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

first summon a meeting of householders.'

'What for?'

'For a general committee—and for the expenses.'

'But how can we hold a meeting? The police——'

'There's the synagogue.'

'Profane the synagogue!'

'Did not the Jews always fly to the synagogue when there was danger?'

'Yes, but to pray.'

'We will pray by pistol.'

'Guard your tongue!'

'Guard your daughters.'

'The Uppermost will guard them.'

'The Uppermost guards them through me, as He feeds them through you. For the last time I ask you, will you or will you not summon me a meeting of householders?'

'You rush like a wild horse. I thank Heaven you will not be my son-in-law.'

Tinowitz ended by demanding time to think it over. David was to call the next day.

When, after a sleepless night on the stove, he betook himself to the corn-factor's house, he found it barred and shuttered. The neighbours reported that Tinowitz had gone off on sudden business, taking his wife and daughters with him for a little jaunt.

IV

The flight of Tinowitz brought two compensations, however. David was promoted from the stove to the bedroom. For the lodger he replaced had likewise departed hurriedly, and when it transpired that the landlord had betrothed this young man to the second of the Tinowitz girls, David divined that the corn-factor had made sure of a son-in-law. His other compensation was to find in the remaining bed a strapping young Jew named Ezekiel Leven, who had come up from an outlying village for the military lottery, and who proved to be a carl after his own heart. Half the night the young heroes planned the deeds of derringdo they might do for their people. Ezekiel Leven was indeed an ideal lieutenant, for he belonged to one of the rare farming colonies, and was already handy with his gun. He had even some kinsfolk in Milovka, and by their aid the Rabbi and a few householders were hurriedly prevailed upon to assemble in the bedroom on a business declared important. Ezekiel himself must, unfortunately, be away at the drawing, but he promised to hasten back to the meeting.

Each member strolled in casually, ordered a glass of tea, and drifted upstairs. The landlord, uneasily sniffing peril and profit, and dismally apprehending pistol lessons, left the inn to his wife, and stole up likewise to the fateful bedroom. Here, after protesting fearfully that they would ruin him by this conspirative meeting, he added that he was not out of sympathy with the times, and volunteered to stand sentinel. Accordingly, he was posted at the ragged window-curtain, where, with excess of caution, he signalled whenever he saw a Christian, in uniform or no. At every signal David's oratory ceased as suddenly as if it had been turned off at the main, and the gaberdined figures, distributed over the two beds and the one chair, gripped one another nervously. But David was used to oratory under difficulties. He lived on the same terms with the police as the most desperate criminals, and a foreigner who should have witnessed the secret meetings at which tactics were discussed, arms distributed, scouts despatched, and night-watches posted, would have imagined him engaged in a rebellion instead of in an attempt to strengthen the forces of law and order.

He had come to Milovka, he explained, to warn them that the Black Hundreds were soon to be loosed upon the Jewish quarter. But no longer must the Jew go like a lamb to the shambles. Too long, when smitten, had he turned the other cheek, only to get it smitten too. They must defend themselves. He was there to form a branch of the Samooborona. Browning revolvers must be purchased. The wood-choppers must be organized as a column of axe-bearers. There would be needed also an ambulance corps, with bandages, dressings, etc.

The shudder at the first mention of the pogrom was not so violent as that which followed the mention of bandages. Each man felt warm blood trickling down his limbs. To what end, then, had he escaped the conscription? The landlord at the window wiped the cold beads off his brow, and was surprised to find his hand not scarlet.

'Brethren,' Koski the timber-merchant burst out, 'this is a Haman in disguise. To hold firearms is the surest way of provoking——'

'I don't say you shall hold firearms!' David interrupted. 'It is your young men who must defend the town. But the Kahal (congregation) must pay the expenses—say, ten thousand roubles to start with.'

'Ten thousand roubles for a few pistols!' cried Mendel the horse-dealer. 'It is a swindle.'

David flushed. 'We have to buy three pistols for every one we get safely into the town. But one revolver may save ten thousand roubles of property, not to mention your life.'

'It will end our lives, not save them!' persisted the timber-merchant. 'This is a plot to destroy us!'

A growl of assent burst from the others.

'My friends,' said David quietly. 'A plot to destroy you has already been hatched; the question is, are you going to be destroyed like rats or like men?'

'Pooh!' said the horse-dealer. 'This is not the first time we have been threatened, if not with death, at least with extra taxes; but we have always sent Shtadlonim (ambassadors). We will make a collection, and the president of the Kahal shall go at once to the Governor, and present it to him'—here Mendel winked—'to enable him to take measures against the pogrom.'

'The Governor is in the plot,' said David.

'He can be bought out,' said the timber-merchant.

'Pogroms are more profitable than presents,' rejoined David drily. 'Let us rather prepare bombs.' A fresh shudder traversed the beds and the chairs, and agitated the window-curtain.

'Bombs! Presents!' burst forth the old Rabbi. 'These are godless instruments. We are in the hands of the Holy One—blessed be He! The Shomer (Guardian) of Israel neither slumbereth nor sleepeth.'

'Neither does the Shochet (slaughterer) of Israel,' said David savagely.

'Hush! Epicurean!' came from every quarter at this grim jest; for the Shomer and the Shochet are the official twain of ritual butchery.

The landlord, seeing how the tide was turning, added, 'Brazen Marshallik (buffoon)!'

