Читать книгу The Collection of Jewish Stories - Isaac Loeb Peretz - Страница 10

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He is on the road, and his beard and coat-tails flutter in the wind.

Every few minutes he presses a hand to his left side—he feels a pang; but he will not confess to it—he tries to think he is only making sure of his leather letter-bag.

"If only I don't lose the contract-paper and the money!" That is what he is so afraid of.

"And if it does hurt me, it means nothing. Thank God, I've got strength enough for an errand like this and to spare! Another at my years wouldn't be able to do a verst,21 while I, thanks to His dear Name, owe no one a farthing and earn my own living. God be praised, they trust me with money.

"If what they trust me with were my own, I shouldn't be running errands at more than seventy years old; but if the Almighty wills it so—so be it."

It begins to snow in thick flakes; he is continually wiping his face.

"I haven't more than half a mile22 to go now," he thinks. "O wa! what is that to me? It is much nearer than further." He turns his head. "One doesn't even see the town-clock from here, or the convent, or the barracks; on with you, Shemaiah, my lad."

And Shemaiah tramps on through the wet snow; the old feet welter in and out. "Thank God, there is not much wind."

Much wind, apparently, meant a gale; the wind was strong enough and blew right into his face, taking his breath away with every gust; it forced the tears out of his old eyes, and they hurt him like pins; but then he always suffered from his eyes.

It occurred to him that he would spend his next earnings on road-spectacles—large, round ones that would cover his eyes completely.

"If God will," he thought, "I shall manage it. If I only had an errand to go every day, a long, long one. Thank God, I can walk any distance, and I should soon save up enough for the spectacles."

He is also in want of a fur coat of some sort, it would ease the oppression on his chest; but he considers that, meanwhile, he has a warm cloak.

"If only it does not tear, it is an excellent one." He smiles to himself. "No new-fangled spider-web for you. All good, old-fashioned sateen—it will outlast me yet. And it has no slit—that's a great point. It doesn't blow out like the cloaks they make nowadays, and it folds over ever so far in front.

"Of course," he thinks on, "a fur coat is better; it's warm—beautifully warm. But spectacles come first. A fur is only good for winter, and spectacles are wanted all the year round, because in summer, when there's a wind and it blows the dust into your eyes, it's worse than in winter."

And so it was settled; first spectacles and then a fur coat. Please God, he would help to carry corn—that would mean four gulden.

And he tramped on, and the wet snow was blown into his face, the wind grew stronger, and his side pained him more than ever.

"If only the wind would change! And yet perhaps it's better so, because coming back I shall feel more tired, and I shall have the wind in my back. Then it will be quite different. Everything will be done; I shall have nothing on my mind."

He was obliged to stop a minute and draw breath; this rather frightened him.

"What is the matter with me? A Cantonist23 ought to know something of the cold," he thought sadly.

And he recalls his time of service under Nicholas, twenty-five years' active service with the musket, beside his childhood as a Cantonist. He has walked enough in his life, marching over hill and dale, in snow and frost and every sort of wind. And what snows, what frosts! The trees would split, the little birds fall dead to the ground, and the Russian soldier marched briskly forward, and even sang a song, a trepak, a komarinski, and beat time with his feet.

The thought of having endured those thirty-five years of service, of having lived through all those hardships, all those snows, all those winds, all the mud, hunger, thirst, and privation, and having come home in health—the thought fills him with pride. He holds up his head and feels his strength renewed.

"Ha, ha, what is a bit of a frost like this to me? In Russia, well, yes, there it was something like."

He walks on, the wind has lessened a little, it grows darker, night is falling.

"Call that a day," he said to himself. "Well, I never," and he began to hurry, not to be overtaken by the night. Not in vain has he been so regularly to study in the Shool of a Sabbath afternoon—he knows that one should go out and come home again before the sun goes down.

He feels rather hungry. He has this peculiarity—that being hungry makes him cheerful. He knows appetite is a good sign; "his" traders, the ones who send him on errands, are continually lamenting their lack of it. He, blessed be His Name, has a good appetite; except when he is not up to the mark, as yesterday, when the bread tasted sour to him.

Why should it have been sour? Soldiers' bread? Once, perhaps, yes; but now? Phonye24 bakes bread that any Jewish baker might be proud of, and he had bought a new loaf which it was a pleasure to cut; but he was not up to the mark, a chill was going through his bones.

But, praised be He whose Name he is not worthy to mention, that happens to him but seldom.

Now he is hungry, and not only that, but he has in his pocket a piece of bread and cheese; the cheese was given him by the trader's wife, may she live and be well. She is a charitable woman—she has a Jewish heart. If only she would not scold so, he thinks, she would be really nice. He recalls to mind his dead wife.

"There was my Shprintze Niepritshkes; she also had a good heart and was given to scolding. Every time I sent one of the children out into the world she wept like a beaver, although at home she left them no peace with her scolding tongue. And when a death happened in the family!" he went on remembering. "Why, she used to throw herself about on the floor whole days like a snake and bang her head with her fists."

"One day she wanted to throw a stone at heaven.

"We see," he thought, "how little notice God takes of a woman's foolishness. But with her there was no taking away the bier and the corpse. She slapped the women and tore the beards of the men.

"She was a fine woman, was Shprintze. Looked like a fly, and was strong, so strong. Yet she was a good woman—she didn't dislike me even, although she never gave me a kind word.

"She wanted a divorce—a divorce. Otherwise she would run away. Only, when was that?"

He remembers and smiles.

It was a long, long time ago; at that time the excise regulations were still in force, and he was a night watchman, and went about all night with an iron staff, so that no brandy should be smuggled into the town.

He knew what service was! To serve with Phonye was good discipline; he had had good teachers. It was a winter's morning before daybreak, he went to have his watch relieved by Chaïm Yoneh—he is in the world of truth now—and then went home, half-frozen and stiff. He knocked at the door and Shprintze called out from her bed:

"Into the ground with you! I thought your dead body would come home some time!"

Oho! she is angry still, because of yesterday. He cannot remember what happened, but so it must be.

"Shut your mouth and open the door!" he shouts.

"I'll open your head for you!" is the swift reply.

"Let me in!"

"Go into the ground, I tell you!"

And he turned away and went into the house-of-study, where he lay down to sleep under the stove. As ill-luck would have it, it was a charcoal stove, and he was suffocated and brought home like a dead man.

Then Shprintze was in a way! He could hear, after a while, how she was carrying on.

They told her it was nothing—only the charcoal.

No! she must have a doctor. She threatened to faint, to throw herself into the water, and went on screaming:

"My husband! My treasure!"

He pulled himself together, sat up, and asked quietly:

"Shprintze, do you want a divorce?"

"May you be—" she never finished the curse, and burst into tears. "Shemaiah, do you think God will punish me for my cursing and my bad temper?"

But no sooner was he well again, there was the old Shprintze back. A mouth on wheels, a tongue on screws, and strong as iron—she scratched like a cat—ha, ha! A pity she died; and she did not even live to have pleasure in her children.

"They must be doing well in the world—all artisans—a trade won't let a man die of hunger. All healthy—they took after me. They don't write, but what of that? They can't do it themselves, and just you go and ask someone to do it for you! Besides, what's the good of a letter of that kind? It's like watered soup. And then young boys, in a long time they forget. They must be doing well.

"But Shprintze is dead and buried. Poor Shprintze!

"Soon after the excise offices were abolished, she died. That was before I had got used to going errands and saying to the gentle folk 'your lordship,' instead of 'your high nobility';25 before they trusted me with contracts and money—and we used to want for bread.

"I, of course, a man and an ex-Cantonist, could easily go a day without food, but for her, as I said, it was a matter of life and death. A foolish woman soon loses her strength; she couldn't even scold any more; all the monkey was out of her; she did nothing but cry.

