Thus Ezrielk became a trader. He began driving to fairs, and traded in anything and everything capable of being bought or sold.
Six months were not over before Ezrielk was out of pocket. He mortgaged his property, and with the money thus obtained he opened a grocery shop for Channehle. He himself (nothing satisfies a Jew!) started to drive about in the neighborhood, to collect the contributions subscribed for the maintenance of the Hostre Rebbe, long life to him!
Ezrielk was five months on the road, and when, torn, worn, and penniless, he returned home, he found Channehle brought to bed of her fourth child, and the shop bare of ware and equally without a groschen. But Ezrielk was now something of a trader, and is there any strait in which a Jewish trader has not found himself? Ezrielk had soon disposed of the whole of his property, paid his debts, rented a larger lodging, and started trading in several new and more ambitious lines: he pickled gherkins, cabbages, and pumpkins, made beet soup, both red and white, and offered them for sale, and so on. It was Channehle again who had to carry on most of the business, but, then, Ezrielk did not sit with his hands in his pockets. Toward Passover he had Shmooreh Matzes; he baked and sold them to the richest householders in Kamenivke, and before the Solemn Days he, as an expert, tried and recommended cantors and prayer-leaders for the Kamenivke Shools. When it came to Tabernacles, he trafficked in citrons and "palms."
For three years Ezrielk and his Channehle struggled at their trades, working themselves nearly to death (of Zion's enemies be it spoken!), till, with the help of Heaven, they came to be twenty years old.
By this time Ezrielk and Channehle were the parents of four living and two dead children. Channehle, the once so lovely Channehle, looked like a beaten Hoshanah, and Ezrielk—you remember the picture drawn at the time of his wedding?—well, then try to imagine what he was like now, after those seven years we have described for you! It's true that he was not spitting blood any more, either because Reb Yainkel had been right, when he said that would pass away, or because there was not a drop of blood in the whole of his body.
So that was all right—only, how were they to live? Even Reb Yainkel and all the Hostre Chassidim together could not tell him!
The singing had raised him and lifted him off his feet, and let him fall. And do you know why it was and how it was that everything Ezrielk took to turned out badly? It was because the singing was always there, in his head and his heart. He prayed and studied, singing. He bought and sold, singing. He sang day and night. No one heard him, because he was hoarse, but he sang without ceasing. Was it likely he would be a successful trader, when he was always listening to what Heaven and earth and everything around him were singing, too? He only wished he could have been a slaughterer or a Rav (he was apt enough at study), only, first, Rabbonim and slaughterers don't die every day, and, second, they usually leave heirs to take their places; third, even supposing there were no such heirs, one has to pay "privilege-money," and where is it to come from? No, there was nothing to be done. Only God could and must have pity on him and his wife and children, and help them somehow.
Ezrielk struggled and fought his need hard enough those days. One good thing for him was this—his being a Hostre Chossid; the Hostre Chassidim, although they have been famed from everlasting as the direst poor among the Jews, yet they divide their last mouthful with their unfortunate brethren. But what can the gifts of mortal men, and of such poor ones into the bargain, do in a case like Ezrielk's? And God alone knows what bitter end would have been his, if Reb Shmuel Bär, the Kabtzonivke scribe, had not just then (blessed be the righteous Judge!) met with a sudden death. Our Ezrielk was not long in feeling that he, and only he, should, and, indeed, must, step into Reb Shmuel's shoes. Ezrielk had been an expert at the scribe's work for years and years. Why, his father's house and the scribe's had been nearly under one roof, and whenever Ezrielk, as a child, was let out of Cheder, he would go and sit any length of time in Reb Shmuel's room (something in the occupation attracted him) and watch him write. And the little Ezrielk had more than once tried to make a piece of parchment out of a scrap of skin; and what Jewish boy cannot prepare the veins that are used to sew the phylacteries and the scrolls of the Law? Nor was the scribe's ink a secret to Ezrielk.
So Ezrielk became scribe in Kabtzonivke.
Of course, he did not make a fortune. Reb Shmuel Bär, who had been a scribe all his days, died a very poor man, and left a roomful of hungry, half-naked children behind him, but then—what Jew, I ask you (or has Messiah come?), ever expected to find a Parnosseh with enough, really enough, to eat?