Stories and Pictures

by Isaac Loeb Peretz

STORIES AND PICTURES

BY
ISAAC LOEB PEREZ
TRANSLATED FROM THE YIDDISH BY
HELENA FRANK

PHILADELPHIA
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
1906

COPYRIGHT, 1906,
BY THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA

[Preface] [Contents] [Glossary] [Footnotes]

PREFACE

My heartfelt thanks are due to all those who, directly or indirectly, have helped in the preparation of this book of translations; among the former, to Professor Israel Abrahams, for invaluable help and advice at various junctures; and to Mr. B. B., for his detailed and scholarly explanations of difficult passages—explanations to which, fearing to overload a story-book with notes, I have done scant justice.

The sympathetic reader who wishes for information concerning the author of these tales will find it in Professor Wiener's "History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century," together with much that will help him to a better appreciation of their drift.

To fully understand any one of them, we should need to know intimately the life of the Russian Jews who figure in their pages, and to be familiar with the lore of the Talmud and the Kabbalah, which colors their talk as the superstitions of Slav or Celtic lands color the talk of their respective peasants.

A Yiddish writer once told me, he feared these tales would be too tief-jüdisch (intensely Jewish) for Gentile readers; and even in the case of the Jewish English-reading public, the "East (of Europe) is East, and West is West."

Perez, however, is a distinctly modern writer, and his views and sympathies are of the widest.

He was born in 1855, and these stories were all written, quite broadly speaking, between 1875 and 1900. They were all published in Russia, under the censorship—a fact to be borne in mind when reading such pages as "Travel-Pictures" (which, by the way, is not a story at all), "In the Post-Chaise," and others.

We may hope that conditions of life such as are depicted in "The Dead Town" will soon belong entirely to history. It is for those who have seen to tell us whether or not the picture is correct.

The future of Yiddish in a Free Russia is hard to tell. There are some who consider its early disappearance by no means a certainty. However that may be, it is at present the only language by which the masses of the Russian Jews can be reached, and Perez's words of 1894, in which he urges the educated writers to remember this fact, have lost none of their interest:

"Nowadays everyone must work for his own, must plough and sow his own particular plot of land, although, or rather because we believe that the future will represent one universal store, whither shall be carried all the corn of all the harvests....

"We do not wish to desert the flag of universal humanity.

"We do not wish to sow the weeds of Chauvinism, the thorns of fanaticism, the tares of scholastic philosophy.

"We want to pull up the weeds by the roots, to cut down the briars, to burn the tares, and to sow the pure grain of human ideas, human feelings, and knowledge.

"We will break up our bit of land, and plough and sow, because we firmly believe that some day there will be a great common store, out of which all the hungry will be fed alike.

"We believe that storm and wind and rain will have an end, that a day is coming when earth shall yield her increase, and heaven give warmth and light!

"And we do not wish our people, in the day of harvest, to stand apart, weeping for misspent years, while the rest make holiday, forced to beg, with shame, for bread that was earned by the sweat and toil of others.

"We want to bring a few sheaves to the store as well as they; we want to be husbandmen also."

Whenever, in the course of translation, I have come across a Yiddish proverb or idiomatic expression of which I knew an English equivalent, I have used the latter without hesitation. To avoid tiresome circumlocutions, some of the more important Yiddish words (most of them Hebrew) have been preserved in the translation. A list of them with brief explanations will be found on page 453. Nevertheless footnotes had to be resorted to in particular cases.

To conclude: I have frequently, in this preface, used the words "was" and "were," because I do not know what kaleidoscopic changes may not have taken place in Russo-Jewish life since these tales were written.

But they are all, with exception of the legend "The Image," tales of the middle or the end of the nineteenth century, and chiefly the latter.

HELENA FRANK

January, 1906

CONTENTS
PAGE
	PREFACE	[5]
[I].	IF NOT HIGHER	[13]
[II].	DOMESTIC HAPPINESS	[21]
[III].	IN THE POST-CHAISE	[29]
[IV].	THE NEW TUNE	[53]
[V].	MARRIED	[59]
[VI].	THE SEVENTH CANDLE OF BLESSING	[89]
[VII].	THE WIDOW	[95]
[VIII].	THE MESSENGER	[101]
[IX].	WHAT IS THE SOUL?	[117]
[X].	IN TIME OF PESTILENCE	[135]
[XI].	BONTZYE SHWEIG	[171]
[XII].	THE DEAD TOWN	[185]
[XIII].	THE DAYS OF THE MESSIAH	[201]
[XIV].	KABBALISTS	[213]
[XV].	TRAVEL-PICTURES
	PREFACE	[223]
	TRUST	[224]
	ONLY GO!	[226]
	WHAT SHOULD A JEWESS NEED?	[229]
	NO. 42	[231]
	THE MASKIL	[237]
	THE RABBI OF TISHEWITZ	[241]
	TALES THAT ARE TOLD	[245]
	A LITTLE BOY	[256]
	THE YARTSEFF RABBI	[259]
	LYASHTZOF	[265]
	THE FIRST ATTEMPT	[266]
	THE SECOND ATTEMPT	[271]
	AT THE SHOCHET'S	[272]
	THE REBBITZIN OF SKUL	[276]
	INSURED	[280]
	THE FIRE	[284]
	THE EMIGRANT	[289]
	THE MADMAN	[291]
	MISERY	[294]
	THE LÀMED WÒFNIK	[295]
	THE INFORMER	[299]
[XVI].	THE OUTCAST	[307]
[XVII].	A CHAT	[313]
[XVIII].	THE PIKE	[321]
[XIX].	THE FAST	[329]
[XX].	THE WOMAN MISTRESS HANNAH	[337]
[XXI].	IN THE POND	[385]
[XXII].	THE CHANUKAH LIGHT	[391]
[XXIII].	THE POOR LITTLE BOY	[401]
[XXIV].	UNDERGROUND	[417]
[XXV].	BETWEEN TWO MOUNTAINS	[429]
[XXVI].	THE IMAGE	[449]
	[GLOSSARY]	[453]

I
IF NOT HIGHER

And the Rebbe of Nemirov, every Friday morning early at Sliches-time, disappeared, melted into thin air! He was not to be found anywhere, either in the synagogue or in the two houses-of-study, or worshipping in some Minyan, and most certainly not at home. His door stood open, people went in and out as they pleased—no one ever stole anything from the Rebbe—but there was not a soul in the house.

Where can the Rebbe be?

Where should he be, if not in heaven?

Is it likely a Rebbe should have no affairs on hand with the Solemn Days so near?

Jews (no evil eye!) need a livelihood, peace, health, successful match-makings, they wish to be good and pious and their sins are great, and Satan with his thousand eyes spies out the world from one end to the other, and he sees, and accuses, and tells tales—and who shall help if not the Rebbe? So thought the people.

Once, however, there came a Lithuanian—and he laughed! You know the Lithuanian Jews—they rather despise books of devotion, but stuff themselves with the Talmud and the codes. Well, the Lithuanian points out a special bit of the Gemoreh—and hopes it is plain enough: even Moses our Teacher could not ascend into heaven, but remained suspended thirty inches below it—and who, I ask you, is going to argue with a Lithuanian?

What becomes of the Rebbe?

"I don't know, and I don't care," says he, shrugging his shoulders, and all the while (what it is to be a Lithuanian!) determined to find out.

———

The very same evening, soon after prayers, the Lithuanian steals into the Rebbe's room, lays himself down under the Rebbe's bed, and lies low.

He intends to stay there all night to find out where the Rebbe goes, and what he does at Sliches-time.

Another in his place would have dozed and slept the time away. Not so a Lithuanian—he learned a whole treatise of the Talmud by heart!

Day has not broken when he hears the call to prayer.

The Rebbe has been awake some time. The Lithuanian has heard him sighing and groaning for a whole hour. Whoever has heard the groaning of the Nemirover Rebbe knows what sorrow for All-Israel, what distress of mind, found voice in every groan. The soul that heard was dissolved in grief. But the heart of a Lithuanian is of cast-iron. The Lithuanian hears and lies still. The Rebbe lies still, too—the Rebbe, long life to him, upon the bed and the Lithuanian under the bed!

———

After that the Lithuanian hears the beds in the house squeak—the people jump out of them—a Jewish word is spoken now and again—water is poured on the fingers—a door is opened here and there. Then the people leave the house, once more it is quiet and dark, only a very little moonlight comes in through the shutter.

He confessed afterwards, did the Lithuanian, that when he found himself alone with the Rebbe terror took hold of him. He grew cold all over, and the roots of his ear-locks pricked his temples like needles. An excellent joke, to be left alone with the Rebbe at Sliches-time before dawn!

But a Lithuanian is dogged. He quivers and quakes like a fish—but he does not budge.

At last the Rebbe, long life to him, rises in his turn.

First he does what beseems a Jew. Then he goes to the wardrobe and takes out a packet—which proves to be the dress of a peasant: linen trousers, high boots, a pelisse, a wide felt hat, and a long and broad leather belt studded with brass nails. The Rebbe puts them on.

Out of the pockets of the pelisse dangles the end of a thick cord, a peasant's cord.

On his way out the Rebbe steps aside into the kitchen, stoops, takes a hatchet from under a bed, puts it into his belt, and leaves the house. The Lithuanian trembles, but he persists.

———

A fearful, Solemn-Day hush broods over the dark streets, broken not unfrequently by a cry of supplication from some little Minyan, or the moan of some sick person behind a window.

The Rebbe keeps to the street side, and walks in the shadow of the houses.

He glides from one to the other, the Lithuanian after him. And the Lithuanian hears the sound of his own heart-beats mingle with the heavy footfall of the Rebbe; but he follows on, and together they emerge from the town.

———

Behind the town stands a little wood. The Rebbe, long life to him, enters it. He walks on thirty or forty paces, and then he stops beside a small tree. And the Lithuanian, with amaze, sees the Rebbe take his hatchet and strike the tree. He sees the Rebbe strike blow after blow, he hears the tree creak and snap. And the little tree falls, and the Rebbe splits it up into logs, and the logs into splinters. Then he makes a bundle, binds it round with the cord, throws it on his shoulder, replaces the hatchet in his belt, leaves the wood, and goes back into the town.

In one of the back streets he stops beside a poor, tumbledown little house, and taps at the window.

"Who is there?" cries a frightened voice within. The Lithuanian knows it to be the voice of a Jewess, a sick Jewess.

"I," answers the Rebbe in the peasant tongue.

"Who is I?" inquires the voice further. And the Rebbe answers again in the Little-Russian speech:

"Vassil."

"Which Vassil? and what do you want, Vassil?"

"I have wood to sell," says the sham peasant, "very cheap, for next to nothing."

And without further ado he goes in. The Lithuanian steals in behind him, and sees, in the gray light of dawn, a poor room with poor, broken furniture.

In the bed lies a sick Jewess huddled up in rags, who says bitterly:

"Wood to sell—and where am I, a poor widow, to get the money from to buy it?"

"I will give you a six-groschen worth on credit."

"And how am I ever to repay you?" groans the poor woman.

"Foolish creature!" the Rebbe upbraids her. "See here: you are a poor sick Jewess, and I am willing to trust you with the little bundle of wood; I believe that in time you will repay me. And you, you have such a great and mighty God, and you do not trust Him! not even to the amount of a miserable six-groschen for a little bundle of wood!"

"And who is to light the stove?" groans the widow. "Do I look like getting up to do it? and my son away at work!"

"I will also light the stove for you," said the Rebbe.

———

And the Rebbe, while he laid the wood in the stove, repeated groaning the first part of Sliches.

Then, when the stove was alight, and the wood crackled cheerily, he repeated, more gaily, the second part of Sliches.

He repeated the third part when the fire had burnt itself out, and he shut the stove doors....

———

The Lithuanian who saw all this remained with the Rebbe, as one of his followers.

And later, when anyone told how the Rebbe early every morning at Sliches-time raised himself and flew up into heaven, the Lithuanian, instead of laughing, added quietly:

"If not higher."

II
DOMESTIC HAPPINESS

Chaïm is a street porter.

