An Obscure Apostle Part 17

Meir shook his head with a peculiar smile.

"I shall never be a Morejne!" said he. "They will not confer such an honour upon me, and I--don't wish for it!"

Schmul thought for a while, and then said:

"I heard that you have quarrelled with the great Rabbi and the members of the kahal."

Meir, without answering, looked at the horrible proofs of deep dest.i.tution around him.

"How poor you are," said he, not answering Schmul directly.

These words touched the very sensitive string of Schmul's life. His hands trembled, and his eyes glared.

"Aj, how poor we are," he moaned; "but the poorest of all living on this street is the hajet (tailor) Schmul. He must support an old, blind mother, and wife, and eight children. And how can I support them? I have no means except these two hands, which sew day and night if there is something to sew."

Speaking thus, he stretched toward Meir his two hands--true beggar's hands, dark, dirty, p.r.i.c.ked with the needle, covered with scars made by scissors, and now trembling from grief.

"Morejne," he said more softly, bending toward the listener, "our life is hard--very hard. Everything is very expensive for us, and we have so much to pay. The Czar's officers take taxes, we must pay more for our kosher meat, and for the candles for Sabbath, we must pay to the funeral society, pay to the officers of the kahal, and for what do we not pay? Aj, vaj! From these poor houses flow rivers of money--and where does it come from? From the sweat of our brows, from our blood and the entrails of our children who grow thin from hunger!

Not a long time ago you asked me, Morejne, why my room was dirty. And how can we help it when eleven of us must live in one room, and in the pa.s.sages there are two goats, which nourish us with their milk.

Morejne, you asked me why my wife is so thin and old, although she has not yet lived many years, and why my children are always sick!

Morejne, kosher meat costs us so much that we never eat it. We eat bread with onion, and we drink goat's-milk. On Sabbath we have fish only when you, Morejne, come to see us and leave us a silver coin.

All in this street are poor--very poor, but the poorest is hajet Schmul, with his blind mother, thin wife and eight children."

He shook his head piteously and looked into Meir's face with his dark eyes which expressed stupefied astonishment at his own misery. Meir, with his hand still on the head of the sickly child, who was finishing his bread, listened to the speech of the miserable fellow.

His mouth expressed pity, but the frowning brows and drooped eyelids gave to his face the expression of angry reverie.

"Schmul," he said, "and why are you so often out of work?"

Schmul became plainly confused, and raised his hand to his head, disarranging his skull cap which covered his long dishevelled hair.

"I will tell you," continued Meir; "they don't give you work because from the stuff which they give you to make dresses you cut large pieces and keep them."

Schmul seized his skull cap in both hands.

"My poor head," he groaned. "Morejne, what have you told me? Your mouth said a very ugly thing against me."

He jumped, bent nearly to the ground, and then jumped again.

"Nu, it's true, Morejne, I will open my heart to you I used to cut off and keep pieces of the stuff, and why did I do it? Because my children were naked. I clothed them with it. And when my blind mother was sick I sold it and bought a piece of meat for her. Morejne, your eye must not look angrily on me! Were I as rich as Reb Jankiel and Morejne Calman--had I as much money as they make from the work of our hands and the sweat of our brows, I would not steal!"

"And for what are Reb Jankiel and Morejne Calman taking your money?"

began Meir thoughtfully, and he wished to continue, but Schmul stretched himself and interrupted suddenly:

"Nu, they have a right to it. They are elders over us. What they do is sacred. When one listens to them it is as if one listened to G.o.d himself."

Meir smiled sadly and put his band into his pocket.

Schmul followed the movement with his eyes, which were animated with cupidity.

Meir placed on the open window a few silver coins. Schmul seized his hand and began to kiss it.

"Morejne, you are good. You always help poor people. You pity my stupid child."

When the enthusiasm of his grat.i.tude had cooled a little, he stretched himself and began to whisper in Meir's ear.

"Morejne, you are good and generous and the grandson of a very rich man, and I am a poor and stupid hajet, but you are as honey in my mouth, and I must open my heart to you. You are wrong in quarrelling with our great Rabbi and with the members of the kahal. Our Rabbi is a great Rabbi and there is no other like him in the whole world. G.o.d revealed to him great things. He alone understands the Kabala Mashjat (the highest part of the Kabala, teaching how, by a combination of letters and words, miracles are performed and the mysteries penetrated). All the birds fly after him when he calls them. He knows how to cure all human diseases and all human hearts open to him.

Every breath of his mouth is holy, and when he prays then his soul kisses G.o.d himself. And you, Morejne, you have turned away your heart from him."

Thus gravely spoke poor Schmul, raising in solemn gesture his black, needle-p.r.i.c.ked index finger.

"And the members of the kahal," continued he, "they are very pious men and very rich. One should respect them and listen to them also, and even close one's eyes if they do something wrong. They could accuse one before G.o.d and the people. G.o.d will be angry if he hears their complaint, and will punish you, and the people will say that you are very bold, and will turn away their faces from you."

