Yiddish Tales Part 36

"I should think not, anything so wonderful!" replied Reb Shloimeh, ironically, gazing at the prayer-book and beginning "Happy are we." He swallowed the prayers as he said them, half of every word; no matter how he wrinkled his forehead, he could not expel the stranger thoughts from his brain, and fix his attention on the prayers. After the service he tried taking up a book, but it was no good, his head was a jumble of all the new sciences. By means of the little he had just learned, he wanted to understand and know everything, to fashion a whole body out of a single hair, and he thought, and thought, and thought....

Sunday, when the teacher came, Reb Shloimeh told him that he wished to have a little talk with him. Meantime he sat down to listen. The hour during which the teacher taught the children was too long for him, and he scarcely took his eyes off the clock.

"Do you want another pupil?" he asked the teacher, stepping with him into his own room. He felt as though he were getting red, and he made a very angry face.

"Why not?" answered the teacher, looking hard into Reb Shloimeh's face.

Reb Shloimeh looked at the floor, his brows, as was usual with him in those days, drawn together.

"You understand me--a pupil--" he stammered, "you understand--not a little boy--a pupil--an elderly man--you understand--quite another sort--"

"Well, well, we shall see!" answered the teacher, smiling.

"I mean myself!" he snapped out with great displeasure, as if he had been forced to confess some very evil deed. "Well, I have sinned--what do you want of me?"

"Oh, but I should be delighted!" and the teacher smiled.

"I always said I meant to be a doctor!" said Reb Shloimeh, trying to joke. But his features contracted again directly, and he began to talk about the terms, and it was arranged that every day for an hour and a half the teacher should read to him and explain the sciences. To begin with, Reb Shloimeh chose physiology, sociology, and mathematical geography.

Days, weeks, and months have gone by, and Reb Shloimeh has become depressed, very depressed. He does not sleep at night, he has lost his appet.i.te, doesn't care to talk to people.

Bad, bitter thoughts oppress him.

For seventy years he had not only known nothing, but, on the contrary, he had known everything wrong, understood head downwards. And it seemed to him that if he had known in his youth what he knew now, he would have lived differently, that his years would have been useful to others.

He could find no stain on his life--it was one long record of deeds of charity; but they appeared to him now so insignificant, so useless, and some of them even mischievous. Looking round him, he saw no traces of them left. The rich man of whom he used to beg donations is no poorer for them, and the pauper for whom he begged them is the same pauper as before. It is true, he had always thought of the paupers as sacks full of holes, and had only stuffed things into them because he had a soft heart, and could not bear to see a look of disappointment, or a tear rolling down the pale cheek of a hungry pauper. His own little world, as he had found it and as it was now, seemed to him much worse than before, in spite of all the good things he had done in it.

Not one good rich man! Not one genuine pauper! They are all just as hungry and their palms itch--there is no easing them. Times get harder, the world gets poorer. Now he understands the reason of it all, now it all lies before him as clear as on a map--he would be able to make every one understand. Only now--now it was getting late--he has no strength left. His spent life grieves him. If he had not been so active, such a "father of the community," it would not have grieved him so much. But he _had_ had a great influence in the town, and this influence had been badly, blindly used! And Reb Shloimeh grew sadder day by day.

He began to feel a pain at his heart, a st.i.tch in the side, a burning in his brain, and he was wrapt in his thoughts. Reb Shloimeh was philosophizing.

To be of use to somebody, he reflected, means to leave an impress of good in their life. One ought to help once for all, so that the other need never come for help again. That can be accomplished by wakening and developing a man's intelligence, so that he may always know for himself wherein his help lies.

And in such work he would have spent his life. If he had only understood long ago, ah, how useful he would have been! And a shudder runs through him.

Tears of vexation come more than once into his eyes.

It was no secret in the town that old Reb Shloimeh spent two to three hours daily sitting with the teacher, only what they did together, that n.o.body knew. They tried to worm something out of the maid, but what was to be got out of a "glomp with two eyes," whose one reply was, "I don't know." They scolded her for it. "How can you not know, glomp?" they exclaimed. "Aren't you sometimes in the room with them?"

"Look here, good people, what's the use of coming to me?" the maid would cry. "How can I know, sitting in the kitchen, what they are about? When I bring in the tea, I see them talking, and I go!"

