ridiculous! He was a lad and she was a girl, but it was all upside down.
The woman, an engine, a Cossack, and the husband, a misery, a bag of
bones! And what do you think! She took him in hand and made a man of
him!
"She was always setting him on Getzil, he was to prevent the
congregation from taking out the scrolls until the matter was settled,
prevent Getzil from being called up to the Law.... it made as much
impression as throwing a pea at a wall. Getzil cuffed him, and after
that the young fellow was ashamed to appear in the house-of-study. Once,
just before Passover, when all devices had failed, Grüne again drove
Beinishe to his uncle, and drove him with a broom! Beinishe went again,
and again the uncle turned him out. I tell you--it was a thing to
happen! My second wife (to be) had just been divorced from her first
husband, and she was Grüne's lodger; and she saw Beinishe come home with
her own eyes; he was more dead than alive, and shook as if he had the
fever; and my good-woman was experienced in that sort of thing (she had
been the matron of the Hekdesh before it was burnt down), and she saw
that something serious had happened.
"It was just about the time when Grüne was to come home (she sold rolls)
from market, and she would have knocked him down; and my good-wife
advised him, out of compassion, to lie down and rest on the stove; and
he, poor man, was like a dummy, tell him to do a thing and he did it; he
got up on the stove.
"Grüne came home, my good-woman said nothing; Beinishe lay and slept, or
pretended to sleep, on the stove![108] And perhaps he was not quite
clear in his head, because, when Getzil was turning him out of the
house, he cried out that he would tell where they had hidden Getzil's
son, and if he had been clear in the head, he would not have said a
thing like that.
"However that may be, the words made a great impression on Getzil's
wife. May my enemies know of their life what Beinishe knew of the
whereabouts of Jonah-Getzil's! But there, a woman, a mother, an only
son!... so, what do you think? She had a grocery shop, got a porter and
a bag of Passover-flour, and had it carried after her to Grüne.
"She goes in ... (such a pity, my wife isn't here! she was an
eye-witness of it, and when she tells the story, it is enough to make
you split with laughter); she goes in, leaves the porter outside the
room.
"'Good morning, Grüne!' Grüne makes no reply, and Getzil's wife begins
to get frightened.
"'Where,' she asks, 'is Beinishe?' 'The black year knows!' answers
Grüne, and turns to the fire-place, where she goes on skimming the soup.
He must have gone to inform, she thinks. She calls in the porter, the
sack of meal is put down, Grüne does not see, or pretends she doesn't,
devil knows which! Getzil's wife begins to flush and tremble, 'Grünishe,
we are relatives ... one blood--call him back! Why should he destroy
himself and my soul with him?'
"Then only Grüne turned round. She was no fool, and soon took in the
situation. She got a few more rubles out of them, and made believe to go
after Beinishe.... It was soon rumored in the town that Beinishe was an
informer ... and Grüne was glad of it ... she kept Beinishe on the
stove, and bullied and drew blood at every householder's where there was
anything wrong."
"At that rate, _she_ was the informer?"
"First she, and then he himself. In his misery, he took to drink, hung
about at night in the public-houses, threatened to 'inform' all on his
own account. He never gave Grüne a penny, and spent all he had in
dissipation. It was sad--a man like that to end so!"
"What happened?"
"He burnt up his inside with drink. First he went mad, and ran about in
the streets, or lay out somewhere for weeks under a hedge. But home to
Grüne--not for any money!
"Even when he was quite a wreck, ten men couldn't get him back into his
house. He fought and bit. He had to be brought into the house-of-study
(the Hekdesh was no longer in existence), and there he died! They tried
to save him, called in a specialist, recited Psalms."
"The Làmed-Wòfnik, too?"
"Certainly!"
"Well?"
"A man with no inside--what could you expect?"
XVI
THE OUTCAST
May had been cold and wet from beginning to end. People began to feel as
if summer would never come, as if it would go on freezing and raining
forever. At last, the day before Pentecost, the sun shone out.
"Torah is light!" said my father, with proud satisfaction, and began to
look for the Tikun[109] for the night of Pentecost.
"In honor of the holy feast-day!" exclaimed my mother, joyfully, and
went back with fresh courage to her cake-making.
"I am going to bake Gelle Challeh!"[110] she called to us.
Soon the house was filled with the smell of freshly-kneaded dough,
saffron, cinnamon and cloves, sugared cheese and melted butter.
My younger sister Hannah took no part in what was going forward.
She sat by the window over a book, but she read nothing, and her eyes
stared anxiously out into the street.
Our mother called on her several times for help, but Hannah did not even
answer....
The pale face wears a scornful smile ... the delicate lips open, she is
about to speak! But she remains silent, and fastens her eyes upon her
book.
"Lazy thing!" grumbles our mother, "always poring over books!
Working-day or holiday, it's all the same to her!"
Our father, who rarely interferes in household matters, having found the
book and dusted it, lies down to sleep before bathing, to prepare for
being up at night.
Our mother stops complaining, lest she should wake him. She calls me
quietly to her, gives me a few pennies, and tells me to go down-stairs
and buy a bit of green, and some colored paper with which to festoon the
windows.
Heaven knows, I am unwilling enough to leave the room wherein stands a
bowl of sweet cream, another of sugared cheese, and where packets of
currants and raisins lie all about. At the same time, going to buy, to
bargain over, and to pay for greenery and paper, was still more
seductive, and away I run.
And it turned out to be such a dreadful Pentecost!
* * * * *
Hannah, my sister, ran away!
We had gone to prayers, and my mother had lain down to rest before
blessing the lights.... It was then they gave a signal--my mother
remembered afterwards hearing a terrible whistle in her sleep. And she
left us, and went over to our enemies! And the time she chose was
Pentecost, the season of the giving of our Law!... It was then she left
us.
* * * * *
Everything passes away, joy and sorrow, good and evil, and still we go
forward on our way to the land where all things are forgotten--or
remembered anew.
Everything we have lived through lies beneath our feet like stones in a
beaten track, like gravestones under which we have buried our friends,
good and bad.
But I cannot forget Hannah!
* * * * *
The life she had sought so eagerly spurned her from it, the vision of
happiness faded into thin air, the flowers turned to sharp thorns in her
grasp!
There was no return possible.
In her way stood the Law and two graves: her father's grave and her
mother's.
Where is she?
Once every year, on the eve of Pentecost, she shows herself to me again.
She appears in the street, she stands outside at the window, as if she
were afraid, as if she had not the power to enter a Jewish home.
She gazes with staring eyes into the room, and sees me there alone.
She looks at me with dismay, supplication, and anger. I understand her.
"Where are they?" she asks in dismay. "Have pity on me!" she says,
imploring. And then, in anger, she lays the whole blame of the disaster
on us:
* * * * *
"What could I know of your bitter feud with _them_? _You_ knew, you
learned all about it in school, _my_ books told me nothing, not a word!
"Living in the same house with you, I led a separate life. My
story-books were like mirrors filled with the bright reflection of
other women's lives, and, as I read, my own appeared there in all its
dreariness!
"I have betrayed something?
"I have been false? To what?
"I only exchanged saffron cakes for cakes of another sort, the tales in
Mother's books of legends for others far more vivid and entrancing--a
bit of green in the window for the free, fresh green of the woods and
fields--litanies for romances--the narrow, stifling routine of my daily
life for sunshine and flowers, for gladness and love! I never betrayed
_you_--I never knew you!
"I knew nothing of your sorrow, you never spoke to me of yourselves. Why
did you not tell me of _your_ love, of the love which is your very
being, why did you not tell me of your _beauty_--of the terrible,
blood-stained beauty of Israel?
"The beautiful, the precious, the exalted in our religion, you hid it in
yourselves, you men, you kept it from me, you kept it from us.
"Of me, of us, with our flesh and blood, with the strength of our youth
struggling and crying out for _life_--of us you asked only butter-cake
and Gelle Challeh!
"You cast us out!"
* * * * *
He who is high above all peoples, who alone can see clearly through
their tangled web of prejudice and hatred--_He_ shall judge her.
XVII
A CHAT
It is warm, real holiday weather, and Reb Shachneh, a tall, thin Jew,
one of the last old Kotzkers,[1] and Reb Zerach, one of the few
remaining old Belzers,[111] are taking a stroll outside the town.
As young men they had been enemies, hating each other heart and soul.
Reb Shachneh led the Kotzkers against the Belzers, and Reb Zerach, the
Belzers against the Kotzkers.
But now that they are old, and Kotzkers are "not what they were," and
Belzers have lost their "go," they have separated themselves from their
former associates, and left the meeting-rooms where less pious, but
younger and stronger, men have taken the lead.
They made peace in the synagogue, in winter time, beside the stove, and
now, on this intermediate day of Passover, on the first fine afternoon,
they have come out together for a walk.
The sun shines in a wide, blue sky. The little grasses are springing up
through the mould, and one can distinctly see the angel who stands
beside each blade, and cries: grow, grow!
Little birds fly about in flocks, looking for last year's nests, and Reb
Shachneh says to Reb Zerach:
"A Kotzker, you see, I mean a real Kotzker--the present ones don't
count--never thought much of the Haggadah."[112]
"But only of the dumplings?" smiles Reb Zerach.
"Never mind about the dumplings!" answers Reb Shachneh, gravely, "and
don't laugh. You know the meaning of 'thou shalt not deliver up a slave
to his master?'"
"For me," says the Belzer with humble pride, "it is enough to know the
hidden meaning of the prayers!"
Reb Shachneh pretends not to have heard, and continues:
"The literal interpretation is simple enough: If a slave, or a servant,
or a serf, run away, one may not, according to the Law, catch him, bind
him, and give him up to his master--it is evident, if a man runs away,
his very life was endangered. But the hidden meaning is also quite
clear: the body here below is a slave--it is the servant of the soul.
The body is sinful, it sees a piece of pork, an idol, a woman, what not,
and is ready to jump out of its skin. But when the soul says, thou shalt
not! it must desist.
"On the other hand, suppose the soul desires to perform a religious act.
The body must be up and doing, however tired and harassed. The hands
must work, the feet must run, the lips move--and why? The soul, the
lord, commands! And therefore it is written: 'Thou shalt not deliver
up!'
"The body may not be handed over unconditionally to the soul. The fiery
soul would speedily burn it to ashes. Had the Creator wished for souls
without bodies, he would not have made the world.
"The body also has its rights. 'He who fasts much is a sinner.' The body
must eat. He who would ride must feed his horse! Comes a feast, a
holiday--be merry, too! Take a sip of brandy, rejoice, body, likewise!
And the soul rejoices and the body rejoices--the soul in the
benediction, and the body in the glass!
"Passover, the season of our deliverance--here, body, catch a dumpling!
And it is inspirited and cheered, and rejoices to fulfil the
commandment.
"Farewell, dumpling! Brother, do not laugh."
Reb Zerach opines that the matter is a deep one and worth consideration;
but he himself does not eat Sheruyah?[113]
"Do you _enjoy_ Passover cakes dry?"
"For dessert?" smiles Reb Zerach. "And where are my teeth to eat them
with?"
"How then do you observe the precept: 'And thou shalt rejoice in thy
feasts,' as regards the body?"
"All sorts of ways. If it likes currant wine--well and good. I myself
revel in the Haggadah. I sit and repeat and count the plagues, and count
and double them and multiply."
"Materialism!"
"Materialism? After all the misery and the hard labor--after the long
exile of the Divine Presence? In my opinion, there ought to be a custom
introduced of repeating the plagues seven times, and seven times 'Pour
out thy wrath!' But the great thing is the plagues! I delight in them.
I wish I could open the door at the plagues--let _them_ hear! Why should
I be afraid? Do you suppose _they_ understand Hebrew?"
Reb Shachneh is silent for a while, and then he relates the following:
"Listen! This is what happened one day with us. I assure you I won't
exaggerate. In perhaps the tenth house from the Rebbe's of blessed
memory, there lived a Shochet who was (may I be forgiven for saying
so--he is no more of this world) a mad butcher, a butcher among
butchers, one in a thousand. A neck like a bull's, eyebrows like
bristles, hands like logs, and a voice, a voice! When he spoke, it
sounded like distant thunder, or musketry. He must have been at one time
or another a Belzer."
"Well, well," growls Reb Zerach.
"Well, and," continues Reb Shachneh, coolly, "he used to pray with the
most extravagant gestures, with shouts and whispers.
"His 'they shall remember' reminded one of sprinkling fire with water."
"Let that pass!"
"You can fancy the uproar when a fellow like this sat down to the
Haggadah. In the Rebbe's chamber we could hear every word. He read, of
course, like a butcher, and the laugh went round.
"The Rebbe of blessed memory scarcely moved his lips, and yet everyone
could see that he was smiling. Later, however, when the butcher began to
count the plagues, so that they shot from his mouth like bullets, and
brought his fist down on the table, so that the glasses rang again, the
Rebbe of blessed memory became melancholy."
"Melancholy? On a feast-day? Passover? What do you mean?"
"Well, we asked him the reason why!"
"And what did he answer?"
"God Himself," was his reply, "became melancholy on the occasion of the
Exodus."
"Where had he found that?"
"It's a Midrash![114] When the children of Israel had crossed the Red
Sea, and the water had covered up and drowned Pharaoh and all his host,
then the angels began to sing songs, seraphim and ophanim flew into all
the seven heavens with hymns and glad tidings, all the stars and planets
danced and sang, and the celestial bodies--you can guess what
rejoicings! But the Creator put an end to them. A Voice issued from the
Throne:
"'My children are being drowned in the sea, and you rejoice and sing?'
"Because God created even Pharaoh and all his host, even the devil
himself, and it is written: 'His tender mercies are over all His
works.'"
"Certainly!" sighs Reb Zerach.
He says nothing more for a while, and then asks:
"And if it _is_ a Midrash, what has he added to it to deserve praise?"
Reb Shachneh stands still, and says gravely:
"First, Belzer fool, no one has the duty to be original; there is no
chronological order in the Law--the new is old, the old is new.
Secondly, he showed us why we recite the Haggadah, even the plagues in
the Haggadah, to a mournful "Sinni" tune, a tune that is steeped in
grief.
"Thirdly, he translated the precept: _Al tismàch Yisroel el Gil
ko-Ammim_: Materialist, rejoice not in a coarse way--you are no boor!
Revenge is not for Jews."
XVIII
THE PIKE[115]
In honor of the feast-day, live fish have been bought.
Two large pike are lying in a great, green glass bowl filled with water,
and a little further off, in one of blackened earthenware, two or three
small carp. These are no sea-folk, but they come out of a fairly wide
river, and they are straightened for room in the bowls.
The poor little carp, in the one of black glaze, have been aware of its
confines for some time past.
They have lain for a good hour by the clock, wondering what sort of a
prison this may be.
And there is plenty of leisure for thinking. It may be long before the
cook comes home from market with good things for the feast-day long
enough for even a carp to have an idea.
But the pike in the glass bowl have not taken in the situation yet. Time
after time they swim out strongly and bang their heads against the hard
glass.
Pike have iron heads but dull wits. The two captive heroes have received
each a hundred knocks from every part of the bowl, but they have not yet
realized that all is closed to them.
They _feel_ the walls, but the weak pike-eyes do not _see_ them.
The glass is green--it is just like river water--and yet there is no
getting out.
"It is witchcraft!" says one pike to the other.
The other agrees with him.
"To-morrow there is an auction. The other bidders have bewitched us."
"Some crayfish or frog has done this."
* * * * *
It is only a short time since the net drew them out of the water. When
they got into the air they had fainted, to recover consciousness inside
a barrel of which the lid had been hammered down.
"How the days are drawing in!" they had observed both at once.
There was very little room in the barrel, scarcely sufficient to turn
in, and hardly water enough for anyone to breathe. What with having
fainted before, and now this difficulty in breathing, they had fallen
into a doze, and had dreamt of all sorts of things, of the fair, and
even of the opera and the ballet. But the dream-angel never showed them
any kind of barrel.
They heard nothing, not even the opening of the barrel and the hubbub of
the market.
Neither perceived they the trembling of the scales in which they
oscillated whilst the cook haggled over them with the fish-wife--or
remarked the click-clack of the pointer that spoke their doom.
They slept still more soundly in the cook's basket, starting into life
again only in the bowl, beneath the rush of cold water. And now, after
doing unwilling penance for an hour against the glass, they have only
just hit upon witchcraft.
"What are we to do?" says one to the other.
The carp know themselves to be in prison.
They, too, have had experience of a long night, and awoke in a bowl.
"Someone," say they, "had palmed off counterfeit bank-notes on us!"
It will be proved, they are sure, if only one could get hold of someone
who will take the matter up properly.
They give a little leap into the air, catch sight of the pike, and fall
back more dead than alive.
"They are going to eat us!" they say, trembling. Not until they realize
that the pike are likewise in prison do they feel somewhat reassured.
"They, they certainly have been passing counterfeit notes, too!" says
one carp to the other.
"Yes, and therein lies our salvation. _They_ will not keep silence, and,
with God's help, we shall all be set free together."
"And they will see us, and, with God's help, will eat us up!"
And the carp nestle closer against the bowl.
They can just see a tub full of onions on the kitchen floor.
"If we signed the contract, we might receive a golden order," observes
one of the pike.
"Please God, we shall be decorated yet," answers the other. "It is a
case of witchcraft, but--"
"But what?"
"There is one thing."
"Well?"
"It sounds almost absurd--but--I wanted to tell you--we ought to
_pray_," he stammers, "it is the best thing against sorcery!"
"To pray? Perhaps so!!" Whereupon the two pike discover that it is years
since they prayed last.
They cannot remember a word.
"Ashrè,"[116] begins one.
"Ashrè," repeats the other, and comes to a standstill.
"Oh, I want to pray!" moans the first.
"So do I!" chimes in the second, "for when all is said and done, we are
but fish!"
A door opens in the wall, a little way, and two heads are seen in the
aperture--a tipsy-looking man's head, and a woman's with curl papers.
"Ah," exclaims the man's head, joyously, "this is something like!
Pike--carp--and all the other good things."
"I should hope so! And I have sent for meat besides."
"My knowing little wife," chuckles the man's head.
"There, there, that will do."
And the heads disappear.
"Did you hear?" says a pike, "there are carp, too."
"They have the best of it."
"How is that?"
"To begin with, they have made no contracts, they are free agents.
Secondly, they can leap."
"If they would only give a _good_ leap, they would find themselves back
in the river."
"Quite true."
"And something good might come of it for us. Wait a bit--let's try!
Carp!"
The carp have suddenly swum to the surface of the water, and are poking
their noses over the edge of the bowl.
The pike, face to face with the carp:
"Bad luck, brothers?" he exclaimed.
"Bad," answer the carp.
"Bitter?"
"Bitter!"
"Very little water?"
"Oh, very little!"
"And it smells?"
"Ugh!"
"Not fit to live in?"
"Not fit!"
"We must get home, back to the river!"
"We--must!"
"We have forgotten what it was like in the river."
"Forgotten!"
"A sin!"
"A mortal sin!"
"Let us beat our head against the wall and do penance."
The carp flatten their bellies against the bowl. The pike run their head
against the glass till it rings again.
"One should leap away home!" continues the pike.
"One should leap!"
"Well--leap!"
The pike commands, and the carp are out of the bowl and on the
floor--lying there more dead than alive.
"I never knew," says the second pike, "that you were such an
orator--your lips drop honey!"
The carp meanwhile are moaning.
"Hurry up!" orders the pike.
The carp give another little spring.
"Oh," they moan, "we do not see any river--and our bones are
breaking--and we cannot breathe."
"On with you--make an effort! It is not much further--give a jump!"
But the carp are past hearing.
The carp lie dying on the floor, and the pike are having a dispute.
Both opine that any proper leap would carry one into the river, but one
says that other fish are wanted, not stupid carp, who can only leap in
the water, who cannot exist for an hour without food, and that what are
wanted are--electric fish!
And the other says: "No, carp--only, lots and lots of carp. If one
hundred thousand carp were to leap, _one_ would certainly fall into the
river, and if _one_ fell in, why, then--ha, ha!"
XIX
THE FAST
A winter's night; Sarah sits by the oil-lamp, darning an old sock. She
works slowly, for her fingers are half-frozen; her lips are blue and
brown with cold; every now and then she lays down her work and runs up
and down the room to warm her icy feet.
In a bed, on a bare straw mattress, sleep four children--two little
heads at each end--covered up with some old clothes.
Now one child and now another gives a start, a head is raised, and there
is a plaintive chirp: "Hungry!"
"Patience, dears, patience!" says Sarah, soothingly.
"Father will be here presently, and bring you some supper. I will be
sure to wake you."
"And something hot?" ask the children, whimpering. "We have had nothing
hot to-day yet!"
"And something hot, too!"
But she does not believe what she is saying.
She glances round the room--perhaps, after all, there is something left
that she can pawn. Nothing! Four bare, damp walls--split
stove--everything clammy and cold--two or three broken dishes on the
chimney-piece--on the stove, an old, battered Chanukah lamp--over-head,
in the beam, a nail--sole relic of a lamp that hung from the ceiling;
two empty beds without pillows--and nothing, nothing else!
The children are some time getting to sleep.
Sarah's heart aches as she looks at them.
Suddenly she turns her eyes, red with crying, to the door--she has heard
footsteps, heavy footsteps, on the stairs leading down into the
basement--a clatter of cans against the wall, now to the right, now to
the left.
A gleam of hope illumines her sunken features.
She rubs one foot against the other two or three times, rises stiffly,
and goes to the door.
She opens it, and in comes a pale, stoop-shouldered Jew, with two empty
cans.
"Well?" she whispers.
He puts away the cans, takes off his yoke, and answers, lower still:
"Nothing--nothing at all; nobody paid me. To-morrow! they said. Everyone
always says to-morrow--the day after to-morrow--on the first day of the
month!"