Part 9
The blast of the great Messianic Shofar sounded through all the seven heavens: Bontzye Shweig has left the earth! The largest angels with the broadest wings flew about and told one another: Bontzye Shweig is to take his seat in the Heavenly Academy! In Paradise there was a noise and a joyful tumult: Bontzye Shweig! Just fancy! Bontzye Shweig!
Little child-angels with sparkling eyes, gold thread-work wings, and silver slippers, ran delightedly to meet him. The rustle of the wings, the tap-tap of the little slippers, and the merry laughter of the fresh, rosy mouths, filled all the heavens and reached to the Throne of Glory, and God Himself knew that Bontzye Shweig was coming.
Abraham, our father, stood in the gate, his right hand stretched out with a hearty greeting, and a sweet smile lit up his old face.
What are they wheeling through heaven?
Two angels are pushing a golden arm-chair into Paradise for Bontzye Shweig.
What flashed so brightly?
They were carrying past a gold crown set with precious stones--all for Bontzye Shweig.
"Before the decision of the Heavenly Court has been given?" ask the saints, not quite without jealousy.
"O," reply the angels, "that will be a mere formality. Even the prosecutor won't say a word against Bontzye Shweig. The case will not last five minutes."
Just consider: Bontzye Shweig!
* * * * *
When the little angels had met Bontzye in mid-air and played him a tune; when Abraham, our father, had shaken him by the hand like an old comrade; when he heard that a chair stood waiting for him in Paradise, that a crown lay ready for his head; and that not a word would be lost over his case before the Heavenly Court--Bontzye, just as in the other world, was too frightened to speak. His heart sank with terror. He is sure it is all a dream, or else simply a mistake.
He is used to both. He often dreamt, in the other world, that he was picking up money off the floor--there were whole heaps of it--and then he woke to find himself as poor as ever; and more than once people had smiled at him and given him a friendly word and then turned away and spit out.
"It is my luck," he used to think. And now he dared not raise his eyes, lest the dream should vanish, lest he should wake up in some cave full of snakes and lizards. He was afraid to speak, afraid to move, lest he should be recognized and flung into the pit.
He trembles and does not hear the angels' compliments, does not see how they dance round him, makes no answer to the greeting of Abraham, our father, and--when he is led into the presence of the Heavenly Court, he does not even wish it "good morning!"
He is beside himself with terror, and his fright increases when he happens to notice the floor of the Heavenly Courthouse; it is all alabaster set with diamonds. "And my feet standing on it!" He is paralyzed. "Who knows what rich man, what rabbi, what saint they take me for--he will come--and that will be the end of me!"
His terror is such, he never even hears the president call out: "The case of Bontzye Shweig!" adding, as he hands the deeds to the advocate, "Read, but make haste!"
The whole hall goes round and round in Bontzye's eyes, there is a rushing in his ears. And through the rushing he hears more and more clearly the voice of the advocate, speaking sweetly as a violin.
"His name," he hears, "fitted him like the dress made for a slender figure by the hand of an artist-tailor."
"What is he talking about?" wondered Bontzye, and he heard an impatient voice break in with:
"No similes, please!"
"He never," continued the advocate, "was heard to complain of either God or man; there was never a flash of hatred in his eye; he never lifted it with a claim on heaven."
Still Bontzye does not understand, and once again the hard voice interrupts: "No rhetoric, please!"
"Job gave way--this one was more unfortunate--"
"Facts, dry facts!"
"When he was a week old, he was circumcised...."
"We want no realism!"
"The Mohel who circumcised him did not know his work--"
"Come, come!"
"And he kept silent," the advocate went on, "even when his mother died, and he was given a step-mother at thirteen years old--a serpent, a vixen."
"Can they mean me after all?" thought Bontzye.
"No insinuations against a third party!" said the president, angrily.
"She grudged him every mouthful--stale, mouldy bread, tendons instead of meat--and _she_ drank coffee with cream."
"Keep to the subject," ordered the president.
"She grudged him everything but her finger nails, and his black-and-blue body showed through the holes in his torn and fusty clothes. Winter time, in the hardest frost, he had to chop wood for her, barefoot, in the yard, and his hands were too young and too weak, the logs too thick, the hatchet too blunt. More than once he nearly dislocated his wrist; more than once his feet were nearly frost-bitten, but he kept silent, even to his father."
"To that drunkard?" laughs the accuser, and Bontzye feels cold in every limb.
"He never even complained to his father," finished up the advocate.
"And always alone," he continued, "no playmates, no school, nor teaching of any kind--never a whole garment--never a free moment."
"Facts, please!" reminded the president.
"He kept silent even later, when his father seized him by the hair in a fit of drunkenness, and flung him out into the street on a snowy winter's night. He quietly picked himself up out of the snow and ran whither his feet carried him.
"He kept silent all the way--however hungry he might be, he only begged with his eyes.
"It was a wild, wet night in spring time, when he reached the great town; he fell like a drop into the ocean, and yet he passed that same night under arrest. He kept silent and never asked why, for what. He was let out, and looked about for the hardest work. And he kept silent. Harder than the work itself was the finding of it--and he kept silent.
"Bathed in a cold sweat, crushed together under heavy loads, his empty stomach convulsed with hunger--he kept silent.
"Bespattered with mud, spat at, driven with his load off the pavement and into the street among the cabs, carts, and tramways, looking death in the eyes every moment--he kept silent.
"He never calculated how many pounds' burden go to a groschen, how many times he fell on an errand worth a dreier; how many times he nearly panted out his soul going after his pay; he never calculated the difference between other people's lot and his--he kept silent.
"And he never insisted loudly on his pay; he stood in the door-way like a beggar, with a dog-like pleading in his eyes--Come again later! and he went like a shadow to come again later, and beg for his wage more humbly than before.
"He kept silent even when they cheated him of part, or threw in a false coin.
"He took everything in silence."
"They mean me after all," thought Bontzye.
* * * * *
"Once," continued the advocate, after a sip of water, "a change came into his life: there came flying along a carriage on rubber tires drawn by two runaway horses. The driver already lay some distance off on the pavement with a cracked skull. The terrified horses foamed at the mouth, sparks shot from their hoofs, their eyes shone like fiery lamps on a winter's night--and in the carriage, more dead than alive, sat a man.
"And Bontzye stopped the horses. And the man he had saved was a charitable Jew, who was not ungrateful.
"He put the dead man's whip into Bontzye's hands, and Bontzye became a coachman. More than that--he was provided with a wife, and more still--with a child.
"And Bontzye kept silent!"
"Me, they mean me!" Bontzye assured himself again, and yet had not the courage to give a glance at the Heavenly Court.
He listens to the advocate further:
"He kept silent also when his protector became bankrupt and did not pay him his wages.
"He kept silent when his wife ran away from him, leaving him a child at the breast.
"He was silent also fifteen years later, when the child had grown up and was strong enough to throw him out of the house."
"Me, they mean me!" Now he is sure of it.
* * * * *
"He kept silent even," began the angelic advocate once more in a still softer and sadder voice, "when the same philanthropist paid all his creditors their due but him--and even when (riding once again in a carriage with rubber tires and fiery horses) he knocked Bontzye down and drove over him.
"He kept silent. He did not even tell the police who had done for him."
* * * * *
"He kept silent even in the hospital, where one may cry out.
"He kept silent when the doctor would not come to his bedside without being paid fifteen kopeks, and when the attendant demanded another five--for changing his linen.
"He kept silent in the death-struggle--silent in death.
"Not a word against God; not a word against men!
"_Dixi!_"
* * * * *
Once more Bontzye trembled all over, he knew that after the advocate comes the prosecutor. Who knows what _he_ will say?
Bontzye himself had remembered nothing of his life.
Even in the other world he forgot every moment what had happened in the one before. The advocate had recalled everything to his mind. Who knows what the prosecutor will not remind him of?
"Gentlemen," begins the prosecutor, in a voice biting and acid as vinegar--but he breaks off.
"Gentlemen," he begins again, but his voice is milder, and a second time he breaks off.
