The father is still lying ill, and Feigele takes out one ruble after another, one five-ruble-piece after another.
The old man lies and prays and muses, and looks at the children, and holds his peace.
His face gets paler and more wrinkled, he grows weaker, he feels his strength ebbing away.
Feigele goes on taking money out of the savings-bank, the stamps in her book grow less and less, she knows that soon there will be nothing left.
Old Reb Yainkel wishes in secret that he did not require so much, that he might cease to hamper other people!
He spits blood-drops, and his strength goes on diminishing, and so do the stamps in Feigele's book. The day he died saw the last farthing of Feigele's dowry disappear after the others.
Feigele has resumed her seat by the bright lamp, and sews and sews till far into the night, and with every seam that she sews, something is added to the credit of her new account.
This time the dowry must be a larger one, because for every stamp that is added to the account-book there is a new grey hair on Feigele's black head.
The mother came out of the bride's chamber, and cast a piercing look at her husband, who was sitting beside a finished meal, and was making pellets of bread crumbs previous to saying grace.
"You go and talk to her! I haven't a bit of strength left!"
"So, Rochel-Leoh has brought up children, has she, and can't manage them! Why! People will be pointing at you and laughing—a ruin to your years!"
"To my years?! A ruin toyours!Mychildren, are they? Are they not yours, too? Couldn't you stay at home sometimes to care for them and help me to bring them up, instead of trapesing round—the black year knows where and with whom?"
"Rochel, Rochel, what has possessed you to start a quarrel with me now? The bridegroom's family will be arriving directly."
"And what do you expect me to do, Moishehle, eh?! For God's sake! Go in to her, we shall be made a laughing-stock."
The man rose from the table, and went into the next room to his daughter. The mother followed.
On the little sofa that stood by the window sat a girl about eighteen, her face hidden in her hands, her arms covered by her loose, thick, black hair. She was evidently crying, for her bosom rose and fell like a stormy sea. On the bed opposite lay the white silk wedding-dress, the Chuppeh-Kleid, with the black,silk Shool-Kleid, and the black stuff morning-dress, which the tailor who had undertaken the outfit had brought not long ago. By the door stood a woman with a black scarf round her head and holding boxes with wigs.
"Channehle! You are never going to do me this dishonor? to make me the talk of the town?" exclaimed the father. The bride was silent.
"Look at me, daughter of Moisheh Groiss! It's all very well for Genendel Freindel's daughter to wear a wig, but not for the daughter of Moisheh Groiss? Is that it?"
"And yet Genendel Freindel might very well think more of herself than you: she is more educated than you are, and has a larger dowry," put in the mother.
The bride made no reply.
"Daughter, think how much blood and treasure it has cost to help us to a bit of pleasure, and now you want to spoil it for us? Remember, for God's sake, what you are doing with yourself! We shall be excommunicated, the young man will run away home on foot!"
"Don't be foolish," said the mother, took a wig out of a box from the woman by the door, and approached her daughter. "Let us try on the wig, the hair is just the color of yours," and she laid the strange hair on the girl's head.
The girl felt the weight, put up her fingers to her head, met among her own soft, cool, living locks, the strange, dead hair of the wig, stiff and cold, and it flashed through her, Who knows where the head to which this hair belonged is now? A shuddering envelopedher, and as though she had come in contact with something unclean, she snatched off the wig, threw in onto the floor and hastily left the room.
Father and mother stood and looked at each other in dismay.
The day after the marriage ceremony, the bridegroom's mother rose early, and, bearing large scissors, and the wig and a hood which she had brought from her home as a present for the bride, she went to dress the latter for the "breakfast."
But the groom's mother remained outside the room, because the bride had locked herself in, and would open her door to no one.
The groom's mother ran calling aloud for help to her husband, who, together with a dozen uncles and brothers-in-law, was still sleeping soundly after the evening's festivity. She then sought out the bridegroom, an eighteen-year-old boy with his mother's milk still on his lips, who, in a silk caftan and a fur cap, was moving about the room in bewildered fashion, his eyes on the ground, ashamed to look anyone in the face. In the end she fell back on the mother of the bride, and these two went in to her together, having forced open the door between them.
"Why did you lock yourself in, dear daughter. There is no need to be ashamed."
"Marriage is a Jewish institution!" said the groom's mother, and kissed her future daughter-in-law on both cheeks.
The girl made no reply.
"Your mother-in-law has brought you a wig and a hood for the procession to the Shool," said her own mother.
The band had already struck up the "Good Morning" in the next room.
"Come now, Kallehshi, Kalleh-leben, the guests are beginning to assemble."
The groom's mother took hold of the plaits in order to loosen them.
The bride bent her head away from her, and fell on her own mother's neck.
"I can't, Mame-leben! My heart won't let me, Mame-kron!"
She held her hair with both hands, to protect it from the other's scissors.
"For God's sake, my daughter? my life," begged the mother.
"In the other world you will be plunged for this into rivers of fire. The apostate who wears her own hair after marriage will have her locks torn out with red hot pincers," said the other with the scissors.
A cold shiver went through the girl at these words.
"Mother-life, mother-crown!" she pleaded.
Her hands sought her hair, and the black silky tresses fell through them in waves. Her hair, the hair which had grown with her growth, and lived with her life, was to be cut off, and she was never, never to have it again—she was to wear strange hair, hair that had grown on another person's head, and no one knows whether that other person was alive or lying in the earth this longtime, and whether she might not come any night to one's bedside, and whine in a dead voice:
"Give me back my hair, give me back my hair!"
A frost seized the girl to the marrow, she shivered and shook.
Then she heard the squeak of scissors over her head, tore herself out of her mother's arms, made one snatch at the scissors, flung them across the room, and said in a scarcely human voice:
"My own hair! May God Himself punish me!"
That day the bridegroom's mother took herself off home again, together with the sweet-cakes and the geese which she had brought for the wedding breakfast for her own guests. She wanted to take the bridegroom as well, but the bride's mother said: "I will not give him back to you! He belongs to me already!"
The following Sabbath they led the bride in procession to the Shool wearing her own hair in the face of all the town, covered only by a large hood.
But may all the names she was called by the way find their only echo in some uninhabited wilderness.
A summer evening, a few weeks after the wedding: The young man had just returned from the Stübel, and went to his room. The wife was already asleep, and the soft light of the lamp fell on her pale face, showing here and there among the wealth of silky-black hair that bathed it. Her slender arms were flung round her head, as though she feared that someone might come by night to shear them off while she slept. He had come home excited and irritable: this was the fourth week of his married life, and they had not yetcalled him up to the Reading of the Law, the Chassidim pursued him, and to-day Chayyim Moisheh had blamed him in the presence of the whole congregation, and had shamed him, becauseshe, his wife, went about in her own hair. "You're no better than a clay image," Reb Chayyim Moisheh had told him. "What do you mean by a woman's saying she won't? It is written: 'And he shall rule over thee.'"
And he had come home intending to go to her and say: "Woman, it is a precept in the Torah! If you persist in wearing your own hair, I may divorce you without returning the dowry," after which he would pack up his things and go home. But when he saw his little wife asleep in bed, and her pale face peeping out of the glory of her hair, he felt a great pity for her. He went up to the bed, and stood a long while looking at her, after which he called softly:
"Channehle ... Channehle ... Channehle...."
She opened her eyes with a frightened start, and looked round in sleepy wonder:
"Nosson, did you call? What do you want?
"Nothing, your cap has slipped off," he said, lifting up the white nightcap, which had fallen from her head.
She flung it on again, and wanted to turn towards the wall.
"Channehle, Channehle, I want to talk to you."
The words went to her heart. The whole time since their marriage he had, so to say, not spoken to her. During the day she saw nothing of him, for he spent it in the house-of-study or in the Stübel. When he came home to dinner, he sat down to the table in silence. When he wanted anything, he asked for itspeaking into the air, and when really obliged to exchange a word with her, he did so with his eyes fixed on the ground, too shy to look her in the face. And now he said he wanted to talk to her, and in such a gentle voice, and they two alone together in their room!
"What do you want to say to me?" she asked softly.
"Channehle," he began, "please, don't make a fool of me, and don't make a fool of yourself in people's eyes. Has not God decreed that we should belong together? You are my wife and I am your husband, and is it proper, and what does it look like, a married woman wearing her own hair?"
Sleep still half dimmed her eyes, and had altogether clouded her thought and will. She felt helpless, and her head fell lightly towards his breast.
"Child," he went on still more gently, "I know you are not so depraved as they say. I know you are a pious Jewish daughter, and His blessed Name will help us, and we shall have pious Jewish children. Put away this nonsense! Why should the whole world be talking about you? Are we not man and wife? Is not your shame mine?"
It seemed to her as thoughsomeone, at once very far away and very near, had come and was talking to her. Nobody had ever yet spoken to her so gently and confidingly. And he was her husband, with whom she would live so long, so long, and there would be children, and she would look after the house!
She leant her head lightly against him.
"I know you are very sorry to lose your hair, the ornament of your girlhood, I saw you with it when I was aguest in your home. I know that God gave you grace and loveliness, I know. It cuts me to the heart that your hair must be shorn off, but what is to be done? It is a rule, a law of our religion, and after all we are Jews. We might even, God forbid, have a child conceived to us in sin, may Heaven watch over and defend us."
She said nothing, but remained resting lightly in his arm, and his face lay in the stream of her silky-black hair with its cool odor. In that hair dwelt a soul, and he was conscious of it. He looked at her long and earnestly, and in his look was a prayer, a pleading with her for her own happiness, for her happiness and his.
"Shall I?" ... he asked, more with his eyes than with his lips.
She said nothing, she only bent her head over his lap.
He went quickly to the drawer, and took out a pair of scissors.
She laid her head in his lap, and gave her hair as a ransom for their happiness, still half-asleep and dreaming. The scissors squeaked over her head, shearing off one lock after the other, and Channehle lay and dreamt through the night.
On waking next morning, she threw a look into the glass which hung opposite the bed. A shock went through her, she thought she had gone mad, and was in the asylum! On the table beside her lay her shorn hair, dead!
She hid her face in her hands, and the little room was filled with the sound of weeping!
The market lies foursquare, surrounded on every side by low, whitewashed little houses. From the chimney of the one-storied house opposite the well and inhabited by the baker, issues thick smoke, which spreads low over the market-place. Beneath the smoke is a flying to and fro of white pigeons, and a tall boy standing outside the baker's door is whistling to them.
Equally opposite the well are stalls, doors laid across two chairs and covered with fruit and vegetables, and around them women, with head-kerchiefs gathered round their weary, sunburnt faces in the hottest weather, stand and quarrel over each other's wares.
"It's certainly worth my while to stand quarrelling withyou! A tramp like you keeping a stall!"
Yente, a woman about forty, whose wide lips have just uttered the above, wears a large, dirty apron, and her broad, red face, with the composed glance of the eyes under the kerchief, gives support to her words.
"Do you suppose you have got the Almighty by the beard? He is mine as well as yours!" answers Taube, pulling her kerchief lower about her ears, and angrily stroking down her hair.
A new customer approached Yente's stall, and Taube, standing by idle, passed the time in vituperations.
"What do I want with the money of a fine lady like you? You'll die like the rest of us, and not a dog will say Kaddish for you," she shrieked, and came to a sudden stop, for Taube had intended to bring up thesubject of her own son Yitzchokel, when she remembered that it is against good manners to praise one's own.
Yente, measuring out a quarter of pears to her customer, made answer:
"Well, if you were a little superior to what you are, your husband wouldn't have died, and your child wouldn't have to be ashamed of you, as we all know he is."
Whereon Taube flew into a rage, and shouted:
"Hussy! The idea of my son being ashamed of me! May you be a sacrifice for his littlest finger-nail, for you're not worthy to mention his name!"
She was about to burst out weeping at the accusation of having been the cause of her husband's death and of causing her son to be ashamed of her, but she kept back her tears with all her might in order not to give pleasure to Yente.
The sun was dropping lower behind the other end of the little town, Jews were hurrying across the market-place to Evening Prayer in the house-of-study street, and the Cheder-boys, just let out, began to gather round the well.
Taube collected her few little baskets into her arms (the door and the chairs she left in the market-place; nobody would steal them), and with two or three parting curses to the rude Yente, she quietly quitted the scene.
Walking home with her armful of baskets, she thought of her son Yitzchokel.
Yente's stinging remarks pursued her. It was not Yente's saying that she had caused her husband's death that she minded, for everyone knew how hard she hadworked during his illness, it was her saying that Yitzchokel was ashamed of her, that she felt in her "ribs." It occurred to her that when he came home for the night, he never would touch anything in her house.
And thinking this over, she started once more abusing Yente.
"Let her not live to see such a thing, Lord of the World, the One Father!"
It seemed to her that this fancy of hers, that Yitzchokel was ashamed of her, was all Yente's fault, it was all her doing, the witch!
"My child, my Yitzchokel, what business is he of yours?" and the cry escaped her:
"Lord of the World, take up my quarrel, Thou art a Father to the orphaned, Thou shouldst not forgive her this!"
"Who is that? Whom are you scolding so, Taube?" called out Necheh, the rich man's wife, standing in the door of her shop, and overhearing Taube, as she scolded to herself on the walk home.
"Who should it be, housemistress, who but the hussy, the abortion, the witch," answered Taube, pointing with one finger towards the market-place, and, without so much as lifting her head to look at the person speaking to her, she went on her way.
