I
On a summer's day toward the close of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century after Christ, Peloni walked in "the good place" of
the Frankfort _Judengasse_ and pondered. At times he came to a
standstill and appeared to study the inscriptions on the tumbled
tombstones, or the carven dragons, shields, and stars, but his black
eyes burnt inward and he saw less the tragedy of Jewish death than the
tragedy of Jewish life.
For "the good place" was the place of death.
Here alone in Frankfort--in this shut-in bit of the shut-in
Jew-street--was true peace for Israel. The rest of the Jew-street
offered comparative tranquillity even for the living; yet when, ninety
years before Peloni was born, the great fire had raged therein, the
inhabitants had locked the Ghetto-gate against the Christians, less
fearful of the ravaging flames than of their fellow-citizens. Even
to-day, if he ventured outside the _Judengasse_, Peloni must tread
delicately. The foot-path was not for him: he must plod on the dusty
road, with all the other beasts. In some places the very road was too
holy for him, and any passer-by might snatch off his hat in punishment
for his breaking bounds. The ragged street urchin or the staggering
drunkard might cry to him "_'Jud,' mach mores_: Jew, mind your
manners."
Some ten years ago the Frankfort Ghetto had been verbally abolished by
a civilized archduke, caught up in the wave of Napoleonic toleration.
Peloni had shared in the exultation of the Jews at the final
dissipation of the long night of mediaevalism. He had written a Hebrew
poem on it, brilliantly rhymed, congested with apt quotations from
Bible and Talmud, the whole making an acrostic upon the name of the
enlightened Karl Theodor von Dalberg. Henceforth Israel would take his
place among the peoples, honour on his brow, love in his heart,
manhood in his limbs. A gracious letter of acknowledgment from the
archduke was displayed in the window of Peloni's little bookselling
establishment, amid the door-amulets, phylacteries, praying-shawls,
Purim-scrolls, and Hebrew volumes.
But now the prince had been ousted, Napoleon was dead, everywhere the
Ghetto-gates were locked again, and the Poem lay stacked on the
remainder shelves. In vain had the grateful Jews hastened to fight for
the Fatherland, tendered it body and soul. Poor little curly-haired
Peloni had been attacked in the streets as an alien that very morning.
Roysterers had raised the old cry of "Hep! Hep!"--fatal, immemorial
cry, ghastly heritage of the Crusades. Century after century that cry
had gone echoing through Europe. Century after century the Jews
thought they had lived it down, bought it down, died it down. But no!
it rose again, buoyant, menacing, irresponsible. Ah, what a fool he
had been to hope! There was no hope.
Rarely, indeed, since the Dark Ages had persecution flaunted itself so
openly. Riots and massacres were breaking out all over Germany, and in
his own Ghetto Peloni had seen sights that had turned his patriotism
to gall, and crushed his trust in the Christian, his beautiful
bubble-dreams of the Millennium. Rothschild himself, whose house in
the _Judengasse_ with the sign of the red shield had been the centre
of the attack, was well-nigh unable to maintain his position in the
town. And these local successes inflamed the Jew-haters everywhere.
"Let the children of Israel be sold to the English," recommended a
popular pamphlet of the period, "who could employ them in their Indian
plantations instead of the blacks. The best plan would be to purge the
land entirely of this vermin, either by exterminating them, or, as
Pharaoh, and the people of Meiningen, Wuerzburg, and Frankfort did, by
driving them from the country."
"Oh, God!" thought Peloni, as his mind ran over the long chain from
Pharaoh to Frankfort. "Evermore to wander, stoned and derided! Thou
hast set a mark on his forehead, but his punishment is greater than he
can bear."
The dead lay all around him, one upon another, new red stones
shouldering aside the gray stones that told to boot of the death of
the centuries. And the pressure of all this struggle for death-room
had raised the earth higher than the adjacent paths. He thought of how
these dead had always come here; even in their lifetime, when the
enemy raged outside. Here they had put the women and children and gone
back to the synagogue to pray. Ah, the cowards! always oscillating
betwixt cemetery and synagogue, why did they not live, why did they
not fight? Yes, but they had fought,--fought for Germany, and this was
Germany's reply.
But could they not fight for themselves then, with money, with the
sinews of war, if not with the weapons; with gold, if not with steel?
could they not join financial forces all through the world? But no!
There was no such solidarity as the Christians dreamed. And they were
too mixed up with the European world to dream of self-concentration.
Even while the Frankfort Rothschild's house was surrounded by rioters,
the Paris Rothschild was giving a ball to the _elite_ of diplomatic
society.
No! the old Jews were right--there was only the synagogue and the
cemetery.
But was there even the synagogue? That, too, was dead. The living
faith, the vivid realization of Israel's hope, which had made the Dark
Ages endurable and even luminous, were only to be found now among
fanatics whose blind ignorance and fierce clinging to the dead letter
and the obsolete form counterbalanced the poetry and sublimity of
their persistence. In the Middle Ages, Peloni felt, his poems would
have been absorbed into the liturgy. For when the liturgy and the
religion were alive, they took in and gave out--like all living
things. But no--the synagogue of to-day was dead.
Remained only the cemetery.
"_Jude, verrek!_" Jew, die like a beast.
Yes, what else was there to do? For he was not even a Rothschild, he
told himself with whimsical anguish; only a poor poet, unread,
unknown, unhealthy; a shadow that only found substance to suffer; a
set of heart-strings across which every wind that blew made a
poignant, passionate music; a lamentation incarnate, a voice of
weeping in the wilderness, a bubble blown of tears, a dream, a mist, a
nobody,--in short, Peloni!
The dead generations drew him. He fell, weeping passionately, upon a
tomb.