Читать книгу Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People - Israel Zangwill - Страница 15

Malka did not have long to wait for her liege lord. He was a fresh-colored young man of thirty, rather good-looking, with side whiskers, keen, eager glance, and an air of perpetually doing business. Though a native of Germany, he spoke English as well as many Lane Jews, whose comparative impiety was a certificate of British birth. Michael Birnbaum was a great man in the local little synagogue if only one of the crowd at "Duke's Plaizer." He had been successively Gabbai and Parnass, or treasurer and president, and had presented the plush curtain, with its mystical decoration of intersecting triangles, woven in silk, that hung before the Ark in which the scrolls of the Law were kept. He was the very antithesis of Moses Ansell. His energy was restless. From hawking he had risen to a profitable traffic in gold lace and Brummagem jewelry, with a large clientèle all over the country, before he was twenty. He touched nothing which he did not profit by; and when he married, at twenty-three, a woman nearly twice his age, the transaction was not without the usual percentage. Very soon his line was diamonds—real diamonds. He carried, a pocket-knife which was a combination of a corkscrew, a pair of scissors, a file, a pair of tweezers, a toothpick, and half a dozen other things, and which seemed an epitome of his character. His temperament was lively, and, like Ephraim Phillips, he liked music-halls. Fortunately, Malka was too conscious of her charms to dream of jealousy.

Michael smacked her soundly on the mouth with his lips and said: "Well, mother!"

He called her mother, not because he had any children, but because she had, and it seemed a pity to multiply domestic nomenclature.

"Well, my little one," said Malka, hugging him fondly. "Have you made a good journey this time?"

"No, trade is so dull. People won't put their hands in their pockets.

And here?"

"People won't take their hands out of their pockets, lazy dogs! Everybody is striking—Jews with them. Unheard-of things! The bootmakers, the capmakers, the furriers! And now they say the tailors are going to strike; more fools, too, when the trade is so slack. What with one thing and another (let me put your cravat straight, my little love), it's just the people who can't afford to buy new clothes that are hard up, so that they can't afford to buy second-hand clothes either. If the Almighty is not good to us, we shall come to the Board of Guardians ourselves."

"Not quite so bad as that, mother," laughed Michael, twirling the massive diamond ring on his finger. "How's baby? Is it ready to be redeemed?"

"Which baby?" said Malka, with well-affected agnosticism.

"Phew!" whistled Michael. "What's up now, mother?"

"Nothing, my pet, nothing."

"Well, I'm going across. Come along, mother. Oh, wait a minute. I want to brush this mud off my trousers. Is the clothes-brush here?"

"Yes, dearest one," said the unsuspecting Malka.

Michael winked imperceptibly, flicked his trousers, and without further parley ran across the diagonal to Milly's house. Five minutes afterwards a deputation, consisting of a char-woman, waited upon Malka and said:

"Missus says will you please come over, as baby is a-cryin' for its grandma."

"Ah, that must be another pin," said Malka, with a gleam of triumph at her victory. But she did not budge. At the end of five minutes she rose solemnly, adjusted her wig and her dress in the mirror, put on her bonnet, brushed away a non-existent speck of dust from her left sleeve, put a peppermint in her mouth, and crossed the Square, carrying the clothes-brush in her hand. Milly's door was half open, but she knocked at it and said to the char-woman:

"Is Mrs. Phillips in?"

"Yes, mum, the company's all upstairs."

"Oh, then I will go up and return her this myself."

Malka went straight through the little crowd of guests to Milly, who was sitting on a sofa with Ezekiel, quiet as a lamb and as good as gold, in her arms.

"Milly, my dear," she said. "I have come to bring you back your clothes-brush. Thank you so much for the loan of it."

"You know you're welcome, mother," said Milly, with unintentionally dual significance. The two ladies embraced. Ephraim Phillips, a sallow-looking, close-cropped Pole, also kissed his mother-in-law, and the gold chain that rested on Malka's bosom heaved with the expansion of domestic pride. Malka thanked God she was not a mother of barren or celibate children, which is only one degree better than personal unfruitfulness, and testifies scarce less to the celestial curse.

"Is that pin-mark gone away yet, Milly, from the precious little thing?" said Malka, taking Ezekiel in her arms and disregarding the transformation of face which in babies precedes a storm.

"Yes, it was a mere flea-bite," said Milly incautiously, adding hurriedly, "I always go through his flannels and things most carefully to see there are no more pins lurking about."

"That is right! Pins are like fleas—you never know where they get to," said Malka in an insidious spirit of compromise. "Where is Leah?"

"She is in the back yard frying the last of the fish. Don't you smell it?"

"It will hardly have time to get cold."

"Well, but I did a dishful myself last night. She is only preparing a reserve in case the attack be too deadly."

"And where is the Cohen?"

"Oh, we have asked old Hyams across the Ruins. We expect him round every minute."

At this point the indications of Ezekiel's facial barometer were fulfilled, and a tempest of weeping shook him.

"Na! Go then! Go to the mother," said Malka angrily. "All my children are alike. It's getting late. Hadn't you better send across again for old Hyams?"