She remembered, as she walked, how, that morning, when she went into Necheh's kitchen with a fowl, she heard her Yitzchokel's voice in the other room disputing with Necheh's boys over the Talmud. She knew that on Wednesdays Yitzchokel ate his "day" at Necheh's table, and she had taken the fowl there that dayon purpose, so that her Yitzchokel should have a good plate of soup, for her poor child was but weakly.
When she heard her son's voice, she had been about to leave the kitchen, and yet she had stayed. Her Yitzchokel disputing with Necheh's children? What did they know as compared with him? Did they come up to his level? "He will be ashamed of me," she thought with a start, "when he finds me with a chicken in my hand. So his mother is a market-woman, they will say, there's a fine partner for you!" But she had not left the kitchen. A child who had never cost a farthing, and she should like to know how much Necheh's children cost their parents! If she had all the money that Yitzchokel ought to have cost, the money that ought to have been spent on him, she would be a rich woman too, and she stood and listened to his voice.
"Oi,heshould have lived to see Yitzchokel, it would have made him well." Soon the door opened, Necheh's boys appeared, and her Yitzchokel with them. His cheeks flamed.
"Good morning!" he said feebly, and was out at the door in no time. She knew that she had caused him vexation, that he was ashamed of her before his companions.
And she asked herself: Her child, her Yitzchokel, who had sucked her milk, what had Necheh to do with him? And she had poured out her bitterness of heart upon Yente's head for this also, that her son had cost her parents nothing, and was yet a better scholar than Necheh's children, and once more she exclaimed:
"Lord of the World! Avenge my quarrel, pay her out for it, let her not live to see another day!"
Passers-by, seeing a woman walking and scolding aloud, laughed.
Night came on, the little town was darkened.
Taube reached home with her armful of baskets, dragged herself up the steps, and opened the door.
"Mame, it's Ma-a-me!" came voices from within.
The house was full of smoke, the children clustered round her in the middle of the room, and never ceased calling out Mame! One child's voice was tearful: "Where have you been all day?" another's more cheerful: "How nice it is to have you back!" and all the voices mingled together into one.
"Be quiet! You don't give me time to draw my breath!" cried the mother, laying down the baskets.
She went to the fireplace, looked about for something, and presently the house was illumined by a smoky lamp.
The feeble shimmer lighted only the part round the hearth, where Taube was kindling two pieces of stick—an old dusty sewing-machine beside a bed, sign of a departed tailor, and a single bed opposite the lamp, strewn with straw, on which lay various fruits, the odor of which filled the room. The rest of the apartment with the remaining beds lay in shadow.
It is a year and a half since her husband, Lezer the tailor, died. While he was still alive, but when his cough had increased, and he could no longer provide for his family, Taube had started earning something on her own account, and the worse the cough, the harder she had to toil, so that by the time she became a widow, she was already used to supporting her whole family.
The eldest boy, Yitzchokel, had been the one consolation of Lezer the tailor's cheerless existence, and Lezer was comforted on his death-bed to think he should leave a good Kaddish behind him.
When he died, the householders had pity on the desolate widow, collected a few rubles, so that she might buy something to traffic with, and, seeing that Yitzchokel was a promising boy, they placed him in the house-of-study, arranged for him to have his daily meals in the houses of the rich, and bade him pass his time over the Talmud.
Taube, when she saw her Yitzchokel taking his meals with the rich, felt satisfied. A weakly boy, what couldshegive him to eat? There, at the rich man's table, he had the best of everything, but it grieved her that he should eat in strange, rich houses—she herself did not know whether she had received a kindness or the reverse, when he was taken off her hands.
One day, sitting at her stall, she spied her Yitzchokel emerge from the Shool-Gass with his Tefillin-bag under his arm, and go straight into the house of Reb Zindel the rich, to breakfast, and a pang went through her heart. She was still on terms, then, with Yente, because immediately after the death of her husband everyone had been kind to her, and she said:
"Believe me, Yente, I don't know myself what it is. What right have I to complain of the householders? They have been very good to me and to my child, made provision for him in rich houses, treated him as if he werenomarket-woman's son, but the child of gentlefolk, and yet every day when I give the other childrentheir dinner, I forget, and lay a plate for my Yitzchokel too, and when I remember that he has his meals at other people's hands, I begin to cry."
"Go along with you for a foolish woman!" answered Yente. "How would he turn out if he were left to you? What is a poor person to give a child to eat, when you come to think of it?"
"You are right, Yente," Taube replied, "but when I portion out the dinner for the others, it cuts me to the heart."
And now, as she sat by the hearth cooking the children's supper, the same feeling came over her, that they had stolen her Yitzchokel away.
When the children had eaten and gone to bed, she stood the lamp on the table, and began mending a shirt for Yitzchokel.
Presently the door opened, and he, Yitzchokel, came in.
Yitzchokel was about fourteen, tall and thin, his pale face telling out sharply against his black cloak beneath his black cap.
"Good evening!" he said in a low tone.
The mother gave up her place to him, feeling that she owed him respect, without knowing exactly why, and it was borne in upon her that she and her poverty together were a misfortune for Yitzchokel.
He took a book out of the case, sat down, and opened it.
The mother gave the lamp a screw, wiped the globe with her apron, and pushed the lamp nearer to him.
"Will you have a glass of tea, Yitzchokel?" she asked softly, wishful to serve him.
"No, I have just had some."
"Or an apple?"
He was silent.
The mother cleaned a plate, laid two apples on it, and a knife, and placed it on the table beside him.
He peeled one of the apples as elegantly as a grown-up man, repeated the blessing aloud, and ate.
When Taube had seen Yitzchokel eat an apple, she felt more like his mother, and drew a little nearer to him.
And Yitzchokel, as he slowly peeled the second apple, began to talk more amiably:
"To-day I talked with the Dayan about going somewhere else. In the house-of-study here, there is nothing to do, nobody to study with, nobody to ask how and where, and in which book, and he advises me to go to the Academy at Makove; he will give me a letter to Reb Chayyim, the headmaster, and ask him to befriend me."
When Taube heard that her son was about to leave her, she experienced a great shock, but the words, Dayan, Rosh-Yeshiveh, mekarev-sein, and other high-sounding bits of Hebrew, which she did not understand, overawed her, and she felt she must control herself. Besides, the words held some comfort for her: Yitzchokel was holding counsel with her, with her—his mother!
"Of course, if the Dayan says so," she answered piously.
"Yes," Yitzchokel continued, "there one can hear lectures with all the commentaries; Reb Chayyim, theauthor of the book "Light of the Torah," is a well-known scholar, and there one has a chance of getting to be something decent."
His words entirely reassured her, she felt a certain happiness and exaltation, because he was her child, because she was the mother of such a child, such a son, and because, were it not for her, Yitzchokel would not be there at all. At the same time her heart pained her, and she grew sad.
Presently she remembered her husband, and burst out crying:
"If onlyhehad lived, if only he could have had this consolation!" she sobbed.
Yitzchokel minded his book.
That night Taube could not sleep, for at the thought of Yitzchokel's departure the heart ached within her.
