Dreamers of the Ghetto Part 54

"What countryman are you?"

"Russian."

"And a Jew, of course?"

"Yes."

"No Russian Jews may enter Palestine."

Aaron was hustled back into the boat and restored safely to the steamer.

THE CONCILIATOR OF CHRISTENDOM

I

The Red Beadle shook his head. "There is nothing but Nature," he said obstinately, as his hot iron polished the boot between his knees. He was called the Red Beadle because, though his irreligious opinions had long since lost him his synagogue appointment and driven him back to his old work of bootmaking, his beard was still ruddy.

"Yes, but who made Nature?" retorted his new employer, his strange, scholarly face aglow with argument, and the flame of the lamp suspended over his bench by strings from the ceiling. The other clickers and riveters of the Spitalfields workshop, in their shocked interest in the problem of the origin of Nature, ceased for an instant breathing in the odors of burnt grease, cobbler's wax, and a c.o.ke fire replenished with sc.r.a.ps of leather.

"Nature makes herself," answered the Red Beadle. It was his declaration of faith--or of war. Possibly it was the familiarity with divine things which synagogue beadledom involves that had bred his contempt for them. At any rate, he was not now to be coerced by Zussmann Herz, even though he was fully alive to the fact that Zussmann's unique book-lined workshop was the only one that had opened to him, when the more pious shoemakers of the Ghetto had professed to be "full up." He was, indeed, surprised to find Zussmann a believer in the Supernatural, having heard whispers that the man was as great an "Epicurean" as himself. Had not Zussmann--ay, and his wigless wife, Hulda, too--been seen emerging from the mighty Church that stood in frowsy majesty amid its tall, neglected box-like tombs, and was to the Ghetto merely a topographical point and the chronometric standard? And yet, here was Zussmann an a.s.siduous attendant at the synagogue of the first floor--nay, a scholar so conversant with Hebrew, not to mention European, lore, that the Red Beadle felt himself a Man-of-the-Earth, only retaining his superiority by remembering that learning did not always mean logic.

"Nature make herself!" Zussmann now retorted, with a tolerant smile.

"As well say this boot made itself! The theory of Evolution only puts the mystery further back, and already in the Talmud we find--"

"_Nature_ made the boot," interrupted the Red Beadle. "Nature made you, and you made the boot. But n.o.body made Nature."

"But what is Nature?" cried Zussmann. "The garment of G.o.d, as Goethe says. Call Him Noumenon with Kant or Thought and Extension with Spinoza--I care not."

The Red Beadle was awed into temporary silence by these unknown names and ideas, expressed, moreover, in German words foreign to his limited vocabulary of Yiddish.

The room in which Zussmann thought and worked was one of two that he rented from the Christian corn-factor who owned the tall house--a stout c.o.c.kney who spent his life book-keeping in a little office on wheels, but whom the specimens of oats and dog-biscuits in his window invested with an air of roseate rurality. This personage drew a little income from the population of his house, whose staircases exhibited strata of children of different social developments, and to which the synagogue on the first floor added a large floating population. Zussmann's attendance thereat was not the only thing in him that astonished the Red Beadle. There was also a gentle deference of manner not usual with masters, or with pious persons. His consideration for his employes amounted, in the Beadle's eyes, to maladministration, and the grave loss he sustained through one of his hands selling off a crate of finished goods and flying to America was deservedly due to confidence in another pious person.

II

Despite the Red Beadle's Rationalism, which, basing itself on the facts of life, was not to be crushed by high-flown German words, the master-shoemaker showed him marked favor and often invited him to stay on to supper. Although the Beadle felt this was but the due recognition of one intellect by another, if an inferior intellect, he was at times irrationally grateful for the privilege of a place to spend his evenings in. For the Ghetto had cut him--there could be no doubt of that. The wors.h.i.+ppers in his old synagogue whom he had once dominated as Beadle now pa.s.sed him by with sour looks--"a dog one does not treat thus," the Beadle told himself, tugging miserably at his red beard.

"It is not as if I were a Meshummad--a convert to Christianity." Some hereditary instinct admitted _that_ as a just excuse for execration.

"I can't make friends with the Christians, and so I am cut off from both."

When after a thunderstorm two of the hands resigned their places at Zussmann's benches on the avowed ground that atheism attracts lightning, Zussmann's loyalty to the freethinker converted the Beadle's grat.i.tude from fitfulness into a steady glow.

And, other considerations apart, those were enjoyable suppers after the toil and grime of the day. The Beadle especially admired Zussmann's hands when the black grease had been washed off them, the fingers were so long and tapering. Why had his own fingers been made so stumpy and square-tipped? Since Nature made herself, why was she so uneven a worker? Nay, why could she not have given him white teeth like Zussmann's wife? Not that these were ostentatious--you thought more of the sweetness of the smile of which they were part. Still, as Nature's irregularity was particularly manifest in his own teeth, he could not help the reflection.

If the Red Beadle had not been a widower, the unfeigned success of the Herz union might have turned his own thoughts to that happy state. As it was, the sight of their happiness occasionally shot through his breast renewed pangs of vain longing for his Leah, whose death from cancer had completed his conception of Nature. Lucky Zussmann, to have found so sympathetic a partner in a pretty female! For Hulda shared Zussmann's dreams, and was even copying out his great work for the press, for business was brisk and he would soon have saved up enough money to print it. The great work, in the secret of which the Red Beadle came to partic.i.p.ate, was written in Hebrew, and the elegant curves and strokes would have done honor to a Scribe. The Beadle himself could not understand it, knowing only the formal alphabet such as appears in books and scrolls, but the first peep at it which the proud Zussmann permitted him removed his last disrespect for the intellect of his master, without, however, removing the mystery of that intellect's aberrations.

"But you dream with the eyes open," he said, when the theme of the work was explained to him.

"How so?" asked Hulda gently, with that wonderful smile of hers.

"Reconcile the Jews and the Christians! _Meshuggas_--madness." He laughed bitterly. "Do you forget what we went through in Poland? And even here in free England, can you walk in the street without every little _shegetz_ calling after you and asking, 'Who killed Christ?'"

"Yes, but herein my husband explains that it was not the Jews who killed Christ, but Herod and Pilate."

"As it says in Corinthians," broke in Zussmann eagerly: "'We speak the wisdom of G.o.d in a mystery, which none of the princes of this world knew; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.'"

"So," said the Red Beadle, visibly impressed.

"a.s.suredly," affirmed Hulda. "But, as Zussmann explains here, they threw the guilt upon the Jews, who were too afraid of the Romans to deny it."

The Beadle pondered.

"Once the Christians understand that," said Zussmann, pursuing his advantage, "they will stretch out the hand to us."

The Beadle had a flash. "But how will the Christians read you? No Christian understands Hebrew."

Zussmann was taken momentarily aback. "But it is not so much for the Christians," he explained. "It is for the Jews--that they should stretch out the hand to the Christians."

The Red Beadle stared at him in shocked silent amaze. "Still greater madness!" he gasped at length. "They will treat you worse than they treat me."

"Not when they read my book."

"Just when they read your book."

Hulda was smiling serenely. "They can do nothing to my husband; he is his own master, G.o.d be thanked; no one can turn him away."

"They can insult him."

Zussmann shook his head gently. "No one can insult me!" he said simply. "When a dog barks at me I pity it that it does not know I love it. Now draw to the table. The pickled herring smells well."

But the Red Beadle was unconvinced. "Besides, what should we make it up with the Christians for--the stupid people?" he asked, as he received his steaming coffee cup from Frau Herz.

"It is a question of the Future of the World," said Zussmann gravely, as he shared out the herring, which had already been cut into many thin slices by the vendor and pickler. "This antagonism is a perversion of the principles of both religions. Shall we allow it to continue for ever?"

"It will continue till they both understand that Nature makes herself," said the Red Beadle.

"It will continue till they both understand my husband's book,"

corrected Hulda.

"Not while Jews live among Christians. Even here they say we take the bread out of the mouths of the Christian shoemakers. If we had our own country now--"

"Hus.h.!.+" said Zussmann. "Do you share that materialistic dream? Our realm is spiritual. Nationality--the world stinks with it! Germany for the Germans, Russia for the Russians. Foreigners to the devil--pah!

Egomania posing as patriotism. Human brotherhood is what we stand for.

Have you forgotten how the Midrash explains the verse in the Song of Solomon: 'I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love till he please'?"