The Life of a Family-Tutor.
The place, where I first occupied the position of family-tutor, was at
the distance of a league from my residence. The family was that of a
miserable farmer in a still more miserable village; and my salary was
five thalers in Polish money. The poverty, ignorance, and rudeness in
the manner of life, which prevailed in this house, were indescribable.
The farmer himself was a man of about fifty years, the whole of whose
face was overgrown with hair, ending in a dirty, thick beard as black as
pitch. His language was a sort of muttering, intelligible only to the
boors, with whom he held intercourse daily. Not only was he ignorant of
Hebrew, but he could not speak a word of Jewish; his only language was
Russian, the common patois of the peasantry. His wife and children were
of the same stamp. Moreover, the apartment, in which they lived, was a
hovel of smoke, black as coal inside and out, without a chimney, but
with merely a small opening in the roof for the exit oi the smoke,--an
opening which was carefully closed as soon as the fire was allowed to go
out, so that the heat might not escape.
The windows were narrow strips of pine laid crosswise over each other,
and covered with paper. This apartment served at once for sitting,
drinking, eating, study and sleep. Think of this room intensely heated,
and the smoke, as is generally the case in winter, driven back by wind
and rain till the whole place is filled with it to suffocation. Here
hang a foul washing and other dirty bits of clothing on poles laid
across the room in order to kill the vermin with the smoke. There hang
sausages to dry, while their fat keeps constantly trickling down on the
heads of people below. Yonder stand tubs with sour cabbage and red
beets, which form the principal food of the Lithuanians. In a corner the
water is kept for daily use, with the dirty water alongside. In this
room the bread is kneaded, cooking and baking are done, the cow is
milked, and all sorts of operations are carried on.
In this magnificent dwelling the peasants sit on the bare ground; you
dare not sit higher if you do not wish to be suffocated with the smoke.
Here they guzzle their whiskey and make an uproar, while the people of
the house sit in a corner. I usually took my place behind the stove with
my dirty half-naked pupils, and expounded to them out of an old tattered
Bible, from Hebrew into Russian Jewish. All this together made such a
splendid group as deserved to be sketched only by a Hogarth, and to be
sung only by a Butler.
It may be easily imagined, how pitiable my condition here must have
been. Whiskey had to form my sole comfort; it made me forget all my
misery. This was increased by the fact, that a regiment of Russians, who
were rioting at that time with every conceivable cruelty on the estates
of Prince Radzivil, was stationed in the village and its neighbourhood.
The house was constantly full of drunken Russians, who committed all
sorts of excesses, hewed to pieces tables and benches, threw glasses and
bottles into the faces of the people of the house, and so on. To give
merely one example, a Russian, who was stationed in this house as guard,
and whose charge it was to secure the house against all violence, came
home once drunk, and demanded something to eat. A dish of millet with
butter was placed before him cooked. He shoved the dish away, and
shouted an order for more butter. A whole small tub of butter was
brought, when he shouted again an order for another dish. This was
brought immediately, whereupon he threw all the butter into it, and
called for spirits. A whole bottle was brought, and he poured it
likewise into the dish. Thereafter milk, pepper, salt, and tobacco, in
large quantities had to be brought to him, the whole being put in, and
the mixture devoured. After he had taken some spoonfuls, he began to
strike about him, pulled the host by the beard, struck him in the face
with his fist, so that the blood flowed out of his mouth, poured some of
his glorious broth down his throat, and went on in this riotous manner
till he became so drunk that he could no longer support himself, and
fell to the ground.
Such scenes were at that time very common everywhere in Poland. If a
Russian army passed a place, they took with them a _prowodnik_, or
guide, to the next place. But instead of seeking to be supplied by the
mayor or the village magistrate, they used to seize the first person
whom they met on the road. He might be young or old, male or female,
healthy or sick, it mattered nothing to them; for they knew the road
well enough from special charts, and only sought an opportunity for
outrage. If it happened that the person seized did not know the way at
all, and did not show them the right road, they did not allow themselves
to be sent astray on this account; they selected the road all right, but
they cudgelled the poor prowodnik till he was half-dead, _for not
knowing the way_!
I was once seized as a prowodnik myself. I did not indeed know the way,
but luckily I hit upon it by chance. Fortunately, therefore, I reached
the proper place, and the only violence I suffered, besides a good many
blows and kicks from the Russian soldiers, was the threat, that, if ever
I led them astray, I should certainly be flayed alive--a threat which
they might be trusted with carrying into execution.
The other places which I filled as tutor were more or less similar to
this. In one of these a remarkable psychological incident occurred in
which I took the principal part and which is to be described in the
sequel. An incident of the same kind, however, which happened to
another person and of which I was simply eye-witness, must be mentioned
here.
A tutor in the next village, who was a somnambulist, rose one night from
his bed and went to the village churchyard with a volume of the Jewish
ceremonial laws in his hand. After remaining some time there he returned
to his bed. In the morning he rose up, without remembering the least of
what had happened during the night, and went to the chest where his copy
of the ceremonial laws was usually kept, in order to take out the first
part, _Orach Chajim_ or the Way of Life, which he was accustomed to read
every morning. The code consists of four parts, each of which was bound
separately, and all the four had certainly been locked up in the chest.
He was therefore astonished to find only three of the parts, _Joreh
Deah_ or the Teacher of Wisdom, being awanting. As he knew about his
disease he searched everywhere, till at last he came to the churchyard
where he found the _Joreh Deah_ lying open at the chapter, _Hilchoth
Abheloth_ or the Laws of Mourning. He took this for a bad omen and came
home much disquieted. On being asked the cause of his disquietude he
related the incident which had occurred, with the addition, "Ah! God
knows how my poor mother is!" He begged of his master the loan of a
horse and permission to ride to the nearest town, where his mother
lived, in order to enquire after her welfare. As he had to pass the
place where I was tutor, and I saw him riding in great excitement
without being willing to dismount even for a little while, I asked him
the cause of his excitement when he related to me the above-mentioned
incident.
I was astonished, not so much about the particular circumstances of this
incident, as about somnambulism in general, of which till then I had
known nothing. My friend, on the other hand, assured me that
somnambulism was a common occurrence with him, and that it meant
nothing, but that the circumstance of the _Hilchoth Abheloth_ made him
forebode some misfortune. Thereupon he rode off, arrived at his mother's
house, and found her seated at her frame for needlework. She asked him
the reason of his coming, when he replied that he had come merely to pay
her a visit, as he had not seen her for a long time. After he had rested
for a good while, he rode back; but his disquietude was by no means
wholly removed, and the thought of the _Hilchoth Abheloth_ he could not
get out of his head. The third day after, a fire broke out in the town
where his mother lived, and the poor woman perished in the flames.
Scarcely had the son heard of the conflagration, when he began to lament
that his mother had so miserably perished. He rode off in all haste to
the town, and found what he had foreboded.