Stories and Pictures Part 42

"Mosheh."

"And his 'German' name?"

"May his name come home!" she scolds suddenly. "He has been four hours getting a dish from the neighbor's!"

"Stop scolding," says the beadle, "and answer when you're spoken to!"

She is afraid of the beadle. He is beadle and bailiff together, and collects the taxes, besides being held in great regard by the town-justice.

"Who was scolding? who? what? Can't I speak against my own husband?"

"What is his 'German' name?" I ask again.

The beadle remembers it himself, and answers, "Jungfreud."

"How many children have you?"

"I beg of you, friend, come later on, when my husband is here; that's his affair! I've enough to do with the shop and six children. Go away, for goodness' sake!"

I make a note of six children, and ask how many are married.

"Married! I wish any of them were married, I should have fewer gray hairs."

"Are they all girls?"

"Three are boys."

"What are they doing?"

"What should they be doing? Plaguing my life out with their open mouths!"

"Why not teach them a trade?"

She turns up her nose, gives me a black look, and refuses to give any further answers.

I have an idea: I buy a packet of cigarettes. She looks less disagreeable, and I ask:

"How much does your husband earn?"

"_He?_ He earn anything? What use do you suppose _he_ is, when I can't even send him to fetch a dish from a neighbor's? He's been four hours already. It won't be thanks to _him_ if we get any supper to-night!"

She goes off into another fury. I have to go outside and catch the husband in the street. I knew him--he was carrying a dish!

AT THE SHOCHET'S

I am greeted by a mixture of different voices. A hero of a c.o.c.k gives a proud crow, as though there were no such thing as a slaughter-knife in the world. Contrariwise, a calf lows sadly--it would seem to be hungry, while between the boards under the holes in the tall roof chirp quant.i.ties of small birds. They have wings and laugh at the Shochet. It is summer, the air is full of insects, men, even the poorest and stingiest, leave crumbs about. Zip! zip! and zip! and zip! zip! zip! The bed in the nest is made, the "he" is decked out in bright colors, the "she" is modest and silent, and the children have had enough to eat!

They are warm, and are not "down" in someone's note-book for military service or in connection with the matter of a license.

But ask them what is the meaning of a "blemish in the holy offerings!"

This question is being discussed by two young men, barefoot, in skull-caps, and undressed to their "little prayer-scarfs."[92]

The young men are only unfit for inspecting licenses or wares in the shop, but calves for the altar--as fast as you please!

When G.o.d portioned out the world, the peasant took the soil, the fisher the river, the hunter the forest, the gardener the fruit-trees, the merchant the weights and measures, and so on; but the poet lingered in a wood. The nightingale sang to him, the trees whispered all sorts of wood-gossip into his ear, and his eyes, the poetical eyes, could not look away from the girl kneeling by the stream, from the tadpole in her hand. And he came too late for everything! The world, when he arrived, was already divided up. G.o.d had nothing left for him but clouds, rainbows, roses, and song-birds. He did not even find the young washerwoman on his way back, she had engaged herself somewhere as nurse.

You have fancy! Create a world for yourself, said G.o.d.

And people envied the poet--his world was the best! The peasant tilled his land with sweat and toil. The fisher is not idle--breaking ice in winter time is no joke. The hunter wearies hunting and pursuing. Pippins are not so easily made out of crab-apples! The merchant must bestir himself, if only about falsifying the weights and measures, else he dies of hunger. _One_ is the poet, who lies on his stomach and creates worlds!

But it was a mistake. It turned out that his soul was only a camera-obscura that reflected the outside world with all its mud and pigs. So long as the pig keeps its place, it is not so bad, but when the pig gets into the foreground, the poet's world becomes as piggish as ours.

The only people who remain to be envied are our two young men, the Shochet's son with the Shochet's son-in-law. Our world with its pigs doesn't fit in with their world of "blemish in the sacrifice." There is no connection between the two, no bridge, no link whatever.

And as I have come into _their_ world out of _our_ world, the Gemorehs are shut, while the young faces express fear and wonder.

The Shochet is not at home, he has gone to a neighboring village; that is why the calf is still lowing in the house. The wife has a little draper's shop.

The daughter and a daughter-in-law stand by the fire and their faces are triply red.

First, from pride in their husbands with their Torah; secondly, from the crackling fire, and thirdly, with confusion before a stranger, a man, and a "German" to boot. One caught a corner of her ap.r.o.n in her mouth, the other moved a few steps backward, as in the synagogue at the end of the Kedushah. Both look at me in astonishment from under low foreheads with hairbands of plaited thread.

The young men, however, soon recover themselves. They have heard of the note-taker, and have guessed that I am he!

The note-taking goes quickly. The Shochet gets four rubles a week, besides what he earns in the villages; were it not for the meat brought in from the villages round about, he would be doing very well.

The shop does not bring in much, but always something. Parnosseh, thank G.o.d, they have! As for the children, they will live with the parents, and when, in G.o.d's good time, the parents shall have departed this life, they will inherit, one, the father's profession, the other, the shop; the house will be in common.

They look better off than any in the town; better off than the traders, householders, workmen, better off even than the public-house keeper and the Feldscher together. There will come a time--I think as I go out--when even teaching will be one of the best paid professions.

It is all not so bad as people think: besides being a rabbi, a Shochet, a beadle, and a teacher, there is yet another good way of getting a living.

In the Shochet's house there is a female lodger; she pays fifteen rubles a year. The door is locked; through the window, which looks into the street, I see quite a nice little room. Two well-furnished beds with white pillows, red-painted wooden furniture; copper utensils hang on the wall by the fire-place; there is a bright hanging-lamp. The room is full of comfort and household cheer.

She has silver, too, they tell me. I see a large chest with bra.s.s fittings. There must be silver candle-sticks in it, and perhaps ornaments.

What do you think? they say. She has a lot of money, the whole town is in her pocket. She is a widow with three children. The door is locked all through the week, because she only comes home every Sabbath, excepting Shabbes Chazon.[93] She spends the whole week going round the villages in the neighborhood, begging, with all three children.

THE REBBITZIN OF SKUL

Esther the queen was sallow,[94] but a gleam of graciousness lighted up her countenance. Esther, the Skul rebbitzin, was also plain-featured, but it was not a gleam, rather a sun, of kindliness that shone in her face. An old, thin woman, her head covered with a thin, wrinkled, pale pink skin, droops like a fine Esrog over her red kerchief. Only this Esrog has two kind, serious eyes.

She is a native of the place, and lives by herself; she has married all her children in various parts of the country, but nothing would induce her to live with any one of them.

It is never advisable to let oneself be dependent on a son-in-law or daughter-in-law. The husband stands up for the wife--the wife for the husband (not without reason saith the holy Torah: "And therefore a man shall leave his parents, etc."). She will not give them occasion to transgress the command to honor a mother, that is a real case of "thou shalt not cause the blind to stumble."

"G.o.d, blessed be His Name, created man so that he should not see the faults of those nearest him, otherwise the world would be as full of divorces as of marriage contracts!"