The Spinoza of Market Street (18 page)

"'Come to the rabbi, my bride! Tonight we shall be man and wife.'

"I was so mixed up that I left one shoe in the store."

II

Leibush Scratch woke up.

"You're talking? Talk. What happened after that?"

"Have you heard it, then?" Jonah the Thief asked. "But you were sleeping!"

"I dozed off, but I heard. At my age sleep isn't what it used to be. I dream I am at a fair, and I know I am lying here at the poorhouse. I am here, and I am there. I am Leibush, and I am the rabbi. Why did you leave your shoe, eh?"

"I was afraid a crowd would gather."

"How could you walk around in one shoe?"

"Just as I stood there, the shoe flew after me from the store. I ran to catch it, and a cart almost knocked me over. My fine gentleman dropped down on his knees in the middle of the gutter and put the shoe on my foot. Just like a play in the theatre. The whole street laughed. The
droshky
was gone, and he pulled me and yelled: 'Where do you find a rabbi around here?' People pointed out a house across the street. And then, my friends, I saw that I had no luck. We were already in front of the steps, when I was suddenly afraid. I said to him: 'You love the other girl, not me.' 'I'll love you, I'll love you,' he answers. 'I am a trained pharmacist. I can live in Petersburg, in Moscow, anywhere in Russia. We'll leave this city, and I'll pluck her out of my heart. I'll love and cherish you, and you will be the mother of my children.' I remember every word as if it happened yesterday. I did not know what a pharmacist was. Later someone explained to me it meant a druggist. An educated man. But I say: 'Do you know what I do?' 'I know,' he cries, 'but I don't want to know. I'll forgive you everything . . .' 'But you don't even know me,' I say, but he screams: 'I do not need to know you. You are more pure than she is . . .' I look at him: he is foaming at the mouth. His eyes are like a madman's. I suddenly felt sick. I broke away and began to run. I ran out of the gates, and heard him running after me and calling: 'Where are you running? Where are you running? Come back! . . .' I ran as if he were a murderer. I came to the butcher stalls in the market, and there I got away from him. The place was so crowded that you could not drop a needle. It was only after I cooled off that I realized that I was done for. Where was I running, woe is me? Back to the mire.

"When I came home and they saw me with the stylish hat and handbag, there was an uproar. The old woman asks: 'Where is the shawl?' And I don't have the shawl. He hid it under his cape. Well, there was no end of talk and laughter. They wouldn't believe me, either. When Sender came and they told him everything, he took away the hat and the handbag. He gave me a punch too, into the bargain. He had a fiancée somewhere, and he took everything to her. And, my dear people, I'll tell you something else: the old woman deducted from my wages for the shawl, or may I never have a holy burial."

For a long while everyone was silent. Then Leibush Scratch asked:

"You are sorry now, eh?"

"Why not? I wouldn't be rotting here today."

"If he lived across the street, why didn't you seek him out?" asked Jonah the Thief.

"They would not give me any days off after that. I thought he would come, but he never did."

"Perhaps he made up with the girl from the leather store?"

"Perhaps."

"There is a saying: forge the iron while it's hot," Leibush Scratch said reflectively.

"That's true."

"And yet, if it is not written for you, it isn't. Was it you, then, who was running? Your feet carried you. Or take me. Did I have to end up lying here on a bundle of straw? Not more than you have to dance on the roof. I was not rich, but I was a man of some property. I owned a house, a small mill. I had a wife . . . But if they want it up in heaven that a man should fall, they find a way. First my wife sickened and died. Then the house went up in smoke. Nobody knew how it started. A few splinters were smoldering under the tripod. Then suddenly there was a burst of fire as though hell itself had opened. There wasn't even any wind. My house stood right next to Chaim the Cooper's, but never a spark touched his place, while I was ruined. Can anyone understand that?"

"No."

"Someone saw a little flame sit on the bed. It rolled over and made somersaults. It was all from the evil ones."

"What did the evil ones have against you?"

"I was destined to take up a beggar's sack. . . ."

Jonah the Thief began to crack his knuckles, first one hand, then the other.

