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A short story by Isaac Loeb Peretz |
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The Dead Town |
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Title: The Dead Town Author: Isaac Loeb Peretz [More Titles by Peretz] When travelling in the provinces after Jewish statistics, I one day met with a Jew dragging himself step by step through the heavy sand. He looks ill, can hardly walk, hardly put one foot before the other. I feel sorry for him and take him into my conveyance. He gets in, gives me a "peace be with you," and asks me every sort of question. I answer, and end by inquiring: "And you, friend, whence are you?" "From the dead town," he answers calmly. I thought he was joking. "Where is it?" I ask. "Behind the hills of darkness?" "Where?" he smiles. "It's just in Poland!" "In our country, a town like that?" "There it is!" he said; "there it is! Although the nations of the world do not know of it, and have never given it a Gentile name, it is a genuinely Jewish town." "What do you mean?" "What I say! You know geography, and you think everything is down in it; not at all. We Jews live without geography. We are not 'down,' and yet they come to us from far and near. What is the good of geography? Every driver knows the way. "You don't believe me?" he asks. I am silent. "And yet it's true; our rabbi corresponds with all the Geonim[49] in the world. Questions and answers concerning the most important matters come and go--everything is arranged somehow--it just depends. Not long ago, for instance, an elderly grass-widow was released from the marriage-tie. Well, of course, the main thing is not the grass-widow, but the dialectics!"[50]
[Footnote 50: By which the law is made applicable to an elderly woman.]
"All the Einiklich[51] know of our town. They come, praise God, often--and, praise God, not in vain." [Footnote 51: Grandsons. A celebrated Rebbe would have "sons" and "grandsons" among his adherents. The former would remain, the latter would come and go in companies and more or less respectable conveyances.]
"That's rather strange! I suppose you keep yourself rather aloof..... And yet it is a truly Jewish town, a real Jewish metropolis. It has everything a town needs, even two or three lunatics! And it has a reputation for commerce, too!" "Is anything taken in or out?" "What? What do you say?" asks the Jew, not quite clear as to my meaning. "Are you speaking of articles of trade?" I nod my head. "Certainly!" he answers. "They take away prayer-scarfs and leather belts, and bring in Corfu Esrogîm and earth of Palestine. But that isn't the chief thing, the chief thing is the business done in the town itself! Drink-shops, lodging homes for travellers, old clothes--according to custom--" "A poor town?" "What do you mean by rich and poor? There is Parnosseh! The very poor go about begging either in the place or in the neighborhood--mostly in the place itself! Whoever holds out a hand is given something! Others try for some easy work, they do broker-business, or pick up things in the streets and earn an honest crust. The Almighty is faithful! The orphans are given free meals by the householders and study in the Talmud Torah. The orphan girls become maid-servants, cooks, or find a living elsewhere. Widows, divorced women, and grass-widows (there have been a lot of grass-widows lately[52]) sit over charcoal braziers, and when the fumes go to their head, they dream that rolls hang on the trees ready baked. Others live quite decently!"
"On what? What do other people live on? A poor man hopes; a trader swallows air, and the one who digs--graves, I mean--is never out of employment--" Is he joking, the dried-up, little, old Jew, the bag-of-bones with the odd gleam in his deeply sunken eyes? On his bony face, covered with a skin like yellow parchment, not the trace of a smile! Only his voice has something odd about it. "What sort of a town is it, anyway?" I ask again. "What do you mean? It's a town like any other! There's a Shool, and they say that once there were all sorts of animals painted on the walls, beasts and birds--out of Perek Shirah[53]--and on the ceiling all sorts of musical instruments, such as were played upon by King David, on whom be peace. I never saw it so, but the old men tell of it."
