III
After tramping a while alongside the coach, the old man lit his pipe, emitted a cloud of smoke, and continued:—
I do not know what happened then. I cannot tell who caught me, nor the place I was taken to. I must have been in a trance all the while.
When I awoke, I found myself surrounded by a flock of sheep, in a meadow near the woods. Near me was my brother Solomon; but I hardly recognized him. He wore peasant clothes: a linen shirt turned out over linen breeches and gathered in by a broad belt. I was eyeing my brother, and he was eyeing me, both of us equally bewildered, for I was disguised like himself.
A little boy, a real peasant boy, was standing near us. He smiled at us in a good-natured, hospitable way. It was the chore-boy of the Jewish quarter. On the Sabbaths of the winter months he kept up the fires in the Jewish houses; that is why he could jabber a few words of Yiddish. During the summer he took care of the flocks of the peasants that lived in the neighborhood.
When I awoke, my mother was with us too. She kissed us amid tears, gave us some bread and salt, and, departing, strictly forbade us to speak any Yiddish. "For God's sake, speak no Yiddish," said she, "you might be recognized! Hide here till the Catcher leaves town."
It was easy enough to say, "Speak no Yiddish"; but did we know how to speak any other language?
I saw then that I was in a sort of hiding-place—a hiding-place under the open sky! I realized that I had escaped from houses, garrets, and cellars, merely to hide in the open field between heaven and earth. I had fled from darkness, to hide in broad daylight!
Indeed, it was not light that I had to fear. Nor was it the sun, the moon, or the sheep. It was only man that I had to avoid.
Mother went away and left us under the protection of the little shepherd boy. And he was a good boy, indeed. He watched us to the best of his ability. As soon as he saw any one approach our place, he called out loudly: "No, no; these are not Jewish boys at all! On my life, they are not!"
As a matter of facet, a stranger did happen to visit our place; but he was only a butcher, who came to buy sheep for slaughtering.
Well, the sun had set, and night came. It was my first night under an open sky. I suffered greatly from fear, for there was no Mezuzah anywhere near me. I put my hand under my Shaatnez clothes, and felt my Tzitzis: they, too, seemed to be in hiding, for they shook in my hand.
Over us the dark night sky was spread out, and it seemed to me that the stars were so many omens whose meaning I could not make out. But I felt certain that they meant nothing good so far as I was concerned. All kinds of whispers, sizzling sounds of the night, reached my ears, and I knew not where they came from.
Looking down, I saw sparks a-twinkling. I knew they were stars reflected in the near-by stream. But soon I thought it was not the water and the stars: the sheen of the water became the broad smile of some giant stretched out flat upon the ground; and the sparks were the twinkling of his eyes. And the sheep were not sheep at all, but some strange creatures moving to and fro, spreading out, and coming together again in knotted masses. I imagined they all were giants bewitched to appear as sheep by day and to become giants again by night. Then I knew too well that the thick, dark forest was behind me; and what doesn't one find in a forest? Is there an unholy spirit that cannot be found there? Z-z-z—— a sudden sizzling whisper reached my ear, and I began to cry.
"Why don't you sleep?" asked the shepherd boy in his broken Yiddish.
"I am afraid!"
"What are you afraid of?"
"Of—of—the woods . . . ."
"Ha—ha—ha—I have good dogs with the flock!"
I wanted a Mezuzah, some talisman, a protection against evil spirits, and that fool offered me barking dogs! All at once he whistled loudly, and his dogs set up a barking that nearly made me deaf. The flock was panic-stricken. I thought at first that the earth had opened her mouth, and packs of dogs were breaking out from hell.
The noise the dogs made broke the awful hush of the night, and my fears were somewhat dispelled.
But there were other reasons why I liked to hear the dogs bark. I was myself the owner of a dog, which I had raised on the sly in my father's house. Imagine the horror of my brother Solomon, who as a real Jewish lad was very much afraid of a dog!
In that way we spent a few days, hiding under the open sky, disguised in our Shaatnez clothes. Soon enough the time came when my parents had to understand what they would not understand when the rabbi wanted to give me up in place of the famous Avremel. For they caught my oldest brother Simhah, may he rest in peace. And Simhah was a privileged person; he was not only the Shohet of the community and a great Lamdan, but also a married man, and the father of four children to boot. Only then, it seems, my parents understood what the rabbi had understood before: that it was not fair to deliver up my brother when I, the ignorant fellow, the lover of dogs, might take his place. A few days later mother came and took us home. As to the rest, others had seen to it.—
Here the old man stopped for a while. He was puffing and snorting, tired from the hard walk uphill. Having reached the summit, he turned around, looked downhill, straightened up, and took a deep breath. "This is an excellent way of getting rid of your tired feeling," said he. "Turn around and look downhill: then your strength will return to you."—