"Where am I to put it, then? In the sky, eh?" asked Berele, and pushed Yainkele aside.
"Go away, I will leave you half. Don't confuse me!—You be quiet!" and Yainkele moved away, and stared with terrified eyes at Berele, as he sat there, bent double,and wrote and wrote, knitted his brows, and dipped the pen, and reflected, and wrote again.
"That's enough!" screamed Yainkele, after a few minutes.
"It's not the half yet," answered Berele, writing on.
"But I ought to have more than half!" said Yainkele, crossly. The longing to write, to pour out his heart onto the post-card, was overwhelming him.
But Berele did not even hear: he had launched out into such rhetorical Hebrew expressions as "First of all, I let you know that I am alive and well," which he had learnt in "The Perfect Letter-Writer," and his little bits of news remained unwritten. He had yet to abuse Lezer the carrier, to tell how many pages of the Gemoreh he had learnt, to let them know they were to send another parcel, because they had no "Monday" and no "Wednesday," and the "Tuesday" was no better than nothing.
And Berele writes and writes, and Yainkele can no longer contain himself—he sees that Berele is taking up more than half the card.
"Enough!" He ran forward with a cry, and seized the penholder.
"Three words more!" begged Berele.
"But remember, not more than three!" and Yainkele's eyes flashed. Berele set to work to write the three words; but that which he wished to express required yet ten to fifteen words, and Berele, excited by the fact of writing, pecked away at the paper, and took up yet another bit of the other half.
"You stop!" shrieked Yainkele, and broke into hysterical sobs, as he saw what a small space remained for him.
"Hush! Just 'from me, thy son,'" begged Berele, "nothing else!"
But Yainkele, remembering that he had given a whole vierer toward the post-card, and that they would read so much of Berele at home, and so little of him, flew into a passion, and came and tried to tear away the card from under Berele's hands. "Let me put 'from me, thy son'!" implored Berele.
"It will dowithout'from me, thy son'!" screamed Yainkele, although hefeltthat one ought to put it. His anger rose, and he began tugging at the card. Berele held tight, but Yainkele gave such a pull that the card tore in two.
"What have you done, villain!" cried Berele, glaring at Yainkele.
"Imeantto do it!" wailed Yainkele.
"Oh, but why did you?" cried Berele, gazing in despair at the two torn halves of the post-card.
But Yainkele could not answer. The tears choked him, and he threw himself against the wall, tearing his hair. Then Berele gave way, too, and the little room resounded with lamentations.
It was in the large synagogue in Klemenke. The week-day service had come to an end. The town cantor who sings all the prayers, even when he prays alone, and who is longer over them than other people, had already folded his prayer-scarf, and was humming the day's Psalm to himself, to a tune. He sang the last words "cantorishly" high:
"And He will be our guide until death." In the last word "death" he tried, as usual, to rise artistically to the higher octave, then to fall very low, and to rise again almost at once into the height; but this time he failed, the note stuck in his throat and came out false.
He got a fright, and in his fright he looked round to make sure no one was standing beside him. Seeing only old Henoch, his alarm grew less, he knew that old Henoch was deaf.
As he went out with his prayer-scarf and phylacteries under his arm, the unsuccessful "death" rang in his ears and troubled him.
"Plague take it," he muttered, "it never once happened to me before."
Soon, however, he remembered that two weeks ago, on the Sabbath before the New Moon, as he stood praying with the choristers before the altar, nearly the same thing had happened to him when he sang "He is our God" as a solo in the Kedushah.
Happily no one remarked it—anyway the "bass" had said nothing to him. And the memory of the unsuccessful "Hear, O Israel" of two weeks ago and of to-day's "unto death" were mingled together, and lay heavily on his heart.
He would have liked to try the note once more as he walked, but the street was just then full of people, and he tried to refrain till he should reach home. Contrary to his usual custom, he began taking rapid steps, and it looked as if he were running away from someone. On reaching home, he put away his prayer-scarf without saying so much as good morning, recovered his breath after the quick walk, and began to sing, "He shall be our guide until death."
"That's right, you have so little time to sing in! The day is too short for you!" exclaimed the cantoress, angrily. "It grates on the ears enough already!"
"How, it grates?" and the cantor's eyes opened wide with fright, "I sing a note, and you say 'it grates'? How can it grate?"
He looked at her imploringly, his eyes said: "Have pity on me! Don't say, 'it grates'! because if itdoesgrate, I am miserable, I am done for!"
But the cantoress was much too busy and preoccupied with the dinner to sympathize and to understand how things stood with her husband, and went on:
"Of course it grates! Why shouldn't it? It deafens me. When you sing in the choir, I have to bear it, but when you begin by yourself—what?"
The cantor had grown as white as chalk, and only just managed to say:
"Grune, are you mad? What are you talking about?"
"What ails the man to-day!" exclaimed Grune, impatiently. "You've made a fool of yourself long enough! Go and wash your hands and come to dinner!"
The cantor felt no appetite, but he reflected that one must eat, if only as a remedy; not to eat would make matters worse, and he washed his hands.
He chanted the grace loud and cantor-like, glancing occasionally at his wife, to see if she noticed anything wrong; but this time she said nothing at all, and he was reassured. "It was my fancy—just my fancy!" he said to himself. "All nonsense! One doesn't lose one's voice so soon as all that!"
Then he remembered that he was already forty years old, and it had happened to the cantor Meyer Lieder, when he was just that age—
That was enough to put him into a fright again. He bent his head, and thought deeply. Then he raised it, and called out loud:
"Grune!"
"Hush! What is it? What makes you call out in that strange voice?" asked Grune, crossly, running in.
"Well, well, let me live!" said the cantor. "Why do you say 'in that strange voice'? Whose voice was it? eh? What is the matter now?"
There was a sound as of tears as he spoke.
"You're cracked to-day! As nonsensical—Well, what do you want?"
"Beat up one or two eggs for me!" begged the cantor, softly.
"Here's a new holiday!" screamed Grune. "On a Wednesday! Have you got to chant the Sabbath prayers? Eggs are so dear now—five kopeks apiece!"
"Grune," commanded the cantor, "they may be one ruble apiece, two rubles, five rubles, one hundred rubles. Do you hear? Beat up two eggs for me, and don't talk!"
"To be sure, you earn so much money!" muttered Grune.
"Then you think it's all over with me?" said the cantor, boldly. "No, Grune!"
He wanted to tell her that he wasn't sure about it yet, there was still hope, it might be all a fancy, perhaps it was imagination, but he was afraid to say all that, and Grune did not understand what he stammered out. She shrugged her shoulders, and only said, "Upon my word!" and went to beat up the eggs.
The cantor sat and sang to himself. He listened to every note as though he were examining some one. Finding himself unable to take the high octave, he called out despairingly:
"Grune, make haste with the eggs!" His one hope lay in the eggs.
The cantoress brought them with a cross face, and grumbled:
"He wants eggs, and we're pinching and starving—"
The cantor would have liked to open his heart to her, so that she should not think the eggs were what he cared about; he would have liked to say, "Grune, I think I'm done for!" but he summoned all his courage and refrained.
