Bruno Lessing

“ Upon the Day of Atonement Bertha fasted. She, too, had gone through a bitter struggle. For a nature like hers to abandon the faith of her race meant a racking of every fibre of soul and body. She had not slept for three nights. Her face was pale, and her eyes were encircled with black shadows. But through all her misery, through all the distress that she felt over her father’s grief, she could not subdue the throbbing of exulting joy that pulsed through her veins, nor blot out from her mind the blue eyes of her lover or the ardour of his kisses. ”

“ The rabbi brought a letter to Erzik.
“She said it was for your wedding.”
Carefully folded in a clean sheet of note paper lay three double eagles; it was Esther’s fortune.
Die Liebe ist eine alte Geschichte. Erzik and Sarah have been married a year, and they still sit side by side in the sweatshop. Spring has come again, and the sewing machines whirr and buzz and drone and hum, and through it all you can hear that foolish old song. When they look up from their work and their eyes meet, they smile. They are content with their lot in life, and they love each other. ”

“ When life is light and free from care, religion is quick to fly; but when the sky grows dark and life becomes earnest, and we feel its burden growing heavy upon our shoulders, then we welcome the consolation that religion brings, and we cling to it. And Shadrach Cohen had taught his sons that life was earnest. They were earning their bread by the sweat of their brow. No prisoner, with chain and ball, was subjected to closer supervision by his keeper than were Gottlieb and Abel. ”

“ To such natures the “no” from a woman’s lips comes like a blow; the sudden knowledge that those same lips can smile brightly upon another follows like molten lead.
That whole afternoon Bernstein had suffered the wildest tortures of jealousy. Had Natzi been a younger man Bernstein’s resentment might not have turned so hotly upon him. Yet Natzi was almost of his own age, a weak-faced creature, with an eternal smile, incapable of intense feeling, ignorant of even the faintest shade of that passion which he (Bernstein) had laid so humbly, so tenderly at her feet—and it was Natzi she loved! ”

“ Mandelkern’s watery eyes narrowed to a slit and his teeth closed tightly together. Then he answered firmly:
“Have no fear. She will be mine. The lad is, young.” And after a moment he repeated, “The lad is young!”
Aye, David was young! His pulses throbbed with the vigour of youth, with the joy of hope, with the deep torrent of a heart’s first love. Glorious youth! Thou art the richest heritage of the children of men! Canst thou not tarry? Down the bright beam of Arcturus there came to David a light that illumined his soul. ”

“ Miriam came, and in a stiff, embarrassed manner Gottlieb presented her to his father. The girl looked in surprise at the venerable figure that stood before her—a picture of a patriarch from the Pentateuch, with a long, straggling beard, and ringlets of hair falling over the ears, and clad in the long gaberdine of the Russian Ghettos. And she saw a pair of grey eyes bent keenly upon her—eyes of shrewdness, but soft and tender as a woman’s—the eyes of a strong man with a kind heart. ”

“ Reuben hurriedly exclaimed. “It is only because I want Barbara. He would say the same to anyone else that asked for his daughter. You know me, rabbi; you have known me a long time, ever since I was a child. I do not pretend to be an angel, but I am not bad. I love the girl, and I can take good care of her. I don’t want to see his old wine glass again. I’d smash it into a——”
Reuben’s jaw fell, and his eyes stared vacantly at the wall. The rabbi followed his gaze, and, seeing nothing, turned to Reuben in surprise. ”

“ A day’s work in the composing-room of the Jewish Workingman is a task calculated to sap a man’s vitality to its last drop. Yet, this task completed, Levine throws himself with feverish activity into the composition of verse, and writes, and writes, and writes, until the lamp burns low. Sometimes, when he tires, he pauses to listen to the gentle breathing of his wife, who sleeps in the next room. ”

“ To him Christianity meant oppression, persecution, torture. His nature was stern and unbending; there could be no compromise, no palliation; the sinner against Israel was like a venomous serpent that must be crushed without argument. And now his duty was clear.
When the officials of the synagogue met, a few days before Yom Kippur, the Rabbi Tamor, pale and trembling, but firm in his determination, laid before them the case of a young woman who had resolved to marry outside her faith. ”

“ His eyes were turned from her—he was watching the gipsies playing—it was all quite casual.
It is said that love creates a sixth sense. In a flash Eulie’s whole nature shrank from this man, and stood at arms ready for battle. This was no friend in search of a boon companion. This was an enemy—a mortal enemy of David. She felt it, knew it as positively as if she had seen him fly at David’s throat. Fortunately the man had not observed the pallor that overspread her countenance. ”

“ A light, happy heart—a nature that gloried in the joy of existence—ever ready to sing, to smile, to frolic—sympathetic to all woe, yet realising sorrow only as an external affliction, whose sting she could see, but had never felt—the soul of merriment was Miriam. ”

