shutter, and I noticed, for the first time, that the lamp was once more
hanging from the ceiling, and that my parents were sleeping in
bed-clothes. Father smiled in his sleep; mother breathed quietly, and
the good angel said to me:
"If you are obedient and pious, your father will recover his health;
your mother will not have to toil into her old age, and your little
brothers will become learned men--rabbis, authorities in the Law, great,
great Jews. Their school fees will be paid."
"Only," put in the bad angel, "Reb Zeinwill will kiss you with his damp
whiskers, and clasp you in his bony arms; and he will torment you as he
did the other wives, and send you to an early grave, and _he_ will come
back and grieve, and he will teach you no more songs, or sit with you
evening after evening--you will be sitting with Reb Zeinwill!"
No! not if the heavens should fall about the earth! Tear up the
contract!
I did not sleep again till morning. My mother was the first to wake. I
wanted to talk with her, but I was accustomed to go for help to my
father.
There, he wakes.
"Do you know, Sarah'le," are his first words, "I feel so well to-day.
You will see, I shall go out."
"Praise to His dear Name! It is all owing to our daughter's good
fortune, all thanks to her merit."
"And the Röfeh was quite right: the milk agrees very well with me."
They are silent, and the good angel repeats:
"If you are good and pious, your father will get well, while if your
lips let fall wicked words, he will decline and die."
"Listen, Sarah'le," continued my father, "you are not to go about
peddling any more."
"What do you mean?"
"What I say! I will go to-day to Reb Zeinwill; he will take me into a
business, or lend me a few rubles, and we will have a little shop; I
will serve a bit, and you a bit--and later I will deal in produce."
"God grant it."
"He _will_ grant it. If you want a dress for the wedding, buy it--even
_two_ dresses. Why not? He said we were to get what we wanted. You are
not going in your old clothes?"
"Go along with you! The thing is to have something made for the
children. Reuben has been going barefoot--last week he got a splinter in
his sole, and he is limping now. Winter is coming on, too, they want
coats and shirts and warm cloaks."
"Buy, buy!"
"You hear?" said the good angel. "If you speak out, your mother will
have no new dress, and you know the old one is falling to bits; the
little brothers will run barefoot to Cheder in the sharpest frost, and
in summer they will get splinters in their soles."
"I tell you what it is," said my mother, "everything ought to be talked
over and settled in detail, because he is not a _very_ good man.
Whatever settlement he intends to make on her ought to be put down in
writing. There will be any quantity to inherit. Even if it isn't a deed,
let him give a written promise, because how long is such a one likely to
live? Another year or so!"
"One can live a long time in comfort!" sighed my father.
"A long time! Remember, he's seventy, and sometimes he looks dead behind
his ears."
And the bad angel whispered: "If you keep silence, you will marry a dead
man; you will live with a corpse; they will lead you to the bridal
chamber with a lifeless body."
Mother sighed.
"Everything is in God's hands," said my father.
Mother sighed again, and father said:
"And what could we do? Anything better? If I only could have gotten
well, and earned something, and we had had at least dry bread in the
house----"
He broke off; I had a feeling that something wept within him.
"If she had been a year or two younger, I would have risked it
all--perhaps even bought lottery tickets."
And I said nothing.
* * * * *
My seventy-year-old bridegroom gave my father a few hundred gulden for
clothes for the wedding, and me a check for one hundred and fifty
gulden.
People said, "A fine match."
I recovered my companions. The one with the satin skirt and the watch
and chain came two or three times a day.
She was the happiest creature in the world, because I had caught her up,
and we were to be married in the same month. I had others, but this one
stuck to me like a leech. The others were "common girls, there was no
saying how long they wouldn't have to wait!"
Rivkah's _fiancé_ was a stranger, but she was to board at home for two
or three years. During that time we would be close friends; she would
run in to me for chicory-coffee; I to her on Sabbath, after the mid-day
rest, for chicken-broth and pear cider.
"And when I am expecting a baby," said Rivkah once, and her face shone,
"you will come and sit by me?"
I made no reply.
"Well," exclaimed Rivkah, "why so sad? There's no saying but you,
too.... Cheer up!" she went on, "if God will, one can fire off a broom.
Besides, how long do you suppose it will last? No one can live forever.
My word, what a young widow you will make, to be sure. Won't you be run
after!"
Rivkah wished Reb Zeinwill no harm.
"To be sure, he's a wretch; he tormented that other woman; but she was
sickly, and you are sound as a nut. He will treat _you_ well enough."