"Dull beast!" they would reply. Then they left her, and betook themselves to the grandchildren, who knew nothing, either.

"They have tea," was their answer to the question, "What does grandfather do with the teacher?"

"But what do they talk about, sillies?"

"We haven't heard!" the children answered gravely.

They tried the old lady.

"Is it my business?" she answered.

They tried to go in to Reb Shloimeh's house, on the pretext of some business or other, but that didn't succeed, either. At last, a few near and dear friends asked Reb Shloimeh himself.

"How people do gossip!" he answered.

"Well, what is it?"

"We just sit and talk!"

There it remained. The matter was discussed all over the town. Of course, n.o.body was satisfied. But he pacified them little by little.

The apostate teacher must turn hot and cold with him!

They imagined that they were occupied with research, and that Reb Shloimeh was opening the teacher's eyes for him--and they were pacified.

When Reb Shloimeh suddenly fell on melancholy, it never came into anyone's head that there might be a connection between this and the conversations. The old lady settled that it was a question of the stomach, which had always troubled him, and that perhaps he had taken a chill. At his age such things were frequent. "But how is one to know, when he won't speak?" she lamented, and wondered which would be best, cod-liver oil or dried raspberries.

Every one else said that he was already in fear of death, and they pitied him greatly. "That is a sickness which no doctor can cure,"

people said, and shook their heads with sorrowful compa.s.sion. They talked to him by the hour, and tried to prevent him from being alone with his thoughts, but it was all no good; he only grew more depressed, and would often not speak at all.

"Such a man, too, what a pity!" they said, and sighed. "He's pining away--given up to the contemplation of death."

"And if you come to think, why should he fear death?" they wondered. "If _he_ fears it, what about us? Och! och! och! Have we so much to show in the next world?" And Reb Shloimeh had a lot to show. Jews would have been glad of a tenth part of his world-to-come, and Christians declared that he was a true Christian, with his love for his fellow-men, and promised him a place in Paradise. "Reb Shloimeh is goodness itself," the town was wont to say. His one lifelong occupation had been the affairs of the community. "They are my life and my delight," he would repeat to his intimate friends, "as indispensable to me as water to a fish." He was a member of all the charitable societies. The Talmud Torah was established under his own roof, and pretty nearly maintained at his expense. The town called him the "father of the community," and all unfortunate, poor, and bitter hearts blessed him unceasingly.

Reb Shloimeh was the one person in the town almost without an enemy, perhaps the one in the whole province. Rich men grumbled at him. He was always after their money--always squeezing them for charities. They called him the old fool, the old donkey, but without meaning what they said. They used to laugh at him, to make jokes upon him, of course among themselves; but they had no enmity against him. They all, with a full heart, wished him joy of his tranquil life.

Reb Shloimeh was born, and had spent years, in wealth. After making an excellent marriage, he set up a business. His wife was the leading spirit within doors, the head of the household, and his whole life had been apparently a success.

When he had married his last child, and found himself a grandfather, he retired from business, and lived his last years on the interest of his fortune.

Free from the hate and jealousy of neighbors, pleasant and satisfactory in every respect, such was Reb Shloimeh's life, and for all that he suddenly became melancholy! It can be nothing but the fear of death!

But very soon Reb Shloimeh, as it were with a wave of the hand, dismissed the past altogether.

He said to himself with a groan that what had been was over and done; he would never grow young again, and once more a shudder went through him at the thought, and there came again the pain in his side and caught his breath, but Reb Shloimeh took no notice, and went on thinking.

"Something must be done!" he said to himself, in the tone of one who has suddenly lost his whole fortune--the fortune he has spent his life in getting together, and there is nothing for him but to start work again with his five fingers.

And Reb Shloimeh started. He began with the Talmud Torah, where he had already long provided for the children's bodily needs--food and clothing.

Now he would supply them with spiritual things--instruction and education.

He dismissed the old teachers, and engaged young ones in their stead, even for Jewish subjects. Out of the Talmud Torah he wanted to make a little university. He already fancied it a success. He closed his eyes, laid his forehead on his hands, and a sweet, happy smile parted his lips. He pictured to himself the useful people who would go forth out of the Talmud Torah. Now he can die happy, he thinks. But no, he does not want to die! He wants to live! To live and to work, work, work! He will not and cannot see an end to his life! Reb Shloimeh feels more and more cheerful, lively, and fresh--to work----to work--till--