Stories and Pictures Part 39

We stepped out into the street.

The sky that hung over Tishewitz resembled a dark blue uniform with dim steel b.u.t.tons.

My companion found it like a curtain[81] sewn with silver spangles.

Perhaps he is dreaming of just such a blue satin "prayer-bag," with spangles, some day to be his own. In five or six years he may receive it as a gift from his bride.

The little town looks quite different by night. The rubbish heaps and the tumbledown houses are hidden in the "poetical and silent lap of darkness."

The windows and door-panes look like great, fiery, purple eyes. By the hearth-sides pots of boiling water must be standing ready for the potatoes or the dumplings.

The statistics give an average annual expenditure of thirty-seven and a half rubles a head--about ten kopeks a day. Now calculate: school fees, two sets of pots and pans, Sabbaths and holidays, an illness, and a wonder-working Rebbe--besides extras. You see now why there is not always a meal cooking, why the dumplings are of buck-wheat without an egg, and why the potatoes are not always eaten with dripping. Many of the houses are stone-blind. In these it is a question of a bit of bread with or without a herring, and perhaps grace without meat. In one of those houses must live the widow who requires so little, beating her hollow chest through the long confession. Perhaps she measures her winding-sheet, or thinks of her wedding dress of long ago with its gold braid, and from her old eyes there drops a tear, and she whispers, smiling, into the night: "After all, what does a Jewess need?"

My motherless companion is thinking of something else. Hopping on one little foot, he lifts his face to the moon, swimming with a silly, aristocratic air in and out of the light clouds.

He sighs. Has he seen a star fall? No.

"_oi_," he says, "_wollt ich gewollt, Mes.h.i.+ach soll kimmen!_" (How I do wish the Messiah would come!)

"What is the matter?"

"I want the moon to be made bigger again. It is so dreadfully sad about her! She committed a sin, but to suffer so long! It will soon be six thousand years."

Altogether, two requests! one of his earthly father for a second little onion, and one of his Father in Heaven, for the enlargement of the moon.

A wild impulse seized me to say: "Let alone! Your father will soon marry again, you will soon have a step-mother, become a step-child, and have to cry for a bit of bread! Spare the little onion, forget about the moon ..."

It was all I could do to refrain.

We left Tishewitz behind, the spring airs blew toward us from the green fields. He drew me to a tree, we sat down.

He must have sat here, it occurs to me, with his mother. She must have pointed out to him the different things that grew in the narrow plots belonging to the townspeople. He recognizes wheat, rye, potatoes.

And those are briars.

n.o.body eats briars, do they?

Donkeys eat briars.

"Why," he asks, "did G.o.d make all creatures to eat different things?"

He does not know that if they ate the same, they would be all alike.

THE YARTSEFF RABBI

The Yartseff rabbi is a man who has all that heart desireth. He gets four rubles a week, and that is really more than enough. How? Are they not an old couple without children? He used to be Dayan in a larger town. There also he had four rubles a week, and nearly cut his fingers to bits over dried herring from week's end to week's end.

Here it's different. He goes through his daily fare for my benefit. For breakfast, what shall he say? a little milk-gruel; for dinner, sometimes, half a pound of meat; and in the evening, a gla.s.s of hot tea with stale rolls--he really cannot hold more! When one lives in the country, one must follow country customs, and they are much the best!...

Dinner in the large towns is a ruination and a misery!... If there should happen not to be any meat for dinner, well, he can afford to wait to eat till supper-time. Sometimes, early in the day, there is a little vegetable soup with dripping--that is how one lives in Yartseff and one does very well. In the large town it was often difficult to get on. Not that _he_ cared! He really doesn't like meat. On week-days it is heavy food; on week-days he likes an onion with a little sour milk, he prefers sour milk even to Purim herbs, it is his nature, but the rebbitzin, she wouldn't look at it (he smiles as he glances at her)--her feelings used to get hurt. It was jealousy! _How_ was that? Well, the Shochet's wife had sausage, and she, the Dayan'te, not so much as a bone--wasn't that humiliating, _ha_? Now he has done with all that; in Yartseff, thank G.o.d, they all eat meat every Sabbath and even mutton, and week-days all fare much alike, too. So long as the rebbitzin has no one to envy, it's all right!

"To envy!" throws in the rebbitzin. "I know, I know!" laughs the rabbi's head with the tiny wrinkles, the beard with the soft end quivers, the old eyes grow moister. "I know, it was not the sinful body you were thinking of, but the honor of the Law. Of course, a Shochet sausage and a Dayan--no, that was very wrong! A Dayan is distinctly greater than a Shochet! Well, well, anyhow, here I am quit of all that--where they don't kill for a whole week at a time."

He is still better pleased with the fresh country air. In the large towns, the householders must live in large houses. The rich householders live in the middle; below, in the cellars, and above, in the attics, poor people, including paid officials of the community like himself.

In summer he had felt suffocated there. It went so far that the rebbitzin stole away his snuff-box, so that he might at any rate not stuff snuff up his nose, but she had to give it him back--without snuff he was nowhere; he cannot even sit and read without it; even when not taking any, he must have the root snuff-box to finger while he studies, and even as now, when talking, he would lose the train of his thought and not find suitable words in which to express himself if he had not got it.

What do you think? When he first saw Yartseff with the wide, gra.s.s-grown market-place, he would have liked a band to play--and a band _played_!

On that day all Kohol was at home, and they came to meet him with chamber-music! And he was charmed by the little, tiny houses, like pieces of root tobacco; there is one walled in, the big one in the centre of the market-place--it is the lord's.

And the stairs he got away from when he left the large town! He is naturally weak in the legs, in another year he would have been without feet! Then--the restfulness of it here!... quiet!... not a dog barks, and the children (lehavdil) don't shout. There are thirty boys and perhaps six teachers, so they're kept well in hand, not as in the large towns. At Purim and Chanukah, then they shout, yes! they make a fearful noise! But otherwise you don't hear a sound.

Above all, a blessing from His dear Name, there are no quarrels! Two or three Cha.s.sidim with blue fringes,[82] but he prays for their life, because when they die, may it not be for a hundred years, there will be a to-do over their burial.[83] Meanwhile there is peace. The inhabitants of the place are all peddlers or "messengers." Even the artisans do not remain at home, but go and work in the villages, even the Feldscher goes about the district with the "cuppers." Early on Sunday you can see the whole male population coming out of the little houses. Outside the town they take off their boots, hang them upon a stick across their shoulder and start off in all directions. Friday evening they return. Even the Shochet sometimes goes away for a whole week, so when should they find time to quarrel? Sabbath and holidays are the time for disputes, and every now and again they get up a discussion, start a hare ... but it is not their line! The thing halts. People are sleepy and tired.

He just sits and studies. Occasionally (he smiles) there is a dispute--only it is for the honor of G.o.d--between him and the Shochet.

You understand, it is seldom a ritual question arises. All the week the people use milk dishes, Sabbath--meat dishes. They don't stand at the fire-place together. Questions about the fitness of slaughtered animals happen along once a year! But on that very account, they make the most of it, turn over the whole Talmud, all the codes, and there you have a quarrel. The Shochet is very obstinate and pig-headed, and has a way of s.h.i.+fting his bundle of faults on to other people's shoulders; says, the rabbi is obstinate and pig-headed! Even here he had terrible bother with two things: the yeast and the house, and all (he smiles again) through the rebbitzin. With the yeast it befell in this wise; he had agreed with Kohol for four rubles a week. The previous rabbi got four rubles with the yeast, but they cheated _him_ out of the yeast--he got none!

On the first Great Sabbath he preached a long sermon on leaven at Pa.s.sover. "The town was beside itself with delight. Everyone knows a good thing, when he hears it, even the most ignorant. I say it is because all the souls were present at Mount Sinai, and there everything was revealed, even what scholars in time to come will deduce from what was explicitly given, so that even when the soul has forgotten, she recognizes whence things are ... and soon the town gave me the yeast.

"Just at the moment I felt a little exultation, for which His dear Name quickly punished me. I had trouble with the yeast! I had disputes to settle all week between the housewives and the rebbitzin; one found her Sabbath loaf too hard, another too heavy, a third said her yeast ran, and people suspected the rebbitzin watered it. What could I do? I hadn't seen her do it, and she said no!

"Well, it was all such nonsense! I can't pa.s.s a decision in a case between the rebbitzin and the housewives, and I arbitrate; if they come on Friday, I exchange their loaf for mine, and a whole week I give a little extra yeast for Kliskelech.[84] Altogether a dreadful worry! G.o.d be praised, a tailor brought some dried yeast, and there was an end of it."

Then as to the house: he observed the rebbitzin was saving money--let her save! Was it his affair? The children are doing well, but may-be she wishes to buy a present for a grandchild--so be it! He is not much in favor of that himself, but he is not going to fight a woman. Perhaps (he reflects) she means differently; he knows, many prepare for later. He doesn't. He says, Blessed be His Name, day by day! When they die, there will be a winding-sheet, but he does not concern himself about it.

The affair of the yeast was just going on. To cut a long matter short, one day someone told him a fine tale--the rebbitzin had bought some timber. He came home, and sure enough, it was true. She had even engaged some workmen, she was beginning to build a house. What is it? She won't live in lodgings any longer. He interfered no further--let her build!

And she built, she took possession, he--he just carried over his Talmud.

"Now, I am a householder, too."

But it was a long way for him to go to the house-of-study.

"Not of you be it said, my feet have grown weak in my old age. I have not many books of my own. They have a rule in the house-of-study not to lend out any book, not to the rabbi, not to any head of the community.

When a question arose, I had nothing to lay my hand on. This gave me a deal of trouble.

"But G.o.d helped me. There was a fire and several houses were burned down, mine among them. G.o.d be praised! The other householders had no great loss; they were insured. I was not, and Kohol, as you see, set aside for me a little corner of the house-of-study."

LYASHTZOF

I arrived in Lyashtzof on a dark summer night, between eleven and twelve o'clock. Another market-place with various buildings and little, walled-in houses round about.

In the middle of the market-place, a collection of large, white stones.

I drive nearer--the stones move and grow horns; they become a herd of milk-white goats.

The goats show more sense than the heads of the community of Tishewitz: they are not frightened. One or two out of the whole lot have lifted their heads, looked at us sleepily, and once more turned their attention to the scanty gra.s.s of the Ga.s.s, and to scratching one the other.

Happy goats! No one calumniates you, _you_ needn't be afraid of statisticians. It is true, people kill you, but what then? Does not everyone die before his time? And as far as troubles go, you certainly have fewer.