The Jews of Barnow: Stories

by Karl Emil Franzos

The last time that I went there was on a beautiful, still autumn day. The sunshine was brightening the landscape, and the only sound to be heard was the faint crackling of the withered leaves on the bushes by the wayside. I followed the winding path that ran through the fields and gardens. I was alone, but I knew the place so well that I did not need to ask my way; for I always go there when I revisit my old home, and every year I become more attached to it. Every year the number of acquaintances to whom it leads me grows more numerous; indeed, the day will soon come when none of them will be found in the little town, for all will be there....

It was the "good place" to which I was going; and as this is the only place to which neither the Pole's whip nor the covetous hand of the wonder-working rabbi can reach, the name is a good one. Here each poor soul is freed from the double ban—and who can count its victims?—that ground him down, and stifled the good that was in him. He is delivered alike from outward humiliation and from the dark night of ignorance. None of these people could have been called really happy until they died. Then, it is true, they know nothing about it, but they feel that it must be so even while they are alive; so they have given their burial-ground the beautiful name of the "good place," and take care to make it as fair to look upon as they can. It never occurs to the Eastern Jews to plant trees or sow annuals there; but the fresh green grass is allowed to cover the graves, and blossoming elders grow by every headstone. Their burial-ground was the only bit of land these people were allowed to possess until a few years ago!...

The "good place" at Barnow is as sweet a spot as is to be found anywhere. I have already described what it was like in late spring when the elders were in blossom, filling the air with a perfume that was almost too powerful, and when the red and purple berries were beginning to show among the leaves. In autumn the bushes are shorn of much of their former beauty, but they are pleasant to look at even then in their own way. The air in September is so wonderfully clear and bright, and the autumnal tints are so vivid, that they lend the somewhat uninteresting landscape a beauty of their own. The moor is never a cheerful place, and it looks more calm and solemn than ever in autumn; but not triste—the heather glows with too deep a red, and the foliage of the limes fades into too soft a yellow for that. Here and there a pond may be seen with its dark, clear waters. Any one going to the burial-ground through country such as this, can not fail, I think, to be impressed with its quiet beauty. But perhaps I am not a good judge of that; perhaps one must have been born in a moorland country to be able to appreciate it....

The "good place" lies on a hill, from which one has an extensive view on all sides. From thence one can see ten ponds, hard by which some villages are situated, whose houses, roofed with brown thatch, resemble collections of bee-hives; and finally, at the foot of the hill is the town, which has a very respectable appearance from there, although, in reality, it is neither more nor less than a wretchedly dirty hole. One is able to breathe more freely when enjoying such an extensive view, such a wide horizon-line. For to east, north, and south the only limit is the sky, and on gray days the same is the case to the west. But when the air is clear and bright, one can see what looks like a curiously-shaped blue-gray bank of cloud on the western horizon. On seeing it for the first time one is inclined to believe that a storm is brewing there. But the cloud neither increases nor decreases in size, and though its outline may seem to shift now and then, it stands fast for ever—it is the Carpathian range of mountains....

But it is beautiful close to where one is standing also. It is true that the queer, twisted branches of the elders are now leafless and bare of blossom and fruit, but they are interlaced with a delicate network of spiders' webs that tremble and glow with prismatic colors in the sunlight. Their deep-red leaves cover the graves, and between the hillocks are flowering asters. The graves are well cared for; the Jewish people have a great reverence for the majesty of Death.

To the Jews, Death is a mighty and somewhat stern ruler, who is kindly disposed to poor humanity, and draws them to him in mercy. These people do not like to die, but death is easier and pleasanter to them than to others, for their belief in immortality is more absolute than that of any other nation. This belief is not merely founded on self-love, but on love to God. Is not God all-just? and where would be His justice if He did not requite them in the other world for all the misery heaped upon them while they lived on earth? And yet they cling to this earth, and regard all the blessedness of heaven as a state of transition, a preparation and foretaste of the fuller blessedness of earth after the coming of the Messiah. It is therefore serving God to bury the dead. It is therefore serving God to tend the graves of those who are gone. Even the oldest and most weather-beaten gravestone is propped up and steadied by some great-grandson, or perhaps one who was no blood relation of the deceased, and who was only moved to do it because the sleeper had once been a man like himself who had felt the joys and sorrows of humanity. He was a Jew, and he should find his resting-place in order when the trumpet should sound. Some people may look upon this belief as ludicrous, but I could never feel it so....

