Ghetto Comedies Part 60

The Territorialist looked uneasy.

'Besides,' David continued, 'what new country could receive us at the rate of two hundred thousand a year? It would be a cemetery, not a country.'

The Territorialist smiled disdainfully. 'Why didn't you say at first you were a bourgeois? The unconditional historic necessity which has created the I.T.O. may drive at what pace it will; enough that as soon as our autonomous land is ready to receive us, I intend to be in the first shipload.'

'Have you this land, then?'

'Not yet. We've only had time to draw up the Const.i.tution. No Socialism as that idiot Grodsky imagines. But Democracy. Hereditary privileges will be abol----'

'But what land _is_ there?'

'Surely there are virgin lands.'

'Even the virgin lands are betrothed!' said David. 'And if there was one still without a lord and master, it would probably be a very ugly and sickly virgin. And, anyhow, it will be a long wooing. So in the meantime let me teach you to fire a pistol.'

'With all my heart--but merely to shoot wild beasts.'

'That is all I am asking for,' said David grimly.

Encouraged by this semi-success, David boldly called upon a tea-merchant quite unknown to him, and asked for a subscription to buy revolvers.

The tea-merchant, who was a small stout man, with a black cap of dubious cut, protested vehemently against such materialistic measures. Let them put their trust in _Cultur_! To talk Hebrew--therein lay Israel's real salvation. Let little children once again lisp in the language of Isaiah and Hosea--that was true Zionism.

'Then don't you want the Holy Land?' asked the astonished David.

'Merely as a centre of _Cultur_. Merely as a University where Herbert Spencer may be studied in the tongue of the Psalmist. All the rest is bourgeois Zionism. Political Zionism? Economic Zionism? Pah! Mere tawdry imitations of heathen politics!'

'Then you agree with the Chovevi Zionists!'

'Not at all. Zion is less a place than a state of mind. We want Culture--not Agriculture; we want the evolutionary efflorescence of Israel's inner personality----'

David fled, only to stumble upon a Nationalist who declared that Zionism was a caricature of true Nationalism, and Territorialism a cheap philanthropic subst.i.tute for it.

'Then why not join in the Self-Defence of our nation?' David asked.

'I will--when we are on our own soil. Your corps is a mere mockery of the military concept.'

David found no more comfort in his interview with the member of the L.A.E.R., who was convinced that only in the League for the Advancement of Equal Rights lay the Jew's true security. It was the one party whose success was sure, the only one based upon an unconditional historic necessity.

David's morning was not, however, to pa.s.s without the discovery of a man of no Party. And, strangely enough, he owed his find to the headache these innumerable Parties caused him. For, going into a chemist's shop for a powder, he was served by a red-bearded Jew whose genial face emboldened him to solicit a stock of bandages and antiseptics--in view of a possible _pogrom_.

'But the _pogroms_ are over,' cried the chemist. 'They were but the expiring agonies of the old order. The reign of love is at hand, the brotherhood of man is beginning, and all races and creeds will henceforth live at peace under the new religion of science.'

David's headache rose again triumphant over the powder. Even a partisan would be easier to convince than this sort of seer.

'Why, a _pogrom_ is planned for Milovka!'

'Impossible! Europe would not permit it. America would prohibit it.

Did you not see the protest even in the Australian Parliament? Look on your calendar; we have reached the twentieth century, even according to the Christian calculation.'

David returned hopelessly to his inn.

Here he saw a burly Jew warming himself at the great stove. Before even ordering dinner, he made a last desperate attempt to save his morning.

'Me join a Jewish Self-Defence!' The burly Jew laughed loud and heartily. 'Why, I'm a True Believer!'

'A _Meshummad_!' David gasped. Modern as he was, the hereditary horror at the baptized apostate overcame him.

'Yes--_I_'m safe enough,' the Convert laughed. 'I've taken the cold-water cure. Besides, I'm the censor of Milovka!'

'Eh?' David looked like a trapped animal. The censor smiled on. 'Don't scowl at me like the other pious zanies. After all, you're an enlightened young man--a violinist, they tell me; you can't take your Judaism any more seriously than I take my baptism. Come--have a gla.s.s of vodka.'

'Then, you won't inform?' David breathed.

'Not unless you publish seditious Yiddish. Keep your pistols out of print. If my own skin is safe, that doesn't mean I'm made of stone like these Tartar devils. Landlord, the vodka. We'll drink confusion to them.'

'I--I have none,' stammered the landlord. 'I haven't the right.'

'There are no rights in Russia,' said the censor good-humouredly.

The landlord furtively produced a big bottle.

'But the idea of asking _me_ to join the Self-Defence!' chuckled the burly Jew. 'You might as well ask me to play the violin!' he added with a wink.

David felt this was the first really sympathetic hearer he had met that morning.

VII

The vodka and a good three-course dinner (_Plotki_ for fish, _Lockschen_ for soup, and _Zrazy_ for joint) brought David new courage, and again he sallied out to recruit.

This time he sought the market-place--a badly-paved square, bordered with small houses and congested with stalls and a grey, kaftaned crowd, amid which gleamed the blue blouses of the unG.o.dly younger generation. He had hitherto addressed himself to the cla.s.ses--he would hear the voice of the people.

On every side the voice babbled of the Duma--babbled happily, as though the word was a new religious charm or a witch's incantation.

Crude political conversations broke out amid all the business of the mart. He had only to listen to know how he would be answered:

A blacksmith buying a new hammer stayed to argue with the vendor.

'We must put our trust in the Const.i.tutional Democrats.'

'And why in the Cadets? Give me the Democrats.'

'Nay, we must put our trust only in the Czar.' (This came from the Rabbi's wife, who was cheapening fish at the next stall.)

'For shame, _Rebbitzin_! Put not your trust in Princes.'

The bystanders hushed down the text-quoter--a fuzzy-headed butcher-boy.