* * * * *
He came back!
My father was better, but he fancied a little dry-cupping--he was
afraid, otherwise, of going out. He felt that after lying down so long,
and then sitting for so many weeks on end, the blood had all settled in
one place, and should be stirred. Also his shoulders ached, and
dry-cupping is the sovereign remedy for that.
I shook as with ague. When there was dry-cupping to be done, the "boy"
came, not the Röfeh himself.
"Will you go and fetch the Röfeh?" asked my father.
"The idea!" exclaimed my mother. "A Kallah-Mädel!"
She went herself.
"Why have you grown so pale?" asked my father, in alarm.
"Nothing."
"It's some days now," he persisted.
"You imagine it, Tate."[15]
"Your mother says the same."
"_Eh!_"
"To-day"--father wanted to cheer me up--"they are coming to measure you
for the wedding dress."
I was silent.
"Aren't you pleased?" he asked.
"Why shouldn't I be?"
"You don't even know _what_ they are making you!"
"But they've measured me once already."
Hereupon my mother came in with the Röfeh himself.
I felt relieved, and yet all the time something mourned within me:
"Perhaps you will never see him again."
"What a world it is!" Thus the Röfeh coming in panting and groaning.
"Reb Zeinwill marries a young girl, and the treasurer's Leezerl has
turned ascetic and run away from his wife."
"Leezerl!" cried mother, in astonishment.
"As I tell you; and here am I at sixty about early and late, and my
assistant goes to bed."
I began to tremble again.
"Don't keep such a Gentile!" said my mother.
"A Gentile?" said the Röfeh. "Why a Gentile?"
"What's all that to me?" interrupted father, impatiently. "You'd better
set to work."
Father was naturally good-tempered; he always seemed to me incapable of
hurting a fly, and yet his tone was so full of contempt for the Röfeh.
When he lay sick in bed, he was always glad if anyone came in to have a
chat with him, but he could never get on with the Röfeh; he always
interrupted him and told him to see to his own business, but this was
the first time he had spoken so strongly. It pained me, because how much
rougher would he not have been with the other, who was lying ill?
What is wrong with him?
He had said his heart was weak.
What that meant exactly, I did not know; it must be something for which
one had to go to bed, and yet _my_ heart told me that I had something to
answer for in the matter.
That night I cried in my sleep; my mother woke me, and sat down beside
me on my bed.
"Hush, my child," she said, "don't let us wake father." And our
conversation was whispered into each other's ears.
I noticed that mother was greatly disturbed; she looked at me
inquiringly, as though determined to get at the truth, and I resolved to
say nothing, at all events so long as my father slept.
"My child, why have you been crying?"
"I don't know, mother."
"Do you feel well?"
"Yes, Mamishe; only sometimes my head aches."
She sat on my bed, leaning half way over, and I drew nearer her and laid
my head on her breast.
"Mother," I asked, "why does your heart beat so loud?"
"For fear, Tochter'she."
"Are _you_ afraid at night, too?"
"Night and day; I am afraid all the time."
"What for are you afraid?"
"I am afraid for you."
"For me?"
No reply, but I felt a warm tear fall on my face.
"Mother, _you_ are crying now."
The tears fell faster.
I won't say! my resolve strengthened.
Suddenly she asked:
"Has Rivkah been telling you anything?"
"What about, mother?"
"About your intended?"
"How should _she_ know him?"
"If she really knew him, she would hold her tongue. I only mean, did she
repeat any gossip? Out of jealousy--when a rich man marries a young girl
in his old age, people always talk. I don't know--has no one told you
that his last wife died because of the life he led her?"
I answered coolly that I had heard something like it, but that I had
forgotten from whom.
"I'm sure it was Rivkah--I wish her mouth were in the back of her head!"
(angrily).
"Then why was it," I inquired, "that she died no suddenly?"
"Why? She had a weak heart."
"But--do people die of a weak heart?"
"Certainly."....
Something seemed to snap inside my brain.
* * * * *
I became a "silken child," my praise was in everyone's mouth. Parents
could not understand it--neither could the tailor: I asked for nothing;
mother chose everything--material, color, and cut, just as she fancied.
Rivkah used to come in and pinch her own red cheeks.
"Who would trust a mother in matters of dress? An old-fashioned Jewess?
You won't dare to show yourself on Sabbath either in Shool or in the
street or anywhere else!
"You've done for yourself," she wound up.
