ESTHER AND HER CHILDREN.
Esther Ansell did not welcome Levi Jacobs warmly. She had just cleared
away the breakfast things and was looking forward to a glorious day's
reading, and the advent of a visitor did not gratify her. And yet Levi
Jacobs was a good-looking boy with brown hair and eyes, a dark glowing
complexion and ruddy lips--a sort of reduced masculine edition of
Hannah.
"I've come to play I-spy-I, Solomon," he said when he entered "My,
don't you live high up!"
"I thought you had to go to school," Solomon observed with a stare.
"Ours isn't a board school," Levi explained. "You might introduce a
fellow to your sister."
"Garn! You know Esther right enough," said Solomon and began to whistle
carelessly.
"How are you, Esther?" said Levi awkwardly.
"I'm very well, thank you," said Esther, looking up from a little
brown-covered book and looking down at it again.
She was crouching on the fender trying to get some warmth at the little
fire extracted from Reb Shemuel's half-crown. December continued gray;
the room was dim and a spurt of flame played on her pale earnest face.
It was a face that never lost a certain ardency of color even at its
palest: the hair was dark and abundant, the eyes were large and
thoughtful, the nose slightly aquiline and the whole cast of the
features betrayed the Polish origin. The forehead was rather low. Esther
had nice teeth which accident had preserved white. It was an arrestive
rather than a beautiful face, though charming enough when she smiled. If
the grace and candor of childhood could have been disengaged from the
face, it would have been easier to say whether it was absolutely pretty.
It came nearer being so on Sabbaths and holidays when scholastic
supervision was removed and the hair was free to fall loosely about the
shoulders instead of being screwed up into the pendulous plait so dear
to the educational eye. Esther could have earned a penny quite easily by
sacrificing her tresses and going about with close-cropped head like a
boy, for her teacher never failed thus to reward the shorn, but in the
darkest hours of hunger she held on to her hair as her mother had done
before her. The prospects of Esther's post-nuptial wig were not
brilliant. She was not tall for a girl who is getting on for twelve; but
some little girls shoot up suddenly and there was considerable room for
hope.
Sarah and Isaac were romping noisily about and under the beds; Rachel
was at the table, knitting a scarf for Solomon; the grandmother pored
over a bulky enchiridion for pious women, written in jargon. Moses was
out in search of work. No one took any notice of the visitor.
"What's that you're reading?" he asked Esther politely.
"Oh nothing," said Esther with a start, closing the book as if fearful
he might want to look over her shoulder.
"I don't see the fun of reading books out of school," said Levi.
"Oh, but we don't read school books," said Solomon defensively.
"I don't care. It's stupid."
"At that rate you could never read books when you're grown up," said
Esther contemptuously.
"No, of course not," admitted Levi. "Otherwise where would be the fun of
being grown up? After I leave school I don't intend to open a book."
"No? Perhaps you'll open a shop," said Solomon.
"What will you do when it rains?" asked Esther crushingly.
"I shall smoke," replied Levi loftily.
"Yes, but suppose it's _Shabbos_," swiftly rejoined Esther.
Levi was nonplussed. "Well, it can't rain all day and there are only
fifty-two _Shabbosim_ in the year," he said lamely. "A man can always do
something."
"I think there's more pleasure in reading than in doing something,"
remarked Esther.
"Yes, you're a girl," Levi reminded her, "and girls are expected to stay
indoors. Look at my sister Hannah. She reads, too. But a man can be out
doing what he pleases, eh, Solomon?"
"Yes, of course we've got the best of it," said Solomon. "The
Prayer-book shows that. Don't I say every morning 'Blessed art Thou, O
Lord our God, who hast not made me a woman'?"
"I don't know whether you do say it. You certainly have got to," said
Esther witheringly.
"'Sh," said Solomon, winking in the direction of the grandmother.
"It doesn't matter," said Esther calmly. "She can't understand what I'm
saying."
"I don't know," said Solomon dubiously. "She sometimes catches more than
you bargain for."
"And then, _you_ catch more than you bargain for," said Rachel, looking
up roguishly from her knitting.
Solomon stuck his tongue in his cheek and grimaced.
Isaac came behind Levi and gave his coat a pull and toddled off with a
yell of delight.
"Be quiet, Ikey!" cried Esther. "If you don't behave better I shan't
sleep in your new bed."
"Oh yeth, you mutht, Ethty," lisped Ikey, his elfish face growing grave.
He went about depressed for some seconds.
"Kids are a beastly nuisance," said Levi, "don't you think so, Esther?"
"Oh no, not always," said the little girl. "Besides we were all kids
once."
"That's what I complain of," said Levi. "We ought to be all born
grown-up."
"But that's impossible!" put in Rachel.
"It isn't impossible at all," said Esther. "Look at Adam and Eve!"
Levi looked at Esther gratefully instead. He felt nearer to her and
thought of persuading her into playing Kiss-in-the-Ring. But he found it
difficult to back out of his undertaking to play I-spy-I with Solomon;
and in the end he had to leave Esther to her book.
She had little in common with her brother Solomon, least of all humor
and animal spirits. Even before the responsibilities of headship had
come upon her she was a preternaturally thoughtful little girl who had
strange intuitions about things and was doomed to work out her own
salvation as a metaphysician. When she asked her mother who made God, a
slap in the face demonstrated to her the limits of human inquiry. The
natural instinct of the child over-rode the long travail of the race to
conceive an abstract Deity, and Esther pictured God as a mammoth cloud.
In early years Esther imagined that the "body" that was buried when a
person died was the corpse decapitated and she often puzzled herself to
think what was done with the isolated head. When her mother was being
tied up in grave-clothes, Esther hovered about with a real thirst for
knowledge while the thoughts of all the other children were sensuously
concentrated on the funeral and the glory of seeing a vehicle drive away
from their own door. Esther was also disappointed at not seeing her
mother's soul fly up to heaven though she watched vigilantly at the
death-bed for the ascent of the long yellow hook-shaped thing. The
genesis of this conception of the soul was probably to be sought in the
pictorial representations of ghosts in the story-papers brought home by
her eldest brother Benjamin. Strange shadowy conceptions of things more
corporeal floated up from her solitary reading. Theatres she came across
often, and a theatre was a kind of Babel plain or Vanity Fair in which
performers and spectators were promiscuously mingled and wherein the
richer folk clad in evening dress sat in thin deal boxes--the cases in
Spitalfields market being Esther's main association with boxes. One of
her day-dreams of the future was going to the theatre in a night-gown
and being accommodated with an orange-box. Little rectification of such
distorted views of life was to be expected from Moses Ansell, who went
down to his grave without seeing even a circus, and had no interest in
art apart from the "Police News" and his "Mizrach" and the synagogue
decorations. Even when Esther's sceptical instinct drove her to inquire
of her father how people knew that Moses got the Law on Mount Sinai, he
could only repeat in horror that the Books of Moses said so, and could
never be brought to see that his arguments travelled on roundabouts. She
sometimes regretted that her brilliant brother Benjamin had been
swallowed up by the orphan asylum, for she imagined she could have
discussed many a knotty point with him. Solomon was both flippant and
incompetent. But in spite of her theoretical latitudinarianism, in
practice she was pious to the point of fanaticism and could scarce
conceive the depths of degradation of which she heard vague
horror-struck talk. There were Jews about--grown-up men and women, not
insane--who struck lucifer matches on the Sabbath and housewives who
carelessly mixed their butter-plates with their meat-plates even when
they did not actually eat butter with meat. Esther promised herself
that, please God, she would never do anything so wicked when she grew
up. She at least would never fail to light the Sabbath candles nor to
_kasher_ the meat. Never was child more alive to the beauty of duty,
more open to the appeal of virtue, self-control, abnegation. She fasted
till two o'clock on the Great White Fast when she was seven years old
and accomplished the perfect feat at nine. When she read a simple little
story in a prize-book, inculcating the homely moralities at which the
cynic sneers, her eyes filled with tears and her breast with unselfish
and dutiful determinations. She had something of the temperament of the
stoic, fortified by that spiritual pride which does not look for equal
goodness in others; and though she disapproved of Solomon's dodgings of
duty, she did not sneak or preach, even gave him surreptitious crusts of
bread before he had said his prayers, especially on Saturdays and
Festivals when the praying took place in _Shool_ and was liable to be
prolonged till mid-day.
