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

'Ah, at last he sees my Fanny was an angel,' said Natalya, neglecting to draw the deduction anent America, and passing over the other angel. And she embroidered the theme. How indeed could a man who had known the blessing of a sober, God-fearing wife endure a drunkard and a child-beater? 'No wonder he killed himself!'

The gossips pointed out that the saying implied flight rather than suicide.

'You are right!' Natalya admitted illogically. 'Just what a coward and blackguard like that would do—leave the children at the mercy of the woman he couldn't face himself. How in Heaven's name will they live?'

'Oh, her father, the furrier, will have to look after them,' the gossips assured her. 'He gave her good money, you know, fifty pounds and the bedding. Ah, trust Elkman for that. He knew he wasn't leaving the children to starve.'

'I don't know so much,' said the old woman, shaking her bewigged head.

What was to be done? Suppose the furrier refused the burden. But Henry's flight, she felt, had removed her even farther from the Elkman household. If she went to spy out the land, she would now have to face the virago in possession. But no! on second thoughts it was this other woman whom Henry's flight had changed to a stranger. What had the wretch to do with the children? She was a mere intruder in the house. Out with her, or at least out with the children.

Yes, she would go boldly there and demand them. 'Poor Becky! Poor Joseph!' her heart wailed. 'You to be beaten and neglected after having known the love of a mother.' True, it would not be easy to support them. But a little more haggling, a little more tramping, a little more mending, and a little less gorging and gormandising! They would be at school during the day, so would not interfere with her rounds, and in the evening she could have them with her as she sat refurbishing the purchases of the day. Ah, what a blessed release from the burden of loneliness, heavier than the heaviest sack! It was well worth the price. And then at bedtime she would say the Hebrew night-prayer with them and tuck them up, just as she had once done with her Fanny.

But how if the woman refused to yield them up—as Natalya could fancy her refusing—out of sheer temper and devilry? What if, amply subsidized by her well-to-do parent, she wished to keep the little ones by her and revenge upon them their father's desertion, or hold them hostages for his return? Why, then, Natalya would use cunning—ay, and force, too—she would even kidnap them. Once in their grandmother's hands, the law would see to it that they did not go back to this stranger, this bibulous brute, whose rights over them were nil.

It was while buying up on a Sunday afternoon the sloughed vestments of a Jewish family in Holloway that her resolve came to a head. A cab would be necessary to carry her goods to her distant garret. What an opportunity for carrying off the children at the same time! The house was actually on her homeward route. The economy of it tickled her, made her overestimate the chances of capture. As she packed the motley, far-spreading heap into the symmetry of her sack, pressing and squeezing the clothes incredibly tighter and tighter till it seemed a magic sack that could swallow up even the Holloway Clothing Emporium, Natalya's brain revolved feverish fancy-pictures of the coming adventure.

Leaving the bag in the basement passage, she ran to fetch a cab. Usually the hiring of the vehicle occupied Natalya half an hour. She would harangue the Christian cabmen on the rank, pleading her poverty, and begging to be conveyed with her goods for a ridiculous sum. At first none of them would take notice of the old Jewish crone, but would read their papers in contemptuous indifference. But gradually, as they remained idly on the rank, the endless stream of persuasion would begin to percolate, and at last one would relent, half out of pity, and would end by bearing the sack gratuitously on his shoulder from the house to his cab. Often there were two sacks, quite filling the interior of a four-wheeler, and then Natalya would ride triumphantly beside her cabby on the box, the two already the best of friends. Things went ill if Natalya did not end by trading off something in the sacks against the fare—at a new profit.

But to-day she was too excited to strike more than a mediocre bargain. The cumbrous sack was hoisted into the cab. Natalya sprang in beside it, and in a resolute voice bade the driver draw up for a moment at the Elkman home.

The unwonted phenomenon of a cab brought Becky to the door ere her grandmother could jump out. She was still under ten, but prematurely developed in body as in mind. There was something unintentionally insolent in her precocity, in her habitual treatment of adults as equals; but now her face changed almost to a child's, and with a glad tearful cry of 'Oh, grandmother!' she sprang into the old woman's arms.

It was the compensation for little Joseph's 'mamma.' Tears ran down the old woman's cheeks as she hugged the strayed lamb to her breast.

A petulant infantile wail came from within, but neither noted it.

'Where is your step-mother, my poor angel?' Natalya asked in a half whisper.

Becky's forehead gloomed in an ugly frown. Her face became a woman's again. 'One o'clock the public-houses open on Sundays,' she snorted.

'Oh, my God!' cried Natalya, forgetting that the circumstance was favouring her project. 'A Jewish woman! You don't mean to say that she drinks in public-houses?'

'You don't suppose I would let her drink here,' said Becky. 'We have nice scenes, I can tell you. The only consolation is she's better-tempered when she's quite drunk.'

The infant's wail rang out more clamorously.

'Hush, you little beast!' Becky ejaculated, but she moved mechanically within, and her grandmother followed her.

All the ancient grandeur of the sitting-room seemed overclouded with shabbiness and untidiness. To Natalya everything looked and smelt like the things in her bag. And there in a stuffy cradle a baby wrinkled its red face with shrieking.

Becky had bent over it, and was soothing it ere its existence penetrated at all to the old woman's preoccupied brain. Its pipings had been like an unheeded wail of wind round some centre of tragic experience. Even when she realized the child's existence her brain groped for some seconds in search of its identity.

Ah, the baby whose birth had cost that painted poppet's life! So it still lived and howled in unwelcome reminder and perpetuation of that brief but shameful episode. 'Grow dumb like your mother,' she murmured resentfully. What a bequest of misery Henry Elkman had left behind him! Ah, how right she had been to suspect him from the very first!

'But where is my little Joseph?' she said aloud.

'He's playing somewhere in the street.'

'Ach, mein Gott! Playing, when he ought to be weeping like this child of shame. Go and fetch him at once!'

'What do you want him for?'

'I am going to take you both away—out of this misery. You'd like to come and live with me—eh, my lamb?'

'Rather—anything's better than this.'

Natalya caught her to her breast again.

'Go and fetch my Joseph! But quick, quick, before the public-house woman comes back!'

Becky flew out, and Natalya sank into a chair, breathless with emotion and fatigue. The baby in the cradle beside her howled more vigorously, and automatically her foot sought the rocker, and she heard herself singing: