Part 23

The two brothers lodged with a poor relation, a widow, a dealer in second-hand goods, who never came home till late at night. The two brothers had no bed, but a chest, which was broad enough, served instead, and the brothers slept sweetly on it, covered with their own torn clothes; and in their dreams they saw their native place, the little street, their home, their father with his long beard and dim eyes and bent back, and their mother with her long, pale, melancholy face, and they heard the little brothers and sisters quarrelling, as they fought over a bit of herring, and they dreamt other dreams of home, and early in the morning they were homesick, and then they used to run to the Dalissovke Inn, and ask the carrier if there were a letter for them from home.

The Dalissovke carriers were good Jews with soft hearts, and they were sorry for the two poor boys, who were so anxious for news from home, whose eyes burned, and whose hearts beat so fast, so loud, but the carriers were very busy; they came charged with a thousand messages from the Dalissovke shopkeepers and traders, and they carried more letters than the post, but with infinitely less method. Letters were lost, and parcels were heard of no more, and the distracted carriers scratched the nape of their neck, and replied to every question:

"Directly, directly, I shall find it directly--no, I don't seem to have anything for you--"

That is how they answered the grown people who came to them; but our two little brothers stood and looked at Lezer the carrier--a man in a wadded caftan, summer and winter--with thirsty eyes and aching hearts; stood and waited, hoping he would notice them and say something, if only one word. But Lezer was always busy: now he had gone into the yard to feed the horse, now he had run into the inn, and entered into a conversation with the clerk of a great store, who had brought a list of goods wanted from a shop in Dalissovke.

And the brothers used to stand and stand, till the elder one, Berele, lost patience. Biting his lips, and all but crying with vexation, he would just articulate: "Reb Lezer, is there a letter from father?"

But Reb Lezer would either suddenly cease to exist, run out into the street with somebody or other, or be absorbed in a conversation, and Berele hardly expected the answer which Reb Lezer would give over his shoulder:

"There isn't one--there isn't one."

"There isn't one!" Berele would say with a deep sigh, and sadly call to Yainkele to come away. Mournfully, and with a broken spirit, they went to where the day's meal awaited them.

"I am sure he loses the letters!" Yainkele would say a few minutes later, as they walked along.

"He is a bad man!" Berele would mutter with vexation.

But one day Lezer handed them a letter and a small parcel.

The letter ran thus:

"Dear Children,

Be good, boys, and learn with diligence. We send you herewith half a cheese and a quarter of a pound of sugar, and a little berry-juice in a bottle.

Eat it in health, and do not quarrel over it.

From me, your father,

CHAYYIM HECHT."

That day Lezer the carrier was the best man in the world in their eyes, they would not have been ashamed to eat him up with horse and cart for very love. They wrote an answer at once--for letter-paper they used to tear out, with fluttering hearts, the first, imprinted pages in the Gemoreh--and gave it that evening to Lezer the carrier. Lezer took it coldly, pushed it into the breast of his coat, and muttered something like "All right!"

"What did he say, Berele?" asked Yainkele, anxiously.

"I think he said 'all right,'" Berele answered doubtfully.

"I think he said so, too," Yainkele persuaded himself. Then he gave a sigh, and added fearfully:

"He may lose the letter!"

"Bite your tongue out!" answered Berele, angrily, and they went sadly away to supper.

And three times a week, early in the morning, when Lezer the carrier came driving, the two brothers flew, not ran, to the Dalissovke Inn, to ask for an answer to their letter; and Lezer the carrier grew more preoccupied and cross, and answered either with mumbled words, which the brothers could not understand, and dared not ask him to repeat, or else not at all, so that they went away with heavy hearts. But one day they heard Lezer the carrier speak distinctly, so that they understood quite well:

"What are you doing here, you two? What do you come plaguing me for? Letter? Fiddlesticks! How much do you pay me? Am I a postman? Eh? Be off with you, and don't worry."

The brothers obeyed, but only in part: their hearts were like lead, their thin little legs shook, and tears fell from their eyes onto the ground. And they went no more to Lezer the carrier to ask for a letter.