And she dreamt, as she lay in bed, that some great Rabbis with tall fur caps and long earlocks came in and took her Yitzchokel away from her; her Yitzchokel was wearing a fur cap and locks like theirs, and he held a large book, and he went far away with the Rabbis, and she stood and gazed after him, not knowing, should she rejoice or weep.
Next morning she woke late. Yitzchokel had already gone to his studies. She hastened to dress the children, and hurried to the market-place. At her stall she fell athinking, and fancied she was sitting beside her son, who was a Rabbi in a large town; there he sits in shoes and socks, a great fur cap on his head, and looks into a huge book. She sits at his right hand knitting asock, the door opens, and there appears Yente carrying a dish, to ask a ritual question of Taube's son.
A customer disturbed her sweet dream.
After this Taube sat up whole nights at the table, by the light of the smoky lamp, rearranging and mending Yitzchokel's shirts for the journey; she recalled with every stitch that she was sewing for Yitzchokel, who was going to the Academy, to sit and study, and who, every Friday, would put on a shirt prepared for him by his mother.
Yitzchokel sat as always on the other side of the table, gazing into a book. The mother would have liked to speak to him, but she did not know what to say.
Taube and Yitzchokel were up before daylight.
Yitzchokel kissed his little brothers in their sleep, and said to his sleeping little sisters, "Remain in health"; one sister woke and began to cry, saying she wanted to go with him. The mother embraced and quieted her softly, then she and Yitzchokel left the room, carrying his box between them.
The street was still fast asleep, the shops were still closed, behind the church belfry the morning star shone coldly forth onto the cold morning dew on the roofs, and there was silence over all, except in the market-place, where there stood a peasant's cart laden with fruit. It was surrounded by women, and Yente's voice was heard from afar:
"Five gulden and ten groschen,' and I'll take the lot!"
And Taube, carrying Yitzchokel's box behind him, walked thus through the market-place, and, catching sight of Yente, she looked at her with pride.
They came out behind the town, onto the highroad, and waited for an "opportunity" to come by on its way to Lentschitz, whence Yitzchokel was to proceed to Kutno.
The sky was grey and cold, and mingled in the distance with the dingy mist rising from the fields, and the road, silent and deserted, ran away out of sight.
They sat down beside the barrier, and waited for the "opportunity."
The mother scraped together a few twenty-kopek-pieces out of her pocket, and put them into his bosom, twisted up in his shirt.
Presently a cart came by, crowded with passengers. She secured a seat for Yitzchokel for forty groschen, and hoisted the box into the cart.
"Go in health! Don't forget your mother!" she cried in tears.
Yitzchokel was silent.
She wanted to kiss her child, but she knew it was not the thing for a grown-up boy to be kissed, so she refrained.
Yitzchokel mounted the cart, the passengers made room for him among them.
"Remain in health, mother!" he called out as the cart set off.
"Go in health, my child! Sit and study, and don't forget your mother!" she cried after him.
The cart moved further and further, till it was climbing the hill in the distance.
Taube still stood and followed it with her gaze; and not till it was lost to view in the dust did she turn and walk back to the town.
She took a road that should lead her past the cemetery.
There was a rather low plank fence round it, and the gravestones were all to be seen, looking up to Heaven.
Taube went and hitched herself up onto the fence, and put her head over into the "field," looking for something among the tombs, and when her eyes had discovered a familiar little tombstone, she shook her head:
"Lezer, Lezer! Your son has driven away to the Academy to study Torah!"
Then she remembered the market, where Yente must by now have bought up the whole cart-load of fruit. There would be nothing left for her, and she hurried into the town.
She walked at a great pace, and felt very pleased with herself. She was conscious of having done a great thing, and this dissipated her annoyance at the thought of Yente acquiring all the fruit.
Two weeks later she got a letter from Yitzchokel, and, not being able to read it herself, she took it to Reb Yochanan, the teacher, that he might read it for her.
Reb Yochanan put on his glasses, cleared his throat thoroughly, and began to read:
"Le-Immi ahuvossi hatzenuoh" ...
"What is the translation?" asked Taube.
"It is the way to address a mother," explained Reb Yochanan, and continued.
Taube's face had brightened, she put her apron to her eyes and wept for joy.
The reader observed this and read on.
"What is the translation, the translation, Reb Yochanan?" the woman kept on asking.
"Never mind, it's not for you, you wouldn't understand—it is an exposition of a passage in the Gemoreh."
She was silent, the Hebrew words awed her, and she listened respectfully to the end.
"I salute Immi ahuvossi and Achoissai, Sarah and Goldeh, and Ochi Yakov; tell him to study diligently. I have all my 'days' and I sleep at Reb Chayyim's," gave out Reb Yochanan suddenly in Yiddish.
Taube contented herself with these few words, took back the letter, put it in her pocket, and went back to her stall with great joy.
"This evening," she thought, "I will show it to the Dayan, and let him read it too."
And no sooner had she got home, cooked the dinner, and fed the children, than she was off with the letter to the Dayan.
She entered the room, saw the tall bookcases filled with books covering the walls, and a man with a white beard sitting at the end of the table reading.
"What is it, a ritual question?" asked the Dayan from his place.
"No."
"What then?"
"A letter from my Yitzchokel."
The Dayan rose, came up and looked at her, took the letter, and began to read it silently to himself.
"Well done, excellent, good! The little fellow knows what he is saying," said the Dayan more to himself than to her.
Tears streamed from Taube's eyes.
"If onlyhehad lived! if only he had lived!"
"Shechitas chutz ... Rambam ... Tossafos is right ..." went on the Dayan.
"Her Yitzchokel, Taube the market-woman's son," she thought proudly.
"Take the letter," said the Dayan, at last, "I've read it all through."
"Well, and what?" asked the woman.
"What? What do you want then?"
"What does it say?" she asked in a low voice.
"There is nothing in it for you, you wouldn't understand," replied the Dayan, with a smile.
Yitzchokel continued to write home, the Yiddish words were fewer every time, often only a greeting to his mother. And she came to Reb Yochanan, and he read her the Yiddish phrases, with which she had to be satisfied. "The Hebrew words are for the Dayan," she said to herself.
But one day, "There is nothing in the letter for you," said Reb Yochanan.
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing," he said shortly.
"Read me at least what there is."
"But it is all Hebrew, Torah, you won't understand."
"Very well, then, Iwon'tunderstand...."
"Go in health, and don't drive me distracted."
Taube left him, and resolved to go that evening to the Dayan.
"Rebbe, excuse me, translate this into Yiddish," she said, handing him the letter.
The Dayan took the letter and read it.
"Nothing there for you," he said.
"Rebbe," said Taube, shyly, "excuse me, translate the Hebrew for me!"
"But it is Torah, an exposition of a passage in the Torah. You won't understand."
"Well, if you would only read the letter in Hebrew, but aloud, so that I may hear what he says."
