Part 13

"I determined to make an end of it--to give up the match-making, grow rich, and sit and study. _Aï_--how does one grow rich? I wrote to the brother-in-law of my first wife, to the treasurer, and asked him for God's sake to tell me when next there was a circumcision.

"I got a message before the month was out, and hastened to Vorke. I stop nowhere, but go straight to the Rebbe."

"And--a larger manure heap?" laughs the Maskil. The narrator gives him a vicious look.

"The Vorke Tsaddik," he said, "went in for ritual cleanliness, his whole religion was ritual cleanliness."

"Only see," remarked the Maskil, "how he looks at me! Rascal! When you came here first, who helped you? A Vorke Chossid? or perhaps your cousin the Tsaddik? or was it I? _ha!_ You would have died of hunger long ago if it hadn't been for me!"

And he turns to me:

"And what do you suppose he is now? He teaches my children, and if I were to take them away from him, he would have no Parnosseh left!... not a crust of bread...."

The other stands silent with downcast eyes.

The Maskil disgusts me more and more, although he made a sign to me with his eyes a little while ago, to the effect that he had exerted himself on my behalf, and with his hands, that to-morrow there will be taking of notes.

I turn to the other:

"Well, my friend?"

"See for yourself," says he to the Maskil, "our note-taker is more of a Maskil than you, on the face of him, and _he_ doesn't make game of things ... one might say, on the contrary. Rambam[80] (lehavdîl) did not believe in magic ... but at any rate, he answers seriously ... a Jew should have manners ... to make fun of things is not fair ... man, it cuts to the heart!"

"Well, well," says the Maskil, more gently, "let us have the rest!"

"I will make it short," says the poor Jew. "I come in without a ticket of admission, nothing to speak for me, without even a money-offering, but that would have been no help at such a time, only his face was terrible! My feet shook under me! I stood there without opening my mouth. He, may his merits protect us, took great strides up and down.

"Suddenly he saw me and gave a roar like a lion.

"'What do you want?'

"I was more terrified than ever and scarcely answered:

"'Riches!'

"It seemed as though the Rebbe had not quite understood.

"'Riches?' he asked, and his voice was like thunder.

"'If only ... Parnosseh!' I answer in a lower tone.

"'What, Parnosseh!' he cried as before.

"'Only not to die of hunger!'

"The Rebbe hurried up and down, stopped suddenly and asked:

"'What else?'

"I thought I should drop dead! It seemed to me (I don't know, but it seemed to me) as if someone else, and not I, had control of my tongue, and it replied:

"'I want Yòsef to be a learned man!'

"'What besides?' I hardly escaped alive, and he, may his merits protect us, died the following week.

"Well? What lay between me and the riches? A hair's breadth! it was my own fault. If I had stood up to him and kept to it! Well!"

"At least," I inquire, "is your son learned?"

"He _would_ have been," he replies in a broken voice, "only he won't learn ... even a Rebbe can't help that ... he _won't_ learn--what can one do?"

"And the moral," interposes the Maskil, "is that one shouldn't keep rubbish heaps under the window, that you can do nothing without money, and, above all, that one shouldn't be frightened of any Rebbe!"

In one second the livid-faced Jew had flushed scarlet, his eyes shot fire, his person lengthened, and the room resounded with two slaps received by the Maskil.

* * * * *

I fear that his first request will equally go unfulfilled: he will yet die of hunger.

A LITTLE BOY

The innkeeper's pretty little boy, with his shrugs and pouts, and his curls full of feathers, haunts me.

Now he stands before me with a small onion in his hand, and he cries--he wants two; or I hear him at evening prayer, repeating the Kaddish in his plaintive child-voice, so tearfully earnest that it goes to my very heart. When the Chossid slapped the Maskil, the child turned pale and green with fright, so that I took him by the hand and led him out of the room.

"Come for a walk."

"A walk?" he stammers.

The pale face flushes.

"Do you never go out for a walk?"

"Not now. When my mother, peace be upon her, was alive, she used to take me out walking Sabbaths and holidays. My father, long life to him, says it's better to sit at one's book."

We were already in the long entrance passage. A "Shield of David" shone redly from a lamp some way off. I could not see his face, but the thin little hand trembled as it lay in mine.

We stepped out into the street.