"After all, it may be only an idea," he thought.
And without saying anything further, he began to drink up the eggs as a remedy.
When they were finished, he tried to make a few cantor-like trills. In this he succeeded, and he grew more cheerful.
"It will be all right," he thought, "I shall not lose my voice so soon as all that! Never mind Meyer Lieder, he drank! I don't drink, only a little wine now and again, at a circumcision."
His appetite returned, and he swallowed mouthful after mouthful.
But his cheerfulness did not last: the erstwhile unsuccessful "death" rang in his ears, and the worry returned and took possession of him.
The fear of losing his voice had tormented the cantor for the greater part of his life. His one care, his one anxiety had been, what should he do if he were to lose his voice? It had happened to him once already, when he was fourteen years old. He had a tenor voice, which broke all of a sudden. But that time he didn't care. On the contrary, he was delighted, he knew that his voice was merely changing, and that in six months he would get the baritone for which he was impatiently waiting. But when he had got the baritone, he knew that when he lost that, it would be lost indeed—he would get no other voice. So he took great care of it—how much more so when he had his own household, and had taken the office of cantor in Klemenke! Not a breath of wind was allowed to blow upon his throat, and he wore a comforter in the hottest weather.
It was not so much on account of the Klemenke householders—he felt sure they would not dismiss him from his office. Even if he were to lose his voice altogether, he would still receive his salary. It was not brought to him to his house, as it was—he had to go for it every Friday from door to door, and the Klemenke Jews were good-hearted, and never refused anything to the outstretched hand. He took care of his voice, and trembled to lose it, only out of love for the singing. He thought a great deal of the Klemenke Jews—their like was not to be found—but in the interpretation of music they were uninitiated, they had no feeling whatever. And when, standing before the altar, he used to make artistic trills and variations, and take the highest notes, that was forhimself—he had great joy in it—and also for his eight singers, who were all the world to him. His very life was bound up with them, and when one of them exclaimed, "Oi, cantor! Oi, how you sing!" his happiness was complete.
The singers had come together from various towns and villages, and all their conversations and their stories turned and wrapped themselves round cantors and music. These stories and legends were the cantor's delight, he would lose himself in every one of them, and give a sweet, deep sigh:
"As if music were a trifle! As if a feeling were a toy!" And now that he had begun to fear he was losing his voice, it seemed to him the singers were different people—bad people! They must be laughing at him among themselves! And he began to be on his guard against them, avoided taking a high note in theirpresence, lest they should find out—and suffered all the more.
And what would the neighboring cantors say? The thought tormented him further. He knew that he had a reputation among them, that he was a great deal thought of, that his voice was much talked of. He saw in his mind's eye a couple of cantors whispering together, and shaking their heads sorrowfully: they are pitying him! "How sad! You have heard? The poor Klemenke cantor——"
The vision quite upset him.
"Perhaps it's only fancy!" he would say to himself in those dreadful moments, and would begin to sing, to try his highest notes. But the terror he was in took away his hearing, and he could not tell if his voice were what it should be or not.
In two weeks time his face grew pale and thin, his eyes were sunk, and he felt his strength going.
"What is the matter with you, cantor?" said a singer to him one day.
"Ha, what is the matter?" asked the cantor, with a start, thinking they had already found out. "You ask what is the matter with me? Then you know something about it, ha!"
"No, I know nothing. That is why I ask you why you look so upset."
"Upset, you say? Nothing more than upset, ha? That's all?"
"The cantor must be thinking out some new piece for the Solemn Days," decided the choir.
Another month went by, and the cantor had not got the better of his fear. Life had become distasteful to him. If he had known for certain that his voice was gone, he would perhaps have been calmer. Verfallen! No one can live forever (losing his voice and dying was one and the same to him), but the uncertainty, the tossing oneself between yes and no, the Olom ha-Tohu of it all, embittered the cantor's existence.
At last, one fine day, the cantor resolved to get at the truth: he could bear it no longer.
It was evening, the wife had gone to the market for meat, and the choir had gone home, only the eldest singer, Yössel "bass," remained with the cantor.
The cantor looked at him, opened his mouth and shut it again; it was difficult for him to say what he wanted to say.
At last he broke out with:
"Yössel!"
"What is it, cantor?"
"Tell me, are you an honest man?"
Yössel "bass" stared at the cantor, and asked:
"What are you asking me to-day, cantor?"
"Brother Yössel," the cantor said, all but weeping, "Brother Yössel!"
That was all he could say.
"Cantor, what is wrong with you?"
"Brother Yössel, be an honest man, and tell me the truth, the truth!"
"I don't understand! What is the matter with you, cantor?"
"Tell me the truth: Do you notice any change in me?"
"Yes, I do," answered the singer, looking at the cantor, and seeing how pale and thin he was. "A very great change——"
"Now I see you are an honest man, you tell me the truth to my face. Do you know when it began?"
"It will soon be a month," answered the singer.
"Yes, brother, a month, a month, but I felt—"
The cantor wiped off the perspiration that covered his forehead, and continued:
"And you think, Yössel, that it's lost now, for good and all?"
"Thatwhatis lost?" asked Yössel, beginning to be aware that the conversation turned on something quite different from what was in his own mind.
"What? How can you ask? Ah? What should I lose? Money? I have no money—I mean—of course—my voice."
Then Yössel understood everything—he was too much of a musiciannotto understand. Looking compassionately at the cantor, he asked:
"For certain?"
"For certain?" exclaimed the cantor, trying to be cheerful. "Why must it be for certain? Very likely it's all a mistake—let us hope it is!"
Yössel looked at the cantor, and as a doctor behaves to his patient, so did he:
"Takedo!" he said, and the cantor, like an obedient pupil, drew outdo.
"Draw it out, draw it out! Four quavers—draw it out!" commanded Yössel, listening attentively.
The cantor drew it out.
"Now, if you please,re!"
The cantor sang outre-re-re.
The singer moved aside, appeared to be lost in thought, and then said, sadly:
"Gone!"
"Forever?"
"Well, are you a little boy? Are you likely to get another voice? At your time of life, gone is gone!"
The cantor wrung his hands, threw himself down beside the table, and, laying his head on his arms, he burst out crying like a child.
Next morning the whole town had heard of the misfortune—that the cantor had lost his voice.
"It's an ill wind——" quoted the innkeeper, a well-to-do man. "He won't keep us so long with his trills on Sabbath. I'd take a bitter onion for that voice of his, any day!"
It was in sad and hopeless mood that Antosh watched the autumn making its way into his peasant's hut. The days began to shorten and the evenings to lengthen, and there was no more petroleum in the hut to fill his humble lamp; his wife complained too—the store of salt was giving out; there was very little soap left, and in a few days he would finish his tobacco. And Antosh cleared his throat, spat, and muttered countless times a day:
"No salt, no soap, no tobacco; we haven't got anything. A bad business!"
