Read Ebook: Forward from Babylon by Golding Louis

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1337 lines and 91870 words, and 27 pages

Philip had not yet recovered from the dull dismay with which he had found himself installed as a scholar in the Infants' Class of the Bridgeway Elementary School. He had attained the age of five. Within quite recent memory he had been breeched. He still remembered the pocket in his skirt which was crammed with "stuffs"--the main merchandise of his companions, snippets of prints, calicoes, alpacas and linen rags picked up below the maternal needles and generally on the doorsteps of Angel Street.

Reb Monash was by no means hostile to the idea that Philip should acquire a Gentile education, on the broad understanding that it should not outshadow Philip's accomplishment in Hebrew lore. It went without saying that labour on the Saturday should be anathema under any concatenation of the links of Fate. Moreover, the law of the land, in the person of the "School Board," had been eyeing him significantly.

"It's time Philip should begin school!" said Reb Monash shatteringly one evening. Philip lay dozing on the horse-hair sofa. His heart shook before the joint assault of a great joy and a great fear. "School"--that unfathomable place of red brick and towering windows, where the "lads" went, the swaggering young men who jumped from pavement to pavement of Angel Street in five jumps; where one was brought into direct visual contact with "pleaseteacher," a thing beyond all imagination lovely and terrible.

"So Channah, thou wilt not go to work to-morrow morning. He's an old man, Philip, and he must make his start in life."

Philip's face shone soapily next morning. His black hair lay stretched in rigidly parallel formations on both sides of his impeccable parting. Channah had shined his button-boots with so much rubbing and spitting into congealed blacking that his boots seemed to focus all the light in the kitchen. His mother had adorned his blouse with a great bow of vermilion sateen.

"Is pleaseteachers like policemans?" Philip asked, as Channah led him by a hand clammy with apprehension along the Doomington Road to the Bridgeway Elementary School.

"Oh no! Pleaseteachers are much more lovely!" was the reply. "Policemen only lock little boys up, but pleaseteachers give 'em toffee--and flowers!"

"And flowers?" echoed Philip incredulously.

When they arrived at the entrance to the school, a sudden nausea overwhelmed Philip.

"I'se not going to school!" he said suddenly and firmly.

"Feivele, what do you mean?"

"I'se not going!"

"What's the matter with you? Why aren't you going?"

But Channah had not come unprepared for such an emergency. Mrs. Massel had anticipated it with a stick-jaw of Moishele's best. She held it towards the child and made provocative labial noises.

"Aren't you going now?"

"No!" he said a little more doubtfully.

She had another weapon in the armoury.

"Gib me de stickjaw, den!" he said.

"You can't eat it now!"

"One suck!" he wheedled.

They passed duly through the vestibule into the great "infants' hall." At its geometrical centre the principal pleaseteacher sat, pavilioned in terrors. A few words of high import passed between Miss Featherstone and Channah. Before Philip's eyes the walls soared endlessly into perpendicular space. There was no ceiling. He made the hideous discovery that there was no floor to the room. His shining boots hung suspended in space. Strange antiphonies propounded and expounded the cosmic mysteries. He was lost. He was rolling headlong among the winds, like a piece of cotton-fluff lifted high above the roofs of Angel Street.

What was this? The pleaseteacher was looking at him; her mouth was opening; there were big cracks on each side of her nose. Yes, she was smiling into him. He resumed his ponderable qualities. He was a little boy dismally sick in the infants' hall of the Bridgeway Elementary School. He preferred to be a piece of cotton-fluff. It was a more impersonal doom.

"What's your name, little boy?"

He wondered whether it was an impertinence to reply. It was funny and dry at the back of his throat. He stared fixedly at the crack on the left side of her nose.

"What's your name, little boy?" A certain acidulation had thinned her voice.

"My name Feivele an' I live at ten Angel Street an' I'm five years old an' my farver's Rebbie Massel!" he said, the words trembling out in a bewildered spate.

"Will you ask your brother to speak a little more slowly and distinctly, Miss Massel? Thank you. Now what's your name, little boy?"

"Philip Massel, pleaseteacher!"

"Yes, pleaseteacher!"

"Stupid! But he'll soon know better," she assured Channah.

"Yes, Miss Featherstone!" Channah corroborated. Philip's hand feverishly held his sister's all this while.

"You'd better just see him to his place," said Miss Featherstone to Channah, as Miss Briggs led the way to her class.

"Sit here, Philip," said Miss Briggs, "next to Hyman Marks!"

"Don't go 'way, don't go 'way!" Philip huskily implored Channah. Hundreds of scornful eyes were stripping him bare of his blouse, his shined boots, his bow of vermilion sateen, till they all lay at his feet in a miserable heap and he shivered there in the cold, naked, despised. "Don't go 'way!" he moaned.

Channah looked despairingly towards Miss Briggs.

Miss Briggs seized her chalk significantly. It was time the new-comer had settled down.

"I'll tell you what," said Channah, "I'll go to Moishele's and buy you a ha'pny tiger nuts and a box of crayons. And I'll come back straight away."

"Promise!" he demanded in anguish.

Philip saw her disappear through the doors. A black cloud of loneliness enveloped him until he could hardly breathe. The terrifying sing-song of these young celebrants at their fathomless ceremony had begun again.

Fantastic hieroglyphs danced across the blackboard at the dictate of Miss Briggs' chalk. The heavy minutes ticked and ticked in a reiteration of monochrome and despair.

What teeth she had, Miss Briggs! Not like his mother's! A little yellow his mother's were, but small and neat, as he observed whenever she smiled one of her tired and sweet smiles. What was the specific purpose of Miss Briggs' teeth? Why should those two at the top in front be so large and pointed? He had heard old Mo who sold newspapers tell tales about canninbles. Wass Miss Briggs a canninble? Oh the long, long Channahless minutes! When would she come? What? Some one was whispering behind him.

"Say, kid!"

Philip was afraid to turn round. What would Miss Briggs do if he turned round? And she had two such horrid teeth, at the top, in front!

"Say, kid! Got anyfing?"

Philip turned his head round fearfully. A villainously scowling face was bent over from the bench behind towards his own.

"Aven't yer got nuffing?"

Philip looked helplessly into the forbidding face.

"I tell yer, kid!" the voice menaced, "if yer don't gib me anyfing, I'll spifflicate yer!"

The process of spifflication sounded as terrible as it certainly was vague. Philip put his hand into his trouser-pocket where the lump of stickjaw lay warmly spreading its seductive bounties over the lining. To part with a whole lump of stickjaw from which the one due he had extracted was a single suck! But, on the other hand, spifflication! And moreover, soon, oh surely very, very soon, Channah would come back with the tiger nuts, not to mention the box of crayons. He drew the lump of sticky languor from his pocket. A grubby fist from behind closed round it.

Faithless Channah! How could the mere passing of time be such a labour? He subsided into a daze of stupefaction; only the hope of Channah's appearance buzzed and buzzed like a fly on the ear-drum. A great tear rolled slowly down his face. Another followed and another. They dropped into the bow of vermilion sateen. Suppose his mother should die in his absence? Or there might be a big, big fire! And just suppose....

A great clangour of bells! Miss Featherstone on her dais shut a book with a loud snap. Miss Briggs definitively placed her chalk on her desk. A pleaseteacher from another class walked with dignity over to the piano at the far end of the hall. She lifted the lid and played a slow march. The top class filed out from the desks, advanced in single order to a red line which, starting a few feet from Miss Featherstone's dais, led to the door; the class marched along the red line and passed with decorum from the hall. When Philip walked the red line in his turn he was wondering whether he ought to be placing each foot centrally upon the line. Dizzily he staggered along. When at last he rushed out into the road, wild with the relief from servitude, Mrs. Massel was waiting for him outside the school entrance, and when she lifted him from his feet, he howled with fearful delight.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet