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A short story by Isaac Loeb Peretz |
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Travel-Pictures |
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Title: Travel-Pictures Author: Isaac Loeb Peretz [More Titles by Peretz] PREFACE It was at the end of the good, and the beginning of the bad, years. Black clouds had appeared in the sky, but it was believed that the wind[57]--the spirit of the times, I mean--would soon disperse them, that they would pour out their heart somewhere in the wilderness.
How far away America was for us in those days! Not a Jew troubled himself as to what a plate of porridge looked like over there, or wondered whether people wore their skull-caps on their feet. Palestinian Esrogîm were as seldom mentioned as Barons Hirsch and Edward de Rothschild.[58] [Footnote 58: Who stand for colonization in Argentina and Palestine, respectively.]
It was resolved, among other things, to inquire into the common, workaday Jewish life, to find out what went on in the little towns, what men were hoping for, how they made a living, what they were about, what the people said.
My first halting-place was Tishewitz. I took lodgings with an acquaintance, Reb Bòruch. He sent for the beadle and a few householders. While I was waiting for them, I stood by the window and looked at the market-place. The market-place is a large square bounded on each side by a row of grimy, tumbledown houses, some roofed with straw, but the majority, with shingle. All are one-storied with a broad veranda supported by rotten beams. Pushing out from the veranda and not far apart, one from the other, stand the huckstresses over the stalls with rolls, bread, peas, beans, and various kinds of fruit. The market-women are in a state of great commotion. I must have impressed them very much. "Bad luck to you!" screams one, "don't point at him with your finger; he can see!" "Hold your tongue!" The women know that I have come to take notes in writing. They confide the secret one to another so softly that I overhear every word, even inside the house. "They say it is he himself!" "It is a good thing the poor sheep have shepherds who are mindful of them. All the same, if that Shepherd[59] did not help, much good it would be!"
Another is more liberal in her views, and helps herself out of the difficulty by means of the Röfeh. "Take a Röfeh," she says, "he is likewise a heretic, and yet he also is permitted--" "That is another thing altogether, he is a private individual, but is it so hard to find good Jews for public affairs?" "They'd better," opines another, "have sent a few hundred rubles. They might let the writing be and welcome, even though my son were not made a general!"[60]
"Long life and peace to you!" he said. I answer, "God send better times and Parnosseh!" I envy my host--Parnosseh is all he wants. He adds impressively: "And there will have to be Parnosseh! Is there not a God in the world? And the 'good Jews' will pray and do what they can." I interrupt him and ask why, although he has confidence in his own business, although he knows quite well "He who gives life gives food"--why he exerts himself so, and lies awake whole nights thinking: To-morrow, later, this time next year. Hardly has a Jew put on his wedding garments, when he begins to think how to buy others for his children--and then, when it comes to All-Israel, his trust is so great that it does not seem worth while to dip one's hand in cold water for it--why is this? "That," he says, "is something quite different. All-Israel is another thing. All-Israel is God's affair--God is mindful of it, and then, in case there should be forgetfulness before the throne of His glory, there are those who will remind Him. But as for private affairs, that's a different matter. Besides, how much longer can the misery of Israel last? It must come to an end some time, either because the measure of guilt is full, or the measure of merit is full. But Parnosseh is quite another thing!"
ONLY GO!
He sent to tell me that it was not his business, that he was a poor, weakly creature, besides which he had been sitting now for several weeks over a knotty question of "meat in milk," and then, the principal thing, he was at loggerheads with Kohol, because they would not increase his salary by two gulden a week. There came, however, three householders and two beadles. I began with mine host. He has no wife, and before I could put in a word, he excused himself for it by asking, "How long do you suppose she has been dead?" lest I should reproach him for not having found another to fill her place. Well, to be brief, I set him down a widower, three sons married, one daughter married, two little boys and one little girl at home. And here he begs me at once to put down that all the sons--except the youngest, who is only four years old "and Messiah will come before he is liable to serve"--that all the others are defective[61] in one way or other.
With the exception of the two eldest sons, I already know the whole family. The married daughter lives in her father's house and deals in tobacco, snuff, tea, and sugar; also, in foodstuffs; also, I think, in rock-oil and grease. I had bought some sugar of her early that morning. She is about twenty-eight years old. A thin face, a long hooked nose that seems to be trying to count the black and decaying teeth in her half-opened mouth, cracked, blue-gray lips--her father's image. Her sister, a young girl, is like her; but she has "Kallah-Chen,"[62] her face is fresher and pinker, the teeth whiter, and altogether she is not so worn and neglected-looking. I also see the two little boys--pretty little boys--they must take after their mother: red cheeks, and shy, restless eyes; their twisted black curls are full of feathers; but they have ugly ways: they are always shrugging their little shoulders and writhing peevishly. They wear stuff cloaks, dirty, but whole.
"What is your business?" I ask him. "Percentage." "Do you mean usury?" "Well, call it usury, if you like. It doesn't amount to anything either way. Do you know what?" he exclaims, "take all my rubbish and welcome, bills of exchange, deeds--everything for twenty-five per cent, only pay me in cash. I will give up the usury, even the public house! Would to God I could get away to Palestine--but give me the cash! Take the whole concern and welcome! You imagine that we live on usury--it lives on us! People don't pay in, the debt increases. The more it increases, the less it's worth, and the poorer am I, upon my faith!" Before going out to take further notes, I witness a little scene. While I was taking up all my things, paper, pencil, cigarettes, Reb Bòruch was buttering bread for the children to take with them to Cheder. They had each two slices of bread and butter and a tiny onion as a relish. "Now go!" he says; he does not want them in the public house. But the little orphan is not satisfied. He hunches his shoulders and pulls a wry face preparatory to crying. He feels a bit ashamed, however, to cry before me, and waits till I shall have gone; but he cannot tarry so long and gives vent to a wail: "Another little onion," he wants. "Mother always gave me two!" The sister has come running into the tap-room, she has caught up another onion and gives it to him. "Go!" says she also, but much more gently. The mother's voice sounded in her words.
One meets with exceptions--here lives, not a Jew, but a drunkard--and here again--flowers and curtains, but they read Hazefirah.[63]
"That is the mistress of the house." I was astonished: the Jewess is too poor for such a house. "The house," explains the beadle, "is not exactly hers. She pays only one-sixth of the rent--she is a widow--but the heirs, her children, do not live here--so she is called the mistress." "How much does the house bring in?" "Nothing at all." "And it's worth?" "About fifteen hundred rubles." "And nothing is made by it?" "It stands empty. Who should live there?" "How do you mean, who?" "Well, just who? Nearly everybody here has his own house, and if any one hires a lodging, he doesn't want to have to heat a special room. The custom here is for a tenant to pay a few rubles a year for the heating of a corner. Who wants such large rooms?" "Why did they build such a house?" "Ba!--once upon a time! It isn't wanted nowadays." "Poor thing." "Why 'poor thing?' She has a stall with salt, earns a few rubles a week. Out of that she pays twenty-eight rubles a year house-tax and lives on the rest--what should a Jewess need? What can she want more? She has her winding-sheet." I gave another look at the old woman, and really it seemed to me that she was not in need of anything. Her wrinkled skin appeared to smile at me: What should a Jewess need?
"And 42?" I ask. "There!" and he points to a ruin in a narrow space between 43 and 41. "Fallen in?" "Pulled down," answers the beadle. "Why?" "On account of a fire-wall." I did not understand what he meant. We were both tired with walking, and we sat down on a seat at the street side. The beadle explained: "You see--according to law, if one house is not built far enough away from another, the roofs must be separated by a fire-wall. What the distance has to be, I don't know; their laws are incomprehensible; I should say, four ells or more. "A fire-wall is with them a charm against fire. Well, this house was built by a very poor man, Yeruchem Ivànovker, a teacher, and he couldn't afford a fire-wall. "Altogether, to tell the truth, he built without a foundation, and out of that, as you will hear presently, there came a lawsuit, at which his wife (peace be upon her) told the whole story, beginning after the custom of women-folk with the sixth day of creation. This is how it happened: "Malkah had not spoken to her husband for about fifteen years. She was naturally a sour-tempered woman,--God forgive me for talking against the dead,--tall and thin, dark, with a pointed nose like a hook. She rarely said a word not relating to Parnosseh--she was a huckstress--and nobody wanted her to do so. Her look was enough to freeze you to the bone. All the other huckstresses trembled before her--there was an expression in her eye. So, you see, Yeruchem was quite content that she should be silent--he never said a word to her, either. "For all this silence, however, they were blessed with two boys and three girls. "But the desire to become householders made them conversational. The conversation was on this wise: "'Malke!' (No answer.) "'Malke!' (No answer.) "He Malke's and she doesn't stir. "But Yeruchem stands up and gives a shout: "'Malke, I am going to build a house!' "Malke could resist no longer, she raised an eye, and opened her mouth. "'I thought,' she said afterward, 'that he had gone mad.' "And it was a madness. He had inherited the narrow strip of land you have seen from a great-grandfather, and not a farthing in money. The wife's trash, which was afterwards sold for fifty-four gulden, used to be in pawn the whole year round, except on Sabbaths and holidays, when Yeruchem took them out on tick. "When the desire calls the imagination to its help--who shall withstand? "No sooner has he a house, than all good things will follow. "People will place confidence in him, and he will borrow money to buy a goat, and there will be plenty in the home. He will let out one room as a drink-shop, and he, God helping, will keep it himself. Above all, the children will be provided for. The little boys shall be sent one way or the other to a rabbinical college, the girls shall be given a deed as their dowry, promising them, after his death, half as much as the boys will get, and the thing's done. "'And how is the building to be paid for?' "He had an answer ready: "'I,' said he, 'am a teacher, and thou art a huckstress, so we have two Parnossehs: let us live on one Parnosseh, and build on the other.' "'Was there ever such an idiot! We can't make both ends meet as it is!' "'God helps those who help themselves,' said he, 'here's a proof of it: the teacher, Noah, our neighbor, has a sickly wife, who earns nothing, and six little children, and it seems they are well and strong--and he lives on nothing but his teaching,' "'There you are again! He is a great teacher, his pupils are the children of gentlefolk.' "'And why do you think it is so? What is the reason? Can he "learn" better than I do? Most certainly not. But God, blessed be His Name, seeing that he has only one Parnosseh, increases it to him. And then, another example: Look at Black Brocheh! A widow with five children and nothing but a huckstress--' "'Listen to him! That one (would it might be said of me!) has a fortune in the business, at least thirty rubles--' "'That is not the thing,' he gives her to understand, 'the thing is that the blessing can only reach her through the apples. The Creator governs the world by the laws of nature.' "And he manages also to persuade her that they can economize in many ways--one can get along-- "And so it was decided: Yeruchem gave up taking snuff, and the entire household, sour milk in particular and supper in general--and they began to build. "They built for years, but when it came to the fire-wall, Malkah had no wares, Yeruchem had no strength left in him, the eldest son had gone begging through the country, the youngest had died, and there was a fortune wanting--forty rubles for a fire-wall. "Well, what was to be done? A coin or two changed hands, and they moved into the new house without building a fire-wall." He took possession with rejoicing. He was a member of the Burial Society, and the community gave him a house-warming. They drank, without exaggeration, a whole barrel of beer, besides brandy and raisin-wine. It was a regular flare-up, a glorification. But the bliss was short-lived. A certain householder quarrelled with a neighbor of Yeruchem, with Noah the teacher. Now Noah the teacher had once been a distinguished householder, a very rich man. Besides what he had inherited from his father, he disposed of a few tidy hundreds. He had carried on a business in honey. Afterwards, when there was the quarrel relating to the Lithuanian rabbi, they got his son taken for a soldier (he is serving in the regiment to this day, with a bad lung), and he himself got involved in a lawsuit for having burnt out the rabbi. Well, it was a great crime. One is used to denouncing, but to heap sticks round a house on all sides and set fire to it, that's a wicked thing. Whether or not he had anything to do with it, the lawsuit and the son together impoverished him completely, and he became a teacher. Being so new to the work, he hadn't the knack of getting on with the parents, one of them took offense at something, removed his child, and sent him to Yeruchem instead. Noah was deeply wounded, but he was a man of high courage; he hung day and night about the office of the district commissioner, and used both his tongue and his pen. Well, in due time, up came the matter of the fire-wall, and down came the senior inspector. Noah meantime had been seized with remorse. He did all he could to prevent the affair from being carried on. A coin or two changed hands, and the affair was hushed up. All might yet have been well, but for a fresh dispute about "blue." Yeruchem was a Radziner,[64] and wore blue "fringes,"[65] and Noah, a rabid Belzer,[66] called down vengeance.
[Footnote 65: To his prayer-scarf. See Num. xv. 38.] [Footnote 66: Followers of the Rebbes of Radzin and Belz, respectively.]
There was a judgment given in default, and the court decided that Yeruchem should erect a fire-wall within a month's time, otherwise--the house was to be taken to pieces. There wasn't a dreier. This time Noah had no remorse; on the contrary, the quarrel was at its height, and there was nothing to be done with him. Yeruchem sent to call him before the rabbi, and he sent the beadle flying out of the house. When Malkah saw that there was no redress to be had, she seized Noah by the collar in the street, and dragged him to the rabbi like a murderer. There was a marketful of Belzers about, but who is going to fight a woman? "He who is murdered by women," says the Talmud, "has no judge and no avenger." Noah's wife followed cursing, but was afraid to interfere. At the rabbi's, Malkah told the whole story from beginning to end, and demanded either that Noah should build the fire-wall, or else that the matter should be dropped again. Our rabbi knew very well that whichever party he declared to be right, the Chassidîm on the other side would be at him forthwith, and he wormed himself out of the difficulty like the learned Jew that he was. He couldn't decide--it was a question of the impulse to do harm--bê-mê. There was no decision possible--the case must be laid before the Rebbes.[67]
Yeruchem, before he left, made his brother-in-law his representative, and trusted him with a few rubles which he had borrowed (people lent them out of pity). But it all turned out badly. The brother-in-law spent the money on himself, or (as he averred) lost it--Malkah fell ill of worry. Yeruchem, it is true, gained his fire-wall with "costs," before the Rebbe, but he and Noah were both caught on the frontier,[68] and brought home with the _étape.[69]
[Footnote 69: For having no passports.]
He lets his beard grow. To be a Maskil in Tishewitz it is enough only to trim it, but they say "he attends to his hair during the ten Days of Penitence!" He is not dressed German fashion, and no more is the Feldscher, also a Jew in a long coat and ear-locks. Our Maskil stops at blacking his boots and wearing a black ribbon round his neck. He has only sorry remnants of ear-locks, but he wears a peaked cap. People simply say: "Yeshurun waxed fat and kicked." He does well, runs a thriving trade, has, altogether, three children--what more can he want? Being free of all care, he becomes a Maskil. On the strength of what he is a Maskil, it is hard to tell--enough that people should consider him one! The whole place knows it, and he confesses to it himself. He is chiefly celebrated for his "Wörtlech," is prepared to criticise anything in heaven or on earth. As I heard later, the Maskil took me for another Maskil, and was sure that I should lodge with him, or, at any rate, that he would be my first entry. "For work of that kind," he said to the others, "you want people with brains. What do you suppose he could do with the like of you?" And as the mountain did not go to Mohammed, because he had never heard of him, Mohammed went to the mountain. He found me in the house of a widow. He came in with the question of the wicked child in the Haggadah: "What business is this of yours?" "Mòi Pànyiye![70] what are you doing here?"
"How here?" I ask. "Very likely you think I come from under the stove? That because a person lives in Tishewitz, he isn't civilized, and doesn't know what is doing in the world? You remember: "I have sojourned with Laban?"[71] I do live here, but when there's a rat about, I soon smell him."
"If you can smell a rat, and know all that is going on, why do you want to ask questions?" The beadle pricked up his ears, and so did the half-dozen loungers who had followed me step by step. There was a fierce delight in their faces, and on their foreheads was written the verse: "Let the young men arise"--let us see two Maskilîm having it out between them! "What is the good of all this joking?" said the Maskil, irritated. "My tongue is not a shoe-sole! And for whose benefit am I to speak? That of the Tishewitz donkeys? Look at the miserable creatures!" I feel a certain embarrassment. I cannot well take up the defense of Tishewitz, because the Tishewitz worthies in the window and the door-way are smiling quite pleasantly. "Come, tell me, what does it all mean, taking notes?" "Statistics!" "Statistic-shmistik! We've heard that before. What's the use of it?" I explained--not exactly to him, but to the community, so that they should all have an idea of what statistics meant. "Ha-ha-ha!" laughs the Maskil loudly and thickly, "you can get the Tishewitz donkeys to believe that, but you won't get me! Why do you want to put down how a person lives, with a floor, without a floor! What does it matter to you if a person lives in a room without a floor? Ha? " It matters, I tell him, because people want to show how poor the Jews are; they think-- "They think nothing of the kind," he interrupted, "but let that pass! Why should they want to know exactly how many boys and how many girls a man has? and what their ages are, and all the rest of the bother?" "They suspect us of shirking military duty. The books, as of course you know, are not correct, and we want to prove--" "Well, that may be so, for one thing--I'll allow that--but--about licenses! Why do you note down who has them--and what they are worth?" "In order to prove that the Jews--" But the Maskil does not allow me to finish my sentence. "A likely story! Meantime, people will know that this one and the other pays less than he ought to for his license, and he'll never hear the last of it." Scarcely had he said so, when the heads in the window disappeared; the beadle in the door-way took himself off, and the Maskil, who had really meant well all along, stood like one turned to stone. The population had taken fright, and in another hour or two the town was full of me. I was suspected of being commissioned by the excise. And why not, indeed? The excise knew very well that a Jew would have less difficulty in getting behind other people's secrets. I was left to pace the market-square alone. The town held aloof. It is true that the Maskil dogged my footsteps, but he had become antipathetic to me, and I couldn't look at him. The faces in the Gass became graver and darker, and I began to think of escaping. There are too many side-glances to please me--there is too much whispering. It occurred to me to make a last effort. I remembered that the rabbi of Tishewitz had once been our Dayan, and would remember me, or at least witness to the fact that I was not what they took me for. "Where does the rabbi live?" I inquire of the Maskil. He is pleased and says: "Come, I will show you!"
"If only," complains the rabbi, "the town would give me another two gulden a week, I could get along. Asö is gor bitter! But I shall get my way. Their law-suits they can decide without me; when it is a question of pots and pans, any school-teacher will do; questions regarding women, of course, cannot be put off; and yet I shall get my way, I'm only waiting for the election of the elders; they can't have an election without a rabbi. Imagine a town--no evil eye!--a metropolis in Israel, without elders! And if that won't do it, I shall refuse to try the slaughtering-knives--I've got them fast enough!" It was no easy matter to divert the rabbi's thoughts from his own grievances, but on the Maskil's promising to do his utmost to induce the community to raise his salary, he begged us to be seated, and listened to our tale. "Nonsense!" he said, "I know you! Tell the fools I know you." "They run away from me!" "Ett![72] They run away! Why should they run away? Who runs away? After what? Well, as you say they run away, I will go out with you myself."
"Give me my cloak," answers the rabbi. "Give you your cloak! I've this minute taken it apart." "Well," says the rabbi, "the misfortune is happily not great. We will go to-morrow." I give him to understand that it is only noon, that I should be sorry to waste the day. "Nu, what shall I do?" answers the rabbi, and folds his hands. "The rebbitzin has just started mending my cloak." "Call them in here!" "Call them? It's easy enough to call them, but who will come? Are they likely to listen to me? Perhaps I had better go in my dressing-gown?" "It wouldn't do, rabbi!" exclaimed the Maskil, 'the inspector is going about in the Gass. "For my part," said the rabbi, "I would have gone, but if you say no--no!" It is settled that we shall all three call the people together from the window. But opening the window is no such easy matter. It hasn't been opened for about fifteen years. The panes are cracked with the sun, the putty dried up, the window shakes at every step on the floor. The frame is worm-eaten, and only rust keeps it fastened to the wall. It is just a chance if there are hinges. And yet we succeeded. We opened first one side and then the other without doing any damage. The rabbi stood in the centre, I and the Maskil on either side of him, and we all three began to call out. The market was full of people. In a few minutes there was a crowd inside the room. "Gentlemen," began the rabbi, "I know this person." "There will be no writing people down!" called out several voices together. The rabbi soon loses heart. "No use, no use," he murmurs, but the Maskil has got on to the table and calls out: "Donkeys! They must be written down! The good of the Jews at large demands it!" "The good of the Jews at large," he says, and he goes on to tell them that he has gone through the whole chapter with me, that there is no question of a joke, that I have shown him letters from the Chief Rabbis. "From which Chief Rabbis?" is the cry. "From the Chief Rabbi in Paris," bellows the Maskil, "from the Chief Rabbi in Paris (no other will do for him), from the Chief Rabbi in London--" "Jews, let us go home!" interrupted someone, "nisht unsere Leut!"[73]
"Give me something," he said, "for the day's work." I gave him a few ten-kopek pieces, he slipped them into his pocket without counting them, and was off without saying good-bye. "What do you say, Rabbi?" I asked. "I don't know what to say, how should I? I am only dreadfully afraid--lest it should do me harm--" "You? " "Whom else? You? If you don't get any statistics, it will be of no great consequence, for 'He that keepeth Israel will neither slumber nor sleep!' I mean the two extra gulden a week." The rebbitzin with the large spectacles has come out from behind the stove. "I told you long ago," she says, "not to interfere in the affairs of the community, but when did you ever listen to me? What has a rabbi to do with that sort of thing? Kohol's business!" "Nu, hush, Rebbitzin, hush!" he answers gently; "you know what I am, I have a soft heart, it touched me, but it's a pity about the two gulden a week."
The whole Tararam[74] had been stirred up by two impoverished householders, who were now in great misery; one, a public-house keeper, and the other, a horse-dealer.
Well done! It is evident that the Maskil had studied in a Cheder, in the great world one meets with other Maskilîm. I go back to the inn; the beadle comes, too. At my host's they still have services, the mourning for his wife not being ended. Between Minchah and Maariv, we get on to politics; after Maariv, on to the Jews. The greater part are dreadfully optimistic. In the first place, it's not a question of them, secondly, plans will not prosper against "Yainkil,"[75] he has brains of his own; thirdly, it's like a see-saw, now it goes up and now it goes down;[76] fourthly, God will help; fifthly, "good Jews" will not allow it to happen.
[Footnote 76: Anti-Semitism.]
"Believe me," exclaims one, with small, restless eyes under a low forehead, "believe me, if there were unity among all 'good Jews,' if they would hold together, as one man, and stop repeating Tachanun,[77] Messiah would have to come!"
"'One swallow,' replied the young man, 'does not make a summer.' Who talks of their imposing a prohibition on All-Israel?" There are times when one must set one's self against things--defend one's self. "If they were to issue a prohibition," says someone, ironically, and with a side-glance at me, "the heretics would take to praying, if only for the sake of saying Tachanun, so that Messiah should not come." The company smile. "But where is the harm," asks someone else, "if the great people don't agree among themselves?" The company gave a groan. Doubtless each remembered how many times he had suffered unjustly on account of the want of unity, and the surest proof of Tishewitz having greatly suffered by reason of dissensions is, that no clear explanation was given as to who was at fault that the great were not at one, so fearful were they of provoking a fresh disagreement. I put forward that poverty had more to do with the differences than anything. There is nothing to trade with, people go about empty-handed, seeking quarrels to while away the time with; the proof is that in larger towns, where each goes about his own business, there is quiet. If someone, I opine, would throw into Tishewitz a few thousand rubles, everything would be forgotten. "To be sure, we know wealth is everything!" exclaims somebody. "If I had only had so much brains, I could put all Tishewitz into my pocket to-day. It was just a toss-up--I had only to say the word." "True! True!" was heard on all sides. "It is an actual fact." The man who had only required to have so much brains, or a little determination, to become rich, looked like poverty itself: lean, yellow, shrunk, "wept out," and in a cloak that had its only equal in the dressing-gown of the Tishewitz rabbi. Thereupon came the Maskil. Of course, he laughed. "Reb Elyeh, you must have bought the lucky number an hour before the drawing!" "Listen to his cheek!" says Reb Elyeh. "As if he couldn't remember the story!" "May my head not ache," swears the Maskil, "for so long as I have forgotten--if ever I heard the lies at all." "Lies!" retorts Reb Elyeh, much hurt, "is that so? Lies? According to you, other things are lies as well." I interfere and ask what the story may be. "You've heard of the Tsaddik of Vorke of blessed memory?" begins Reb Elyeh. Of course! "Naturally, Kind und Keit[78] knew of him. And you will have heard that there came to him not only the pious men of the nations of the world, but even 'German' Jews, even Lithuanians, knowing fellows that they are. May I have as much money as I have seen Lithuanians at his house! There is even a story about a discussion a Lithuanian had with him. A Lithuanian must always be showing off his acumen! He asks a question about the Tossafot on Vows. The Rebbe, of blessed memory, explains a bit of the Mishnah to him upside down.
"'Lord of the world (and he sat down in the middle of the room)! Would it not have been enough to torment the Jews with persecutions? Now one cannot even sit and study in peace.' "Someone, it would appear, answered him from 'up there.' "'So,' he said, 'that is another thing altogether! I give in; good pay puts everything straight. But, Lord of the world! a little of it here as well!' "Again one could see in his face that he heard a response, and he answered: "'Well, if not--not! You are solvent, we will wait!' "But that is not what I was after. His chief concern was whatever was connected with circumcision. In the matter of circumcision he was steel and iron. In that he would take no denial from the Powers above. And, indeed, they waited for his word up there! Scarce had he given a sign, when the thing he wanted was done and established. He said, that before going to a circumcision, when he merely began to think of the Mohel-knife, the quality of Fear[79] straightway diffused itself through his being, and then there could be no doubt all would go as he wanted, for 'the will of those who fear Him He executeth.'
"He was very sorry that people had become aware of this peculiarity of his. He knew that on this account he would not perform the ceremony here much longer, that he would be called to join the Heavenly Academy. His relations to the upper world having become known, the very stability of the world was endangered. It ought to have remained a secret. "Well, people had become aware of it. I, too. And even sooner than others, because the treasurer, Mösheh, was my first wife's brother-in-law, and he it was who let out the secret. For this he was deprived of his place for half a year, but his distress was so great, the Rebbe had compassion on him, and restored him to his office. But that doesn't belong to the story either. "Enough that I knew it. "Well, 'and he kept the thing in his heart.' I waited, for I was not going to plague the Rebbe about a trifle. I waited. I was living just then a mile outside Vorke. My first wife was alive, and she did not fare badly, though it was difficult to make both ends meet. But I earned whatever it was by my match-making, and my wife supported us by means of her stall. And not only us, but also she provided for a married couple, my eldest daughter and her husband, who was an excellent scholar. What, then, was lacking? "And it came to pass on a day that my son-in-law was away at the Ger Rebbe's, there was a fair in the town, and my daughter was in child-bed. It went hard with her, a first baby. Beile Bashe, the midwife, was at her wit's end, and this was the third day of her pains. No cupping, no blood-letting seemed to help--things were very bad. And I hear that the Rebbe is coming to a circumcision. "What do you think? 'There sprang up light for the Jews!' We were all overjoyed. It put new life into us. We pray that God will preserve her another day and a half, because people were only let in an hour before the ceremony. But meanwhile things got worse and worse, she was near death. "An hour or two before the ceremony, however, she grew easier, or so it seemed to me. She came to herself, opened her eyes, urged her mother to go to the fair, and called me to her bedside. A foolish woman, they are all alike--they blame us for it. "She doesn't like Shmülek, she says, she never liked him, she didn't want him from the very first. She can't stand him and had better die. She had sent her mother out on purpose, because she was afraid of her. She, peace be upon her, was a terror to the children--she wanted to slap her daughter on her wedding-day. "I, of course, gave her to understand that all women are the same, that some even make a vow never to live with their husbands again; that the sin-offering is there on that account--some even swear that--'but no one may be held responsible for what he utters in pain and grief.' But she keeps to it, she bids me farewell, she needs no vows, no oaths, she says, smiling. I am going out, she says, like a candle. "Well, I listen to her and can see all the while that she is better. She is quite clear again in her mind, and it only wants half an hour to the circumcision. And she looked quite pretty again. "I sit by the bed and talk to her--even the midwife had gone to buy a cradle at the fair. I look at the clock--it is time to go. I look at her. Upon my word! Quite well! And yet I do not want to go and leave her all alone, and nearly alone in the town. "The fair, you see, comes once a year, and lasts three days, and it means Parnosseh for the whole twelve months. So, you see, there was no one left at the Rebbe's even--every soul was off to the fair. "Well, I wait a bit. "But in half an hour things got suddenly worse. She snatches at my hand, falls back on the pillows, makes grimaces. Bad! "She begins to moan. I call for help, no one answers. There is a great noise from the fair--nobody hears me. Among a thousand men and women--and we might have been in a wilderness. I want to pull away my hands, go and call somebody, but she holds them tight. "Two, three minutes pass, it grows late, things are bad. I tear away my hands and I run thither. The circumcision was at the further end of the town. I fly along roads, over bales of merchandise, I fly and fly! It is all too long to me. It was July and yet I shivered with cold as I ran--there, there is Tsemach's house, where the ceremony has taken place." * * * * * "My heart beats as though I were a malefactor; I feel that there, at home, a soul is about to escape. There I am at the first window! I will not wait for the door, I will break a pane and get in that way. I run up to the window, I see the Rebbe is really in the room, he is walking up and down, I am about to enter like a housebreaker. I gather my remaining strength--there is a cry in my ears: Father, father! I leap." The narrator was out of breath. He takes a rest, lowers his eyes, which are full of large tears, and ends quietly with a broken voice: "But it was not to be! There was a heap of manure and stones before the window--I fell, and nearly broke my neck. I have a mark on my forehead to this day. When they brought me in to the Rebbe, he motioned me away with his hand. "When I got home (how I got there, I don't know), she was lying on the floor--either she fell out of bed dying, or I pulled her out tearing away my hands." The listeners were silent, a stone weighed on our hearts. The Maskil soon recovered himself. "Well," he said, "blessed be the righteous Judge! Where are the riches?" The narrator wiped his eyes with his sleeve, gave a sad smile and continued: "Yes, I only wanted to show you what one means when one says, it was not to be. There came trouble after trouble--my wife died--the stall went to the bad because it was kept by a man--I was left alone with the children, and there wasn't a crust--I married again--I took an elderly woman on purpose, because I thought she would do for the stall, but I was taken in. There was a baby a year. Meanwhile our fairs fell off, and for a whole twelvemonth the stall wasn't worth a pinch of powder. "I determined to make an end of it--to give up the match-making, grow rich, and sit and study. Aï--how does one grow rich? I wrote to the brother-in-law of my first wife, to the treasurer, and asked him for God's sake to tell me when next there was a circumcision. "I got a message before the month was out, and hastened to Vorke. I stop nowhere, but go straight to the Rebbe." "And--a larger manure heap?" laughs the Maskil. The narrator gives him a vicious look. "The Vorke Tsaddik," he said, "went in for ritual cleanliness, his whole religion was ritual cleanliness." "Only see," remarked the Maskil, "how he looks at me! Rascal! When you came here first, who helped you? A Vorke Chossid? or perhaps your cousin the Tsaddik? or was it I? ha! You would have died of hunger long ago if it hadn't been for me!" And he turns to me: "And what do you suppose he is now? He teaches my children, and if I were to take them away from him, he would have no Parnosseh left!... not a crust of bread...." The other stands silent with downcast eyes. The Maskil disgusts me more and more, although he made a sign to me with his eyes a little while ago, to the effect that he had exerted himself on my behalf, and with his hands, that to-morrow there will be taking of notes. I turn to the other: "Well, my friend?" "See for yourself," says he to the Maskil, "our note-taker is more of a Maskil than you, on the face of him, and he doesn't make game of things ... one might say, on the contrary. Rambam[80] (lehavdîl) did not believe in magic ... but at any rate, he answers seriously ... a Jew should have manners ... to make fun of things is not fair ... man, it cuts to the heart!"