Antosh had no prospect of earning anything in the village. The one village Jew was poor himself, and had no work to give. Antosh had onlyonehope left. Just before the Feast of Tabernacles he would drive a whole cart-load of fir-boughs into the little town and bring a tidy sum of money home in exchange.
He did this every year, since buying his thin horse in the market for six rubles.
"When shall you have Tabernacles?" he asked every day of the village Jew. "Not yet," was the Jew's daily reply. "But whenshallyou?" Antosh insisted one day.
"In a week," answered the Jew, not dreaming how very much Antosh needed to know precisely.
In reality there were only five more days to Tabernacles, and Antosh had calculated with business accuracy that it would be best to take the fir-boughs into the town two days before the festival. But this was really the first day of it.
He rose early, ate his dry, black bread dipped in salt, and drank a measure of water. Then he harnessed his thin, starved horse to the cart, took his hatchet, and drove into the nearest wood.
He cut down the branches greedily, seeking out the thickest and longest.
"Good ware is easier sold," he thought, and the cart filled, and the load grew higher and higher. He was calculating on a return of three gulden, and it seemed still too little, so that he went on cutting, and laid on a few more boughs. The cart could hold no more, and Antosh looked at it from all sides, and smiled contentedly.
"That will be enough," he muttered, and loosened the reins. But scarcely had he driven a few paces, when he stopped and looked the cart over again.
"Perhaps it's not enough, after all?" he questioned fearfully, cut down five more boughs, laid them onto the already full cart, and drove on.
He drove slowly, pace by pace, and his thoughts travelled slowly too, as though keeping step with the thin horse.
Antosh was calculating how much salt and how much soap, how much petroleum and how much tobacco he could buy for the return for his ware. At length the calculating tired him, and he resolved to put it off till he should have the cash. Then the calculating would be done much more easily.
But when he reached the town, and saw that the booths were already covered with fir-boughs, he felt a pang at his heart. The booths and the houses seemed to betwirling round him in a circle, and dancing. But he consoled himself with the thought that every year, when he drove into town, he found many booths already covered. Some cover earlier, some later. The latter paid the best.
"I shall ask higher prices," he resolved, and all the while fear tugged at his heart. He drove on. Two Jewish women were standing before a house; they pointed at the cart with their finger, and laughed aloud.
"Why do you laugh?" queried Antosh, excitedly.
"Because you are too soon with your fir-boughs," they answered, and laughed again.
"How too soon?" he asked, astonished. "Too soon—too soon—" laughed the women.
"Pfui," Antosh spat, and drove on, thinking, "Berko said himself, 'In a week.' I am only two days ahead."
A cold sweat covered him, as he reflected he might have made a wrong calculation, founded on what Berko had told him. It was possible that he had counted the days badly—had come too late! There is no doubt: all the booths are covered with fir-boughs. He will have no salt, no tobacco, no soap, and no petroleum.
Sadly he followed the slow paces of his languid horse, which let his weary head droop as though out of sympathy for his master.
Meantime the Jews were crowding out of the synagogues in festal array, with their prayer-scarfs and prayer-books in their hands. When they perceived the peasant with the cart of fir-boughs, they looked questioningly one at the other: Had they made a mistake and begun the festival too early?
"What have you there?" some one inquired.
"What?" answered Antosh, taken aback. "Fir-boughs! Buy, my dear friend, I sell it cheap!" he begged in a piteous voice.
The Jews burst out laughing.
"What should we want it for now, fool?" "The festival has begun!" said another. Antosh was confused with his misfortune, he scratched the back of his head, and exclaimed, weeping:
"Buy! Buy! I want salt, soap! I want petroleum."
The group of Jews, who had begun by laughing, were now deeply moved. They saw the poor, starving peasant standing there in his despair, and were filled with a lively compassion.
"A poor Gentile—it's pitiful!" said one, sympathetically. "He hoped to make a fortune out of his fir-boughs, and now!" observed another.
"It would be proper to buy up that bit of fir," said a third, "else it might cause a Chillul ha-Shem." "On a festival?" objected some one else.
"It can always be used for firewood," said another, contemplating the cartful.
"Whether or no! It's a festival——"
"No salt, no soap, no petroleum—" It was the refrain of the bewildered peasant, who did not understand what the Jews were saying among themselves. He could only guess that they were talking about him. "Hold! he doesn't wantmoney! He wants ware. Ware without money may be given even on a festival," called out one.
The interest of the bystanders waxed more lively. Among them stood a storekeeper, whose shop was close by. "Give him, Chayyim, a few jars of salt and other things that he wants—even if it comes to a few gulden. We will contribute."
"All right, willingly!" said Chayyim, "A poor Gentile!"
"A precept, a precept! It would be carrying out a religious precept, as surely as I am a Jew!" chimed in every individual member of the crowd.
Chayyim called the peasant to him; all the rest followed. He gave him out of the stores two jars of salt, a bar of soap, a bottle of petroleum, and two packets of tobacco.
The peasant did not know what to do for joy. He could only stammer in a low voice, "Thank you! thank you!"
"And there's a bit of Sabbath loaf," called out one, when he had packed the things away, "take that with you!"
"There's some more!" and a second hand held some out to him.
"More!"
"More!"
"And more!"
They brought Antosh bread and cake from all sides; his astonishment was such that he could scarcely articulate his thanks.
The people were pleased with themselves, and Yainkel Leives, a cheerful man, who was well supplied for thefestival, because his daughter's "intended" was staying in his house, brought Antosh a glass of brandy:
"Drink, and drive home, in the name of God!"
Antosh drank the brandy with a quick gulp, bit off a piece of cake, and declared joyfully, "I shall never forget it!"
"Not at all a bad Gentile," remarked someone in the crowd.
"Well, what would you have? Did you expect him to beat you?" queried another, smiling.
The words "to beat" made a melancholy impression on the crowd, and it dispersed in silence.
From behind the curtain came low moans, and low words of encouragement from the old and experienced Bobbe. In the room it was dismal to suffocation. The seven children, all girls, between twenty-three and four years old, sat quietly, each by herself, with drooping head, and waited for something dreadful.
At a little table near a great cupboard with books sat the "patriarch" Reb Selig Chanes, a tall, thin Jew, with a yellow, consumptive face. He was chanting in low, broken tones out of a big Gemoreh, and continually raising his head, giving a nervous glance at the curtain, and then, without inquiring what might be going on beyond the low moaning, taking up once again his sad, tremulous chant. He seemed to be suffering more than the woman in childbirth herself.
"Lord of the World!"—it was the eldest daughter who broke the stillness—"Let it be a boy for once! Help, Lord of the World, have pity!"
"Oi, thus might it be, Lord of the World!" chimed in the second.
And all the girls, little and big, with broken heart and prostrate spirit, prayed that there might be born a boy.
Reb Selig raised his eyes from the Gemoreh, glanced at the curtain, then at the seven girls, gave vent to a deep-drawn Oi, made a gesture with his hand, and said with settled despair, "She will give you another sister!"
