Albert’s mind was like a sponge thrown into water, absorbing while seemingly inactive. Subconsciously he was studying every face, no matter how often he had seen it; every object, however commonplace, aroused his curiosity.
When he left Hedwiga his mind was a blank. He walked on blindly, seemingly thoughtful but really thinking of nothing. He was conscious of joy tempered by timidity—but without thinking of anything in particular.
Nearing his home he began to think of her more specifically. She was a living image. The image grew in vividness. His eyes almost closed now—his eyelids had come together automatically—and all objects disappeared save her form. Her slender figure and that clinging, draping skirt around her legs; her loose hair of dazzling tints—red and gold mixed with ochre—and those wonderful eyes of her—they looked at him so piteously and yet so proudly. He was breathing fast, a warm glow was on his face, his full lips parted. For the moment his mouth seemed strikingly feminine—the mouth of a young woman alive to stirring passion.
No, he was not conscious of sex; at least, not of the sex-consciousness he had often experienced. Its rude call was absent. He could not define the difference, but the strange desires he had felt at the sight of the barefooted peasant girls working in the fields were wanting. All that he desired at present was to go back to that hut—to the home of the Witch so full of dread and mystery—and just sit and look at Hedwiga.
He told no one of his visit to the Free House, as the Witch’s hovel was called. He did not even make mention of this to his sister, the keeper of all his secrets, nor even to Christian, but he thought of Hedwiga every minute.
After much day-dreaming Albert took a stroll in the direction of the Witch’s house. He had not yet definitely decided to pay her another call, but was sauntering aimlessly on the road leading to the Witch’s house. Before long he found himself perilously near the hut. He first caught sight of the elm tree. It was the same hour of the day he had chanced by the first time. Without the calculation of the maturer lover he vaguely hoped that he would again find her alone—perhaps again drying her hair in the sun. His heart beat loudly as he approached the little yard, covered with weeds and grass. The blistered front door was shut.
He mounted the steps and paused on the slab at the threshold, trembling. It was a hot afternoon, without a sound in the air. The old elm tree with the overhanging branches and parched leaves seemed like an old horse left standing unsheltered in the blazing sun. The Rhine flowed noiselessly on, with broad folds of gray reflecting the patches of cloud in the sky.
He felt certain that no one was in the hut, yet he knocked on the door boldly. It gave him pleasure to knock on that door. Every rap sounded in his ears as if he were voicing Hedwiga’s name loudly.
Suddenly the door opened and fear seized him. He did not know why sudden fear had taken possession of him. Before him stood Hedwiga in the same clinging skirt, ragged at the hem, the same flaming red blouse reaching to her waist, her hair falling over her shoulders in long tresses. She appeared to him like the West Indian quadroon he had once seen. He forgot to greet her and only mumbled that it was a hot day.
She held the door open without saying a word. Unlike at their former meeting she now seemed confused and her confusion was mingled with timidity. The scorching heat was reflected in the iris of her eyes.
Without invitation he went in and sat down in the same backless chair.
“I keep the door closed because that keeps the heat out of the house,” she said as she closed the door.
He was conscious of isolation, of aloneness with her. She was knitting, and settling on her stool she continued to work, her eyes downcast.
“Why do you knit such heavy woolen stockings in the summer?” he asked, watching the nimble movements of her long fingers, the frequent jerks of her elbows, and the intermittent clicks of the needles.
“Why do squirrels store nuts in the summer?” she answered with a counterquestion, and gave a little metallic laugh.
Suddenly she raised her eyes and looked at him for a bare second, her lashes quivering, a faint blush on her cheeks.
He held his breath. The impulse he had felt the first time—the impulse to touch the tip of her nose and the curving red of her lips—came upon him overwhelmingly; her knees, outlined through her thin skirt, tempted him. His eyes soon fell upon the hook where the skirt was fastened at the waist. An impulse seized him to touch that, too. There seemed something endearing about that hook.
He spent an awkward hour and called himself an idiot as he wended his way home that afternoon. She was kindly enough to have manifested a desire to have him stay longer, but he had suddenly risen and left.
As soon as he was out of the hut he wished to go back, and wondered what had made him depart so abruptly, yet even as he wondered he pressed on resolutely toward home.
“I thought your eyes were blue, but they are only green,” she had remarked. A few minutes before she had said something about the smallness of his eyes and the frailty of his body. He thought there was a touch of mockery in her voice as she said that. And the idea of asking him whether he liked songs!
He did not pity her any longer. On the former occasion she had appeared humble, almost obsequious; today he scented pride. On his return home he determined to dismiss her from his mind.
He might have dismissed Hedwiga from his mind had not a kindhearted gossip carried the report of his visit to his parents. Father and Mother held council. They had not been much concerned about their son’s religious belief, but the mother’s eye was ever vigilant as to his morals.
“You had better talk to him,” David Zorn said. “He must stop these visits. You can never tell what they might lead to at his tender age.”
Mrs. Zorn spent a troublesome night over this. She was alarmed but she did not wish to seem too antagonistic. She knew the effect of antagonism upon her impetuous, high-strung son. So she broached the subject with seeming levity, with playfulness almost.
“But you know, Albert dear, a headman’s daughter is no company for Doctor Hollman’s grandson,” she urged persuasively.
“The girl isn’t to blame because her father was a headman,” he returned. “Why should she bear the sins of her fathers?”
The longer his mother argued the more reasons he found against her arguments. It was unjust to make the poor girl an outcast because her father had been an executioner, he insisted.
When he left his mother his heart was full of pity for the poor outcast. He brooded over her unfortunate position. He could not dismiss her image from his mind—the slender frame draped by that clinging skirt! His imagination lent color to the misery of the child of the accursed. He visualized her past. He saw her in the Black Forest surrounded by those old, toothless hags, drinking and quarreling and whirring their spinning wheels. He saw her ragged garments, her little bare feet curled under her, her unkempt golden hair, her beautiful eyes. The picture of her as a child was blended with that of the present day Hedwiga.
In his cogitation he soon found himself fighting for a principle. He did not listen to the throbbing of his boyish heart, to the seething of the blood of youth, which were propelling him toward the Free House with a power of their own. He persuaded himself that it was his keen sense of justice that forced him to defy his mother’s wishes.
It was summer time, the thrushes were singing, the roses were in bloom, the call of flocks was heard over plain and meadow, the sunlight rested on hill and dale; it way summer and the morning dew of love was on Albert’s cheeks.
He called at the Witch’s again and again; and the more often he came the more natural it seemed to be with her. The constraint had soon worn off and they were children again—boy and girl. When Aunt Graettel was at home he talked to her, and she told him many weird tales of her husband and his coterie of headmen.
“That sword cut off more than a hundred heads,” she pointed to a large, shining sabre standing in a corner.
Albert shuddered at the sight of the bloody weapon.
“My husband could always tell beforehand when he would be called upon to perform his work,” the Witch added proudly. “When the sword quivered and emitted a strange sound my husband knew some thief’s head was to come off.”
But most of the time he found Hedwiga alone and he soon discovered that she could sing beautiful songs of loving knights and beloved princesses and shepherds on the hills.
While the cannons were roaring at Waterloo and crushing the armies of the Emperor he worshipped, Albert Zorn was seated in the little hut on the Rhine, listening to Hedwiga’s melodies; and intoxicated with love rushed to translate his sentiments into sweet rhymes.
Thus the summer passed, and winter came. He had left the Lyceum and was now attending the Realschule. His mother was steadfast in her resolution to make a banker of him. She saw great possibilities in the financial world as soon as the terms of peace were definitely settled. For Napoleon had already been decisively beaten and the rulers of the other nations were holding a momentous conference.
One afternoon he found Hedwiga in a strange mood. It was midwinter, the river asleep under blankets of the softest down, the long arms of the large elm tree covered with the whitest fleece, and inside the hut the cozy, stuffy warmth of a low ceiling, crackling logs in an open oven and flames wrapped in dense smoke, rolling into the flue with a roaring glare. Hedwiga was seated opposite the fire, her left elbow on her knee, her chin in the open palm of her hand, her cheeks and eyes aglow, warbling a weird song.
Albert was silent. He had had a strange dream about her the night before and her present preoccupation reminded him of the dream. He thought he had seen her before in precisely the same environments and in the same pose. His imagination often played him pranks of this sort.
With eyes narrowed, he watched the light in her eyes, the contour of her cheeks, the shadowy white of her throat and the slight movement of her breasts. Yes, he knew the song she was humming. Zippel used to sing it to him in his childhood.
Hedwiga’s eyes closed and her red lips trembled. Then silence; no sound save that of the roaring fire.
“Ich will küssen—” he chimed in, finishing the stanza.
He paused and looked yearningly at her red lips, which were slightly parted against the dazzling white of her teeth.
Hedwiga opened her great dark eyes, turned them upon him teasingly, and suddenly jumped up from her low seat; and dashing across the room seized the shining sword—the sword that had cut off a hundred heads—and brandishing it in the air whirled around and sang again of the Great Otilje and his shining sword, pointing the deadly weapon at his breast every time she faced him.
“Hedwiga!”
But her wild song drowned his whispered murmurs. There was provoking defiance in her roguish eyes, almost a trace of malevolence in her face as she came close to him, barely touching him, and then swung away in her mad dance with the glittering blade.
“Hedwiga!”
But she would not pause. She continued whirling around and warbling this odd song. Once or twice he tried to seize her as she brushed past him, but she gracefully evaded him. He finally leaped from his seat and flung his arms around her.
“Don’t—take care!—” she cried, panting, holding the sword in front of her.
But he clung to her recklessly and, the sword having dropped from her hand, pressed his lips against her feverish mouth.
