In Those Days: The Story of an Old Man Part 11

"Rest, rest," said they, warningly. "Thanks to G.o.d, the crisis is over."

I doubted, I thought it was all a dream. But it was no dream. It was all very simple: Anna and Marusya had enlisted and were serving as volunteer nurses at the military hospital, and I had known nothing of it.

"Marusya," said I, "please tell me how do I happen to be here?"

Then she began to tell me how they brought me there, and took me down from the wagon as insensible as a log. But she could not finish her story; she began to choke with tears, and Anna finished what Marusya wanted to tell me.

I turned to Marusya:

"Where are my clothes?"

"What do you want them for?"

"There is a paper there."

I insisted, and she brought the paper.

"Read the paper, Marusya," said I. She read the doc.u.ment in which Serge a.s.signed the house to Marusya. The two women looked at me with glad surprise.

"How did you ever get it?"

But I had decided to keep the thing a secret from them, and I did.

When I was discharged from the hospital, the war was long over, and a treaty of peace had been signed. Had they asked me, I should not have signed it.--

XIII

Here the old man stopped for a while. Apparently he skipped many an incident, and omitted many a thing that he did not care to mention.

I saw he was touching upon them mentally. Her resumed:--

Just so, just so. . . . Many, many a thing may take place within us, without our ever knowing it. I never suspected that I had been longing to see my parents. I never wrote to them, simply because I had never learned to write my Jewish well enough. Of course, had my brother Solomon been taken, he would surely have written regularly, for he was a great penman, may he rest in peace. As to Russian, I certainly might have written in that language; but then it would have been very much like offering salt water to a thirsty person.

And that is why I did not write. I thought I had forgotten my parents. But no! Even that was merely a matter of habit. I had gotten so used to my feeling of longing that I was not aware of having it. That is the way I explain it to myself. By and by there opened in my heart a dark little corner that had been closed for many a year. That was the longing for my parents, for my home, mixed with just a trace of anger and resentment. I began to picture to myself how my folks would meet me: there would be kisses, embraces, tears, neighbors. . . . For, like a silly child, I imagined they were all alive and well yet, and that the Angel of Death would wait till I came and repaid them for all the worry I had caused them. . . . And, indeed, would they not have been greatly wronged, had they been allowed to die unconsoled, after they had rent Heaven with their prayers and lamentations?

But the nearer I came to my native town, the less grew my desire to see it. A feeling of estrangement crept over me at the sight of the neighborhood. No, it was not exactly a feeling of estrangement, but some other feeling, something akin to what we feel at the recollection of the pain caused by long-forgotten troubles. I can hardly make it clear to you; it was not unlike what an old man feels after a bad dream of the days of his youth.

It was about this time of the year. The roads were just as bad as now, the slush just as deep. And it was as nauseating to sit in the coach only to watch the glittering mud and count the slow steps of the horses. In a season like this it is certainly much more agreeable to dismount and walk. That was just what I did. My native town was not far away: only once uphill, once downhill, and there was the inevitable cemetery, which must be pa.s.sed when one enters a Jewish village. The horses could hardly move, and I overtook them very soon, as I took a short cut, and struck into a path across the peasants' fields. I allowed myself that privilege, because at that time I was still wearing my uniform with the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons shining brightly. When I descended into the valley, I decided to cross the cemetery, and so shorten my way. The coach was far behind, and I was walking very slowly, that it might reach me at the other side of the cemetery. My path lay among the gravestones, some of them gray with age, dilapidated, bent forward, as if trying to overhear the talk of the nether world: some clean and upright, as if gazing proudly heavenwards. It was a world of silence I was in; and heavy indeed is the silence I was in; it is really a speaking silence. I think there is something real in the belief that the dead talk in their graves. To me it seemed as if the gravestones were casting evil glances at me for my having disturbed the silent place with the glitter of my b.u.t.tons. And it was with difficulty that I could decipher the inscriptions on the stones. I do not know why it was so: either my Hebrew had got rusty, or else graveyard inscriptions make hard reading in general.

"Here lieth . . . . the righteous man . . . . modest, pious . . . .

Rabbi Simhah . . . . Shohet. . . ."

I read it all, and shuddered: why, under that very stone lay the remains of my own brother Simhah!

I wanted to shed tears, but my tears did not obey me. I read it again and again, and when I came to the words "modest," "pious," I mumbled something to myself, something angry and envious. Then I thought I felt the tombstone move, the ground shake under me, as if a shiver were pa.s.sing through the air. . .

"Forgive me, forgive me!"

It was not my ears that caught those words; it was my heart. I understood that it was the soul of my brother apologizing to me for the action of my parents. Tears began to flow from my eyes. I did not care to read any further, from fear of finding something I did not wish to find. I was thinking of my parents.

And when I entered the house of my parents, I could hardly recognize them. Wrinkled, bent, with sunken cheeks, they had changed entirely in appearance.

Father looked at my b.u.t.tons, removed his cap, and stood bent before me. Mother was busying herself at the oven, and began to speak to father in a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish: "Sure enough, some sort of taxes again. . . . Much do we need it now. . . ." Then, in a fit of spitefulness, I made believe I was a stranger.

"Old people," said I, "I have brought you news from your son Samuel." As soon as father heard me speak Yiddish, he ran to the window, rubbed his hands against the moist pane, by way of washing them, and shook hands with me.

"Peace be with you, young man," said he. Mother left her corner and stood up before me. Father began fumbling for his gla.s.ses, and asked me: "News from my son, you say? Where did you see him last?"

"And when did you see him?" asked mother, shivering.

I mentioned some imaginary place and date.

"How does he feel? Was he in the war? Is he well? Does he expect to come home?"

Many such questions followed one another in quick succession.

Meanwhile father took me aside, and whispered into my ear: "How about . . . . how about religion?" Out of sheer spitefulness I wanted to worry the poor old folks a little; may the Lord not consider it a sin on my part.

I said: "Had Rabbi Simhah the Shohet been in his place, he surely would have withstood all temptations!" . . . .

"What, converted?!"

I kept silent, and the old people took it as a sign of affirmation.

They hung their heads despondently, and kept silent, too. Then father asked me once more:

"Married a Gentile? Has children?" I still kept silent. My old mother wept silently. My heart melted within me, but I braced myself up and kept silent. I felt as if a lump in my throat was choking me, but I swallowed it. I heard mother talking to herself: "O Master of the Universe, Father who art in Heaven, Thou Merciful and Righteous!" . . . . As she said it, she shook her head, as if accepting G.o.d's verdict and complaining at the same time.

The old man stood up, his beard a-quiver. His hand shook nervously, and he said in a tone of dry, cold despair:

"Ett. . . . Blessed be the righteous Judge!" as though I had told him the news of his son's death. With that he took out a pocket knife, and wanted to make the "mourning cut." At that moment my ear caught the sound of the heartrending singsong of the Psalms. The voice was old and tremulous. It was an old man, evidently a lodger, who was reading his Psalter in an adjoining room:

"For the Lord knoweth the path of the righteous. . . ."

The memories of the long past overtook me, and I told my parents who I was. . . . .

And yet--continued Samuel after some thought--and yet they were not at peace, fearing I had deceived them. And they never rested till they got me married to my Rebekah, "according to the laws of Moses and Israel."

Well, two years pa.s.sed after my wedding, and troubles began; I got a toothache, may you be spared the pain! That is the way of the Jew: no sooner does he wed a woman and beget children, than all kinds of ills come upon him.

Some one told me, there was a nurse at the city hospital who knew how to treat aching teeth and all kinds of ills better than a full-fledged doctor.

I went to the hospital, and asked for the nurse.