Yiddish Tales Part 56

The Rav is naturally humble-minded, and it is no trifle to him to expound the Torah. To take a pa.s.sage of the Bible and say, The meaning is this and that, is a thing he hasn't the cheek to do. It makes him feel as uncomfortable as if he were telling lies. Up to twenty-five years of age he was a Misnaggid, but under the influence of the Saken Rebbetzin, he became a Chossid, bit by bit. Now he is over fifty, he drives to the Rebbe, and comes home every time with increased faith in the latter's supernatural powers, and, moreover, with a strong desire to expound a little of the Torah himself; only, whenever a good idea comes into his head, it oppresses him, because he has not sufficient self-confidence to express it.

The difficulty for him lies in making a start. He would like to do as the Rebbe does (long life to him!)--give a push to his chair, a look, stern and somewhat angry, at those sitting at table, then a groaning sigh. But the Rav is ashamed to imitate him, or is partly afraid, lest people should catch him doing it. He drops his eyes, holds one hand to his forehead, while the other plays with the knife on the table, and one hardly hears:

"When thou goest forth to war with thine enemy--thine enemy--that is, the inclination to evil, oi, oi,--a--" he nods his head, gathers a little confidence, continues his explanation of the pa.s.sage, and gradually warms to the part. He already looks the stranger boldly in the face. The stranger twists himself into a correct att.i.tude, nods a.s.sent, but cannot for the life of him tear his gaze from the brandy-bottle on the table, and cannot wonder sufficiently at so much being allowed to remain in it at the end of a meal. And when the Rav comes to the fact that to be in "prison" means to have bad habits, and "well-favored woman" means that every bad habit has its good side, the guest can no longer restrain himself, seizes the bottle rather awkwardly, as though in haste, fills up his gla.s.s, spills a little onto the cloth, and drinks with his head thrown back, gulping it like a regular tippler, after a hoa.r.s.e and sleepy "to your health." This has a bad effect on the Rav's enthusiasm, it "mixes his brains," and he turns to his son for help. To tell the truth, he has not much confidence in his son where the Law is concerned, although he loves him dearly, the boy being the only one of his children in whom he may hope, with G.o.d's help, to have comfort, and who, a hundred years hence, shall take over from him the office of Rav in Saken. The elder son is rich, but he is a usurer, and his riches give the Rav no satisfaction whatever. He had had one daughter, but she died, leaving some little orphans. Sholem is, therefore, the only one left him. He has a good head, and is quick at his studies, a quiet, well-behaved boy, a little obstinate, a bit opinionated, but that is no harm in a boy, thinks the old man. True, too, that last week people told him tales. Sholem, they said, read heretical books, and had been seen carrying "burdens" on Sabbath. But this the father does not believe, he will not and cannot believe it. Besides, Sholem is certain to have made amends. If a Talmid-Chochem commit a sin by day, it should be forgotten by nightfall, because a Talmid-Chochem makes amends, it says so in the Gemoreh.

However, the Rav is ashamed to give his own exegesis of the Law before his son, and he knows perfectly well that nothing will induce Sholem to drive with him to the Rebbe.

But the stranger and his brandy-drinking have so upset him that he now looks at his son in a piteous sort of way. "Hear me out, Sholem, what harm can it do you?" says his look.

Sholem draws himself up, and pulls in his chair, supports his head with both his hands, and gazes into his father's eyes out of filial duty. He loves his father, but in his heart he wonders at him; it seems to him his father ought to learn more about his heretical leanings--it is quite time he should--and he continues to gaze in silence and in wonder, not unmixed with compa.s.sion, and never ceases thinking, "Upon my word, Tate, what a simpleton you are!"

But when the Rav came in the course of his exposition to speak of "death by kissing" (by the Lord), and told how the righteous, the holy Tzaddikim, die from the very sweetness of the Blessed One's kiss, a spark kindled in Sholem's eyes, and he moved in his chair. One of those wonders had taken place which do frequently occur, only they are seldom remarked: the Cha.s.sidic exposition of the Torah had suggested to Sholem a splendid idea for a romantic poem!

It is an old commonplace that men take in, of what they hear and see, that which pleases them. Sholem is fascinated. He wishes to die anyhow, so what could be more appropriate and to the purpose than that his love should kiss him on his death-bed, while, in that very instant, his soul departs?

The idea pleased him so immensely that immediately after grace, the stranger having gone on his way, and the Rav laid himself down to sleep in the other room, Sholem began to write. His heart beat violently while he made ready, but the very act of writing out a poem after dinner on Sabbath, in the room where his father settled the cases laid before him by the townsfolk, was a bit of heroism well worth the risk. He took the writing-materials out of his locked box, and, the pen and ink-pot in one hand and a collection of ma.n.u.script verse in the other, he went on tiptoe to the table.

He folded back the table-cover, laid down his writing apparatus, and took another look around to make sure no one was in the room. He counted on the fact that when the Rav awoke from his nap, he always coughed, and that when he walked he shuffled so with his feet, and made so much noise with his long slippers, that one could hear him two rooms off. In short, there was no need to be anxious.

He grows calmer, reads the ma.n.u.script poems, and his face tells that he is pleased. Now he wants to collect his thoughts for the new one, but something or other hinders him. He unfastens the girdle, round his waist, rolls it up, and throws it into the Rav's soft stuffed chair.

And now that there is nothing to disturb from without, a second and third wonder must take place within: the Rav's Torah, which was transformed by Sholem's brain into a theme for romance, must now descend into his heart, thence to pour itself onto the paper, and pa.s.s, by this means, into the heads of Sholem's friends, who read his poems with enthusiasm, and have sinful dreams afterwards at night.

And he begins to imagine himself on his death-bed, sick and weak, unable to speak, and with staring eyes. He sees nothing more, but he feels a light, ethereal kiss on his cheek, and his soul is aware of a sweet voice speaking. He tries to take out his hands from under the coverlet, but he cannot--he is dying--it grows dark.

A still brighter and more unusual gleam comes into Sholem's eyes, his heart swells with emotion seeking an outlet, his brain works like running machinery, a whole dictionary of words, his whole treasure of conceptions and ideas, is turned over and over so rapidly that the mind is unconscious of its own efforts. His poetic instinct is searching for what it needs. His hand works quietly, forming letter on letter, word on word. Now and again Sholem lifts his eyes from the paper and looks round, he has a feeling as though the four walls and the silence were thinking to themselves: "Hush, hush! Disturb not the poet at his work of creation! Disturb not the priest about to offer sacrifice to G.o.d."

To the Rav, meanwhile, lying in the other room, there had come a fresh idea for the exposition of the Torah, and he required to look up something in a book. The door of the reception-room opened, the Rav entered, and Sholem had not heard him.

It was a pity to see the Rav's face, it was so contracted with dismay, and a pity to see Sholem's when he caught sight of his father, who, utterly taken aback, dropt into a seat exactly opposite Sholem, and gave a groan--was it? or a cry?

But he did not sit long, he did not know what one should do or say to one's son on such an occasion; his heart and his eyes inclined to weeping, and he retired into his own room. Sholem remained alone with a very sore heart and a soul opprest. He put the writing-materials back into their box, and went out with the ma.n.u.script verses tucked away under his Tallis-koton.

He went into the house-of-study, but it looked dreadfully dismal; the benches were pushed about anyhow, a sign that the last worshippers had been in a great hurry to go home to dinner. The beadle was snoring on a seat somewhere in a corner, as loud and as fast as if he were trying to inhale all the air in the building, so that the next congregation might be suffocated. The cloth on the platform reading-desk was crooked and tumbled, the floor was dirty, and the whole place looked as dead as though its Sabbath sleep were to last till the resurrection.

He left the house-of-study, walked home and back again; up and down, there and back, many times over. The situation became steadily clearer to him; he wanted to justify himself, if only with a word, in his father's eyes; then, again, he felt he must make an end, free himself once and for all from the paternal restraint, and become a Jewish author. Only he felt sorry for his father; he would have liked to do something to comfort him. Only what? Kiss him? Put his arms round his neck? Have his cry out before him and say, "Tatishe, you and I, we are neither of us to blame!" Only how to say it so that the old man shall understand? That is the question.

And the Rav sat in his room, bent over a book in which he would fain have lost himself. He rubbed his brow with both hands, but a stone lay on his heart, a heavy stone; there were tears in his eyes, and he was all but crying. He needed some living soul before whom he could pour out the bitterness of his heart, and he had already turned to the Rebbetzin:

"Zelde!" he called quietly.

"A-h," sighed the Rebbetzin from her bed. "I feel bad; my foot aches, Lord of the World! What is it?"

"Nothing, Zelde. How are you getting on, eh?" He got no further with her; he even mentally repented having so nearly added to her burden of life.

