Part 24

"Why should it come like this?" Dobe went on. "The same time, the same sickness?"

"A simple blind coincidence of circumstances," replied her husband.

"But so exactly--one like the other, as if somebody had made it happen on purpose."

Ginzburg understood his wife's meaning, and answered short and sharp:

"Dobe, don't talk nonsense."

Meanwhile Dvorehle's illness developed, and the day came on which the doctor said that a crisis would occur within twenty-four hours. What this meant to the Ginzburgs would be difficult to describe, but each of them determined privately not to survive the loss of their second child.

They sat beside it, not lifting their eyes from its face. They were pale and dazed with grief and sleepless nights, their hearts half-dead within them, they shed no tears, they were so much more dead than alive themselves, and the child's flame of life flickered and dwindled, flickered and dwindled.

A tangle of memories was stirring in Ginzburg's head, all relating to deaths and graves. He lived through the death of their first child with all details--his father's death, his mother's--early in a summer morning--that was--that was--he recalls it--as though it were to-day.

"What is to-day?" he wonders. "What day of the month is it?" And then he remembers, it is the first of May.

"The same day," he murmurs, as if he were talking in his sleep.

"What the same day?" asks Dobe.

"Nothing," says Ginzburg. "I was thinking of something."

He went on thinking, and fell into a doze where he sat.

He saw his mother enter the room with a soft step, take a chair, and sit down by the sick child.

"Mother, save it!" he begs her, his heart is full to bursting, and he begins to cry.

"Isrolik," says his mother, "I have brought a remedy for the child that bears my name."

"Mame!!!"

He is about to throw himself upon her neck and kiss her, but she motions him lightly aside.

"Why do you never light a candle for my Yohrzeit?" she inquires, and looks at him reproachfully.

"Mame, have pity on us, save the child!"

"The child will live, only you must light me a candle."

"Mame" (he sobs louder), "have pity!"

"Light my candle--make haste, make haste--"

"Ginzburg!" a shriek from his wife, and he awoke with a start.

"Ginzburg, the child is dying! Fly for the doctor."

Ginzburg cast a look at the child, a chill went through him, he ran to the door.

The doctor came in person.

"Our child is dying! Help save it!" wailed the unhappy mother, and he, Ginzburg, stood and shivered as with cold.

The doctor scrutinized the child, and said:

"The crisis is coming on." There was something dreadful in the quiet of his tone.

"What can be done?" and the Ginzburgs wrung their hands.

"Hush! Nothing! Bring some hot water, bottles of hot water!--Champagne!--Where is the medicine? Quick!" commanded the doctor.

Everything was to hand and ready in an instant.

The doctor began to busy himself with the child, the parents stood by pale as death.

"Well," asked Dobe, "what?"

"We shall soon know," said the doctor.

Ginzburg looked round, glided like a shadow into a corner of the room, and lit the little lamp that stood there.

"What is that for?" asked Dobe, in a fright.

"Nothing, Yohrzeit--my mother's," he answered in a strange voice, and his hands never ceased trembling.

"Your child will live," said the doctor, and father and mother fell upon the child's bed with their faces, and wept.

The flame in the lamp burnt brighter and brighter.

SLACK TIMES THEY SLEEP

Despite the fact of the winter nights being long and dark as the Jewish exile, the Breklins go to bed at dusk.

But you may as well know that when it is dusk outside in the street, the Breklins are already "way on" in the night, because they live in a basement, separated from the rest of the world by an air-shaft, and when the sun gathers his beams round him before setting, the first to be summoned are those down the Breklins' shaft, because of the time required for them to struggle out again.

The same thing in the morning, only reversed. People don't usually get up, if they can help it, before it is really light, and so it comes to pass that when other people have left their beds, and are going about their business, the Breklins are still asleep and making the long, long night longer yet.

If you ask me, "How is it they don't wear their sides out with lying in bed?" I shall reply: They _do_ rise with aching sides, and if you say, "How can people be so lazy?" I can tell you, They don't do it out of laziness, and they lie awake a great part of the time.

What's the good of lying in bed if one isn't asleep?

There you have it in a nutshell--it's a question of the economic conditions. The Breklins are very poor, their life is a never-ending struggle with poverty, and they have come to the conclusion that the cheapest way of waging it, and especially in winter, is to lie in bed under a great heap of old clothes and rags of every description.