When he goes through the town stooping beneath his case of wares, one can hardly make him out—it looks as if the box were walking along on two feet of its own. Listen to the heavy breathing! One can hear it quite a long way off.

But now he lays down his load, and is given a few pence. He straightens himself, wipes the sweat off his face, draws a deep breath, goes to the fountain and takes a drink of water, and then runs into the court.

He stands close to the wall, and lifts his huge head till the point of his chin and the tip of his nose and the brim of his hat are all on a level.

"Hannah," he calls.

A little window opens just below the eaves, and a small female head in a white kerchief answers, "Chaïm!"

The two look at each other very contentedly.

The neighbors say they are "lovering."

Chaïm tosses up his earnings wrapped in a piece of paper, and Hannah catches them in the air—not for the first time in her life, either!

"You're a wonder!" says Chaïm, and shows no disposition to go away.

"Off with you, Chaïm!" she says, smiling. "I daren't take my eyes off the sick child. I have stood the cradle near the fire-place, and I skim with one hand and rock with the other."

"How is it, poor little thing?"

"Better."

"God be praised! Where is Henne?"

"With the sempstress, learning to sew."

"And Yössele?"

"In Choder."

Chaïm lowers his chin and goes away. Hannah follows him with her eyes till he disappears. Thursday and Friday it lasts longer.

"How much have you got there in the paper?" inquires Hannah.

"Twenty-two groschen."

"I am afraid it is not enough!"

"Why, what do you want, Hannah?"

"A sechser's worth of ointment for the baby, a few farthing dips—a Sabbath loaf I have—oh! meat—a pound and a half—let me see—and brandy for the Kiddush, and a few splinters."

"Those I can get for you. There are sure to be some in the market."

"And then I want," and she makes a calculation of all she needs for Sabbath, and it comes to this: that one can say the Kiddush quite well over a loaf, and that there are heaps of things one can do without.

The two important ones are: the candles to say the blessing over and the salve for the child.

And if only the children, God helping, are well, and the metal candle-sticks not in pawn, and supposing there is even a pudding, they spend a cheerful Sabbath.

Hannah is wonderful at puddings!

She is always short of something, either meal or eggs or suet, and the end of it all is a sweet, succulent, altogether ravishing pudding—it melts away into the very limbs!

"An angel's handiwork!" says Hannah, smiling delightedly.

"An angel's is it?" Chaïm laughs. "You think you are a little angel, do you, because you put up with me and the children? Well, they worry you enough, goodness knows! And I'm a regular crosspatch, I am, at times—and never a curse do I get—you're not like other women. And what a comfort I must be to you, too! I'm no good at Kiddush or Havdoleh either—I can't even sing the hymns properly!"

"You're a good husband and a good father," persists Hannah. "I ask no better for myself or anyone else. God grant that we may grow old together, you and I!"

And they gaze into each other's eyes so kindly and so affectionately as it were from the very heart. It looks for all the world as if they were newly married, and the party at table grows more and more festive.

But directly after his nap, Chaïm repairs to the little synagogue to hear the Law—a teacher expounds Alshech[1] there to simple folk like himself.

The faces still look sleepy.

One is finishing his doze, another yawns loudly. But all of a sudden, when it comes to the right moment, when there is talk of the other world, of Gehenna, where the wicked are scourged with iron rods, of the lightsome Garden of Eden, where the just sit with golden crowns on their heads and study the Torah, then they come to life again! The mouths open, the cheeks flush, they listen breathlessly to be told what the next world will be like. Chaïm usually stands near the stove.

His eyes are full of tears, he trembles all over, he is all there, in the other world!

He suffers together with the wicked; he is immersed in the molten pitch, he is flung away into hell; he gathers chips and splinters in gloomy woods....

He goes through it all himself, and is covered with a cold sweat. But then, later on, he also shares the bliss of the righteous. The Garden of Eden, the angels, Leviathan, Behemoth, and all good things present themselves so vividly to his imagination that when the reader kisses the book previously to closing it, Chaïm starts as it were out of a dream, like one called back from the other world!

"Ach!" he gasps, for wonder has held him breathless. "O Lord, just a tiny bit, just a scrap, just a morsel of the world to come—for me, for my wife, and for my little children!"

And then he grows sad, wondering: After all, because of what? as a reward for what?

Once, when the reading was over, he went up to the teacher:

"Rabbi," he said, and his voice shook, "advise me! What must I do to gain the world to come?"

"Study the Law, my son!" answered the teacher.

"I can't."

"Study Mishnayes, or some "Eye of Jacob," or even Perek."

"I can't."

"Recite the Psalms!"

"I haven't time!"

"Pray with devotion!"

"I don't know what the prayers mean!" The teacher looks at him with compassion:

"What are you?" he asks.

"A street porter."

"Well, then, do some service for the scholars."

"I beg pardon?"

"For instance, carry a few cans of water every day toward evening into the house-of-study, so that the students may have something to drink."

"Rabbi," he inquired further, "and my wife?"

"When a man sits on a chair in Paradise, his wife is his footstool."

———

When Chaïm went home to say Havdoleh, Hannah was sitting there reciting "God of Abraham." And when he saw her he felt a tug at his heart.

"No, Hannah," he flung his arms around her, "I won't have you be my footstool! I shall bend down to you and raise you and make you sit beside me. We shall sit both on one chair, just as we are doing now. We are so happy like that! Do you hear, Hannah? You and I, we are going to sit in a chair together ... the Almighty will have to allow it!"

III
IN THE POST-CHAISE

He told me everything at once, in one breath. I learned in little over a minute that he was Chaïm, Yoneh Krubishever's son-in-law, Beril Konskivoler's son, and that the rich Meerenstein in Lublin was a relation on his mother's side, peace be upon her! But this relation lived almost like a Gentile; whether or not they ate forbidden food, he could not tell, but that they ate with unwashed hands ... so much he had seen with his own eyes.

They had other queer ways beside: long colored cloths were lying on their stairs; before going in, one rang a bell; figured table-covers were spread about the rooms where people sat as if in jail ... stole across them like thieves ... altogether it was like being in a company of deaf-mutes.

His wife has a family of a kind in Warsaw. But he never goes near them; they are as poor as himself, so what is the good of them to him, ha?

In the house of the Lublin relation things are not as they should be, but, at least, he is rich, and whoso rubs against fat meat gets shiny himself; where they chop wood, there are splinters; where there is a meal, one may chance to lick a bone—but those others—paupers!

He even counts on the Lublin relation's obtaining a place for him. Business, he says, is bad; just now he is dealing in eggs, buys them, in the villages, and sends them to Lublin, whence they are despatched to London. There, it is said, people put them into lime-ovens and hatch chickens out of them. It must be lies. The English just happen to like eggs! However that may be, the business, for the present, is in a bad way. Still, it is better than dealing in produce—produce is knocked on the head. He became a produce dealer soon after his marriage; he had everything to learn, and his partner was an old dealer who simply turned his pockets inside out.

———

It was dark in the post-chaise—I could not see Chaïm's face, and I don't know to this day how he recognized a fellow-Jew in me. When he got in, I was sitting in a corner dozing, and was only awakened by his voice. I don't talk in my sleep—perhaps I gave a Jewish groan. Perhaps he felt that my groan and his groan were one groan?

He even told me that his wife was from Warsaw and did not fancy Konskivòlye. That is, she was born in Krubisheff, but she was brought up in Warsaw by that miserable family of hers—lost her parents.

There she learned to know about other things. She could talk Polish and read German addresses fluently. She even says that she can play, not on a fiddle, but on some other instrument.

"And who are you?" and he seized me by the hand.

Sleep was out of the question, and he had begun to interest me. It was like a story. A young man from a small provincial town; a wife brought up in Warsaw—she is impatient of the small town. Something might be made of it, I reflect; one must know exactly how it all is, then add a little to it, and it will make a novel. I will put in a villain, a convict, a bankruptcy or two, and rush in a dragon—I, too, will be interesting!

I lean toward my neighbor, and tell him who I am.

"So it's you," he said, "is it? You yourself! Tell me, I beg of you, how do you find the time and attention required for inventing stories?"

"Well, you see...."

"How can I see? You must have inherited a large fortune, and you are living on the interest?"

"Heaven forbid! My parents are alive."

"Then you won in the lottery?"

"Wrong again!"

"Then, what?"

I really did not know how to answer.

"Do you make a living by that?"

I gave a genuinely Jewish reply—Bê!

"And that is your whole Parnosseh, without anything additional?"

"For the present."

"O wa! how much does it bring in?"

"Very little."

"A bad business, too?"

"Knocked on the head!"

"Bad times!" sighed my neighbor.

A few minutes' silence, but he could not be quiet long.

"Tell me, I beg of you, what is the good of the stories you write? I don't mean to you," he amended himself. "Heaven forbid! A Jew must earn a living, if he has to suck it out of the wall—that is not what I mean—what will a Jew not do for a living? I am riding in the post-chaise, and not in an 'opportunity,'[2] because I could not hear of one. Heaven knows whether I'm not sitting on Shatnez.[3] I mean the people—what is the good of the stories to them? What is the object of them? What do they put into story books?" Then, answering himself: "I guess it's just a question of women's fashions, like crinolines!"

"And you," I ask, "have never dipped into a story-book?"

"I can tell you: I do know a little about them, as much as that."

And he measured off a small piece of his finger, but it was dark in the chaise.

"Did they interest you?"

"Me? Heaven forbid! It was all through my wife! This, you see, is how it happened: It must be five or six years ago—six—a year after the wedding, we were still boarding with my father—when my wife grew poorly. Not that she was ill; she went about as usual, but she was not up to the mark.

"One day I asked her what was wrong.

"But, really—" he caught himself up. "I don't know why I should bother you with all this."

"Please, go on!"

My neighbor laughed.

"Is straw wanted in Egypt? Do you want my stories, when you can invent your own?"

"Do, please, go on!"

"Apparently, you write fiction for other people and want truth for yourself?"

It does not occur to him that one might wish to write the truth.

"Well," he said, "so be it!"

———

"Well," repeated my neighbor, "there's nothing to be ashamed of. We had a room to ourselves, I was a young man then, more given to that sort of thing—and I asked her what was the matter. She burst out crying!

"I felt very sorry for her. Besides being my wife, she was an orphan, away from her home, and altogether much to be pitied."

"Why so much to be pitied?" I wonder.

"You see, my mother, peace be upon her, died about two years before the marriage, and my father, peace be upon him, did not marry again.

"My mother, may her merits protect us, was a good woman, and my father could not forget her. Well, a woman alone in the house! My father, peace be upon him, had no time to spare—he was away nearly the whole week in the villages—he traded in all sorts of things, whatever you please—eggs, butter, rags, hogs' bristles, linen."

"And you?"

"I sat in the house-of-study and learned. Well, I reflected, a woman gets frightened all by herself; but why cry? No, she said, she was dull. Dull? What was that?

"I saw that she went about like one half asleep. Sometimes she did not hear when spoken to, or she seemed absent-minded, and sat staring at the wall—stared and stared—or else, her lips moved and never a sound to be heard. But as to being dull—all a woman's fancy. An unaccountable folk, women! A Jew, a man, is never dull. A Jew has no time to be dull, a Jew is either hungry or full; either he has business on hand, or he is in the house-of-study, or asleep; if one has heaps of time one smokes a pipe; but dull!—--"

"Remember," I put in, "a woman has no Torah, no Kohol affairs, no six hundred and thirteen religious obligations."

"That's just where it is! I soon came to the conclusion that being dull meant having nothing to do—a sort of emptiness calculated to drive one mad. Our sages saw that long ago. Do you know the saying, 'Idleness leads the mind to wander?' According to the law, no woman may be idle. I said to her: Do something! She said, she wanted to 'read'!

"'To read,' sounded very queer to me, too. I knew that people who know how to write call 'learning' lehavdîl, reading books and newspapers, but I did not know then that she was so learned.... She spoke less to me than I to her. She was a tall woman; but she kept her head down and her lips closed as though she could not count two. She was quiet altogether—quiet as a lamb; and there was always a look in her face as if a whole ship full of sour milk had foundered at sea. She wanted to read, she said. And what? Polish, German, even Yiddish—anything to read.

"In all Konskivòlye there wasn't a book to be found. I was very sorry—I couldn't refuse her. I told her I would get her some books when I went to see my relative in Lublin.

"'And you have nothing?' she asked.

"'I? Preserve us!'

"'But what do you do all day in the house-of-study?'

"'I learn.'

"'I want to learn, too,' says she.

"I explained to her that the Gemoreh is not a story-book, that it is not meant for women, that it had been said women should not study it, that it is Hebrew....

"I gave her to understand that if the Konskivòlye people heard of such a thing, they would stone me, and quite right, too! I won't keep you in suspense, but tell you at once that she begged so hard of me, cried, fainted, made such a to-do that she had her way. I sat down every evening and translated a page of the Gemoreh for her benefit; but I knew what the end of it would be."

"And what was it?"

"You need not ask. I translated a page about goring oxen, ditches, setting on fire,[4] commentaries and all. I held forth, and she went to sleep over it night after night. That sort of thing was not intended for women. By good fortune, however, it happened that, during the great gale that blew that year, a certain book-peddler wandered out of his way into Konskivòlye, and I brought her home forty pounds' weight of story-books. Now it was the other way about—she read to me, and—I went to sleep.

"And to this day," he wound up, "I don't know what is the use of story-books. At any rate, for men. Perhaps you write for women?"

———

Meanwhile it began to dawn; my neighbor's long, thin, yellow face became visible—with a pair of black-ringed, tired-looking red eyes.

He was apparently anxious to recite his prayers, and began to polish the window-pane, but I interrupted him.

"Tell me, my friend, don't take it amiss. Is your wife content now?"

"How, content?"

"She is no longer dull?"

"She has a stall with salt and herrings; one child at the breast and two to wash and comb. She has a day's work blowing their noses."

Again he rubs the pane, and again I question:

"Tell me, friend, what is your wife like?"

My neighbor sat up, threw a side-glance at me, looked me down from head to foot, and asked severely:

"Then you know my wife? From Warsaw, eh?"

"Not in the least," I answered; "I only mean, in case I am ever in Konskivòlye, so that I may recognize her."

"So that you may recognize her?" he smiles, reassured. "I'll give you a sign: she has a mole on the left side of her nose."

———

The Jew got down from the chaise, giving me a cold and distant farewell as he stood on the step. He evidently still suspected me of knowing his wife and of belonging to her miserable family in Warsaw.

I was left alone in the chaise, but it was useless to think of sleep. The cool morning had taken hold of me. My literary overcoat blew out in the wind, and I felt chilly all over. I shrank together in the corner. The sun began to shine outside. It may be that I was riding through beautiful country; the early rays may have kissed hill-tops and green trees, and slid down a glassy river; but I hadn't the courage to open the little window.

A Jewish author fears the cold! I began, as the Jew put it, to "think out" a story. But other thoughts came in between.

Two different worlds, a man's world and a woman's world—a world with Talmudical treatises on goring oxen, and ditches, and incendiary fires, and the damages to be paid for them, and a world with story-books that are sold by weight!

If he reads, she goes to sleep; if she reads, he goes to sleep! As if we were not divided enough, as if we had not already "French noses," "English sticks," "Dutch Georges," "Lithuanian pigs," "Polish beggars," "Palestinian tramps;" as though every part of our body were not lying in a different place and had not a resounding nickname; as though every part, again, had not fallen into smaller ones: Chassidîm, Misnagdîm, "Germans;" as though all this were not, we must needs divide ourselves into men and women—and every single, narrow, damp, and dirty Jewish room must contain these two worlds within itself.

These two at least ought to be united. To strive after their unification is a debt every Yiddish writer owes his public. Only, the writers have too many private debts beside—one requires at least one additional Parnosseh, as he said.

———

My reflections about an additional Parnosseh were broken in upon by a few sharp notes on the postillion's horn. But I did not leave the chaise. I was just feeling a little warmer, and the sun had begun to pour in his beams.

I got a new neighbor and, thanks to the bright daylight, I saw his face plainly and even recognized him. It was an old acquaintance, we had skated together as children, played at bakers—we were almost comrades—then I went to the dingy, dirty Cheder, and he, to the free, lightsome "gymnasium."[5]

When I did not know the lesson, I was beaten; when I answered right, they pinched my cheek—it hurt either way.

He was sometimes kept in and sometimes he got "fives;"[6] I broke my head over the Talmud; he broke his over Greek and Latin. But we stuck together. We lived on neighborly terms; he taught me to read in secret, lent me books, and in after years we turned the world upside down as we lay on the green grass beside the river. I wanted to invent a kind of gunpowder that should shoot at great distances, say one hundred miles; he, a balloon in which to mount to the stars and bring the people "up there" to a sense of order and enlightenment. We were dreadfully sorry for the poor world, she was stuck in the mud—and how to get her out? Ungreased wheels, lazy horses, and the driver—asleep!

Then I married, and he went to a university. We never corresponded. I heard later that he had failed, and, instead of a doctor, had become an apothecary somewhere in a small country town....

I all but cried for joy when my new neighbor entered the chaise, and my heart grew warm; my hands stretched themselves out; my whole body leaned toward him, but I held myself back—I held myself back with all my strength.

There you are! I thought. It is Yanek Polnivski, our late sequestrator's son. He was my playfellow, he had a large embrace and wanted to put his arms round the whole world and kiss its every limb, except the ugly growths which should be cut away. Only—there you are again! Present-day times. Perhaps he is an anti-Semite, breathing death and destruction in the newspapers; perhaps now we Jews are the excrescences that need removing from Europe's shapely nose. He will measure me with a cold glance, or he may embrace me, but tell me, at the same time, that I am not as other Jews.

But I was mistaken. Polnivski recognized me, fell upon my neck, nor had I spoken a word before he asked me how I liked "this vile anti-Semitism."

"It is," he said to me, of course in Polish, "a kind of cholera—an epidemic."

"Some say it is political."

"I don't believe it," said Polnivski. "Politicians invent nothing new, they create no facts. They only use those which exist, suppress some, and make the most of others. They can fan the flame of hell-fire, but not a spark can they kindle for themselves. It is human nature, not the politician, that weaves the thread of history. The politicians plait it, twist it, knot it, and entangle it.

"Anti-Semitism is a disease. The politician stands by the patient's bedside like a dishonest doctor who tries to spin out the sickness.

"The politician makes use of anti-Semitism—a stone flies through the air and Bismarck's assistant directs it through the window of the Shool; otherwise other panes would be smashed. Does anyone raise a protesting fist? Immediately a thin, shrinking Jewish shoulder is thrust beneath it, otherwise other bones would crack.

"But the stone, the fist, the hatred, and the detestation, these exist of themselves.

"Who die of a physical epidemic? Children, old people, and invalids. Who fall victims to a moral pestilence? The populace, the decadent aristocrat, and a few lunatics who caper round and lead the dance. Only the healthy brains resist."

"How many healthy brains have we?" I asked.

"How many? Unhappily, very few," replied Polnivski.

There was a short, sad silence. "I do not know what my neighbor's thoughts may have been; it seemed to me that the strongest and best-balanced brains had not escaped infection. There are two different phases in history: one in which the best and cleverest man leads the mass, and one in which the mass carries the best and cleverest along with it. The popular leader is a Columbus in search of new happiness, a new America for mankind; but no sooner is there scarcity of bread and water on board than the men mutiny, and they lead. The first thing is to kill somebody, the next, to taste meat, and still their hatred."

———

"And don't suppose," said Polnivski, "that I am fishing for compliments, that I consider myself an esprit fort, who runs no danger of infection, an oak-tree no gale can dislodge.

"No, brother," he went on, "I am no hero. I might have been like the rest; I also might have been torn like a decayed leaf from the tree of knowledge, and whirled about in the air. I might have tried to think, with the rest of the dead leaves, that it was a ball, and we were dancing for our enjoyment; that the wind was our hired musician who played to us on his flute.

"I was saved by an accident; I learned to know a Jewish woman. Listen!"

I leaned toward my neighbor. His face had grown graver, darker; he rested his elbows on his knees and supported his head with his hands.

"But don't suppose," he said again, "that I discovered the heroine of a romance, a strong character that breaks through bolt and bar, and goes proudly on its way. Don't suppose that she was an 'exception,' an educated woman full of the new ideas, or, in fact, any 'ideal' at all. No; I learned to know a simple Jewish woman—one of the best, but one of the best of those who are most to be pitied. I learned to love her, and I'll tell you the truth: Whenever I read anything against Jews in general, she comes hack to my mind with her soft, sad eyes; stands before me and begs: 'Do not believe it. I am not like that.'"

He is lost in thought.

"The story is a simple one," he rouses himself and begins afresh. "We have not written to one another the whole time, and you don't know what has happened to me, so I'll tell you—briefly. I am only going as far as Lukave.

"On leaving the gymnasium I entered the university and studied medicine. I did not finish the course; it was partly my comrades' fault, partly the teachers', and most of all my own. I had to leave and become an apothecary, had to marry, take my marriage portion, and set up a shop full of cod-liver oil in a little out-of-the-way town. But I was fortunate in many ways. I had a good father-in-law, who was prompt in fulfilling the contract, a pretty wife—it was a little bit of a town.

"My wife's name was Maria—I see her before me now, turning round helplessly from the looking-glass. Her golden curls refuse to submit to the comb, they fly merrily in all directions; they will not be twisted into the wreath which was just then the fashion.

"Slender—and such good, laughing, sky-blue eyes.

"We were not much disturbed by my professional duties. The town was too poor and an apothecary shop where there is no doctor isn't worth much. There was little doing, but we lived in a paradise, and we were always on the veranda—it was summer-time—side by side, hand in hand.

"And what should have claimed our interest? We had enough to live on, and as for going out, where were we to go? The veranda overlooked nearly the whole town—the low, sagging houses, broad, black, wooden booths that leaned, as though in pity, over the roll and apple sellers at their wretched stalls before the house-doors, as though they wanted to protect the old, withered, wrinkled faces from the sun.

"The town had once been rich, the booths full of all kinds of produce and fruits, the market full of carts, peasants, and brokers; sometimes even a great nobleman would be seen among the white peasant coats and the gray kaftans (at least so they assured me in the town), but the chaussée and the railroad had thrown everything out. The streets were empty, the booths filled with decayed onions and pieces of cheese—all that was left of the good times.

"Poor as poor can be. Ten traders threw themselves on every cart-load of corn brought in by the peasants, raised the price, then came to an agreement, promised cession money, and bought it in common; but not one of the ten could find in his pockets the wherewith to pay, and they borrowed money on interest. There were one hundred tailors to a pair of trousers; fifty cobblers to put in one patch. In all my born days I never saw such poverty.

"We kept away from the town as much as possible—the happy are selfish.

"But somehow we could not help noticing a young housewife opposite, not more than eighteen or twenty at most, and we could neither of us take our eyes off her, and she, apparently, couldn't take hers off us. It was an unusual sight. Imagine a beauty, a perfect picture, set in a frame as dirty as only a Jewish window in a small town can be, beneath a dreadfully bent roof. Imagine a pair of sad, soft, dreamy eyes in an alabaster white face and under a hair-band.

"She made a terribly sad impression on us.

"For hours together she would stand leaning in the window, her fingers twisted together, staring at us, or else at the stars, and swallowing her tears. We saw that she was always alone (your men never have any time to spare), always unhappy and wistful. Her face spoke for her. She is a stranger here, we decided; she has come from a larger house, less shut in, and she longs to be far away; her heart yearns after a freer life. She also wanted to live, to live and to be loved. No, you may say what you like, but you do sometimes sell your daughters. It is true that after a while they forget. They are pious and good and patient, but who shall count the tears that fall over their saddened faces till the store is exhausted? Or note what the heart suffers till it resigns itself to its living death? And why should it be so? Just because they are good and pious? You should have seen the husband—yellow, shrunk together. I saw him twice a day—go out in the morning and come home at night.

"A shame!"

You will believe that I had no answer ready.

We were both silent for a time, and then Polnivski went on:

"Once we missed her. She did not appear at the window all day.

"She must be ill, we thought.

"That evening the husband came in—the yellow creature—and asked for a remedy.

"'What sort?'

"'I don't know,' he said; 'a remedy.'

"'For whom?'

"'You want to know that, too? For my wife.'

"'What is wrong with her?'

"'I'm sure I don't know. She says, her heart hurts her.'

"And that," said Polnivski, "was the occasion of our becoming acquainted. I won't be long about it. I am a bit of a doctor, too, and I went back with him."

Polnivski had begun to talk in broken sentences; he looked for cigarettes; at last he broke off altogether, opened his travelling-bag and commenced to hunt for matches.

Meantime I was tormented by suspicions.

I now looked at Polnivski with other eyes; his story had begun to pain me.

Who can read a man? Who knows all that is in him? I began to think that I might have before me a Christian weasel who stole into Jewish hen-houses. He is too indignant about the fate of Jewish daughters; he is too long looking for matches; he is ashamed of something. Why will he "not be long about it?" Why won't he tell me the whole story in detail? Who knows what part he played in it, if not the old part of the serpent in Paradise? Why won't his conscience let him speak out? There it is again—a Jewess—then, why not? At one time it was a merit to christen her; now the approved thing is to incite her to rebel against her God, her parents, her husband, her whole life!

It is called liberalism, entering a prison and letting in a breath of fresh air, a few rays of sunlight; awaking the prisoner, giving him a few gingerbreads and then going—not seeing the prisoner grind his teeth as the rusty key turns in the lock, or how his face darkens, how convulsively he breathes, how he tears his hair; or else, if he still can weep, how he waters with bitter tears the mouldy bread at which the mice have been gnawing while he slept.

To waken the dark, slumbering, and oppressed heart of a Jewish woman strikes a romantic chord; to fan the flame of unknown or smouldering feelings; to kiss and then—good-bye! bolt the door! she must make the best of it!

We have been slaked for so long with bitterness, gall, and hatred, that now, when we are offered bread and salt, we feel sure it must be poisoned—even though the hand that holds it out to us shakes with pity; even though there are tears in the eyes, and words of comfort on the lips.

It is so hard to believe in it all. For we also are infected; we also have succumbed to the plague.

Meanwhile Polnivski had found his matches, and I unwillingly accepted a cigarette. We smoked. The chaise was filled with blue, smoky rings. I watched them, followed them with my eyes, and thought: Thus vanish both good and evil.

———

"We made each other's acquaintance," said my Christian neighbor, "but nothing came of it in the way of closer friendship."

"Why not?" I asked, astonished.

"We went on looking at each other like the best of friends, but she could not come to us, nor we, to her.

"She had but to try it! It was a most orthodox town, where everyone but the Feldscher and the ladies' tailor wore kaftans. And there was something besides, I don't know what, that kept us back.

"Then the worst misfortune befell me that can befall a man.

"The apothecary's shop brought in next to nothing, and my wife began to fail in health.

"I saw more clearly every day that she was declining, and there was no hope of saving her. She needed Italy, and I could not even provide her with enough to eat; and, you know, when people are in that state of health, they are full of hope and do not believe in their illness.

"The whole pain, the whole anguish has to be suppressed, buried deep in the heart; and no matter how the heart is aching, you have to smile and wear a smooth brow. It dies within you every second, and yet you must help to make plans for this time next year, settle about enlarging the house, buying a piano."

His voice changed.

"I am not equal to describing, to living through those times again; but my sorrow and her sorrow brought us nearer together."

Lukave appeared in the distance.

"I will tell you, in the few minutes I have left, that anyone so unhappy as that woman, and at the same time so full of sympathy and compassion for others, I never saw; and all so simple, so natural, without any exaggeration.

"She never left Maria's bedside; she got round her husband to lend me money at a lower rate of interest. She was our watcher, our housekeeper, our cook, our most devoted friend, and when Maria died, it was almost harder to comfort her than me.

"Then it was I became convinced that hatred between nations is not natural. There's just a lot of trouble in the world, and the more passionate would protest, only the false scribe, the political advocate, drafts instead a denunciation of the Jews.

"I saw clearly that the Jews are not inimical to us—that we can live in peace."

Lukave draws nearer and nearer to us—or we to it—and still I am afraid of the end. I interrupt him and ask:

"And what became of the woman?"

"How should I know? I buried my wife, sold the apothecary's shop, cried when I said good-bye to my neighbor, and—that's all. Now I live in Lukave. I am not doing well there, either."

"And what was the name of the little town you lived in before?"

"Konska-vola."[7]

"Your neighbor was tall and pale?"

"Yes."

"Thin?"

"Yes—you know her?" he asked, looking pleased.

"She has a mole on the left side of her nose?"

"A mole?" laughed Yanek. "What an idea!"

I think I must have made a mistake and say: "Perhaps on the right side?"

"My dear fellow, what are you talking about?"

"Perhaps you did not notice—and her husband is yellow-skinned?"

"Yes."

"Called Chaïm?"

"I think not, and yet—perhaps—— devil may care!"

"But her name is Hannah?"

"Ach, nonsense! Sarah! I remember I called her Sòruchna. I shouldn't have forgotten her name."

I was the fool. Are there so few Jewish women leading similar lives?

IV
THE NEW TUNE

The end of the Day of Atonement.

A blast on the Shofar, and the congregation stirred noisily: "Next year in Jerusalem!" The boys made a dash at the candle-wax on the table, a week-day reader was already at the desk, and the week-day evening prayer was being recited to a week-day tune.

Full tilt they recited the prayers and full tilt they took off robes and prayer-scarfs and began to put on their boots—who has time to spare?

Nobody—not even to remark the pale young man walking round and round among the people, dragging after him a still paler child. It is his third round; but nobody notices him. One is under a seat looking for his boots, another finds somebody has taken his goloshes by mistake or dropped candle-grease on his hat, and all are hungry.

He looks vainly into their faces; he cannot catch a single glance.

"Father, let us go home," begs the child.

"We will go round once more," he answers, "and look for uncle."

Meantime the congregation is preparing to leave. The last Kaddish is said, the last Amen!

The congregation make a rush for the door, carrying along with them the young man and the child.

In the court of the Shool the men begin to recite the blessing on the moon. The women walk away down both sides of the street, forming two white fillets.

On the way home, there is time to count how many women really fainted; how many nearly fainted; and to discuss the reader, who grew hoarser this year than he had ever done before. At every house-door two or three people say good-bye to the rest and go in, while the majority are still in the court of the Shool, gesticulating toward the moon. The pale young man and the pale child still circulate among them. The crowd lessens, and his face darkens; now the last has finished and gone. The young man remains.

"Not one; well, we must do without. I am not going to beg into a new year, just after the Day of Atonement,"[8] he murmured, with quivering lips.

The child thinks he is saying the moon-prayer.

"Enough now, father," and he took hold of the man's coat. "Come home!" His voice was full of tears.

"Silly child, why are you in such a hurry?"

"I want to eat; I'm hungry."

"I should think so! Of course, you are hungry, you rogue; you needn't tell me that. Was I likely to think that you wouldn't be, after fasting through a whole Day of Atonement?"

"Come home!" begs the child again.

"Look here, David'l, there's nothing to eat at home, either."

"Just a bit of bread!"

"There isn't a scrap!"

The child stands still in alarm.

"David'l," say the father, "you know what day this has been?"

The child only sobs quietly.

"To-day, David'l, was the Day of Atonement—a Yôm kodesh.[9] Do you know what that means?"

Yes, the child just nodded.

"Well, tell me, David'l, what have we done all day?"

"Prayed," wept the child.

"Right! And He whose Name is blessed, what has He done?"

"Forgiven us!" (sobbing).

"Well, do you know, David'l, if God, blessed be He, has forgiven us, I think we ought to be cheerful, don't you?"

The child makes no reply.

"You remember, David'l, last year, when mother was alive, how we sang after supper, to a new tune? Do you remember the tune?

"No."

"I will sing it to remind you, only you must join in."

And the young man began to sing in a weak, hoarse voice. It was not a "Sinni" and not a "Wallach" tune, but it was a gruesome tune that went to one's heart.

The child joined in and sang through his tears.

V
MARRIED

(Told by a Woman)

I remember myself at the time when I played marbles and made mud cakes in the yard; in winter I sat all day indoors and rocked a little brother who was born sickly, and who lingered on into his seventh year, when he died of a decline.

In summer, whenever it was sunny, the poor little creature sat in the yard, warmed itself in the sun, and watched me playing marbles.

In winter it never left its cradle, and I told it stories and sang to it. The other boys all went to Cheder.

Mother was always busy, she had at least ten Parnossehs. Poor mother! she peddled, she baked gingerbread, she helped at circumcisions and weddings, she was a Tikerin, a grave-measurer,[10] recited prayers, and bought in provisions for better-class households.

Father earned three rubles a week keeping accounts for Reb Zeinwill Terkelbaum in the forest. And those were the good times; teachers were paid, and the rent, too—almost on rent-day,—and we never had to eat our bread dry.

Sometimes mother would bake a cake for supper; then there was quite a feast. But that happened seldom.

Mother usually came home late and tired; often with red eyes and in a bitter mood. She would complain that the well-to-do ladies owed her money. They would get her to lay out her money for them, and then tell her to come for the money to-morrow, the day after; meantime more purchases were made, and when it came to a reckoning, the house-mistress could not remember if she hadn't already paid for the day before yesterday's quarter of a pound of butter—and she "put it aside" to ask her husband about it, who was there at the time—he has a tenacious memory, and will certainly remember how it was. Next morning it turns out the husband came home too late from the house-of-study, and she forgot to ask him. On the third day she says, with a pleased expression, that she asked her husband about it, and he was angry with her for bothering him, "as if he had nothing better to do than attend to the affairs of a couple of women;" and it is settled that she, the madam, shall try to remember herself.

Presently she begins to feel sure the butter was included in the account after all; a little later, she is ready to build on it; and when poor mother reminded her of the butter again, she was called a pert hussy, who was trying to get an extra gulden by trickery—and she was assured that if they heard any more about the butter, she need never show herself there again.

Mother, who was herself the daughter of well-to-do parents, and would have been a lady herself, were it not for the nobleman who took her dowry, could not accept this meekly. She frequently came home with swollen eyelids, threw herself on the bed with a burst of tears, and lay there weeping bitterly till her heart was eased, when she stood up and cooked us Kliskelech[11] with beans.

At other times she vented her anger on us; that is, on me; she never scolded the sick Beril, and the other boys only very seldom—they, poor things, used to come home from Cheder with their cheeks pinched brown and blue and with swollen under-lids; I, on the other hand, came in for many an undeserved tweak to my hair or else a slap.

"You were not so sick all this time, but you could have laid the fire, put on a kettleful of water, were you?" And if I had done it, I caught it worse: "Look at my fine lady! Goes and makes a fire and lets the wood burn away for nothing and nobody—never a thought of me toiling all day! She'll be the ruin of us!"

Sometimes when father was at work in the woods, mother would sit down on the bed with her face to the window and complain, as she stared before her: "What does he care! There he sits out in the woods like a lord, breathes fresh air, lies about on the grass, eats sour milk, perhaps even cream, how do I know? and here am I, skin and bone!"

And with all that, those were good days. We never knew want, and after a week of little worries came a cheerful, or at all events a peaceful, Sabbath. Father often came home for it, and mother was busy all about the house and smiled to herself in secret.

Friday evening, just before blessing the candles, she would often kiss me on the head. I knew what that meant. Because if it so happened that father did not come home, then I was an idle hussy. Even when mother pulled out half my hair while combing it, and gave me a few slaps on the shoulders besides, I didn't cry. My childish heart felt that it was not me she meant, but her unhappy fate. When the wood was all cut down, my father stayed at home, and then food began to grow scarce. It was my father, my mother, and myself, really, who hadn't enough; the other children knew very little about it. Beril wanted next to nothing—took a cup of porridge when it was given him, and stared all the time at the ceiling. The other poor children had to go to Cheder, "they must have something hot," but I often went hungry.