"There's no hurry, mother," said Michael Birnbaum soothingly. "We must wait for Sam."

"And who's Sam?" cried Malka unappeased.

"Sam is Leah's Chosan," replied Michael ingenuously.

"Clever!" sneered Malka. "But my grandson is not going to wait for the son of a proselyte. Why doesn't he come?"

"He'll be here in one minute."

"How do you know?"

"We came up in the same train. He got in at Middlesborough. He's just gone home to see his folks, and get a wash and a brush-up. Considering he's coming up to town merely for the sake of the family ceremony, I think it would be very rude to commence without him. It's no joke, a long railway journey this weather. My feet were nearly frozen despite the foot-warmer."

"My poor lambkin," said Malka, melting. And she patted his side whiskers.

Sam Levine arrived almost immediately, and Leah, fishfork in hand, flew out of the back-yard kitchen to greet him. Though a member of the tribe of Levi, he was anything but ecclesiastical in appearance, rather a representative of muscular Judaism. He had a pink and white complexion, and a tawny moustache, and bubbled over with energy and animal spirits. He could give most men thirty in a hundred in billiards, and fifty in anecdote. He was an advanced Radical in politics, and had a high opinion of the intelligence of his party. He paid Leah lip-fealty on his entry.

"What a pity it's Sunday!" was Leah's first remark when the kissing was done.

"No going to the play," said Sam ruefully, catching her meaning.

They always celebrated his return from a commercial round by going to the theatre—the-etter they pronounced it. They went to the pit of the West End houses rather than patronize the local dress circles for the same money. There were two strata of Ghetto girls, those who strolled in the Strand on Sabbath, and those who strolled in the Whitechapel Road. Leah was of the upper stratum. She was a tall lovely brunette, exuberant of voice and figure, with coarse red hands. She doted on ice-cream in the summer, and hot chocolate in the winter, but her love of the theatre was a perennial passion. Both Sam and she had good ears, and were always first in the field with the latest comic opera tunes. Leah's healthy vitality was prodigious. There was a legend in the Lane of such a maiden having been chosen by a coronet; Leah was satisfied with Sam, who was just her match. On the heels of Sam came several other guests, notably Mrs. Jacobs (wife of "Reb" Shemuel), with her pretty daughter, Hannah. Mr. Hyams, the Cohen, came last—the Priest whose functions had so curiously dwindled since the times of the Temples. To be called first to the reading of the Law, to bless his brethren with symbolic spreadings of palms and fingers in a mystic incantation delivered, standing shoeless before the Ark of the Covenant at festival seasons, to redeem the mother's first-born son when neither parent was of priestly lineage—these privileges combined with a disability to be with or near the dead, differentiated his religious position from that of the Levite or the Israelite. Mendel Hyams was not puffed up about his tribal superiority, though if tradition were to be trusted, his direct descent from Aaron, the High Priest, gave him a longer genealogy than Queen Victoria's. He was a meek sexagenarian, with a threadbare black coat and a child-like smile. All the pride of the family seemed to be monopolized by his daughter Miriam, a girl whose very nose Heaven had fashioned scornful. Miriam had accompanied him out of contemptuous curiosity. She wore a stylish feather in her hat, and a boa round her throat, and earned thirty shillings a week, all told, as a school teacher. (Esther Ansell was in her class just now.) Probably her toilette had made old Hyams unpunctual. His arrival was the signal for the commencement of the proceedings, and the men hastened to assume their head-gear.

Ephraim Phillips cautiously took the swaddled-up infant from the bosom of Milly where it was suckling and presented it to old Hyams. Fortunately Ezekiel had already had a repletion of milk, and was drowsy and manifested very little interest in the whole transaction.

"This my first-born son," said Ephraim in Hebrew as he handed Ezekiel over—"is the first-born of his mother, and the Holy One, blessed be He, hath given command to redeem him, as it is said, and those that are to be redeemed of them from a month old, shalt thou redeem according to thine estimation for the money of five shekels after the shekel of the sanctuary, the shekel being twenty gerahs; and it is said, 'Sanctify unto me all the first-born, whatsoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast; it is mine.'"

Ephraim Phillips then placed fifteen shillings in silver before old Hyams, who thereupon inquired in Chaldaic: "Which wouldst thou rather—give me thy first-born son, the first-born of his mother, or redeem him for five selaim, which thou art bound to give according to the Law?"

Ephraim replied in Chaldaic: "I am desirous rather to redeem my son, and here thou hast the value of his redemption, which I am bound to give according to the Law."

Thereupon Hyams took the money tendered, and gave back the child to his father, who blessed God for His sanctifying commandments, and thanked Him for His mercies; after which the old Cohen held the fifteen shillings over the head of the infant, saying: "This instead of that, this in exchange for that, this in remission of that. May this child enter into life, into the Law, and into the fear of Heaven. May it be God's will that even as he has been admitted to redemption, so may he enter into the Law, the nuptial canopy and into good deeds. Amen." Then, placing his hand in benediction upon the child's head, the priestly layman added: "God make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord turn His face to thee and grant thee peace. The Lord is thy guardian; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. For length of days and years of life and peace shall they add to thee. The Lord shall guard thee from all evil. He shall guard thy soul."

