Читать книгу Against the Current: Simple Chapters from a Complex Life - Edward Alfred Steiner - Страница 7

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THE town of Maria’s Bosom was a little larger than the one in which I lived and was famous for its healing waters, drawn from a spring in which the face of the Virgin was to be seen. This water cured all manner of diseases, and many grateful pilgrims had enriched the monastery in whose centre the spring bubbled. The town itself drew a fair share of revenue from this sacred fame; there were inns for all sorts of pocketbooks and for all conditions of men, and there were sellers of honey cakes who fashioned their sweet wares in various symbolic and saintly forms. The goose girl bought the Twelve Apostles and she ate six and I ate six without either of us suffering serious consequences.

Booth upon booth crowded the wall which encircled the great church whose twin towers rose high above its red tiled roof; but I fear that my eyes were holden by the gewgaws offered for sale in the booths, and that neither the architecture of the church nor the solemn service within, made much impression upon me. The pool, with its healing waters and the throng of pilgrims who dipped their sores in it, did sadden and sicken me, and to this day I never see a wound without having that scene recalled to my mind.

The goose girl being at the base of supplies, I did not suffer hunger nor did I feel any homesickness, for there was much to be seen and my mind was diverted. When the pilgrims formed to go home, however, I began to realize that I had run away and that most likely the consequences would be equally unpleasant whether I kept on running away or returned home. Probably I decided that running away was not such fun as I anticipated and that my brother had been punished enough by my absence, for I remember being seated by the goose girl homeward bound when the band began to play, first solemnly as is fitting for a well-behaved brass band when it returns from a pilgrimage; then it quickened its action and played a military march quite out of keeping with the occasion. Besides the healing waters at Maria’s Bosom, wine flowed freely and the musicians were evidently in a happy mood after their libations.

The driver of the wagon where I sat with the goose girl was not at all cordial when he discovered me among the jugs of water that were being carried back to the sick.

“How much are you going to pay me, you little Jew, for taking you home?” he demanded. The word Jew in the Slavic language is Schid, and it had a contemptuous, menacing sound. I protested that I was not a Schid and before I knew it, he took me by the back of the neck and threw me from the wagon; then he whipped his horses while I, limping and crying, started in pursuit, which I soon saw to be fruitless, as the procession moved rapidly away from me.

Seated in the ditch by the road, wishing with all my heart, no doubt, that I had not run away, I heard the rumbling of a cart and horse. Looking up, I discovered on the cart my Uncle Isaac, my guardian, who had evidently started in search of me. My uncle was not on the best terms with my mother, for she was not satisfied by the way in which he administered our estate, and he was even less satisfied by the unorthodox way in which he thought she was bringing me up—her youngest and very much spoiled child. In consequence I did not like him and was always afraid of him; for he had an unpleasant habit of frequently stopping me on the street and partially undressing me, to see if my mother had not forgotten to put on the sacred fringes which every Jewish boy must wear close to his body.

“Where have you been?” he cried, when he saw me.

“I have been visiting the Mother of God,” I replied.

Then I remember being lifted onto the cart most ungently, and my uncle’s telling me that if my mother had brought me up right, I would not be running after the idols of the Gentiles. He prophesied a dire end to my existence and promised that from this time forth, he would take my religious training into his own hands.

I do not distinctly recall what happened when I reached home, but I can still see my mother with a candle in her hand taking me down from the cart, rejoiced to see me back; later, as she herself undressed me and discovered on my back the marks of my brother’s punishment, I could hear her weeping as I fell into a long and troubled sleep.

The next day I had to begin the study of the Hebrew alphabet, my uncle being the teacher, and a hard one indeed. Moreover, he strictly forbade my playing with the Gentile children, an injunction which I did not always obey. But inasmuch as they now called me Schid, in spite of my sharing my bread and butter with them more lavishly than ever, I gradually forsook their haunts. The next spring I no more made whistles, or scourges at Easter time; neither did I follow the goslings to the pasture or sit beside the goose girl under the beech tree by the chapel.

It was a new period in my life. The days began and ended differently and all things bore a changed aspect. Every evening and every morning I had to meet my uncle in the synagogue for prayers. He was the most pious man in the community, a descendant of Abraham Bolsover, the fragrance of whose piety still lingers in local history. My uncle had penetrated into the very heart of rabbinical Judaism. He knew much of the Talmud by heart, he could recite the prayers for all the holy days, even those for the Day of Atonement, without once looking at the prayer-book; and whenever the synagogue was without an official reader he filled the place.

I did not then appreciate his piety or the splendid tenor voice in which he recited the prayers, or the many virtues which now I know he possessed. At that period I knew him only as a hard teacher and guardian. My mind never was with the prayers which I could not understand; the discordant service did not interest me and the synagogue became a place of torture. My eyes wandered mechanically up and down the walls. I knew how many cracks they had and how many rivulets of moisture came down from where the roof had leaked. I could tell the exact number of spindles in the railing of the gallery which divided the women from the men, for I must have counted them a thousand times. Whenever my uncle caught my wandering eyes he brought me back to the prayer-book by poking me in the ribs, at times very forcibly. His own children were of a different type. They throve on studying Hebrew; they sang with their father and knew all the pianissimos and fortissimos of the hymns of praise. And they were always held up to me as shining examples to follow, especially by my grandmother, who took great pride in them and invariably gave them the largest ginger cakes on Sabbath afternoons. That did not increase my love for her or for my cousins, or did it make me a better student of Hebrew and of the Talmud at whose threshold I was then standing. I still preferred the willows and the whistles, the goslings and the goose girl to my uncle, my grandmother, my cousins, and the Talmud.

And yet the bond between me and my former playmates was broken; for I knew I was a Jew. The Gentile boys knew it, even the geese, I thought, must know it, for the ganders seemed to hiss at me: “Schid, Schid.” The goose girl, the poor drunken mason’s daughter—half-starved creature that she was—knew it also; although I think she remembered our childhood’s friendship the longest.