The White Terror and The Red Part 21

She named her inn, and the two started thither together. There were so many strangers in town, each in quest of an audience with the "Good Jew," and Yossl was so close to the holy man, or to those near him, that their conversation attracted scarcely any notice.

"It's a very serious matter, Reb Yossl," she said, as they crossed the market place. "n.o.body is to know anything about it, or it may be bad for your son."

"Go ahead," he snarled, turning pale. "Never mind spending time on a woman's prefaces. What is up?"

"You know how the educated young people of these days are. There is nothing, in fact, the matter. It'll soon be over. But for the present it would do him good if the gendarmes knew he was in Paris."

"Why, isn't he in Paris?" Yossl asked morosely. "I received a letter from him from there."

"Of course he is. Only, the gendarmes, in case they look for him, and they may do so sooner or later, you know, the gendarmes may not believe he is there. So it would be a good thing if you could convince them of it. Your son would be benefited by it very much."

Yossl took fire.

"On my part let him go to all the black ghosts!" he burst out. "'The educated people of these days,' indeed! First he will play with fire and then he wants me to fight his battles! Would he have his old father go to prison on account of him? He is not in Paris, then? I am as clever as you, young woman. I, too, understand a thing or two, though I am not of 'the educated people of these days!' It is not enough that he has got in trouble himself; he wants to drag me in, too. Is that the kind of 'education' he has got? Is that what he has broken with his wife and father for? The ghost take him!"

"Don't be excited, Reb Yossl," Clara pleaded, earnestly. "It's a treasure of a son you have and you know it. As to the education he has acquired, it is the kind that teaches one to struggle against injustice and oppression, things which I know you hate as deeply as your son does." A tremour came into her voice, and a slight blush into her cheeks, as she added: "Your son is one of those remarkable men who are willing to die for the suffering people."

"But who are you?" he asked with a frown, "How did you get here? If you, too, are one of those people you had better leave this town at once. I don't want to get in trouble on account of you."

They reached the inn, and he paused in front of it, leaning against a waggon.

"Never mind who I am," she returned.

"But where is he? Has he been arrested? Good G.o.d, what has he been doing to himself? What does he want of my old bones? Is he sorry his father is still alive?"

"You don't want your son to perish, do you?" she said rather pugnaciously. "If you don't, you had better get the gendarmes off his track."

She went on arguing with renewed ardour. As he listened, a questioning look came into his face. Instead of following her plea he scrutinised her suspiciously.

"But why should you pray for him so fervently," he asked significantly.

"Why should you run risks for his sake? What do you get out of it?"

"Must one get something 'out of it' to do what is right?"

"Ah, may the ghost take the whole lot of you!" Yossl said, with a wave of his hand, and walked away. He felt sure that this young woman and his son were in love, and he was shocked for the sake of Miriam, Makar's divorced wife, as well as for his own.

He made for a slushy narrow lane, but turned back, retracing his steps in the direction of the house which was the Good Jew's headquarters, as also the home of Miriam. It was the house of her uncle, Arye Weinstein, the richest Pietist in Zorki.

The Good Jew occupied two expensively furnished rooms which were always kept sacred to his use. They were known as "the rabbi's chambers" and although the Righteous Man visited Zorki only once a year, n.o.body was ever allowed so much as to sit down in his easy chair. One day, when Weinstein caught his little girl playing in the "rabbi's bed room" with a skull-cap which the holy man had left there, he flew into one of the savage fits of temper for which he was dreaded, and slapped the child's face till it bled. The rabbi's chambers were never swept or dusted until a day or two before his arrival, and then half a dozen people worked day and night to make things worthy of the exalted guest. The "rabbi's parlour" opened into a vast room, by far the largest in the house, which on Sat.u.r.days was usually turned into a synagogue, and was known in town as "Weinstein's salon."

Miriam was a very bright, quick-witted little woman, but she was not pretty--a pale, sickly, defenceless-looking creature of the kind who have no enemies even among their own s.e.x. Her separation from Makar was only a nominal affair, in fact, the divorce having been brought about against the will of the young couple by her iron-willed uncle, who had succeeded in embroiling Yossl with his son as well as with himself soon after the true character of Makar's visits to Pani Oginska's house had been discovered; but Makar and Miriam had become reconciled, through a letter from him, and they had been in secret correspondence ever since.

Yossl never lost hope of seeing them remarried, and, in order to keep the memory of his son fresh in Miriam's mind, he had obeyed the Good Jew and made peace with the wealthy Pietist.

Yossl was in charge of the town's weight-house and was commonly known as "Yossl the weight-house man." When Feivish (Makar's real first name) was old enough to be started on the Talmud, he left the weight-house to his wife, devoting himself to the spiritual education of the boy. Every time they sat down to the huge book he would pin the edge of Feivish's s.h.i.+rt to his collar, leaving the child's back bare to the strap in his hand. Whenever his wife protested he would bring her to terms by threatening to tell the Good Jew that she would have her son brought up as a dunce. He was going to make a "fattened scholar" of him. He was going to fatten him on divine Law by main force, even as his wife fattened her geese for Pa.s.sover. He was going to show those fish-blooded, sneering Oppositionists that they had no monopoly of the Talmud. Often during his lesson a distracted look would come into Feivish's dark little eyes, and Yossl's words fell on deaf ears. Then it was that the thong would descend on the bare back. Feivish never cried.

As the blow fell, he would curl himself up with a startled look, that haunted Yossl for hours after. Feivish turned out to be a most ardent Pietist. Once, for example, in a very cold wintry night, after the Good Jew had crossed a snow-covered lawn, Feivish, in a burst of devotion, took off his boots and "followed in the foot-steps of the man of righteousness" barefoot.

For four years the young couple lived happily, their only woe being the death of both children that had been born to them. But the Good Jew said "G.o.d will have mercy," and Feivish "served his Lord with gladness." But this did not last. Feivish was initiated into the world of free thought, and gradually the fervent Pietist was transformed into a fervent atheist. It was during that period that he first met Pavel and that his wife's despotic uncle extorted a divorce from him.

While Yossl was twitting the red-headed Oppositionist in front of Weinstein's house, Bathsheba, a daughter-in-law of the man of substance, a plump, black-eyed beauty of the kind one's mind a.s.sociates with a Turkish harem, beckoned Miriam aside, in one of the rooms within, offering her a piece of cake.

"It's from a chunk the Good Jew has tasted," she said, triumphantly.

"Eat it, and your heart will be lighter."

"It will help me as much as blood-letting helps a dead man," Miriam answered with a smile.

"Eat it, I say. You'll get letters more often if you do." For a woman to exchange love letters with the man from whom she has been divorced is quite a grave sin for a daughter of Israel to commit. The remedy Bathsheba recommended was therefore something like the prayer of a thief that the Lord may bless his business. But then Miriam questioned the power of the rabbi's "leavings" to bring a blessing upon any business.

She smiled.

"How do you know it is nonsense? Maybe it isn't, after all," Bathsheba urged.

"You're a foolish little dear."

"If I were you I should eat it. What can you lose by it?"

Maria, a Gentile servant who had been longer in the house than Bathsheba, came in. She spoke Yiddish excellently and was almost like a member of the family.

"Take a bite and you will be blessed, Maria," Miriam joked, holding out the cake to her. "It's from a piece the Good Jew has tasted."

"If I was a Jewess I would," Maria retorted reproachfully. "It's a sin to make mock of a Good Jew."

The other two burst into a laugh.

Left alone, Miriam was about to throw the cake away, but had not the heart to do so. She sat eyeing it for some minutes and then, making fun of herself, she bit off a morsel. She acted like the Jewess of the anecdote, who, to be on the safe side, would kiss the cross and the Hebrew prayer book at once.

An hour later Yossl was flaunting his son's Paris letter and cursing him to a new crowd in front of the Good Jew's headquarters.

"The ghost take him!" he said. "Indeed, the ghost is a well-travelled fellow. He can get to Paris just as readily as he does to Zorki."

CHAPTER XXI.

MAKAR'S FATHER.

On Sat.u.r.day morning Weinstein's salon was crowded with wors.h.i.+ppers, all married men in their praying shawls and skull-caps. A Good Jew is exempt from praying with the congregation, his transports of religious fervour being too sacred a proceeding for common mortals to intrude upon.

Accordingly, the Man of Righteousness was making his devotions in the seclusion of the adjoining parlour.

To a stranger unfamiliar with Pietist prayer meetings the crowd here gathered would have looked for all the world like the inmates of the violent ward in an insane asylum. Most of the wors.h.i.+ppers were snapping their fingers; the others were clapping their hands, clenching their fists with all their might or otherwise gesticulating savagely. They were running or jumping about, shrieking, sighing or intoning merrily, while here and there a man seemed to be straining every bit of his strength to shut his eyes as tightly as possible or to distort his face into some painful or grotesque expression. The Gentiles of the province called the Pietists Jumping Jacks.

Some of the wors.h.i.+ppers gesticulated merely because it was "correct form"; others did so from force of habit, or by way of fighting off the intrusion of worldly thoughts; still others for the same reason for which one yawns when others do. But all these formed a small minority.

The bulk of the Pietists present, including several people of questionable honesty in business matters, were honestly convulsed with a contagion of religious rapture. The invisible proximity of the Man of Righteousness, the sight of the door that concealed his holy presence, keyed them up to the highest pitch of exaltation. Their ears followed the "master of prayers" at the Stand, but their minds beheld the Good Jew of Gornovo. All hearts converged at the mysterious spot behind that door. That which sounded and looked like a pandemonium of voices and gestures was in reality a chorus of uplifted souls with the soul of the concealed man of G.o.d for a "master of prayers."