An Easy Fast

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Title:     An Easy Fast
Author: Shalom Rabinovitz [More Titles by Rabinovitz]

That which Doctor Tanner failed to accomplish, was effectually carried out by Chayyim Chaikin, a simple Jew in a small town in Poland.

Doctor Tanner wished to show that a man can fast forty days, and he only managed to get through twenty-eight, no more, and that with people pouring spoonfuls of water into his mouth, and giving him morsels of ice to swallow, and holding his pulse--a whole business! Chayyim Chaikin has proved that one can fast more than forty days; not, as a rule, two together, one after the other, but forty days, if not more, in the course of a year.

To fast is all he asks!

Who said drops of water? Who said ice? Not for him! To fast means no food and no drink from one set time to the other, a real four-and-twenty-hours.

And no doctors sit beside him and hold his pulse, whispering, "Hush! Be quiet!"

Well, let us hear the tale!

Chayyim Chaikin is a very poor man, encumbered with many children, and they, the children, support him.

They are mostly girls, and they work in a factory and make cigarette wrappers, and they earn, some one gulden, others half a gulden, a day, and that not every day. How about Sabbaths and festivals and "shtreik" days? One should thank God for everything, even in their out-of-the-way little town strikes are all the fashion!

And out of that they have to pay rent--for a damp corner in a basement.

To buy clothes and shoes for the lot of them! They have a dress each, but they are two to every pair of shoes.

And then food--such as it is! A bit of bread smeared with an onion, sometimes groats, occasionally there is a bit of taran that burns your heart out, so that after eating it for supper, you can drink a whole night.

When it comes to eating, the bread has to be portioned out like cake.

"Oi, dos Essen, dos Essen seiers!"

Thus Chaike, Chayyim Chaikin's wife, a poor, sick creature, who coughs all night long.

"No evil eye," says the father, and he looks at his children devouring whole slices of bread, and would dearly like to take a mouthful himself, only, if he does so, the two little ones, Fradke and Beilke, will go supperless.

And he cuts his portion of bread in two, and gives it to the little ones, Fradke and Beilke.

Fradke and Beilke stretch out their little thin, black hands, look into their father's eyes, and don't believe him: perhaps he is joking? Children are nashers, they play with father's piece of bread, till at last they begin taking bites out of it. The mother sees and exclaims, coughing all the while:

"It is nothing but eating and stuffing!"

The father cannot bear to hear it, and is about to answer her, but he keeps silent--he can't say anything, it is not for him to speak! Who is he in the house? A broken potsherd, the last and least, no good to anyone, no good to them, no good to himself.

Because the fact is he does nothing, absolutely nothing; not because he won't do anything, or because it doesn't befit him, but because there is nothing to do--and there's an end of it! The whole townlet complains of there being nothing to do! It is just a crowd of Jews driven together. Delightful! They're packed like herrings in a barrel, they squeeze each other close, all for love.

"Well-a-day!" thinks Chaikin, "it's something to have children, other people haven't even that. But to depend on one's children is quite another thing and not a happy one!" Not that they grudge him his keep--Heaven forbid! But he cannot take it from them, he really cannot!

He knows how hard they work, he knows how the strength is wrung out of them to the last drop, he knows it well!

Every morsel of bread is a bit of their health and strength--he drinks his children's blood! No, the thought is too dreadful!

"Tatinke, why don't you eat?" ask the children.

"To-day is a fast day with me," answers Chayyim Chaikin.

"Another fast? How many fasts have you?"

"Not so many as there are days in the week."

And Chayyim Chaikin speaks the truth when he says that he has many fasts, and yet there are days on which he eats.

But he likes the days on which he fasts better.

First, they are pleasing to God, and it means a little bit more of the world-to-come, the interest grows, and the capital grows with it.

"Secondly" (he thinks), "no money is wasted on me. Of course, I am accountable to no one, and nobody ever questions me as to how I spend it, but what do I want money for, when I can get along without it?

"And what is the good of feeling one's self a little higher than a beast? A beast eats every day, but I can go without food for one or two days. A man should be above a beast!

"O, if a man could only raise himself to a level where he could live without eating at all! But there are one's confounded insides!" So thinks Chayyim Chaikin, for hunger has made a philosopher of him.

