TALES THAT ARE TOLD
Sad and perplexed in spirit, I came down from the rabbi, with the Maskil, and into the street. There we came across the beadle, who assured us that, in his opinion, we should be able to go on with the work to-morrow.
The whole Tararam[74] had been stirred up by two impoverished householders, who were now in great misery; one, a public-house keeper, and the other, a horse-dealer.
The Maskil, for his part, promises to talk the matter over with the townspeople between Minchah and Maariv, and if he doesn't turn the place upside down, then his name is not Shmeril (such a name has a Maskil in Tishewitz!). They may stand on their heads, he said, but the notes must be taken. "The very authorities that forbade will permit."
Well done! It is evident that the Maskil had studied in a Cheder, in the great world one meets with other Maskilîm.
I go back to the inn; the beadle comes, too. At my host's they still have services, the mourning for his wife not being ended. Between Minchah and Maariv, we get on to politics; after Maariv, on to the Jews. The greater part are dreadfully optimistic. In the first place, it's not a question of them, secondly, plans will not prosper against "Yainkil,"[75] he has brains of his own; thirdly, it's like a see-saw, now it goes up and now it goes down;[76] fourthly, God will help; fifthly, "good Jews" will not allow it to happen.
The old song!
"Believe me," exclaims one, with small, restless eyes under a low forehead, "believe me, if there were unity among all 'good Jews,' if they would hold together, as one man, and stop repeating Tachanun,[77] Messiah would have to come!"
"But the Kozenitz Rebbe, may his memory be blessed, did stop," suggested another.
"'One swallow,' replied the young man, 'does not make a summer.' Who talks of their imposing a prohibition on All-Israel?"
There are times when one must set one's self against things—defend one's self.
"If they were to issue a prohibition," says someone, ironically, and with a side-glance at me, "the heretics would take to praying, if only for the sake of saying Tachanun, so that Messiah should not come."
The company smile.
"But where is the harm," asks someone else, "if the great people don't agree among themselves?"
The company gave a groan. Doubtless each remembered how many times he had suffered unjustly on account of the want of unity, and the surest proof of Tishewitz having greatly suffered by reason of dissensions is, that no clear explanation was given as to who was at fault that the great were not at one, so fearful were they of provoking a fresh disagreement.
I put forward that poverty had more to do with the differences than anything.
There is nothing to trade with, people go about empty-handed, seeking quarrels to while away the time with; the proof is that in larger towns, where each goes about his own business, there is quiet.
If someone, I opine, would throw into Tishewitz a few thousand rubles, everything would be forgotten.
"To be sure, we know wealth is everything!" exclaims somebody. "If I had only had so much brains, I could put all Tishewitz into my pocket to-day. It was just a toss-up—I had only to say the word."
"True! True!" was heard on all sides. "It is an actual fact."
The man who had only required to have so much brains, or a little determination, to become rich, looked like poverty itself: lean, yellow, shrunk, "wept out," and in a cloak that had its only equal in the dressing-gown of the Tishewitz rabbi.
Thereupon came the Maskil.
Of course, he laughed.
"Reb Elyeh, you must have bought the lucky number an hour before the drawing!"
"Listen to his cheek!" says Reb Elyeh. "As if he couldn't remember the story!"
"May my head not ache," swears the Maskil, "for so long as I have forgotten—if ever I heard the lies at all."
"Lies!" retorts Reb Elyeh, much hurt, "is that so? Lies? According to you, other things are lies as well."
I interfere and ask what the story may be.
"You've heard of the Tsaddik of Vorke of blessed memory?" begins Reb Elyeh.
Of course!
"Naturally, Kind und Keit[78] knew of him. And you will have heard that there came to him not only the pious men of the nations of the world, but even 'German' Jews, even Lithuanians, knowing fellows that they are. May I have as much money as I have seen Lithuanians at his house! There is even a story about a discussion a Lithuanian had with him. A Lithuanian must always be showing off his acumen! He asks a question about the Tossafot on Vows. The Rebbe, of blessed memory, explains a bit of the Mishnah to him upside down.
"'Well, I never, Rebbe!' exclaims the Lithuanian, 'why, the Tossafot on New Year dealing with the same subject says exactly the opposite of your words.' Well, what do you say to that? It was a miracle the Rebbe did not seize and strangle him on the spot. But that is not what I was driving at. The 'Vorker' treated the Almighty like a good comrade.
