He does not know that if they ate the same, they would be all alike.
——
THE YARTSEFF RABBI
The Yartseff rabbi is a man who has all that heart desireth. He gets four rubles a week, and that is really more than enough. How? Are they not an old couple without children? He used to be Dayan in a larger town. There also he had four rubles a week, and nearly cut his fingers to bits over dried herring from week's end to week's end.
Here it's different. He goes through his daily fare for my benefit. For breakfast, what shall he say? a little milk-gruel; for dinner, sometimes, half a pound of meat; and in the evening, a glass of hot tea with stale rolls—he really cannot hold more! When one lives in the country, one must follow country customs, and they are much the best!... Dinner in the large towns is a ruination and a misery!... If there should happen not to be any meat for dinner, well, he can afford to wait to eat till supper-time. Sometimes, early in the day, there is a little vegetable soup with dripping—that is how one lives in Yartseff and one does very well. In the large town it was often difficult to get on. Not that he cared! He really doesn't like meat. On week-days it is heavy food; on week-days he likes an onion with a little sour milk, he prefers sour milk even to Purim herbs, it is his nature, but the rebbitzin, she wouldn't look at it (he smiles as he glances at her)—her feelings used to get hurt. It was jealousy! How was that? Well, the Shochet's wife had sausage, and she, the Dayan'te, not so much as a bone—wasn't that humiliating, ha? Now he has done with all that; in Yartseff, thank God, they all eat meat every Sabbath and even mutton, and week-days all fare much alike, too. So long as the rebbitzin has no one to envy, it's all right!
"To envy!" throws in the rebbitzin. "I know, I know!" laughs the rabbi's head with the tiny wrinkles, the beard with the soft end quivers, the old eyes grow moister. "I know, it was not the sinful body you were thinking of, but the honor of the Law. Of course, a Shochet sausage and a Dayan—no, that was very wrong! A Dayan is distinctly greater than a Shochet! Well, well, anyhow, here I am quit of all that—where they don't kill for a whole week at a time."
He is still better pleased with the fresh country air. In the large towns, the householders must live in large houses. The rich householders live in the middle; below, in the cellars, and above, in the attics, poor people, including paid officials of the community like himself.
In summer he had felt suffocated there. It went so far that the rebbitzin stole away his snuff-box, so that he might at any rate not stuff snuff up his nose, but she had to give it him back—without snuff he was nowhere; he cannot even sit and read without it; even when not taking any, he must have the root snuff-box to finger while he studies, and even as now, when talking, he would lose the train of his thought and not find suitable words in which to express himself if he had not got it.
What do you think? When he first saw Yartseff with the wide, grass-grown market-place, he would have liked a band to play—and a band played! On that day all Kohol was at home, and they came to meet him with chamber-music! And he was charmed by the little, tiny houses, like pieces of root tobacco; there is one walled in, the big one in the centre of the market-place—it is the lord's.
And the stairs he got away from when he left the large town! He is naturally weak in the legs, in another year he would have been without feet! Then—the restfulness of it here!... quiet!... not a dog barks, and the children (lehavdîl) don't shout. There are thirty boys and perhaps six teachers, so they're kept well in hand, not as in the large towns. At Purim and Chanukah, then they shout, yes! they make a fearful noise! But otherwise you don't hear a sound.