"The insides, the necessity of eating, these are the causes of the world's evil! The insides and the necessity of eating have made a pauper of me, and drive my children to toil in the sweat of their brow and risk their lives for a bit of bread!

"Suppose a man had no need to eat! Ai--ai--ai! My children would all stay at home! An end to toil, an end to moil, an end to 'shtreikeven,' an end to the risking of life, an end to factory and factory owners, to rich men and paupers, an end to jealousy and hatred and fighting and shedding of blood! All gone and done with! Gone and done with! A paradise! a paradise!"

So reasons Chayyim Chaikin, and, lost in speculation, he pities the world, and is grieved to the heart to think that God should have made man so little above the beast.

* * * * *

The day on which Chayyim Chaikin fasts is, as I told you, his best day, and a real fast day, like the Ninth of Ab, for instance--he is ashamed to confess it--is a festival for him!

You see, it means not to eat, not to be a beast, not to be guilty of the children's blood, to earn the reward of a Mitzveh, and to weep to heart's content on the ruins of the Temple.

For how can one weep when one is full? How can a full man grieve? Only he can grieve whose soul is faint within him! The good year knows how some folk answer it to their conscience, giving in to their insides--afraid of fasting! Buy them a groschen worth of oats, for charity's sake!

Thus would Chayyim Chaikin scorn those who bought themselves off the fast, and dropped a hard coin into the collecting box.

The Ninth of Ab is the hardest fast of all--so the world has it.

Chayyim Chaikin cannot see why. The day is long, is it? Then the night is all the shorter. It's hot out of doors, is it? Who asks you to go loitering about in the sun? Sit in the Shool and recite the prayers, of which, thank God, there are plenty.

"I tell you," persists Chayyim Chaikin, "that the Ninth of Ab is the easiest of the fasts, because it is the best, the very best!

"For instance, take the Day of Atonement fast! It is written, 'And you shall mortify your bodies.' What for? To get a clean bill and a good year.

"It doesn't say that you are to fast on the Ninth of Ab, but you fast of your own accord, because how could you eat on the day when the Temple was wrecked, and Jews were killed, women ripped up, and children dashed to pieces?

"It doesn't say that you are to weep on the Ninth of Ab, but you do weep. How could anyone restrain his tears when he thinks of what we lost that day?"

"The pity is, there should be only one Ninth of Ab!" says Chayyim Chaikin.

"Well, and the Seventeenth of Tammuz!" suggests some one.

"And there is only one Seventeenth of Tammuz!" answers Chayyim Chaikin, with a sigh.

"Well, and the Fast of Gedaliah? and the Fast of Esther?" continues the same person.

"Only one of each!" and Chayyim Chaikin sighs again.

"Ê, Reb Chayyim, you are greedy for fasts, are you?"

"More fasts, more fasts!" says Chayyim Chaikin, and he takes upon himself to fast on the eve of the Ninth of Ab as well, two days at a stretch.

What do you think of fasting two days in succession? Isn't that a treat? It is hard enough to have to break one's fast after the Ninth of Ab, without eating on the eve thereof as well.

One forgets that one has insides, that such a thing exists as the necessity to eat, and one is free of the habit that drags one down to the level of the beast.

The difficulty lies in the drinking! I mean, in the not drinking. "If I" (thinks Chayyim Chaikin) "allowed myself one glass of water a day, I could fast a whole week till Sabbath."

You think I say that for fun? Not at all! Chayyim Chaikin is a man of his word. When he says a thing, it's said and done! The whole week preceding the Ninth of Ab he ate nothing, he lived on water.

Who should notice? His wife, poor thing, is sick, the elder children are out all day in the factory, and the younger ones do not understand. Fradke and Beilke only know when they are hungry (and they are always hungry), the heart yearns within them, and they want to eat.

"To-day you shall have an extra piece of bread," says the father, and cuts his own in two, and Fradke and Beilke stretch out their dirty little hands for it, and are overjoyed.

"Tatinke, you are not eating," remark the elder girls at supper, "this is not a fast day!"

"And no more do I fast!" replies the father, and thinks: "That was a take-in, but not a lie, because, after all, a glass of water--that is not eating and not fasting, either."

