Part 26

The fear of losing his voice had tormented the cantor for the greater part of his life. His one care, his one anxiety had been, what should he do if he were to lose his voice? It had happened to him once already, when he was fourteen years old. He had a tenor voice, which broke all of a sudden. But that time he didn't care. On the contrary, he was delighted, he knew that his voice was merely changing, and that in six months he would get the baritone for which he was impatiently waiting. But when he had got the baritone, he knew that when he lost that, it would be lost indeed--he would get no other voice. So he took great care of it--how much more so when he had his own household, and had taken the office of cantor in Klemenke! Not a breath of wind was allowed to blow upon his throat, and he wore a comforter in the hottest weather.

It was not so much on account of the Klemenke householders--he felt sure they would not dismiss him from his office. Even if he were to lose his voice altogether, he would still receive his salary. It was not brought to him to his house, as it was--he had to go for it every Friday from door to door, and the Klemenke Jews were good-hearted, and never refused anything to the outstretched hand. He took care of his voice, and trembled to lose it, only out of love for the singing. He thought a great deal of the Klemenke Jews--their like was not to be found--but in the interpretation of music they were uninitiated, they had no feeling whatever. And when, standing before the altar, he used to make artistic trills and variations, and take the highest notes, that was for _himself_--he had great joy in it--and also for his eight singers, who were all the world to him. His very life was bound up with them, and when one of them exclaimed, "Oi, cantor! Oi, how you sing!" his happiness was complete.

The singers had come together from various towns and villages, and all their conversations and their stories turned and wrapped themselves round cantors and music. These stories and legends were the cantor's delight, he would lose himself in every one of them, and give a sweet, deep sigh:

"As if music were a trifle! As if a feeling were a toy!" And now that he had begun to fear he was losing his voice, it seemed to him the singers were different people--bad people! They must be laughing at him among themselves! And he began to be on his guard against them, avoided taking a high note in their presence, lest they should find out--and suffered all the more.

And what would the neighboring cantors say? The thought tormented him further. He knew that he had a reputation among them, that he was a great deal thought of, that his voice was much talked of. He saw in his mind's eye a couple of cantors whispering together, and shaking their heads sorrowfully: they are pitying him! "How sad! You have heard? The poor Klemenke cantor----"

The vision quite upset him.

"Perhaps it's only fancy!" he would say to himself in those dreadful moments, and would begin to sing, to try his highest notes. But the terror he was in took away his hearing, and he could not tell if his voice were what it should be or not.

In two weeks time his face grew pale and thin, his eyes were sunk, and he felt his strength going.

"What is the matter with you, cantor?" said a singer to him one day.

"Ha, what is the matter?" asked the cantor, with a start, thinking they had already found out. "You ask what is the matter with me? Then you know something about it, ha!"

"No, I know nothing. That is why I ask you why you look so upset."

"Upset, you say? Nothing more than upset, ha? That's all?"

"The cantor must be thinking out some new piece for the Solemn Days," decided the choir.

Another month went by, and the cantor had not got the better of his fear. Life had become distasteful to him. If he had known for certain that his voice was gone, he would perhaps have been calmer. Verfallen! No one can live forever (losing his voice and dying was one and the same to him), but the uncertainty, the tossing oneself between yes and no, the Olom ha-Tohu of it all, embittered the cantor's existence.

At last, one fine day, the cantor resolved to get at the truth: he could bear it no longer.

It was evening, the wife had gone to the market for meat, and the choir had gone home, only the eldest singer, Yoessel "bass," remained with the cantor.

The cantor looked at him, opened his mouth and shut it again; it was difficult for him to say what he wanted to say.

At last he broke out with:

"Yoessel!"

"What is it, cantor?"

"Tell me, are you an honest man?"

Yoessel "bass" stared at the cantor, and asked:

"What are you asking me to-day, cantor?"

"Brother Yoessel," the cantor said, all but weeping, "Brother Yoessel!"

That was all he could say.

"Cantor, what is wrong with you?"

"Brother Yoessel, be an honest man, and tell me the truth, the truth!"

