III

There were many fasts in the Ghetto calendar, most of them twelve

hours long, but some twenty-four. Not a morsel of food nor a drop of

water must pass the lips from the sunset of one day to nightfall on

the next. The child had only been allowed to keep a few fasts, and

these only partially, but now it was for his own soul to settle how

long and how often it would afflict itself, and it determined to do so

at every opportunity. And the great opportunity came soon. Not the

Black Fast when the congregation sat shoeless on the floor of the

synagogue, weeping and wailing for the destruction of Jerusalem, but

the great White Fast, the terrible Day of Atonement commanded in the

Bible. It was preceded by a long month of solemn prayer, ushering in

the New Year. The New Year itself was the most sacred of the

Festivals, provided with prayers half a day long, and made terrible by

peals on the ram's horn. There were three kinds of calls on this

primitive trumpet--plain, trembling, wailing; and they were all

sounded in curious mystic combinations, interpolated with passionate

bursts of prayer. The sinner was warned to repent, for the New Year

marked the Day of Judgment. For nine days God judged the souls of the

living, and decided on their fate for the coming year--who should live

and who should die, who should grow rich and who poor, who should be

in sickness and who in health. But at the end of the tenth day, the

day of the great White Fast, the judgment books were closed, to open

no more for the rest of the year. Up till twilight there was yet time,

but then what was written was finally sealed, and he who had not truly

repented had missed his last chance of forgiveness. What wonder if

early in the ten penitential days, the population of the Ghetto

flocked towards the canal bridge to pray that its sins might be cast

into the waters and swept away seawards!

'Twas the tenth day, and an awful sense of sacred doom hung over the

Ghetto. In every house a gigantic wax taper had burnt, white and

solemn, all through the night, and fowls or coins had been waved round

the heads of the people in atonement for their iniquities. The morning

dawned gray and cold, but with the dawn the population was astir, for

the services began at six in the morning and lasted without

intermission till seven at night. Many of the male worshippers were

clad in their grave-clothes, and the extreme zealots remained standing

all day long, swaying to and fro and beating their breasts at the

confessions of sin. For a long time the boy wished to stand too, but

the crowded synagogue reeked with heavy odors, and at last, towards

mid-day, faint and feeble, he had to sit. But to fast till nightfall

he was resolved. Hitherto he had always broken his fast at some point

in the services, going home round the corner to delicious bread and

fish. When he was seven or eight this breakfast came at mid-day, but

the older he grew the longer he fasted, and it became a point of honor

to beat his record every successive year. Last time he had brought his

breakfast down till late in the afternoon, and now it would be

unforgivable if he could not see the fast out and go home, proud and

sinless, to drink wine with the men. He turned so pale, as the

afternoon service dragged itself along, that his father begged him

again and again to go home and eat. But the boy was set on a full

penance. And every now and again he forgot his headache and the

gnawing at his stomach in the fervor of passionate prayer and in the

fascination of the ghostly figures weeping and wailing in the gloomy

synagogue, and once in imagination he saw the heavens open overhead

and God sitting on the judgment throne, invisible by excess of

dazzling light, and round him the four-winged cherubim and the fiery

wheels and the sacred creatures singing "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord

of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory." Then a great awe

brooded over the synagogue, and the vast forces of the universe seemed

concentred about it, as if all creation was awaiting in tense silence

for the terrible words of judgment. And then he felt some cool, sweet

scent sprinkled on his forehead, and, as from the far ends of the

world, he heard a voice that sounded like his father's asking him if

he felt better. He opened his eyes and smiled faintly, and said

nothing was the matter, but now his father insisted that he must go

home to eat. So, still dazed by the glories he had seen, he dragged

himself dreamily through the press of swaying, weeping worshippers,

over whom there still seemed to brood some vast, solemn awe, and came

outside into the little square and drew in a delicious breath of fresh

air, his eyes blinking at the sudden glare of sunlight and blue sky.

But the sense of awe was still with him, for the Ghetto was deserted,

the shops were shut, and a sacred hush of silence was over the stones

and the houses, only accentuated by the thunder of ceaseless prayer

from the synagogues. He walked towards the tall house with the nine

stories, then a great shame came over him. Surely he had given in too

early. He was already better, the air had revived him. No, he would

_not_ break his fast; he would while away a little time by walking,

and then he would go back to the synagogue. Yes, a brisk walk would

complete his recovery. There was no warder at the open gate; the

keepers of the Ghetto had taken a surreptitious holiday, aware that on

this day of days no watching was needed. The guardian barca lay moored

to a post unmanned. All was in keeping with the boy's sense of solemn

strangeness. But as he walked along the Cannaregio bank, and further

and further into the unknown city, a curious uneasiness and surprise

began to invade his soul. Everywhere, despite the vast awe

overbrooding the world, shops were open and people were going about

unconcernedly in the quaint alleys; babies laughed in their nurses'

arms, the gondoliers were poised as usual on the stern of their

beautiful black boats, rowing imperturbably. The water sparkled and

danced in the afternoon sun. In the market-place the tanned old women

chattered briskly with their customers. He wandered on and on in

growing wonder and perturbation. Suddenly his trouble ceased, a burst

of wonderful melody came to him; there was not only a joyful tune, but

other tunes seemed to blend with it, melting his heart with

unimaginable rapture; he gave chase to the strange sounds, drawing

nearer and nearer, and at last he emerged unexpectedly upon an immense

square bordered by colonnades, under which beautifully dressed signori

and signore sat drinking at little tables, and listening to men in red

with great black cockades in their hats who were ranged on a central

platform, blowing large shining horns; a square so vast and so crowded

with happy chattering people and fluttering pigeons that he gazed

about in blinking bewilderment. And then, uplifting his eyes, he saw a

sight that took his breath away--a glorious building like his dream of

the Temple of Zion, glowing with gold and rising in marvellous domes

and spires, and crowned by four bronze animals, which he felt sure

must be the creatures called horses with which Pharaoh had pursued the

Israelites to the Red Sea. And hard by rose a gigantic tower, like the

Tower of Babel, leading the eye up and up. His breast filled with a

strange pleasure that was almost pain. The enchanted temple drew him

across the square; he saw a poor bare-headed woman going in, and he

followed her. Then a wonderful golden gloom fell upon him, and a sense

of arches and pillars and soaring roofs and curved walls beautiful

with many-colored pictures; and the pleasure, that was almost pain,

swelled at his heart till it seemed as if it must burst his breast.

Then he saw the poor bare-headed woman kneel down, and in a flash he

understood that she was praying--ay, and in the men's quarter--and

that this was no Temple, but one of those forbidden places called

churches, into which the abhorred deserters went who were spoken of on

that marble slab in the Ghetto. And, while he was wrestling with the

confusion of his thoughts, a splendid glittering being, with a cocked

hat and a sword, marched terrifyingly towards him, and sternly bade

him take off his hat. He ran out of the wonderful building in a great

fright, jostling against the innumerable promenaders in the square,

and not pausing till the merry music of the big shining horns had died

away behind him. And even then he walked quickly, as if pursued by the

strange vast world into which he had penetrated for the first time.

And suddenly he found himself in a blind alley, and knew that he could

not find his way back to the Ghetto. He was about to ask of a woman

who looked kind, when he remembered, with a chill down his spine, that

he was not wearing a yellow O, as a man should, and that, as he was

now a "Son of the Commandment," the Venetians would consider him a

man. For one forlorn moment it seemed to him that he would never find

himself back in the Ghetto again; but at last he bethought himself of

asking for the Cannaregio, and so gradually, cold at heart and

trembling, he reached the familiar iron gate and slipped in. All was

as before in the Ghetto. The same sacred hush in court and square,

accentuated by the rumble of prayer from the synagogues, the gathering

dusk lending a touch of added solemnity.

"Well, have you eaten?" asked the father. The boy nodded "Yes." A

faint flush of exultation leapt into his pale cheek. He would see the

fast out after all. The men were beating their breasts at the

confession of sin. "For the sin we have committed by lying," chimed in

the boy. But although in his attention to the wailful melody of the

words he scarcely noticed the meaning, something of the old passion

and fervor had gone out of his voice. Twilight fell; the shadows

deepened, the white figures, wailing and weeping in their

grave-clothes, grew mystic; the time for sealing the Books of

Judgment drew nigh. The figures threw themselves forward full length,

their foreheads to the floor, proclaiming passionately again and

again, "The Lord He is God; the Lord He is God!" It was the hour in

which the boy's sense of overbrooding awe had always been tensest. But

he could not shake off the thought of the gay piazza and the wonderful

church where other people prayed other prayers. For something larger

had come into his life, a sense of a vaster universe without, and its

spaciousness and strangeness filled his soul with a nameless trouble

and a vague unrest. He was no longer a child of the Ghetto.