Yiddish Tales Part 55

"Well, now, say: Yisgaddal."

"Yisdaddal," repeated the child in his own way.

"Veyiskaddash."

"Veyistaddash."

And Reb Selig repeated the Kaddish with him several times.

The small lamp burnt low, and scarcely illuminated Reb Selig's yellow, corpse-like face, or the little one of Alterke, who repeated wearily the difficult, and to him unintelligible words of the Kaddish. And Alterke, all the while, gazed intently into the corner, where Tate's shadow and his own had a most fantastic and frightening appearance.

AVRHOM THE ORCHARD-KEEPER

When he first came to the place, as a boy, and went straight to the house-of-study, and people, having greeted him, asked "Where do you come from?" and he answered, not without pride, "From the Government of Wilna"--from that day until the day he was married, they called him "the Wilner."

In a few years' time, however, when the house-of-study had married him to the daughter of the Psalm-reader, a coa.r.s.e, undersized creature, and when, after six months' "board" with his father-in-law, he became a teacher, the town altered his name to "the Wilner teacher." Again, a few years later, when he got a chest affection, and the doctor forbade him to keep school, and he began to deal in fruit, the town learnt that his name was Avrhom, to which they added "the orchard-keeper," and his name is "Avrhom the orchard-keeper" to this day.

Avrhom was quite content with his new calling. He had always wished for a business in which he need not have to do with a lot of people in whom he had small confidence, and in whose society he felt ill at ease.

People have a queer way with them, he used to think, they want to be always talking! They want to tell everything, find out everything, answer everything!

When he was a student he always chose out a place in a corner somewhere, where he could see n.o.body, and n.o.body could see him; and he used to murmur the day's task to a low tune, and his murmured repet.i.tion made him think of the ruin in which Rabbi Jose, praying there, heard the Bas-Kol mourn, cooing like a dove, over the exile of Israel. And then he longed to float away to that ruin somewhere in the wilderness, and murmur there like a dove, with no one, no one, to interrupt him, not even the Bas-Kol. But his vision would be destroyed by some hard question which a fellow-student would put before him, describing circles with his thumb and chanting to a shrill Gemoreh-tune.

In the orchard, at the end of the Ga.s.s, however, which Avrhom hired of the Gentiles, he had no need to exchange empty words with anyone.

Avrhom had no large capital, and could not afford to hire an orchard for more than thirty rubles. The orchard was consequently small, and only grew about twenty apple-trees, a few pear-trees, and a cherry-tree.

Avrhom used to move to the garden directly after the Feast of Weeks, although that was still very early, the fruit had not yet set, and there was nothing to steal.

But Avrhom could not endure sitting at home any longer, where the wife screamed, the children cried, and there was a continual "fair." What should he want there? He only wished to be alone with his thoughts and imaginings, and his quiet "tunes," which were always weaving themselves inside him, and were nearly stifled.

It is early to go to the orchard directly after the Feast of Weeks, but Avrhom does not mind, he is drawn back to the trees that can think and hear so much, and keep so many things to themselves.

And Avrhom betakes himself to the orchard. He carries with him, besides phylacteries and prayer-scarf, a prayer-book with the Psalms and the "Stations," two volumes of the Gemoreh which he owns, a few works by the later scholars, and the Tales of Jerusalem; he takes his wadded winter garment and a cushion, makes them into a bundle, kisses the Mezuzeh, mutters farewell, and is off to the orchard.

As he nears the orchard his heart begins to beat loudly for joy, but he is hindered from going there at once. In the yard through which he must pa.s.s lies a dog. Later on, when Avrhom has got to know the dog, he will even take him into the orchard, but the first time there is a certain risk--one has to know a dog, otherwise it barks, and Avrhom dreads a bark worse than a bite--it goes through one's head! And Avrhom waits till the owner comes out, and leads him through by the hand.

"Back already?" exclaims the owner, laughing and astonished.

"Why not?" murmurs Avrhom, shamefacedly, and feeling that it is, indeed, early.

"What shall you do?" asks the owner, graver. "There is no hut there at all--last year's fell to pieces."

"Never mind, never mind," begs Avrhom, "it will be all right."

"Well, if you want to come!" and the owner shrugs his shoulders, and lets Avrhom into the orchard.

Avrhom immediately lays his bundle on the ground, stretches himself out full length on the gra.s.s, and murmurs, "Good! good!"

At last he is silent, and listens to the quiet rustle of the trees. It seems to him that the trees also wonder at his coming so soon, and he looks at them beseechingly, as though he would say:

"Trees--you, too! I couldn't help it ... it drew me...."

And soon he fancies that the trees have understood everything, and murmur, "Good, good!"