It was an hour or two before the Rav collected himself, and was able to think over what had happened. And still he could not, would not, believe that his son, Sholem, had broken the Sabbath, that he was worthy of being stoned to death. He sought for some excuse for him, and found none, and came at last to the conclusion that it was a work of Satan, a special onset of the Tempter. And he kept on thinking of the Cha.s.sidic legend of a Rabbi who was seen by a Chossid to smoke a pipe on Sabbath.

Only it was an illusion, a deception of the Evil One. But when, after he had waited some time, no Sholem appeared, his heart began to beat more steadily, the reality of the situation made itself felt, he got angry, and hastily left the house in search of the Sabbath-breaker, intending to make an example of him.

Hardly, however, had he perceived his son walking to and fro in front of the house-of-study, with a look of absorption and worry, than he stopped short. He was afraid to go up to his son. Just then Sholem turned, they saw each other, and the Rav had w.i.l.l.y-nilly to approach him.

"Will you come for a little walk?" asked the Rav gently, with downcast eyes. Sholem made no reply, and followed him.

They came to the Eruv, the Rav looked in all his pockets, found his handkerchief, tied it round his neck, and glanced at his son with a kind of prayer in his eye. Sholem tied his handkerchief round his neck.

When they were outside the town, the old man coughed once and again and said:

"What is all this?"

But Sholem was determined not to answer a word, and his father had to summon all his courage to continue:

"What is all this? Eh? Sabbath-breaking! It is--"

He coughed and was silent.

They were walking over a great, broad meadow, and Sholem had his gaze fixed on a horse that was moving about with hobbled legs, while the Rav shaded his eyes with one hand from the beams of the setting sun.

"How can anyone break the Sabbath? Come now, is it right? Is it a thing to do? Just to go and break the Sabbath! I knew Hebrew grammar, and could write Hebrew, too, once upon a time, but break the Sabbath! Tell me yourself, Sholem, what you think! When you have bad thoughts, how is it you don't come to your father? I suppose I am your father, ha?" the old man suddenly fired up. "Am I your father? Tell me--no? Am I perhaps _not_ your father?"

"For I _am_ his father," he reflected proudly. "That I certainly am, there isn't the smallest doubt about it! The greatest heretic could not deny it!"

"You come to your father," he went on with more decision, and falling into a Gemoreh chant, "and you tell him _all_ about it. What harm can it do to tell him? No harm whatever. I also used to be tempted by bad thoughts. Therefore I began driving to the Rebbe of Libavitch. One mustn't let oneself go! Do you hear me, Sholem? One mustn't let oneself go!"

The last words were long drawn out, the Rav emphasizing them with his hands and wrinkling his forehead. Carried away by what he was saying, he now felt all but sure that Sholem had not begun to be a heretic.

"You see," he continued very gently, "every now and then we come to a stumbling-block, but all the same, we should not--"

Meantime, however, the ma.n.u.script folio of verses had been slipping out from under Sholem's Four-Corners, and here it fell to the ground. The Rav stood staring, as though startled out of a sweet dream by the cry of "fire." He quivered from top to toe, and seized his earlocks with both hands. For there could be no doubt of the fact that Sholem had now broken the Sabbath a second time--by carrying the folio outside the town limit. And worse still, he had practiced deception, by searching his pockets when they had come to the Eruv, as though to make sure not to transgress by having anything inside them.

Sholem, too, was taken by surprise. He hung his head, and his eyes filled with tears. The old man was about to say something, probably to begin again with "What is all this?" Then he hastily stopt and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the folio, as though he were afraid Sholem might get hold of it first.

"Ha--ha--azoi!" he began panting. "Azoi! A heretic! A Goi."

But it was hard for him to speak. He might not move from where he stood, so long as he held the papers, it being outside the Eruv. His ankles were giving way, and he sat down to have a look at the ma.n.u.script.

"Aha! Writing!" he exclaimed as he turned the leaves. "Come here to me,"

he called to Sholem, who had moved a few steps aside. Sholem came and stood obediently before him. "What is this?" asked the Rav, sternly.

"Poems!"

"What do you mean by poems? What is the good of them?" He felt that he was growing weak again, and tried to stiffen himself morally. "What is the good of them, heretic, tell me!"

"They're just meant to read, Tatishe!"

"What do you mean by 'read'? A Jeroboam son of Nebat, that's what you want to be, is it? A Jeroboam son of Nebat, to lead others into heresy!

No! I won't have it! On no account will I have it!"