"I don't understand! What is the matter with you, cantor?"

"Tell me the truth: Do you notice any change in me?"

"Yes, I do," answered the singer, looking at the cantor, and seeing how pale and thin he was. "A very great change----"

"Now I see you are an honest man, you tell me the truth to my face. Do you know when it began?"

"It will soon be a month," answered the singer.

"Yes, brother, a month, a month, but I felt--"

The cantor wiped off the perspiration that covered his forehead, and continued:

"And you think, Yoessel, that it's lost now, for good and all?"

"That _what_ is lost?" asked Yoessel, beginning to be aware that the conversation turned on something quite different from what was in his own mind.

"What? How can you ask? Ah? What should I lose? Money? I have no money--I mean--of course--my voice."

Then Yoessel understood everything--he was too much of a musician _not_ to understand. Looking compassionately at the cantor, he asked:

"For certain?"

"For certain?" exclaimed the cantor, trying to be cheerful. "Why must it be for certain? Very likely it's all a mistake--let us hope it is!"

Yoessel looked at the cantor, and as a doctor behaves to his patient, so did he:

"Take _do_!" he said, and the cantor, like an obedient pupil, drew out _do_.

"Draw it out, draw it out! Four quavers--draw it out!" commanded Yoessel, listening attentively.

The cantor drew it out.

"Now, if you please, _re_!"

The cantor sang out _re-re-re_.

The singer moved aside, appeared to be lost in thought, and then said, sadly:

"Gone!"

"Forever?"

"Well, are you a little boy? Are you likely to get another voice? At your time of life, gone is gone!"

The cantor wrung his hands, threw himself down beside the table, and, laying his head on his arms, he burst out crying like a child.

Next morning the whole town had heard of the misfortune--that the cantor had lost his voice.

"It's an ill wind----" quoted the innkeeper, a well-to-do man. "He won't keep us so long with his trills on Sabbath. I'd take a bitter onion for that voice of his, any day!"

LATE

It was in sad and hopeless mood that Antosh watched the autumn making its way into his peasant's hut. The days began to shorten and the evenings to lengthen, and there was no more petroleum in the hut to fill his humble lamp; his wife complained too--the store of salt was giving out; there was very little soap left, and in a few days he would finish his tobacco. And Antosh cleared his throat, spat, and muttered countless times a day:

"No salt, no soap, no tobacco; we haven't got anything. A bad business!"

Antosh had no prospect of earning anything in the village. The one village Jew was poor himself, and had no work to give. Antosh had only _one_ hope left. Just before the Feast of Tabernacles he would drive a whole cart-load of fir-boughs into the little town and bring a tidy sum of money home in exchange.

He did this every year, since buying his thin horse in the market for six rubles.

"When shall you have Tabernacles?" he asked every day of the village Jew. "Not yet," was the Jew's daily reply. "But when _shall_ you?" Antosh insisted one day.

"In a week," answered the Jew, not dreaming how very much Antosh needed to know precisely.

In reality there were only five more days to Tabernacles, and Antosh had calculated with business accuracy that it would be best to take the fir-boughs into the town two days before the festival. But this was really the first day of it.

He rose early, ate his dry, black bread dipped in salt, and drank a measure of water. Then he harnessed his thin, starved horse to the cart, took his hatchet, and drove into the nearest wood.

He cut down the branches greedily, seeking out the thickest and longest.

"Good ware is easier sold," he thought, and the cart filled, and the load grew higher and higher. He was calculating on a return of three gulden, and it seemed still too little, so that he went on cutting, and laid on a few more boughs. The cart could hold no more, and Antosh looked at it from all sides, and smiled contentedly.

"That will be enough," he muttered, and loosened the reins. But scarcely had he driven a few paces, when he stopped and looked the cart over again.

"Perhaps it's not enough, after all?" he questioned fearfully, cut down five more boughs, laid them onto the already full cart, and drove on.

He drove slowly, pace by pace, and his thoughts travelled slowly too, as though keeping step with the thin horse.

Antosh was calculating how much salt and how much soap, how much petroleum and how much tobacco he could buy for the return for his ware. At length the calculating tired him, and he resolved to put it off till he should have the cash. Then the calculating would be done much more easily.

But when he reached the town, and saw that the booths were already covered with fir-boughs, he felt a pang at his heart. The booths and the houses seemed to be twirling round him in a circle, and dancing. But he consoled himself with the thought that every year, when he drove into town, he found many booths already covered. Some cover earlier, some later. The latter paid the best.

"I shall ask higher prices," he resolved, and all the while fear tugged at his heart. He drove on. Two Jewish women were standing before a house; they pointed at the cart with their finger, and laughed aloud.

"Why do you laugh?" queried Antosh, excitedly.

"Because you are too soon with your fir-boughs," they answered, and laughed again.

"How too soon?" he asked, astonished. "Too soon--too soon--" laughed the women.

"Pfui," Antosh spat, and drove on, thinking, "Berko said himself, 'In a week.' I am only two days ahead."

A cold sweat covered him, as he reflected he might have made a wrong calculation, founded on what Berko had told him. It was possible that he had counted the days badly--had come too late! There is no doubt: all the booths are covered with fir-boughs. He will have no salt, no tobacco, no soap, and no petroleum.

Sadly he followed the slow paces of his languid horse, which let his weary head droop as though out of sympathy for his master.

Meantime the Jews were crowding out of the synagogues in festal array, with their prayer-scarfs and prayer-books in their hands. When they perceived the peasant with the cart of fir-boughs, they looked questioningly one at the other: Had they made a mistake and begun the festival too early?

"What have you there?" some one inquired.

"What?" answered Antosh, taken aback. "Fir-boughs! Buy, my dear friend, I sell it cheap!" he begged in a piteous voice.

The Jews burst out laughing.

"What should we want it for now, fool?" "The festival has begun!" said another. Antosh was confused with his misfortune, he scratched the back of his head, and exclaimed, weeping:

"Buy! Buy! I want salt, soap! I want petroleum."

The group of Jews, who had begun by laughing, were now deeply moved. They saw the poor, starving peasant standing there in his despair, and were filled with a lively compassion.

"A poor Gentile--it's pitiful!" said one, sympathetically. "He hoped to make a fortune out of his fir-boughs, and now!" observed another.

"It would be proper to buy up that bit of fir," said a third, "else it might cause a Chillul ha-Shem." "On a festival?" objected some one else.

"It can always be used for firewood," said another, contemplating the cartful.

"Whether or no! It's a festival----"

"No salt, no soap, no petroleum--" It was the refrain of the bewildered peasant, who did not understand what the Jews were saying among themselves. He could only guess that they were talking about him. "Hold! he doesn't want _money_! He wants ware. Ware without money may be given even on a festival," called out one.

The interest of the bystanders waxed more lively. Among them stood a storekeeper, whose shop was close by. "Give him, Chayyim, a few jars of salt and other things that he wants--even if it comes to a few gulden. We will contribute."

"All right, willingly!" said Chayyim, "A poor Gentile!"

"A precept, a precept! It would be carrying out a religious precept, as surely as I am a Jew!" chimed in every individual member of the crowd.

Chayyim called the peasant to him; all the rest followed. He gave him out of the stores two jars of salt, a bar of soap, a bottle of petroleum, and two packets of tobacco.

The peasant did not know what to do for joy. He could only stammer in a low voice, "Thank you! thank you!"

"And there's a bit of Sabbath loaf," called out one, when he had packed the things away, "take that with you!"

"There's some more!" and a second hand held some out to him.

"More!"

"More!"

"And more!"

They brought Antosh bread and cake from all sides; his astonishment was such that he could scarcely articulate his thanks.

The people were pleased with themselves, and Yainkel Leives, a cheerful man, who was well supplied for the festival, because his daughter's "intended" was staying in his house, brought Antosh a glass of brandy:

"Drink, and drive home, in the name of God!"

Antosh drank the brandy with a quick gulp, bit off a piece of cake, and declared joyfully, "I shall never forget it!"

"Not at all a bad Gentile," remarked someone in the crowd.