And Avrhom already feels at home in the orchard. He rises from the ground, and goes to every tree in turn, as though to make its acquaintance. Then he considers the hut that stands in the middle of the orchard.

It has fallen in a little certainly, but Avrhom is all the better pleased with it. He is not particularly fond of new, strong things, a building resembling a ruin is somehow much more to his liking. Such a ruin is inwardly full of secrets, whispers, and melodies. There the tears fall quietly, while the soul yearns after something that has no name and no existence in time or s.p.a.ce. And Avrhom creeps into the fallen-in hut, where it is dark and where there are smells of another world. He draws himself up into a ball, and remains hid from everyone.

But to remain hid from the world is not so easy. At first it can be managed. So long as the fruit is ripening, he needs no one, and no one needs him. When one of his children brings him food, he exchanges a few words with it, asks what is going on at home, and how the mother is, and he feels he has done his duty, if, when obliged to go home, he spends there Friday night and Sat.u.r.day morning. That over, and the hot stew eaten, he returns to the orchard, lies down under a tree, opens the Tales of Jerusalem, goes to sleep reading a fantastical legend, dreams of the Western Wall, Mother Rachel's Grave, the Cave of Machpelah, and other holy, quiet places--places where the air is full of old stories such as are given, in such easy Hebrew, in the Tales of Jerusalem.

But when the fruit is ripe, and the trees begin to bend under the burden of it, Avrhom must perforce leave his peaceful world, and become a trader.

When the first wind begins to blow in the orchard, and covers the ground thereof with apples and pears, Avrhom collects them, makes them into heaps, sorts them, and awaits the market-women with their loud tongues, who destroy all the peace and quiet of his Garden of Eden.

On Sabbath he would like to rest, but of a Sabbath the trade in apples--on tick of course--is very lively in the orchards. There is a custom in the town to that effect, and Avrhom cannot do away with it.

Young gentlemen and young ladies come into the orchard, and hold a sort of revel; they sing and laugh, they walk and they chatter, and Avrhom must listen to it all, and bear it, and wait for the night, when he can creep back into his hut, and need look at no one but the trees, and hear nothing but the wind, and sometimes the rain and the thunder.

But it is worse in the autumn, when the fruit is getting over-ripe, and he can no longer remain in the orchard. With a bursting heart he bids farewell to the trees, to the hut in which he has spent so many quiet, peaceful moments. He conveys the apples to a shed belonging to the farm, which he has hired, ever since he had the orchard, for ten gulden a month, and goes back to the Ga.s.s.

In the Ga.s.s, at that time, there is mud and rain. Town Jews drag themselves along sick and disheartened. They cough and groan. Avrhom stares round him, and fails to recognize the world.

"Bad!" he mutters. "Fe!" and he spits. "Where is one to get to?"

And Avrhom recalls the beautiful legends in the Tales of Jerusalem, he recalls the land of Israel.

There he knows it is always summer, always warm and fine. And every autumn the vision draws him.

But there is no possibility of his being able to go there--he must sell the apples which he has brought from the orchard, and feed the wife and the children he has "outside the land." And all through the autumn and part of the winter, Avrhom drags himself about with a basket of apples on his arm and a yearning in his heart. He waits for the dear summer, when he will be able to go back and hide himself in the orchard, in the hut, and be alone, where the town mud and the town Jews with dulled senses shall be out of sight, and the week-day noise, out of hearing.

HIRSH DAVID NAUMBERG

Born, 1876, in Msczczonow, Government of Warsaw, Russian Poland, of Hasidic parentage; traditional Jewish education in the house of his grandfather; went to Warsaw in 1898; at present (1912) in America; first literary work appeared in 1900; writer of stories, etc., in Hebrew and Yiddish; co-editor of Ha-Zofeh, Der Freind, Ha-Boker; contributor to Ha-Zeman, Heint, Ha-Dor, Ha-Shiloah, etc.; collected works, 5 vols., Warsaw, 1908-1911.

THE RAV AND THE RAV'S SON

The Sabbath midday meal is over, and the Saken Rav pa.s.ses his hands across his serene and pious countenance, pulls out both earlocks, straightens his skull-cap, and prepares to expound a pa.s.sage of the Torah as G.o.d shall enlighten him. There sit with him at table, to one side of him, a pa.s.sing guest, a Libavitch Chossid, like the Rav himself, a man with yellow beard and earlocks, and a grubby shirt collar appearing above the grubby yellow kerchief that envelopes his throat; to the other side of him, his son Sholem, an eighteen-year-old youth, with a long pale face, deep, rather dreamy eyes, a velvet hat, but no earlocks, a secret Maskil, who writes Hebrew verses, and contemplates growing into a great Jewish author. The Rebbetzin has been suffering two or three months with rheumatism, and lies in another room.