I pushed a coin into his hand, and he went away. Meanwhile the news had spread, my intention to purchase earth of Palestine had been noised abroad, and the little town echoed with my name. In the streets, lanes, and market-place, the talk was all of me and of how "there is no putting a final value on a Jewish soul: one thought he was one of them, and now he wants to buy earth of Palestine!" Many of those who met me looked at me askance, "The same and not the same!" In the synagogue they gave me the best turn at the Reading of the Law; Jews in shoes and socks wished me "a good Sabbath" with great heartiness, and a friendly smile: "Eh-eh-eh! We understand—you are a deep one—you are one of us after all." In short, they surrounded me, and nearly carried me on their shoulders, so that I really became something of a celebrity.
Yüdel, the "living orphan," worked the hardest. Yüdel is already a man in years, but everyone calls him the "orphan" on account of what befell him on a time. His history is very long and interesting, I will tell it you in brief.
He has a very distinguished father and a very noble mother, and he is an only child, of a very frolicsome disposition, on account of which his father and his mother frequently disagreed; the father used to punish him and beat him, but the boy hid with his mother. In a word, it came to this, that his father gave him into the hands of strangers, to be educated and put into shape. The mother could not do without him, and fell sick of grief; she became a wreck. Her beautiful house was burnt long ago through the boy's doing: one day, when a child, he played with fire, and there was a conflagration, and the neighbors came and built on the site of her palace, and she, the invalid, lies neglected in a corner. The father, who has left the house, often wished to rejoin her, but by no manner of means can they live together without the son, and so the cast-off child became a "living orphan"; he roams about in the wide world, comes to a place, and when he has stayed there a little while, they drive him out, because wherever he comes, he stirs up a commotion. As is the way with all orphans, he has many fathers, and everyone directs him, hits him, lectures him; he is always in the way, blamed for everything, it's always his fault, so that he has got into the habit of cowering and shrinking at the mere sight of a stick. Wandering about as he does, he has copied the manners and customs of strange people, in every place where he has been; his very character is hardly his own. His father has tried both to threaten and to persuade him into coming back, saying they would then all live together as before, but Yüdel has got to like living from home, he enjoys the scrapes he gets into, and even the blows they earn for him. No matter how people knock him about, pull his hair, and draw his blood, the moment they want him to make friendly advances, there he is again, alert and smiling, turns the world topsyturvy, and won't hear of going home. It is remarkable that Yüdel, who is no fool, and has a head for business, the instant people look kindly on him, imagines they like him, although he has had a thousand proofs to the contrary. He has lately been of such consequence in the eyes of the world that they have begun to treat him in a new way, and they drive him out of every place at once. The poor boy has tried his best to please, but it was no good, they knocked him about till he was covered with blood, took every single thing he had, and empty-handed, naked, hungry, and beaten as he is, they shout at him "Be off!" from every side. Now he lives in narrow streets, in the small towns, hidden away in holes and corners. He very often hasn't enough to eat, but he goes on in his old way, creeps into tight places, dances at all the weddings, loves to meddle, everything concerns him, and where two come together, he is the third.
I have known him a long time, ever since he was a little boy. He always struck me as being very wild, but I saw that he was of a noble disposition, only that he had grown rough from living among strangers. I loved him very much, but in later years he treated me to hot and cold by turns. I must tell you that when Yüdel had eaten his fill, he was always very merry, and minded nothing; but when he had been kicked out by his landlord, and went hungry, then he was angry, and grew violent over every trifle. He would attack me for nothing at all, we quarrelled and parted company, that is, I loved him at a distance. When he wasn't just in my sight, I felt a great pity for him, and a wish to go to him; but hardly had I met him than he was at the old game again, and I had to leave him. Now that I was together with him in my native place, I found him very badly off, he hadn't enough to eat. The town was small and poor, and he had no means of supporting himself. When I saw him in his bitter and dark distress, my heart went out to him. But at such times, as I said before, he is very wild and fanatical. One day, on the Ninth of Ab, I felt obliged to speak out, and tell him that sitting in socks, with his forehead on the ground, reciting Lamentations, would do no good. Yüdel misunderstood me, and thought I was laughing at Jerusalem. He began to fire up, and he spread reports of me in the town, and when he saw me in the distance, he would spit out before me. His anger dated from some time past, because one day I turned him out of my house; he declared that I was the cause of all his misfortunes, and now that I was his neighbor, I had resolved to ruin him; he believed that I hated him and played him false. Why should Yüdel think that? I don't know. Perhaps he feels one ought to dislike him, or else he is so embittered that he cannot believe in the kindly feelings of others. However that may be, Yüdel continued to speak ill of me, and throw mud at me through the town; crying out all the while that I hadn't a scrap of Jewishness in me.
Now that he heard I was buying Palestinian earth, he began by refusing to believe it, and declared it was a take-in and the trick of an apostate, for how could a person who laughed at socks on the Ninth of Ab really want to buy earth of Palestine? But when he saw the green shawls and the little bags of earth, he went over—a way he has—to the opposite, the exact opposite. He began to worship me, couldn't praise me enough, and talked of me in the back streets, so that the women blessed me aloud. Yüdel was now much given to my company, and often came in to see me, and was most intimate, although there was no special piousness about me. I was just the same as before, but Yüdel took this for the best of signs, and thought it proved me to be of extravagant hidden piety.
"There's a Jew for you!" he would cry aloud in the street. "Earth of Palestine! There's a Jew!"
In short, he filled the place with my Jewishness and my hidden orthodoxy. I looked on with indifference, but after a while the affair began to cost me both time and money.
The Palestinian beggars and, above all, Yüdel and the townsfolk obtained for me the reputation of piety, and there came to me orthodox Jews, treasurers, cabalists, beggar students, and especially the Rebbe's followers; they came about me like bees. They were never in the habit of avoiding me, but this was another thing all the same. Before this, when one of the Rebbe's disciples came, he would enter with a respectful demeanor, take off his hat, and, sitting in his cap, would fix his gaze on my mouth with a sweet smile; we both felt that the one and only link between us lay in the money that I gave and he took. He would take it gracefully, put it into his purse, as it might be for someone else, and thank me as though he appreciated my kindness. When I went to see him, he would place a chair for me, and give me preserve. But now he came to me with a free and easy manner, asked for a sip of brandy with a snack to eat, sat in my room as if it were his own, and looked at me as if I were an underling, and he had authority over me; I am the penitent sinner, it is said, and that signifies for him the key to the door of repentance; I have entered into his domain, and he is my lord and master; he drinks my health as heartily as though it were his own, and when I press a coin into his hand, he looks at it well, to make sure it is worth his while accepting it. If I happen to visit him, I am on a footing with all his followers, the Chassidim; his "trustees," and all his other hangers-on, are my brothers, and come to me when they please, with all the mud on their boots, put their hand into my bosom and take out my tobacco-pouch, and give it as their opinion that the brandy is weak, not to talk of holidays, especially Purim and Rejoicing of the Law, when they troop in with a great noise and vociferation, and drink and dance, and pay as much attention to me as to the cat.
In fact, all the townsfolk took the same liberties with me. Before, they asked nothing of me, and took me as they found me, now they began to demand things of me and to inquire why I didn't do this, and why I did that, and not the other. Shmuelke the bather asked me why I was never seen at the bath on Sabbath. Kalmann the butcher wanted to know why, among the scape-fowls, there wasn't a white one of mine; and even the beadle of the Klaus, who speaks through his nose, and who had never dared approach me, came and insisted on giving me the thirty-nine stripes on the eve of the Day of Atonement: "Eh-eh, if you are a Jew like other Jews, come and lie down, and you shall be given stripes!"
And the Palestinian Jews never ceased coming with their bags of earth, and I never ceased rejecting. One day there came a broad-shouldered Jew from "over there," with his bag of Palestinian earth. The earth pleased me, and a conversation took place between us on this wise: