After Tashlich
THE curious roaring and gurgling subsided gradually in my ears. The upward streaks of water slackened their speed and then vanished. I became conscious that my feet had touched the oozy bottom, but, as in a daze, I waited to make certain of my mental and physical balance.
On every side of me the green, sinister light deepened away into utter darkness. Intangible shadows lurked in front of me, vaguely malevolent, and silently a fish went by, looking into my eyes with a cold, sardonic smile.
I took a step forward, and stopped, helplessly. I was afraid to move. The outer curtain of darkness began to dissolve with infinite slowness, and disclosed successive elusive walls of thickening green. I began to see more clearly. On my right loomed a rotting bulk, bristling with masts and spars. The sea-floor was netted with a snake-like growth which writhed slowly with the invisible movement of the undercurrents. I looked up and saw the gliding shapes of living ships. My reassurance stole back to me as consciousness steals back to an awakening dreamer.
"I am alone," I said, wanting to hear my voice.
A voice answered behind me.
"Nonesense."
I turned round with a swimming motion, for the water impeded me, and saw, with a strange lack of astonishment, a small, middle-aged man wearing a "yarmelke."
"You here too?" I said.
He looked at me suspiciously.
"Who are you?" he asked, in Yiddish.
"Oh, nobody in particular," I said, with a deprecatory wave of my hand. "Who are you?"
"I belong to the five six three two division," he said, with a curious modesty. "You're quite recent, I suppose—" this last with some contempt.
"Oh, quite!" I said, hurriedly. I was thoroughly ashamed.
"Well, well," he said, in a kindly voice, "you'll grow older."
"I suppose so," I said, despondently.
"You must let me show you round," he said, briskly, and seized my arm. I accompanied him, stumbling with difficulty through the tangled vegetation.
“Let me see,” he continued, cheerfully, “you’re five six seven six, aren’t you. Dear me, that’s forty four years since Icame down. However, that’s not so long after all. There are some in these parts who are a good deal older. There are even two who say they date from five two five three, and that they had belonged to the two Jews who came over with Columbus on his first voyage, but it’s a lie. Columbus wasn’t here in time for Rosh-Hashanah: at least, I don’t think so. One had the impudence—at the time when the rumor came out that Columbus was a Jew—to say that he had belonged to Columbus himself, but that’s a worse lie still: Columbus never went to Tashlich even if he had Jewish blood in his veins. You know, there was one old fellow, on the other side, in Europe I mean, who claimed to have been shaken out of the caftan-tails of a German Jew in four seven two eight,
more than nine hundred years ago, but he was an ignorant imposter, for the best authorities tell us that Tashlich can't be more than eight hundred years old at most."
A shape materialized suddenly out of the green gloom. A dapper fellow, neatly dressed and—as I live—smoking a Que Placer.
“What’s this?” he asked of my guide.
"New arrival, five six seven six, found wandering," said the other, meekly.
"All right, leave him to be. Go back to your division, please."
We waited till the other had disappeared, and my new friend turned to me.
"These old fogies!" fiercely. Then, softening: "I'm organizing secretary chosen by five six seven five, last year's division, you know. I'll have to find you a place. Whom did you belong to?"
"I don't remember," I stammered.
"That's all right," he said, genially. "We're modern, you know. We're not particular about antecedents. I don't care whom you belonged to. But you're modern all right?"
"Oh, sure," I said.
"Saw it from the first." He smiled proudly. "I'm modern myself. Still all this is strange to you, isn't it?"
"More or less," I confessed.
“Let’s sit down; I'll explain.” He waved me to a mouldering anchor, and seated himself on a rot-green ship’s bed.
"Well, the bottom of the sea is mostly Jewish. It's inhabited by us fellows—we're the Sins—who've been shaken out of the coats of the sinners at Tashlich. We're reinforced every year by large and growing numbers. Every year's arrivals have their own division of course, but a certain amount of wandering has been permitted. However, that'll have to be restricted. There's been a frightful amount of friction between the divisions. Those d—d old-fashioned fogies who were shaken down years ago give themselves no end of airs. They're a vulgar lot—belong to the elemental Classes, you know—Greed, Envy, Mendacity, Cruelty and so on. They can't understand the subtleties of us modern chaps. can they?"
"Certainly not," I said.
“I mean to say they’re simply brutal—not the kind of thing we stand for. Take me, for instance: I belong to the Business Method Class. We sins are subdivided into Classes, you see. Well, I wouldn’t talk to any of those fellows from the Haughtiness Class, or the Unclean Thought Class. T'hey’re obsolete. They belong to the animal sins, the sins of the brute— the sort of thing we modern Jews—I use the term proudly—have altogether outgrown. They were shaken out of the pockets and coat-tails and skirt-tails of positively unspeakable people—old women mostly. As I say, they belong to the old Bruitish Classes—the sins of the flesh. Pah! We" he stood up in his pride — “we belonge to the vagaries of the soul.”
"You don't say?" I said in admiration.
"Surest thing," he said, reseating himself. "Take me for instance: I belong to Business Method Class. I was owned by a Jew who issued an edition of the