"Is that how you hold your spoon?" inquires the father, and Lebele holds the spoon lower, and the food sticks in his throat.

After supper Lebele has to say grace aloud and in correct Hebrew, according to custom. If he mumbles a word, his father calls out:

"What did I hear? what? once more, 'Wherewith Thou dost feed and sustain us.' Well, come, say it! Don't be in a hurry, it won't burn you!"

And Lebele says it over again, although he _is_ in a great hurry, although he longs to run out into the street, and the words _do_ seem to burn him.

When it is dark, he repeats the Evening Prayer by lamplight; his father is always catching him making a mistake, and Lebele has to keep all his wits about him. The moon, round and shining, is already floating through the sky, and Lebele repeats the prayers, and looks at her, and longs after the street, and he gets confused in his praying.

Prayers over, he escapes out of the house, puzzling over some question in the Talmud against the morrow's lesson. He delays there a while gazing at the moon, as she pours her pale beams onto the Ga.s.s. But he soon hears his father's voice:

"Come indoors, to bed!"

It is warm outside, there is not a breath of air stirring, and yet it seems to Lebele as though a wind came along with his father's words, and he grows cold, and he goes in like one chilled to the bone, takes his stand by the window, and stares at the moon.

"It is time to close the shutters--there's nothing to sit up for!"

Lebele hears his father say, and his heart sinks. His father goes out, and Lebele sees the shutters swing to, resist, as though they were being closed against their will, and presently there is a loud bang. No more moon!--his father has hidden it!

A while after, the lamp has been put out, the room is dark, and all are asleep but Lebele, whose bed is by the window. He cannot sleep, he wants to be in the street, whence sounds come in through the c.h.i.n.ks. He tries to sit up in bed, to peer out, also through the c.h.i.n.ks, and even to open a bit of the shutter, without making any noise, and to look, look, but without success, for just then his father wakes and calls out:

"What are you after there, eh? Do you want me to come with the strap?"

And Lebele nestles quietly down again into his pillow, pulls the coverlet over his head, and feels as though he were buried alive.

THE CHARITABLE LOAN

The largest fair in Klemenke is "Ulas." The little town waits for Ulas with a beating heart and extravagant hopes. "Ulas," say the Klemenke shopkeepers and traders, "is a Heavenly blessing; were it not for Ulas, Klemenke would long ago have been 'aus Klemenke,' America would have taken its last few remaining Jews to herself."

But for Ulas one must have the wherewithal--the shopkeepers need wares, and the traders, money.

Without the wherewithal, even Ulas is no good! And Chayyim, the dealer in produce, goes about gloomily. There are only three days left before Ulas, and he hasn't a penny wherewith to buy corn to trade with. And the other dealers in produce circulate in the market-place with caps awry, with thickly-rolled cigarettes in their mouths and walking-sticks in their hands, and they are talking hard about the fair.

"In three days it will be lively!" calls out one.

"Pshshsh," cries another in ecstasy, "in three days' time the place will be packed!"

And Chayyim turns pale. He would like to call down a calamity on the fair, he wishes it might rain, snow, or storm on that day, so that not even a mad dog should come to the market-place; only Chayyim knows that Ulas is no weakling, Ulas is not afraid of the strongest wind--Ulas is Ulas!

And Chayyim's eyes are ready to start out of his head. A charitable loan--where is one to get a charitable loan? If only five and twenty rubles!

He asks it of everyone, but they only answer with a merry laugh:

"Are you mad? Money--just before a fair?"

And it seems to Chayyim that he really will go mad.

"Suppose you went across to Loibe-Bares?" suggests his wife, who takes her full share in his distress.

"I had thought of that myself," answers Chayyim, meditatively.

"But what?" asks the wife.

Chayyim is about to reply, "But I can't go there, I haven't the courage," only that it doesn't suit him to be so frank with his wife, and he answers:

"Devil take him! He won't lend anything!"

"Try! It won't hurt," she persists.

And Chayyim reflects that he has no other resource, that Loibe-Bares is a rich man, and living in the same street, a neighbor in fact, and that _he_ requires no money for the fair, being a dealer in lumber and timber.

"Give me out my Sabbath overcoat!" says Chayyim to his wife, in a resolute tone.

"Didn't I say so?" the wife answers. "It's the best thing you can do, to go to him."

Chayyim placed himself before a half-broken looking-gla.s.s which was nailed to the wall, smoothed his beard with both hands, tightened his earlocks, and then took off his hat, and gave it a polish with his sleeve.

"Just look and see if I haven't got any white on my coat off the wall!"

"If you haven't?" the wife answered, and began slapping him with both hands over the shoulders.

"I thought we once had a little clothes-brush. Where is it? ha?"

"Perhaps you dreamt it," replied his wife, still slapping him on the shoulders, and she went on, "Well, I should say you had got some white on your coat!"

"Come, that'll do!" said Chayyim, almost angrily. "I'll go now."

He drew on his Sabbath overcoat with a sigh, and muttering, "Very likely, isn't it, he'll lend me money!" he went out.

On the way to Loibe-Bares, Chayyim's heart began to fail him. Since the day that Loibe-Bares came to live at the end of the street, Chayyim had been in the house only twice, and the path Chayyim was treading now was as bad as an examination: the "approach" to him, the light rooms, the great mirrors, the soft chairs, Loibe-Bares himself with his long, thick beard and his black eyes with their "gevirish" glance, the lady, the merry, happy children, even the maid, who had remained in his memory since those two visits--all these things together terrified him, and he asked himself, "Where are you going to? Are you mad? Home with you at once!" and every now and then he would stop short on the way. Only the thought that Ulas was near, and that he had no money to buy corn, drove him to continue.

"He won't lend anything--it's no use hoping." Chayyim was preparing himself as he walked for the shock of disappointment; but he felt that if he gave way to that extent, he would never be able to open his mouth to make his request known, and he tried to cheer himself:

"If I catch him in a good humor, he will lend! Why should he be afraid of lending me a few rubles over the fair? I shall tell him that as soon as ever I have sold the corn, he shall have the loan back. I will swear it by wife and children, he will believe me--and I will pay it back."

But this does not make Chayyim any the bolder, and he tries another sort of comfort, another remedy against nervousness.

"He isn't a bad man--and, after all, our acquaintance won't date from to-day--we've been living in the same street twenty years--Parabotzker Street--"

And Chayyim recollects that a fortnight ago, as Loibe-Bares was pa.s.sing his house on his way to the market-place, and he, Chayyim, was standing in the yard, he gave him the greeting due to a gentleman ("and I could swear I gave him my hand," Chayyim reminded himself). Loibe-Bares had made a friendly reply, he had even stopped and asked, like an old acquaintance, "Well, Chayyim, and how are you getting on?" And Chayyim strains his memory and remembers further that he answered on this wise:

"I thank you for asking! Heaven forgive me, one does a little bit of business!"

And Chayyim is satisfied with his reply, "I answered him quite at my ease."