Ghetto Comedies - Israel Zangwill (great novels of all time txt) 📗

a barometer!' he gasped.

'Well, it isn't any good to me,' retorted Peleg angrily.

'Then why did you buy it?' cried the Gabbai.

'It was the cheapest article I could get off with.'

'But you didn't go to buy,' said the Parnass.

'I know that—but you come into the shop—naturally he takes you for a customer—he looks so dignified; he strokes his beard—you can't look a fool, you must——'

'Be one,' snapped the Parnass. 'And then you come to us to share the expenses!'

'Well, what do I want with a barometer?'

'It'll do to tell you there's a storm when the chimney-pots are blowing down,' suggested the Parnass crushingly.

'Put it in your window—you'll make a profit out of it,' said Mendel.

'Not while Simeon Samuels is selling them cheaper, as with his Sabbath profits he can well afford to do!'

'Oh, he said he'd stick to his Sabbath profit, did he?' inquired the Parnass.

'We never touched on that,' said Peleg miserably. 'I couldn't manage to work the Sabbath into the conversation.'

'This is terrible.' Barzinsky's fist smote the table. 'I'll go—let him suspect my motives or not. The Almighty knows they are pure.'

'Bravo! Well spoken!' There was a burst of applause. Several marine-dealers shot out their hands and grasped Barzinsky's in admiration.

'Do not await me, gentlemen,' he said importantly. 'Go in peace.'

XII

'Good afternoon, Mr. Samuels,' said Solomon Barzinsky.

'Good afternoon, sir. What can I do for you?'

'You—you don't know me? I am a fellow-Jew.'

'That's as plain as the nose on your face.'

'You don't remember me from Shool? Mr. Barzinsky! I had the rolling-up of the Scroll the time you had the elevation of it.'

'Ah, indeed. At these solemn moments I scarcely notice people. But I am very glad to find you patronizing my humble establishment.'

'I don't want a barometer,' said Solomon hurriedly.

'That is fortunate, as I have just sold my last. But in the way of waterproofs, we have a new pattern, very seasonable.'

'No, no; I didn't come for a waterproof.'

'These oilskins——'

'I didn't come to buy anything.'

'Ah, you wish to sell me something.'

'Not that either. The fact is, I've come to beg of you, as one Jew to another——'

'A Schnorrer!' interrupted Simeon Samuels. 'Oh, Lord, I ought to have recognised you by that synagogue beginning.'

'Me, a Schnorrer!' The little man swelled skywards. 'Me, Solomon Barzinsky, whose shop stood in Sudminster twenty years before you poked your nose in——'

'I beg your pardon. There! you see I'm a beggar, too.' And Simeon Samuels laughed mirthlessly. 'Well, you've come to beg of me.' And his fingers caressed his patriarchal beard.

'I don't come on my own account only,' Barzinsky stammered.

'I understand. You want a contribution to the Passover Cake Fund. My time is precious, so is yours. What is the Parnass giving?'

'I'm not begging for money. I represent the congregation.'

'Dear me, why didn't you come to the point quicker? The congregation wishes to beg my acceptance of office. Well, it's very good of you all, especially as I'm such a recent addition. But I really feel a diffidence. You see, my views of the Sabbath clash with those of the congregation.'

'They do!' cried Barzinsky, leaping at his opportunity.

'Yes, I am for a much stricter observance than appears general here. Scarcely one of you carries his handkerchief tied round his loins like my poor old father, peace be upon him! You all carry the burden of it impiously in a pocket.'

'I never noticed your handkerchief round your waist!' cried the bewildered Barzinsky.

'Perhaps not; I never had a cold; it remained furled.'

Simeon Samuels' superb insolence twitched Barzinsky's mouth agape. 'But you keep your shop open!' he cried at last.

'That would be still another point of clashing,' admitted Simeon Samuels blandly. 'Altogether, you will see the inadvisability of my accepting office.'

'Office!' echoed Barzinsky, meeting the other's ironic fence with crude thwacks. 'Do you think a God-fearing congregation would offer office to a Sabbath-breaker?'

'Ah, so that was at the back of it. I suspected something underhand in your offer. I was to be given office, was I, on condition of closing my shop on Saturday? No, Mr. Barzinsky. Go back and tell those who sent you that Simeon Samuels scorns stipulations, and that when you offer to make him Parnass unconditionally he may consider your offer, but not till then. Good-bye. You must jog along with your present apology for a Parnass.'

'You—you Elisha ben Abuyai!' And, consoled only by the aptness of his reference to the atheist of the Talmud, Barzinsky rushed off to tell the Parnass how Simeon Samuels had insulted them both.

XIII

The Parnass, however, was not to be drawn yet. He must keep himself in reserve, he still insisted. But perhaps, he admitted, Simeon Samuels resented mere private members or committeemen. Let the Gabbai go.

Accordingly the pompous treasurer of the synagogue strode into the notorious shop on the Sabbath itself, catching Simeon Samuels red-handed.

But nothing could be suaver than that gentleman's 'Good Shabbos. What can I do for you?'

'You can shut up your shop,' said the Gabbai brusquely.

'And how shall I pay your bill, then?'

'I'd rather give you a seat and all the honours for nothing than see this desecration.'

'You must have a goodly surplus, then.'

'We have enough.'

'That's strange. You're the first Gabbai I ever knew who was satisfied with his balance-sheet. Is it your excellent management, I wonder, or have you endowments?'

'That's not for me to say. I mean we have five or six hundred pounds in legacies.'

'Indeed! Soundly invested, I hope?'

'First-class. English Railway Debentures.'

'I see. Trustee stock.' Simeon Samuels stroked his beard. 'And so your whole congregation works on the Sabbath. A pretty confession!'