Esther often went to synagogue and sat in the ladies' compartment. The
drone of the "Sons of the Covenant" downstairs was part of her
consciousness of home, like the musty smell of the stairs, or Becky's
young men through whom she had to plough her way when she went for the
morning milk, or the odors of Mr. Belcovitch's rum or the whirr of his
machines, or the bent, snuffy personality of the Hebrew scholar in the
adjoining garret, or the dread of Dutch Debby's dog that was ultimately
transformed to friendly expectation. Esther led a double life, just as
she spoke two tongues. The knowledge that she was a Jewish child, whose
people had had a special history, was always at the back of her
consciousness; sometimes it was brought to the front by the scoffing
rhymes of Christian children, who informed her that they had stuck a
piece of pork upon a fork and given it to a member of her race.
But far more vividly did she realize that she was an English girl; far
keener than her pride in Judas Maccabaeus was her pride in Nelson and
Wellington; she rejoiced to find that her ancestors had always beaten
the French from the days of Cressy and Poictiers to the days of
Waterloo, that Alfred the Great was the wisest of kings, and that
Englishmen dominated the world and had planted colonies in every corner
of it, that the English language was the noblest in the world and men
speaking it had invented railway trains, steamships, telegraphs, and
everything worth inventing. Esther absorbed these ideas from the school
reading books. The experience of a month will overlay the hereditary
bequest of a century. And yet, beneath all, the prepared plate remains
most sensitive to the old impressions.
Sarah and Isaac had developed as distinct individualities as was
possible in the time at their disposal. Isaac was just five and
Sarah--who had never known her mother--just four. The thoughts of both
ran strongly in the direction of sensuous enjoyment, and they preferred
baked potatoes, especially potatoes touched with gravy, to all the joys
of the kindergarten. Isaac's ambition ran in the direction of eider-down
beds such as he had once felt at Malka's and Moses soothed him by the
horizon-like prospect of such a new bed. Places of honor had already
been conceded by the generous little chap to his father and brother.
Heaven alone knows how he had come to conceive their common bed as his
own peculiar property in which the other three resided at night on
sufferance. He could not even plead it was his by right of birth in it.
But Isaac was not after all wholly given over to worldly thoughts, for
an intellectual problem often occupied his thoughts and led him to slap
little Sarah's arms. He had been born on the 4th of December while Sarah
had been born a year later on the 3d.
"It ain't, it can't be," he would say. "Your birfday can't be afore
mine."
"'Tis, Esty thays so," Sarah would reply.
"Esty's a liar," Isaac responded imperturbably.
"Ask _Tatah_."
"_Tatah_ dunno. Ain't I five?"
"Yeth."
"And ain't you four?"
"Yeth."
"And ain't I older than you?"
"Courth."
"And wasn't I born afore you?"
"Yeth, Ikey."
"Then 'ow can your birfday come afore mine?"
"'Cos it doth."
"Stoopid!"
"It doth, arx Esty," Sarah would insist.
"Than't teep in my new bed," Ikey would threaten.
"Thall if I like."
"Than't!"
Here Sarah would generally break down in tears and Isaac with premature
economic instinct, feeling it wicked to waste a cry, would proceed to
justify it by hitting her. Thereupon little Sarah would hit him back and
develop a terrible howl.
"Hi, woe is unto me," she would wail in jargon, throwing herself on the
ground in a corner and rocking herself to and fro like her far-away
ancestresses remembering Zion by the waters of Babylon.
Little Sarah's lamentations never ceased till she had been avenged by a
higher hand. There were several great powers but Esther was the most
trusty instrument of reprisal. If Esther was out little Sarah's sobs
ceased speedily, for she, too, felt the folly of fruitless tears. Though
she nursed in her breast the sense of injury, she would even resume her
amicable romps with Isaac. But the moment the step of the avenger was
heard on the stairs, little Sarah would betake herself to the corner and
howl with the pain of Isaac's pummellings. She had a strong love of
abstract justice and felt that if the wrongdoer were to go unpunished,
there was no security for the constitution of things.
To-day's holiday did not pass without an outbreak of this sort. It
occurred about tea-time. Perhaps the infants were fractious because
there was no tea. Esther had to economize her resources and a repast at
seven would serve for both tea and supper. Among the poor, combination
meals are as common as combination beds and chests. Esther had quieted
Sarah by slapping Isaac, but as this made Isaac howl the gain was
dubious. She had to put a fresh piece of coal on the fire and sing to
them while their shadows contorted themselves grotesquely on the beds
and then upwards along the sloping walls, terminating with twisted necks
on the ceiling.
Esther usually sang melancholy things in minor keys. They seemed most
attuned to the dim straggling room. There was a song her mother used to
sing. It was taken from a _Purim-Spiel_, itself based upon a Midrash,
one of the endless legends with which the People of One Book have
broidered it, amplifying every minute detail with all the exuberance of
oriental imagination and justifying their fancies with all the ingenuity
of a race of lawyers. After his brethren sold Joseph to the Midianite
merchants, the lad escaped from the caravan and wandered foot-sore and
hungry to Bethlehem, to the grave of his mother, Rachel. And he threw
himself upon the ground and wept aloud and sang to a heart-breaking
melody in Yiddish.
Und hei weh ist mir,
Wie schlecht ist doch mir,
Ich bin vertrieben geworen
Junger held voon dir.
Whereof the English runs:
Alas! woe is me!
How wretched to be
Driven away and banished,
Yet so young, from thee.
Thereupon the voice of his beloved mother Rachel was heard from the
grave, comforting him and bidding him be of good cheer, for that his
future should be great and glorious.
Esther could not sing this without the tears trickling down her cheeks.
Was it that she thought of her own dead mother and applied the lines to
herself? Isaac's ill-humor scarcely ever survived the anodyne of these
mournful cadences. There was another melodious wail which Alte
Belcovitch had brought from Poland. The chorus ran:
Man nemt awek die chasanim voon die callohs
Hi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree!
They tear away their lovers from the maidens,
Hi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree!
The air mingled the melancholy of Polish music with the sadness of
Jewish and the words hinted of God knew what.
"Old unhappy far-off things
And battles long ago."
And so over all the songs and stories was the trail of tragedy, under
all the heart-ache of a hunted race. There are few more plaintive chants
in the world than the recitation of the Psalms by the "Sons of the
Covenant" on Sabbath afternoons amid the gathering shadows of twilight.
Esther often stood in the passage to hear it, morbidly fascinated, tears
of pensive pleasure in her eyes. Even the little jargon story-book which
Moses Ansell read out that night to his _Kinder_, after tea-supper, by
the light of the one candle, was prefaced with a note of pathos. "These
stories have we gathered together from the Gemorah and the Midrash,
wonderful stories, and we have translated the beautiful stories, using
the Hebrew alphabet so that every one, little or big, shall be able to
read them, and shall know that there is a God in the world who forsaketh
not His people Israel and who even for us will likewise work miracles
and wonders and will send us the righteous Redeemer speedily in our
days, Amen." Of this same Messiah the children heard endless tales.
Oriental fancy had been exhausted in picturing him for the consolation
of exiled and suffering Israel. Before his days there would be a wicked
Messiah of the House of Joseph; later, a king with one ear deaf to hear
good but acute to hear evil; there would be a scar on his forehead, one
of his hands would be an inch long and the other three miles, apparently
a subtle symbol of the persecutor. The jargon story-book among its
"stories, wonderful stories," had also extracts from the famous
romance, or diary, of Eldad the Danite, who professed to have
discovered the lost Ten Tribes. Eldad's book appeared towards the end of
the ninth century and became the Arabian Nights of the Jews, and it had
filtered down through the ages into the Ansell garret, in common with
many other tales from the rich storehouse of mediaeval folk-lore in the
diffusion of which the wandering few has played so great a part.
Sometimes Moses read to his charmed hearers the description of Heaven
and Hell by Immanuel, the friend and contemporary of Dante, sometimes a
jargon version of Robinson Crusoe. To-night he chose Eldad's account of
the tribe of Moses dwelling beyond the wonderful river, Sambatyon, which
never flows on the Sabbath.
"There is also the tribe of Moses, our just master, which is called the
tribe that flees, because it fled from idol worship and clung to the
fear of God. A river flows round their land for a distance of four days'
journey on every side. They dwell in beautiful houses provided with
handsome towers, which they have built themselves. There is nothing
unclean among them, neither in the case of birds, venison nor
domesticated animals; there are no wild animals, no flies, no foxes, no
vermin, no serpents, no dogs, and in general, nothing which does harm;
they have only sheep and cattle, which bear twice a year. They sow and
reap; there are all sorts of gardens, with all kinds of fruits and
cereals, viz.: beans, melons, gourds, onions, garlic, wheat and barley,
and the seed grows a hundred fold. They have faith; they know the Law,
the Mishnah, the Talmud and the Agadah; but their Talmud is in Hebrew.
They introduce their sayings in the name of the fathers, the wise men,
who heard them from the mouth of Joshua, who himself heard them from the
mouth of God. They have no knowledge of the Tanaim (doctors of the
Mishnah) and Amoraim (doctors of the Talmud), who flourished during the
time of the second Temple, which was, of course, not known to these
tribes. They speak only Hebrew, and are very strict as regards the use
of wine made by others than themselves, as well as the rules of
slaughtering animals; in this respect the Law of Moses is much more
rigorous than that of the Tribes. They do not swear by the name of God,
for fear that their breath may leave them, and they become angry with
those who swear; they reprimand them, saying, 'Woe, ye poor, why do you
swear with the mention of the name of God upon your lips? Use your mouth
for eating bread and drinking water. Do you not know that for the sin of
swearing your children die young?' And in this way they exhort every one
to serve God with fear and integrity of heart. Therefore, the children
of Moses, the servant of God, live long, to the age of 100 or 120 years.
No child, be it son or daughter, dies during the lifetime of its parent,
but they reach a third and a fourth generation, and see grandchildren
and great-grandchildren with their offspring. They do all field work
themselves, having no male or female servants; there are also merchants
among them. They do not close their houses at night, for there is no
thief nor any wicked man among them. Thus a little lad might go for days
with his flock without fear of robbers, demons or danger of any other
kind; they are, indeed, all holy and clean. These Levites busy
themselves with the Law and with the commandments, and they still live
in the holiness of our master, Moses; therefore, God has given them all
this good. Moreover, they see nobody and nobody sees them, except the
four tribes who dwell on the other side of the rivers of Cush; they see
them, and speak to them, but the river Sambatyon is between them, as it
is said: 'That thou mayest say to prisoners, Go forth' (Isaiah xlix.,
9). They have plenty of gold and silver; they sow flax and cultivate the
crimson worm, and make beautiful garments. Their number is double or
four times the number that went out from Egypt.
"The river Sambatyon is 200 yards broad--'about as far as a bowshot'
(Gen. xxi., 16), full of sand and stones, but without water; the stones
make a great noise like the waves of the sea and a stormy wind, so that
in the night the noise is heard at a distance of half a day's journey.
There are sources of water which collect themselves in one pool, out of
which they water the fields. There are fish in it, and all kinds of
clean birds fly round it. And this river of stone and sand rolls during
the six working days and rests on the Sabbath day. As soon as the
Sabbath begins fire surrounds the river and the flames remain till the
next evening, when the Sabbath ends. Thus no human being can reach the
river for a distance of half a mile on either side; the fire consumes
all that grows there. The four tribes, Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher,
stand on the borders of the river. When shearing their flocks here, for
the land is flat and clean without any thorns, if the children of Moses
see them gathered together on the border they shout, saying, 'Brethren,
tribes of Jeshurun, show us your camels, dogs and asses,' and they make
their remarks about the length of the camel's neck and the shortness of
the tail. Then they greet one another and go their way."
When this was done, Solomon called for Hell. He liked to hear about the
punishment of the sinners; it gave a zest to life. Moses hardly needed a
book to tell them about Hell. It had no secrets for him. The Old
Testament has no reference to a future existence, but the poor Jew has
no more been able to live without the hope of Hell than the poor
Christian. When the wicked man has waxed fat and kicked the righteous
skinny man, shall the two lie down in the same dust and the game be
over? Perish the thought! One of the Hells was that in which the sinner
was condemned to do over and over again the sins he had done in life.
"Why, that must be jolly!" said Solomon.
"No, that is frightful," maintained Moses Ansell. He spoke Yiddish, the
children English.
"Of course, it is," said Esther. "Just fancy, Solomon, having to eat
toffy all day."
"It's better than eating nothing all day," replied Solomon.
"But to eat it every day for ever and ever!" said Moses. "There's no
rest for the wicked."