When it comes to the eve of the Ninth of Ab, Chayyim feels so light and airy as he never felt before, not because it is time to prepare for the fast by taking a meal, not because he may eat. On the contrary, he feels that if he took anything solid into his mouth, it would not go down, but stick in his throat.

That is, his heart is very sick, and his hands and feet shake; his body is attracted earthwards, his strength fails, he feels like fainting. But fie, what an idea! To fast a whole week, to arrive at the eve of the Ninth of Ab, and not hold out to the end! Never!

And Chayyim Chaikin takes his portion of bread and potato, calls Fradke and Beilke, and whispers:

"Children, take this and eat it, but don't let Mother see!"

And Fradke and Beilke take their father's share of food, and look wonderingly at his livid face and shaking hands.

Chayyim sees the children snatch at the bread and munch and swallow, and he shuts his eyes, and rises from his place. He cannot wait for the other girls to come home from the factory, but takes his book of Lamentations, puts off his shoes [*], and drags himself--it is all he can do--to the Shool.

[* "Puts off his shoes!"--To pray in stocking-feet is a sign of mourning and a penance.]

He is nearly the first to arrive. He secures a seat next the reader, on an overturned bench, lying with its feet in the air, and provides himself with a bit of burned-down candle, which he glues with its drippings to the foot of the bench, leans against the corner of the platform, opens his book, "Lament for Zion and all the other towns," and he closes his eyes and sees Zion robed in black, with a black veil over her face, lamenting and weeping and wringing her hands, mourning for her children who fall daily, daily, in foreign lands, for other men's sins.

"And wilt not thou, O Zion, ask of me
Some tidings of the children from thee reft?
I bring thee greetings over land and sea,
From those remaining--from the remnant left!----"

And he opens his eyes and sees:

A bright sunbeam has darted in through the dull, dusty window-pane, a beam of the sun which is setting yonder behind the town. And though he shuts them again, he still sees the beam, and not only the beam, but the whole sun, the bright, beautiful sun, and no one can see it but him! Chayyim Chaikin looks at the sun and sees it--and that's all! How is it? It must be because he has done with the world and its necessities--he feels happy--he feels light--he can bear anything--he will have an easy fast--do you know, he will have an easy fast, an easy fast!

Chayyim Chaikin shuts his eyes, and sees a strange world, a new world, such as he never saw before. Angels seem to hover before his eyes, and he looks at them, and recognizes his children in them, all his children, big and little, and he wants to say something to them, and cannot speak--he wants to explain to them, that he cannot help it--it is not his fault! How should it, no evil eye! be his fault, that so many Jews are gathered together in one place and squeeze each other, all for love, squeeze each other to death for love? How can he help it, if people desire other people's sweat, other people's blood? if people have not learned to see that one should not drive a man as a horse is driven to work? that a horse is also to be pitied, one of God's creatures, a living thing?----

And Chayyim Chaikin keeps his eyes shut, and sees, sees everything. And everything is bright and light, and curls like smoke, and he feels something is going out of him, from inside, from his heart, and is drawn upward and loses itself from the body, and he feels very light, very, very light, and he gives a sigh--a long, deep sigh--and feels still lighter, and after that he feels nothing at all--absolutely nothing at all--

Yes, he has an easy fast.

* * * * *

When Bäre the beadle, a red-haired Jew with thick lips, came into the Shool in his socks with the worn-down heels, and saw Chayyim Chaikin leaning with his head back, and his eyes open, he was angry, thought Chayyim was dozing, and he began to grumble:

"He ought to be ashamed of himself--reclining like that--came here for a nap, did he?--Reb Chayyim, excuse me, Reb Chayyim!----"

But Chayyim Chaikin did not hear him.

* * * * *

The last rays of the sun streamed in through the Shool window, right onto Chayyim Chaikin's quiet face with the black, shining, curly hair, the black, bushy brows, the half-open, black, kindly eyes, and lit the dead, pale, still, hungry face through and through.

* * * * *

I told you how it would be: Chayyim Chaikin had an easy fast!

[The end]
Shalom Rabinovitz's short story: Easy Fast

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