Stories and Pictures Part 29

"How should she have? In the course of the dispute some one set fire to the Shool and to the house-of-study and to the wedding canopy; everything, you may say, was burnt. They accused pretty well everybody in turn--"

"And after that?"

"Nothing; the corpses had come to life and the living began to die out, for want of room, for want of air--but specially of hunger--"

"Was there a famine?"

"No more than anywhere else! But there _was_ one for all that. The corpses took their place at the prayer-meetings and at the table at home as well. People didn't know why, but there were suddenly not enough spoons. All ate out of one dish, and there were not enough spoons. Every house-mistress knows that she has as many spoons as there are people in the house, so she thinks there has been a robbery! The pious say: Witchcraft! But as they came to see the spoons were missing everywhere, and there was not food to go round, then they said: A famine! and they hungered, and they are hungering still."

"And in a short time the corpses outnumbered the living; now they are the community and the leaders of the community! They do not beget children and increase naturally--not that, but when anyone dies, they steal him away off his bed, out of the grave--and there is a fresh corpse going about the town.

"And what is lacking to them? They have no cares, no fear of death--they eat for the purpose of saying grace--they don't want the food, they have no craving for it--let alone drink and lodging; a hundred corpses can sleep in one room--they don't require air!

"And they have no worries, because whence do worries spring? From knowing! 'The more knowledge, the more sorrow, but the dead man does not trouble.' It's not his affair! He doesn't wish to know and he _needn't_ know--he wanders in a world of illusion.

"He keeps away from living concerns; he has no questions, no anxieties, no heart-ache, no one is conscious of his liver!

"Who do you think is our rabbi? Once it was a live man and a man of action; now he, too, is a corpse; he wanders in a world of illusion, and goes on giving decisions by rote as in a dream.

"Who are his a.s.sistants? People like him--half-decayed corpses.

"And they solve ritual questions for the living and the dead, they know everything and do everything; they say blessings, unite in wedlock. Who is it stands at the platform? A corpse! He has the face of a corpse, the voice of a corpse; if it happen that a c.o.c.k crows suddenly, he runs away.

"And the Gevirim, the almsgivers, the agitators, the providers, the whole lot--what are they? Dead men, long dead and long buried!"

"And you, friend? What are you?"

"I? I am half-dead," answers the Jew. He jumps down from the conveyance and disappears among the trees.

XIII

THE DAYS OF THE MESSIAH

As in all the Jewish towns in Galicia, big and little, so in the one where my parents lived, there was a lunatic.

And as in most cases, so in this one, the lunatic was afraid of n.o.body, neither of Kohol, nor of the rabbi or his a.s.sistants, not even of the bather or the grave-digger, who are treated with respect by the richest men. On the other hand, the whole of the little town, Kohol with all the Jewish authorities and the bather and the grave-digger, trembled before the lunatic, closed door and window at his approach. And although the poor lunatic had never said an abusive word, never touched any one with his little finger, everybody called him names, many people hit him, and the street boys threw mud and stones at him.

I always felt sorry for the lunatic. He attracted me, somehow, I wanted to talk to him, to console him, to give him a friendly pat; but it was impossible to approach him; I should have received part of the stones and mud with which he was bombarded by the others. I was quite a little boy, and I wore a nice suit from Lemberg or Cracow, and I wished to preserve my shoulders from stones and my suit from mud; so I remained at a distance.

The little town in which my parents lived and where I spent my childhood, dressed in clothes made by the tailors of Lemberg and Cracow, was a fortress, surrounded by moats, water, earthworks, and high walls.

On the walls were batteries, and these were protected by soldiers with muskets, who marched up and down, serious and silent. Hardly had darkness fallen, when the iron drawbridge was raised from over the moat, all the gates were closed, and the little town was cut off from the rest of the world till early next morning. At every gate stood a watchman, fully armed.

A short while ago, in the day-time, we were all free, we could go in and out without applying for leave to the major in command; one might bathe in the river outside the town, and even lie stretched out on the green bank and gaze into the sky or out into the wide world, as one chose. No one made any objection, and even if one did not return, no questions were asked. But at night all was to be quiet in the town, no one was to go out or to come in. "Lucky," I used to think to myself, "that they let in the moon."

And as long as I may live, I shall never forget the twilights there, the fall of night. As the shades deepened, a shudder went through the whole town, men and houses seemed suddenly to grow smaller and cower together.

The bridge was raised, the iron chains grated against the huge blocks; and the rasp of the iron, the harsh, broken sounds, went through one's very bones. Then gate on gate fell to. Every evening it was the same thing, and yet every evening people's limbs trembled, a dull apathy overspread their faces, and their eyes were as the eyes of the dead.

Eye-lids fell heavy as lead; the heart seemed to stop beating, one scarcely breathed. Then a patrol would march down the streets, with a clatter of trailing swords and great water-boots; the bayonets glistened, and the patrol shouted: "_Wer da?_" To which one had to reply: "A citizen, an inhabitant," otherwise there was no saying what might not happen. Many preferred to remain behind lock and key--they were afraid of being seen in the street.

One day I had the following adventure: I had been bathing in the river, and either I lost myself in thought, or in staring about, or I simply forgot that after day comes night. Suddenly I see them raise the bridge; there is a grating in the ears, the gates swing to, and my heart goes by leaps and bounds. No help for it! I must pa.s.s the night outside the walls--and strange to say, night after night, as I lay in my warm bed at home, I had dreamt of the free world outside the fortress; and now that my dreams had come true, I was frightened. There ensued the usual dispute between head and heart. The head cried: Steady! Now, for once, you may enjoy the free air and the starry sky to the full! And the heart, all the while, struggled and fluttered like a caged bird. Then from heart to head rose as it were a vapor, a mist, and the clear reasoning became obscured, and was swallowed up in the cloud.

There was a rushing noise in my ears, a flickering before my eyes. Every sound, however light, every motion of a twig or a blade of gra.s.s made me shudder, and threw me on to the ground with fright.

I hid my face in the sand. Whether or not I slept, and how long I lay there, I cannot tell! But I suddenly heard someone breathing close to me; I spring up and--I am not alone! Two well-known, deep, black eyes are gazing at me in all candor and gentleness.

It is the lunatic.

"What are you doing here?" I ask in smothered tones.

"I never sleep in the town!" he answers sadly, and his glance is so gentle, the voice so brotherly, that I recover myself completely and lose all fear.

"Once upon a time," I reflected, "lunatics were believed to be prophets--it is still so in the East--and I wonder, perhaps he is one, too! Is he not persecuted like a prophet? Don't they throw stones at him as at a prophet? Don't his eyes shine like stars? Doesn't his voice sound like the sweetest harp? Does he not bear the sorrows of all, and suffer for a whole generation? Perhaps he also knows what shall be hereafter!"

I have a try and begin to question him, and he answers so softly and sweetly, that I think sometimes it is all a dream, the dream of a summer's night outside the fortress.

"Do you believe in the days of the Messiah?" I ask him.

"Of course!" he answers gently and confidently, "he _must_ come!"

"He must?!"

"O, surely! All wait for him, even the heavens and the earth wait! If it were not so, no one would care to live, to dip a hand in cold water--and if people live as they do and show they _want_ to live, it is a sign they all feel that Messiah is coming, that he must come, that he is already on the way."

"Is it true," I question further, "that first there will be dreadful wars, and false Messiahs, on account of whom people will tear one another like wild beasts, till the earth be soaked with blood? Is it true that rivers of blood will flow from east to west and from north to south, and all the animals and beasts drink human blood, all the fields and gardens and wild places and roads be swamped with human blood, and that in the middle of this b.l.o.o.d.y time the _true_ Messiah will come--the _right_ one? Is that true?"

"True!"

"And people will know him?"

"Everyone will know him. n.o.body will be mistaken. He will be Messiah in every look, in every word, in every limb, in every glance. He will have no armies with him, he will ride on no horse, and there will be no sword at his side--"

"Then, what?"

"He will have wings--Messiah will have wings, and then everyone will have wings. It will be like this: suddenly there will be born a child with wings, and then a second, a third, and so it will go on. At first people will be frightened, by degrees they will get used to it, until there has arisen a whole generation with wings, a generation that will no longer struggle in the mud over a Parnosseh-worm."

He talked on like this for some time, but I had already ceased to understand him. Only his voice was so sadly-sweet that I sucked it up like a sponge. The day was breaking when he ceased--they had opened the gates and were letting down the bridge.

Since the night spent outside the fortress, the life within it had grown more unbearable still. The old walls, the rasping iron drawbridge, the iron doors, the sentinels and patrols, the hoa.r.s.ely-angry "_Wer da?_"