Part 15

He shines and illumines the whole place with credit. Yelenskin compared him to a spider sitting in his web, and the count to one of the flies entangled in it. After a while our "sun-spider," or "spider-sun," enlarged his house, wrote marriage contracts for his children, settled dowries on them; bought his wife pearls and himself a sealskin coat, engaged better teachers for his boys, and for the girls someone to teach them if only how to write a Jewish letter.

Suddenly (at least, for the town), the count was declared bankrupt, and our "spider-sun," or "sun-spider," lost everything at once.

If I had passed through a month earlier, I should have put down:

A house, fifteen hundred rubles, a propination,[102] a business in timber and produce, a money-lender. He has lent the count fifteen thousand rubles at ten per cent., not as a mortgage, but for "hand-receipts."

Now I write one word:

"Burnt-out."

I might add:

A man of eighty-two, swollen feet, a household of seventeen persons.

THE EMIGRANT

I open a door.

A room without beds, without furniture, carpeted with hay and straw. In the middle of the room stands a barrel upside down. Round the barrel, four starved-looking children, with frowzy hair, hang over a great earthenware dish of sour milk, out of which they eat, holding a greenish metal spoon in their right hand and a bit of bran-bread in their left.

In one corner, on the floor, sits a pale woman, and the tears fall from her eyes on the potatoes she is about to peel. In the second corner lies "he," also on the floor, and undressed.

"It was no good your coming, neighbor," he says to me, without rising, "no good at all! I don't belong here now!"

But when he sees that I have no intention of going away, he raises himself slowly.

"_Nu_, where am I to seat you?" he asks sadly.

I assure him that I can write standing.

"You will get nothing out of me! I am only waiting for a boat ticket--you see, I have sold everything, even my tools...."

"You are a mechanic?" I ask.

"A tailor."

"And what obliges you to emigrate?"

"Hunger."

And there was hunger in _his_ face, in _her_ face, and still more in the gleaming eyes of the children round the barrel.

"No work to be had?"

He shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, he and work had long been strangers.

"Where are you going to?"

"To London. I was there once already, and made money. I sent my wife ten rubles a week, and lived like a human being. The bad luck brought me home again."

I wondered if the "bad luck" were his wife.

"Why not have sent for your family to join you?"

"It drew me back! It's black as night over there. As soon as ever I closed an eye, I dreamt of the little town, the river round it, ... I felt suffocated there, and it drew me and drew me...."

"This is certainly," I remark, "a beautiful bit of country."

"The air costs nothing, and we have been living on air, heaven be praised, these three years. This time I am going with wife and child. I mean to put an end to it."

"You will miss the wood again!"

"The wood!"--he gives himself a twist with a bitter smile--"my wife went into the wood the evening before last, to gather berries, and they marched her out and treated her to the whip."

"There is the river,"--I want to take him away from his sad thoughts.

His pale face grew paler.

"The river? In the summer it took one of my children."

I hurried away from the luckless home.

THE MADMAN

I returned to my lodgings quite unnerved, and lay a long time on the hard sofa without closing an eye.... A noise wakes me. Something is stealing in to me through the window. I see on the window ledge two long, bony, dirty hands, and there raises itself from behind them an unkempt head with two gleaming eyes in a livid face.

"Won't you enter _me_?" asks the head, softly.

I do not know how to answer. He, meanwhile, has taken silence for consent, and stands in the middle of the room.

Alarmed, and still more astonished, I keep my eye on him.

"Write!" he says impatiently. "Shall I give you the ink and a pen?"

Without waiting for an answer, he pushes up to my sofa the little table with the writing materials.

"Write, please, write!"

And his voice is so soft and gentle, it finds its way into my heart, and I am no longer frightened.

I sit up to write. I question him, and he answers me.

"Your name?"

"Jonah."

"Your surname?"

"When I was a little boy, they called me Jonah Zieg. After my wedding, Jonah Drong, but since the misfortune happened to me, Mad Jonah."

"What is your German name?"

"O, you mean _that_?... Directly, directly. Perelmann. You see my pearls?"

He points to a torn, red kerchief round his neck, and says: "Real pearls, _ha_? But that's what I'm called. How can I help it?"

"A wife?"