'I will appoint a day of fasting and prayer,' concluded the Rabbi solemnly.

A breath of reassurance wafted through the room. 'And I, Rabbi,' said Gütels the grocer, 'will supply the synagogue with candles to equal in length the graves of all your predecessors.'

'May thy strength increase, Gütels!' came the universal gratitude, and the landlord at the window-curtain drew a great sigh of relief.

'Still, gentlemen,' he said, 'if I may intrude my humble opinion—Reb Mendel's advice is also good. God is, of course, our only protection. But there can be no harm in getting, lehavdil (not to compare them), the Governor's protection too.'

'True, true.' And the faces grew still cheerier.

'In God's name, wake up!' David burst forth. 'In Samooborona lies your only salvation. Give the money to us, not to the Governor. We can meet and practise in your Talmud-Torah Hall!'

'The holy hall of study!' gasped the Rabbi. 'Given over to unlawful meetings!'

'The hooligans will meet there, if you don't,' said David grimly. 'Don't you see it is the safest place for us? The police associate it only with learned weaklings.'

'Hush, Haman!' said the timber-merchant, and rose to go. David's voice changed to passion; memories of things he had seen came over him as in a red mist: an old man scalped with a sharp ladle; a white-hot poker driven through a woman's eye; a baby's skull ground under a True Russian's heel. 'Bourgeois!' he thundered, 'I will save you despite yourselves.' The landlord signalled in a frenzy, but David continued recklessly, 'Will you never learn manli——'

They flung themselves upon him in a panic, and held him hand-gagged and struggling upon the bed.

Suddenly a new figure burst into the room. There was a blood-freezing instant in which all gave themselves up for lost. Their grip on David relaxed. Then the mist cleared, and they saw it was only Ezekiel Leven.

'Blessed art thou who comest!' cried David, jumping to his feet. 'You and I, Ezekiel, will save Milovka.'

'Alas!' Ezekiel groaned. 'I drew a low number—I go to fight for Russia.'

V

Fifteen thousand roubles were soon collected for the Governor, but even before they were presented to him the Rabbi, in mortal terror of that firebrand of a David, had rushed to inquire whether Self-Defence was legal, and might the Talmud-Torah Hall be legitimately used for drilling. Sharp came an order that Jews found with firearms or in conclave for non-religious purposes should be summarily shot. And so, when the Shtadlonim arrived with the fifteen thousand roubles, the Governor was able to point out severely that if a pogrom did occur they would have only themselves to blame. The Jews of Milovka had begun to carry pistols like revolutionaries; they planned illegal assemblies in halls; was it to be wondered at if the League of True Russians grew restive? However, he would do his best with these inadequate roubles to have extra precautions taken, but let them root out the evil weeds that had sprung up in their midst, else even his authority might be overborne by the righteous indignation of the loyal children of the Little Father. Tremblingly the Ambassadors crept back with their empty money-bags.

Poor David now found it impossible to get anybody to a meeting. His landlord had forbidden any more gatherings in the inn, and his original audience would have called as a deputation upon David to beg him to withdraw from the town, but that might have been considered a conspirative meeting. So one of the Ambassadors was sent to inform the landlord instead.

'Don't you think I've already ordered him off my premises?'

'But he is still here!'

'Alas! He threatens to shoot me—or anybody who massers (informs),' said the poor landlord.

The Ambassador shivered.

'As if I would betray a brother-in-Israel!' added the landlord reproachfully.

'No, no—of course not,' said the Ambassador. 'These fellows are best left alone; they wear fuses under their waistcoats instead of Tsitsith (ritual fringes). Let us hope, however, a sudden death may rid us of him.'

'Amen,' said the landlord fervently.

Not that David had any reason for clinging to so squalid a hostel. But his blood was up, and he took a malicious pleasure in inflicting his perilous presence upon his prudential host.

Reduced now to buttonholing individuals, he consoled himself with the thought that the population was best tackled by units. One fool or coward was enough to infect or betray a whole gathering.

Still intent on the sinews of war, he sallied out after breakfast, and approached Erbstein the Banker. Erbstein held up his hands. 'But I've just given a thousand roubles to guard us from a pogrom!'

'That was for the Governor. Give me only a hundred for Self-Defence.'

The Banker puffed tranquilly at his big cigar. 'But our rights are bound to come in the end. We can only get them gradually. Full rights now are nonsense—impossible. It is bad tactics to ask for what you cannot get. Only in common with Russia can our emancipation——'

'I am not talking of our rights, but of our lives.' David grew impatient.

Being a Banker, Erbstein never listened, though he invariably replied. His success in finance had made him an authority upon religion and politics.

'Trust the Octobrists,' he said cheerily.

'I'd rather trust our revolvers.'

The Banker's cigar fell from his mouth.

'An anarchist! like my nephew Simon!'

David began to realize the limitations of the financial intellect. He saw that to get ideas into Bankers' brains is even more difficult than to get cheques from their pockets. Still, there was that promising scapegrace Simon! He hurried out on his scent, and ran him to earth in a cosy house near the town gate. Simon practised law, it appeared, and his surname was Rubensky.

The young barrister, informed of his uncle's accusation of anarchism, laughed contemptuously. 'Bourgeois! Every idea that makes no money he calls anarchy. As a matter of fact, I'm the exact opposite of an anarchist: I'm a