I cannot explain why, when Yarchi asked me sarcastically, over the
Sabbath dinner, whether I was going to the "Supper of the Holy Queen,"
I knew at once that I should be found at this mysterious meal. Perhaps
it was that I had nothing better to do; perhaps my sympathy was
returning to those strange, good-humoured, musical loungers, so far
removed from the New York ideal of life. Or perhaps I was vaguely
troubled by the dream I had wrestled with more or less obscurely all
night long--that I stood naked in a whirl of burning wheels that sang,
as they turned, the melody of the _Chassidim_. Was I this nondescript
soul, I wondered, half smilingly, fashioned of the Evil One to delay
the Messianic era?
The sun was set, the three stars already in the sky, and my pious
landlord had performed the Ceremony of Division ere I set out,
declining the bread and fish Yarchi offered to make up in a package.
"Saturday nights every man must bring his own meal," he said.
I replied that I went not to eat, but to look on. However, I was so
late in arriving that, as there were no lights, looking on was
well-nigh reduced to listening. In the gray twilight the _Klaus_
seemed full of uncanny forms rocking in monotonous sing-song. Through
the gathering gloom the old Wonder Rabbi's face loomed half
ghostlike, half regal. As the mystic dusk grew deeper and darkness
fell, the fascination of it all began to overcome me: the dim,
tossing, crooning figures, divined rather than seen, washed round
lappingly and swayingly by their own rhythmic melody, full of wistful
sweetness. My soul too tossed in this circumlapping tide. The complex
world of modern civilization fell away from me as garments fall from a
bather. Even this primitive mountain village passed into nothingness,
and in a timeless, spaceless universe I floated in a lulling,
measureless music.
AEons might have elapsed ere the glare of light dazzled my eyes when
the week-day candles were lit, and the supper to escort the departing
Holy Queen--the Sabbath--began. Again I was invited to the upper
table, despite Yarchi's warning. But I had no appetite for earthly
things, was jarred by the prosaic gusto with which the mystics threw
themselves upon the tureen of red _Borsch_ and the black pottle of
brandy.
"Der Rabbi hat geheissen Branntwein trinken," hummed the sexton
joyously. But little by little, as their stomachs grew satiate, the
holy singing started afresh, and presently they leaped up, pulled
aside the table, and made a whirling ring. I was caught up into the
human cyclone, and round and round we flew, our hands upon one
another's shoulders, with blind ecstatic faces, our legs kicking out
madly, to repel, I understood, the embryonic demons outside the magic
circle. And again methought I made a "soul-ascension," or at least
hovered as near to the ineffable mysteries as the demoniacles to our
magic circle.
Oh, what inexpressible religious raptures were mine! What no gorgeous
temple, nor pealing organ, nor white-robed minister had ever wrought
for me was wrought in this barracklike room with its rude benches and
wooden ark. "Children of the Palace" we sang, and as I strove to pick
up the words I thought we were indeed sons of our Father who is in
Heaven.