Ghetto Comedies Part 35

'RIGHT HONOURABLE ANGELICAL MR. LEOPOLD BARSTEIN,

'I have now the honour to again solicit Your genteel genuine sympathical humane philanthropic kind cordial n.o.bility to oblige me at present by Your merciful loan of gracious second and propitious favourable aidance in my actually poor indigent position in which I have no earn by my dental practice likewise no help, also no protection, no recommendation, no employment, and then the compet.i.tion is here very violent. I was ruined by Russia, and I have nothing for the celebration of our Jewish new year. Consequentially upon your merciful archangelical donative I was able to make my livelihood by my dental practice even very difficult, but still I had my vital subsistence by it till up now, but not further for the little while, in consequence of it my circ.u.mstances are now in the urgent extreme immense need. Thus I implore Your competent, well famous good-hearted liberal magnanimous benevolent generosity to respond me in Your beneficent relief as soon as possible, according to Your kind grand clemence of Your good ingenuous genteel humanity. I wish You a happy new year.

'Your obedient servant respectfully, 'NEHEMIAH SILVERMANN, '_Dentist and Professor of Languages_.'

But when the reading was finished, Schneemann's comment was unexpected.

'_Rosh Hashanah_ so near?' he said.

A rush of Ghetto memories swamped the three artists as they tried to work out the date of the Jewish New Year, that solemn period of earthly trumpets and celestial judgments.

'Why, it must be to-day!' cried Rozenoffski suddenly. The trio looked at one another with rueful humour. Why, the Ghetto could not even realize such indifference to the heavenly tribunals so busily decreeing their life-or-death sentences!

Barstein raised his gla.s.s. 'Here's a happy new year, anyhow!' he said.

The three men clinked gla.s.ses.

Rozenoffski drew out a hundred-lire note.

'Send that to the poor devil,' he said.

'Oho!' laughed Schneemann. 'You still believe "Charity delivers from death!" Well, I must be saved too!' And he threw down another hundred-lire note.

To the acutely a.n.a.lytical Barstein it seemed as if an old superst.i.tious thrill lay behind Schneemann's laughter as behind Rozenoffski's donation.

'You will only make the _Luftmensch_ believe still more obstinately in his Providence,' he said, as he gathered up the New Year gifts. 'Again will he declare that he has been accorded a good writing and a good sealing by the Heavenly Tribunal!'

'Well, hasn't he?' laughed Schneemann.

'Perhaps he has,' said Rozenoffski musingly. '_Qui sa?_'

THE TUG OF LOVE

THE TUG OF LOVE

When Elias Goldenberg, Belcovitch's head cutter, betrothed himself to f.a.n.n.y Fersht, the prettiest of the machinists, the Ghetto blessed the match, always excepting Sugarman the _Shadchan_ (whom love matches shocked), and Goldenberg's relatives (who considered f.a.n.n.y flighty and fond of finery).

'That f.a.n.n.y of yours was cut out for a rich man's wife,' insisted Goldenberg's aunt, shaking her pious wig.

'He who marries f.a.n.n.y _is_ rich,' retorted Elias.

'"p.a.w.n your hide, but get a bride,"' quoted the old lady savagely.

As for the slighted marriage-broker, he remonstrated almost like a relative.

'But I didn't want a negotiated marriage,' Elias protested.

'A love marriage I could also have arranged for you,' replied Sugarman indignantly.

But Elias was quite content with his own arrangement, for f.a.n.n.y's glance was melting and her touch transporting. To deck that soft warm hand with an engagement-ring, a month's wages had not seemed disproportionate, and f.a.n.n.y flashed the diamond bewitchingly. It lit up the gloomy workshop with its signal of felicity. Even Belcovitch, bent over his press-iron, sometimes omitted to rebuke f.a.n.n.y's badinage.

The course of true love seemed to run straight to the Canopy--f.a.n.n.y had already worked the bridegroom's praying shawl--when suddenly a storm broke. At first the cloud was no bigger than a man's hand--in fact, it was a man's hand. Elias espied it groping for f.a.n.n.y's in the dim s.p.a.ce between the two machines. As f.a.n.n.y's fingers fluttered towards it, her other hand still guiding the cloth under the throbbing needle, Elias felt the needle stabbing his heart up and down, through and through. The very finger that held his costly ring lay in this alien paw gratis.

The shameless minx! Ah, his relatives were right. He snapped the scissors savagely like a dragon's jaw.

'f.a.n.n.y, what dost thou?' he gasped in Yiddish.

f.a.n.n.y's face flamed; her guilty fingers flew back.

'I thought thou wast on the other side,' she breathed.

Elias snorted incredulously.

As soon as Sugarman heard of the breaking of the engagement he flew to Elias, his blue bandanna streaming from his coat-tail.

'If you had come to me,' he crowed, 'I should have found you a more reliable article. However, Heaven has given you a second helping. A well-built wage-earner like you can look as high as a greengrocer's daughter even.'

'I never wish to look upon a woman again,' Elias groaned.

'_Schtuss!_' said the great marriage-broker. 'Three days after the Fast of Atonement comes the Feast of Tabernacles. The Almighty, blessed be He, who created both light and darkness, has made obedient females as well as pleasure-seeking jades.' And he blew his nose emphatically into his bandanna.

'Yes; but she won't return me my ring,' Elias lamented.

'What!' Sugarman gasped. 'Then she considers herself still engaged to you.'

'Not at all. She laughs in my face.'

'And she has given you back your promise?'

'My promise--yes. The ring--no.'

'But on what ground?'

'She says I gave it to her.'

Sugarman clucked his tongue. 'Tututu! Better if we had followed our old custom, and the man had worn the engagement-ring, not the woman!'

'In the workshop,' Elias went on miserably, 'she flashes it in my eyes. Everybody makes mock. Oh, the Jezebel!'

'I should summons her!'