It occurred to me that I had done for myself a long time, and I waited
indifferently for the Sabbath of Consolation, when Reb Zeinwill was to
be invited to supper.
Then there would follow the "calling up,"[16] and then the wedding.
Father was really better, he sometimes went out and began to inquire
about produce. He thought it too soon to speak to Reb Zeinwill about
anything further; he intended to ask him on Sabbath to come again for
the "third meal," and to put in a word for himself after that.
All being so well, it was time to dismiss the Röfeh; there was no
difficulty now about credit--he never reminded us of what was owing him,
never sent the "boy," but came himself. Still, it was time this should
end. I don't know how much they sent him, but the messenger was my
brother Avremele, who was to leave the money on his way to Cheder.
But the "boy" appeared a few days later.
"How, wasn't it enough?" said my father, on seeing him.
"Yes, Reb Yehùdah; I have come to say good-bye."
"To me?" asked my father in surprise.
I had dropped down, when he came in, on the nearest chair, but at these
words I stood up; it had flashed across me that I must protect him, not
let him be insulted. He hadn't come for that.
"I used to come to see you at one time," he said, with his gentle,
melancholy voice, which was like sweet oil to my heart, "now I am
leaving for good, so I thought--"
"Well, well, certainly," replied father, quite politely. "Take a seat,
young man. It was very nice of you to think of it, very nice, indeed."
"Daughter," he called to me, "we must offer him some refreshment."
He sprang up, pale, with quivering lips and burning eyes, but the next
instant his face had taken on its old melancholy expression.
"No, Reb Yehùdah, I want nothing, thank you. Farewell!"
He put out his hand to no one, and barely gave me a glance.
And yet, in that one glance, I read that he reproached me, that he would
never forgive me. For what? I hardly knew myself.
And again I fainted.
"The third time," I hear my mother say to my father. "It is of no
consequence--at her age it often happens--but heaven forbid that Reb
Zeinwill should hear of it. He would break off the match. He had enough
of that with the last one--the invalid."
I was not an invalid. And I only fainted once more--on the wedding-day,
when I saw Reb Zeinwill for the first time.
Never again.
Yesterday even, when the Röfeh, who cuts my Reb Zeinwill's nails every
month (otherwise they grow into his fingers), asked me, as he left, if I
remembered his "boy," because he had died in a hospital in Warsaw--even
then I didn't faint; I only shed one tear. And I was not aware of
_that_, only it seemed to please the Röfeh.
"You are a kind soul," he said, and then I felt it on my cheek.
Nothing more.
I am healthy; I have lived with Reb Zeinwill five years.
_How?_ Perhaps I shall tell another time.
VI
THE SEVENTH CANDLE OF BLESSING
The thirteen-year-old brow is puckered with anguish, the child-face pale
with dread, tear after tear falls from the innocent eyes. Only last
Friday, just a week ago, she was so happy, so full of glee. It was the
"short Friday."[17] Grandmother had woke her a little earlier than
usual, she had spent the day in preparation for the Sabbath.
In the late afternoon she had washed herself, plaited her long hair,
singing and dancing the while, dressed, and gone with grandmother to the
synagogue--and they had lighted each her candles. Bashe's first
candle--God bless grandmother! Her second--God bless Tatishe,[18] and
let him find lots of work and make heaps of money, and not sigh any more
and say that the times are bad. Her third--God bless Mamishe, and make
her strong.
And then--for the little sisters and the little brothers, a candle each.
It lasted till people began to come in for the prayers.
How she loves the synagogue! how she loves candle-blessing.
She has lived with grandmother two whole years.
She does not want to go home (there is no candle-blessing there, it is
not the custom), unless it were just to see her mother, to clasp her
father once round the neck and play awhile with his black, silky beard,
and to have a game with the little ones.
Grandmother must not be left alone. She is always so good to her; she
has taught her to bless the candles.
Bashe loves grandmother, and blessing the candles, too. She longs for it
the whole week through, she counts the days. But this is a miserable
Friday.
In the morning everything was the same as usual.
She had "made Sabbath"; grandmother had sat there and watched her
happily. They had dressed themselves, and grandmother had taken her
stick. Then, as ill-luck would have it, there came the postman.
Grandmother read the letter, threw herself on the bed, and there she has
lain for two hours with her face to the wall.
She is black as a coal, her eyes are shut; one hand holds the letter;
she foams at the mouth.
No one is to come near her; no one is to be sent for.
Bashe is pushed away, and whenever she tries to open the door,
grandmother hears and screams "No!"