"I wish he were dead and buried!" they exclaimed, but they did not mean it, and they longed all the time just to go and look at Lezer the carrier, his horse and cart. After all, they came from Dalissovke, and the two brothers loved them.

* * * * *

One day, two or three weeks after the carrier sent them about their business in the way described, the two brothers were sitting in the house of the poor relation and talking about home. It was summer-time, and a Friday afternoon.

"I wonder what father is doing now," said Yainkele, staring at the small panes in the small window.

"He must be cutting his nails," answered Berele, with a melancholy smile.

"He must be chopping up lambs' feet," imagined Yainkele, "and Mother is combing Chainele, and Chainele is crying."

"Now we've talked nonsense enough!" decided Berele. "How can we know what is going on there?"

"Perhaps somebody's dead!" added Yainkele, in sudden terror.

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Berele. "When people die, they let one know--"

"Perhaps they wrote, and the carrier won't give us the letter--"

"Ai, that's chatter enough!" Berele was quite cross. "Shut up, donkey! You make me laugh," he went on, to reassure Yainkele, "they are all alive and well."

Yainkele became cheerful again, and all at once he gave a bound into the air, and exclaimed with eager eyes:

"Berele, do what I say! Let's write by the post!"

"Right you are!" agreed Berele. "Only I've no money."

"I have four kopeks; they are over from the ten I got last night. You know, at my 'Thursday' they give me ten kopeks for supper, and I have four over.

"And I have one kopek," said Berele, "just enough for a post-card."

"But which of us will write it?" asked Yainkele.

"I," answered Berele, "I am the eldest, I'm a first-born son."

"But I gave four kopeks!"

"A first-born is worth more than four kopeks."

"No! I'll write half, and you'll write half, ha?"

"Very well. Come and buy a card."

And the two brothers ran to buy a card at the postoffice.

"There will be no room for anything!" complained Yainkele, on the way home, as he contemplated the small post-card. "We will make little tiny letters, teeny weeny ones!" advised Berele.

"Father won't be able to read them!"

"Never mind! He will put on his spectacles. Come along--quicker!" urged Yainkele. His heart was already full of words, like a sea, and he wanted to pour it out onto the bit of paper, the scrap on which he had spent his entire fortune.

They reached their lodging, and settled down to write.

Berele began, and Yainkele stood and looked on.

"Begin higher up! There is room there for a whole line. Why did you put 'to my beloved Father' so low down?" shrieked Yainkele.

"Where am I to put it, then? In the sky, eh?" asked Berele, and pushed Yainkele aside.

"Go away, I will leave you half. Don't confuse me!--You be quiet!" and Yainkele moved away, and stared with terrified eyes at Berele, as he sat there, bent double, and wrote and wrote, knitted his brows, and dipped the pen, and reflected, and wrote again.

"That's enough!" screamed Yainkele, after a few minutes.

"It's not the half yet," answered Berele, writing on.

"But I ought to have more than half!" said Yainkele, crossly. The longing to write, to pour out his heart onto the post-card, was overwhelming him.

But Berele did not even hear: he had launched out into such rhetorical Hebrew expressions as "First of all, I let you know that I am alive and well," which he had learnt in "The Perfect Letter-Writer," and his little bits of news remained unwritten. He had yet to abuse Lezer the carrier, to tell how many pages of the Gemoreh he had learnt, to let them know they were to send another parcel, because they had no "Monday" and no "Wednesday," and the "Tuesday" was no better than nothing.

And Berele writes and writes, and Yainkele can no longer contain himself--he sees that Berele is taking up more than half the card.

"Enough!" He ran forward with a cry, and seized the penholder.

"Three words more!" begged Berele.

"But remember, not more than three!" and Yainkele's eyes flashed. Berele set to work to write the three words; but that which he wished to express required yet ten to fifteen words, and Berele, excited by the fact of writing, pecked away at the paper, and took up yet another bit of the other half.

"You stop!" shrieked Yainkele, and broke into hysterical sobs, as he saw what a small space remained for him.

"Hush! Just 'from me, thy son,'" begged Berele, "nothing else!"

But Yainkele, remembering that he had given a whole vierer toward the post-card, and that they would read so much of Berele at home, and so little of him, flew into a passion, and came and tried to tear away the card from under Berele's hands. "Let me put 'from me, thy son'!" implored Berele.

"It will do _without_ 'from me, thy son'!" screamed Yainkele, although he _felt_ that one ought to put it. His anger rose, and he began tugging at the card. Berele held tight, but Yainkele gave such a pull that the card tore in two.

"What have you done, villain!" cried Berele, glaring at Yainkele.

"I _meant_ to do it!" wailed Yainkele.

"Oh, but why did you?" cried Berele, gazing in despair at the two torn halves of the post-card.

But Yainkele could not answer. The tears choked him, and he threw himself against the wall, tearing his hair. Then Berele gave way, too, and the little room resounded with lamentations.

LOST HIS VOICE

It was in the large synagogue in Klemenke. The week-day service had come to an end. The town cantor who sings all the prayers, even when he prays alone, and who is longer over them than other people, had already folded his prayer-scarf, and was humming the day's Psalm to himself, to a tune. He sang the last words "cantorishly" high:

"And He will be our guide until death." In the last word "death" he tried, as usual, to rise artistically to the higher octave, then to fall very low, and to rise again almost at once into the height; but this time he failed, the note stuck in his throat and came out false.

He got a fright, and in his fright he looked round to make sure no one was standing beside him. Seeing only old Henoch, his alarm grew less, he knew that old Henoch was deaf.

As he went out with his prayer-scarf and phylacteries under his arm, the unsuccessful "death" rang in his ears and troubled him.

"Plague take it," he muttered, "it never once happened to me before."

Soon, however, he remembered that two weeks ago, on the Sabbath before the New Moon, as he stood praying with the choristers before the altar, nearly the same thing had happened to him when he sang "He is our God" as a solo in the Kedushah.

Happily no one remarked it--anyway the "bass" had said nothing to him. And the memory of the unsuccessful "Hear, O Israel" of two weeks ago and of to-day's "unto death" were mingled together, and lay heavily on his heart.

He would have liked to try the note once more as he walked, but the street was just then full of people, and he tried to refrain till he should reach home. Contrary to his usual custom, he began taking rapid steps, and it looked as if he were running away from someone. On reaching home, he put away his prayer-scarf without saying so much as good morning, recovered his breath after the quick walk, and began to sing, "He shall be our guide until death."

"That's right, you have so little time to sing in! The day is too short for you!" exclaimed the cantoress, angrily. "It grates on the ears enough already!"

"How, it grates?" and the cantor's eyes opened wide with fright, "I sing a note, and you say 'it grates'? How can it grate?"

He looked at her imploringly, his eyes said: "Have pity on me! Don't say, 'it grates'! because if it _does_ grate, I am miserable, I am done for!"

But the cantoress was much too busy and preoccupied with the dinner to sympathize and to understand how things stood with her husband, and went on:

"Of course it grates! Why shouldn't it? It deafens me. When you sing in the choir, I have to bear it, but when you begin by yourself--what?"

The cantor had grown as white as chalk, and only just managed to say:

"Grune, are you mad? What are you talking about?"

"What ails the man to-day!" exclaimed Grune, impatiently. "You've made a fool of yourself long enough! Go and wash your hands and come to dinner!"

The cantor felt no appetite, but he reflected that one must eat, if only as a remedy; not to eat would make matters worse, and he washed his hands.

He chanted the grace loud and cantor-like, glancing occasionally at his wife, to see if she noticed anything wrong; but this time she said nothing at all, and he was reassured. "It was my fancy--just my fancy!" he said to himself. "All nonsense! One doesn't lose one's voice so soon as all that!"

Then he remembered that he was already forty years old, and it had happened to the cantor Meyer Lieder, when he was just that age--

That was enough to put him into a fright again. He bent his head, and thought deeply. Then he raised it, and called out loud:

"Grune!"

"Hush! What is it? What makes you call out in that strange voice?" asked Grune, crossly, running in.

"Well, well, let me live!" said the cantor. "Why do you say 'in that strange voice'? Whose voice was it? eh? What is the matter now?"

There was a sound as of tears as he spoke.

"You're cracked to-day! As nonsensical--Well, what do you want?"

"Beat up one or two eggs for me!" begged the cantor, softly.

"Here's a new holiday!" screamed Grune. "On a Wednesday! Have you got to chant the Sabbath prayers? Eggs are so dear now--five kopeks apiece!"

"Grune," commanded the cantor, "they may be one ruble apiece, two rubles, five rubles, one hundred rubles. Do you hear? Beat up two eggs for me, and don't talk!"

"To be sure, you earn so much money!" muttered Grune.

"Then you think it's all over with me?" said the cantor, boldly. "No, Grune!"

He wanted to tell her that he wasn't sure about it yet, there was still hope, it might be all a fancy, perhaps it was imagination, but he was afraid to say all that, and Grune did not understand what he stammered out. She shrugged her shoulders, and only said, "Upon my word!" and went to beat up the eggs.

The cantor sat and sang to himself. He listened to every note as though he were examining some one. Finding himself unable to take the high octave, he called out despairingly:

"Grune, make haste with the eggs!" His one hope lay in the eggs.

The cantoress brought them with a cross face, and grumbled:

"He wants eggs, and we're pinching and starving--"

The cantor would have liked to open his heart to her, so that she should not think the eggs were what he cared about; he would have liked to say, "Grune, I think I'm done for!" but he summoned all his courage and refrained.

"After all, it may be only an idea," he thought.

And without saying anything further, he began to drink up the eggs as a remedy.

When they were finished, he tried to make a few cantor-like trills. In this he succeeded, and he grew more cheerful.

"It will be all right," he thought, "I shall not lose my voice so soon as all that! Never mind Meyer Lieder, he drank! I don't drink, only a little wine now and again, at a circumcision."

His appetite returned, and he swallowed mouthful after mouthful.

But his cheerfulness did not last: the erstwhile unsuccessful "death" rang in his ears, and the worry returned and took possession of him.

The fear of losing his voice had tormented the cantor for the greater part of his life. His one care, his one anxiety had been, what should he do if he were to lose his voice? It had happened to him once already, when he was fourteen years old. He had a tenor voice, which broke all of a sudden. But that time he didn't care. On the contrary, he was delighted, he knew that his voice was merely changing, and that in six months he would get the baritone for which he was impatiently waiting. But when he had got the baritone, he knew that when he lost that, it would be lost indeed--he would get no other voice. So he took great care of it--how much more so when he had his own household, and had taken the office of cantor in Klemenke! Not a breath of wind was allowed to blow upon his throat, and he wore a comforter in the hottest weather.

It was not so much on account of the Klemenke householders--he felt sure they would not dismiss him from his office. Even if he were to lose his voice altogether, he would still receive his salary. It was not brought to him to his house, as it was--he had to go for it every Friday from door to door, and the Klemenke Jews were good-hearted, and never refused anything to the outstretched hand. He took care of his voice, and trembled to lose it, only out of love for the singing. He thought a great deal of the Klemenke Jews--their like was not to be found--but in the interpretation of music they were uninitiated, they had no feeling whatever. And when, standing before the altar, he used to make artistic trills and variations, and take the highest notes, that was for _himself_--he had great joy in it--and also for his eight singers, who were all the world to him. His very life was bound up with them, and when one of them exclaimed, "Oi, cantor! Oi, how you sing!" his happiness was complete.

The singers had come together from various towns and villages, and all their conversations and their stories turned and wrapped themselves round cantors and music. These stories and legends were the cantor's delight, he would lose himself in every one of them, and give a sweet, deep sigh:

"As if music were a trifle! As if a feeling were a toy!" And now that he had begun to fear he was losing his voice, it seemed to him the singers were different people--bad people! They must be laughing at him among themselves! And he began to be on his guard against them, avoided taking a high note in their presence, lest they should find out--and suffered all the more.

And what would the neighboring cantors say? The thought tormented him further. He knew that he had a reputation among them, that he was a great deal thought of, that his voice was much talked of. He saw in his mind's eye a couple of cantors whispering together, and shaking their heads sorrowfully: they are pitying him! "How sad! You have heard? The poor Klemenke cantor----"

The vision quite upset him.

"Perhaps it's only fancy!" he would say to himself in those dreadful moments, and would begin to sing, to try his highest notes. But the terror he was in took away his hearing, and he could not tell if his voice were what it should be or not.

In two weeks time his face grew pale and thin, his eyes were sunk, and he felt his strength going.

"What is the matter with you, cantor?" said a singer to him one day.

"Ha, what is the matter?" asked the cantor, with a start, thinking they had already found out. "You ask what is the matter with me? Then you know something about it, ha!"

"No, I know nothing. That is why I ask you why you look so upset."

"Upset, you say? Nothing more than upset, ha? That's all?"

"The cantor must be thinking out some new piece for the Solemn Days," decided the choir.

Another month went by, and the cantor had not got the better of his fear. Life had become distasteful to him. If he had known for certain that his voice was gone, he would perhaps have been calmer. Verfallen! No one can live forever (losing his voice and dying was one and the same to him), but the uncertainty, the tossing oneself between yes and no, the Olom ha-Tohu of it all, embittered the cantor's existence.

At last, one fine day, the cantor resolved to get at the truth: he could bear it no longer.

It was evening, the wife had gone to the market for meat, and the choir had gone home, only the eldest singer, Yoessel "bass," remained with the cantor.

The cantor looked at him, opened his mouth and shut it again; it was difficult for him to say what he wanted to say.

At last he broke out with:

"Yoessel!"

"What is it, cantor?"

"Tell me, are you an honest man?"

Yoessel "bass" stared at the cantor, and asked:

"What are you asking me to-day, cantor?"

"Brother Yoessel," the cantor said, all but weeping, "Brother Yoessel!"

That was all he could say.

"Cantor, what is wrong with you?"

"Brother Yoessel, be an honest man, and tell me the truth, the truth!"

"I don't understand! What is the matter with you, cantor?"

"Tell me the truth: Do you notice any change in me?"

"Yes, I do," answered the singer, looking at the cantor, and seeing how pale and thin he was. "A very great change----"

"Now I see you are an honest man, you tell me the truth to my face. Do you know when it began?"

"It will soon be a month," answered the singer.

"Yes, brother, a month, a month, but I felt--"

The cantor wiped off the perspiration that covered his forehead, and continued:

"And you think, Yoessel, that it's lost now, for good and all?"

"That _what_ is lost?" asked Yoessel, beginning to be aware that the conversation turned on something quite different from what was in his own mind.

"What? How can you ask? Ah? What should I lose? Money? I have no money--I mean--of course--my voice."

Then Yoessel understood everything--he was too much of a musician _not_ to understand. Looking compassionately at the cantor, he asked:

"For certain?"

"For certain?" exclaimed the cantor, trying to be cheerful. "Why must it be for certain? Very likely it's all a mistake--let us hope it is!"

Yoessel looked at the cantor, and as a doctor behaves to his patient, so did he:

"Take _do_!" he said, and the cantor, like an obedient pupil, drew out _do_.

"Draw it out, draw it out! Four quavers--draw it out!" commanded Yoessel, listening attentively.

The cantor drew it out.

"Now, if you please, _re_!"

The cantor sang out _re-re-re_.

The singer moved aside, appeared to be lost in thought, and then said, sadly:

"Gone!"

"Forever?"

"Well, are you a little boy? Are you likely to get another voice? At your time of life, gone is gone!"

The cantor wrung his hands, threw himself down beside the table, and, laying his head on his arms, he burst out crying like a child.

Next morning the whole town had heard of the misfortune--that the cantor had lost his voice.

"It's an ill wind----" quoted the innkeeper, a well-to-do man. "He won't keep us so long with his trills on Sabbath. I'd take a bitter onion for that voice of his, any day!"

LATE

It was in sad and hopeless mood that Antosh watched the autumn making its way into his peasant's hut. The days began to shorten and the evenings to lengthen, and there was no more petroleum in the hut to fill his humble lamp; his wife complained too--the store of salt was giving out; there was very little soap left, and in a few days he would finish his tobacco. And Antosh cleared his throat, spat, and muttered countless times a day:

"No salt, no soap, no tobacco; we haven't got anything. A bad business!"