CHAPTER X
It was noon on the Day of Atonement which followed nine days after the Rosh Hashonah memorable to more than one by the oration of Reb Monash, noon in Cambridge Street, a thoroughfare in Doomington far removed from the region of the synagogues, which, for this day, were crowded from dawn to dusk by the day-long worshippers. The most pious did not move from within their precincts; the less pious withdrew occasionally to the immediate environs. All who were sacrilegious on all the other three hundred and sixty-four days, on this day rigidly fasted, and, having no regular pew in a regular synagogue, were devoutly glad to pay for the privilege of any pew in any synagogue. If they gainsaid or were indifferent to the precepts of their faith on other days, who could forswear the immemorial terror of this day? If they had been building all the year a palisade between Heaven and themselves, on this day, who knew, they might enter Heaven through a breach in the palisade. On the night concluding Yom Kippur many looked forward to the impieties of the morrow as if these had been annulled in anticipation. But most felt that if all else were démodé, Yom Kippur stood august beyond fashion. Even the great jewellery and general emporia of Doomington shut their doors, though they exhibited a note to the effect that cleaning operations were in progress, so that their credit with their more Nonconformist customers might remain unimpaired. Bob Cohen, who lived with a goyah, a Gentile lady, all the year round, became entirely oblivious of her existence for these twenty-four hours, in a synagogue several towns away from the scene of his amour. In shool his fervent contrition was only drowned by the self-reproaches of the penitents whose perpetual state was the strictest matrimonial chastity. Avowed atheists put in an appearance despite all their logic. There were few Jews in Doomington that day beyond the circumference of a circle whose radius was half a mile in any direction from the Polisher Shool.
Hence it was surprising to see Alec Segal in a shop doorway far up Cambridge Street on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. It added to the surprise to find Harry Sewelson join him after some minutes, for the four parents of these youths, emancipated to the pitch of transferring a kettle to and from the fire on shabbos, were yet very far from the transgression of this ultimate sanctity; a sanctity of such awe as might overwhelm spirits even of the defiant aloofness of Segal and Harry.
"You're late!" said Segal.
"Three minutes!"
"Six and a half to be precise!"
"You'll be taking notes of how long your neck's in the noose before you're dead...."
"Yes, and make a graph of the parabola of my descent. But why are you late? Called in at a public-house en route?"
"No fear! I've had a drink at the scullery-tap, it was a little less ostentatious. I suppose you've had a drink?"
"Yes, I hid a bottle of lemonade in my mattress!" declared Segal cunningly.
"I'm not thirsty but I'm jolly peckish. My elder sister fainted, so I had to take her home. As for Esther—you know, my other sister—she's only fifteen, but she's dead nuts on fasting. Queer thing, the less she puts down the more she brings up! She's been sick all day!"
"But that young scoundrel's not turned up yet! I wonder if anything's wrong?"
"He's all right. His father doesn't stir a foot out of the Polisher Shool; he'll have had an opportunity to prig something to eat and drink!"
"I don't think he can have backed out?" Segal suggested.
"I don't think it's likely. He may be walking backward to draw attention away from his bowler hat. He doesn't like bowler hats!"
"Or he may be writing a poem in a dark corner, being only young and somewhat foolish. He'll grow out of the first as time goes on."
"Yes, he's amusing enough. But isn't that the illustrious bowler hat?"
"Hello! Here we are! I say, bowler hat, have you seen Philip Massel?"
"He's just coming!" said Philip, appearing at last. "Well, he's come! I'm starving, where's the shop?"
"You've been at a banquet with Sir Timothy and the City Fathers; else why so late?" insisted Harry.
"My mother was fearfully faint," replied Philip awkwardly. "I didn't like to leave her. It's a crime for her to fast, she's so weak nowadays! It's not been so bad for me, with some packets of biscuits at home and a copy of Milton for shool. But let's come along!"
The boys walked up Cambridge Street and turned to the right towards a bridge over the Deadwater Canal. They passed through the door of an eating-house and the fat smells of frying enveloped them unpleasantly; they chose a table in a corner and sat before a lake of spilled gravy and the tin utensils.
"It feels rather shifty, all this!" ventured Philip after a few moments.
"Look here, lad, don't be conscientious at this time of day!" remonstrated Segal.
"I mean when you think of the old men and the sick women who're a sight worse off than we are!"
"Now, Philip," interposed Harry, "You know quite well it's not the beastly food. It's a symbol of freedom! We're not going to be enslaved any longer under the heel of these daft old superstitions. Vive la liberté and all that sort of thing! I positively don't feel like eating now, as a matter of fact; the stink's rather thick. You know, Alec, you might have chosen something more encouraging than this hole."
"Phew!" from Philip. "I prefer the smell of the Polisher Shool!"
"We can't afford anything better. I should have preferred the New Carlton myself, I admit!"
"There'd be too many Jews there! It would be too public!" Harry affirmed.
"Well, young fellers," said a dishevelled lady at this stage, "wot are ye going to 'ave? Say it slick!"
"Ham and eggs all round!" said Segal lordlily.
"Righto!" The lady was bustling off.
"Hold on!" Philip shouted after her concernedly.
"What's the matter with you, cock?"
"What else have you got? I won't have ham!"
"What about fish and fried, saucy?"
"Thank you!" Philip muttered gratefully.
"What do you mean by it?" exclaimed Harry indignantly. "What do you want to spoil the show for?"
"You can call me a blooming prig, if you like, and be blowed! I think ham's overdoing it, that's all! It's not playing the game!"
"Don't be a kid! What's your objection to the miserable animal? I thought you'd got over all that!"
"I thought so too, but I think a chap can choose another sort of day for ham! What's the good of piling it on like this?"
"Do you mean," asked Harry, "that you've just shoved your head out of the burrow of superstitions, like a rabbit, and are going to dive down again, scared? I thought you were more consistent than that. Personally I should prefer beef, but I'm sacrificing my inclinations precisely because ham is a symbol."
"It's not a symbol! I call it cheek!"
"Cheek my fat aunt! You're funking it!"
"You can say what you like! You can stuff your own mouth with the muck! I'm not going to choke for your sake!"
"But what of all your wonderful talk about freedom and advancing with the new race," Segal asked quietly, "and all the good old moonshine?"
"I just think, if you want a symbol, fried fish on Yom Kippur is as useful as ham. It's what d'you call it? it's irreverent somehow, insisting on ham! Yes, that's it! It's irreverent!"
"It's certainly expensive!" declared Segal with an air of finality. When the food came at last, the three boys hardly touched either ham or fish. They had, at least, stood up for the principle of emancipation! And ham, moreover, is a difficult commodity between unaccustomed jaws.
"It's time I got back!" said Philip, at the point where Cambridge Street merged into more familiar territory. "He'll be getting restive about me!"
"There's a comet in the offing!" declared Segal. "To-morrow night?"
"To-morrow night, and let your ham rest quiet in your bellies!"
Philip, after entering the Polisher Shool, spent a little time with his mother, not yet being of an age when a masculine presence raised perturbation in the women's section. When he advanced towards his own seat, his father frowned a question upon him. "Nu, and where so long?"
"I've been feeling sick!" Philip replied truthfully.
"Sit thee down then and open thy machzer! It is at this place one holds! Omit thou no word!"
"I hope you are feeling all right, tatte?"
"How should I feel? 'Tis well with me!"
Around his head the chanting and the weeping gathered volume. The voice of Mr. Herman on the pulpit was choked with crying and his usual ornamentations were now wholly absent from his delivery. The hands of Mr. Linsky thundered contrition. The face of Reb Yonah was drenched in tears. To Philip it seemed that the voices of all these moaning, swaying men had been lifted for age beyond age. It was as if he stood in a dark country where large boulders stood greyly from the uneven ground; the air was full of lamentations; the sky was compact with lightless cloud. If but the dome were rifted, if but through that blue division there came among these boulders and this lamentation the sharp shaft of wind—the boulders would subside into sand, there would be no lamentation; there would be flowers in green hollows, and water in willowy places; if but the dome were rifted, if but a wind blew....
