Ghetto Comedies by Israel Zangwill (the gingerbread man read aloud .txt) 📖

seaport, to whose reverence or disesteem she still instinctively referred all her triumphs and failures.

Yet, on the other hand, surged her hero-son's scorn at the union by contract consecrated by the generations! But surely a compromise could be found. He should have love—this strange English thing—but could he not find a Jewess? Ah, happy inspiration! he should marry a quite poor Jewess—he had money enough, thank Heaven! That would show him he was not making a match, that he was truly in love.

But this strange girl at Harrow—he would never be happy with her! No, no; there were limits to Anglicization.

XI

It was not till she was seated in the ancient synagogue, relieved from the squeeze of entry in the wake of soldiers and the exhilaration of hearing 'See the Conquering Hero comes' pealing, she knew not whence, that she woke to the full strangeness of it all, and to the consciousness that she was actually sitting among the men—just as in St. Paul's. And what men! Everywhere the scarlet and grey of uniforms, the glister of gold lace—the familiar decorous lines of devout top-hats broken by glittering helmets, bear-skins, white nodding plumes, busbies, red caps a-cock, glengarries, all the colour of the British army, mixed with the feathered jauntiness of the Colonies and the khaki sombreros of the C.I.V.'s! Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards, Dragoon Guards, Lancers, Hussars, Artillery, Engineers, King's Royal Rifles, all the corps that had for the first time come clearly into her consciousness in her tardy absorption into English realities, Jews seemed to be among them all. And without conscription—oh, what would poor Solomon have thought of that?

The Great Synagogue itself struck a note of modern English gaiety, as of an hotel dining-room, freshly gilded, divested of its historic mellowness, the electric light replacing the ancient candles and flooding the winter afternoon with white resplendence. The pulpit—yes, the pulpit—was swathed in the Union Jack; and looking towards the box of the Parnass and Gabbai, she saw it was occupied by officers with gold sashes. Somebody whispered that he with the medalled breast was a Christian Knight and Commander of the Bath—'a great honour for the synagogue!' What! were Christians coming to Jewish services, even as she had gone to Christian? Why, here was actually a white cross on an officer's sleeve.

And before these alien eyes, the cantor, intoning his Hebrew chant on the steps of the Ark, lit the great many-branched Chanukah candlestick. Truly, the world was changing under her eyes.

And when the Chief Rabbi went toward the Ark in his turn, she saw that he wore a strange scarlet and white gown (military, too, she imagined in her ignorance), and—oh, even rarer sight!—he was followed by a helmeted soldier, who drew the curtain revealing the ornate Scrolls of the Law.

And amid it all a sound broke forth that sent a sweetness through her blood. An organ! An organ in the Synagogue! Ah! here indeed was Anglicization.

It was thin and reedy even to her ears, compared with that divine resonance in St. Paul's: a tinkling apology, timidly disconnected from the congregational singing, and hovering meekly on the borders of the service—she read afterwards that it was only a harmonium—yet it brought a strange exaltation, and there was an uplifting even to tears in the glittering uniforms and nodding plumes. Simon's eyes met his mother's, and a flash of the old childish love passed between them.

There was a sermon—the text taken with dual appropriateness from the Book of Maccabees. Fully one in ten of the Jewish volunteers, said the preacher, had gone forth to drive out the bold invader of the Queen's dominions. Their beloved country had no more devoted citizens than the children of Israel who had settled under her flag. They had been gratified, but not surprised, to see in the Jewish press the names of more than seven hundred Jews serving Queen and country. Many more had gone unrecorded, so that they had proportionally contributed more soldiers—from Colonel to bugler-boy—than their mere numbers would warrant. So at one in spirit and ideals were the Englishman and the Jew whose Scriptures he had imbibed, that it was no accident that the Anglophobes of Europe were also Anti-Semites.