Breklin is a house-painter, and from Christmas to Purim (I beg to distinguish!) work is dreadfully slack. When you're not earning a crooked penny, what are you to do?

In the first place, you must live on "cash," that is, on the few dollars scraped together and put by during the "season," and in the second place, you must cut down your domestic expenses, otherwise the money won't hold out, and then you might as well keep your teeth in a drawer.

But you may neither eat nor drink, nor live at all to mention--if it's winter, the money goes all the same: it's bitterly cold, and you can't do without the stove, and the nights are long, and you want a lamp.

And the Breklins saw that their money would _not_ hold out till Purim--that their Fast of Esther would be too long. Coal was beyond them, and kerosene as dear as wine, and yet how could they possibly spend less? How could they do without a fire when it was so cold? Without a lamp when it was so dark? And the Breklins had an "idea"!

Why sit up at night and watch the stove and the lamp burning away their money, when they might get into bed, bury themselves in rags, and defy both poverty and cold? There is nothing in particular to do, anyhow. What should there be, a long winter evening through? Nothing! They only sat and poured out the bitterness in their heart one upon the other, quarrelled, and scolded. They could do that in bed just as well, and save firing and light into the bargain.

So, at the first approach of darkness, the bed was made ready for Mr. Breklin, and his wife put to sleep their only, three-year-old child. Avremele did not understand why he was put to bed so early, but he asked no questions. The room began to feel cold, and the poor little thing was glad to nestle deep into the bedcoverings.

The lamp and the fire were extinguished, the stove would soon go out of itself, and the Breklin family slept.

They slept, and fought against poverty by lying in bed.

It was waging cheap warfare.

* * * * *

Having had his first sleep out, Breklin turns to his wife:

"What do you suppose the time to be now, Yudith?"

Yudith listens attentively.

"It must be past eight o'clock," she says.

"What makes you think so?" asks Breklin.

"Don't you hear the clatter of knives and forks? Well-to-do folk are having supper."

"We also used to have supper about this time, in the Tsisin," said Breklin, and he gave a deep sigh of longing.

"We shall soon forget the good times altogether," says Yudith, and husband and wife set sail once more for the land of dreams.

A few hours later Breklin wakes with a groan.

"What is the matter?" inquires Yudith.

"My sides ache with lying."

"Mine, too," says Yudith, and they both begin yawning.

"What o'clock would it be now?" wonders Breklin, and Yudith listens again.

"About ten o'clock," she tells him.

"No later? I don't believe it. It must be a great deal later than that."

"Well, listen for yourself," persists Yudith, "and you'll hear the housekeeper upstairs scolding somebody. She's putting out the gas in the hall."

"Oi, weh is mir! How the night drags!" sighs Breklin, and turns over onto his other side.

Yudith goes on talking, but as much to herself as to him:

"Upstairs they are still all alive, and we are asleep in bed."

"Weh is mir, weh is mir!" sighs Breklin over and over, and once more there is silence.

The night wears on.

"Are you asleep?" asks Breklin, suddenly.

"I wish I were! Who could sleep through such a long night? I'm lying awake and racking my brains."

"What over?" asks Breklin, interested.

"I'm trying to think," explains Yudith, "what we can have for dinner to-morrow that will cost nothing, and yet be satisfying."

"Oi, weh is mir!" sighs Breklin again, and is at a loss what to advise.

"I wonder" (this time it is Yudith) "what o'clock it is now!"

"It will soon be morning," is Breklin's opinion.

"Morning? Nonsense!" Yudith knows better.

"It must be morning soon!" He holds to it.

"You are very anxious for the morning," says Yudith, good-naturedly, "and so you think it will soon be here, and I tell you, it's not midnight yet."

"What are you talking about? You don't know what you're saying! I shall go out of my mind."

"You know," says Yudith, "that Avremele always wakes at midnight and cries, and he's still fast asleep."

"No, Mame," comes from under Avremele's heap of rags.

"Come to me, my beauty! So he was awake after all!" and Yudith reaches out her arms for the child.

"Perhaps he's cold," says Breklin.

"Are you cold, sonny?" asks Yudith.

"Cold, Mame!" replies Avremele.

Yudith wraps the coverlets closer and closer round him, and presses him to her side.

And the night wears on.

"O my sides!" groans Breklin.

"Mine, too!" moans Yudith, and they start another conversation.

