With such sweet words did my father send me off to "_Cheder_," to my new teacher, "_Reb_" Chayim Kotter. It was the first time that I had heard such good kind words from my father. And I forgot, in a moment, all his harshness, and all his abuse, and all his blows. It was as if they had never existed in the world. If I were not ashamed, I would have thrown my arms about his neck, and kissed him. But how can one kiss a father?
Ha! ha! ha!
My mother gave me a whole apple and three "_groschens_" to take to "_Cheder_," and the German gave me a few "_kopeks_." He pinched my cheek, and said in his language:
"Best boy, good, good!"
I took my "_Gemarra_" under my arm, kissed the "_Mezuzah_," and went off to "_Cheder_" like one newly born, with a clean heart, and fresh, pious thoughts. The sun looked down, and greeted me with its warm rays. The little breeze stole in under one of my earlocks. The birds twittered--Tif--tif--tif--tif! I was lifted up. I was borne on the breeze. I wanted to run, jump, dance. Oh, how good it is--how sweet to be alive and to be honest, when one is not a thief and not a liar.
I pressed my "_Gemarra_" tightly to my breast, and still tighter. I ran to "_Cheder_" with pleasure, with joy. And I swore by my "_Gemarra_"
that I would never, never touch what belonged to another--never, never steal, and never, never deny anything again. I would always be honest, for ever and ever honest.
On the Fiddle
Children, I will now play for you a little tune on the fiddle. I imagine there is nothing better and finer in the world than to be able to play on the fiddle. What? Perhaps it is not so? I don"t know how it is with you. But I know that since I first reached the age of understanding, my heart longed for a fiddle. I loved as my life any musician whatever--no matter what instrument he played. If there was a wedding anywhere in the town, I was the first to run forward and welcome the musicians. I loved to steal over to the ba.s.s, and draw my fingers across one of the strings--Boom! And I flew away. Boom! And I flew away. For this same "boom" I once got it hot from Berel Ba.s.s. Berel Ba.s.s--a cross Jew with a flattened out nose, and a sharp glance--pretended not to see me stealing over to the ba.s.s. And when I stretched out my hand to the thick string, he caught hold of me by the ear and dragged me, respectfully, to the door:
"Here, scamp, kiss the "_Mezuzah_.""
But this was not of much consequence to me. It did not make me go a single step from the musicians. I loved them all, from Sheika the little fiddler with his beautiful black beard and his thin white hands, to Getza the drummer with his beautiful hump, and, if you will forgive me for mentioning it, the big bald patches behind his ears. Not once, but many times did I lie hidden under a bench, listening to the musicians playing, though I was frequently found and sent home. And from there, from under the bench, I could see how Sheika"s thin little fingers danced about over the strings; and I listened to the sweet sounds which he drew so cleverly out of the little fiddle.
Afterwards I used to go about in a state of great inward excitement for many days on end. And Sheika and his little fiddle stood before my eyes always. At night I saw him in my dreams; and in the daytime I saw him in reality; and he never left my imagination. When no one was looking I used to imagine that I was Sheika, the little fiddler. I used to curve my left arm and move my fingers, and draw out my right hand, as if I were drawing the bow across the strings. At the same time I threw my head to one side, closing my eyes a little--just as Sheika did, not a hair different.
My "_Rebbe_," Nota-Leib, once caught me doing this. It happened in the middle of a lesson. I was moving my arms about, throwing my head to one side, and blinking my eyes, and he gave me a sound box on the ears.
"What a scamp can do! We are teaching him his lessons, and he makes faces and catches flies!"
I promised myself that, even if the world turned upside down, I must have a little fiddle, let it cost me what it would. But what was I to make a fiddle out of? Of cedar wood, of course. But it"s easy to talk of cedar wood. How was I to come by it when, as everybody knows, the cedar tree grows only in Palestine? But what does the Lord do for me? He goes and puts a certain thought in my head. In our house there was an old sofa. This sofa was left us, as a legacy, by our grandfather "_Reb_"
Anshel. And my two uncles fought over this sofa with my father--peace be unto him! My uncle Benny argued that since he was my grandfather"s oldest son, the sofa belonged to him; and my uncle Sender argued that he was the youngest son, and that the sofa belonged to him. And my father--peace be unto him!--argued that although he was no more than a son-in-law to my grandfather, and had no personal claim on the sofa, still, since his wife, my mother, that is, was the only daughter of "_Reb_" Anshel, the sofa belonged, by right, to her. But all this happened long ago. And as the sofa has remained in our house, this was a proof that it was our sofa. And our two aunts interfered, my aunt Etka, and my aunt Zlatka. They began to invent scandals and to carry tales from one house to another. It was sofa and sofa, and nothing else but sofa! The town rocked, all because of the sofa. However, to make a long story short, the sofa remained our sofa.
This same sofa was an ordinary wooden sofa covered with a thin veneer.
This veneer had come unloosened in many places and was split up. It had now a number of small mounds. And the upper layer of the veneer which had come unloosened was of the real cedar wood--the wood of which fiddles are made. At least, that is what I was told at school. The sofa had one fault, and this fault was, in reality, a good quality. For instance, when one sat on it one could not get up off it again because it stood a little on the slant. One side was higher than the other, and in the middle there was a hole. And the good thing about our sofa was that no one wanted to sit on it, and it was put away in a corner, to one side, in compulsory retirement.
It was on this sofa that I had cast my eyes, to make a fiddle out of the cedar wood veneer. A bow I had already provided myself with, long ago. I had a comrade, Shimalle Yudel, the car-owner"s son. He promised me a few hairs from the tail of his father"s horse. And resin to smear the bow with I had myself. I hated to depend on miracles. I got the resin from another friend of mine, Mayer-Lippa, Sarah"s son, for a bit of steel from my mother"s old crinoline which had been knocking about in the attic. Out of this piece of steel, Mayer Lippa afterwards made himself a little knife. It is true when I saw the knife I wanted him to change back again with me. But he would not have it. He began to shout:
"A clever fellow that! What do you say to him! I worked hard for three whole nights. I sharpened and sharpened and cut all my fingers sharpening, and now he comes and wants me to change back again with him!"
"Just look at him!" I cried. "Well then, it won"t be! A great bargain for you--a little bit of steel! Isn"t there enough steel knocking about in our attic? There will be enough for our children, and our children"s children even."
Anyway, I had everything that was necessary. And there only remained one thing for me to do--to scale off the cedar wood from the sofa. For this work I selected a very good time, when my mother was in the shop, and my father had gone to lie down and have a nap after dinner. I hid myself in a corner and, with a big nail, I betook myself to my work in good earnest. My father heard, in his sleep, how some one was sc.r.a.ping something. At first he thought there were mice in the house, and he began to make a noise from his bedroom to drive them off--"Kush! Kush!"
I was like dead.... My father turned over on the other side and when I heard him snoring again, I went back to my work. Suddenly I looked about me. My father was standing and staring at me with curious eyes. It appeared that he could not, on any account, understand what was going on--what I was doing. Then, when he saw the spoiled and torn sofa, he realized what I had done. He pulled me out of the corner by the ear and beat me so much that I fainted away and had to be revived. I actually had to have cold water thrown over me to bring me to life again.
"The Lord be with you! What have you done to the child?" my mother wailed, the tears starting to her eyes.
"Your beautiful son! He will drive me into my grave, while I am still living," said my father, who was white as chalk. He put his hand to his heart and was attacked by a fit of coughing which lasted several minutes.
"Why should you eat your heart out like this?" my mother asked him. "As it is you are a sickly man. Just look at the face you"ve got. May my enemies have as healthy a year!"
My desire to play the fiddle grew with me. The older I grew, the stronger became my desire. And, as if out of spite, I was destined to hear music every day of the week. Right in the middle of the road, halfway between my home and the school, stood a little house covered with earth. And from that house came forth various sweet sounds. But most often than all the playing of a fiddle could be heard. In that house there lived a musician whose name was Naphtali "_Bezborodka_,"--a Jew who wore a short jacket, curled-up earlocks, and a starched collar.
He had a fine-sized nose. It looked as if it had been stuck on his face.
He had thick lips and black teeth. His face was pock-pitted, and had not on it even signs of a beard. That is why he was called "_Bezborodka_,"
the Beardless One. He had a wife who was like a machine. The people called her "Mother Eve." Of children he had about a dozen and a half.
They were ragged, half-naked, and bare-footed. And each child, from the biggest to the smallest, played on a musical instrument. One played the fiddle, another the "cello, another the double-ba.s.s, another the trumpet, another the "_Ballalaika_," another the drum, and another the cymbals. And amongst them there were some who could whistle the longest melody with their lips, or between their teeth. Others could play tunes on little gla.s.ses, or little pots, or bits of wood. And some made music with their faces. They were demons, evil spirits--nothing else.