One's heart and mind are full of many thoughts as one wanders up the hill between the rows of graves. I do not mean those eternal questions which one generation inherits as a legacy of torment from those that have preceded it, and to which only fools suppose they can give an adequate answer. Verily, we all hope for such an answer, for we are all fools, poor fools, with an eternal bandage covering our eyes, and an eternal thirst for knowledge filling our spirits. But why touch unnecessarily on such deep subjects? I mean questions of a different kind from these. Whoever, for example, walks through that part of the cemetery where the hill slopes down gently to the plain below, near the river, can not help thinking of the evil consequences of two Polish nobles determining to show themselves humane at the same time. On four hundred headstones the same year is chiseled as the date of death—the same year, the same day, the same hour—it is an unspeakable history. Wet? no! drowned in blood and tears! And it all came from a contemporaneous desire for the exercise of the virtue of humanity! During the time that the Polish kings had power in the land, the Jagellons protected the Jews, who paid them tribute in return. But as the royal authority became of less and less account—still existent, more because it refused to die than because any remnant of power remained to it—the Waywodes, and in the flat land the Starosts, snatched at the chance of taking the Jews under their protection; they were one and all so filled to overflowing with the milk of human kindness. A large and rich Jewish community lived in Barnow, so it was regarded as doing God good service to take care of so great a number of men who were capable of paying considerable taxes with ease. Two Starosts—those of Tulste and of Old Barnow—drew up in battle array, one at each side of the town, and each sent a message to the following effect to the Jewish community: "If you do not choose me as your protector, I shall at once put you and your possessions to fire and sword." The unfortunate Jews had not much time granted them in which to deliberate; they quickly gathered together all the ready money that they could, and bought the protection of both. This conduct brought down further misfortunes upon the poor people. The Starosts were both philanthropists, and both wished to fulfill the duty they had undertaken. Neither trusted the other with a work of such importance, and each determined to put his rival to the proof; so the Starost of Old Barnow began to murder and plunder the Jews at one end of the town, and then waited to see whether the other would do his duty and protect his protégés. But, unfortunately, his rival was equally determined to try the worth of his promises, and had been doing exactly the same at the other end. Thus neither gained his object. Good men seldom attain what they strive for! The terrible carnage lasted for three days and three nights....

The mild autumn sunshine falls as softly on the graves of these murdered people as elsewhere, and the asters are larger and more perfect between these closely massed hillocks; the grasshoppers chirp merrily in the grass and moss that cover them, and the autumn threads spun by the busy spider wave to and fro in the gentle breeze. Peace and quiet reign here also—a peace as restful as in any other part of the "good place;" and yet it seems to me as though a sudden cry must arise from these graves, as though a piercing, agonized cry must break the stillness of all around; and that cry would not be one of mourning, but of accusation, and not alone of the Starosts of Tulste and Old Barnow....

There are many other graves besides these that bear the same date ... those, for instance, that were filled in the days when a Czartoryski hunted the Jews because there was so little game left in the neighborhood. And then, again, in this very century, in those three terrible summers when the wrath of God—the cholera—raged throughout the great plain. Grass makes more resistance against the scythe than these people did, in their narrow pestiferous streets, against the great plague. The graves are innumerable, and the field in which they lie is a very large one; but the community now living in Barnow is much smaller than one would think on seeing the cemetery. But the very poorest creature who is given a resting-place and headstone there, has it in perpetuity; none will disturb his rest until, as they say, the last trumpet sounds....

The headstone on every grave is of the same shape. No eccentric monumental tablets are to be seen, and no artistically carved figure is represented on any of the gravestones—the Jewish faith forbids all such adornments. The only difference in these stones lies in the fact that those of the poor are small, and those of the rich large; that the inscription on the poor man's headstone shows him to have been an honest man, and that on the rich man's makes him out to have been the noblest man who ever lived—that is all; for even the arrangement of the inscription is strictly ordained in the Talmodim. The insignia of the tribe is put first, then the name of the deceased, followed by those of his parents, and after that his occupation in life. Sometimes this last is passed over in silence, for "usurer" or "informer" would not look well upon a tomb, to say nothing of worse things. In such cases the friends content themselves with putting, "He was indefatigable in the study of his religion, and loved his children"—and, as a rule, this was true.