Part 15

For five days and five nights Yitzchok-Yossel set his imagination to work on Binyomin Droibnik's inheritance. There was no eating for him, no drinking, and no sleeping. The scissors squeaked, the needle ran hither and thither, up and down, the inheritance sighed and almost sobbed under the hot iron. But how happy was Yitzchok-Yossel those lightsome days and merry nights? Who could compare with him? Greater than the Kabtzonivke village elder, richer than Yisroel Dintzis, the tax-gatherer, and more exalted than the bailiff himself was Yitzchok-Yossel, that is, in his own estimation. All that he wished, thought, and felt was forthwith created by means of his scissors and iron, his thimble, needle, and cotton. No more putting on of patches, sewing on of pockets, cutting out of "Tefillin-Saecklech" and "little prayer-scarfs," no more doing up of old dresses. Freedom, freedom--he wanted one bit of work of the right sort, and that was all! Ha, now he would show them, the Kabtzonivke cripples and householders, now he would show them who Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber is! They would not laugh at him or tease him any more! His fame would travel from one end of the world to the other, and Malkeh the orphan, his bride, his wife, she also would hear of it, and--

She will come back to him! He feels it in every limb. It was not him she cast off, only his bad luck. He will rent a lodging (money will pour in from all sides)--buy a little furniture: a bed, a sofa, a table--in time he will buy a little house of his own--she will come, she has been homeless long enough--it is time she should rest her weary, aching bones--it is high time she should have her own corner!

She will come back, he feels it, she will certainly come home!

The last night! The work is complete. Yitzchok-Yossel spread it out on the table of the women's Shool, lighted a second groschen candle, sat down in front of it with wide open, sparkling eyes, gazed with delight at the product of his imagination and--was wildly happy!

So he sat the whole night.

It was very hard for him to part with his achievement, but hardly was it day when he appeared with it at Reb Binyomin Droibnik's.

"A good morning, a good year, Reb Yitzchok-Yossel! I see by your eyes that you have been successful. Is it true?"

"You can see for yourself, there--"

"No, no, there is no need for me to see it first. Dvoshke, Cheike, Shprintze, Dovid-Hershel, Yitzchok-Yoelik! You understand, I want them all to be present and see."

In a few minutes the whole family had appeared on the scene. Even the four little ones popped up from behind the heaps of ragged covering.

Yitzchok-Yossel untied his parcel and--

"_Wuus is duuuusss???!!!_"

"A pair of trousers with sleeves!"

JUDAH STEINBERG

Born, 1863, in Lipkany, Bessarabia; died, 1907, in Odessa; education Hasidic; entered business in a small Roumanian village for a short time; teacher, from 1889 in Jedency and from 1896 in Leowo, Bessarabia; removed to Odessa, in 1905, to become correspondent of New York Warheit; writer of fables, stories, and children's tales in Hebrew, and poems in Yiddish; historical drama, Ha-Sotah; collected works in Hebrew, 3 vols., Cracow, 1910-1911 (in course of publication).

A LIVELIHOOD

The two young fellows Maxim Klopatzel and Israel Friedman were natives of the same town in New Bessarabia, and there was an old link existing between them: a mutual detestation inherited from their respective parents. Maxim's father was the chief Gentile of the town, for he rented the corn-fields of its richest inhabitant; and as the lawyer of the rich citizen was a Jew, little Maxim imagined, when his father came to lose his tenantry, that it was owing to the Jews. Little Struli was the only Jewish boy he knew (the children were next door neighbors), and so a large share of their responsibility was laid on Struli's shoulders. Later on, when Klopatzel, the father, had abandoned the plough and taken to trade, he and old Friedman frequently came in contact with each other as rivals.

They traded and traded, and competed one against the other, till they both become bankrupt, when each argued to himself that the other was at the bottom of his misfortune--and their children grew on in mutual hatred.

A little later still, Maxim put down to Struli's account part of the nails which were hammered into his Savior, over at the other end of the town, by the well, where the Government and the Church had laid out money and set up a crucifix with a ladder, a hammer, and all other necessary implements.