“ In the heart of the Jewish quarter stood an old Catholic church, relic of those bygone days ere the oppressed Jews of Russia and Austria had learned that this land was a haven of refuge, and had come to settle in this neighbourhood by the hundreds of thousands. Close by this church lived the Rabbi Sarna, one of the earliest of the immigrants—an honest, whole-souled man who knew the Talmud and the Kabbala by heart, and who had a daughter. Her name was Hannah—and there the story and the song began. ”

“ While it lasted he worked like an automaton, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing save a chaotic tumult in his heart and brain that could find no vent in words, no audible expression save in a fierce outcry against fate—resistless, remorseless fate. A few months ago these attacks had come upon him more frequently, and had lasted for hours, leaving him exhausted and ill. But they had become rarer and less violent; there is no misfortune to which the human mind cannot ultimately become reconciled. Lizschen was soon to die. Braun had rebelled ”

“ You who swelter in your parlour these sultry days—do you know what the heat of summer means to two families chained by poverty within a solitary room in a Ghetto tenement, where there is neither light nor air, where the pores of the walls perspire, where the stench of decay is ever present, where there is nothing but heat, heat, heat? ”

“ Then, in his wheezy voice, Mandelkern had outlined his plan.
“The Shadchen has arranged it all. She is younger than I—oh, a great many years younger, David—and she does not know me. We have only seen each other once. Of course she is marrying me for my money, but I know that when once we are married she will love me. But the trouble is, David, that I cannot find out for myself, positively, whether she is the kind of girl I want to marry. You see, if I were to go and see her myself, she would be on her good behaviour all the time. They always are. ”

“ Natzi looked at the bowed head before him with tender smile. Bernstein was trembling.
“I am glad, though, that all happened as it did. Had I nursed you only for your own sake, much as I loved you, I might have weakened, my strength might not have held out. For a man can do that for his love which he cannot do for himself. ”

“ Beside this glorious panorama, with its background of infinity and eternity, its colossal force, its sublime grandeur, the ills of life seem trivial. And David, who had been lonely all his life, would sit for hours upon each bright night, building castles along the Milky Way and pouring out his soul to the stellar universe—particularly to Arcturus, who had never failed him. Upon this 246night there was a faint smile of amusement upon his face. He was thinking of the queer mission that Mandelkern, his employer, had asked him to undertake that day. ”

“ He looked at me in surprise, his eyes wide open, and after gazing at me for a moment he shook his head.
“No, that was not beautiful. The ‘Rakoczy March’ is the greatest march in the world, but these gipsies do not know how to play it. They cannot play. They have no life, no soul. They play it as if they were machines.” ”

“ Surely Gurtman could envy him nothing. Why should a strong, fine-looking man—a rich man, too, as matters went in Hester Street—take pleasure in tormenting an ugly, good-natured cripple? It was strange, yet true. Perhaps it was that Chertoff’s cheery disposition grated upon 172the brooding, gloomy temperament of the sweater, or perhaps the cripple’s popularity in the sweatshop was an offence in his employer’s eyes, or perhaps it was merely one of those unreasoning antipathies that one man often feels toward another and for which he can give not the slightest explanation. ”

“ You pose as a cynic, as a man who looks down upon the petty things that make up life for most of us, but I—I, who have lived with you, struggled with you, known so many of the trials and heart-breakings of everyday life with you—I know you better. ”

“ But in the Ghetto each day his cry is repeated, and through the heat and the foul air there arises from a thousand hearts the tearless murmur:
“Great is my affliction, O God of Israel, but Thou knowest best!”
217 THE SUN OF WISDOM “And therefore,” concluded Salvin, stroking his long, grey beard, “we are forced to accept the belief that the object of life is toil. We are the advance guard cutting out the road down which the next generation will travel, who, in turn, will carry the road further along. Our work done—our usefulness ends. ”

“ It is an old story in the Ghetto, one that lovers tell to their sweethearts, who always cry when they hear it. The machines still roar and whirr, as if a legion of wild spirits were shrieking within them, and many a tear is stitched into the garments, but you never see them, madame—no, gaze as intently 29upon your jacket as you will, the tear has left no stain. There is an old man at the corner machine, grey-haired and worn, but he works briskly. ”

“ His lips were twitching with repressed curses on Reuben’s head. But Reuben only smiled.
“No, good father,” he said. “Not to-morrow. You might change your mind. Let it be now, and your glass is safe.”
(“What a pertinacious young man!” thought the connoisseur.)
307“May the fiends devour you!” cried Zalman.
“Now look you,” said Reuben, twirling the delicate glass in a careless way that sent chill shudders down the tailor’s spine; “it is you who are stubborn. Not I. If you knew how devotedly I loved Barbara you would not, you could not be so heartless as to keep us apart.” ”