THE BOUNDARIES STRETCH
The long chapter of troubles which led to my father's emigration to
America began with his own illness. The doctors sent him to Courland
to consult expensive specialists, who prescribed tedious courses of
treatment. He was far from cured when my mother also fell ill, and my
father had to return to Polotzk to look after the business.
Trouble begets trouble. After my mother took to her bed everything
continued to go wrong. The business gradually declined, as too much
money was withdrawn to pay the doctors' and apothecaries' bills; and
my father, himself in poor health, and worried about my mother, was
not successful in coping with the growing difficulties. At home, the
servants were dismissed, for the sake of economy, and all the
housework and the nursing fell on my grandmother and my sister.
Fetchke, as a result, was overworked, and fell ill of a fever. The
baby, suffering from unavoidable neglect, developed the fractious
temper of semi-illness. And by way of a climax, the old cow took it
into her head to kick my grandmother, who was laid up for a week with
a bruised leg.
Neighbors and cousins pulled us through till grandma got up, and after
her, Fetchke. But my mother remained on her bed. Weeks, months, a year
she lay there, and half of another year. All the doctors in Polotzk
attended her in turn, and one doctor came all the way from Vitebsk.
Every country practitioner for miles around was consulted, every
quack, every old wife who knew a charm. The apothecaries ransacked
their shops for drugs the names of which they had forgotten, and kind
neighbors brought in their favorite remedies. There were midnight
prayers in the synagogue for my mother, and petitions at the graves of
her parents; and one awful night when she was near death, three pious
mothers who had never lost a child came to my mother's bedside and
bought her, for a few kopecks, for their own, so that she might gain
the protection of their luck, and so be saved.
Still my poor mother lay on her bed, suffering and wasting. The house
assumed a look of desolation. Everybody went on tiptoe; we talked in
whispers; for weeks at a time there was no laughter in our home. The
ominous night lamp was never extinguished. We slept in our clothes
night after night, so as to wake the more easily in case of sudden
need. We watched, we waited, but we scarcely hoped.
Once in a while I was allowed to take a short turn in the sick-room.
It was awful to sit beside my mother's bed in the still night and see
her helplessness. She had been so strong, so active. She used to lift
sacks and barrels that were heavy for a man, and now she could not
raise a spoon to her mouth. Sometimes she did not know me when I gave
her the medicine, and when she knew me, she did not care. Would she
ever care any more? She looked strange and small in the shadows of the
bed. Her hair had been cut off after the first few months; her short
curls were almost covered by the ice bag. Her cheeks were red, red,
but her hands were so white as they had never been before. In the
still night I wondered if she cared to live.
The night lamp burned on. My father grew old. He was always figuring
on a piece of paper. We children knew the till was empty when the
silver candlesticks were taken away to be pawned. Next, superfluous
featherbeds were sold for what they would bring, and then there came a
day when grandma, with eyes blinded by tears, groped in the big
wardrobe for my mother's satin dress and velvet mantle; and after that
it did not matter any more what was taken out of the house.
Then everything took a sudden turn. My mother began to improve, and at
the same time my father was offered a good position as superintendent
of a gristmill.
As soon as my mother could be moved, he took us all out to the mill,
about three versts out of town, on the Polota. We had a pleasant
cottage there, with the miller's red-headed, freckled family for our
only neighbors. If our rooms were barer than they used to be, the sun
shone in at all the windows; and as the leaves on the trees grew
denser and darker, my mother grew stronger on her feet, and laughter
returned to our house as the song bird to the grove.
We children had a very happy summer. We had never lived in the country
before, and we liked the change. It was endless fun to explore the
mill; to squeeze into forbidden places, and be pulled out by the angry
miller; to tyrannize over the mill hands, and be worshipped by them in
return; to go boating on the river, and discover unvisited nooks, and
search the woods and fields for kitchen herbs, and get lost, and be
found, a hundred times a week. And what an adventure it was to walk
the three versts into town, leaving a trail of perfume from the
wild-flower posies we carried to our city friends!
But these things did not last. The mill changed hands, and the new
owner put a protégé of his own in my father's place. So, after a short
breathing spell, we were driven back into the swamp of growing poverty
and trouble.
The next year or so my father spent in a restless and fruitless search
for a permanent position. My mother had another serious illness, and
his own health remained precarious. What he earned did not more than
half pay the bills in the end, though we were living very humbly now.
Polotzk seemed to reject him, and no other place invited him.
Just at this time occurred one of the periodic anti-Semitic movements
whereby government officials were wont to clear the forbidden cities
of Jews, whom, in the intervals of slack administration of the law,
they allowed to maintain an illegal residence in places outside the
Pale, on payment of enormous bribes and at the cost of nameless risks
and indignities.
It was a little before Passover that the cry of the hunted thrilled
the Jewish world with the familiar fear. The wholesale expulsion of
Jews from Moscow and its surrounding district at cruelly short notice
was the name of this latest disaster. Where would the doom strike
next? The Jews who lived illegally without the Pale turned their
possessions into cash and slept in their clothes, ready for immediate
flight. Those who lived in the comparative security of the Pale
trembled for their brothers and sisters without, and opened wide their
doors to afford the fugitives refuge. And hundreds of fugitives,
preceded by a wail of distress, flocked into the open district,
bringing their trouble where trouble was never absent, mingling their
tears with the tears that never dried.
The open cities becoming thus suddenly crowded, every man's chance of
making a living was diminished in proportion to the number of
additional competitors. Hardship, acute distress, ruin for many: thus
spread the disaster, ring beyond ring, from the stone thrown by a
despotic official into the ever-full river of Jewish persecution.
Passover was celebrated in tears that year. In the story of the Exodus
we would have read a chapter of current history, only for us there was
no deliverer and no promised land.
But what said some of us at the end of the long service? Not "May we
be next year in Jerusalem," but "Next year--in America!" So there was
our promised land, and many faces were turned towards the West. And if
the waters of the Atlantic did not part for them, the wanderers rode
its bitter flood by a miracle as great as any the rod of Moses ever
wrought.
My father was carried away by the westward movement, glad of his own
deliverance, but sore at heart for us whom he left behind. It was the
last chance for all of us. We were so far reduced in circumstances
that he had to travel with borrowed money to a German port, whence he
was forwarded to Boston, with a host of others, at the expense of an
emigrant aid society.
I was about ten years old when my father emigrated. I was used to his
going away from home, and "America" did not mean much more to me than
"Kherson," or "Odessa," or any other names of distant places. I
understood vaguely, from the gravity with which his plans were
discussed, and from references to ships, societies, and other
unfamiliar things, that this enterprise was different from previous
ones; but my excitement and emotion on the morning of my father's
departure were mainly vicarious.
I know the day when "America" as a world entirely unlike Polotzk
lodged in my brain, to become the centre of all my dreams and
speculations. Well I know the day. I was in bed, sharing the measles
with some of the other children. Mother brought us a thick letter from
father, written just before boarding the ship. The letter was full of
excitement. There was something in it besides the description of
travel, something besides the pictures of crowds of people, of foreign
cities, of a ship ready to put out to sea. My father was travelling at
the expense of a charitable organization, without means of his own,
without plans, to a strange world where he had no friends; and yet he
wrote with the confidence of a well-equipped soldier going into
battle. The rhetoric is mine. Father simply wrote that the emigration
committee was taking good care of everybody, that the weather was
fine, and the ship comfortable. But I heard something, as we read the
letter together in the darkened room, that was more than the words
seemed to say. There was an elation, a hint of triumph, such as had
never been in my father's letters before. I cannot tell how I knew it.
I felt a stirring, a straining in my father's letter. It was there,
even though my mother stumbled over strange words, even though she
cried, as women will when somebody is going away. My father was
inspired by a vision. He saw something--he promised us something. It
was this "America." And "America" became my dream.
While it was nothing new for my father to go far from home in search
of his fortune, the circumstances in which he left us were unlike
anything we had experienced before. We had absolutely no reliable
source of income, no settled home, no immediate prospects. We hardly
knew where we belonged in the simple scheme of our society. My mother,
as a bread-winner, had nothing like her former success. Her health was
permanently impaired, her place in the business world had long been
filled by others, and there was no capital to start her anew. Her
brothers did what they could for her. They were well-to-do, but they
all had large families, with marriageable daughters and sons to be
bought out of military service. The allowance they made her was
generous compared to their means,--affection and duty could do no
more,--but there were four of us growing children, and my mother was
obliged to make every effort within her power to piece out her income.
How quickly we came down from a large establishment, with servants and
retainers, and a place among the best in Polotzk, to a single room
hired by the week, and the humblest associations, and the averted
heads of former friends! But oftenest it was my mother who turned away
her head. She took to using the side streets to avoid the pitiful eyes
of the kind, and the scornful eyes of the haughty. Both were turned on
her as she trudged from store to store, and from house to house,
peddling tea or other ware; and both were hard to bear. Many a winter
morning she arose in the dark, to tramp three or four miles in the
gripping cold, through the dragging snow, with a pound of tea for a
distant customer; and her profit was perhaps twenty kopecks. Many a
time she fell on the ice, as she climbed the steep bank on the far
side of the Dvina, a heavy basket on each arm. More than once she
fainted at the doors of her customers, ashamed to knock as suppliant
where she had used to be received as an honored guest. I hope the
angels did not have to count the tears that fell on her frost-bitten,
aching hands as she counted her bitter earnings at night.
And who took care of us children while my mother tramped the streets
with her basket? Why, who but Fetchke? Who but the little housewife of
twelve? Sure of our safety was my mother with Fetchke to watch; sure
of our comfort with Fetchke to cook the soup and divide the scrap of
meat and remember the next meal. Joseph was in heder all day; the baby
was a quiet little thing; Mashke was no worse than usual. But still
there was plenty to do, with order to keep in a crowded room, and the
washing, and the mending. And Fetchke did it all. She went to the
river with the women to wash the clothes, and tucked up her dress and
stood bare-legged in the water, like the rest of them, and beat and
rubbed with all her might, till our miserable rags gleamed white
again.
And I? I usually had a cold, or a cough, or something to disable me;
and I never had any talent for housework. If I swept and sanded the
floor, polished the samovar, and ran errands, I was doing much. I
minded the baby, who did not need much minding. I was willing enough,
I suppose, but the hard things were done without my help.
Not that I mean to belittle the part that I played in our reduced
domestic economy. Indeed, I am very particular to get all the credit
due me. I always remind my sister Deborah, who was the baby of those
humble days, that it was I who pierced her ears. Earrings were a
requisite part of a girl's toilet. Even a beggar girl must have
earrings, were they only loops of thread with glass beads. I heard my
mother bemoan the baby because she had not time to pierce her ears.
Promptly I armed myself with a coarse needle and a spool of thread,
and towed Deborah out into the woodshed. The operation was entirely
successful, though the baby was entirely ungrateful. And I am proud to
this day of the unflinching manner in which I did what I conceived to
be my duty. If Deborah chooses to go with ungarnished ears, it is her
affair; my conscience is free of all reproach.
[Illustration: WINTER SCENE ON THE DVINA]
I had a direct way in everything. I rushed right in--I spoke right
out. My mother sent me sometimes to deliver a package of tea, and I
was proud to help in business. One day I went across the Dvina and far
up "the other side." It was a good-sized expedition for me to make
alone, and I was not a little pleased with myself when I delivered my
package, safe and intact, into the hands of my customer. But the
storekeeper was not pleased at all. She sniffed and sniffed, she
pinched the tea, she shook it all out on the counter.
"_Na_, take it back," she said in disgust; "this is not the tea I
always buy. It's a poorer quality."
I knew the woman was mistaken. I was acquainted with my mother's
several grades of tea. So I spoke up manfully.
"Oh, no," I said; "this is the tea my mother always sends you. There
is no worse tea."
Nothing in my life ever hurt me more than that woman's answer to my
argument. She laughed--she simply laughed. But I understood, even
before she controlled herself sufficiently to make verbal remarks,
that I had spoken like a fool, had lost my mother a customer. I had
only spoken the truth, but I had not expressed it diplomatically.
That was no way to make business.
I felt very sore to be returning home with the tea still in my hand,
but I forgot my trouble in watching a summer storm gather up the
river. The few passengers who took the boat with me looked scared as
the sky darkened, and the boatman grasped his oars very soberly. It
took my breath away to see the signs, but I liked it; and I was much
disappointed to get home dry.
When my mother heard of my misadventure she laughed, too; but that was
different, and I was able to laugh with her.
This is the way I helped in the housekeeping and in business. I hope
it does not appear as if I did not take our situation to heart, for I
did--in my own fashion. It was plain, even to an idle dreamer like me,
that we were living on the charity of our friends, and barely living
at that. It was plain, from my father's letters, that he was scarcely
able to support himself in America, and that there was no immediate
prospect of our joining him. I realized it all, but I considered it
temporary, and I found plenty of comfort in writing long letters to my
father--real, original letters this time, not copies of Reb' Isaiah's
model--letters which my father treasured for years.
As an instance of what I mean by my own fashion of taking trouble to
heart, I recall the day when our household effects were attached for a
debt. We had plenty of debts, but the stern creditor who set the law
on us this time was none of ours. The claim was against a family to
whom my mother sublet two of our three rooms, furnished with her own
things. The police officers, who swooped down upon us without warning,
as was their habit, asked no questions and paid no heed to
explanations. They affixed a seal to every lame chair and cracked
pitcher in the place; aye, to every faded petticoat found hanging in
the wardrobe. These goods, comprising all our possessions and all our
tenant's, would presently be removed, to be sold at auction, for the
benefit of the creditor.
Lame chairs and faded petticoats, when they are the last one has, have
a vital value in the owner's eyes. My mother moved about, weeping
distractedly, all the while the officers were in the house. The
frightened children cried. Our neighbors gathered to bemoan our
misfortune. And over everything was the peculiar dread which only Jews
in Russia feel when agents of the Government invade their homes.
The fear of the moment was in my heart, as in every other heart there.
It was a horrid, oppressive fear. I retired to a quiet corner to
grapple with it. I was not given to weeping, but I must think things
out in words. I repeated to myself that the trouble was all about
money. Somebody wanted money from our tenant, who had none to give.
Our furniture was going to be sold to make this money. It was a
mistake, but then the officers would not believe my mother. Still, it
was only about money. Nobody was dead, nobody was ill. It was all
about _money_. Why, there was plenty of money in Polotzk! My own uncle
had many times as much as the creditor claimed. He could buy all our
things back, or somebody else could. What did it matter? It was only
_money_, and money was got by working, and we were all willing to
work. There was nothing gone, nothing lost, as when somebody died.
This furniture could be moved from place to place, and so could money
be moved, and nothing was lost out of the world by the transfer.
_That_ was all. If anybody--
Why, what do I see at the window? Breine Malke, our next-door
neighbor, is--yes, she is smuggling something out of the window! If
she is caught--! Oh, I must help! Breine Malke beckons. She wants me
to do something. I see--I understand. I must stand in the doorway, to
obstruct the view of the officers, who are all engaged in the next
room just now. I move readily to my post, but I cannot resist my
curiosity. I must look over my shoulder a last time, to see what it is
Breine Malke wants to smuggle out.
I can scarcely stifle my laughter. Of all our earthly goods, our
neighbor has chosen for salvation a dented bandbox containing a
moth-eaten bonnet from my mother's happier days! And I laugh not only
from amusement but also from lightness of heart. For I have succeeded
in reducing our catastrophe to its simplest terms, and I find that it
is only a trifle, and no matter of life and death.
I could not help it. That was the way it looked to me.
I am sure I made as serious efforts as anybody to prepare myself for
life in America on the lines indicated in my father's letters. In
America, he wrote, it was no disgrace to work at a trade. Workmen and
capitalists were equal. The employer addressed the employee as _you_,
not, familiarly, as _thou_. The cobbler and the teacher had the same
title, "Mister." And all the children, boys and girls, Jews and
Gentiles, went to school! Education would be ours for the asking, and
economic independence also, as soon as we were prepared. He wanted
Fetchke and me to be taught some trade; so my sister was apprenticed
to a dressmaker and I to a milliner.
Fetchke, of course, was successful, and I, of course, was not. My
sister managed to learn her trade, although most of the time at the
dressmaker's she had to spend in sweeping, running errands, and
minding the babies; the usual occupations of the apprentice in any
trade.
But I--I had to be taken away from the milliner's after a couple of
months. I did try, honestly. With all my eyes I watched my mistress
build up a chimney pot of straw and things. I ripped up old bonnets
with enthusiasm. I picked up everybody's spools and thimbles, and
other far-rolling objects. I did just as I was told, for I was
determined to become a famous milliner, since America honored the
workman so. But most of the time I was sent away on errands--to the
market to buy soup greens, to the corner store to get change, and all
over town with bandboxes half as round again as I. It was winter, and
I was not very well dressed. I froze; I coughed; my mistress said I
was not of much use to her. So my mother kept me at home, and my
career as a milliner was blighted.
This was during our last year in Russia, when I was between twelve and
thirteen years of age. I was old enough to be ashamed of my failures,
but I did not have much time to think about them, because my Uncle
Solomon took me with him to Vitebsk.
It was not my first visit to that city. A few years before I had spent
some days there, in the care of my father's cousin Rachel, who
journeyed periodically to the capital of the province to replenish her
stock of spools and combs and like small wares, by the sale of which
she was slowly earning her dowry.
On that first occasion, Cousin Rachel, who had developed in business
that dual conscience, one for her Jewish neighbors and one for the
Gentiles, decided to carry me without a ticket. I was so small, though
of an age to pay half-fare, that it was not difficult. I remember her
simple stratagem from beginning to end. When we approached the ticket
office she whispered to me to stoop a little, and I stooped. The
ticket agent passed me. In the car she bade me curl up in the seat,
and I curled up. She threw a shawl over me and bade me pretend to
sleep, and I pretended to sleep. I heard the conductor collect the
tickets. I knew when he was looking at me. I heard him ask my age and
I heard Cousin Rachel lie about it. I was allowed to sit up when the
conductor was gone, and I sat up and looked out of the window and saw
everything, and was perfectly, perfectly happy. I was fond of my
cousin, and I smiled at her in perfect understanding and admiration of
her cleverness in beating the railroad company.
I knew then, as I know now, beyond a doubt, that my Uncle David's
daughter was an honorable woman. With the righteous she dealt
squarely; with the unjust, as best she could. She was in duty bound to
make all the money she could, for money was her only protection in the
midst of the enemy. Every kopeck she earned or saved was a scale in
her coat of armor. We learned this code early in life, in Polotzk; so
I was pleased with the success of our ruse on this occasion, though I
should have been horrified if I had seen Cousin Rachel cheat a Jew.
We made our headquarters in that part of Vitebsk where my father's
numerous cousins and aunts lived, in more or less poverty, or at most
in the humblest comfort; but I was taken to my Uncle Solomon's to
spend the Sabbath. I remember a long walk, through magnificent
avenues and past splendid shops and houses and gardens. Vitebsk was a
metropolis beside provincial Polotzk; and I was very small, even
without stooping.
Uncle Solomon lived in the better part of the city, and I found his
place very attractive. Still, after a night's sleep, I was ready for
further travel and adventures, and I set out, without a word to
anybody, to retrace my steps clear across the city.
The way was twice as long as on the preceding day, perhaps because
such small feet set the pace, perhaps because I lingered as long as I
pleased at the shop windows. At some corners, too, I had to stop and
study my route. I do not think I was frightened at all, though I
imagine my back was very straight and my head very high all the way;
for I was well aware that I was out on an adventure.
I did not speak to any one till I reached my Aunt Leah's; and then I
hardly had a chance to speak, I was so much hugged and laughed over
and cried over, and questioned and cross-questioned, without anybody
waiting to hear my answers. I had meant to surprise Cousin Rachel, and
I had frightened her. When she had come to Uncle Solomon's to take me
back, she found the house in an uproar, everybody frightened at my
disappearance. The neighborhood was searched, and at last messengers
were sent to Aunt Leah's. The messengers in their haste quite
overlooked me. It was their fault if they took a short cut unknown to
me. I was all the time faithfully steering by the sign of the tobacco
shop, and the shop with the jumping-jack in the window, and the garden
with the iron fence, and the sentry box opposite a drug store, and all
the rest of my landmarks, as carefully entered on my mental chart the
day before.
All this I told my scared relatives as soon as they let me, till they
were convinced that I was not lost, nor stolen by the gypsies, nor
otherwise done away with. Cousin Rachel was so glad that she would not
have to return to Polotzk empty-handed that she would not let anybody
scold me. She made me tell over and over what I had seen on the way,
till they all laughed and praised my acuteness for seeing so much more
than they had supposed there was to see. Indeed, I was made a heroine,
which was just what I intended to be when I set out on my adventure.
And thus ended most of my unlawful escapades; I was more petted than
scolded for my insubordination.
My second journey to Vitebsk, in the company of Uncle Solomon, I
remember as well as the first. I had been up all night, dancing at a
wedding, and had gone home only to pick up my small bundle and be
picked up, in turn, by my uncle. I was a little taller now, and had my
own ticket, like a real traveller.
It was still early in the morning when the train pulled out of the
station, or else it was a misty day. I know the fields looked soft and
gray when we got out into the country, and the trees were blurred. I
did not want to sleep. A new day had begun--a new adventure. I would
not miss any of it.
But the last day, so unnaturally prolonged, was entangled in the
skirts of the new. When did yesterday end? Why was not this new day
the same day continued? I looked up at my uncle, but he was smiling at
me in that amused way of his--he always seemed to be amused at me, and
he would make me talk and then laugh at me--so I did not ask my
question. Indeed, I could not formulate it, so I kept staring out on
the dim country, and thinking, and thinking; and all the while the
engine throbbed and lurched, and the wheels ground along, and I was
astonished to hear that they were keeping perfectly the time of the
last waltz I had danced at the wedding. I sang it through in my head.
Yes, that was the rhythm. The engine knew it, the whole machine
repeated it, and sent vibrations through my body that were just like
the movements of the waltz. I was so much interested in this discovery
that I forgot the problem of the Continuity of Time; and from that day
to this, whenever I have heard that waltz,--one of the sweet Danube
waltzes,--I have lived through that entire experience; the festive
night, the misty morning, the abnormal consciousness of time, as if I
had existed forever, without a break; the journey, the dim landscape,
and the tune singing itself in my head. Never can I hear that waltz
without the accompaniment of engine wheels grinding rhythmically along
speeding tracks.
I remained in Vitebsk about six months. I do not believe I was ever
homesick during all that time. I was too happy to be homesick. The
life suited me extremely well. My life in Polotzk had grown meaner and
duller, as the family fortunes declined. For years there had been no
lessons, no pleasant excursions, no jolly gatherings with uncles and
aunts. Poverty, shadowed by pride, trampled down our simple ambitions
and simpler joys. I cannot honestly say that I was very sensitive to
our losses. I do not remember suffering because there was no jam on my
bread, and no new dress for the holidays. I do not know whether I was
hurt when some of our playmates abandoned us. I remember myself
oftener in the attitude of an onlooker, as on the occasion of the
attachment of our furniture, when I went off into a corner to think
about it. Perhaps I was not able to cling to negations. The possession
of the bread was a more absorbing fact than the loss of the jam. If I
were to read my character backwards, I ought to believe that I did
miss what I lacked in our days of privation; for I know, to my shame,
that in more recent years I have cried for jam. But I am trying not to
reason, only to remember; and from many scattered and shadowy
memories, that glimmer and fade away so fast that I cannot fix them on
this page, I form an idea, almost a conviction, that it was with me as
I say.
However indifferent I may have been to what I had not, I was fully
alive to what I had. So when I came to Vitebsk I eagerly seized on the
many new things that I found around me; and these new impressions and
experiences affected me so much that I count that visit as an epoch in
my Russian life.
I was very much at home in my uncle's household. I was a little afraid
of my aunt, who had a quick temper, but on the whole I liked her. She
was fair and thin and had a pretty smile in the wake of her tempers.
Uncle Solomon was an old friend. I was fond of him and he made much of
me. His fine brown eyes were full of smiles, and there always was a
pleasant smile for me, or a teasing one.
Uncle Solomon was comparatively prosperous, so I soon forgot whatever
I had known at home of sordid cares. I do not remember that I was ever
haunted by the thought of my mother, who slaved to keep us in bread;
or of my sister, so little older than myself, who bent her little back
to a woman's work. I took up the life around me as if there were no
other life. I did not play all the time, but I enjoyed whatever work I
found because I was so happy. I helped my Cousin Dinke help her
mother with the housework. I put it this way because I think my aunt
never set me any tasks; but Dinke was glad to have me help wash dishes
and sweep and make beds. My cousin was a gentle, sweet girl, blue-eyed
and fair, and altogether attractive. She talked to me about grown-up
things, and I liked it. When her friends came to visit her she did not
mind having me about, although my skirts were so short.
My helping hand was extended also to my smaller cousins, Mendele and
Perele. I played lotto with Mendele and let him beat me; I found him
when he was lost, and I helped him play tricks on our elders. Perele,
the baby, was at times my special charge, and I think she did not
suffer in my hands. I was a good nurse, though my methods were
somewhat original.
Uncle Solomon was often away on business, and in his absence Cousin
Hirshel was my hero. Hirshel was only a little older than I, but he
was a pupil in the high school, and wore the student's uniform, and
knew nearly as much as my uncle, I thought. When he buckled on his
satchel of books in the morning, and strode away straight as a
soldier,--no heder boy ever walked like that,--I stood in the doorway
and worshipped his retreating steps. I met him on his return in the
late afternoon, and hung over him when he laid out his books for his
lessons. Sometimes he had long Russian pieces to commit to memory. He
would walk up and down repeating the lines out loud, and I learned as
fast as he. He would let me hold the book while he recited, and a
proud girl was I if I could correct him.
My interest in his lessons amused him; he did not take me seriously.
He looked much like his father, and twinkled his eyes at me in the
same way and made fun of me, too. But sometimes he condescended to set
me a lesson in spelling or arithmetic,--in reading I was as good as
he,--and if I did well, he praised me and went and told the family
about it; but lest I grow too proud of my achievements, he would sit
down and do mysterious sums--I now believe it was algebra--to which I
had no clue whatever, and which duly impressed me with a sense of my
ignorance.
There were other books in the house than school-books. The Hebrew
books, of course, were there, as in other Jewish homes; but I was no
longer devoted to the Psalms. There were a few books about in Russian
and in Yiddish, that were neither works of devotion nor of
instruction. These were story-books and poems. They were a great
surprise to me and a greater delight. I read them hungrily, all there
were--a mere handful, but to me an overwhelming treasure. Of all those
books I remember by name only "Robinson Crusoe." I think I preferred
the stories to the poems, though poetry was good to recite, walking up
and down, like Cousin Hirshel. That was my introduction to secular
literature, but I did not understand it at the time.
When I had exhausted the books, I began on the old volumes of a
Russian periodical which I found on a shelf in my room. There was a
high stack of these paper volumes, and I was so hungry for books that
I went at them greedily, fearing that I might not get through before I
had to return to Polotzk.
I read every spare minute of the day, and most of the night. I
scarcely ever stopped at night until my lamp burned out. Then I would
creep into bed beside Dinke, but often my head burned so from
excitement that I did not sleep at once. And no wonder. The violent
romances which rushed through the pages of that periodical were fit to
inflame an older, more sophisticated brain than mine. I must believe
that it was a thoroughly respectable magazine, because I found it in
my Uncle Solomon's house; but the novels it printed were certainly
sensational, if I dare judge from my lurid recollections. These
romances, indeed, may have had their literary qualities, which I was
too untrained to appreciate. I remember nothing but startling
adventures of strange heroes and heroines, violent catastrophes in
every chapter, beautiful maidens abducted by cruel Cossacks, inhuman
mothers who poisoned their daughters for jealousy of their lovers; and
all these unheard-of things happening in a strange world, the very
language of which was unnatural to me. I was quick enough to fix
meanings to new words, however, so keen was my interest in what I
read. Indeed, when I recall the zest with which I devoured those
fearful pages, the thrill with which I followed the heartless mother
or the abused maiden in her adventures, my heart beating in my throat
when my little lamp began to flicker; and then, myself, big-eyed and
shivery in the dark, stealing to bed like a guilty ghost,--when I
remember all this, I have an unpleasant feeling, as of one hearing of
another's debauch; and I would be glad to shake the little bony
culprit that I was then.
My uncle was away so much of the time that I doubt if he knew how I
spent my nights. My aunt, poor hard-worked housewife, knew too little
of books to direct my reading. My cousins were not enough older than
myself to play mentors to me. Besides all this, I think it was tacitly
agreed, at my uncle's as at home, that Mashke was best let alone in
such matters. So I burnt my midnight lamp, and filled my mind with a
conglomeration of images entirely unsuited to my mental digestion; and
no one can say what they would have bred in me, besides headache and
nervousness, had they not been so soon dispelled and superseded by a
host of strong new impressions. For these readings ended with my
visit, which was closely followed by the preparations for our
emigration.
On the whole, then, I do not feel that I was seriously harmed by my
wild reading. I have not been told that my taste was corrupted, and my
morals, I believe, have also escaped serious stricture. I would even
say that I have never been hurt by any revelation, however distorted
or untimely, that I found in books, good or poor; that I have never
read an idle book that was entirely useless; and that I have never
quite lost whatever was significant to my spirit in any book, good or
bad, even though my conscious memory can give no account of it.
One lived, at Uncle Solomon's, not only one's own life, but the life
of all around. My uncle, when he returned after a short absence, had
stories to tell and adventures to describe; and I learned that one
might travel considerably and see things unknown even in Vitebsk,
without going as far as America. My cousins sometimes went to the
theatre, and I listened with rapture to their account of what they had
seen, and I learned the songs they had heard. Once Cousin Hirshel went
to see a giant, who exhibited himself for three kopecks, and came home
with such marvellous accounts of his astonishing proportions, and his
amazing feats of strength, that little Mendele cried for envy, and I
had to play lotto with him and let him beat me oh, so easily! till he
felt himself a man again.
And sometimes I had adventures of my own. I explored the city to some
extent by myself, or else my cousins took me with them on their
errands. There were so many fine people to see, such wonderful shops,
such great distances to go. Once they took me to a bookstore. I saw
shelves and shelves of books, and people buying them, and taking them
away to keep. I was told that some people had in their own houses more
books than were in the store. Was not that wonderful? It was a great
city, Vitebsk; I never could exhaust its delights.
Although I did not often think of my people at home, struggling
desperately to live while I revelled in abundance and pleasure and
excitement, I did do my little to help the family by giving lessons in
lacemaking. As this was the only time in my life that I earned money
by the work of my hands, I take care not to forget it and I like to
give an account of it.
I was always, as I have elsewhere admitted, very clumsy with my hands,
counting five thumbs to the hand. Knitting and embroidery, at which my
sister was so clever, I could never do with any degree of skill. The
blue peacock with the red tail that I achieved in cross-stitch was not
a performance of any grace. Neither was I very much downcast at my
failures in this field; I was not an ambitious needlewoman. But when
the fad for "Russian lace" was introduced into Polotzk by a family of
sisters who had been expelled from St. Petersburg, and all feminine
Polotzk, on both sides of the Dvina, dropped knitting and crochet
needles and embroidery frames to take up pillow and bobbins, I, too,
was carried away by the novelty, and applied myself heartily to learn
the intricate art, with the result that I did master it. The Russian
sisters charged enormous fees for lessons, and made a fortune out of
the sale of patterns while they held the monopoly. Their pupils passed
on the art at reduced fees, and their pupils' pupils charged still
less; until even the humblest cottage rang with the pretty click of
the bobbins, and my Cousin Rachel sold steel pins by the ounce,
instead of by the dozen, and the women exchanged cardboard patterns
from one end of town to the other.
My teacher, who taught me without fee, being a friend of our
prosperous days, lived "on the other side." It was winter, and many a
time I crossed the frozen river, carrying a lace pillow as big as
myself, till my hands were numb with cold. But I persisted, afraid as
I was of cold; and when I came to Vitebsk I was glad of my one
accomplishment. For Vitebsk had not yet seen "Russian lace," and I was
an acceptable teacher of the new art, though I was such a mite,
because there was no other. I taught my Cousin Dinke, of course, and I
had a number of paying pupils. I gave lessons at my pupils' homes, and
was very proud, going thus about town and being received as a person
of importance. If my feet did not reach the floor when I sat in a
chair, my hands knew their business for once; and I was such a
conscientious and enthusiastic teacher that I had the satisfaction of
seeing all my pupils execute difficult pieces before I left Vitebsk.
I never have seen money that was half so bright to look at, half so
pretty to clink, as the money I earned by these lessons. And it was
easy to decide what to do with my wealth. I bought presents for
everybody I knew. I remember to this day the pattern of the shawl I
bought for my mother. When I came home and unpacked my treasures, I
was the proudest girl in Polotzk.
The proudest, but not the happiest. I found my family in such a
pitiful state that all my joy was stifled by care, if only for a
while.
Unwilling to spoil my holiday, my mother had not written me how things
had gone from bad to worse during my absence, and I was not prepared.
Fetchke met me at the station, and conducted me to a more wretched
hole than I had ever called home before.
I went into the room alone, having been greeted outside by my mother
and brother. It was evening, and the shabbiness of the apartment was
all the gloomier for the light of a small kerosene lamp standing on
the bare deal table. At one end of the table--is this Deborah? My
little sister, dressed in an ugly gray jacket, sat motionless in the
lamplight, her fair head drooping, her little hands folded on the edge
of the table. At sight of her I grew suddenly old. It was merely that
she was a shy little girl, unbecomingly dressed, and perhaps a little
pale from underfeeding. But to me, at that moment, she was the
personification of dejection, the living symbol of the fallen family
state.
Of course my sober mood did not last long. Even "fallen family state"
could be interpreted in terms of money--absent money--and that, as
once established, was a trifling matter. Hadn't I earned money myself?
Heaps of it! Only look at this, and this, and this that I brought from
Vitebsk, bought with my own money! No, I did not remain old. For many
years more I was a very childish child.
Perhaps I had spent my time in Vitebsk to better advantage than at the
milliner's, from any point of view. When I returned to my native town
I _saw_ things. I saw the narrowness, the stifling narrowness, of life
in Polotzk. My books, my walks, my visits, as teacher, to many homes,
had been so many doors opening on a wider world; so many horizons, one
beyond the other. The boundaries of life had stretched, and I had
filled my lungs with the thrilling air from a great Beyond. Child
though I was, Polotzk, when I came back, was too small for me.
And even Vitebsk, for all its peepholes into a Beyond, presently began
to shrink in my imagination, as America loomed near. My father's
letters warned us to prepare for the summons, and we lived in a quiver
of expectation.
Not that my father had grown suddenly rich. He was so far from rich
that he was going to borrow every cent of the money for our
third-class passage; but he had a business in view which he could
carry on all the better for having the family with him; and, besides,
we were borrowing right and left anyway, and to no definite purpose.
With the children, he argued, every year in Russia was a year lost.
They should be spending the precious years in school, in learning
English, in becoming Americans. United in America, there were ten
chances of our getting to our feet again to one chance in our
scattered, aimless state.
So at last I was going to America! Really, really going, at last! The
boundaries burst. The arch of heaven soared. A million suns shone out
for every star. The winds rushed in from outer space, roaring in my
ears, "America! America!"