The Tiger in the Well (35 page)

"There's nothing for it, Rebecca," said Leah. "We'll have to grow beards. But, Papa, what is it.^ What have you come home for.?"

"Trouble," said Morris Katz. "Isaac Feinberg's son was attacked by some roughs in Mile End yesterday. They left a note pinned to his coat saying NO JEWS. And the synagogue was painted with the same slogan. They can't spell Jews, either. They write it Juwes. Someone threw a brick through the window of Bloom's, the baker's. ... I don't want you to go out alone until things are calmer, d'you see.?"

"But—are you talking about a pogrom, Morris? What do you mean? Is it that bad?"

"I don't know yet! I just don't Uke the feel of things, that's all. If Goldberg was free to move around, maybe he could rally the Jews, keep us together. We're all splitting up into factions. But Reuben Singer said he saw him last night— at Arnold Fox's meeting, of all places."

"The man's mad," said Mrs. Katz decisively. "He's as bad as these crazy men from Hibbat Zion. They're everywhere now; you hear their talk all over the place. You haven't been listening to them?"

Hibbat Zion was a movement of Jews who wanted to encourage a return to the Holy Land. Morris Katz waved impatiently.

"To hear what they say, of course I've been listening! D'you think I buy my opinions ready-made? And I'm not so sure they are crazy, Hibbat Zion. They sound to me as if they're talking a lot of sense."

"Goldberg would know better. He wouldn't waste his time with them."

"One minute he's mad, the next minute he'd know better! Make up your mind. Anyway, you're wrong. Goldberg would argue with them, but he'd listen first. That's what you people don't understand about him—"

"You people! Who's you people? His own wife he calls you people r

"Oh, I can't stop now," said Morris Katz. "Fve got a shop to run. Rebecca, take the child. Remember what I said— don't go out alone. Keep the door shut."

He embraced his wife and daughter more warmly than he usually did, and hurried out. Harriet knew nothing of the move from one pair of arms to another. Rebecca sat down with her, marveling at the lightness and softness of this creature who only a few minutes before had been howling, kicking, screaming in fury. Her little face was drenched with sleep. She was at home, in Orchard House, and they were all there—Uncle Webster, Sarah-Jane, Jim, Bruin, and Mama,

and she was with them, commanding them never to go away again.

Like many immigrant Jews, Morris Katz belonged to a chevra: a rehgious organization not quite a synagogue but more than a club, where services were held, discussions and arguments and learning of all kinds took place, and where poor men worn out after their day's toil could go and refresh themselves in the fountain of the Talmud, the collective wisdom of Jewishness. For many immigrants the chevra was a link with the past, with the society and fellowship of the town or the village they'd come from, and they clung to it in this strange land as something familiar.

And when Morris Katz visited the chevra that evening, he found that his wife's guess about Hibbat Zion was right, for there was a visitor in the room, a pale, intense young Russian Jew whom Katz had never seen before.

"My brothers," he was saying in a passionate, musical voice, "what is happening all over Europe.'' Shall I tell you.'' Every nation is coming to a consciousness of itself—realizing who and what it is—and as it does so, it expels all those who don't belong. Russia throws us out of Russia; Germany doesn't want us in Germany; Poland can't wait to hustle us out of Poland.

"But aren't we a nation too.'' Isn't every Jew a member of a nation—but one without a country.f"'

This question had been posed many times, and many of the men there had argued it back and forth. But the young man went on. "I say to you that, yes, there is a Jewish nation, and, yes, there is a country which is ours, given to us by the Lord—given to Abraham, given to Isaac—yes, I'm talking about Eretz Israel, the land of Israel!"

Morris Katz had heard that before too. Talk like this was being heard more and more, among the eastern European Jews in particular. And in spite of what he'd said to his wife, he really wasn't sure what he thought about it, which was why he liked to listen to the arguments.

"But . . . we've settled here," said one of the men. "We have businesses here, homes here. And what would we do in Eretz Israel.'* I'm not a farmer. ..."

"No, our visitor's right," said another. "You can be born here and die here, but they'll never think of you as English; you'll always be a Jew first—an alien—"

"It's the same in Germany—"

"It's the same everywhere!"

