Stories and Pictures Part 35

But it all turned out badly.

The brother-in-law spent the money on himself, or (as he averred) lost it--Malkah fell ill of worry.

Yeruchem, it is true, gained his fire-wall with "costs," before the Rebbe, but he and Noah were both caught on the frontier,[68] and brought home with the _etape_.[69]

When Yeruchem arrived, Malkah was dead, and the little house pulled down.

THE MASKIL

And don't imagine Tishewitz to be the world's end. It has a Maskil, too, and a real Maskil, one of the old style, of middle age, uneducated and unread, without books, without even a newspaper, in a word a mere pretense at a Maskil.

He lets his beard grow. To be a Maskil in Tishewitz it is enough only to trim it, but they say "he attends to his hair during the ten Days of Penitence!"

He is not dressed German fashion, and no more is the Feldscher, also a Jew in a long coat and ear-locks.

Our Maskil stops at blacking his boots and wearing a black ribbon round his neck. He has only sorry remnants of ear-locks, but he wears a peaked cap.

People simply say: "Yeshurun waxed fat and kicked."

He does well, runs a thriving trade, has, altogether, three children--what more can he want? Being free of all care, he becomes a Maskil.

On the strength of what he is a Maskil, it is hard to tell--enough that people should consider him one!

The whole place knows it, and he confesses to it himself. He is chiefly celebrated for his "Wortlech," is prepared to criticise anything in heaven or on earth.

As I heard later, the Maskil took me for another Maskil, and was sure that I should lodge with him, or, at any rate, that he would be my first entry.

"For work of that kind," he said to the others, "you want people with brains. What do you suppose he could do with the like of _you_?"

And as the mountain did not go to Mohammed, because he had never heard of him, Mohammed went to the mountain.

He found me in the house of a widow. He came in with the question of the wicked child in the Haggadah: "What business is this of yours?"

"_Mi Panyiye!_[70] what are you doing here?"

"How here?" I ask.

"Very likely you think I come from under the stove? That because a person lives in Tishewitz, he isn't civilized, and doesn't know what is doing in the world? You remember: "I have sojourned with Laban?"[71] I do live here, but when there's a rat about, I soon smell him."

"If you can smell a rat, and know all that is going on, why do you want to ask questions?"

The beadle p.r.i.c.ked up his ears, and so did the half-dozen loungers who had followed me step by step.

There was a fierce delight in their faces, and on their foreheads was written the verse: "Let the young men arise"--let us see two Maskilim having it out between them!

"What is the good of all this joking?" said the Maskil, irritated. "My tongue is not a shoe-sole! And for whose benefit am I to speak? That of the Tishewitz donkeys? Look at the miserable creatures!"

I feel a certain embarra.s.sment. I cannot well take up the defense of Tishewitz, because the Tishewitz worthies in the window and the door-way are smiling quite pleasantly.

"Come, tell me, what does it all mean, taking notes?"

"Statistics!"

"_Statistic-shmistik!_ We've heard that before. What's the use of it?"

I explained--not exactly to _him_, but to the community, so that they should all have an idea of what statistics meant.

"Ha-ha-ha!" laughs the Maskil loudly and thickly, "you can get the Tishewitz donkeys to believe that, but you won't get me! Why do you want to put down how a person lives, with a floor, without a floor! What does it matter to you if a person lives in a room without a floor? _Ha?_"

It matters, I tell him, because people want to show how poor the Jews are; they think--

"They think nothing of the kind," he interrupted, "but let that pa.s.s!

Why should they want to know exactly how many boys and how many girls a man has? and what their ages are, and all the rest of the bother?"

"They suspect us of shirking military duty. The books, as of course you know, are not correct, and we want to prove--"

"Well, that may be so, for one thing--I'll allow that--but--about licenses! Why do you note down who has them--and what they are worth?"

"In order to prove that the Jews--"

But the Maskil does not allow me to finish my sentence.

"A likely story! Meantime, people will know that this one and the other pays less than he ought to for his license, and he'll never hear the last of it."

Scarcely had he said so, when the heads in the window disappeared; the beadle in the door-way took himself off, and the Maskil, who had really meant well all along, stood like one turned to stone.

The population had taken fright, and in another hour or two the town was full of me.

I was suspected of being commissioned by the excise. And why not, indeed? The excise knew very well that a Jew would have less difficulty in getting behind other people's secrets.

I was left to pace the market-square alone. The town held aloof. It is true that the Maskil dogged my footsteps, but he had become antipathetic to me, and I couldn't look at him.

The faces in the Ga.s.s became graver and darker, and I began to think of escaping. There are too many side-glances to please me--there is too much whispering.

It occurred to me to make a last effort. I remembered that the rabbi of Tishewitz had once been our Dayan, and would remember me, or at least witness to the fact that I was not what they took me for.

"Where does the rabbi live?" I inquire of the Maskil.

He is pleased and says: "Come, I will show you!"

THE RABBI OF TISHEWITZ

No one who has not seen the rabbi of Tishewitz's dressing-gown would ever know the reason why the rebbitzin, his third wife, though hardly middle-aged, already wears a large pair of spectacles on her nose. The dressing-gown looks as if it were simply _made_ of patches.

"If only," complains the rabbi, "the town would give me another two gulden a week, I could get along. _Aso is gor bitter!_ But I shall get my way. Their law-suits they can decide without me; when it is a question of pots and pans, any school-teacher will do; questions regarding women, of course, cannot be put off; and yet I shall get my way, I'm only waiting for the election of the elders; they can't have an election without a rabbi. Imagine a town--no evil eye!--a metropolis in Israel, without elders! And if that won't do it, I shall refuse to try the slaughtering-knives--I've got them fast enough!"