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GHETTO TRAGEDIES




The MM Co.




Ghetto Tragedies

BY

I. ZANGWILL

AUTHOR OF "CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO,"
"THE KING OF SCHNORRERS," ETC.




PHILADELPHIA
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA




COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY I. ZANGWILL


Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.




PREFACE


The "Ghetto Tragedies" collected in a little volume in 1893 have been
so submerged in the present collection that I have relegated the
original name to the sub-title. "Satan Mekatrig" was written in 1889,
"Bethulah" this year. Anyone who should wish to measure the progress
or decay of my imagination during the ten years has therefore
materials to hand. "Noah's Ark" stands on the firmer Ararat of
history, my invention being confined to the figure of Peloni (the
Hebrew for "nobody"). The other stories have also a basis in life. But
neither in pathos nor heroic stimulation can they vie with the literal
tragedy with which the whole book is in a sense involved. Mrs. N.S.
Joseph, the great-hearted lady to whom "Ghetto Tragedies" was
inscribed, herself walked in darkness, yet was not dismayed: in the
prime of life she went down into the valley of the shadow, with no
word save of consideration for others. I trust the new stories would
not have been disapproved by my friend, to whose memory they must now,
alas! be dedicated.

                                                             I.Z.

  OCTOBER, 1899.




CONTENTS


I
                                                             PAGE
"THEY THAT WALK IN DARKNESS"                                    1

II

TRANSITIONAL                                                   41

III

NOAH'S ARK                                                     79

IV

THE LAND OF PROMISE                                           127

V

TO DIE IN JERUSALEM                                           159

VI

BETHULAH                                                      185

VII

THE KEEPER OF CONSCIENCE                                      249

VIII

SATAN MEKATRIG                                                345

IX

DIARY OF A MESHUMAD                                           403

X

INCURABLE                                                     457

XI

THE SABBATH-BREAKER                                           479




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I

"THEY THAT WALK IN DARKNESS"




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I

"THEY THAT WALK IN DARKNESS"


I

It was not till she had fasted every Monday and Thursday for a
twelvemonth, that Zillah's long yearning for a child was gratified.
She gave birth--O more than fair-dealing God!--to a boy.

Jossel, who had years ago abandoned the hope of an heir to pray for
his soul, was as delighted as he was astonished. His wife had kept him
in ignorance of the fasts by which she was appealing to Heaven; and
when of a Monday or Thursday evening on his return from his boot
factory in Bethnal Green, he had sat down to his dinner in Dalston, no
suspicion had crossed his mind that it was Zillah's breakfast. He
himself was a prosaic person, incapable of imagining such
spontaneities of religion, though he kept every fast which it behoves
an orthodox Jew to endure who makes no speciality of sainthood. There
was a touch of the fantastic in Zillah's character which he had only
appreciated in its manifestation as girlish liveliness, and which
Zillah knew would find no response from him in its religious
expression.

Not that her spiritual innovations were original inventions. From some
pious old crone, after whom (as she could read Hebrew) a cluster of
neighbouring dames repeated what they could catch of the New Year
prayers in the women's synagogue, Zillah had learnt that certain holy
men were accustomed to afflict their souls on Mondays and Thursdays.
From her unsuspecting husband himself she had further elicited that
these days were marked out from the ordinary, even for the man of the
world, by a special prayer dubbed "the long 'He being merciful.'"
Surely on Mondays and Thursdays, then, He would indeed be merciful. To
make sure of His good-will she continued to be unmerciful to herself
long after it became certain that her prayer had been granted.


II

Both Zillah and Jossel lived in happy ignorance of most things,
especially of their ignorance. The manufacture of boots and all that
appertained thereto, the synagogue and religion, misunderstood
reminiscences of early days in Russia, the doings and misdoings of a
petty social circle, and such particular narrowness with general
muddle as is produced by stumbling through a Sabbath paper and a
Sunday paper: these were the main items in their intellectual
inventory. Separate Zillah from her husband and she became even
poorer, for she could not read at all.

