The Seven-Branched Candlestick Part 2

My aunt gave this last a few pettish, impatient moments of thought.

After the doctor was gone, and she and I sat opposite each other at the table, where the gla.s.s and silver made so ostentatious a showing, she did her best to be practical about it.

"Now, dear, let's see," she pondered, her long white fingers stroking the table cloth, "I'm sure we can find something to interest and amuse you, dear. How about basket weaving? or coloring photographs or something artistic like that?"

I wasn't very polite in my refusals. I declined basket weaving and coloring photographs and even balked at the idea of installing a billiard table in our apartment--which seemed to relieve Mrs. Haberman immensely, since she considered billiards a brutal and vulgar game.

All her suggestions came to naught. Once she spoke of religion, but her eyes fluttered and she changed the subject quickly, as if she had accidently hit upon the truth and found it unpleasant. It was enough to put an idea into my head.

I did not know then, but I do now, that the thing I needed was Faith. A boy needs it--needs it as much as he needs his parents--and I had neither one nor the other.

The days retreating into a gloomy background of autumn chills and fogs, left me thoroughly weakened in spirit. Oftentimes--I could not guess why--I came home from high school so exhausted that I could only throw myself upon my bed, behind a locked door, and sob and sigh and shiver as if with the ague. Everything that had happened during the day would come pouring back into my memory with a distorted clarity, tinctured with despair, hopelessly sombred with a boy's sense of wrong and persecution.

I did actually have enough to contend with at high school. I had begun to feel the racial distinctions, the thoughtless slurs and boycottings which Jewish lads must everywhere encounter. I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter--that these were only rough, ill-bred boys to whom I ought not lower myself to pay attention. But a boy of fourteen finds it hard to argue himself into bravery, and I failed miserably, ridiculously at the task. Years later, I was to learn that it was all natural--that I was pa.s.sing, as every boy must pa.s.s, through the difficult period of adolescence. It was mostly that I was lonely, balked by the unappreciative att.i.tude of my aunt, without guidance or curb.

If in all this personal recital I am harsh to the memory of my aunt, you will perhaps see that I have the right. I am grateful, truly grateful, for all that she attempted to do for me, but I know that all her care was misdirected. It was, besides, cruelly lacking in all of the finer things which should have been mine; things which my parents would have given me, things that, in my aggravated state, I needed.

Once I was asked by some other Jewish boys at high school to join a little club which they were forming. I hesitated about it. They were jolly, healthy boys--most of them from the poorer sections of the city--who went up to Van Cortlandt Park on Sat.u.r.day afternoons and Sundays to play ball or to skate. It would have done me good to be one of them, to join their sports and laughter--and yet....

Well, my aunt did not approve. I knew she wouldn't, long before I asked her. If I was the least bit undecided before, she gave me clearly to understand that companionship with Jewish boys would not be right for me; that I must avoid this stigma of Judaism as I would avoid a crime.

She said it was for my _own_ good--but I cannot believe it very heartily. She was trying at that time to make me join a dancing cla.s.s of Gentile boys and girls. She told me she thought their company would counteract the effect of having to endure a high school's rabble.

There came a night, after a day of n.i.g.g.ardly discouragements, when the strange moroseness seemed too heavy to bear. I told my aunt that I did not want any supper--a fact which did not worry her too much, since she was in a hurry to dress and go off to a studio party of some silly sort.

And when she was gone and I was alone in the apartment, I could not read or rest or do anything. I tried to study my next day's lessons, but had to give them up.

And at last I put on my hat and coat and went down to the street. The air was bracing, but I was not used to the streets at night--and a white, wraith-like fog was beginning to seep up from the pavements and cl.u.s.ter in misty, yellow patches around the lamp-lights.

Shivering, I went on. I did not know where I was bound. The old, savage loneliness--here in the open, where the dampness brought the scent of withered gra.s.s and lean, bare trees--was sharper, more embittering than ever.

I went across the street and into the nearest entrance of Central Park.

The quietness of everything there frightened me, called up every foolish, childhood fear and superst.i.tion. I went through dark lanes that were branched over with creaking branches. I saw the lake, black, cold, with the stippled reflections of sh.o.r.e lights shining up from its edges.

I felt the moist, chilly wind that came across the big lawns and struck my face and chest and shoulders. I felt--I could not help but feel that I must go on, go on and on--in search of I know not what.

I came at length to the Fifth Avenue side of the park. The huge white stone and marble houses that flanked the street beyond were half lost in the mist. The automobiles that went up and down the pavements, which were wet and shining like the backs of seals, made no noise--went silently, mystically, sweeping blurred trails of light upon the sidewalks as they pa.s.sed.

Against that white, low horizon of houses I saw one thing that loomed dark and gropingly conspicuous.

I did not know what it was. Not then. But it held my attention: the darkness, the gray curve of it against the sky. There was something about it that was forbidding, deep, sombre. The lower front of it seemed to be arched and pillared--and under each arch the shadows were impenetrably black.

There were automobiles waiting in front of it, at the sidewalk's edge. A long string of them, too, as if many persons were within upon some mysterious business.

Then, softly, as if from far distant recesses, there came from within the soft, resonant voice of an organ--playing.

Was it a church?

Then I remembered that it was Friday night--and I knew that this was a synagogue--a temple of the Jewish Faith.

At first realization, I moved a little away from it, down the street. A synagogue--and all that it brought to my mind was the memory of my parents. In former years they had been wont to take me with them when they went on Friday nights. And those had been dull, wearisome nights for me--but I had spent them at my parent's side. So that now, in the shadow of G.o.d's house, my loneliness for them came back to me in wild deluge, breaking the dam of reserve and doubts and petty limitations.

The music of the organ swelled louder, richer, blending all the majesty of its ba.s.s notes with the triumph and fancy of its treble. Louder, richer, louder--and I, who stood outside in the choking fog, felt my heart give way to its pain and my eyes to the solace of their tears.

Until the service was ended, and the organ had ceased to play I stayed there. Once or twice I heard the voice of the cantor at his solemn chantings--and this too brought me a distinct memory of the cantor in our Brooklyn synagogue, and of how I had listened to him with my hands locked in my mother's.

Outside it was all so dark, so clammy with mist--and in there they--my own sort of people--were worshipping G.o.d--my G.o.d. And when, soon thereafter, the doors swung open in the black of the arches and bathed the steps below with a great, glad, golden light, I ran forward, almost involuntarily, to gaze within.

I caught a glimpse of rich things, bright and gleaming--of carpets glowing, walls resplendent--of golden tracery and colors. And then people began coming through the doors down the steps, blackening and obscuring my view of the interior.

I saw some of their faces. They were Jewish people, of course--and I heard a man among them talking rather loudly and laughingly. He talked with an accent.

For me the spell was broken. All the old, petty prejudice which circ.u.mstance had nurtured in me sprang up anew. A sense of anti-climax, of disgust came over me: yes, these--such as these were my people--and I hated them.

And I turned and ran away, back through the park, and home.

I did not ever tell my aunt where I had been, nor anything else of the adventure. I knew she would not have understood it. But I did. And, boy as I was, I knew now that I needed some Faith, some link to the company and comfort of G.o.d--and that, sooner or later, as Jew or Christian, I must seek and find that link.

But I knew, too, that my antipathy to my own people had become deep-seated--had grown to be part of my whole life's code.

IV

THE BOY AND THE SCHOOL

High school's terrors developed for me into a more personal terror of that young tough, Jim Geoghen. A thorough bully, he made me feel always that he was aware of my religion, that he could at any moment disclose it to the rest of my cla.s.smates and make me the subject of their taunts.

No doubt, they all knew as well as he that I was a Jew--but, for the most part, they paid little attention to that fact. A large number of them were Jews themselves: bright-eyed, poorly-dressed little fellows who led the cla.s.s in studies, but who mingled little with any other element.

Something stronger than myself made me take up a half-hearted companionship with these Jewish boys. I did not want to: I dreaded being one of them--and yet, for all my aunt's sneers and warnings, and my own perverted pride, I always felt more comfortable with them--more as if, in walking home with one of them after school, instead of with some Christian boy, I was where I belonged. I know it was only self-consciousness that gave me this feeling--but after all, comfort must play a big part in our companionships.

Geoghen, with his towering, menacing form, his dull, animal's face, his swinging crutch, his mysterious scapular, haunted me continuously. I remember distinctly dreaming of him once or twice at night--and that he stood over my bedside, in those dreams, with his crutch upraised to strike, and his little leather scapular writhing and hissing like a coiled snake.

One day he did strike me. It was during the noon recess when a group of us were in the asphalted yard, eating our lunches. Mine was always an elaborate package of dainties, wrapped in much tissue paper and doilies.

Geoghen, on the other hand, had just a chunk of rye bread, covered over with a slice of ham. His glance, long and greedy, betrayed how envious of me he was.

"Eat ham?" he asked with a snicker.

He did not wait for an answer, but crammed a few shreds of it towards my mouth, his dirty fingers striking my teeth. I jumped away from him and he followed after me, hobbling with amazing swiftness.

"Tried to bite me, eh?" he cried.

I denied it--but he did not listen and, raising his crutch, dealt me a stinging blow with the smaller end of it--though, at that, I was let off easy.

Towards our teacher, Mr. Levi, Geoghen and some of the other boys acted with all the pent-up meanness and savagery of mischievous youth. Mr.

Levi's manner invited the twitting, perhaps: his pale, thin face bore always a nettled look, his eyes seemed ever hungry with some dark sorrow, and his mouth was always twitching. There was a fine timidity about his way of handling us. He did not seem to be able to scold or be authoritative.

But when he would be teaching us our Roman History, for instance, and would tell us of the beauties of Italian scenery or of Caesar's centurions lost in the dark, tangled German forests or of how Cleopatra came with purple sails--or of how Cleopatra came to meet Mark Antony in a golden barge with purple sails--then his face would light up with a look that was glorious, and even the rattiest, coa.r.s.est of us would thrill and be hushed with the thrill--and know, no matter how dimly, that he was in the presence of a great and beautiful spirit.

But those times were rare; and, as a rule, we made life miserable for Mr. Levi. He seemed to feel, I am sure, the handicap of his religion--to know that the Irish boys of the cla.s.s, and dark, sullen-faced Italians, were thinking it an insult to be taught by a Jew--and that they were only waiting for the opportunity for an outburst.