It would be difficult to guess the impression made on Meir by Schmul's humble and at the same time grave, warning. He continually kept his hand on little Lejbele's head, and looked into the beautiful fine-featured face of the pale, sick, idiotic and trembling child, where he saw the personification of that portion of Israel, which, devoured by misery and disease, nevertheless believed blindly and worshipped humbly, timidly, and everlastingly.

Then he gave Schmul a slow and friendly nod, and went away. Schmul followed him several steps.

"Morejne," he moaned, "don't be angry with me for having opened my heart to you. Be wise. May the learned and rich not complain of you to G.o.d, for the man who is under the ground is better off than he on whom they shall turn their angry hands."

Then he returned to his hut, and did not notice that Lejbele was not standing at the wall of the house. When Meir departed, the pale child followed him. With hands still m.u.f.fled in the sleeves of his ragged gown, and with wide opened mouth, the child of Schmul the tailor followed the tall, beautiful man. At the end of the street only, as a being afraid to go further, the poor boy said, in a hoa.r.s.e, guttural voice:

"Morejne!"

Meir looked back. A friendly smile brightened his face when he saw the boy. The dark, dull eyes of the child were raised to his face, and from the gray sleeve a small, thin hand was stretched toward him.

"Hala," said Lejbele.

Meir looked around for a huckster's stand. Along the street stood several miserable barrows, by which the women, their thin bodies scantily clad in rags, were selling loaves of bread, hard as stone, and some heads of onion, as well as a black, unappetising preparation made of honey and poppy-seed.

From Meir's white hand to the dark, thin hand of the child again pa.s.sed a big hala. Lejbele raised it to his mouth with both hands, and, turning, he walked slowly and gravely down the middle of the street toward his home.

After a while Meir reached the square of the town. It seemed to him that he came back to the light of day from a dark cavern. The sunlight flooded everything around, dried the mud, and kindled golden sparks in the windows of the houses. In the yard of the pious. Reb Jankiel, some large, new structure was being erected. The red-haired owner inspected the workmen personally, evidently satisfied with the increase of his wealth. The noise of axes and the gnashing of the saws filled the air, and in front of the low inn stood a couple of carriages belonging to pa.s.sing guests. Further along the street stood Morejne Calman in the piazza of his house, shining in his satin halat. With one hand he held to his smiling mouth a cigar, and with the other he caressed the golden hair of a two-year-old child, who sat on a bench holding a loaf of bread abundantly spread with honey, which he had smeared all over his plump face, casting the while admiring glances at his magnificent father.

In the court-yard of the Ezofowich mansion there was plenty of noise, sunlight, and gaiety. In the centre two broad-shouldered workmen were sawing wood for the winter, and in the soft sawdust several cleanly-dressed children were playing. At the well a buxom and merry servant girl was drawing water, joking with the workmen, and through the open windows of the house could be seen Raphael's and Abraham's grave heads--they were talking over business affairs with great animation--and Sarah, standing by the fireplace, and pretty Lija, who stood before a mirror smoothing her luxuriant tresses.

When Meir entered the gate, the workmen stopped sawing, and smiled and nodded to him. They came from the same poor, dirty street he had just left, and evidently knew him very well.

"Scholem Alejhem!" (peace to you) they exclaimed.

"Alejhem & Scholem!" answered Meir, merrily.

"Will you not help us to-day?" asked one of the workmen jokingly.

"Why not?" answered Meir, approaching them.

Meir was fond of physical work. He practised it very often, and his grandfather's workmen were accustomed to it. One of them was about to give him his place at the log of wood, but at that moment. Lija appeared in the open window. She was just finishing braiding her hair, and said.

"Meir! Meir! where have you been so long? Zeide wishes to see you."

Hardly a quarter of an hour had pa.s.sed since the Rabbi's visit. Saul still sat with his head between his hands, lost in half angry and half sad musing. A few steps from him sat Freida, bathed in golden sunlight and sparkling with diamonds. A very complicated process was going on in Saul's old breast. He disliked Isaak Todros. Without having deeply understood the real meaning of the action and position of either his ancestor Michael, or his father Hersh, he knew that they had great influence among their "own people," and enjoyed the general esteem of the mighty, although 'stranger' people. Therefore he was proud of these reminiscences of his family, and the knowledge of the wrong done to these two stars of his family by ancestors of Isaak Todros excited toward the latter a mute and not very well-defined dislike. Besides this, being rich, and proud of so being, he resented the misery and--as he said at the bottom of his soul--the s.l.u.ttishness of the Todros. But all this was as nothing compared with the respect felt for the holy, wise, and deeply-learned man, who was the representative of all that was holiest, wisest, and most learned. Saul himself read with great zeal the holy books, but he could not become familiar with them, because for a long time his brain had been occupied with quite different matters. He read them, but understood very little of their obscure and secret sense, and the less he understood the more he respected them, and the deeper was his humility and dread. And now that dread and humility stood opposed to the true, tender love for his grandson, and he struggled between them.