Stories and Pictures Part 4

"Why so much to be pitied?" I wonder.

"You see, my mother, peace be upon her, died about two years before the marriage, and my father, peace be upon him, did not marry again.

"My mother, may her merits protect us, was a good woman, and my father could not forget her. Well, a woman alone in the house! My father, peace be upon him, had no time to spare--he was away nearly the whole week in the villages--he traded in all sorts of things, whatever you please--eggs, b.u.t.ter, rags, hogs' bristles, linen."

"And you?"

"I sat in the house-of-study and learned. Well, I reflected, a woman gets frightened all by herself; but why cry? No, she said, she was dull.

Dull? What was that?

"I saw that she went about like one half asleep. Sometimes she did not hear when spoken to, or she seemed absent-minded, and sat staring at the wall--stared and stared--or else, her lips moved and never a sound to be heard. But as to being dull--all a woman's fancy. An unaccountable folk, women! A Jew, a man, is never dull. A Jew has no time to be dull, a Jew is either hungry or full; either he has business on hand, or he is in the house-of-study, or asleep; if one has _heaps_ of time one smokes a pipe; but dull!----"

"Remember," I put in, "a woman has no Torah, no Kohol affairs, no six hundred and thirteen religious obligations."

"That's just where it is! I soon came to the conclusion that being dull meant having nothing to do--a sort of emptiness calculated to drive one mad. Our sages saw that long ago. Do you know the saying, 'Idleness leads the mind to wander?' According to the law, no woman may be idle. I said to her: Do something! She said, she wanted to 'read'!

"'To read,' sounded very queer to me, too. I knew that people who know how to write call 'learning' lehavdil, reading books and newspapers, but I did _not_ know then that she was so learned.... She spoke less to me than I to her. She was a tall woman; but she kept her head down and her lips closed as though she could not count two. She was quiet altogether--quiet as a lamb; and there was always a look in her face as if a whole ship full of sour milk had foundered at sea. She wanted to read, she said. And what? Polish, German, even Yiddish--anything to read.

"In all Konskivlye there wasn't a book to be found. I was very sorry--I couldn't refuse her. I told her I would get her some books when I went to see my relative in Lublin.

"'And _you_ have nothing?' she asked.

"'_I?_ Preserve us!'

"'But what do you do all day in the house-of-study?'

"'I learn.'

"'I want to learn, too,' says she.

"I explained to her that the Gemoreh is not a story-book, that it is not meant for women, that it had been said women should not study it, that it is Hebrew....

"I gave her to understand that if the Konskivlye people heard of such a thing, they would stone me, and quite right, too! I won't keep you in suspense, but tell you at once that she begged so hard of me, cried, fainted, made such a to-do that she had her way. I sat down every evening and translated a page of the Gemoreh for her benefit; but I knew what the end of it would be."

"And what was it?"

"You need not ask. I translated a page about goring oxen, ditches, setting on fire,[4] commentaries and all. I held forth, and she went to sleep over it night after night. That sort of thing was not intended for women. By good fortune, however, it happened that, during the great gale that blew that year, a certain book-peddler wandered out of his way into Konskivlye, and I brought her home forty pounds' weight of story-books. Now it was the other way about--_she_ read to _me_, and--_I_ went to sleep.

"And to this day," he wound up, "I don't know what is the use of story-books. At any rate, for men. Perhaps you write for women?"

Meanwhile it began to dawn; my neighbor's long, thin, yellow face became visible--with a pair of black-ringed, tired-looking red eyes.

He was apparently anxious to recite his prayers, and began to polish the window-pane, but I interrupted him.

"Tell me, my friend, don't take it amiss. Is your wife content _now_?"

"How, content?"

"She is no longer dull?"

"She has a stall with salt and herrings; one child at the breast and two to wash and comb. She has a day's work blowing their noses."

Again he rubs the pane, and again I question:

"Tell me, friend, what is your wife like?"

