RUTH'S BURIAL
The people of Tetuan were not melted towards Israel by the depth of his
sorrow and the breadth of shadow that lay upon him. By noon of the day
following the night of Ruth's death, Israel knew that he was to be left
alone. It was a rule of the Mellah that on notice being given of a death
in their quarter, the clerk of the synagogue should publish it at the
first service thereafter, in order that a body of men, called the Hebra
Kadisha of Kabranim, the Holy Society of Buriers, might straightway make
arrangements for burial. Early prayers had been held in the synagogue
at eight o'clock that morning, and no one had yet come near to Israel's
house. The men of the Hebra were going about their ordinary occupations.
They knew nothing of Ruth's death by official announcement. The clerk
had not published it. Israel remembered with bitterness that notice
of it had not been sent. Nevertheless, the fact was known throughout
Tetuan. There was not a water-carrier in the market-place but had taken
it to each house he called at, and passed it to every man he met. Little
groups of idle Jewish women had been many hours congregated in the
streets outside, talking of it in whispers and looking up at the
darkened windows with awe. But the synagogue knew nothing of it.
Israel had omitted the customary ceremony, and in that omission lay the
advantage of his enemies. He must humble himself and send to them. Until
he did so they would leave him alone.
Israel did not send. Never once since the birth of Naomi had he crossed
the threshold of the synagogue. He would not cross it now, whether in
body or in spirit. But he was still a Jew, with Jewish customs, if he
had lost the Jewish faith, and it was one of the customs of the Jews
that a body should be buried within twenty-four hours, at farthest, from
the time of death. He must do something immediately. Some help must be
summoned. What help could it be?
It was useless to think of the Muslimeen. No believer would lend a hand
to dig a grave for an unbeliever, or to make apparel for his dead. It
was just as idle to think of the Jews. If the synagogue knew nothing of
this burial, no Jew in the Mellah would be found so poor that he would
have need to know more. And of Christians of any sort or condition there
were none in all Tetuan.
The gall of Israel's heart rose to his throat. Was he to be left alone
with his dead wife? Did his enemies wish to see him howk out her grave
with his own hands? Or did they expect him to come to them with bowed
forehead and bended knee? Either way their reckoning was a mistake.
They might leave him terribly and awfully alone--alone in his hour of
mourning even as they had left him alone in his hour of rejoicing, when
he had married the dear soul who was dead. But his strength and energy
they should not crush: his vital and intellectual force they should
not wither away. Only one thing they could do to touch him--they could
shrivel up his last impulse of sweet human sympathy. They were doing it
now.
When Israel had put matters to himself so, he despatched a message
to the Governor at the Kasbah, and received, in answer, six State
prisoners, fettered in pairs, under the guard of two soldiers.
The burial took place within the limit of twenty-four hours prescribed
by Jewish custom. It was twilight when the body was brought down from
the upper room to the patio. There stood the coffin on a trestle that
had been raised for it on chairs standing back to back. And there, too,
sat Israel, with Naomi and little black Ali beside him.
Israel's manner was composed; his face was as firm as a rock, and
his dress was more costly than Tetuan had ever seen him wear before.
Everything that related to the burial he had managed himself, down to
the least or poorest detail. But there was nothing poor about it in
the larger sense. Israel was a rich man now, and he set no value on his
riches except to subdue the fate that had first beaten him down and to
abash the enemies who still menaced him. Nothing was lacking that money
could buy in Tetuan to make this burial an imposing ceremony. Only one
thing it wanted--it wanted mourners, and it had but one.
Unlike her father, little Naomi was visibly excited. She ran to and fro,
clutched at Israel's clothes and seemed to look into his face, clasped
the hand of little Ali and held it long as if in fear. Whether she knew
what work was afoot, and, if she knew it, by what channel of soul or
sense she learnt it, no man can say. That she was conscious of the
presence of many strangers is certain, and when the men from the Kasbah
brought the roll of white linen down the stairway, with the two black
women clinging to it, kissing its fringe and wailing over it, she broke
away from Israel and rushed in among them with a startled cry, and her
little white arms upraised. But whatever her impulse, there was no need
to check her. The moment she had touched her mother she crept back in
dread to her father's side.
“God be gracious to my father, look at that,” whispered Fatimah.
“My child, my poor child,” said Israel, “is there but one thing in life
that speaks to you? And is that death? Oh, little one, little one!”
It was a strange procession which then passed out of the patio. Four of
the prisoners carried the coffin on their shoulders, walking in pairs
according to their fetters. They were gaunt and bony creatures. Hunger
had wasted their sallow cheeks, and the air of noisome dungeons had
sunken their rheumy eyes. Their clothes were soiled rags, and over them,
and concealing them down to their waists and yet lower, hung the deep,
rich, velvet pall, with its long silk fringes. In front walked the two
remaining prisoners, each bearing a great plume in his left hand--the
right arm, as well as the right leg, being chained. On either side was a
soldier, carrying a lighted lantern, which burnt small and feeble in the
twilight, and last of all came Israel himself, unsupported and alone.
Thus they passed through the little crowd of idlers that had congregated
at the door, through the streets of the Mellah and out into the
marketplace, and up the narrow lane that leads to the chief town gate.
There is something in the very nature of power that demands homage, and
the people of Tetuan could not deny it to Israel. As the procession went
through the town they cleared a way for it, and they were silent until
it had gone. Within the gate of the Mellah, a shocket was killing fowls
and taking his tribute of copper coins, but he stopped his work and fell
back as the procession approached. A blind beggar crouching at the other
side of the gate was reciting passages of the Koran, and two Arabs close
at his elbow were wrangling over a game at draughts which they were
playing by the light of a flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the
procession passed under the arch. In the market-place a Soosi juggler
was performing before a throng of laughing people, and a story-teller
was shrieking to the twang of his ginbri; but the audience of the
juggler broke up as the procession appeared, and the ginbri of the
storyteller was no more heard. The hammering in the shops of
the gunsmiths was stopped, and the tinkling of the bells of the
water-carriers was silenced. Mules bringing wood from the country were
dragged out of the path, and the town asses, with their panniers full of
street-filth, were drawn up by the wall. From the market-place and out
of the shops, out of the houses and out of the mosque itself, the people
came trooping in crowds, and they made a long close line on either side
of the course which the procession must take. And through this avenue
of onlookers the strange company made its way--the two prisoners
bearing the plumes, the four others bearing the coffin, the two soldiers
carrying the lanterns, and Israel last of all, unsupported and alone.
Nothing was heard in the silence of the people but the tramp of the feet
of the six men, and the clank of their chains.
The light of the lanterns was on the faces of some of them, and every
one knew them for what they were. It was on the face of Israel also, yet
he did not flinch. His head was held steadily upward; he looked neither
to the right nor to the left, but strode firmly along.
The Jewish cemetery was outside the town walls, and before the
procession came to it the darkness had closed in. Its flat white
tombstones, all pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock
of sheep asleep among the grass. It had no gate but a gap in the fence,
and no fence but a hedge of the prickly pear and the aloe.
Israel had opened a grave for Ruth beside the grave of the old rabbi
her father. He had asked no man's permission to do so, but if no one had
helped at that day's business, neither had any one dared to hinder. And
when the coffin was set down by the grave-side no ceremony did Israel
forget and none did he omit. He repeated the Kaddesh, and cut the notch
in his kaftan; he took from his breast the little linen bag of the white
earth of the land of promise and laid it under the head; he locked a
padlock and flung away the key. Last of all, when the body had been
taken out of the coffin and lowered to its long home, he stepped in
after it, and called on one of the soldiers to lend him a lantern. And
then, kneeling at the foot of his dead wife, he touched her with both
his hands, and spoke these words in a clear, firm voice, looking down
at her where she lay in the veil that she had used to wear in the
synagogue, and speaking to her as though she heard: “Ruth, my wife, my
dearest, for the cruel wrong which I did you long ago when I suffered
you to marry me, being a man such as I was, under the ban of my people,
forgive me now, my beloved, and ask God to forgive me also.”
The dark cemetery, the six prisoners in their clanking irons, the two
soldiers with their lanterns the open grave, and this strong-hearted
man kneeling within it, that he might do his last duty, according to the
custom of his race and faith, to her whom he had wronged and should meet
no more until the resurrection itself reunited them! The traffic of the
streets had begun again by this time, and between the words which Israel
had spoken the low hum of many voices had come over the dark town walls.
The six prisoners went back to the Kasbah with joyful hearts, for
each carried with him a paper which procured his freedom on the day
following. But Israel returned to his home with a soured and darkened
mind. As he had plucked his last handful of the grass, and flung it over
his shoulder, saying, “They shall spring in the cities as the grass in
the earth,” he had asked himself what it mattered to him though all the
world were peopled, now that she, who had been all the world to him, was
dead. God had left him as a lonely pilgrim in a dreary desert. Only one
glimpse of human affection had he known as a man, and here it was taken
from him for ever.
And when he remembered Naomi, he quarrelled with God again. She was
a helpless exile among men, a creature banished from all human
intercourse, a living soul locked in a tabernacle of flesh. Was it a
good God who had taken the mother from such a child--the child from such
a mother? Israel was heart-smitten, and his soul blasphemed. It was not
God but the devil that ruled the world. It was not justice but evil that
governed it.
Thus did this outcast man rebel against God, thinking of the child's
loss and of his own; but nevertheless by the child itself he was yet to
be saved from the devil's snare, and the ways wherein this sweet flower,
fresh from God's hand, wrought upon his heart to redeem it were very
strange and beautiful.