it was a sunday and the first day of spring, the first day on which one felt at any rate spring in the air. it blew in at my window with its warm breath, with its inevitable little touch of sadness. i felt restless, and i had nowhere to go to; everyone i knew was out of town. i looked out of my window at the black trees breaking into bud, the tulips and the hyacinths that even london could not rob of their reds and blues and yellows, the delicate spring sunshine on the asphalt, and the pale blue sky that the chimney pots broke into. i found myself muttering "damn it" for no very obvious reason. it was spring, i suppose, the first stirring of the blood.
i wanted to see clean trees, and the sun shine upon grass; i wanted flowers and leaves unsoiled by soot; i wanted to see and smell the earth; above all i wanted the horizon. i felt that something was waiting for me beyond the houses and the chimney-pots: i should find it where earth and sky meet. i didn't of course but i took the train to kew.
if i did not find in kew the place where earth and sky meet or even the smell of the earth, i saw at any rate the sun upon the brown bark of trees and the delicate green of grass. it was spring there, english spring with its fresh warm breath, and its pale blue sky above the trees. yes, the quiet orderly english spring that embraced and sobered even the florid luxuriance of great flowers bursting in white cascades over strange tropical trees.
and the spring had brought the people out into the gardens, the quiet orderly english people. it was the first stirring of the blood. it had stirred them to come out in couples, in family parties, in tight matronly black dresses, in drab coats and trousers in dowdy skirts and hats. it had stirred some to come in elegant costumes and morning suits and spats. they looked at the flaunting tropical trees, and made jokes, and chaffed one another, and laughed not very loud. they were happy in their quiet orderly english way, happy in the warmth of the sunshine, happy to be among quiet trees, and to feel the soft grass under their feet. they did not run about or shout, they walked slowly, quietly, taking care to keep off the edges of the grass because the notices told them to do so.
it was very warm, very pleasant, and very tiring. i wandered cut at last through the big gates, and was waved by a man with a napkin—he stood on the pavement—through a georgian house into a garden studded with white topped tables and dirty ricketty chairs. it was crowded with people, and i sat down at the only vacant table, and watched them eating plum-cake and drinking tea quietly, soberly, under the gentle apple-blossom.
a man came up the garden looking quickly from side to side for an empty place. i watched him in a tired lazy way. there was a bustle and roll and energy in his walk. i noticed the thickness of his legs above the knee, the arms that hung so loosely and limply by his sides as they do with people who wear loose hanging clothes without sleeves, his dark fat face and the sensual mouth, the great curve of the upper lip and the hanging lower one. a clever face, dark and inscrutable, with its large mysterious eyes and the heavy lids which went into deep folds at the corners.
he stopped near my table, looked at the empty chair and then at me, and said:
"excuse me, sir, but d'you mind my sitting at your table?"
i noticed the slight thickness of the voice, the overemphasis, and the little note of assertiveness in it. i said i didn't mind at all.
he sat down, leaned back in his chair, and took his hat off. he had a high forehead, black hair, and well-shaped fat hands.
"fine day," he said, "wonderfully fine day, the finest day i ever remember. nothing to beat a fine english spring day."
i saw the delicate apple-blossom and the pale blue sky behind his large dark head. i smiled. he saw the smile, flushed, and then smiled himself.
"you are amused," he said, still smiling, "i believe i know why."
"yes," i said, "you knew me at once and i knew you. we show up, don't we, under the apple-blossom and this sky. it doesn't belong to us, do you wish it did?"
"ah," he said seriously, "that's the question. or rather we don't belong to it. we belong to palestine still, but i'm not sure that it doesn't belong to us for all that."
"well, perhaps your version is truer than mine. i'll take it, but there's still the question, do you wish you belonged to it?"
he wasn't a bit offended. he tilted back his chair, put one thumb in the arm-hole of his waistcoat, and looked round the garden. he showed abominably concentrated, floridly intelligent, in the thin spring air and among the inconspicuous tea-drinkers. he didn't answer my question; he was thinking, and when he spoke, he asked another:
"do you ever go to synagogue?"
"no."
"nor do i, except on yom kippur. i still go then every year—pure habit. i don't believe in it, of course; i believe in nothing—you believe in nothing—we're all sceptics. and yet we belong to palestine still. funny, ain't it? how it comes out! under the apple-blossom and blue sky, as you say, as well as—as—among the tombs."
"among the tombs?"
"ah, i was thinking of another man i met. he belongs to palestine too. shall i tell you about him?"
i said i wished he would. he put his hand's in his pockets and began at once.
* * * * * * * * *
the first time i saw him, i remember the day well, as well as yesterday. there was no apple-blossom then, a november day, cold, bitter cold, the coldest day i remember. it was the anniversary of my poor wife's death. she was my first wife, rebecca. she made me a good wife, i tell you—we were very happy. (he took out a white silk pocket handkerchief, opened it with something of a flourish, and blew his nose long and loudly. then he continued.)
i buried her at the cemetery in k—road. you know it? what? no? you must know it, the big cemetery near the hospital. you know the hospital at any rate? well, you turn down by it coming from the station, take the first turning to the right and the second to the left, and there you are. it's a big cemetery, very big, almost as big as golders green, and they keep the gardens very nicely. well, my poor wife lies there—my first wife, i've married again, you see, and she's living and well, thank god—and i went on the first anniversary to visit the grave and put flowers on it.
there you are now, there's another curious thing. i often wonder why we do it. it's not as if it did anyone any good. i don't believe in immortality, nor do you, nor do any of us. but i go and put flowers on her grave though it won't do her any good, poor soul. it's sentiment, i suppose. no one can say we jews haven't got that, and family affection. they're among our very strongest characteristics.
yes, they don't like us. (he looked round at the quiet tea-drinkers.) we're too clever perhaps, too sharp, too go-ahead. nous, that's what we've got, nous, and they don't like it, eh? but they can't deny us our other virtues—sentiment and family affection. now look at the titanic disaster: who was it refused to get into the boats, unless her husband went too? who met death hand in hand with him? eh? a jewess! there you are! her children rise up and call her blessed: her husband also and he praiseth her!
i put that verse from proverbs on my poor wife's tombstone. i remember standing in front of it, and reading it over and over again that day, the day i'm talking about. my dear sir, i felt utterly wretched, standing there in that cold wet cemetery, with all those white tombstones round me and a damp yellow november fog. i put some beautiful white flowers on her grave.
the cemetery-keeper had given me some glass gallipots to stand the flowers in, and, as i left, i thought i would give him a shilling. he was standing near the gates. by jove! you couldn't mistake him for anything but a jew. his arms hung down from his shoulders in that curious, loose, limp way—you know it?—it makes the clothes look as if they didn't belong to the man who is wearing them. clever cunning grey eyes, gold pince-nez, and a nose, by jove, sir, one of the best, one of those noses, white and shiny, which, when you look at it full face, seems almost flat on the face, but immensely broad, curving down, like a broad highroad from between the bushy eye-brows down over the lips. and side face, it was colossal; it stood out like an elephant's trunk with its florid curves and scrolls.
i was, as i say, utterly wretched. i wanted someone to talk to, and though i didn't expect to get much comfort out of a cemetery-keeper, i said by way of conversation, as i gave him a shilling:
"you keep these gardens very nicely."
he looked at me over the gold rims of his glasses:
"we do our best. i haven't been here long, you know, but i do my best. and a man can't do more, now can he?"
"no" i said, "he can't."
he put his head on one side, and looked at a tombstone near by: it was tilted over to one side, blackened by the soot to a dirty yellow colour, the plaster peeling off. there was one dirty scraggy evergreen growing on the grave. there was a text on the stone, i remember, something about the righteous nourishing like the bay-tree.
