Dzyalin, the count’s estate was half an hour’s walk from the heart of
the Gnesen. On Saturdays and summer evenings the gates were open and the
town people were allowed to promenade through the wooded paths and the
tree-lined winding alleys. The grounds were entered through a narrow
portal and after passing the spacious courtyard, around which were
located several imposing homes of the manager and his assistants, there
was a tall iron gate which led to two broad shaded lanes. The one to the
right led to the count’s castle and the one turning left was open to the
public. The latter extended over more than a mile, rows of Lombardy
poplars on either side, like sentinels on guard, and came to a sudden
halt at the dam, which held the streams in check for the water mill. For
farther left was a narrow river, beyond which spread the count’s
vegetable gardens and grain fields.
Albert was at the designated spot ahead of time, and when he spied her
in the distance he ran toward her with an extended hand but she
overlooked it and remained standing stock still, pale, shy, trembling.
Her cheeks looked almost bloodless for a moment and her eyes, which he
had thought were jet black, were of a sapphire blue and devoid of all
animation. A dark cashmere shawl, which had covered her head, had
slipped to her shoulders, and the tassels at the ends were gathered in
her clasped hands, with an expression of stunned fright on her face.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he mumbled.
She drew a long breath, her hands clinching the tassels in her hands,
and a film of mist appeared in her dark-blue eyes.
“Some one might see me,” she muttered in a fretful voice and a frown of
agony appeared on her countenance.
They moved back of the row of poplars, where the ground sloped toward
the river, screened by shrubs and bushy willows.
He soon made her forget her fears. He began to ask her questions about
the people in Gnesen, about herself, but she would not talk about
herself. She wanted him to tell her about Berlin, of which she had heard
so much. She sighed. She was tired of Gnesen and the people here. There
was nothing new in Gnesen. The same gloom day after day, week after
week, year after year. Ah, for a glimpse of Berlin!
He made attempts to console her. Her naiveté, her ignorance of the
world, her simplicity, her artlessness, her evident truthfulness charmed
him. She had never been outside the little town, and she was in her
eighteenth year. She entertained strange notions of what a large city
was like, and wished she could go to one—she would go anywhere to
escape the tedium of Gnesen.
They were now seated in the screening shade of a clump of willows on one
side and on the other were the bushy shrubs through which one caught
only intermittent glimpses of the flowing stream below. Now and then
were heard the quaint songs of the peasant women in the fields—Polish
folk songs—the piping of a swineherd in the distance, the barking of a
dog, the shrill drilling sound of the locust. He sat on the ground
opposite Miriam, listening to her wistfully, catching the enchanting
melodies around him, and looking, with narrowed eyes, at the beautiful
maiden before him. There was an exhaling purity about her. Sheltered by
her mother’s rigorous virtue she was like a soft-colored wild flower
surrounded by high woods, never scorched by the burning rays of the sun,
never harassed by gusts of cold winds. As he looked at her appealing
dark-blue eyes with those exquisite long black eyelashes, her rich black
hair combed straight back from her low, square forehead, and the
faintest dimple in her chin, there was a strange sentiment in his heart.
He was conscious of a desire to rest his hands upon her bowed
head—barely touching it—as did the Jews of old, and murmur a prayer
and a blessing that God may guard her sweet purity.
“You ought to be glad to be away from large cities,” he endeavored to
cheer her. “Here you have treasures Berlin could never give you.”
He halted. A finch dropped a few sweet notes and sailed away, and then
the chattering crickets accentuated the silence around them.
“Ah! you don’t understand—you don’t understand—” she was saying,
sadness spreading over her face.
She was playing with the tassels of her cashmere shawl absent-mindedly.
She could not explain what he did not understand, for she did not quite
fully understand herself beyond the fact that she was weary of Gnesen.
Life in Gnesen was a perpetual “You must not.” Being a rabbi’s daughter
more things were forbidden her than other girls. And the sudden
appearance of this elegantly dressed young man, with his intent eyes
upon her, his charming voice and pure German speech, made her conscious
of her circumscribed, narrow, drab existence with all its dinginess.
Strange feelings had been stirring in her the past year or two but they
only made her restless, without revealing to her, her inner desires.
Recently she had overheard her mother complain that her father was not
active enough to procure a husband for their daughter and the rabbi
murmured that “the good Lord would provide.” Miriam trembled at the
thought of marriage; a repulsive feeling came over her at the mere
mention of it. Marriage in Gnesen meant shaving off her beautiful
tresses and exchanging them for the detestable wig; it meant—she
shuddered—the drudgery of married life in poverty.
On the day she caught a glimpse of Albert at the well she went home with
her heart a-flutter. He was so unlike the young men in Gnesen. She had
not thought he belonged to her people but his dreamy, intent look had
not escaped her despite her seeming inattentiveness. No one had looked
at her in the manner of this stranger.
The evening of their first meeting she remained seated on the steps of
the porch, with her elbows on her knees, her pensive face between her
hands, musing; at times her breasts heaved, though she knew not why. Her
musing was interrupted by the approach of her father and Shloma, the
marriage-broker. The two were conversing in a low confidential tone. She
knew the topic of their conversation. The day before her father had been
telling her mother that Shloma was proposing a suitable young man for
Miriam. He mentioned his name. Miriam trembled. She had never spoken
with the young man but she knew him by sight, an ungainly young man.
When her father and the marriage-broker came near the porch Miriam went
into the house and retired. She spent a troubled night, with a heart
full of sorrow, and in the back of her brain was the picture of a young
man, slender, handsomely dressed, with light-brown hair, and eyes that
made her heart flutter.