Father and mother were always recalling by-gone days with tears in their eyes. I, on the contrary, was happier in the bad times than I had been in the good. Now that bread was often lacking in the house, I received a double portion of my mother's love; she never pulled a hair out of my head when combing it, or hit my thin bones; my father would stroke my head at supper and play with me, so that I should not observe the smallness of my share of food; and I was quite proud whenever there came a fast, because I fasted with my parents, like a grown-up girl.

It was about that time that Beril died. It happened this way: Mother woke up one morning and said to father across the bed: "Do you know, Beril must be better; he has slept the whole night through."

I heard it—I have always been a light sleeper—sprang joyfully from my bed on the chest, and ran to look at my "pet of a brother" (that is how I called him—I was so fond of him). I hoped to see a smile on the wan little face, such as came over it once a year—but it was a dead face I saw.

There was a week's mourning.

After that my father's health failed, and the Röfeh began to come to the house.

So long as there was money to pay his fee, the old Röfeh came in person; later on, when all the bed-clothes and the hanging-lamp, with father's book-case, which for a while my mother wouldn't touch, had gone in medicines, the Röfeh began to send his "boy," the assistant.

The "boy" displeased my mother dreadfully; he had merely a suspicion of pointed whiskers, was dressed like a Gentile, and was continually introducing Polish words into his speech.

I was afraid of him, to this day I don't know why. But when I knew he was to come, I ran and hid in the yard, and waited there till he had gone.

One day a neighbor fell ill, also a poor man, and one whose furniture had apparently gone, too, and the "boy" (to this day I don't know what his name was) went to him straight from our house. Crossing the yard, he found me sitting on a log.

I looked down. Aware of his approach, I felt a chill run through me, and my heart began to beat faster.

He came up to me, took me by the chin, lifted my face and said:

"A pretty girl like you ought not to have untidy hair! And she ought not to be ashamed before any lad in the world."

He let me go, and I ran into the house. I felt that all the blood had rushed into my face at once. I squeezed into the darkest corner behind the stove, under pretense of counting the soiled linen. That was on a Wednesday.

On Friday, for the first time, I reminded my mother of my own accord that my head needed washing, that it was frowzy.

"More shame to me!" exclaimed my mother, wringing her hands. "I haven't combed her hair these three weeks."

Suddenly she grew angry: "Lazy thing!" she cried; "a great girl like you and not able to comb her own hair! Another at your age would have washed the other children."

"Sarah'le, don't scream," begged father; but her anger only grew more violent.

"Lazy girl, you shall comb your own hair, and this minute. Do you hear?"

But I was afraid to go to the fire-place, where the hot water stood, because I had to pass mother, who would have given me a slap. Father saved me, as usual.

"Sarah'le," he moaned, "don't scream, my head does ache so."

That was enough. My mother's anger vanished. I ran freely across the room to the hot water.

As I awkwardly combed my hair, I saw my mother go up to my father and point at me with a heavy sigh:

"Lord of the world, the poor child grows taller every day," she whispered to my father, but my ears caught every word. "Fine as gold—and what's to be done with her?"

Father answered with a still heavier sigh.

The Röfeh assured us several times that father had nothing serious the matter with him. Worry of mind had gone to his liver, and this had swollen and pressed against the heart; nothing worse. He was to drink milk and not trouble any more, walk out into the street, talk with his friends, and find something to do; but father said his feet refused to carry him. Why, I only knew later.

Early one summer morning I was awakened by the following conversation between my parents:

"Did you knock yourself up in the woods?" asked my mother.

"Looks like it," answered my father. "They were cutting down in twenty places at once. You see, the wood is the nobleman's, but the peasants have certain privileges;[12] they get the twigs that fall and lie about on the ground, and the wood of any tree that is struck by lightning. Well, when the trees are cut down they lose their privileges, and have to buy wood for building and for heating purposes. So, of course, they wanted to stop it and bring down a commissioner. But they set about it too late. Reb Zeinwill no sooner saw them scratching their heads than he gave orders to put on forty axes. It was a Gehenna! They were felling in perhaps twenty different places, and one had to be everywhere. Well, what could you expect? My feet swelled like toadstools."

"Sinner that I am," sighed my mother. "And there was I fancying you had nothing to do."

"Nothing at all," my father smiled sadly; "I was only on my feet from dawn to dark."

"And three rubles a week wages," added my mother, angrily.

"He consented to raise them; meanwhile, you know, the timber raft was sunk, and he told me he was a poor man."

"And you believe it?"

"It may be."

"He is always saying that" (angrily), "and yet the fortune goes on increasing."

"With God's help," sighed father.

There was silence for a while.

"Do you know what he is doing now?" asked father, who had scarcely left the house for a year.

"What should he? He trades in flax and eggs; he has a public-house."

"And she?"

"Sick, poor thing."

"A pity; she was a good woman."

"A jewel. The only lady who was not allowed to put up a groschen's worth of preserves! She would have paid me regularly, but she hadn't much to say in the matter."

"I fancy she is his third wife," said my father.

"She is," my mother agreed.

"Well, Sarah, here we have a rich Jew, one who might live comfortably, and, lo and behold, he has no luck with his wives—we all have our troubles."

"Such a young woman, too," said my mother; "not more than two or three and twenty."

"There's no accounting for these things; he must be seventy, and he's solid as iron."

"You don't say so."

"And no spectacles."

"And when he walks, he shakes the planks."

"And here am I in bed."

These last words gave me a pang.

"God will help," mother consoled him.

"Only she—she—," sighed my mother, and glanced toward my box, "she is growing taller and taller, do you see?"

"Of course, I see!"

"And a face—bright as the sun."

There is a silence.

"Sarah'le, we are not doing our duty."

"In what respect?"

"In respect to her. How old were you when you married?"

"I was younger than she is."

"Well?"

"Well—what?"

At that moment there were two raps at the shutter.

Mother sprang out of bed; in one minute she had torn down the string by which the shutter was held to, and thrown open the window, which had long been without a fastening.

"What is it?" she called into the street.

"Rebekah Zeinwill is dead!"

Mother left the window.

"Blessed be the righteous Judge!" said my father. "To die is nothing."

"Blessed be the righteous Judge!" said my mother. "We were just talking about her."

———

I was very restless in those days. I don't know myself what ailed me.

Sometimes I would lie awake all night. Hammers beat in my temples, and my heart pained me as though filled with fear, or else with a longing after something for which it had no name. At other times it grew so warm and tender, I could have taken everything and everyone round me in my arms and kissed them and hugged them.

Only whom? The little brothers wouldn't let me—even the five-year old Yochanan butted and screamed; he wouldn't play with a girl. My mother, besides my being afraid of her, was always cross and overdriven; my father—growing from bad to worse.

In a short time he was as gray as a pigeon, his face shrivelled like parchment, and his eyes had such a helpless, pleading stare, it needed only one glance at them to send me out of the room crying.

Then I used to think of Beril. I could have told him everything, I could have hugged and kissed him. Now he lay in the cold earth, and I cried more bitterly than ever.

Indeed, the tears often came without any reason at all. Sometimes I would be looking out of the window into the yard and see the moon swimming nearer and nearer to the whitewashed fence opposite, and not able to swim over it.

And I would be seized with pity for the moon and feel a sudden contraction of the heart, and the tears flowed and flowed.

Other days I was listless. I hung round with no energy and a pale face with drooping eyelids. There was a rushing in my ears, my head was heavy, and life seemed so little worth living, it would be best to die.

At these times I envied Beril his lot. He lay in the earth, where it is quiet.

And I often dreamt that I was dead; that I lay in the grave, or else that I was flying about in heaven in a shift with my hair loose, and that I looked down to see what people were about on the earth.

Just about then I lost all the companions with whom I used to play at marbles in days gone by, and they were not replaced. One of them already went out on Sabbath with a satin skirt and a watch and chain. It was soon to be her wedding. Others were "Kallah-Mädlich";[13] match-makers and future fathers-in-law were "breaking in the doors," and there was combing and washing and dressing, when I was still going barefoot, in an old bodice and a short skirt and a faded cotton waist, which had burst in several places right in front, and which I had patched with calico of a different color. The "Kallah-Mädlich" avoided me, and I was ashamed to play with younger children; besides, marbles amused me no longer. So I never showed myself in the street by day. Mother never sent me out on errands, and one day when I intended to go somewhere, she prevented me. I often used to slip out after dark, and walk about behind the house near the barns, or else sit down beside the river.

In summer time, I sat there till quite late at night.

Some evenings, mother would come out after me. She never came up to me, but would stand in the gateway, look round—and I could almost hear the sigh she gave as she watched me in the distance.

That also came to an end in time; I would sit by myself there for hours, listening to the noise of the little mill stream, watching the frogs jump out of the grass into the water, or following a cloud through the sky.

At times I would fall half asleep with my eyes open.

One evening I heard a melancholy song. The voice was young and fresh, and yet the song thrilled me with emotion; it was a Jewish song.

"That is the Röfeh-boy singing," I said to myself. "Another would have sung hymns, not a song."

I also said to myself that one should go indoors, so as not to hear it or meet the Röfeh-boy, and yet I remained sitting; I was in a dreamy state, with no energy to move, and I sat on, though my heart was beating anxiously.

The song drew nearer; it was coming from the opposite bank—across the bridge.

Already I hear steps in the sand, I want to run away, but my limbs are disobedient, and I remain sitting.

At last he comes to the spot where I am.

"Is it you, Leah?"

I do not answer.

The noise in my ears is louder than ever, the hammering in my temples, busier, and it seems to me the kindest and sweetest voice I ever heard.

My not answering matters little to him, he sits down beside me on the log, and looks me straight in the face.

I do not see his look, because I dare not raise my eyes, but I feel how it is scorching me.

"You are a pretty girl, Leah," he says, "it's a pity to hide yourself."

A dreadful crying fit seizes hold of me, and I run away.

The next evening I stayed at home, and the one after. On the third, Friday night, my heart was so heavy, I had to go out—I felt I should suffocate indoors. He was apparently waiting for me in the shadow round a corner of the house, for hardly had I sat down in my accustomed place when he stood before me as though he had grown out of the ground.

"Don't run away from me, Leah," he begged gently. "Believe me, I will do you no harm."

His gentle, earnest voice touched me. Then he began to sing a low, sad song, and again the tears came into my eyes. I could not keep them back, and began to cry quietly.

"Why are you crying, Leah," he broke off, and took my hand.

"You sing so sadly," I answered, and withdrew my hand from his.

"I am an orphan," he said, "unhappy—among strangers."

Someone appeared in the street and we fled in different directions.

I learned the song and used to hum it softly over to myself in bed; I went to sleep with it, and I rose with it next morning. And yet I frequently had remorse, and cried because I had made acquaintance with a Röfeh-boy who dressed German fashion and shaved his chin. Had he dressed like the old Röfeh, had he at least been pious! I knew that if my father heard of it, the grief would kill him; my mother would do herself a mischief, and the secret lay on my heart like a stone.

I go up to my father's bed to hand him something, and my mother comes in from the street, and my sin overwhelms me, so that hands and feet shake, and all the color goes from my face. And yet every night I consented to come out again the next, and I felt no desire to run away from him now. He never took my hand again and told me I was a pretty girl. He only talked with me, taught me songs; but one day he brought me a bit of St. John's Bread.

"Eat it, Leah."

I wouldn't take it.

"Why not?" he asked sadly. "Why will you not take anything from me?"

I blurted out that I would rather have a piece of bread.

———

How long our sitting together and singing lasted, I don't know.

But one day he came sadder than usual; I saw it in his face and asked him what was the matter.

"I have to go."

"Where to?" I asked faintly.

"To the recruiting station."

I caught hold of his hand.

"You are going into the army?"

"No," he replied, and pressed my fingers, "I am not strong. I suffer from the heart. I shall not be taken for a soldier, but I must present myself."

"Shall you come back?"

"Of course!"

We are both silent.

"It will only be for a few weeks," he said.

I was silent, and he looked at me pleadingly.

"Shall you miss me?"

"Yes." I scarcely heard my own reply.

Another silence.

"Let us say good-bye."

My hand still lay in his.

"Go in health," I said in a trembling voice.

He leaned over, kissed me, and vanished.

I stood there a long time like one tipsy.

"Leah!" It was mother's voice, but the old, gentle, almost singing voice of the days when father was well.

"Leah'she!"

I had not been called that for a long time. One more quiver, and I ran indoors with lips still burning from his kiss. I scarcely recognized the room. On the table stood two strange candle-sticks with lighted candles, and beside them, brandy and gingerbread. Father was sitting on a chair propped up with cushions, joy smiling out of every wrinkle in his face. And round the table were strange chairs with strange people—and mother caught me in her arms and kissed me.

"Good luck to you, daughter, my little daughter, Leah'she! good luck to you!"

I don't understand, but I am frightened, and my heart beats wildly. When my mother let me loose, my father called me. I had no strength to stand, and I dropped on my knees beside him, and laid my head in his lap. He stroked my head, curled my hair with his fingers.

"My child you will never suffer want and hunger again, you will never go barefoot—you will be a lady—you will be rich—you will pay for the teaching of your little brothers—so that they shall not be turned out of the Cheder—you will help us, too—I-shall get well."

"And do you know who the suitor is?" asked mother, excitedly. "Reb Zeinwill! fancy, Reb Zeinwill! He sent the match-maker himself."

———

I don't know what happened to me, but I woke to find myself on my bed in broad daylight.

"God be praised!" cried my mother.

"Praised be His dear Name!" said my father.

And they continued to embrace and kiss me. They even offered me preserves.... Would I like syrup in water?... Perhaps a sip of wine?

I shut my eyes again, and was choked with a terrible fit of crying.

"Never mind, never mind," said my mother, joyfully. "Poor child, let her have her cry out. It is our fault for telling her the good news all at once, so suddenly. She might have burst a vein, which heaven forbid. But God be praised! Yes, cry your heart out. May all sorrow swim away with the tears, and a new life begin for you—a new life."

Man has two angels, a good and a bad, and I felt convinced that the good angel bade me forget my Röfeh-boy, eat Reb Zeinwill's preserves, drink his syrup in water, and dress at his expense, while the bad angel urged me to tell my parents, once and for all, that I would not consent, that on no account would I consent.

I did not know Reb Zeinwill, unless I had seen him once and then forgotten—or else not known who it was—but I disliked him.

The second night I dreamed that I stood under the wedding canopy.

The bridegroom is Reb Zeinwill, and they lead me round him seven times, but my feet are as if paralyzed, and they carry me in their hands.

Then I am taken home.

My mother comes to meet me with a cake, and they are bringing the golden broth.[14]

I am afraid to raise my eyes. I feel sure I shall see before me a blind man, both eyes gone, with a dreadfully long nose—a cold shudder runs through me—but someone whispers in my ear:

"Leah, what a pretty girl you are!" And the voice is not that of an old man; it is his voice. I open my eyes a little way; it is his face: "Sst!" he whispers; "don't tell! I enticed Reb Zeinwill into the wood, put him into a sack, tied it up, and threw it into the river (this was out of a story my mother once told me), and I am here in his place!"

I woke trembling.

Pale moonshine was lighting the whole room through a chink in the shutter, and I noticed, for the first time, that the lamp was once more hanging from the ceiling, and that my parents were sleeping in bed-clothes. Father smiled in his sleep; mother breathed quietly, and the good angel said to me:

"If you are obedient and pious, your father will recover his health; your mother will not have to toil into her old age, and your little brothers will become learned men—rabbis, authorities in the Law, great, great Jews. Their school fees will be paid."

"Only," put in the bad angel, "Reb Zeinwill will kiss you with his damp whiskers, and clasp you in his bony arms; and he will torment you as he did the other wives, and send you to an early grave, and he will come back and grieve, and he will teach you no more songs, or sit with you evening after evening—you will be sitting with Reb Zeinwill!"

No! not if the heavens should fall about the earth! Tear up the contract!

I did not sleep again till morning. My mother was the first to wake. I wanted to talk with her, but I was accustomed to go for help to my father.

There, he wakes.

"Do you know, Sarah'le," are his first words, "I feel so well to-day. You will see, I shall go out."

"Praise to His dear Name! It is all owing to our daughter's good fortune, all thanks to her merit."

"And the Röfeh was quite right: the milk agrees very well with me."

They are silent, and the good angel repeats:

"If you are good and pious, your father will get well, while if your lips let fall wicked words, he will decline and die."

"Listen, Sarah'le," continued my father, "you are not to go about peddling any more."

"What do you mean?"

"What I say! I will go to-day to Reb Zeinwill; he will take me into a business, or lend me a few rubles, and we will have a little shop; I will serve a bit, and you a bit—and later I will deal in produce."

"God grant it."

"He will grant it. If you want a dress for the wedding, buy it—even two dresses. Why not? He said we were to get what we wanted. You are not going in your old clothes?"

"Go along with you! The thing is to have something made for the children. Reuben has been going barefoot—last week he got a splinter in his sole, and he is limping now. Winter is coming on, too, they want coats and shirts and warm cloaks."

"Buy, buy!"

"You hear?" said the good angel. "If you speak out, your mother will have no new dress, and you know the old one is falling to bits; the little brothers will run barefoot to Cheder in the sharpest frost, and in summer they will get splinters in their soles."

"I tell you what it is," said my mother, "everything ought to be talked over and settled in detail, because he is not a very good man. Whatever settlement he intends to make on her ought to be put down in writing. There will be any quantity to inherit. Even if it isn't a deed, let him give a written promise, because how long is such a one likely to live? Another year or so!"

"One can live a long time in comfort!" sighed my father.

"A long time! Remember, he's seventy, and sometimes he looks dead behind his ears."

And the bad angel whispered: "If you keep silence, you will marry a dead man; you will live with a corpse; they will lead you to the bridal chamber with a lifeless body."

Mother sighed.

"Everything is in God's hands," said my father.

Mother sighed again, and father said:

"And what could we do? Anything better? If I only could have gotten well, and earned something, and we had had at least dry bread in the house——"

He broke off; I had a feeling that something wept within him.

"If she had been a year or two younger, I would have risked it all—perhaps even bought lottery tickets."

And I said nothing.

———

My seventy-year-old bridegroom gave my father a few hundred gulden for clothes for the wedding, and me a check for one hundred and fifty gulden.

People said, "A fine match."

I recovered my companions. The one with the satin skirt and the watch and chain came two or three times a day.

She was the happiest creature in the world, because I had caught her up, and we were to be married in the same month. I had others, but this one stuck to me like a leech. The others were "common girls, there was no saying how long they wouldn't have to wait!"

Rivkah's fiancé was a stranger, but she was to board at home for two or three years. During that time we would be close friends; she would run in to me for chicory-coffee; I to her on Sabbath, after the mid-day rest, for chicken-broth and pear cider.

"And when I am expecting a baby," said Rivkah once, and her face shone, "you will come and sit by me?"

I made no reply.

"Well," exclaimed Rivkah, "why so sad? There's no saying but you, too.... Cheer up!" she went on, "if God will, one can fire off a broom. Besides, how long do you suppose it will last? No one can live forever. My word, what a young widow you will make, to be sure. Won't you be run after!"

Rivkah wished Reb Zeinwill no harm.

"To be sure, he's a wretch; he tormented that other woman; but she was sickly, and you are sound as a nut. He will treat you well enough."

———

He came back!

My father was better, but he fancied a little dry-cupping—he was afraid, otherwise, of going out. He felt that after lying down so long, and then sitting for so many weeks on end, the blood had all settled in one place, and should be stirred. Also his shoulders ached, and dry-cupping is the sovereign remedy for that.

I shook as with ague. When there was dry-cupping to be done, the "boy" came, not the Röfeh himself.

"Will you go and fetch the Röfeh?" asked my father.

"The idea!" exclaimed my mother. "A Kallah-Mädel!"

She went herself.

"Why have you grown so pale?" asked my father, in alarm.

"Nothing."

"It's some days now," he persisted.

"You imagine it, Tate."[15]

"Your mother says the same."

"Eh!"

"To-day"—father wanted to cheer me up—"they are coming to measure you for the wedding dress."

I was silent.

"Aren't you pleased?" he asked.

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"You don't even know what they are making you!"

"But they've measured me once already."

Hereupon my mother came in with the Röfeh himself.

I felt relieved, and yet all the time something mourned within me: "Perhaps you will never see him again."

"What a world it is!" Thus the Röfeh coming in panting and groaning. "Reb Zeinwill marries a young girl, and the treasurer's Leezerl has turned ascetic and run away from his wife."

"Leezerl!" cried mother, in astonishment.

"As I tell you; and here am I at sixty about early and late, and my assistant goes to bed."

I began to tremble again.

"Don't keep such a Gentile!" said my mother.

"A Gentile?" said the Röfeh. "Why a Gentile?"

"What's all that to me?" interrupted father, impatiently. "You'd better set to work."

Father was naturally good-tempered; he always seemed to me incapable of hurting a fly, and yet his tone was so full of contempt for the Röfeh.

When he lay sick in bed, he was always glad if anyone came in to have a chat with him, but he could never get on with the Röfeh; he always interrupted him and told him to see to his own business, but this was the first time he had spoken so strongly. It pained me, because how much rougher would he not have been with the other, who was lying ill?

What is wrong with him?

He had said his heart was weak.

What that meant exactly, I did not know; it must be something for which one had to go to bed, and yet my heart told me that I had something to answer for in the matter.

That night I cried in my sleep; my mother woke me, and sat down beside me on my bed.

"Hush, my child," she said, "don't let us wake father." And our conversation was whispered into each other's ears.

I noticed that mother was greatly disturbed; she looked at me inquiringly, as though determined to get at the truth, and I resolved to say nothing, at all events so long as my father slept.

"My child, why have you been crying?"

"I don't know, mother."

"Do you feel well?"

"Yes, Mamishe; only sometimes my head aches."

She sat on my bed, leaning half way over, and I drew nearer her and laid my head on her breast.

"Mother," I asked, "why does your heart beat so loud?"

"For fear, Tochter'she."

"Are you afraid at night, too?"

"Night and day; I am afraid all the time."

"What for are you afraid?"

"I am afraid for you."

"For me?"

No reply, but I felt a warm tear fall on my face.

"Mother, you are crying now."

The tears fell faster.

I won't say! my resolve strengthened.

Suddenly she asked:

"Has Rivkah been telling you anything?"

"What about, mother?"

"About your intended?"

"How should she know him?"

"If she really knew him, she would hold her tongue. I only mean, did she repeat any gossip? Out of jealousy—when a rich man marries a young girl in his old age, people always talk. I don't know—has no one told you that his last wife died because of the life he led her?"

I answered coolly that I had heard something like it, but that I had forgotten from whom.

"I'm sure it was Rivkah—I wish her mouth were in the back of her head!" (angrily).

"Then why was it," I inquired, "that she died no suddenly?"

"Why? She had a weak heart."

"But—do people die of a weak heart?"

"Certainly."....

Something seemed to snap inside my brain.

———

I became a "silken child," my praise was in everyone's mouth. Parents could not understand it—neither could the tailor: I asked for nothing; mother chose everything—material, color, and cut, just as she fancied.

Rivkah used to come in and pinch her own red cheeks.

"Who would trust a mother in matters of dress? An old-fashioned Jewess? You won't dare to show yourself on Sabbath either in Shool or in the street or anywhere else!

"You've done for yourself," she wound up.

It occurred to me that I had done for myself a long time, and I waited indifferently for the Sabbath of Consolation, when Reb Zeinwill was to be invited to supper.

Then there would follow the "calling up,"[16] and then the wedding.

Father was really better, he sometimes went out and began to inquire about produce. He thought it too soon to speak to Reb Zeinwill about anything further; he intended to ask him on Sabbath to come again for the "third meal," and to put in a word for himself after that.