The sky that hung over Tishewitz resembled a dark blue uniform with dim steel buttons.

My companion found it like a curtain[81] sewn with silver spangles.

Perhaps he is dreaming of just such a blue satin "prayer-bag," with spangles, some day to be his own. In five or six years he may receive it as a gift from his bride.

The little town looks quite different by night. The rubbish heaps and the tumbledown houses are hidden in the "poetical and silent lap of darkness."

The windows and door-panes look like great, fiery, purple eyes. By the hearth-sides pots of boiling water must be standing ready for the potatoes or the dumplings.

The statistics give an average annual expenditure of thirty-seven and a half rubles a head--about ten kopeks a day. Now calculate: school fees, two sets of pots and pans, Sabbaths and holidays, an illness, and a wonder-working Rebbe--besides extras. You see now why there is not always a meal cooking, why the dumplings are of buck-wheat without an egg, and why the potatoes are not always eaten with dripping. Many of the houses are stone-blind. In these it is a question of a bit of bread with or without a herring, and perhaps grace without meat. In one of those houses must live the widow who requires so little, beating her hollow chest through the long confession. Perhaps she measures her winding-sheet, or thinks of her wedding dress of long ago with its gold braid, and from her old eyes there drops a tear, and she whispers, smiling, into the night: "After all, what does a Jewess need?"

My motherless companion is thinking of something else. Hopping on one little foot, he lifts his face to the moon, swimming with a silly, aristocratic air in and out of the light clouds.

He sighs. Has he seen a star fall? No.

"_Öi_," he says, "_wollt ich gewollt, Meshiach soll kimmen!_" (How I do wish the Messiah would come!)

"What is the matter?"

"I want the moon to be made bigger again. It is so dreadfully sad about her! She committed a sin, but to suffer so long! It will soon be six thousand years."

Altogether, two requests! one of his earthly father for a second little onion, and one of his Father in Heaven, for the enlargement of the moon.

A wild impulse seized me to say: "Let alone! Your father will soon marry again, you will soon have a step-mother, become a step-child, and have to cry for a bit of bread! Spare the little onion, forget about the moon ..."

It was all I could do to refrain.

We left Tishewitz behind, the spring airs blew toward us from the green fields. He drew me to a tree, we sat down.

He must have sat here, it occurs to me, with his mother. She must have pointed out to him the different things that grew in the narrow plots belonging to the townspeople. He recognizes wheat, rye, potatoes.

And those are briars.

Nobody eats briars, do they?

Donkeys eat briars.

"Why," he asks, "did God make all creatures to eat different things?"

He does not know that if they ate the same, they would be all alike.

THE YARTSEFF RABBI

The Yartseff rabbi is a man who has all that heart desireth. He gets four rubles a week, and that is really more than enough. How? Are they not an old couple without children? He used to be Dayan in a larger town. There also he had four rubles a week, and nearly cut his fingers to bits over dried herring from week's end to week's end.

Here it's different. He goes through his daily fare for my benefit. For breakfast, what shall he say? a little milk-gruel; for dinner, sometimes, half a pound of meat; and in the evening, a glass of hot tea with stale rolls--he really cannot hold more! When one lives in the country, one must follow country customs, and they are much the best!... Dinner in the large towns is a ruination and a misery!... If there should happen not to be any meat for dinner, well, he can afford to wait to eat till supper-time. Sometimes, early in the day, there is a little vegetable soup with dripping--that is how one lives in Yartseff and one does very well. In the large town it was often difficult to get on. Not that _he_ cared! He really doesn't like meat. On week-days it is heavy food; on week-days he likes an onion with a little sour milk, he prefers sour milk even to Purim herbs, it is his nature, but the rebbitzin, she wouldn't look at it (he smiles as he glances at her)--her feelings used to get hurt. It was jealousy! _How_ was that? Well, the Shochet's wife had sausage, and she, the Dayan'te, not so much as a bone--wasn't that humiliating, _ha_? Now he has done with all that; in Yartseff, thank God, they all eat meat every Sabbath and even mutton, and week-days all fare much alike, too. So long as the rebbitzin has no one to envy, it's all right!

