Yiddish Tales Part 24

So Ezrielk went on intoning and chanting, and the Kamenivke Jews licked their fingers, and nearly jumped out of their skin for joy when they heard him.

Two years pa.s.sed in this way, and then came a change.

It was early in the morning of the Fast of the Destruction of the Temple, all the windows of the Great Shool were open, and all the tables, benches, and desks had been carried out from the men's hall and the women's hall the evening before. Men and women sat on the floor, so closely packed a pin could not have fallen to the floor between them.

The whole street in which was the Great Shool was chuck full with a terrible crowd of men, women, and children, although it just happened to be cold, wet weather. The fact is, Ezrielk's Lamentations had long been famous throughout the Jewish world in those parts, and whoever had ears, a Jewish heart, and sound feet, came that day to hear him. The sad epidemic disease that (not of our days be it spoken!) swallows men up, was devastating Kamenivke and its surroundings that year, and everyone sought a place and hour wherein to weep out his opprest and bitter heart.

Ezrielk also sat on the floor reciting Lamentations, but the man who sat there was not the same Ezrielk, and the voice heard was not his.

Ezrielk, with his sugar-sweet, honeyed voice, had suddenly been transformed into a strange being, with a voice that struck terror into his hearers; the whole people saw, heard, and felt, how a strange creature was flying about among them with a fiery sword in his hand. He slashes, hews, and hacks at their hearts, and with a terrible voice he cries out and asks: "Sinners! Where is your holy land that flowed with milk and honey? Slaves! Where is your Temple? Accursed slaves! You sold your freedom for money and calumny, for honors and worldly greatness!"

The people trembled and shook and were all but entirely dissolved in tears. "Upon Zion and her cities!" sang out once more Ezrielk's melancholy voice, and suddenly something snapped in his throat, just as when the strings of a good fiddle snap when the music is at its best.

Ezrielk coughed, and was silent. A stream of blood poured from his throat, and he grew white as the wall.

The doctor declared that Ezrielk had lost his voice forever, and would remain hoa.r.s.e for the rest of his life.

"Nonsense!" persisted Reb Yainkel. "His voice is breaking--it's nothing more!"

"G.o.d will help!" was the comment of the Hostre saint. A whole year went by, and Ezrielk's voice neither broke nor returned to him. The Hostre Cha.s.sidim a.s.sembled in the house of Elkoneh the butcher to consider and take counsel as to what Ezrielk should take to in order to earn a livelihood for wife and children. They thought it over a long, long time, talked and gave their several opinions, till they hit upon this: Ezrielk had still one hundred and fifty rubles in store--let him spend one hundred rubles on a house in Kabtzonivke, and begin to traffic with the remainder.

Thus Ezrielk became a trader. He began driving to fairs, and traded in anything and everything capable of being bought or sold.

Six months were not over before Ezrielk was out of pocket. He mortgaged his property, and with the money thus obtained he opened a grocery shop for Channehle. He himself (nothing satisfies a Jew!) started to drive about in the neighborhood, to collect the contributions subscribed for the maintenance of the Hostre Rebbe, long life to him!

Ezrielk was five months on the road, and when, torn, worn, and penniless, he returned home, he found Channehle brought to bed of her fourth child, and the shop bare of ware and equally without a groschen.

But Ezrielk was now something of a trader, and is there any strait in which a Jewish trader has not found himself? Ezrielk had soon disposed of the whole of his property, paid his debts, rented a larger lodging, and started trading in several new and more ambitious lines: he pickled gherkins, cabbages, and pumpkins, made beet soup, both red and white, and offered them for sale, and so on. It was Channehle again who had to carry on most of the business, but, then, Ezrielk did not sit with his hands in his pockets. Toward Pa.s.sover he had Shmooreh Matzes; he baked and sold them to the richest householders in Kamenivke, and before the Solemn Days he, as an expert, tried and recommended cantors and prayer-leaders for the Kamenivke Shools. When it came to Tabernacles, he trafficked in citrons and "palms."

For three years Ezrielk and his Channehle struggled at their trades, working themselves nearly to death (of Zion's enemies be it spoken!), till, with the help of Heaven, they came to be twenty years old.

By this time Ezrielk and Channehle were the parents of four living and two dead children. Channehle, the once so lovely Channehle, looked like a beaten Hoshanah, and Ezrielk--you remember the picture drawn at the time of his wedding?--well, then try to imagine what he was like now, after those seven years we have described for you! It's true that he was not spitting blood any more, either because Reb Yainkel had been right, when he said that would pa.s.s away, or because there was not a drop of blood in the whole of his body.

So that was all right--only, how were they to live? Even Reb Yainkel and all the Hostre Cha.s.sidim together could not tell him!

The singing had raised him and lifted him off his feet, and let him fall. And do you know why it was and how it was that everything Ezrielk took to turned out badly? It was because the singing was always there, in his head and his heart. He prayed and studied, singing. He bought and sold, singing. He sang day and night. No one heard him, because he was hoa.r.s.e, but he sang without ceasing. Was it likely he would be a successful trader, when he was always listening to what Heaven and earth and everything around him were singing, too? He only wished he could have been a slaughterer or a Rav (he was apt enough at study), only, first, Rabbonim and slaughterers don't die every day, and, second, they usually leave heirs to take their places; third, even supposing there were no such heirs, one has to pay "privilege-money," and where is it to come from? No, there was nothing to be done. Only G.o.d could and must have pity on him and his wife and children, and help them somehow.

Ezrielk struggled and fought his need hard enough those days. One good thing for him was this--his being a Hostre Chossid; the Hostre Cha.s.sidim, although they have been famed from everlasting as the direst poor among the Jews, yet they divide their last mouthful with their unfortunate brethren. But what can the gifts of mortal men, and of such poor ones into the bargain, do in a case like Ezrielk's? And G.o.d alone knows what bitter end would have been his, if Reb Shmuel Bar, the Kabtzonivke scribe, had not just then (blessed be the righteous Judge!) met with a sudden death. Our Ezrielk was not long in feeling that he, and only he, should, and, indeed, must, step into Reb Shmuel's shoes.

Ezrielk had been an expert at the scribe's work for years and years.

Why, his father's house and the scribe's had been nearly under one roof, and whenever Ezrielk, as a child, was let out of Cheder, he would go and sit any length of time in Reb Shmuel's room (something in the occupation attracted him) and watch him write. And the little Ezrielk had more than once tried to make a piece of parchment out of a sc.r.a.p of skin; and what Jewish boy cannot prepare the veins that are used to sew the phylacteries and the scrolls of the Law? Nor was the scribe's ink a secret to Ezrielk.

So Ezrielk became scribe in Kabtzonivke.

Of course, he did not make a fortune. Reb Shmuel Bar, who had been a scribe all his days, died a very poor man, and left a roomful of hungry, half-naked children behind him, but then--what Jew, I ask you (or has Messiah come?), ever expected to find a Parnosseh with enough, really enough, to eat?

YITZCHOK-YOSSEL BROITGEBER

At the time I am speaking of, the above was about forty years old. He was a little, thin Jew with a long face, a long nose, two large, black, kindly eyes, and one who would sooner be silent and think than talk, no matter what was being said to him. Even when he was scolded for something (and by whom and when and for what was he _not_ scolded?), he used to listen with a quiet, startled, but sweet smile, and his large, kindly eyes would look at the other with such wonderment, mingled with a sort of pity, that the other soon stopped short in his abuse, and stood nonplussed before him.

"There, you may talk! You might as well argue with a horse, or a donkey, or the wall, or a log of wood!" and the other would spit and make off.

But if anyone observed that smile attentively, and studied the look in his eyes, he would, to a certainty, have read there as follows:

"O man, man, why are you eating your heart out? Seeing that you don't know, and that you don't understand, why do you undertake to tell me what I ought to do?"

And when he was obliged to answer, he used to do so in a few measured and gentle words, as you would speak to a little, ignorant child, smiling the while, and then he would disappear and start thinking again.

They called him "breadwinner," because, no matter how hard the man worked, he was never able to earn a living. He was a little tailor, but not like the tailors nowadays, who specialize in one kind of garment, for Yitzchok-Yossel made everything: trousers, cloaks, waistcoats, top-coats, fur-coats, capes, collars, bags for prayer-books, "little prayer-scarfs," and so on. Besides, he was a ladies' tailor as well.

Summer and winter, day and night, he worked like an ox, and yet, when the Kabtzonivke community, at the time of the great cholera, in order to put an end to the plague, led him, aged thirty, out to the cemetery, and there married him to Malkeh the orphan, she cast him off two weeks later! She was still too young (twenty-eight), she said, to stay with him and die of hunger. She went out into the world, together with a large band of poor, after the great fire that destroyed nearly the whole town, and nothing more was heard of Malkeh the orphan from that day forward. And Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber betook himself, with needle and flat-iron, into the women's chamber in the New Shool, the community having a.s.signed it to him as a workroom.

How came it about, you may ask, that so versatile a tailor as Yitzchok-Yossel should be so poor?

Well, if you do, it just shows you didn't know him!

Wait and hear what I shall tell you.

The story is on this wise: Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber was a tailor who could make anything, and who made nothing at all, that is, since he displayed his imagination in cutting out and sewing on the occasion I am referring to, n.o.body would trust him.

I can remember as if it were to-day what happened in Kabtzonivke, and the commotion there was in the little town when Yitzchok-Yossel made Reb Yecheskel the teacher a pair of trousers (begging your pardon!) of such fantastic cut that the unfortunate teacher had to wear them as a vest, though he was not then in need of one, having a brand new sheepskin not more than three years old.

And now listen! Binyomin Droibnik the trader's mother died (blessed be the righteous Judge!), and her whole fortune went, according to the Law, to her only son Binyomin. She had to be buried at the expense of the community. If she was to be buried at all, it was the only way. But the whole town was furious with the old woman for having cheated them out of their expectations and taken her whole fortune away with her to the real world. None knew exactly _why_, but it was confidently believed that old "Aunt" Leah had heaps of treasure somewhere in hiding.

It was a custom with us in Kabtzonivke to say, whenever anyone, man or woman, lived long, ate sicknesses by the clock, and still did not die, that it was a sign that he had in the course of his long life gathered great store of riches, that somewhere in a cellar he kept potsful of gold and silver.

The Funeral Society, the younger members, had long been whetting their teeth for "Aunt" Leah's fortune, and now she had died (may she merit Paradise!) and had fooled them.

"What about her money?"

"A cow has flown over the roof and laid an egg!"

In that same night Reb Binyomin's cow (a real cow) calved, and the unfortunate consequence was that she died. The Funeral Society took the calf, and buried "Aunt" Leah at its own expense.

Well, money or no money, inheritance or no inheritance, Reb Binyomin's old mother left him a quilt, a large, long, wide, wadded quilt. As an article of house furniture, a quilt is a very useful thing, especially in a house where there is a wife (no evil eye!) and a goodly number of children, little and big. Who doesn't see that? It looks simple enough!

Either one keeps it for oneself and the two little boys (with whom Reb Binyomin used to sleep), or else one gives it to the wife and the two little girls (who also sleep all together), or, if not, then to the two bigger boys or the two bigger girls, who repose on the two bench-beds in the parlor and kitchen respectively. But this particular quilt brought such perplexity into Reb Binyomin's rather small head that he (not of you be it spoken!) nearly went mad.

"Why I and not she? Why she and not I? Or they? Or the others? Why they and not I? Why them and not us? Why the others and not them? Well, well, what is all this fuss? What did we cover them with before?"

Three days and three nights Reb Binyomin split his head and puzzled his brains over these questions, till the Almighty had pity on his small skull and feeble intelligence, and sent him a happy thought.

"After all, it is an inheritance from one's one and only mother (peace be upon her!), it is a thing from Thingland! I must adapt it to some useful purpose, so that Heaven and earth may envy me its possession!"

And he sent to fetch Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber, the tailor, who could make every kind of garment, and said to him:

"Reb Yitzchok-Yossel, you see this article?"

"I see it."

"Yes, you see it, but do you understand it, really and truly understand it?"