The Jews of Barnow: Stories

by Karl Emil Franzos

"I told you so before. But you want to do what is impossible. You want to waken the dead, and to strike moments out of our life that are imperishable, because they are too deeply engraved on our memories ever to be forgotten. I know and can understand how you have suffered," he continued, his voice trembling, "because I can compare your feelings with my own. And now, that you may be spared more pain, and may not form hopes that can never be fulfilled, I entreat you to listen to me, although you asked me to come here to listen to you...."

When he began to speak she had raised her clasped hands in mute appeal to his compassion, but now she let them fall listlessly to her side, and sighed deeply. She then resumed her seat, and motioned to him to take a chair opposite. He sat down, and went on firmly and decidedly:

"I was born at Barnow, and am the son of the late rabbi. The people there were very kind to me in their own way after my father's death, but I was ungrateful, and mistook their meaning. I left the place after my mother died. I can still remember the dismal, misty autumn morning when I ran away as distinctly as if it were yesterday. I had no money, but Jews are always kind and charitable to the poor. I traveled through Galicia and Poland, remaining sometimes for a few weeks with a rabbi, who was good enough to take me as a pupil; but none of the teaching I received entirely satisfied me. I went on farther. In course of time I reached Wilna, where Rabbi Naphtali, the celebrated Cabalist, has a school. Under his guidance I learned to know the 'Cabala'—that strange, deep, mysterious book, containing the profoundest wisdom and religious teaching of our people. I threw myself into its study with the utmost enthusiasm. That was my misfortune, if you like to call it so. I went through that time of doubt when all dogmatic religion appears to be glaringly false—a time which no young man who thinks at all about these subjects can fail to pass through, and during which he boldly and determinately endeavors to grasp the inconceivable.

"My knowledge appeared small and narrow. I strove to make it both wider and higher. The German people, with their great poets and thinkers, were irresistibly attractive to me. I studied their language carefully; and by dint of teaching, and exercising an economy that was almost miserly, I at last succeeded in making enough money to go to Germany. I set out at a most fortunate moment for myself, for it chanced that I made the acquaintance of old Prince Sugatscheff at a small town on the borders of Lithuania. He was of the truest nobility: he was a noble-minded man. Prince Alexius, whom you met at Baden-Baden, was his son, Frau Gräfin."

"I remember," she answered, in a low voice.

"Well," he continued, "the young Polish Jew, who knew Lessing, and delighted in Schiller's poetry, awakened his sympathy. He gave me the means of studying. The ancient world was now revealed to me in the books to which I had access at college. I saw it in all its cheerful light-heartedness, and also in its thoughtfulness and depth. But that was not the kind of knowledge for which I thirsted. I then made natural science my principal study. My researches were all confined to the realm of matter. At length the need of leading a practically active life grew more and more apparent to me. The fire of youth had begun to smolder; I gave up trying to raise the veil of Isis, and endeavoring to discover the reason of every natural phenomenon. I became a doctor, and I can now say that I made a reputation for skill in my profession. I had changed my name. David Blum would have had many stumbling-blocks and disagreeables in his path that Friedrich Reimann was spared. I did not change my religion with my name—from habit, if you like—for I was indifferent to every form of dogmatic religion.

"My practice increased, and I became one of the first physicians in the northern seaport town where I had settled. Then old Prince Sugatscheff was taken ill in Paris, and sent for me. It was his last illness. Before his death, he entreated me to be a faithful friend to his young son, and to accompany him everywhere as his private physician until I thought him capable of taking care of himself, and of withstanding the temptations of the great world. I gave him the promise that destroyed my own career; but he was the only man who had felt a real friendship for me, and he was the only one whom I loved next to my mother.

"I discovered the whole responsibility and painfulness of my position very soon after his death. Prince Alexius was a light-minded and depraved, if not absolutely bad man. I did my duty without caring whether it made him dislike me or not; he respected me at least. It was a time of great anxiety and trouble; one thing alone sustained me, and that was the consciousness of having done my duty. Then we went to Baden-Baden, where I made your acquaintance, Frau Gräfin...."

She had until now listened to him with bent head, but at these words she fixed her eyes upon his face, as though awaiting a sentence of life or death. And he continued, with a slight quiver in his voice:

"I will not attempt to recall the events of that happy time to your memory. I loved you with all my heart and soul, and I know that you loved me. If it is any comfort to you to know it, let me tell you that I never doubted your love for me, even at the moment when you wounded me most deeply. But there is one thing I ought to tell you, and that is why I did not then inform you of all that you now know. I did not conceal it from any false shame about my past or my religion, but simply because I never thought of it. You were my first love, and my sad restless heart found rest and happiness in you. I shall always be grateful to you for that short time of unalloyed happiness. First love knows nothing of the past, and does not look forward to the future. The German poet was right when he wrote, 'First love does not know that it must die, as a child does not know what death is, although it may often hear of it.' My love was so great that I did not guess that your love might change when you learned that a Jewish mother had borne me, and that I had been a poor Talmudist. It was not because you were the Gräfin Jadwiga Bortynska that I loved you, but because you were you—a noble high-minded woman, whose heart beat in response to mine. I could never have felt a different kind of love than this, for the experience of life had made me grave and proud. What separates us now, and must separate us for ever, is that you were not what I thought you, that you could not rise above the prejudices of your station—it is that, and that alone....