Stories and Pictures Part 21

Besides, and worse even than the plague itself, there is disinfection, isolation, and, heaven have mercy on us, post-mortems. No man can live forever, nor can he die more than once; but death and life are in the hands of the All-Merciful. Weeping, prayer, and confession, these help; almsgiving is a remedy; but the other things mean falling into the hands of men. They suck the marrow out of your bones, it costs you a fortune, treasure and blood--and they make post-mortems! They cut up a corpse, heaven defend us, into little pieces, and bury it without a winding-sheet, in pitch. In the hospital there is poisoning; they burn innocent bedding, or they make a ring of Cossacks, and people may starve to death or devour each other as they choose. Ha! one must be up and doing and not let the enemy into the town.

"Candles of blessing" are already in the windows, side-glances are being cast at Va.s.sil's mill, and a marriage between two orphans is under discussion. And the terror increases day by day. One had hoped that the calamity would pa.s.s away with the summer, with the great heat....

These are all over, the Solemn Days, too. Now, thank G.o.d, it is after Tabernacles. One feels the cold in one's bones; it snows a little, not unfrequently, and the pestilence creeps on and on. May G.o.d watch over us and protect us.

2

TWO ARE NOT AFRAID

And yet there are two persons in the place who are not afraid; and not only that, but they are hoping for the plague.

The two persons are the young doctor, Savitzki, a Christian, and, lehavdil, Yossil, the beggar-student.

Savitzki came two years and a half ago, straight from the university; he came a good Christian, a treasure, quite one of the righteous of the nations of the world; people wished the town-justice were as good. There wasn't a particle of pride in the man; he never gave himself airs; he greeted everyone he pa.s.sed, even a child, even a woman. For an old person he would step aside. He loved Jewish fish as life itself, and the householders treated him one and all with respect; they bowed to him and took off as much as the whole hat; they sent him Sabbath cakes, and often asked him in to fish. In fact, they wished him all that is good, only--they never consulted him. Who wanted a doctor? Hadn't they a Rofeh? And what a Rofeh! He has only to give the patient one look to know what is the matter with him. So it's no wonder the apothecary is willing to make up his prescriptions. It is possible that another doctor might have got a practice quicker. For instance, if there had come an old doctor with long experience and leaving a large practice somewhere behind him, but there appears this popinjay, who cannot even twirl the down on his upper lip, with a young, pale face like a girl's, dressed like a dandy, a boy fresh from school. And just as the eggs always know more than the hen, so must he think himself better than the old Rofeh, who, as the saying goes, had eaten up his teeth at the work. So must he say, that the sick take overmuch castor oil, that cupping was a mistake, especially for a woman in child-bed; leeches he wanted put on the shelf, that they might do no harm; dry-cupping he made fun of, and he had no faith in salves. Did you ever hear of a doctor without salves and without blood-letting? Who would consult him? An apothecary turns up his nose at such an one's prescriptions--for twenty groschen apiece.

Thus it went on for six months; there was open war with the Rofeh and hidden war with the apothecary, and yet he was on very good terms with the householders.

Thus it went on, I say, till Savitzki came to the last of the few gulden which he had brought with him from somewhere; after a bit he got behindhand with his rent, and was in debt to the butcher and the grocer and the tailor--he was in debt all round--and the creditors grew daily more impatient.

And once, when the butcher had sent back the maid without any meat, Savitzki let his wings droop, and confessed that blood-letting was necessary, and that castor oil might be taken every minute; but this did him no good at all, because, first, no one believed him, that he really meant it--it was very likely only to take people in; secondly, supposing it were so, and he had really given in to the Rofeh, then what was he wanted for?

Savitzki got another gulden or two from somewhere (Christians often inherit things from rich uncles and aunts), and dragged on another six months, at the end of which he had an inspiration: _he became an anti-Semite_, and a real bitter one.

He left off saluting people, and now, if he stepped aside for a Jew, it was to spit out before him.

He persuaded the town-justice, even though it was winter, to drive a few Jewish families off the peasants' land, and when there came a new inspector (the old ones had their hush-money), he would himself take him round the courtyards and show him where there lurked uncleanliness. He told the apothecary one day that in _his_ place he should give all the Jews poison; and many, many more things of the kind.

_This_ idea really proved helpful. Certain of the householders began to call him in and paid him for his visits, although they would afterwards tear up his prescriptions, pour out his mixtures, throw away his ointment. The enemy of Israel must have his mouth shut; that also was a kind of "hush-money"; but Savitzki did not make a living by it.

He had no more inspirations, and there was no hope of things bettering themselves.

In addition to this he had the following misfortunes: he was unable to extract a pea out of a little boy's ear; a sick man risked his life by taking one of Savitzki's prescriptions and in a week he was dead. But the worst was that he forgot himself one day and declared that fever was not in itself an illness, but a remedy, a weapon by means of which the body would rid itself of the disease. Those who heard him all but split with laughter; and still more did they pant for laughing when it happened that he was called in to a woman in child-bed at the critical moment, because the "town-grandmother" was away on business in a village, and there was no help for it. The ridiculous things he did! He called for a basin of water, a piece of soap. He poured something into the basin out of a little bottle he had brought in his pocket. The people stood and watched him, and concluded he made up his medicines at home to annoy the apothecary--but heaven only knew what it was. Then he just went and washed his hands; and yet his hands were as clean as clean could be, as is the way with Christians. And as if that wasn't enough, he took out a knife and cleaned his nails--really, lehavdil, he might have been a pious Jewess. Then he rubbed his hands and washed them anew. What more shall I say about his conjuring tricks? Then to business. The woman (it was not her first) said he certainly had smaller hands than the "town-grandmother," and was quicker at it, too, except for his fads.

But who could stand all that fuss?

And when there's no soap to be had? It just happened to have been washing day, but otherwise?

The result of all this was that Savitzki went about like a wicked man in the other world, and at the end of two years and a half he saw he would not be able to hold on there; that his "inexpressibles" were getting too big for him, that he was growing daily thinner, and might fall into a decline; he was preparing to run away and leave his debts behind, and now--_it_ was near.

No, this is not the time to leave a town of the kind; there are golden days coming. They have already sent an order to build a "barrack" for cholera patients and to set apart a house for their families; and although the heads of the community have forked out and bribed the town-justice and the inspectors, to set down the "expenditures" for the barrack as though it had been built, and not alarm the town, everyone felt it was on the move, that it was coming; that it meant peril of death to everyone and good luck to Savitzki. He will get three to four rubles a day from the government, the sick will pay him extra, and those who are well will pay not to be put down as sick. All the Jews will pay, for disinfection and no-disinfection, isolation and non-isolation, for being let in and let out, for speaking and for being silent, and above all, "burial money"--not to be made the subject of a post-mortem and be buried in pitch.

Savitzki revived. His heart grew light within him.

He paced the streets whistling a merry air; he looked cheerily into everyone's face, peeped in at all the doors and windows. Jews like to hide themselves, ah! but he will not allow it. They shall pay him for the past years--he will come into his own.

Then he will leave the dead-alive place and marry. Whom should he find here? The apothecary's daughter--that ugly thing?

3

THE SECOND WHO IS NOT AFRAID

Yossil, the beggar-student, would also like to marry, and has equally put his hope in the pestilence; he is the one orphan lad in the town.

The householders could get no other if they wished. They will _have_ to marry him off.

And he wishes it very much, which is no wonder--it is in the family. His father and his grandfather at his age had already buried children, and he is eighteen years old. He is "a scorn and a derision." They call him "bachelor" and "old maid," he has no peace at the academy all day. The allusions made at his expense p.r.i.c.k him like pins. At night, it's worse.

He lies all alone in the house-of-study on the hard bench, and does not sleep whole nights--the bad dreams will not let him; he is ready to crawl up the wall.

He begs and implores the neighbors to marry him. He asks mercy, and the answer is always the same: "Unless it be the Queen of Sheba, who will look at you, scab?"

That, as it happened, was something Yossil had not; but he had other attractions. He had come to the place fourteen years before, with his father, a book-peddler who fell ill on his way through and who--not of you be it said!--died there.

He had never known his mother, and therefore had wandered about with his father from babyhood.

Kohol was moved to pity, householders bought up all the books in order to bury the father, which they did almost for nothing, and even gave him a nice grave.

The orphan was taken into the Talmud Torah and told to sleep in the house-of-study; he ate "days,"[41] as he was still doing when my story begins.

In half a year's time he went through measles in the house-of-study, and then small-pox, and got a face as pitted as a grater.

The next year brought a new misfortune. In the house-of-study was an old split stove, of which Yossil was the official heater. This oven was a useless old thing and gave out no heat. By day things were bearable; at night the stove went down to freezing-point. Yossil's rags, given him by the householders on some holiday, were hardly enough to clothe him, never sufficient for extra covering at night.

One day Yossil thought the matter over, and stole the key of the wood store-room. He commenced to steal wood, and every day he heated the stove more, and sat by the fire and warmed himself. At last, as people said, G.o.d punished him for his theft: the stove suddenly burst, and a piece flew out and broke his foot. The town Rofeh cured it, but it remained shorter than the other, and Yossil limped from that day forward.

And he was no genius, not even specially diligent. Who would fix on him?

Whom was he likely to attract? Not even a water-carrier would take him for a son-in-law. Meantime, as though to spite him, his eyes would burn like hot coals, his heart beat and yearned and sickened after something.

He often felt dizzy, there was a sound as of bells in his ears, and he shook as in a fever, hot and cold, hot and cold.

But who troubles about an orphan?

The householders feel they have done their part in giving him free meals. What sort of meals? Well, what merit is there to be secured in feeding a boy like that? A boy who won't learn, sits over a book, and is all the time wool-gathering? You speak to him and he doesn't hear.

And all of a sudden he starts up and jumps away from his place, leaves the book open, and runs about the house-of-study like a mad thing, upsets the reading-desks, upsets the people, like one possessed.

A madcap, a scatter-brain. Tendons, bones, mouldy bread, the day before yesterday's porridge--and _that's_ a waste! What's the use of him? He may thank his stars that he's an orphan.

A boy of that sort in a family is apprenticed to a workman, but n.o.body wants to undertake a strange child. Who would care to be responsible for it? Besides, the father was a learned man, who recited Torah in his last moments, and who died like a saint in the seventh month, after making a very clear confession of sins; and who would dare apprentice the child of such an one to a workman?[42] Who would undertake to answer for it to the dead?

And so Yossil grew up alone in the house-of-study; by day he was tormented by malicious observations and at night by bad dreams; it is two or three years since he had rest.

But he would not let himself drift; he felt that these were bad thoughts, evil dreams; but they grew stronger and stronger, and his will grew weaker, and he began to fast, but this was of no avail; to recite psalms--no use at all; to study--when he could not read the letters?

Fiery wheels circled before his eyes.

He saw that the seducer was stronger than he was, and he let his wings droop and ceased to oppose him. He only consoled himself with the thought that he, too, might be married some day. And he waited for the match-mongers, and then, as they did not come to him, he put shame aside and went to them. But that is not done so easily.

Months pa.s.sed before he ventured to speak to a match-monger; first to one, then to another, then to a third, until he had been to all there were in the town. And when the last one had given him the same reply as the others, that no one would look at him but the Queen of Sheba, he fell into great despondency.