An Obscure Apostle Part 16

Todros spoke further:

"Marry him as soon as you can, because it is written that when on a young man's face the hair is growing, and he has not a wife, then he will fall into uncleanliness. Your grandson's soul has already fallen into uncleanliness. Yesterday I saw him with a girl--"

Saul raised his eyes.

"I saw him," continued the Rabbi, "talking with Karaim's girl."

"Karaim's girl?" repeated Saul, in a voice full of surprise and fright.

"He was standing on the edge of the pond and took from her hand some flowers, and I read in their faces that the unclean fire was embracing them."

"With Karaim's girl," repeated Saul once more.

"With a heretic!" said the Rabbi.

"With a beggar!" said Saul energetically, raising his head.

"Rabbi," continued he, "now I will act differently with him! I don't wish to have shame eat up my eyes in my old age, because my grandson has an unclean friends.h.i.+p with a beggar. I shall marry him!"

"You must punish him," said the Rabbi, "I came here to tell you to put your foot on his neck and bend his pride. Don't spare him, for your indulgence will be a sin which the Lord will not forgive you.

And if you will not punish him, I will lay my hand on his head and there will be great shame for you, and for him such misfortune that he will grovel in the dirt, like a miserable worm!"

Under the influence of these words, p.r.o.nounced in a threatening voice, Saul trembled. Different emotions fought continually within the old man; a secret hatred for Todros and a great respect for his learning, pride and fear, fierce anger toward his grandson and tender love for him. The Rabbi's threat touched that last chord.

"Rabbi," he said, "forgive him. He is still a mere child. When he is married and starts in business he will be different. When he was born his father wrote to me: 'Father, what name do you wish your grandson to be given?' and I answered, 'Give him the name of Meir, which means light, that it may be a light before me and all Israel!'"

Here emotion choked his voice and he was silent. Two tears rolled slowly down his cheeks.

The Rabbi rose from the sofa, lifted his index finger and said:

"You must remember my commands. I order you to set your foot on his neck, and you must listen to my orders, because it is written that 'the sages are the world's foundation.'"

Having said this, he advanced toward the door, at which Reb Jankiel and Morejne Calman seized him again, and carried him through the hall and across the threshold and set him on the ground.

And again the black throng of people advanced through the square toward the school-yard; again the melamed, retreating before the Rabbi, jumped, clapped his hands, danced and shouted; and again the crowd of children, following the retinue at a distance, imitated their teacher, jumping, howling, Clapping their hands. And in Ezofowich's parlour old Saul sat with his face covered with his hands, while at the opposite door Freida appeared. The sun rays, falling through the window, kindled into rainbow colours the diamonds with which she was covered. She looked around the room with her half-closed eyes, and p.r.o.nounced, in her customary soundless whisper:

"Wo ist Meir?"

CHAPTER VI

Meir was absent during the Rabbi's visit. He left the house early in the morning and went in the direction of the poorest quarter of the town. The houses there were very small and very low and exceedingly dismal, none of them having more than two windows. In front of the houses were evil-smelling sloughs. From the black chimneys of the tenements arose thin streaks of smoke, indicating by their thinness the scarcity of fuel, and the food cooked by it. Fences, rotten and tumble-down, surrounded the small courtyards, which were covered with sweepings. Here and there could be seen in the rear of the houses, tiny tracts of land with meagre vegetables growing in them. At the low doors, miserable looking women with dark sickly faces, wearing blue caftans and carroty wigs, washed their gray, coa.r.s.e linen in buckets. The old and bent women sat on the benches, knitting blue or black wool stockings, while young sunburned girls, in dirty dresses and dishevelled hair, milked the goats.

It was the quarter of the town inhabited by the poorest population of Szybow, the nursery of poverty--even of misery, dirt, and disease.

The houses of the Ezofowichs, Calmans, Witebskis and Kamionkers, standing at the square, were luxurious palaces when compared with those human dwellings, the mere exterior aspect of which made one think of earthly purgatory. And no wonder. There, on the square, lived merchants and learned men, the aristocracy of every Jewish community; here lived the population of working men and tradesmen--the plebeians earning their daily bread with their hands and not with brains.

In spite of the fact that it was yet early morning, the daily work had generally begun. From behind the dirty windows could be seen the rising and falling arms of the tailors and cobblers. Through the thin walls resounded the tools of tinsmiths and the hammers of blacksmiths, and from the houses of the manufacturers of tallow candles rose unbearable, greasy exhalations. Some of the inhabitants, taking advantage of the sunrise, looked into the street, opened their windows and a pa.s.ser-by could see the interior of, the small rooms with black walls, crowded with occupants which swarmed like ants.

Through the windows came the mixed noise of singing and praying in male voices, the quarrelling of women and the screaming of children.

All the smaller children rent the sultry air of the black, crowded rooms with their cries, while the older ones trooped out into the street in great crowds, chasing each other noisily or rolling on the ground. Growing boys, dressed not in sleeveless jackets like the children, but in long, grey halats, stood on the thresholds of the huts leaning against the walls, pale, thin, drowsy, with widely opened mouths, as though they wished to breathe into their sickly, cold b.r.e.a.s.t.s the warm rays of the sun and the fresh breeze of the morning.

Meir approached one of these youths.

"Nu, Lejbele," said he, "I have come to see you. Are you always sick and looking like an owl?"

It was evident that Lejbele was ill and moping, for, with hands folded in the sleeves of his miserable halat, and pressed to his chest, he was s.h.i.+vering with cold, although the morning was warm; he did not answer Meir, but opened his mouth and great, dull, dark eyes more widely, and looked idiotically at the young man.

Meir laid his band on the boy's head.

"Were you in the heder yesterday?" he asked. The boy began to tremble still more, and answered in a hoa.r.s.e voice:

"Aha."

This meant an affirmative.

"Were you beaten again?"

Tears filled the boy's dark eyes, which remained raised to the face of the tall young man.

"They beat me," he said.

His breast began to heave with sobs under the sleeves of the halat, which were still pressed by the boy's folded bands.

"Have you breakfasted?"

The boy shook his head in the negative.

Meir took from the nearest huckster's stand a big hala (loaf of bread), for which he threw a copper coin to the old woman. He then gave the bread to the child. Lejbele seized it in both bands, and began to devour it rapaciously. At that moment a tall, thin, lithe man rushed out from the cabin. He wore a black beard, and bad an old, sorrowful face. He threw himself toward Meir. First be seized his band and raised it to his lips, and then began to reproach him.

"Morejne!" he exclaimed, "why did you give him that hala? He is a stupid, nasty child. He don't want to study, and brings shame upon me. The melamed--may he live a hundred years--takes a great deal of trouble to teach him; but he has a head which does not understand anything. The melamed beats him, and I beat him, too, in order that the learning shall enter his head, but it does not help at all. He is an alejdyc gejer (lazy)--a donkey!"

Meir looked at the boy, who was still devouring the bread.

"Schmul," said he, "he is neither lazy nor a donkey, but he is sick."

Schmul waved his hand contemptuously.

"He is sick," shouted he. "He began to be sick when he was told to study. Before that he was healthy, gay, and intelligent. Ah, what an intelligent and pretty child he was! Could I expect such a misfortune? What is he now?"

Meir continued to smooth the dishevelled hair of the pale child with his hand. The tall, thin Schmul bent again and kissed his hand.

"Morejne," said he, "you are very good if you pity such a stupid child."

"Schmul, why do you call me Morejne?" asked Meir.

Schmul interrupted him hastily.

"The fathers of your father were Morejnes; your zeide and your uncles are Morejnes, and you, Meir, you will soon be Morejne also."