The Landsmen Read online

  “For nothing else. I’ve never met one of you Golinskers, even the dullest, lacking in something like shrewdness.” Perhaps to move away from the “blessing” I had been detained for, he added, “How do you feel, Nochim, about praying all your life in a synagogue without a true rabbi to it?”

  “Honestly speaking,” I said, not wishing to irritate a host, “it isn’t that we don’t want an ordained rabbi. We had three but they went away.”

  “Don’t say the what, but the why.”

  “That you’d have to get from one smarter than myself. About the Holy Word,” I added, feeling a tug in my heart, “sometimes it dreams itself to me that I and the Holy Word are not too healthy for each other — let The Highest One only forgive such honesty.”

  “The Holy Word your enemy? Nochim “how such a twist?”

  “A long story, Rabbi.”

  For the next half hour, I exposed a most private sore — how Lenka had come home one night with rings in her ears, with bags of walnuts, with “Never mind, Papa, the Squire won’t harm you any more.” I gave an account of all the landsmen’s arguments, and of the decision. I told of the night I rode her away, of how I threw her from the wagon, of how she cursed me as I turned the horse around, and of how I spoke to no one for six days thereafter. I admitted I had not wanted to ride her away in the deepest part of the night to put her in the muds of the world. When Lenka had been born, I said, and her mother lay dying away, I had prayed that both might live; when her mother did not I turned the mirror to the wall, swore Lenka would have me as father and mother both. But a man had to look

  for a living and the child needed a real mother, which was how I married Pesha and made other children. Ever since, I admitted to the rabbi, I had regretted my act against Lenka. Though I had obeyed the Holy Word of the Law, though I had cast a harlot from my house, it had seemed even then that I had also cast myself away, for she was a daughter who had given me long joys.

  “A heavy thing,” the rabbi said, a tear in each eye. “But the end of life, Nochim, is not happiness, only wisdom. You did what was wise.”

  “It was twelve years ago, Rabbi,” I said, “and the more time passes, the smaller and narrower I become in my misery. Wherever I go I ask for her and learn nothing.”

  Seeing my tears the rabbi said, “Continue to say the mourner’s prayer for her. She will be with you forever in The World To Come. Many a flower like your Lenka has been torn from the branch, yet the trunk grows higher and stronger and our enemies will never topple it. The Holy Law is our snow, Nochim, our rain, our soil, our rock.”

  His words weakened me worse than an unstoppable bleeding. What did I have? Neither my daughter nor the comfort the rabbi offered. Yes, of course. The Next World . . . only it did not cheer me. It was in my human condition to pine, to wish to seek Lenka out and kiss her feet. In the rabbi’s presence I could but dry my face and throw him the pity of my silence, which in a grown man becomes a hurtful exercise — pity being the counterfeit of goodness, a coin returning each time heavier to the thrower’s pocket.

  The rabbi rose from his chair, his bad hand shaking more than ordinarily as he led me downstairs. Putting on his long black kaftan and furry hat he said, “In ten minutes bring my horse and wagon quietly to the seventh house down the lane on this side. But quietly.”

  This I did; and out of a house with no lights in it came the rabbi and a youth in a long coat, the door behind them closing with unusual quickness and quiet. “Underneath,” said the rabbi to the youth, pointing to a canvas on the wagon floor. When I felt the highroad under the wheels, the land-blackness on either side, Reb Sussya let me know

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  what I was doing. The lad, a Kalman-ben-Zvee, had been conscripted into the army, or was supposed to be, I’m not sure which; anyway, on the plea of an illness of the bowels by Reb Sussya and doctors well paid for their reports, the authorities had agreed to “let him grow out of it” for a year. Now Kalman, as the rabbi briefly explained, would soon be on his way to Warsaw in a gypsy wagon, sums of money having been put into the hands of vulnerable officials to look the other way in the matter. In Warsaw Kalman would find relatives of Reb Sussya and so begin a new life. We were bringing the youth to where his gypsies stood encamped near the tavern of a Yegor on the highroad, and I was to stop a few hundred yards from there and deliver the boy to the gypsies, safely, the rabbi’s noticeable gait since his illness being the drawback to his doing it himself. “And better an out-Pukopper for this, anyway,” he ended.

  I said nothing but feared for the success of a plan dependent upon the bribery of too many. Walking down the dark road with Kalman, floating once more in troubles not of my choosing, I thought of the probable amount of the bribes. With but a fraction of it I could have kept Lenka out of the Squire’s fields; he might never have seen her among the field-workers, riding past on his prancing Commander, so pointy-bearded and thick-legged in the saddle.

  Kalman and I went to the gypsy wagon in silence. It stood across the road from the tavern, its high slats and wooden top taking the shape against the trees in the dark of a dry slanting ship long aground. It was empty; I told the boy to climb in; I would go into the tavern and tell the gypsies. “And you’ll come back,” Kalman said with unclouded trust. I turned for the tavern, intending to hurry through with the gypsies and back to the rabbi.

  A small rain began to fall as I entered the brown swim of Yegor’s tavern. I was not immediately noticed in the bitter phlegms of that crowded spittoon. Maruska, Yegor’s wife, stood behind the counter at the rear, pouring from a bottle. I saw the gypsies at a table, throwing cards for peasants’ fortunes. From under the dripping tallows on the blackened beams a voice challenged itself to sing.

  Father, come take a bath,

  The Tsar bathes all day long.

  At the sight of the gypsies my chest gave a jump, not an hour ago the old wound opened. I began to imagine my daughter very clearly. My big chance loomed; I had a fine reason to be speaking to gypsies and I would ask one about Lenka. Paths often crossed among wanderers; some lucky sign in their flyaway world could lead me to where Lenka was or had been. I felt a lightening. The cracked seams on the bug-bitten walls began to remind me of the wrinkles on the brows of holy men.

  Maruska saw me. “Come here, Onion-Nose,” she called in a hoarse growl she acquired when she drank. Yegor reached her as I did. “Busy, busy with their predictions of riches,” Yegor mumbled, looking toward the gypsies throwing cards to the peasants. “The boys are buying them whole bottles on credit.”

  “It’s the wrong way,” Maruska said happily, handing him a full bottle. “Tomorrow we’ll be begged at.”

  “Never mind, Maruska. Good fights tomorrow.” He threw a second look my way, which he believed I thought was his first. “Pigs ? Oh, it’s him.” He pushed me lightly with his boot. “Same stink. Get him out, Mrs. Mountain.”

  Yegor carried the bottle away. Maruska leaned close to me. “Go to sleep in the barn.” Her lips made settled twists of amusement. “He won’t notice.”

  “I have first to be with the gypsies, thank you.”

  She pinched my nose where the bridge should have been. “Your fortune is known. To the barn with you. And if somebody comes to see if you’re warm, you’ll understand it’s not your mother.” She tickled my nose with her fingers. I turned my head, not knowing how to talk to her. “You wouldn’t think it, Onion-Nose,” she said, “but you and I . . . it’s curious.”

  I chose to act as though I had not heard, and stepped to the gypsies’ table. Tapping the woman’s shoulder, I waited for her to turn her

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  face, a dirty pillow slept on too many times. “The boy sits in your wagon to go on his journey,” I whispered. “In your wagon.”

  “In the wagon,” she said, turning back to her customers. I stood wondering how to ask my question. Wildly I thought to go back to Maruska and beg a bottle on credit for the gypsy. I felt a hand from behind, which picked me up and
threw me to the floor. Rolling over, I saw Yegor’s two hands plunging down like the front feet of a frightened horse, his fingers lifting and tossing me in the air. He performed this trick, cleanly, with no show of anger.

  I lay on my side where I fell, beginning to want to cry not simply for the pain; also was the pain of having been unable to talk to the gypsy woman about Lenka. Yegor’s toe turned me over on my back. Seeing my hand protecting the damaged side, he kicked the fingers away and caved the side in further with other sharper kicks. I lay still awhile, fearing he would kill me if I tried to move away. But so to hold myself was unbearable. I made myself crawl to the door, turning for a last look at them. Yegor had already gone toward Maruska, who held her back to me. Arms like upright snakes waved at me from both sides.

  In the coolness of the rain, I seemed to come to the end of a journey. My side had opened and was bleeding. High sounds came through the tavern’s door — muffled bleats, the screams of a woman in quick pain but with an anger in it. Maruska’s were like the screams of other beaten women I had heard, their past hurts returning in the pain of the latest. In that moment I felt a warmness under my shirt where the side was bleeding. Pressing my hand to it I ran up the road toward where I had left the rabbi. Weights lay on my chest. Knives whirled over my head. I fell. I seemed to hear close sounds, the gallop of horses, new screams, a near excitement of some kind. I wanted to lie still, nothing else. The rain fell on my back. I felt the oncoming of sleep and heard something familiar.

  Father, come take a bath,

  The Tsar bathes all day long.

  When next I opened my eyes it was to see the face of Maruska by the candle in her hand, her broad loose body in a squat. She wiped her bloody cheek with the bottom of her skirt as she looked at me. I lay on straw, shivering in my wet shirt.

  “Keep still,” she whispered, “the police may return.”

  “Police, what . . . ?”

  “Those gypsies.” Wiping her cheek again, she started in fear, then blew out the candle. “The police came for them. In and out with them. I’ll go now, I had to wait until you opened your eyes. Yegor could have killed you.”

  Maruska, my friend of the while . . . both of us knowing the iron in Yegor’s hands. “You’d better be out of here early,” she said in the dark of the barn.

  “Wait.” The meaning became clearer. “The police were here?”

  “Their horses ran you over on the road. I carried you in. They made the gypsies drive their wagon back to Pukop.”

  “Back to Pukop?”

  “With them behind it. How you weren’t killed as you lay there, under the wheels . . . but your bones are straight. I felt.”

  “But my side . . .”

  “You can walk. You’ll have to. It’s lucky I ran out, or otherwise . . In the pitch-dark barn her voice changed to a gentle child’s. “Good rest, Onion-Nose. Be away early. Yegor mustn’t see you.”

  She stamped out, closing the door. Kalman, the rabbi, police, gypsies . . . for what? I had wanted a drink; there had to be an Itzik and a rabbi and a Kalman.

  On this I slept. In the early morning of the next day, Friday, I found the world as usual outside Yegor’s barn. The bleeding of my side had stopped. A small piece of rib lay exposed like a bit of fat in dried gravy. I could walk; the low sun gave me the shadow of a tall man; the quiet made me remember the fiddle I had left in the rabbi’s house; but I had to be for Golinsk now. What remained in Pukop I would learn later.

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  Moving my feet on the Golinsk way, I saw, in my fever, Pesha and the children before me on the road; they pulled me to the comfortable boredom of my hut and I tried to pace more quickly. “Tomorrow is Laib’s confirmation,” I told myself, “a twelve-year-old becomes a man . . . someday another Kalman, another prize for them ... if only,” it came to me humorously, “The One Above would arrange for Jews to be born at seventy and grow down instead of up, with the wisest years lived first, with conscription to be worried about at the end instead of the beginning ... ay, peculiar arrangement, you are not sensible — for in such a harness would not our children suffer for us ? . . . Let it be the way it is. . . .”

  With such musings I numbed the thought of the nine miles until I would be home. I came to where the highroad turned and ran between clumps of trees taken fire the year before, now gray and bare. I ordered myself to examine the lifeless trunks. “See how they still try to be trees . . . without sense, Nochim . . . take a lesson from them ... lie down . . . it’s a solution.”

  I sank to the road. Warmth spurted anew from my side. I waited for the smell of the last night’s rain, for the feel of damp earth on my tongue, for the blackness. I supposed this to be the end of my nonsensical circlings, all fights for pennies finished, the seeking for Lenka over. “It is better now,” I thought in the underpull.

  I heard Pesha say, “He opens his eyes.”

  Pesha? My passage into the Next World interrupted? Yes, it was Pesha. What other voice could manage to squeeze such sadness into her relief? Ay, my ticket not yet stamped; I lived!

  Yushin barked, “Good, I’ll keep on.” Yes, my acquaintance the druggist, happy with his cupping-glasses, eagerly saving my life at his price. He never wished anyone dead, just dying; save the life and take out the mortgage. But not this time, Mr. Druggist. “Go try,” I urged myself, “open an eye.”

  Reb Maisha was first to see. “A good thank-you, God, my Dear!” he chanted with a lift. “One joy at least on this terrible day!”

  I knew I was home. Reb Maisha, the crack in the wall stuffed with putty and tar, Yushin, Pesha. Yes, home, but how? My thoughts began to gather themselves; I heard Berel-the-Ox, then Yeersel, and also Laib-Shmul, the entire Burial Brotherhood. “Wait,” I whispered to Yushin, “stop the cupping-glasses, they burn. Let a man . .

  I opened my eyes again to Pesha crying, but where were Marya, Fendel, Sholem, Zagzaigel? “Ay, I’ll live,” I thought. “I want to know everything.” And I shouted quite clearly, “Rabbi, have you seen Kalman of Pukop? Do you hear me, Rabbi?”

  “Kalman,” I heard Reb Maisha say. “Ay, a Sabbath of Satan’s!”

  Laib-Shmul leaned over and promised, “Later, Nochim. Everything.”

  What, the Sabbath? It’s tomorrow; what happened to yesterday? I shouted to them, “Where’s yesterday, Kalman, the Rabbi, Maruska, the police?” They held me down but I kept shouting. “Send the druggist away, let me gather myself! Say what is, open your mouths . . . Mama, Mama, make them!”

  Yushin commanded them to hold me. Yeersel said, “No, he is going; let him speak.”

  “Wait, Nochim,” Reb Maisha said to me. “Hear me quietly.”

  He spoke of the Svutzkers finding me on the road under a high sun that morning and bringing me home in their wagon, riding on the Sabbath but pardoned by the emergency. The police, they said, had taken Kalman out of the gypsies’ wagon, bound and buttoned for the soldier’s funeral he had wanted to flee. The Svutzkers had heard the shots and the shouts, “Reprisal against the Jews’ conspiracy.” After all the bribes! Ay, so; the gypsies in two pays, the rabbi’s and the police’s! And so ended Kalman, bribe-today, bribe-tomorrow; and of the rabbi, not known except arrested.

  Yeersel interrupted Maisha. “Enough for now.”

  “Ay,” from my shrilling wife, “the rest let wait!”

  “What rest, brothers?” I shouted, trying to rise up. “Run. Leave me and run. They’ve made a conspiracy and from Pukop they’ll stitch it to Golinsk and sew our own lads into Kalman-coats!”

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  “The fever,” Yeersel said.

  “Tie him down,” from Berel-the-Ox.

  “Don’t stand here,” I screamed. “Be birds!”

  “He believes a pogrom’s coming,” Laib-Shmul decided. “Tell him of Laib’s confirmation, Maisha. It’ll quiet him.”

  This morning, Nochim [chanted Reb Maisha],

  In the synagogue, on the Sabbath, into Laib’s confirmation,

>   It came a fragrant thing-a-thing, like the festival bough a bit, Ha-hi, such a pain to my laughter!

  Solemn in the synagogue, solemn confirmation day,

  Laib-ben-Aaron born, praying from the altar,

  Grown into twelve years, the orphan soon a man,

  And comes to the end of the service, Nochim,

  A big “Amen,” you know, you know,

  Blessings, excitements, kissings, ha-hi!

  But what is it? What smells?

  On Reb Maisha, what smells?

  Disgrace, scandal,

  Only from a frenchy-woman such a smell.

  Ay, brought into the synagogue!

  Put in the prayer book, a small something-in-a-glass,

  Broken and such a dripping; but how to me?

  Then Laib comes back from running away,

  Calling “Mine, mine,” with trembles,

  “She gave it, a present, I hid it in the book She’s Varya from Profim’s.”

  And again Laib with a quick-away and again on me names,

  “Such a guardian,”

  “Laib with a whore before confirmed in Israel,”

  “A fine teacher, Reb Maisha,”

  Ay, this in our synagogue today, Nochim,

  Today.

  See how we joke,

  Ha-hi, ha-hi,

  Such a pain to my laughter!

  So hearing I thought, “Ah, you again, Mottel; again the bad uncle of the confirmation boy.” I knew Varya from hearing in the taverns; stories of her and the Squire, and of how she was Mottel’s private playtoy, a badhouse romance. But next to my Kalman-thing, a small evil, Varya. Small, indeed.

  So closing my eyes I heard Yushin say, “Now he’ll sleep.”

  In my sleep I met Lenka. We sat in a calm field looking at two cows nibbling grass. “Daughter,” I said, “it took you so long to come. Was it from far?”

  “I waited for you to bring me home. But it is a visit only. I cannot stay.”

  “You are beautiful.”