He grows calmer, reads the manuscript poems, and his face tells that he is pleased. Now he wants to collect his thoughts for the new one, but something or other hinders him. He unfastens the girdle, round his waist, rolls it up, and throws it into the Rav's soft stuffed chair.
And now that there is nothing to disturb from without, a second and third wonder must take place within: the Rav's Torah, which was transformed by Sholem's brain into a theme for romance, must now descend into his heart, thence to pour itself onto the paper, and pass, by this means, into the heads of Sholem's friends, who read his poems with enthusiasm, and have sinful dreams afterwards at night.
And he begins to imagine himself on his death-bed, sick and weak, unable to speak, and with staring eyes. He sees nothing more, but he feels a light, ethereal kiss on his cheek, and his soul is aware of a sweet voice speaking. He tries to take out his hands from under the coverlet, but he cannot—he is dying—it grows dark.
A still brighter and more unusual gleam comes into Sholem's eyes, his heart swells with emotion seeking an outlet, his brain works like running machinery, a whole dictionary of words, his whole treasure of conceptions and ideas, is turned over and over so rapidly that the mind is unconscious of its own efforts. His poetic instinct is searching for what it needs. His hand works quietly, forming letter on letter, word on word. Now and again Sholem lifts his eyes from the paper and looks round, he has a feeling as though the four walls and the silence were thinking to themselves: "Hush, hush! Disturb not the poet at his work of creation! Disturb not the priest about to offer sacrifice to God."
To the Rav, meanwhile, lying in the other room, there had come a fresh idea for the exposition of the Torah, and he required to look up something in a book. The door of the reception-room opened, the Rav entered, and Sholem had not heard him.
It was a pity to see the Rav's face, it was so contracted with dismay, and a pity to see Sholem's when he caught sight of his father, who, utterly taken aback, dropt into a seat exactly opposite Sholem, and gave a groan—was it? or a cry?
But he did not sit long, he did not know what one should do or say to one's son on such an occasion; his heart and his eyes inclined to weeping, and he retired into his own room. Sholem remained alone with a very sore heart and a soul opprest. He put the writing-materials back into their box, and went out with the manuscript verses tucked away under his Tallis-koton.
He went into the house-of-study, but it looked dreadfully dismal; the benches were pushed about anyhow, a sign that the last worshippers had been in a great hurry to go home to dinner. The beadle was snoring on a seat somewhere in a corner, as loud and as fast as if he were trying to inhale all the air in the building, so that the next congregation might be suffocated. The cloth on the platform reading-desk was crooked and tumbled, the floor was dirty, and the whole place looked as dead as though its Sabbath sleep were to last till the resurrection.
He left the house-of-study, walked home and back again; up and down, there and back, many times over. The situation became steadily clearer to him; he wanted to justify himself, if only with a word, in his father's eyes; then, again, he felt he must make an end, free himself once and for all from the paternal restraint, and become a Jewish author. Only he felt sorry for his father; he would have liked to do something to comfort him. Only what? Kiss him? Put his arms round his neck? Have his cry out before him and say, "Tatishe, you and I, we are neither of us to blame!" Only how to say it so that the old man shall understand? That is the question.
And the Rav sat in his room, bent over a book in which he would fain have lost himself. He rubbed his brow with both hands, but a stone lay on his heart, a heavy stone; there were tears in his eyes, and he was all but crying. He needed some living soul before whom he could pour out the bitterness of his heart, and he had already turned to the Rebbetzin: