The Tiger in the Well

  He looked up, aware that the debate had halted, and one of the men at the back of the room said in Yiddish, "Comrade Goldberg, we can't decide. The arguments for Polish sound irrefutable until I hear the arguments for German, and then the arguments for Russian knock them into a cocked hat, while I know all the time that the journal ought to be in Yiddish. But--"

  Five voices rose at once to denounce him, but he simply raised his over the hubbub, and went on:

  "But we haven't heard from you! Give us the benefit of your judgement: which language should our journal be published in?"

  Goldberg took the cigar out of his mouth, eased off the ash, and said simply, "English."

  The hubbub redoubled. Goldberg seemed to have expected that, because he continued scribbling from where he'd stopped with hardly a second's pause. A man sitting near by leaned over and jabbed vigorously with his forefinger, making a point so passionately that he nearly upset the ink. Goldberg inclined his head to listen, moving the ink out of range with his left hand while continuing to scribble with the right. Then he said a word or two in response; his hand never ceased to scrawl until he reached the bottom of a page, when he flung the paper aside and began his assault on the next.

  The argument continued until finally the Chairman had had enough. He banged on the table with a cobbler's hammer, calling for silence.

  "Comrades! Comrades! Argument and debate are the very lifeblood of democratic socialism, but we should allow each other to listen as well as speak! Comrade Goldberg, could you explain your preference for English?"

  He had been speaking in Yiddish, and Goldberg answered in the same language. His voice, when he raised it to speak, was harsh and powerful.

  "There are three reasons," he said. Everyone had turned to hear, and sat twisted in their chairs, arms thrown over the back. "First, we are in England. There are some of us who want to go back to where we came from, others who want to live in Palestine, others who want to go to America, but shall I tell you where most of you will die and be buried? In England, comrades. Your children will have children who were born here and will consider themselves English, and will know no Polish, no German, no Russian. A journal in Polish, for example, would have a declining circulation by its very nature. As for Yiddish, the same argument applies, with the added disadvantage that it will limit the circulation to Jews. Is this a Jewish movement exclusively? Was socialism invented to benefit Jews and to exclude Gentiles? That's not my understanding, comrades. But I look around the room tonight, and if I looked at a score of similar meetings, I'd find the same - and what do I see? Every one of us is Jewish. Why do you exclude Gentiles? Oh, you don't have a policy of exclusion, no, no - you just happen to print your notices in Yiddish. Comrades, if this is socialism, I don't like it. You should welcome men of talent and goodwill from the community you live in, and the way to do that is to publish in English. You should welcome men of talent and goodwill even if they're women. In fact--"

  The rest of that sentence was lost in an uproar of protest and counter-protest, but Goldberg had been expecting it and grinned, waiting for the noise to subside. He carried on:

  "Yes, we should make no distinctions. That's the first reason. The second is simpler; I can see that whatever it's called, this journal, I shall be writing most of it, and I'm going to write in English, and you haven't got enough money to pay for a translator. Besides, writing in English is the only way to improve it."

  "But your English is very good, Comrade Goldberg," said a timid voice.

  "Oh, my English is impeccable," said Goldberg cheerfully. "It's my English readers' English I want to improve."

  Laughter.

  "And what about the third reason?" called someone.

  "Oh, the third reason is the most convincing of all. In fact, it's so powerful that once you've heard it you won't entertain any other consideration for a moment. It convinced me, I can tell you that. Unfortunately, I've forgotten what it was."

  Grins, more laughter; Goldberg knew exactly how to control an audience, and he had them on his side now. They'd grumble and argue, but he knew he'd won.

  "I move," said an elderly man in a battered cap, "that Comrade Goldberg's suggestion be adopted, bitterly though it pains me, who will have to spell out every word letter by letter."

  "But we haven't debated the proposition!" came another voice. "If Comrade Goldberg wants to pitch all our traditions out of the window and make us all into Englishmen, it seems to me that we need to discuss it more fully. To begin with. . ."

