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Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People, a novel by Israel Zangwill |
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Book 2. The Grandchildren Of The Ghetto - Chapter 13. The Dead Monkey Again |
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_ BOOK II. THE GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO CHAPTER XIII. THE DEAD MONKEY AGAIN Esther woke early, little refreshed. The mattress was hard, and in her restricted allowance of space she had to deny herself the luxury of tossing and turning lest she should arouse Debby. To open one's eyes on a new day is not pleasant when situations have to be faced. Esther felt this disagreeable duty could no longer be shirked. Malka's words rang in her ears. How, indeed, could she earn a living? Literature had failed her; with journalism she had no point of contact save _The Flag of Judah_, and that journal was out of the question. Teaching--the last resort of the hopeless--alone remained. Maybe even in the Ghetto there were parents who wanted their children to learn the piano, and who would find Esther's mediocre digital ability good enough. She might teach as of old in an elementary school. But she would not go back to her own--all the human nature in her revolted at the thought of exposing herself to the sympathy of her former colleagues. Nothing was to be gained by lying sleepless in bed, gazing at the discolored wallpaper and the forlorn furniture. She slipped out gently and dressed herself, the absence of any apparatus for a bath making her heart heavier with reminders of the realities of poverty. It was not easy to avert her thoughts from her dainty bedroom of yesterday. But she succeeded; the cheerlessness of the little chamber turned her thoughts backwards to the years of girlhood, and when she had finished dressing she almost mechanically lit the fire and put the kettle to boil. Her childish dexterity returned, unimpaired by disuse. When Debby awoke, she awoke to a cup of tea ready for her to drink in bed--an unprecedented luxury, which she received with infinite consternation and pleasure. "Why, it's like the duchesses who have lady's-maids," she said, "and read French novels before getting up." To complete the picture, her hand dived underneath the bed and extracted a _London Journal_, at the risk of upsetting the tea. "But it's you who ought to be in bed, not me." "I've been a sluggard too often," laughed Esther, catching the contagion of good spirits from Debby's radiant delight. Perhaps the capacity for simple pleasures would come back to her, too. At breakfast they discussed the situation. "I'm afraid the bed's too small," said Esther, when Debby kindly suggested a continuance of hospitality. "Perhaps I took up too much room," said the hostess. "No, dear; you took up too little. We should have to have a wider bed and, as it is, the bed is almost as big as the room." "There's the back garret overhead! It's bigger, and it looks on the back yard just as well. I wouldn't mind moving there," said Debby, "though I wouldn't let old Guggenheim know that I value the view of the back yard, or else he'd raise the rent." "You forget the _Greeners_ who moved in yesterday." "Oh, so I do!" answered Debby with a sigh. "Strange," said Esther, musingly, "that I should have shut myself out of my old home." The postman's knuckles rapping at the door interrupted her reflections. In Royal Street the poor postmen had to mount to each room separately; fortunately, the tenants got few letters. Debby was intensely surprised to get one. "It isn't for me at all," she cried, at last, after a protracted examination of the envelope; "it's for you, care of me." "But that's stranger still." said Esther. "Nobody in the world knows my address." The mystery was not lessened by the contents. There was simply a blank sheet of paper, and when this was unfolded a half-sovereign rolled out. The postmark was Houndsditch. After puzzling herself in vain, and examining at length the beautiful copy-book penmanship of the address, Esther gave up the enigma. But it reminded her that it would be advisable to apprise her publishers of her departure from the old address, and to ask them to keep any chance letter till she called. She betook herself to their offices, walking. The day was bright, but Esther walked in gloom, scarcely daring to think of her position. She entered the office, apathetically hopeless. The junior partner welcomed her heartily. "I suppose you've come about your account," he said. "I have been intending to send it you for some months, but we are so busy bringing out new things before the dead summer season comes on." He consulted his books. "Perhaps you would rather not be bothered," he said, "with a formal statement. I have it all clearly here--the book's doing fairly well--let me write you a cheque at once!" She murmured assent, her cheeks blanching, her heart throbbing with excitement and surprise. "There you are--sixty-two pounds ten," he said. "Our profits are just one hundred and twenty-five. If you'll endorse it, I'll send a clerk to the bank round the corner and get it cashed for you at once." The pen scrawled an agitated autograph that would not have been accepted at the foot of a cheque, if Esther had had a banking account of her own. "But I thought you said the book was a failure," she said. "So it was," he answered cheerfully, "so it was at first. But gradually, as its nature leaked out, the demand increased. I understand from Mudie's that it was greatly asked for by their Jewish clients. You see, when there's a run on a three-volume book, the profits are pretty fair. I believed in it myself, or I should never have given you such good terms nor printed seven hundred and fifty copies. I shouldn't be surprised if we find ourselves able to bring it out in one-volume form in the autumn. We shall always be happy to consider any further work of yours; something on the same lines, I should recommend." The recommendation did not convey any definite meaning to her at the moment. Still in a pleasant haze, she stuffed the twelve five-pound notes and the three gold-pieces into her purse, scribbled a receipt, and departed. Afterwards the recommendation rang mockingly in her ears. She felt herself sterile, written out already. As for writing again on the same lines, she wondered what Raphael would think if he knew of the profits she had reaped by bespattering his people. But there! Raphael was a prig like the rest. It was no use worrying about _his_ opinions. Affluence had come to her--that was the one important and exhilarating fact. Besides, had not the hypocrites really enjoyed her book? A new wave of emotion swept over her--again she felt strong enough to defy the whole world. When she got "home," Debby said, "Hannah Jacobs called to see you." "Oh, indeed, what did she want?" "I don't know, but from something she said I believe I can guess who sent the half-sovereign." "Not Reb Shemuel?" said Esther, astonished. "No, _your_ cousin Malka. It seems that she saw Hannah leaving Zachariah Square with you, and so went to her house last night to get your address." Esther did not know whether to laugh or be angry; she compromised by crying. People were not so bad, after all, nor the fates so hard to her. It was only a little April shower of tears, and soon she was smiling and running upstairs to give the half-sovereign to the _Greeners_. It would have been ungracious to return it to Malka, and she purchased all the luxury of doing good, including the effusive benedictions of the whole family, on terms usually obtainable only by professional almoners. Then she told Debby of her luck with the publishers. Profound was Debby's awe at the revelation that Esther was able to write stories equal to those in the _London Journal_. After that, Debby gave up the idea of Esther living or sleeping with her; she would as soon have thought of offering a share of her bed to the authoresses of the tales under it. Debby suffered scarce any pang when her one-night companion transferred herself to Reb Shemuel's. For it was to suggest this that Hannah had called. The idea was her father's; it came to him when she told him of Esther's strange position. But Esther said she was going to America forthwith, and she only consented on condition of being allowed to pay for her keep during her stay. The haggling was hard, but Esther won. Hannah gave up her room to Esther, and removed her own belongings to Levi's bedroom, which except at Festival seasons had been unused for years, though the bed was always kept ready for him. Latterly the women had had to make the bed from time to time, and air the room, when Reb Shemuel was at synagogue. Esther sent her new address to her brothers and sisters, and made inquiries as to the prospects of educated girls in the States. In reply she learned that Rachel was engaged to be married. Her correspondents were too taken up with this gigantic fact to pay satisfactory attention to her inquiries. The old sense of protecting motherhood came back to Esther when she learned the news. Rachel was only eighteen, but at once Esther felt middle-aged. It seemed of the fitness of things that she should go to America and resume her interrupted maternal duties. Isaac and Sarah were still little more than children, perhaps they had not yet ceased bickering about their birthdays. She knew her little ones would jump for joy, and Isaac still volunteer sleeping accommodation in his new bed, even though the necessity for it had ceased. She cried when she received the cutting from the American Jewish paper; under other circumstances