XXIV THE CHURCH WITH THE CROSS

THE cross dominated the landscape; crowning the hilltop stood one, black, austere, forbidding ... a suffering, emaciated Christ hanging on the tree. Cut out of white limestone, another shone against the dark forest guarding its sylvan mysteries. The cross rose above the river, from the centre pier of the bridge where it vibrated to each shock of the swift rushing stream; at every turn of the road, on the dividing line of orchard and meadow, marking the boundaries of fields and villages, stood the sacred emblem of The Church, itself surmounted by this Roman gallows of beaten gold, proud symbol and sign of victory!

No one ever told me its meaning, yet I soon learned that it was something ominous ... terrible; and that because of Him who hung upon it we suffered and were persecuted.

This I learned by painful experience; for I felt many a lump on my head raised by the benevolent fists of Gentile youth because I would not look at the cross and kiss it. On the other hand, my ears were pulled much too often by my guardian because I did look at it. Once I was all but choked to death because I would not make the sign of the cross, and again was threatened by punishment temporal and eternal, because I carried in my pocket a little crucifix given me by the goose girl in my race-unconscious days. At that time I regarded it as a toy. It never repelled me, although as I now analyze my feelings it was to me a symbol of unforgiveness, something which was angry with me, that I should like to make up with, yet did not dare approach. It was unpleasant to me, not because I suffered bodily harm through it, but because it stood aloof and kept me from enjoying all for which my life hungered. It seemed to say: “This is a Catholic mountain; this is a Christian river, and these fields and meadows, these birds and wild flowers are not for you.”

Whenever I passed a cross I seemed to hear the Christ saying: “Get out of here, you little Jewish boy, you crucified Me!” I heard Him say that, because every Catholic I met seemed to be especially angry with me if we met before a crucifix or shrine. Even now when walking along those highways I have the same feeling.

During my childhood I named most of these holy places after some bodily punishment that I received there. Not long ago I sat in the shadow of an acacia grove and saw the crucifix of the “bloody nose,” as I called it. I know some beech trees overshadowing a shrine, which I called the shrine “Zur Ohrfeige” a peculiar form of punishment which my countrymen will readily recognize.

Once, when I shared in Christmas exercises, taking the part of Moorish King, as I have already told, and was hurled from my high estate, I received presents and a kiss from the sister of the Pany, a woman as saintly as he was wicked. She carried a rosary with an ivory crucifix to church with her and the cross lost much of its terror for me because she was associated with it. Twice, I think, after I took the part of Wise Man, she sent me at Christmas time a present of russet apples; and while she never spoke to me again she smiled at me always when in passing I doffed my cap to her.

There was also a hatter in our town who, it was rumoured, had studied for the priesthood; he too had a share in reconciling me to the crucifix. He was the priest’s right hand man, assuming all sorts of parish burdens. On Corpus Christi he carried the large crucifix at the head of the procession. This holy day was a peculiarly trying one to the Jewish community, for the Catholic population was enraged when a Jew refused to bare his head as the crucifix passed.

To keep one’s head covered and stand erect in the synagogue was regarded by us children as a protest against the Christian faith and practice; while to share in the Christian worship even by the removal of one’s cap, would have been regarded as a most sinful and humiliating act.

The Jews usually drew the shutters, locked the doors and kept out of sight while the procession passed; but I was lured by the music, the gaily coloured banners and by all that in a procession appeals to a boy. I was pushed far to the front and when the head of the procession approached I stood there erect with covered head and immediately became the target for well-aimed blows, which sent my cap flying and threw me violently to the ground. I might have been crushed beneath the feet of the mob had it not been for the hatter, who, shifting the heavy crucifix to one hand and supporting it against his body, stooped, lifted me, led me half around the church and through its open portal; while the bells rang, pious worshippers sang and priests chanted. The good hatter and the crucifix thus became closely identified.

That was the first time I had seen the interior of the church on a festal day. Candles blazed on the altars, banners waved, the organ was reinforced by blaring trombones and huge brass horns; priests and acolytes wore their most splendid vestments, and clouds of incense trailed upward to the loft where pigeons cooed and ventured many a flight around the awestruck congregation.

I am sure that I worshipped; at least I was uplifted; the crude and discordant in my nature seemed to leave me and I felt buoyant as if floating on the air. It was a moment akin to that when, on her death-bed, the miller’s daughter passed her wasted fingers through my hair and kissed my hot temples.

Why should I not remember that first, conscious sharing in Christian worship? It brought swift punishment. The acolytes beat me unmercifully and the Jewish lads who saw me going into the church, beside calling me “Goy” Christian, told on me, and the consequences may be imagined. Yet I remember the punishment less than the fact that it was my first conscious worship; a real attempt to commune with the Unseen. The mysterious in my own nature had touched the eternal mystery, and the cross had lost much of its aloofness; I had entered its domain.

I do not know what I felt when I saw the golden cross that day from the omnibus; but I was conscious of a reconciliation and perhaps something more. “We are not such strangers after all,” I suppose I said to myself. “I don’t hate you although I don’t quite understand you—but some day I shall.”

Perhaps it was merely a youth’s resolve to taste the forbidden thing as soon as he escaped his environment—perhaps I have magnified my feeling, recalling it now in the light of my later experiences. I am fairly positive, however, that I felt a premonition that some day I should enter into whatever experiences the cross held for a human soul. The life which awaited me was favourable to this, and in looking back I can plainly see the guidance of a good Providence.

Far beyond our cross-crowned hill and many another, my new life began. My teachers were Jesuit fathers, the schoolroom was an anteroom to the church and the crucifix was everywhere. The fathers looked very much like the Christ I remembered, painted upon the crosses that dotted our highways; austere and forbidding. They were skilled teachers and splendid disciplinarians. Even my untrained mind was forced into a groove.

There were pages and pages of Latin, curious problems in mathematics and such history as they deigned to give us; but the curriculum consisted largely of Latin, and there are not many questions which the soul can ask when the mind is being drilled in Latin grammar. Living itself began to be a task in which the higher and lower curiously blended; although the unrestrained lower nature threatened ascendency.

Being a Jew, I had to live among my own people, and of course chose so to live. I have slept on harder beds and have eaten coarser fare since then; but I have never felt contrasts more keenly than when I exchanged home for that boarding-place. It was kept by people who had “seen better days”—a fate they shared with boarding-house keepers the world over.

I had little or no time for social life. The town was totally Slavic and the Jews who lived there were strangers; so I was left much to myself. Most of the students were living with the Fathers, wore clerical attire and were destined for the priesthood. Their pleasures were few. For exercise they walked by classes or in pairs; what they thought or how they lived, I never knew, although I went into the same class-room with many of them. The larger world into which I had entered had even more compartments and smaller ones than the world I had left, and for a good many years I was in a compartment by myself, with no one to share my confidences or to exchange thoughts with me.

My social nature was almost starved, and because those who lived on my level did not take me in, I sought the companionship of those morally and intellectually beneath me and found them ready enough to receive me. What they offered and what I shared I never fully enjoyed. I know that it lowered me and while I never reached the nethermost depths, I went low enough to know something of the humiliation of meeting one’s higher nature when one emerges from the abyss.

In such a mood I strolled into a church during my last year in the gymnasium. I had long outgrown my boyhood and was a man in my thoughts, feelings and desires; although less than the man I wished to be. The preacher spoke about sin. I do not remember either the text or the sermon, but I know it was the first time that I felt myself reproved, as if by God. I seemed to see my own soul—a puny, struggling, mean thing and not what I desired it to be. I began to loathe it and myself, and when the preacher offered peace, renewal and pardon to all who would confess and repent, I was sure that my soul’s hour had come, that I must set it free and let it grow Godward no matter what the cost to me.

When the congregation knelt, I knelt too and prayed—my own prayer—which had no words, which was just an aspiration Christward. My eyes sought the crucifix in faith, and I was ready to claim its power whatever it was, if it could cleanse me and renew me. I looked at the priest who held it up before the kneeling congregation and saw something strangely familiar in that homely face lighted by the fervour of his faith. It led me back to the village of Deephole. It was Sabbath afternoon; an old man lay voiceless and motionless upon his hard bed because his son was an apostate. Then I could feel the hand of my mother leading me out of that stricken home, along the fields where poppies and bachelor’s buttons grew. How she restrained me from plucking them because it was the Sabbath! I felt as if she were touching my hand as I knelt. She led me past the lighted altar, out of the throng of kneeling worshippers and she seemed to say: “No, not while I am living, my son.”