"I lost all pleasure in life—she grew somehow afraid to eat, lest I shouldn't have enough.

"Seeing she was afraid, I grew bold, I screamed, I scolded. For instance: 'Why don't you go and eat?' Now and then I went into a fury and nearly hit her, but how are you to hit a woman who sits crying with her hands folded and doesn't stir? I run at her with a clenched fist and spit at it, and she only says: 'You go and eat first—and then I will,' and I had to eat some of the bread first and leave her the rest.

"Once she fooled me out into the street: 'I will eat, only you go into the street—perhaps you will earn something,' and she smiled and patted me.

"I go and I come again, and find the loaf much as I left it. She told me she couldn't eat dry bread—she must have porridge."

He lets his head drop as though beneath a heavy weight, and the sad thoughts chase one another:

"And what a wailing she set up when I wanted to pawn my Sabbath cloak—the one I'm wearing now. She moved heaven and earth, and went and pawned the metal candle-sticks, and said the blessing over candles stuck into potatoes to the day of her death. Before dying she confessed to me that she had never really wanted a divorce; it was only her evil tongue.

"'My tongue, my tongue,' she cried, 'God forgive me my tongue!' And she really died in terror lest in the other world they should hang her by the tongue.

"'God,' she said to me, 'will never forgive me; I've been too great a sinner. But when you come—not soon, heaven forbid, but in over a hundred and twenty years26—when you do come, then remember and take me down from the gallows, and tell the Heavenly Council that you forgave me.'

"She began to wander soon after that, and was continually calling the children. She fancied they were there in the room, that she was talking to them, and she asked their pardon.

"Silly woman, who wouldn't have forgiven her!

"How old was she altogether? Perhaps fifty. To die so young! It was worse than a person taking his own life, because every time a thing went out at the door, to the pawn-shop, a bit of her health and strength went with it.

"She grew thinner and yellower day by day, and said she felt the marrow drying up in her bones; she knew that she would die.

"How she loved the room and all its furniture! Whatever had to go, whether it were a chair or a bit of crockery or anything else, she washed it with her tears, and parted from it as a mother from her child; put her arms around it and nearly kissed it. 'Oho!' she would say, 'when I come to die, you won't be there in the room.'

"Well, there; every woman is a fool. At one moment she's a Cossack in petticoats, and the next weaker than a child; because, really, whether you die with a chair or without a chair, what does it matter?

"Phê," he interrupted himself, "what shall I think of next? Fancy letting one's thoughts wander like that, and my pace has slackened, too, thanks to the rubbish!

"Come, soldier's feet, on with you!" he commanded.

He looks round—snow on every hand; above, a gray sky with black patches—just like my under-coat, he thought, stuff patched with black sateen. Lord of the world, is it for want of "credit" up there, too?

Meanwhile it is freezing. His beard and whiskers are ice. His body is fairly comfortable and his head is warm, he even feels the drops of sweat on his forehead; only his feet grow colder and weaker.

He has not walked so very far, and yet he would like to rest, and he feels ashamed of himself. It is the first time he ever wanted to rest on an errand of two miles. He will not confess to himself that he is a man of nearly eighty, and his weariness not at all surprising.

No, he must walk on—just walk on—for so long as one walks, one is walking, one gets on; the moment one gives way to temptation and rests, it's all over with one.

One might easily get a chill, he says to frighten himself, and does all he can to shake off the craving for rest.

"It isn't far now to the village; there I shall have time to sit down.

"That's what I'll do. I won't go straight to the nobleman—one has to wait there for an hour outside; I'll go first to the Jew.

"It's a good thing," he reflected, "that I am not afraid of the nobleman's dog. When they let him loose at night, it's dreadful. I've got my supper with me, and he likes cheese. It will be better to go first and get rested. I will go to the Jew and warm myself, and wash, and eat something."

His mouth waters at the thought; he has had nothing to eat since early this morning; but that's nothing, he doesn't mind if he is hungry; it is a proof that one is alive. Only his feet!

Now he has only two versts more to walk, he can see the nobleman's great straw-covered shed, only his feet cannot see it, and they want to rest.

"On the other hand," he mused, "supposing I rested a little after all? One minute, half a minute? Why not? Let us try. My feet have obeyed me so long, for once I'll obey them."

And Shemaiah sits down by the road-side on a little heap of snow. Now for the first time he becomes aware that his heart is beating like a hammer and his whole head perspiring.

He is alarmed. Is he going to be ill? And he has other people's money on him. He might faint! Then he comforts himself: "God be praised, there is no one coming, and if anyone came, it would never occur to him that I have money with me—that I am trusted with money. Just a minute, and then on we go."

But his lids are heavy as lead.

"No, get up, Shemaiah, vstavai!"27 he commands.

He can still give a command, but he cannot carry it out; he cannot move. Yet he imagines he is walking, and that he is walking quicker and quicker. Now he sees all the little houses—that is Antek's, yonder, Basili's, he knows them all, he hires conveyances of them. It is still a long way to the Jew's. Yet, best to go there first—he may find Mezumen,28 and it seems to him that he approaches the Jew's house; but it moves further and further on—he supposes that so it must be. There is a good fire in the chimney, the whole window is cheery and red; the stout Mir'l is probably skimming a large potful of potatoes, and she always gives him one. What so nice as a hot potato? And on he trudges, or—so he thinks, for in reality he has not left his place.

The frost has lessened its grip, and the snow is falling in broad, thick flakes.

He seems to be warmer, too, in his cloak of snow, and he fancies that he is now inside the Jew's house. Mir'l is straining the potatoes, he hears the water pouring away—ziùch, ziùch, ziùch—and so it drips, indeed, off his sateen cloak. Yoneh walks round and hums in his beard; it is a habit of his to sing after evening prayer, because then he is hungry and says frequently: "Well, Mir'l!"

But Mir'l never hurries—"more haste, worse speed."

"Am I asleep and is it a dream?" He is seized with joyful surprise. He thinks he sees the door open and let in his eldest son. Chonoh, Chonoh! Oh, he knows him well enough. What is he doing here? But Chonoh does not recognize him, and Shemaiah keeps quiet. Ha, ha, ha; he is telling Yoneh that he is on his way to see his father; he inquires after him; he has not forgotten; and Yoneh, sly dog, never tells him that his father is sitting there on the sleeping-bench. Mir'l is busy; she is taken up with the potatoes; she won't stop in her work; she only smiles and mashes the potatoes with the great wooden spoon—and smiles.

Ach! Chonoh must be rich, very rich! Everything he has on is whole, and he wears a chain—perhaps it is pinchbeck? No, it is real gold! Chonoh wouldn't wear a pinchbeck chain. Ha, ha, ha! he glances at the stove.29 Ha, ha, ha! he nearly splits with laughter. Yainkil, Beril, Zecharyah—all three—ha, ha, ha! they were hidden on the stove. The thieves! What a pity Shprintze is not there! What a pity! She would have been so pleased. Meantime Chonoh is ordering two geese. "Chonoh! Chonoh! don't you know me? I am he!" And he fancies they embrace him.

"Look you, Chonoh; what a pity your mother cannot see you! Yainkil, Beril, Zecharyah, come down from the stove! I knew you at once! Make haste! I knew you would come! Look, I have brought you some cheese, real sheep's milk cheese. Don't you like soldier's bread? What? Perhaps not? Yes, it is a pity about the mother."

And he fancies that all the four children have put their arms round him and hold him and kiss and press him to them.

"Gently, children, gently; don't squeeze me too hard! I am no young man—I am eighty years old! Gently, you are suffocating me; gently, children! Old bones! Gently, there is money in the bag. Praise God, they trust me with money! Enough, children, enough!"

And it was enough. He sat there suffocated, with his hand pressed to the bag in his bosom.