Nathan Silberstein was a man of irreproachable character. He was a fine-looking young fellow, honest, straightforward, and intelligent, and knew the Talmud as well as he knew his trade. As he was to be a merchant, his father had had him taught High German. With the help of his teacher he learned reading and writing, and waded through a "complete letter-writer," and a "complete index of German municipal law." These two books were supposed to represent his German library; but hidden in his bookcase, under great Hebrew folios, was one other little German book. On Saturday afternoons, when he went to spend his holiday in the park, he took this little volume in his pocket. He read it in a solitary corner where the green leaves rustled around him, and at these times he felt something within him moving in sympathy with the poetry, of which he was unconscious during the rest of the week. Perhaps it was his heart beating. On the back of the book the title was written in gilt letters, "Schiller's Poems."
When his father told him he had chosen him a wife, and who she was to be, his heart was untouched. He answered dutifully, "As you will, father;" but the color left his face as he spoke. The girl was as obedient to her father as he was to his, only she blushed instead of turning pale when she heard the name of her future husband.
The betrothal took place, and three months later they were married.
In the interval, Nathan gave his fiancée presents of costly pearls and precious stones; and she embroidered a robe in gold and silver for him to wear in the synagogue. Their conversations were always on indifferent subjects. They did not talk of themselves or their future life, and they did not talk of the past; for though they had been neighbors all their lives, they had no mutual recollections.
The marriage was solemnized with great pomp and ceremony: wine flowed liberally, mountains of meat and confectionery were consumed, and the best musicians and merry-andrews enlivened the guests. The young people then took up their abode in the large roomy house opposite the Dominican monastery, which Manasse had prepared for his son. They led a busy life; their days were spent in labor, and they lived on pleasant friendly terms with one another. They were both good and well-disposed, and as they had never expected their married life to be spent in an earthly paradise, they were not disappointed. Custom, a common occupation, and mutual respect bound them to each other. Time passed uneventfully until the end of the first year, when a child was born, and the young father again felt his heart beat as it had not done for a long time. The infant only survived its birth a few weeks, and grief brought the young couple into closer sympathy than before. Old Manasse died about the same time, and the whole responsibility of the business fell upon their shoulders. Nathan had to go away on long journeys, and Chane became a trustworthy stewardess of the great house. She learned to read and write German, so as to be able to help her husband in the business, while his personal comforts were her ceaseless care. He had the greatest esteem for her, and brought her many presents from Lemberg and Czernowitz. They were contented with their lot, and were happy enough.
Happy enough—why were they not quite happy?
Because they did not love one another. They knew nothing of love except that Christians, previous to marriage, fell in love; and what concern had a Jew in Christian usages?
They were happy enough, and their married life seemed firmly founded on esteem for each other, and on their common interests and work; but the storms of passion were to shake the structure to its base, and after throwing it down, were to carry them onward to grief and pain.
Barnow is a very small town, a squalid nook in a God-forgotten corner of the earth, where the great current of life hardly seems to cause the faintest ripple—but it has its casino. This is only a modest little room in the court behind Nathan's shop, containing two tables and a few chairs. Nathan had opened it for the use of his principal customers. Here the officials and magnates of Barnow are accustomed to drink their morning glasses and discuss politics; and if their wives allow them, they do the same again in the evening. The high-born Florian von Bolwinski, a squire without land, and a bachelor, drinks not only his morning and evening glasses in this room, but sundry others also, filling up the intervals with expeditions to make love to a cook, or squeeze a Jew, or execute some important business. The former district judge, Herr Hippolyt Lozinski, had been a constant customer; and the little room did him one good service in giving him a red nose, which was a fine contrast to his yellow complexion. When the red deepened to ruby color he died, rather to the delight of the district, and to the grief of his many admirers. Frau Kasimira retired to the estate of the Von Cybulskies, a small, heavily mortgaged farmhouse near Tarnopol; and the new district judge, Herr Julko von Negrusz, took up his residence in the first floor of the white house. He took the place of his predecessor at the casino also, but without frequenting it so continually as he had been used to do.