The Landsmen Page 7

  Thus was my father comforted. But I understood. Not Yalkinn but I was the source of my father’s trouble. It was not simple for a Hasid young or old to pray for the death of one such as Yalkinn, for whom there was less hope in heaven than on earth, yet that night I managed it. “O Highest One,” I prayed, “Uncle Mendel repeated to me the words of the great Koretzker, teaching me that anger is as sinful as melancholy; yet now I wish to feel anger, O Most High . . . for did not the Koretzker say also that after one has learned to put his anger in his pocket, he may take it out when he has need of it ? And since the Satan plays in Yalkinn, and since the Satan thrusts at my father, may not, O Highest, I beseech you to make an end of Yalkinn, to strike him dead?”

  But the danger of Yalkinn was removed otherwise. Yalkinn’s master, the Baron, had taken a young wife after many years of widowerhood and had most apparently succeeded at the age of seventy-eight in

  54 The Landsmen

  impregnating her, which made him love his little daughter as nothing else in the world.

  One day that winter the child disappeared. The Baron sent twenty couriers on horseback throughout the region promising a reward of one thousand rubles. All Karlin, and most principally the Jews, needed the child found. Our Committee had hastily collected itself and decided to offer its services to the search; it was agreed also that in the event of the child’s being found by a Jew, the reward was to be returned.

  At the end of the second day the child was still missing. The weather held very cold, everything was ice, and the Baron demanded soldiers from Pinsk. Two companies arrived in sleds the following morning. The first order issued by the Colonel shortly after his arrival directed every Jew in Karlin to stay within his own four walls until further notice.

  “Each in his own house, forbidden to see one another . . . Ay, what next?”

  “Shh,” my mother called.

  “That’s right,” my father cried suddenly, “sew up my mouth! We’re fools, hear? Waiting for them to hack themselves in with their sabers and chop us up one at a time!”

  “They’ll hear you outside.”

  “All right,” he said in a lower voice. “This is the third day. Not even a strong man could live outside three days in this winter. The child may be found, but if so she will be dead. Joylessness will fall upon us with their sabers, in terrible blows! In three weeks he’ll be thirteen, a son of Israel — if not a corpse!”

  “Don’t be afraid, Maisha,” my mother begged, “the father is mixed up now!”

  “He is correct,” I said. “Only don’t weep, Mother dear. As Rabbi Nahum said — ”

  “Hold in what Rabbi Nahum said,” my father shouted.

  “Enough!” my mother shouted; and when my mother shouted my father and I always kept quiet, for we knew we had deeply offended

  her. She made us sit down and listen to her. “I know what we must do. To sit waiting until the end is crazy.”

  “Thank God,” my father shot in, “you’re beginning to agree with me.”

  Such terror in them, such love for me, sitting there planning my escape from the pogrom they saw coming! Ay, the waste . . . working to live if not without fear then at least without hunger, and to what end? To wrap their heaviest burlap rags around my crippled toes, to send me away with some bread and white cheese rolled in a piece of oilcloth, to sew a little bag stuffed with rubles into my undershirt . . . and to pour their last words into me:

  “Outside is a soldier. Go to him and take his hand. He’ll lead you to a wagon.” ( Father )

  “And when it’s a little more quiet we’ll come to Pinsk for you, Maisha.” ( Mother )

  I began to cry and first my mother and then my father begged me not to be afraid and not to be unhappy. “Let me; let me cry, Mother. If I do not know what gives you pain, how can I say I truly love you?”

  “Ay, ay, cry, little flyaway,” my mother sobbed.

  “We’ll soon see each other,” my father kept saying.

  . . . Only the soldier waiting for me in our street didn’t put me on the train for Pinsk, but on the train for Kovno, but not before he took the money sewed in my undershirt. In Kovno I found only Misnagdim but they sheltered the ragged little fugitive with his pathetic story of Karlin, and when my thirteenth birthday arrived they made an event of my confirmation ceremony. For my confirmation sermon I embroidered upon the thought of the Rabbi Saras, repeated to me by Uncle Mendel, “The good man should himself be the Law, and people should be able to learn good conduct from observing him,” but this made a poor impression.