"I will make it short," says the poor Jew. "I come in without a ticket of admission, nothing to speak for me, without even a money-offering, but that would have been no help at such a time, only his face was terrible! My feet shook under me! I stood there without opening my mouth. He, may his merits protect us, took great strides up and down. "Suddenly he saw me and gave a roar like a lion. "'What do you want?' "I was more terrified than ever and scarcely answered: "'Riches!' "It seemed as though the Rebbe had not quite understood. "'Riches?' he asked, and his voice was like thunder. "'If only ... Parnosseh!' I answer in a lower tone. "'What, Parnosseh!' he cried as before. "'Only not to die of hunger!' "The Rebbe hurried up and down, stopped suddenly and asked: "'What else?' "I thought I should drop dead! It seemed to me (I don't know, but it seemed to me) as if someone else, and not I, had control of my tongue, and it replied: "'I want Yòsef to be a learned man!' "'What besides?' I hardly escaped alive, and he, may his merits protect us, died the following week. "Well? What lay between me and the riches? A hair's breadth! it was my own fault. If I had stood up to him and kept to it! Well!" "At least," I inquire, "is your son learned?" "He would have been," he replies in a broken voice, "only he won't learn ... even a Rebbe can't help that ... he won't learn--what can one do?" "And the moral," interposes the Maskil, "is that one shouldn't keep rubbish heaps under the window, that you can do nothing without money, and, above all, that one shouldn't be frightened of any Rebbe!" In one second the livid-faced Jew had flushed scarlet, his eyes shot fire, his person lengthened, and the room resounded with two slaps received by the Maskil. * * * * * I fear that his first request will equally go unfulfilled: he will yet die of hunger.
Now he stands before me with a small onion in his hand, and he cries--he wants two; or I hear him at evening prayer, repeating the Kaddish in his plaintive child-voice, so tearfully earnest that it goes to my very heart. When the Chossid slapped the Maskil, the child turned pale and green with fright, so that I took him by the hand and led him out of the room. "Come for a walk." "A walk?" he stammers. The pale face flushes. "Do you never go out for a walk?" "Not now. When my mother, peace be upon her, was alive, she used to take me out walking Sabbaths and holidays. My father, long life to him, says it's better to sit at one's book." We were already in the long entrance passage. A "Shield of David" shone redly from a lamp some way off. I could not see his face, but the thin little hand trembled as it lay in mine. We stepped out into the street. The sky that hung over Tishewitz resembled a dark blue uniform with dim steel buttons. My companion found it like a curtain[81] sewn with silver spangles.
Perhaps he is dreaming of just such a blue satin "prayer-bag," with spangles, some day to be his own. In five or six years he may receive it as a gift from his bride. The little town looks quite different by night. The rubbish heaps and the tumbledown houses are hidden in the "poetical and silent lap of darkness." The windows and door-panes look like great, fiery, purple eyes. By the hearth-sides pots of boiling water must be standing ready for the potatoes or the dumplings. The statistics give an average annual expenditure of thirty-seven and a half rubles a head--about ten kopeks a day. Now calculate: school fees, two sets of pots and pans, Sabbaths and holidays, an illness, and a wonder-working Rebbe--besides extras. You see now why there is not always a meal cooking, why the dumplings are of buck-wheat without an egg, and why the potatoes are not always eaten with dripping. Many of the houses are stone-blind. In these it is a question of a bit of bread with or without a herring, and perhaps grace without meat. In one of those houses must live the widow who requires so little, beating her hollow chest through the long confession. Perhaps she measures her winding-sheet, or thinks of her wedding dress of long ago with its gold braid, and from her old eyes there drops a tear, and she whispers, smiling, into the night: "After all, what does a Jewess need?" My motherless companion is thinking of something else. Hopping on one little foot, he lifts his face to the moon, swimming with a silly, aristocratic air in and out of the light clouds. He sighs. Has he seen a star fall? No. "Öi," he says, "wollt ich gewollt, Meshiach soll kimmen!" (How I do wish the Messiah would come!) "What is the matter?" "I want the moon to be made bigger again. It is so dreadfully sad about her! She committed a sin, but to suffer so long! It will soon be six thousand years." Altogether, two requests! one of his earthly father for a second little onion, and one of his Father in Heaven, for the enlargement of the moon. A wild impulse seized me to say: "Let alone! Your father will soon marry again, you will soon have a step-mother, become a step-child, and have to cry for a bit of bread! Spare the little onion, forget about the moon ..." It was all I could do to refrain. We left Tishewitz behind, the spring airs blew toward us from the green fields. He drew me to a tree, we sat down. He must have sat here, it occurs to me, with his mother. She must have pointed out to him the different things that grew in the narrow plots belonging to the townspeople. He recognizes wheat, rye, potatoes. And those are briars. Nobody eats briars, do they? Donkeys eat briars. "Why," he asks, "did God make all creatures to eat different things?" He does not know that if they ate the same, they would be all alike.
Here it's different. He goes through his daily fare for my benefit. For breakfast, what shall he say? a little milk-gruel; for dinner, sometimes, half a pound of meat; and in the evening, a glass of hot tea with stale rolls--he really cannot hold more! When one lives in the country, one must follow country customs, and they are much the best!... Dinner in the large towns is a ruination and a misery!... If there should happen not to be any meat for dinner, well, he can afford to wait to eat till supper-time. Sometimes, early in the day, there is a little vegetable soup with dripping--that is how one lives in Yartseff and one does very well. In the large town it was often difficult to get on. Not that he cared! He really doesn't like meat. On week-days it is heavy food; on week-days he likes an onion with a little sour milk, he prefers sour milk even to Purim herbs, it is his nature, but the rebbitzin, she wouldn't look at it (he smiles as he glances at her)--her feelings used to get hurt. It was jealousy! How was that? Well, the Shochet's wife had sausage, and she, the Dayan'te, not so much as a bone--wasn't that humiliating, ha? Now he has done with all that; in Yartseff, thank God, they all eat meat every Sabbath and even mutton, and week-days all fare much alike, too. So long as the rebbitzin has no one to envy, it's all right! "To envy!" throws in the rebbitzin. "I know, I know!" laughs the rabbi's head with the tiny wrinkles, the beard with the soft end quivers, the old eyes grow moister. "I know, it was not the sinful body you were thinking of, but the honor of the Law. Of course, a Shochet sausage and a Dayan--no, that was very wrong! A Dayan is distinctly greater than a Shochet! Well, well, anyhow, here I am quit of all that--where they don't kill for a whole week at a time." He is still better pleased with the fresh country air. In the large towns, the householders must live in large houses. The rich householders live in the middle; below, in the cellars, and above, in the attics, poor people, including paid officials of the community like himself. In summer he had felt suffocated there. It went so far that the rebbitzin stole away his snuff-box, so that he might at any rate not stuff snuff up his nose, but she had to give it him back--without snuff he was nowhere; he cannot even sit and read without it; even when not taking any, he must have the root snuff-box to finger while he studies, and even as now, when talking, he would lose the train of his thought and not find suitable words in which to express himself if he had not got it. What do you think? When he first saw Yartseff with the wide, grass-grown market-place, he would have liked a band to play--and a band played! On that day all Kohol was at home, and they came to meet him with chamber-music! And he was charmed by the little, tiny houses, like pieces of root tobacco; there is one walled in, the big one in the centre of the market-place--it is the lord's. And the stairs he got away from when he left the large town! He is naturally weak in the legs, in another year he would have been without feet! Then--the restfulness of it here!... quiet!... not a dog barks, and the children (lehavdîl) don't shout. There are thirty boys and perhaps six teachers, so they're kept well in hand, not as in the large towns. At Purim and Chanukah, then they shout, yes! they make a fearful noise! But otherwise you don't hear a sound. Above all, a blessing from His dear Name, there are no quarrels! Two or three Chassidîm with blue fringes,[82] but he prays for their life, because when they die, may it not be for a hundred years, there will be a to-do over their burial.[83] Meanwhile there is peace. The inhabitants of the place are all peddlers or "messengers." Even the artisans do not remain at home, but go and work in the villages, even the Feldscher goes about the district with the "cuppers." Early on Sunday you can see the whole male population coming out of the little houses. Outside the town they take off their boots, hang them upon a stick across their shoulder and start off in all directions. Friday evening they return. Even the Shochet sometimes goes away for a whole week, so when should they find time to quarrel? Sabbath and holidays are the time for disputes, and every now and again they get up a discussion, start a hare ... but it is not their line! The thing halts. People are sleepy and tired.
[Footnote 83: Opponents might deny them burial in a choice place.]
He just sits and studies. Occasionally (he smiles) there is a dispute--only it is for the honor of God--between him and the Shochet. You understand, it is seldom a ritual question arises. All the week the people use milk dishes, Sabbath--meat dishes. They don't stand at the fire-place together. Questions about the fitness of slaughtered animals happen along once a year! But on that very account, they make the most of it, turn over the whole Talmud, all the codes, and there you have a quarrel. The Shochet is very obstinate and pig-headed, and has a way of shifting his bundle of faults on to other people's shoulders; says, the rabbi is obstinate and pig-headed! Even here he had terrible bother with two things: the yeast and the house, and all (he smiles again) through the rebbitzin. With the yeast it befell in this wise; he had agreed with Kohol for four rubles a week. The previous rabbi got four rubles with the yeast, but they cheated him out of the yeast--he got none! On the first Great Sabbath he preached a long sermon on leaven at Passover. "The town was beside itself with delight. Everyone knows a good thing, when he hears it, even the most ignorant. I say it is because all the souls were present at Mount Sinai, and there everything was revealed, even what scholars in time to come will deduce from what was explicitly given, so that even when the soul has forgotten, she recognizes whence things are ... and soon the town gave me the yeast. "Just at the moment I felt a little exultation, for which His dear Name quickly punished me. I had trouble with the yeast! I had disputes to settle all week between the housewives and the rebbitzin; one found her Sabbath loaf too hard, another too heavy, a third said her yeast ran, and people suspected the rebbitzin watered it. What could I do? I hadn't seen her do it, and she said no! "Well, it was all such nonsense! I can't pass a decision in a case between the rebbitzin and the housewives, and I arbitrate; if they come on Friday, I exchange their loaf for mine, and a whole week I give a little extra yeast for Kliskelech.[84] Altogether a dreadful worry! God be praised, a tailor brought some dried yeast, and there was an end of it."