I made the acquaintance of this family quite by accident. One day, as I was standing outside the window of their house, listening to them playing, one of the children, Pinna the flautist, a youth of about fifteen, in bare feet, caught sight of me through the window. He came out to me and asked me if I liked his playing.
"I only wish," said I, "that I may play as well as you in ten years"
time."
"Can"t you manage it?" he asked of me. And he told me that for two and a half "_roubles_" a month, his father would teach me how to play. But if I liked he himself, the son, that is, would teach me.
"Which instrument would you like to learn to play?" he asked. "On the fiddle?"
"On the fiddle."
"On the fiddle?" he repeated. "Can you pay two and a half "_roubles_" a month? Or are you as unfortunate as I am?"
"So far as that goes, I can manage it," I said. "But what then? Neither my father nor my mother, nor my teacher must know that I am learning to play the fiddle."
"The Lord keep us from telling it!" he cried. "Whose business is it to drum the news through the town? Maybe you have on you a cigar end, or a cigarette? No? You don"t smoke? Then lend me a "_kopek_" and I will buy cigarettes for myself. But you must tell no one, because my father must not know that I smoke. And if my mother finds that I have money, she will take it from me and buy rolls for supper. Come into the house. What are we standing here for?"
With great fear, with a palpitating heart and trembling limbs, I crossed the threshold of the house that was to me a little Garden of Eden.
My friend Pinna introduced me to his father.
"Shalom--Nahum Veviks--a rich man"s boy. He wants to learn to play the fiddle."
Naphtali "_Bezborodka_" twirled his earlocks, straightened his collar, b.u.t.toned up his coat, and started a long conversation with me, all about music and musical instruments in general and the fiddle in particular.
He gave me to understand that the fiddle was the best and most beautiful of all instruments. There was none older and none more wonderful in the world than the fiddle. To prove this to me, he went on to tell me that the fiddle was always the leading instrument of any orchestra, and not the trumpet or the flute. And this was simply because the fiddle was the mother of all musical instruments.
And so it came about that Naphtali "_Bezborodka_" gave me a whole lecture on music. Whilst he was speaking he gesticulated with his hands and moved his nose, and I stood staring right into his mouth. I looked at his black teeth and swallowed, yes, positively swallowed, every word that he said.
"The fiddle, you must understand," went on Naphtali "_Bezborodka_" to me, and evidently satisfied with the lecture he was giving me, "the fiddle, you must understand, is an instrument that is older than all other instruments. The first man in the world to play on the fiddle was Jubal-Cain, or Methuselah, I don"t exactly remember which. You will know that better than I, for, to be sure, you are learning Bible history at school. The second fiddler in the world was King David. Another great fiddler--the third greatest in the world--was Paganini. He also was a Jew. All the best fiddlers in the world were Jews. For instance there was "_Stempenyu_," and there was "_Pedotchur_." Of myself I say nothing.
People tell me that I do not play the fiddle badly. But how can I come up to Paganini? They say that Paganini sold his soul to the Ashmodai for a fiddle. Paganini hated to play before great people like kings and popes, although they covered him with gold. He would much rather play at wayside inns for poor folks, or in villages. Or else he would play in the forest for wild beasts and fowls of the air. What a fiddler Paganini was!...
"Eh, boys, to your places! To your instruments!"
That was the order which Naphtali "_Bezborodka_" gave to his regiment of children, all of whom came together in one minute. Each one took up an instrument. Naphtali himself stood up, beat his baton on the table, threw a sharp glance on every separate child and on all at once; and they began to play a concert on every sort of instrument with so much force that I was almost knocked off my feet. Each child tried to make more noise than the other. But above all, I was nearly deafened by the noise that one boy made, a little fellow who was called Hemalle. He was a dry little boy with a wet little nose, and dirty bare little feet.
Hemalle played a curiously made instrument. It was a sort of sack which, when you blew it up, let out a mad screech--a peculiar sound like a yell of a cat after you have trodden on its tail. Hemalle beat time with his little bare foot. And all the while he kept looking at me out of his roguish little eyes, and winking to me as if he would say: "Well, isn"t it so? I blow well--don"t I?" But it was Naphtali himself who worked the hardest of all. Along with playing the fiddle, he led the orchestra, waved his hands about, shifted his feet, and moved his nose, and his eyes and his whole body. And if some one made a mistake--G.o.d forbid! he ground his teeth and shouted in anger:
"Forte, devil, forte! Fortissimo! Time, wretch, time! One, two, three!