Ghetto Comedies Part 48

'No--it is not charity, it is a sort of university endowment. It is just to support such old students as you that these sums are sent from all the world over. The prayers and studies of our old men in Jerusalem are a redemption to all Israel. And yours would be to me in particular.'

'True, true,' said Yossel eagerly; 'and life is very cheap there, I have always heard.'

'Then it is a bargain,' slipped unwarily from the artist's tongue. But Yossel replied simply:

'May the blessings of the Eternal be upon you for ever and for ever, and by the merit of my prayers in Jerusalem may your sins be forgiven.'

The artist was moved. Surely, he thought, struggling between tears and laughter, no undesirable lover had ever thus been got rid of by the head of the family. Not to speak of an undesirable grandfather.

IV

The news that Yossel was leaving the village bound for the Holy Land, produced a sensation which quite obscured his former notoriety as an aspirant to wedlock. Indeed, those who discussed the new situation most avidly forgot how convinced they had been that marriage and not death was the hunchback's goal. How Yossel had found money for the great adventure was not the least interesting ingredient in the cup of gossip. It was even whispered that the grandmother herself had been tapped. Her skittish advances had been taken seriously by Yossel. He had boldly proposed to lead her under the Canopy, but at this point, it was said, the old lady had drawn back--she who had led him so far was not to be thus led. Women are changeable, it is known, and even when they are old they do not change. But Yossel had stood up for his rights; he had demanded compensation. And his fare to Palestine was a concession for his injured affections. It was not many days before the artist met persons who had actually overheard the bargaining between the _Bube_ and the hunchback.

Meantime Yossel's departure was drawing nigh, and all those who had relatives in Palestine besieged him from miles around, plying him with messages, benedictions, and even packages for their kinsfolk. And conversely, there was scarcely a Jewish inhabitant who had not begged for clods of Palestine earth or bottles of Jordan water. So great indeed were the demands that their supply would have const.i.tuted a distinct invasion of the sovereign rights of the Sultan, and dried up the Jordan.

With his grandmother's future thus off his mind, the artist had settled down to making a picture of the ruined castle which he commanded from his bedroom window. But when the through ticket for Jerusalem came from the agent at Vienna, and he had brazenly endured Yossel's blessings for the same, his artistic instinct demanded to see how the _Bube_ was taking her hero's desertion. As he lifted the latch he heard her voice giving orders, and the door opened, not on the peaceful scene he expected of the spinster at her ingle nook, but of a bustling and apparently rejuvenated old lady supervising a packing menial. The greatest shock of all was that this menial proved to be Yossel himself squatted on the floor, his crutches beside him. Almost as in guilty confusion the hunchback hastily closed the sheet containing a huddle of articles, and tied it into a bundle before the artist's chaotic sense of its contents could change into clarity. But instantly a flash of explanation came to him.

'Aha, grandmother,' he said, 'I see you too are sending presents to Palestine.'

The grandmother took snuff uneasily. 'Yes, it is going to the Land of Israel,' she said.

As the artist lifted his eyes from the two amorphous heaps on the floor--Yossel and his bundle--he became aware of a blank in the familiar interior.

'Why, where is the spinning-wheel?' he cried.

'I have given it to the widow Rubenstein--I shall spin no more.'

'And I thought of painting you as a spinster!' he murmured dolefully.

Then a white patch in the darkened wood over the mantelpiece caught his eye. 'Why, your marriage certificate is gone too!'

'Yes, I have taken it down.'

'To give to the widow Rubenstein?'

'What an idea!' said his grandmother seriously. 'It is in the bundle.'

'You are sending it away to Palestine?'

The grandmother fumbled with her spectacles, and removing them with trembling fingers blinked downwards at the bundle. Yossel s.n.a.t.c.hed up his crutches, and propped himself manfully upon them.

'Your grandmother goes with me,' he explained decisively.

'What!' the artist gasped.

The grandmother's eyes met his unflinchingly; they had drawn fire from Yossel's. 'And why should I not go to Palestine too?' she said.

'But you are so old!'

'The more reason I should make haste if I am to be luckier than Moses our Master.' She readjusted her spectacles firmly.

'But the journey is so hard.'

'Yossel has wisdom; he will find the way while alive as easily as others will roll thither after death.'

'You'll be dead before you get there,' said the artist brutally.

'Ah, no! G.o.d will not let me die before I touch the holy soil!'

'You, too, want to die in Palestine?' cried the amazed artist.

'And where else shall a daughter of Israel desire to die? Ah, I forgot--your mother was an Epicurean with G.o.dless tresses; she did not bring you up in the true love of our land. But every day for seventy years and more have I prayed the prayer that my eyes should behold the return of the Divine Glory to Zion. That mercy I no longer expect in my own days, inasmuch as the Sultan hardens his heart and will not give us back our land, not though Moses our Master appears to him every night, and beats him with his rod. But at least my eyes shall behold the land of Israel.'

'Amen!' said Yossel, still propped a.s.sertively on his crutches. The grandson turned upon the interrupter. 'But you can't take her _with_ you?'

'Why not?' said Yossel calmly.

Schneemann found himself expatiating upon the responsibility of looking after such an old woman; it seemed too absurd to talk of the scandal. That was left for the grandmother to emphasize.

'Would you have me arrive alone in Palestine?' she interposed impatiently. 'Think of the talk it would make in Jerusalem! And should I even be permitted to land? They say the Sultan's soldiers stand at the landing-place like the angels at the gates of Paradise with swords that turn every way. But Yossel is cunning in the customs of the heathen; he will explain to the soldiers that he is an Austrian subject, and that I am his _Frau_.'

'What! Pa.s.s you off as his _Frau_!'

'Who speaks of pa.s.sing off? He could say I was his sister, as Abraham our Father said of Sarah. But that was a sin in the sight of Heaven, and therefore as our sages explain----'

'It is simpler to be married,' Yossel interrupted.

'Married!' echoed the artist angrily.

'The witnesses are coming to my lodging this afternoon,' Yossel continued calmly. 'Dovidel and Yitzkoly from the _Beth Hamedrash_.'

'They think they are only coming to a farewell gla.s.s of brandy,'

chuckled the grandmother. 'But they will find themselves at a secret wedding.'

'And to-morrow we shall depart publicly for Trieste,' Yossel wound up calmly.

'But this is too absurd!' the artist broke in. 'I forbid this marriage!'

A violent expression of amazement overspread the ancient dame's face, and the tone of the far-away years came into her voice. 'Silence, Vroomkely, or I'll smack your face. Do you forget you are talking to your grandmother?'

'I think Mr. Mandelstein forgets it,' the artist retorted, turning upon the heroic hunchback. 'Do you mean to say you are going to marry my grandmother?'

'And why not?' asked Yossel. 'Is there a greater lover of G.o.d in all Galicia?'

'Hush, Yossel, I am a great sinner.' But her old face was radiant.

She turned to her grandson. 'Don't be angry with Yossel--all the fault is mine. He did not ask me to go with him to Palestine; it was I that asked _him_.'

'Do you mean that you asked him to marry you?'