Ghetto Tragedies Part 47

"Thank G.o.d, Rivkoly!" the dying lips muttered. "I knew thou wouldst come."

As he spoke there was a frantic beating at the door. The hunchback's face was convulsed.

"Hasten, hasten, Brother Azrael!" he cried.

The Vapour lightened a little. Moshe Grinwitz seemed to rally. His face glowed with eagerness.

"Open the door! open the door!" he cried. "It's Rivkoly--my Rivkoly!"

The vain battering at the door grew fiercer, but none noted it in the house. Since the shadow of the hunchback had first fallen within that thickly crowded human nest, the doves had become hawks, the hawks vultures. All was discord and bickering.

"Lie still," said the hunchback; "'tis but your fevered imagination.

Drink."

He put the jug to the dying man's lips, but it was dashed violently from his hand and shattered into a hundred pieces.

"Give me nothing bought with Christian money!" gasped Moshe hoa.r.s.ely, his breath rattling painfully in his throat. "Never will I knowingly gain by the denial of the Unity of G.o.d."

"Then die like a dog!" roared the hunchback. "Hasten, Brother Azrael!"

The Vapour folded itself thickly about the room. The rickety door was shaken frantically, as by a great gale.

"Moshe! Moshe!" shrieked a voice. "Let me in--me--thy Rivkoly! In G.o.d's name, let me in! I bring thee a precious gift. Or art thou dead, dead, dead? My G.o.d, why didst Thou not cause me to know he was ill before!"

"Your husband is dying," said the hunchback. "When he is dead, you shall look upon his face. But he may not look upon your face again.

You have sworn it."

"Devil!" cried the fierce voice of the woman. "I swore it on _Kol Nidre_ night, when I had just asked the Almighty to absolve me from all rash oaths. Let me in, I tell you."

"I will not have a sacred oath treated thus lightly," said the hunchback savagely. "I will keep your soul from sin."

"Cursed be thou to eternity of eternities!" replied the woman. "Pray, Moshe, pray for thy soul. Pray, for thou art dying."

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G.o.d, the Lord is one," rose the sonorous Hebrew.

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G.o.d, the Lord is one," wailed the woman.

The very Vapour seemed to cling round and prolong the vibrations of the sacred words. Only the hunchback was silent. The mocking words died on his lips, and as the woman, with one last mighty blow, dashed in through the flying door, he seemed to glide past her and melt into the darkness of the staircase.

Rivkoly heeded not his contorted, malignant visage, crowned with its serpentine wreath of fiery hair; she flew straight through the heavy Vapour, stooped and kissed the livid mouth, read in a moment the decree of Death in the eyes, and then put something small and warm into her husband's fast chilling arms.

"Take it, Moshe," she cried, "and comfort thy soul in death. 'Tis thy child, for G.o.d has at last sent us a son. _Yom Kippur_ night--now six long months ago--I had a dream that G.o.d would forgive thee, and I was glad. But when I thought to go home to thee in the evening, I learnt that thou hadst been feasting all that dread Day of Atonement with the _Satan Mekatrig_; and my heart fell, for I knew that my dream was but the vain longing of my breast, and that through thine own misguided soul thou couldst never be saved from the eternal vengeance. Then I went away, far from here, and toiled and lived hard and lone; and I believed not in my dream. But I prayed and prayed for thy soul, and lo! very soon I was answered; for I knew we should have a child. And then I entreated that it should be a son, to pray for thee, and perhaps win thee back to G.o.d, and to say the _Kaddish_ after thee when thou shouldst come to die, though I knew not that thy death was at hand; and a few weeks back the Almighty was gracious and merciful to me, and I had my wish."

She ceased, her wan face radiant. The Shadow of Death could not chill her sublime faith, her simple, trustful hope. The husband was clasping the feebly whimpering babe to his frozen breast, and showering pa.s.sionate kisses on its unconscious form.

"Rivkoly!" he whispered, as the tears rolled down his cheeks, "how pale and thin thou art grown! O G.o.d, my sin has been heavy!"

"No, no," she cried, her loving hand in his. "It was the _Satan Mekatrig_ that led thee astray. I am well and strong. I will work for our child, and train it up to pray for thee and to love thee. I have named it Jacob, for it shall wrestle with the Recording Angel and shall prevail."

The hue of death deepened on Moshe Grinwitz's face, but it was overspread by a divine calm.

"Ah, the good old times we had at the _Cheder_ in Poland," he said.

"The rabbi was sometimes cross, but we children were always in good spirits; and when the Rejoicing of the Law came round it was such fun carrying the candles stuck in hollowed apples, and gnawing at your candlestick as you walked. I always loved _Simchath Torah_, Rivkoly.

How long is it to the Rejoicing?"

"It will soon be here again, now Pa.s.sover is over," she said, pressing his hand.

"Is _Pesach_ over?" he said mournfully. "I don't remember giving _Seder_. Why didst thou not remind me, Rivkoly? It was so wrong of thee. Thou knowest how I loved the sight of the table--the angels always seemed to hover about it. _Chad Gadyah! Chad Gadyah!_" he commenced to sing in a cracked, hoa.r.s.e whisper. The child burst into a wail. "Hush, hush, Yaankely," said the mother, taking it to her breast.

