Stories and Pictures Part 3

IN THE POST-CHAISE

He told me everything at once, in one breath. I learned in little over a minute that he was Cham, Yoneh Krubishever's son-in-law, Beril Konskivoler's son, and that the rich Meerenstein in Lublin was a relation on his mother's side, peace be upon her! But this relation lived almost like a Gentile; whether or not they ate forbidden food, he could not tell, but that they ate with unwashed hands ... so much he had seen with his own eyes.

They had other queer ways beside: long colored cloths were lying on their stairs; before going in, one rang a bell; figured table-covers were spread about the rooms where people sat as if in jail ... stole across them like thieves ... altogether it was like being in a company of deaf-mutes.

His wife has a family of a kind in Warsaw. But he never goes near them; they are as poor as himself, so what is the good of them to him, _ha?_

In the house of the Lublin relation things are not as they should be, but, at least, he is rich, and whoso rubs against fat meat gets s.h.i.+ny himself; where they chop wood, there are splinters; where there is a meal, one may chance to lick a bone--but those others--paupers!

He even counts on the Lublin relation's obtaining a place for him.

Business, he says, is bad; just now he is dealing in eggs, buys them, in the villages, and sends them to Lublin, whence they are despatched to London. There, it is said, people put them into lime-ovens and hatch chickens out of them. It must be lies. The English just happen to _like_ eggs! However that may be, the business, for the present, is in a bad way. Still, it is better than dealing in produce--produce is knocked on the head. He became a produce dealer soon after his marriage; he had everything to learn, and his partner was an old dealer who simply turned his pockets inside out.

It was dark in the post-chaise--I could not see Cham's face, and I don't know to this day how he recognized a fellow-Jew in me. When he got in, I was sitting in a corner dozing, and was only awakened by his voice. I don't talk in my sleep--perhaps I gave a Jewish groan. Perhaps he felt that _my_ groan and _his_ groan were _one_ groan?

He even told me that his wife was from Warsaw and did not fancy Konskivlye. That is, she was born in Krubisheff, but she was brought up in Warsaw by that miserable family of hers--lost her parents.

There she learned to know about _other_ things. She could talk Polish and read German addresses fluently. She even says that she can play, not on a fiddle, but on some other instrument.

"And who are you?" and he seized me by the hand.

Sleep was out of the question, and he had begun to interest me. It was like a story. A young man from a small provincial town; a wife brought up in Warsaw--she is impatient of the small town. Something might be made of it, I reflect; one must know exactly how it all is, then add a little to it, and it will make a novel. I will put in a villain, a convict, a bankruptcy or two, and rush in a dragon--I, too, will be interesting!

I lean toward my neighbor, and tell him who I am.

"So it's you," he said, "is it? You yourself! Tell me, I beg of you, how do you find the time and attention required for inventing stories?"

"Well, you see...."

"How can I see? You must have inherited a large fortune, and you are living on the interest?"

"Heaven forbid! My parents are alive."

"Then you won in the lottery?"

"Wrong again!"

"Then, what?"

I really did not know how to answer.

"Do you make a living by _that_?"

I gave a genuinely Jewish reply--_Be!_

"And that is your whole Parnosseh, without anything additional?"

"For the present."

"O _wa_! how much does it bring in?"

"Very little."

"A bad business, too?"

"Knocked on the head!"

"Bad times!" sighed my neighbor.

A few minutes' silence, but he could not be quiet long.

"Tell me, I beg of you, what is the good of the stories you write? I don't mean to _you_," he amended himself. "Heaven forbid! A Jew must earn a living, if he has to suck it out of the wall--that is not what I mean--what will a Jew not do for a living? I am riding in the post-chaise, and not in an 'opportunity,'[2] because I could not hear of one. Heaven knows whether I'm not sitting on Shatnez.[3] I mean the people--what is the good of the stories to _them?_ What is the object of them? What do they put into story books?" Then, answering himself: "I guess it's just a question of women's fas.h.i.+ons, like crinolines!"

"And you," I ask, "have never dipped into a story-book?"

"I can tell _you_: I do know a _little_ about them, as much as that."

And he measured off a small piece of his finger, but it was dark in the chaise.

"Did they interest you?"

"_Me?_ Heaven forbid! It was all through my wife! This, you see, is how it happened: It must be five or six years ago--six--a year after the wedding, we were still boarding with my father--when my wife grew poorly. Not that she was ill; she went about as usual, but she was not up to the mark.

"One day I asked her what was wrong.

"But, really--" he caught himself up. "I don't know why I should bother you with all this."

"Please, go on!"

My neighbor laughed.

"Is straw wanted in Egypt? Do you want _my_ stories, when you can invent your own?"

"Do, please, go on!"

"Apparently, you write fiction for other people and want truth for yourself?"

It does not occur to him that one might wish to write the truth.

"Well," he said, "so be it!"

"Well," repeated my neighbor, "there's nothing to be ashamed of. We had a room to ourselves, I was a young man then, more given to that sort of thing--and I asked her what was the matter. She burst out crying!

"I felt very sorry for her. Besides being my wife, she was an orphan, away from her home, and altogether much to be pitied."