Stories and Pictures Part 20

I had my mouth open to speak many a time, but it seemed to me that Gutele stood behind her shoulders, held out her small hands to me in supplication, and spoke with her eyes: "No," she begged, "no, don't tell!"

And the prayer in her eyes overcame my piety; I felt that for her I would go, not through fire and water only, but into h.e.l.l itself.

And yet it seemed to me a great pity, for my mother and all my teachers were sure that I had in me the making of something remarkable.

13

I was quit of Zerach Kneip and his long finger-nail, but I was not so much the better off.

I was sixteen years old. The match-mongers were already catching at my mother's skirts, and I preserved the childish habit of collecting wax off the Shool table on the Day of Atonement and secretly moulding it in Cheder under the table.

The beadle hated me for this with a deadly hatred, and I was well served out for it besides.

"What have you got there?" asks Reb Yozel.

I am wool-gathering at the moment and lay my whole hand on the Gemoreh, wax on all the five fingers.

Reb Yozel has grown pale with anger. He opens the drawer, takes out a piece of thin string, and binds together my two thumbs, but so tight, a pang goes through me.

That was only the beginning. He went to the broom and deliberately chose and pulled out a thin, flexible twig. With this twig he whipped me over my tied hands--for how long? It seemed to me forever. And strange to say, I took the pain in good part; I felt sure G.o.d had sent it me that I might repent of my sin and give up going to the teacher.

When my hands were pretty well swollen and the skin had turned all colors, Reb Yozel put away the twig and said: "Enough! Now you'll let the wax alone!"

I went on moulding wax all the same.

It gave me the greatest satisfaction to make whatever I pleased out of it. I felt I had something to be busy about.

I would mould the head of a man, and then turn it into a cat or a mouse; then I drew the sides out into wings, divided the head into two, and it became an Imperial eagle. After that, out of the two heads and two wings, I made a bun in four pieces.

I myself was just such another piece of wax. Reb Yozel, the teacher, my mother, and anybody who pleased moulded me into shape. Gutele melted me.

14

They moulded me into shapes, but it hurt.

I remember very well that it hurt, but why? Why must _I_ torment myself about the soul?

My comrades laughed at me; they nicknamed me the "soul-boy," and I suffered as much from the name as it was foolish in itself.

I am lost in thought; I wonder what my end will be; when I shall have the strength to tear myself out of Satan's grasp. I call my own soul to account; I reproach it; I scold it. Suddenly I receive a fillip on the nose, "Soul-boy." I wish to forget my troubles and plunge into a deep problem of Rabbinical dialectics; I yoke together a difficult explanation of the Tossafot with a hard pa.s.sage in the Rambam, mix in a piece from the P'ne Yehoshuah, and top it off with an argument from Eibeschutz. I am in another world, forgotten are the teacher, Gutele, the soul. Things are fitting one into the other in my brain; I nearly "have it," the solution is at the tip of my tongue--a whistle in my ear--"Soul-boy!" It rings through my head, something bursts in my brain.

Forgotten Tossafot, forgotten Rambam--I am back on the earth!

I stand repeating the Eighteen Benedictions, my heart and my eyes are alike full of tears, "Heal us, O Eternal, and we shall be healed!" I say with devotion, and I mean not the body, heaven forbid, I mean the soul: "Heal me, Almighty; heal my poor soul!"

"That's the soul-boy," says one to another, pointing at me. And it is all over with my devotion.

Thus I suffered day and night.

15

Gutele was held to be very clever; her father never called her anything but "my little wisdom," and the neighbors said she was as bright as the day, and that if she were as pious as she was clever, she would rejoice the heart of her mother in Paradise. My mother, too, used to praise her cleverness, and, if only Gutele had known more about koshering meat, she would not have wished for a better daughter-in-law.

And one day, when I found the teacher out, and Gutele alone, it occurred to me to ask her opinion about the soul.

My knees shook, my hands twitched, my heart fluttered; my eyes were fixed on the floor, and yet I asked: "They all say, Gutele, that you are so wise. Tell me, please, what is the soul?"

She smiled and answered:

"I'm sure, I don't know."

Then she grew suddenly sad and tears came into her eyes:

"I just remember," she said to me, "that when my mother was alive (on whom be peace), my father always said, she was his soul--they loved one another so dearly."

I don't know what came over me, but that same instant I took her hand and said, trembling:

"Gutele, will you be my soul?" And she answered me quite softly: "Yes!"

X

IN TIME OF PESTILENCE

1

THE TOWN TAKES FRIGHT

It is coming! _oi_, it is already near! In the villages round about people are in peril of death! Lord of the world, what is to be done?

"Thou shalt not open thy mouth for Satan"--the name of the pestilence may not cross the lips, but fear descends on every heart like a stone.

And every day there is worse news. In Apte a water-carrier, carrying his cans, has fallen dead in the street. In Ostrovtze they have made post-mortem examinations on two Jews. In Brotkoff there is a doctor with a student from Warsaw. Racheff is isolated; they let n.o.body out or in.

Radom is surrounded by a chain of Cossacks; in Tzoismir, heaven defend us, they say people are falling like flies. A terror!

Trade slackens, piousness increases. Dealers in produce are afraid to leave the spot; big Yossil has already sold his horse and wagon--it's a pity about the oats. The produce-brokers tighten the belt across their empty stomachs, and there is daily more room in the dwellings, because every Friday something more is taken to be p.a.w.ned against Sabbath. A workman, sometimes even a householder, will take an extra sip of brandy, to put heart into him, but that doesn't go far to fill the innkeeper's pocket, and a peasant is seldom to be seen. To make up for this, the Rofeh's wife has removed her wig and put on a hair-band;[37] a secret Maskil has burnt his "Love of Zion"[38] in public and taken to reciting psalms; the bather's maid-servant has gone to the rabbi and asked him how to do penance for having been in the habit of peeping into the men's bath-house, on Fridays, through a c.h.i.n.k in the door. A certain young man, not to mention names, has been fasting a whole month and thinks of becoming an ascetic--heaven only knows for what sin. Some of the tailors now return remnants, butchers are more liberal in their cuts, only Yeruchem Chalfen asks ten per cent. a month on a p.a.w.n ticket, and no less with a security. His heart is of flint.

And faces grow yellow and livid, lips, blue-brown, eyes look large and round, and heads droop; and the street is hushed. Small, scattered groups, men and women apart, stand and hold voiceless conversation; heads are shaken, hands thrown out, and eyes lifted to the leaden sky spread out over the little town. It is quiet even in the house-of-study between afternoon and evening prayers. On the other hand, the women's gallery in the Shool is full. Every few minutes a piteous cry comes through the grating, and the men feel their hair and nails tingle. There is Kol Nidrei[39] every night, and people are bathed in tears.

What is to be done? Who can advise?

It is said that in Warsaw they have started tea-houses for the poor, and cheap kitchens; they are giving away coal, clothes, and food for nothing--all "_their_" precautions, all to imitate the nations of the world, and perhaps to please the chief of police. Here other means are employed--"Mer Baal-Ness,"[40] wonder-workers, and famous charms.

Sat.u.r.day evening, as soon as it is dark, "candles of blessing" are stuck in the windows; outside the town, Va.s.sil has a mill--the stakes shall be conveyed away by night and buried in holy ground; an orphan boy shall be married to an orphan girl--and every possible thing of the kind; only--only, these charms have been from everlasting, and yet, when there was the plague of 1829, the entire market-place was gra.s.s-grown with only a pathway or two in the middle, trodden by those who carried the dead.