  No word came in reply to the letters sent to my father and it was decided by the Rabbi that for the time being, until at least it could be known that I could return safely, I should continue to assist the

  beadle. For almost two years I hoped and prayed but no word came at all. Karlin was far away, travelers were few, and news traveled slowly if at all. “Ay, Maisha,” the beadle said to me once, “when a father doesn’t answer to a son, the father must be without hands.”

  Misery and lonesomeness drove me back to Karlin, no matter what the risk. In the summer of 1830 I made my way there on broken feet, eating fruit and bread for three weeks, to find my mother in her grave and my father ready for his own. He had broken himself into pieces, letting the saloon slide away from him, never looking to see what he ate and drank, and even keeping away from the synagogue. As for the little daughter of the Baron . . . months after my flight it had come out that she had not been lost at all but had been taken to Paris secretly by her mother and her real father — who, it turned out, was the Baron’s middle son. This had so shamed and crushed and enraged the Baron that he had flung the truth of it away from him and announced the “disappearance” of the child, passing from this to the higher nonsense of sending couriers out with the news of a reward and to the calling-in of the military. From all this the Baron had given himself a stroke and died. But then what, a month after? The mother, the daughter, and the real father, the Baron’s middle son, come back to Karlin and without a thought live like the royalty they are!

  Yalkinn, the Conscription Law, the Baron, my departure, my mother’s death, my own disappearance for two years ... it had become too much for my father. In the synagogue they told me, “Your father has forsaken God.”

  “Ay . . . what, what can I do?”

  “Love him, love him more than ever.”

  One morning after prayers I came back and found him breathing with chokes. Leaning down to him, I saw thick teardrops in the corners of his heavy eyes. “It’s all right, all right, Maisha. Now ... I know . . . why I ... I was created.”

  Thus he sent himself into The Next World. And when the winter melted itself out, I promised myself to find Uncle Mendel, to travel any distance but to find him and be his helper and disciple.

  But between what a person promises himself and what he finds in the world is quite often a difference. In Golinsk . . . yes, Golinsk . . . I found myself, as the Proverb says, a wife of worth.

  In Karlin the announcement of my intended pilgrimage was received with true Hasidic joy. I would first travel to Ladi, seat of the great Lazer to whom my uncle had gone three years before; and I too would study with Lazer and the more improve the good name of Karlin. My Karliners pledged to send letters to places where Hasids held sway and inform them of my coming and also to forward to them any news of Mendel, the Karliner. On my part I was to write steady letters back to Karlin. In that way, we prayed, Uncle Mendel and I would most certainly be reunited.

  For many months in my seventeenth year, I hobbled from town to town asking in the synagogues, “Has Mendel the Karliner been?” When my mission became known, many times I would be brought to food and to a sleeping-place; my comings would be deemed blessings and I would be given things to help me on my way, even ointments for my twisted feet.

  But then there were other times, such as in December; when Ladi was still very high to the north I dragged myself into a tiny, miserable habitation. It was late in the day and I had c
ome from Pukop. There I had been angrily directed by the beadle to take myself to Golinsk where I would find other such Hasidic idiots as I.

  My spirits were not high, but could have been lower. Passing across the district of Minsk, I expected the scorn I had received from the superior-minded book-learned beadles of that province. They were poor, with not much more to their names than I, and undoubtedly plagued by all kinds of wandering beggars; and when one is not only a beadle but also a Misnagid, and the year is 1831, what else can one be but a Policeman of God — that is to say, a wandering soul?

  Well, to make it brief, I sit at the roadside in Golinsk not knowing where to go look for a Jew and too exhausted to try. I am glad to sit. My feet burn like fire and Pm grateful, for otherwise they'd be freez-

  ing. The wind blows, it gives hints of snow again ... ay, I’m thinking, if I sit here much longer I’ll have to say evening prayers by myself, well, so . . .

  Then comes a man, looks down at me, speaks. Ay, Yiddish! “You’re a Jew?”

  “What else?”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Karlin,” I say, not certain from the voice what kind of heart lies behind it. He’s a big man with a rope pulled around his waist to hold his coat snug, a coat with a fur collar, and his legs are wrapped with fur, and it’s a fur hat.

