IV

The brief tale I am telling you happened in the days before Kamenivke had joined itself on, by means of the long, tall, and beautiful bridge, to the great high hill that has stood facing it from everlasting, thickly wooded, and watered by quant.i.ties of clear, crystal streams, which babble one to another day and night, and whisper with their running tongues of most important things. So long as the bridge had not been flung from one of the giant rocks to the other rock, the Kamenivke people had not been able to procure the good, wholesome water of the wild hill, and had to content themselves with the thick, impure water of the river Smotritch, which has flowed forever round the eminence on which Kamenivke is built. But man, and especially the Jew, gets used to anything, and the Kamenivke people, who are nearly all Grandfather Abraham's grandchildren, had drunk Smotritch water all their lives, and were conscious of no grievance.

But the lot of the Kamenivke water-carriers was hard and bitter.

Kamenivke stands high, almost in the air, and the river Smotritch runs deep down in the valley.

In summer, when the ground is dry, it was bearable, for then the Kamenivke water-carrier was merely bathed in sweat as he toiled up the hill, and the Jewish breadwinner has been used to that for ages. But in winter, when the snow was deep and the frost tremendous, when the steep Skossny hill with its clay soil was covered with ice like a hill of gla.s.s! Or when the great rains were pouring down, and the town and especially the clay hill are confounded with the deep, thick mud!

Our Bertzi Wa.s.serfuhrer was more alive to the fascinations of this Parnosseh than any other water-carrier. He was, as though in his own despite, a pious Jew and a great man of his word, and he had to carry water for almost all the well-to-do householders. True, that in face of all his good luck he was one of the poorest Jews in the Poor People's Street, only----

V

Lord of the World, may there never again be such a winter as there was then!

Not the oldest man there could recall one like it. The snow came down in drifts, and never stopped. One could and might have sworn on a scroll of the Law, that the great Jewish G.o.d was angry with the Kamenivke Jews, and had commanded His angels to shovel down on Kamenivke all the snow that had lain by in all the seven heavens since the sixth day of creation, so that the sinful town might be a ruin and a desolation.

And the terrible, fiery frosts!

Frozen people were brought into the town nearly every day.

Oi, Jews, how Bertzi Wa.s.serfuhrer struggled, what a time he had of it!

Enemies of Zion, it was nearly the death of him!

And suddenly the snow began to stop falling, all at once, and then things were worse than ever--there was a sea of water, an ocean of mud.

And Pa.s.sover coming on with great strides!

For three days before Pa.s.sover he had not come home to sleep. Who talks of eating, drinking, and sleeping? He and his man toiled day and night, like six horses, like ten oxen.

The last day before Pa.s.sover was the worst of all. His horse suddenly came to the conclusion that sooner than live such a life, it would die.

So it died and vanished somewhere in the depths of the Kamenivke clay.

And Bertzi the water-carrier and his man had to drag the cart with the great water-barrel themselves, the whole day till long after dark.

VI

It is already eleven, twelve, half past twelve at night, and Bertzi's chest, throat, and nostrils continue to pipe and to whistle, to sob and to sigh.

The room is colder and darker, the small fire in the oven went out long ago, and only little stumps of candles remain.

Rochtzi walks and runs about the room, she weeps and wrings her hands.

But now she runs up to the couch by the table, and begins to rouse her husband with screams and cries fit to make one's blood run cold and the hair stand up on one's head:

"No, no, you're not going to sleep any longer, I tell you! Bertzi, do you hear me? Get up, Bertzi, aren't you a Jew?--a man?--the father of children?--Bertzi, have you G.o.d in your heart? Bertzi, have you said your prayers? My husband, what about the Seder? I won't have it!--I feel very ill--I am going to faint!--Help!--Water!"

"Have I forgotten somebody's water?--Whose?--Where?..."

But Rochtzi is no longer in need of water: she beholds her "king" on his feet, and has revived without it. With her two hands, with all the strength she has, she holds him from falling back onto the couch.

"Don't you see, Bertzi? The candles are burning down, the supper is cold and will spoil. I fancy it's already beginning to dawn. The children, long life to them, went to sleep without any food. Come, please, begin to prepare for the Seder, and I will wake the two elder ones."

Bertzi stands bent double and treble. His breathing is labored and loud, his face is smeared with mud and swollen from the cold, his beard and earlocks are rough and bristly, his eyes sleepy and red. He looks strangely wild and unkempt. Bertzi looks at Rochtzi, at the table, he looks round the room, and sees nothing. But now he looks at the bed: his little children, washed, and in their holiday dresses, are all lying in a row across the bed, and--he remembers everything, and understands what Rochtzi is saying, and what it is she wants him to do.

