Chapter XXVI: The Image 449 (5)

"And yet it's true; our rabbi corresponds with all the Geonim[49] in the world. Questions and answers concerning the most important matters come and go--everything is arranged somehow--it just depends. Not long ago, for instance, an elderly grass-widow was released from the marriage-tie. Well, of course, the main thing is not the grass-widow, but the dialectics!"[50]

He goes on:

"All the Einiklich[51] know of our town. They come, praise God, often--and, praise God, not in vain."

"It is the first time I ever heard of a dead town."

"That's rather strange! I suppose you keep yourself rather aloof..... And yet it is a truly Jewish town, a real Jewish metropolis. It has everything a town needs, even two or three lunatics! And it has a reputation for commerce, too!"

"Is anything taken in or out?"

"What? What do you say?" asks the Jew, not quite clear as to my meaning. "Are you speaking of articles of trade?"

I nod my head.

"Certainly!" he answers. "They take away prayer-scarfs and leather belts, and bring in Corfu Esrogîm and earth of Palestine. But that isn't the chief thing, the chief thing is the business done in the town itself! Drink-shops, lodging homes for travellers, old clothes--according to custom--"

"A poor town?"

"What do you mean by rich and poor? There is Parnosseh! The very poor go about begging either in the place or in the neighborhood--mostly in the place itself! Whoever holds out a hand is given something! Others try for some easy work, they do broker-business, or pick up things in the streets and earn an honest crust. The Almighty is faithful! The orphans are given free meals by the householders and study in the Talmud Torah. The orphan girls become maid-servants, cooks, or find a living elsewhere. Widows, divorced women, and grass-widows (there have been a lot of grass-widows lately[52]) sit over charcoal braziers, and when the fumes go to their head, they dream that rolls hang on the trees ready baked. Others live _quite_ decently!"

"On what?"

"On what? What do other people live on? A poor man hopes; a trader swallows air, and the one who digs--graves, I mean--is never out of employment--"

Is he joking, the dried-up, little, old Jew, the bag-of-bones with the odd gleam in his deeply sunken eyes? On his bony face, covered with a skin like yellow parchment, not the trace of a smile! Only his voice has something odd about it.

"What sort of a town _is_ it, anyway?" I ask again.

"What do you mean? It's a town like any other! There's a Shool, and they say that once there were all sorts of animals painted on the walls, beasts and birds--out of Perek Shirah[53]--and on the ceiling all sorts of musical instruments, such as were played upon by King David, on whom be peace. I never saw it so, but the old men tell of it."

"And nowadays?"

"Nowadays? Dust and spider-webs. There's only a wooden chain, carved out of one piece, that hangs from the beam, and falls very prettily to one side of the Ark to the right of the curtain, which was itself the gift of pious women. Nobody remembers who made the chain, but it was an artist, there's no doubt! Such a chain!

"In the Shool," he continued, "you see only the common people, artisans, except tailors, who form a congregation apart, and butchers and drivers, who have hired a place of their own to pray in. The Shool can hardly read Hebrew! The well-to-do householders--sons of the Law--assemble in the house-of-study, a large one with piles of books! The Chassidîm, again, pray in rooms apart!"

"And are there dissensions?"

"Many men, many minds! In the grave, on the other hand, there is peace; one burial ground for all; and the men's bath--the women's bath--are there for all alike."

"What else have you in your town?"

"What more would you have? There was a refuge for wayfarers, and it was given up; wayfarers can sleep in the house-of-study--at night it's empty--and we have a Hekdesh."

"A hospital, you mean?"

"Not a hospital at all, just a Hekdesh, two rooms. At one time they were occupied by the bather, then it was arranged that the bather should content himself with one room, and that the other should be used for the Hekdesh; there are not more than three sick women in it altogether: one poor thing, an old woman with paralyzed legs, who lies all of a heap; a second with all her limbs paralyzed, and beside these, a crazy grass-widow. Three corners are taken up with beds, in the fourth stands a chimney-stove; in the middle there is a dead-house, in case of need!"

"You are laughing at me, friend," I break in, "that is Tziachnovke! Tziachnovke itself with its commerce and charities and good works! Why do you call it the dead town?"

"Because it is a dead town! I am speaking of a town which, from the day it was built, hung by a hair, and now the hair has snapt, it hangs in the air. It hangs by nothing at all. And because it hangs by nothing and floats in mid-air, it is a dead town; if you like, I will tell you about it."

"By all means--most interesting!"

Meanwhile night is falling, one half of the sky grows blood-red and fiery, over there is the sunset. On our other hand, the moon is swimming into view out of a light mist, like the face of a bride peeping out of her white veil. The pale beams, as they spread over the earth, mix with the quivering shadows of the sad, still night.

Uncanny!--

We drive into a wood. The moon-rays steal in after us between the trembling leaves.

On the ground, among the fallen leaves and twigs, there dance little circles of light, like silver coins. There is something magical in the illumination, in the low breathing of the wood.

I glance at the wayfaring Jew, his appearance has changed. It is melancholy and serious, and his expression is so simple and honest. Can it all be true?

_Ha!_ I will listen to what he has to say.

"The town hung by a hair from the first," said the narrator, "because it was started in a part where no Jewish town was allowed to be! It was not till the first Minyan was complete that people held a meeting and decided to reckon themselves as belonging to a town in the neighborhood. On this pretense they built a bath, a Shool, and after that, a men's bath, and bought a piece of land for a burial ground.

"And when all that was finished, they sent people of backstair influence to have it all endorsed."

"Head downward?"

"Isn't that always the way with us? How should it be otherwise?"

"I don't know!"

"However, that's how it was! And the thing was not so underhand as you suppose.

"There was a Jew who was very rich, and this rich Jew, as is usually the case, was a little, not to say very much, in with the authorities, and everything was in his name; it was _his_ Shool, _his_ bath, _his_ women's bath--even to _his_ burial ground--and nothing was said; as I tell you, he was a person of influence!

"And when the paper came from high quarters, he was to transcribe it in the name of the community and stop paying sop-money to the local police."

"And then the rich man said: 'To my account'?"

"No, my dear sir, such rich people didn't exist in those days. 'To my account' was a thing unknown; but hear what happened, what things may come to pass!

"It was not the Gevir, but the envoy who caused the trouble. He made off, half-way, with the money and the papers, and left the freshly-baked community like a grass-widow with a family."

"Did they send another?"

"Not so soon as all that! Before it was known that the first had absconded, or anything about it, the Gevir died and left, among other things, an heir who was a minor; he couldn't sign a paper till he was twenty-one!"

"So they hurried up?"

"Of course, as soon as he was twenty-one, they meant to send another envoy, and perhaps two."

"And meanwhile it was entered in the communal records?"

"That's where it is! The records remembered and the people forgot! Some say the record was burnt, that the trustee took the record, said Havdoleh over it, set fire to a little brandy, and--good-bye!

"The community, meanwhile, was growing; Jews, praise God, soon multiply. And they come in from other places; one person brings in a son-in-law, another a daughter-in-law, in a word, it grew. And the Gevir's heirs disappeared as though on purpose! The widow married again and left, one son after another went to seek his fortune elsewhere, to take a look 'round. The youngest remained. Kohol appointed him a guardian and married him, and gave him an experienced partner."

"Who led him about by the nose?"

"According to the law of Moses and of Israel!

"He had trouble with the partner and more still with the wife; and he signed a forged check and took himself off, bankrupt; townspeople and strangers collected and made a great noise, the case was heard in court, down came an inspector, no money to be seen anywhere, the wife hid the furniture, the inspector took possession of the Shool and the burial ground!

"The little town was thunderstruck, it was a bolt from the blue with a vengeance! Because, you see, the whole thing had been kept dark to the last minute!

"And all of a sudden, the community was seen hanging, as it were, by a hair!

"What was to be done? They drove to lawyers. What could they advise in a case like that? The best thing would be to have an auction, the inspector would sell the things and the community buy them at any cost. The community was no community? The papers had been lost by the way? They must find another Gevir, and buy in his name! The great thing was not to wait till the Gevir should die or go away!

"The advice seemed good, Kohol was quite used to loss of money; but there was not only _one_ Gevir, there were several! And heaps willing to act as diplomatic envoys. Whose name should they use? Who should be taken for an envoy? All were willing and might be offended. So they held a meeting and talked it over. And they talked it over till the talk became a dispute, and when _we_ have a dispute, it isn't settled in a hurry. Now and again it looks like peace, the flame of discord burns low, comes a peacemaker and pours oil on it, and it blazes up again and--blazes on!"

The Jew wiped his pale forehead and continued:

"Meanwhile something happened, something not to be believed!

"Only," he added with a smile, "it is night and the creature who walks the sky at night (he points at the moon) is called 'truth,' and at night, specially in such a quiet one, everything is credible."

"Well, yes"--I allow unwillingly.

"The story is a dreadful one.

"The inspector put his foot on the 'holy ground,' the corpses heard and must have grown angry--the tombstones move--the corpses rise up from beneath them--you believe me?"

"I am no heretic," I replied, "heaven forbid! And I believe in the immortality of the soul, only--"

"Only, friend, only?"

"I always thought, that only the soul remained--the soul that flies into heaven; but the body that goes into the grave, the image that decays--anyhow, it cannot move without the soul--cannot rise again."

"Well said!" he praises me. "May I ever hear the like!

"I am glad," he said, "that you are book-learned; but, my friend, you have forgotten the world of illusion! You say the soul goes to heaven, into the sky--very well--but to which part? One goes into Paradise, the other into Gehenna. Paradise is for the souls of the righteous, Gehenna for the souls of the wicked. The one, for his good deeds, receives a share of Leviathan, of Behemoth, wine of the ages,--the other, for his sins, boiling pitch; but that only means reward and punishment, and why reward and punishment? Because so long as a man lives, he has a free choice. If he wishes to do what is good, he does it, if to do evil, he does evil, and as he makes his bed, _ha?_ so he lies.

"But what is the sentence passed when a man was no man, when his life was no life, and he did nothing, neither good nor evil, because he could not do anything? He had no choice, and he slept away his life and lived in a dream. What is such a soul entitled to? Gehenna? What for? It never so much as killed a fly. Paradise? For what? It never dipped a hand in cold water to gain it."

"What _does_ become of such a soul?"

"Nothing! It goes on living in a world of illusion, it does not detach itself from the body; but just as it dreamt before that it lived _on_ the earth, so it dreams now that it lives _in_ the earth!

"No one in our town ever really died, because no one ever really lived! No one did either good or evil, there were no sinners and no righteous--only sleepy-heads and souls in a world of illusion. When such a sleepy-head is laid in the grave, it remains a sleepy-head--only in another lodging--that's all.

"And so dying with us was a perfect comedy! Because if a feather was put under the nose of a _live_ man, would he stir to brush it away? Not he! And the same with a fly. They left off troubling about Parnosseh--they simply left off troubling about anything at all!

"So it went on.... There are many towns like it, and when it happens, as it has happened with us, that a corpse creeps out of its grave, it doesn't begin to remember that it has made its last confession of sins and drawn its last breath. No sooner have the potsherds fallen from its eyes than it goes straight to the house-of-study, to the bath, or else home to supper--it remembers nothing about having died!"

I do not know if it is the moon's fault, or whether I am not quite myself, but I hear, believe, and even ask:

"Did all the corpses rise? All?"

"Who can tell? Do they keep a register? There may have been a few heretics who thought it was the final resurrection and lay low; but there rose a whole community; they rose and fled before the inspector into the nearest wood!"

"Why into a wood?"

"They couldn't go into the town, because it was daylight, and it is not the thing to appear in winding-sheets by daylight--they might have frightened the young mothers."

"True. And the inspector?"

"You ask about a Gentile? He saw nothing. Perhaps he was tipsy--nothing--he did his work, made his inventory."

"And sold the things?"

"Nothing, there was as yet no one to buy."

"And the corpses?"

"Ah--the corpses!"

* * * * *

He rests for a moment and then goes on:

"Hardly had night fallen, when the corpses came back into the town; each one went to his home, stole in at the door, the window, or down the chimney--went hastily to the wardrobe, took out some clothes, dressed himself, yawned, and lay down somewhere to sleep.

"Next morning there was a whole townfull of corpses."

"And the living said nothing?"

"They never remarked; they were taken up with the dispute; their heads were full of it, they were all at sixes and sevens! And really, when you come to think of it, how much difference is there between a dead-alive person and a walking corpse in winding-sheets? When a son saw his father, he spat out three times, indignant with himself: 'To think of the dream I had--I dreamt I said Kaddish for my father and inherited him! May such dreams plague my enemies.'

"A widow saw her husband, and gave him a hearty slap. He had deceived her, the wretch! made game of her! and she, foolish woman that she was, had made him new winding-sheets!"

"And supposing she had married again?"

"How should she have? In the course of the dispute some one set fire to the Shool and to the house-of-study and to the wedding canopy; everything, you may say, was burnt. They accused pretty well everybody in turn--"

"And after that?"

"Nothing; the corpses had come to life and the living began to die out, for want of room, for want of air--but specially of hunger--"

"Was there a famine?"

"No more than anywhere else! But there _was_ one for all that. The corpses took their place at the prayer-meetings and at the table at home as well. People didn't know why, but there were suddenly not enough spoons. All ate out of one dish, and there were not enough spoons. Every house-mistress knows that she has as many spoons as there are people in the house, so she thinks there has been a robbery! The pious say: Witchcraft! But as they came to see the spoons were missing everywhere, and there was not food to go round, then they said: A famine! and they hungered, and they are hungering still."

* * * * *

"And in a short time the corpses outnumbered the living; now they are the community and the leaders of the community! They do not beget children and increase naturally--not that, but when anyone dies, they steal him away off his bed, out of the grave--and there is a fresh corpse going about the town.

"And what is lacking to them? They have no cares, no fear of death--they eat for the purpose of saying grace--they don't want the food, they have no craving for it--let alone drink and lodging; a hundred corpses can sleep in one room--they don't require air!

"And they have no worries, because whence do worries spring? From knowing! 'The more knowledge, the more sorrow, but the dead man does not trouble.' It's not his affair! He doesn't wish to know and he _needn't_ know--he wanders in a world of illusion.

"He keeps away from living concerns; he has no questions, no anxieties, no heart-ache, no one is conscious of his liver!

"Who do you think is our rabbi? Once it was a live man and a man of action; now he, too, is a corpse; he wanders in a world of illusion, and goes on giving decisions by rote as in a dream.

"Who are his assistants? People like him--half-decayed corpses.

"And they solve ritual questions for the living and the dead, they know everything and do everything; they say blessings, unite in wedlock. Who is it stands at the platform? A corpse! He has the face of a corpse, the voice of a corpse; if it happen that a cock crows suddenly, he runs away.

"And the Gevirîm, the almsgivers, the agitators, the providers, the whole lot--what are they? Dead men, long dead and long buried!"

* * * * *

"And you, friend? What are you?"

"I? I am half-dead," answers the Jew. He jumps down from the conveyance and disappears among the trees.

XIII

THE DAYS OF THE MESSIAH

As in all the Jewish towns in Galicia, big and little, so in the one where my parents lived, there was a lunatic.

And as in most cases, so in this one, the lunatic was afraid of nobody, neither of Kohol, nor of the rabbi or his assistants, not even of the bather or the grave-digger, who are treated with respect by the richest men. On the other hand, the whole of the little town, Kohol with all the Jewish authorities and the bather and the grave-digger, trembled before the lunatic, closed door and window at his approach. And although the poor lunatic had never said an abusive word, never touched any one with his little finger, everybody called him names, many people hit him, and the street boys threw mud and stones at him.

I always felt sorry for the lunatic. He attracted me, somehow, I wanted to talk to him, to console him, to give him a friendly pat; but it was impossible to approach him; I should have received part of the stones and mud with which he was bombarded by the others. I was quite a little boy, and I wore a nice suit from Lemberg or Cracow, and I wished to preserve my shoulders from stones and my suit from mud; so I remained at a distance.

The little town in which my parents lived and where I spent my childhood, dressed in clothes made by the tailors of Lemberg and Cracow, was a fortress, surrounded by moats, water, earthworks, and high walls.

On the walls were batteries, and these were protected by soldiers with muskets, who marched up and down, serious and silent. Hardly had darkness fallen, when the iron drawbridge was raised from over the moat, all the gates were closed, and the little town was cut off from the rest of the world till early next morning. At every gate stood a watchman, fully armed.

A short while ago, in the day-time, we were all free, we could go in and out without applying for leave to the major in command; one might bathe in the river outside the town, and even lie stretched out on the green bank and gaze into the sky or out into the wide world, as one chose. No one made any objection, and even if one did not return, no questions were asked. But at night all was to be quiet in the town, no one was to go out or to come in. "Lucky," I used to think to myself, "that they let in the moon."

And as long as I may live, I shall never forget the twilights there, the fall of night. As the shades deepened, a shudder went through the whole town, men and houses seemed suddenly to grow smaller and cower together. The bridge was raised, the iron chains grated against the huge blocks; and the rasp of the iron, the harsh, broken sounds, went through one's very bones. Then gate on gate fell to. Every evening it was the same thing, and yet every evening people's limbs trembled, a dull apathy overspread their faces, and their eyes were as the eyes of the dead. Eye-lids fell heavy as lead; the heart seemed to stop beating, one scarcely breathed. Then a patrol would march down the streets, with a clatter of trailing swords and great water-boots; the bayonets glistened, and the patrol shouted: "_Wer da?_" To which one had to reply: "A citizen, an inhabitant," otherwise there was no saying what might not happen. Many preferred to remain behind lock and key--they were afraid of being seen in the street.

* * * * *

One day I had the following adventure: I had been bathing in the river, and either I lost myself in thought, or in staring about, or I simply forgot that after day comes night. Suddenly I see them raise the bridge; there is a grating in the ears, the gates swing to, and my heart goes by leaps and bounds. No help for it! I must pass the night outside the walls--and strange to say, night after night, as I lay in my warm bed at home, I had dreamt of the free world outside the fortress; and now that my dreams had come true, I was frightened. There ensued the usual dispute between head and heart. The head cried: Steady! Now, for once, you may enjoy the free air and the starry sky to the full! And the heart, all the while, struggled and fluttered like a caged bird. Then from heart to head rose as it were a vapor, a mist, and the clear reasoning became obscured, and was swallowed up in the cloud.

There was a rushing noise in my ears, a flickering before my eyes. Every sound, however light, every motion of a twig or a blade of grass made me shudder, and threw me on to the ground with fright.

I hid my face in the sand. Whether or not I slept, and how long I lay there, I cannot tell! But I suddenly heard someone breathing close to me; I spring up and--I am not alone! Two well-known, deep, black eyes are gazing at me in all candor and gentleness.

It is the lunatic.

"What are you doing here?" I ask in smothered tones.

"I never sleep in the town!" he answers sadly, and his glance is so gentle, the voice so brotherly, that I recover myself completely and lose all fear.

"Once upon a time," I reflected, "lunatics were believed to be prophets--it is still so in the East--and I wonder, perhaps he is one, too! Is he not persecuted like a prophet? Don't they throw stones at him as at a prophet? Don't his eyes shine like stars? Doesn't his voice sound like the sweetest harp? Does he not bear the sorrows of all, and suffer for a whole generation? Perhaps he also knows what shall be hereafter!"

I have a try and begin to question him, and he answers so softly and sweetly, that I think sometimes it is all a dream, the dream of a summer's night outside the fortress.

"Do you believe in the days of the Messiah?" I ask him.

"Of course!" he answers gently and confidently, "he _must_ come!"

"He must?!"

"O, surely! All wait for him, even the heavens and the earth wait! If it were not so, no one would care to live, to dip a hand in cold water--and if people live as they do and show they _want_ to live, it is a sign they all feel that Messiah is coming, that he must come, that he is already on the way."

"Is it true," I question further, "that first there will be dreadful wars, and false Messiahs, on account of whom people will tear one another like wild beasts, till the earth be soaked with blood? Is it true that rivers of blood will flow from east to west and from north to south, and all the animals and beasts drink human blood, all the fields and gardens and wild places and roads be swamped with human blood, and that in the middle of this bloody time the _true_ Messiah will come--the _right_ one? Is that true?"

"True!"

"And people will know him?"

"Everyone will know him. Nobody will be mistaken. He will be Messiah in every look, in every word, in every limb, in every glance. He will have no armies with him, he will ride on no horse, and there will be no sword at his side--"

"Then, what?"

"He will have wings--Messiah will have wings, and then everyone will have wings. It will be like this: suddenly there will be born a child with wings, and then a second, a third, and so it will go on. At first people will be frightened, by degrees they will get used to it, until there has arisen a whole generation with wings, a generation that will no longer struggle in the mud over a Parnosseh-worm."

He talked on like this for some time, but I had already ceased to understand him. Only his voice was so sadly-sweet that I sucked it up like a sponge. The day was breaking when he ceased--they had opened the gates and were letting down the bridge.

Since the night spent outside the fortress, the life within it had grown more unbearable still. The old walls, the rasping iron drawbridge, the iron doors, the sentinels and patrols, the hoarsely-angry "_Wer da?_" the falsely-servile: "A citizen, an inhabitant!" the eternal quivering of the putty-colored faces, the startled, half-extinguished eyes, the market with its cowering, aimlessly restless shadows of men--the whole thing weighed on me like lead--not to be able to breathe, not to feel free! And my heart grew sick with a great longing. And I resolved to go to meet the Messiah.

* * * * *

I got into the first conveyance that presented itself. The driver turned round and asked:

"Where to?"

"Wherever you please," I answered, "only a great way--a great way off from here!"

"For how long?"

"For as long as the horse can go!"

The driver gathered up the reins, and we set off.

We drove on and on. Other fields, other woods, other villages, other towns, everything different; but the difference was only on the surface, below that everything was the same. When I looked into things, I saw everywhere the same melancholy, every face wore a look of frightened cunning, speech was everywhere broken and halting--the world seemed overspread with a mournful mist that hid every gleam of light and extinguished every joy. Everything shrank together and stifled. And I kept shouting: "Go on!" But I depended on the driver, and the driver, on the horse--the horse wants to eat, and we are obliged to stop.

I step into the inn. A large room, divided into two by means of an old curtain, reaching from one wall to the other. On my side of the curtain, three men sit round a large table. They do not remark me, and I have time to look them over. They represent three generations. The oldest is gray as a pigeon, but he sits erect and gazes with sharp eyes and without spectacles into a large book, lying before him on the table. The old face is grave, the old eyes unerring in their glance, and the old man and the book are blent into one by the white beard, whose silver points rest on the pages. At his right hand sits a younger man, who must be his son; it is the same face, only younger, less unmoved, more nervous, at times more drawn and weary. He also gazes into a book, but through glasses. The book is smaller, and he holds it nearer to his eyes, resting it against the edge of the table. He is of middle age; beard and ear-locks just silvered over. He rocks himself to and fro. It seems every time as if his body wished to tear itself away from the book, only the book draws it back. He rocks himself, and the lips move inaudibly. Every now and then he glances at the old man, who does not notice it.

To the old man's left sits the youngest, probably a grandson, a young man with glossy black hair and a burning, restless glance. He also is looking at a book, but the book is quite small, and he holds it close to his bright, unquiet eyes. He continually lowers it, however, and throws a glance of mingled fear and respect at the old man, another, with a half-ironic smile, at his father, and then leans over to hear what is going on, on the further side of the curtain. And from the further side of the curtain come moans as of a woman in child-birth--

I am about to cough, so that they may be aware of me. At this moment a fold of the curtain is pushed aside and there appear two women: an old one with a sharp, bony face and sharp eyes, and one of middle age with a gentle, rather flabby face and uncertain glance. They stand looking at the men, and waiting to be questioned. The oldest does not see them--his soul has melted into the soul of the book. The middle-aged man has seen them, and is wondering how best to rouse his father; the youngest starts up--

"Mother! Grandmother! Well?"

The father rises anxiously from his chair; the grandfather only pushes the book a little away from him, and lifts his eyes to the women.

"How is she?" inquires the young one further, with a trembling voice.

"She is over it!"

"Over it! over it!" stammers the young one.

"Mother, won't you say, Good luck to you?" asks the second. The old one reflects a moment and then asks:

"What has happened? Even if it is a girl--"

"No!"--the grandmother speaks for the first time--"it is a boy."

"Still-born?"

"No, it lives!" answers the old woman, and yet there is no joy in her tone.

"A cripple? Defective?"

"It has marks! On both shoulders--"

"What sort of marks?"

"Of wings--"

"Of wings?"

"Yes, of wings, and they are growing--"

The old man remains sitting in perplexity, the second is lost in wonder, the youngest fairly leaps for joy.

"Good, good! Let them grow, may they grow into wings, big, strong ones! Good, good!"

"What is there to be glad about?" inquires his father.

"A dreadful deformity!" sighs the old man.

"Why so?" asks the grandson.

"Wings," said the old man, sternly, "raise one into the height--when one has wings one cannot keep to the earth."

"Much it matters!" retorts the grandson, defiantly. "One is quit of living here and wallowing in the mud, one lives in the height. Is heaven not better than earth?"

The old man grows pale, and the son takes up the word:

"Foolish child! What is one to live on in the height? Air doesn't go far. There are no inns to hire up there, no 'contracts' to sign. There's no one of whom to buy a bit of shoe-leather--in the height--"

The old man interrupts him: "In the height," he says in hard tones, "there is no Shool, no house-of-study, no Kläus to pray and read in; in the height, there is no pathway, trodden out by past generations--in the height, one wanders and gets lost, because one does not know the road. One is a free bird, but woe to the free bird in the hour of doubt and despondency!"

"What do you mean?" and the young man starts up with burning cheeks and eyes.

But the grandmother is beforehand with him:

"What fools men are," she exclaims, "how they talk! And the rabbi? Do you suppose the rabbi is going to let him be circumcised? Is he likely to allow a blessing to be spoken over a child with wings?"

* * * * *

I give a start. The night spent outside the town, the drive, and the child with wings were all a dream.

XIV

KABBALISTS

When times are bad, even Torah, "the best ware,"[54] loses in value.

In the Lashewitz "academy," there remain only the head, Reb Yainkil, and one pupil.

The head of the academy is on old, thin Jew, with a long, pointed beard and old, extinguished eyes; Lemech, his beloved pupil, is a young man, likewise thin, tall, and pale, with black, curling ear-locks, dark, glowing eyes, heavily-ringed, dry lips, and sharp, quivering throat; both with garments open at the breast, with _no_ shirts, and both in rags; the teacher just drags about a pair of peasant boots; the pupil's shoes drop from his sockless feet.

That is all that remains of the celebrated academy!

The impoverished little town sent less and less food, gave fewer and fewer free meals to the poor students, and these crept away elsewhere! But Reb Yainkil intends to die here, and his pupil remains to close his eyelids!

And these two are often hungry. Eating little means sleeping little, and whole nights without sleep or food incline one to the Kabbalah! If one has to wake whole nights and hunger whole days, one may as well get something by it, if only fasting and flagellations, so long as these open the door to the world of mystery, of spirits, and of angels!

And they have been studying the Kabbalah for some time!

Now they are sitting at the one long table. With everyone else it is "after dinner," with them still "before breakfast." They are used to that. The teacher rolls his eyes and holds forth; the pupil sits with both hands supporting his head and listens.

"Therein," said the teacher, "are many degrees of attainment: one knows a bit of a tune, another half a one, another a whole. The Rebbe of blessed memory knew a whole one with the accompaniment. I," he added sadly, "have only been found worthy of a bit like that!"

He measured off a tiny piece of his bony finger and went on:

"There is one kind of tune that must have words, that is a low order of tune. But there is a higher kind: a tune that sings itself, but without words--a pure melody! But _that_ melody must have a voice--and lips, through which the voice issues! And lips, you see, are material things!

"And the voice itself is refined matter, certainly, but matter none the less. Let us say, the voice stands mid-way between the spiritual and the material.

"However that may be, the tune that finds expression through a voice and is dependent on lips is not pure, not entirely pure, not yet really spiritual!

"The real tune sings itself without a voice--it sings itself inside one, in the heart, in the thoughts!

"There you have the meaning of the words of King David: 'All my bones shall say,' etc. It ought to sing in the marrow of the bones, that is where the tune should be--that is the highest praise we can give to God. That is no human tone that has been _thought out_! It is a fragment of the melody to which God created the world, of the soul He breathed into it. Thus sings the Heavenly Family, thus sang the Rebbe, whose memory be blessed!"

The teacher was interrupted by a shock-headed lad with a cord round his waist--a porter. He came into the house-of-study, put down on the table, beside the teacher, a dish of porridge with a piece of bread, said gruffly: "Reb Tebil sends the teacher some food," turned his back, and added, as he went out: "I'll come back presently for the dish."

Recalled by the rough tone from the divine harmonies, the teacher rose heavily, and went to the basin to wash, dragging his great boots.

He continued to speak as he went, but with less assurance, and the pupil followed him with greedy ears and glowing, dreaming eyes.

"But I," repeated Reb Yainkil, sadly, "was not even worthy of understanding to what category it belongs, of knowing under what heading it is classified. However," he added with a smile, "the initiatory mortifications and purifications, those I _do_ know, and perhaps I will teach them you to-day."

The pupil's eyes seem about to start from their sockets with eagerness; he keeps his mouth open so as to catch every word. But the teacher is silent, he is washing his hands; he repeats the ritual formula, comes back to the table and says "Thou who bringest forth,"[55] with trembling lips.

He lifts the dish with shaking fingers, and the warm steam rises into his face; then he puts it down, takes the spoon in his right hand, and warms the left at the dish's edge; after which he masticates the rest of the bread with some salt between his tongue and his toothless gums.

Having warmed his face with his hands, he wrinkles his forehead, purses his thin lips, and begins to blow the porridge.

The pupil has not taken his eyes off him the whole time, and when the teacher's trembling mouth met the spoonful of porridge, something came over him, and he covered his face with both hands and withdrew within himself.

A few minutes later another boy came in with a bowl of porridge and some bread:

"Reb Yòsef sends the pupil some breakfast!"

But the pupil did not remove his hands from his face.

The teacher laid down his spoon and went up to the pupil. For a while he gazed at him with affectionate pride, then he wrapped his hand in the skirt of his kaftan, and touched him on the shoulder:

"They have brought you something to eat," he said gently, by way of rousing him. Slowly and sadly the pupil uncovered his face. It was paler than ever, and the black-ringed eyes had grown wilder.

"I know, Rebbe," he answered, "but I will not eat anything to-day."

"The fourth fast?" asked the teacher, wondering, "and without me?" he added, with a playful pretense at being hurt.

"It is another kind of fast," answered the pupil, "it is a penance."

"What do you mean? _You_ and a penance?"

"Yes, Rebbe! A penance. A minute ago, when you began to eat, I was tempted to break the commandment: 'Thou shalt not covet!'"

* * * * *

Late that night the pupil woke the teacher. They slept on the benches in the Kläus, opposite to one another.

"Rebbe, Rebbe!" he called in a weak voice.

"What is it?" and the teacher started up in alarm.

"Just now I attained to a higher degree!"

"How so?" inquired the teacher, still half asleep.

"It sang within me!"

The teacher sat up:

"How so? how so?"

"I don't know myself, Rebbe," replied the pupil in his feeble tones, "I couldn't sleep, and I thought over what you told me. I wanted to get to know the tune--and I was so sorrowful, because I could not, that I began to weep--everything in me wept; all my limbs wept before the Creator.

"Then I made the invocations you taught me--and, wonderful to say, not with my lips, but somehow inside me--with my whole self. Suddenly it grew light; I shut my eyes, and still it was light to me, very light, brilliantly light."

"There!" and the teacher sat bending toward him.

"And I had such pleasant feelings as I lay in the light, and I seemed to weigh nothing at all, no more than if my body had been a feather, I felt as if I could fly."

"You see, you see, you see!"

"Then I felt merry and lively, I wanted to laugh--my face never moved, nor my lips either, and yet I laughed--and so heartily."

"You see, you see, you see!"

"Then there was a humming inside me like the beginning of a melody."

The teacher sprang down from his bench, and was across the room.

"Well, well?"

"Then I heard something begin to sing within me."

"What did you feel like? Tell me quick!"

"I felt as though all the doors of sense in me were shut, and as though something sang within me--as it ought to do--without any words, like ... like...."

"How was it? How was it?"

"No, I can't! I knew, before--and then the singing turned into--into--"

"Into what? What became of it?"

"A kind of playing--as though (lehavdîl) there were a fiddle inside me--or as if Yoneh, the musician, were sitting there and playing hymns, as he does at the Rebbe's dinner-table. Only it was better, more beautiful, more spiritual. And without a voice, without any voice at all--it was _all_ spiritual."

"Happy, happy, happy, are you!"

"Now it's all gone (sadly), the doors of sense are reopened, and I am so tired, I am so--so--_tired_, that I--

"Rebbe!" he called out suddenly, clapping a hand to his heart, "Rebbe, say the confession of sins with me! They have come for me! They have come for me! There is a singer wanted in the Heavenly Family! An angel with white wings! Rebbe, Rebbe! Hear, O Israel! Hear, O Is--"

* * * * *

The entire little town wished as one man that it might die as blessed a death; but the Rebbe was not satisfied.

"Another fast or two," he groaned, "and he would have died beneath the Divine kiss!"[56]

XV

TRAVEL-PICTURES