"But you won't understand one word, it's Hebrew!" persisted the Dayan, with a smile.
"Well, Iwon'tunderstand, that's all," said the woman, "but it's my child's Torah, my child's!"
The Dayan reflected a while, then he began to read aloud.
Presently, however, he glanced at Taube, and remembered he was expounding the Torah to a woman! And he felt thankful no one had heard him.
"Take the letter, there is nothing in it for you," he said compassionately, and sat down again in his place.
"But it is my child's Torah, my Yitzchokel's letter, why mayn't I hear it? What does it matter if I don't understand? It is my own child!"
The Dayan turned coldly away.
When Taube reached home after this interview, she sat down at the table, took down the lamp from the wall, and looked silently at the letter by its smoky light.
She kissed the letter, but then it occurred to her that she was defiling it with her lips, she, a sinful woman!
She rose, took her husband's prayer-book from the bookshelf, and laid the letter between its leaves.
Then with trembling lips she kissed the covers of the book, and placed it once more in the bookcase.
So that you should not suspect me of taking his part, I will write a short preface to my story.
It is written: "A man never so much as moves his finger, but it has been so decreed from above," and whatsoever a man does, he fulfils God's will—even animals and birds (I beg to distinguish!) carry out God's wishes: whenever a bird flies, it fulfils a precept, because God, blessed is He, formed it to fly, and an ox the same when it lows, and even a dog when it barks—all praise God with their voices, and sing hymns to Him, each after his manner.
And even the wicked who transgresses fulfils God's will in spite of himself, because why? Do you suppose he takes pleasure in transgressing? Isn't he certain to repent? Well, then? He is just carrying out the will of Heaven.
And the Evil Inclination himself! Why, every time he is sent to persuade a Jew to sin, he weeps and sighs: Woe is me, that I should be sent on such an errand!
After this little preface, I will tell you the story itself.
Formerly, before the thing happened, he was called Reb Avròhom, but afterwards they ceased calling him by his name, and said simply the Sinner.
Reb Avròhom was looked up to and respected by the whole town, a God-fearing Jew, beloved and honored by all, and mothers wished they might have children like him.
He sat the whole day in the house-of-study and learned. Not that he was a great scholar, but he was a pious, scrupulously observant Jew, who followed the straight and beaten road, a man without any pride. He used to recite the prayers in Shool together with the strangers by the door, and quite quietly, without any shouting or, one may say, any special enthusiasm. His prayer that rose to Heaven, the barred gates opening before it till it entered and was taken up into the Throne of Glory, this prayer of his did not become a diamond there, dazzling the eye, but a softly glistening pearl.
And how, you ask, did he come to be called the Sinner? On this wise: You must know that everyone, even those who were hardest on him after the affair, acknowledged that he was a great lover of Israel, and I will add that his sin and, Heaven defend us, his coming to such a fall, all proceeded from his being such a lover of Israel, such a patriot.
And it was just the simple Jew, the very common folk, that he loved.
He used to say: A Jew who is a driver, for instance, and busy all the week with his horses and cart, and soaked in materialism for six days at a stretch, so that he only just manages to get in his prayers—when he comes home on Sabbath and sits down to table, and the bed is made, and the candles burning, and his wife and children are round him, and they sing hymns together, well, the driver dozing off over his prayer-book and forgetting to say grace, I tell you, said Reb Avròhom, the Divine Presence rests on his house and rejoices andsays, "Happy am I that I chose me out this people," for such a Jew keeps Sabbath, rests himself, and his horse rests, keeps Sabbath likewise, stands in the stable, and is also conscious that it is the holy Sabbath, and when the driver rises from his sleep, he leads the animal out to pasture, waters it, and they all go for a walk with it in the meadow.
And this walk of theirs is more acceptable to God, blessed is He, than repeating "Bless the Lord, O my soul." It may be this was because he himself was of humble origin; he had lived till he was thirteen with his father, a farmer, in an out-of-the-way village, and ignorant even of his letters. True, his father had taken a youth into the house to teach him Hebrew, but Reb Avròhom as a boy was very wild, wouldn't mind his book, and ran all day after the oxen and horses.
He used to lie out in the meadow, hidden in the long grasses, near him the horses with their heads down pulling at the grass, and the view stretched far, far away, into the endless distance, and above him spread the wide sky, through which the clouds made their way, and the green, juicy earth seemed to look up at it and say: "Look, sky, and see how cheerfully I try to obey God's behest, to make the world green with grass!" And the sky made answer: "See, earth, how I try to fulfil God's command, by spreading myself far and wide!" and the few trees scattered over the fields were like witnesses to their friendly agreement. And little Avròhom lay and rejoiced in the goodness and all the work of God. Suddenly, as though he had received a revelation from Heaven, he went home, and asked the youth who washis teacher, "What blessing should one recite on feeling happy at sight of the world?" The youth laughed, and said: "You stupid boy! One says a blessing over bread and water, but as to saying one overthis world—who ever heard of such a thing?"
Avròhom wondered, "The world is beautiful, the sky so pretty, the earth so sweet and soft, everything is so delightful to look at, and one says no blessing over it all!"
At thirteen he had left the village and come to the town. There, in the house-of-study, he saw the head of the Academy sitting at one end of the table, and around it, the scholars, all reciting in fervent, appealing tones that went to his heart.
The boy began to cry, whereupon the head of the Academy turned, and saw a little boy with a torn hat, crying, and his hair coming out through the holes, and his boots slung over his shoulder, like a peasant lad fresh from the road. The scholars laughed, but the Rosh ha-Yeshiveh asked him what he wanted.
"To learn," he answered in a low, pleading voice.
The Rosh ha-Yeshiveh had compassion on him, and took him as a pupil. Avròhom applied himself earnestly to the Torah, and in a few days could read Hebrew and follow the prayers without help.
And the way he prayed was a treat to watch. You should have seen him! He just stood and talked, as one person talks to another, quietly and affectionately, without any tricks of manner.
Once the Rosh ha-Yeshiveh saw him praying, and said before his whole Academy, "I can learn better thanhe, but when it comes to praying, I don't reach to his ankles." That is what he said.
So Reb Avròhom lived there till he was grown up, and had married the daughter of a simple tailor. Indeed, he learnt tailoring himself, and lived by his ten fingers. By day he sat and sewed with an open prayer-book before him, and recited portions of the Psalms to himself. After dark he went into the house-of-study, so quietly that no one noticed him, and passed half the night over the Talmud.
Once some strangers came to the town, and spent the night in the house-of-study behind the stove. Suddenly they heard a thin, sweet voice that was like a tune in itself. They started up, and saw him at his book. The small lamp hanging by a cord poured a dim light upon him where he sat, while the walls remained in shadow. He studied with ardor, with enthusiasm, only his enthusiasm was not for beholders, it was all within; he swayed slowly to and fro, and his shadow swayed with him, and he softly chanted the Gemoreh. By degrees his voice rose, his face kindled, and his eyes began to glow, one could see that his very soul was resolving itself into his chanting. The Divine Presence hovered over him, and he drank in its sweetness. And in the middle of his reading, he got up and walked about the room, repeating in a trembling whisper, "Lord of the World! O Lord of the World!"
Then his voice grew as suddenly calm, and he stood still, as though he had dozed off where he stood, for pure delight. The lamp grew dim, and still he stood and stood and never moved.
Awe fell on the travellers behind the stove, and they cried out. He started and approached them, and they had to close their eyes against the brightness of his face, the light that shone out of his eyes! And he stood there quite quietly and simply, and asked in a gentle voice why they had called out. Were they cold?
And he took off his cloak and spread it over them.
Next morning the travellers told all this, and declared that no sooner had the cloak touched them than they had fallen asleep, and they had seen and heard nothing more that night. After this, when the whole town had got wind of it, and they found out who it was that night in the house-of-study, the people began to believe that he was a Tzaddik, and they came to him with Petitions, as Chassidim to their Rebbes, asking him to pray for their health and other wants. But when they brought him such a petition, he would smile and say: "Believe me, a little boy who says grace over a piece of bread which his mother has given him, he can help you more than twenty such as I."
Of course, his words made no impression, except that they brought more petitions than ever, upon which he said:
"You insist on a man of flesh and blood such as I being your advocate with God, blessed is He. Hear a parable: To what shall we liken the thing? To the light of the sun and the light of a small lamp. You can rejoice in the sunlight as much as you please, and no one can take your joy from you; the poorest and most humble may revive himself with it, so long as his eyes can behold it, and even though a man should sit, which God forbid,in a dungeon with closed windows, a reflection will make its way in through the chinks, and he shall rejoice in the brightness. But with the poor light of a lamp it is otherwise. A rich man buys a quantity of lamps and illumines his house, while a poor man sits in darkness. God, blessed be He, is the great light that shines for the whole world, reviving and refreshing all His works. The whole world is full of His mercy, and His compassion is over all His creatures. Believe me, you have no need of an advocate with Him; God is your Father, and you are His dear children. How should a child need an advocate with his father?"
The ordinary folk heard and were silent, but our people, the Chassidim, were displeased. And I'll tell you another thing, I was the first to mention it to the Rebbe, long life to him, and he, as is well known, commanded Reb Avròhom to his presence.
So we set to work to persuade Reb Avròhom and talked to him till he had to go with us.
The journey lasted four days.
I remember one night, the moon was wandering in a blue ocean of sky that spread ever so far, till it mingled with a cloud, and she looked at us, pitifully and appealingly, as though to ask us if we knew which way she ought to go, to the right or to the left, and presently the cloud came upon her, and she began struggling to get out of it, and a minute or two later she was free again and smiling at us.
Then a little breeze came, and stroked our faces, and we looked round to the four sides of the world, and it seemed as if the whole world were wrapped in a prayer-scarfwoven of mercy, and we fell into a slight melancholy, a quiet sadness, but so sweet and pleasant, it felt like on Sabbath at twilight at the Third Meal.
Suddenly Reb Avròhom exclaimed: "Jews, have you said the blessings on the appearance of the new moon?" We turned towards the moon, laid down our bundles, washed our hands in a little stream that ran by the roadside, and repeated the blessings for the new moon.
He stood looking into the sky, his lips scarcely moving, as was his wont. "Sholom Alechem!" he said, turning to me, and his voice quivered like a violin, and his eyes called to peace and unity. Then an awe of Reb Avròhom came over me for the first time, and when we had finished sanctifying the moon our melancholy left us, and we prepared to continue our way.
But still he stood and gazed heavenward, sighing: "Lord of the Universe! How beautiful is the world which Thou hast made by Thy goodness and great mercy, and these are over all Thy creatures. They all love Thee, and are glad in Thee, and Thou art glad in them, and the whole world is full of Thy glory."
I glanced up at the moon, and it seemed that she was still looking at me, and saying, "I'm lost; which way am I to go?"
We arrived Friday afternoon, and had time enough to go to the bath and to greet the Rebbe.
He, long life to him, was seated in the reception-room beside a table, his long lashes low over his eyes, leaning on his left hand, while he greeted incomers with his right. We went up to him, one at a time, shook hands, and said "Sholom Alechem," and he, long life to him,said nothing to us. Reb Avròhom also went up to him, and held out his hand.
A change came over the Rebbe, he raised his eyelids with his fingers, and looked at Reb Avròhom for some time in silence.
And Reb Avròhom looked at the Rebbe, and was silent too.
The Chassidim were offended by such impertinence.
That evening we assembled in the Rebbe's house-of-study, to usher in the Sabbath. It was tightly packed with Jews, one pushing the other, or seizing hold of his girdle, only beside the ark was there a free space left, a semicircle, in the middle of which stood the Rebbe and prayed.
But Reb Avròhom stood by the door among the poor guests, and prayed after his fashion.
"To Kiddush!" called the beadle.
The Rebbe's wife, daughters, and daughters-in-law now appeared, and their jewelry, their precious stones, and their pearls, sparkled and shone.
The Rebbe stood and repeated the prayer of Sanctification.
He was slightly bent, and his grey beard swept his breast. His eyes were screened by his lashes, and he recited the Sanctification in a loud voice, giving to every word a peculiar inflection, to every sign an expression of its own.
"To table!" was called out next.
At the head of the table sat the Rebbe, sons and sons-in-law to the left, relations to the right of him, then the principal aged Jews, then the rich.
The people stood round about.
The Rebbe ate, and began to serve out the leavings, to his sons and sons-in-law first, and to the rest of those sitting at the table after.
Then there was silence, the Rebbe began to expound the Torah. The portion of the week was Numbers, chapter eight, and the Rebbe began:
"When a man's soul is on a low level, enveloped, Heaven defend us, in uncleanness, and the Divine spark within the soul wishes to rise to a higher level, and cannot do so alone, but must needs be helped, it is a Mitzveh to help her, to raise her, and this Mitzveh is specially incumbent on the priest. This is the meaning of 'the seven lamps shall give light over against the candlestick,' by which is meant the holy Torah. The priest must bring the Jew's heart near to the Torah; in this way he is able to raise it. And who is the priest? The righteous in his generation, because since the Temple was destroyed, the saint must be a priest, for thus is the command from above, that he shall be the priest...."
"Avròhom!" the Rebbe called suddenly, "Avròhom! Come here, I am calling you."
The other went up to him.
"Avròhom, did you understand? Did you make out the meaning of what I said?
"Your silence," the Rebbe went on, "is an acknowledgment. I must raise you, even though it be against my will and against your will."
There was dead stillness in the room, people waiting to hear what would come next.
"You are silent?" asked the Rebbe, now a little sternly.
"Youwant to be a raiser of souls? Haveyou, bless and preserve us, bought the Almighty for yourself? Do you think that a Jew can approach nearer to God, blessed is He, throughyou? Thatyouare the 'handle of the pestle' and the rest of the Jews nowhere? God's grace is everywhere, whichever way we turn, every time we move a limb we feel God! Everyone must seek Him in his own heart, because there it is that He has caused the Divine Presence to rest. Everywhere and always can the Jew draw near to God...."
Thus answered Reb Avròhom, but our people, the Rebbe's followers, shut his mouth before he had made an end, and had the Rebbe not held them back, they would have torn him in pieces on the spot.
"Leave him alone!" he commanded the Chassidim.
And to Reb Avròhom he said:
"Avròhom, you have sinned!"
And from that day forward he was called the Sinner, and was shut out from everywhere. The Chassidim kept their eye on him, and persecuted him, and he was not even allowed to pray in the house-of-study.
And I'll tell you what I think: A wicked man, even when he acts according to his wickedness, fulfils God's command. And who knows? Perhaps they were both right!
Born, 1885, in Slutzk, Government of Minsk (Lithuania), White Russia; was in America for a short time in 1908; contributor to Die Zukunft; co-editor of Ha-Olam, Wilna; Hebrew and Yiddish writer; collected works: Yiddish, Gesammelte Schriften, Warsaw, 1910; Hebrew, Sippurim, Cracow, 1910.
Feivke was a wild little villager, about seven years old, who had tumbled up from babyhood among Gentile urchins, the only Jewish boy in the place, just as his father Mattes, the Kozlov smith, was the only Jewish householder there. Feivke had hardly ever met, or even seen, anyone but the people of Kozlov and their children. Had it not been for his black eyes, with their moody, persistent gaze from beneath the shade of a deep, worn-out leather cap, it would have puzzled anyone to make out his parentage, to know whence that torn and battered face, that red scar across the top lip, those large, black, flat, unchild-like feet. But the eyes explained everything—his mother's eyes.
Feivke spent the whole summer with the village urchins in the neighboring wood, picking mushrooms, climbing the trees, driving wood-pigeons off their high nests, or wading knee-deep in the shallow bog outside to seek the black, slippery bog-worms; or else he found himself out in the fields, jumping about on the top of a load of hay under a hot sky, and shouting to his companions, till he was bathed in perspiration. At other times, he gathered himself away into a dark, cool barn, scrambled at the peril of his life along a round beam under the roof, crunched dried pears, saw how the sun sprinkled the darkness with a thousand sparks, and—thought. He could always think about Mikita, the son of the village elder, who had almost risen to be conductor on a railway train, and who came from a long way off to visithis father, brass buttons to his coat and a purse full of silver rubles, and piped to the village girls of an evening on the most cunning kind of whistle.
How often it had happened that Feivke could not be found, and did not even come home to bed! But his parents troubled precious little about him, seeing that he was growing up a wild, dissolute boy, and the displeasure of Heaven rested on his head.
Feivke was not a timid child, but there were two things he was afraid of: God and davvening. Feivke had never, to the best of his recollection, seen God, but he often heard His name, they threatened him with It, glanced at the ceiling, and sighed. And this embittered somewhat his sweet, free days. He felt that the older he grew, the sooner he would have to present himself before this terrifying, stern, and unfamiliar God, who was hidden somewhere, whether near or far he could not tell. One day Feivke all but ran a danger. It was early on a winter morning; there was a cold, wild wind blowing outside, and indoors there was a black stranger Jew, in a thick sheepskin, breaking open the tin charity boxes. The smith's wife served the stranger with hot potatoes and sour milk, whereupon the stranger piously closed his eyes, and, having reopened them, caught sight of Feivke through the white steam rising from the dish of potatoes—Feivke, huddled up in a corner—and beckoned him nearer.
"Have you begun to learn, little boy?" he questioned, and took his cheek between two pale, cold fingers, which sent a whiff of snuff up Feivke's nose. His mother, standing by the stove, reddened, and madesome inaudible answer. The black stranger threw up his eyes, and slowly shook his head inside the wide sheepskin collar. This shaking to and fro of his head boded no good, and Feivke grew strangely cold inside. Then he grew hot all over, and, for several nights after, thousands of long, cold, pale fingers pursued and pinched him in his dreams.
They had never yet taught him to recite his prayers. Kozlov was a lonely village, far from any Jewish settlement. Every Sabbath morning Feivke, snug in bed, watched his father put on a mended black cloak, wrap himself in the Tallis, shut his eyes, take on a bleating voice, and, turning to the wall, commence a series of bows. Feivke felt that his father was bowing before God, and this frightened him. He thought it a very rash proceeding. Feivke, in his father's place, would sooner have had nothing to do with God. He spent most of the time while his father was at his prayers cowering under the coverlet, and only crept out when he heard his mother busy with plates and spoons, and the pungent smell of chopped radishes and onions penetrated to the bedroom.
Winters and summers passed, and Feivke grew to be seven years old, just such a Feivke as we have described. And the last summer passed, and gave way to autumn.
That autumn the smith's wife was brought to bed of a seventh child, and before she was about again, the cold, damp days were upon them, with the misty mornings, when a fish shivers in the water. And the days of her confinement were mingled for the lonelyvillage Jewess with the Solemn Days of that year into a hard and dreary time. She went slowly about the house, as in a fog, without help or hope, and silent as a shadow. That year they all led a dismal life. The elder children, girls, went out to service in the neighboring towns, to make their own way among strangers. The peasants had become sharper and worse than formerly, and the smith's strength was not what it had been. So his wife resolved to send the two men of the family, Mattes and Feivke, to a Minyan this Yom Kippur. Maybe, iftwowent, God would not be able to resist them, and would soften His heart.
One morning, therefore, Mattes the smith washed, donned his mended Sabbath cloak, went to the window, and blinked through it with his red and swollen eyes. It was the Eve of the Day of Atonement. The room was well-warmed, and there was a smell of freshly-stewed carrots. The smith's wife went out to seek Feivke through the village, and brought him home dishevelled and distracted, and all of a glow. She had torn him away from an early morning of excitement and delight such as could never, never be again. Mikita, the son of the village elder, had put his father's brown colt into harness for the first time. The whole contingent of village boys had been present to watch the fiery young animal twisting between the shafts, drawing loud breaths into its dilated and quivering nostrils, looking wildly at the surrounding boys, and stamping impatiently, as though it would have liked to plow away the earth from under its feet. And suddenly it had given a bound and started careering through the village withthe cart behind it. There was a glorious noise and commotion! Feivke was foremost among those who, in a cloud of dust and at the peril of their life, had dashed to seize the colt by the reins.
His mother washed him, looked him over from the low-set leather hat down to his great, black feet, stuffed a packet of food into his hands, and said:
"Go and be a good and devout boy, and God will forgive you."