"Give me some water--I said Minchah and Maariv by the way, while I was at work."

"I'm bringing it already! May G.o.d grant you a like happiness! Good health to you! Hershele, get up, my Kaddish, father has come home already! Shmuelkil, my little son, go and ask father the Four Questions."

Bertzi fills a goblet with wine, takes it up in his left hand, places it upon his right hand, and begins:

"Savri Moronon, ve-Rabbonon, ve-Rabbosai--with the permission of the company."--His head goes round.--"Lord of the World!--I am a Jew.--Blessed art Thou. Lord our G.o.d, King of the Universe--" It grows dark before his eyes: "The first night of Pa.s.sover--I ought to make Kiddush--Thou who dost create the fruit of the vine"--his feet fail him, as though they had been cut off--"and I ought to give the Seder--This is the bread of the poor.... Lord of the World, you know how it is: I can't do it!--Have mercy!--Forgive me!"

VII

A nasty smell of sputtered-out candles fills the room. Rochtzi weeps.

Bertzi is back on the couch and snores.

Different sounds, like the voices of winds, cattle, and wild beasts, and the whirr of a mill, are heard in his snoring. And her weeping--it seems as if the whole room were sighing and quivering and shaking....

EZRIELK THE SCRIBE

Forty days before Ezrielk descended upon this sinful world, his life-partner was proclaimed in Heaven, and the Heavenly Council decided that he was to transcribe the books of the Law, prayers, and Mezuzehs for the Kabtzonivke Jews, and thereby make a living for his wife and children. But the hard word went forth to him that he should not disclose this secret decree to anyone, and should even forget it himself for a goodly number of years. A glance at Ezrielk told one that he had been well lectured with regard to some important matter, and was to tell no tales out of school. Even Minde, the Kabtzonivke Bobbe, testified to this:

"Never in all my life, all the time I've been bringing Jewish children into G.o.d's world, have I known a child scream so loud at birth as Ezrielk--a sign that he'd had it well rubbed into him!"

Either the angel who has been sent to fillip little children above the lips when they are being born, was just then very sleepy (Ezrielk was born late at night), or some one had put him out of temper, but one way or another little Ezrielk, the very first minute of his Jewish existence, caught such a blow that his top lip was all but split in two.

After this kindly welcome, when G.o.d's angel himself had thus received Ezrielk, slaps, blows, and stripes rained down upon his head, body, and life, all through his days, without pause or ending.

Ezrielk began to attend Cheder when he was exactly three years old. His first teacher treated him very badly, beat him continually, and took all the joy of his childhood from him. By the time this childhood of his had pa.s.sed, and he came to be married (he began to wear the phylacteries and the prayer-scarf on the day of his marriage), he was a very poor specimen, small, thin, stooping, and yellow as an egg-pudding, his little face dark, dreary, and weazened, like a dried Lender herring. The only large, full things about him were his earlocks, which covered his whole face, and his two blue eyes. He had about as much strength as a fly, he could not even break the wine-gla.s.s under the marriage canopy by himself, and had to ask for help of Reb Yainkef Butz, the beadle of the Old Shool.

Among the German Jews a boy like that would have been left unwed till he was sixteen or even seventeen, but our Ezrielk was married at thirteen, for his bride had been waiting for him seventeen years.

It was this way: Reb Seinwill Ba.s.sis, Ezrielk's father, and Reb Selig Tachs.h.i.t, his father-in-law, were Hostre Cha.s.sidim, and used to drive every year to spend the Solemn Days at the Hostre Rebbe's. They both (not of you be it spoken!) lost all their children in infancy, and, as you can imagine, they pressed the Rebbe very closely on this important point, left him no peace, till he should bestir himself on their behalf, and exercise all his influence in the Higher Spheres. Once, on the Eve of Yom Kippur, before daylight, after the waving of the scape-fowls, when the Rebbe, long life to him, was in somewhat high spirits, our two Cha.s.sidim made another set upon him, but this time they had quite a new plan, and it simply _had_ to work out!

"Do you know what? Arrange a marriage between your children! Good luck to you!" The whole company of Cha.s.sidim broke some plates, and actually drew up the marriage contract. It was a little difficult to draw up the contract, because they did not know which of our two friends would have the boy (the Rebbe, long life to him, was silent on this head), and which, the girl, but--a learned Jew is never at a loss, and they wrote out the contract with conditions.

For three years running after this their wives bore them each a child, but the children were either both boys or both girls, so that their vow to unite the son of one to a daughter of the other born in the same year could not be fulfilled, and the doc.u.ments lay on the shelf.

True, the little couples departed for the "real world" within the first month, but the Rebbe consoled the father by saying: