Dreamers of the Ghetto Part 20

"And for me?" eagerly interrupted Abraham Rubio, the beggar from the Morea.

"I had not forgotten thee," answered Sabbata. "Art thou not Josiah?"

"True--I had forgotten," murmured the beggar.

"To thee I give Turkey, and the seat of thine empire shall be Smyrna."

"May thy Majesty be exalted for ever and ever," replied King Josiah fervently. "Verily shall I sit under my own fig-tree."

Portugal fell to a Marrano physician who had escaped from the Inquisition. Even Sabbata's old enemy, Chayim Penya, was magnanimously presented with a kingdom.

"To thee, my well-beloved Raphael Joseph Chelebi of Cairo," wound up Sabbata, "in whose palace Melisselda became my Queen, to thee, under the style of King Joash, I give the realm of Egypt."

The Emperor of the World rose, and his Kings prostrated themselves at his feet.

"Prepare yourselves," said he. "On the morning of the New Year we set out."

When he had left the chamber a great hubbub broke out. Wealthy men who had been disappointed of kingdoms essayed to purchase them from their new monarchs. The bidding for the Ottoman Empire was particularly high.

"Away! Flaunt not your money-bags!" cried Abraham Rubio, flown with new-born majesty. "Know ye not that this Smyrna is our capital city, and we could confiscate your gold to our royal exchequer? Josiah is King here." And he took his seat upon the throne vacated by Sabbata.

"Get ye gone, or the bastinado and the bowstring shall be your portion."

XIX

Punctually with the dawn of the Millennial Year the Turkish Messiah, with his Queen and his train of Kings, took s.h.i.+p for Constantinople to dethrone the Grand Turk, the Lord of Palestine. He voyaged in a two-masted Levantine Saic, the bulk of his followers travelling overland. Though his object had been diplomatically unpublished, pompous messages from Samuel Primo had heralded his advent. The day of his arrival was fixed. Constantinople was in a ferment. The Grand Vizier gave secret orders for his arrest as a rebel; a band of Chiauses was sent to meet the Saic in the harbor. But the day came and went and no Messiah. Instead, thunders and lightnings and rain and gales and news of wrecks. The wind was northerly, as commonly in the h.e.l.lespont and Propontis, and it seemed as if the Saic must have been blown out of her course.

The Jews of Constantinople asked news of every vessel. The captain of a ketch from the Isles of Marmora told them that a chember had cast anchor in the isles, and a tall man, clothed in white, who bestrode the deck, being apprised that the islanders were Christians, had raised his finger, whereupon the church burnt down. When at last the Jews heard of the safety of Sabbata's weather--beaten vessel, which had made for a point on the coast of the Dardanelles, they told how their Master had ruled the waves and the winds by the mere reading of the hundred and sixteenth Psalm. But the news of his safety was speedily followed by the news of his captivity; the Vizier's officers were bringing him to Constantinople.

It was true; yet his Mussulman captors were not without a sense of the majesty of their prisoner, for they stopped their journey at Cheknese Kutschuk, near the capital, so that he might rest for the Sabbath, and hither, apprised in advance by messenger, the Sabbatians of Constantinople hastened with food and money. They still expected to see their Sovereign arrive with pomp and pageantry, but he came up miserably on a sorry horse, chains clanking dismally at his feet. Yet was he in no wise dismayed. "I am like a woman in labor," he said to his body-guard of Kings, "the redoubling of whose anguish marks the near deliverance. Ye should laugh merrily, like the Rabbi in the Talmud when he saw the jackal running about the ruined walls of the Temple; for till the prophecies are utterly fulfilled the glory cannot return." And his face shone with conscious deity.

He was placed in a khan with a strong guard. But his wors.h.i.+ppers bought off his chains, and even made for him a kind of throne. On the Sunday his captors brought him, and him alone, to Constantinople. A vast gathering of Jews and Turks--a motley-colored medley--awaited him on the quay; mounted police rode about to keep a path for the disembarking officers and to prevent a riot. At length, amid clamor and tumult, Sabbata set fettered foot on sh.o.r.e.

His sad, n.o.ble air, the beauty of his countenance, his invincible silence, set a circle of mystery around him. Even the Turks had a moment of awe. A man-G.o.d, surely!

The Pacha had sent his subordinate with a guard to transfer him to the Seraglio. By them he was first hastily conducted into the custom-house, the guard riding among and dispersing the crowd.

Sabbata sat upon a chest as majestically as though it were the throne of Solomon.

But the Sub-Pacha shook off the oppressive emotion with which the sight of Sabbata inspired him.

"Rise, traitor," said he, "it is time that thou shouldst receive the reward of thy treasons and gather the fruit of thy follies." And therewith he dealt Sabbata a sounding box of the ear.

His myrmidons, relieved from the tension, exploded in a malicious guffaw.

Sabbata looked at the brutal dignitary with sad, steady gaze, then silently turned the other cheek.

The Sub-Pacha recoiled with an uncanny feeling of the supernatural; the mockery of the bystanders was hushed.

Sabbata was conducted by side ways, to avoid the mob, to the Palace of the Kaimacon, the Deputy-Vizier.

"Art thou the man," cried the Kaimacon, "whom the Jews aver to have wrought miracles at Smyrna? Now is thy time to work one, for lo! thy treason shall cost thee dear."

"Miracles!" replied Sabbata meekly. "I--what am I but a poor Jew, come to collect alms for my poor brethren in Jerusalem? The Jews of this great city persuade themselves that my blessing will bring them G.o.d's grace; they flock to welcome me. Can I stay them?"

"Thou art a seditious knave."

"An arrant impostor," put in the Sub-Pacha, "with the airs of a G.o.d. I thought to risk losing my arm when I cuffed him on the ear, but lo!

'tis stronger than ever." And he felt his muscle complacently.

"To gaol with the rogue!" cried the Kaimacon.

Sabbata, his face and mien full of celestial conviction, was placed in the loathsome dungeon which served as a prison for Jewish debtors.

XX

For a day or so the Moslems made merry over the disconcerted Jews and their Messiah. The street-boys ran after the Sabbatians, shouting, "_Gheldi mi? Gheldi mi?_" (Is he coming? Is he coming?); the very bark of the street-dogs sounded sardonic. But soon the tide turned.

Sabbata's prophetic retinue testified unshaken to their Master--Messiah because Sufferer. Women and children were rapt in mystic visions, and miracles took place in the highways. Moses Suriel, who in fun had feigned to call up spirits, suddenly hearing strange singing and playing, fell into a foaming fury, and hollow prophecies issued from him, sublimely eloquent and inordinately rapid, so that on his recovery he went about crying, "Repent! Repent! I was a mocker and a sinner. Repent! Repent!" The Moslems themselves began to waver. A Turkish Dervish, clad in white flowing robes, with a stick in his hand, preached in the street corners to his countrymen, proclaiming the Jewish Messiah. "Think ye," he cried, "that to wash your hands stained with the blood of the poor and full of booty, or to bathe your feet which have walked in the way of unrighteousness, suffices to render you clean? Vain imagination! G.o.d has heard the prayers of the poor whom ye despise! He will raise the humble and abash the proud."

Bastinadoed in vain several times, he was at last brought before the Cadi, who sent him to the _Timar-Hane_, the mad-house. But the doctors testified that he was sound, and he was again haled before the Cadi, who threatened him with death if he did not desist. "Kill me," said the Dervish pleadingly, "and ye will deliver me from the spirits which possess me and drive me to prophesy." Impressed, the Cadi dismissed him, and would have laden him with silver, but the Dervish refused and went his rhapsodical way. And in the heavens a comet flamed.

Soon Sabbata had a large Turkish following. The Jews already in the debtors' dungeon hastened to give him the best place, and made a rude throne for him. He became King of the Prison. Thousands surged round the gates daily to get a glimpse of him. The keeper of the prison did not fail to make his profit of their veneration, and instead of the five _aspres_ which friends of prisoners had to pay for the privilege of a visit, he charged a crown, and grew rapidly rich. Some of the most esteemed Jews attended a whole day before Sabbata in the Oriental postures of civility and service--eyes cast down, bodies bending forward, and hands crossed on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Before these visitors, who came laden with gifts, Sabbata maintained an equally sublime silence; sometimes he would point to the chapter of Genesis recounting how Joseph issued from his dungeon to become ruler of Egypt.

"How fares thy miserable prisoner?" casually inquired the Kaimacon of his Sub-Pacha one day.

"Miserable prisoner, Sire!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Sub-Pacha. "Nay, happy and glorious Monarch! The prison is become a palace. Where formerly reigned perpetual darkness, incessant wax tapers burn; in what was a sewer of filth and dung, one breathes now only amber, musk, aloe-wood, otto of roses, and every perfume; where men perished of hunger now obtains every luxury; the crumbs of Sabbata's table suffice for all his fellow-prisoners."

