questioning Reb Yozel about the soul.
The soul, with me, had become a sort of _idée fixe_; it was never out of
my thoughts. The first thing Reb Yozel did was to empty my head of the
notion of other people being our equals, and to fill it up again with
"Thou hast chosen us."
"Not in vain," said he, "do we suffer exile, scorn, and other plagues
not mentioned in the denunciations of the Pentateuch. Were we like to
other nations, we should have _this_ world the same as they have it;
'the child whom the father loveth, he correcteth,' so that it may study
and enter the gates of knowledge.
"But even with us Jews," went on Reb Yozel, "souls are not all alike;
there are coarse, ordinary souls, like Zerach Kneip's, for instance;
your teacher, the heretic, has a soul like Korah; there are also very
great souls, some of which come from out the space under the Throne of
Glory; these belong to the category of _kémach sòlet_."[36]
I understood little, especially about the space under the Throne of
Glory; I only knew the meaning of _kémach sòlet_, and supposed the
difference between soul and soul was like that between rye-flour,
corn-flour, wheat-flour, and the flour which was used for the Sabbath
loaf. The greatest of all the souls must be mixed with saffron and
raisins.
10
"The great thing," said Reb Yozel, "is to suffer.
"No soul will be lost; they must all return to the state in which they
were previous to their stay on earth. And the souls can be cleansed only
by suffering. The Creator, in His great mercy, sends us suffering so
that we may remember we are but flesh and blood, a broken potsherd, mere
nothings, who fall into dust and ashes at His look; but in the other
world also the souls undergo purification."
And he told me all that was done to the poor souls in the seven
torture-chambers of Gehenna.
11
About the holiday times I had more leisure for looking round at home.
Just before Tabernacles, we had a great wash.
One night I dreamt that I was in the next world. I saw how the angels
stretched out their hands from heaven and caught hold of the souls who
were returning thither. The angels sifted them; those that were clean
and white as snow, flew up like doves out of their hands as though into
Paradise. The dirty ones were thrown into a heap, and the heap was
thrown into the sea of ice, beside which stood black angels with their
sleeves rolled up, who washed them. After that they were boiled in a
black pot over hell-fire.
And when the dirt was squeezed out of them and they were ironed, the
weeping of the souls was heard from one end of the world to the other.
There, in the soiled heap, I recognized the soul of my teacher; it had
his long nose, his hollow cheeks, his pointed beard, and it wore his
large, blue spectacles. They washed it, and it only looked the blacker.
And an angel called out: "That is the soul of the heretical teacher!"
Then the same angel said angrily to me:
"If you walk in his ways, your soul will be as black as his, and it will
be washed like this every evening, till it is thrown into Gehenna."
"I will not walk in his ways!" I cried out in my sleep.
My mother woke me and took my hand down from my breast.
"What is it, my treasure?" she asked in alarm. "You are bathed in
perspiration;" and she blew upon me--_fu_, _fu_, _fu!_
"Mother, I have been in the other world!"
Early next morning my mother asked me in all seriousness if I had seen
my father there. I said, "No."
"What a pity! What a pity!" she lamented. "He would certainly have given
you a message for me."
12
What was to be done, if the teacher even made game of dreams?
For his own sake, still more for Gütele's, I wished to save him, and I
described to him the whole of my dream. But he said dreams were foolish;
he paid no attention to such things.
He wanted to prove to me out of the Bible and the Talmud that dreams
were rubbish, but I stopped my ears with my little fingers and would not
listen.
I saw clearly that he was lost; that his sentence would be a terrible
one; that I ought to avoid him like the plague; that he was like to ruin
my soul, my young soul.
But, again, what was to be done? I made a hundred resolves to tell my
mother, and never kept one of them.
I had my mouth open to speak many a time, but it seemed to me that
Gütele stood behind her shoulders, held out her small hands to me in
supplication, and spoke with her eyes: "No," she begged, "no, don't
tell!"
And the prayer in her eyes overcame my piety; I felt that for her I
would go, not through fire and water only, but into hell itself.
And yet it seemed to me a great pity, for my mother and all my teachers
were sure that I had in me the making of something remarkable.
13
I was quit of Zerach Kneip and his long finger-nail, but I was not so
much the better off.