She turned her head this way and that to escape his kisses, gurgling laughter in her throat, but was overpowered by his impetuosity, gradually yielding, listlessly turning her face to his, her parted burning lips seeking his . . .
Entwined they sat, the fire of their beings leaping into a common flame. Soon tears overflowed her eyes—she did not know why she was crying but in her heart was dread mingled with inexpressible joy—and presently his tears streamed down his pale cheeks.
A strand of her hair loosened and touched his face. He begged for this lock of hair. He swore he would carry it to his dying day—“Yes, to my dying day,” he repeated again and again.
A new light appeared in her eyes, and suddenly freeing herself she cut the golden lock with the fallen blade.
He took it from her and kissed it tenderly and murmured reverently, “Until the last beat of my heart—.”
He left her that day with a feeling that this was all a dream, a bewitching dream. When he returned home he flung his arms around his sister and laughed and cried and uttered a babble of foolish words. He muttered rhythmic verses that sprang to his lips. At last he understood love. He had made the great discovery.
His sister shared his ecstasy without knowing the cause. She knew Albert was sentimental. She had often seen him act madly when reciting his songs to her. This was her secret. That her brother had other secrets was unknown to her.
Having exhausted the exuberance of his feelings upon his sister he rushed out of the house in quest of Christian Lutz. He felt that with Christian he could talk more freely.
He did not tell Christian at once of Hedwiga but talked of love and death. He was just raving as Christian had often heard him rave about flowers and the Rhine. He recited a ballad he had composed about an imaginary maiden with golden locks and lips as red as rubies and a face as blessedly sweet as the lily and the roses. He knew Hedwiga’s hair was red, and only golden when the sun rested upon it, but he would not think of red hair—it was always golden. Besides, it did not sound so well—“Ihr rotes Haar”—No, it would not do; it would not ring as well as “Ihr goldenes Haar”. Besides, the only color that was really beautiful was golden; and the ever docile, acquiescing Christian concurred in this. A short time before, when Albert discussed a Spanish Donna, who was to figure in his great tragedy, and had gone into raptures about the lustre of bluish-black hair, Christian had just as readily, and whole-heartedly, admitted that raven hair was the most beautiful in the world.
While Albert did not at first mention the name of his beloved, he talked so much of golden hair, of a small mouth with red curving lips, of a slender figure and clinging garments, of features more nobly chiseled than those of Niobe’s daughters, of a certain hut on the bank of the Rhine—the quaintest hut in the world—of innocent children who must suffer for their father’s sins, and of a thousand other things that Christian could not help but recognize the identity of the goddess his friend was worshipping; and when finally, in a moment of great secrecy, Albert whispered her lovely name—the loveliest name in creation and the most melodious—Christian feigned such great surprise that Albert felt flattered at the word picture he had given of her.
Mrs. Zorn had been watching the progress of her son’s infatuation with anxious, yet amused, vigilance. She had always regarded romanticism as mere froth, easily dissipated by the strong currents of reason. When her husband told her again and again of the repeated rumors that had reached him she only smiled. What was the calf-love of a youth of sixteen? Besides, though she had drifted from the creed of her forefathers, the centuries of segregation, the self-discipline, the enforced chastity of her people had not only subdued but almost eradicated the romantic instinct from her heart. The Ghetto had eaten itself into the very flesh of the Jewish woman of those days and seared her passions. Hemmed in as if a cordon had been thrown around her, all self-expression denied, her intense romantic love, like a rushing current dammed on one side, turned into another course and spent itself on filial devotion, conjugal affection, domestic tenderness. Persecution, like the fire that purifies gold and also brings forth dross, often ennobles the soul even while it degrades the body.
Towards the end of that winter, however, Mrs. Zorn began to realize that something had to be done to end her son’s foolish infatuation. Albert was neglecting his studies more than ever and had become more subject to nervous headaches, walked too much, brooded too much, and took to reading poetry more assiduously. She began to fear her dream of making a banker of him might not be realized. Her husband had suggested that he be apprenticed to a banker in Frankfort, a friend of his.
The next day she broached the subject rather abruptly. She meant to impress upon Albert the folly of his ways.
“Albert, I have something of the gravest importance to say to you.”
She paused. She wished to prepare him for the solemn occasion. There was no one in the house. She had purposely timed the interview so that she could speak to him alone.
“What is it, mother?”
“I hate to speak of it, but I wonder if you appreciate at what sacrifice your father has kept you at school—“. Whenever she wished to impress him she always spoke of his father, never of herself. “He has denied you nothing—has given you a good home, good clothes—while he denied himself almost everything.”
She turned her eyes away. Albert drooped his head, tears appearing in his eyes. Her evident sorrow pained him.
“I’ll be glad to quit school and go to work,” he said promptly. “I don’t want to be a burden to you.”