"of course one can't do everything. look at that now. some people don't do anything, never come near the place, don't spend a penny on their graves. then of course they go like that. it will get worse and worse, for we only bury reserves here now. sometimes it ain't anyone's fault: families die out, the graves are forgotten. it don't look nice, but well, i say, what does it matter after all? when i'm dead, they may chuck me on the dung-hill, for all i care."
he looked down his nose at the rows and rows of dirty white grave-stones, which were under his charge, critically, with an air of hostility, as if they had done him some wrong.
"you don't perhaps believe in a life after death?" i said.
he pushed his hands well down into the pockets of his long overcoat, hugged himself together, and looked up at the yellow sky and dirty yellow houses, looming over the cemetery.
"no i don't," he said with conviction. "it ain't likely. nobody knows anything about it. it ain't likely, is it?"
"no, but what about the bible?"
his cold grey eyes looked at me steadily over the gold pince-nez.
"i'm not sure there's much in the bible about it, eh? and one can't believe everything in the bible. there's the almighty of course, well, who can say? he may exist, he may not—i say i don't know. but a life hereafter, i don't believe in it. one don't have to believe everything now: it was different when i was young. you had to believe everything then; you had to believe everything they told you in schul. now you may think for yourself. and mind you, it don't do to think too much: if you think too much about those things, you go mad, raving mad. what i say is, lead a pure clean life here, and you'll get your reward here. i've seen it in my own case: i wasn't always in a job like this. i had a business once, things went wrong through no fault of mine, and i lost everything—everything sold up except an old wooden bed. ah, those were hard times, i can tell you! then i got offered this job—it ain't very good, but i thought to myself: well, there'll be a comfortable home for my wife and my two boys as long as i live. i've tried to live a clean life, and i shall have better times now, eh?
i thought of my own wife and my motherless children: my sadness increased. and i thought of our race, its traditions and its faith, how they are vanishing in the life that surrounds us. the old spirit, the old faith, they had kept alive hot and vigorous—for how many centuries?—when we were spat upon, outcasts. but now they are cold and feeble, vanishing in the universal disbelief. i looked at the man under the shadow of the dirty yellow london fog and the squalid yellow london houses. "this man," i thought to myself, "a mere keeper of graves is touched by it as much as i am. he isn't a jew now any more than i am. we're jews only externally now, in our black hair and our large noses, in the way we stand and the way we walk. but inside we're jews no longer. even he doesn't believe, the keeper of jewish graves! the old spirit, the ancient faith has gone out of him."
i was wrong; i know now, and i'll tell you how i came to see it. the spirit's still there all right; it comes out under the apple-blossom, eh?, and it came out among the tombs too.
the next time i saw him was another november day, an english, a london day; o lord, his nose showed in it very white and florid under the straight houses and the chimney-pots and the heavy, melancholy dripping sky. i had married in the meantime, and my wife—like the good soul that she is—had come with me to put flowers on my poor rebecca's grave—another anniversary you see. yes, i was happy—i don't mind telling you so—even at my poor rebecca's graveside.
he was standing there in the same place, in a black top-hat and a great black overcoat, looking at the tombstones over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses. all the cares of the world seemed to be weighing down his sloping shoulders.
"good day", he said to me, just touching the brim of his hat.
"well", i said, "and how's the world going with you?"
he fixed me with his hard grey eyes that had a look of pain in them, and said in a tone which had neither reverence nor irony in it, nor indeed any feeling at all:
"the lord gave and the lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the lord. i buried my poor wife last thursday".
there was an awkward silence.
"i'm very sorry to hear that," i said, "very sorry."
"yes" he said, "the righteous flourish like the bay-tree: they tell us that: you see it there on the tombstone."
he put his head on one side and stared at it.
"vell," he said—and i noticed for the first time the thick jewish speech—"vell, its there, so i suppose its true, ain't it? but its difficult to see, y' know always. i've often said the only thing we can do is to lead a clean life here, a pure life, and we'll get our reward. but mine seems to be pretty long in coming," he sighed, "yes pretty long, i tell you. i had hard times before: we both of us did, my poor wife and i. and then at last i got this job; i thought she was going to have a happy peaceful life at last. nothing very grand in pay, but enough to keep us and the two boys. and a nice enough house for her. and then as soon as we come here she takes ill and dies, poor soul."
he wiped his eyes.
"i don't know why i should call her poor soul. she's at rest any way. and she made me the best, the very best wife a man could have."
he put his hands well down in the pockets of his overcoat, drew his arms to his sides so that he looked like a great black bird folding its wings round itself, and rocked himself backwards and forwards, first on his toes and then on his heels, looking up at me sideways with wrinkled forehead.
"vell," he said, "ei've got my two boys. i wish you could see 'em. fine young fellows. one earning 30/- a week, though he's only eighteen. he'll do well, i tell you; all right up here." he tapped his forehead. "and the other, though i'm his father i'm not afraid to tell anyone, he's a genius—he draws, draws beautiful, and paints too, real artistic pictures. ah they're good lads—a bit wild, the elder one—" he lowered his voice and showed his teeth in a grin, "he's got an eye for the petticoats, but then boys will be boys. i daresay i was the same myself."
i didn't altogether like the grin, with my wife standing there, so i gave him a shilling and went. i've seen him once more: the day came round again, and i took my boy this time, dear little chap, to see his mother's grave. and fanny came too,—ah, she's a mother to those motherless children.
there he was standing in the same place, in his top-hat and seedy black coat. i saw at once that things were not right with him. his clothes seemed to hang on him as if he were merely an old clothes prop; his old bowed shoulders sloped more than ever. his face was grey, pasty, terribly lined, and his nose more white and shiny than ever. seedy was the word for him, seedy inside and out, seedy through and through. he was beaten, degraded, down, gone under, gone all to bits. and yet somehow he looked as if that was just what hadn't happened—he hadn't gone all to bits: there was something in him that still stood up and held him together, something like a rock which, beaten and buffeted, still held out indomitable.
"well, and how are you?" i asked.
"poorly," he said in a flat voice, "poorly—i'm not what i was."
"nothing serious, i hope?"
"vell, i'm not on my back yet."
"and the boys? they're still doing well, i hope."
a sort of rigidity came over him: he eyed me furtively and yet sternly.
"boys? i've only one boy."
"ah, i'm sorry, very sorry to—"
"no, no, it's not what you think, not that. i've had trouble, but not that. that eldest boy of mine, he's no longer my son——i have done with him; i have only one son now."
there was nothing dejected, nothing humble in him now. he seemed to draw himself together, to become taller. a stiff-necked race, i thought!
"if you ask me how many sons i've got, i say only one, only one. that fellow isn't my son at all. i had a servant girl here working in my house, a christian serving girl—and he married her behind my back. he asks me to sit down to meat with a girl, a christian girl, who worked in my house—i can't do it. i'm not proud, but there are some things—if he had come to me and said: "dad, i want to marry a girl"—a really nice girl—"but she's not one of us: will you give me your permission and blessing?" well i don't believe in it. our women are as good, better than christian women. aren't they as beautiful, as clever, as good wives? i know my poor mother, god rest her soul, used to say: "my son," she said, "if you come to me and say you want to marry a good girl, a jewess, i don't care whether she hasn't a chemise to her back, i'll welcome her—but if you marry a christian, if she's as rich as solomon, i've done with you—don't you ever dare to come into my house again." vell, i don't go as far as that, though i understand it. times change: i might have received his wife, even though she was a goy. but a servant girl who washed my dishes! i couldn't do it. one must have some dignity."
he stood there upright, stern, noble: a battered scarred old rock, but immovable under his seedy black coat. i couldn't offer him a shilling; i shook his hand, and left him brooding over his son and his graves.
