Ghetto Tragedies Part 45

"Well thrown, Rav Moshe!" said a grating voice. "Now that you have at last conquered your reverence for a bit of tin and a morsel of parchment, I will honour your mansion with my presence."

Instantly Rebecca felt a wild longing to join in the merriment and to laugh away her fears; but, muttering a potent talismanic verse, she turned and faced her husband and his guest. Instinct had not deceived her--the new-comer was the hunchback of that fatal Sabbath. This time she did not faint.

"A strange hour and occasion to bring a visitor, Moshe," she said sternly, her face growing even more rigid and white as she caught the nicotian and alcoholic reek of the two men's breaths.

"Your good _Frau_ is not over-polite," said the visitor. "But it's _Yom Kippur_, and so I suppose she feels she must tell the truth."

"I brought him, Rivkoly, to convince thee what a fool thou wast to a.s.sert that thou hadst seen--but _I_ mustn't be impolite," he broke off, with a coa.r.s.e laugh. "There's no call for _me_ to tell the truth because it's _Yom Kippur_. Down at the Club we celebrated the occasion by something better than truth--a jolly spread! And our good friend here actually stood a bottle of champagne! Champagne, Rivkoly! Think of it! Real, live champagne, like that which fizzes and sparkles on the table of the Lord Mayor. Oh, he's a jolly good fellow! and so said all of us, too. And yet thou sayest he isn't a fellow at all."

A drunken leer overspread his sallow face, and was rendered more ghastly by the flame leaping up from the expiring candle.

"_Roshah_, sinner!" thundered the woman. Then looking straight into the cruel eyes of the hunchback, her wan face shining with the stress of a great emotion, her meagre form convulsed with fury, "Avaunt, _Satan Mekatrig_!" she screamed. "Get thee down from my house--get thee down. In G.o.d's name, get thee down--to h.e.l.l."

Even the brazen-faced hunchback trembled before her pa.s.sion; but he grasped his friend's hot hand in his long, nervous fingers, and seemed to draw courage from the contact.

"If I go, I take your husband!" he hissed, his great eyes blazing in turn. "He will leave me no more. Send me away, if you will."

"Yes, thou must not send my friend away like this," hiccoughed Moshe Grinwitz. "Come, make him welcome, like the good wife thou wast wont to be."

Rebecca uttered a terrible cry, and, cowering down on the ground, rocked herself to and fro.

The drunkard appeared moved. "Get up, Rivkoly," he said, with a tremour in his tones. "To see thee one would think thou wast sitting _Shivah_ over my corpse." He put out his hand as if to raise her up.

"Back!" she screamed, writhing from his grasp. "Touch me not; no longer am I wife of thine."

"Hear you that, man?" said the hunchback eagerly. "You are free. I am here as a witness. Think of it; you are free."

"Yes, I am free," repeated Moshe, with a horrible, joyous exultation on his sickly visage. The gigantic shadow of himself that bent over him, cast by the dying flame of the _Yom Kippur_ Candle, seemed to dance in grim triumph, his long side-curls dangling in the spectral image like barbaric ornaments in the ears of a savage, while the unshapely, fantastic shadow of the hunchback seemed to nod its head in applause. Then, as the flame leaped up in an irregular jet, the distorted shadow of the Tempter intertwined itself in a ghastly embrace with her own. With frozen blood and stifled breath the tortured woman turned away, and, as her eyes fell upon the many-cracked looking-gla.s.s which adorned the mantelpiece, she saw, or her overwrought fancy seemed to see--her husband's dead face, wreathed with a slavering serpent in the place of the phylacteries he had ceased to wear, and surrounded by endless perspectives of mocking marble-browed visages, with fiery snakes for hair and live coals for eyes.

She felt her senses slipping away from her grasp, but she struggled wildly against the heavy vapour that seemed to choke her. "Moshe!" she shrieked, in mad, involuntary appeal for help, as she clutched the mantel and closed her eyes to shut out the hideous vision.

"I am no longer thy husband," tauntingly replied the man. "I may not touch thee."

"Hear you that, woman?" came the sardonic voice of the hunchback. "You are free. I am here as a witness."

"I am here as a witness," a thousand mocking voices seemed to hiss in echoed sibilance.

A terrible silence followed. At last she turned her white shrunken face, which the contrast of the jet-black wig rendered weird and death-like, toward the man who had been her husband, and looked long and slowly, yearningly yet reproachfully, into his bloodshot eyes.

Again a great wave of agitation shook the man from head to foot.

"Don't look at me like that, Rivkoly," he almost screamed. "I won't have it. I won't see thee. Curse that candle! Why does it flicker on eternally and not blot thee from my sight?" He puffed violently at the tenacious flame and a pall fell over the room. But the next instant the light leaped up higher than ever.

"Moshe!" Rebecca shrieked in wild dismay. "Dost thou forget it is _Kol Nidre_ night? How canst thou dare to blow out a light? Besides, it is the _Yom Kippur_ Candle--it is our life and happiness for the New Year. If you blow it out, I swear, by my soul and the great Name, that you shall never look upon my face again."

"It is because I do not wish to see thy face that I will blow it out,"

he replied, laughing hysterically.

"No, no!" she pleaded. "I will go away rather. It is nearly dead of itself; let it die."

"No! It takes too long dying; 'tis like thy father, the Rav, who had the corpse-watchers so long in attendance that one died himself," said Moshe Grinwitz with horrible laughter. "I will kill it!" And bending down low over the broad socket of the candlestick, so that his head loomed gigantic on the ceiling, he silenced forever the restless tongue of fire.

Immediately a thick blackness, as of the grave, settled upon the chamber. Hollow echoes of the blasphemer's laughter rang and resounded on every side. Myriads of dreadful faces shaped themselves out of the gloom, and mowed and gibbered at the woman. At the window, the green, baleful eyes of the black cat glared with phosph.o.r.escent light. A wreath of fiery serpents twisted themselves in fiendish contortions, shedding lurid radiance upon the cruel marble brow they garlanded. An unspeakable Eeriness, an unnameable Unholiness, floated with far-sweeping, rustling pinions through the Darkness.

With stifling throat that strove in vain to shriek, the woman dashed out through the well-known door, fled wildly down the stairs, pursued at every step by the sardonic merriment, met at every corner by the gibbering shapes--fled on, dashing through the heavy, ever-open street door into the fresher air of the night--on, instinctively on, through the almost deserted streets and alleys, where only the vile gin-houses gleamed with life--on, without pause or rest, till she fell exhausted upon the dusty door-step of the Synagogue of Love and Mercy.

"_All Israel have a portion in the world to come._"--Ethics of the Fathers.

The aged keeper of the synagogue rushed out at the noise.

"Save me! For G.o.d's sake, save me, Reb Yitzchok!" cried the fallen figure. "Save me from the _Satan Mekatrig_! I have no home--no husband--any more! Take me in!"

"Take you in?" said Reb Yitzchok pityingly, for he dimly guessed something of her story. "Where can I take you in? You know my wife and I are allowed but one tiny room here."

"Take me in!" repeated the woman. "I will pa.s.s the night in the synagogue. I must pray for my husband's soul, for he has no son to pray for him. Let me come in! Save me from the _Satan Mekatrig_!"

"You would certainly meet many a _Satan Mekatrig_ in the streets during the night," said the old man musingly. "But have you no friends to go to?"

"None--none--but G.o.d! Let me in that I may go to Him. Give me shelter, and He will have mercy on you when the great _Tekiah_ sounds to-morrow night!"

Without another word Reb Yitzchok went into his room, returned with the key, and threw open the door of the women's synagogue, revealing a dazzling flood of light from the numerous candles, big and little, which had been left burning in their sconces. The low curtain that served as a part.i.tion had been half rolled back by devoted husbands who had come to inquire after their wives at the end of the service, and the synagogue looked unusually large and bright, though it was hot and close, with lingering odours of breaths, and snuff, and tallow, and smelling-salts.

With a sob of infinite thankfulness Rebecca dropped upon a wooden bench.

"Would you like a blanket?" said the old man.

"No, no, G.o.d bless you!" she replied. "I must watch and weep, not sleep. For the Scroll of Judgment is written and the Book of Life is all but closed."

With a pitying sigh the old man turned and left her alone for the night in the Synagogue of Love and Mercy.

For a few moments Rebecca sat, prayerless, her soul full of a strange peace. Then she found herself counting the chimes as they rolled out sonorously from a neighbouring steeple: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, TWELVE!

Starting up suddenly when the last stroke ceased to vibrate on the air, Rebecca Grinwitz found, to her surprise, that a merciful sleep must have overtaken her eyelids, that hours must have pa.s.sed since midnight had struck, and that the great Day of Atonement must have dawned. Both compartments of the synagogue were full of the restless stir of a praying mult.i.tude. With a sense of something vaguely strange, she bent her eyes downward on her neighbour's _Machzor_. The woman immediately pushed the prayer-book more toward Rebecca, with a wonderful smile of love and tenderness, which seemed to go right through Rebecca's heart, though she could not clearly remember ever having seen her neighbour before. Nor, wonderingly stealing a first glance around, could she help feeling that the entire congregation was somewhat strange and unfamiliar, though she could not quite think why or how. The male worshippers, too, why did they all wear the shroud-like garments, usually confined on this solemn occasion to the ministers and a few extra-devout personages? And had not some transformation come over the synagogue? Was it only the haze before her tear-worn eyes or did dim perspectives of worshippers stretch away boundlessly on all sides of the clearly seen area, which still retained the form of the room she knew so well?

But the curious undercurrent of undefined wonder lasted but a moment.

In another instant she was reconciled to the scene. All was familiar and expected; once more she was taking part in divine service with no sorrowful thoughts of her husband coming to distract her, her whole soul bathing in and absorbing the Peace of G.o.d which pa.s.seth all understanding. Then suddenly she felt a stir of recollection coming over her, and a stream of love warming her heart, and looking up at her neighbour's face she saw with joyous content that it was that of her mother.

The service went on, mother and daughter following it in the book they had in common. After several hours, during which the huge, far-spreading congregation alternated with the Cantor in intoning the beautiful poems of the liturgy of the day, the white curtain with its mystic cabalistic insignia was rolled back from the Ark of the Covenant and two Scrolls were withdrawn therefrom. Rebecca noted with joy that the Ark was filled with Scrolls big and little, in rich mantles, and that those taken out were swathed in satin beautifully embroidered, and that the ornaments and the musically tinkling bells were of pure gold.

Then some of the worshippers were called up in turn to the _Al Memor_ to be present at the reading of a section of the Law. They were all well known to Rebecca. First came Moses ben Amram. He walked humbly up to the _Al Memor_ with bowed head, his long _Talith_ enveloping him from crown to foot. Rebecca saw his face well, for though it was covered with a thick veil, it shone luminously through its draping.

"Bless ye the Lord, who is blessed," said Moses ben Amram, the words seeming all the sweeter from his lips for the slight stammering with which they were uttered.

"Blessed be the Lord, who is blessed to all eternity and beyond,"

responded the endless congregation, in a low murmur that seemed to be taken up and vibrated away and away into the infinite distances for ever and ever.

"Blessed be the Lord, who is blessed to all eternity and beyond,"