After tramping a while alongside the coach, the old man lit his
pipe, emitted a cloud of smoke, and continued:--
I do not know what happened then. I cannot tell who caught me, nor
the place I was taken to. I must have been in a trance all the
while.
When I awoke, I found myself surrounded by a flock of sheep, in a
meadow near the woods. Near me was my brother Solomon; but I hardly
recognized him. He wore peasant clothes: a linen shirt turned out
over linen breeches and gathered in by a broad belt. I was eyeing
my brother, and he was eyeing me, both of us equally bewildered, for
I was disguised like himself.
A little boy, a real peasant boy, was standing near us. He smiled
at us in a good-natured, hospitable way. It was the chore-boy of
the Jewish quarter. On the Sabbaths of the winter months he kept up
the fires in the Jewish houses; that is why he could jabber a few
words of Yiddish. During the summer he took care of the flocks of
the peasants that lived in the neighborhood.
When I awoke, my mother was with us too. She kissed us amid tears,
gave us some bread and salt, and, departing, strictly forbade us to
speak any Yiddish. "For God's sake, speak no Yiddish," said she,
"you might be recognized! Hide here till the Catcher leaves town."
It was easy enough to say, "Speak no Yiddish"; but did we know how
to speak any other language?
I saw then that I was in a sort of hiding-place--a hiding-place
under the open sky! I realized that I had escaped from houses,
garrets, and cellars, merely to hide in the open field between
heaven and earth. I had fled from darkness, to hide in broad
daylight!
Indeed, it was not light that I had to fear. Nor was it the sun,
the moon, or the sheep. It was only man that I had to avoid.
Mother went away and left us under the protection of the little
shepherd boy. And he was a good boy, indeed. He watched us to the
best of his ability. As soon as he saw any one approach our place,
he called out loudly: "No, no; these are not Jewish boys at all! On
my life, they are not!"
As a matter of facet, a stranger did happen to visit our place; but
he was only a butcher, who came to buy sheep for slaughtering.
Well, the sun had set, and night came. It was my first night under
an open sky. I suffered greatly from fear, for there was no Mezuzah
anywhere near me. I put my hand under my Shaatnez clothes, and felt
my Tzitzis: they, too, seemed to be in hiding, for they shook in my
hand.
Over us the dark night sky was spread out, and it seemed to me that
the stars were so many omens whose meaning I could not make out.
But I felt certain that they meant nothing good so far as I was
concerned. All kinds of whispers, sizzling sounds of the night,
reached my ears, and I knew not where they came from.
Looking down, I saw sparks a-twinkling. I knew they were stars
reflected in the near-by stream. But soon I thought it was not the
water and the stars: the sheen of the water became the broad smile
of some giant stretched out flat upon the ground; and the sparks
were the twinkling of his eyes. And the sheep were not sheep at
all, but some strange creatures moving to and fro, spreading out,
and coming together again in knotted masses. I imagined they all
were giants bewitched to appear as sheep by day and to become giants
again by night. Then I knew too well that the thick, dark forest
was behind me; and what doesn't one find in a forest? Is there an
unholy spirit that cannot be found there? Z-z-z---- a sudden
sizzling whisper reached my ear, and I began to cry.
"Why don't you sleep?" asked the shepherd boy in his broken Yiddish.
"I am afraid!"
"What are you afraid of?"
"Of--of--the woods . . . ."
"Ha--ha--ha--I have good dogs with the flock!"
I wanted a Mezuzah, some talisman, a protection against evil
spirits, and that fool offered me barking dogs! All at once he
whistled loudly, and his dogs set up a barking that nearly made me
deaf. The flock was panic-stricken. I thought at first that the
earth had opened her mouth, and packs of dogs were breaking out from
hell.
The noise the dogs made broke the awful hush of the night, and my
fears were somewhat dispelled.
But there were other reasons why I liked to hear the dogs bark. I
was myself the owner of a dog, which I had raised on the sly in my
father's house. Imagine the horror of my brother Solomon, who as a
real Jewish lad was very much afraid of a dog!
In that way we spent a few days, hiding under the open sky,
disguised in our Shaatnez clothes. Soon enough the time came when
my parents _had_ to understand what they would not understand when
the rabbi wanted to give me up in place of the famous Avremel. For
they caught my oldest brother Simhah, may he rest in peace. And
Simhah was a privileged person; he was not only the Shohet of the
community and a great Lamdan, but also a married man, and the father
of four children to boot. Only then, it seems, my parents
understood what the rabbi had understood before: that it was not
fair to deliver up my brother when I, the ignorant fellow, the lover
of dogs, might take his place. A few days later mother came and
took us home. As to the rest, others had seen to it.--
Here the old man stopped for a while. He was puffing and snorting,
tired from the hard walk uphill. Having reached the summit, he
turned around, looked downhill, straightened up, and took a deep
breath. "This is an excellent way of getting rid of your tired
feeling," said he. "Turn around and look downhill: then your
strength will return to you."--