"You had better _not_ put her down: she doesn't live with me. Since the misfortune, she doesn't live with me ... a nice wife, too. I would gladly have given her a divorce, but the rabbi wouldn't allow it. He said I mustn't. A nice little wife!"

And his eyes grew moist.

"She even took the child with her. It's better off with her--what should _I_ do with it? Carry it about? They throw stones at me, and would have hurt it."

"One child is it you have?"

"One."

"What was your misfortune?"

"May you know trouble as little as I know that! Folk say a devil. The Röfeh says, a stone fell into my head, and the soul, or, as he calls it, the life, into my belly. I don't remember the stone, but I have a bruise on my head."

He takes off his hat and cap together, bends his head, and shows me a bare bump in the hair.

"It may have been from a stone, but I _am_ mad--that's certain."

"What is your eccentricity?"

"Two or three times a day I have my soul in my belly, and then I speak out of my belly, and crow like a cock. I can't stop myself, I really can't!"

"What were you _before_ the misfortune?"

"I hadn't got to be anything. It happened to me early in the Köst.[103] That is why I have only one child, health and strength to it!"

"Have you any money?"

"I had a few gulden dowry. A lot of it went in remedies--on 'good Jews' ... the rest I gave _her_."

"What do you live on?"

"On trouble. The boys throw stones at me. I daren't go about in the market-place, else I might have earned something near a stall. At one time people were sorry for me and gave me things. Now times are bad--I have to go begging. I beg before dinner, while the children are still in Cheder. And it's little enough I get by it! The town is small; there are two mad people in it beside me. And now they say that yesterday the 'Lokshiche'[104] threw a saucepan at her servant's head. The servant is sure to go mad, quite sure! Only I don't know yet if she will crow as I do, or trumpet into her fist, like the rabbi's Shlom'tzie, or be silent like Hannah the Tikerin."

MISERY

I shall not call the little town by its name, but if I come across another such, I, too, shall begin to crow, like the madman....

He was an excellent shoemaker, who supported wife and children (rarely less than four or five) respectably. He won a large sum of money in a lottery, took to drink, drank it all up, left his wife and children to shift for themselves, disappeared, and must have died since somewhere or other beneath a hedge.

But that is not specifically Jewish. Take another one of us, his partner in the lottery ticket. He was a teacher, won some money, hired a mill together with the Rebbe. The mill failed, now he is beadle in a Chassidic meeting-house, gets nothing for it, but he sells the "bitter drop." The wife is a "buyer-in," takes round eggs and butter to the houses. She doesn't earn much, because she is lame. One son is away, the second works somewhere at a carpenter's; one is at home, scrofulous.

The widow Beile Bashe, surname unknown, lives with a daughter-in-law, a soldier's wife. The husband disappeared in the Turkish war. The daughter-in-law plucks feathers--she is a Tikerin, and watches beside women in child-bed, or else by the sick. In summer, so long as the nobleman allowed it, she gathered berries in the forest; a sickly woman, she does a little bit of begging besides.

Zeinwill Graf has only lately become a skinner. Last year he was a great fisher, rented a river which the nobleman wished to let to a Christian; he paid a lot of cession-money, caught only "forbidden fish" the whole summer, and is now in dire poverty.

Shmerke Bentzies, formerly a Dantzig trader ... it is twenty years since he came home empty-handed. Since then he trades in currant-wine for Kiddush. The wife is a sempstress, has suffered a year or two with her eyes. "They haven't _no_ children," but competition in the currant-wine trade is very keen, and they struggle.

Melach Berils, a fine young man, only lately boarding with his father-in-law ... he was in business together with a cattle-dealer and lost his money; meantime the father-in-law died in poverty. It is uncertain what he will do. There are three little children, not more.

I was also asked to put down a man (they had forgotten the name), a man with a wife, and children (nobody remembers how many, but a lot), who may arrive at any moment. The nobleman has refused to renew his lease; no one can tell what he will take to, but--"you may as well put him down!"

THE LÀMED-WÒFNIK

"We (the story is told me by a teacher of small children) once had a real Làmed-Wòfnik!"

"He said so himself?" I ask.