“No, you don’t understand me, Albert. No good parents ever find their children burdensome. These burdens are pleasures—. I wouldn’t speak of this if you—if you—”
She faltered. She could not find fitting words to clothe her present thoughts. She wished to reprimand him without hurting his feelings.
He threw his arms around his mother’s neck, hot tears streaming down his cheeks.
“I’ll go to work, mother dear—I’ll learn a trade—I’ll do anything to lighten your burdens.” He kissed her hysterically.
“It’s not that. We don’t mind that in the least. The war is over and father will resume business. But we have decided to apprentice you to a banker in Frankfort. He is a good friend of father’s and will give you every opportunity of learning the business.”
She paused, slyly watching the expression on his face. She feared his temper—all the Zorns had such violent tempers!
“I should love to go to Frankfort,” he cried joyfully.
The mother heaved a sigh of relief.
The prospect of the journey to Frankfort filled Albert with boyish glee. He was not thinking of his career—he did not clearly think of anything—he was happy because of the prospective change in his life. He had often heard his father tell of his visits to that beautiful city—the “Weltstadt”, his father had called it—the city where kings were once crowned and where his king, the great Goethe, was born—of the wonderful Fair, of the Roemer, of the Zeil. Albert had never seen a large city and was restive with anticipation.
He was in high spirits. His mother had never seen him so animated, so boyishly happy. He romped and danced and sang like a joyous child. His excitement was so great that he could neither read nor write nor talk coherently. He paced up and down the house, rambled through the streets, restless with eagerness.
In the meanwhile the winter was drawing to a close. Hedwiga, alone in that overheated hovel, sat knitting and brooding and thinking of Albert. He was the first ray of sunshine in her desolate life. He had often spoken to her of things she did not understand but that made him even more alluring. Only at rare moments she caught flashes, like that of meeting clouds, and then darkness again. She had heard her aunt prattle about love which had always been meaningless to her. But Albert’s sweet amorous words she understood. When she looked at his half-closed eyes, at his dishevelled hair, at his sensitive lips, she became more restless—she often quivered—and craved his touch, and yet when his hands came in contact with her arms she trembled with shrinking fear—shrinking and yet yielding. After he had kissed her that afternoon, in the warm dusk of the hut, her fear was gone. She longed for his arrival, to be seized in his arms, to have his lips against hers. Even in his absence her lips quivered as she thought of him and her eyes closed. He had a peculiar way of placing the tips of his sensitive fingers upon her shoulders, barely touching them, as if he were fingering the strings of a violin, and gazing into her face pensively, almost mysteriously, and then letting his fingers glide over her thinly covered arms—sending a delicious shiver through her whole being—and slowly, creepingly, letting them slide until they reached her wrists, then her hands, then her moist fingers, which almost involuntarily, helplessly became entwined with his, her eyes staring blindly, upward, at his face. No one could whisper such sweet little secrets in her memory. The tears that often sprang to her eyes were never bitter; she felt happier when they came.
Her aunt had of late been alarmed about her. She seemed to have grown thinner, with a peculiar flush in her cheeks. When Aunt Graettel at first made some veiled reference to her health, she laughed merrily and said she had never felt as well as now. One day Aunt Graettel overheard a stifled cough and told her niece that it might be best to have that Zorn boy stop his visits and she forthwith prepared a concoction of herbs. Hedwiga shoved the tonic away with a fierceness the Witch had never suspected in her and said if Albert stopped coming she would throw herself into the river.
But Albert’s joy at the approach of his journey was so great that he failed to notice the peculiar lustre in the girl’s eyes. He was bubbling over with delight. Did she not think it was wonderful? He was going to theWeltstadt, where mere were theatres and picture galleries and a great library and cafés and grand boulevards and—and he stopped for want of words. Did she not think it was wonderful?
“And there are so many pretty girls in Frankfort?” she returned, with a sad smile and a strange glitter in her eyes.
No, he swore he was not thinking of girls. Besides, no one was as pretty as his Lorelei, his Hedwiga.
“You are not crying?”
He shrank back half a step and looked puzzled.
No, she was not crying. She wiped her tears away and was smiling. And presently he was reading a poem he had written the other night. He recited the verses—they were meant for her . . .
No, no, she did not wish to cry, but her tears flowed against her will. He stowed the verses away and was consoling her. Wouldn’t it be wonderful when he came back after he had seen the world! His arms were stealing around her, her lips yielded so willingly, her tears flowed so freely! Tears beget tears, and soon his emotions stirred. He did not know why, but his tears flowed, too, mingling with hers and, with heart beating against heart, the fires of youth blazed in one conflagration—Dann schlagen zusammen die Flammen!
She was soon sobbing as if her heart would break.
“Why do you cry?” he asked.
She did not know why she was sobbing. There was really no occasion for grief. Was he not going to Frankfort to see the world—the great, wonderful world?
“Just think,liebste! No more dry text books, no more mathematics, no more stupid lessons in accounting, no more school! Just think of freedom all day and all night, and I shall be able to read and read and read and walk and walk through the boulevards and write—Oh, Hedwiga!” He pressed her to his breast with frantic ecstasy. “I’ll write wonderful tragedies and songs and I will—”
Words failed to express all his hopes and plans and desires. He was dizzy from the flood of thoughts that rushed upon him.
She was sobbing no longer. Her hands limply in her lap, her tear-stained face composed, her shoulders relaxed and stooped forward, she stared blankly in front of her, looking without seeing, her great eyes wide open and full of heart-rending sadness.
“Will you write to me?”
“Will I write to you? As often as the post will carry my letters. I’ll tell you all about the wonderful things in Frankfort. By the way, father said the streets in Frankfort are lighted at night—light enough to read—rows of great lanterns in the streets! Wouldn’t you like to see Frankfort?”
A sob was her only reply.
“But you will come to Frankfort. I’ll be in the banking business there, and I will send for you, sweetheart mine.”
Soon the winter was gone. Men and women came to the sun’s aid with hatchet and pick-axe, hacking and chopping and chipping the frozen mass, glittering diamonds flying in the air and catching the genial rays of the early spring sun. There was joy in every heart and even greater joy in Albert’s breast. As soon as all the ice was gone and the road dried his father was to take him to Frankfort. His heart thrilled at the sound of the running waters, washing away the last traces of the hoary winter. He helped clear away the ice in the shadowy part of the yard which the sunbeams could not reach. He desired to hasten the arrival of spring, the day on which he could start on the great journey.
On the evening before his departure he and Christian took their last stroll. It was early in the evening, a young moon in the sky, the scents of spring in the air, from afar the rumbling sound of the awakening Rhine, and the gurgling of running waters. Two shadows, so clearly outlined on the ground, preceded them like bodyguards; one was taller than the other. The streets were dark save for the moonlight and the occasional glimmer from a window.
Albert’s voice, like the running waters, never ceased. He was talking of Frankfort, of his journey, of his future. While he knew he was to be apprenticed to a banker, the duties of such apprenticeship were not clear in his mind. He made the duties fit his dreams.
They had now reached the river, which had spread, as it always did at this time of the year, and had risen higher, and was flowing with increased speed. There was a glow like a milky-way along the midstream where the moonbeams rested lightly upon the rippling waters.
Albert halted his speech and his step. The river claimed his attention. He was not far from the cloister where the stream chattered noisily among the rocks and purred like a cat further down where there was a very narrow, low waterfall, descending like a huge corkscrew. For the moment Albert forgot everything, even Frankfort. The vast shadow of the Franciscan monastery, the moonlight above it, the rushing river, the earth-and-water scent in the air—they all overwhelmed him. It all found expression in a contraction of his eyelids and in an exultant cry of “Ah! Christian!”
His husky cry echoed in Christian’s heart. Albert was going far, far away—Frankfort seemed to Christian at an endless distance and the memories of their close friendship crowded in upon him. His association with Albert had made the boyish years so wonderful. Hardly a day but he had walked and talked with Albert, and listened to his strange chatter; and when they were alone Albert was full of mirth and pranks and laughter. Albert had such a peculiar way of making fun of people. And every book he read he discussed with Christian, though at times Christian could scarcely follow his comrade.
“Ah, Albert!” he echoed and rested his hand upon his friend’s arm.
There were tears in Christian’s eyes.
They remained standing silently for a moment, silhouetted in the moonlight against the vast shadow of the cloister. Then with a simultaneous impulse they were clasped in each other’s arms.
“Will you remember me when you become a great man?”
“Ah! Christian! Can I ever forget you!”
“Albert!”
“Christian!”
At last the eventful morning arrived. Albert had not slept a wink the night before. Too many tumultuous thoughts had kept him awake. He had called on Hedwiga the day before and her tears filled him with anguish. So he spent wakeful hours in composing a poem on the pain of parting and felt relieved.
Today everything was forgotten. For in front of the house stood a vehicle, bedded with hay, and two horses with fodder-bags over their heads, and inside the house his mother was packing his father’s large folding leather valise, and his sister and his little brothers, were watching with inquisitive, curious eyes. Albert was too restive to watch the packing. From time to time he stepped to the window and stole a peep at the horses outside, a strange joy in his heart, and walked back with his hands in the pockets of his new coat.
“Mama is crying,” piped up his little brother who stood close to his mother and followed her every move and insisted upon helping her, carrying a shirt from a chair nearby. Albert turned his head and glanced at his mother; she was brushing something from her cheek. His father was in the shop, making a few entries in his ledger and giving another look at his balance.
Soon Uncle Salomon arrived, and Aunt Braunelle and Aunt Hanna and Father Schumacher, with his long pipe in one hand and his silver-headed cane in the other.
“I hope you’ll become another Rothschild,” Schumacher said as he clasped the youth’s hand, an irrepressible smile on his fine face.