The seven girls looked at one another in desperation;their father's conclusion quite crushed them, and they had no longer even the courage to pray.
Only the littlest, the four-year-old, in the torn frock, prayed softly:
"Oi, please God, there will be a little brother."
"I shall die without a Kaddish!" groaned Reb Selig.
The time drags on, the moans behind the curtain grow louder, and Reb Selig and the elder girls feel that soon, very soon, the "grandmother" will call out in despair, "A little girl!" And Reb Selig feels that the words will strike home to his heart like a blow, and he resolves to run away.
He goes out into the yard, and looks up at the sky. It is midnight. The moon swims along so quietly and indifferently, the stars seem to frolic and rock themselves like little children, and still Reb Selig hears, in the "grandmother's" husky voice, "A girl!"
"Well, there will be no Kaddish! Verfallen!" he says, crossing the yard again. "There's no getting it by force!"
But his trying to calm himself is useless; the fear that it should be a girl only grows upon him. He loses patience, and goes back into the house.
But the house is in a turmoil.
"What is it, eh?"
"A little boy! Tate, a boy! Tatinke, as surely may I be well!" with this news the seven girls fall upon him with radiant faces.
"Eh, a little boy?" asked Reb Selig, as though bewildered, "eh? what?"
"A boy, Reb Selig, a Kaddish!" announced the "grandmother." "As soon as I have bathed him, I will show him you!"
"A boy ... a boy ..." stammered Reb Selig in the same bewilderment, and he leant against the wall, and burst into tears like a woman.
The seven girls took alarm.
"That is for joy," explained the "grandmother," "I have known that happen before."
"A boy ... a boy!" sobbed Reb Selig, overcome with happiness, "a boy ... a boy ... a Kaddish!"
The little boy received the name of Jacob, but he was called, by way of a talisman, Alter.
Reb Selig was a learned man, and inclined to think lightly of such protective measures; he even laughed at his Cheike for believing in such foolishness; but, at heart, he was content to have it so. Who could tell what might not be in it, after all? Women sometimes know better than men.
By the time Alterke was three years old, Reb Selig's cough had become worse, the sense of oppression on his chest more frequent. But he held himself morally erect, and looked death calmly in the face, as though he would say, "Now I can afford to laugh at you—I leave a Kaddish!"
"What do you think, Cheike," he would say to his wife, after a fit of coughing, "would Alterke be able to say Kaddish if I were to die to-day or to-morrow?"
"Go along with you, crazy pate!" Cheike would exclaim in secret alarm. "You are going to live a long while! Is your cough anything new?"
Selig smiled, "Foolish woman, she supposes I am afraid to die. When one leaves a Kaddish, death is a trifle."
Alterke was sitting playing with a prayer-book and imitating his father at prayer, "A num-num—a num-num."
"Listen to him praying!" and Cheike turned delightedly to her husband. "His soul is piously inclined!"
Selig made no reply, he only gazed at his Kaddish with a beaming face. Then an idea came into his head: Alterke will be a Tzaddik, will help him out of all his difficulties in the other world.
"Mame, I want to eat!" wailed Alterke, suddenly.
He was given a piece of the white bread which was laid aside, for him only, every Sabbath.
Alterke began to eat.
"Who bringest forth! Who bringest forth!" called out Reb Selig.
"Tan't!" answered the child.
"It is time you taught him to say grace," observed Cheike.
And Reb Selig drew Alterke to him and began to repeat with him.
"Say: Boruch."
"Bo'uch," repeated the child after his fashion.
"Attoh."
"Attoh."
When Alterke had finished "Who bringest forth," Cheike answered piously Amen, and Reb Selig saw Alterke, in imagination, standing in the synagogue and repeating Kaddish, and heard the congregation answerAmen, and he felt as though he were already seated in the Garden of Eden.
Another year went by, and Reb Selig was feeling very poorly. Spring had come, the snow had melted, and he found the wet weather more trying than ever before. He could just drag himself early to the synagogue, but going to the afternoon service had become a difficulty, and he used to recite the afternoon and later service at home, and spend the whole evening with Alterke.
It was late at night. All the houses were shut. Reb Selig sat at his little table, and was looking into the corner where Cheike's bed stood, and where Alterke slept beside her. Selig had a feeling that he would die that night. He felt very tired and weak, and with an imploring look he crept up to Alterke's crib, and began to wake him.
The child woke with a start.
"Alterke"—Reb Selig was stroking the little head—"come to me for a little!"
The child, who had had his first sleep out, sprang up, and went to his father.
Reb Selig sat down in the chair which stood by the little table with the open Gemoreh, lifted Alterke onto the table, and looked into his eyes.
"Alterke!"
"What, Tate?"
"Would you like me to die?"
"Like," answered the child, not knowing what "to die" meant, and thinking it must be something nice.
"Will you say Kaddish after me?" asked Reb Selig, in a strangled voice, and he was seized with a fit of coughing.
"Will say!" promised the child.
"Shall you know how?"
"Shall!"
"Well, now, say: Yisgaddal."
"Yisdaddal," repeated the child in his own way.
"Veyiskaddash."
"Veyistaddash."
And Reb Selig repeated the Kaddish with him several times.
The small lamp burnt low, and scarcely illuminated Reb Selig's yellow, corpse-like face, or the little one of Alterke, who repeated wearily the difficult, and to him unintelligible words of the Kaddish. And Alterke, all the while, gazed intently into the corner, where Tate's shadow and his own had a most fantastic and frightening appearance.
When he first came to the place, as a boy, and went straight to the house-of-study, and people, having greeted him, asked "Where do you come from?" and he answered, not without pride, "From the Government of Wilna"—from that day until the day he was married, they called him "the Wilner."
In a few years' time, however, when the house-of-study had married him to the daughter of the Psalm-reader, a coarse, undersized creature, and when, after six months' "board" with his father-in-law, he became a teacher, the town altered his name to "the Wilner teacher." Again, a few years later, when he got a chest affection, and the doctor forbade him to keep school, and he began to deal in fruit, the town learnt that his name was Avròhom, to which they added "the orchard-keeper," and his name is "Avròhom the orchard-keeper" to this day.
Avròhom was quite content with his new calling. He had always wished for a business in which he need not have to do with a lot of people in whom he had small confidence, and in whose society he felt ill at ease.
People have a queer way with them, he used to think, they want to be always talking! They want to tell everything, find out everything, answer everything!
When he was a student he always chose out a place in a corner somewhere, where he could see nobody, and nobody could see him; and he used to murmur the day'stask to a low tune, and his murmured repetition made him think of the ruin in which Rabbi José, praying there, heard the Bas-Kol mourn, cooing like a dove, over the exile of Israel. And then he longed to float away to that ruin somewhere in the wilderness, and murmur there like a dove, with no one, no one, to interrupt him, not even the Bas-Kol. But his vision would be destroyed by some hard question which a fellow-student would put before him, describing circles with his thumb and chanting to a shrill Gemoreh-tune.
