He came from the village of “Deephole,” a Slavic community, so hidden in the hills that not even its church steeple was visible from the main road. His father was a whiskey distiller and usurer, and the home smelt of vile liquor, which the peasants consumed in great quantities on the premises. On Sundays it was the scene of drunken brawls, which followed the weekly dance. The boy’s bed was underneath the table around which his father’s guests drank and made merry, and when the room was vacated, which was usually late at night, he went to sleep, breathing until morning the filthy, alcohol-laden air.
Nor were his waking hours much happier. His father, who was quick tempered, believed and practiced King Solomon’s advice to parents; while the mother did not have sufficient strength of character to shield her children from his brutal assaults.
When the boy came to town, he came into a new world and when he came to our home it was indeed to him a Sabbath of delight; for he was a growing boy who never had got enough to eat and our table was bountifully supplied. He was an ill-favoured, freckled, hook-nosed lad, extremely sensitive and shy. He never answered any questions beyond yes, or no, as if loath to lose any time from the process of filling up.
The Jew scarcely ever expects to be thanked for favours extended, so we were not at all astonished when, after feeding the Sabbath boy for four years, he dropped out with no word of acknowledgment, and another half-starved village child took his place.
Rabbinic law proscribed that walking on the Sabbath be restricted to 2,000 yards from the synagogue. These were marked out by wires, stretched across rather frail looking poles.
How many generations of children had been hemmed in by these rusty wires I do not know; but the beckoning fields in the spring, the butterflies, the corn-flowers and the poppies were mightier than the rabbinic law, and many a time I drew my mother past the boundaries, out into God’s open world. I delighted to watch the peasants at work in the field, and it took the firm hand of my mother to keep me from going to aid them at haying time, or when they lifted the heavy sheaves of rye upon their huge wagons, drawn by white, long-horned oxen. I do not know how many sins I was guilty of each Sabbath afternoon, for I loved to pluck the wild flowers and that was a sin repeatedly committed. I whistled secular tunes which no doubt was another; I ran many godless miles beyond the boundary, chasing rabbits and often stopping to read inscriptions upon the Christian shrines.
Ah, me! if only all my sins had left such unstained and pleasant memories. On these Sabbath walks I drew my mother into the villages which lay around us, and from which came our “day-eaters” as the charity boarders were called. We often stopped to inquire for them; but I fear my interest was wholly selfish, for invariably we were offered some refreshments, and in spite of my æsthetic delights in these Sabbath afternoon walks, they made me hungry.
Once we went to the village of Deephole. The wretched isbas crowded about the village church. Pigs, babies and geese bathed indiscriminately in the muddy pond; wrinkled, toothless old women were breaking flax, while drunken peasants reeled out of the inn towards which we did not need to inquire our way.
Two rickety steps led up to the door, on which was a faded sign, stating that the government gave license for the sale of tobacco. A shrill bell announced our coming when we opened the door. The air was heavy from ill-smelling tobacco smoke, which helped to make the other stenches at least bearable. A wooden enclosure, reaching from the beaten earth floor almost to the ceiling, fenced in the bar, where a Gentile girl measured out palenka, for on the Sabbath a Jew may not engage in business; hence the proxy. Watching her, as an eagle watches her prey, was the Jewess, her smooth false front and clean dress being signs of the holy day.
When she recognized my mother she fell weeping upon her neck; mother wept too, although not knowing why and I began to whimper and cry in sympathy. The Gentile bar maid took an ancient looking stick of candy out of an open jar and, giving it to me, assuaged my grief. The Jewess locked the bar, temporarily suspending business, and drew my mother into the adjoining living-room, a third of which was occupied by a bake-oven, which served as bed for a fair share of the large family. On top of the oven lay the husband—paralyzed. His black eyes seemed to be the only members of his body that he could move and they were pathetic in their mute helplessness and appeal for sympathy. I caught but snatches of the story as it was told my mother. It was all about our “Sabbath boy.” “He ran away from home—the father, God forgive him, was too hard on him.” Not a line came from him—not a sign of life. When the peasants came home from their annual pilgrimage to the Shrine at Maria’s Bosom, they told how they had seen a freckled, hook-nosed acolyte there, who looked just like the little “schid” that ran away. The same evening his father started for the town, walking, without stopping and without eating. Day after day the mother waited but no word came from her husband. She closed her home and started after him, taking the children with her. When they came to the town and inquired for him, she was led to a hospital in which Sisters of Charity walked about noiselessly. “So kind they were to think of it,” and they took her gently to a cot on which lay the motionless body of her husband. All he said, and that in a laboured, painful whisper, was: “Hashel has been baptized.” There the story ended, and as various things needed to be done for the sick man, mother did them.