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

with the luck of the rich he won heavily in the pools. It was not till the penultimate night of the voyage that Rozenoffski caught his second glimpse of his red-haired muse. He had started his nocturnal pacing much earlier than usual, for the inevitable concert on behalf of marine charities had sucked the loungers from their steamer-chairs. He had himself, of course, been approached by the programme-organizer, a bouncing actress from 'Frisco, with an irresistible air, but he had defeated her hopelessly with the mysterious sarcasm: 'To meet the Bright Lights?' And his reward was to have the deck and the heavens almost to himself, and presently to find the stars outgleamed by a girl's hair. Yes, there she was, gazing pensively forth from the cabin window. He guessed the mistress was out for once—presumably at the concert. His heart beat faster as he came to a standstill, yet the reminder that she was a lady's maid brought an involuntary note of condescension into his voice.

'I hope Mrs. Wilhammer hasn't been keeping you too imprisoned?' he said.

She smiled faintly. 'Not so close as Neptune has kept her.'

'Ill?' he said, with a shade of malicious satisfaction.

'It is curious and even consoling to see the limitations of Crœsus,' she replied. 'But she is lucky—she just recovered in time.'

'In time for what?'

'Can't you hear?'

Indeed, the shrill notes of an amateur soprano had been rending the air throughout, but they had scarcely penetrated through his exaltation. He now shuddered.

'Do you mean it is she singing?'

The girl laughed outright. 'She sing! No, no, she is a sensitive receiver. She receives; she gives out nothing. She exploits her soul as her husband exploits the globe. There isn't a sensation or an emotion she denies herself—unless it is painful. It was to escape the concert that she has left her couch—and sought refuge in a friend's cabin. You see, here sound travels straight from the dining-hall, and a false note, she says, gives her nerve-ache.'

'Then she can't return till the close of the concert,' he said eagerly. 'Won't you come outside and walk a bit under this beautiful moon?'

She came out without a word, with the simplicity of a comrade.

'Yes, it is a beautiful night,' she said, 'and very soon I shall be in Russia.'

'But is Mrs. Wilhammer going to Russia, then?' he asked, with a sudden thought, wondering that it had never occurred to him before.

'Of course not! I only joined her for this voyage. I have to work my passage, you see, and Providence, on the eve of sailing, robbed Mrs. Wilhammer of her maid.'

'Oh!' he murmured in relief. His red-haired muse was going back to her social pedestal. 'But you must have found it humiliating,' he said.

'Humiliating?' She laughed cheerfully. 'Why more than manicuring her?'

The muse shivered again on the pedestal.

'Manicuring?' he echoed in dismay.

'Sure!' she laughed in American. 'When, after a course of starvation and medicine at Berne University, I found I had to get a new degree for America....'

'You are a doctor?' he interrupted.

'And, therefore, peculiarly serviceable as a ship-maid.'

She smiled again, and her smile in the moonlight reminded him of a rippling passage of Chopin. Prosaic enough, however, was what she went on to tell him of her struggle for life by day and for learning by night. 'Of course, I could only attend the night medical school. I lived by lining cloaks with fur; my bed was the corner of a room inhabited by a whole family. A would-be graduate could not be seen with bundles; for fetching and carrying the work my good landlady extorted twenty cents to the dollar. When the fur season was slack I cooked in a restaurant, worked a typewriter, became a "hello girl"—at a telephone, you know—reported murder cases—anything, everything.'

'Manicuring,' he recalled tenderly.

'Manicuring,' she repeated smilingly. 'And you ask me if it is humiliating to wait upon an artistic sea-sick lady!'

'Artistic!' he sneered. His heart was full of pity and indignation.

'As surely as sea-sick!' she rejoined laughingly. 'Why are you prejudiced against her?'

He flushed. 'Prej-prejudiced?' he stammered. 'Why should I be prejudiced? From all I hear it's she that's prejudiced. It's a wonder she took a Jewess into her service.'

'Where's the wonder? Don't the Southerners have negro servants?' she asked quietly.

His flush deepened. 'You compare Jews to negroes!'

'I apologize to the negroes. The blacks have at least Liberia. There is a black President, a black Parliament. We have nothing, nothing!'

'We!' Again that ambiguous plural. But he still instinctively evaded co-classification.

'Nothing?' he retorted. 'I should have said everything. Every gift of genius that Nature can shower from her cornucopia.'

'Jewish geniuses!' Her voice had a stinging inflection. 'Don't talk to me of our geniuses; it is they that have betrayed us. Every other people has its great men; but our great men—they belong to every other people. The world absorbs our sap, and damns us for our putrid remains. Our best must pipe alien tunes and dance to the measures of the heathen. They build and paint; they write and legislate. But never a song of Israel do they fashion, nor a picture of Israel, nor a law of Israel, nor a temple of Israel. Bah! What are they but hirelings?'

Again the passion of her patriotism uplifted and enkindled him. Yes, it was true. He, too, was but a hireling. But he would become a Master; he would go back—back to the Ghetto, and this noble Jewess should be his mate. Thank God he had kept himself free for her. But ere he could pour out his soul, the bouncing San Franciscan actress appeared suddenly at his elbow, risking a last desperate assault, discharging a pathetic tale of a comedian with a cold. Rozenoffski repelled the attack savagely, but before he could exhaust the enemy's volubility his red-haired companion had given him a friendly nod and smile, and retreated into her shrine of duty.

