My old friend grows perceptibly weaker. There are no symptoms of a
definite trouble but _senectus morbus ipsa_. The nasty cold penetrates
the chinks at door and window and settles in some corner of the room,
however carefully warmed and provided against weather. The very time of
year prepares mischief for an old, decaying body. If Simon were sitting
in some sunny spot, who knows if his seventy-eight years would be
oppressing him so? What remarkable old people I saw in the south,
especially in Rome. They bore their eighty or ninety years with proud
dignity and fine carriage. We of the north age much more rapidly;
perhaps we are not even born young. Especially we Jews! Conditions have
been bettered in the course of time, since our young people have been
allowed to benefit by the sanitary, hygienic, and aesthetic achievements
of modern life. They all devote themselves to sports, and the obligation
to serve in the army has forced them--and the need therefor is highly
significant--to practice gymnastic exercises to their advantage.
Nevertheless they have something old, thoughtful, worldly-wise in their
souls. It is the heritage of the many thousands of years of culture, the
culture which has won us renown and singled us out among the nations,
but has burdened us also and weighted us down with the over-thoughtfulness
born of limitless life-experience. _Naivete_ and an easy mode of
existence we have lost through this heritage; and that it manifests
itself especially in spiritual matters is praiseworthy, though neither
gratifying nor exhilarating. How difficult we are! How dependent upon
tradition! What deep roots we have struck in the soil of the past! I
believe we drag the chains of our long history more painfully than those
put upon us by the other nations. And though these chains are wrought of
the gold of fidelity and linked with the pearls of wisdom, they weight
us down--they weight us down in a world where we are only
tolerated--strangers!
Simon Eichelkatz awakened these thoughts in me. Yesterday he told me a
great deal again. Remarkable! It is as though he felt the need to
unburden his soul of a few more matters before he sinks into the great,
eternal silence. But he doesn't suspect my anxiety in his behalf. He
chats on heedlessly into the twilight of the early winter evenings. The
twilight makes people communicative and confidential. It is the time of
intimate secrets. And at such a time Simon acquainted me with the most
solemn experience of his life.
"I do not know, Herr Kreisphysikus, how to tell you--when I found it
out, I felt a pain as though a piece of my body were being torn away. It
hurt! My, how it hurt! I cried aloud! I made a rent in my coat; I threw
myself on the ground, and I sat _Shiveh_. My son was dead, my only
child! Madame Eichelkatz said nothing. She remained immovable. Not a
sound passed her lips; and to this day I do not know what she thought or
felt when the news came that our only child had been--baptized! He had
had himself _baptized_, Herr Kreisphysikusleben. Converted! Stepped from
one religion into another as lightly as though stepping from the middle
of the street over the gutter onto the pavement! From the painful, dusty
road to the elegant, smoothly-paved street!
"'What have you to say to this?' I screamed at my wife. But she said
nothing. And she raised no objections when after the Shiveh I declared
my intention of giving up the business, because, not having a child any
more, I did not know for whom to work. She quietly let me do whatever I
decided on in my pain and anger. She seemed entirely broken. But no one
learned whether from surprise, grief, or repentance. She faded away, and
two years after the terrible event she died from no special sickness.
'As a punishment,' the people said, 'of a broken heart'--who knows what
goes on in the soul of such a woman!
"I did not know. And that's where I was wrong in the matter. I know it
now. And it's a pity, Herr Kreisphysikus, that you never know at the
right time. You are never clever, you never understand, you never do the
right thing at the right time. It always comes when it's too late."
He paused in his confidences, somewhat hastily uttered, and looked
gloomily into space. Then, as though he had suddenly gathered together
his inner forces, he added:
"And yet, when I think it over carefully, it's probably not such a pity.
It must be so and can't be different, because to err is human. And it's
only by way of error that you arrive at knowledge. In man error is life.
When he knows everything, more than he likes to know, then comes death."
Error is life, and knowledge is death! The soul of this old man
comprehends everything. Philosophers and poets--he never read a line of
their works, scarcely a name of theirs reaches his ear, and yet their
finest thoughts are crystallized in his observations. And again, for
after a little pause he said:
"Death, what is it, Herr Kreisphysikus? Something else that no one
knows, surely doesn't know--forgive me, Herr Kreisphysikus, you,
too--although you've studied about life and death--and you're a fine,
learned man, a serious, learned man--I know, I know. If anyone could
have learned about death you certainly would have--but can one learn the
eternal riddles of nature? Who knows her secrets? The greatest learning
can't penetrate to them. Do me a favor, Herr Kreisphysikus, if there
_is_ anyone who knows, tell me; I'd be happy to learn one more thing,
before I lay myself down and become a dead man, as now I am a live man."
A startling thought flashed through my mind; but before I could answer
him, he said, almost hastily:
"I knew it, Herr Kreisphysikus; you can't tell me. Why? Because there's
not a soul who could have discovered it--nobody knows what--we don't
know anything."
_Ignorabimus!_
Ay, there's the rub. The thought has given pause to many another besides
Simon Eichelkatz!
But now I was determined to give expression to the thought which a
moment before had flashed through my mind.
"That's not so easily disposed of as you think, Herr Eichelkatz. We know
as little as you say, and yet we know so much! When the inscrutable
fails to yield us anything positive, when the exact sciences can tell us
no more, then comes the work of hypothesis, of thought."
He looked at me with great, astonished eyes. A light of comprehension
spread over his face, although he softly said:
"That's too much for me, Herr Kreisphysikus, what you are saying--I mean
the way you say it--I think I can understand your meaning; and as for
the exact sciences, I can imagine what that means, I have heard the
words before. But the other word, poth--pothe--it can't come from
apothecary? What you mean is that when we don't know about something,
others come and try to explain it from what they have thought over the
matter for themselves."
"That is called philosophy," I said.
"I know the word," he murmured under his breath.
"And the greatest minds of all times have occupied themselves with it."
"And has anything ever come of it?" he said, an ironical smile flitting
about the corners of his sunken mouth.
"Why, yes! For if thinking, interpreting, and reasoning did not make the
things of this earth clear to us and throw a moral light upon them,
there would be only one course left to us; we should be driven to
desperation."
He was obviously trying to adjust the meaning of my words in his mind,
for it was after a few minutes' pause that he said:
"And you really believe, Herr Kreisphysikus, that it is of some use?
Well, I won't argue with you, because I don't understand--but that we
should accomplish anything for the general good through morality, I
mean, the same sort of morality for many or for all--that--that seems
unlikely to me. I've always found that each man has his own morality,
just as every Jew has his own _Shulchan Oruch_. And there is nothing too
bad or too wicked for one man to do to another but that he can excuse it
as being moral. I've experienced it, Herr Kreisphysikus--I"--he paused
an instant--"yes, and why shouldn't I tell you? At the time when my only
child forsook the faith of his fathers, he wrote me a letter, yes--and
he explained the necessity for his taking the step, and in the finest
words and thoughts told me how it is the highest morality to be true to
yourself--not to what has been handed down to you by others--and how
each must find in himself the moral laws of the world--and how each must
free himself in order to strive unhampered toward the light. No one
should abide by what others have offered him, for to take is--mercy! And
the strong man must not kill himself out of compassion and mercy. But my
son said of himself, he was strong, and for that reason, he said, he
must go his own way pitilessly, and I should forgive him the pain he
caused me--he was not one of those who quietly gives a little of himself
here and a little there, as is the custom in narrow circles; he was one
of the few--one of the magnificently wealthy--a great giver who gives
himself to mankind!"
His voice had risen as he conveyed the contents of the letter to me; but
then, as though tired out, he added:
"I know every word by heart. I read the letter a thousand times; and, do
you know, Herr Kreisphysikus, so that I'd be sure to understand it and
read it perfectly, he wrote it in Hebrew letters."
He drew the Bible that always lay on the table closer to himself, took
out a piece of paper showing signs of much handling, and gave it to me.
It was the letter.
The depths of my soul were stirred.
"What could I do, nebbich, Herr Kreisphysikus? This letter was the only
thing I'd ever read of philosophy. Then--yes, after getting it, I sat
Shiveh! Because I learned from the letter: 'Be true to yourself.' And I
was true to myself in being true to my religion. 'And each must find in
himself the moral laws of the world,'--and the moral law of my world is
to hold sacred what the God of Israel has commanded. But I hid my sorrow
in my soul, and I never again reproached Madame Eichelkatz with having
led him into error through her education. What could a frivolous Madame
Eichelkatz do, and how could she hinder a man who 'gives himself to
mankind,' nebbich?
"She never saw him again, nor did he stand at her grave; because I got
the rabbi to write to him he should not come. He answered with only two
lines."
Simon reached out again for the book, took a slip of paper out, set his
horn-rimmed spectacles on his nose, and read:
"'Weep not, my father! Is not all weeping a lament? And all lamenting an
accusation? Accuse not my mother in her grave--accuse not me. Your soul
will be healed; for yours is not a petty grief.'
"That was the last I heard from him. Not a tear was shed at Madame
Eichelkatz's grave. Then I settled down here with Feiwel Silbermann. I
had enough to live on, more than enough, and I began to ponder over
mankind and things in general. I've grown old, and I am a stranger to
people. Rabbi Dr. Merzbach has been dead a long time, and Cantor Elias,
and Meyer Nathanson the Shammes, and Saul Feuerstein, the professional
bankrupt, and Dr. Krakauer, saving your reverence, and all the others.
The new generation scarcely knows me."
The last words were uttered brokenly, his head sank softly forward. He
had dropped off to sleep from sheer exhaustion. After a few minutes he
came to himself, and Feiwel Silbermann carried him to bed while I stood
there. We administered some bouillon and Tokay wine; but he remained
apathetic, and only murmured, almost unintelligibly: "Yes--times
change--the Khille is no longer _fromm_." Then he fell asleep again.
I was greatly disturbed on leaving him, and returned the next morning at
the very earliest hour possible. He was asleep. Two days later he had
passed into the eternal sleep of death.