In the orchard, at the end of the Gass, however, which Avròhom hired of the Gentiles, he had no need to exchange empty words with anyone. Avròhom had no large capital, and could not afford to hire an orchard for more than thirty rubles. The orchard was consequently small, and only grew about twenty apple-trees, a few pear-trees, and a cherry-tree. Avròhom used to move to the garden directly after the Feast of Weeks, although that was still very early, the fruit had not yet set, and there was nothing to steal.
But Avròhom could not endure sitting at home any longer, where the wife screamed, the children cried, and there was a continual "fair." What should he want there? He only wished to be alone with his thoughts and imaginings, and his quiet "tunes," which were always weaving themselves inside him, and were nearly stifled.
It is early to go to the orchard directly after the Feast of Weeks, but Avròhom does not mind, he is drawn back to the trees that can think and hear so much, and keep so many things to themselves.
And Avròhom betakes himself to the orchard. He carries with him, besides phylacteries and prayer-scarf, a prayer-book with the Psalms and the "Stations," two volumes of the Gemoreh which he owns, a few works by the later scholars, and the Tales of Jerusalem; he takes his wadded winter garment and a cushion, makes them into a bundle, kisses the Mezuzeh, mutters farewell, and is off to the orchard.
As he nears the orchard his heart begins to beat loudly for joy, but he is hindered from going there at once. In the yard through which he must pass lies a dog. Later on, when Avròhom has got to know the dog, he will even take him into the orchard, but the first time there is a certain risk—one has to know a dog, otherwise it barks, and Avròhom dreads a bark worse than a bite—it goes through one's head! And Avròhom waits till the owner comes out, and leads him through by the hand.
"Back already?" exclaims the owner, laughing and astonished.
"Why not?" murmurs Avròhom, shamefacedly, and feeling that it is, indeed, early.
"What shall you do?" asks the owner, graver. "There is no hut there at all—last year's fell to pieces."
"Never mind, never mind," begs Avròhom, "it will be all right."
"Well, if you want to come!" and the owner shrugs his shoulders, and lets Avròhom into the orchard.
Avròhom immediately lays his bundle on the ground, stretches himself out full length on the grass, and murmurs, "Good! good!"
At last he is silent, and listens to the quiet rustle of the trees. It seems to him that the trees also wonder at his coming so soon, and he looks at them beseechingly, as though he would say:
"Trees—you, too! I couldn't help it ... it drew me...."
And soon he fancies that the trees have understood everything, and murmur, "Good, good!"
And Avròhom already feels at home in the orchard. He rises from the ground, and goes to every tree in turn, as though to make its acquaintance. Then he considers the hut that stands in the middle of the orchard.
It has fallen in a little certainly, but Avròhom is all the better pleased with it. He is not particularly fond of new, strong things, a building resembling a ruin is somehow much more to his liking. Such a ruin is inwardly full of secrets, whispers, and melodies. There the tears fall quietly, while the soul yearns after something that has no name and no existence in time or space. And Avròhom creeps into the fallen-in hut, where it is dark and where there are smells of another world. He draws himself up into a ball, and remains hid from everyone.
But to remain hid from the world is not so easy. At first it can be managed. So long as the fruit is ripening, he needs no one, and no one needs him. When one of his children brings him food, he exchanges a few words with it, asks what is going on at home, and how the mother is, and he feels he has done his duty, if, when obliged to go home, he spends there Friday nightand Saturday morning. That over, and the hot stew eaten, he returns to the orchard, lies down under a tree, opens the Tales of Jerusalem, goes to sleep reading a fantastical legend, dreams of the Western Wall, Mother Rachel's Grave, the Cave of Machpelah, and other holy, quiet places—places where the air is full of old stories such as are given, in such easy Hebrew, in the Tales of Jerusalem.
But when the fruit is ripe, and the trees begin to bend under the burden of it, Avròhom must perforce leave his peaceful world, and become a trader.
When the first wind begins to blow in the orchard, and covers the ground thereof with apples and pears, Avròhom collects them, makes them into heaps, sorts them, and awaits the market-women with their loud tongues, who destroy all the peace and quiet of his Garden of Eden.
On Sabbath he would like to rest, but of a Sabbath the trade in apples—on tick of course—is very lively in the orchards. There is a custom in the town to that effect, and Avròhom cannot do away with it. Young gentlemen and young ladies come into the orchard, and hold a sort of revel; they sing and laugh, they walk and they chatter, and Avròhom must listen to it all, and bear it, and wait for the night, when he can creep back into his hut, and need look at no one but the trees, and hear nothing but the wind, and sometimes the rain and the thunder.
But it is worse in the autumn, when the fruit is getting over-ripe, and he can no longer remain in the orchard. With a bursting heart he bids farewell tothe trees, to the hut in which he has spent so many quiet, peaceful moments. He conveys the apples to a shed belonging to the farm, which he has hired, ever since he had the orchard, for ten gulden a month, and goes back to the Gass.
In the Gass, at that time, there is mud and rain. Town Jews drag themselves along sick and disheartened. They cough and groan. Avròhom stares round him, and fails to recognize the world.
"Bad!" he mutters. "Fê!" and he spits. "Where is one to get to?"
And Avròhom recalls the beautiful legends in the Tales of Jerusalem, he recalls the land of Israel.
There he knows it is always summer, always warm and fine. And every autumn the vision draws him.
But there is no possibility of his being able to go there—he must sell the apples which he has brought from the orchard, and feed the wife and the children he has "outside the land." And all through the autumn and part of the winter, Avròhom drags himself about with a basket of apples on his arm and a yearning in his heart. He waits for the dear summer, when he will be able to go back and hide himself in the orchard, in the hut, and be alone, where the town mud and the town Jews with dulled senses shall be out of sight, and the week-day noise, out of hearing.
Born, 1876, in Msczczonow, Government of Warsaw, Russian Poland, of Hasidic parentage; traditional Jewish education in the house of his grandfather; went to Warsaw in 1898; at present (1912) in America; first literary work appeared in 1900; writer of stories, etc., in Hebrew and Yiddish; co-editor of Ha-Zofeh, Der Freind, Ha-Boker; contributor to Ha-Zeman, Heint, Ha-Dor, Ha-Shiloah, etc.; collected works, 5 vols., Warsaw, 1908-1911.
The Sabbath midday meal is over, and the Saken Rav passes his hands across his serene and pious countenance, pulls out both earlocks, straightens his skull-cap, and prepares to expound a passage of the Torah as God shall enlighten him. There sit with him at table, to one side of him, a passing guest, a Libavitch Chossid, like the Rav himself, a man with yellow beard and earlocks, and a grubby shirt collar appearing above the grubby yellow kerchief that envelopes his throat; to the other side of him, his son Sholem, an eighteen-year-old youth, with a long pale face, deep, rather dreamy eyes, a velvet hat, but no earlocks, a secret Maskil, who writes Hebrew verses, and contemplates growing into a great Jewish author. The Rebbetzin has been suffering two or three months with rheumatism, and lies in another room.