"Nowadays? Dust and spider-webs. There's only a wooden chain, carved out of one piece, that hangs from the beam, and falls very prettily to one side of the Ark to the right of the curtain, which was itself the gift of pious women. Nobody remembers who made the chain, but it was an artist, there's no doubt! Such a chain! "In the Shool," he continued, "you see only the common people, artisans, except tailors, who form a congregation apart, and butchers and drivers, who have hired a place of their own to pray in. The Shool can hardly read Hebrew! The well-to-do householders--sons of the Law--assemble in the house-of-study, a large one with piles of books! The Chassidîm, again, pray in rooms apart!" "And are there dissensions?" "Many men, many minds! In the grave, on the other hand, there is peace; one burial ground for all; and the men's bath--the women's bath--are there for all alike." "What else have you in your town?" "What more would you have? There was a refuge for wayfarers, and it was given up; wayfarers can sleep in the house-of-study--at night it's empty--and we have a Hekdesh." "A hospital, you mean?" "Not a hospital at all, just a Hekdesh, two rooms. At one time they were occupied by the bather, then it was arranged that the bather should content himself with one room, and that the other should be used for the Hekdesh; there are not more than three sick women in it altogether: one poor thing, an old woman with paralyzed legs, who lies all of a heap; a second with all her limbs paralyzed, and beside these, a crazy grass-widow. Three corners are taken up with beds, in the fourth stands a chimney-stove; in the middle there is a dead-house, in case of need!" "You are laughing at me, friend," I break in, "that is Tziachnovke! Tziachnovke itself with its commerce and charities and good works! Why do you call it the dead town?" "Because it is a dead town! I am speaking of a town which, from the day it was built, hung by a hair, and now the hair has snapt, it hangs in the air. It hangs by nothing at all. And because it hangs by nothing and floats in mid-air, it is a dead town; if you like, I will tell you about it." "By all means--most interesting!" Meanwhile night is falling, one half of the sky grows blood-red and fiery, over there is the sunset. On our other hand, the moon is swimming into view out of a light mist, like the face of a bride peeping out of her white veil. The pale beams, as they spread over the earth, mix with the quivering shadows of the sad, still night. Uncanny!-- We drive into a wood. The moon-rays steal in after us between the trembling leaves. On the ground, among the fallen leaves and twigs, there dance little circles of light, like silver coins. There is something magical in the illumination, in the low breathing of the wood. I glance at the wayfaring Jew, his appearance has changed. It is melancholy and serious, and his expression is so simple and honest. Can it all be true? Ha! I will listen to what he has to say. "The town hung by a hair from the first," said the narrator, "because it was started in a part where no Jewish town was allowed to be! It was not till the first Minyan was complete that people held a meeting and decided to reckon themselves as belonging to a town in the neighborhood. On this pretense they built a bath, a Shool, and after that, a men's bath, and bought a piece of land for a burial ground. "And when all that was finished, they sent people of backstair influence to have it all endorsed." "Head downward?" "Isn't that always the way with us? How should it be otherwise?" "I don't know!" "However, that's how it was! And the thing was not so underhand as you suppose. "There was a Jew who was very rich, and this rich Jew, as is usually the case, was a little, not to say very much, in with the authorities, and everything was in his name; it was his Shool, his bath, his women's bath--even to his burial ground--and nothing was said; as I tell you, he was a person of influence! "And when the paper came from high quarters, he was to transcribe it in the name of the community and stop paying sop-money to the local police." "And then the rich man said: 'To my account'?" "No, my dear sir, such rich people didn't exist in those days. 'To my account' was a thing unknown; but hear what happened, what things may come to pass! "It was not the Gevir, but the envoy who caused the trouble. He made off, half-way, with the money and the papers, and left the freshly-baked community like a grass-widow with a family." "Did they send another?" "Not so soon as all that! Before it was known that the first had absconded, or anything about it, the Gevir died and left, among other things, an heir who was a minor; he couldn't sign a paper till he was twenty-one!" "So they hurried up?" "Of course, as soon as he was twenty-one, they meant to send another envoy, and perhaps two." "And meanwhile it was entered in the communal records?" "That's where it is! The records remembered and the people forgot! Some say the record was burnt, that the trustee took the record, said Havdoleh over it, set fire to a little brandy, and--good-bye! "The community, meanwhile, was growing; Jews, praise God, soon multiply. And they come in from other places; one person brings in a son-in-law, another a daughter-in-law, in a word, it grew. And the Gevir's heirs disappeared as though on purpose! The widow married again and left, one son after another went to seek his fortune elsewhere, to take a look 'round. The youngest remained. Kohol appointed him a guardian and married him, and gave him an experienced partner." "Who led him about by the nose?" "According to the law of Moses and of Israel! "He had trouble with the partner and more still with the wife; and he signed a forged check and took himself off, bankrupt; townspeople and strangers collected and made a great noise, the case was heard in court, down came an inspector, no money to be seen anywhere, the wife hid the furniture, the inspector took possession of the Shool and the burial ground! "The little town was thunderstruck, it was a bolt from the blue with a vengeance! Because, you see, the whole thing had been kept dark to the last minute! "And all of a sudden, the community was seen hanging, as it were, by a hair! "What was to be done? They drove to lawyers. What could they advise in a case like that? The best thing would be to have an auction, the inspector would sell the things and the community buy them at any cost. The community was no community? The papers had been lost by the way? They must find another Gevir, and buy in his name! The great thing was not to wait till the Gevir should die or go away! "The advice seemed good, Kohol was quite used to loss of money; but there was not only one Gevir, there were several! And heaps willing to act as diplomatic envoys. Whose name should they use? Who should be taken for an envoy? All were willing and might be offended. So they held a meeting and talked it over. And they talked it over till the talk became a dispute, and when we have a dispute, it isn't settled in a hurry. Now and again it looks like peace, the flame of discord burns low, comes a peacemaker and pours oil on it, and it blazes up again and--blazes on!" The Jew wiped his pale forehead and continued: "Meanwhile something happened, something not to be believed! "Only," he added with a smile, "it is night and the creature who walks the sky at night (he points at the moon) is called 'truth,' and at night, specially in such a quiet one, everything is credible." "Well, yes"--I allow unwillingly. "The story is a dreadful one. "The inspector put his foot on the 'holy ground,' the corpses heard and must have grown angry--the tombstones move--the corpses rise up from beneath them--you believe me?" "I am no heretic," I replied, "heaven forbid! And I believe in the immortality of the soul, only--" "Only, friend, only?" "I always thought, that only the soul remained--the soul that flies into heaven; but the body that goes into the grave, the image that decays--anyhow, it cannot move without the soul--cannot rise again." "Well said!" he praises me. "May I ever hear the like! "I am glad," he said, "that you are book-learned; but, my friend, you have forgotten the world of illusion! You say the soul goes to heaven, into the sky--very well--but to which part? One goes into Paradise, the other into Gehenna. Paradise is for the souls of the righteous, Gehenna for the souls of the wicked. The one, for his good deeds, receives a share of Leviathan, of Behemoth, wine of the ages,--the other, for his sins, boiling pitch; but that only means reward and punishment, and why reward and punishment? Because so long as a man lives, he has a free choice. If he wishes to do what is good, he does it, if to do evil, he does evil, and as he makes his bed, ha? so he lies. "But what is the sentence passed when a man was no man, when his life was no life, and he did nothing, neither good nor evil, because he could not do anything? He had no choice, and he slept away his life and lived in a dream. What is such a soul entitled to? Gehenna? What for? It never so much as killed a fly. Paradise? For what? It never dipped a hand in cold water to gain it." "What does become of such a soul?" "Nothing! It goes on living in a world of illusion, it does not detach itself from the body; but just as it dreamt before that it lived on the earth, so it dreams now that it lives in the earth! "No one in our town ever really died, because no one ever really lived! No one did either good or evil, there were no sinners and no righteous--only sleepy-heads and souls in a world of illusion. When such a sleepy-head is laid in the grave, it remains a sleepy-head--only in another lodging--that's all. "And so dying with us was a perfect comedy! Because if a feather was put under the nose of a live man, would he stir to brush it away? Not he! And the same with a fly. They left off troubling about Parnosseh--they simply left off troubling about anything at all! "So it went on.... There are many towns like