I saw it was fruitless to reason with his hunchbacked view of the
subject.
On the Friday eve I repaired again to the _Klaus_, but this time it
was not so easy to find a seat. However, by the grace of my friend the
sexton, I was accommodated near the Ark, where, amid a congregation
clad in unexpected white, I sat, a conscious black discord. There was
a certain palpitating fervour in the air, as though the imminence of
the New Year and Judgment Day had strung all spirits to a higher
tension. Suddenly a shiver seemed to run through the assemblage, and
all eyes turned to the door. A tall old man, escorted by several
persons of evident consideration, walked with erect head but tottering
gait to the little platform in front of the Ark, and, taking a
praying-shawl from the reverential hand of the sexton, held it a
moment, as in abstraction, before drawing it over his head and
shoulders. As he stood thus, almost facing me, yet unconscious of me,
his image was photographed on my excited brain. He seemed very aged,
with abundant white locks and beard, and he was clothed in a white
satin robe cut low at the neck and ornamented at the breast with
gold-laced, intersecting triangles of "the Shield of David."
On his head was a sort of white biretta. I noted a curious streak of
yellow in the silvered eyebrows, as if youth clung on, so to speak,
by a single hair, and underneath these arrestive eyebrows green pupils
alternately glowed and smouldered. On his forefinger he wore a signet
ring, set with amethysts and with a huge Persian emerald, which, as
his hand rose and fell, and his fingers clasped and unclasped
themselves in the convulsion of prayer, seemed to glare at me like a
third green eye. And as soon as he began thus praying, every trace of
age vanished. He trembled, but only from emotion; and his passion
mounted, till at last his whole body prayed. And the congregation
joined in with shakings and quiverings and thunderings and ululations.
Not even in Prague had I experienced such sympathetic emotion. After
the well-regulated frigidities of our American services, it was truly
warming to be among worshippers not ashamed to feel. Hours must have
passed, but I sat there as content as any. When the service ended,
everybody crowded round the Wonder Rabbi to give the "Good Sabbath"
handshake. The scene jarred me by its incongruous suggestion of our
American receptions at which the lion of the evening must extend his
royal paw to every guest. But I went up among the rest, and murmured
my salutation. The glow came into his eyes as they became conscious of
me for the first time, and his gaunt bloodless hand closed crushingly
on mine, so that I almost fancied the signet ring was sealing my
flesh.
"Good Sabbath, stranger," he replied. "You linger long here."
"As long as the floods," I said.
"Are you as dangerous to us?" he flashed back.
"I trust not," I said, a whit startled.
His jewelled forefinger drummed on the reading-stand, and his eyes no
longer challenged mine, but were lowered as in abstraction.
"Your grandfather, who lies in Lemberg, was no friend to the followers
of Besht. He laid the ban even on white Sabbath garments, and those
who but wept in the synagogues he classed with us."
I was more taken aback by his knowledge of my grandfather than by that
ancient gentleman's hostility to the emotional heresy of his day.
"I never saw my grandfather," I replied simply.
"True. The son of the prairies should know more of God than the
bookworms. Will you accept a seat at my table?"
"With pleasure, Rabbi," I murmured, dazed by his clairvoyant air.
They were now arranging the two tables, one with a white cloth for the
master and his circle in strict order of precedence; and the other of
bare wood for such of the rabble as could first scramble into the
seats. I was placed on his right hand, and became at once an object of
wonder and awe. The _Kiddush_ which initiated the supper was not a
novel ceremony to me, but what I had never seen before was the
eagerness with which each guest sipped from the circulating wine-cup
of consecration, and the disappointment of such of the mob as could
find no drop to drain. Still fiercer was the struggle for the Wonder
Rabbi's soup, after he had taken a couple of spoonfuls; even I had no
chance of distinction before this sudden simultaneous swoop, though of
course I had my own plateful to drink. As sudden was the transition
from soup to song, the whole company singing and swaying in victorious
ecstasy. I turned to speak to my host, but his face awed me. The eyes
had now their smouldering inward fire. The eyebrows seemed wholly
white; the features were still. Then as I watched him his whole body
grew rigid, he closed his eyes, his head fell back. The singing
ceased; as tense a silence reigned as though the followers too were in
a trance. My eyes were fixed on the Master's blind face, which had now
not the dignity of death, but only the indignity of lifelessness, and,
but for the suggestion of mystery behind, would have ceased to impress
me. For there was now revealed a coarseness of lips, a narrowness of
forehead, an ugliness of high cheek-bone, which his imperial glance
had transfigured, and which his flowing locks still abated. But as I
gazed, the weird stillness took possession of me. I could not but feel
with the rest that the Master was making a "soul-ascension."
It seemed very long--yet it may have been only a few minutes, for in
absolute silence one's sense of time is disconcerted--ere waves of
returning life began to traverse the cataleptic face and form. At last
the Wonder Rabbi opened his eyes, and the hush grew profounder. Every
ear was astrain for the revelations to come.
"Children," said he slowly, "as I passed through the circles the souls
cried to me. 'Haste, haste, for the Evil One plotteth and the
Messianic day will be again delayed.' So I rose into the ante-chamber
of Grace where the fiery wheels sang 'Holy, holy,' and there I came
upon the Poison God waiting to see the glory of the Little Face. And
with him was a soul, very strange, such as I had never seen, living
neither in heaven nor hell, perchance created of Satan himself for his
instrument. Then with a great cry I uttered the Name, and the Poison
God fled with a great fluttering, leaving the nameless, naked soul
helpless amid the consuming, dazzling wheels. So I returned through
the circles to reassure the souls, and they shouted with a great
shout."
"Hallelujah!" came in a great shout from the wrought-up listeners, and
then they burst into a lilting chant of triumph. But by this time my
mood had changed. The spell of novelty had begun to wear off; perhaps
also I was fatigued by the long strain. I recalled the coarser face of
the comatose saint, and I found nothing but gibberish in the oracular
"revelation" which he had brought down with such elaborate pains from
the circles amid which he seemed to move.
Thanking him for his hospitality, I slipped from the hot, roaring
room.
Ah! what a waft of fresh air and sense of starlit space! The young
moon floated in the star-sprinkled heavens like a golden boat, with a
faint suggestion of the full-sailed orb. The true glamour and mystery
of the universe were again borne in upon me, as in our rich,
constellated prairie nights, and all the artificial abracadabra of the
_Klaus_ seemed akin to its heated, noisy atmosphere. The lights of the
village were extinguished, and, looking at my watch, I found it was
close upon midnight. But as I passed the saint's "palace" I was
astonished to find a light twinkling from the turret window. I
wondered who kept vigil. Then I bethought me it was Friday night when
no light could be struck, and this must be Ben David's bed-room lamp,
awaiting his return.
"I thought he had taken you up in his fiery chariot," grumbled Yarchi
sleepily, as he unbarred the door.
"The fiery chariot must not run on the Sabbath," I said smiling. "And,
moreover, Ben David takes no passengers to the circles."
"Circles! He ought to have a circle of rope round his neck."
"The soup was good," I pleaded, as I groped my way toward my quaint,
tall bed.