Comrade Yetta

Albert Edwards

Albert Edwards

Comrade Yetta

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

BENJAMIN'S BOOK-STORE

The girlhood of Yetta Rayefsky was passed in her father's second-hand book-store on East Broadway. In the late nineties the fame of his kindly philosophy had attracted a circle of followers, and the store became almost prosperous.

It was in a basement – four steps down from the sidewalk. The close-packed cases around the walls were filled with the wildest assortment of second-hand English books. You were likely to find a novel of Laura Jean Libby cheek by jowl with "The Book of Mormon," between two volumes of "Browning's Poems." The tables in the centre were piled chaotically with books and periodicals in Russian and Hebrew.

Every night in the week you would have found Benjamin Rayefsky and his little daughter Yetta perched on high stools back of the desk to the left of the door. He would have greeted you with his sad, wistful smile, and would have gotten down to shake hands with you. It would have surprised and hurt him if you had asked at once for a book, paid for it, and gone out. It was customary to take plenty of time and to make quite sure that he did not have in stock some book you would prefer to the one you had come after.

When he had succeeded in making you feel at home, he would have returned to his desk, and Yetta would have gone on reading aloud to him. Very likely you would have wanted to laugh at the discussions they had over how various English words should be pronounced. When they could not agree, Benjamin would write down the word on a slip of paper for Yetta to take to school in the morning and submit to the teacher. You would have wondered with amusement how much the little lassie understood of the ponderous tomes she read in her high-pitched uncertain voice.

But you would not have wanted to laugh at the memory you carried away of the couple. More than one Gentile who had dropped into the store by chance went away racking their brains to recall the Holy Picture the Rayefskys suggested. It was what the psychologists call "inverse association." The Father and Daughter inevitably called to mind the Mother and Son.

Benjamin resembled – except for an ugly scar on his forehead – Guido Reni's "Christ." There was the same poignant sadness about his mouth, the same soft beard and sensitive nose; there was the same otherworldly kindliness in his eyes and his every gesture. And little Yetta was very like the Child Mary in Titian's "Presentation."

Towards nine o'clock the little shop began to fill up. First of the regulars was a consumptive lad whose attention had been caught by an advertisement asserting that a certain encyclopædia was worth a university education. Lacking money to go to college or to acquire so large a set of books, he was reading one of these compendiums in Rayefsky's Book-store. He had reached the letter "R," and considered himself a junior. There were others who came for regular reading, but more came to talk – and to listen to Benjamin. At ten he would close Yetta's book and, putting his arm about her shoulders, begin his evening discourse. Generally his text was some phrase from his reading which had impressed him during the day. Before long the little girl's eyes would close and her head fall over on her father's shoulder.

But one night he kept her awake. There was a wedding in progress across the street. It was his custom to talk directly to some one person of his audience, and this night he addressed himself to Yetta. With poetic imagination he paraphrased the idyll of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, making of the story an interpretation of marriage for his daughter's guidance. Some time in the years to come a Man would claim her, and against that time he taught her the vow that Ruth made to Naomi.

"Whither thou goest, I will go; where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."

He made her repeat the vow over a