As if endowed with clairvoyance and the ability to read my thoughts, he looked at me sharply and said:
"You must not think that I was jealous, not what one understands by that word. Upon my honor, I was not. When I married my wife, Friederike, née Böhm, there was no talk of love between us. We married as all people married then. I had entered Joseph Böhm's business as clerk, and later I married into it, because Böhm could not continue to carry it on alone. He himself came to me and said: 'Simon, if you want to marry my daughter Friederike, we needn't pay a Shadchen, you needn't and I needn't. You know the business. It's gone backward within the last year; but if you look after it, you will advance it again. You know it once was a good business, and I can no longer keep up against the competition of others; but you can.'
"It flattered my ambition that Herr Joseph Böhm, one of the chief wholesale dealers in Silesia, should offer his daughter to me himself, to me, who only three years before had entered his business as a poor, unknown clerk. Simon Eichelkatz, who was Simon Eichelkatz? Born in Tarnow, of poor, decent folk, I came to Reissnitz and made my fortune there. Just think! The son-in-law of Joseph Böhm! Such a thing had never been! But to become a son-in-law you must have a wife; and I took Friederike Böhm, who was aristocratically brought up, and could speak French."
To-day it particularly struck me what it was that so peculiarly characterized his manner of narrating. As soon as he spoke about personal matters or told stories of the Khille, he fell into the jargon and the intonation of the Jews of former times.[*] But when he dealt with generalities and gave expression to ideas and speculations, his speech acquired a swing, his expressions became almost choice, and the form scarcely ever detracted from the matter. He grew, as it were, beyond his own bounds; and I thought I saw before me not a simple old Jew, but a sage.
[*] The translator has found it impossible to convey this subtle distinction in English. It shows itself in the German by slightly mispronouncing words, for instance, Leit instead of Leute; using ä instead of the article ein (an), and very slightly changing the correct order of the words.
"What did they know at that time of such notions? They harnessed two human beings together and said, Now see how you get along with each other." A shadow flitted over his countenance, usually so mild.
"And yet," I interposed, "Jewish marriages as a whole were seldom unfortunate."
"That was because husband and wife were confined to their own homes, their children, and at most to their Mishpocheh. Nothing strange, from the outside, came to disturb them. Life passed in the closest relation of two human beings. Nowadays it's different. But if it happened to be different in my time, it was a calamity—and it was a calamity that Frau Friederike Eichelkatz, née Böhm, had learned to speak French. During the first year things went pretty well. To be sure, even then she spoke scornfully of having married an uneducated man, who knew nothing but whether cloths were bad or good, who could tell at the first glance whether a piece of cloth came from Cottbus or from Brünn, whether it was manufactured in Germany or in England, whether the woof was wool or thread, and whether the wool was pure or mixed. All this was of value in business, but not in marriage. Marriage requires other knowledge to create happiness. And when my wife would ask me so mockingly: 'Do you suppose anyone in Tarnow knows French?' I had enough for a whole week.
"But I always answered back; and that's what made the trouble. I didn't have peace and quiet until I realized that it's best not to say a word, not one word. By the time I found this out it was too late. I believe, Herr Doktor, one always is too old by the time one learns sense. It doesn't do yourself any good any more, and the young folk want to get their own foolish experiences. And so it's really no use to get sensible."
"How can you say anything like that, Herr Eichelkatz? Haven't I the pleasure of listening to so many experiences of yours which interest me and give me food for thought? Don't your stories of the congregation give me a picture which is significant to everyone who loves his people, loves them faithfully and with sorrow at the heart? Besides, wasn't it through the events and incidents of your life that you arrived, whether early or late, at that state of peace and calm which beautifies your old age?"