IN THE STORM
IN THE STORM
A pious woman told it to me as a warning to sinners, to the young, to the moderns.
Black clouds began to fleck the clear sky. Dense, heavy storm-clouds. At first far off, beyond the forest, but very soon they darkened the whole sky over the village. A violent wind lashed and drove them on, and they sped under its whip, angry and sullen, menacing. The wind—a tornado—raged in all the consciousness of its formidable power, raising pillars of dust as high as the driven clouds, tearing off roofs and uprooting trees.
Terror had descended upon the village. Bright day had of a sudden turned to night, such as well befitted the Sabbath of Repentance, the Sabbath before the Day of Atonement.... As frightfully dark, as oppressively heavy as a pious Jew’s heart.
Folks shut themselves up in their houses, fastening windows and locking doors. The earnest faces of the penitent Jews became still more earnest. The depressing moods of the Sabbath of Repentance waxed still more depressing. God was scolding. The sad voices of the psalm-singers became deeper and more tearful.
The darkness grew blacker and blacker. Then old Chyene raised her eyes from the psalms, looked through her spectacles into the street, uttered “Au-hu!” with trembling heart and heaved a sigh.
For a while she sat gazing outside. She shook her head. Her whole soul was full of God’s omnipotence.
It refused to grow lighter. The clouds passed by in endless procession, and the wind howled, whirling thick pillars of dust in its path.
She could recite psalms no longer. She removed her spectacles and placed them between the pages of her thick woman’s prayer-book, rose from her seat and went into her daughter’s room.
“What do you say to....”
She did not conclude her question. Her daughter was not there.
The old woman surveyed the room, looked into the kitchen, then returned to the room. Her daughter’s bonnet was not in its place. With quivering hands she opened the closet. The jacket was missing!
She had gone! And she had warned her daughter, it seemed, not to go out to-day,—that on the Sabbath of Repentance, at least, she might remain at home and not run off to that “Apostate,” the former student.
Her aged countenance became as dark as the sky without. And her heart grew as furious as the storm. She gazed about the room as if seeking to vent her rage,—strike somebody, break something.
“Oh, may she no longer be a daughter of mine!” escaped in angry outburst from her storming bosom, and she raised her hand to heaven.
She was not affrighted by the curse that her lips had uttered on this solemn Sabbath. At this moment she could curse and shriek the bitterest words. She could have seized her now by the hair, and slapped her face ruthlessly.
Suddenly she threw a shawl over her head and dashed out of the house.
She would hunt them both out and would visit an evil end upon both of them.
A flash of lightning rent the clouds, and was followed by reverberating thunder. Then flash upon flash of lightning and crash upon crash of thunder. One more blinding than the other, one louder than the other!
The horror of the population grew greater. That it should thunder on the Sabbath of Repentance, and in such demoniac fashion! All hearts were touched, all souls went out in prayer.
Old Chyene, however, scarcely noticed this.
The wind blinded her eyes with dust, tore her scarf from her, blew her skirts about, twisted the wig on her old head.
She rushed along oblivious to all.
She neither heard nor saw anything before her. Within her it thundered and raged, it stormed and something drove her on. And before her all was dark, for her eyes were shot with blood.
Her small form grew even smaller. She strode along fairly doubled up, hastening breathlessly. She seemed to go faster than the wind. The wind lagged behind her. And whenever it caught up with her, it only spurred her on, and she quickened her step.
She did not look around, did not remark the inquisitive eyes that peered at her from behind the fastened windows by which she ran. She neither saw nor heard anything. Her entire being was merged with the fury of nature. Her thought was a curse, a horrible curse, a deadly curse. Not in words. But in her whole soul. Within her it cried, it thundered,—drowning out the thunder of the black, angry clouds.
She stormed into the “apostate’s” house. She opened the door with a loud bang and closed it with one even louder. Those in the room shuddered at the sudden intrusion and jumped to their feet. She cast a wild, hostile glance at them and dashed through the rooms, from one to the other, from the other to a third. She tore the doors open and slammed them behind her, accompanied by the thunder, as if in a wager as to which of them would make the panes and the windows rattle more violently. A little child took fright and began to cry. She ran from room to room, but neither he nor her daughter was there.
Then she flew back. On the threshold, however, she paused for a moment. She rolled her eyes heavenward and raised her arms to God.
“May flames devour this house!” came from her in a hoarse voice.
Then she departed, pulling the street-door violently and leaving it open. The household stood agape, as if the storm itself had torn into the home. Out of sheer stupefaction the persons forgot to close their mouths.
Out of the clouds poured a drenching rain mixed with hail. The tempest seethed like a cauldron.
This boiling tempest, however, raged in Chyene’s bosom. Something stormed furiously within her. She no longer felt the ground beneath her. The flood soaked her through and through, but this could not restrain her. It served only to augment her savage mood.
She ran from house to house, wherever she might have expected to come upon her daughter and the “apostate.” She stopped nowhere, uttered never a word, but dashed in and then sped out like a flash of lightning, leaving the household open-mouthed with astonishment.
She should find them! Even under the ground. And she did not cease her cursing and her maledictions.
As she rushed from the last house she paused for a moment. Whither now?
She turned homeward. Her heart told her that her daughter was now at home. Her lips muttered the most terrible imprecations, and the inner fury was at its height; the very air, it seemed to her, was laden with her cries, with her curses and oaths.
With a strong gust of wind, a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, she tore into her home.
Her daughter was not there.
She sank upon a chair and burst into wailing.
There was a terrifying crash of thunder. One of those thunderclaps that work the most widespread havoc. Nature seemed to be shaking off the entire residue of energy that had been left to her by the hot summer.
The inhabitants of the village were rooted to the spot in terror. They looked about, then ventured a glance outside. Hadn’t some misfortune occurred? The penitents buried their faces deeper than ever in their prayer-books, and more than ever their voices quivered.
Chyene, however, had apparently not heard the thunder. She continued to wail, to wail bitterly. Then a wild cry issued from her throat, as wild as the thunder:
“May she not live to come home! May they bring her to me dead! Oh, Lord of the universe!”
The clouds replied with a clap of thunder and the wind sped apace, shrieking.
Suddenly she arose and dashed out as before. The wind accompanied her. Now it thrust her forward from behind, now it ran ahead like a faithful dog, smiting all in its path, raising the dirt from the road and mixing it with the thick drops that fell from the clouds, which were still black, and with the seething drops that coursed from her burning eyes.
She was running to the road just beyond the village.
They had surely gone for a walk on the road, where they had been seen several times. She would meet them on the way, or in Jonah’s inn near the big forest.
On the Gentile’s lane, the last one of the village, the dogs in the yards heard her hastening steps upon the drenched earth. Some of them began to bark behind the gates, not caring to venture out into the rain; others were not so lazy and crawled out from under the gates with an angry yelping. She neither saw nor heard them, however. She only gazed far out over the road, which began at the lane, and ran along.
One dog seized her skirt, which had become heavy with the water. She did not heed this, and dragged the animal along for part of the way, until it tired of keeping pace with her in the pelting downpour. So it released her skirt. For a moment it thought of seizing her in some other spot, but at once, with a sullen growl, it set out for its yard.
On the road the wind became still stronger. And the thunder re-echoed here with thousands of reverberations from the neighbouring forest. Chyene looked only straight before her, into the distance, through the dense, water-laden atmosphere.
The way was strewn with heaps of twigs and branches that had been severed by the lightning, and even a few trees lay before her, torn up from their very roots, and charred.
“Would to God that the thunder would strike them even so!” she muttered.
She was consumed by an inner cry. Now she had found a definite form for all her curses. The thunder up yonder had torn it from her.
And she ran on, on....
But what is this here?
A few paces before her lie two persons. A man and a woman. With contorted visages. In writhing positions. Their faces black as earth, their eyes rolled back. Two corpses, struck by lightning.
There was a brilliant flash, followed by a deafening thunderclap.
She recognised her daughter.
More by her clothes than by her charred countenance; more by her entire figure than by the horribly staring whites of her eyes.
The girl’s arm lay beneath that of the young man. The top of the open umbrella in the youth’s hand had been burned off.
The old woman was on the point of shrieking a curse, of adding her thunder to the fury of the storm’s thunder; her eyes flashed together with the lightning; in her heart there arose a devastating tempest.
She wished to cry out the most evil of words,—that the dead maiden had earned her end. She desired to send after her the most wretched and degrading of names.
Suddenly, however, all grew black before her. A flood of molten lead seemed to pour into her head. Weariness and trembling fell upon her. Her garments, saturated with the rain, seemed to drag her to the earth. Her eyes were extinguished.
The thunder and lightning and shrieking of the wind broke out anew.
But within the old woman all was quiet, dark, dead. She sank to her knees before the corpse of her daughter, stretched over the body her trembling arms, and a dull flame flickered up in her eyes.
Her entire being quivered. Her teeth knocked together. And with a hoarse, toneless voice she gasped:
“My darling daughter! Hennye, my darling!”
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For Myself Alone
Translated from the French of ANDRÉ CORTHIS
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