  “Where are you going?” is his next question.

  “To Ladi.”

  “On foot?”

  “How else?”

  He takes another look, a long one. “You wish to pray?”

  “Yes.” I decided I’ll not start right oflF with my question, “Has Mendel the Karliner been?” I know he’s not a Hasid; he’s too anxious to know about me and not very anxious to help; but a good man he can also be without the Hasid part so I’ll be still . . .

  “I’m going to the synagogue now. Come.”

  “Be so good as to lift me by the arm.”

  He takes my arm and pulls me up. I hobble with him to the synagogue. He tells me I’m in Golinsk, a place of seventeen Jewish families. He is Lipka, a tarmaker, claydigger, and woodhauler, and who am I? “Only a student,” I reply. “I’m going to Ladi to study with my uncle.”

  He is impressed. “Your uncle learns students from as far as Karlin?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a true rabbi, your uncle?”

  “Yes,” I reply. According to me he is a true rabbi, and I don’t press Lipka for his definition of one.

  He takes me to the synagogue, I pray with the others, all poor peasants and trifle-merchants of the village; and from the way they pray

  (looking mostly in the book, and swaying only gently, and without loud singing), I see they are not Hasidic-minded at all. I wonder why the Pukopper beadle called Golinsk a Hasidic place. (Later I understood it was his way of insulting Golinskers; between Pukoppers and Golinskers brewed a feud involving the Minsker Rabbi; but this did not become important for years.)

  At prayer I forget where I am and begin swaying and shaking myself as the beauty of the service runs through me like a wine. When I come to the “Holy, Holy, Holy,” I begin to sing it and my voice leaps above the routine shouting. And when the last amen is said, Lipka turns to me. “Do you always shake yourself so at prayer?”

  “Well, I was a little cold,” I mumble . . . and to myself I think, Tonight I mustn't be thrown back on the road!

  By now the others are gathered around me in the synagogue. Pm a stranger and the custom is for me to launch into a long account of who and what and where and why, until I am interrupted by one who says, “You’ll eat and sleep with me until tomorrow.” I look around at their faces . . . plain ordinary faces . . . and I become ashamed with myself. “Why do I have to lie?” I demand. “Pm from the Hasids. All right, give me permission to sleep here in the synagogue and Pll go tomorrow after morning prayers.”

  Lipka is amused. “So you’re something of a Hasid? Because you shake yourself at prayer like a bridegroom without a bride, that means you’re a Hasid?”

  This Lipka is evidently a big maker in the community for the rest keep quiet to see how I answer him. “Whether a person is a true Hasid is not for him but for others to say,” I fire at Lipka, drawing myself up very straight and folding my arms. “The Master of the Good Name, the Besht himself, taught that the man who sways and shakes himself at prayer must not be laughed at. This man prays with fervor to save himself from foreign thoughts which threaten to engulf his prayer. Would you laugh at a drowning man who makes motions in the water to save himself?”

  Lipka chews this over in his mind for a few seconds and says,

  “You’ll eat and sleep with me.” Then he takes me to his little stable of a home, tells his wife to give me to wash my hands, and asks my name.

  “I’m called Maisha of Karlin.”

  And at the table (it was potato soup and onions fried in chicken fat), I saw Gitel for the first time. This Gitel changed me from Maisha of Karlin to Maisha of Golinsk, and made Lipka my father-in- law.

  The way it came about was through my feet. After supper I could not stand up, and after I told Lipka and Gitel and the mother about the boiling water and the blows of the axe, then about Yalkinn and finally the whole story from beginning to end, the mother brought out a pan and filled it with baking soda in hot water, and I sat soaking and talking until midnight. Little by little we all felt better and little by little I kept noticing the warmth in the mother’s eyes and the roundness of Gitel’s. She was only fifteen then, yet she had a woman’s eyes and she also spoke very little. Three or four times in my narrative I paused to remark, “I’ve said enough for one night and tomorrow I must be on my way . . . it’s late . . . well, so . . The last time I said a word about the next day, Lipka shook his head and asked, “Why not rest tomorrow and go the next day?”

