And again the black throng of people advanced through the square toward the school-yard; again the melamed, retreating before the Rabbi, jumped, clapped his hands, danced and shouted; and again the crowd of children, following the retinue at a distance, imitated their teacher, jumping, howling, Clapping their hands. And in Ezofowich's parlour old Saul sat with his face covered with his hands, while at the opposite door Freida appeared. The sun rays, falling through the window, kindled into rainbow colours the diamonds with which she was covered. She looked around the room with her half-closed eyes, and pronounced, in her customary soundless whisper:
"Wo ist Meir?"
CHAPTER VI
Meir was absent during the Rabbi's visit. He left the house early in the morning and went in the direction of the poorest quarter of the town. The houses there were very small and very low and exceedingly dismal, none of them having more than two windows. In front of the houses were evil-smelling sloughs. From the black chimneys of the tenements arose thin streaks of smoke, indicating by their thinness the scarcity of fuel, and the food cooked by it. Fences, rotten and tumble-down, surrounded the small courtyards, which were covered with sweepings. Here and there could be seen in the rear of the houses, tiny tracts of land with meagre vegetables growing in them. At the low doors, miserable looking women with dark sickly faces, wearing blue caftans and carroty wigs, washed their gray, coarse linen in buckets. The old and bent women sat on the benches, knitting blue or black wool stockings, while young sunburned girls, in dirty dresses and dishevelled hair, milked the goats.
It was the quarter of the town inhabited by the poorest population of Szybow, the nursery of poverty—even of misery, dirt, and disease. The houses of the Ezofowichs, Calmans, Witebskis and Kamionkers, standing at the square, were luxurious palaces when compared with those human dwellings, the mere exterior aspect of which made one think of earthly purgatory. And no wonder. There, on the square, lived merchants and learned men, the aristocracy of every Jewish community; here lived the population of working men and tradesmen—the plebeians earning their daily bread with their hands and not with brains.
In spite of the fact that it was yet early morning, the daily work had generally begun. From behind the dirty windows could be seen the rising and falling arms of the tailors and cobblers. Through the thin walls resounded the tools of tinsmiths and the hammers of blacksmiths, and from the houses of the manufacturers of tallow candles rose unbearable, greasy exhalations. Some of the inhabitants, taking advantage of the sunrise, looked into the street, opened their windows and a passer-by could see the interior of, the small rooms with black walls, crowded with occupants which swarmed like ants. Through the windows came the mixed noise of singing and praying in male voices, the quarrelling of women and the screaming of children. All the smaller children rent the sultry air of the black, crowded rooms with their cries, while the older ones trooped out into the street in great crowds, chasing each other noisily or rolling on the ground. Growing boys, dressed not in sleeveless jackets like the children, but in long, grey halats, stood on the thresholds of the huts leaning against the walls, pale, thin, drowsy, with widely opened mouths, as though they wished to breathe into their sickly, cold breasts the warm rays of the sun and the fresh breeze of the morning.
Meir approached one of these youths.
"Nu, Lejbele," said he, "I have come to see you. Are you always sick and looking like an owl?"
It was evident that Lejbele was ill and moping, for, with hands folded in the sleeves of his miserable halat, and pressed to his chest, he was shivering with cold, although the morning was warm; he did not answer Meir, but opened his mouth and great, dull, dark eyes more widely, and looked idiotically at the young man.
Meir laid his band on the boy's head.