Yet they prospered. The pavements of the East End resounded with their
hob-nailed boots, and even in many a West End drawing-room their
patent-leather shoes creaked. But they themselves had no wish to stand
in such shoes; the dingy perspectives of Dalston villadom limited
their ambition, already sufficiently gratified by migration from
Whitechapel. The profits went to enlarge their factory and to buy
houses, a favourite form of investment in their set. Zillah could cook
fish to perfection, both fried and stewed, and the latter variety both
sweet and sour. Nothing, in fine, had been wanting to their
happiness--save a son, heir, and mourner.

When he came at last, little that religion or superstition could do
for him was left undone. An amulet on the bedpost scared off Lilith,
Adam's first wife, who, perhaps because she missed being the mother of
the human race, hankers after babes and sucklings. The initiation into
the Abrahamic covenant was graced by a pious godfather with pendent
ear-locks, and in the ceremony of the Redemption of the First-Born the
five silver shekels to the priest were supplemented by golden
sovereigns for the poor. Nor, though Zillah spoke the passable English
of her circle, did she fail to rock her Brum's cradle to the old
"Yiddish" nursery-songs:--

    "Sleep, my birdie, shut your eyes,
      O sleep, my little one;
    Too soon from cradle you'll arise
      To work that must be done.

    "Almonds and raisins you shall sell,
      And holy scrolls shall write;
    So sleep, dear child, sleep sound and well,
      Your future beckons bright.

    "Brum shall learn of ancient days,
      And love good folk of this;
    So sleep, dear babe, your mother prays,
      And God will send you bliss."

Alas, that with all this, Brum should have grown up a weakling, sickly
and anaemic, with a look that in the child of poorer parents would have
said starvation.


III

Yet through all the vicissitudes of his infantile career, Zillah's
faith in his survival never faltered. He was emphatically a child from
Heaven, and Providence would surely not fly in its own face. Jossel,
not being aware of this, had a burden of perpetual solicitude, which
Zillah often itched to lighten. Only, not having done so at first, she
found it more and more difficult to confess her negotiation with the
celestial powers. She went as near as she dared.

"If the Highest One has sent us a son after so many years," she said
in the "Yiddish" which was still natural to her for intimate domestic
discussion, "He will not take him away again."

"As well say," Jossel replied gloomily, "that because He has sent us
luck and blessing after all these years, He may not take away our
prosperity."

"Hush! don't beshrew the child!" And Zillah spat out carefully. She
was tremulously afraid of words of ill-omen and of the Evil Eye,
against which, she felt vaguely, even Heaven's protection was not
potent. Secretly she became more and more convinced that some woman,
envious of all this "luck and blessing," was withering Brum with her
Evil Eye. And certainly the poor child was peaking and pining away.
"Marasmus," a physician had once murmured, wondering that so well
dressed a child should appear so ill nourished. "Take him to the
seaside often, and feed him well," was the universal cry of the
doctors; and so Zillah often deserted her husband for a _kosher_
boarding-house at Brighton or Ramsgate, where the food was voluminous,
and where Brum wrote schoolboy verses to the strange, fascinating sea.

For there were compensations in the premature flowering of his
intellect. Even other mothers gradually came round to admitting he was
a prodigy. The black eyes seemed to burn in the white face as they
looked out on the palpitating universe, or devoured every and any
scrap of print! A pity they had so soon to be dulled behind
spectacles. But Zillah found consolation in the thought that the
glasses would go well with the high black waistcoat and white tie of
the British Rabbi. He had been given to her by Heaven, and to Heaven
must be returned. Besides, that might divert it from any more sinister
methods of taking him back.

In his twelfth year Brum began to have more trouble with his eyes, and
renewed his early acquaintance with the drab ante-rooms of eye
hospitals that led, at the long-expected ting-ting of the doctor's
bell, into a delectable chamber of quaint instruments. But it was not
till he was on the point of _Bar-Mitzvah_ (confirmation at thirteen)
that the blow fell. Unwarned explicitly by any physician, Brum went
blind.

"Oh,