  Gitel’s eyes grew rounder and rounder to me and I stayed not one day but six. And on the sixth day Lipka said, “Maisha, you want my Gitel?”

  I began to flush up. “What did I do? What did I say — ?”

  “I’m not against it, Maisha. Only you’d have to quiet down a little bit with the Hasidism, earn a living, be a responsible father.”

  “Gitel is pretty,” I said, “and she’d easily do better than just me. Anyway.”

  “Gitel is not pretty and she knows it,” her father said. “But if she’s pretty to you I won’t argue.”

  “She wouldn’t want me, I know that without asking.”

  “That’s another thing, Maisha.”

  “But I know — to her I’m just a wandering student — and really.

  zMaisha 6 1

  how can I, as you say, quiet down my Hasidism? I must find my Uncle Mendel, he has my life in his hands.”

  “So?”

  “Yes, that is so.”

  I bade Gitel good-by and thanked Lipka and let the mother kiss my cheek. I set my feet again on the road to Ladi. But I went only as far as Svutz. There I told myself that I had to rest, at least over the winter until my feet could better stand the strain; and as long as I had to rest, why not in Golinsk ? When they saw me again, the mother kissed my cheek, quietly, as though she had expected me, and gave me to wash my hands. Lipka threw me a pleased look; his beard seemed to grow three inches when he saw me. And Gitel? Without a word she went to the stove to get hot water to put into the pan, with baking soda, for my feet.

  The next day after my return was the Sabbath, and my appearance at the synagogue caused much peering and exchanging of nods. Lipka introduced me to the beadle. I had known he was the beadle before being introduced, and Lipka had not bothered at all to introduce me individually to the congregation. “Why did you bring me over to the beadle?” I asked Lipka on the way home from the synagogue.

  “He is a good beadle, Zellik. But he is bad with the children. They learn nothing from him but to hit each other with sticks.”

  “You have a learning-table for children in the synagogue?”

  “A good wooden learning-table,” Lipka grunted, “but
to tell the truth I don’t know what is more wooden, the table or Zellik. Plain talk: you could be the teacher of the children, Maisha, but you’d have to leave off some of the Hasidism . . . anyway, my boy, you see . . .” Lipka waved his hand vaguely by which I took him to mean that while he thought me a fine fellow despite my bad feet, he hoped I was not really too fanatical about my beliefs, at least not so fanatical as to not marry his daughter.

  I married Gitel, of course, but not right away. Not until my feet benefited by the resting and not until I tried myself out as the teacher at the learning-table in the synagogue, with Lipka and several of the

  fathers sitting by, listening. And it went well, my expounding of the Law, and the fathers were pleased, and I said to myself afterward, when I heard the praise, “Didn’t Uncle Mendel tell of the Rabbi of Stretin who said that special piety should be kept hidden, otherwise the pious one is guilty of pride?” Ay, I really didn’t know what to do!

  For two weeks I waited for the answer to come. Then on the eve of the Feast of Lights my Uncle Mendel came to me in a dream. He wore the white robes of prayer. In his hand he held a golden light, and he took me and kissed me. “Maisha, Maisha,” he said over and over again, “Ay, Maisha, Maisha ... he who is a complete Jew at home is only half a Jew on a journey.”

  “But, Uncle Mendel!” I replied in my dream. “Why then are you without a home?”

  “Maisha . . . does not the Talmud tell us that when the Ar set forth is a separate book? And has not your Ark found its home?”

  “You are my Ark, Uncle Mendel!”

  Then he smiled and kissed me once more, putting his golden light in my hand. I looked about me, holding the light up high, and saw Gitel coming toward me in a slow, beautiful solemn dance, wearing the wifely ceremonial wig and long many-colored petticoats . . . and when I looked for Uncle Mendel again, to return the golden light, he had disappeared. “Uncle Mendel!” I shouted, “Your light, your light! You forgot it!”

  “Sh,” Gitel whispered, her brow knitting, but with something gay and lively in her seriousness. “Stay, grow a beard, and we’ll have children! Remember the words of Uncle Mendel . . . ‘He who is a complete Jew at home is only half a Jew on a journey.’ ”