Ghetto Tragedies Part 51

"I will put you on the free list of the _Novoe Vremia_, father," he said. "Good-night, _papasha_."

What could I say? What could I do? I called up a smile to my trembling lips.

"Good-night, Paul," I said.

I shall never tell him now.

_Tuesday, 3 a.m._--I reopen these pages to note an ironic climax to this bitter day. Through the excitement of Paul's coming I had not read my letters. After sitting here in a numb trance for hours, I suddenly bethought me of them. One is from my business man, informing me that he has just sold the South American stock, respecting which I gave him _carte blanche_. I go to bed richer by five thousand roubles.

_Odessa, Wednesday Night._--Six months have pa.s.sed. I am on the free list of the _Novoe Vremia_. Almost every day brings me a fresh stab as I read. But I am a "constant reader." It is my penance, and I bear it as such. After a long silence, I have just had a letter from Nicholas Alexandrovitch, and I reopen my diary to note it. He is about to marry a prosperous widow, and is going over to Catholicism. He writes he is very happy. Lucky, soulless being. He does not know he will be a richer man when I die. Happily, I am ready, though it were to-day. My peace is made, I hope, with G.o.d and man, though Paul knows nothing even now. He could not fail to learn it, though, if he came to Odessa again. I have bribed the spies and the clergy heavily. Thanks to their silence, I am one of the most prominent Jews of the town, and n.o.body dreams of connecting me with the trenchant editor of the _Novoe Vremia_. I see now that I could have acted so all along, if I had not been such a coward. But I keep Paul away. It is my last cowardice. In a postscript Nicholas writes that Paul's articles are causing a great sensation in the remotest parts of Russia. Alas, I know it. Are there not anti-Jewish riots in all parts, encouraged by cruel Government measures? Do not the local newspapers everywhere reproduce Paul's printed firebrands? Have I not the pleasure of coming across them again in our own Odessa papers, in the _Wiertnik_ and the _Listok_? I should not wonder if we had an outbreak here. There was a little affray yesterday in the _pereouloks_ of the Jewish quarter, though we are quiet enough down this way.... Great G.o.d! What is that noise I hear?... Yes! it is! it is! "Down with the _Zhits_! Down with the _Zhits_!" There is red on the horizon. _Bozhe moi!_ It is flame!

_Voi!_ They are pillaging the Jewish quarter. The sun sinks in blood, as on that unhappy day among the village hills.... _Ach!_ Paul, Paul!

Why did I not stop your murderous pen?... But if not you, another would have written.... No, that is no excuse.... Forgive me, O G.o.d, I have been weak. Ever weak and cowardly from the day I first deserted Thee, even unto this day.... I am not worthy of my blood, of my race.... They are coming this way. It goes through me like a knife.

"Down with the _Zhits_! Down with the _Zhits_!" And now I see them.

They are mad, drunk with the vodka they have stolen from the Jewish inns. Great G.o.d! They have knives and guns. And their leader is flouris.h.i.+ng a newspaper and shouting out something from it. There are soldiers among them, and sailors, native and foreign, and mad muzhiks.

Where are the police?... The mob is pa.s.sing under my window. _G.o.d pity me, it is Paul's words they are shouting._... They have pa.s.sed. No one thinks of me. Thank G.o.d, I am safe. I am safe from these demons.

What a narrow escape!... Ah, G.o.d, they have captured Rabbi Isaac and are dragging him along by his white beard toward the barracks. My place is by his side. I will rouse my brethren. We are not a few. We will turn on these dogs and rend them. _Proshcha_, my loved diary.

Farewell! I go to proclaim the Unity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In order to preserve the local colour, the Translator has occasionally left a word or phrase of the MS. in the original Russian.

[2] Dissenters.

X

"INCURABLE"

X

"INCURABLE"

"_Cast off among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave.

Whom Thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off from Thy hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in dark places, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me and Thou hast afflicted me with all Thy waves. Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me; Thou hast made me an abomination unto them; I am shut up and I cannot come forth. Mine eye wasteth away by reason of affliction. I have called daily upon Thee, O Lord, I have spread forth my hands unto Thee._"--Eighty-eighth Psalm.

There was a restless air about the Refuge. In a few minutes the friends of the patients would be admitted. The Incurables would hear the latest gossip of the Ghetto, for the world was still very much with these abortive lives, avid of sensations, Jewish to the end. It was an unpretentious inst.i.tution--two corner houses knocked together--near the east lung of London; supported mainly by the poor at a penny a week, and scarcely recognized by the rich; so that paraplegia and vertigo and rachitis and a dozen other hopeless diseases knocked hopelessly at its narrow portals. But it was a model inst.i.tution all the same, and the patients lacked for nothing except freedom from pain. There was even a miniature synagogue for their spiritual needs, with the women's compartment religiously railed off from the men's, as if these grotesque ruins of s.e.x might still distract each other's devotions.