"Wait, wait, wait!" said another objector. "Every nation has its own language. Right.'' That's one of the things that makes it a nation. So what language would your Jewish nation speak.? Yiddish.? German.? Polish?"

"Hebrew," said the young man.

Shrugs, nods, vigorous head shakings, and a dozen voices at once. Morris Katz listened with half an ear, obscurely troubled. He knew that Dan Goldberg would have a dozen arguments to beat this one; but Goldberg wasn't there, and intense believers like this young man were becoming more and more influential.

The room they were in was narrow and dark, and extremely hot and stuffy from the iron stove in the comer. Morris Katz hadn't meant to stay for long, and he was about to get up and leave when there was a sudden, shocking crash of glass.

All talk stopped. The talkers froze. On the floor among their feet was a scatter of glass and a brick, and chalked on the brick were the words no juwes.

It took a moment for the men to gather their wits. Then those nearest the window, Morris Katz among them, leaped up and peered out into the rain. Across the street, under a gas lamp, two young men made an obscene gesture and ran off laughing.

As two of the Jews made for the door to try and catch them, as others hunted for a broom to sweep up the glass and a patch of cardboard to put over the window, Morris Katz met the eyes of the visitor. The young man looked determined and frightened and triumphant all at once.

"Well?" he said. "It's beginning, Morris Katz. You're going to have to choose. Are you with us, or against us.'* It's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. Do you want the Jews to have a country.'' Or do you want them to vanish.-'"

Morris Katz didn't reply. He felt the choice wasn't as simple as that. He didn't like these crude certainties; and more than ever he wished Dan Goldberg was there, to help them all see what the truth was.

t

24

The Entry in the Ledger

That same night, Goldberg held a conference on the fourth floor of a tobacco warehouse in Wapping. It was a place he'd used before; a sovereign to the night watchman, and the place was his. Once the windows were covered with sacking, no lights could be seen from the street, and provided no one dropped a match and burned the warehouse down, they were perfectly safe.

Kid Mendel, the Soho gangster, was there, and so was Moishe Lipman, the leader of the Jewish gangs in Bethnal, Green; and so, looking far from easy, were the young Russian from Hibbat Zion and several other representatives of Jewish causes. There were some of the earnest socialists, too, and Reuben Singer, and Bill—about twenty men in all, and they eyed each other warily, waiting for Goldberg to speak. Warily, that is, except for Kid Mendel, who sat on a bale of tobacco with one immaculately shod foot resting on the opposite knee, looking around with urbane curiosity.

When they had all arrived, Goldberg began. He spoke in English, translating into Yiddish and Russian as he went along.

"I've called you all here, gentlemen, because we have to make a decision very soon about the violence that's going to erupt in our midst. We know it's coming; we've been seeing the signs for weeks. We have to decide how we're going to meet it. And what we decide will have a great effect on the lives of all of us.

"Now, as you look around you'll see men you know, men

you don't know, men you trust, men you wouldn't give the time of day to. There are capitaHsts here, and there are socialists. There are those who want all Jews to live in Palestine, and those who are prospering in London. The only thing we have in common is that we're Jews.

"But for the moment that's the important thing, because that's what we're going to be attacked for. Now, you've all put aside your other concerns and come to this meeting, and I'm very glad to see you. What we'll do to start with is go around briefly and compare our observations about how things are in our different areas. Then we'll decide what to do about it. Who'd like to start.'' Mr. Mendel.?"

"With pleasure, Dan," said Kid Mendel. "But I've got a question for you first. You're no fool, and we all know there's a price on your head. How do you know one of us won't turn you in as soon as we leave here.'*"

Goldberg smiled, and his eyes glittered with pure innocence. "D'you know, I hadn't thought of that.?" he said, and no one beheved him for a moment. "Tell you what. Kid—if you know who's going to turn me in, ask him to leave the room, and I'll tell the rest of you how I'm going to spike his guns. Then he can come back in, and we'll get on with the business."

Smiles all around, the broadest from Kid Mendel himself. He nodded.

"All right," he said. "I suppose I'll have to trust my fellow Jews, even the law-abiding ones. The situation in Soho's like this, gentlemen. ..."