The Rav is naturally humble-minded, and it is no trifle to him to expound the Torah. To take a passage of the Bible and say, The meaning is this and that, is a thing he hasn't the cheek to do. It makes him feel as uncomfortable as if he were telling lies. Up to twenty-five years of age he was a Misnaggid, but under the influence of the Saken Rebbetzin, he became a Chossid, bit by bit. Now he is over fifty, he drives to the Rebbe, and comes home every time with increased faith in the latter's supernatural powers, and, moreover, with a strong desire to expound a little of the Torah himself; only, whenever a good idea comes into his head, itoppresses him, because he has not sufficient self-confidence to express it.
The difficulty for him lies in making a start. He would like to do as the Rebbe does (long life to him!)—give a push to his chair, a look, stern and somewhat angry, at those sitting at table, then a groaning sigh. But the Rav is ashamed to imitate him, or is partly afraid, lest people should catch him doing it. He drops his eyes, holds one hand to his forehead, while the other plays with the knife on the table, and one hardly hears:
"When thou goest forth to war with thine enemy—thine enemy—that is, the inclination to evil, oi, oi,—a—" he nods his head, gathers a little confidence, continues his explanation of the passage, and gradually warms to the part. He already looks the stranger boldly in the face. The stranger twists himself into a correct attitude, nods assent, but cannot for the life of him tear his gaze from the brandy-bottle on the table, and cannot wonder sufficiently at so much being allowed to remain in it at the end of a meal. And when the Rav comes to the fact that to be in "prison" means to have bad habits, and "well-favored woman" means that every bad habit has its good side, the guest can no longer restrain himself, seizes the bottle rather awkwardly, as though in haste, fills up his glass, spills a little onto the cloth, and drinks with his head thrown back, gulping it like a regular tippler, after a hoarse and sleepy "to your health." This has a bad effect on the Rav's enthusiasm, it "mixes his brains," and he turns to his son for help. To tell the truth, he has not much confidence in his son where the Law is concerned, although heloves him dearly, the boy being the only one of his children in whom he may hope, with God's help, to have comfort, and who, a hundred years hence, shall take over from him the office of Rav in Saken. The elder son is rich, but he is a usurer, and his riches give the Rav no satisfaction whatever. He had had one daughter, but she died, leaving some little orphans. Sholem is, therefore, the only one left him. He has a good head, and is quick at his studies, a quiet, well-behaved boy, a little obstinate, a bit opinionated, but that is no harm in a boy, thinks the old man. True, too, that last week people told him tales. Sholem, they said, read heretical books, and had been seen carrying "burdens" on Sabbath. But this the father does not believe, he will not and cannot believe it. Besides, Sholem is certain to have made amends. If a Talmid-Chochem commit a sin by day, it should be forgotten by nightfall, because a Talmid-Chochem makes amends, it says so in the Gemoreh.
However, the Rav is ashamed to give his own exegesis of the Law before his son, and he knows perfectly well that nothing will induce Sholem to drive with him to the Rebbe.
But the stranger and his brandy-drinking have so upset him that he now looks at his son in a piteous sort of way. "Hear me out, Sholem, what harm can it do you?" says his look.
Sholem draws himself up, and pulls in his chair, supports his head with both his hands, and gazes into his father's eyes out of filial duty. He loves his father, but in his heart he wonders at him; it seems to himhis father ought to learn more about his heretical leanings—it is quite time he should—and he continues to gaze in silence and in wonder, not unmixed with compassion, and never ceases thinking, "Upon my word, Tate, what a simpleton you are!"
But when the Rav came in the course of his exposition to speak of "death by kissing" (by the Lord), and told how the righteous, the holy Tzaddikim, die from the very sweetness of the Blessed One's kiss, a spark kindled in Sholem's eyes, and he moved in his chair. One of those wonders had taken place which do frequently occur, only they are seldom remarked: the Chassidic exposition of the Torah had suggested to Sholem a splendid idea for a romantic poem!
It is an old commonplace that men take in, of what they hear and see, that which pleases them. Sholem is fascinated. He wishes to die anyhow, so what could be more appropriate and to the purpose than that his love should kiss him on his death-bed, while, in that very instant, his soul departs?
The idea pleased him so immensely that immediately after grace, the stranger having gone on his way, and the Rav laid himself down to sleep in the other room, Sholem began to write. His heart beat violently while he made ready, but the very act of writing out a poem after dinner on Sabbath, in the room where his father settled the cases laid before him by the townsfolk, was a bit of heroism well worth the risk. He took the writing-materials out of his locked box, and, the pen and ink-pot in one hand and a collection of manuscript verse in the other, he went on tiptoe to the table.
He folded back the table-cover, laid down his writing apparatus, and took another look around to make sure no one was in the room. He counted on the fact that when the Rav awoke from his nap, he always coughed, and that when he walked he shuffled so with his feet, and made so much noise with his long slippers, that one could hear him two rooms off. In short, there was no need to be anxious.
He grows calmer, reads the manuscript poems, and his face tells that he is pleased. Now he wants to collect his thoughts for the new one, but something or other hinders him. He unfastens the girdle, round his waist, rolls it up, and throws it into the Rav's soft stuffed chair.
And now that there is nothing to disturb from without, a second and third wonder must take place within: the Rav's Torah, which was transformed by Sholem's brain into a theme for romance, must now descend into his heart, thence to pour itself onto the paper, and pass, by this means, into the heads of Sholem's friends, who read his poems with enthusiasm, and have sinful dreams afterwards at night.
And he begins to imagine himself on his death-bed, sick and weak, unable to speak, and with staring eyes. He sees nothing more, but he feels a light, ethereal kiss on his cheek, and his soul is aware of a sweet voice speaking. He tries to take out his hands from under the coverlet, but he cannot—he is dying—it grows dark.
A still brighter and more unusual gleam comes into Sholem's eyes, his heart swells with emotion seeking an outlet, his brain works like running machinery, awhole dictionary of words, his whole treasure of conceptions and ideas, is turned over and over so rapidly that the mind is unconscious of its own efforts. His poetic instinct is searching for what it needs. His hand works quietly, forming letter on letter, word on word. Now and again Sholem lifts his eyes from the paper and looks round, he has a feeling as though the four walls and the silence were thinking to themselves: "Hush, hush! Disturb not the poet at his work of creation! Disturb not the priest about to offer sacrifice to God."
To the Rav, meanwhile, lying in the other room, there had come a fresh idea for the exposition of the Torah, and he required to look up something in a book. The door of the reception-room opened, the Rav entered, and Sholem had not heard him.
It was a pity to see the Rav's face, it was so contracted with dismay, and a pity to see Sholem's when he caught sight of his father, who, utterly taken aback, dropt into a seat exactly opposite Sholem, and gave a groan—was it? or a cry?
But he did not sit long, he did not know what one should do or say to one's son on such an occasion; his heart and his eyes inclined to weeping, and he retired into his own room. Sholem remained alone with a very sore heart and a soul opprest. He put the writing-materials back into their box, and went out with the manuscript verses tucked away under his Tallis-koton.