Mrs. Zorn overheard this and became more intent on forcing some handkerchiefs into the corner of the traveling bag; there was a touch of obstinacy around her mouth as she smoothed the bulging packet of linen.
The hour had come. Albert was seated in the hooded coach by the side of his father, the coachman on the box, a long whip in his hand. Mrs. Zorn rushed up to embrace her son once more. His sister reminded him to write to her all about the Roemer and the Zeil, and his little brother called to his father to remind him of the whistle “with three holes” he had promised. David Zorn murmured something, the coachman snapped his whip, and the coach started off with a rattle and clatter over the cobblestones.
Then everything moved before Albert’s eyes. Schmallgasse, the Marktplatz, the big bronze statue of Jan Wilhelm, the Great Elector, the Franciscan cloister, the domes of the churches, the Hofgarten—like a flowing river, everything seemed to move before him and away from him . . .
The vehicle lurched and they turned into the main road. Albert stuck out his head to catch a last glimpse of the disappearing town. The road ran along elevated ground and he saw in the distance only a mass of crowded red roofs and a few rising towers against the sunny sky. There was nothing clear in his mind; nothing but confusion. For he was already beginning to feel lonesome, his life-associations falling away like crumbling walls. His father was silent, absent-mindedly stroking his blond beard and clearing his throat from time to time.
The Rhine Road was finally struck. It followed the bank of the river and was only a short distance from the shore. The horses snorted and quickened their steps unbidden by the driver, the dull thump-thump of their hoofs on the sandy ground was music to Albert’s ears. Wafts of fresh air—the cool, moist air of spring—came from the winding river; a bird was twittering in the branches of a nearby willow; a calf was lowing afar off unseen; a tethered colt galloped in a circle; expanses of green and brown flew before his eyes; and the sky was pale blue with endless bars of gray scarcely discernible and blended with the more colorful texture around them. Now and then glimpses of the Rhine came into view through the clumps of vines, and Albert was dimly conscious of links between himself and Gunsdorf. The farther away he traveled from his native place the more endearing it became and the less alluring the city of his destination.
Presently his erstwhile enthusiasm for Frankfort was gone. He did not even think of it. He thought of nothing. He only felt a peculiar sensation in his heart, a sensation akin to pain, a feeling of loneliness possessed him. Unconsciously he moved closer to his father, who was now dozing. He felt dreadfully alone, and soon well-defined memories of Gunsdorf began to make inroads into his mind. His sister, his mother, Christian, Hedwiga. His mind was now centered upon Hedwiga. He let his head rest against the truss of hay back of him. His eyes closed. There was a strange longing in his heart. He stretched his hand and imagined he was touching the back of her neck, feeling her shudder as his fingers played with the soft down close to her ears. His lips moved as if he were tasting a savory dish. He sensed the sweet fragrance of her lips. . .
He turned quickly to the right. A girl’s voice was calling “Goodbye.” For a bare second he was deluded into believing it was Hedwiga’s voice. But when he craned his neck and peeped outside he beheld a farmhouse, a fence, an open wicker gate, a barefooted girl with a thin skirt fluttering in the air, a few strands of flaxen hair flying; a hand shading smiling eyes. By her side was a little boy waving his hand. . .
He leaned back and watched the stretches of field with a keener zest and listened languorously to the steady trot-trot of the horses, to the jingle of the harness. Everything was moving and there was a low hum in his ears and he felt the warmth of the covers around him and a strange vagueness before him . . .
THE JUDENGASSE.
“Whois there?”
Albert rubbed his eyes. The voice sounded as if it were coming through a tunnel, muffled yet rumbling. There were other noises in his ears, stamping and pounding and shuffling of feet. And there was darkness around him, the darkness of black night.
“A traveler,” called another voice.
This voice was familiar to him. He remembered the voice of Bandy-legged Schultz—the name by which the coachman was best known in Gunsdorf—and that brought to his mind the memory of his departure from his native town, the long tedious journey, the stops at various taverns. He felt weary and every muscle ached. He wished he were at the end of the journey. And what dreams he had had since he left Schmallgasse!
“Verdammte Juden!You are too late. The gates are closed.”
A shudder ran through the lad’s frame. He was now sure he was dreaming and buried his face into the cushion in the corner of the coach.
“Here, Schultz!”
It was his father who was speaking. He saw through half-closed eyes his father handing the coachman a silver coin. The driver jumped off the box and approached a high wall in front of him. Albert could not make out what the barrier was except that it was high and it cast a great black shadow, revealing in the foreground a little house, and beyond it a gleam of the moon, half hidden, as if balancing itself on the high wall.
Schultz knocked on the pane of a tiny window. He used the silver coin as a knocker. Then silence—ominous silence. Albert felt that his father was holding his breath and he, too, caught his breath and sensed the mystery around him.
“The lazy louts are asleep,” the coachman murmured.
David Zorn passed his hand over his head and emitted a grim grunt.