'What do you mean?'

'Runs railway trains, lights engine-fires, keeps porters and signal-men toiling, and pockets the profits!'

'Who does?'

'You, sir, in particular, as the financial representative of the congregation. How can any Jew hold industrial shares in a heathen country without being a partner in a Sabbath business—ay, and opening on the Day of Atonement itself? And it is you who have the audacity to complain of me! I, at least, do my own dirty work, not hide myself behind stocks and shares. Good Shabbos to you, Mr. Gabbai, and kindly mind your own business in future—your locomotives and your sidings and your stinking tunnels.'

XIV

The Parnass could no longer delay the diplomatic encounter. 'Twas vain to accuse the others of tactlessness, and shirk the exhibition of his own tact. He exhibited it most convincingly by not informing the others that he was about to put it to a trial.

Hence he refrained from improving a synagogue opportunity, but sneaked one week-day towards the shop. He lingered without, waiting to be invited within. Thus all appearance of his coming to rebuke would be removed. His mission should pop up from a casual conversation.

He peeped into the window, passed and repassed.

Simeon Samuels, aware of a fly hovering on the purlieus of his web, issued from its centre, as the Parnass turned his back on the shop and gazed musingly at the sky.

'Looks threatening for rain, sir,' observed Simeon Samuels, addressing the back. 'Our waterproofs—— Bless my soul, but it surely isn't our Parnass!'

'Yes, I'm just strolling about. I seem to have stumbled on your establishment.'

'Lucky for me.'

'And a pleasure for me. I never knew you had such a nice display.'

'Won't you come inside, and see the stock?'

'Thank you, I must really get back home. And besides, as you say, it is threatening for rain.'

'I'll lend you a waterproof, or even sell you one cheap. Come in, sir—come in. Pray honour me.'

Congratulating himself on catching the spider, the fly followed him within.

A quarter of an hour passed, in which he must buzz about the stock. It seemed vastly difficult to veer round to the Sabbath through the web of conversation the spider wove round him. Simeon Samuels' conception of a marine-dealer's stock startled him by its comprehensiveness, and when he was asked to admire an Indian shawl, he couldn't help inquiring what it was doing there.

'Well,' explained Simeon Samuels, 'occasionally a captain or first mate will come back to England, home, and beauty, and will have neglected to buy foreign presents for his womenkind. I then remind him of the weakness of womenkind for such trophies of their menfolks' travel.'

'Excellent. I won't tell your competitors.'

'Oh, those cattle!' Simeon snapped his fingers. 'If they stole my idea, they'd not be able to carry it out. It's not easy to cajole a captain.'

'No, you're indeed a honeyed rascal,' thought the Parnass.

'I also do a brisk business in chutney,' went on Simeon. 'It's a thing women are especially fond of having brought back to them from India. And yet it's the last thing their menkind think of till I remind them of it on their return.'

'I certainly brought back none,' said the Parnass, smiling in spite of himself.

'You have been in India?'

'I have,' replied the Parnass, with a happy inspiration, 'and I brought back to my wife something more stimulating than chutney.'

'Indeed?'

'Yes, the story of the Beni-Israel, the black Jews, who, surrounded by all those millions of Hindoos, still keep their Sabbath.'

'Ah, poor niggers. Then you've been half round the world.'

'All round the world, for I went there and back by different routes. And it was most touching, wherever I went, to find everywhere a colony of Jews, and everywhere the Holy Sabbath kept sacred.'

'But on different days, of course,' said Simeon Samuels.

'Eh? Not at all! On the same day.'

'On the same day! How could that be? The day changes with every move east or west. When it's day here, it's night in Australia.'

Darkness began to cloud the presidential brow.

'Don't you try to make black white!' he said angrily.

'It's you that are trying to make white black,' retorted Simeon Samuels. 'Perhaps you don't know that I hail from Australia, and that by working on Saturday I escape profaning my native Australian Sabbath, while you, who have been all round the world, and have either lost or gained a day, according as you travelled east or west, are desecrating your original Sabbath either by working on Friday or smoking on Sunday.'

The Parnass felt his head going round—he didn't know whether east or west. He tried to clear it by a pinch of snuff, which he in vain strove to make judicial.

'Oh, and so, and so—atchew!—and so you're the saint and I'm the sinner!' he cried sarcastically.

'No, I don't profess to be a saint,' replied Simeon Samuels somewhat unexpectedly. 'But I do think the Saturday was meant for Palestine, not for the lands of the Exile, where another day of rest rules. When you were in India you probably noted that the Mohammedans keep Friday. A poor Jew in the bazaar is robbed of his Hindoo customers on Friday, of his Jews on Saturday, and his Christians on Sunday.'

'The Fourth Commandment is eternal!' said the Parnass with obstinate sublimity.

'But the Fifth says, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." I believe this reward belongs to all the first five Commandments—not only to the Fifth—else an orphan would have no chance of long life. Keep the Sabbath in the land that the Lord giveth thee; not in England, which isn't thine.'

'Oho!' retorted the Parnass. 'Then at that rate in England you needn't honour your father and mother.'

'Not if you haven't got them!' rejoined Simeon Samuels. 'And if you haven't got a land, you can't keep its Sabbath. Perhaps you think we can keep the Jubilee also without a country.'

'The Sabbath is eternal,' repeated the Parnass doggedly. 'It has nothing to do with countries. Before we got to the Promised Land we kept the Sabbath in the wilderness.'

'Yes, and God sent a double dose of manna on the Friday. Do you mean to say He sends us here a double dose of profit?'

'He doesn't let us starve. We prospered well enough before you brought your wretched example——'

'Then my wretched example cannot lead the