sweetly, that I think sometimes it is all a dream, the dream of a
summer's night outside the fortress.
"Do you believe in the days of the Messiah?" I ask him.
"Of course!" he answers gently and confidently, "he _must_ come!"
"He must?!"
"O, surely! All wait for him, even the heavens and the earth wait! If it
were not so, no one would care to live, to dip a hand in cold water--and
if people live as they do and show they _want_ to live, it is a sign
they all feel that Messiah is coming, that he must come, that he is
already on the way."
"Is it true," I question further, "that first there will be dreadful
wars, and false Messiahs, on account of whom people will tear one
another like wild beasts, till the earth be soaked with blood? Is it
true that rivers of blood will flow from east to west and from north to
south, and all the animals and beasts drink human blood, all the fields
and gardens and wild places and roads be swamped with human blood, and
that in the middle of this bloody time the _true_ Messiah will come--the
_right_ one? Is that true?"
"True!"
"And people will know him?"
"Everyone will know him. Nobody will be mistaken. He will be Messiah in
every look, in every word, in every limb, in every glance. He will have
no armies with him, he will ride on no horse, and there will be no sword
at his side--"
"Then, what?"
"He will have wings--Messiah will have wings, and then everyone will
have wings. It will be like this: suddenly there will be born a child
with wings, and then a second, a third, and so it will go on. At first
people will be frightened, by degrees they will get used to it, until
there has arisen a whole generation with wings, a generation that will
no longer struggle in the mud over a Parnosseh-worm."
He talked on like this for some time, but I had already ceased to
understand him. Only his voice was so sadly-sweet that I sucked it up
like a sponge. The day was breaking when he ceased--they had opened the
gates and were letting down the bridge.
Since the night spent outside the fortress, the life within it had grown
more unbearable still. The old walls, the rasping iron drawbridge, the
iron doors, the sentinels and patrols, the hoarsely-angry "_Wer da?_"
the falsely-servile: "A citizen, an inhabitant!" the eternal quivering
of the putty-colored faces, the startled, half-extinguished eyes, the
market with its cowering, aimlessly restless shadows of men--the whole
thing weighed on me like lead--not to be able to breathe, not to feel
free! And my heart grew sick with a great longing. And I resolved to go
to meet the Messiah.
* * * * *
I got into the first conveyance that presented itself. The driver turned
round and asked:
"Where to?"
"Wherever you please," I answered, "only a great way--a great way off
from here!"
"For how long?"
"For as long as the horse can go!"
The driver gathered up the reins, and we set off.
We drove on and on. Other fields, other woods, other villages, other
towns, everything different; but the difference was only on the surface,
below that everything was the same. When I looked into things, I saw
everywhere the same melancholy, every face wore a look of frightened
cunning, speech was everywhere broken and halting--the world seemed
overspread with a mournful mist that hid every gleam of light and
extinguished every joy. Everything shrank together and stifled. And I
kept shouting: "Go on!" But I depended on the driver, and the driver, on
the horse--the horse wants to eat, and we are obliged to stop.
I step into the inn. A large room, divided into two by means of an old
curtain, reaching from one wall to the other. On my side of the curtain,
three men sit round a large table. They do not remark me, and I have
time to look them over. They represent three generations. The oldest is
gray as a pigeon, but he sits erect and gazes with sharp eyes and
without spectacles into a large book, lying before him on the table. The
old face is grave, the old eyes unerring in their glance, and the old
man and the book are blent into one by the white beard, whose silver
points rest on the pages. At his right hand sits a younger man, who must
be his son; it is the same face, only younger, less unmoved, more
nervous, at times more drawn and weary. He also gazes into a book, but
through glasses. The book is smaller, and he holds it nearer to his
eyes, resting it against the edge of the table. He is of middle age;
beard and ear-locks just silvered over. He rocks himself to and fro. It
seems every time as if his body wished to tear itself away from the
book, only the book draws it back. He rocks himself, and the lips move
inaudibly. Every now and then he glances at the old man, who does not
notice it.
To the old man's left sits the youngest, probably a grandson, a young
man with glossy black hair and a burning, restless glance. He also is
looking at a book, but the book is quite small, and he holds it close
to his bright, unquiet eyes. He continually lowers it, however, and
throws a glance of mingled fear and respect at the old man, another,
with a half-ironic smile, at his father, and then leans over to hear
what is going on, on the further side of the curtain. And from the
further side of the curtain come moans as of a woman in child-birth--
I am about to cough, so that they may be aware of me. At this moment a
fold of the curtain is pushed aside and there appear two women: an old
one with a sharp, bony face and sharp eyes, and one of middle age with a
gentle, rather flabby face and uncertain glance. They stand looking at
the men, and waiting to be questioned. The oldest does not see them--his
soul has melted into the soul of the book. The middle-aged man has seen
them, and is wondering how best to rouse his father; the youngest starts
up--
"Mother! Grandmother! Well?"
The father rises anxiously from his chair; the grandfather only pushes
the book a little away from him, and lifts his eyes to the women.
"How is she?" inquires the young one further, with a trembling voice.
"She is over it!"
"Over it! over it!" stammers the young one.
"Mother, won't you say, Good luck to you?" asks the second. The old one
reflects a moment and then asks:
"What has happened? Even if it is a girl--"
"No!"--the grandmother speaks for the first time--"it is a boy."
"Still-born?"
"No, it lives!" answers the old woman, and yet there is no joy in her
tone.
"A cripple? Defective?"
"It has marks! On both shoulders--"
"What sort of marks?"
"Of wings--"
"Of wings?"
"Yes, of wings, and they are growing--"
The old man remains sitting in perplexity, the second is lost in wonder,
the youngest fairly leaps for joy.
"Good, good! Let them grow, may they grow into wings, big, strong ones!
Good, good!"
"What is there to be glad about?" inquires his father.
"A dreadful deformity!" sighs the old man.
"Why so?" asks the grandson.
"Wings," said the old man, sternly, "raise one into the height--when one
has wings one cannot keep to the earth."
"Much it matters!" retorts the grandson, defiantly. "One is quit of
living here and wallowing in the mud, one lives in the height. Is heaven
not better than earth?"
The old man grows pale, and the son takes up the word:
"Foolish child! What is one to live on in the height? Air doesn't go
far. There are no inns to hire up there, no 'contracts' to sign.
There's no one of whom to buy a bit of shoe-leather--in the height--"
The old man interrupts him: "In the height," he says in hard tones,
"there is no Shool, no house-of-study, no Kläus to pray and read in; in
the height, there is no pathway, trodden out by past generations--in the
height, one wanders and gets lost, because one does not know the road.
One is a free bird, but woe to the free bird in the hour of doubt and
despondency!"
"What do you mean?" and the young man starts up with burning cheeks and
eyes.
But the grandmother is beforehand with him:
"What fools men are," she exclaims, "how they talk! And the rabbi? Do
you suppose the rabbi is going to let him be circumcised? Is he likely
to allow a blessing to be spoken over a child with wings?"
* * * * *
I give a start. The night spent outside the town, the drive, and the
child with wings were all a dream.
XIV
KABBALISTS
When times are bad, even Torah, "the best ware,"[54] loses in value.
In the Lashewitz "academy," there remain only the head, Reb Yainkil, and
one pupil.
The head of the academy is on old, thin Jew, with a long, pointed beard
and old, extinguished eyes; Lemech, his beloved pupil, is a young man,
likewise thin, tall, and pale, with black, curling ear-locks, dark,
glowing eyes, heavily-ringed, dry lips, and sharp, quivering throat;
both with garments open at the breast, with _no_ shirts, and both in
rags; the teacher just drags about a pair of peasant boots; the pupil's
shoes drop from his sockless feet.
That is all that remains of the celebrated academy!
The impoverished little town sent less and less food, gave fewer and
fewer free meals to the poor students, and these crept away elsewhere!
But Reb Yainkil intends to die here, and his pupil remains to close his
eyelids!
And these two are often hungry. Eating little means sleeping little, and
whole nights without sleep or food incline one to the Kabbalah! If one
has to wake whole nights and hunger whole days, one may as well get
something by it, if only fasting and flagellations, so long as these
open the door to the world of mystery, of spirits, and of angels!
And they have been studying the Kabbalah for some time!
Now they are sitting at the one long table. With everyone else it is
"after dinner," with them still "before breakfast." They are used to
that. The teacher rolls his eyes and holds forth; the pupil sits with
both hands supporting his head and listens.
"Therein," said the teacher, "are many degrees of attainment: one knows
a bit of a tune, another half a one, another a whole. The Rebbe of
blessed memory knew a whole one with the accompaniment. I," he added
sadly, "have only been found worthy of a bit like that!"
He measured off a tiny piece of his bony finger and went on:
"There is one kind of tune that must have words, that is a low order of
tune. But there is a higher kind: a tune that sings itself, but without
words--a pure melody! But _that_ melody must have a voice--and lips,
through which the voice issues! And lips, you see, are material things!
"And the voice itself is refined matter, certainly, but matter none the
less. Let us say, the voice stands mid-way between the spiritual and the
material.
"However that may be, the tune that finds expression through a voice and
is dependent on lips is not pure, not entirely pure, not yet really
spiritual!
"The real tune sings itself without a voice--it sings itself inside one,
in the heart, in the thoughts!
"There you have the meaning of the words of King David: 'All my bones
shall say,' etc. It ought to sing in the marrow of the bones, that is
where the tune should be--that is the highest praise we can give to God.
That is no human tone that has been _thought out_! It is a fragment of
the melody to which God created the world, of the soul He breathed into
it. Thus sings the Heavenly Family, thus sang the Rebbe, whose memory be
blessed!"
The teacher was interrupted by a shock-headed lad with a cord round his
waist--a porter. He came into the house-of-study, put down on the table,
beside the teacher, a dish of porridge with a piece of bread, said
gruffly: "Reb Tebil sends the teacher some food," turned his back, and
added, as he went out: "I'll come back presently for the dish."
Recalled by the rough tone from the divine harmonies, the teacher rose
heavily, and went to the basin to wash, dragging his great boots.
He continued to speak as he went, but with less assurance, and the pupil
followed him with greedy ears and glowing, dreaming eyes.
"But I," repeated Reb Yainkil, sadly, "was not even worthy of
understanding to what category it belongs, of knowing under what heading
it is classified. However," he added with a smile, "the initiatory
mortifications and purifications, those I _do_ know, and perhaps I will
teach them you to-day."
The pupil's eyes seem about to start from their sockets with eagerness;
he keeps his mouth open so as to catch every word. But the teacher is
silent, he is washing his hands; he repeats the ritual formula, comes
back to the table and says "Thou who bringest forth,"[55] with trembling
lips.
He lifts the dish with shaking fingers, and the warm steam rises into
his face; then he puts it down, takes the spoon in his right hand, and
warms the left at the dish's edge; after which he masticates the rest of
the bread with some salt between his tongue and his toothless gums.
Having warmed his face with his hands, he wrinkles his forehead, purses
his thin lips, and begins to blow the porridge.
The pupil has not taken his eyes off him the whole time, and when the
teacher's trembling mouth met the spoonful of porridge, something came
over him, and he covered his face with both hands and withdrew within
himself.
A few minutes later another boy came in with a bowl of porridge and some
bread:
"Reb Yòsef sends the pupil some breakfast!"
But the pupil did not remove his hands from his face.
The teacher laid down his spoon and went up to the pupil. For a while he
gazed at him with affectionate pride, then he wrapped his hand in the
skirt of his kaftan, and touched him on the shoulder:
"They have brought you something to eat," he said gently, by way of
rousing him. Slowly and sadly the pupil uncovered his face. It was paler
than ever, and the black-ringed eyes had grown wilder.
"I know, Rebbe," he answered, "but I will not eat anything to-day."
"The fourth fast?" asked the teacher, wondering, "and without me?" he
added, with a playful pretense at being hurt.
"It is another kind of fast," answered the pupil, "it is a penance."
"What do you mean? _You_ and a penance?"
"Yes, Rebbe! A penance. A minute ago, when you began to eat, I was
tempted to break the commandment: 'Thou shalt not covet!'"
* * * * *
Late that night the pupil woke the teacher. They slept on the benches in
the Kläus, opposite to one another.
"Rebbe, Rebbe!" he called in a weak voice.
"What is it?" and the teacher started up in alarm.
"Just now I attained to a higher degree!"
"How so?" inquired the teacher, still half asleep.
"It sang within me!"
The teacher sat up:
"How so? how so?"
"I don't know myself, Rebbe," replied the pupil in his feeble tones, "I
couldn't sleep, and I thought over what you told me. I wanted to get to
know the tune--and I was so sorrowful, because I could not, that I began
to weep--everything in me wept; all my limbs wept before the Creator.
"Then I made the invocations you taught me--and, wonderful to say, not
with my lips, but somehow inside me--with my whole self. Suddenly it
grew light; I shut my eyes, and still it was light to me, very light,
brilliantly light."
"There!" and the teacher sat bending toward him.
"And I had such pleasant feelings as I lay in the light, and I seemed to
weigh nothing at all, no more than if my body had been a feather, I felt
as if I could fly."
"You see, you see, you see!"
"Then I felt merry and lively, I wanted to laugh--my face never moved,
nor my lips either, and yet I laughed--and so heartily."
"You see, you see, you see!"
"Then there was a humming inside me like the beginning of a melody."
The teacher sprang down from his bench, and was across the room.
"Well, well?"
"Then I heard something begin to sing within me."
"What did you feel like? Tell me quick!"
"I felt as though all the doors of sense in me were shut, and as though
something sang within me--as it ought to do--without any words, like ...
like...."
"How was it? How was it?"
"No, I can't! I knew, before--and then the singing turned into--into--"
"Into what? What became of it?"
"A kind of playing--as though (lehavdîl) there were a fiddle inside
me--or as if Yoneh, the musician, were sitting there and playing hymns,
as he does at the Rebbe's dinner-table. Only it was better, more
beautiful, more spiritual. And without a voice, without any voice at
all--it was _all_ spiritual."
"Happy, happy, happy, are you!"
"Now it's all gone (sadly), the doors of sense are reopened, and I am so
tired, I am so--so--_tired_, that I--
"Rebbe!" he called out suddenly, clapping a hand to his heart, "Rebbe,
say the confession of sins with me! They have come for me! They have
come for me! There is a singer wanted in the Heavenly Family! An angel
with white wings! Rebbe, Rebbe! Hear, O Israel! Hear, O Is--"
* * * * *
The entire little town wished as one man that it might die as blessed a
death; but the Rebbe was not satisfied.
"Another fast or two," he groaned, "and he would have died beneath the
Divine kiss!"[56]
XV
TRAVEL-PICTURES
PREFACE
It was at the end of the good, and the beginning of the bad, years.
Black clouds had appeared in the sky, but it was believed that the
wind[57]--the spirit of the times, I mean--would soon disperse them,
that they would pour out their heart somewhere in the wilderness.
In Europe's carefully-tended vineyard the bitter root was already
cleaving the sod and sending out prickly, poisonous shoots, but look,
look! now the gardener will see it and tear it out root and all. That
was the idea. It was supposed that the nineteenth century had caught a
cold, a feverish chill, in its old age. That it would end in a serious
illness, a fit of insanity, never occurred to anyone.
How far away America was for us in those days! Not a Jew troubled
himself as to what a plate of porridge looked like over there, or
wondered whether people wore their skull-caps on their feet. Palestinian
Esrogîm were as seldom mentioned as Barons Hirsch and Edward de
Rothschild.[58]
Astronomy calculates beforehand every eclipse of the sun or moon.
Psychology is not so advanced. The world-soul grows suddenly dark, the
body is seized with a sort of convulsion, and science cannot foretell
the hour--the thing is difficult enough to believe in after it has
happened--it is not to be explained. And yet people were uneasy--rumor
followed rumor from every side.
It was resolved, among other things, to inquire into the common,
workaday Jewish life, to find out what went on in the little towns, what
men were hoping for, how they made a living, what they were about, what
the people said.
TRUST
My first halting-place was Tishewitz. I took lodgings with an
acquaintance, Reb Bòruch. He sent for the beadle and a few householders.
While I was waiting for them, I stood by the window and looked at the
market-place. The market-place is a large square bounded on each side by
a row of grimy, tumbledown houses, some roofed with straw, but the
majority, with shingle. All are one-storied with a broad veranda
supported by rotten beams.
Pushing out from the veranda and not far apart, one from the other,
stand the huckstresses over the stalls with rolls, bread, peas, beans,
and various kinds of fruit.
The market-women are in a state of great commotion. I must have
impressed them very much.
"Bad luck to you!" screams one, "don't point at him with your finger; he
can see!"
"Hold your tongue!"
The women know that I have come to take notes in writing. They confide
the secret one to another so softly that I overhear every word, even
inside the house.
"They say it is he himself!"
"It is a good thing the poor sheep have shepherds who are mindful of
them. All the same, if _that_ Shepherd[59] did not help, much good it
would be!"
"One cannot understand why _that_ Shepherd should require such
messengers" (in allusion to my shaven beard and short-skirted coat).
Another is more liberal in her views, and helps herself out of the
difficulty by means of the Röfeh.
"Take a Röfeh," she says, "he is likewise a heretic, and yet he also is
permitted--"
"That is another thing altogether, he is a private individual, but is it
so hard to find good Jews for public affairs?"
"They'd better," opines another, "have sent a few hundred rubles. They
might let the writing be and welcome, even though my son were _not_ made
a general!"[60]
Sitting at the table, I saw without being seen. I was hidden from the
street, but I could see half the market-place. Meantime, mine host had
finished his prayers, put off Tallis and Tefillin, poured out a little
brandy, and drunk my health in it.
"Long life and peace to you!" he said.
I answer, "God send better times and Parnosseh!"
I envy my host--Parnosseh is all he wants.
He adds impressively:
"And there will _have_ to be Parnosseh! Is there not a God in the world?
And the 'good Jews' will pray and do what they can."
I interrupt him and ask why, although he has confidence in his own
business, although he knows quite well "He who gives life gives
food"--why he exerts himself so, and lies awake whole nights thinking:
To-morrow, later, this time next year. Hardly has a Jew put on his
wedding garments, when he begins to think how to buy others for his
children--and then, when it comes to All-Israel, his trust is so great
that it does not seem worth while to dip one's hand in cold water for
it--why is this?
"That," he says, "is something quite different. All-Israel is another
thing. All-Israel is God's affair--God is mindful of it, and then, in
case there should be forgetfulness before the throne of His glory, there
are those who will remind Him. But as for private affairs, that's a
different matter. Besides, how much longer can the misery of Israel
last? It _must_ come to an end some time, either because the measure of
guilt is full, or the measure of merit is full. But Parnosseh is quite
another thing!"
ONLY GO!
I forgot to tell you that the rabbi of the little town would neither
come to see me nor allow me to visit him.
He sent to tell me that it was not his business, that he was a poor,
weakly creature, besides which he had been sitting now for several weeks
over a knotty question of "meat in milk," and then, the principal thing,
he was at loggerheads with Kohol, because they would not increase his
salary by two gulden a week.
There came, however, three householders and two beadles.
I began with mine host. He has no wife, and before I could put in a
word, he excused himself for it by asking, "How long do you suppose she
has been dead?" lest I should reproach him for not having found another
to fill her place.
Well, to be brief, I set him down a widower, three sons married, one
daughter married, two little boys and one little girl at home.
And here he begs me at once to put down that all the sons--except the
youngest, who is only four years old "and Messiah will come before _he_
is liable to serve"--that all the others are defective[61] in one way or
other.
With the exception of the two eldest sons, I already know the whole
family.
The married daughter lives in her father's house and deals in tobacco,
snuff, tea, and sugar; also, in foodstuffs; also, I think, in rock-oil
and grease. I had bought some sugar of her early that morning. She is
about twenty-eight years old. A thin face, a long hooked nose that seems
to be trying to count the black and decaying teeth in her half-opened
mouth, cracked, blue-gray lips--her father's image. Her sister, a young
girl, is like her; but she has "Kallah-Chen,"[62] her face is fresher
and pinker, the teeth whiter, and altogether she is not so worn and
neglected-looking. I also see the two little boys--pretty little
boys--they must take after their mother: red cheeks, and shy, restless
eyes; their twisted black curls are full of feathers; but they have ugly
ways: they are always shrugging their little shoulders and writhing
peevishly. They wear stuff cloaks, dirty, but whole.
The mother cannot have died more than a short time ago, long enough for
the cloaks to get dirty, not long enough for them to be torn. Who is
there to look after them now? The eldest sister has four children, a
husband who is a scholar, and the shop--the little Kallah maiden serves
her father's customers at the bar; the father himself has no time.
"What is your business?" I ask him.
"Percentage."
"Do you mean usury?"