And Struli, on his part, had an account to settle with Maxim respecting certain other nails driven in with hammers, and torn scrolls of the Law, and the history of the ten martyrs of the days of Titus, not to mention a few later ones.

Their hatred grew with them, its strength increased with theirs.

When Krushevan began to deal in anti-Semitism, Maxim learned that Christian children were carried off into the Shool, Struli's Shool, for the sake of their blood.

Thenceforth Maxim's hatred of Struli was mingled with fear. He was terrified when he passed the Shool at night, and he used to dream that Struli stood over him in a prayer robe, prepared to slaughter him with a ram's horn trumpet.

This because he had once passed the Shool early one Jewish New Year's Day, had peeped through the window, and seen the ram's horn blower standing in his white shroud, armed with the Shofar, and suddenly a heartrending voice broke out with Min ha-Mezar, and Maxim, taking his feet on his shoulders, had arrived home more dead than alive. There was very nearly a commotion. The priest wanted to persuade him that the Jews had tried to obtain his blood.

So the two children grew into youth as enemies. Their fathers died, and the increased difficulties of their position increased their enmity.

The same year saw them called to military service, from which they had both counted on exemption as the only sons of widowed mothers; only Israel's mother had lately died, bequeathing to the Czar all she had--a soldier; and Maxim's mother had united herself to a second provider--and there was an end of the two "only sons!"

Neither of them wished to serve; they were too intellectually capable, too far developed mentally, too intelligent, to be turned all at once into Russian soldiers, and too nicely brought up to march from Port Arthur to Mukden with only one change of shirt. They both cleared out, and stowed themselves away till they 'fell separately into the hands of the military.

They came together again under the fortress walls of Mukden.

They ate and hungered sullenly round the same cooking pot, received punches from the same officer, and had the same longing for the same home.

Israel had a habit of talking in his sleep, and, like a born Bessarabian, in his Yiddish mixed with a large portion of Roumanian words.

One night, lying in the barracks among the other soldiers, and sunk in sleep after a hard day, Struli began to talk sixteen to the dozen. He called out names, he quarrelled, begged pardon, made a fool of himself--all in his sleep.

It woke Maxim, who overheard the homelike names and phrases, the name of his native town.

He got up, made his way between the rows of sleepers, and sat down by Israel's pallet, and listened.

Next day Maxim managed to have a large helping of porridge, more than he could eat, and he found Israel, and set it before him.

"Maltzimesk!" said the other, thanking him in Roumanian, and a thrill of delight went through Maxim's frame.

The day following, Maxim was hit by a Japanese bullet, and there happened to be no one beside him at the moment.

The shock drove all the soldier-speech out of his head. "Help, I am killed!" he called out, and fell to the ground.

Struli was at his side like one sprung from the earth, he tore off his Four-Corners, and made his comrade a bandage.

The wound turned out to be slight, for the bullet had passed through, only grazing the flesh of the left arm. A few days later Maxim was back in the company.

"I wanted to see you again, Struli," he said, greeting his comrade in Roumanian.

A flash of brotherly affection and gratitude lighted Struli's Semitic eyes, and he took the other into his arms, and pressed him to his heart.

They felt themselves to be "countrymen," of one and the same native town.

Neither of them could have told exactly when their union of spirit had been accomplished, but each one knew that he thanked God for having brought him together with so near a compatriot in a strange land.

And when the battle of Mukden had made Maxim all but totally blind, and deprived Struli of one foot, they started for home together, according to the passage in the Midrash, "Two men with one pair of eyes and one pair of feet between them." Maxim carried on his shoulders a wooden box, which had now became a burden in common for them, and Struli limped a little in front of him, leaning lightly against his companion, so as to keep him in the smooth part of the road and out of other people's way.

Struli had become Maxim's eyes, and Maxim, Struli's feet; they were two men grown into one, and they provided for themselves out of one pocket, now empty of the last ruble.

They dragged themselves home. "A kasa, a kasa!" whispered Struli into Maxim's ear, and the other turned on him his two glazed eyes looking through a red haze, and set in swollen red lids.

A childlike smile played on his lips:

"A kasa, a kasa!" he repeated, also in a whisper.

Home appeared to their fancy as something holy, something consoling, something that could atone and compensate for all they had suffered and lost. They had seen such a home in their dreams.

But the nearer they came to it in reality, the more the dream faded. They remembered that they were returning as conquered soldiers and crippled men, that they had no near relations and but few friends, while the girls who had coquetted with Maxim before he left would never waste so much as a look on him now he was half-blind; and Struli's plans for marrying and emigrating to America were frustrated: a cripple would not be allowed to enter the country.

All their dreams and hopes finally dissipated, and there remained only one black care, one all-obscuring anxiety: how were they to earn a living?

They had been hoping all the while for a pension, but in their service book was written "on sick-leave." The Russo-Japanese war was distinguished by the fact that the greater number of wounded soldiers went home "on sick-leave," and the money assigned by the Government for their pension would not have been sufficient for even a hundredth part of the number of invalids.

Maxim showed a face with two wide open eyes, to which all the passers-by looked the same. He distinguished with difficulty between a man and a telegraph post, and wore a smile of mingled apprehension and confidence. The sound feet stepped hesitatingly, keeping behind Israel, and it was hard to say which steadied himself most against the other. Struli limped forward, and kept open eyes for two. Sometimes he would look round at the box on Maxim's shoulders, as though he felt its weight as much as Maxim.

Meantime the railway carriages had emptied and refilled, and the locomotive gave a great blast, received an answer from somewhere a long way off, a whistle for a whistle, and the train set off, slowly at first, and then gradually faster and faster, till all that remained of it were puffs of smoke hanging in the air without rhyme or reason.

The two felt more depressed than ever. "Something to eat? Where are we to get a bite?" was in their minds.

Suddenly Yisroel remembered with a start: this was the anniversary of his mother's death--if he could only say one Kaddish for her in a Klaus!

"Is it far from here to a Klaus?" he inquired of a passer-by.

"There is one a little way down that side-street," was the reply.

"Maxim!" he begged of the other, "come with me!"

"Where to?"

"To the synagogue."

Maxim shuddered from head to foot. His fear of a Jewish Shool had not left him, and a thousand foolish terrors darted through his head.

But his comrade's voice was so gentle, so childishly imploring, that he could not resist it, and he agreed to go with him into the Shool.

It was the time for Afternoon Prayer, the daylight and the dark held equal sway within the Klaus, the lamps before the platform increasing the former to the east and the latter to the west. Maxim and Yisroel stood in the western part, enveloped in shadow. The Cantor had just finished "Incense," and was entering upon Ashre, and the melancholy night chant of Minchah and Maariv gradually entranced Maxim's emotional Roumanian heart.

The low, sad murmur of the Cantor seemed to him like the distant surging of a sea, in which men were drowned by the hundreds and suffocating with the water. Then, the Ashre and the Kaddish ended, there was silence. The congregation stood up for the Eighteen Benedictions. Here and there you heard a half-stifled sigh. And now it seemed to Maxim that he was in the hospital at night, at the hour when the groans grow less frequent, and the sufferers fall one by one into a sweet sleep.

Tears started into his eyes without his knowing why. He was no longer afraid, but a sudden shyness had come over him, and he felt, as he watched Yisroel repeating the Kaddish, that the words, which he, Maxim, could not understand, were being addressed to someone unseen, and yet mysteriously present in the darkening Shool.

When the prayers were ended, one of the chief members of the congregation approached the "Mandchurian," and gave Yisroel a coin into his hand.

Yisroel looked round--he did not understand at first what the donor meant by it.

Then it occurred to him--and the blood rushed to his face. He gave the coin to his companion, and explained in a half-sentence or two how they had come by it.

Once outside the Klaus, they both cried, after which they felt better.

"A livelihood!" the same thought struck them both.

"We can go into partnership!"

AT THE MATZES

It was quite early in the morning, when Sossye, the scribe's daughter, a girl of seventeen, awoke laughing; a sunbeam had broken through the rusty window, made its way to her underneath the counterpane, and there opened her eyes.

It woke her out of a deep dream which she was ashamed to recall, but the dream came back to her of itself, and made her laugh.

Had she known whom she was going to meet in her dreams, she would have lain down in her clothes, occurs to her, and she laughs aloud.