The Deputy-Vizier was troubled, and cast about for what to do.

Meantime the fame of Sabbata grew. It was said that every night a light appeared over his head, sometimes in stars, sometimes as an olive bough. Some English merchants in Galata visited him to complain of their Jewish debtors at Constantinople, who had ceased to traffic and would not discharge their liabilities. Sabbata took up his quill and wrote:

"To you the Nation of Jews who expect the appearance of the Messiah and the Salvation of Israel, Peace without end. Whereas we are informed that ye are indebted to several of the English nation: It seemeth right unto us to order you to make satisfaction to these your just debts: which if you refuse to do, and not obey us herein, know ye that then ye are not to enter with us into our Joys and Dominions."

The debts were instantly paid, and the glory of the occupant of the debtors' prison waxed greater still. The story of his incarceration and of the homage paid him, even by Mussulmans, spread through the world. What! The Porte--so prompt to slay, the maxim of whose polity was to have the Prince served by men he could raise without envy and destroy without danger--the Turk, ever ready with the cord and the sack, the sword and the bastinado, dared not put to death a rebel, the vaunted dethroner of the Sultan. A miracle and a Messiah indeed!

XXI

But the Kaimacon was embarking for the war with Crete; in his absence he feared to leave Sabbata in the capital. The prisoner was therefore transferred to the abode of State prisoners, the Castle of the Dardanelles at Abydos, with orders that he was to be closely confined, and never to go outside the gates. But, under the spell of some strange respect, or in the desire to have a hold upon them, too, the Kaimacon allowed his retinue of Kings to accompany him, likewise his amanuensis, Samuel Primo, and his consort, Melisselda.

The news of his removal to better quarters did not fail to confirm the faith of the Sabbatians. It was reported, moreover, that the Janissaries sent to take him fell dead at a word from his mouth, and being desired to revive them he consented, except in the case of some who, he said, were not true Turks. Then he went of his own accord to the Castle, but the shackles they laid on his feet fell from him, converted into gold with which he gratified his true and faithful believers, and, spite of steel bars and iron locks, he was seen to walk through the streets with a numerous attendance. Nor did the Sabbatians fail to find mystic significance in the fact that their Messiah arrived at his new prison on the Eve of Pa.s.sover--of the anniversary of Freedom.

Sabbata at once proceeded to kill the Paschal lamb for himself and his followers, and eating thereof with the fat, in defiance of Talmudic Law, he exclaimed:--"Blessed be G.o.d who hath restored that which was forbidden."

To the Tower of Strength, as the Sabbatians called the castle at Abydos, wherein the Messiah held his Court, streamed treasure-laden pilgrims from Poland, Germany, Italy, Vienna, Amsterdam, Cairo, Morocco, thinking by the pious journey to become worthy of seeing his face; and Sabbata gave them his benediction, and promised them increase of their stores and enlargement of their possessions in the Holy Land. The s.h.i.+ps were overburdened with pa.s.sengers; freights rose.

The natives grew rich by accommodating the pilgrims, the castellan (interpreting liberally the Kaimacon's instructions to mean that though the prisoner might not go out visitors might come in) by charging them fifteen to thirty marks for admission to the royal precincts. A shower of gold poured into Abydos. Jew, Moslem, Christian--the whole world wondered, and half of it believed. The beauty and gaiety of Melisselda witched the stubbornest sceptics.

Men's thoughts turned to "The Tower of Strength," from the far ends of the world. Never before in human history had the news of a Messiah travelled so widely in his own lifetime. To console those who could not make the pilgrimage to him or to Jerusalem, Sabbata promised equal indulgence and privilege to all who should pray at the tombs of their mothers. His initials, S.Z., were ornamentally inscribed in letters of gold over almost every synagogue, with a crown on the wall, in the circle of which was the ninety-first Psalm, and a prayer for him was inserted in the liturgy: "Bless our Lord and King, the holy and righteous Sabbata Zevi, the Messiah of the G.o.d of Jacob."

The Ghettos began to break up. Work and business dwindled in the most sceptical. In Hungary the Jews commenced to demolish their houses. The great commercial centres, which owed their vitality to the Jews, were paralyzed. The very Protestants wavered in their Christianity.