Sally was too tired to explore that night. Instead she lay listening to Eliza's faint snores and reviewed what she'd discovered so far.

First, the business with the footman. She'd been foolish to expose herself so easily to getting caught, but if they thought that her real target was Michelet, they wouldn't think her curiosity about the Tzaddik was suspicious: she'd be just

trying to find a way to Michelet through him. On the whole she'd come well out of that encounter, after a few moments of panic.

Second, Michelet himself. Every time she saw him no she found herself remembering the secretary's words: Michelet had been convicted of an offense involving children. Images of what that might have been, and images of Harriet connected with it, strained insistently to come into her mind.

Third, the secretary himself and those offices on the second floor. That was where she must go next.

Fourth, the matter she'd overheard them discussing—and that was the most urgent of all these urgent things. The Tzaddik, through Parrish, was planning to start a riot—an attack on the Jews—and unleash who knew what savagery and hatred. . . . She had the sense of some huge earth movement, a landslide, beginning to move under her; and all she could do was hold back a few pebbles.

But somehow the key to it all lay in that bloated, inert mass of flesh, the Tzaddik. Somehow the way to stop him was to find out who he was—or who else he was; and the way to find that out was to understand the plot against her and Harriet.

Why had he picked on her, out of all the women in Londo with a small child.'' He was so hooded, so guarded, so mys terious that even when she was holding a cup to his lips sh could sense nothing but his deathly helplessness. And th fact that the malevolence that victimized her came out o such infantile weakness made it all the more chilling. Out Oj the strong came forth sweetness. . . . She remembered Samson' riddle. Out of the still came forth poison. Out of the dar . . . Out of the past . . .

She fell asleep.

All over Whitechapel, all over Spitalfields and Mile En( and Wapping, the rain fell unceasingly. The sewers were engorged; the drains and gutters brimmed, choked, overn flowed.

^1

In the pubs, in the Mechanics' Improvement Societies, in kitchens and parlors and eating houses, the word was spreading that there was going to be trouble.

Dockers who were out of work, factory hands, brewery workers, toilers in warehouses and tanneries, laborers of all sorts: anyone who felt cheated, dispossessed, done out of a living or a home or a bit of space. . . . Parrish's men moved among them, buying drinks, lending an ear, letting the poison drip.

The Jews do all right for themselves, don't they.''

They don't go short . . .

They got the markets all sewn up.

Disease. They spread disease. . . . Their women are rotten with it.

There's more and more of 'em coming over on every boat. . . .

You can go down their end of Brick Lane and not see a proper English face for an hour at at time. Hanbury Street— Fashion Street—they're just as bad; Flower and Dean Street . . .

That Hungarian case—it was in the papers—they stole a Christian child and killed it to use her blood in their rituals. It's true—^witnesses—they confessed—

There was a case like that in Germany.

Christian children.'' What, they kill 'em.^

It's been proved time and time again.

There's a Jewish giri in Montagu Street with a stolen child.

Get away. . . .

It is! Not Jewish, neither. . . . Not with fair hair . . .

"Montagu Street.'"' said Mr. Parrish. He was m. a pub in the Whitechapel Road—a grand mahogany place, with polished brass and glittering mirrors and plushly upholstered barmaids. Cigar smoke hung thickly in the air, and Parrish was buying the drinks.

"Yeah," said his informant blurrily, through his eighth pint.

"Have you seen this child.'' What is it, by the way—boy or girl?"

"My old lady has. It's a girl, she reckons. Crying all the time. Stands to reason they stole it."

"Your wife familiar with the street, is she.^"'

"She oughter be. She was born there. Afore them bloody Jews come in. She was going down there yesterday, and she hears this kid yelling and screaming. Smart house it was— lick of paint, clean curtains; must be a bit of money in there, eh.'* They don't go without, do they.f*"

"I expect they're living nice and fat," said Mr. Parrish. "Go on about the child."

"Oh, aye. Well, she hears this yelling and carrying on and looks in through the window, and she sees it—nice little fair-haired kiddie struggling to get away from this Jewish gel what was holding it. The gel sees her looking and drags it away from the window. Bound to be stolen, my old lady reckons. Course, she didn't know about this blood business. ... Is that true, then.?"