My neighbor sat up, threw a side-glance at me, looked me down from head to foot, and asked severely:

"Then you know my wife? From Warsaw, eh?"

"Not in the least," I answered; "I only mean, in case I am ever in Konskivlye, so that I may recognize her."

"So that you may recognize her?" he smiles, rea.s.sured. "I'll give you a sign: she has a mole on the left side of her nose."

The Jew got down from the chaise, giving me a cold and distant farewell as he stood on the step. He evidently still suspected me of knowing his wife and of belonging to her miserable family in Warsaw.

I was left alone in the chaise, but it was useless to think of sleep.

The cool morning had taken hold of me. My literary overcoat blew out in the wind, and I felt chilly all over. I shrank together in the corner.

The sun began to shine outside. It may be that I was riding through beautiful country; the early rays may have kissed hill-tops and green trees, and slid down a gla.s.sy river; but I hadn't the courage to open the little window.

A Jewish author fears the cold! I began, as the Jew put it, to "think out" a story. But other thoughts came in between.

Two different worlds, a man's world and a woman's world--a world with Talmudical treatises on goring oxen, and ditches, and incendiary fires, and the damages to be paid for them, and a world with story-books that are sold by weight!

If _he_ reads, _she_ goes to sleep; if _she_ reads, _he_ goes to sleep!

As if we were not divided enough, as if we had not already "French noses," "English sticks," "Dutch Georges," "Lithuanian pigs," "Polish beggars," "Palestinian tramps;" as though every part of our body were not lying in a different place and had not a resounding nickname; as though every part, again, had not fallen into smaller ones: Cha.s.sidim, Misnagdim, "Germans;" as though all this were not, we must needs divide ourselves into men and women--and every single, narrow, damp, and dirty Jewish room must contain these two worlds within itself.

These two at least ought to be united. To strive after their unification is a debt every Yiddish writer owes his public. Only, the writers have too many private debts beside--one requires at least one additional Parnosseh, as he said.

My reflections about an additional Parnosseh were broken in upon by a few sharp notes on the postillion's horn. But I did not leave the chaise. I was just feeling a little warmer, and the sun had begun to pour in his beams.

I got a new neighbor and, thanks to the bright daylight, I saw his face plainly and even recognized him. It was an old acquaintance, we had skated together as children, played at bakers--we were almost comrades--then _I_ went to the dingy, dirty Cheder, and he, to the free, lightsome "gymnasium."[5]

When _I_ did not know the lesson, I was beaten; when I answered right, they pinched my cheek--it hurt either way.

_He_ was sometimes kept in and sometimes he got "fives;"[6] _I_ broke my head over the Talmud; he broke his over Greek and Latin. But we stuck together. We lived on neighborly terms; he taught me to read in secret, lent me books, and in after years we turned the world upside down as we lay on the green gra.s.s beside the river. I wanted to invent a kind of gunpowder that should shoot at great distances, say one hundred miles; he, a balloon in which to mount to the stars and bring the people "up there" to a sense of order and enlightenment. We were dreadfully sorry for the poor world, she was stuck in the mud--and how to get her out?

Ungreased wheels, lazy horses, and the driver--asleep!

Then I married, and he went to a university. We never corresponded. I heard later that he had failed, and, instead of a doctor, had become an apothecary somewhere in a small country town....

I all but cried for joy when my new neighbor entered the chaise, and my heart grew warm; my hands stretched themselves out; my whole body leaned toward him, but I held myself back--I held myself back with all my strength.

There you are! I thought. It is Yanek Polnivski, our late sequestrator's son. He was my playfellow, he had a large embrace and wanted to put his arms round the whole world and kiss its every limb, except the ugly growths which should be cut away. Only--there you are again! Present-day times. Perhaps he is an anti-Semite, breathing death and destruction in the newspapers; perhaps now we Jews are the excrescences that need removing from Europe's shapely nose. He will measure me with a cold glance, or he may embrace me, but tell me, at the same time, that I am not as other Jews.