All being so well, it was time to dismiss the Röfeh; there was no difficulty now about credit—he never reminded us of what was owing him, never sent the "boy," but came himself. Still, it was time this should end. I don't know how much they sent him, but the messenger was my brother Avremele, who was to leave the money on his way to Cheder.

But the "boy" appeared a few days later.

"How, wasn't it enough?" said my father, on seeing him.

"Yes, Reb Yehùdah; I have come to say good-bye."

"To me?" asked my father in surprise.

I had dropped down, when he came in, on the nearest chair, but at these words I stood up; it had flashed across me that I must protect him, not let him be insulted. He hadn't come for that.

"I used to come to see you at one time," he said, with his gentle, melancholy voice, which was like sweet oil to my heart, "now I am leaving for good, so I thought—"

"Well, well, certainly," replied father, quite politely. "Take a seat, young man. It was very nice of you to think of it, very nice, indeed."

"Daughter," he called to me, "we must offer him some refreshment."

He sprang up, pale, with quivering lips and burning eyes, but the next instant his face had taken on its old melancholy expression.

"No, Reb Yehùdah, I want nothing, thank you. Farewell!"

He put out his hand to no one, and barely gave me a glance.

And yet, in that one glance, I read that he reproached me, that he would never forgive me. For what? I hardly knew myself.

And again I fainted.

"The third time," I hear my mother say to my father. "It is of no consequence—at her age it often happens—but heaven forbid that Reb Zeinwill should hear of it. He would break off the match. He had enough of that with the last one—the invalid."

I was not an invalid. And I only fainted once more—on the wedding-day, when I saw Reb Zeinwill for the first time.

Never again.

Yesterday even, when the Röfeh, who cuts my Reb Zeinwill's nails every month (otherwise they grow into his fingers), asked me, as he left, if I remembered his "boy," because he had died in a hospital in Warsaw—even then I didn't faint; I only shed one tear. And I was not aware of that, only it seemed to please the Röfeh.

"You are a kind soul," he said, and then I felt it on my cheek.

Nothing more.

I am healthy; I have lived with Reb Zeinwill five years.

How? Perhaps I shall tell another time.

VI
THE SEVENTH CANDLE OF BLESSING

The thirteen-year-old brow is puckered with anguish, the child-face pale with dread, tear after tear falls from the innocent eyes. Only last Friday, just a week ago, she was so happy, so full of glee. It was the "short Friday."[17] Grandmother had woke her a little earlier than usual, she had spent the day in preparation for the Sabbath.

In the late afternoon she had washed herself, plaited her long hair, singing and dancing the while, dressed, and gone with grandmother to the synagogue—and they had lighted each her candles. Bashe's first candle—God bless grandmother! Her second—God bless Tatishe,[18] and let him find lots of work and make heaps of money, and not sigh any more and say that the times are bad. Her third—God bless Mamishe, and make her strong.

And then—for the little sisters and the little brothers, a candle each.

It lasted till people began to come in for the prayers.

How she loves the synagogue! how she loves candle-blessing.

She has lived with grandmother two whole years.

She does not want to go home (there is no candle-blessing there, it is not the custom), unless it were just to see her mother, to clasp her father once round the neck and play awhile with his black, silky beard, and to have a game with the little ones.

Grandmother must not be left alone. She is always so good to her; she has taught her to bless the candles.

Bashe loves grandmother, and blessing the candles, too. She longs for it the whole week through, she counts the days. But this is a miserable Friday.

In the morning everything was the same as usual.

She had "made Sabbath"; grandmother had sat there and watched her happily. They had dressed themselves, and grandmother had taken her stick. Then, as ill-luck would have it, there came the postman.

Grandmother read the letter, threw herself on the bed, and there she has lain for two hours with her face to the wall.

She is black as a coal, her eyes are shut; one hand holds the letter; she foams at the mouth.

No one is to come near her; no one is to be sent for.

Bashe is pushed away, and whenever she tries to open the door, grandmother hears and screams "No!"

Bashe stands by the bed and cannot make it out. Her heart beats wildly. God only knows what they have written from home. Perhaps—perhaps....

She cannot think what has happened. She drops on to her knees and clutches convulsively at grandmother's hand:

"Granny, granny, what is it? Speak to me! Tell me—what is it? Granny, I think I shall die of fright!" She spoke involuntarily.

Grandmother has turned toward her; she moves her lips, opens her eyes, gives her one look, and

"Die!" she says in a hard voice, and turns her face once more to the wall. "And there wasn't his like!" she adds. "Die, Bashe, die!"

Bashe is silent. A blackness passes before her eyes, and her head falls on grandmother's feet. Within her all is dark and cold. She has ceased to puzzle herself, she is nearly unconscious.

And in this way another half-hour goes by.

She hears her grandmother's voice:

"Get up!"

Bashe obeys.

Grandmother has risen to her feet and taken up the stick which she previously had flung away.

"How many candles have you?" she asks.

"Why, eight," is the trembling reply.

"Leave one out!"

Bashe does not move.

"Put one away!" screams grandmother, angrily.

Bashe trembles like a leaf, but does not move.

The old woman has gone to the table herself, undone the packet of candles, taken out one, and tied the rest together again. She pushes them into Bashe's hands:

"Come along!"

Bashe follows her automatically; neither has thought to fasten the door behind her. Bashe does not know herself how she reached the platform with her candles.

"Light them one at a time, for whom I shall tell you. Repeat my words. Say: God bless Mamishe and grant her long life!"

Bashe shakes as with ague: the first candle has always been father's.

"Repeat!" screams grandmother.

Bashe does so.

"The second: God make Chaïmle a good Jew!"

Little Bashe shakes more and more—her limbs are giving way beneath her—she does not hear her father's name. Her heart thumps, her temples throb, her eyes burn.

Grandmother has no pity on her—she screams louder every time:

"Repeat, repeat what I say!"

Bashe is lighting the last candle.

"Say: God bless Sarah!" commands grandmother.

No—she will not say that—where is father? No, she cannot say it—her whole being is in revolt against her wicked grandmother—no, no, no!

"Repeat, repeat!" screams grandmother with increasing violence.

Bashe refuses to obey—the last light must be father's.

She begins: "God bless fa—"

"Hush!" in a terrible voice. "Hush, hush! Your father is no longer a Jew. He has become an official!"[19]

VII
THE WIDOW

The gray, swirling mists have rolled themselves together into one black cloud. It is warm and stifling; it is going to pour with rain; a few drops are falling already. The little house stands just under the hill. The low, thatched roof is full of holes—there is no one to mend it.

The clouds have hidden the sun, and the remaining light is intercepted by the hill.

Inside the hut it is nearly dark; it is late—night is falling.

In the corner, on the chimney-shelf, stands a little empty lamp, with a cracked globe; the naphthaline is exhausted, there is no one to go and buy more. It is closer indoors than out.

The fire-place is not empty, it boasts two or three broken earthenware pots, a handful of ashes, a fragment of polished slate, a little iron stand on legs, but not a spark of fire.

Outside the door lies a log of rotten wood; there is no one to chop it.

The owner of the hut lay sick for a whole year, and with every day of it their little hoard of money grew less. He had saved for a child's sake, "scraped together one hundred rubles, to be lent on interest." God gave a little girl: "It shall be her marriage portion!"

But there came the illness.

The little hoard dwindled and dwindled, and the man's strength likewise. The household goods were disposed of one after another; the last to go was the sewing-machine, and with the last penny out of the bag the soul departed out of the body.

The soiled shred of linen that held the money hangs across a glass of water beside the soul-light.[20]

A small, tin trunk stands near the door; it belongs to the servant-girl, who has just gone out to look for another situation.

The dismantled room is now all but dark; a few scattered wisps of straw shimmer on the floor; a nail-head stares here and there out of the four walls.

On the wall used to hang a looking-glass (it is not wanted now. If the widow were to see her reflection, she would be terrified). A Chanukah lamp (for whom should it be lighted?) and clothes used to hang there, too. They came and took each his own before he died.

In one corner stands a cradle; in the cradle lies a child, asleep. On the floor beside the cradle sits the newly-made widow.

The thin hands hang helpless, the heavy head rests on the cradle; the eyes, which look as if they had wept themselves out, stare fixedly at the ceiling.

You might suppose she was dead, that she neither felt nor remembered any longer. Her heart scarcely beats, her strength has left her.

And yet one thought is revolving ceaselessly in her brain; no other seems able to drive it away—it is not to be dislodged.

"Hannah," he had once said to her, "hand me the scissors."

He had no use for them just then, and he had given a little artful smile. What had he really wanted?

Did he wish me to go near to him? I was peeling potatoes. Did I give him the scissors? No; just then someone came in—but who? She cannot recollect, and goes puzzling herself—who?

The child sleeps on, and smiles; it is dreaming.

VIII
THE MESSENGER

He is on the road, and his beard and coat-tails flutter in the wind.

Every few minutes he presses a hand to his left side—he feels a pang; but he will not confess to it—he tries to think he is only making sure of his leather letter-bag.

"If only I don't lose the contract-paper and the money!" That is what he is so afraid of.

"And if it does hurt me, it means nothing. Thank God, I've got strength enough for an errand like this and to spare! Another at my years wouldn't be able to do a verst,[21] while I, thanks to His dear Name, owe no one a farthing and earn my own living. God be praised, they trust me with money.

"If what they trust me with were my own, I shouldn't be running errands at more than seventy years old; but if the Almighty wills it so—so be it."

It begins to snow in thick flakes; he is continually wiping his face.

"I haven't more than half a mile[22] to go now," he thinks. "O wa! what is that to me? It is much nearer than further." He turns his head. "One doesn't even see the town-clock from here, or the convent, or the barracks; on with you, Shemaiah, my lad."

And Shemaiah tramps on through the wet snow; the old feet welter in and out. "Thank God, there is not much wind."

Much wind, apparently, meant a gale; the wind was strong enough and blew right into his face, taking his breath away with every gust; it forced the tears out of his old eyes, and they hurt him like pins; but then he always suffered from his eyes.

It occurred to him that he would spend his next earnings on road-spectacles—large, round ones that would cover his eyes completely.

"If God will," he thought, "I shall manage it. If I only had an errand to go every day, a long, long one. Thank God, I can walk any distance, and I should soon save up enough for the spectacles."

He is also in want of a fur coat of some sort, it would ease the oppression on his chest; but he considers that, meanwhile, he has a warm cloak.

"If only it does not tear, it is an excellent one." He smiles to himself. "No new-fangled spider-web for you. All good, old-fashioned sateen—it will outlast me yet. And it has no slit—that's a great point. It doesn't blow out like the cloaks they make nowadays, and it folds over ever so far in front.

"Of course," he thinks on, "a fur coat is better; it's warm—beautifully warm. But spectacles come first. A fur is only good for winter, and spectacles are wanted all the year round, because in summer, when there's a wind and it blows the dust into your eyes, it's worse than in winter."

And so it was settled; first spectacles and then a fur coat. Please God, he would help to carry corn—that would mean four gulden.

And he tramped on, and the wet snow was blown into his face, the wind grew stronger, and his side pained him more than ever.

"If only the wind would change! And yet perhaps it's better so, because coming back I shall feel more tired, and I shall have the wind in my back. Then it will be quite different. Everything will be done; I shall have nothing on my mind."

He was obliged to stop a minute and draw breath; this rather frightened him.

"What is the matter with me? A Cantonist[23] ought to know something of the cold," he thought sadly.

And he recalls his time of service under Nicholas, twenty-five years' active service with the musket, beside his childhood as a Cantonist. He has walked enough in his life, marching over hill and dale, in snow and frost and every sort of wind. And what snows, what frosts! The trees would split, the little birds fall dead to the ground, and the Russian soldier marched briskly forward, and even sang a song, a trepak, a komarinski, and beat time with his feet.

The thought of having endured those thirty-five years of service, of having lived through all those hardships, all those snows, all those winds, all the mud, hunger, thirst, and privation, and having come home in health—the thought fills him with pride. He holds up his head and feels his strength renewed.