Then, from out the same throat, comes in a voice that is almost gentle:
"Gentlemen! _He_ was silent! I will be silent, too!"
There is a hush--and there sounds in front a new, soft, trembling voice:
"Bontzye, my child," it speaks like a harp, "my dear child Bontzye!"
And Bontzye's heart melts within him. Now he would lift up his eyes, but they are blinded with tears; he never felt such sweet emotion before. "My child!" "My Bontzye!"--no one, since his mother died, had spoken to him with such words in such a voice.
"My child," continued the presiding judge, "you have suffered and kept silent; there is no whole limb, no whole bone in your body, without a scar, without a wound, not a fibre of your soul that has not bled--and you kept silent.
"There they did not understand. Perhaps you yourself did not know that you might have cried out, and that at your cry the walls of Jericho would have shaken and fallen. You yourself knew nothing of your hidden power.
"In the other world your silence was not understood, but _that_ is the world of delusion; in the world of truth you will receive your reward.
"The Heavenly Court will not judge you; the Heavenly Court will not pass sentence on you; they will not apportion you a reward. Take what you will! Everything is yours!"
Bontzye looks up for the first time. He is dazzled; everything shines and flashes and streams with light.
"_Taki?_" he asks shyly.
"Yes, really!" answers the presiding judge with decision; "really, I tell you, everything is yours; everything in heaven belongs to you. Because all that shines and sparkles is only the reflection of your hidden goodness, a reflection of your soul. You only take of what is yours."
"_Taki?_" asks Bontzye again, this time in a firmer voice.
"_Taki! taki! taki!_" they answer him from all sides.
"Well, if it is so," Bontzye smiles, "I would like to have every day, for breakfast, a hot roll with fresh butter."
The Court and the angels looked down, a little ashamed; the prosecutor laughed.
XII
THE DEAD TOWN
When travelling in the provinces after Jewish statistics, I one day met with a Jew dragging himself step by step through the heavy sand. He looks ill, can hardly walk, hardly put one foot before the other. I feel sorry for him and take him into my conveyance. He gets in, gives me a "peace be with you," and asks me every sort of question. I answer, and end by inquiring:
"And you, friend, whence are you?"
"From the dead town," he answers calmly.
I thought he was joking.
"Where is it?" I ask. "Behind the hills of darkness?"
"Where?" he smiles. "It's just in Poland!"
"In our country, a town like that?"
"There it is!" he said; "there it is! Although the nations of the world do not know of it, and have never given it a Gentile name, it is a genuinely Jewish town."
"What do you mean?"
"What I say! You know geography, and you think everything is down in it; not at all. We Jews live without geography. We are not 'down,' and yet they come to us from far and near. What is the good of geography? Every driver knows the way.
"You don't believe me?" he asks.
I am silent.
"And yet it's true; our rabbi corresponds with all the Geonim[49] in the world. Questions and answers concerning the most important matters come and go--everything is arranged somehow--it just depends. Not long ago, for instance, an elderly grass-widow was released from the marriage-tie. Well, of course, the main thing is not the grass-widow, but the dialectics!"[50]
He goes on:
"All the Einiklich[51] know of our town. They come, praise God, often--and, praise God, not in vain."
"It is the first time I ever heard of a dead town."
"That's rather strange! I suppose you keep yourself rather aloof..... And yet it is a truly Jewish town, a real Jewish metropolis. It has everything a town needs, even two or three lunatics! And it has a reputation for commerce, too!"
"Is anything taken in or out?"
"What? What do you say?" asks the Jew, not quite clear as to my meaning. "Are you speaking of articles of trade?"
I nod my head.
"Certainly!" he answers. "They take away prayer-scarfs and leather belts, and bring in Corfu Esrogîm and earth of Palestine. But that isn't the chief thing, the chief thing is the business done in the town itself! Drink-shops, lodging homes for travellers, old clothes--according to custom--"
"A poor town?"
"What do you mean by rich and poor? There is Parnosseh! The very poor go about begging either in the place or in the neighborhood--mostly in the place itself! Whoever holds out a hand is given something! Others try for some easy work, they do broker-business, or pick up things in the streets and earn an honest crust. The Almighty is faithful! The orphans are given free meals by the householders and study in the Talmud Torah. The orphan girls become maid-servants, cooks, or find a living elsewhere. Widows, divorced women, and grass-widows (there have been a lot of grass-widows lately[52]) sit over charcoal braziers, and when the fumes go to their head, they dream that rolls hang on the trees ready baked. Others live _quite_ decently!"
"On what?"
"On what? What do other people live on? A poor man hopes; a trader swallows air, and the one who digs--graves, I mean--is never out of employment--"
Is he joking, the dried-up, little, old Jew, the bag-of-bones with the odd gleam in his deeply sunken eyes? On his bony face, covered with a skin like yellow parchment, not the trace of a smile! Only his voice has something odd about it.
"What sort of a town _is_ it, anyway?" I ask again.
"What do you mean? It's a town like any other! There's a Shool, and they say that once there were all sorts of animals painted on the walls, beasts and birds--out of Perek Shirah[53]--and on the ceiling all sorts of musical instruments, such as were played upon by King David, on whom be peace. I never saw it so, but the old men tell of it."
"And nowadays?"
"Nowadays? Dust and spider-webs. There's only a wooden chain, carved out of one piece, that hangs from the beam, and falls very prettily to one side of the Ark to the right of the curtain, which was itself the gift of pious women. Nobody remembers who made the chain, but it was an artist, there's no doubt! Such a chain!
"In the Shool," he continued, "you see only the common people, artisans, except tailors, who form a congregation apart, and butchers and drivers, who have hired a place of their own to pray in. The Shool can hardly read Hebrew! The well-to-do householders--sons of the Law--assemble in the house-of-study, a large one with piles of books! The Chassidîm, again, pray in rooms apart!"
"And are there dissensions?"
"Many men, many minds! In the grave, on the other hand, there is peace; one burial ground for all; and the men's bath--the women's bath--are there for all alike."
"What else have you in your town?"
"What more would you have? There was a refuge for wayfarers, and it was given up; wayfarers can sleep in the house-of-study--at night it's empty--and we have a Hekdesh."
"A hospital, you mean?"
"Not a hospital at all, just a Hekdesh, two rooms. At one time they were occupied by the bather, then it was arranged that the bather should content himself with one room, and that the other should be used for the Hekdesh; there are not more than three sick women in it altogether: one poor thing, an old woman with paralyzed legs, who lies all of a heap; a second with all her limbs paralyzed, and beside these, a crazy grass-widow. Three corners are taken up with beds, in the fourth stands a chimney-stove; in the middle there is a dead-house, in case of need!"
"You are laughing at me, friend," I break in, "that is Tziachnovke! Tziachnovke itself with its commerce and charities and good works! Why do you call it the dead town?"
"Because it is a dead town! I am speaking of a town which, from the day it was built, hung by a hair, and now the hair has snapt, it hangs in the air. It hangs by nothing at all. And because it hangs by nothing and floats in mid-air, it is a dead town; if you like, I will tell you about it."
"By all means--most interesting!"
Meanwhile night is falling, one half of the sky grows blood-red and fiery, over there is the sunset. On our other hand, the moon is swimming into view out of a light mist, like the face of a bride peeping out of her white veil. The pale beams, as they spread over the earth, mix with the quivering shadows of the sad, still night.
Uncanny!--
We drive into a wood. The moon-rays steal in after us between the trembling leaves.
On the ground, among the fallen leaves and twigs, there dance little circles of light, like silver coins. There is something magical in the illumination, in the low breathing of the wood.
I glance at the wayfaring Jew, his appearance has changed. It is melancholy and serious, and his expression is so simple and honest. Can it all be true?
_Ha!_ I will listen to what he has to say.
"The town hung by a hair from the first," said the narrator, "because it was started in a part where no Jewish town was allowed to be! It was not till the first Minyan was complete that people held a meeting and decided to reckon themselves as belonging to a town in the neighborhood. On this pretense they built a bath, a Shool, and after that, a men's bath, and bought a piece of land for a burial ground.
