THE FIRST ATTEMPT
Early in the morning, before the arrival of the beadle, there come some Jews—they want to see the note-taker.
My fame has preceded me.
I make a beginning, and turn to one of them:
"Good morning, friend!"
"Good morning, Sholom Alechem."[85]
He gives me his hand, quite lazily.
"What is your name, friend?"
"Levi Yitzchok."
"And your German name?"[86]
"Why do you want to know?"
"Well, is it a secret?"
"Secret or no secret, you may as well tell me why you want to know. I'll be bound that's no secret!"
"Then you don't know it?"
"Not exactly."
"Make a shot at it—just for fun!"
"Bärenpelz," he answers, a little ashamed.
"A wife?"
"Ett!"
"He wants a divorce!" another answers for him.
"How many children?"
He has to think, and counts on his fingers: "By the first wife—mine: one, two, three; hers: one, two; by the second wife...." He is tired of counting: "Let us say six!"
"'Let us say' is no good. I must know exactly."
"You see, 'exactly' is not so easy. 'Exactly!' Why do you want to know? Wos is? Are you an official? Do they pay you for it? Will somebody follow and check your statements? 'Exactly!'"
"Tell, blockhead, tell," the rest encourage him, "now you've begun, tell!"
They want to know what the next questions will be.
Once again he has counted on his fingers and, heaven be praised, there are three more.
"Nine children, health and strength to them!"
"How many sons, how many daughters?"
He counts again:
"Four sons and five daughters."
"How many sons and how many daughters married?"
"You want to know that, too? Look here, tell me why?"
"Tell him, then, tell him!" cry the rest, impatiently.
"Three daughters and two sons," answers someone for the questioned.
"Taki?" says the latter. "And Yisrolik?"
"Horse! They call him up next Sabbath![87] What does a week and a half matter?"
I make a note and ask further: "Have you served in the army?"
"I bought exemption from Kohol, for four hundred rubles![88] Where should I find them now?" and he groans.
"And your sons?"
"The eldest has a swelling below his right eye, and has besides—not of you be it said!—a rupture. He has been in three hospitals. It cost more than a wedding. They only just sent him home from the regiment! The second drew a high number.[89] ... The third is serving his time now."
"And the wife?"
"At home with me, of course. Need you ask?"
"She might have been at her father's."
"A pauper!"
"Have you a house?"
"Have I a house!"
"Worth how much?"
"If it were in Samoscz, it would be worth something. Here it's not worth a dreier, except that I have a place to lay my head down in."
"Would you sell it for one hundred rubles?"
"Preserve us! One's own inheritance! Not for three hundred."
"Would you give it for five hundred?"
"Mê! I should hire a lodging and apply myself to some business!"
"And what is your business now?"
"What business?"
"What do you live on?"
"That's what you mean! One just lives."
"On what?"
"God's providence. When He gives something, one has it!"
"But He doesn't throw things down from heaven?"
"He does so! Can I tell how I live? Let us reckon: I need a lot of money, at least four rubles a week. The house yields, beside my own lodging, twelve rubles a year—nine go in taxes, five in repairs, leaves a hole in the pocket of two rubles a year! That's it."
He puts on airs:
"Heaven be praised, I have no money. Neither I, nor any one of the Jews standing here, nor any other Jews—except perhaps the 'German' ones[90] in the big towns. We have no money. I don't know any trade, my grandfather never sewed a shoe. Therefore I live as God wills, and have lived so for fifty years. And if there is a child to be married, we have a wedding, and dance in the mud."
"Once and for all, what are you?"
"A Jew."
"I study, I pray—what else should a Jew do? And when I have eaten, I go to the market."
"What do you do in the market?"
"What do I do? Whatever turns up. Well, yesterday, for example, I heard, as I passed, that Yoneh Borik wanted to buy three rams for a gentleman. Before daylight I was at the house of a second gentleman, who had once said, he had too many rams. I made an agreement with Yoneh Borik, and, heaven be praised, we made a ruble and a half by it."
"Are you, then, what is called a commission-agent?"
"How should I know? Sometimes it even occurs to me to buy a bit of produce."
"Sometimes?"
"What do you mean by 'sometimes'? When I have a ruble, I buy."
"And when not?"
"I get one."
"How?"
"What do you mean by 'how'?"
And it is an hour before I find out that Levi Yitzchock Bärenpelz is a bit of a rabbinical assistant, and acts as arbiter in quarrels; a bit of a commission-agent, a fragment of a merchant, a morsel of a match-maker, and now and again, when the fancy takes him, a messenger.
Thanks to all these "trades," the counted and the forgotten ones, he earns his bread, although with toil and trouble, for wife and child—even for the married daughter, because her father-in-law is but a pauper.
——