Fight it, Davie. Give up studying by heart. It is not with a pure motive you are doing it. Your studies are poisoned with hatred and malice. Do you want to gladden my heart, Davie?"
"I do. I will. What do you mean?" "Just step up to the Pole and beg his pardon for the evil thoughts you have harbored about him."
A minute later I stood in front of my hated rival, thrilling with the ecstasy of penitence.
"I have sinned against you. Forgive me," I said, with downcast eyes
The Pole was puzzled
"I envied you," I explained. "I could not bear to hear everybody speak of the five hundred leaves you know by heart. So I wanted to show you that I could learn by heart just as much, if not more."
A suggestion of a sneer flitted across his well-fed face. It stung me as if it were some loathsome insect. His golden forelock exasperated me
"And I could do it, too," I snapped. "I have learned more than fifty leaves already. It is not so much of a trick as I thought it was."
"Is it not?" the Pole said, with a full-grown sneer
"You need not be so stuck up, anyhow," I shot back, and turned away
Before I had reached Reb Sender, who had been watching us, I rushed back to the Pole
"I just want to say this," I began, in a towering rage. "With all your boasted memory you would be glad to change brains with me."
His shoulders shook with soundless mirth
"Laugh away. But let Reb Sender examine both of us. Let him select a pa.s.sage and see who of us can delve deeper into it, you or I? Memory alone is nothing."
"Isn"t it? Then why are you green with envy of me?" And once more he burst into a laugh, with a graceful jerk of his head which set my blood on fire
"You"re a pampered idiot."
"You"re green with envy."
"I"ll break every bone in you."
We flew at each other, but Reb Sender and two other scholars tore us apart
"Shame!" the Talmudists cried, shrugging their shoulders in disgust
"Just like Gentiles," some one commented
"It is an outrage to have the holy place desecrated in this manner."
"What has got into you?" Reb Sender said to me as he led me back to my desk
I resumed studying by heart with more energy than ever. "That"s all right!" I thought to myself. "I"ll have that silk-stocking of a fellow lick the dust of my shoes." I now took special measures to guard my secret even from Reb Sender. One of these was to take a book home and to work there, staying away from synagogue as often as I could invent a plausible pretext. I was lying right and left. Satan chuckled in my face, but I did not care. I promised myself to settle my accounts with the Uppermost later on. The only thing that mattered now was to beat the Pole
The sight of me learning the Word of G.o.d so diligently was a source of indescribable joy to my mother. She struggled to suppress her feeling, but from time to time a sigh would escape her, as though the rush of happiness was too much for her heart
Alas! this happiness of hers was not to last much longer
BOOK III
I LOSE MY MOTHER
CHAPTER I
IT was Purim, the feast of Esther. Our school-boys were celebrating the downfall of Haman, and they were doing it in the same war-like fashion in which American boys celebrate their forefathers" defiance of George III. The synagogues roared with the booming of fire-crackers, the report of toy pistols, the whir-whir of Purim rattles. It was four weeks to the great eight-day festival of Pa.s.sover and my mother went to work in a bakery of unleavened bread. She toiled from eighteen to twenty hours a day, so that she often dozed off over her rolling-pin from sheer exhaustion. But then she earned far more than usual. Including tips from customers (the baker merely acted as a contractor for the families whose flour he transformed into flat, round, tasteless Pa.s.sover cakes, or "matzoths") she saved up, during the period, a little over twenty rubles. With a part of this sum she ordered a new coat for me and bought me a new cap. I remember that coat very well. It was of a dark-brown cotton stuff, neat at the waist and with absurdly long skirts, of course. The Jewish Pa.s.sover often concurs with the Christian Easter. This was the case in the year in question. One afternoon--it was the seventh day of our festival--I chanced to be crossing the Horse-market. As it was not market day, it was deserted save for groups of young Gentiles, civilians and soldiers, who were rolling brightly colored Easter eggs over the ground. My new long-skirted coat and side-locks provoked their mirth until one of them hit me a savage blow in the face, splitting my lower lip.
Another rowdy s.n.a.t.c.hed off my new cap--just because our people considered it a sin to go bareheaded. And, as I made my way, bleeding, with one hand to my lip and the other over my bare head, the company sent a shower of broken eggs and a chorus of jeers after me
It was only a short distance from Abner"s Court. When I entered our bas.e.m.e.nt and faced my mother, she stared at me for a moment, as though dumfounded, and then, slapping her hands together, she sobbed: "Woe is me! Darkness is me! What has happened to you?"
When she had heard my story she stood silent awhile, looking aghast, and then left the house.
"I"m going to kill him. I am just going to kill him," she said, in measured accents which still ring in my ears
The bookbinder"s wife, the retired soldier, and I ran after her, imploring her not to risk her life on such a foolhardy errand, but she took no heed of us
"Foolish woman! You don"t even know who did it," urged the soldier
"I"ll find out!" she answered
The bookbinder"s wife seized her by an arm, but she shook her off.
I pleaded with her with tears in my eyes
"Go back," she said to me, trying to be gentle while her eyes were lit with an ominous look
These were the last words I ever heard her utter
Fifteen minutes later she was carried into our bas.e.m.e.nt unconscious. Her face was bruised and swollen and the back of her head was broken. She died the same evening
I have never been able to learn the ghastly details of her death. The police and an examining magistrate were said to be investigating the case, but nothing came of it
There was no lack of excitement among the Jews of Antomir. The funeral was expected to draw a vast crowd. But the epidemic of anti-Jewish atrocities of 1881 and 1882 were fresh in one"s mind, so word was pa.s.sed round "not to irritate the Gentiles." The younger and "modern" element in town took exception to this timidity. They insisted upon a demonstrative funeral. They were organizing for self-defense in case the procession was interfered with, but the counsel of older people prevailed. As a consequence, the number of mourners following the hea.r.s.e was even smaller than it would have been if my mother had died a natural death.
And the few who did take part in the sad procession were unusually silent. A Jewish funeral without a chorus of sobbing women was inconceivable in Antomir. Indeed, a pious matron who happens to come across such a scene will join in the weeping, whether she had ever heard of the deceased or not. On this occasion, however, sobs were conspicuous by their absence
""S-sh! "s-sh! None of your wailing!" an old man kept admonishing the women
I spent the "Seven Days "(of mourning) in our bas.e.m.e.nt, where I received visits from neighbors, from the families of my two distant relatives, from Reb Sender and other Talmudists of my synagogue. Among these was the Pole.
This time my rival begged my forgiveness. I granted it, of course, but I felt that we never could like each other
There was a great wave of sympathy for me. Offers of a.s.sistance came pouring in in all sorts of forms. Had there been a Yiddish newspaper in town and such things as public meetings, the outburst might have crystallized into what, to me, would have been a great fortune. As it was, public interest in me died before anything tangible was done. Still, there were several prosperous families of the old-fashioned cla.s.s, each of which wanted to provide me with excellent board. But then Reb Sender"s wife, in a fit of compa.s.sion and carried away by the prevailing spirit of the moment, claimed the sole right to feed me
"I"ll take his mother"s place," she said. "Whatever the Upper One gives us will be enough for him, too." Her husband was happy, while I lacked the courage to overrule them