"To envy!" throws in the rebbitzin. "I know, I know!" laughs the rabbi's head with the tiny wrinkles, the beard with the soft end quivers, the old eyes grow moister. "I know, it was not the sinful body you were thinking of, but the honor of the Law. Of course, a Shochet sausage and a Dayan--no, that was very wrong! A Dayan is distinctly greater than a Shochet! Well, well, anyhow, here I am quit of all that--where they don't kill for a whole week at a time."

He is still better pleased with the fresh country air. In the large towns, the householders must live in large houses. The rich householders live in the middle; below, in the cellars, and above, in the attics, poor people, including paid officials of the community like himself.

In summer he had felt suffocated there. It went so far that the rebbitzin stole away his snuff-box, so that he might at any rate not stuff snuff up his nose, but she had to give it him back--without snuff he was nowhere; he cannot even sit and read without it; even when not taking any, he must have the root snuff-box to finger while he studies, and even as now, when talking, he would lose the train of his thought and not find suitable words in which to express himself if he had not got it.

What do you think? When he first saw Yartseff with the wide, grass-grown market-place, he would have liked a band to play--and a band _played_! On that day all Kohol was at home, and they came to meet him with chamber-music! And he was charmed by the little, tiny houses, like pieces of root tobacco; there is one walled in, the big one in the centre of the market-place--it is the lord's.

And the stairs he got away from when he left the large town! He is naturally weak in the legs, in another year he would have been without feet! Then--the restfulness of it here!... quiet!... not a dog barks, and the children (lehavdîl) don't shout. There are thirty boys and perhaps six teachers, so they're kept well in hand, not as in the large towns. At Purim and Chanukah, then they shout, yes! they make a fearful noise! But otherwise you don't hear a sound.

Above all, a blessing from His dear Name, there are no quarrels! Two or three Chassidîm with blue fringes,[82] but he prays for their life, because when they die, may it not be for a hundred years, there will be a to-do over their burial.[83] Meanwhile there is peace. The inhabitants of the place are all peddlers or "messengers." Even the artisans do not remain at home, but go and work in the villages, even the Feldscher goes about the district with the "cuppers." Early on Sunday you can see the whole male population coming out of the little houses. Outside the town they take off their boots, hang them upon a stick across their shoulder and start off in all directions. Friday evening they return. Even the Shochet sometimes goes away for a whole week, so when should they find time to quarrel? Sabbath and holidays are the time for disputes, and every now and again they get up a discussion, start a hare ... but it is not their line! The thing halts. People are sleepy and tired.

He just sits and studies. Occasionally (he smiles) there is a dispute--only it is for the honor of God--between him and the Shochet. You understand, it is seldom a ritual question arises. All the week the people use milk dishes, Sabbath--meat dishes. They don't stand at the fire-place together. Questions about the fitness of slaughtered animals happen along once a year! But on that very account, they make the most of it, turn over the whole Talmud, all the codes, and there you have a quarrel. The Shochet is very obstinate and pig-headed, and has a way of shifting his bundle of faults on to other people's shoulders; says, the rabbi is obstinate and pig-headed! Even here he had terrible bother with two things: the yeast and the house, and all (he smiles again) through the rebbitzin. With the yeast it befell in this wise; he had agreed with Kohol for four rubles a week. The previous rabbi got four rubles with the yeast, but they cheated _him_ out of the yeast--he got none!

On the first Great Sabbath he preached a long sermon on leaven at Passover. "The town was beside itself with delight. Everyone knows a good thing, when he hears it, even the most ignorant. I say it is because all the souls were present at Mount Sinai, and there everything was revealed, even what scholars in time to come will deduce from what was explicitly given, so that even when the soul has forgotten, she recognizes whence things are ... and soon the town gave me the yeast.

"Just at the moment I felt a little exultation, for which His dear Name quickly punished me. I had trouble with the yeast! I had disputes to settle all week between the housewives and the rebbitzin; one found her Sabbath loaf too hard, another too heavy, a third said her yeast ran, and people suspected the rebbitzin watered it. What could I do? I hadn't seen her do it, and she said no!

"Well, it was all such nonsense! I can't pass a decision in a case between the rebbitzin and the housewives, and I arbitrate; if they come on Friday, I exchange their loaf for mine, and a whole week I give a little extra yeast for Kliskelech.[84] Altogether a dreadful worry! God be praised, a tailor brought some dried yeast, and there was an end of it."

Then as to the house: he observed the rebbitzin was saving money--let her save! Was it his affair? The children are doing well, but may-be she wishes to buy a present for a grandchild--so be it! He is not much in favor of that himself, but he is not going to fight a woman. Perhaps (he reflects) she means differently; he knows, many prepare for later. He doesn't. He says, Blessed be His Name, day by day! When they die, there will be a winding-sheet, but he does not concern himself about it.

The affair of the yeast was just going on. To cut a long matter short, one day someone told him a fine tale--the rebbitzin had bought some timber. He came home, and sure enough, it was true. She had even engaged some workmen, she was beginning to build a house. What is it? She won't live in lodgings any longer. He interfered no further--let her build! And she built, she took possession, he--he just carried over his Talmud.

"Now, I am a householder, too."

But it was a long way for him to go to the house-of-study.

"Not of you be it said, my feet have grown weak in my old age. I have not many books of my own. They have a rule in the house-of-study not to lend out any book, not to the rabbi, not to any head of the community. When a question arose, I had nothing to lay my hand on. This gave me a deal of trouble.

"But God helped me. There was a fire and several houses were burned down, mine among them. God be praised! The other householders had no great loss; they were insured. I was not, and Kohol, as you see, set aside for me a little corner of the house-of-study."

LYASHTZOF

I arrived in Lyashtzof on a dark summer night, between eleven and twelve o'clock. Another market-place with various buildings and little, walled-in houses round about.

In the middle of the market-place, a collection of large, white stones. I drive nearer--the stones move and grow horns; they become a herd of milk-white goats.

The goats show more sense than the heads of the community of Tishewitz: they are not frightened. One or two out of the whole lot have lifted their heads, looked at us sleepily, and once more turned their attention to the scanty grass of the Gass, and to scratching one the other.

Happy goats! No one calumniates you, _you_ needn't be afraid of statisticians. It is true, people kill you, but what then? Does not everyone die before his time? And as far as troubles go, you certainly have fewer.

I recall what I was told in Tishewitz: "In Lyashtzof you will get on better and faster. The people are sensible, quieter; no one will run after you."

Kohol and the goats seem to be equally admirable; one like the other. But my host, an old friend, is not encouraging. He says it will not be so easy as people think.

"What will you do?" he asks. "Go from house to house?"

"What else?"

"I wish they may be civil."

"Why shouldn't they be?"

"A Jew hates having his money-box opened and the contents counted."

"Why so? Won't the blessing enter in afterwards?"

"No, it isn't that--the misfortune is that the credit will go out."

THE FIRST ATTEMPT

Early in the morning, before the arrival of the beadle, there come some Jews--they want to see the note-taker.

My fame has preceded me.

I make a beginning, and turn to one of them:

"Good morning, friend!"

"Good morning, _Sholom Alechem_."[85]

He gives me his hand, quite lazily.

"What is your name, friend?"

"Levi Yitzchok."

"And your German name?"[86]

"Why do you want to know?"

"Well, is it a secret?"

"Secret or no secret, you may as well tell me why you want to know. I'll be bound _that's_ no secret!"

"Then you don't know it?"

"Not exactly."

"Make a shot at it--just for fun!"

"Bärenpelz," he answers, a little ashamed.

"A wife?"

"_Ett!_"

"What does _ett_ mean?"

"He wants a divorce!" another answers for him.

"How many children?"

He has to think, and counts on his fingers: "By the first wife--mine: one, two, three; hers: one, two; by the second wife...." He is tired of counting: "Let us say six!"

"'Let us say' is no good. I must know exactly."

"You see, 'exactly' is not so easy. 'Exactly!' Why do you want to know? _Wos is?_ Are you an official? Do they pay you for it? Will somebody follow and check your statements? 'Exactly!'"

"Tell, blockhead, tell," the rest encourage him, "now you've begun, tell!"

They want to know what the next questions will be.

Once again he has counted on his fingers and, heaven be praised, there are three more.

"Nine children, health and strength to them!"

"How many sons, how many daughters?"

He counts again:

"Four sons and five daughters."

"How many sons and how many daughters married?"

"You want to know that, too? Look here, tell me why?"

"Tell him, then, tell him!" cry the rest, impatiently.

"Three daughters and two sons," answers someone for the questioned.

_"Taki?"_ says the latter. "And Yisrolik?"

"But he isn't married yet."

"Horse! They call him up next Sabbath![87] What does a week and a half matter?"

I make a note and ask further: "Have you served in the army?"

"I bought exemption from Kohol, for four hundred rubles![88] Where should I find them now?" and he groans.

"And your sons?"

"The eldest has a swelling below his right eye, and has besides--not of you be it said!--a rupture. He has been in three hospitals. It cost more than a wedding. They only just sent him home from the regiment! The second drew a high number.[89] ... The third is serving his time now."

"And the wife?"

"At home with me, of course. Need you ask?"

"She might have been at _her_ father's."

"A pauper!"

"Have you a house?"

"Have I a house!"

"Worth how much?"

"If it were in Samoscz, it would be worth something. Here it's not worth a dreier, except that I have a place to lay my head down in."

"Would you sell it for one hundred rubles?"

"Preserve us! One's own inheritance! Not for three hundred."

"Would you give it for five hundred?"

"_Mê!_ I should hire a lodging and apply myself to some business!"

"And what is your business now?"

"What business?"

"What do you live on?"

"_That's_ what you mean! One just lives."

"On what?"

"God's providence. When He gives something, one has it!"

"But He doesn't throw things down from heaven?"

"He does so! Can I tell how I live? Let us reckon: I need a lot of money, at least four rubles a week. The house yields, beside my own lodging, twelve rubles a year--nine go in taxes, five in repairs, leaves a hole in the pocket of two rubles a year! That's it."

He puts on airs:

"Heaven be praised, I have no money. Neither I, nor any one of the Jews standing here, nor any other Jews--except perhaps the 'German' ones[90] in the big towns. We have no money. I don't know any trade, my grandfather never sewed a shoe. Therefore I live as God wills, and have lived so for fifty years. And if there is a child to be married, we have a wedding, and dance in the mud."

"Once and for all, what are you?"

"A Jew."

"What do you do all day?"

"I study, I pray--what else should a Jew do? And when I have eaten, I go to the market."

"What do you do in the market?"

"What do I do? Whatever turns up. Well, yesterday, for example, I heard, as I passed, that Yoneh Borik wanted to buy three rams for a gentleman. Before daylight I was at the house of a second gentleman, who had once said, he had too many rams. I made an agreement with Yoneh Borik, and, heaven be praised, we made a ruble and a half by it."

"Are you, then, what is called a commission-agent?"

"How should I know? Sometimes it even occurs to me to buy a bit of produce."

"Sometimes?"

"What do you mean by 'sometimes'? When I have a ruble, I buy."

"And when not?"

"I get one."

"How?"

"What do you mean by 'how'?"

And it is an hour before I find out that Levi Yitzchock Bärenpelz is a bit of a rabbinical assistant, and acts as arbiter in quarrels; a bit of a commission-agent, a fragment of a merchant, a morsel of a match-maker, and now and again, when the fancy takes him, a messenger.

Thanks to all these "trades," the counted and the forgotten ones, he earns his bread, although with toil and trouble, for wife and child--even for the married daughter, because her father-in-law is _but_ a pauper.

THE SECOND ATTEMPT

I am taken into a shop.

A few packets of matches, a few boxes of cigarettes; needles, pins, hair-pins, buttons, green and yellow soap, a few pieces of home-made, fragrant soap, a few grocery wares.

"Who lives here?" I ask.

"You can see for yourself!" answers a Jewish woman, and goes on combing the hair of a little girl about ten years old, who has twitched her head from under the comb and stares with great, astonished eyes, at the Goï[91] who talks Yiddish.

"Lay your head down again!" screams the mother.

"What is the name of your husband?" I inquire.

"Mösheh."

"And his 'German' name?"

"May his name come home!" she scolds suddenly. "He has been four hours getting a dish from the neighbor's!"

"Stop scolding," says the beadle, "and answer when you're spoken to!"

She is afraid of the beadle. He is beadle and bailiff together, and collects the taxes, besides being held in great regard by the town-justice.

"Who was scolding? who? what? Can't I speak against my own husband?"

"What is his 'German' name?" I ask again.

The beadle remembers it himself, and answers, "Jungfreud."

"How many children have you?"