She stood on the threshold of the house, and looked after her two men starting for a distant Minyan. The bearing of seven children had aged and weakened the once hard, obstinate woman, and, left standing alone in the doorway, watching her poor, barefoot, perverse-natured boy on his way to present himself for the first time before God, she broke down by the Mezuzeh and wept.
Silently, step by step, Feivke followed his father between the desolate stubble fields. It was a good ten miles' walk to the large village where the Minyan assembled, and the fear and the wonder in Feivke's heart increased all the way. He did not yet quite understand whither he was being taken, and what was to be done with him there, and the impetus of the brown colt's career through the village had not as yet subsided in his head. Why had Father put on his black mended cloak? Why had he brought a Tallis with him, and a white shirt-like garment? There was certainly some hour of calamity and terror ahead, something was preparing which had never happened before.
They went by the great Kozlov wood, wherein every tree stood silent and sad for its faded and fallen leaves. Feivke dropped behind his father, and stepped aside into the wood. He wondered: Should he run away and hide in the wood? He would willingly stay there for the rest of his life. He would foregather with Nasta, the barrel-maker's son, he of the knocked-out eye; they would roast potatoes out in the wood, and now and again, stolen-wise, milk the village cows for their repast. Let them beat him as much as they pleased, let them kill him on the spot, nothing should induce him to leave the wood again!
But no! As Feivke walked along under the silent trees and through the fallen leaves, and perceived that the whole wood was filled through and through with a soft, clear light, and heard the rustle of the leaves beneath his step, a strange terror took hold of him. The wood had grown so sparse, the trees so discolored, and he should have to remain in the stillness alone, and roam about in the winter wind!
Mattes the smith had stopped, wondering, and was blinking around with his sick eyes.
"Feivke, where are you?"
Feivke appeared out of the wood.
"Feivke, to-day you mustn't go into the wood. To-day God may yet—to-day you must be a good boy," said the smith, repeating his wife's words as they came to his mind, "and you must say Amen."
Feivke hung his head and looked at his great, bare, black feet. "But if I don't know how," he said sullenly.
"It's no great thing to say Amen!" his father replied encouragingly. "When you hear the other people say it, you can say it, too! Everyone must say Amen, then God will forgive them," he added, recalling again his wife and her admonitions.
Feivke was silent, and once more followed his father step by step. What will they ask him, and what is he to answer? It seemed to him now that they were going right over away yonder where the pale, scarcely-tinted sky touched the earth. There, on a hill, sits a great, old God in a large sheepskin cloak. Everyone goes up to him, and He asks them questions, which they have to answer, and He shakes His head to and fro inside the sheepskin collar. And what is he, a wild, ignorant little boy, to answer this great, old God?
Feivke had committed a great many transgressions concerning which his mother was constantly admonishing him, but now he was thinking only of two great transgressions committed recently, of which his mother knew nothing. One with regard to Anishka the beggar. Anishka was known to the village, as far back as it could remember, as an old, blind beggar, who went the round of the villages, feeling his way with a long stick. And one day Feivke and another boy played him a trick: they placed a ladder in his way, and Anishka stumbled and fell, hurting his nose. Some peasants had come up and caught Feivke. Anishka sat in the middle of the road with blood on his face, wept bitterly, and declared that God would not forget his blood that had been spilt. The peasants had given the little Zhydek a sound thrashing, but Feivke feltnow as if that would not count: God would certainly remember the spilling of Anishka's blood.
Feivke's second hidden transgression had been committed outside the village, among the graves of the peasants. A whole troop of boys, Feivke in their midst, had gone pigeon hunting, aiming at the pigeons with stones, and a stone of Feivke's had hit the naked figure on the cross that stood among the graves. The Gentile boys had started and taken fright, and those among them who were Feivke's good friends told him he had actually hit the son of God, and that the thing would have consequences; it was one for which people had their heads cut off.
These two great transgressions now stood before him, and his heart warned him that the hour had come when he would be called to account for what he had done to Anishka and to God's son. Only he did not know what answer he could make.
By the time they came near the windmill belonging to the large strange village, the sun had begun to set. The village river with the trees beside it were visible a long way off, and, crossing the river, a long high bridge.
"The Minyan is there," and Mattes pointed his finger at the thatched roofs shining in the sunset.
Feivke looked down from the bridge into the deep, black water that lay smooth and still in the shadow of the trees. The bridge was high and the water deep! Feivke felt sick at heart, and his mouth was dry.
"But, Tate, I won't be able to answer," he let out in despair.
"What, not Amen? Eh, eh, you little silly, that is no great matter. Where is the difficulty? One just ups and answers!" said his father, gently, but Feivke heard that the while his father was trying to quiet him, his own voice trembled.
At the other end of the bridge there appeared the great inn with the covered terrace, and in front of the building were moving groups of Jews in holiday garb, with red handkerchiefs in their hands, women in yellow silk head-kerchiefs, and boys in new clothes holding small prayer-books. Feivke remained obstinately outside the crowd, and hung about the stable, his black eyes staring defiantly from beneath the worn-out leather cap. But he was not left alone long, for soon there came to him a smart, yellow-haired boy, with restless little light-colored eyes, and a face like a chicken's, covered with freckles. This little boy took a little bottle with some essence in it out of his pocket, gave it a twist and a flourish in the air, and suddenly applied it to Feivke's nose, so that the strong waters spurted into his nostril. Then he asked:
"To whom do you belong?"
Feivke blew the water out of his nose, and turned his head away in silence.
"Listen, turkey, lazy dog! What are you doing there? Have you said Minchah?"
"N-no...."
"Is the Jew in a torn cloak there your father?"
"Y-yes ... T-tate...."
The yellow-haired boy took Feivke by the sleeve.
"Come along, and you'll see what they'll do to your father."
Inside the room into which Feivke was dragged by his new friend, it was hot, and there was a curious, unfamiliar sound. Feivke grew dizzy. He saw Jews bowing and bending along the wall and beating their breasts—now they said something, and now they wept in an odd way. People coughed and spat sobbingly, and blew their noses with their red handkerchiefs. Chairs and stiff benches creaked, while a continual clatter of plates and spoons came through the wall.
In a corner, beside a heap of hay, Feivke saw his father where he stood, looking all round him, blinking shamefacedly and innocently with his weak, red eyes. Round him was a lively circle of little boys whispering with one another in evident expectation.
"That is his boy, with the lip," said the chicken-face, presenting Feivke.
At the same moment a young man came up to Mattes. He wore a white collar without a tie and with a pointed brass stud. This young man held a whip, which he brandished in the air like a rider about to mount his horse.
"Well, Reb Smith."
"Am I ... I suppose I am to lie down?" asked Mattes, subserviently, still smiling round in the same shy and yet confiding manner.
"Be so good as to lie down."
The young man gave a mischievous look at the boys, and made a gesture in the air with the whip.
Mattes began to unbutton his cloak, and slowly and cautiously let himself down onto the hay, whereupon the young man applied the whip with might and main, and his whole face shone.