The coachman knocked again with the silver coin.
“Open the door—a traveler wants admittance!” he bellowed angrily.
There was a stirring inside the little house and a thud as of one rolling off a bench.
“The devil take the Jews!Tausend Donner Sakrament!They don’t give a fellow a moment’s rest even on Easter Eve!”
A gruff voice was heard within, a clatter of a bolt—of a heavy iron hasp—the clanking of chains—the grating of a key in a lock, the creaking of hinges, two tall gates swinging open slowly, and Albert beheld a bit of sky above the horses’ heads. The sky appeared narrow and high, as if seen from a deep trench.
A short, heavy-set man, with a mustache the color of dry sand and the stiffness of bristle, appeared at the opening; between the swinging gates. He held a lantern in his hand, the yellow glare of the tallow candle inside fell grotesquely over his patched jerkin and saffron-colored hose.
Schultz put the silver coin into the hand of the man with the lantern.
The man put the money into his pocket and mumbled, “Don’t you know any better than to come so long after the gates closed!”
He was stretching his arms and yawning. His jaws opened and closed sleepily as he spoke.
“We are coming a long way,” the driver explained. “Couldn’t figure on the exact hour.”
“How many Jews have you?”
“Just one.”
The guard walked up to the wagon, raised his lantern, and strained his eyes.
“Huh! What do you call this, a suckling?” pointing at Albert, who stared around him in bewilderment.
“He is the gentleman’s son,” explained the coachman.
“You didn’t bring his cradle along—Huh! When a Jew reaches the age of twelve he is just as much of one for poll tax as he will be at seventy-five. We call it two Jews—huh! One Jew, he says! You can’t fool me!”
“How much is it?” Zorn opened his purse, the guard holding the lantern to help him see the contents.
“One Jew oneThaler, two Jews twoThalers—simple arithmetic,” snickered the guard.
Zorn paid the price in silence.
“How about a fewPfennigeforTrinkgeld—what do you say? I could have kept you waiting here all night. And tomorrow is Easter.”
Zorn handed him a few more coins and cleared his throat as if something was choking him.
Schultz led the horses by the bridles a few steps. There was another guardhouse inside the gates.
“Dovidle, stick your nose out—a couple of Jews for Easter,” the guard called in a piping, mimicking, sneering voice, and pounded on the casement.
A door opened and out came a little man.
The little man greeted Zorn kindly, extending his hand. “You must have come a great distance or you would have known better than to come so late.”
“Since when have they re-established the Ghetto?” asked Zorn tremblingly.
“As soon as they chased the French out,” replied Dovidle in a saddened, low voice. “Yes, they have hemmed us in again;” the little man sighed. “They are at their old tricks again, fleecing and torturing our poor people. Oh, God, will there ever be an end?”
Albert trembled in every limb, a piercing pain shot through his head. He had read of the miserable Ghettoes, which were abolished as soon as Napoleon’s troops occupied the Rhenish provinces, but he had never thought of himself as belonging to a segregated people. He had long forgotten the taunts of Long Kunz and Shorty Fritz. In his native city he had never thought, and was never reminded, of his ancestry. His parents’ indifference to creed had made him almost forget it himself.
The driver soon mounted the box, clacked his tongue, and moved on.
They proceeded slowly through a long, narrow street —it seemed to Albert interminably long and exceedingly narrow—the buildings on either side high and close together. It was dark—depressingly dark—with an occasional candle light peeping through a window. Not infrequently there was the sound of footsteps which was quickly drowned by the heavier tread of the horses. A door opened now and then—dabs of yellow against a black curtain—a slam, and silence again . . .
Although warned not to wander alone through the streets outside the Judengasse, Albert’s curiosity got the better of him. No sooner was his father gone to see the banker, to whom Albert was to be apprenticed, than the boy left the tavern. He followed the long stream of people toward the gate at the end of the Judengasse. There were three gates in the enclosure, but this gate led to the Wollgraben, beyond which was the Fair.
He rambled aimlessly staring around him. He was proceeding along the banks of the Main, which was thronged with a thousand noisy traders, small vessels of antiquated design slowly moving to the accompaniment of the quaint cries of the steersmen. The tumult was deafening. Porters with high loads on their heads crying at the jostling crowd to make way; trundling bales, chests, caskets: yells of warning for the passersby to stand back: quarreling, half-naked boatmen; scolding red-coated officials, leaping from vessel to vessel on their tours of inspection: rattling of chains, plunging of anchors . . .
Presently he stood before the Roemer, the old Senate house, from which gaudy streamers were flying, its high gables bedecked with shields and banners; all around laughing, guffawing, merry-making. For today Frankfort was celebrating its independence once more, its independence from the enemy.
Carried along with the jubilant throng he soon paused at the sight of a curious procession. Mountebanks blowing trumpets, jugglers performing deft tricks, fencing masters displaying their agility in mock duels, a band marching and drumming and fifing, followed by girls clad in fantastic colors—yellow and black and green astride long sticks in the fashion of children playing horse, wiggling their high hips and heavy legs in the manner of Spanish dancers. Then came a column of bareheaded, barefooted chanting monks, wax tapers in the hands of some, while others carried effigies and tall banners on which were painted bearded apostles and smooth shaven saints, and great silver crucifixes against a background of jet black drapery . . .
Suddenly there was a hush. The chanting of the monks ceased; the shrill voices of the dancing girls died in the distance; the noises of the merry-makers halted. Not a sound—nothing but the soft swinging of censers. Hark! a silver bell tinkled. Instantly all were on their knees with bowed heads.
Fear possessed Albert. Though accustomed to Catholic ceremonies from childhood he would not kneel. And without looking to the right or left he hurried back as fast as his legs could carry him to the high walls of the Judengasse.
In youth experiences produce impressions, at a maturer age they generate thought. Albert’s mind had the peculiarity of both, youth and maturity. Impressions and thoughts came to him almost simultaneously.
The humiliation of his present surroundings made him shrink with a sensitiveness he could not define. He had thought the Ghetto belonged to the dark ages. He did not yet realize that there was but a step between the Dark Ages and any Age. The bitterness of his soul crowded out every other thought, every other feeling. The jubilee he had witnessed was to him the rejoicing of the sporting Philistines around the chained Samson.
On his return to the tavern he threw himself upon his bed, his hands clasped under his head, his face toward the ceiling, tortured by a thousand conflicting thoughts. The back of his head was burning, and there was a pain in his eyes, the harbinger of one of his nervous headaches.
He tossed and turned. He felt as if the ceiling were coming down on him, as if the walls were pressing together, the very air seemed suffocating. Incoherently the morning scenes flitted through his mind—white robed priests—white—the symbol of truth and purity—the crucifix moulded of silver against a black background—another symbol—the images of saints, their eyes turned heavenward—Ah, that was too much for the impulsive, poetic youth, who never had to search for the truth, to whom truth came flying. He was writhing with pain, the mortifying pain of helplessness. No, he was not helpless, he was saying to himself. Socrates was not helpless; Spinoza was not helpless; Lessing was not helpless. Every one must carry his torch as well as his cross. Yes, he would make his torch flare so that it would dispel the darkness around him. A strange ambition seized him. He did not want to be a poet. He did not want to be a money changer. He wanted to be a warrior to help mankind free itself from its own enslavement. Nor did he crave earthly pleasures. For the moment he was an old man satiated with the pleasures and pains of life. Then came over him the sweeping melancholy of blossoming youth. The heavens opened before him and he caught a glimpse of eternity. Yes, he might fight—live and fight for the truth.
How strong the sun was shining in his eyes! Its rays were coming through a window opposite his bed. He turned his face to the wall, away from the light. Patches of pink and yellow and purple floated before his eyes in the shape of lotus flowers, and around them large golden wheels revolved, emitting diamond sparks, with the sound of a waterfall in his ears . . . No, it was not the sound of rushing water. It was a musical sound . . .
He soon recognized the tune. It was Allegri’s Miserere . . . and the light of an oblique column of sun dust was in his eyes . . He turned and noticed the strong sunlight falling upon the wooden image of the Christ—the wooden image that stood under those arches in the Franciscan cloister. It was the same figure, the same bleeding Christ with a broad gash between the ribs, the same smear of blood. The figure was nodding its head—it was beckoning to him—but he could not budge. The figure then began to move toward him, and the palms, instead of nailed to the cross, were unfastened and turned heavenward, and the head, instead of drooping, was thrown back, with derisive laughter on the sorrowful face—Yes, the figure was laughing, a strange, mocking laugh that made him shudder, and the laughter blended weirdly with the dying notes of the Miserere—
“Are you asleep, Albert?”
His father’s voice seemed to come from a great distance.
“No, I haven’t slept—I am just resting—” Albert mumbled and rose to a sitting posture.
“Herr Rindskopf assured me there is a great opportunity for you in his bank,” Zorn was saying cheerfully. “And he is a fine man to work for, Rindskopf is.”
Albert listened to his father as if in a dream, as if only remotely interested in the subject.
The following day was Friday, the busiest in the Judengasse. Zorn had made all arrangements with Rindskopf, but owing to the Sabbath he was obliged to remain here until Sunday. And this was the Sabbath of Sabbaths. It was the Saturday before the Passover—Shabbos H’godol—the Great Sabbath. Albert welcomed his father’s suggestion to accompany him to the synagogue that evening. Everything about him seemed so strange and quaint.
It was beginning to grow dusk when father and son started for the house of worship. The air was cool and refreshing, and the sinking sun was behind the high walls of the quarter. All men, and some women, were on their way to the courtyard which enclosed the House of God. The erstwhile grimacing faces, on which was written abject misery, were now serene, carefree, spiritual—