Bashe stands by the bed and cannot make it out. Her heart beats wildly.
God only knows what they have written from home. Perhaps--perhaps....
She cannot think what has happened. She drops on to her knees and
clutches convulsively at grandmother's hand:
"Granny, granny, what is it? Speak to me! Tell me--what is it? Granny, I
think I shall die of fright!" She spoke involuntarily.
Grandmother has turned toward her; she moves her lips, opens her eyes,
gives her one look, and
"Die!" she says in a hard voice, and turns her face once more to the
wall. "And there wasn't his like!" she adds. "Die, Bashe, die!"
Bashe is silent. A blackness passes before her eyes, and her head falls
on grandmother's feet. Within her all is dark and cold. She has ceased
to puzzle herself, she is nearly unconscious.
And in this way another half-hour goes by.
She hears her grandmother's voice:
"Get up!"
Bashe obeys.
Grandmother has risen to her feet and taken up the stick which she
previously had flung away.
"How many candles have you?" she asks.
"Why, eight," is the trembling reply.
"Leave one out!"
Bashe does not move.
"Put one away!" screams grandmother, angrily.
Bashe trembles like a leaf, but does not move.
The old woman has gone to the table herself, undone the packet of
candles, taken out one, and tied the rest together again. She pushes
them into Bashe's hands:
"Come along!"
Bashe follows her automatically; neither has thought to fasten the door
behind her. Bashe does not know herself how she reached the platform
with her candles.
"Light them one at a time, for whom I shall tell you. Repeat my words.
Say: God bless Mamishe and grant her long life!"
Bashe shakes as with ague: the first candle has always been father's.
"Repeat!" screams grandmother.
Bashe does so.
"The second: God make Chaïmle a good Jew!"
Little Bashe shakes more and more--her limbs are giving way beneath
her--she does not hear her father's name. Her heart thumps, her temples
throb, her eyes burn.
Grandmother has no pity on her--she screams louder every time:
"Repeat, repeat what I say!"
Bashe is lighting the last candle.
"Say: God bless Sarah!" commands grandmother.
No--she will not say that--where is father? No, she cannot say it--her
whole being is in revolt against her wicked grandmother--no, no, no!
"Repeat, repeat!" screams grandmother with increasing violence.
Bashe refuses to obey--the last light _must_ be father's.
She begins: "God bless fa--"
"Hush!" in a terrible voice. "Hush, hush! Your father is no longer a
Jew. He has become an official!"[19]
VII
THE WIDOW
The gray, swirling mists have rolled themselves together into one black
cloud. It is warm and stifling; it is going to pour with rain; a few
drops are falling already. The little house stands just under the hill.
The low, thatched roof is full of holes--there is no one to mend it.
The clouds have hidden the sun, and the remaining light is intercepted
by the hill.
Inside the hut it is nearly dark; it is late--night is falling.
In the corner, on the chimney-shelf, stands a little empty lamp, with a
cracked globe; the naphthaline is exhausted, there is no one to go and
buy more. It is closer indoors than out.
The fire-place is not empty, it boasts two or three broken earthenware
pots, a handful of ashes, a fragment of polished slate, a little iron
stand on legs, but not a spark of fire.
Outside the door lies a log of rotten wood; there is no one to chop it.
The owner of the hut lay sick for a whole year, and with every day of it
their little hoard of money grew less. He had saved for a child's sake,
"scraped together one hundred rubles, to be lent on interest." God gave
a little girl: "It shall be her marriage portion!"
But there came the illness.
The little hoard dwindled and dwindled, and the man's strength likewise.
The household goods were disposed of one after another; the last to go
was the sewing-machine, and with the last penny out of the bag the soul
departed out of the body.
The soiled shred of linen that held the money hangs across a glass of
water beside the soul-light.[20]
A small, tin trunk stands near the door; it belongs to the servant-girl,
who has just gone out to look for another situation.
The dismantled room is now all but dark; a few scattered wisps of straw
shimmer on the floor; a nail-head stares here and there out of the four
walls.
On the wall used to hang a looking-glass (it is not wanted now. If the
widow were to see her reflection, she would be terrified). A Chanukah
lamp (for whom should it be lighted?) and clothes used to hang there,
too. They came and took each his own before he died.
In one corner stands a cradle; in the cradle lies a child, asleep. On
the floor beside the cradle sits the newly-made widow.
The thin hands hang helpless, the heavy head rests on the cradle; the
eyes, which look as if they had wept themselves out, stare fixedly at
the ceiling.
You might suppose she was dead, that she neither felt nor remembered any
longer. Her heart scarcely beats, her strength has left her.
And yet one thought is revolving ceaselessly in her brain; no other
seems able to drive it away--it is not to be dislodged.
"Hannah," he had once said to her, "hand me the scissors."
He had no use for them just then, and he had given a little artful
smile. What had he really wanted?
Did he wish me to go near to him? I was peeling potatoes. Did I give him
the scissors? No; just then someone came in--but who? She cannot
recollect, and goes puzzling herself--who?
The child sleeps on, and smiles; it is dreaming.
VIII
THE MESSENGER
He is on the road, and his beard and coat-tails flutter in the wind.
Every few minutes he presses a hand to his left side--he feels a pang;
but he will not confess to it--he tries to think he is only making sure
of his leather letter-bag.
"If only I don't lose the contract-paper and the money!" That is what he
is so afraid of.
"And if it _does_ hurt me, it means nothing. Thank God, I've got
strength enough for an errand like this and to spare! Another at my
years wouldn't be able to do a verst,[21] while I, thanks to His dear
Name, owe no one a farthing and earn my own living. God be praised, they
trust me with money.
"If what they trust me with were my own, I shouldn't be running errands
at more than seventy years old; but if the Almighty wills it so--so be
it."
It begins to snow in thick flakes; he is continually wiping his face.
"I haven't more than half a mile[22] to go now," he thinks. _"O wa!_
what is that to me? It is much nearer than further." He turns his head.
"One doesn't even see the town-clock from here, or the convent, or the
barracks; on with you, Shemaiah, my lad."
And Shemaiah tramps on through the wet snow; the old feet welter in and
out. "Thank God, there is not much wind."
Much wind, apparently, meant a gale; the wind was strong enough and blew
right into his face, taking his breath away with every gust; it forced
the tears out of his old eyes, and they hurt him like pins; but then he
always suffered from his eyes.
It occurred to him that he would spend his next earnings on
road-spectacles--large, round ones that would cover his eyes completely.
"If God will," he thought, "I shall manage it. If I only had an errand
to go every day, a long, long one. Thank God, I can walk any distance,
and I should soon save up enough for the spectacles."
He is also in want of a fur coat of some sort, it would ease the
oppression on his chest; but he considers that, meanwhile, he has a warm
cloak.
"If only it does not tear, it is an excellent one." He smiles to
himself. "No new-fangled spider-web for you. All good, old-fashioned
sateen--it will outlast me yet. And it has no slit--that's a great
point. It doesn't blow out like the cloaks they make nowadays, and it
folds over ever so far in front.
"Of course," he thinks on, "a fur coat is better; it's warm--beautifully
warm. But spectacles come first. A fur is only good for winter, and
spectacles are wanted all the year round, because in summer, when
there's a wind and it blows the dust into your eyes, it's worse than in
winter."
And so it was settled; first spectacles and then a fur coat. Please
God, he would help to carry corn--that would mean four gulden.
And he tramped on, and the wet snow was blown into his face, the wind
grew stronger, and his side pained him more than ever.
"If only the wind would change! And yet perhaps it's better so, because
coming back I shall feel more tired, and I shall have the wind in my
back. Then it will be quite different. Everything will be done; I shall
have nothing on my mind."
He was obliged to stop a minute and draw breath; this rather frightened
him.
"What is the matter with me? A Cantonist[23] ought to know something of
the cold," he thought sadly.
And he recalls his time of service under Nicholas, twenty-five years'
active service with the musket, beside his childhood as a Cantonist. He
has walked enough in his life, marching over hill and dale, in snow and
frost and every sort of wind. And what snows, what frosts! The trees
would split, the little birds fall dead to the ground, and the Russian
soldier marched briskly forward, and even sang a song, a _trepak_, a
_komarinski_, and beat time with his feet.
The thought of having endured those thirty-five years of service, of
having lived through all those hardships, all those snows, all those
winds, all the mud, hunger, thirst, and privation, and having come home
in health--the thought fills him with pride. He holds up his head and
feels his strength renewed.
"Ha, ha, what is a bit of a frost like this to me? In Russia, well, yes,
there it was something like."
He walks on, the wind has lessened a little, it grows darker, night is
falling.
"Call that a day," he said to himself. "Well, I never," and he began to
hurry, not to be overtaken by the night. Not in vain has he been so
regularly to study in the Shool of a Sabbath afternoon--he knows that
one should go out and come home again before the sun goes down.