Stories and Pictures Part 44

Groups of yellow-faced women are already standing around it. The brown shawls are held with washed fingers over their unwashed heads, and pale lips lament and bewail the house.

With the morning came a fresh wind. A little sooner, and it would have played havoc. Now it just shakes the remaining old chimney over the women's heads as though it were a palm. The chimney rocks and groans sadly, as though it felt deserted, and perhaps it listens to the inn-keeper telling me the tale of the destruction of the house, and affirms with a nod: "True, true!"

You would sooner pick up every thread, every dust-grain of life out of which the sleep-angel has woven you a fantastic dream, than discover all the devices a Jew must resort to before he hears the clink of copper coin.

If I were to describe everything, you would think I had been dreaming myself.... Who shall read the Divine countenance when a wretched creature stands before Him, lifts its head with its racked brain, extinguished eyes, and trembling voice, and pressing its empty stomach with cracked and bony hands, prays without a voice, without a language; the tongue will not move, but the blood cries: "Lord of the world, I have done my part, now--Thou must help! Lord of the world, feed me like the ravens! In what am I more worthless than they are? Lord of the world, where are _my_ crumbs? When will it be _my_ 'Sabbath of Song?'"[99]

And for all the body he has, he might very well be a bird; nothing is wanting but the wings, and the nest with the crumbs.

And therefore the Jewish Parnossehs are so specialized that their like will only be in the twenty-first century, when one specialist will lift the upper eye-lid, a second press down the lower, and a third examine the sick eye.

If a dish of roast veal, a rag in a paper-factory, or an exported egg had a mouth to speak with and the rabbi Reb Heshil's memory, they would still be unable to say how many Jewish hands had taken them out and put them in, from the peasant's shed into the roasting-pan, from the manure-box into the "Hollander,"[100] from servitude into freedom....

And a Jewish Parnosseh is just such a ladder as Jacob our father saw in a dream, the night when all stones united into one stone for his head, a ladder standing on the earth, and the top of it reaches into the sky.

How deep it is chained into the earth, is known only to the worm at its foot, and how high it reaches--to the star only that shines above it.

_We_ grow giddy gazing up the height; and when we peer down into the depths, our stomach turns, and we look green forever after.

Angels ascend and descend the ladder; men, alas, _climb_ it with their last remaining strength, and fall down it when their strength is exhausted. And even if he can thank his stars his neck is not broken, the Jew has no strength left to begin climbing again.

Such is the ladder that was partly climbed by our "burnt-out" one. First he travelled between the villages as a "runner," on business for other people; the earth was hot to his bare feet. It was not the cry of a brother's blood this Cain heard, it was the cry of wife and children for bread.

Heaven came to his a.s.sistance; he bought very cheaply for two or three years on end, and then he was promoted from a "runner" to a "walker."

There was already provision at home for a week at a time, and he only came back Fridays with the result of a week's bargaining; the brain was more composed, and had time to take in the fact that the feet were becoming swollen, that the father of six children ought always to walk and not run, if he wishes his feet to carry him till at least one of them is confirmed. And G.o.d helped further; he is now, blessed be the Name, a village peddler, that is, he walks only when there is no "opportunity"[101] to ride in from one village to another for a kopek; if the "opportunity" is there, he rides.

G.o.d helped him on again; another year or two, and he has his own horse and cart!

Time does not stand still, and he took no rest, and G.o.d helped. The one horse turned into two, the cart into a trap, and it even came to a driver! And he is now a produce dealer; first he deals with peasants and then with gentlemen.

And, G.o.d helping, he gets into favor first with the head of the dairy farm, then with the manager, after that with the bailiff, after that again with the steward, and at last with the count himself. O, by that time he is an inhabitant, settled in the place, the driver becomes a domestic servant, horse and carriage are sold, and pockets are lined with the count's receipts....

What is he now?

He is like the sun round which circle the stars--smaller traders, and little stars--brokers.

He shines and illumines the whole place with credit. Yelenskin compared him to a spider sitting in his web, and the count to one of the flies entangled in it. After a while our "sun-spider," or "spider-sun,"

enlarged his house, wrote marriage contracts for his children, settled dowries on them; bought his wife pearls and himself a sealskin coat, engaged better teachers for his boys, and for the girls someone to teach them if only how to write a Jewish letter.

Suddenly (at least, for the town), the count was declared bankrupt, and our "spider-sun," or "sun-spider," lost everything at once.

If I had pa.s.sed through a month earlier, I should have put down:

A house, fifteen hundred rubles, a propination,[102] a business in timber and produce, a money-lender. He has lent the count fifteen thousand rubles at ten per cent., not as a mortgage, but for "hand-receipts."

Now I write one word:

"Burnt-out."

I might add:

A man of eighty-two, swollen feet, a household of seventeen persons.

THE EMIGRANT

I open a door.

A room without beds, without furniture, carpeted with hay and straw. In the middle of the room stands a barrel upside down. Round the barrel, four starved-looking children, with frowzy hair, hang over a great earthenware dish of sour milk, out of which they eat, holding a greenish metal spoon in their right hand and a bit of bran-bread in their left.

In one corner, on the floor, sits a pale woman, and the tears fall from her eyes on the potatoes she is about to peel. In the second corner lies "he," also on the floor, and undressed.

"It was no good your coming, neighbor," he says to me, without rising, "no good at all! I don't belong here now!"

But when he sees that I have no intention of going away, he raises himself slowly.

"_Nu_, where am I to seat you?" he asks sadly.

I a.s.sure him that I can write standing.

"You will get nothing out of me! I am only waiting for a boat ticket--you see, I have sold everything, even my tools...."

"You are a mechanic?" I ask.

"A tailor."

"And what obliges you to emigrate?"

"Hunger."

And there was hunger in _his_ face, in _her_ face, and still more in the gleaming eyes of the children round the barrel.

"No work to be had?"

He shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, he and work had long been strangers.

"Where are you going to?"

"To London. I was there once already, and made money. I sent my wife ten rubles a week, and lived like a human being. The bad luck brought me home again."

I wondered if the "bad luck" were his wife.

"Why not have sent for your family to join you?"

"It drew me back! It's black as night over there. As soon as ever I closed an eye, I dreamt of the little town, the river round it, ... I felt suffocated there, and it drew me and drew me...."

"This is certainly," I remark, "a beautiful bit of country."

"The air costs nothing, and we have been living on air, heaven be praised, these three years. This time I am going with wife and child. I mean to put an end to it."