He went into the house-of-study, but it looked dreadfully dismal; the benches were pushed about anyhow,a sign that the last worshippers had been in a great hurry to go home to dinner. The beadle was snoring on a seat somewhere in a corner, as loud and as fast as if he were trying to inhale all the air in the building, so that the next congregation might be suffocated. The cloth on the platform reading-desk was crooked and tumbled, the floor was dirty, and the whole place looked as dead as though its Sabbath sleep were to last till the resurrection.
He left the house-of-study, walked home and back again; up and down, there and back, many times over. The situation became steadily clearer to him; he wanted to justify himself, if only with a word, in his father's eyes; then, again, he felt he must make an end, free himself once and for all from the paternal restraint, and become a Jewish author. Only he felt sorry for his father; he would have liked to do something to comfort him. Only what? Kiss him? Put his arms round his neck? Have his cry out before him and say, "Tatishe, you and I, we are neither of us to blame!" Only how to say it so that the old man shall understand? That is the question.
And the Rav sat in his room, bent over a book in which he would fain have lost himself. He rubbed his brow with both hands, but a stone lay on his heart, a heavy stone; there were tears in his eyes, and he was all but crying. He needed some living soul before whom he could pour out the bitterness of his heart, and he had already turned to the Rebbetzin:
"Zelde!" he called quietly.
"A-h," sighed the Rebbetzin from her bed. "I feel bad; my foot aches, Lord of the World! What is it?"
"Nothing, Zelde. How are you getting on, eh?" He got no further with her; he even mentally repented having so nearly added to her burden of life.
It was an hour or two before the Rav collected himself, and was able to think over what had happened. And still he could not, would not, believe that his son, Sholem, had broken the Sabbath, that he was worthy of being stoned to death. He sought for some excuse for him, and found none, and came at last to the conclusion that it was a work of Satan, a special onset of the Tempter. And he kept on thinking of the Chassidic legend of a Rabbi who was seen by a Chossid to smoke a pipe on Sabbath. Only it was an illusion, a deception of the Evil One. But when, after he had waited some time, no Sholem appeared, his heart began to beat more steadily, the reality of the situation made itself felt, he got angry, and hastily left the house in search of the Sabbath-breaker, intending to make an example of him.
Hardly, however, had he perceived his son walking to and fro in front of the house-of-study, with a look of absorption and worry, than he stopped short. He was afraid to go up to his son. Just then Sholem turned, they saw each other, and the Rav had willy-nilly to approach him.
"Will you come for a little walk?" asked the Rav gently, with downcast eyes. Sholem made no reply, and followed him.
They came to the Eruv, the Rav looked in all his pockets, found his handkerchief, tied it round his neck, and glanced at his son with a kind of prayer in his eye. Sholem tied his handkerchief round his neck.
When they were outside the town, the old man coughed once and again and said:
"What is all this?"
But Sholem was determined not to answer a word, and his father had to summon all his courage to continue:
"What is all this? Eh? Sabbath-breaking! It is—"
He coughed and was silent.
They were walking over a great, broad meadow, and Sholem had his gaze fixed on a horse that was moving about with hobbled legs, while the Rav shaded his eyes with one hand from the beams of the setting sun.
"How can anyone break the Sabbath? Come now, is it right? Is it a thing to do? Just to go and break the Sabbath! I knew Hebrew grammar, and could write Hebrew, too, once upon a time, but break the Sabbath! Tell me yourself, Sholem, what you think! When you have bad thoughts, how is it you don't come to your father? I suppose I am your father, ha?" the old man suddenly fired up. "Am I your father? Tell me—no? Am I perhapsnotyour father?"
"For Iamhis father," he reflected proudly. "That I certainly am, there isn't the smallest doubt about it! The greatest heretic could not deny it!"
"You come to your father," he went on with more decision, and falling into a Gemoreh chant, "and you tell himallabout it. What harm can it do to tell him? No harm whatever. I also used to be tempted by bad thoughts. Therefore I began driving to the Rebbe of Libavitch. One mustn't let oneself go! Do you hear me, Sholem? One mustn't let oneself go!"
The last words were long drawn out, the Rav emphasizing them with his hands and wrinkling his forehead. Carried away by what he was saying, he now felt all but sure that Sholem had not begun to be a heretic.
"You see," he continued very gently, "every now and then we come to a stumbling-block, but all the same, we should not—"
Meantime, however, the manuscript folio of verses had been slipping out from under Sholem's Four-Corners, and here it fell to the ground. The Rav stood staring, as though startled out of a sweet dream by the cry of "fire." He quivered from top to toe, and seized his earlocks with both hands. For there could be no doubt of the fact that Sholem had now broken the Sabbath a second time—by carrying the folio outside the town limit. And worse still, he had practiced deception, by searching his pockets when they had come to the Eruv, as though to make sure not to transgress by having anything inside them.
Sholem, too, was taken by surprise. He hung his head, and his eyes filled with tears. The old man was about to say something, probably to begin again with "What is all this?" Then he hastily stopt and snatched up the folio, as though he were afraid Sholem might get hold of it first.
"Ha—ha—azoi!" he began panting. "Azoi! A heretic! A Goi."
But it was hard for him to speak. He might not move from where he stood, so long as he held the papers,it being outside the Eruv. His ankles were giving way, and he sat down to have a look at the manuscript.
"Aha! Writing!" he exclaimed as he turned the leaves. "Come here to me," he called to Sholem, who had moved a few steps aside. Sholem came and stood obediently before him. "What is this?" asked the Rav, sternly.
"Poems!"
"What do you mean by poems? What is the good of them?" He felt that he was growing weak again, and tried to stiffen himself morally. "What is the good of them, heretic, tell me!"
"They're just meant to read, Tatishe!"
"What do you mean by 'read'? A Jeroboam son of Nebat, that's what you want to be, is it? A Jeroboam son of Nebat, to lead others into heresy! No! I won't have it! On no account will I have it!"
The sun had begun to disappear; it was full time to go home; but the Rav did not know what to do with the folio. He was afraid to leave it in the field, lest Sholem or another should pick it up later, so he got up and began to recite the Afternoon Prayer. Sholem remained standing in his place, and tried to think of nothing and to do nothing.
The old man finished "Sacrifices," tucked the folio into his girdle, and, without moving a step, looked at Sholem, who did not move either.
"Say the Afternoon Prayer, Shegetz!" commanded the old man.
Sholem began to move his lips. And the Rav felt, as he went on with the prayer, that this anger was coolingdown. Before he came to the Eighteen Benedictions, he gave another look at his son, and it seemed madness to think of him as a heretic, to think that Sholem ought by rights to be thrown into a ditch and stoned to death.
Sholem, for his part, was conscious for the first time of his father's will: for the first time in his life, he not only loved his father, but was in very truth subject to him.