it, and when it happens, as it has happened with us, that a corpse creeps out of its grave, it doesn't begin to remember that it has made its last confession of sins and drawn its last breath. No sooner have the potsherds fallen from its eyes than it goes straight to the house-of-study, to the bath, or else home to supper--it remembers nothing about having died!" I do not know if it is the moon's fault, or whether I am not quite myself, but I hear, believe, and even ask: "Did all the corpses rise? All?" "Who can tell? Do they keep a register? There may have been a few heretics who thought it was the final resurrection and lay low; but there rose a whole community; they rose and fled before the inspector into the nearest wood!" "Why into a wood?" "They couldn't go into the town, because it was daylight, and it is not the thing to appear in winding-sheets by daylight--they might have frightened the young mothers." "True. And the inspector?" "You ask about a Gentile? He saw nothing. Perhaps he was tipsy--nothing--he did his work, made his inventory." "And sold the things?" "Nothing, there was as yet no one to buy." "And the corpses?" "Ah--the corpses!" * * * * * He rests for a moment and then goes on: "Hardly had night fallen, when the corpses came back into the town; each one went to his home, stole in at the door, the window, or down the chimney--went hastily to the wardrobe, took out some clothes, dressed himself, yawned, and lay down somewhere to sleep. "Next morning there was a whole townfull of corpses." "And the living said nothing?" "They never remarked; they were taken up with the dispute; their heads were full of it, they were all at sixes and sevens! And really, when you come to think of it, how much difference is there between a dead-alive person and a walking corpse in winding-sheets? When a son saw his father, he spat out three times, indignant with himself: 'To think of the dream I had--I dreamt I said Kaddish for my father and inherited him! May such dreams plague my enemies.' "A widow saw her husband, and gave him a hearty slap. He had deceived her, the wretch! made game of her! and she, foolish woman that she was, had made him new winding-sheets!" "And supposing she had married again?" "How should she have? In the course of the dispute some one set fire to the Shool and to the house-of-study and to the wedding canopy; everything, you may say, was burnt. They accused pretty well everybody in turn--" "And after that?" "Nothing; the corpses had come to life and the living began to die out, for want of room, for want of air--but specially of hunger--" "Was there a famine?" "No more than anywhere else! But there was one for all that. The corpses took their place at the prayer-meetings and at the table at home as well. People didn't know why, but there were suddenly not enough spoons. All ate out of one dish, and there were not enough spoons. Every house-mistress knows that she has as many spoons as there are people in the house, so she thinks there has been a robbery! The pious say: Witchcraft! But as they came to see the spoons were missing everywhere, and there was not food to go round, then they said: A famine! and they hungered, and they are hungering still." * * * * * "And in a short time the corpses outnumbered the living; now they are the community and the leaders of the community! They do not beget children and increase naturally--not that, but when anyone dies, they steal him away off his bed, out of the grave--and there is a fresh corpse going about the town. "And what is lacking to them? They have no cares, no fear of death--they eat for the purpose of saying grace--they don't want the food, they have no craving for it--let alone drink and lodging; a hundred corpses can sleep in one room--they don't require air! "And they have no worries, because whence do worries spring? From knowing! 'The more knowledge, the more sorrow, but the dead man does not trouble.' It's not his affair! He doesn't wish to know and he needn't know--he wanders in a world of illusion. "He keeps away from living concerns; he has no questions, no anxieties, no heart-ache, no one is conscious of his liver! "Who do you think is our rabbi? Once it was a live man and a man of action; now he, too, is a corpse; he wanders in a world of illusion, and goes on giving decisions by rote as in a dream. "Who are his assistants? People like him--half-decayed corpses. "And they solve ritual questions for the living and the dead, they know everything and do everything; they say blessings, unite in wedlock. Who is it stands at the platform? A corpse! He has the face of a corpse, the voice of a corpse; if it happen that a cock crows suddenly, he runs away. "And the Gevirîm, the almsgivers, the agitators, the providers, the whole lot--what are they? Dead men, long dead and long buried!" * * * * * "And you, friend? What are you?" "I? I am half-dead," answers the Jew. He jumps down from the conveyance and disappears among the trees. [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |