III
IN THE POST-CHAISE
He told me everything at once, in one breath. I learned in little over a minute that he was Chaïm, Yoneh Krubishever's son-in-law, Beril Konskivoler's son, and that the rich Meerenstein in Lublin was a relation on his mother's side, peace be upon her! But this relation lived almost like a Gentile; whether or not they ate forbidden food, he could not tell, but that they ate with unwashed hands ... so much he had seen with his own eyes.
They had other queer ways beside: long colored cloths were lying on their stairs; before going in, one rang a bell; figured table-covers were spread about the rooms where people sat as if in jail ... stole across them like thieves ... altogether it was like being in a company of deaf-mutes.
His wife has a family of a kind in Warsaw. But he never goes near them; they are as poor as himself, so what is the good of them to him, ha?
In the house of the Lublin relation things are not as they should be, but, at least, he is rich, and whoso rubs against fat meat gets shiny himself; where they chop wood, there are splinters; where there is a meal, one may chance to lick a bone—but those others—paupers!
He even counts on the Lublin relation's obtaining a place for him. Business, he says, is bad; just now he is dealing in eggs, buys them, in the villages, and sends them to Lublin, whence they are despatched to London. There, it is said, people put them into lime-ovens and hatch chickens out of them. It must be lies. The English just happen to like eggs! However that may be, the business, for the present, is in a bad way. Still, it is better than dealing in produce—produce is knocked on the head. He became a produce dealer soon after his marriage; he had everything to learn, and his partner was an old dealer who simply turned his pockets inside out.
———
It was dark in the post-chaise—I could not see Chaïm's face, and I don't know to this day how he recognized a fellow-Jew in me. When he got in, I was sitting in a corner dozing, and was only awakened by his voice. I don't talk in my sleep—perhaps I gave a Jewish groan. Perhaps he felt that my groan and his groan were one groan?
He even told me that his wife was from Warsaw and did not fancy Konskivòlye. That is, she was born in Krubisheff, but she was brought up in Warsaw by that miserable family of hers—lost her parents.