One time they discuss their neighbors; another time the Breklins try to calculate how long it is since they married, how much they spend a week on an average, and what was the cost of Yudith's confinement.

It is seldom they calculate anything right, but talking helps to while away time, till the basement begins to lighten, whereupon the Breklins jump out of bed, as though it were some perilous hiding-place, and set to work in a great hurry to kindle the stove.

ABRAHAM RAISIN

Born, 1876, in Kaidanov, Government of Minsk (Lithuania), White Russia; traditional Jewish education; self-taught in Russian language; teacher at fifteen, first in Kaidanov, then in Minsk; first poem published in Perez's Juedische Bibliothek, in 1891; served in the army, in Kovno, for four years; went to Warsaw in 1900, and to New York in 1911; Yiddish lyric poet and novelist; occasionally writes Hebrew; contributor to Spektor's Hausfreund, New York Abendpost, and New York Arbeiterzeitung; co-editor of Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert; in 1903, published and edited, in Cracow, Das juedische Wort, first to urge the claim of Yiddish as the national Jewish language; publisher and editor, since 1911, of Dos neie Land, in New York; collected works (poems and tales), 4 vols., Warsaw, 1908-1912.

SHUT IN

Lebele is a little boy ten years old, with pale cheeks, liquid, dreamy eyes, and black hair that falls in twisted ringlets, but, of course, the ringlets are only seen when his hat falls off, for Lebele is a pious little boy, who never uncovers his head.

There are things that Lebele loves and never has, or else he has them only in part, and that is why his eyes are always dreamy and troubled, and always full of longing.

He loves the summer, and sits the whole day in Cheder. He loves the sun, and the Rebbe hangs his caftan across the window, and the Cheder is darkened, so that it oppresses the soul. Lebele loves the moon, the night, but at home they close the shutters, and Lebele, on his little bed, feels as if he were buried alive. And Lebele cannot understand people's behaving so oddly.

It seems to him that when the sun shines in at the window, it is a delight, it is so pleasant and cheerful, and the Rebbe goes and curtains it--no more sun! If Lebele dared, he would ask:

"What ails you, Rebbe, at the sun? What harm can it do you?"

But Lebele will never put that question: the Rebbe is such a great and learned man, he must know best. Ai, how dare he, Lebele, disapprove? He is only a little boy. When he is grown up, he will doubtless curtain the window himself. But as things are now, Lebele is not happy, and feels sadly perplexed at the behavior of his elders.

Late in the evening, he comes home from Cheder. The sun has already set, the street is cheerful and merry, the cockchafers whizz and, flying, hit him on the nose, the ear, the forehead.

He would like to play about a bit in the street, let them have supper without him, but he is afraid of his father. His father is a kind man when he talks to strangers, he is so gentle, so considerate, so confidential. But to him, to Lebele, he is very unkind, always shouting at him, and if Lebele comes from Cheder a few minutes late, he will be angry.

"Where have you been, my fine fellow? Have you business anywhere?"

Now go and tell him that it is not at all so bad out in the street, that it's a pleasure to hear how the cockchafers whirr, that even the hits they give you on the wing are friendly, and mean, "Hallo, old fellow!" Of course it's a wild absurdity! It amuses him, because he is only a little boy, while his father is a great man, who trades in wood and corn, and who always knows the current prices--when a thing is dearer and when it is cheaper. His father can speak the Gentile language, and drive bargains, his father understands the Prussian weights. Is that a man to be thought lightly of? Go and tell him, if you dare, that it's delightful now out in the street.

And Lebele hurries straight home. When he has reached it, his father asks him how many chapters he has mastered, and if he answers five, his father hums a tune without looking at him; but if he says only three, his father is angry, and asks:

"How's that? Why so little, ha?"

And Lebele is silent, and feels guilty before his father.

After that his father makes him translate a Hebrew word.

"Translate _Kimlunah_!"

"_Kimlunah_ means 'like a passing the night,'" answers Lebele, terrified.

His father is silent--a sign that he is satisfied--and they sit down to supper. Lebele's father keeps an eye on him the whole time, and instructs him how to eat.

"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 Gass. 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 chinks. He tries to sit up in bed, to peer out, also through the chinks, 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 'aeus 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-Baeres?" 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-Baeres 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-glass 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-Baeres, Chayyim's heart began to fail him. Since the day that Loibe-Baeres 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-Baeres 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-Baeres was passing 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-Baeres 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!"