"Well, he would have been a fine Làmed-Wòfnik if he had! He denied it 'stone and bone.' If he were questioned about it, he lost his temper and fired up. But, of course, people got wind of it, they knew well enough! yes, 'kith and kin,' the whole town knew it! As if there could be any doubt! People talked, it was clear as daylight! In the beginning, there were some who wouldn't believe--they came to a bad end!

"For instance: Yainkef-Yosef Weinshenker, a man of eighty and much respected, I can't quite explain, but he sort of turned up his nose at him. Did he _say_ anything? Heaven forbid! but there! Like that.... Turned up his nose as much as to say: Preserve us! Nothing worse! Well, what do you think? Not more than five or six years after, he was dead. Yainkef-Yosef lay in his grave. Poor Leah, the milkwoman! One was sorry for her. It was muddy, and she did not step off the stone causeway to make room for him. Would you believe it, the milk went wrong at all her customers' for a month on end! And there was no begging off! When approached on the subject, he pretended to know nothing about it, and scolded into the bargain!"

"Of course,"--I wish to show off my knowledge--"though a scholar decline the honor due to him...."

"A scholar? _Is_ a Làmed-Wòfnik a scholar? And you think he knew even how to read Hebrew properly? He could manage to make seven mistakes in spelling Noah. Besides, Hebrew is nothing. Hebrew doesn't count for much with us. He could not even read through the weekly portion. And his reciting the Psalms made nevertheless an impression in the highest! The last Rebbe, of blessed memory, said that Welvil (that was his name, the Làmed-Wòfnik's) cleft the seventh heaven! And you think his Psalm-singing was all! Wait till I tell you!

"Hannah the Tikerin's goat (not of you be it said!) fell sick, and she drove it to the Gentile exorcist, who lives behind the village. The goat staggered, she was so ill.

"On the way--it was heaven's doing--the goat met the Làmed-Wòfnik, and as she staggered along, she touched his cloak. What do you think? Cured, as I live! Hannah kept it to herself, only what happened afterwards was this: A disease broke out among the goats; literally, 'there was not a house in which there was not one dead;' then she told. The Làmed-Wòfnik was enticed into the market-place, and all the goats were driven at him."

"And they all got well?"

"What a question! They even gave a double quantity of milk."

"The Tikerin got a groschen a goat--she became quite rich!"

"And he?"

"He? nothing! Why, he denied everything, and even got angry and scolded--and such an one _may_ not take money, he is no 'good Jew'--he must not be 'discovered!'"

"How did he live?"

"At one time he was a shoemaker (a Làmed-Wòfnik has got to be a workman, if only a water-carrier, only he must support himself with his hands); he used to go to circumcisions in a pair of his own shoes, but in his old age he was no longer any good for a shoemaker, he could no longer so much as draw the thread, let alone put in a patch--his hands shook: he just took a message, carried a canful of water, sat up with the dead at night, recited Psalms, was called up to the Tochechoh,[105] and in winter there was the stove to heat in the house-of-study."

"He carried wood?"

"Carry wood? Why, where were the boys? The wood was brought, laid in the stove, he gave the word, and applied the light. People say: A stove is a lifeless thing. And yet, do you know, the house-of-study stove knew him as a woman (lehavdîl) knows her husband! He applied a light and the stove burnt! The wind might be as high as you please. Everywhere else it smoked, but in the house-of-study it crackled! And the stove, a split one, such an old thing as never was! And let anyone else have a try--by no means! Either it wouldn't burn, or else it smoked through every crack, and the heat went up the chimney, and at night one nearly froze to death! When he died, they had to put in another stove, because nobody could do anything with the old one.

"He was a terrible loss! So long as he lived there was Parnosseh, now, heaven help us, one may whistle for a dreier! There was no need to call in a doctor."

"And all through his Psalms?"

"You ask such a question? Why, it was as clear as day that he delivered from death."

"And no one died in his day?"

"All alive? Nobody died? Do you suppose the death-angel has no voice in the matter? How many times, do you suppose, has the 'good Jew' himself of blessed memory wished a complete recovery, and he, Satan, opposed him with all his might? Well, was it any good? An angel is no trifle! And the Heavenly Academy once in a while decides in the death-angel's favor. Well, then! There was no doctor wanted; not one could get on here. Now we have _two_ doctors!"

