Ch. 7: Jews in Shushan - Page 2

Jews. Once the rude door of the square was
suddenly smashed open by a struggle from inside, and showed the meek
bill-collector at his work, nostrils dilated, lips drawn back over his
teeth, and his hands upon a half-maddened sheep. He was attired in
strange raiment, having no relation whatever to duster coats or list
slippers, and a knife was in his mouth. As he struggled with the animal
between the walls, the breath came from him in thick sobs, and the
nature of the man seemed changed. When the ordained slaughter was ended,
he saw that the door was open and shut it hastily, his hand leaving a
red mark on the timber, while his children from the neighbouring house-
top looked down awe-stricken and open-eyed. A glimpse of Ephraim busied
in one of his religious capacities was no thing to be desired twice.

Summer came upon Shushan, turning the trodden waste-ground to iron, and
bringing sickness to the city.

'It will not touch us,' said Ephraim confidently. 'Before the winter we
shall have our synagogue. My brother and his wife and children are
coming up from Calcutta, and THEN I shall be the priest of the
synagogue.'

Jackrael Israel, the old man, would crawl out in the stifling evenings
to sit on the rubbish-heap and watch the corpses being borne down to the
river.

'It will not come near us,' said Jackrael Israel feebly, 'for we are the
People of God, and my nephew will be priest of our synagogue. Let them
die.' He crept back to his house again and barred the door to shut
himself off from the world of the Gentile.

But Miriam, the wife of Ephraim, looked out of the window at the dead as
the biers passed and said that she was afraid. Ephraim comforted her
with hopes of the synagogue to be, and collected bills as was his
custom.

In one night, the two children died and were buried early in the morning
by Ephraim. The deaths never appeared in the City returns. 'The sorrow
is my sorrow,' said Ephraim; and this to him seemed a sufficient reason
for setting at naught the sanitary regulations of a large, flourishing,
and remarkably well-governed Empire.

The orphan boy, dependent on the charity of Ephraim and his wife, could
have felt no gratitude, and must have been a ruffian. He begged for
whatever money his protectors would give him, and with that fled down-
country for his life. A week after the death of her children Miriam left
her bed at night and wandered over the country to find them. She heard
them crying behind every bush, or drowning in every pool of water in the
fields, and she begged the cartmen on the Grand Trunk Road not to steal
her little ones from her. In the morning the sun rose and beat upon her
bare head, and she turned into the cool wet crops to lie down