Yet the Rabbis knew human nature. The sprightly, hydrocephalous, paralytic Leah had had the chair she inhabited carried down into the men's sitting-room to beguile the moments, and was smiling fascinatingly upon the deaf blind man, who had the Braille Bible at his fingers' ends, and read on as stolidly as St. Anthony. Mad Mo had strolled vacuously into the ladies' ward, and, indifferent to the pretty white-ap.r.o.ned Christian nurses, was loitering by the side of a weird, hatchet-faced cripple with a stiletto-shaped nose supporting big spectacles. Like most of the patients she was up and dressed; only a few of the white pallets ranged along the walls were occupied.

"Leah says she'd be quite happy if she could walk like you," said Mad Mo in complimentary tones. "She always says Milly walks so beautiful.

She says you can walk the whole length of the garden." Milly, huddled in her chair, smiled miserably.

"You're crying again, Rebecca," protested a dark-eyed, bright-faced dwarf in excellent English, as she touched her friend's withered hand.

"You are in the blues again. Why, that page is all blistered."

"No--I feel so nice," said the sad-eyed Russian in her quaint musical accent. "You sall not tink I cry because I am not happy. Ven I read sad tings--like my life--den only I am happy."

The dwarf gave a short laugh that made her pendent earrings oscillate.

"I thought you were brooding over your love affairs," she said.

"Me!" cried Rebecca. "I lost too young my leg to be in love. No, it is Psalm eighty-eight dat I brood over. 'I am afflicted and ready to die from my yout' up.' Yes, I vas only a girl ven I had to go to Konigsberg to find a doctor to cut off my leg. 'Lover and friend hast dou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness!'"

Her face shone ecstatic.

"Hus.h.!.+" whispered the dwarf, with a warning nudge and a slight nod in the direction of a neighbouring waterbed on which a pale, rigid, middle-aged woman lay, with shut sleepless eyes.

"Se cannot understand Englis'," said the Russian girl proudly.

"Don't be so sure, look how the nurses here have picked up Yiddis.h.!.+"

Rebecca shook her head incredulously. "Sarah is a Polis' woman," she said. "For years dey are in England and dey learn noting."

"_Ick bin krank! Krank! Krank!_" suddenly moaned a shrivelled Polish grandmother--an advanced centenarian--as if to corroborate the girl's contention. She was squatting monkey-like on her bed, every now and again murmuring her querulous burden of sickness, and jabbering at the nurses to shut all the windows. Fresh air she objected to as vehemently as if it were b.u.t.ter or some other heterodox dainty.

Hard upon her crooning came bloodcurdling screams from the room above, sounds that reminded the visitor he was not in a "Barnum" show, that the monstrosities were genuine. Pretty Sister Margaret--not yet indurated--thrilled with pity, as before her inner vision rose the ashen perspiring face of the palsied sufferer, who sat quivering all the long day in an easy-chair, her swollen jelly-like hands resting on cotton-wool pads, an air-pillow between her knees, her whole frame racked at frequent intervals by fierce spasms of pain, her only diversion faint blurred reflections of episodes of the street in the gla.s.s of a framed picture; yet morbidly suspicious of slow poison in her drink, and cursed with an incurable vitality.

Meantime Sarah lay silent, bitter thoughts moving beneath her white, impa.s.sive face like salt tides below a frozen surface. It was a strong, stern face, telling of a present of pain, and faintly hinting at a past of prettiness. She seemed alone in the populated ward, and indeed the world was bare for her. Most of her life had been spent in the Warsaw Ghetto, where she was married at sixteen, nineteen years before. Her only surviving son--a youth whom the English atmosphere had not improved--had sailed away to trade with the Kaffirs. And her husband had not been to see her for a fortnight!

When the visitors began to arrive, her torpor vanished. She eagerly raised the half of her that was not paralyzed, partially sitting up.

But gradually expectation died out of her large gray eyes. There was a buzz of talk in the room--the hydrocephalous girl was the gay centre of a group; the Polish grandmother who cursed her grandchildren when they didn't come and when they did, was denouncing their neglect of her to their faces; everybody had somebody to kiss or quarrel with.

One or two acquaintances approached the bed-ridden wife, too, but she would speak no word, too proud to ask after her husband, and wincing under the significant glances occasionally cast in her direction. By and by she had the red screen placed round her bed, which gave her artificial walls and a quasi-privacy. Her husband would know where to look for her--

"Woe is me!" wailed her centenarian country-woman, rocking to and fro.

"What sin have I committed to get such grandchildren? You only come to see if the old grandmother isn't dead yet. So sick! So sick! So sick!"

Twilight filled the wards. The white beds looked ghostly in the darkness. The last visitor departed. Sarah's husband had not yet come.

"He is not well, Mrs. Kretznow," Sister Margaret ventured to say in her best Yiddish. "Or he is busy working. Work is not so slack any more." Alone in the inst.i.tution she shared Sarah's ignorance of the Kretznow scandal. Talk of it died before her youth and sweetness.

"He would have written," said Sarah sternly. "He is awearied of me. I have lain here a year. Job's curse is on me."