she would have laughed. It was one of a batch headed "Personals," and ran: "Sam Wiseberg, the handsome young drummer, of Cincinnati, has become engaged to Rachel Ansell, the fair eighteen-year-old type-writer and daughter of Moses Ansell, a well-known Chicago Hebrew. Life's sweetest blessings on the pair! The marriage will take place in the Fall." Esther dried her eyes and determined to be present at the ceremony. It is so grateful to the hesitant soul to be presented with a landmark. There was nothing to be gained now by arriving before the marriage; nay, her arrival just in time for it would clench the festivities. Meantime she attached herself to Hannah's charitable leading-strings, alternately attracted to the Children of the Ghetto by their misery, and repulsed by their failings. She seemed to see them now in their true perspective, correcting the vivid impressions of childhood by the insight born of wider knowledge of life. The accretion of pagan superstition was greater than she had recollected. Mothers averted fever by a murmured charm and an expectoration, children in new raiment carried bits of coal or salt in their pockets to ward off the evil-eve. On the other hand, there was more resourcefulness, more pride of independence. Her knowledge of Moses Ansell had misled her into too sweeping a generalization. And she was surprised to realize afresh how much illogical happiness flourished amid penury, ugliness and pain. After school-hours the muggy air vibrated with the joyous laughter of little children, tossing their shuttlecocks, spinning their tops, turning their skipping-ropes, dancing to barrel-organs or circling hand-in-hand in rings to the sound of the merry traditional chants of childhood. Esther often purchased a pennyworth of exquisite pleasure by enriching some sad-eyed urchin. Hannah (whose own scanty surplus was fortunately augmented by an anonymous West-End Reform Jew, who employed her as his agent) had no prepossessions to correct, no pendulum-oscillations to distract her, no sentimental illusions to sustain her. She knew the Ghetto as it was; neither expected gratitude from the poor, nor feared she might "pauperize them," knowing that the poor Jew never exchanges his self-respect for respect for his benefactor, but takes by way of rightful supplement to his income. She did not drive families into trickery, like ladies of the West, by being horrified to find them eating meat. If she presided at a stall at a charitable sale of clothing, she was not disheartened if articles were snatched from under her hand, nor did she refuse loans because borrowers sometimes merely used them to evade the tallyman by getting their jewelry at cash prices. She not only gave alms to the poor, but made them givers, organizing their own farthings into a powerful auxiliary of the institutions which helped them. Hannah's sweet patience soothed Esther, who had no natural aptitude for personal philanthropy; the primitive, ordered pieties of the Reb's household helping to give her calm. Though she accepted the inevitable, and had laughed in melancholy mockery at the exaggerated importance given to love by the novelists (including her cruder self), she dreaded meeting Raphael Leon. It was very unlikely her whereabouts would penetrate to the West; and she rarely went outside of the Ghetto by day, or even walked within it in the evening. In the twilight, unless prostrated by headache, she played on Hannah's disused old-fashioned grand piano. It had one cracked note which nearly always spoiled the melody; she would not have the note repaired, taking a morbid pleasure in a fantastic analogy between the instrument and herself. On Friday nights after the Sabbath-hymns she read _The Flag of Judah_. She was not surprised to find Reb Shemuel beginning to look askance at his favorite paper. She noted a growing tendency in it to insist mainly on the ethical side of Judaism, salvation by works being contrasted with the salvation by spasm of popular Christianity. Once Kingsley's line, "Do noble things, not dream them all day long," was put forth as "Judaism _versus_ Christianity in a nut-shell;" and the writer added, "for so thy dreams shall become noble, too." Sometimes she fancied phrases and lines of argument were aimed at her. Was it the editor's way of keeping in touch with her, using his leaders as a medium of communication--a subtly sweet secret known only to him and her? Was it fair to his readers? Then she would remember his joke about the paper being started merely to convert her, and she would laugh. Sometimes he repeated what he already said to her privately, so that she seemed to hear him talking. Then she would shake her head, and say, "I love you for your blindness, but I have the terrible gift of vision." _ |
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