Reb Monash

“ A walking-stick like a tree! A moujik, God should so help me, not a rebbie! Poor Jakele, crying his heart out like a dove! I'll take him away from a so crooked chayder!"
"But that concerns me little!" broke in Reb Monash. "For each one that goes, come four each time!" (This confident mathematic invariably puzzled Philip. He knew how necessary to the Massel family was an increased income. Why should not Reb Monash dismiss his whole chayder and then automatically increase his clientele fourfold?) ”

“ Massel could never bear the telling of this tale. She would be in the scullery peeling potatoes. Not washing up. It was indiscreet to make a noise when Reb Monash was talking. If Philip dropped a book, Reb Monash had to pause a full minute until he recovered the evenness of his flow.
"Poor little Rochke, peace be upon her, crying for food! And so crushed were we that there wasn't even room to feed the child, though everybody understood and tried to make room. Now, perhaps you'll realize what it was like. As the child became more and more hungry she became too weak even to cry. ”

“ The cavernous lips opened as the beaker rose to their glooms. "I am that I am!" a voice moaned among endless colonnades of hills toppling towards the verges of space. How came it that the eyes of Jehovah aloof among the chasmed clouds were the eyes of Reb Monash, sitting upon his peculiar and inalienable chair in the corner of the kitchen? And the copper tray was a lake profound with many distances and many generations where dim ancestral shapes flickered from deep to deep. ”

“ Reb Monash took from the pocket of his alpaca coat a long thin strip of black hide. He sat down on a chair, and without looking towards Philip, commanded "Thy trousers down!" Philip obeyed.
"Now I will teach thee whether thou wilt mix with all the filth in the land. Over my knees!"
The venomous strap descended, twice, three times, four times. A swift catch came from Philip's throat. Again and once again. Her whole body shuddering dismally, Mrs. Massel stole from the room. From the scullery came Channah's voice, moaning. ”

“ Then he recovered himself. He stared into the pallor of his father's cheeks, avoiding the eyes, avoiding the deep lines of fatigue about the corners of his mouth. "Nothing, tatte, a friend! What will you?" Reb Monash was about to express his unease with another question when he too checked himself and the shadow of this new friendship lay between them, heavy, unexplained.
But when next Strauss seductively introduced the name of Kate into the conversation, Philip shouted suddenly, at the top of his voice—and in Cambridge Street, "Go to the devil, you're a swine!" ”

“ Benjamin would lose his Jewish clientele, it would shake Reb Monash's chayder to its foundations, and what would be thought of a maggid whose son ... No, the matter was too terrible to think of! They must be patient, perhaps God would be kind even yet! Yet it was hard, very hard to bear! Not for all her resolutions could she stifle periodic outbursts of wrath. Philip would rise from the table with shut lips and retire to his room and his books.
Poetry had begun to lose its savour for him. Poetry tinkled. ”

“ It was not wholly that the young scions of Judæa in Russia were so far from committing definite sins against God and Man that their days were a positive round of gratuitous holiness. Much as Philip tried dutifully to rejoice with his father over this sanctity of young Russian Jewry, even when Reb Monash significantly expatiated on the talents of young gentlemen only seven years old who steered their own vessels through the dark seas of Kaballah—it was not this piety which set Philip brooding. ”

“ The idea had occurred to him of inviting Philip to the annual Doomington camp among the Westmoreland hills, particularly as the camp regularly contained a fair proportion of the Jewish boys at the school. But the thought of Reb Monash seemed rigidly to disqualify the idea. It was obvious that with the most courteous intentions in the world the ceremonial minutiae of Angel Street could hardly be repeated to their last austerity in the divine welter of camp. ”

“ It meant that he arrived home nearly two hours before the nightly session of chayder; with the consequence that Reb Monash was still wrapped in his afternoon doze. Mrs. Massel had by this time cleared away every vestige of the mid-day meal and the kitchen was smelling delightfully fresh and clean. The brasses on the mantelshelf shone broad and lustrous—trays and samovar brought over from Russia, and the array of candlesticks which glorified the table every Sabbath eve. ”

“ Philip felt instinctively how everybody stiffened with dislike when he entered the synagogue, a dislike accentuated by the universal honour with which his father was regarded. Had he but been the son of a bootmaker, the Judaic virtues would not have been so prominently expected from him; they would have said "a bootmaker remains a bootmaker, even to his remote posterity!" But being the son of Reb Monash, whose black hair and beard his son was even now dimming with disastrous grey, Philip was a public scorn. ”

“ He uttered the prayer with dead clarity.
Minchah was over. In dull wonder he realized that the shammos had unfastened his father's shoe laces and was unfastening his own. Reb Monash rose weakly and walked across the room and Philip followed. The crowd desultorily made way for them as they moved, their loose laces dragging in the dust. As they were fumbling once more with the tying of their laces, the black figures were flickering through the door into the road.
Who of the living shall stay in the place of the dead? Let the dead hold such converse together as they can! ”

“ The room was full of unchecked sobbing. Grief was round her like a whirlpool. How calm she lay at its centre, unperturbed, serene! A woman was tearing her hair, Dorah beating her breast savagely! Reb Monash stood heaped against a corner, his head drooped upon his breast. Channah, her shoulders convulsively shaking, lay clasped in a woman's arms. Philip looked tearless upon his mother's tearless face. She knew how to take Death quietly, like a queen! ”

“ If Reb Monash met a friend and these pursued a common way to the synagogue, Philip would hover behind, remove the bowler hat, and pretend it was somebody else's—he was only "holding it like."
There was a brood of young gentlemen very popular among their elders at the Polisher Shool. There was Hymie, whose eyes were large and innocent and who helped himself daily from his father's till. His voice was the voice of an exceptionally guileless thrush and he sang Yiddish songs at Shalla-shudos, the Saturday afternoon gatherings. ”

“ Before a table facing the window Reb Monash sat, in the additional shadow cast by the large oblong of cardboard which occupied a fourth of the window-space so as to hide the damage caused by a malicious Gentile stone. More for minatory gesture than for punishment, a bone-handled walking-stick lay to his hand, along the table. Facing the door a large cupboard stood invariably open. Here on the lowest shelf were the Prayer Books, from the first page of which the youngest scholars learned their Hebrew capitals. ”

“ When Reb Monash fell into his best anecdotic form, Philip sometimes, only a year or two ago, had been afraid to venture beyond the front door, in fear of Kossacken galloping in with drawn sabres from Doomington Road. Indubitably the night was compact with their menace. Only gradually he shook off these alarms. England, he realized, the very filth of the Mitchen river impressing it upon him, and the grime of these grassless, clangorous streets, England was not Russia—a knowledge won only after thick agony and his brow soaked with midnight terror. ”

“ Not the most enthusiastic observer could have foretold the growth of a friendship between Philip and Mottele. On the other hand, Reb Monash regarded with some alarm the growing relations between his son and Harry Sewelson. He was not wholly satisfied that a sound Jewish atmosphere ruled in the Sewelson household, but his own path and theirs were too far apart for any accurate ascertainment. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Night swallowed something of boyhood. Manhood came stalking towards Philip out of the vast. Manhood placed a finger on his young forehead. A sad boy slept that night in Angel Street, sad and wise.
CHAPTER XII
Dorah was a tall, raw-boned woman, carrying all the implicit angles of Reb Monash to an explicit extreme. In the civil strife at Angel Street her sympathy had always been on the side of tradition and Reb Monash, as against licence and Philip. Channah likewise had, in a weak and somewhat hopeless way, taken sides. ”

“ One will see thee in the afternoon shool, Mottele, for minchah, eh?"
"God being so good, Reb Monash!"
"And forget thou not, Feivel! Not a foot into the street or thou wilt see then!"
"But Monash," broke in Mrs. Massel, "see how it is a fine day! Can't he just go out and get some air in the street?"
"So thou must take his part, Chayah, nu? It will not harm him to go without air. The Torah if he will imbibe will do him more good!"
"A guten Shabbos!" said Mottele quietly as he slid through the door, "A good Sabbath!" Philip looked towards him in a passion of dumb hate. ”

“ He remembered the quiet pride with which, long ago, she had regarded Reb Monash as he sat oracular in his chair, his admirers drinking with reverent avidity the wine of wisdom flowing from his lips. The boy's throat shook with harsh, suppressed sobs.
Channah spoke. "Philip, she's calling to you!"
Not a tear had risen to his eyes. He bent over his mother with a wan smile. Weakly, slowly, she spoke. He knew that she had been lying there, waiting to summon up the strength with which to frame a few words.
"Nu, Feivele, my own one. Art thou feeling stronger for being away?" ”

“ Hapathy! Your children is drinking the blood of their fathers! What for? What for, I ask? Hapathy! Deny it who can!"
Reb Monash was engaged in a conversation with a lady who had two sons to dispose into a chayder. He thought it discreet for the moment to remain outwardly unaware of the sinful hour Philip had chosen for his return. Open disapproval would have displayed Philip as no satisfactory sample, so to speak, of the paternal wares. He turned to Philip and with a gentle significance the two-sonned lady could not have fathomed, inquired, "Sewelson?"
"No!" replied Philip, "Socialism!" ”

“ Russia—the first Babylon—the dread, the enmity, faded into the murky Doomington skies.
One scene remained with him to consummate this nightmare. Reb Monash told the story frequently. If he had played a part whereat women lowered their respectful eyes with a fleeting gesture of disapproval or impatience, his piety none the less was confirmed, if it needed confirmation, in the eyes of the Lord Himself. ”

“ Massel echoed, very quietly, from her corner of the sofa.
Reb Monash could not resist the temptation of taking out one of his Silver Virginia cigarettes, deliberately setting it in his mouthpiece, lighting it, and drawing smoke two or three times contemplatively.
Somebody's foot tapped in a corner. He resumed. "Yah, a gun pointing at him through a chink. What was there to do, I ask you? If they fired—well, they fired, and he was dead. If they didn't fire, he was alive. And if a man's alive, a man must live. ”

“ The room in which the chayder was housed was distinctly dismal, despite the fountain of spiritual light playing perpetually there, the fountain whereof Reb Monash himself was the head. It lay between the "parlour," a chilly room upholstered in yellow plush, which was on the right as you passed into the "lobby," and the kitchen in the recesses of the house, to enter which you descended two invisible steps. Beyond the window of the chayder and beyond the yard, hung a grim, blank-windowed hat-and-cap factory. ”

“ On the sofa sat Mrs. Massel herself, in a clean afternoon apron, her fingers busy with knitting, allowing herself in Philip's honour the few minutes she spent idly in a day which began at six in the morning and ended at eleven. Mrs. Massel was a woman of middle age, slim, but her whole body eloquent of hard work. When Reb Monash had gone to seek his rhetorical fortunes in America, before Philip was born, she had tried to combine the housework with some form of itinerant business; the strain was still visible in the long lines across her forehead. ”

“ Never goes out with any other girl, only his sister you'll see on his arm, week after week. A real Jew, say I, and a real brother! And what about Moses Montefiore? He would stand up in the House of Parliament while one talked of taxes and India and face the East and start shaking himself over his davenning! But let him be like Moishe Nearford, let alone Moses Montefiore, and I am content!"
So it came about that a tacit understanding existed for the next few months between Reb Monash and Philip that the old Spartan devotion to chayder and shool was temporarily not expected from him. ”