V

He spent a sleepless but happy night, planning out their future together; her redemption from her hireling status, their joint work for their people. He was no longer afraid of the sea. He was afraid of nothing—not even of the pogroms that awaited them in Russia. Russia itself became dear to him again—the beautiful land of his boyhood, whose birds and whispering leaves and waters had made his earliest music.

But dearer than all resurged his Jewish memories. When he went almost mechanically to the piano on the last afternoon, all these slumbering forces wakened in him found vent in a rhapsody of synagogue melody to which he abandoned himself, for once forgetting his audience. When gradually he became aware of the incongruity, it did but intensify his inspiration. Let the heathen rats wallow in Hebrew music! But soon all self-consciousness passed away again, drowned in his deeper self.

It was a strange fantasia that poured itself through his obedient fingers; it held the wistful chants of ancient ritual, the festival roulades and plaintive yearnings of melodious cantors, the sing-song augmentation of Talmud-students oscillating in airless study-houses, the long, melancholy drone of Psalm-singers in darkening Sabbath twilights, the rustle of palm-branches and sobbings of penitence, the long-drawn notes of the ram's horn pealing through the Terrible Days, the passionate proclamation of the Unity, storming the gates of heaven. And fused with these merely physical memories, there flowed into the music the peace of Sabbath evenings and shining candles, the love and wonder of childhood's faith, the fantasy of Rabbinic legend, the weirdness of penitential prayers in raw winter dawns, the holy joy of the promised Zion, when God would wipe away the tears from all faces.

There were tears to be wiped from his own face when he ended, and he wiped them brazenly, unresentful of the frenzied approval of the audience, which now let itself go, out of stored-up gratitude, and because this must be the last performance. All his vanity, his artistic posing, was swallowed up in utter sincerity. He did not shut the piano; he sat brooding a moment or two in tender reverie. Suddenly he perceived his red-haired muse at his side. Ah, she had discovered him at last, knew him simultaneously for the genius and the patriot, was come to pour out her soul at his feet. But why was she mute? Why was she tendering this scented letter? Was it because she could not trust herself to speak before the crowd? He tore open the delicate envelope. Himmel! what was this? Would the maestro honour Mrs. Wilhammer by taking tea in her cabin?

He stared dazedly at the girl, who remained respectful and silent.

'Did you not hear what I was playing?' he murmured.

'Oh yes—a synagogue medley,' she replied quietly. 'They publish it on the East Side, nicht wahr?'

'East Side?' He was outraged. 'I know nothing of East Side.' Her absolute unconsciousness of his spiritual tumult, her stolidity before this spectacle of his triumphant genius, her matter-of-fact acceptance of his racial affinity, her refusal to be impressed by the heroism of a Hebrew pianoforte solo, all she said and did not say, jarred upon his quivering nerves, chilled his high emotion. 'Will you say I shall have much pleasure?' he added coldly.

The red-haired maid nodded and was gone. Rozenoffski went mechanically to his cabin, scarcely seeing the worshippers he plodded through; presently he became aware that he was changing his linen, brushing his best frock-coat, thrilling with pleasurable excitement.

Anon he was tapping at the well-known door. A voice—of another sweetness—cried 'Come!' and instantly he had the sensation that his touch on the handle had launched upon him, as by some elaborate electric contrivance, a tall and beautiful American, a rustling tea-gown, a shimmer of rings, a reek of patchouli, and a flood of compliment.

'So delightful of you to come—I know you men of genius are farouches—it was awfully insolent of me, I know, but you have forgiven me, haven't you?'

'The pleasure is mine, gracious lady,' he murmured in German.

'Ach, so you are a German,' she replied in the same tongue. 'I thought no American or Englishman could have so much divine fire. You see, mein Herr, I do not even know your name—only your genius. Every afternoon I have lain here, lapped in your music, but I might never have had the courage to thank you had you not played that marvellous thing just now—such delicious heartbreak, such adorable gaiety, and now and then the thunder of the gods! I'm afraid you'll think me very ignorant—it wasn't Grieg, was it?'

He looked uncomfortable. 'Nothing so good, I fear—a mere impromptu of my own.'

'Your own!' She clapped her jewelled hands in girlish delight. 'Oh, where can I get it?'

'East Side,' some mocking demon tried to reply; but he crushed her down, and replied uneasily: 'You can't get it. It just came to me this afternoon. It came—and it has gone.'

'What a pity!' But she was visibly impressed by this fecundity and riotous extravagance of genius. 'I do hope you will try to remember it.'

'Impossible—it was just a mood.'

'And to think of all the other moods I seem to have missed! Why have I not heard you in America?'

He grew red. 'I—I haven't been playing there,' he murmured. 'You see, I'm not much known outside a few European circles.' Then, summoning up all his courage, he threw down his name 'Rozenoffski' like a bomb, and the red of his cheeks changed to the pallor of apprehension. But no explosion followed, save of enthusiasm. Evidently, the episode so lurid to his own memory, had left no impress on hers.

'Oh, but America must know you, Herr Rozenoffski. You must promise me to come back in the fall, give me the glory of launching you.' And, seeing the cloud on his face, she cried: 'You must, you must, you must!' clapping her hands at each 'must.'

He hesitated, distracted between rapture and anxiety lest she should remember.

'You have never heard of me, of