  As the Democratic Socialists settled back to enjoy the business of debating what they all knew would be the result, Goldberg struck a match and relit his cigar before stabbing the pen at the ink and taking up his sentence from where he'd left off.

  The room was so crowded and noisy that no one noticed the door open and a slender figure edge through. The red-bearded young man from the ship, rucksack in his arms, gazed around, blinking with smarting eyes through the reek of smoke. He asked a question of the man nearest to him, and looked where he pointed, and then made his way through the crowded chairs to the table where Goldberg was sitting. Goldberg, still furiously scribbling, took no notice.

  Finally the young man coughed and said, "Comrade Goldberg?"

  "Yes?" said Goldberg, without looking up.

  "My name is Jacob Liebermann, comrade. I arrived in London only today. I--"

  "Liebermann! Ah, man, it's good to meet you! That article in the Arbeiter Freind. . . A delightful piece of writing! Come and sit down."

  He shook hands and pulled out a chair. Liebermann sat down, trying to conceal the emotion in his face. To have been read and praised by the great Daniel Goldberg! But Goldberg was looking at him more closely now, and he put the cigar aside.

  "You're not well," he said quietly. "What is it? Consumption?"

  Liebermann nodded. He was nearly at the end of his strength.

  "All right, let's get out of this smoky place. These people will be arguing till midnight," said Goldberg. "Come with me. I've got a room upstairs. Give me your rucksack."

  He gathered up all his papers, slung the rucksack over his shoulder, put the pen between his teeth, capped the ink, and shoved his way briskly through the crowd. Liebermann followed, sagging with weariness.

  "That job I was doing. . ." Liebermann said as they made their way upstairs. "Larousse gave me your message. . . After I left Berlin, I went to Latvia . . . I've got some news. . ."

  "I remember. Good. Tell me, then."

  "Comrade Goldberg, there's a conspiracy against the Jews. There are hundreds of Jews, maybe thousands, gathered at the frontiers - with no money, no papers. . . Those who do have tickets crowd into the railway stations and the seaports--"

  "Yes. I know all that. What's the news?"

  "I was coming to that."

  "Well, come to it sooner. That was the one trouble with your banking piece, if you'll let me say so; you didn't begin it quickly enough. Give the whole story in the first sentence. Argument is different, essays are different, travel sketches and that kind of thing are different, but to tell a news story you give it in the first sentence. The rest is enlargement, background, explanation, development - you can throw it away if you want. I know all that stuff about frontiers and passports and no money. Give me the story now in one sentence."

  "The man behind it is known as the Tzaddik, and he is on his way to London."

  "That's better. We'll make a journalist of you yet. Here we are. . ."

  They had arrived outside a door on the tiny second-floor landing. Goldberg opened it and let Liebermann through, and then struck a match to light an oil-lamp. Liebermann sank into the nearest chair, and coughed. Goldberg looked at him; the feverish cheeks, the bright eyes were alarming. He put down the rucksack, cleared a space among the reference books and government reports for the papers he was carrying, and poured Liebermann a glass of brandy.

  "So, what do you know of this man, the Tzaddik?"

  Liebermann took the glass with t
wo hands and sipped, closing his eyes as the liquid warmed his mouth and throat. Goldberg sat at the table.

  "I first heard of him in Riga," Liebermann began. "I was with a comrade who was showing me the office of something called the Aliens' Registry Bureau of the British Consulate."

  "No such thing," said Goldberg. "It's a fake." Out came the bottle of ink from his overcoat pocket, out came the pen. He put the papers he'd brought up under a fist-sized stone on the floor, uncapped the ink, and began to write as Liebermann spoke.

  "So I found out. I pretended to be a Russian Jew, wanting to come to England. The man there - British - asked me a number of questions, looked at my papers, then made me pay a fee and wrote my name in a book. It would guarantee me residence in London for three months, he said. There were dozens of people there; some of them couldn't pay, they had no money left. They'd had to face this kind of thing all the way from Kiev. A transit fee in Moscow, a registration pass somewhere else, a particular stamp in their passport at the frontier - it went on and on; every time they moved, they had to pay someone a fee."

  "The Tzaddik," prompted Goldberg.

  "Ah yes. The comrade I was with told me about him. It seems that the people - the Jews - are all afraid of some mysterious figure they call the Tzaddik; as if their misfortunes - all these obstructions in their way, all the fraud and the persecution - were all the work of this one man. But, you see, they're superstitious, they think he's . . . not human. From the villages out in the shtetl to the slums of Warsaw and Bucharest and Vienna, they all talk of the Tzaddik as if he were a demon, something supernatural. They say he has a dybbuk for a servant: a little imp from hell that waits on him. They call him Tzaddik - righteous one, saint, holy man - as a way of keeping the evil at bay, like a kind of desperate joke. When I first heard that sort of talk, I threw my hands up: what can you do with rank superstition? But now. . . Well, I've seen him, Goldberg. I think they're right.

  "It happened like this: my comrade in Riga took me to a warehouse in the docks that overlooked the gangplank of a steamship. This was late at night; the docks had been closed earlier in the evening, and if we'd been caught, we'd have gone to prison. We were going to see the Tzaddik going aboard the steamer. It was very secret; no one usually sees him, because he always travels at night. We waited there till past midnight, and then a carriage rolled up beside the gangplank.

  "It was a big, luxurious carriage, strongly made, heavily built. We couldn't see them unloading him from where we were, but--"

  "Unloading him?" said Goldberg.

  "You'll see. When the carriage moved away, there he was on the gangplank, being hauled up by two sailors and pushed up by two footmen. He was in an invalid chair. Immensely fat. A servant close by, holding a rug or something. And - I don't care if you don't believe this - I saw the dybbuk."

  Goldberg looked up. Liebermann's face was tense, and he'd nearly finished the brandy. Goldberg poured some more, and Liebermann went on:

  "A little shadow like a cat - the size of a cat - but human. A homunculus, like the medieval magicians used to make in those old stories. Skipping and running up the gangplank after him. . ."

  He closed his eyes and sighed, trembling.

  "Anyway, they took the man on board and then lifted the carriage up too, with a crane. And I left, with my comrade, and came on overland to Rotterdam. That was where I next heard of the Tzaddik. It was on board the ship, the night we sailed. I was on the deck - the air below was filthy and full of smoke - and I was trying to get warm behind some kind of lifeboat. And I heard two men talking. The ship's engine was turning over, and I could feel the throbbing in the bulkhead behind me - is that the word? It was near the chimney - funnel - and I could see the lights of the city behind the customs shed. I was huddled down there under my waterproof, and I saw the men's outline against the sky, leaning on the rail. They were speaking in English.

  "One of them said, 'Fifty-six passengers at five guilders each. Two hundred and eighty guilders. You owe me ten per cent - twenty-eight.' I recognized his voice: he was the official who'd stamped the papers for the passengers to come on board.

  "The other man said, 'You never said ten per cent. We agreed on five.'

  "The official said, 'The price has gone up. This is the last run we can do from Rotterdam like this; the authorities are beginning to want their cut. I must have my profit. Ten per cent, or I go to the Tzaddik.'

  "The other man grumbled, but paid over some coins. Then he said, 'The Tzaddik's in Russia, the last I heard. Are you going back there, then?'

  " 'He's coming this way,' said the official. 'He's on his way to London. The network's almost all in place.'

  "The second man said, 'If we can't use this dodge again, what are we going to do next time?'

  "The official said, 'Go and see a man in Blackmoor Street when you get to London. A Mr Parrish. He'll tell you.'

  "I didn't hear what the second man said, because the ship's whistle blew. I saw them shake hands, and then the official left. The other man stayed there until the boat had drawn away from the dockside and we were passing out of the harbour, and then he went below. As for me, that was when I began to feel seasick."

  He stopped, and sank back in the chair. Goldberg was tapping the pen against his teeth, his eyes intense with speculation.

  "Did you say Parrish?" he said. "Of Blackmoor Street?"

  "That's what I heard. But no more than that. I'm sorry, Goldberg, but I couldn't follow him when we left the boat. I was nearly finished. So I don't know any more about this Parrish. . . Does it mean anything to you?"

  "Oh, yes," said Goldberg. "I've heard of Mr Parrish. But I didn't know he was mixed up in this. . . Liebermann, this is extraordinarily interesting. I'm very much obliged to you."

  Liebermann's eyes were closed. There was no fire in the room, and it was chilly. Goldberg pulled the blankets off the bed and wrapped them around the other man. He looked longingly at his cigars, but contented himself with putting one between his teeth unlit; and then he turned his overcoat collar up, wrapped the muffler around his neck, and began to write.

  Chapter Three

  THE MARRIAGE REGISTER

  Next morning, having told Sarah-Jane not to let Harriet out of her sight and Ellie not to admit any strangers, Sally set off for her office in the City.

  It stood up three narrow flights of stairs at the top of an old building in Bengal Court, not far from St Paul's. She shared the building with an insurance agent, a spectacle-maker, a tobacco importer, an agent for an American typewriting-machine manufacturer and the office of the Tricycling Gazette. It was a busy place, and the other occupants were friendly; though Sally was struck by the thought that any of them might have been spying on her. How could Parrish know so much if he didn't have spies?

  Margaret Haddow was already in when she arrived. She was a year or two younger than Sally, but because of her dark, rather austere looks and her dry manner, she seemed older. Sally trusted her implicitly. Their clerk, Cicely Corrigan, came in from Bromley, having to settle her crippled mother for the day, so she usually arrived a little later.

  "Are we busy today?" said Sally, hanging up her cloak and hat.

  "Not very," Margaret told her. "We've got to look at those South American mining shares before tomorrow, and I'd like to go over Mr Thompson's file with you. Then I was going to see a Mrs Wilson, but not till three o'clock. I thought we might look at the Australian goldfields - I've got an idea they're going to move up."

  "Can you leave that for now and do something for me?"

  "Yes, I expect so. What is it?"

  Sally told her everything. The story sounded no more credible now it was so familiar. Margaret knew about Harriet and had visited Orchard House a number of times, and her reaction was a good deal more sympathetic than that of the lawyer and the clerk.

  "This is monstrous!" she said. "What can I do? Would you like me to testify in court or something? Just tell me."

  "I hope it won't come to court," said Sa
lly. "I hope I can find out why he's doing it before that. If I know what it's all about, then I'll know how to fight it. I'm going to go and look at the register in this church today - there's a train in forty minutes - but I must find out about Parrish. Could you go to his office for me?"

  "Of course! What d'you wantme to do there? Shoot him?"

  Sally smiled. "Not yet. But if you could make up some plausible story - some commission for him - and see what you can find out about his business. . . Anything at all. I don't know what to look for, because I don't know anything about him. Whatever you find out will help."

  Sally's train took her to Portsmouth by midday, and a hansom cab took her to the Rectory of St Thomas's in the parish of Southam. The area was an undistinguished suburb of Portsmouth: dull terraces of small brick houses, a row of dingy shops, an area of scrubland by the railway line awaiting development. The church was no more than fifty years old: old enough to be dirty, not old enough to be interesting. The Rectory looked the same.

  The Rector, a Mr Murray, was having luncheon, so the maidservant told her. Would she care to come back in half an hour? Sally agreed, and wandered into the church to pass the time. It was a conventional Gothic revival building of no beauty at all, and the only point of interest was the list of incumbents on the wall. There had been five previous Rectors of Southam. The current one, the Reverend Mr Murray, had only been in office since the year before; he hadn't been here when the supposed marriage took place. The Rector then had been called Beech.

  When she judged that Mr Murray had finished his luncheon, she went back to the Rectory. The maid showed her into a study, and Mr Murray rose to shake her hand. He was tall, thin, middle-aged and severe.

  "I wonder if I might look at your parish records?" she said.

  "You're aware we only go back to 1832?" said Mr Murray. "If you're hunting ancestors, there will not be many here."