BONTZYE SHWEIG[35]
(BONTZYE THE SILENT)
DOWN here, in this world, Silent Bontzye’s death made no impression at all. Ask any one you like who Bontzye was, how he lived, and what he died of; whether of heart failure, or whether his strength gave out, or whether his back broke under a heavy load, and they won’t know. Perhaps, after all, he died of hunger.
Bontzye lived quietly and died quietly. He passed through our world like a shadow. He lived like a little dun-coloured grain of sand on the sea-shore, among millions of his kind; and when the wind lifted him and blew him over to the other side of the sea, nobody noticed it. When he was alive, the mud in the street preserved no impression of his feet; after his death the wind overturned the little board on his grave. The grave-digger’s wife found it a long way off from the spot, and boiled a potful of potatoes over it. Three days after that, the grave-digger had forgotten where he had laid him.
A shadow! His likeness remained photographed in nobody’s brain, in nobody’s heart; not a trace of him remained.
‘No kith, no kin!’ He lived and died alone.
Had the world been less busy, some one might have remarked that Bontzye (also a human being) went about with two extinguished eyes and fearfully hollow cheeks; that even when he had no load on hisshoulders his head drooped earthward as though, while yet alive, he were looking for his grave. When they carried Bontzye into the hospital, his corner in the underground lodging was soon filled—there were ten of his like waiting for it, and they put it up for auction among themselves. When they carried him from the hospital bed to the dead-house, there were twenty poor sick persons waiting for the bed. When he had been taken out of the dead-house, they brought in twenty bodies from under a building that had fallen in. Who knows how long he will rest in his grave? Who knows how many are waiting for the little plot of ground?
A quiet birth, a quiet life, a quiet death, and a quieter burial.
But it was not so in the Other World. There Bontzye’s death made a great impression.
The blast of the great Messianic Shofar sounded through all the seven heavens; Bontzye Shweig has left the earth! The largest angels with the broadest wings flew about and told one another; Bontzye Shweig is to take his seat in the Heavenly Academy! In Paradise there was a noise and a joyful tumult: Bontzye Shweig! Just fancy! Bontzye Shweig!