"'Lord of the world (and he sat down in the middle of the room)! Would it not have been enough to torment the Jews with persecutions? Now one cannot even sit and study in peace.'
"Someone, it would appear, answered him from 'up there.'
"'So,' he said, 'that is another thing altogether! I give in; good pay puts everything straight. But, Lord of the world! a little of it here as well!'
"Again one could see in his face that he heard a response, and he answered:
"'Well, if not—not! You are solvent, we will wait!'
"But that is not what I was after. His chief concern was whatever was connected with circumcision. In the matter of circumcision he was steel and iron. In that he would take no denial from the Powers above. And, indeed, they waited for his word up there! Scarce had he given a sign, when the thing he wanted was done and established. He said, that before going to a circumcision, when he merely began to think of the Mohel-knife, the quality of Fear[79] straightway diffused itself through his being, and then there could be no doubt all would go as he wanted, for 'the will of those who fear Him He executeth.'
"He was very sorry that people had become aware of this peculiarity of his. He knew that on this account he would not perform the ceremony here much longer, that he would be called to join the Heavenly Academy. His relations to the upper world having become known, the very stability of the world was endangered. It ought to have remained a secret.
"Well, people had become aware of it. I, too. And even sooner than others, because the treasurer, Mösheh, was my first wife's brother-in-law, and he it was who let out the secret. For this he was deprived of his place for half a year, but his distress was so great, the Rebbe had compassion on him, and restored him to his office. But that doesn't belong to the story either.
"Enough that I knew it.
"Well, 'and he kept the thing in his heart.' I waited, for I was not going to plague the Rebbe about a trifle. I waited. I was living just then a mile outside Vorke. My first wife was alive, and she did not fare badly, though it was difficult to make both ends meet. But I earned whatever it was by my match-making, and my wife supported us by means of her stall. And not only us, but also she provided for a married couple, my eldest daughter and her husband, who was an excellent scholar. What, then, was lacking?
"And it came to pass on a day that my son-in-law was away at the Ger Rebbe's, there was a fair in the town, and my daughter was in child-bed. It went hard with her, a first baby. Beile Bashe, the midwife, was at her wit's end, and this was the third day of her pains. No cupping, no blood-letting seemed to help—things were very bad. And I hear that the Rebbe is coming to a circumcision.
"What do you think? 'There sprang up light for the Jews!' We were all overjoyed. It put new life into us. We pray that God will preserve her another day and a half, because people were only let in an hour before the ceremony. But meanwhile things got worse and worse, she was near death.
"An hour or two before the ceremony, however, she grew easier, or so it seemed to me. She came to herself, opened her eyes, urged her mother to go to the fair, and called me to her bedside. A foolish woman, they are all alike—they blame us for it.
"She doesn't like Shmülek, she says, she never liked him, she didn't want him from the very first. She can't stand him and had better die. She had sent her mother out on purpose, because she was afraid of her. She, peace be upon her, was a terror to the children—she wanted to slap her daughter on her wedding-day.
"I, of course, gave her to understand that all women are the same, that some even make a vow never to live with their husbands again; that the sin-offering is there on that account—some even swear that—'but no one may be held responsible for what he utters in pain and grief.' But she keeps to it, she bids me farewell, she needs no vows, no oaths, she says, smiling. I am going out, she says, like a candle.
"Well, I listen to her and can see all the while that she is better. She is quite clear again in her mind, and it only wants half an hour to the circumcision. And she looked quite pretty again.
"I sit by the bed and talk to her—even the midwife had gone to buy a cradle at the fair. I look at the clock—it is time to go. I look at her. Upon my word! Quite well! And yet I do not want to go and leave her all alone, and nearly alone in the town.
"The fair, you see, comes once a year, and lasts three days, and it means Parnosseh for the whole twelve months. So, you see, there was no one left at the Rebbe's even—every soul was off to the fair.
"Well, I wait a bit.
"But in half an hour things got suddenly worse. She snatches at my hand, falls back on the pillows, makes grimaces. Bad!
"She begins to moan. I call for help, no one answers. There is a great noise from the fair—nobody hears me. Among a thousand men and women—and we might have been in a wilderness. I want to pull away my hands, go and call somebody, but she holds them tight.