"Ha, ha, what is a bit of a frost like this to me? In Russia, well, yes, there it was something like."

He walks on, the wind has lessened a little, it grows darker, night is falling.

"Call that a day," he said to himself. "Well, I never," and he began to hurry, not to be overtaken by the night. Not in vain has he been so regularly to study in the Shool of a Sabbath afternoon—he knows that one should go out and come home again before the sun goes down.

He feels rather hungry. He has this peculiarity—that being hungry makes him cheerful. He knows appetite is a good sign; "his" traders, the ones who send him on errands, are continually lamenting their lack of it. He, blessed be His Name, has a good appetite; except when he is not up to the mark, as yesterday, when the bread tasted sour to him.

Why should it have been sour? Soldiers' bread? Once, perhaps, yes; but now? Phonye[24] bakes bread that any Jewish baker might be proud of, and he had bought a new loaf which it was a pleasure to cut; but he was not up to the mark, a chill was going through his bones.

But, praised be He whose Name he is not worthy to mention, that happens to him but seldom.

Now he is hungry, and not only that, but he has in his pocket a piece of bread and cheese; the cheese was given him by the trader's wife, may she live and be well. She is a charitable woman—she has a Jewish heart. If only she would not scold so, he thinks, she would be really nice. He recalls to mind his dead wife.

"There was my Shprintze Niepritshkes; she also had a good heart and was given to scolding. Every time I sent one of the children out into the world she wept like a beaver, although at home she left them no peace with her scolding tongue. And when a death happened in the family!" he went on remembering. "Why, she used to throw herself about on the floor whole days like a snake and bang her head with her fists."

"One day she wanted to throw a stone at heaven.

"We see," he thought, "how little notice God takes of a woman's foolishness. But with her there was no taking away the bier and the corpse. She slapped the women and tore the beards of the men.

"She was a fine woman, was Shprintze. Looked like a fly, and was strong, so strong. Yet she was a good woman—she didn't dislike me even, although she never gave me a kind word.

"She wanted a divorce—a divorce. Otherwise she would run away. Only, when was that?"

He remembers and smiles.

It was a long, long time ago; at that time the excise regulations were still in force, and he was a night watchman, and went about all night with an iron staff, so that no brandy should be smuggled into the town.

He knew what service was! To serve with Phonye was good discipline; he had had good teachers. It was a winter's morning before daybreak, he went to have his watch relieved by Chaïm Yoneh—he is in the world of truth now—and then went home, half-frozen and stiff. He knocked at the door and Shprintze called out from her bed:

"Into the ground with you! I thought your dead body would come home some time!"

Oho! she is angry still, because of yesterday. He cannot remember what happened, but so it must be.

"Shut your mouth and open the door!" he shouts.

"I'll open your head for you!" is the swift reply.

"Let me in!"

"Go into the ground, I tell you!"

And he turned away and went into the house-of-study, where he lay down to sleep under the stove. As ill-luck would have it, it was a charcoal stove, and he was suffocated and brought home like a dead man.

Then Shprintze was in a way! He could hear, after a while, how she was carrying on.

They told her it was nothing—only the charcoal.

No! she must have a doctor. She threatened to faint, to throw herself into the water, and went on screaming:

"My husband! My treasure!"

He pulled himself together, sat up, and asked quietly:

"Shprintze, do you want a divorce?"

"May you be—" she never finished the curse, and burst into tears. "Shemaiah, do you think God will punish me for my cursing and my bad temper?"

But no sooner was he well again, there was the old Shprintze back. A mouth on wheels, a tongue on screws, and strong as iron—she scratched like a cat—ha, ha! A pity she died; and she did not even live to have pleasure in her children.

"They must be doing well in the world—all artisans—a trade won't let a man die of hunger. All healthy—they took after me. They don't write, but what of that? They can't do it themselves, and just you go and ask someone to do it for you! Besides, what's the good of a letter of that kind? It's like watered soup. And then young boys, in a long time they forget. They must be doing well.

"But Shprintze is dead and buried. Poor Shprintze!

"Soon after the excise offices were abolished, she died. That was before I had got used to going errands and saying to the gentle folk 'your lordship,' instead of 'your high nobility';[25] before they trusted me with contracts and money—and we used to want for bread.

"I, of course, a man and an ex-Cantonist, could easily go a day without food, but for her, as I said, it was a matter of life and death. A foolish woman soon loses her strength; she couldn't even scold any more; all the monkey was out of her; she did nothing but cry.

"I lost all pleasure in life—she grew somehow afraid to eat, lest I shouldn't have enough.

"Seeing she was afraid, I grew bold, I screamed, I scolded. For instance: 'Why don't you go and eat?' Now and then I went into a fury and nearly hit her, but how are you to hit a woman who sits crying with her hands folded and doesn't stir? I run at her with a clenched fist and spit at it, and she only says: 'You go and eat first—and then I will,' and I had to eat some of the bread first and leave her the rest.

"Once she fooled me out into the street: 'I will eat, only you go into the street—perhaps you will earn something,' and she smiled and patted me.

"I go and I come again, and find the loaf much as I left it. She told me she couldn't eat dry bread—she must have porridge."

He lets his head drop as though beneath a heavy weight, and the sad thoughts chase one another:

"And what a wailing she set up when I wanted to pawn my Sabbath cloak—the one I'm wearing now. She moved heaven and earth, and went and pawned the metal candle-sticks, and said the blessing over candles stuck into potatoes to the day of her death. Before dying she confessed to me that she had never really wanted a divorce; it was only her evil tongue.

"'My tongue, my tongue,' she cried, 'God forgive me my tongue!' And she really died in terror lest in the other world they should hang her by the tongue.

"'God,' she said to me, 'will never forgive me; I've been too great a sinner. But when you come—not soon, heaven forbid, but in over a hundred and twenty years[26]—when you do come, then remember and take me down from the gallows, and tell the Heavenly Council that you forgave me.'

"She began to wander soon after that, and was continually calling the children. She fancied they were there in the room, that she was talking to them, and she asked their pardon.

"Silly woman, who wouldn't have forgiven her!

"How old was she altogether? Perhaps fifty. To die so young! It was worse than a person taking his own life, because every time a thing went out at the door, to the pawn-shop, a bit of her health and strength went with it.

"She grew thinner and yellower day by day, and said she felt the marrow drying up in her bones; she knew that she would die.

"How she loved the room and all its furniture! Whatever had to go, whether it were a chair or a bit of crockery or anything else, she washed it with her tears, and parted from it as a mother from her child; put her arms around it and nearly kissed it. 'Oho!' she would say, 'when I come to die, you won't be there in the room.'

"Well, there; every woman is a fool. At one moment she's a Cossack in petticoats, and the next weaker than a child; because, really, whether you die with a chair or without a chair, what does it matter?

"Phê," he interrupted himself, "what shall I think of next? Fancy letting one's thoughts wander like that, and my pace has slackened, too, thanks to the rubbish!

"Come, soldier's feet, on with you!" he commanded.

He looks round—snow on every hand; above, a gray sky with black patches—just like my under-coat, he thought, stuff patched with black sateen. Lord of the world, is it for want of "credit" up there, too?

Meanwhile it is freezing. His beard and whiskers are ice. His body is fairly comfortable and his head is warm, he even feels the drops of sweat on his forehead; only his feet grow colder and weaker.

He has not walked so very far, and yet he would like to rest, and he feels ashamed of himself. It is the first time he ever wanted to rest on an errand of two miles. He will not confess to himself that he is a man of nearly eighty, and his weariness not at all surprising.

No, he must walk on—just walk on—for so long as one walks, one is walking, one gets on; the moment one gives way to temptation and rests, it's all over with one.

One might easily get a chill, he says to frighten himself, and does all he can to shake off the craving for rest.

"It isn't far now to the village; there I shall have time to sit down.

"That's what I'll do. I won't go straight to the nobleman—one has to wait there for an hour outside; I'll go first to the Jew.

"It's a good thing," he reflected, "that I am not afraid of the nobleman's dog. When they let him loose at night, it's dreadful. I've got my supper with me, and he likes cheese. It will be better to go first and get rested. I will go to the Jew and warm myself, and wash, and eat something."

His mouth waters at the thought; he has had nothing to eat since early this morning; but that's nothing, he doesn't mind if he is hungry; it is a proof that one is alive. Only his feet!

Now he has only two versts more to walk, he can see the nobleman's great straw-covered shed, only his feet cannot see it, and they want to rest.

"On the other hand," he mused, "supposing I rested a little after all? One minute, half a minute? Why not? Let us try. My feet have obeyed me so long, for once I'll obey them."

And Shemaiah sits down by the road-side on a little heap of snow. Now for the first time he becomes aware that his heart is beating like a hammer and his whole head perspiring.

He is alarmed. Is he going to be ill? And he has other people's money on him. He might faint! Then he comforts himself: "God be praised, there is no one coming, and if anyone came, it would never occur to him that I have money with me—that I am trusted with money. Just a minute, and then on we go."

But his lids are heavy as lead.

"No, get up, Shemaiah, vstavai!"[27] he commands.

He can still give a command, but he cannot carry it out; he cannot move. Yet he imagines he is walking, and that he is walking quicker and quicker. Now he sees all the little houses—that is Antek's, yonder, Basili's, he knows them all, he hires conveyances of them. It is still a long way to the Jew's. Yet, best to go there first—he may find Mezumen,[28] and it seems to him that he approaches the Jew's house; but it moves further and further on—he supposes that so it must be. There is a good fire in the chimney, the whole window is cheery and red; the stout Mir'l is probably skimming a large potful of potatoes, and she always gives him one. What so nice as a hot potato? And on he trudges, or—so he thinks, for in reality he has not left his place.

The frost has lessened its grip, and the snow is falling in broad, thick flakes.

He seems to be warmer, too, in his cloak of snow, and he fancies that he is now inside the Jew's house. Mir'l is straining the potatoes, he hears the water pouring away—ziùch, ziùch, ziùch—and so it drips, indeed, off his sateen cloak. Yoneh walks round and hums in his beard; it is a habit of his to sing after evening prayer, because then he is hungry and says frequently: "Well, Mir'l!"

But Mir'l never hurries—"more haste, worse speed."

"Am I asleep and is it a dream?" He is seized with joyful surprise. He thinks he sees the door open and let in his eldest son. Chonoh, Chonoh! Oh, he knows him well enough. What is he doing here? But Chonoh does not recognize him, and Shemaiah keeps quiet. Ha, ha, ha; he is telling Yoneh that he is on his way to see his father; he inquires after him; he has not forgotten; and Yoneh, sly dog, never tells him that his father is sitting there on the sleeping-bench. Mir'l is busy; she is taken up with the potatoes; she won't stop in her work; she only smiles and mashes the potatoes with the great wooden spoon—and smiles.

Ach! Chonoh must be rich, very rich! Everything he has on is whole, and he wears a chain—perhaps it is pinchbeck? No, it is real gold! Chonoh wouldn't wear a pinchbeck chain. Ha, ha, ha! he glances at the stove.[29] Ha, ha, ha! he nearly splits with laughter. Yainkil, Beril, Zecharyah—all three—ha, ha, ha! they were hidden on the stove. The thieves! What a pity Shprintze is not there! What a pity! She would have been so pleased. Meantime Chonoh is ordering two geese. "Chonoh! Chonoh! don't you know me? I am he!" And he fancies they embrace him.

"Look you, Chonoh; what a pity your mother cannot see you! Yainkil, Beril, Zecharyah, come down from the stove! I knew you at once! Make haste! I knew you would come! Look, I have brought you some cheese, real sheep's milk cheese. Don't you like soldier's bread? What? Perhaps not? Yes, it is a pity about the mother."

And he fancies that all the four children have put their arms round him and hold him and kiss and press him to them.

"Gently, children, gently; don't squeeze me too hard! I am no young man—I am eighty years old! Gently, you are suffocating me; gently, children! Old bones! Gently, there is money in the bag. Praise God, they trust me with money! Enough, children, enough!"

And it was enough. He sat there suffocated, with his hand pressed to the bag in his bosom.

IX
WHAT IS THE SOUL?