"Beside the exorcist?"

"He was taken, too!"

"_Gepegert?_"[106]

"One doesn't say _gepegert_ of anyone like that--the 'other side'[107] is no trifle, either."

THE INFORMER

If Tomàshef had a Làmed-Wòfnik, it had an "informer" too! This also was told me by the primary school teacher. Neither is it long since he--only I don't know how it should be expressed--departed, died, was taken.

Perhaps you think an ordinary informer, in the usual sense of the word; he saw a false weight, an unequal balance, and went and told? Heaven forbid! Not at all! It was all blackmail, all frightening people into paying him not to tell--see, there he goes, he runs, he drives, he writes, he sends! And he sucked the marrow from the bones--

"And he was badly used himself," continued the teacher. "I remember when Yeruchem first brought him here! A very fine young man! Only Yeruchem promised 'dowry and board,' and hadn't enough for a meal for himself. And Yeruchem had been badly used, too. His brother Getzil (a rich miser as ever was), he had the most to answer for!

"It is a tale of two brothers, one clever and good, the other foolish and bad; the good, clever one, poor, and the bad fool, a rich man. Of course, the rich brother would do nothing for the poor one.

"Well, so long as it was only a question of food, Yeruchem said nothing. But when his daughter Grüne had come to be an overgrown girl of nineteen or twenty, Yeruchem made a commotion. The town and the rabbi took the matter up, and Getzil handed over a written promise that he would give so and so much to be paid out a year after her marriage. Not any sooner; the couple might change their minds, Yeruchem would spend the money, and there would be the whole thing over again.

"He, Getzil, wished to defer the payment until the end of three years, but they succeeded in getting him to promise to pay it in one year. When the time came, Getzil said: 'Not a penny! Anyhow, according to _their_ law, the paper isn't worth a farthing,' and meanwhile it became impossible to settle it within the community. The old rabbi had died; the new rabbi wouldn't interfere, he was afraid of the crown-rabbi, lest he send it up to the regular courts--and there it ended! Getzil wouldn't give a kopek, Yeruchem disappeared either on the way to a 'good Jew,' or else he went begging through the country ... and Beinishe remained with Grüne!

"Truly, the ways of the Most High are past finding out! It seems ridiculous! He was a lad and she was a girl, but it was all upside down. The woman, an engine, a Cossack, and the husband, a misery, a bag of bones! And what do you think! She took him in hand and made a man of him!

"She was always setting him on Getzil, he was to prevent the congregation from taking out the scrolls until the matter was settled, prevent Getzil from being called up to the Law.... it made as much impression as throwing a pea at a wall. Getzil cuffed him, and after that the young fellow was ashamed to appear in the house-of-study. Once, just before Passover, when all devices had failed, Grüne again drove Beinishe to his uncle, and drove him with a broom! Beinishe went again, and again the uncle turned him out. I tell you--it was a thing to happen! My second wife (to be) had just been divorced from her first husband, and she was Grüne's lodger; and she saw Beinishe come home with her own eyes; he was more dead than alive, and shook as if he had the fever; and my good-woman was experienced in that sort of thing (she had been the matron of the Hekdesh before it was burnt down), and she saw that something serious had happened.

"It was just about the time when Grüne was to come home (she sold rolls) from market, and she would have knocked him down; and my good-wife advised him, out of compassion, to lie down and rest on the stove; and he, poor man, was like a dummy, tell him to do a thing and he did it; he got up on the stove.

"Grüne came home, my good-woman said nothing; Beinishe lay and slept, or pretended to sleep, on the stove![108] And perhaps he was not quite clear in his head, because, when Getzil was turning him out of the house, he cried out that he would tell where they had hidden Getzil's son, and if he had been clear in the head, he would not have said a thing like that.

"However that may be, the words made a great impression on Getzil's wife. May my enemies know of their life what Beinishe knew of the whereabouts of Jonah-Getzil's! But there, a woman, a mother, an only son!... so, what do you think? She had a grocery shop, got a porter and a bag of Passover-flour, and had it carried after her to Grüne.

"She goes in ... (such a pity, my wife isn't here! she was an eye-witness of it, and when she tells the story, it is enough to make you split with laughter); she goes in, leaves the porter outside the room.

"'Good morning, Grüne!' Grüne makes no reply, and Getzil's wife begins to get frightened.

"'Where,' she asks, 'is Beinishe?' 'The black year knows!' answers Grüne, and turns to the fire-place, where she goes on skimming the soup. He must have gone to inform, she thinks. She calls in the porter, the sack of meal is put down, Grüne does not see, or pretends she doesn't, devil knows which! Getzil's wife begins to flush and tremble, 'Grünishe, we are relatives ... one blood--call him back! Why should he destroy himself and my soul with him?'

"Then only Grüne turned round. She was no fool, and soon took in the situation. She got a few more rubles out of them, and made believe to go after Beinishe.... It was soon rumored in the town that Beinishe was an informer ... and Grüne was glad of it ... she kept Beinishe on the stove, and bullied and drew blood at every householder's where there was anything wrong."

"At that rate, _she_ was the informer?"

"First she, and then he himself. In his misery, he took to drink, hung about at night in the public-houses, threatened to 'inform' all on his own account. He never gave Grüne a penny, and spent all he had in dissipation. It was sad--a man like that to end so!"

"What happened?"

"He burnt up his inside with drink. First he went mad, and ran about in the streets, or lay out somewhere for weeks under a hedge. But home to Grüne--not for any money!

"Even when he was quite a wreck, ten men couldn't get him back into his house. He fought and bit. He had to be brought into the house-of-study (the Hekdesh was no longer in existence), and there he died! They tried to save him, called in a specialist, recited Psalms."

"The Làmed-Wòfnik, too?"

"Certainly!"

"Well?"

"A man with no inside--what could you expect?"

XVI

THE OUTCAST

May had been cold and wet from beginning to end. People began to feel as if summer would never come, as if it would go on freezing and raining forever. At last, the day before Pentecost, the sun shone out.

"Torah is light!" said my father, with proud satisfaction, and began to look for the Tikun[109] for the night of Pentecost.

"In honor of the holy feast-day!" exclaimed my mother, joyfully, and went back with fresh courage to her cake-making.

"I am going to bake Gelle Challeh!"[110] she called to us.

Soon the house was filled with the smell of freshly-kneaded dough, saffron, cinnamon and cloves, sugared cheese and melted butter.

My younger sister Hannah took no part in what was going forward.

She sat by the window over a book, but she read nothing, and her eyes stared anxiously out into the street.

Our mother called on her several times for help, but Hannah did not even answer....

The pale face wears a scornful smile ... the delicate lips open, she is about to speak! But she remains silent, and fastens her eyes upon her book.

"Lazy thing!" grumbles our mother, "always poring over books! Working-day or holiday, it's all the same to her!"

Our father, who rarely interferes in household matters, having found the book and dusted it, lies down to sleep before bathing, to prepare for being up at night.

Our mother stops complaining, lest she should wake him. She calls me quietly to her, gives me a few pennies, and tells me to go down-stairs and buy a bit of green, and some colored paper with which to festoon the windows.

Heaven knows, I am unwilling enough to leave the room wherein stands a bowl of sweet cream, another of sugared cheese, and where packets of currants and raisins lie all about. At the same time, going to buy, to bargain over, and to pay for greenery and paper, was still more seductive, and away I run.

And it turned out to be such a dreadful Pentecost!

* * * * *

Hannah, my sister, ran away!

We had gone to prayers, and my mother had lain down to rest before blessing the lights.... It was then they gave a signal--my mother remembered afterwards hearing a terrible whistle in her sleep. And she left us, and went over to our enemies! And the time she chose was Pentecost, the season of the giving of our Law!... It was then she left us.

* * * * *

Everything passes away, joy and sorrow, good and evil, and still we go forward on our way to the land where all things are forgotten--or remembered anew.

Everything we have lived through lies beneath our feet like stones in a beaten track, like gravestones under which we have buried our friends, good and bad.

But I cannot forget Hannah!

* * * * *

The life she had sought so eagerly spurned her from it, the vision of happiness faded into thin air, the flowers turned to sharp thorns in her grasp!

There was no return possible.

In her way stood the Law and two graves: her father's grave and her mother's.

Where is she?

Once every year, on the eve of Pentecost, she shows herself to me again.