I was sixteen years old. The match-mongers were already catching at my
mother's skirts, and I preserved the childish habit of collecting wax
off the Shool table on the Day of Atonement and secretly moulding it in
Cheder under the table.
The beadle hated me for this with a deadly hatred, and I was well served
out for it besides.
"What have you got there?" asks Reb Yozel.
I am wool-gathering at the moment and lay my whole hand on the Gemoreh,
wax on all the five fingers.
Reb Yozel has grown pale with anger. He opens the drawer, takes out a
piece of thin string, and binds together my two thumbs, but so tight, a
pang goes through me.
That was only the beginning. He went to the broom and deliberately chose
and pulled out a thin, flexible twig. With this twig he whipped me over
my tied hands--for how long? It seemed to me forever. And strange to
say, I took the pain in good part; I felt sure God had sent it me that I
might repent of my sin and give up going to the teacher.
When my hands were pretty well swollen and the skin had turned all
colors, Reb Yozel put away the twig and said: "Enough! Now you'll let
the wax alone!"
I went on moulding wax all the same.
It gave me the greatest satisfaction to make whatever I pleased out of
it. I felt I had something to be busy about.
I would mould the head of a man, and then turn it into a cat or a mouse;
then I drew the sides out into wings, divided the head into two, and it
became an Imperial eagle. After that, out of the two heads and two
wings, I made a bun in four pieces.
I myself was just such another piece of wax. Reb Yozel, the teacher, my
mother, and anybody who pleased moulded me into shape. Gütele melted me.
14
They moulded me into shapes, but it hurt.
I remember very well that it hurt, but why? Why must _I_ torment myself
about the soul?
My comrades laughed at me; they nicknamed me the "soul-boy," and I
suffered as much from the name as it was foolish in itself.
I am lost in thought; I wonder what my end will be; when I shall have
the strength to tear myself out of Satan's grasp. I call my own soul to
account; I reproach it; I scold it. Suddenly I receive a fillip on the
nose, "Soul-boy." I wish to forget my troubles and plunge into a deep
problem of Rabbinical dialectics; I yoke together a difficult
explanation of the Tossafot with a hard passage in the Rambam, mix in a
piece from the P'ne Yehoshuah, and top it off with an argument from
Eibeschütz. I am in another world, forgotten are the teacher, Gütele,
the soul. Things are fitting one into the other in my brain; I nearly
"have it," the solution is at the tip of my tongue--a whistle in my
ear--"Soul-boy!" It rings through my head, something bursts in my brain.
Forgotten Tossafot, forgotten Rambam--I am back on the earth!
I stand repeating the Eighteen Benedictions, my heart and my eyes are
alike full of tears, "Heal us, O Eternal, and we shall be healed!" I say
with devotion, and I mean not the body, heaven forbid, I mean the soul:
"Heal me, Almighty; heal my poor soul!"
"That's the soul-boy," says one to another, pointing at me. And it is
all over with my devotion.
Thus I suffered day and night.
15
Gütele was held to be very clever; her father never called her anything
but "my little wisdom," and the neighbors said she was as bright as the
day, and that if she were as pious as she was clever, she would rejoice
the heart of her mother in Paradise. My mother, too, used to praise her
cleverness, and, if only Gütele had known more about koshering meat, she
would not have wished for a better daughter-in-law.
And one day, when I found the teacher out, and Gütele alone, it occurred
to me to ask her opinion about the soul.
My knees shook, my hands twitched, my heart fluttered; my eyes were
fixed on the floor, and yet I asked: "They all say, Gütele, that you are
so wise. Tell me, please, what is the soul?"
She smiled and answered:
"I'm sure, I don't know."
Then she grew suddenly sad and tears came into her eyes:
"I just remember," she said to me, "that when my mother was alive (on
whom be peace), my father always said, she was his soul--they loved one
another so dearly."
I don't know what came over me, but that same instant I took her hand
and said, trembling:
"Gütele, will you be my soul?" And she answered me quite softly:
"Yes!"
X
IN TIME OF PESTILENCE
1
THE TOWN TAKES FRIGHT
It is coming! _öi_, it is already near! In the villages round about
people are in peril of death! Lord of the world, what is to be done?
"Thou shalt not open thy mouth for Satan"--the name of the pestilence
may not cross the lips, but fear descends on every heart like a stone.
And every day there is worse news. In Apte a water-carrier, carrying his
cans, has fallen dead in the street. In Ostrovtze they have made
post-mortem examinations on two Jews. In Brotkoff there is a doctor with
a student from Warsaw. Racheff is isolated; they let nobody out or in.
Radom is surrounded by a chain of Cossacks; in Tzoismir, heaven defend
us, they say people are falling like flies. A terror!
Trade slackens, piousness increases. Dealers in produce are afraid to
leave the spot; big Yossil has already sold his horse and wagon--it's a
pity about the oats. The produce-brokers tighten the belt across their
empty stomachs, and there is daily more room in the dwellings, because
every Friday something more is taken to be pawned against Sabbath. A
workman, sometimes even a householder, will take an extra sip of brandy,
to put heart into him, but that doesn't go far to fill the innkeeper's
pocket, and a peasant is seldom to be seen. To make up for this, the
Röfeh's wife has removed her wig and put on a hair-band;[37] a secret
Maskil has burnt his "Love of Zion"[38] in public and taken to reciting
psalms; the bather's maid-servant has gone to the rabbi and asked him
how to do penance for having been in the habit of peeping into the men's
bath-house, on Fridays, through a chink in the door. A certain young
man, not to mention names, has been fasting a whole month and thinks of
becoming an ascetic--heaven only knows for what sin. Some of the tailors
now return remnants, butchers are more liberal in their cuts, only
Yeruchem Chalfen asks ten per cent. a month on a pawn ticket, and no
less with a security. His heart is of flint.
And faces grow yellow and livid, lips, blue-brown, eyes look large and
round, and heads droop; and the street is hushed. Small, scattered
groups, men and women apart, stand and hold voiceless conversation;
heads are shaken, hands thrown out, and eyes lifted to the leaden sky
spread out over the little town. It is quiet even in the house-of-study
between afternoon and evening prayers. On the other hand, the women's
gallery in the Shool is full. Every few minutes a piteous cry comes
through the grating, and the men feel their hair and nails tingle. There
is Kol Nidrei[39] every night, and people are bathed in tears.
What is to be done? Who can advise?
It is said that in Warsaw they have started tea-houses for the poor, and
cheap kitchens; they are giving away coal, clothes, and food for
nothing--all "_their_" precautions, all to imitate the nations of the
world, and perhaps to please the chief of police. Here other means are
employed--"Meïr Baal-Ness,"[40] wonder-workers, and famous charms.
Saturday evening, as soon as it is dark, "candles of blessing" are stuck
in the windows; outside the town, Vassil has a mill--the stakes shall be
conveyed away by night and buried in holy ground; an orphan boy shall be
married to an orphan girl--and every possible thing of the kind;
only--only, these charms have been from everlasting, and yet, when there
was the plague of 1829, the entire market-place was grass-grown with
only a pathway or two in the middle, trodden by those who carried the
dead.
Besides, and worse even than the plague itself, there is disinfection,
isolation, and, heaven have mercy on us, post-mortems. No man can live
forever, nor can he die more than once; but death and life are in the
hands of the All-Merciful. Weeping, prayer, and confession, these help;
almsgiving is a remedy; but the other things mean falling into the hands
of men. They suck the marrow out of your bones, it costs you a fortune,
treasure and blood--and they make post-mortems! They cut up a corpse,
heaven defend us, into little pieces, and bury it without a
winding-sheet, in pitch. In the hospital there is poisoning; they burn
innocent bedding, or they make a ring of Cossacks, and people may
starve to death or devour each other as they choose. Ha! one must be up
and doing and not let the enemy into the town.
"Candles of blessing" are already in the windows, side-glances are being
cast at Vassil's mill, and a marriage between two orphans is under
discussion. And the terror increases day by day. One had hoped that the
calamity would pass away with the summer, with the great heat....
These are all over, the Solemn Days, too. Now, thank God, it is after
Tabernacles. One feels the cold in one's bones; it snows a little, not
unfrequently, and the pestilence creeps on and on. May God watch over us
and protect us.
2
TWO ARE NOT AFRAID
And yet there are two persons in the place who are not afraid; and not
only that, but they are hoping for the plague.
The two persons are the young doctor, Savitzki, a Christian, and,
lehavdîl, Yössil, the beggar-student.
Savitzki came two years and a half ago, straight from the university; he
came a good Christian, a treasure, quite one of the righteous of the
nations of the world; people wished the town-justice were as good. There
wasn't a particle of pride in the man; he never gave himself airs; he
greeted everyone he passed, even a child, even a woman. For an old
person he would step aside. He loved Jewish fish as life itself, and the
householders treated him one and all with respect; they bowed to him
and took off as much as the whole hat; they sent him Sabbath cakes, and
often asked him in to fish. In fact, they wished him all that is good,
only--they never consulted him. Who wanted a doctor? Hadn't they a
Röfeh? And what a Röfeh! He has only to give the patient one look to
know what is the matter with him. So it's no wonder the apothecary is
willing to make up his prescriptions. It is possible that another doctor
might have got a practice quicker. For instance, if there had come an
old doctor with long experience and leaving a large practice somewhere
behind him, but there appears this popinjay, who cannot even twirl the
down on his upper lip, with a young, pale face like a girl's, dressed
like a dandy, a boy fresh from school. And just as the eggs always know
more than the hen, so must he think himself better than the old Röfeh,
who, as the saying goes, had eaten up his teeth at the work. So must he
say, that the sick take overmuch castor oil, that cupping was a mistake,
especially for a woman in child-bed; leeches he wanted put on the shelf,
that they might do no harm; dry-cupping he made fun of, and he had no
faith in salves. Did you ever hear of a doctor without salves and
without blood-letting? Who would consult him? An apothecary turns up his
nose at such an one's prescriptions--for twenty groschen apiece.
Thus it went on for six months; there was open war with the Röfeh and
hidden war with the apothecary, and yet he was on very good terms with
the householders.
Thus it went on, I say, till Savitzki came to the last of the few
gulden which he had brought with him from somewhere; after a bit he got
behindhand with his rent, and was in debt to the butcher and the grocer
and the tailor--he was in debt all round--and the creditors grew daily
more impatient.
And once, when the butcher had sent back the maid without any meat,
Savitzki let his wings droop, and confessed that blood-letting was
necessary, and that castor oil might be taken every minute; but this did
him no good at all, because, first, no one believed him, that he really
meant it--it was very likely only to take people in; secondly, supposing
it were so, and he had really given in to the Röfeh, then what was he
wanted for?
* * * * *
Savitzki got another gulden or two from somewhere (Christians often
inherit things from rich uncles and aunts), and dragged on another six
months, at the end of which he had an inspiration: _he became an
anti-Semite_, and a real bitter one.
He left off saluting people, and now, if he stepped aside for a Jew, it
was to spit out before him.
He persuaded the town-justice, even though it was winter, to drive a few
Jewish families off the peasants' land, and when there came a new
inspector (the old ones had their hush-money), he would himself take him
round the courtyards and show him where there lurked uncleanliness. He
told the apothecary one day that in _his_ place he should give all the
Jews poison; and many, many more things of the kind.
_This_ idea really proved helpful. Certain of the householders began to
call him in and paid him for his visits, although they would afterwards
tear up his prescriptions, pour out his mixtures, throw away his
ointment. The enemy of Israel must have his mouth shut; that also was a
kind of "hush-money"; but Savitzki did not make a living by it.
He had no more inspirations, and there was no hope of things bettering
themselves.
In addition to this he had the following misfortunes: he was unable to
extract a pea out of a little boy's ear; a sick man risked his life by
taking one of Savitzki's prescriptions and in a week he was dead. But
the worst was that he forgot himself one day and declared that fever was
not in itself an illness, but a remedy, a weapon by means of which the
body would rid itself of the disease. Those who heard him all but split
with laughter; and still more did they pant for laughing when it
happened that he was called in to a woman in child-bed at the critical
moment, because the "town-grandmother" was away on business in a
village, and there was no help for it. The ridiculous things he did! He
called for a basin of water, a piece of soap. He poured something into
the basin out of a little bottle he had brought in his pocket. The
people stood and watched him, and concluded he made up his medicines at
home to annoy the apothecary--but heaven only knew what it was. Then he
just went and washed his hands; and yet his hands were as clean as clean
could be, as is the way with Christians. And as if that wasn't enough,
he took out a knife and cleaned his nails--really, lehavdîl, he might
have been a pious Jewess. Then he rubbed his hands and washed them
anew. What more shall I say about his conjuring tricks? Then to
business. The woman (it was not her first) said he certainly had smaller
hands than the "town-grandmother," and was quicker at it, too, except
for his fads.
But who could stand all that fuss?
And when there's no soap to be had? It just happened to have been
washing day, but otherwise?
The result of all this was that Savitzki went about like a wicked man in
the other world, and at the end of two years and a half he saw he would
not be able to hold on there; that his "inexpressibles" were getting too
big for him, that he was growing daily thinner, and might fall into a
decline; he was preparing to run away and leave his debts behind, and
now--_it_ was near.
No, this is not the time to leave a town of the kind; there are golden
days coming. They have already sent an order to build a "barrack" for
cholera patients and to set apart a house for their families; and
although the heads of the community have forked out and bribed the
town-justice and the inspectors, to set down the "expenditures" for the
barrack as though it had been built, and not alarm the town, everyone
felt it was on the move, that it was coming; that it meant peril of
death to everyone and good luck to Savitzki. He will get three to four
rubles a day from the government, the sick will pay him extra, and those
who are well will pay not to be put down as sick. All the Jews will pay,
for disinfection and no-disinfection, isolation and non-isolation, for
being let in and let out, for speaking and for being silent, and above
all, "burial money"--not to be made the subject of a post-mortem and be
buried in pitch.
Savitzki revived. His heart grew light within him.
He paced the streets whistling a merry air; he looked cheerily into
everyone's face, peeped in at all the doors and windows. Jews like to
hide themselves, ah! but he will not allow it. They shall pay him for
the past years--he will come into his own.
Then he will leave the dead-alive place and marry. Whom should he find
here? The apothecary's daughter--that ugly thing?
3
THE SECOND WHO IS NOT AFRAID
Yössil, the beggar-student, would also like to marry, and has equally
put his hope in the pestilence; he is the one orphan lad in the town.
The householders could get no other if they wished. They will _have_ to
marry him off.
And he wishes it very much, which is no wonder--it is in the family. His
father and his grandfather at his age had already buried children, and
he is eighteen years old. He is "a scorn and a derision." They call him
"bachelor" and "old maid," he has no peace at the academy all day. The
allusions made at his expense prick him like pins. At night, it's worse.
He lies all alone in the house-of-study on the hard bench, and does not
sleep whole nights--the bad dreams will not let him; he is ready to
crawl up the wall.
He begs and implores the neighbors to marry him. He asks mercy, and the
answer is always the same: "Unless it be the Queen of Sheba, who will
look at you, scab?"
That, as it happened, was something Yössil had not; but he had other
attractions. He had come to the place fourteen years before, with his
father, a book-peddler who fell ill on his way through and who--not of
you be it said!--died there.
He had never known his mother, and therefore had wandered about with his
father from babyhood.
Kohol was moved to pity, householders bought up all the books in order
to bury the father, which they did almost for nothing, and even gave him
a nice grave.
The orphan was taken into the Talmud Torah and told to sleep in the
house-of-study; he ate "days,"[41] as he was still doing when my story
begins.
In half a year's time he went through measles in the house-of-study, and
then small-pox, and got a face as pitted as a grater.
The next year brought a new misfortune. In the house-of-study was an old
split stove, of which Yössil was the official heater. This oven was a
useless old thing and gave out no heat. By day things were bearable; at
night the stove went down to freezing-point. Yössil's rags, given him by
the householders on some holiday, were hardly enough to clothe him,
never sufficient for extra covering at night.
One day Yössil thought the matter over, and stole the key of the wood
store-room. He commenced to steal wood, and every day he heated the
stove more, and sat by the fire and warmed himself. At last, as people
said, God punished him for his theft: the stove suddenly burst, and a
piece flew out and broke his foot. The town Röfeh cured it, but it
remained shorter than the other, and Yössil limped from that day
forward.
And he was no genius, not even specially diligent. Who would fix on him?
Whom was he likely to attract? Not even a water-carrier would take him
for a son-in-law. Meantime, as though to spite him, his eyes would burn
like hot coals, his heart beat and yearned and sickened after something.
He often felt dizzy, there was a sound as of bells in his ears, and he
shook as in a fever, hot and cold, hot and cold.
But who troubles about an orphan?