Philip was tired of vain imaginings. As long prayer succeeded long prayer, the tedium of the day gripped him. He remembered the Milton in his pocket and, with a thrill of dangerous delight, drew it forth carefully. Oh, it was important to take the utmost care! Good Lord, if he were found out, what on earth would happen? Could anything happen proportionate to the crime? His machzer, fortunately, was a large, protective book! He leaned the Milton against its yellow pages and turned stealthily to "Comus." Was there any poetry like "Comus" in the world? What savour it gained from contact with these present sights and sounds! How fair was the lady, and how the rhymes were like bells at morning!
Enraptured he turned page upon page of "Comus." "Comus" was ended. Reb Monash was shaking in his corner there, by the Ark, his face pale with the fast. All was safe. He turned to "Allegro" and "Penseroso." Never had he known poetry to taste so fresh, like cheese and fine bread among the hills. He turned to the "Ode on the morning of Christ's Nativity."
See how from far upon the eastern road
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet....
What lines were these, flawless in music, divinely simple!
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet....
How much loveliness in how little space! "Star-led," the exquisite phrase! ... "Star-led" ... Now to the "Hymn! ..."
But a law of gravitation greater than he might understand brought his eyes from his book, bent backward his head, lifted his eyes into the eyes of his father staring down from above upon his book.
Then Philip realized blindingly the significance of this moment:
... The son of heaven's eternal King,
Of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born....
and once more,
... The heaven-born Child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies....
Into the inmost centre of the very heart of his father's faith, the faith of those innumerable dead who for the many centuries had looked upon this day as the climax of their childhood in Jehovah, upon this Yom Kippur whose mere utterance was a fear and a great light, into the synagogue's self, at the very doors of the Holy Ark where lay the Law pregnant with history, he had introduced ... the "wedded Maid," the "heaven-born Child" ...!
Down from his father's eyes it seemed that two actual shafts of flame descended into his own eyes, burning like an acid through the pupils beyond the sockets, into the grey stuff of his brain. A sweat stood upon Philip's forehead, and a chill then seemed to hold it there, like a circle of ice. The fire in his father's eyes shrivelled; there came a hollow shadow of unutterable pain; a sigh fell weakly from his lips. He staggered towards the door for air.
He returned and said, "My son, throw it away, throw thyself away! Let me not see thee again!"
Philip hid the book among the dilapidated Prayer Books at a corner of the women's section and returned to his machzer. Not once did his father's eye meet his own during the rest of the day. When Reb Monash and his wife were proceeding homewards after the fast and Philip made a movement as to accompany them, Reb Monash stared with cold eyes and motioned him to stand away.
The end had come. Channah sitting with wet eyes on a corner of the sofa knew it. Mrs. Massel in the scullery lifting her apron to her eyes and sobbing ever so quietly knew it. Philip in the darkness of the empty chayder with his head between his hands knew it. Reb Monash knew it, breaking his fast in the kitchen, saying not a word.
The next morning Reb Monash turned to Mrs. Massel. Philip was in the room. "He must go somewhere! He cannot sleep here to-night! He has broken me, let him not stay to laugh in my face!"
"What can he do? Where can he go?"
"I know not! He must go!" There was no doubting the finality of his command.
Not a word passed between Philip and his father. Mrs. Massel dared not trust herself to utter a sound until Reb Monash had gone upstairs for his afternoon nap.
"Nu, Feivele," she ventured then, "seest thou what has befallen us? God knows I have not too many years to see thee in ... and now this black year! Schweig den, schweig, Feivel! What shall be with us?"
Channah realized that it lay with her to take the initiative.
"Mother," she urged, "all will be well! You mustn't upset yourself like this! The thing we've to talk about now is what we're going to do with Philip!"
"Yes, what?" Philip asked helplessly.
"We've understood for a long time it was going to end up like this, there was nothing else for it. We were talking about it only last week. She said..."
"Who said, Channah? Who do you mean?"
"I mean Dorah! She said you were wasting the old man to a shadow and she was going to put a stop to it, for father's sake and everybody else's!"
"Wasting to a shadow! What about mother?"
"I know! But I didn't say anything! You know what it's like to argue with Dorah! But she was going to see father about it, sooner or later, and now that this has happened ... well, we'd best go and see her at once!"
"Not one word didst thou say to me!" complained Mrs. Massel.
"It's bad enough now we've got to; what dost thou want more, mutter?"
"Oh, but what are you driving at, Channah? What's the idea?"
"She's going to put up a bed for you in her back-room. Benjamin keeps a lot of stock there now, but they can put a little under your bed and the rest on the landing. You can pay her so much a week while your scholarship lasts, and if you don't get another, well, she says you'll just have to go in for tailoring or something; or Benjamin can take you on his rounds."
"Oh, hell!" groaned Philip.
There had never been much sympathy between his elder sister Dorah and himself. Although the fact was rarely referred to among the Massels, Reb Monash and his wife were already a widower and a widow respectively when they were married, Reb Monash bringing Dorah, and Mrs. Massel Channah, to the union. Their only children were Rochke, who died so tragically on the exodus of the family from Russia, and Philip, born some time later in Doomington. The common parent between Dorah and Philip, therefore, was Reb Monash, and the long conflict between the father and son had rendered less and less substantial the affection between the brother and sister. Dorah, a tall, squared-jawed angular woman, was in some ways more masculine and more forbidding than Reb Monash, and in all ways more evident to the eye in her Longton household than her demure husband, Benjamin, whose main concerns in life were his wife's temper and the state of his samples. From time to time she had startled Philip with sudden spurts of generosity, but these had become increasingly rarer during the last two years.
"There's no way out of it!" asserted Channah. "And, after all, mother, it's only twenty minutes' walk away. Besides, there's the tram up Blenheim Road!"
The three made their appearance before long at Dorah's. They found her already in possession of the main facts, as she had sent Benjamin down that morning to find out how the family was feeling after the fast and Benjamin had met Reb Monash proceeding to Longton. They had both accepted the hospitality and the lemon-tea of Mr. Levine, the parnass, who had ushered them in from the door of his furniture shop. Benjamin had rendered his report duly.
With Channah, Dorah was monosyllabic. Philip she ignored.
"From where he takes this godlessness, mutter," she said in Yiddish, "I understand not! A shkandal it is, over the whole neighbourhood!"
"He is growing older, he will understand more. Folg mir, Dorah, he will be a good Jew yet!"
"Would that one saw the least sign! I have made his bed for him, with a perinny on top and a perinny below. He will be comfortable!"
"Oh, mother, don't!" broke in Channah. "Don't! It's not far from Angel Street! You'll be able to see her every day after school, won't you, Philip?"
"Yes!" said Philip thickly, "Every day! He'll be sleeping!"
Dorah turned to Philip for the first time. "Well, you'd best go home and get your things ready! Will you want to bring all those books?"
"I must have my books!"
"He can take away the bookcases I made for them!" declared Mrs. Massel. "The books will not be in thy way!"
"Loz shen zein! Let it be, then! Well, he will need a handcart. Our greengrocer has one. I'll send him down at eight o'clock!"
A miserable drizzle was falling as Philip gathered the collection of books he so much prized and placed them on the dirty brown sacking of the handcart. Angel Street was more dark and wretched than the Angel Street of any of his memories. His mother stood on the doorstep forlornly, coughing heavily now and again in the rain and wind. He had laid the soap-box bookcases she had made for him over his books and the man was securing the whole load under a final layer of sacking with coils of coarse rope.
"I'm going now, mamma!" He kissed her drawn face.
"Go, my little one!"
As the cart splashed over the greasy setts of Angel Street through the damp darkness, she still stood watching, rain in her hair and soaking her blouse. Slightly she lifted her hands towards the receding boy. He looked back and saw her still standing there. He came back swiftly and covered her face with kisses. But as he again withdrew, again she stood there emptily. Whither did her lorn figure bring back his mind? Whither? Somewhere long ago, far off! Then he remembered. He remembered his image of her alone in the Russian darkness, when the dead child had been taken from her arms. She had stood there emptily as now ... But the handcart was lurching round into Doomington Road....
BOOK III
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