by one; the foolish statistics play with figures. Do statistics record
the anxious heart-beats that thumped in the breast of the grandson of
the descendant from Spanish ancestors, or the son of the author of the
_Tevuas Shor_, before they committed their first illegality? Do they
measure how their hearts bled _after_ they committed it? Do they count
the sleepless nights before and after?
Can they show how many were the days of hunger? How many times the
children flung themselves about in convulsions, how often hands and feet
shook when the first glass was filled by the unlicensed brandy-seller?
Livid, ghastly, blue faces float before me in the empty air, and
blue-brown, parched lips whisper: "There has been no fire in my chimney
for twenty-four days."
"We have eaten potato peelings for ten."
"Three died without a doctor or a prescription; I _had_ to save the
fourth!"
The hoarse voices cut me to the heart, like a blunt knife; I leave the
window where I have been standing; but the room is full of ghosts.
By the stove stands a red Jew, well-nourished: "Hee, hee!" he laughs.
"Steal? buy stolen things? a business like any other ... not less than a
month's imprisonment ... in a month I would have lost a fortune ... all
the noblemen will bear me witness ... honestly! honestly!"
That voice is worse; it saws ... I throw myself on the bed, I shut my
eyes, and there appears to me the good old rebbitzin of Skul.
"Well," she says with her childlike, silvery voice, "and suppose the
result of your inquiries were not favorable for the Jews, shall you he
able to say: 'Thy people are all righteous?'" I feel as if her kind,
blue, dove-like eyes rested soothingly on my hot forehead.
I fell asleep beneath them, and I dreamt of the two angels, the good
inclination and the evil one. I saw them flying earthward before
day-break, enveloped in a thin, pink mist. The evil inclination carried,
in one hand, a blue paper with a large, black eye in the top left-hand
corner, evidently a deed relating to a house or some property ...
expensive dresses, besides fur caps, braided kaftans, silk sashes, also
a top-hat and frock-coat as if for one person; also handkerchiefs,
head-kerchiefs, kerchiefs with tinsel, pearl necklaces, as well as silk
and satin trains of all colors--all that in one hand, and in the
other--potato peelings....
The good inclination--naked, without clothes or things to carry, as God
made him....
Both fly ... it seems as if the good inclination wanted to tell me
something, he opens his pretty mouth ... but not his voice, a cry of
alarm wakes me. Fire! I spring out of bed, there is a fire just
opposite!
A long tongue of flame stretches out toward me and seems to say:
"Don't be frightened: it's insured!"
THE FIRE
The fiery tongue was put out at me by Reb Chaïm Weizensang's house. The
tongue grew larger and the house smaller till it fell in, into a sea of
wails and screams of terror. There was fortunately no wind at the time
of the conflagration.
When the sun rose from out the mist, blushing red like a beautiful and
innocent maiden after the bath, she saw nothing but long, black, male
heads turning over the ruins with sticks. They were looking for the
remnants of Weizensang's riches in the remnants of his house.
Groups of yellow-faced women are already standing around it. The brown
shawls are held with washed fingers over their unwashed heads, and pale
lips lament and bewail the house.
With the morning came a fresh wind. A little sooner, and it would have
played havoc. Now it just shakes the remaining old chimney over the
women's heads as though it were a palm. The chimney rocks and groans
sadly, as though it felt deserted, and perhaps it listens to the
inn-keeper telling me the tale of the destruction of the house, and
affirms with a nod: "True, true!"
You would sooner pick up every thread, every dust-grain of life out of
which the sleep-angel has woven you a fantastic dream, than discover all
the devices a Jew must resort to before he hears the clink of copper
coin.
If I were to describe everything, you would think I had been dreaming
myself.... Who shall read the Divine countenance when a wretched
creature stands before Him, lifts its head with its racked brain,
extinguished eyes, and trembling voice, and pressing its empty stomach
with cracked and bony hands, prays without a voice, without a language;
the tongue will not move, but the blood cries: "Lord of the world, I
have done my part, now--Thou must help! Lord of the world, feed me like
the ravens! In what am I more worthless than they are? Lord of the
world, where are _my_ crumbs? When will it be _my_ 'Sabbath of
Song?'"[99]
And for all the body he has, he might very well be a bird; nothing is
wanting but the wings, and the nest with the crumbs.
And therefore the Jewish Parnossehs are so specialized that their like
will only be in the twenty-first century, when one specialist will lift
the upper eye-lid, a second press down the lower, and a third examine
the sick eye.
If a dish of roast veal, a rag in a paper-factory, or an exported egg
had a mouth to speak with and the rabbi Reb Heshil's memory, they would
still be unable to say how many Jewish hands had taken them out and put
them in, from the peasant's shed into the roasting-pan, from the
manure-box into the "Holländer,"[100] from servitude into freedom....
And a Jewish Parnosseh is just such a ladder as Jacob our father saw in
a dream, the night when all stones united into one stone for his head, a
ladder standing on the earth, and the top of it reaches into the sky.
How deep it is chained into the earth, is known only to the worm at its
foot, and how high it reaches--to the star only that shines above it.
_We_ grow giddy gazing up the height; and when we peer down into the
depths, our stomach turns, and we look green forever after.
Angels ascend and descend the ladder; men, alas, _climb_ it with their
last remaining strength, and fall down it when their strength is
exhausted. And even if he can thank his stars his neck is not broken,
the Jew has no strength left to begin climbing again.
Such is the ladder that was partly climbed by our "burnt-out" one. First
he travelled between the villages as a "runner," on business for other
people; the earth was hot to his bare feet. It was not the cry of a
brother's blood this Cain heard, it was the cry of wife and children for
bread.
Heaven came to his assistance; he bought very cheaply for two or three
years on end, and then he was promoted from a "runner" to a "walker."
There was already provision at home for a week at a time, and he only
came back Fridays with the result of a week's bargaining; the brain was
more composed, and had time to take in the fact that the feet were
becoming swollen, that the father of six children ought always to walk
and not run, if he wishes his feet to carry him till at least one of
them is confirmed. And God helped further; he is now, blessed be the
Name, a village peddler, that is, he walks only when there is no
"opportunity"[101] to ride in from one village to another for a kopek;
if the "opportunity" is there, he rides.
God helped him on again; another year or two, and he has his own horse
and cart!
Time does not stand still, and he took no rest, and God helped. The one
horse turned into two, the cart into a trap, and it even came to a
driver! And he is now a produce dealer; first he deals with peasants and
then with gentlemen.
And, God helping, he gets into favor first with the head of the dairy
farm, then with the manager, after that with the bailiff, after that
again with the steward, and at last with the count himself. O, by that
time he is an inhabitant, settled in the place, the driver becomes a
domestic servant, horse and carriage are sold, and pockets are lined
with the count's receipts....
What is he now?
He is like the sun round which circle the stars--smaller traders, and
little stars--brokers.
He shines and illumines the whole place with credit. Yelenskin compared
him to a spider sitting in his web, and the count to one of the flies
entangled in it. After a while our "sun-spider," or "spider-sun,"
enlarged his house, wrote marriage contracts for his children, settled
dowries on them; bought his wife pearls and himself a sealskin coat,
engaged better teachers for his boys, and for the girls someone to teach
them if only how to write a Jewish letter.
Suddenly (at least, for the town), the count was declared bankrupt, and
our "spider-sun," or "sun-spider," lost everything at once.
If I had passed through a month earlier, I should have put down:
A house, fifteen hundred rubles, a propination,[102] a business in
timber and produce, a money-lender. He has lent the count fifteen
thousand rubles at ten per cent., not as a mortgage, but for
"hand-receipts."
Now I write one word:
"Burnt-out."
I might add:
A man of eighty-two, swollen feet, a household of seventeen persons.
THE EMIGRANT
I open a door.
A room without beds, without furniture, carpeted with hay and straw. In
the middle of the room stands a barrel upside down. Round the barrel,
four starved-looking children, with frowzy hair, hang over a great
earthenware dish of sour milk, out of which they eat, holding a greenish
metal spoon in their right hand and a bit of bran-bread in their left.
In one corner, on the floor, sits a pale woman, and the tears fall from
her eyes on the potatoes she is about to peel. In the second corner lies
"he," also on the floor, and undressed.
"It was no good your coming, neighbor," he says to me, without rising,
"no good at all! I don't belong here now!"
But when he sees that I have no intention of going away, he raises
himself slowly.
"_Nu_, where am I to seat you?" he asks sadly.
I assure him that I can write standing.
"You will get nothing out of me! I am only waiting for a boat
ticket--you see, I have sold everything, even my tools...."
"You are a mechanic?" I ask.
"A tailor."
"And what obliges you to emigrate?"
"Hunger."
And there was hunger in _his_ face, in _her_ face, and still more in the
gleaming eyes of the children round the barrel.
"No work to be had?"
He shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, he and work had long been
strangers.
"Where are you going to?"
"To London. I was there once already, and made money. I sent my wife ten
rubles a week, and lived like a human being. The bad luck brought me
home again."
I wondered if the "bad luck" were his wife.
"Why not have sent for your family to join you?"
"It drew me back! It's black as night over there. As soon as ever I
closed an eye, I dreamt of the little town, the river round it, ... I
felt suffocated there, and it drew me and drew me...."
"This is certainly," I remark, "a beautiful bit of country."
"The air costs nothing, and we have been living on air, heaven be
praised, these three years. This time I am going with wife and child. I
mean to put an end to it."
"You will miss the wood again!"
"The wood!"--he gives himself a twist with a bitter smile--"my wife
went into the wood the evening before last, to gather berries, and they
marched her out and treated her to the whip."
"There is the river,"--I want to take him away from his sad thoughts.
His pale face grew paler.
"The river? In the summer it took one of my children."
I hurried away from the luckless home.
THE MADMAN
I returned to my lodgings quite unnerved, and lay a long time on the
hard sofa without closing an eye.... A noise wakes me. Something is
stealing in to me through the window. I see on the window ledge two
long, bony, dirty hands, and there raises itself from behind them an
unkempt head with two gleaming eyes in a livid face.
"Won't you enter _me_?" asks the head, softly.
I do not know how to answer. He, meanwhile, has taken silence for
consent, and stands in the middle of the room.
Alarmed, and still more astonished, I keep my eye on him.
"Write!" he says impatiently. "Shall I give you the ink and a pen?"
Without waiting for an answer, he pushes up to my sofa the little table
with the writing materials.
"Write, please, write!"
And his voice is so soft and gentle, it finds its way into my heart, and
I am no longer frightened.
I sit up to write. I question him, and he answers me.
"Your name?"
"Jonah."
"Your surname?"
"When I was a little boy, they called me Jonah Zieg. After my wedding,
Jonah Drong, but since the misfortune happened to me, Mad Jonah."
"What is your German name?"
"O, you mean _that_?... Directly, directly. Perelmann. You see my
pearls?"
He points to a torn, red kerchief round his neck, and says: "Real
pearls, _ha_? But that's what I'm called. How can I help it?"
"A wife?"
"You had better _not_ put her down: she doesn't live with me. Since the
misfortune, she doesn't live with me ... a nice wife, too. I would
gladly have given her a divorce, but the rabbi wouldn't allow it. He
said I mustn't. A nice little wife!"
And his eyes grew moist.
"She even took the child with her. It's better off with her--what should
_I_ do with it? Carry it about? They throw stones at me, and would have
hurt it."
"One child is it you have?"
"One."
"What was your misfortune?"
"May you know trouble as little as I know that! Folk say a devil. The
Röfeh says, a stone fell into my head, and the soul, or, as he calls it,
the life, into my belly. I don't remember the stone, but I have a bruise
on my head."
He takes off his hat and cap together, bends his head, and shows me a
bare bump in the hair.
"It may have been from a stone, but I _am_ mad--that's certain."
"What is your eccentricity?"
"Two or three times a day I have my soul in my belly, and then I speak
out of my belly, and crow like a cock. I can't stop myself, I really
can't!"
"What were you _before_ the misfortune?"
"I hadn't got to be anything. It happened to me early in the Köst.[103]
That is why I have only one child, health and strength to it!"
"Have you any money?"
"I had a few gulden dowry. A lot of it went in remedies--on 'good Jews'
... the rest I gave _her_."
"What do you live on?"
"On trouble. The boys throw stones at me. I daren't go about in the
market-place, else I might have earned something near a stall. At one
time people were sorry for me and gave me things. Now times are bad--I
have to go begging. I beg before dinner, while the children are still in
Cheder. And it's little enough I get by it! The town is small; there are
two mad people in it beside me. And now they say that yesterday the
'Lokshiche'[104] threw a saucepan at her servant's head. The servant is
sure to go mad, quite sure! Only I don't know yet if she will crow as I
do, or trumpet into her fist, like the rabbi's Shlom'tzie, or be silent
like Hannah the Tikerin."
MISERY
I shall not call the little town by its name, but if I come across
another such, I, too, shall begin to crow, like the madman....
He was an excellent shoemaker, who supported wife and children (rarely
less than four or five) respectably. He won a large sum of money in a
lottery, took to drink, drank it all up, left his wife and children to
shift for themselves, disappeared, and must have died since somewhere or
other beneath a hedge.
But that is not specifically Jewish. Take another one of us, his partner
in the lottery ticket. He was a teacher, won some money, hired a mill
together with the Rebbe. The mill failed, now he is beadle in a
Chassidic meeting-house, gets nothing for it, but he sells the "bitter
drop." The wife is a "buyer-in," takes round eggs and butter to the
houses. She doesn't earn much, because she is lame. One son is away, the
second works somewhere at a carpenter's; one is at home, scrofulous.
The widow Beile Bashe, surname unknown, lives with a daughter-in-law, a
soldier's wife. The husband disappeared in the Turkish war. The
daughter-in-law plucks feathers--she is a Tikerin, and watches beside
women in child-bed, or else by the sick. In summer, so long as the
nobleman allowed it, she gathered berries in the forest; a sickly woman,
she does a little bit of begging besides.
Zeinwill Graf has only lately become a skinner. Last year he was a great
fisher, rented a river which the nobleman wished to let to a Christian;
he paid a lot of cession-money, caught only "forbidden fish" the whole
summer, and is now in dire poverty.
Shmerke Bentzies, formerly a Dantzig trader ... it is twenty years since
he came home empty-handed. Since then he trades in currant-wine for
Kiddush. The wife is a sempstress, has suffered a year or two with her
eyes. "They haven't _no_ children," but competition in the currant-wine
trade is very keen, and they struggle.
Melach Berils, a fine young man, only lately boarding with his
father-in-law ... he was in business together with a cattle-dealer and
lost his money; meantime the father-in-law died in poverty. It is
uncertain what he will do. There are three little children, not more.
I was also asked to put down a man (they had forgotten the name), a man
with a wife, and children (nobody remembers how many, but a lot), who
may arrive at any moment. The nobleman has refused to renew his lease;
no one can tell what he will take to, but--"you may as well put him
down!"
THE LÀMED-WÒFNIK
"We (the story is told me by a teacher of small children) once had a
real Làmed-Wòfnik!"
"He said so himself?" I ask.
"Well, he would have been a fine Làmed-Wòfnik if he had! He denied it
'stone and bone.' If he were questioned about it, he lost his temper and
fired up. But, of course, people got wind of it, they knew well enough!
yes, 'kith and kin,' the whole town knew it! As if there could be any
doubt! People talked, it was clear as daylight! In the beginning, there
were some who wouldn't believe--they came to a bad end!
"For instance: Yainkef-Yosef Weinshenker, a man of eighty and much
respected, I can't quite explain, but he sort of turned up his nose at
him. Did he _say_ anything? Heaven forbid! but there! Like that....
Turned up his nose as much as to say: Preserve us! Nothing worse! Well,
what do you think? Not more than five or six years after, he was dead.
Yainkef-Yosef lay in his grave. Poor Leah, the milkwoman! One was sorry
for her. It was muddy, and she did not step off the stone causeway to
make room for him. Would you believe it, the milk went wrong at all her
customers' for a month on end! And there was no begging off! When
approached on the subject, he pretended to know nothing about it, and
scolded into the bargain!"
"Of course,"--I wish to show off my knowledge--"though a scholar decline
the honor due to him...."
"A scholar? _Is_ a Làmed-Wòfnik a scholar? And you think he knew even
how to read Hebrew properly? He could manage to make seven mistakes in
spelling Noah. Besides, Hebrew is nothing. Hebrew doesn't count for much
with us. He could not even read through the weekly portion. And his
reciting the Psalms made nevertheless an impression in the highest! The
last Rebbe, of blessed memory, said that Welvil (that was his name, the
Làmed-Wòfnik's) cleft the seventh heaven! And you think his
Psalm-singing was all! Wait till I tell you!
"Hannah the Tikerin's goat (not of you be it said!) fell sick, and she
drove it to the Gentile exorcist, who lives behind the village. The goat
staggered, she was so ill.
"On the way--it was heaven's doing--the goat met the Làmed-Wòfnik, and
as she staggered along, she touched his cloak. What do you think? Cured,
as I live! Hannah kept it to herself, only what happened afterwards was
this: A disease broke out among the goats; literally, 'there was not a
house in which there was not one dead;' then she told. The Làmed-Wòfnik
was enticed into the market-place, and all the goats were driven at
him."
"And they all got well?"
"What a question! They even gave a double quantity of milk."
"The Tikerin got a groschen a goat--she became quite rich!"
"And he?"
"He? nothing! Why, he denied everything, and even got angry and
scolded--and such an one _may_ not take money, he is no 'good Jew'--he
must not be 'discovered!'"
"How did he live?"
"At one time he was a shoemaker (a Làmed-Wòfnik has got to be a workman,
if only a water-carrier, only he must support himself with his hands);
he used to go to circumcisions in a pair of his own shoes, but in his
old age he was no longer any good for a shoemaker, he could no longer so
much as draw the thread, let alone put in a patch--his hands shook: he
just took a message, carried a canful of water, sat up with the dead at
night, recited Psalms, was called up to the Tochechoh,[105] and in
winter there was the stove to heat in the house-of-study."
"He carried wood?"
"Carry wood? Why, where were the boys? The wood was brought, laid in the
stove, he gave the word, and applied the light. People say: A stove is a
lifeless thing. And yet, do you know, the house-of-study stove knew him
as a woman (lehavdîl) knows her husband! He applied a light and the
stove burnt! The wind might be as high as you please. Everywhere else it
smoked, but in the house-of-study it crackled! And the stove, a split
one, such an old thing as never was! And let anyone else have a try--by
no means! Either it wouldn't burn, or else it smoked through every
crack, and the heat went up the chimney, and at night one nearly froze
to death! When he died, they had to put in another stove, because nobody
could do anything with the old one.
"He was a terrible loss! So long as he lived there was Parnosseh, now,
heaven help us, one may whistle for a dreier! There was no need to call
in a doctor."
"And all through his Psalms?"
"You ask such a question? Why, it was as clear as day that he delivered
from death."
"And no one died in his day?"
"All alive? Nobody died? Do you suppose the death-angel has no voice in
the matter? How many times, do you suppose, has the 'good Jew' himself
of blessed memory wished a complete recovery, and he, Satan, opposed him
with all his might? Well, was it any good? An angel is no trifle! And
the Heavenly Academy once in a while decides in the death-angel's
favor. Well, then! There was no doctor wanted; not one could get on
here. Now we have _two_ doctors!"
"Beside the exorcist?"
"He was taken, too!"
"_Gepegert?_"[106]
"One doesn't say _gepegert_ of anyone like that--the 'other side'[107]
is no trifle, either."
THE INFORMER
If Tomàshef had a Làmed-Wòfnik, it had an "informer" too! This also was
told me by the primary school teacher. Neither is it long since he--only
I don't know how it should be expressed--departed, died, was taken.
Perhaps you think an ordinary informer, in the usual sense of the word;
he saw a false weight, an unequal balance, and went and told? Heaven
forbid! Not at all! It was all blackmail, all frightening people into
paying him not to tell--see, there he goes, he runs, he drives, he
writes, he sends! And he sucked the marrow from the bones--
"And he was badly used himself," continued the teacher. "I remember when
Yeruchem first brought him here! A very fine young man! Only Yeruchem
promised 'dowry and board,' and hadn't enough for a meal for himself.
And Yeruchem had been badly used, too. His brother Getzil (a rich miser
as ever was), he had the most to answer for!
"It is a tale of two brothers, one clever and good, the other foolish
and bad; the good, clever one, poor, and the bad fool, a rich man. Of
course, the rich brother would do nothing for the poor one.
"Well, so long as it was only a question of food, Yeruchem said nothing.
But when his daughter Grüne had come to be an overgrown girl of nineteen
or twenty, Yeruchem made a commotion. The town and the rabbi took the
matter up, and Getzil handed over a written promise that he would give
so and so much to be paid out a year after her marriage. Not any sooner;
the couple might change their minds, Yeruchem would spend the money, and
there would be the whole thing over again.
"He, Getzil, wished to defer the payment until the end of three years,
but they succeeded in getting him to promise to pay it in one year. When
the time came, Getzil said: 'Not a penny! Anyhow, according to _their_
law, the paper isn't worth a farthing,' and meanwhile it became
impossible to settle it within the community. The old rabbi had died;
the new rabbi wouldn't interfere, he was afraid of the crown-rabbi, lest
he send it up to the regular courts--and there it ended! Getzil wouldn't
give a kopek, Yeruchem disappeared either on the way to a 'good Jew,' or
else he went begging through the country ... and Beinishe remained with
Grüne!