"And when all that was finished, they sent people of backstair influence to have it all endorsed."
"Head downward?"
"Isn't that always the way with us? How should it be otherwise?"
"I don't know!"
"However, that's how it was! And the thing was not so underhand as you suppose.
"There was a Jew who was very rich, and this rich Jew, as is usually the case, was a little, not to say very much, in with the authorities, and everything was in his name; it was _his_ Shool, _his_ bath, _his_ women's bath--even to _his_ burial ground--and nothing was said; as I tell you, he was a person of influence!
"And when the paper came from high quarters, he was to transcribe it in the name of the community and stop paying sop-money to the local police."
"And then the rich man said: 'To my account'?"
"No, my dear sir, such rich people didn't exist in those days. 'To my account' was a thing unknown; but hear what happened, what things may come to pass!
"It was not the Gevir, but the envoy who caused the trouble. He made off, half-way, with the money and the papers, and left the freshly-baked community like a grass-widow with a family."
"Did they send another?"
"Not so soon as all that! Before it was known that the first had absconded, or anything about it, the Gevir died and left, among other things, an heir who was a minor; he couldn't sign a paper till he was twenty-one!"
"So they hurried up?"
"Of course, as soon as he was twenty-one, they meant to send another envoy, and perhaps two."
"And meanwhile it was entered in the communal records?"
"That's where it is! The records remembered and the people forgot! Some say the record was burnt, that the trustee took the record, said Havdoleh over it, set fire to a little brandy, and--good-bye!
"The community, meanwhile, was growing; Jews, praise God, soon multiply. And they come in from other places; one person brings in a son-in-law, another a daughter-in-law, in a word, it grew. And the Gevir's heirs disappeared as though on purpose! The widow married again and left, one son after another went to seek his fortune elsewhere, to take a look 'round. The youngest remained. Kohol appointed him a guardian and married him, and gave him an experienced partner."
"Who led him about by the nose?"
"According to the law of Moses and of Israel!
"He had trouble with the partner and more still with the wife; and he signed a forged check and took himself off, bankrupt; townspeople and strangers collected and made a great noise, the case was heard in court, down came an inspector, no money to be seen anywhere, the wife hid the furniture, the inspector took possession of the Shool and the burial ground!
"The little town was thunderstruck, it was a bolt from the blue with a vengeance! Because, you see, the whole thing had been kept dark to the last minute!
"And all of a sudden, the community was seen hanging, as it were, by a hair!
"What was to be done? They drove to lawyers. What could they advise in a case like that? The best thing would be to have an auction, the inspector would sell the things and the community buy them at any cost. The community was no community? The papers had been lost by the way? They must find another Gevir, and buy in his name! The great thing was not to wait till the Gevir should die or go away!
"The advice seemed good, Kohol was quite used to loss of money; but there was not only _one_ Gevir, there were several! And heaps willing to act as diplomatic envoys. Whose name should they use? Who should be taken for an envoy? All were willing and might be offended. So they held a meeting and talked it over. And they talked it over till the talk became a dispute, and when _we_ have a dispute, it isn't settled in a hurry. Now and again it looks like peace, the flame of discord burns low, comes a peacemaker and pours oil on it, and it blazes up again and--blazes on!"
The Jew wiped his pale forehead and continued:
"Meanwhile something happened, something not to be believed!
"Only," he added with a smile, "it is night and the creature who walks the sky at night (he points at the moon) is called 'truth,' and at night, specially in such a quiet one, everything is credible."
"Well, yes"--I allow unwillingly.
"The story is a dreadful one.
"The inspector put his foot on the 'holy ground,' the corpses heard and must have grown angry--the tombstones move--the corpses rise up from beneath them--you believe me?"
"I am no heretic," I replied, "heaven forbid! And I believe in the immortality of the soul, only--"
"Only, friend, only?"
"I always thought, that only the soul remained--the soul that flies into heaven; but the body that goes into the grave, the image that decays--anyhow, it cannot move without the soul--cannot rise again."
"Well said!" he praises me. "May I ever hear the like!