Then as to the house: he observed the rebbitzin was saving money--let her save! Was it his affair? The children are doing well, but may-be she wishes to buy a present for a grandchild--so be it! He is not much in favor of that himself, but he is not going to fight a woman. Perhaps (he reflects) she means differently; he knows, many prepare for later. He doesn't. He says, Blessed be His Name, day by day! When they die, there will be a winding-sheet, but he does not concern himself about it. The affair of the yeast was just going on. To cut a long matter short, one day someone told him a fine tale--the rebbitzin had bought some timber. He came home, and sure enough, it was true. She had even engaged some workmen, she was beginning to build a house. What is it? She won't live in lodgings any longer. He interfered no further--let her build! And she built, she took possession, he--he just carried over his Talmud. "Now, I am a householder, too." But it was a long way for him to go to the house-of-study. "Not of you be it said, my feet have grown weak in my old age. I have not many books of my own. They have a rule in the house-of-study not to lend out any book, not to the rabbi, not to any head of the community. When a question arose, I had nothing to lay my hand on. This gave me a deal of trouble. "But God helped me. There was a fire and several houses were burned down, mine among them. God be praised! The other householders had no great loss; they were insured. I was not, and Kohol, as you see, set aside for me a little corner of the house-of-study."
In the middle of the market-place, a collection of large, white stones. I drive nearer--the stones move and grow horns; they become a herd of milk-white goats. The goats show more sense than the heads of the community of Tishewitz: they are not frightened. One or two out of the whole lot have lifted their heads, looked at us sleepily, and once more turned their attention to the scanty grass of the Gass, and to scratching one the other. Happy goats! No one calumniates you, you needn't be afraid of statisticians. It is true, people kill you, but what then? Does not everyone die before his time? And as far as troubles go, you certainly have fewer. I recall what I was told in Tishewitz: "In Lyashtzof you will get on better and faster. The people are sensible, quieter; no one will run after you." Kohol and the goats seem to be equally admirable; one like the other. But my host, an old friend, is not encouraging. He says it will not be so easy as people think. "What will you do?" he asks. "Go from house to house?" "What else?" "I wish they may be civil." "Why shouldn't they be?" "A Jew hates having his money-box opened and the contents counted." "Why so? Won't the blessing enter in afterwards?" "No, it isn't that--the misfortune is that the credit will go out."
THE FIRST ATTEMPT
My fame has preceded me. I make a beginning, and turn to one of them: "Good morning, friend!" "Good morning, Sholom Alechem."[85]
"What is your name, friend?" "Levi Yitzchok." "And your German name?"[86]
"Why do you want to know?" "Well, is it a secret?" "Secret or no secret, you may as well tell me why you want to know. I'll be bound that's no secret!" "Then you don't know it?" "Not exactly." "Make a shot at it--just for fun!" "Bärenpelz," he answers, a little ashamed. "A wife?" "Ett!" "What does ett mean?" "He wants a divorce!" another answers for him. "How many children?" He has to think, and counts on his fingers: "By the first wife--mine: one, two, three; hers: one, two; by the second wife...." He is tired of counting: "Let us say six!" "'Let us say' is no good. I must know exactly." "You see, 'exactly' is not so easy. 'Exactly!' Why do you want to know? Wos is? Are you an official? Do they pay you for it? Will somebody follow and check your statements? 'Exactly!'" "Tell, blockhead, tell," the rest encourage him, "now you've begun, tell!" They want to know what the next questions will be. Once again he has counted on his fingers and, heaven be praised, there are three more. "Nine children, health and strength to them!" "How many sons, how many daughters?" He counts again: "Four sons and five daughters." "How many sons and how many daughters married?" "You want to know that, too? Look here, tell me why?" "Tell him, then, tell him!" cry the rest, impatiently. "Three daughters and two sons," answers someone for the questioned. "Taki?" says the latter. "And Yisrolik?" "But he isn't married yet." "Horse! They call him up next Sabbath![87] What does a week and a half matter?"
I make a note and ask further: "Have you served in the army?" "I bought exemption from Kohol, for four hundred rubles![88] Where should I find them now?" and he groans.
"The eldest has a swelling below his right eye, and has besides--not of you be it said!--a rupture. He has been in three hospitals. It cost more than a wedding. They only just sent him home from the regiment! The second drew a high number.[89] ... The third is serving his time now."
"At home with me, of course. Need you ask?" "She might have been at her father's." "A pauper!" "Have you a house?" "Have I a house!" "Worth how much?" "If it were in Samoscz, it would be worth something. Here it's not worth a dreier, except that I have a place to lay my head down in." "Would you sell it for one hundred rubles?" "Preserve us! One's own inheritance! Not for three hundred." "Would you give it for five hundred?" "Mê! I should hire a lodging and apply myself to some business!" "And what is your business now?" "What business?" "What do you live on?" "That's what you mean! One just lives." "On what?" "God's providence. When He gives something, one has it!" "But He doesn't throw things down from heaven?" "He does so! Can I tell how I live? Let us reckon: I need a lot of money, at least four rubles a week. The house yields, beside my own lodging, twelve rubles a year--nine go in taxes, five in repairs, leaves a hole in the pocket of two rubles a year! That's it." He puts on airs: "Heaven be praised, I have no money. Neither I, nor any one of the Jews standing here, nor any other Jews--except perhaps the 'German' ones[90] in the big towns. We have no money. I don't know any trade, my grandfather never sewed a shoe. Therefore I live as God wills, and have lived so for fifty years. And if there is a child to be married, we have a wedding, and dance in the mud."
"A Jew." "What do you do all day?" "I study, I pray--what else should a Jew do? And when I have eaten, I go to the market." "What do you do in the market?" "What do I do? Whatever turns up. Well, yesterday, for example, I heard, as I passed, that Yoneh Borik wanted to buy three rams for a gentleman. Before daylight I was at the house of a second gentleman, who had once said, he had too many rams. I made an agreement with Yoneh Borik, and, heaven be praised, we made a ruble and a half by it." "Are you, then, what is called a commission-agent?" "How should I know? Sometimes it even occurs to me to buy a bit of produce." "Sometimes?" "What do you mean by 'sometimes'? When I have a ruble, I buy." "And when not?" "I get one." "How?" "What do you mean by 'how'?" And it is an hour before I find out that Levi Yitzchock Bärenpelz is a bit of a rabbinical assistant, and acts as arbiter in quarrels; a bit of a commission-agent, a fragment of a merchant, a morsel of a match-maker, and now and again, when the fancy takes him, a messenger. Thanks to all these "trades," the counted and the forgotten ones, he earns his bread, although with toil and trouble, for wife and child--even for the married daughter, because her father-in-law is but a pauper.
THE SECOND ATTEMPT
A few packets of matches, a few boxes of cigarettes; needles, pins, hair-pins, buttons, green and yellow soap, a few pieces of home-made, fragrant soap, a few grocery wares. "Who lives here?" I ask. "You can see for yourself!" answers a Jewish woman, and goes on combing the hair of a little girl about ten years old, who has twitched her head from under the comb and stares with great, astonished eyes, at the Goï[91] who talks Yiddish.
"Lay your head down again!" screams the mother. "What is the name of your husband?" I inquire. "Mösheh." "And his 'German' name?" "May his name come home!" she scolds suddenly. "He has been four hours getting a dish from the neighbor's!" "Stop scolding," says the beadle, "and answer when you're spoken to!" She is afraid of the beadle. He is beadle and bailiff together, and collects the taxes, besides being held in great regard by the town-justice. "Who was scolding? who? what? Can't I speak against my own husband?" "What is his 'German' name?" I ask again. The beadle remembers it himself, and answers, "Jungfreud." "How many children have you?" "I beg of you, friend, come later on, when my husband is here; that's his affair! I've enough to do with the shop and six children. Go away, for goodness' sake!" I make a note of six children, and ask how many are married. "Married! I wish any of them were married, I should have fewer gray hairs." "Are they all girls?" "Three are boys." "What are they doing?" "What should they be doing? Plaguing my life out with their open mouths!" "Why not teach them a trade?" She turns up her nose, gives me a black look, and refuses to give any further answers. I have an idea: I buy a packet of cigarettes. She looks less disagreeable, and I ask: "How much does your husband earn?" "He? He earn anything? What use do you suppose he is, when I can't even send him to fetch a dish from a neighbor's? He's been four hours already. It won't be thanks to him if we get any supper to-night!" She goes off into another fury. I have to go outside and catch the husband in the street. I knew him--he was carrying a dish!
AT THE SHOCHET'S
But ask them what is the meaning of a "blemish in the holy offerings!" This question is being discussed by two young men, barefoot, in skull-caps, and undressed to their "little prayer-scarfs."[92]
The young men are only unfit for inspecting licenses or wares in the shop, but calves for the altar--as fast as you please! When God portioned out the world, the peasant took the soil, the fisher the river, the hunter the forest, the gardener the fruit-trees, the merchant the weights and measures, and so on; but the poet lingered in a wood. The nightingale sang to him, the trees whispered all sorts of wood-gossip into his ear, and his eyes, the poetical eyes, could not look away from the girl kneeling by the stream, from the tadpole in her hand. And he came too late for everything! The world, when he arrived, was already divided up. God had nothing left for him but clouds, rainbows, roses, and song-birds. He did not even find the young washerwoman on his way back, she had engaged herself somewhere as nurse. You have fancy! Create a world for yourself, said God. And people envied the poet--his world was the best! The peasant tilled his land with sweat and toil. The fisher is not idle--breaking ice in winter time is no joke. The hunter wearies hunting and pursuing. Pippins are not so easily made out of crab-apples! The merchant must bestir himself, if only about falsifying the weights and measures, else he dies of hunger. One is the poet, who lies on his stomach and creates worlds! But it was a mistake. It turned out that his soul was only a camera-obscura that reflected the outside world with all its mud and pigs. So long as the pig keeps its place, it is not so bad, but when the pig gets into the foreground, the poet's world becomes as piggish as ours. The only people who remain to be envied are our two young men, the Shochet's son with the Shochet's son-in-law. Our world with its pigs doesn't fit in with their world of "blemish in the sacrifice." There is no connection between the two, no bridge, no link whatever. And as I have come into their world out of our world, the Gemorehs are shut, while the young faces express fear and wonder. The Shochet is not at home, he has gone to a neighboring village; that is why the calf is still lowing in the house. The wife has a little draper's shop. The daughter and a daughter-in-law stand by the fire and their faces are triply red. First, from pride in their husbands with their Torah; secondly, from the crackling fire, and thirdly, with confusion before a stranger, a man, and a "German" to boot. One caught a corner of her apron in her mouth, the other moved a few steps backward, as in the synagogue at the end of the Kedushah. Both look at me in astonishment from under low foreheads with hairbands of plaited thread. The young men, however, soon recover themselves. They have heard of the note-taker, and have guessed that I am he! The note-taking goes quickly. The Shochet gets four rubles a week, besides what he earns in the villages; were it not for the meat brought in from the villages round about, he would be doing very well. The shop does not bring in much, but always something. Parnosseh, thank God, they have! As for the children, they will live with the parents, and when, in God's good time, the parents shall have departed this life, they will inherit, one, the father's profession, the other, the shop; the house will be in common. They look better off than any in the town; better off than the traders, householders, workmen, better off even than the public-house keeper and the Feldscher together. There will come a time--I think as I go out--when even teaching will be one of the best paid professions. It is all not so bad as people think: besides being a rabbi, a Shochet, a beadle, and a teacher, there is yet another good way of getting a living. In the Shochet's house there is a female lodger; she pays fifteen rubles a year. The door is locked; through the window, which looks into the street, I see quite a nice little room. Two well-furnished beds with white pillows, red-painted wooden furniture; copper utensils hang on the wall by the fire-place; there is a bright hanging-lamp. The room is full of comfort and household cheer. She has silver, too, they tell me. I see a large chest with brass fittings. There must be silver candle-sticks in it, and perhaps ornaments. What do you think? they say. She has a lot of money, the whole town is in her pocket. She is a widow with three children. The door is locked all through the week, because she only comes home every Sabbath, excepting Shabbes Chazon.[93] She spends the whole week going round the villages in the neighborhood, begging, with all three children.
THE REBBITZIN OF SKUL
It is never advisable to let oneself be dependent on a son-in-law or daughter-in-law. The husband stands up for the wife--the wife for the husband (not without reason saith the holy Torah: "And therefore a man shall leave his parents, etc."). She will not give them occasion to transgress the command to honor a mother, that is a real case of "thou shalt not cause the blind to stumble." "God, blessed be His Name, created man so that he should not see the faults of those nearest him, otherwise the world would be as full of divorces as of marriage contracts!" Secondly--as the rabbi of Skul observed more than once--a widow who depends on her children is a double grass-widow, and "the words of the rabbi of Skul should be framed in gold and worn about the neck as an _Öibele." True, she says with a low sigh, _Öibeles are not worn nowadays, imitation pearls are considered prettier! She could not stay on in Skul. Since her husband the rabbi died, the place has become hateful to her. "Really," she says, "'its glory has departed, its splendor, and its beauty.'" She goes there once a year, for the anniversary of his death, but she cannot remain long--"it has grown empty." She lived with the Skul rabbi forty years. Those that knew him say that she grew to be his second self. He, may he forgive me! was a Misnagid; so she thinks nothing of "good Jews!" His "service" was the Torah in its plain meaning. She sits all day over the Pentateuch in Yiddish, or learns the Shulchan Aruch;[95] she quotes the Skul rabbi at every second word and it is his voice, his motions, his customs!
After the Skul rabbi's Kiddush and Havdoleh, she will listen to no other; she says her own over cake or currant wine. And her Kiddush is his Kiddush--the same low, dignified chant, the same sweetness. She eats "just kosher" and is very learned. She can answer ritual questions! Forty years running she has stood by the hearth with her kind face turned to the table at which her husband sat and studied; her dove's eyes took in his every movement, her ears, half hidden under the head-kerchief, his every word, she was his true helpmeet, she hid his every thought in her brain and his goodness in her heart. A river may have lain a hundred years in another bed, and all its previous twists and bends are wrought into the rocks of its first one. The Skul rabbi's life may have run more peacefully than a river, but the rebbitzin was no rock to him, rather a sponge that absorbed the whole of him. She is not satisfied with the world as it is to-day. "If it is no longer pious, the Almighty must have a care; if His people behave so, it is doubtless because He wishes it. Only, there is no 'purpose' in it all; the present-day stuffs are spider-webs, and people don't sew as they used to, they cut it all up into seams! "Don't talk to me of the curtains before the Ark, you can't make so much as a frock for a child out of them! The old-fashioned head-dresses get dearer every day, a head-kerchief ought to last forever, and even out of a bosom-kerchief you can always draw a gold or silver thread, but imitation pearls and glass spangles are good for nothing. And, believe me, it is all much uglier, in my opinion!" But she bears no one a grudge: "My husband, the Skul rabbi, was a Misnagid, but he never persecuted a Chossid, heaven forbid!" She remembers how the householders once came crying out that the Chassidîm of the place were late in reciting the Shema,[96] and she heard from his own lips the reply: "There are," he said to them, "different armies, and they have different weapons, different customs, but they all serve the same kingdom. Even boots," he added with his smile, "are not all made by the same pattern."
She remembers all his sayings and lives according to his ideas. He used to get very angry if a workman rose and stood before him as a sign of respect, for he was greatly in favor of people working with their hands, therefore when she came here with her few hundred rubles, she set up soap-making--sooner than live on others. She knows that even a woman is under the law bidding every one do something for his own support--it is not one of the laws bound to a certain time, from which women are exempt. When they "kept" her money, she remained dependent on the soap only. "It wouldn't be a bad business," she says, "blessed be His Name! I make three to four rubles a week before a holiday. My soap, may His Name be praised! has a reputation in the whole neighborhood, only--just now it's all on credit. Some day the business will fail." I look round on all sides, I see no utensils, no instruments for the work. Nothing extra is wanted for it, she gives me to understand: "You take some ashes from the hearth, potatoes, and other vegetables, work them together in water, let them steam and then simmer over the fire; in that way you get 'unclear' soap, and if you do the same thing over again, you get liter, that is, good soap!" When I leave, she asks a little troubled and ashamed: "Tell me, I beg of you, when your writings come into the hands of the great people, will they not say I must take out a license?"
INSURED
And the wood has a short cut to Jerusalem. There was once a goat belonging to one of the native Làmed-Wòfniks, and the goat knew the road; she used to trot every morning to pasture on the Temple Mount, and return with three pitcherfuls of milk for the holy man. To the right of the wood, beside a river, lies the town. It is divided into two parts. One part is a long strip--a straight, paved street with walled-in houses under sheet-metal roofs, quite substantial, fastened to the earth with foundations. The inhabitants of the street know for certain that they will live and die in them; that all the winds of heaven may blow without causing them to move an inch. Then comes the second part, another world, quite spiritual: flimsy "hen-houses" entirely built of straw and fir planks, with only an occasional slate-roof. A breeze blows over them, and they are gone. Do their dwellers hope to find the short cut to the Temple Mount, like the immortal goat, or do they speculate on the fire-insurance? And how like are the houses to their inhabitants! These are narrow-chested, with darkened eyes, and crouch under crooked straw caps. Cocks crow out of the huts, ducks quack, and geese cackle. From out the marsh, which licks the threshold with seventy tongues, croak well-fed, portly frogs. A Jewish calf frequently contributes a bleat, and is answered out of the long street by a Gentile dog. I shall begin to take notes early in the morning. I know beforehand what it will be: if not thirty-six rubles a year, it will be thirty-three or thirty-two.... I shall find "many trades and few blessings,"[98] more soap factories, any number of empty houses.... The beadle will reckon up for me: he is a messenger, she, a huckstress; two daughters are out in service in Lublin, in Samoscz.... one son is a "helper" in a Cheder, the other serving his time in the army, and the daughter-in-law with three, four, five children has gone home to her father and mother....
All you gain by statistics is that you find out about an unlicensed public-house, or a horse-thief, or a receiver of stolen goods. Scientific medicine has invented a machine for checking heart-beats, one by one; the foolish statistics play with figures. Do statistics record the anxious heart-beats that thumped in the breast of the grandson of the descendant from Spanish ancestors, or the son of the author of the Tevuas Shor, before they committed their first illegality? Do they measure how their hearts bled after they committed it? Do they count the sleepless nights before and after? Can they show how many were the days of hunger? How many times the children flung themselves about in convulsions, how often hands and feet shook when the first glass was filled by the unlicensed brandy-seller? Livid, ghastly, blue faces float before me in the empty air, and blue-brown, parched lips whisper: "There has been no fire in my chimney for twenty-four days." "We have eaten potato peelings for ten." "Three died without a doctor or a prescription; I had to save the fourth!" The hoarse voices cut me to the heart, like a blunt knife; I leave the window where I have been standing; but the room is full of ghosts. By the stove stands a red Jew, well-nourished: "Hee, hee!" he laughs. "Steal? buy stolen things? a business like any other ... not less than a month's imprisonment ... in a month I would have lost a fortune ... all the noblemen will bear me witness ... honestly! honestly!" That voice is worse; it saws ... I throw myself on the bed, I shut my eyes, and there appears to me the good old rebbitzin of Skul. "Well," she says with her childlike, silvery voice, "and suppose the result of your inquiries were not favorable for the Jews, shall you he able to say: 'Thy people are all righteous?'" I feel as if her kind, blue, dove-like eyes rested soothingly on my hot forehead. I fell asleep beneath them, and I dreamt of the two angels, the good inclination and the evil one. I saw them flying earthward before day-break, enveloped in a thin, pink mist. The evil inclination carried, in one hand, a blue paper with a large, black eye in the top left-hand corner, evidently a deed relating to a house or some property ... expensive dresses, besides fur caps, braided kaftans, silk sashes, also a top-hat and frock-coat as if for one person; also handkerchiefs, head-kerchiefs, kerchiefs with tinsel, pearl necklaces, as well as silk and satin trains of all colors--all that in one hand, and in the other--potato peelings.... The good inclination--naked, without clothes or things to carry, as God made him.... Both fly ... it seems as if the good inclination wanted to tell me something, he opens his pretty mouth ... but not his voice, a cry of alarm wakes me. Fire! I spring out of bed, there is a fire just opposite! A long tongue of flame stretches out toward me and seems to say: "Don't be frightened: it's insured!"
THE FIRE
When the sun rose from out the mist, blushing red like a beautiful and innocent maiden after the bath, she saw nothing but long, black, male heads turning over the ruins with sticks. They were looking for the remnants of Weizensang's riches in the remnants of his house. Groups of yellow-faced women are already standing around it. The brown shawls are held with washed fingers over their unwashed heads, and pale lips lament and bewail the house. With the morning came a fresh wind. A little sooner, and it would have played havoc. Now it just shakes the remaining old chimney over the women's heads as though it were a palm. The chimney rocks and groans sadly, as though it felt deserted, and perhaps it listens to the inn-keeper telling me the tale of the destruction of the house, and affirms with a nod: "True, true!" You would sooner pick up every thread, every dust-grain of life out of which the sleep-angel has woven you a fantastic dream, than discover all the devices a Jew must resort to before he hears the clink of copper coin. If I were to describe everything, you would think I had been dreaming myself.... Who shall read the Divine countenance when a wretched creature stands before Him, lifts its head with its racked brain, extinguished eyes, and trembling voice, and pressing its empty stomach with cracked and bony hands, prays without a voice, without a language; the tongue will not move, but the blood cries: "Lord of the world, I have done my part, now--Thou must help! Lord of the world, feed me like the ravens! In what am I more worthless than they are? Lord of the world, where are my crumbs? When will it be my 'Sabbath of Song?'"[99]
And therefore the Jewish Parnossehs are so specialized that their like will only be in the twenty-first century, when one specialist will lift the upper eye-lid, a second press down the lower, and a third examine the sick eye. If a dish of roast veal, a rag in a paper-factory, or an exported egg had a mouth to speak with and the rabbi Reb Heshil's memory, they would still be unable to say how many Jewish hands had taken them out and put them in, from the peasant's shed into the roasting-pan, from the manure-box into the "Holländer,"[100] from servitude into freedom.... And a Jewish Parnosseh is just such a ladder as Jacob our father saw in a dream, the night when all stones united into one stone for his head, a ladder standing on the earth, and the top of it reaches into the sky.
We grow giddy gazing up the height; and when we peer down into the depths, our stomach turns, and we look green forever after. Angels ascend and descend the ladder; men, alas, climb it with their last remaining strength, and fall down it when their strength is exhausted. And even if he can thank his stars his neck is not broken, the Jew has no strength left to begin climbing again. Such is the ladder that was partly climbed by our "burnt-out" one. First he travelled between the villages as a "runner," on business for other people; the earth was hot to his bare feet. It was not the cry of a brother's blood this Cain heard, it was the cry of wife and children for bread. Heaven came to his assistance; he bought very cheaply for two or three years on end, and then he was promoted from a "runner" to a "walker." There was already provision at home for a week at a time, and he only came back Fridays with the result of a week's bargaining; the brain was more composed, and had time to take in the fact that the feet were becoming swollen, that the father of six children ought always to walk and not run, if he wishes his feet to carry him till at least one of them is confirmed. And God helped further; he is now, blessed be the Name, a village peddler, that is, he walks only when there is no "opportunity" to ride in from one village to another for a kopek; if the "opportunity" is there, he rides. God helped him on again; another year or two, and he has his own horse and cart! Time does not stand still, and he took no rest, and God helped. The one horse turned into two, the cart into a trap, and it even came to a driver! And he is now a produce dealer; first he deals with peasants and then with gentlemen. And, God helping, he gets into favor first with the head of the dairy farm, then with the manager, after that with the bailiff, after that again with the steward, and at last with the count himself. O, by that time he is an inhabitant, settled in the place, the driver becomes a domestic servant, horse and carriage are sold, and pockets are lined with the count's receipts.... What is he now? He is like the sun round which circle the stars--smaller traders, and little stars--brokers. He shines and illumines the whole place with credit. Yelenskin compared him to a spider sitting in his web, and the count to one of the flies entangled in it. After a while our "sun-spider," or "spider-sun," enlarged his house, wrote marriage contracts for his children, settled dowries on them; bought his wife pearls and himself a sealskin coat, engaged better teachers for his boys, and for the girls someone to teach them if only how to write a Jewish letter. Suddenly (at least, for the town), the count was declared bankrupt, and our "spider-sun," or "sun-spider," lost everything at once. If I had passed through a month earlier, I should have put down: A house, fifteen hundred rubles, a propination,[102] a business in timber and produce, a money-lender. He has lent the count fifteen thousand rubles at ten per cent., not as a mortgage, but for "hand-receipts."
"Burnt-out." I might add: A man of eighty-two, swollen feet, a household of seventeen persons.
THE EMIGRANT
A room without beds, without furniture, carpeted with hay and straw. In the middle of the room stands a barrel upside down. Round the barrel, four starved-looking children, with frowzy hair, hang over a great earthenware dish of sour milk, out of which they eat, holding a greenish metal spoon in their right hand and a bit of bran-bread in their left. In one corner, on the floor, sits a pale woman, and the tears fall from her eyes on the potatoes she is about to peel. In the second corner lies "he," also on the floor, and undressed. "It was no good your coming, neighbor," he says to me, without rising, "no good at all! I don't belong here now!" But when he sees that I have no intention of going away, he raises himself slowly. "Nu, where am I to seat you?" he asks sadly. I assure him that I can write standing. "You will get nothing out of me! I am only waiting for a boat ticket--you see, I have sold everything, even my tools...." "You are a mechanic?" I ask. "A tailor." "And what obliges you to emigrate?" "Hunger." And there was hunger in his face, in her face, and still more in the gleaming eyes of the children round the barrel. "No work to be had?" He shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, he and work had long been strangers. "Where are you going to?" "To London. I was there once already, and made money. I sent my wife ten rubles a week, and lived like a human being. The bad luck brought me home again." I wondered if the "bad luck" were his wife. "Why not have sent for your family to join you?" "It drew me back! It's black as night over there. As soon as ever I closed an eye, I dreamt of the little town, the river round it, ... I felt suffocated there, and it drew me and drew me...." "This is certainly," I remark, "a beautiful bit of country." "The air costs nothing, and we have been living on air, heaven be praised, these three years. This time I am going with wife and child. I mean to put an end to it." "You will miss the wood again!" "The wood!"--he gives himself a twist with a bitter smile--"my wife went into the wood the evening before last, to gather berries, and they marched her out and treated her to the whip." "There is the river,"--I want to take him away from his sad thoughts. His pale face grew paler. "The river? In the summer it took one of my children." I hurried away from the luckless home.
"Won't you enter me?" asks the head, softly. I do not know how to answer. He, meanwhile, has taken silence for consent, and stands in the middle of the room. Alarmed, and still more astonished, I keep my eye on him. "Write!" he says impatiently. "Shall I give you the ink and a pen?" Without waiting for an answer, he pushes up to my sofa the little table with the writing materials. "Write, please, write!" And his voice is so soft and gentle, it finds its way into my heart, and I am no longer frightened. I sit up to write. I question him, and he answers me. "Your name?" "Jonah." "Your surname?" "When I was a little boy, they called me Jonah Zieg. After my wedding, Jonah Drong, but since the misfortune happened to me, Mad Jonah." "What is your German name?" "O, you mean that?... Directly, directly. Perelmann. You see my pearls?" He points to a torn, red kerchief round his neck, and says: "Real pearls, ha? But that's what I'm called. How can I help it?" "A wife?" "You had better not put her down: she doesn't live with me. Since the misfortune, she doesn't live with me ... a nice wife, too. I would gladly have given her a divorce, but the rabbi wouldn't allow it. He said I mustn't. A nice little wife!" And his eyes grew moist. "She even took the child with her. It's better off with her--what should I do with it? Carry it about? They throw stones at me, and would have hurt it." "One child is it you have?" "One." "What was your misfortune?" "May you know trouble as little as I know that! Folk say a devil. The Röfeh says, a stone fell into my head, and the soul, or, as he calls it, the life, into my belly. I don't remember the stone, but I have a bruise on my head." He takes off his hat and cap together, bends his head, and shows me a bare bump in the hair. "It may have been from a stone, but I am mad--that's certain." "What is your eccentricity?" "Two or three times a day I have my soul in my belly, and then I speak out of my belly, and crow like a cock. I can't stop myself, I really can't!" "What were you before the misfortune?" "I hadn't got to be anything. It happened to me early in the Köst.[103] That is why I have only one child, health and strength to it!"
"I had a few gulden dowry. A lot of it went in remedies--on 'good Jews' ... the rest I gave her." "What do you live on?" "On trouble. The boys throw stones at me. I daren't go about in the market-place, else I might have earned something near a stall. At one time people were sorry for me and gave me things. Now times are bad--I have to go begging. I beg before dinner, while the children are still in Cheder. And it's little enough I get by it! The town is small; there are two mad people in it beside me. And now they say that yesterday the 'Lokshiche'[104] threw a saucepan at her servant's head. The servant is sure to go mad, quite sure! Only I don't know yet if she will crow as I do, or trumpet into her fist, like the rabbi's Shlom'tzie, or be silent like Hannah the Tikerin."
He was an excellent shoemaker, who supported wife and children (rarely less than four or five) respectably. He won a large sum of money in a lottery, took to drink, drank it all up, left his wife and children to shift for themselves, disappeared, and must have died since somewhere or other beneath a hedge. But that is not specifically Jewish. Take another one of us, his partner in the lottery ticket. He was a teacher, won some money, hired a mill together with the Rebbe. The mill failed, now he is beadle in a Chassidic meeting-house, gets nothing for it, but he sells the "bitter drop." The wife is a "buyer-in," takes round eggs and butter to the houses. She doesn't earn much, because she is lame. One son is away, the second works somewhere at a carpenter's; one is at home, scrofulous. The widow Beile Bashe, surname unknown, lives with a daughter-in-law, a soldier's wife. The husband disappeared in the Turkish war. The daughter-in-law plucks feathers--she is a Tikerin, and watches beside women in child-bed, or else by the sick. In summer, so long as the nobleman allowed it, she gathered berries in the forest; a sickly woman, she does a little bit of begging besides. Zeinwill Graf has only lately become a skinner. Last year he was a great fisher, rented a river which the nobleman wished to let to a Christian; he paid a lot of cession-money, caught only "forbidden fish" the whole summer, and is now in dire poverty. Shmerke Bentzies, formerly a Dantzig trader ... it is twenty years since he came home empty-handed. Since then he trades in currant-wine for Kiddush. The wife is a sempstress, has suffered a year or two with her eyes. "They haven't no children," but competition in the currant-wine trade is very keen, and they struggle. Melach Berils, a fine young man, only lately boarding with his father-in-law ... he was in business together with a cattle-dealer and lost his money; meantime the father-in-law died in poverty. It is uncertain what he will do. There are three little children, not more. I was also asked to put down a man (they had forgotten the name), a man with a wife, and children (nobody remembers how many, but a lot), who may arrive at any moment. The nobleman has refused to renew his lease; no one can tell what he will take to, but--"you may as well put him down!"