"Amen," answered the company, and then there was a buzz of secular talk, general rapture being expressed at the stolidness of Ezekiel's demeanor. Cups of tea were passed round by the lovely Leah, and the secrets of the paper bags were brought to light. Ephraim Phillips talked horses with Sam Levine, and old Hyams quarrelled with Malka over the disposal of the fifteen shillings. Knowing that Hyams was poor, Malka refused to take back the money retendered by him under pretence of a gift to the child. The Cohen, however, was a proud man, and under the eye of Miriam a firm one. Ultimately it was agreed the money should be expended on a Missheberach, for the infant's welfare and the synagogue's. Birds of a feather flock together, and Miriam forgathered with Hannah Jacobs, who also had a stylish feather in her hat, and was the most congenial of the company. Mrs. Jacobs was left to discourse of the ailments of childhood and the iniquities of servants with Mrs. Phillips. Reb Shemuel's wife, commonly known as the Rebbitzin, was a tall woman with a bony nose and shrivelled cheeks, whereon the paths of the blood-vessels were scrawled in red. The same bones were visible beneath the plumper padding of Hannah's face. Mrs. Jacobs had escaped the temptation to fatness, which is the besetting peril of the Jewish matron. If Hannah could escape her mother's inclination to angularity she would be a pretty woman. She dressed with taste, which is half the battle, and for the present she was only nineteen.

"Do you think it's a good match?" said Miriam Hyams, indicating Sam

Levine with a movement of the eyebrow.

A swift, scornful look flitted across Hannah's face. "Among the Jews," she said, "every match is a grand Shidduch before the marriage; after, we hear another tale."

"There is a good deal in that," admitted Miriam, thoughtfully. "The girl's family cries up the capture shamelessly. I remember when Clara Emanuel was engaged, her brother Jack told me it was a splendid Shidduch. Afterwards I found he was a widower of fifty-five with three children."

"But that engagement went off," said Hannah.

"I know," said Miriam. "I'm only saying I can't fancy myself doing anything of the kind."

"What! breaking off an engagement?" said Hannah, with a cynical little twinkle about her eye.

"No, taking a man like that," replied Miriam. "I wouldn't look at a man over thirty-five, or with less than two hundred and fifty a year."

"You'll never marry a teacher, then," Hannah remarked.

"Teacher!" Miriam Hyams repeated, with a look of disgust. "How can one be respectable on three pounds a week? I must have a man in a good position." She tossed her piquant nose and looked almost handsome. She was five years older than Hannah, and it seemed an enigma why men did not rush to lay five pounds a week at her daintily shod feet.

"I'd rather marry a man with two pounds a week if I loved him," said

Hannah in a low tone.

"Not in this century," said Miriam, shaking her head incredulously. "We don't believe in that nonsense now-a-days. There was Alice Green—she used to talk like that—now look at her, riding about in a gig side by side with a bald monkey."

"Alice Green's mother," interrupted Malka, pricking up her ears, "married a son of Mendel Weinstein by his third wife, Dinah, who had ten pounds left her by her uncle Shloumi."

"No, Dinah was Mendel's second wife," corrected Mrs. Jacobs, cutting short a remark of Mrs. Phillips's in favor of the new interest.

"Dinah was Mendel's third wife," repeated Malka, her tanned cheeks reddening. "I know it because my Simon, God bless him, was breeched the same month."

Simon was Malka's eldest, now a magistrate in Melbourne.

"His third wife was Kitty Green, daughter of the yellow Melammed," persisted the Rebbitzin. "I know it for a fact, because Kitty's sister Annie was engaged for a week to my brother-in-law Nathaniel."

"His first wife," put in Malka's husband, with the air of arbitrating between the two, "was Shmool the publican's eldest daughter."

"Shmool the publican's daughter," said Malka, stirred to fresh indignation, "married Hyam Robins, the grandson of old Benjamin, who kept the cutlery shop at the corner of Little Eden Alley, there where the pickled cucumber store stands now."

"It was Shmool's sister that married Hyam Robins, wasn't it, mother?" asked Milly, incautiously.

"Certainly not," thundered Malka. "I knew old Benjamin well, and he sent me a pair of chintz curtains when I married your father."

"Poor old Benjamin! How long has he been dead?" mused Reb Shemuel's wife.

"He died the year I was confined with my Leah——"

"Stop! stop!" interrupted Sam Levine boisterously. "There's Leah getting as red as fire for fear you'll blab out her age."

"Don't be a fool, Sam," said Leah, blushing violently, and looking the lovelier for it.

The attention of the entire company was now concentrated upon the question at issue, whatever it might be. Malka fixed her audience with her piercing eye, and said in a tone that scarce brooked contradiction: "Hyam Robins couldn't have married Shmool's sister because Shmool's sister was already the wife of Abraham the fishmonger."

"Yes, but Shmool had two sisters," said Mrs. Jacobs, audaciously asserting her position as the rival genealogist.

"Nothing of the kind," replied Malka warmly.