Stories and Pictures Part 7

"We will go round once more," he answers, "and look for uncle."

Meantime the congregation is preparing to leave. The last Kaddish is said, the last Amen!

The congregation make a rush for the door, carrying along with them the young man and the child.

In the court of the Shool the men begin to recite the blessing on the moon. The women walk away down both sides of the street, forming two white fillets.

On the way home, there is time to count how many women really fainted; how many nearly fainted; and to discuss the reader, who grew hoa.r.s.er this year than he had ever done before. At every house-door two or three people say good-bye to the rest and go in, while the majority are still in the court of the Shool, gesticulating toward the moon. The pale young man and the pale child still circulate among them. The crowd lessens, and his face darkens; now the last has finished and gone. The young man remains.

"Not one; well, we must do without. I am not going to beg into a new year, just after the Day of Atonement,"[8] he murmured, with quivering lips.

The child thinks he is saying the moon-prayer.

"Enough now, father," and he took hold of the man's coat. "Come home!"

His voice was full of tears.

"Silly child, why are you in such a hurry?"

"I want to eat; I'm hungry."

"I should think so! Of course, you are hungry, you rogue; you needn't tell me that. Was I likely to think that you wouldn't be, after fasting through a whole Day of Atonement?"

"Come home!" begs the child again.

"Look here, David'l, there's nothing to eat at home, either."

"Just a bit of bread!"

"There isn't a sc.r.a.p!"

The child stands still in alarm.

"David'l," say the father, "you know what day this has been?"

The child only sobs quietly.

"To-day, David'l, was the Day of Atonement--a Yom kodesh.[9] Do you know what that means?"

Yes, the child just nodded.

"Well, tell me, David'l, what have we done all day?"

"Prayed," wept the child.

"Right! And He whose Name is blessed, what has _He_ done?"

"Forgiven us!" (sobbing).

"Well, do you know, David'l, if G.o.d, blessed be He, has forgiven us, I think we ought to be cheerful, don't you?"

The child makes no reply.

"You remember, David'l, last year, when mother was alive, how we sang after supper, to a new tune? Do you remember the tune?

"No."

"I will sing it to remind you, only you must join in."

And the young man began to sing in a weak, hoa.r.s.e voice. It was not a "Sinni" and not a "Wallach" tune, but it was a gruesome tune that went to one's heart.

The child joined in and sang through his tears.

V

MARRIED

(Told by a Woman)

I remember myself at the time when I played marbles and made mud cakes in the yard; in winter I sat all day indoors and rocked a little brother who was born sickly, and who lingered on into his seventh year, when he died of a decline.

In summer, whenever it was sunny, the poor little creature sat in the yard, warmed itself in the sun, and watched me playing marbles.

In winter it never left its cradle, and I told it stories and sang to it. The other boys all went to Cheder.

Mother was always busy, she had at least ten Parnossehs. Poor mother!

she peddled, she baked gingerbread, she helped at circ.u.mcisions and weddings, she was a Tikerin, a grave-measurer,[10] recited prayers, and bought in provisions for better-cla.s.s households.

Father earned three rubles a week keeping accounts for Reb Zeinwill Terkelbaum in the forest. And those were the good times; teachers were paid, and the rent, too--almost on rent-day,--and we never had to eat our bread dry.

Sometimes mother would bake a cake for supper; then there was quite a feast. But that happened seldom.

Mother usually came home late and tired; often with red eyes and in a bitter mood. She would complain that the well-to-do ladies owed her money. They would get her to lay out her money for them, and then tell her to come for the money to-morrow, the day after; meantime more purchases were made, and when it came to a reckoning, the house-mistress could not remember if she hadn't already paid for the day before yesterday's quarter of a pound of b.u.t.ter--and she "put it aside" to ask her husband about it, who was there at the time--he has a tenacious memory, and will certainly remember how it was. Next morning it turns out the husband came home too late from the house-of-study, and she forgot to ask him. On the third day she says, with a pleased expression, that she asked her husband about it, and he was angry with her for bothering him, "as if he had nothing better to do than attend to the affairs of a couple of women;" and it is settled that she, the madam, shall try to remember herself.

Presently she begins to feel sure the b.u.t.ter was included in the account after all; a little later, she is ready to build on it; and when poor mother reminded her of the b.u.t.ter again, she was called a pert hussy, who was trying to get an extra gulden by trickery--and she was a.s.sured that if they heard any more about the b.u.t.ter, she need never show herself there again.

Mother, who was herself the daughter of well-to-do parents, and would have been a lady herself, were it not for the n.o.bleman who took her dowry, could not accept this meekly. She frequently came home with swollen eyelids, threw herself on the bed with a burst of tears, and lay there weeping bitterly till her heart was eased, when she stood up and cooked us Kliskelech[11] with beans.

At other times she vented her anger on us; that is, on me; she never scolded the sick Beril, and the other boys only very seldom--they, poor things, used to come home from Cheder with their cheeks pinched brown and blue and with swollen under-lids; I, on the other hand, came in for many an undeserved tweak to my hair or else a slap.

"You were not so sick all this time, but you could have laid the fire, put on a kettleful of water, were you?" And if I _had_ done it, I caught it worse: "Look at my fine lady! Goes and makes a fire and lets the wood burn away for nothing and n.o.body--never a thought of me toiling all day!

Sh.e.l.l be the ruin of us!"

Sometimes when father was at work in the woods, mother would sit down on the bed with her face to the window and complain, as she stared before her: "What does he care! There he sits out in the woods like a lord, breathes fresh air, lies about on the gra.s.s, eats sour milk, perhaps even cream, how do I know? and here am I, skin and bone!"