And then the congregation rose, while the preacher behind the folds of the Union Jack read out the names of the Jews who had died for England in the far-off veldt. Every head was bent as the names rose on the hushed air of the synagogue. It went on and on, this list, reeking with each bloody historic field, recalling every regiment, British or colonial; on and on in the reverent silence, till a black pall seemed to descend, inch by inch, overspreading the synagogue. She had never dreamed so many of her brethren had died out there. Ah! surely they were knit now, these races: their friendship sealed in blood!

As the soldiers filed out of synagogue, she squeezed towards Simon and seized his hand for an instant, whispering passionately: 'My lamb, marry her—we are all English alike.'

Nor did she ever know that she had said these words in Yiddish!

XII

Now came an enchanting season of confidences; the mother, caught up in the glow of this strange love, learning to see the girl through the boy's eyes, though the only aid to his eloquence was the photograph of a plump little blonde with bewitching dimples. The time was not ripe yet for bringing Lucy and her together, he explained. In fact, he hadn't actually proposed. His mother understood he was waiting for the year of mourning to be up.

'But how will you be married?' she once asked.

'Oh, there's the registrar,' he said carelessly.

'But can't you make her a proselyte?' she ventured timidly.

He coloured. 'It would be absurd to suddenly start talking religion to her.'

'But she knows you're a Jew.'

'Oh, I dare say. I never hid it from her brother, so why shouldn't she know? But her father's a bit of a crank, so I rather avoid the subject.'

'A crank? About Jews?'

'Well, old Winstay has got it into his noddle that the Jews are responsible for the war—and that they leave the fighting to the English. It's rather sickening: even in South Africa we are not treated as we should be, considering——'

Her dark eye lost its pathetic humility. 'But how can he say that, when you yourself—when you saved his——'

'Well, I suppose just because he knows I was fighting, he doesn't think of me as a Jew. It's a bit illogical, I know.' And he smiled ruefully. 'But, then, logic is not the old boy's strong point.'

'He seemed such a nice old man,' said Mrs. Cohn, as she recalled the photograph of the white-haired cherub writing with a quill at a property desk.

'Oh, off his hobby-horse he's a dear old boy. That's why I don't help him into the saddle.'

'But how can he be ignorant that we've sent seven hundred at least to the war?' she persisted. 'Why, the paper had all their photographs!'

'What paper?' said Simon, laughing. 'Do you suppose he reads the Jewish what's-a-name, like you? Why, he's never heard of it!'

'Then you ought to show him a copy.'

'Oh, mother!' and he laughed again. 'That would only prove to him there are too many Jews everywhere.'

A cloud began to spread over Mrs. Cohn's hard-won content. But apparently it only shadowed her own horizon. Simon was as happily full of his Lucy as ever.

Nevertheless, there came a Sunday evening when Simon returned from Harrow earlier than his wont, and Hannah's dog-like eye noted that the cloud had at last reached his brow.

'You have had a quarrel?' she cried.

'Only with the old boy.'

'But what about?'

'The old driveller has just joined some League of Londoners for the suppression of the immigrant alien.'

'But you should have told him we all agree there should be decentralization,' said Mrs. Cohn, quoting her favourite Jewish organ.

'It isn't that—it's the old fellow's vanity that's hurt. You see, he composed the "Appeal to the Briton," and gloated over it so conceitedly that I couldn't help pointing out the horrible contradictions.'

'But Lucy——' his mother began anxiously.

'Lucy's a brick. I don't know what my life would have been without the little darling. But listen, mother.' And he drew out a portentous prospectus. 'They say aliens should not be admitted unless they produce a certificate of industrial capacity, and in the same breath they accuse them of taking the work away from the British workman. Now this isn't a Jewish question, and I didn't raise it as such—just a piece of muddle—and even as an Englishman I can't see how we can exclude Outlanders here after fighting for the Outland——'

'But Lucy——' his mother interrupted.

His vehement self-assertion passed into an affectionate smile.

'Lucy was dimpling all over her face. She knows the old boy's vanity. Of course she couldn't side with me openly.'

'But what will happen? Will you go there again?'

The cloud returned to his brow. 'Oh, well, we'll see.'

A letter from Lucy saved him the trouble of deciding the point.