"Isn't it the truth, though? That night when I went to the village of Bysht I knew well enough that I should not go. The peasants had heard of me. I was warned that they were sleeping in the stables. Wojciech the village elder had posted a watch with a rattle. I needed the whole business like a hole in the head. Just a few days before that I pulled in a big haul. Zeldele, may she rest in peace, begged me: 'Joruh, don't try to grab the whole world. I'd rather eat dry bread than see you making this kind of a living.' And what did we need? There were only the two of us. Zelig the horse merchant wanted to hire me as a driver. I could have become a horse dealer myself. Sometimes you earn more, sometimes less, but it's honest money. I was already going to bed that night. I closed the shutters and pulled off my boots. Suddenly I put them on again and started out for Bysht. I walked with a heavy heart. I kept stopping and wanting to turn back. But I never walked back--they brought me home in a wheelbarrow."

"What did they do it with? Sticks?" asked Leibush.

"Whatever they could lay their hands on. A whole village against one man. . . ."

"I'll tell you the truth--it's a wonder you came out alive. This was before your day. There was a certain Itchele Nonie--that's what they called him because he had a long nose--and he went to Boyares to steal a horse. The peasants ambushed him and burned him alive. All that was left of him was a heap of ashes. The gravediggers' brotherhood had nothing to bury . . ."

"I know. I've heard of it. He had better luck than I."

"When did your wife die? I don't remember any more."

"Six months later."

"From all that trouble, eh?"

"No, from pleasure."

"Well, everything is destined. Everything is written for us above, to the last breath. As my grandmother used to say: Nobody is mightier than the Almighty."

"Who writes it all? God?"

"Not you."

"Where does he get so much paper?"

"Don't let your brains dry up in worrying about that."

"Man has his share of responsibility too."

"No, he hasn't. . . ."

It became quiet at the poorhouse. Hodele the beggar moaned in her sleep, muttered unintelligible words. A cricket chirped once. Leibush Scratch resumed his snoring, whistling through his nose. Jonah the Thief asked:

"Do you still have a piece of macaroon? I have a bitter taste in my mouth. . . ."

Bashe did not answer.

 ---
Translated by Mirra Ginsburg

I

REB BUNIM COMES TO KRESHEV

I am the Primeval Snake, the Evil One, Satan. The cabala refers to me as Samael and the Jews sometimes call me merely, "that one."

It is well known that I love to arrange strange marriages, delighting in such mismatings as an old man with a young girl, an unattractive widow with a youth in his prime, a cripple with a great beauty, a cantor with a deaf woman, a mute with a braggart. Let me tell you about one such "interesting" union I contrived in Kreshev, which is a town on the river San, that enabled me to be properly abusive and gave me the opportunity to perform one of those little stunts that forces the forsaking of both this world and the next between the saying of a "yes" and a "no."

Kreshev is about as large as one of the smallest letters in the smallest prayer books. On two sides of the town there is a thick pine forest and on the third the river San. The peasants in the neighboring villages are poorer and more isolated than any others in the Lublin district and the fields are the most barren. During a good part of the year the roads leading to the larger towns are merely broad trenches of water; one travels by wagon at one's peril. Bears and wolves lurk at the edge of the settlement in winter and often attack a stray cow or calf, occasionally even a human being. And, finally, so that the peasants shall never be rid of their wretchedness, I have instilled in them a burning faith. In that part of the country there is a church in every other village, a shrine at every tenth house. The Virgin stands with rusty halo, holding in her arms Jesus, the infant son of the Jewish carpenter Yossel. To her the aged come--and in the depth of winter kneel down, thus acquiring rheumatism. When May comes we have daily processions of the half-starved chanting with hoarse voices for rain. The incense gives off an acrid odor, and a consumptive drummer beats with all his might to frighten me away. Nevertheless, the rains don't come. Or if they do, they are never in time. But that doesn't prevent the people from believing. And so it has continued from time immemorial.

The Jews of Kreshev are both somewhat better informed and more prosperous than the peasants. Their wives are shopkeepers and are skilled in giving false weight and measure. The village peddlers know how to get the peasant women to purchase all sorts of trinkets and thus earn for themselves corn, potatoes, flax, chickens, ducks, geese--and sometimes a little extra. What won't a woman give for a string of beads, a decorated feather duster, a flowered calico, or just a kind word from a stranger? So it is not entirely surprising that here and there among the flaxen-haired children one comes across a curly-haired, black-eyed imp with a hooked nose. The peasants are extremely sound sleepers but the devil does not permit their young women to rest but leads them down back paths to barns where the peddlers wait in the hay. Dogs bay at the moon, roosters crow, frogs croak, the stars in heaven look down and wink, and God himself dozes among the clouds. The Almighty is old; it is no easy task to live forever.