"We (the story is told me by a teacher of small children) once had a real Làmed-Wòfnik!" "He said so himself?" I ask. "Well, he would have been a fine Làmed-Wòfnik if he had! He denied it 'stone and bone.' If he were questioned about it, he lost his temper and fired up. But, of course, people got wind of it, they knew well enough! yes, 'kith and kin,' the whole town knew it! As if there could be any doubt! People talked, it was clear as daylight! In the beginning, there were some who wouldn't believe--they came to a bad end! "For instance: Yainkef-Yosef Weinshenker, a man of eighty and much respected, I can't quite explain, but he sort of turned up his nose at him. Did he say anything? Heaven forbid! but there! Like that.... Turned up his nose as much as to say: Preserve us! Nothing worse! Well, what do you think? Not more than five or six years after, he was dead. Yainkef-Yosef lay in his grave. Poor Leah, the milkwoman! One was sorry for her. It was muddy, and she did not step off the stone causeway to make room for him. Would you believe it, the milk went wrong at all her customers' for a month on end! And there was no begging off! When approached on the subject, he pretended to know nothing about it, and scolded into the bargain!" "Of course,"--I wish to show off my knowledge--"though a scholar decline the honor due to him...." "A scholar? Is a Làmed-Wòfnik a scholar? And you think he knew even how to read Hebrew properly? He could manage to make seven mistakes in spelling Noah. Besides, Hebrew is nothing. Hebrew doesn't count for much with us. He could not even read through the weekly portion. And his reciting the Psalms made nevertheless an impression in the highest! The last Rebbe, of blessed memory, said that Welvil (that was his name, the Làmed-Wòfnik's) cleft the seventh heaven! And you think his Psalm-singing was all! Wait till I tell you! "Hannah the Tikerin's goat (not of you be it said!) fell sick, and she drove it to the Gentile exorcist, who lives behind the village. The goat staggered, she was so ill. "On the way--it was heaven's doing--the goat met the Làmed-Wòfnik, and as she staggered along, she touched his cloak. What do you think? Cured, as I live! Hannah kept it to herself, only what happened afterwards was this: A disease broke out among the goats; literally, 'there was not a house in which there was not one dead;' then she told. The Làmed-Wòfnik was enticed into the market-place, and all the goats were driven at him." "And they all got well?" "What a question! They even gave a double quantity of milk." "The Tikerin got a groschen a goat--she became quite rich!" "And he?" "He? nothing! Why, he denied everything, and even got angry and scolded--and such an one may not take money, he is no 'good Jew'--he must not be 'discovered!'" "How did he live?" "At one time he was a shoemaker (a Làmed-Wòfnik has got to be a workman, if only a water-carrier, only he must support himself with his hands); he used to go to circumcisions in a pair of his own shoes, but in his old age he was no longer any good for a shoemaker, he could no longer so much as draw the thread, let alone put in a patch--his hands shook: he just took a message, carried a canful of water, sat up with the dead at night, recited Psalms, was called up to the Tochechoh,[105] and in winter there was the stove to heat in the house-of-study."
"Carry wood? Why, where were the boys? The wood was brought, laid in the stove, he gave the word, and applied the light. People say: A stove is a lifeless thing. And yet, do you know, the house-of-study stove knew him as a woman (lehavdîl) knows her husband! He applied a light and the stove burnt! The wind might be as high as you please. Everywhere else it smoked, but in the house-of-study it crackled! And the stove, a split one, such an old thing as never was! And let anyone else have a try--by no means! Either it wouldn't burn, or else it smoked through every crack, and the heat went up the chimney, and at night one nearly froze to death! When he died, they had to put in another stove, because nobody could do anything with the old one. "He was a terrible loss! So long as he lived there was Parnosseh, now, heaven help us, one may whistle for a dreier! There was no need to call in a doctor." "And all through his Psalms?" "You ask such a question? Why, it was as clear as day that he delivered from death." "And no one died in his day?" "All alive? Nobody died? Do you suppose the death-angel has no voice in the matter? How many times, do you suppose, has the 'good Jew' himself of blessed memory wished a complete recovery, and he, Satan, opposed him with all his might? Well, was it any good? An angel is no trifle! And the Heavenly Academy once in a while decides in the death-angel's favor. Well, then! There was no doctor wanted; not one could get on here. Now we have two doctors!" "Beside the exorcist?" "He was taken, too!" "Gepegert? "[106]
Perhaps you think an ordinary informer, in the usual sense of the word; he saw a false weight, an unequal balance, and went and told? Heaven forbid! Not at all! It was all blackmail, all frightening people into paying him not to tell--see, there he goes, he runs, he drives, he writes, he sends! And he sucked the marrow from the bones-- "And he was badly used himself," continued the teacher. "I remember when Yeruchem first brought him here! A very fine young man! Only Yeruchem promised 'dowry and board,' and hadn't enough for a meal for himself. And Yeruchem had been badly used, too. His brother Getzil (a rich miser as ever was), he had the most to answer for! "It is a tale of two brothers, one clever and good, the other foolish and bad; the good, clever one, poor, and the bad fool, a rich man. Of course, the rich brother would do nothing for the poor one. "Well, so long as it was only a question of food, Yeruchem said nothing. But when his daughter Grüne had come to be an overgrown girl of nineteen or twenty, Yeruchem made a commotion. The town and the rabbi took the matter up, and Getzil handed over a written promise that he would give so and so much to be paid out a year after her marriage. Not any sooner; the couple might change their minds, Yeruchem would spend the money, and there would be the whole thing over again. "He, Getzil, wished to defer the payment until the end of three years, but they succeeded in getting him to promise to pay it in one year. When the time came, Getzil said: 'Not a penny! Anyhow, according to their law, the paper isn't worth a farthing,' and meanwhile it became impossible to settle it within the community. The old rabbi had died; the new rabbi wouldn't interfere, he was afraid of the crown-rabbi, lest he send it up to the regular courts--and there it ended! Getzil wouldn't give a kopek, Yeruchem disappeared either on the way to a 'good Jew,' or else he went begging through the country ... and Beinishe remained with Grüne! "Truly, the ways of the Most High are past finding out! It seems ridiculous! He was a lad and she was a girl, but it was all upside down. The woman, an engine, a Cossack, and the husband, a misery, a bag of bones! And what do you think! She took him in hand and made a man of him! "She was always setting him on Getzil, he was to prevent the congregation from taking out the scrolls until the matter was settled, prevent Getzil from being called up to the Law.... it made as much impression as throwing a pea at a wall. Getzil cuffed him, and after that the young fellow was ashamed to appear in the house-of-study. Once, just before Passover, when all devices had failed, Grüne again drove Beinishe to his uncle, and drove him with a broom! Beinishe went again, and again the uncle turned him out. I tell you--it was a thing to happen! My second wife (to be) had just been divorced from her first husband, and she was Grüne's lodger; and she saw Beinishe come home with her own eyes; he was more dead than alive, and shook as if he had the fever; and my good-woman was experienced in that sort of thing (she had been the matron of the Hekdesh before it was burnt down), and she saw that something serious had happened. "It was just about the time when Grüne was to come home (she sold rolls) from market, and she would have knocked him down; and my good-wife advised him, out of compassion, to lie down and rest on the stove; and he, poor man, was like a dummy, tell him to do a thing and he did it; he got up on the stove. "Grüne came home, my good-woman said nothing; Beinishe lay and slept, or pretended to sleep, on the stove! And perhaps he was not quite clear in his head, because, when Getzil was turning him out of the house, he cried out that he would tell where they had hidden Getzil's son, and if he had been clear in the head, he would not have said a thing like that. "However that may be, the words made a great impression on Getzil's wife. May my enemies know of their life what Beinishe knew of the whereabouts of Jonah-Getzil's! But there, a woman, a mother, an only son!... so, what do you think? She had a grocery shop, got a porter and a bag of Passover-flour, and had it carried after her to Grüne. "She goes in ... (such a pity, my wife isn't here! she was an eye-witness of it, and when she tells the story, it is enough to make you split with laughter); she goes in, leaves the porter outside the room. "'Good morning, Grüne!' Grüne makes no reply, and Getzil's wife begins to get frightened. "'Where,' she asks, 'is Beinishe?' 'The black year knows!' answers Grüne, and turns to the fire-place, where she goes on skimming the soup. He must have gone to inform, she thinks. She calls in the porter, the sack of meal is put down, Grüne does not see, or pretends she doesn't, devil knows which! Getzil's wife begins to flush and tremble, 'Grünishe, we are relatives ... one blood--call him back! Why should he destroy himself and my soul with him?' "Then only Grüne turned round. She was no fool, and soon took in the situation. She got a few more rubles out of them, and made believe to go after Beinishe.... It was soon rumored in the town that Beinishe was an informer ... and Grüne was glad of it ... she kept Beinishe on the stove, and bullied and drew blood at every householder's where there was anything wrong." "At that rate, she was the informer?" "First she, and then he himself. In his misery, he took to drink, hung about at night in the public-houses, threatened to 'inform' all on his own account. He never gave Grüne a penny, and spent all he had in dissipation. It was sad--a man like that to end so!" "What happened?" "He burnt up his inside with drink. First he went mad, and ran about in the streets, or lay out somewhere for weeks under a hedge. But home to Grüne--not for any money! "Even when he was quite a wreck, ten men couldn't get him back into his house. He fought and bit. He had to be brought into the house-of-study (the Hekdesh was no longer in existence), and there he died! They tried to save him, called in a specialist, recited Psalms." "The Làmed-Wòfnik, too?" "Certainly!" "Well?" "A man with no inside--what could you expect?" [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |