Here the old man stopped for a while. Apparently he skipped many an
incident, and omitted many a thing that he did not care to mention.
I saw he was touching upon them mentally. Her resumed:--
Just so, just so. . . . Many, many a thing may take place within
us, without our ever knowing it. I never suspected that I had been
longing to see my parents. I never wrote to them, simply because I
had never learned to write my Jewish well enough. Of course, had my
brother Solomon been taken, he would surely have written regularly,
for he was a great penman, may he rest in peace. As to Russian, I
certainly might have written in that language; but then it would
have been very much like offering salt water to a thirsty person.
And that is why I did not write. I thought I had forgotten my
parents. But no! Even that was merely a matter of habit. I had
gotten so used to my feeling of longing that I was not aware of
having it. That is the way I explain it to myself. By and by there
opened in my heart a dark little corner that had been closed for
many a year. That was the longing for my parents, for my home,
mixed with just a trace of anger and resentment. I began to picture
to myself how my folks would meet me: there would be kisses,
embraces, tears, neighbors. . . . For, like a silly child, I
imagined they were all alive and well yet, and that the Angel of
Death would wait till I came and repaid them for all the worry I had
caused them. . . . And, indeed, would they not have been greatly
wronged, had they been allowed to die unconsoled, after they had
rent Heaven with their prayers and lamentations?
But the nearer I came to my native town, the less grew my desire to
see it. A feeling of estrangement crept over me at the sight of the
neighborhood. No, it was not exactly a feeling of estrangement, but
some other feeling, something akin to what we feel at the
recollection of the pain caused by long-forgotten troubles. I can
hardly make it clear to you; it was not unlike what an old man feels
after a bad dream of the days of his youth.
It was about this time of the year. The roads were just as bad as
now, the slush just as deep. And it was as nauseating to sit in the
coach only to watch the glittering mud and count the slow steps of
the horses. In a season like this it is certainly much more
agreeable to dismount and walk. That was just what I did. My
native town was not far away: only once uphill, once downhill, and
there was the inevitable cemetery, which must be passed when one
enters a Jewish village. The horses could hardly move, and I
overtook them very soon, as I took a short cut, and struck into a
path across the peasants' fields. I allowed myself that privilege,
because at that time I was still wearing my uniform with the brass
buttons shining brightly. When I descended into the valley, I
decided to cross the cemetery, and so shorten my way. The coach was
far behind, and I was walking very slowly, that it might reach me at
the other side of the cemetery. My path lay among the gravestones,
some of them gray with age, dilapidated, bent forward, as if trying
to overhear the talk of the nether world: some clean and upright, as
if gazing proudly heavenwards. It was a world of silence I was in;
and heavy indeed is the silence I was in; it is really a speaking
silence. I think there is something real in the belief that the
dead talk in their graves. To me it seemed as if the gravestones
were casting evil glances at me for my having disturbed the silent
place with the glitter of my buttons. And it was with difficulty
that I could decipher the inscriptions on the stones. I do not know
why it was so: either my Hebrew had got rusty, or else graveyard
inscriptions make hard reading in general.
"Here lieth . . . . the righteous man . . . . modest, pious . . . .
Rabbi Simhah . . . . Shohet. . . ."
I read it all, and shuddered: why, under that very stone lay the
remains of my own brother Simhah!
I wanted to shed tears, but my tears did not obey me. I read it
again and again, and when I came to the words "modest," "pious," I
mumbled something to myself, something angry and envious. Then I
thought I felt the tombstone move, the ground shake under me, as if
a shiver were passing through the air. . .
"Forgive me, forgive me!"
It was not my ears that caught those words; it was my heart. I
understood that it was the soul of my brother apologizing to me for
the action of my parents. Tears began to flow from my eyes. I did
not care to read any further, from fear of finding something I did
not wish to find. I was thinking of my parents.
And when I entered the house of my parents, I could hardly recognize
them. Wrinkled, bent, with sunken cheeks, they had changed entirely
in appearance.
Father looked at my buttons, removed his cap, and stood bent before
me. Mother was busying herself at the oven, and began to speak to
father in a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish: "Sure enough, some sort
of taxes again. . . . Much do we need it now. . . ." Then, in a
fit of spitefulness, I made believe I was a stranger.
"Old people," said I, "I have brought you news from your son
Samuel." As soon as father heard me speak Yiddish, he ran to the
window, rubbed his hands against the moist pane, by way of washing
them, and shook hands with me.
"Peace be with you, young man," said he. Mother left her corner and
stood up before me. Father began fumbling for his glasses, and
asked me: "News from my son, you say? Where did you see him last?"
"And when did you see him?" asked mother, shivering.