When she beheld the stranger in the company of the count her heart stood
still for a second and the blood rushed to her face. To Miriam the day
of miracles had not yet passed. All her life she had heard of nothing
but miracles. Her dreams were not of knights and princes but of the
thousands of miracles God had performed for her people.
After Albert and the count had left Miriam threw her cashmere shawl over
her head and took a long walk, to the very end of the town. She was not
thinking of the stranger. She was not thinking of anything. Only her
head was thumping and she was restless.
During Albert’s next visit Miriam sat in the adjoining room and drank in
every word, every syllable. She loved to listen to his voice, to his
pure German, and frequently blushed at the comical attempts of her
father to make his patois sound Germanic. She hoped the young man would
come again.
Then the miracle happened. The young man called when her father was away
and he handed her that note. She cherished the scrap of paper and
secretly read it over again and again. She did not hesitate about going
to meet him but she trembled with fear. In her innocence the thought
that she was running any risk never occurred to her until she had
reached the meeting place.
On her departure from their first secret meeting she readily agreed to
come the following day. She wanted to hear more of the great city where
the streets were paved and lit by lamps at night. She naively asked him
what street he lived on and when he told her she asked him to put the
address on a piece of paper. Then she made a new discovery; the houses
in Berlin were numbered! In Gnesen the houses needed no numbers. One
knew the occupants of all the houses and instead of numbers, there were
little descriptive signs over the doors, indicating what each owner must
furnish in case of fire. The picture of a ladder was above the door of
one house, that of an axe over another, and there were sketches—not
very graphic—of long hooks and pails and besoms, and, in fact, of all
the instruments of the Gnesen fire brigade.
During one of their clandestine meetings Albert remained seated on the
ground, his hands around his knee, staring at her as if she were a work
of art which aroused his innermost admiration.
Tears of ecstasy were in his eyes as he continued looking at her in
silence.
The past three years Albert had learned considerably about the lure of
sex—sensuality was no longer an unsolved mystery to him—but though
Miriam drew him toward her with a thousand invisible chains he was
conscious of an inner fear—the fear of touching a sacred
shrine—whenever he touched her cashmere shawl or passed his hand, ever
so lightly, over her sleeves, or when he clasped her hand in parting.
Miriam looked up at him and for a moment let her eyes rest upon his
sensitive face. She did not understand the meaning of the mist in his
eyes but she was conscious of an overwhelming desire to touch him, to
let her hand rest upon his.
This was the first touch of romance in the young girl’s life, the first
conscious awakening of the mysterious being within her. It was the first
tiny opening of the bursting bud, the first petal catching the light of
the sun, though its warmth had long before penetrated it. She thought of
nothing save the irresistible sweetness of sitting under the willow tree
with this young stranger. He seemed a mystery to her, part of the
mystery of the great world, of which she knew nothing. The boundaries of
her world were the bluish tree tops on the horizon to the left of Gnesen
and the dome of the cathedral to the right. And it was midsummer and the
Fearful Days—as the group of holidays at the end of summer were
symbolically named—were soon at hand. Sadness! sadness! sadness! as if
life in Gnesen was not sad enough without fasts, without heart-rending
lamentations, without wailing and praying and torturing of the flesh.
“I can’t meet you tomorrow,” she said one day as they parted.
“And why not?” he inquired eagerly.
“Don’t you know what tomorrow is?”
He shook his head.
A strange expression stole over her face. Her eyes contracted, there was
a deep dent between her eyebrows, and she stared at him as if sudden
fear possessed her.
“So it is not true,” she muttered in a husky voice, “that you are a
Jew.”
Albert threw his head back and laughed.
“Too much of a Jew, Miriam—too much of one to be left in peace.” The
sunny smile now vanished from his eyes, the deep corners of his mouth
drooped and twitched, the wing of melancholy brushed his flushed cheeks.
“Why do you doubt it?” He again made an attempt at smiling.
“You couldn’t be a Jew without knowing that tomorrow is a Jewish
holiday!”
He looked puzzled at her. He did not observe Jewish holidays.
However, she soon yielded and promised to come.
The next day they were seated in their secluded place, Albert reciting a
song he had written the night before. He told her that if he had not met
her the song would not have been written.
There were tears in his eyes; he uttered the last verse in a whisper
almost, and then silence. The day was hot, without the slightest breeze;
nothing stirred, not even the drooping feather-like boughs of the willow
overhead.
Suddenly the sound of footsteps behind them arrested their attention. A
tall, red-bearded, round-faced man was staring at them as if frightened
by an apparition. He was Getzel the Beadle.
Miriam leaped up and like a frightened deer, sped through the bushes
before Albert had fully realized what had happened.
He waited but she did not return. He called at the same place the next
day and the next but she did not appear. Each new love was a first love
to him, only it lashed his soul with greater fury. Ah! the shades of the
past, they were nothing more than a memory to him now. The wilted flower
of yesterday is always forgotten when the perfume of the living one is
wafted into our nostrils. No one was like Miriam. There never was any
other woman as sweet as Miriam. His whole being yearned for her.
Hedwiga, Hilda, Eugenie—they were all fancies—but Miriam—everything
swam before his feverish eyes as he thought of her. Nothing in life
mattered any more—nothing! He tried to see her at her home—to tell her
parents of his love for their daughter, but the rabbi, like Eugenie’s
father, shut the door in his face.
He suddenly awoke from his poet’s dream. He saw nothing but abject
misery around him. He could no longer share in his host’s gayety.