But let us return to the Jews of Kreshev.

All year round, the market place is one deep marsh, for the very good reason that the women empty their slops there. The houses don't stand straight; they are half-sunk into the earth and have patched roofs; their windows are stuffed with rags or covered with ox bladders. The homes of the poor have no floors; some even lack chimneys. In such houses the smoke from the stove escapes through a hole in the roof. The women marry when they are fourteen or fifteen and age quickly from too much childbearing. In Kreshev the cobblers at their low benches have only worn-out, scuffed shoes on which to practice their trade. The tailors have no alternative but to turn the ragged furs brought to them to their third side. The brush-makers comb hog bristles with wooden combs and hoarsely sing fragments of ritual chants and wedding tunes. After market day there is nothing for the storekeepers to do and so they hang around the study house, scratching themselves and leafing through the Talmud or else telling each other amazing stories of monsters and ghosts and werewolves. Obviously in such a town there isn't much for me to do. One is just very hard put to come across a real sin thereabouts. The inhabitants lack both the strength and the inclination. Now and again a seamstress gossips about the rabbi's wife or the water bearer's girl grows large with child, but those are not the sort of things that amuse me. That is why I rarely visit Kreshev.

But at the time I am speaking about there were a few rich men in the town and in a prosperous home anything can happen. So whenever I turned my eyes in that direction, I made sure to see how things were going in the household of Reb Bunim Shor, the community's richest man. It would take too long to explain in detail how Reb Bunim happened to settle in Kreshev. He had originally lived in Zholkve which is a town near Lemberg. He had left there for business reasons. His interest was lumber and for a very small sum he had purchased a nice tract of woods from the Kreshev squire. In addition, his wife, Shifrah Tammar (a woman of distinguished family, granddaughter of the famous scholar Reb Samuel Edels) suffered from a chronic cough which made her spit blood, and a Lemberg doctor had recommended that she live in a wooded area. At any rate, Reb Bunim had moved to Kreshev with all his possessions, bringing along with him also a grown son and Lise, his ten-year-old daughter. He had built a house set apart from all the other dwellings at the end of the synagogue street; and several wagonloads of furniture, crockery, clothing, books and a host of other things had been crammed into the building. He had also brought with him a couple of servants, an old woman and a young man called Mendel, who acted as Reb Bunim's coachman. The arrival of the new inhabitant restored life to the town. Now there was work for the young men in Reb Bunim's forests and Kreshev's coachmen had logs to haul. Reb Bunim repaired the town's bath and he constructed a new roof for the almshouse.

Reb Bunim was a tall, powerful, large-boned man. He had the voice of a cantor and a pitch-black beard that ended in two points. He wasn't much of a scholar and could scarcely get through a chapter of the Midrash, but he always contributed generously to charity. He could sit down to a meal and finish at one sitting a loaf of bread and a six-egg omelet, washing it all down with a quart of milk. Fridays at the bath, he would climb to the highest perch and would have the attendant beat him with a bundle of twigs until it was time to light the candles. When he went into the forest he was accompanied by two fierce hounds, and he carried a gun. It was said that he could tell at a glance whether a tree was healthy or rotten. When necessary, he could work eighteen hours on end and walk for miles on foot. His wife, Shifrah Tammar, had once been very handsome, but between running to doctors and worrying about herself, she'd managed to become prematurely old. She was tall and thin, almost flat-chested, and she had a long, pale face and a beak of a nose. Her thin lips stayed forever closed and her gray eyes looked belligerently out at the world. Her periods were painful and when they came she would take to her bed as though she were mortally ill. In fact she was a constant sufferer--one moment it would be a headache, the next an abscessed tooth or pressure on her abdomen. She was not a fit mate for Reb Bunim but he was not the sort who complained. Very likely he was convinced that that was the way it was with all women since he had married when he was fifteen years old.