Bedouins /

Yakov leaned out of his window and greedily listened to the Cardinal playing his fiddle. The window was small and under a hot roof. From it a view of the great palace of his Eminence was easy, for the house of Yakov’s mother stood in a narrow court at the rear, and was a low-sized building, not far from the Cathedral which dominated this old-fashioned and once aristocratic section of the city. The bedroom of the boy was on a level with the living-room of the Cardinal—a tall, spare old man with mild eyes and ascetic face. His bushy white hair and ruddy complexion, coupled with a high, hawk-like nose, gave him the appearance, in Yakov’s eyes, of a benevolent bird of exotic origin. Stranger still was his passion for music. At least once a day he could be seen by the lad, walking with long, elastic strides about the large bare room, a violin tucked under his chin, his eyes closed, and he fiddling as if rehearsing for a classical concert. Yakov knew it was “classical” music because he couldn’t make head or tail of it, although he was studying the instrument himself at the big conservatory on the square. But he was only a beginner—that’s what his cross teacher told him when his lesson was a poor one—and he realized the fact, while the Cardinal—oh! he played everything difficult, and always without notes.

He wondered why this kindly old gentleman in the queer dress should fiddle in the great palace across the way; he, so rich and powerful, doing for fun what the poor little Yiddish boy did as a task. When Yakov could play he wouldn’t live in a palace, but would try to get a job in a theatre orchestra. His mother answered his query, “What is a cardinal?” with a vague, “Oh, he is a sort of high rabbi,” which didn’t tell her son much. He was brought up in the orthodox faith, went to Shool—the synagogue—and was careful to eat no food that had not been prepared in Kosher fashion. This last practice brought him into conflict with the boys of his class at the public school around the corner. They were American born, though many of foreign descent. That made no difference, for, as much as they quarrelled with one another, they were a unit as to the undesirability of the Jew. Their teacher had scolded, had even punished them, but uselessly. They were sarcastic, were these boys of Italian, Irish and German parents, calling aloud, “Micky,” “Dutchy,” “Guinney,” “Wop,” but for Yakov and his like—in the majority at the school—they had choicer terms: “Sheeny” “Kike!” “Mekmek!” Yakov didn’t much mind the nicknames.

He only feared the suddenly delivered punches at his back, the vise-like grip of “Jimmy the Brick” (self-christened) on his neck, and the hateful grin with which a ham sandwich would be thrust into his mouth. This last was the supreme insult. If he did not complain to his teacher, it was because he feared reprisals. So he only told his mother, with tears in his large, dark, expressive eyes, and she comforted him. She said it was the glory of his race, this badge of suffering, these insults from the Gentiles. He must not fight back, but meekly endure. Jehovah would watch over him. She was a decent widow woman, who had a small dressmaking business in her house and barely supported herself and child, also giving him a musical education. Oh! to see him a great violinist! She loved music, and as she worked her sewing-machine she hummed to its rhythms. Once, many years ago, she had heard in Lemberg, her Galician birthplace, the greatest violinist in the world, Joseph Joachim, and one of her race. She was unmarried then, yet she made a silent vow that if ever she had a son....

She had Yakov now, and his father was gone. She always said to him—dead. But she knew better. He had deserted her for another woman, left her without a dollar, and she had been fighting for ten years to keep their heads above water. Living in this humble yet genteel court behind the Cathedral, she dreamed of Yakov’s future, and she cried with joy when the teacher at the conservatory grudgingly admitted that the boy had talent and might—he coughed his reservations—with hard work make a fair musician. Yakov went to school and in the afternoons practised. The weather was warm, windows were opened, and he attentively heard the fiddle of the Cardinal.

The music was a succession of beautiful sounds for the young visionary. His eyes glittering, his lips apart, his arms tightly folded about his thin little frame, he listened as if to the voice of God. The Cardinal played the slow movement of Mendelssohn’s concerto, and, threadbare as has become this familiar song, to Yakov it was an enchantment. Its obvious sentiment seemed a call from his dead father in heaven. When the music ceased he involuntarily stretched aloft his arms. The eye of the Cardinal must have caught the glint of white—the boy was in his shirt-sleeves—and came to the window cautiously, peering across to Yakov. He vaguely smiled, and to Yakov’s sorrow he closed the window, yet the sound of his fiddle softly echoed in the ears of the boy.

Every evening he stationed himself at the same spot, but the Cardinal did not play. Yakov yearned for his music. His own cheap red fiddle became hateful to him. Its rasping tones when he attempted scales extinguished his ambition. One day his mother said in her purring Yiddish: “Yakov, you must be more industrious, else the gentleman at the conservatory will send you home.” Even that didn’t arouse him. He suddenly took to playing in the court with the other boys after school. Such rough games! He stood a lot of kicking and punching, especially from Jimmy the Brick, who, after all, wasn’t a bad-hearted chap. He once grabbed Yakov’s lunch-box and critically swallowed the contents, which pleased him, as he liked full-flavored food. “Say, Kike, that’s not bad grub. I like your stuffed fish better than the macaroni of that Wop kid Tony.” With this backing of the boss Yakov enjoyed comparative peace. He had thought of revenge, of organizing into a compact phalanx the large body of Jewish boys at the school, but his mother’s advice and the patience of his race dissuaded him from active rebellion. He let things slide along, and in the meantime his music was almost neglected. In vain did his teacher rap his knuckles with the fiddle-bow and threaten him with dismissal. Yakov knew the crosspatch wouldn’t keep his word, for he was a pay pupil; not much pay, to be sure; anyhow, not a charity scholar.

The magic of a windless June night transformed the old Red Lion court into an operatic picture. Moonlit, it recalled a prosperous past that had hardly modulated into its present middle-class shabbiness. Old houses, colonial in style, but sadly defaced by time, slept tranquilly in the magnetic rays of a moon which breasted the low housetops. The din and gabble had ceased, the only noise being the sound of hammered iron on the anvil of the blacksmith’s at the corner. So changed were times that the legend over the door of the smithy read, “Sokolov & Grünstein—Horseshoers.” The ancient and honorable profession had been wrested from sturdy English and Irish hands by the more persistent hosts from southeastern Europe. For Yakov the change meant nothing, but it gave extreme pain to Jimmy’s parents, and so Jimmy, with his faithful band, was in the habit of yelling defiant and insulting words at the two blacksmiths, though keeping at a safe distance. The rhythmic tapping of the hammers brought peace to Yakov, who stood in his window regarding with awakened curiosity the spectacle of the Cardinal’s living-room, lighted for the first time in weeks; perhaps—! Presently the sound of a fiddle oozed through the open space. He was back, the Cardinal with his fiddle. What was he playing? Hymn tunes, surely. First, the Adeste Fideles, which Yakov remembered because in a moment of condescending generosity Jimmy had taken him to Vespers at the Cathedral and had told him the name of the music he had heard.

Then the tune shifted to a more solemn, a celestial tune, indeed, which the listener couldn’t place. He didn’t know it was the O Jesu, by Haydn, but that didn’t matter; his ear was ravished by its pleading strains, and he hung out of his perch, tremulously absorbing every tone. The Cardinal’s humor shifted. He dashed off a gay Tipperary jig, and followed this with The Valley Lay Smiling Before Me, and The Harp of Tara. Yakov felt that the violinist must be an Irishman, but ever so different from the noisy Jimmy. Yet Irish!

What, what! He pinched himself as the grave music of the Kol Nidré, the sacred tune sounded on the Day of Atonement, came swelling across the Cardinal’s windows. The Kol Nidré, that immemorial cantillation of the Hebrews, in it compressed the dolors of the ages, and perhaps first chanted in the house of Egyptian bondage, perhaps out of the dim centuries before Egypt, before the shadowy Sumerians! Who knows? What concerned the boy was the strange happening—a potentate of the Gentile Church playing on a fiddle the grand and venerable hymn of the Jews. But that he was fascinated by the music he would have rushed down to his mother to tell her the glad tidings. She knew of the playing across in the palace, and was pleased because of Yakov’s evident interest. She would welcome the return of the Cardinal, for her boy would be again spurred to study. He couldn’t leave the window till the last note had been squeezed from the august and mournful melody.

In a fever Yakov seized his tiny instrument and lovingly mimicked the Cardinal. Its squeak reached the priest, who came to the window and waited until Yakov’s imperfect interpretation of the Kol Nidré ended, and, smiling a kind smile that melted the heart within the bosom of the boy, he waved a slender hand, as if to say, “I salute a brother artist!” It was too much for Yakov, who ran to his mother’s sewing-room, there to pour out his joy and receive her gentle blessing. He, too, would play the fiddle like the Cardinal—play the Kol Nidré for a hall full of listeners, who would applaud him! The mighty Cardinal had played the Kol Nidré for the poor little Jew boy, and he hadn’t even bowed his profound gratitude!

On wings of song, he mounted the stairway to his garret, but the music was no longer heard, though the windows were still alight. Not able to control himself, Yakov took his instrument, and, all the while playing, marched down-stairs into the court, and in the mystic moonshine he played on, played the Kol Nidré. Soon the gang surrounded him, and Jimmy the Brick cried: “Aw, give us a rest with that tune. Play a coon song.” Yakov only shook his head and kept on playing.

“Stop it, I say!” yelled Jimmy. “We want none of yer Kike music in this court. D’ye hear?” Yakov still played, and the tune rang out with the terror and desolation of the Day of Atonement.

“Hit him, Tony! Grab his fiddle, you Wop!” hoarsely commanded the leader. The boys closed about him and in a twinkling the current of the music was cut off, the red violin smashed into a hundred bits, the bow snapped in two and its coarse hair twisted about Yakov’s neck. He fought silently, tearlessly. The firm of Sokolov & Grünstein came to his rescue, and, being muscular men, they routed the band and sent the victim to his home with consoling phrases. But he was hopeless. That another fiddle might be bought for him found no place in his whirling imagination. He had been cruelly treated. Why should he be so punished? As he sank on his knees at his attic window tears flowed and sobs followed. Yakov mourned and would not be comforted. And across the court in the chamber of the palace the Cardinal played with exquisite melancholy that antique Hebraic tune, the Kol Nidré.