I REMEMBER
My father and mother could tell me much more that I have forgotten, or
that I never was aware of; but I want to reconstruct my childhood from
those broken recollections only which, recurring to me in after years,
filled me with the pain and wonder of remembrance. I want to string
together those glimpses of my earliest days that dangle in my mind,
like little lanterns in the crooked alleys of the past, and show me an
elusive little figure that is myself, and yet so much a stranger to
me, that I often ask, Can this be I?
I have not much faith in the reality of my first recollection, but as
I can never go back over the past without bringing up at last at this
sombre little scene, as at a door beyond which I cannot pass, I must
put it down for what it is worth in the scheme of my memories. I see,
then, an empty, darkened room. In the middle, on the floor, lies a
long Shape, covered with some black stuff. There are candles at the
head of the Shape. Dim figures are seated low, against the walls,
swaying to and fro. No sound is in the room, except a moan or a sigh
from the shadowy figures; but a child is walking softly around and
around the Shape on the floor, in quiet curiosity.
The Shape is the body of my grandfather laid out for burial. The child
is myself--myself asking questions of Death.
I was four years old when my mother's father died. Do I really
remember the little scene? Perhaps I heard it described by some fond
relative, as I heard other anecdotes of my infancy, and unconsciously
incorporated it with my genuine recollections. It is so suitable a
scene for a beginning: the darkness, the mystery, the impenetrability.
My share in it, too, is characteristic enough, if I really studied
that Shape by the lighted candles, as I have always pretended to
myself. So often afterwards I find myself forgetting the conventional
meanings of things, in some search for a meaning of my own. It is more
likely, however, that I took no intellectual interest in my
grandfather's remains at the time, but later on, when I sought for a
First Recollection, perhaps, elaborated the scene, and my part in it,
to something that satisfied my sense of dramatic fitness. If I really
committed such a fraud, I am now well punished, by being obliged, at
the very start, to discredit the authenticity of my memoirs.
The abode of our childhood, if not revisited in later years, is apt to
loom in our imagination as a vast edifice with immense chambers in
which our little self seems lost. Somehow I have failed of this
illusion. My grandfather's house, where I was born, stands, in my
memory, a small, one-story wooden building, whose chimneys touch the
sky at the same level as its neighbors' chimneys. Such as it was, the
house stood even with the sidewalk, but the yard was screened from the
street by a board fence, outside which I am sure there was a bench.
The gate into the yard swung so high from the ground that four-footed
visitors did not have to wait till it was opened. Pigs found their way
in, and were shown the way out, under the gate; grunting on their
arrival, but squealing on their departure.
[Illustration: MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE, WHERE I WAS BORN]
Of the interior of the house I remember only one room, and not so much
the room as the window, which had a blue sash curtain, and beyond the
curtain a view of a narrow, walled garden, where deep-red dahlias
grew. The garden belonged to the house adjoining my grandfather's,
where lived the Gentile girl who was kind to me.
Concerning my dahlias I have been told that they were not dahlias at
all, but poppies. As a conscientious historian I am bound to record
every rumor, but I retain the right to cling to my own impression.
Indeed, I must insist on my dahlias, if I am to preserve the garden at
all. I have so long believed in them, that if I try to see _poppies_
in those red masses over the wall, the whole garden crumbles away, and
leaves me a gray blank. I have nothing against poppies. It is only
that my illusion is more real to me than reality. And so do we often
build our world on an error, and cry out that the universe is falling
to pieces, if any one but lift a finger to replace the error by truth.
Ours was a quiet neighborhood. Across the narrow street was the
orderly front of the Korpus, or military academy, with straight rows
of unshuttered windows. It was an imposing edifice in the eyes of us
all, because it was built of brick, and was several stories high. At
one of the windows I pretend I remember seeing a tailor mending the
uniforms of the cadets. I knew the uniforms, and I knew, in later
years, the man who had been the tailor; but I am not sure that he did
not emigrate to America, there to seek his fortune in a candy shop,
and his happiness in a family of triplets, twins, and even odds, long
before I was old enough to toddle as far as the gate.
Behind my grandfather's house was a low hill, which I do _not_
remember as a mountain. Perhaps it was only a hump in the ground. This
eminence, of whatever stature, was a part of the Vall, a longer and
higher ridge on the top of which was a promenade, and which was said
to be the burying-ground of Napoleonic soldiers. This historic rumor
meant very little to me, for I never knew what Napoleon was.
It was not my way to accept unchallenged every superstition that came
to my ears. Among the wild flowers that grew on the grassy slopes of
the Vall, there was a small daisy, popularly called "blind flower,"
because it was supposed to cause blindness in rash children who picked
it. I was rash, if I was awake; and I picked "blind flowers" behind
the house, handfuls of them, and enjoyed my eyesight unimpaired. If my
faith in nursery lore was shaken by this experience, I kept my
discovery to myself, and did not undertake to enlighten my playmates.
I find other instances, later on, of the curious fact that I was
content with _finding out_ for myself. It is curious to me because I
am not so reticent now. When I discover anything, if only a new tint
in the red sunset, I must publish the fact to all my friends. Is it
possible that in my childish reflections I recognized the fact that
ours was a secretive atmosphere, where knowledge was for the few, and
wisdom was sometimes a capital offence?
In the summer-time I lived outdoors considerably. I found many
occasions to visit my mother in the store, which gave me a long walk.
If my errand was not pressing--or perhaps even if it was--I made a
long stop on the Platz, especially if I had a companion with me. The
Platz was a rectangular space in the centre of a roomy square, with a
shady promenade around its level lawn. The Korpus faced on the Platz,
which was its drill ground. Around the square were grouped the fine
residences of the officers of the Korpus, with a great white church
occupying one side. These buildings had a fearful interest for me,
especially the church, as the dwellings and sanctuary of the enemy;
but on the Platz I was not afraid to play and seek adventures. I loved
to watch the cadets drill and play ball, or pass them close as they
promenaded, two and two, looking so perfect in white trousers and
jackets and visored caps. I loved to run with my playmates and lay out
all sorts of geometric figures on the four straight sides of the
promenade; patterns of infinite variety, traceable only by a pair of
tireless feet. If one got so wild with play as to forget all fear, one
could swing, until chased away by the guard, on the heavy chain
festoons that encircled the monument at one side of the square. This
was the only monument in Polotzk, dedicated I never knew to whom or
what. It was the monument, as the sky was the sky, and the earth,
earth: the only phenomenon of its kind, mysterious, unquestionable.
It was not far from the limits of Polotzk to the fields and woods. My
father was fond of taking us children for a long walk on a Sabbath
afternoon. I have little pictures in my mind of places where we went,
though I doubt if they could be found from my descriptions. I try in
vain to conjure up a panoramic view of the neighborhood. Even when I
stood on the apex of the Vall, and saw the level country spread in all
directions, my inexperienced eyes failed to give me the picture of the
whole. I saw the houses in the streets below, all going to market. The
highroads wandered out into the country, and disappeared in the sunny
distance, where the edge of the earth and the edge of the sky fitted
together, like a jewel box with the lid ajar. In these things I saw
what a child always sees: the unrelated fragments of a vast,
mysterious world. But although my geography may be vague, and the
scenes I remember as the pieces of a paper puzzle, still my breath
catches as I replace this bit or that, and coax the edges to fit
together. I am obstinately positive of some points, and for the rest,
you may amend the puzzle if you can. You may make a survey of Polotzk
ever so accurate, and show me where I was wrong; still I am the better
guide. You may show that my adventureful road led nowhere, but I can
prove, by the quickening of my pulse and the throbbing of my rapid
recollections, that _things happened to me_ there or here; and I shall
be believed, not you. And so over the vague canvas of scenes half
remembered, half imagined, I draw the brush of recollection, and pick
out here a landmark, there a figure, and set my own feet back in the
old ways, and live over the old events. It is real enough, as by my
beating heart you might know.
Sometimes my father took us out by the Long Road. There is no road in
the neighborhood of Polotzk by that name, but I know very well that
the way was long to my little feet; and long are the backward thoughts
that creep along it, like a sunbeam travelling with the day.
The first landmark on the sunny, dusty road is the house of a peasant
acquaintance where we stopped for rest and a drink. I remember a cool
gray interior, a woman with her bosom uncovered pattering barefoot to
hand us the hospitable dipper, and a baby smothered in a deep cradle
which hung by ropes from the ceiling. Farther on, the empty road gave
us shadows of trees and rustlings of long grass. This, at least, is
what I imagine over the spaces where no certain object is. Then, I
know, we ran and played, and it was father himself who hid in the
corn, and we made havoc following after. Laughing, we ramble on, till
we hear the long, far whistle of a locomotive. The railroad track is
just visible over the field on the _left_ of the road; the cornfield,
I say, is on the _right_. We stand on tiptoe and wave our hands and
shout as the long train rushes by at a terrific speed, leaving its
pennon of smoke behind.
The passing of the train thrilled me wonderfully. Where did it come
from, and whither did it fly, and how did it feel to be one of the
faces at the windows? If ever I dreamed of a world beyond Polotzk, it
must have been at those times, though I do not honestly remember.
Somewhere out on that same Long Road is the place where we once
attended a wedding. I do not know who were married, or whether they
lived happily ever after; but I remember that when the dancers were
wearied, and we were all sated with goodies, day was dawning, and
several of the young people went out for a stroll in a grove near by.
They took me with them--who were they?--and they lost me. At any rate,
when they saw me again, I was a stranger. For I had sojourned, for an
immeasurable moment, in a world apart from theirs. I had witnessed my
first sunrise; I had watched the rosy morning tiptoe in among the
silver birches. And that grove stands on the _left_ side of the road.
We had another stopping-place out in that direction. It was the place
where my mother sent her hundred and more house plants to be cared for
one season, because for some reason they could not fare well at home.
We children went to visit them once; and the memory of that is red and
white and purple.
The Long Road went ever on and on; I remember no turns. But we turned
at last, when the sun was set and the breeze of evening blew; and
sometimes the first star came in and the Sabbath went out before we
reached home and supper.
Another way out of town was by the bridge across the Polota. I recall
more than one excursion in that direction. Sometimes we made a large
party, annexing a few cousins and aunts for the day. At this moment I
feel a movement of affection for these relations who shared our
country adventures. I had forgotten what virtue there was in our
family; I do like people who can walk. In those days, it is likely
enough, I did not always walk on my own legs, for I was very little,
and not strong. I do not remember being carried, but if any of my big
uncles gave me a lift, I am sure I like them all the more for it.
The Dvina River swallowed the Polota many times a day, yet the lesser
stream flooded the universe on one occasion. On the hither bank of
that stream, as you go from Polotzk, I should plant a flowering bush,
a lilac or a rose, in memory of the life that bloomed in me one day
that I was there.
Leisurely we had strolled out of the peaceful town. It was early
spring, and the sky and the earth were two warm palms in which all
live things nestled. Little green leaves trembled on the trees, and
the green, green grass sparkled. We sat us down to rest a little above
the bridge; and life flowed in and out of us fully, freely, as the
river flowed and parted about the bridge piles.
A market garden lay on the opposite slope, yellow-green with first
growth. In the long black furrows yet unsown a peasant pushed his
plow. I watched him go up and down, leaving a new black line on the
bank for every turn. Suddenly he began to sing, a rude plowman's song.
Only the melody reached me, but the meaning sprang up in my heart to
fit it--a song of the earth and the hopes of the earth. I sat a long
time listening, looking, tense with attention. I felt myself
discovering things. Something in me gasped for life, and lay still. I
was but a little body, and Life Universal had suddenly burst upon me.
For a moment I had my little hand on the Great Pulse, but my fingers
slipped, empty. For the space of a wild heartbeat I _knew_, and then I
was again a simple child, looking to my earthly senses for life. But
the sky had stretched for me, the earth had expanded; a greater life
had dawned in me.
We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first and the
spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are
attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful.
Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we
ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth. Our souls
are scarred with the struggles of successive births, and the process
is recorded also by the wrinkles in our brains, by the lines in our
faces. Look at me and you will see that I have been born many times.
And my first self-birth happened, as I have told, that spring day of
my early springs. Therefore would I plant a rose on the green bank of
the Polota, there to bloom in token of eternal life.
Eternal, divine life. This is a tale of immortal life. Should I be
sitting here, chattering of my infantile adventures, if I did not know
that I was speaking for thousands? Should you be sitting there,
attending to my chatter, while the world's work waits, if you did not
know that I spoke also for you? I might say "you" or "he" instead of
"I." Or I might be silent, while you spoke for me and the rest, but
for the accident that I was born with a pen in my hand, and you
without. We love to read the lives of the great, yet what a broken
history of mankind they give, unless supplemented by the lives of the
humble. But while the great can speak for themselves, or by the
tongues of their admirers, the humble are apt to live inarticulate and
die unheard. It is well that now and then one is born among the simple
with a taste for self-revelation. The man or woman thus endowed must
speak, will speak, though there are only the grasses in the field to
hear, and none but the wind to carry the tale.
* * * * *
It is fun to run over the bridge, with a clatter of stout little shoes
on resounding timbers. We pass a walled orchard on the right, and
remind each other of the fruit we enjoyed here last summer. Our next
stopping-place is farther on, beyond the wayside inn where lives the
idiot boy who gave me such a scare last time. It is a poor enough
place, where we stop, but there is an ice house, the only one I know.
We are allowed to go in and see the greenish masses of ice gleaming in
the half-light, and bring out jars of sweet, black "lager beer," which
we drink in the sunny doorway. I shall always remember the flavor of
the stuff, and the smell, and the wonder and chill of the ice house.
I vaguely remember something about a convent out in that direction,
but I was tired and sleepy after my long walk, and glad to be
returning home. I hope they carried me a bit of the way, for I was
very tired. There were stars out before we reached home, and the men
stopped in the middle of the street to bless the new moon.
It is pleasant to recall how we went bathing in the Polota. On Friday
afternoons in summer, when the week's work was done, and the houses of
the good housewives stood shining with cleanliness, ready for the
Sabbath, parties of women and girls went chattering and laughing down
to the river bank. There was a particular spot which belonged to the
women. I do not know where the men bathed, but our part of the river
was just above Bonderoff's gristmill. I can see the green bank sloping
to the water, and the still water sliding down to the sudden swirl and
spray of the mill race.
The woods on the bank screened the bathers. Bathing costumes were
simply absent, which caused the mermaids no embarrassment, for they
were accustomed to see each other naked in the public hot baths. They
had little fear of intrusion, for the spot was sacred to them. They
splashed about and laughed and played tricks, with streaming hair and
free gestures. I do not know when I saw the girls play as they did in
the water. It was a pretty picture, but the bathers would have been
shocked beyond your understanding if you had suggested that naked
women might be put into a picture. If it ever happened, as it happened
at least once for me to remember, that their privacy was outraged, the
bathers were thrown into a panic as if their very lives were
threatened. Screaming, they huddled together, low in the water, some
hiding their eyes in their hands, with the instinct of the ostrich.
Some ran for their clothes on the bank, and stood shrinking behind
some inadequate rag. The more spirited of the naiads threw pebbles at
the cowardly intruders, who, safe behind the leafy cover that was
meant to shield modesty, threw jeers and mockery in return. But the
Gentile boys ran away soon, or ran away punished. A chemise and a
petticoat turn a frightened woman into an Amazon in such
circumstances; and woe to the impudent wretch who lingered after the
avengers plunged into the thicket. Slaps and cuffs at close range were
his portion, and curses pursued him in retreat.
Among the liveliest of my memories are those of eating and drinking;
and I would sooner give up some of my delightful remembered walks,
green trees, cool skies, and all, than to lose my images of suppers
eaten on Sabbath evenings at the end of those walks. I make no apology
to the spiritually minded, to whom this statement must be a revelation
of grossness. I am content to tell the truth as well as I am able. I
do not even need to console myself with the reflection that what is
dross to the dreamy ascetic may be gold to the psychologist. The fact
is that I ate, even as a delicate child, with considerable relish; and
I remember eating with a relish still keener. Why, I can dream away a
half-hour on the immortal flavor of those thick cheese cakes we used
to have on Saturday night. I am no cook, so I cannot tell you how to
make such cake. I might borrow the recipe from my mother, but I would
rather you should take my word for the excellence of Polotzk cheese
cakes. If you should attempt that pastry, I am certain, be you ever so
clever a cook, you would be disappointed by the result; and hence you
might be led to mistrust my reflections and conclusions. You have
nothing in your kitchen cupboard to give the pastry its notable
flavor. It takes history to make such a cake. First, you must eat it
as a ravenous child, in memorable twilights, before the lighting of
the week-day lamp. Then you must have yourself removed from the house
of your simple feast, across the oceans, to a land where your
cherished pastry is unknown even by name; and where daylight and
twilight, work day and fête day, for years rush by you in the unbroken
tide of a strange, new, overfull life. You must abstain from the
inimitable morsel for a period of years,--I think fifteen is the magic
number,--and then suddenly, one day, rub the Aladdin's lamp of memory,
and have the renowned tidbit whisked upon your platter, garnished with
a hundred sweet herbs of past association.
Do you think all your imported spices, all your scientific blending
and manipulating, could produce so fragrant a morsel as that which I
have on my tongue as I write? Glad am I that my mother, in her
assiduous imitation of everything American, has forgotten the secrets
of Polotzk cookery. At any rate, she does not practise it, and I am
the richer in memories for her omissions. Polotzk cheese cake, as I
now know it, has in it the flavor of daisies and clover picked on the
Vall; the sweetness of Dvina water; the richness of newly turned earth
which I moulded with bare feet and hands; the ripeness of red cherries
bought by the dipperful in the market place; the fragrance of all my
childhood's summers.
Abstinence, as I have mentioned, is one of the essential ingredients
in the phantom dish. I discovered this through a recent experience. It
was cherry time in the country, and the sight of the scarlet fruit
suddenly reminded me of a cherry season in Polotzk, I could not say
how many years ago. On that earlier occasion my Cousin Shimke, who,
like everybody else, was a storekeeper, had set a boy to watch her
store, and me to watch the boy, while she went home to make cherry
preserves. She gave us a basket of cherries for our trouble, and the
boy offered to eat them with the stones if I would give him my share.
But I was equal to that feat myself, so we sat down to a cherry-stone
contest. Who ate the most stones I could not remember as I stood under
the laden trees not long ago, but the transcendent flavor of the
historical cherries came back to me, and I needs must enjoy it once
more.
I climbed into the lowest boughs and hung there, eating cherries with
the stones, my whole mind concentrated on the sense of taste. Alas!
the fruit had no such flavor to yield as I sought. Excellent American
cherries were these, but not so fragrantly sweet as my cousin's
cherries. And if I should return to Polotzk, and buy me a measure of
cherries at a market stall, and pay for it with a Russian groschen,
would the market woman be generous enough to throw in that haunting
flavor? I fear I should find that the old species of cherry is extinct
in Polotzk.
Sometimes, when I am not trying to remember at all, I am more
fortunate in extracting the flavors of past feasts from my plain
American viands. I was eating strawberries the other day, ripe, red
American strawberries. Suddenly I experienced the very flavor and
aroma of some strawberries I ate perhaps twenty years ago. I started
as from a shock, and then sat still for I do not know how long,
breathless with amazement. In the brief interval of a gustatory
perception I became a child again, and I positively ached with the
pain of being so suddenly compressed to that small being. I wandered
about Polotzk once more, with large, questioning eyes; I rode the
Atlantic in an emigrant ship; I took possession of the New World, my
ears growing accustomed to a new language; I sat at the feet of
renowned professors, till my eyes contracted in dreaming over what
they taught; and there I was again, an American among Americans,
suddenly made aware of all that I had been, all that I had
become--suddenly illuminated, inspired by a complete vision of myself,
a daughter of Israel and a child of the universe, that taught me more
of the history of my race than ever my learned teachers could
understand.
All this came to me in that instant of tasting, all from the flavor of
ripe strawberries on my tongue. Why, then, should I not treasure my
memories of childhood feasts? This experience gives me a great respect
for my bread and meat. I want to taste of as many viands as possible;
for when I sit down to a dish of porridge I am certain of rising again
a better animal, and I may rise a wiser man. I want to eat and drink
and be instructed. Some day I expect to extract from my pudding the
flavor of manna which I ate in the desert, and then I shall write you
a contemporaneous commentary on the Exodus. Nor do I despair of
remembering yet, over a dish of corn, the time when I fed on worms;
and then I may be able to recall how it felt to be made at last into a
man. Give me to eat and drink, for I crave wisdom.
* * * * *
My winters, while I was a very little girl, were passed in comparative
confinement. On account of my delicate health, my grandmother and
aunts deemed it wise to keep me indoors; or if I went out, I was so
heavily coated and mittened and shawled that the frost scarcely got a
chance at the tip of my nose. I never skated or coasted or built snow
houses. If I had any experience of snowballs, it was with those
thrown at me by the Gentile boys. The way I dodge a snowball to this
day makes me certain that I learned the act in my fearful childhood
days, when I learned so many cowardly tricks of bending to a blow. I
know that I was proud of myself when, not many years ago, I found I
was not afraid to stand up and catch a flying baseball; but the fear
of the snowball I have not conquered. When I turn a corner in snowball
days, the boys with bulging pockets see a head held high and a step
unquickened, but I know that I cringe inwardly; and this private
mortification I set down against old Polotzk, in my long score of
grievances and shames. Fear is a devil hard to cast out.
Let me make the most of the winter adventures that I recall. First,
there was sleighing. We never kept horses of our own, but the horses
of our customer-guests were always at our disposal, and many a jolly
ride they gave us, with the dvornik at the reins, while their owners
haggled with my mother in the store about the price of soap. We had no
luxurious sleigh, with cushions and fur robes, no silver bells on our
harness. Ours was a bare sledge used for hauling wood, with a padding
of straw and burlap, and the reins, as likely as not, were a knotted
rope. But the horses did fly, over the river and up the opposite bank
if we chose; and whether we had bells or not, the merry, foolish heart
of Yakub would sing, and the whip would crack, and we children would
laugh; and the sport was as good as when, occasionally, we did ride in
a more splendid sleigh, loaned us by one of our prouder guests. We
were wholesome as apples to look at when we returned for bread and tea
in the dusk; at least I remember my sister, with cheeks as red as a
painted doll's under her close-clipped curls; and my little brother,
rosy, too, and aristocratic-looking enough, in his little greatcoat
tied with a red sash, and little fur cap with earlaps. For myself, I
suppose my nose was purple and my cheeks pinched, just as they are now
in the cold weather; but I had a good time.
At certain--I mean uncertain--intervals we were bundled up and marched
to the public baths. This was so great an undertaking, consuming half
a day or so, and involving, in winter, such risk of catching cold,
that it is no wonder the ceremony was not practised oftener.
The public baths were situated on the river bank. I always stopped
awhile outside, to visit the poor patient horse in the treadmill, by
means of which the water was pumped into the baths. I was not
sentimental about animals then. I had not read of "Black Beauty" or
any other personified monsters; I had not heard of any societies for
the prevention of cruelty to anything. But my pity stirred of its own
accord at the sight of that miserable brute in the treadmill. I was
used to seeing horses hard-worked and abused. This horse had no load
to make him sweat, and I never saw him whipped. Yet I pitied this
creature. Round and round his little circle he trod, with head hanging
and eyes void of expectation; round and round all day, unthrilled by
any touch of rein or bridle, interpreters of a living will; round and
round, all solitary, never driven, never checked, never addressed;
round and round and round, a walking machine, with eyes that did not
flash, with teeth that did not threaten, with hoofs that did not
strike; round and round the dull day long. I knew what a horse's life
should be, entangled with the life of a master: adventurous, troubled,
thrilled; petted and opposed, loved and abused; to-day the ringing
city pavement underfoot, and the buzz of beasts and men in the market
place; to-morrow the yielding turf under tickled flanks, and the lone
whinny of scattered mates. How empty the existence of the treadmill
horse beside this! As empty and endless and dull as the life of almost
any woman in Polotzk, had I had eyes to see the likeness.
But to my ablutions!
We undress in a room leading directly from the entry, and furnished
only with benches around the walls. There is no screen or other
protection against the drafts rushing in every time the door is
opened. When we enter the bathing-room we are confused by a babel of
sounds--shrill voices of women, hoarse voices of attendants, wailing
and yelping of children, and rushing of water. At the same time we are
smitten by the heat of the room and nearly suffocated by clouds of
steam. We find at last an empty bench, and surround ourselves with a
semicircle of wooden pails, collected from all around the room.
Sometimes two women in search of pails lay hold of the same pail at
the same moment, and a wrangle ensues, in the course of which each
disputant reminds the other of all her failings, nicknames, and
undesirable connections, living, dead, and unborn; until an attendant
interferes, with more muscle than argument, punctuating the sentence
of justice with newly coined expletives suggested by the occasion. The
centre of the room, where the bathers fill their pails at the faucets,
is a field of endless battle, especially on a crowded day. The
peaceful women seated within earshot stop their violent scrubbing, to
the relief of unwilling children, while they attend to the liveliest
of the quarrels.
I like to watch the _poll_, that place of torture and heroic
endurance. It is a series of steps rising to the ceiling, affording a
gradually mounting temperature. The bather who wants to enjoy a
violent sweating rests full length for a few minutes on each step,
while an attendant administers several hearty strokes of a stinging
besom. Sometimes a woman climbs too far, and is brought down in a
faint. On the poll, also, the cupping is done. The back of the
patient, with the cups in even rows, looks to me like a muffin pan. Of
course I never go on the poll: I am not robust enough. My spankings I
take at home.
Another centre of interest is the _mikweh_, the name of which it is
indelicate to mention in the hearing of men. It is a large pool of
standing water, its depth graded by means of a flight of steps. Every
married woman must perform here certain ceremonious ablutions at
regular intervals. Cleanliness is as strictly enjoined as godliness,
and the manner of attaining it is carefully prescribed. The women are
prepared by the attendants for entering the pool, the curious children
looking on. In the pool they are ducked over their heads the correct
number of times. The water in the pool has been standing for days; it
does not look nor smell fresh. But we had no germs in Polotzk, so no
harm came of it, any more than of the pails used promiscuously by
feminine Polotzk. If any were so dainty as to have second thoughts
about the use of the common bath, they could enjoy, for a fee of
twenty-five kopecks, a private bathtub in another part of the
building. For the rich there were luxuries even in Polotzk.
Cleansed, red-skinned, and steaming, we return at last to the
dressing-room, to shiver, as we dress, in the cold drafts from the
entry door; and then, muffled up to the eyes, we plunge into the
refreshing outer air, and hurry home, looking like so many big bundles
running away with smaller bundles. If we meet acquaintances on the way
we are greeted with "_zu refueh_" ("to your good health"). If the
first man we meet is a Gentile, the women who have been to the mikweh
have to return and repeat the ceremony of purification. To prevent
such a calamity, the kerchief is worn hooded over the eyes, so as to
exclude unholy sights. At home we are indulged with extra pieces of
cake for tea, and otherwise treated like heroes returned from victory.
We narrate anecdotes of our expedition, and my mother complains that
my little brother is getting too old to be taken to the women's bath.
He will go hereafter with the men.
[Illustration: THE MEAT MARKET, POLOTZK]
My winter confinement was not shared by my older sister, who otherwise
was my constant companion. She went out more than I, not being so
afraid of the cold. She used to fret so when my mother was away in the
store that it became a custom for her to accompany my mother from the
time she was a mere baby. Muffled and rosy and frost-bitten, the tears
of cold rolling unnoticed down her plump cheeks, she ran after my busy
mother all day long, or tumbled about behind the counter, or nestled
for a nap among the bulging sacks of oats and barley. She warmed her
little hands over my mother's pot of glowing charcoal--there was no
stove in the store--and even learned to stand astride of it, for
further comfort, without setting her clothes on fire.
Fetchke was like a young colt inseparable from the mare. I make this
comparison not in disrespectful jest, but in deepest pity. Fetchke
kept close to my mother at first for love and protection, but the
petting she got became a blind for discipline. She learned early, from
my mother's example, that hands and feet and brains were made for
labor. She learned to bow to the yoke, to lift burdens, to do more for
others than she could ever hope to have done for her in turn. She
learned to see sugar plums lie around without asking for her share.
When she was only fit to nurse her dolls, she learned how to comfort a
weary heart.
And all this while I sat warm and watched over at home, untouched by
any discipline save such as I directly incurred by my own sins. I
differed from Fetchke a little in age, considerably in health, and
enormously in luck. It was my good luck, in the first place, to be
born after her, instead of before; in the second place, to inherit,
from the family stock, that particular assortment of gifts which was
sure to mark me for special attentions, exemptions, and privileges;
and as fortune always smiles on good fortune, it has ever been my
luck, in the third place, to find something good in my idle
hand--whether a sunbeam, or a loving heart, or a congenial
task--whenever, on turning a corner, I put out my hand to see what my
new world was like; while my sister, dear, devoted creature, had her
hands so full of work that the sunbeam slipped, and the loving comrade
passed out of hearing before she could straighten from her task, and
all she had of the better world was a scented zephyr fanned in her
face by the irresistible closing of a door.
Perhaps Esau has been too severely blamed for selling his birthright
for a mess of pottage. The lot of the firstborn is not necessarily to
be envied. The firstborn of a well-to-do patriarch, like Isaac, or of
a Rothschild of to-day, inherits, with his father's flocks and slaves
and coffers, a troop of cares and responsibilities; unless he be a
man without a sense of duty, in which case we are not supposed to envy
him. The firstborn of an indigent father inherits a double measure of
the disadvantages of poverty,--a joyless childhood, a guideless youth,
and perhaps a mateless manhood, his own life being drained to feed the
young of his father's begetting. If we cannot do away with poverty
entirely, we ought at least to abolish the institution of
primogeniture. Nature invented the individual, and promised him, as a
reward for lusty being, comfort and immortality. Comes man with his
patented brains and copyrighted notions, and levies a tax on the
individual, in the form of enforced coöperation, for the maintenance
of his pet institution, the family. Our comfort, in the grip of this
tyranny, must lie in the hope that man, who is no bastard child of
Mother Nature, may be approaching a more perfect resemblance to her
majestic features; that his fitful development will culminate in a
spiritual constitution capable of absolute justice.
* * * * *
I think I was telling how I stayed at home in the winter, while my
sister helped or hindered my mother in her store-keeping. The days
drew themselves out too long sometimes, so that I sat at the window
thinking what should happen next. No dolls, no books, no games, and at
times no companions. My grandmother taught me knitting, but I never
got to the heel of my stocking, because if I discovered a dropped
stitch I insisted on unravelling all my work till I picked it up; and
grandmother, instead of encouraging me in my love for perfection, lost
patience and took away my knitting needles. I still maintain that she
was in the wrong, but I have forgiven her, since I have worn many
pairs of stockings with dropped stitches, and been grateful for them.
And speaking of such everyday things reminds me of my friends, among
whom also I find an impressive number with a stitch dropped somewhere
in the pattern of their souls. I love these friends so dearly that I
begin to think I am at last shedding my intolerance; for I remember
the day when I could not love less than perfection. I and my imperfect
friends together aspire to cast our blemishes, and I am happier so.
There was not much to see from my window, yet adventures beckoned to
me from the empty street. Sometimes the adventure was real, and I went
out to act in it, instead of dreaming on my stool. Once, I remember,
it was early spring, and the winter's ice, just chopped up by the
street cleaners, lay muddy and ragged and high in the streets from
curb to curb. So it must lie till there was time to cart it to the
Dvina, which had all it could do at this season to carry tons, and
heavy tons, of ice and snow and every sort of city rubbish,
accumulated during the long closed months. Polotzk had no underground
communication with the sea, save such as water naturally makes for
itself. The poor old Dvina was hard-worked, serving both as
drinking-fountain and sewer, as a bridge in winter, a highway in
summer, and a playground at all times. So it served us right if we had
to wait weeks and weeks in thawing time for our streets to be cleared;
and we deserved all the sprains and bruises we suffered from
clambering over the broken ice in the streets while going about our
business.
Leah the Short, little and straight and neat, with a basket on one arm
and a bundle under the other, stood hesitating on the edge of the curb
opposite my window. Her poor old face, framed in its calico kerchief,
had a wrinkle of anxiety in it. The tumbled ice heap in the street
looked to her like an impassable barrier. Tiny as she was, and loaded,
she had reason to hesitate. Perhaps she had eggs in her basket,--I
thought of that as I looked at her across the street; and I thought of
my old ambition to measure myself, shoulder to shoulder, with Leah,
reputedly short. I was small myself, and was constantly reminded of it
by a variety of nicknames, lovingly or vengefully invented by my
friends and enemies. I was called Mouse and Crumb and Poppy Seed.
Should I live to be called, in my old age, Mashke the Short? I longed
to measure my stature by Leah's, and here was my chance.
I ran out into the street, my grandmother scolding me for going
without a shawl, and I calling back to her to be sure and watch me. I
skipped over the ice blocks like a goat, and offered my assistance to
Leah the Short. With admirable skill and solicitude I guided her timid
steps across the street, at the same time winking to my grandmother at
the window, and pointing to my shoulder close to Leah's. Once on the
safe sidewalk, the tiny woman thanked me and blessed me and praised me
for a thoughtful child; and I watched her toddle away without the
least stir of shame at my hypocrisy. She had convinced me that I was a
good little girl, and I had convinced myself that I was not so very
short. My chin was almost on a level with Leah's shoulder, and I had
years ahead in which to elevate it. Grandma at the window was witness,
and I was entirely happy. If I caught cold from going bareheaded, so
much the better; mother would give me rock candy for my cough.
For the long winter evenings there was plenty of quiet occupation. I
liked to sit with the women at the long bare table picking feathers
for new featherbeds. It was pleasant to poke my hand into the
soft-heaped mass and set it all in motion. I pretended that I could
pick out the feathers of particular hens, formerly my pets. I
reflected that they had fed me with eggs and broth, and now were going
to make my bed so soft; while I had done nothing for them but throw
them a handful of oats now and then, or chase them about, or spoil
their nests. I was not ashamed of my part; I knew that if I were a hen
I should do as a hen does. I just liked to think about things in my
idle way.
Itke, the housemaid, was always the one to break in upon my
reflections. She was sure to have a fit of sneezing just when the heap
on the table was highest, sending clouds of feathers into the air,
like a homemade snowstorm. After that the evening was finished by our
picking the feathers from each other's hair.
Sometimes we played cards or checkers, munching frost-bitten apples
between moves. Sometimes the women sewed, and we children wound yarn
or worsted for grandmother's knitting. If somebody had a story to tell
while the rest worked, the evening passed with a pleasant sense of
semi-idleness for all.
On a Saturday night, the Sabbath being just departed, ghost stories
were particularly in favor. After two or three of the creepy legends
we began to move closer together under the lamp. At the end of an hour
or so we started and screamed if a spool fell, or a window rattled. At
bedtime nobody was willing to make the round of doors and windows, and
we were afraid to bring a candle into a dark room.
I was just as much afraid as anybody. I am afraid now to be alone in
the house at night. I certainly was afraid that Saturday night when
somebody, in bravado, suggested fresh-baked buns, as a charm to dispel
the ghosts. The baker who lived next door always baked on Saturday
night. Who would go and fetch the buns? Nobody dared to venture
outdoors. It had snowed all evening; the frosted windows prevented a
preliminary survey of the silent night. _Brr-rr!_ Nobody would take
the dare.
Nobody but me. Oh, how the creeps ran up and down my back! and oh! how
I loved to distinguish myself! I let them bundle me up till I was
nearly smothered. I paused with my mittened hand on the latch. I
shivered, though I could have sat the night out with a Polar bear
without another shawl. I opened the door, and then turned back, to
make a speech.
"I am not afraid," I said, in the noble accents of courage. "I am not
afraid to go. God goes with me."
Pride goeth before a fall. On the step outside I slid down into a
drift, just on the eve of triumph. They picked me up; they brought me
in. They found all of me inside my wrappings. They gave me a piece of
sugar and sent me to bed. And I was very glad. I did hate to go all
the way next door and all the way back, through the white snow, under
the white stars, invisible company keeping step with me.
* * * * *
And I remember my playmates.
There was always a crowd of us girls. We were a mixed set,--rich
little girls, well-to-do little girls, and poor little girls,--but not
because we were so democratic. Rather it came about, if my sister and
I are considered the centre of the ring, because we had suffered the
several grades of fortune. In our best days no little girls had to
stoop to us; in our humbler days we were not so proud that we had to
condescend to our chance neighbors. The granddaughters of Raphael the
Russian, in retaining their breeding and manners, retained a few of
their more exalted friends, and became a link between them and those
whom they later adopted through force of propinquity.
We were human little girls, so our amusements mimicked the life about
us. We played house, we played soldiers, we played Gentiles, we
celebrated weddings and funerals. We copied the life about us
literally. We had not been to a Froebel kindergarten, and learned to
impersonate butterflies and stones. Our elders would have laughed at
us for such nonsense. I remember once standing on the river bank with
a little boy, when a quantity of lumber was floating down on its way
to the distant sawmill. A log and a board crowded each other near
where we stood. The board slipped by first, but presently it swerved
and swung partly around. Then it righted itself with the stream and
kept straight on, the lazy log following behind. Said Zalmen to me,
interpreting: "The board looks back and says, 'Log, log, you will not
go with me? Then I will go on by myself.'" That boy was called simple,
on account of such speeches as this. I wonder in what language he is
writing poetry now.
We had very few toys. Neither Fetchke nor I cared much for dolls. A
rag baby apiece contented us, and if we had a set of jackstones we
were perfectly happy. Our jackstones, by the way, were not stones but
bones. We used the knuckle bones of sheep, dried and scraped; every
little girl cherished a set in her pocket.
I did not care much for playing house. I liked soldiers better, but it
was not much fun without boys. Boys and girls always played apart.
I was very fond of playing Gentiles. I am afraid I liked everything
that was a little risky. I particularly enjoyed being the corpse in a
Gentile funeral. I was laid across two chairs, and my playmates, in
borrowed shawls and long calicoes, with their hair loose and with
candlesticks in their hands, marched around me, singing unearthly
songs, and groaning till they scared themselves. As I lay there,
covered over with a black cloth, I felt as dead as dead could be; and
my playmates were the unholy priests in gorgeous robes of velvet and
silk and gold. Their candlesticks were the crosiers that were carried
in Christian funeral processions, and their chantings were hideous
incantations to the arch enemy, the Christian God of horrible images.
As I imagined the bareheaded crowds making way for my funeral to pass,
my flesh crept, not because I was about to be buried, but because the
people _crossed themselves_. But our procession stopped outside the
church, because we did not dare to carry even our make-believe across
that accursed threshold. Besides, none of us had ever been
inside,--God forbid!--so we did not know what did happen next.
When I arose from my funeral I was indeed a ghost. I felt unreal and
lost and hateful. I don't think we girls liked each other much after
playing funeral. Anyway, we never played any more on the same day; or
if we did, we soon quarrelled. Such was the hold which our hereditary
terrors and hatreds had upon our childish minds that if we only mocked
a Christian procession in our play, we suffered a mutual revulsion of
feeling, as if we had led each other into sin.
We gathered oftener at our house than anywhere else. On Sabbath days
we refrained, of course, from soldiering and the like, but we had just
as good a time, going off to promenade, two and two, in our very best
dresses; whispering secrets and telling stories. We had a few stories
in the circle--I do not know how they came to us--and these were told
over and over. Gutke knew the best story of all. She told the story of
Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and she told it well. It was her
story, and nobody else ever attempted it, though I, for one, soon had
it by heart. Gutke's version of the famous tale was unlike any I have
since read, but it was essentially the story of Aladdin, so that I was
able to identify it later when I found it in a book. Names, incidents,
and "local color" were slightly Hebraized, but the supernatural
wonders of treasure caves, jewelled gardens, genii, princesses, and
all, were not in the least marred or diminished. Gutke would spin the
story out for a long afternoon, and we all listened entranced, even at
the hundredth rehearsal. We had a few other fairy stories,--I later
identified them with stories of Grimm's or of Andersen's,--but for the
most part the tales we told were sombre and unimaginative; tales our
nurses used to tell to frighten us into good behavior.
Sometimes we spent a whole afternoon in dancing. We made our own
music, singing as we danced, or somebody blew on a comb with a bit of
paper over its teeth; and comb music is not to be despised when there
is no other sort. We knew the polka and the waltz, the mazurka, the
quadrille, and the lancers, and several fancy dances. We did not
hesitate to invent new steps or figures, and we never stopped till we
were out of breath. I was one of the most enthusiastic dancers. I
danced till I felt as if I could fly.
Sometimes we sat in a ring and sang all the songs we knew. None of us
were trained,--we had never seen a sheet of music--but some of us
could sing any tune that was ever heard in Polotzk, and the others
followed half a bar behind. I enjoyed these singing-bees. We had
Hebrew songs and Jewish and Russian; solemn songs, and jolly songs,
and songs unfit for children, but harmless enough on our innocent
lips. I enjoyed the play of moods in these songs--I liked to be
harrowed one minute and tickled the next. I threw all my heart into
the singing, which was only fair, as I had very little voice to throw
in.
Although I always joined the crowd when any fun was on foot, I think I
had the best times by myself. My sister was fond of housework, but
I--I was fond of idleness. While Fetchke pottered in the kitchen
beside the maid or trotted all about the house after my grandmother, I
wasted time in some window corner, or studied the habits of the cow
and the chickens in the yard. I always found something to do that was
of no use to anybody. I had no particular fondness for animals; I
liked to see what they did, merely because they were curious. The red
cow would go to meet my grandmother as she came out of the kitchen
with a bucket of bran for her. She drank it up in no time, the greedy
creature, in great loud gulps; and then she stood with dripping
nostrils over the empty bucket, staring at me on the other side. I
teased grandmother to give the cow more, because I enjoyed her
enjoyment of it. I wondered, if I ate from a bucket instead of a
plate, should I take so much more pleasure in my dinner? That red cow
liked everything. She liked going to pasture, and she liked coming
back, and she stood still to be milked, as if she liked that too.
The chickens were not all alike. Some of them would not let me catch
them, while others stood still till I took them up. There were two
that were particularly tame, a white hen and a speckled one. In
winter, when they were kept in the house, my sister and I had these
two for our pets. They let us handle them by the hour, and stayed just
where we put them. The white hen laid her eggs in a linen chest made
of bark. We would take the warm egg to grandmother, who rolled it on
our eyes, repeating this charm: "As this egg is fresh, so may your
eyes be fresh. As this egg is sound, so may your eyes be sound." I
still like to touch my eyelids with a fresh-laid egg, whenever I am so
happy as to possess one.
On the horses in the barn I bestowed the same calm attention as on the
cow, speculative rather than affectionate. I was not a very
tender-hearted infant. If I have been a true witness of my own growth,
I was slower to love than I was to think. I do not know when the
change was wrought, but to-day, if you ask my friends, they will tell
you that I know how to love them better than to solve their problems.
And if you will call one more witness, and ask me, I shall say that if
you set me down before a noble landscape, I feel it long before I
begin to see it.
Idle child though I was, the day was not long enough sometimes for my
idleness. More than once in the pleasant summer I stole out of bed
when even the cow was still drowsing, and went barefoot through the
dripping grass and stood at the gate, awaiting the morning. I found a
sense of adventure in being conscious when all other people were
asleep. There was not much of a prospect from the gateway, but in
that early hour everything looked new and large to me, even the little
houses that yesterday had been so familiar. The houses, when creatures
went in and out of them, were merely conventional objects; in the soft
gray morning they were themselves creatures. Some stood up straight,
and some leaned, and some looked as if they saw me. And then over the
dewy gardens rose the sun, and the light spread and grew over
everything, till it shone on my bare feet. And in my heart grew a
great wonder, and I was ready to cry, my world was so strange and
sweet about me. In those moments, I think, I could have loved somebody
as well as I loved later--somebody who cared to get up secretly, and
stand and see the sun come up.
Was there not somebody who got up before the sun? Was there not Mishka
the shepherd? Aye, that was an early riser; but I knew he was no
sun-worshipper. Before the chickens stirred, before the lazy maid let
the cow out of the barn, I heard his rousing horn, its distant notes
harmonious with the morning. Barn doors creaked in response to
Mishka's call, and soft-eyed cattle went willingly out to meet him,
and stood in groups in the empty square, licking and nosing each
other; till Mishka's little drove was all assembled, and he tramped
out of town behind them, in a cloud of dust.