Ghetto Comedies - Israel Zangwill (great novels of all time txt) 📗
- Author: Israel Zangwill
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'Did I not say you were from heaven?' Nehemiah's eyes shone again. 'But I do not require the papers. It is enough for me that your holy feet have stood in my homestead. I thought you might send money. But to come with your own feet! Now I shall be able to tell I have spoken with him face to face!'
Barstein was touched. 'I think you will need a larger table for the reading-room,' he said.
The tall figure shook its tall hat. 'It is only gas that I need for my operations.'
'Gas!' repeated Barstein, astonished. 'Then you propose to continue your dentistry too.'
'It is for the restaurant I need the gas,' elucidated Nehemiah. 'Unless there shall be a cheerful shining here the young men will not come. But the penny gas is all I need.'
'Well, if it costs only a penny——' began Barstein.
'A penny in the slot,' corrected Nehemiah. 'But then there is the meter and the cost of the burners.' He calculated that four pounds would convert the room into a salon of light that would attract all the homeless moths of the neighbourhood.
So this was the four-pound solution, Barstein reflected with his first sense of solid foothold. After all Nehemiah had sustained his surprise visit fairly well—he was obviously no Crœsus—and if four pounds would not only save this swarming family but radiate cheer to the whole neighbourhood—
He sprung open the sovereign-purse that hung on his watch-chain. It contained only three pounds ten. He rummaged his pockets for silver, finding only eight shillings.
'I'm afraid I haven't quite got it!' he murmured.
'As if I couldn't trust you!' cried Nehemiah reproachfully, and as he lifted his long coat-tails to trouser-pocket the money, Barstein saw that he had no waistcoat.
About six months later, when Barstein had utterly forgotten the episode, he received another letter whose phraseology instantly recalled everything.
'To the most Honourable Competent Authentical Illustrious Authority and Universal Celebrious Dignity of the very Famous Sculptor.
'3a, The Minories, E.
'Dear Sir,
'I have the honour and pleasure now to render the real and sincere gratitude of my very much obliged thanks for Your grand gracious clement sympathical propitious merciful liberal compassionable cordial nobility of your real humane generous benevolent genuine very kind magnanimous philanthropy, which afforded to me a great redemption of my very lamentable desperate necessitous need, wherein I am at present very poor indeed in my total ruination by the cruel cynical Russia, therein is every day a daily tyrannous massacre and assassinate, here is nothing to do any more for me previously, I shall rather go to Bursia than to Russia. I received from Your dear kind amiable amicable goodness recently £4 the same was for me a momental recreateing aid in my actual very indigent paltry miserable calamitous situation wherein I gain now nothing and I only perish here. Even I cannot earn here my daily bread by my perfect scientifick Knowledge of diverse languages, I know the philological neology and archaiology, the best way is for me to go to another country to wit, to Bursia or Turkey. Thus, I solicit and supplicate Your charitable generosity by my very humble and instant request to make me go away from here as soon as possible according to Your humane kind merciful clemency.
'Your obedient Servant respectfully,
'Nehemiah Silvermann,
'Dentist and Professor of Languages.'
So an Academy of Languages had evolved from the gas, not a restaurant. Anyhow the dictionary was in distress again. Emigration appeared now the only salvation.
But where in the world was Bursia? Possibly Persia was meant. But why Persia? Wherein lay the attraction of that exotic land, and whatever would Mrs. Silvermann and her overflowing progeny do in Persia? Nehemiah's original suggestion of Jerusalem had been much more intelligible. Perhaps it persisted still under the head of Turkey. Not least characteristic Barstein found Nehemiah's tenacious gloating over his ancient ruin at the hands of Russia.
For some days the sculptor went about weighed down by Nehemiah's misfortunes, and the necessity of finding time to journey to the Minories. But he had an absorbing piece of work, and before he could tear himself away from it a still more urgent shower of words fell upon him.
'3a, The Minories, E.
'I have the honour now,' the new letter ran, 'to inquire about my decided and expecting departure. I must sue by my quite humble and very instant entreaty Your noble genteel cordial humanity in my very hard troublous and bitter and sour vexations and tribulations to effect for my poor position at least a private anonymous prompt collection as soon as possible according to Your clement magnanimous charitable mercy of £15 if not £25 among Your very estimable and respectfully good friends, in good order to go in another country even Bursia to get my livelihood by my dental practice or by my other scientifick and philological knowledge. The great competition is here in anything very vigorous. I have here no dental employment, no dental practice, no relations, no relief, no gain, no earning, no introduction, no protection, no recommendation, no money, no good friends, no good connecting acquaintance, in Russia I am ruined and I perish here, I am already desperate and despond entirely. I do not know what to do and what shall I do, do now in my actual urgent, extreme immense need. I am told by good many people, that the board of guardians is very seldom to rescue by aid the people, but very often is to find only faults, and vices and to make them guilty. I have nothing to do there, and in the russian jewish fund I found once Sir Asher Aaronsberg and he is not to me sympathical. I supply and solicit considerably Your kind humane clement mercy to answer me as soon as possible quick according to Your very gracious mercy.
'Your obedient Servant respectfully,
'Nehemiah Silvermann,
'Dentist and Professor of Languages.'
As soon as the light failed in his studio, Barstein summoned a hansom and sped to the Minories.
Nehemiah's voice bade him walk in, and turning the door-handle he saw the top-hatted figure sprawled in solitary gloom along a caneless chair, reading a newspaper by the twinkle of a rushlight. Nehemiah sprang up with a bark of joy, making his gigantic shadow bow to the visitor. From chimney-pot to coat-tail he stretched unchanged, and the same celestial rapture illumined his gaunt visage.
But Barstein drew back his own coat-tail from the attempted kiss.
'Where is the gas?' he asked drily.
'Alas, the company removed the meter.'
'But the gas-brackets?'
'What else had we to eat?' said Nehemiah simply.
Barstein in sudden suspicion raised his eyes to the ceiling. But a fragment of gaspipe certainly came through it. He could not, however, recall whether the pipe had been there before or not.
'So the young men would not come?' he said.
'Oh yes, they came, and they read, and they ate. Only they did not pay.'
'You should have made it a rule—cash down.'
Again a fine shade of rebuke and astonishment crossed his lean and melancholy visage.
'And could I oppress a brother-in-Israel? Where had those young men to turn but to me?'
Again Barstein felt his angelic reputation imperilled. He hastened to change the conversation.
'And why do you want to go to Bursia?' he said.
'Why shall I want to go to Bursia?' Nehemiah replied.
'You said so.' Barstein showed him the letter.
'Ah, I said I shall sooner go to Bursia than to Russia. Always Sir Asher Aaronsberg speaks of sending us back to Russia.'
'He would,' said Barstein grimly. 'But where is Bursia?'
Nehemiah shrugged his shoulders. 'Shall I know? My little Rebeccah was drawing a map thereof; she won a prize of five pounds with which we lived two months. A genial child is my Rebeccah.'
'Ah, then, the Almighty did send you something.'
'And do I not trust Him?' said Nehemiah fervently. 'Otherwise, burdened down as I am with a multitude of children——'
'You made your own burden,' Barstein could not help pointing out.
Again that look of pain, as if Nehemiah had caught sight of feet of clay beneath Barstein's shining boots.
'"Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,"' Nehemiah quoted in Hebrew. 'Is not that the very first commandment in the Bible?'
'Well, then, you want to go to Turkey,' said the sculptor evasively. 'I suppose you mean Palestine?'
'No, Turkey. It is to Turkey we Zionists should ought to go, there to work for Palestine. Are not many of the Sultan's own officials Jews? If we can make of them hot-hearted Zionists——'
It was an arresting conception, and Barstein found himself sitting on the table to discuss it. The reverence with which Nehemiah listened to his views was touching and disconcerting. Barstein felt humbled by the celestial figure he cut in Nehemiah's mental mirror. Yet he could not suspect the man of a glozing tongue, for of the leaders of Zionism Nehemiah spoke with, if possible, greater veneration, with an awe trembling on tears. His elongated figure grew even gaunter, his lean visage unearthlier, as he unfolded his plan for the conquest of Palestine, and Barstein's original impression of his simple sincerity was repeated and re-enforced.
Presently, however, it occurred to Barstein that Nehemiah himself would have scant opportunity of influential contact with Ottoman officials, and that the real question at issue was, how Nehemiah, his wife, and his 'at least eleven children,' were to be supported in Turkey. He mentioned the point.
Nehemiah waved it away. 'And cannot the Almighty support us in Turkey as well as in England?' he asked. 'Yes, even in Bursia itself the Guardian of Israel is not sleepy.'
It was then that the word 'Luftmensch' flew into Barstein's mind. Nehemiah was not an earth-man in gross contact with solidities. He was an air-man, floating on facile wings through the æther. True, he spoke of troublesome tribulations, but these were mainly dictionary distresses, felt most keenly in the rhapsody of literary composition. At worst they were mere clouds on the blue. They had nothing in common with the fogs which frequently veiled heaven from his own vision. Never for a moment had Nehemiah failed to remember the blue, never had he lost his radiant outlook. His very pessimism was merely optimism in disguise, since it was only a personal pessimism to be remedied by 'a few frivolous pounds,' by a new crumb from the hand of Providence, not that impersonal despair of the scheme of things which gave the thinker such black moments. How had Nehemiah lived during those first ten years in England? Who should say? But he had had the wild daring to uproot himself from his childhood's home and adventure himself upon an unknown shore, and there, by hook or crook, for better or for worse, through vicissitudes innumerable and crises beyond calculation, ever on the perilous verge of nothingness, he had scraped through the days and the weeks and the years, fearlessly contributing perhaps more important items to posterity than the dead stones, which were all he, the sculptor, bade fair to leave behind him. Welcoming each new child with feasting and psalmody, never for a moment had Nehemiah lost his robustious faith in life, his belief in God, man, or himself.
Yes, even deeper than his own self-respect was his respect for others. An impenetrable idealist, he lived surrounded by a radiant humanity, by men become as Gods. With no conscious hyperbole did he address one as 'Angel.' Intellect and goodness were his pole-stars. And what airy courage in his mundane affairs, what invincible resilience! He had once been a dentist, and he still considered himself one. Before he owned a tablecloth he deemed himself the proprietor of a restaurant. He enjoyed alike the pleasures of anticipation and of memory, and having nothing, glided ever buoyantly between two gilded horizons. The superficial
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