"A--a--ah!" A wild scream rose from Moshe Grinwitz's lips. "My _Kaddish_! Take not away my _Kaddish_!" He sat up, with clammy, ghastly brow, and glared with sightless eyes, his arms groping. A thin stream of blood oozed from his mouth.

"Hear, O Israel!" screamed the woman, as she put her hand to his mouth to stanch the blood.

He beat her back wildly. "Not thee! I want not thee! My _Kaddish_!"

came the mad, hoa.r.s.e whisper. "I have blasphemed G.o.d! Give me my _Kaddish_! give me my _Kaddish_!"

She put the child into his arms, and he clutched it in his dying frenzy. As he felt its feeble form, the old divine peace came over his face. The babe's cries were hushed in fear. The mother was dumb and stony. And silently the Vapour crawled in sluggish folds through the heavy air.

But in a moment the silence was broken by a deep, stertorous rattle.

Moshe Grinwitz's head fell back; his arms relaxed their hold of his child, which was caught with a wild cry to its mother's bosom. And the dark Vapour lifted, and showed the three figures to the baleful, agonized eyes of the hunchback at the open door.

IX

DIARY OF A MESHUMAD

IX

DIARY OF A MESHUMAD[1]

_Tchemnovosk, Sat.u.r.day (midnight)._--So! The first words have been written. For the first time in my life I have commenced a diary. Will it prove the solace I have heard it is? Shall I find these now cold, blank pages growing more and more familiar, till I shall turn to them as to a sympathetic friend; till this little book shall become that loved and trusted confidant for whom my lonely soul longs? Instead of either Black or White Clergy, this record in black and white shall be my father confessor. Our village pope, to whom I have so often confessed everything but the truth, would be indeed shocked, if he could gossip with this, his new-created brother. What a heap of roubles it would take to tranquillize him! Ah, G.o.d! _Ach_, G.o.d of Israel! how is it possible that a man who has known the tenderest human ties should be so friendless, so solitary in his closing years, that not even in memory can he commune with a fellow-soul? Verily, the old curse has wrought itself out, that penalty of apostasy which came to my mind the other day after nearly forty years of forgetfulness, that curse which has filled my spirit with shuddering awe, and driven me to seek daily communion through thee, little book, even with my own self of yesterday--"_And that soul shall be cut off from among its people._" Yea, and from all others, too! For so many days and years Caterina was my constant companion; I loved her as my own soul. Yet was she but a sun that dazzled my eyes so that I could not gaze upon my own soul; but a veil between me and my dead youth. The sun has sunk forever below the horizon; the veil is rent. No phantom from the other world hovers to remind me of our happiness. Those years, with all their raptures and successes, are a dull blank. It is the years of boyhood and youth which resurge in my consciousness; their tints are vivid, their tones are clear.

Why is this? Is it Caterina's death? Is it old age? Is it returning to these village scenes after half a lifetime spent in towns? Is it the sight of the _izbas_, and their torpid, tow-haired, sheepskin-clad inhabitants, and the great slushy cabbage gardens, that has rekindled the ashen past into colours of flame? And yet, except our vodka-seller, there isn't a Jew in the place. However it be, Caterina's face is filmy, phantasmal, compared with my mother's. And mother died forty years ago; the gra.s.s of two short years grows over my wife's grave. And Paul? He is living--he kissed me but a few moments back. Yet _his_ face is far-away--elusive. The hues of life are on my father's--poor, ignorant, narrow-minded, warm-hearted father, whose heart I broke. Happily I have not to bear the remembrance of his dying look, but can picture him as I saw him in those miserable, happy days. My father's kiss is warm upon the lips which my son's has just left cold. Poor St. Paul, living up there with your ideals and your theories like a dove in a balloon! And yet, _golubtchik_, how I love you, my handsome, gifted boy, fighting the battle of life so pluckily and well! Ah! it is hard fighting when one is hampered by a conscience. Is it your fault that the cold iron bar of a secret lies between our souls; that a bar my own hands have forged, and which I have not the courage or the strength to break, keeps you from my inmost heart, and makes us strangers? No; you are the best of sons, and love me truly. But if your eyes were purged, and you could see the ugly, hateful thing, and through and beyond it, into my ugly, hateful soul! Ah, no! That must never be. Your affection, your reverential affection, is the only sacred and precious thing yet left to me on earth. If I lost that, if my spirit were cut off even from the semblance of human sympathy, then might the grave close over my body, as it would have already closed over my soul. And yet should I have the courage to die? Yes; for then Paul would know; Paul would obey my wishes and see me buried among my people. Paul would hire mourners (G.o.d! hired mourners, when I have a son!) to say the _Kaddish_. Paul would do his duty, though his heart broke. Terrible, ominous words! Break my son's heart as I did my father's! The saints--_voi!_ I mean G.o.d--forfend! And for opposite reasons. _Ach_, it is a strange world. Is religion, then, a curse, eternally dividing man from man? No, I will not think these blasphemous thoughts. My poor, brave Paul!