Summer Will Show (15 page)

“Perhaps because they had opened their hands, my parents began to grow more prosperous. My father started a little shop, selling such things as seed and candles and household gear. Because the wares were good and cheap, people from the village came to buy, saying always that they were cheated and overcharged, but coming again. My mother baked cakes for their Christian feast-days, cakes flavoured with caraways or wild anise, and I, instead of gathering wood strawberries, cherries, and cranberries for myself, gathered them to make into jams, and the money from this little commerce was put by for my wedding dowry. One day my father came back from a journey to the town with a coloured bandbox containing a wig for my mother. For when they had married they had been too poor to buy such a thing, and my mother, shaving her head as Jewish women must do on marriage, had ever afterwards worn only a kerchief. Now she had a wig, a grand, an honourable wig. It was of horsehair, dyed chestnut colour, very voluminous and towering, and when she had put it on all her friends came in to congratulate and admire. My father, too, looked at her as though she were beautiful and stately as Queen Esther. His face was full of pride and love. But I hung back, awkward and alarmed; for to me this wig seemed ugly and, worse still, baleful and unlucky.

“Under these glaring tresses I saw for the first time how pale and careworn my mother’s face had grown since the coming of these other Jews and our riches, so that I had lost all sight, now, of the mother who had walked singing over the heath and suckled her baby in the birch-wood.

“But these thoughts I kept to myself, only saying among those of my own age that the wig was ugly, and that when I married I would wear a kerchief or perhaps keep my long hair. When I said such things as these my playmates tittered and pretended to be shocked. I made them long speeches, saying that Jewry must be freed, and that when I was older I would lead them all back to Jerusalem. Some of the boys jeered at me, saying that I did not know where Jerusalem was (indeed, I did not), and that anyhow I was only a woman and could do nothing but obey my husband. But mostly they followed me, and when my speeches were too much for them I wooed them back with a story. All my stories were of freedom and the overthrowing of tyrants, and so led to my speeches again. And when I tired of their listening faces I would give them the slip, and go over the heath to the river (for it was an easy walk now); and sitting on the river bank I used to say, over and over again, David’s words:
Turn our captivity, O Lord, as the rivers in the south
. For I had never forgotten my first sight of the river, so proud and turbulent, bearing away its broken fetters. The river would understand me when I spoke of Liberty.

“Eleven times since I was born the ice had crept over the running river and thickened there. And now it was winter again, midwinter, and a winter’s evening dusk. Not since the winter of the pestilence had there been such ruthless cold, such famine and distress. The wolves came out in broad daylight, at night they fought among themselves, ravening for each other’s flesh. Unknown birds flew over us in bands, driven even out of their north by the cold. Whenever they flew over, a storm followed.

“I was just coming across the yard from the outhouse, where I had gone to carry our goats their feed, when I heard footsteps, a man running and staggering along the frozen path. The running man was my father. He had torn off his mittens as though their weight would encumber him, I saw his red hands flapping against the dusky white of the snow. His mouth was open, he fetched his breath with groaning. He fell down on the icy track, and was up again, and came running on with his face bloodied. He did not see me where I stood motionless in the dusk of the yard, but ran past me and burst open the house door and staggered in. Before he had spoken I heard my mother cry out, a wild despairing cry that yet seemed to have a note of exultation in it, as though it were recognising and embracing some terror long foreseen. I went in after him, very slowly and quietly, as though in this sweep of terror I must move as noiselessly as possible. He was leaning over the table, his hands clenching it, and trembling. He trembled, his back heaved up and down with his struggles for breath, with every gasp he groaned with the anguish of breathing. Mixed in with his groans were words. Always the same words. ‘They’re coming!’ he said. ‘They’re coming!’”

“Wolves!” exclaimed Frederick.

“
Christians
.

“My mother with averted eyes as though she dared not look at him was hurrying the younger children into their coats and wrappings. The baby began to cry. ‘Hush!’ she whispered. I could scarcely hear the word, but it was spoken with such vehemence that the child, a child at the breast, understood, and lay still as a corpse. With arms that seemed to have stretched into the wings of a vast bird she gathered us together. ‘Come! Come quickly and softly! We must hide in the forest.’ ‘The Book,’ said my father. ‘The candlesticks. The holy things of Israel.’ There was no expression on her face as she stood waiting, while trembling and fumbling he collected these together, and wrapped them carefully in a cloth. When this was done she laid her hand on his arm, persuading him towards the door. He stopped. ‘The others,’ he said. ‘They must be warned. I will go to them.’ For a moment her set face seemed to fall apart in an explosion of rage and despair. But she said no word, standing by the door with her baby in her arms and her children about her. ‘I will go,’ I said. ‘Send me!’

“Through the heavy dusk I ran from house to house. Many houses were closed and shuttered, I had to bang and shout to be admitted. I stopped only to say, ‘The Christians are coming.’ It was all I knew. In every house it was the same. A cry, a lamentation! And then the same desperate haste, and smooth making ready to fly, as though, waking and sleeping, winter and summer, a life-long, a nation-long, this had been expected and rehearsed. I had reached the last house when I saw the darkness suddenly changed to a pattern of ruddy white and leaping black shadows; and turning, I saw torches, flaring pine-knots, and a throng of people, black and hurrying, and heard shouts, and laughter, and curses. No need, at this last door, to cry that the Christians were coming.

“I heard them calling out my father’s name, saying that he was a usurer, and my mother a witch. Then there was a scream. It was one of our goats, I thought; but Dinah, the woman of the last house, thrust a shawl over my head, pressing her hands over my ears, and some one took me by the arm and began to run with me. My head was muffled in the shawl, I could not untie the knot, I could only run, dragged on by this hand on my arm. Sometimes a bundle with sharp edges banged against my legs, I was jostled against, I lost my footing and stumbled, and was hauled up again, blinded and half smothered in the shawl. All round were people running. I heard their feet striving in the snow, the thud of large feet and the patter of small. And behind us came the pursuers, shouting and jeering like cattle-drivers. Suddenly at my side there was a scream like a flash of lightning, and the hand that dragged me forward let go, and I ran on alone, tearing at the knotted shawl.

“Something cold and rigid stopped my flight, and at the same moment I felt a stab in my arm, and the blood running. I thought it was the pike of the Christians, and I fell on the ground and lay still, waiting for the death-stroke. But nothing happened. The flying and the pursuing feet went past, but no one touched me; and presently, feeling about, I found that it was a bush that I had run against, wounding myself against a broken bough, sharp with ice. My hands were too numbed to unfasten the knot, but with my teeth I bit a hole in the shawl, and tore it open and thrust out my head.

“I was at the edge of the forest, all alone. I thought it would be dark, but there was still a faint cringing daylight. The voices and the footsteps were gone far off, the screaming and shouting almost done. At longer and longer intervals there would sound a long wavering cry, or a yelp of anguish; and as I listened I remembered how after a summer thunderstorm I had often sat at the edge of the forest, watching the world flash out in its new revived green, and hearing the last drops of rain fall, splash, splash, here and there, till at last they ceased altogether, or I had tired of counting them. Summer or winter, then or now ... both were equally real or unreal to me, as I sat under the bush, waiting, since slaughter had passed me by, for wolves or cold to make an end of me. There was a smell of woodsmoke in the air, and through my stupor this comforted me. My wits were so scattered that even when I saw the flames rising on the sky, and knew that it was our houses that burned, the scented smoke was still my comfort. I moved, to settle myself deeper under the bush where I should die. With the agony of that movement I was driven alive again, crying out with pain, struggling to my feet, and felled by the weight of my stiffened blood. Like an animal gone mad I darted over the snow, shaking myself and whining, and running hither and thither. Presently, near the edge of the forest, I came on the body of a woman — dead; and further on the body of an old man — dead, too; and the bloodied tracks led me from there to something that might have been man or woman or child — but was only blood and a heap of trampled flesh. Like a mad dog I ran from corpse to corpse, snuffing at them and starting away. Darkness had fallen, but the blazing houses gave me light — light enough to find at last a round thing like a fallen bird’s-nest, cold and stiff with frost, and rocking lightly in the wind. It was my mother’s wig. There was a body near by, but not hers; and searching over the trampled snow I found at last the track of my father’s feet, his by the print of the broken heel. The tracks led back towards the hamlet. He had turned, and gone back for me, his first-born.

“Now I knew where to perish. The Christians should see that a Jewess could be no less faithful than a Jew. And while I ran towards the blazing house my old fancies flared up, and it seemed to me that not only should I die defying them, but that my race should be avenged through me, since I would certainly kill many of them before they killed me.

“I jumped over a smouldering paling, and ran between the burning huts towards our own. As I came in sight I heard a long crackling yell of acclamation. The Christian women had come up, to watch the burning, and to rifle; and now as I neared them they all cried out: ‘See, the little Jewess! How she runs, the Devil is after her! Throw her into the fire! No! Don’t touch her! She’s mad! Look at her eyes. She’s mad, and will bite us.’

“I threw myself among them, and they gave way, shrinking back, grabbing at me and letting go, as I struck at them with fists and set teeth. But in an instant I was caught by two fat strong hands, my shoulders caught, and my face pressed into a fat black-draped belly that smelt of onions and incense. It was the priest, who had come up with the women. I kicked his shins, but he held me fast, and the women, flocking up, took hold of my hands and feet, and overpowered me.

“‘Hold her, good Christians, hold her,’ he said, coughing because I had butted his belly. ‘God has sent her into our hands. We will keep her, and baptise her. Holy Church has always room for another soul.’”

She paused, her eyes staring out from her rigid pose. There was a stir at the back of the room, but no one turned a head. Only when the heavy eyelids drooped over the staring eyes was there a faint sigh, a rustle and exhalation as though a field of corn that had stood all day in the breathless August drought had yielded to a breath of wind. Released from Minna’s gaze, Sophia felt a sudden giddiness. I will not faint, she thought. A chair was slid towards her. She had forgotten that all this while she had stood. But she would not sit down. Glancing about, trying to ease her stiffened eyes, she saw that the ivory fan of the woman seated near her was snapped in two.

Still looking down, Minna seemed to be summoning a final cold to arise from the depths of a well at her feet. Her face became even paler, her body stiffened as though with frost, her lips narrowed. When she spoke her voice was cold and flat like a snowfield.

“I shall not forget what I suffered in the priest’s house ... ”

But the stir at the back of the room, discreetly swelling, had now arched itself into an enquiring silence. Into that silence broke a preliminary cough, and a dull snuffling voice said,

“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. But the people in the street are demanding the carriages for their barricade.”

“What?”

Without animation the concierge repeated,

“The people in the street are demanding the carriages for their barricade.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Frederick, speaking from the heart of England.

A sort of quenched scuffle arose. Skirts rustled, chairs thrust back squawked on the parquet, voices, hushed but prepared to rise in a minute, questioned and exclaimed. A lady with diamonds called “Stanislas!,” and the bald man whose shoulders were draped with a plaid shawl uttered a growl of satisfaction. For already the assembly had split into two parties, the one lightly alarmed, lightly enthusiastic, the other excited, class-conscious, and belligerent. The ill-dressed and the well-dressed, who had been sitting so surprisingly cheek by jowl, began to group themselves after their kind. When the lady with diamonds embraced Minna and. cried out, “Ah, my dear! It has come at last, our revolution,” the camp of the ill-dressed showed no sympathy.

Nor, thought Sophia, sharply observing this turn of the evening’s entertainment, did Minna. Her narrative and her spell broken by the concierge’s announcement, she had put on for a moment the look of a cat made a fool of — a massive sultry fury. Rallying, she had matched the situation by a majestic rising to her feet, a lightening of her sombre mask, a deepened breathing and an opening of hands, as though welcoming a dayspring on her darkness. This was havocked by the embrace of the diamonded lady. For a second time baulked of the centre of the stage, she seemed about to turn her back on her audience, till, catching Sophia’s faithful glance, she made a swift, a confidential grimace, walked towards her, and deflecting herself at a few steps’ distance began to talk to the hump-backed little Jew.