The flaming red sun dropt quietly down behind the horizon just before the old man broke down with emotion over "Thou art One," and took the sky and the earth to witness that God is One and His Name is One, and His people Israel one nation on the earth, to whom He gave the Sabbath for a rest and an inheritance. The Rav wept and swallowed his tears, and his eyes were closed. Sholem, on the other hand, could not take his eye off the manuscript that stuck out of his father's girdle, and it was all he could do not to snatch it and run away.
They said nothing on the way home in the dark, they might have been coming from a funeral. But Sholem's heart beat fast, for he knew his father would throw the manuscript into the fire, where it would be burnt, and when they came to the door of their house, he stopped his father, and said in a voice eloquent of tears:
"Give it me back, Tatishe, please give it me back!"
And the Rav gave it him back without looking him in the face, and said:
"Look here, only don't tell Mother! She is ill, she mustn't be upset. She is ill, not of you be it spoken!"
Born, 1879, in a village near Pereyaslav, Government of Poltava, Little Russia, of Hasidic parentage; educated in Kieff, where he acquired the trade of carpenter in order to win the right of residence; studied medicine; began to write in 1906; came to New York in 1908; writer of stories to the number of about fifty, which have been published in various periodicals; wrote also Der Sod, and Dr. Makower.
A Prose Poem
Hedged round with tall, thick woods, as though designedly, so that no one should know what happens there, lies the long-drawn-out old town of Pereyaslav.
To the right, connected with Pereyaslav by a wooden bridge, lies another bit of country, named—Pidvorkes.
The town itself, with its long, narrow, muddy streets, with the crowded houses propped up one against the other like tombstones, with their meagre grey walls all to pieces, with the broken window-panes stuffed with rags—well, the town of Pereyaslav was hardly to be distinguished from any other town inhabited by Jews.
Here, too, people faded before they bloomed. Here, too, men lived on miracles, were fruitful and multiplied out of all season and reason. They talked of a livelihood, of good times, of riches and pleasures, with the same appearance of firm conviction, and, at the same time the utter disbelief, with which one tells a legend read in a book.
And they really supposed these terms to be mere inventions of the writers of books and nothing more! For not only were they incapable of a distinct conception of their real meaning, but some had even given up the very hope of ever being able to earn so much as a living, and preferred not to reach out into the world with their thoughts, straining them fornothing, that is, for the sake of a thing so plainly out of the question as a competence. At night the whole town was overspread by a sky which, if not grey with clouds, was of a troubled and washed-out blue. But the people were better off than by day. Tired out, overwrought, exhausted, prematurely aged as they were, they sought and found comfort in the lap of the dreamy, secret, inscrutable night. Their misery was left far behind, and they felt no more grief and pain.
An unknown power hid everything from them as though with a thick, damp, stone wall, and they heard and saw nothing.
They did not hear the weak voices, like the mewing of blind kittens, of their pining children, begging all day for food as though on purpose—as though they knew there was none to give them. They did not hear the sighs and groans of their friends and neighbors, filling the air with the hoarse sound of furniture dragged across the floor; they did not see, in sleep, Death-from-hunger swing quivering, on threads of spider-web, above their heads.
Even the little fires that flickered feverishly on their hearths, and testified to the continued existence of breathing men, even these they saw no longer. Silence cradled everything to sleep, extinguished it, and caused it to be forgotten.
Hardly, however, was it dawn, hardly had the first rays pierced beneath the closed eyelids, before a whole world of misery awoke and came to life again.
The frantic cries of hundreds of starving children, despairing exclamations and imprecations and otherpiteous sounds filled the air. One gigantic curse uncoiled and crept from house to house, from door to door, from mouth to mouth, and the population began to move, to bestir themselves, to run hither and thither.
Half-naked, with parched bones and shrivelled skin, with sunken yet burning eyes, they crawled over one another like worms in a heap, fastened on to the bites in each other's mouth, and tore them away—
But this is summer, and they are feeling comparatively cheerful, bold, and free in their movements. They are stifled and suffocated, they are in a melting-pot with heat and exhaustion, but there are counter-balancing advantages; one can live for weeks at a time without heating the stove; indeed, it is pleasanter indoors without fire, and lighting will cost very little, now the evenings are short.
In winter it was different. An inclement sky, an enfeebled sun, a sick day, and a burning, biting frost!
People, too, were different. A bitterness came over them, and they went about anxious and irritable, with hanging head, possessed by gloomy despair. It never even occurred to them to tear their neighbor's bite out of his mouth, so depressed and preoccupied did they become. The days were months, the evenings years, and the weeks—oh! the weeks were eternities!
And no one knew of their misery but the winter wind that tore at their roofs and howled in their all but smokeless chimneys like one bewitched, like a lost soul condemned to endless wandering.
But there were bright stars in the abysmal darkness; their one pride and consolation were the Pidvorkes,the inhabitants of the aforementioned district of that name. Was it a question of the upkeep of a Reader or of a bath, the support of a burial-society, of a little hospital or refuge, a Rabbi, of providing Sabbath loaves for the poor, flour for the Passover, the dowry of a needy bride—the Pidvorkes were ready! The sick and lazy, the poverty-stricken and hopeless, found in them support and protection. The Pidvorkes! They were an inexhaustible well that no one had ever found to fail them, unless the Pidvorke husbands happened to be present, on which occasion alone one came away with empty hands.
The fair fame of the Pidvorkes extended beyond Pereyaslav to all poor towns in the neighborhood. Talk of husbands—they knew about the Pidvorkes a hundred miles round; the least thing, and they pointed out to their wives how they should take a lesson from the Pidvorke women, and then they would be equally rich and happy.
It was not because the Pidvorkes had, within their border, great, green velvety hills and large gardens full of flowers that they had reason to be proud, or others, to be proud of them; not because wide fields, planted with various kinds of corn, stretched for miles around them, the delicate ears swaying in sunshine and wind; not even because there flowed round the Pidvorkes a river so transparent, so full of the reflection of the sky, you could not decide which was the bluest of the two. Pereyaslav at any rate was not affected by any of these things, perhaps knew nothing of them, and certainly did not wish to know anything, for whoso dares to let hismind dwell on the like, sins against God. Is it a Jewish concern? A townful of men who have a God, and religious duties to perform, with reward and punishment, who havethatworld to prepare for, and a wife and children inthisone, people must be mad (of the enemies of Zion be it said!) to stare at the sky, the fields, the river, and all the rest of it—things which a man on in years ought to blush to talk about.
No, they are proud of the Pidvorke women, and parade them continually. The Pidvorke women are no more attractive, no taller, no cleverer than others. They, too, bear children and suckle them, one a year, after the good old custom; neither are they more thought of by their husbands. On the contrary, they are the best abused and tormented women going, and herein lies their distinction.
They put up, with the indifference of all women alike, to the belittling to which they are subjected by their husbands; they swallow their contempt by the mouthful without a reproach, and yet they are exceptions; and yet they are distinguished from all other women, as the rushing waters of the Dnieper from the stagnant pools in the marsh.