"Two, three minutes pass, it grows late, things are bad. I tear away my hands and I run thither. The circumcision was at the further end of the town. I fly along roads, over bales of merchandise, I fly and fly! It is all too long to me. It was July and yet I shivered with cold as I ran—there, there is Tsemach's house, where the ceremony has taken place."
———
"My heart beats as though I were a malefactor; I feel that there, at home, a soul is about to escape. There I am at the first window! I will not wait for the door, I will break a pane and get in that way. I run up to the window, I see the Rebbe is really in the room, he is walking up and down, I am about to enter like a housebreaker. I gather my remaining strength—there is a cry in my ears: Father, father! I leap."
The narrator was out of breath. He takes a rest, lowers his eyes, which are full of large tears, and ends quietly with a broken voice:
"But it was not to be! There was a heap of manure and stones before the window—I fell, and nearly broke my neck. I have a mark on my forehead to this day. When they brought me in to the Rebbe, he motioned me away with his hand.
"When I got home (how I got there, I don't know), she was lying on the floor—either she fell out of bed dying, or I pulled her out tearing away my hands."
The listeners were silent, a stone weighed on our hearts.
The Maskil soon recovered himself.
"Well," he said, "blessed be the righteous Judge! Where are the riches?"
The narrator wiped his eyes with his sleeve, gave a sad smile and continued:
"Yes, I only wanted to show you what one means when one says, it was not to be. There came trouble after trouble—my wife died—the stall went to the bad because it was kept by a man—I was left alone with the children, and there wasn't a crust—I married again—I took an elderly woman on purpose, because I thought she would do for the stall, but I was taken in. There was a baby a year. Meanwhile our fairs fell off, and for a whole twelvemonth the stall wasn't worth a pinch of powder.
"I determined to make an end of it—to give up the match-making, grow rich, and sit and study. Aï—how does one grow rich? I wrote to the brother-in-law of my first wife, to the treasurer, and asked him for God's sake to tell me when next there was a circumcision.
"I got a message before the month was out, and hastened to Vorke. I stop nowhere, but go straight to the Rebbe."
"And—a larger manure heap?" laughs the Maskil. The narrator gives him a vicious look.
"The Vorke Tsaddik," he said, "went in for ritual cleanliness, his whole religion was ritual cleanliness."
"Only see," remarked the Maskil, "how he looks at me! Rascal! When you came here first, who helped you? A Vorke Chossid? or perhaps your cousin the Tsaddik? or was it I? ha! You would have died of hunger long ago if it hadn't been for me!"
And he turns to me:
"And what do you suppose he is now? He teaches my children, and if I were to take them away from him, he would have no Parnosseh left!... not a crust of bread...."
The other stands silent with downcast eyes.
The Maskil disgusts me more and more, although he made a sign to me with his eyes a little while ago, to the effect that he had exerted himself on my behalf, and with his hands, that to-morrow there will be taking of notes.
I turn to the other:
"Well, my friend?"
"See for yourself," says he to the Maskil, "our note-taker is more of a Maskil than you, on the face of him, and he doesn't make game of things ... one might say, on the contrary. Rambam[80] (lehavdîl) did not believe in magic ... but at any rate, he answers seriously ... a Jew should have manners ... to make fun of things is not fair ... man, it cuts to the heart!"
"Well, well," says the Maskil, more gently, "let us have the rest!"
"I will make it short," says the poor Jew. "I come in without a ticket of admission, nothing to speak for me, without even a money-offering, but that would have been no help at such a time, only his face was terrible! My feet shook under me! I stood there without opening my mouth. He, may his merits protect us, took great strides up and down.
"Suddenly he saw me and gave a roar like a lion.
"'What do you want?'
"I was more terrified than ever and scarcely answered:
"'Riches!'
"It seemed as though the Rebbe had not quite understood.
"'Riches?' he asked, and his voice was like thunder.
"'If only ... Parnosseh!' I answer in a lower tone.
"'What, Parnosseh!' he cried as before.
"'Only not to die of hunger!'
"The Rebbe hurried up and down, stopped suddenly and asked:
"'What else?'
"I thought I should drop dead! It seemed to me (I don't know, but it seemed to me) as if someone else, and not I, had control of my tongue, and it replied:
"'I want Yòsef to be a learned man!'
"'What besides?' I hardly escaped alive, and he, may his merits protect us, died the following week.
"Well? What lay between me and the riches? A hair's breadth! it was my own fault. If I had stood up to him and kept to it! Well!"
"At least," I inquire, "is your son learned?"
"He would have been," he replies in a broken voice, "only he won't learn ... even a Rebbe can't help that ... he won't learn—what can one do?"
"And the moral," interposes the Maskil, "is that one shouldn't keep rubbish heaps under the window, that you can do nothing without money, and, above all, that one shouldn't be frightened of any Rebbe!"
In one second the livid-faced Jew had flushed scarlet, his eyes shot fire, his person lengthened, and the room resounded with two slaps received by the Maskil.
———
I fear that his first request will equally go unfulfilled: he will yet die of hunger.
———
A LITTLE BOY
The innkeeper's pretty little boy, with his shrugs and pouts, and his curls full of feathers, haunts me.
Now he stands before me with a small onion in his hand, and he cries—he wants two; or I hear him at evening prayer, repeating the Kaddish in his plaintive child-voice, so tearfully earnest that it goes to my very heart. When the Chossid slapped the Maskil, the child turned pale and green with fright, so that I took him by the hand and led him out of the room.
"Come for a walk."
"A walk?" he stammers.
The pale face flushes.
"Do you never go out for a walk?"
"Not now. When my mother, peace be upon her, was alive, she used to take me out walking Sabbaths and holidays. My father, long life to him, says it's better to sit at one's book."
We were already in the long entrance passage. A "Shield of David" shone redly from a lamp some way off. I could not see his face, but the thin little hand trembled as it lay in mine.
We stepped out into the street.
The sky that hung over Tishewitz resembled a dark blue uniform with dim steel buttons.
My companion found it like a curtain[81] sewn with silver spangles.
Perhaps he is dreaming of just such a blue satin "prayer-bag," with spangles, some day to be his own. In five or six years he may receive it as a gift from his bride.
The little town looks quite different by night. The rubbish heaps and the tumbledown houses are hidden in the "poetical and silent lap of darkness."
The windows and door-panes look like great, fiery, purple eyes. By the hearth-sides pots of boiling water must be standing ready for the potatoes or the dumplings.
The statistics give an average annual expenditure of thirty-seven and a half rubles a head—about ten kopeks a day. Now calculate: school fees, two sets of pots and pans, Sabbaths and holidays, an illness, and a wonder-working Rebbe—besides extras. You see now why there is not always a meal cooking, why the dumplings are of buck-wheat without an egg, and why the potatoes are not always eaten with dripping. Many of the houses are stone-blind. In these it is a question of a bit of bread with or without a herring, and perhaps grace without meat. In one of those houses must live the widow who requires so little, beating her hollow chest through the long confession. Perhaps she measures her winding-sheet, or thinks of her wedding dress of long ago with its gold braid, and from her old eyes there drops a tear, and she whispers, smiling, into the night: "After all, what does a Jewess need?"
My motherless companion is thinking of something else. Hopping on one little foot, he lifts his face to the moon, swimming with a silly, aristocratic air in and out of the light clouds.
He sighs. Has he seen a star fall? No.
"Öi," he says, "wollt ich gewollt, Meshiach soll kimmen!" (How I do wish the Messiah would come!)
"What is the matter?"
"I want the moon to be made bigger again. It is so dreadfully sad about her! She committed a sin, but to suffer so long! It will soon be six thousand years."
Altogether, two requests! one of his earthly father for a second little onion, and one of his Father in Heaven, for the enlargement of the moon.
A wild impulse seized me to say: "Let alone! Your father will soon marry again, you will soon have a step-mother, become a step-child, and have to cry for a bit of bread! Spare the little onion, forget about the moon ..."
It was all I could do to refrain.
We left Tishewitz behind, the spring airs blew toward us from the green fields. He drew me to a tree, we sat down.
He must have sat here, it occurs to me, with his mother. She must have pointed out to him the different things that grew in the narrow plots belonging to the townspeople. He recognizes wheat, rye, potatoes.
And those are briars.
Nobody eats briars, do they?
Donkeys eat briars.
"Why," he asks, "did God make all creatures to eat different things?"
He does not know that if they ate the same, they would be all alike.
——