"Got up laughing!" scolds her mother. "There's a piece of good luck for you! It's a sign of a black year for her (may it be to my enemies!)."

Sossye proceeds to dress herself. She does not want to fall out with her mother to-day, she wants to be on good terms with everyone.

In the middle of dressing she loses herself in thought, with one naked foot stretched out and an open stocking in her hands, wondering how the dream would have ended, if she had not awoke so soon.

Chayyimel, a villager's son, who boards with her mother, passes the open doors leading to Sossye's room, and for the moment he is riveted to the spot. His eyes dance, the blood rushes to his cheeks, he gets all he can by looking, and then hurries away to Cheder without his breakfast, to study the Song of Songs.

And Sossye, fresh and rosy from sleep, her brown eyes glowing under the tumbled gold locks, betakes herself to the kitchen, where her mother, with her usual worried look, is blowing her soul out before the oven into a smoky fire of damp wood.

"Look at the girl standing round like a fool! Run down to the cellar, and fetch me an onion and some potatoes!"

Sossye went down to the cellar, and found the onions and potatoes sprouting.

At sight of a green leaf, her heart leapt. Greenery! greenery! summer is coming! And the whole of her dream came back to her!

"Look, mother, green sprouts!" she cried, rushing into the kitchen.

"A thousand bad dreams on your head! The onions are spoilt, and she laughs! My enemies' eyes will creep out of their lids before there will be fresh greens to eat, and all this, woe is me, is only fit to throw away!"

"Greenery, greenery!" thought Sossye, "summer is coming!"

Greenery had got into her head, and there it remained, and from greenery she went on to remember that to-day was the first Passover-cake baking at Gedalyeh the baker's, and that Shloimeh Shieber would be at work there.

Having begged of her mother the one pair of boots that stood about in the room and fitted everyone, she put them on, and was off to the Matzes.

It was, as we have said, the first day's work at Gedalyeh the baker's, and the sack of Passover flour had just been opened. Gravely, the flour-boy, a two weeks' orphan, carried the pot of flour for the Mehereh, and poured it out together with remembrances of his mother, who had died in the hospital of injuries received at _their_ hands, and the water-boy came up behind him, and added recollections of his own.

"The hooligans threw his father into the water off the bridge--may they pay for it, suesser Gott! May they live till he is a man, and can settle his account with them!"

Thus the grey-headed old Henoch, the kneader, and he kneaded it all into the dough, with thoughts of his own grandchildren: this one fled abroad, the other in the regiment, and a third in prison.

The dough stiffens, the horny old hands work it with difficulty. The dough gets stiffer every year, and the work harder, it is time for him to go to the asylum!

The dough is kneaded, cut up in pieces, rolled and riddled--is that a token for the whole Congregation of Israel? And now appear the round Matzes, which must wander on a shovel into the heated oven of Shloimeh Shieber, first into one corner, and then into another, till another shovel throws them out into a new world, separated from the old by a screen thoroughly scoured for Passover, which now rises and now falls. There they are arranged in columns, a reminder of Pithom and Rameses. Kuk-ruk, kuk-ruk, ruk-ruk, whisper the still warm Matzes one to another; they also are remembering, and they tell the tale of the Exodus after their fashion, the tale of the flight out of Egypt--only they have seen more flights than one.

Thus are the Matzes kneaded and baked by the Jews, with "thoughts." The Gentiles call them "blood," and assert that Jews need blood for their Matzes, and they take the trouble to supply us with fresh "thoughts" every year!

But at Gedalyeh the baker's all is still cheerfulness. Girls and boys, in their unspent vigor, surround the tables, there is rolling and riddling and cleaning of clean rolling-pins with pieces of broken glass (from where ever do Jews get so much broken glass?), and the whole town is provided with kosher Matzes. Jokes and silver trills escape the lively young workers, the company is as merry as though the Exodus were to-morrow.

But it won't be to-morrow. Look at them well, because another day you will not find them so merry, they will not seem like the same.

One of the likely lads has left his place, and suddenly appeared at a table beside a pretty, curly-haired girl. He has hurried over his Matzes, and now he wants to help her.

She thanks him for his attention with a rolling-pin over the fingers, and there is such laughter among the spectators that Berke, the old overseer, exclaims, "What impertinence!"

But he cannot finish, because he has to laugh himself. There is a spark in the embers of his being which the girlish merriment around him kindles anew.

And the other lads are jealous of the beaten one. They know very well that no girl would hit a complete stranger, and that the blow only meant, "Impudent boy, why need the world know of anything between us?"

Shloimehle Shieber, armed with the shovels, stands still for a minute trying to distinguish Sossye's voice in the peals of laughter. The Matzes under his care are browning in the oven.

And Sossye takes it into her head to make her Matzes with one pointed corner, so that he may perhaps know them for hers, and laughs to herself as she does so.

There is one table to the side of the room which was not there last year; it was placed there for the formerly well-to-do housemistresses, who last year, when they came to bake their Matzes, gave Yom-tov money to the others. Here all goes on quietly; the laughter of the merry people breaks against the silence, and is swallowed up.

The work grows continually pleasanter and more animated. The riddler stamps two or three Matzes with hieroglyphs at once, in order to show off. Shloimeh at the oven cannot keep pace with him, and grows angry:

"May all bad...."

The wish is cut short in his mouth, he has caught a glance of Sossye's through the door of the baking-room, he answers with two, gets three back, Sossye pursing her lips to signify a kiss. Shloimeh folds his hands, which also means something.

Meantime ten Matzes get scorched, and one of Sossye's is pulled in two. "Brennen brennt mir mein Harz," starts a worker singing in a plaintive key.

"Come! hush, hush!" scolds old Berke. "Songs, indeed! What next, you impudent boy?"

"My sorrows be on their head!" sighs a neighbor of Sossye's. "They'd soon be tired of their life, if they were me. I've left two children at home fit to scream their hearts out. The other is at the breast, I have brought it along. It is quiet just now, by good luck."

"What is the use of a poor woman's having children?" exclaims another, evidently "expecting" herself. Indeed, she has a child a year--and a seven-days' mourning a year afterwards.

"Do you suppose I ask for them? Do you think I cry my eyes out for them before God?"

"If she hasn't any, who's to inherit her place at the Matzes-baking--a hundred years hence?"

"All very well for you to talk, _you're_ a grass-widow (to no Jewish daughter may it apply!)!"

"May such a blow be to my enemies as he'll surely come back again!"

"It's about time! After three years!"

"Will you shut up, or do you want another beating?"

Sossye went off into a fresh peal of laughter, and the shovel fell out of Shloimeh's hand.

Again he caught a glance, but this time she wrinkled her nose at him, as much as to say, "Fie, you shameless boy! Can't you behave yourself even before other people?"

Hereupon the infant gave account of itself in a small, shrill voice, and the general commotion went on increasing. The overseer scolded, the Matzes-printing-wheel creaked and squeaked, the bits of glass were ground against the rolling-pins, there was a humming of songs and a proclaiming of secrets, followed by bursts of laughter, Sossye's voice ringing high above the rest.

And the sun shone into the room through the small window--a white spot jumped around and kissed everyone there.

Is it the Spirit of Israel delighting in her young men and maidens and whispering in their ears: "What if it _is_ Matzes-kneading, and what if it _is_ Exile? Only let us be all together, only let us all be merry!"

Or is it the Spring, transformed into a white patch of sunshine, in which all have equal share, and which has not forgotten to bring good news into the house of Gedalyeh the Matzeh-baker?

A beautiful sun was preparing to set, and promised another fine day for the morrow.

"Ding-dong, gul-gul-gul-gul-gul-gul!"

It was the convent bells calling the Christians to confession!

All tongues were silenced round the tables at Gedalyeh the baker's.

A streak of vapor dimmed the sun, and gloomy thoughts settled down upon the hearts of the workers.

"Easter! _Their_ Easter is coming on!" and mothers' eyes sought their children.

The white patch of sunshine suddenly gave a terrified leap across the ceiling and vanished in a corner.

"Kik-kik, kik-rik, kik-rik," whispered the hot Matzes. Who is to know what they say?