lipski’s case and have published endless editorials stating that the time has come for Matthews to seriously review his position. Even the mainstream Jewish newspapers are now pleading for commutation. And the Pall Mall Gazette has thundered on in Lipski’s defence, like an unstoppable juggernaut.
Only the government and the government’s cronies are still baying for Lipski’s head. But the momentum, they know, has shifted. Lipski’s defenders are now riding a tidal wave of support and the government, hard pressed to respond, is under relentless pressure to give in and, at the very least, commute the sentence of death and disemploy the hangman.
And now came word that Hayward’s advert in the press asking for members of the jury to contact him has paid off. Two of Lipski’s jurors have sent telegrams to the Queen asking for me
rcy and Hayward is about to forward a third one.
Suddenly Z knows – deep down wherein resides the certainty of knowledge – that they have truly won and, within hours if not minutes, a message will be received from the Queen sparing Lipski’s life. As for the rest of this valiant committee of defence, no one feels this might be Lipski’s last day on earth, a notion their sense of conviction refuses to allow – as if by force of will alone they have constructed a sweet reality where natural justice (as they see it) could not but prevail.
CHAPTER 49
WHEN Z LEAVES Hayward’s office that fateful day of Sunday, the 21st of August, he is feeling a pleasant hum of contentment. The sky outside is bright; the sun is beaming down, the birds are gaily twittering and the people he passes on the street, smile at him instead of frown. It’s good to be alive, thinks Z, this year of Victoria’s Jubilee. It’s good to feel that calm of certainty, knowing things are right and that despite the machinations of Imperial Mandarins, justice – true British Justice – will be done.
Perhaps it was the latent cynicism, inherent in all Jews, that made him always question, always suspect, always fear the loss of his critical sensibilities. Perhaps he clung to scepticism as a lifeline lest that intuitive mechanism of survival – Jewish survival honed over thousands of years – be somehow imperilled. But just for today, perhaps he could let it go. In a dozen years, he thinks to himself, it will be the 20th century. A new world was being born. Even in his short life so much has come to pass. People from all classes, all races, all religions were learning to walk free. Jews like him had gained nearly the same privileges as Christians. And people’s voices were being heard in ways never before dreamt. Certainly it must be true – there was a new age dawning and he was part of it. The old world was being transformed by the unleashed energy of millions. You could sense it in the air, couldn’t you? You could hear it in the crackle of the light bulbs blazing incandescent signs that pointed in one direction and one alone – toward the evolution of humanity. The trains, the telegraph, the typewriter, photography had changed the way we thought; all manner of life was in a happy state of transcendence. The ancient regimes were collapsing and in their wake, poverty, superstition and injustice would also crumble.
And feeling his spirits soar, he looked up into the sky, into the vastness of the cosmos and saw a cloud passing overhead. How perfect, he thought, how agreeable! Floating there so sweetly in the blue, it proffered hope – a magic carpet that would someday fly him higher than the moon. But as he watched the cloud, which at first was nothing more than wispy lace, he saw it start to grow dark and darker.
Then from behind he heard a voice he recognised: ‘Sir! Please Sir!’
He turned around and met the eyes of Hayward’s little messenger. And he knew at once that something had happened.
CHAPTER 50
THE SUN WAS fading from the sky. Z wanders aimlessly through the thickening London fog. In the winter, coal fires burning in thousands of homes and hovels spewed out toxic geysers of soot and tar. Combined with factory effluents and the noxious dampness rising from dank and narrow alleyways, a lethal mixture was created of sulphurated smoke and carbonated dust that hovered over London like a blanket of gloom. But now the cooling waters of the estuary were sucked in by the August heat producing a more benign and graceful sea mist that swirled like a hazy veil and painted grey the setting sun.
He loves walking in the fog when the air is breathable. It serves as a shroud that makes everything less obvious and thus allows him to keep his writer’s anonymity, to observe without being observed, and to think without being interrupted by any visual stimulus.
It seems to him like hours since he started his directionless march, but it could well have been just twenty minutes. He has no way of telling nor does he wish to know. But when he arrives at where he ends up, he thinks that even though he hadn’t consciously planned to be there, it’s probably where he wanted to go.
St. Katherine Docks. He had come some weeks before when he had first met Maggie and given her a tour of that peculiar entry point into the heart of Empire. Today he stood alone and gazed out into the choppy waters of the Thames, into the miasma.
He waited and watched. And soon he saw them, emerging from the mist: one, then two, then three, then four – the small landing craft rowing immigrants to shore. He heard the sloshing of the waters, he felt the spray, and then he saw the bodies – women, men, children, young and old, coupled and alone, entire families, some holding firm, some fearful, knuckles white, faces pale, but eyes all fixed on the nearing landfall of the place they’ll soon call home.
The boatmen, tough and weathered, land their swaying vessels by the river shore where the immigrants are to disembark, demanding sixpence for the short ride from the nearby steamer anchored just a hundred feet from the embankment. And then, one by one, two by two, they grab their meagre belongings and trek the narrow, muddy path to the Irongate Stairs which leads them finally to the quayside.
Z watches, transfixed, the scene that has been played out so many times before and for so many years. What goes through his mind, yet again, is that he is seeing the end of that gigantic funnel stretching from the Eastern hinterlands sucking the dispossessed of Polish Russia, like a monstrous vacuum pump, and spewing them out here, at St. Katherine Dock, right before him. These people are destitute – not like the ones who will continue on to America. Many are the poorest of the poor. They all appear to him thin and famished: gaunt faces, hollow eyes, shivering from the water’s chill or simply from extreme exhaustion. They swarm ashore like tired ants. Their luggage is a battered box or just a soiled piece of cloth in which to tie a few possessions. There is no joy in their faces for reality has struck. The promised streets of a London paved with gold have turned out to be a muddy path that leads to stinking smoke and sooty dust.
There are some lucky ones, of course. They will be met by family or friends or landsmen who have promised to take them on. Life will be hard but they will survive and some of them will prosper. But for many, he knows that they will just be grist for an unrelenting mill that will grind them down to grizzle. They will share a mattress in a filthy room that reeks of dread and putrid water. They will subsist on hellish soup, stale crusts of bread, maggoty cheese and rotting vegetables. If they are lucky enough to be given sweated labour, they will work from dawn till midnight in a room nine feet long by nine feet wide with fourteen others. And for six days of ceaseless toil they will earn, at the most, six shillings – half of which they will send back to the Pale in order to bring their families to join them. But before that eagerly awaited day, some will hang themselves in desperation – as happened last week and the week prior – in order to escape the unending horror.
Z watches, invisible, shrouded by the fog. He watches as a writer would watch, with compassionate detachment. But then he sees a face, the face of a young man – a young man alone, caught up in the gathering crowd. The young man gazes into the distance with hesitant eyes. He is unsure which way to turn, which way to go.
Nearby Z sees the sharks begin to circle. They have the young man’s scent in their nostrils and the quickest one approaches and grabs for his bag. The young man looks confused. The shark, however, knows its prey and explains to him in Yiddish, Russian, German, English – whatever language the young man wishes – that he, the shark, is here to help the young man find a room, a job, a place to feel at home. The shark smiles and shows his teeth. He asks the young man where he’s from. Warsaw? But of course, that is where the shark is from too. They are landsmen. Brothers – almost. Come, says the shark. It is a dangerous city, this London. There are bad people, mischievous people out to take his money. The young man protests – he has no money. The shark winks – not even a little? Just a few coins, admits the young man, that are hidden in his shoe. Just enough to see him through till he can find a way to earn his living.
And here is where Z finally decides that he
can be invisible no longer.
CHAPTER 51
Z APPROACHED THE young man and the rogue who was about to carry him off, introducing himself – in Yiddish, of course – as a representative of a Jewish welfare agency and, in doing so, took the young man’s bag from the shark who spat and protested. But Z knew he wouldn’t make too much a fuss as there were many fish beached on shore that evening and there were always police close at hand – not to help the immigrants but to stop any altercation that might disrupt the flow of humanity from here to dingy East End rooms or West End brothels (it didn’t matter to them as long as they kept up the flow and cleared the quayside with a minimum of trouble).
Taking the young man aside, Z felt impelled to explain it all to this anonymous immigrant with the face of a child – to tell him of the pitfalls and the dangers in coming to this fantasy world called London where everything was divided into two – one harsh and grotesque, the other sublime and the beautiful but the one that was sublime and beautiful was always out of reach for those who were confined to the harsh and grotesque. (In saying this, of course, he completely ignored his own writings about the ghetto which created a world that was exactly the opposite.) He even considered suggesting that if the young man truly cared about his future and his family’s happiness (he must have a mother and father who loved him and feared for his safety, didn’t he?), then he should think seriously about getting back on the steamer that brought him here and returning home to Polish Russia. But, of course, he didn’t because he also knew there probably was no home to which the young man could return, and, if there were a home, it was most likely even more unsafe than here.