"What! Not even on the Sabbath?" said Esther.
"Oh, yes: of course, then. Like the river Sambatyon, even the flames of
Hell rest on _Shabbos_."
"Haven't they got no fire-_goyas_?"; inquired Ikey, and everybody
laughed.
"_Shabbos_ is a holiday in Hell," Moses explained to the little one.
"So thou seest the result of thy making out Sabbath too early on
Saturday night, thou sendest the poor souls back to their tortures
before the proper time."
Moses never lost an opportunity of enforcing the claims of the
ceremonial law. Esther had a vivid picture flashed upon her of poor,
yellow hook-shaped souls floating sullenly back towards the flames.
Solomon's chief respect for his father sprang from the halo of military
service encircling Moses ever since it leaked out through the lips of
the _Bube_, that he had been a conscript in Russia and been brutally
treated by the sergeant. But Moses could not be got to speak of his
exploits. Solomon pressed him to do so, especially when his father gave
symptoms of inviting him to the study of Rashi's Commentary. To-night
Moses brought out a Hebrew tome, and said, "Come, Solomon. Enough of
stories. We must learn a little."
"To-day is a holiday," grumbled Solomon.
"It is never a holiday for the study of the Law."
"Only this once, father; let's play draughts."
Moses weakly yielded. Draughts was his sole relaxation and when Solomon
acquired a draught board by barter his father taught him the game. Moses
played the Polish variety, in which the men are like English kings that
leap backwards and forwards and the kings shoot diagonally across like
bishops at chess. Solomon could not withstand these gigantic
grasshoppers, whose stopping places he could never anticipate. Moses won
every game to-night and was full of glee and told the _Kinder_ another
story. It was about the Emperor Nicholas and is not to be found in the
official histories of Russia.
"Nicholas, was a wicked king, who oppressed the Jews and made their
lives sore and bitter. And one day he made it known to the Jews that if
a million roubles were not raised for him in a month's time they should
be driven from their homes. Then the Jews prayed unto God and besought
him to help them for the merits of the forefathers, but no help came.
Then they tried to bribe the officials, but the officials pocketed their
gold and the Emperor still demanded his tax. Then they went to the
great Masters of Cabalah, who, by pondering day and night on the name
and its transmutations, had won the control of all things, and they
said, 'Can ye do naught for us?' Then the Masters of Cabalah took
counsel together and at midnight they called up the spirits of Abraham
our father, and Isaac and Jacob, and Elijah the prophet, who wept to
hear of their children's sorrows. And Abraham our father, and Isaac and
Jacob, and Elijah the prophet took the bed whereon Nicholas the Emperor
slept and transported it to a wild place. And they took Nicholas the
Emperor out of his warm bed and whipped him soundly so that he yelled
for mercy. Then they asked: 'Wilt thou rescind the edict against the
Jews?' And he said 'I will.' But in the morning Nicholas the Emperor
woke up and called for the chief of the bed-chamber and said, 'How
darest thou allow my bed to be carried out in the middle of the night
into the forest?' And the chief of the bed-chamber grew pale and said
that the Emperor's guards had watched all night outside the door,
neither was there space for the bed to pass out. And Nicholas the
Emperor, thinking he had dreamed, let the man go unhung. But the next
night lo! the bed was transported again to the wild place and Abraham
our father, and Isaac and Jacob, and Elijah the prophet drubbed him
doubly and again he promised to remit the tax. So in the morning the
chief of the bed-chamber was hanged and at night the guards were
doubled. But the bed sailed away to the wild place and Nicholas the
Emperor was trebly whipped. Then Nicholas the Emperor annulled the edict
and the Jews rejoiced and fell at the knees of the Masters of Cabalah."
"But why can't they save the Jews altogether?" queried Esther.
"Oh," said Moses mysteriously. "Cabalah is a great force and must not be
abused. The Holy Name must not be made common. Moreover one might lose
one's life."
"Could the Masters make men?" inquired Esther, who had recently come
across Frankenstein.
"Certainly," said Moses. "And what is more, it stands written that Reb
Chanina and Reb Osheya fashioned a fine fat calf on Friday and enjoyed
it on the Sabbath."
"Oh, father!" said Solomon, piteously, "don't you know Cabalah?"