"Well, what would you have? Did you expect him to beat you?" queried another, smiling.

The words "to beat" made a melancholy impression on the crowd, and it dispersed in silence.

THE KADDISH

From behind the curtain came low moans, and low words of encouragement from the old and experienced Bobbe. In the room it was dismal to suffocation. The seven children, all girls, between twenty-three and four years old, sat quietly, each by herself, with drooping head, and waited for something dreadful.

At a little table near a great cupboard with books sat the "patriarch" Reb Selig Chanes, a tall, thin Jew, with a yellow, consumptive face. He was chanting in low, broken tones out of a big Gemoreh, and continually raising his head, giving a nervous glance at the curtain, and then, without inquiring what might be going on beyond the low moaning, taking up once again his sad, tremulous chant. He seemed to be suffering more than the woman in childbirth herself.

"Lord of the World!"--it was the eldest daughter who broke the stillness--"Let it be a boy for once! Help, Lord of the World, have pity!"

"Oi, thus might it be, Lord of the World!" chimed in the second.

And all the girls, little and big, with broken heart and prostrate spirit, prayed that there might be born a boy.

Reb Selig raised his eyes from the Gemoreh, glanced at the curtain, then at the seven girls, gave vent to a deep-drawn Oi, made a gesture with his hand, and said with settled despair, "She will give you another sister!"

The seven girls looked at one another in desperation; their father's conclusion quite crushed them, and they had no longer even the courage to pray.

Only the littlest, the four-year-old, in the torn frock, prayed softly:

"Oi, please God, there will be a little brother."

"I shall die without a Kaddish!" groaned Reb Selig.

The time drags on, the moans behind the curtain grow louder, and Reb Selig and the elder girls feel that soon, very soon, the "grandmother" will call out in despair, "A little girl!" And Reb Selig feels that the words will strike home to his heart like a blow, and he resolves to run away.

He goes out into the yard, and looks up at the sky. It is midnight. The moon swims along so quietly and indifferently, the stars seem to frolic and rock themselves like little children, and still Reb Selig hears, in the "grandmother's" husky voice, "A girl!"

"Well, there will be no Kaddish! Verfallen!" he says, crossing the yard again. "There's no getting it by force!"

But his trying to calm himself is useless; the fear that it should be a girl only grows upon him. He loses patience, and goes back into the house.

But the house is in a turmoil.

"What is it, eh?"

"A little boy! Tate, a boy! Tatinke, as surely may I be well!" with this news the seven girls fall upon him with radiant faces.

"Eh, a little boy?" asked Reb Selig, as though bewildered, "eh? what?"

"A boy, Reb Selig, a Kaddish!" announced the "grandmother." "As soon as I have bathed him, I will show him you!"

"A boy ... a boy ..." stammered Reb Selig in the same bewilderment, and he leant against the wall, and burst into tears like a woman.

The seven girls took alarm.

"That is for joy," explained the "grandmother," "I have known that happen before."

"A boy ... a boy!" sobbed Reb Selig, overcome with happiness, "a boy ... a boy ... a Kaddish!"

* * * * *

The little boy received the name of Jacob, but he was called, by way of a talisman, Alter.

Reb Selig was a learned man, and inclined to think lightly of such protective measures; he even laughed at his Cheike for believing in such foolishness; but, at heart, he was content to have it so. Who could tell what might not be in it, after all? Women sometimes know better than men.

By the time Alterke was three years old, Reb Selig's cough had become worse, the sense of oppression on his chest more frequent. But he held himself morally erect, and looked death calmly in the face, as though he would say, "Now I can afford to laugh at you--I leave a Kaddish!"

"What do you think, Cheike," he would say to his wife, after a fit of coughing, "would Alterke be able to say Kaddish if I were to die to-day or to-morrow?"

"Go along with you, crazy pate!" Cheike would exclaim in secret alarm. "You are going to live a long while! Is your cough anything new?"

Selig smiled, "Foolish woman, she supposes I am afraid to die. When one leaves a Kaddish, death is a trifle."

Alterke was sitting playing with a prayer-book and imitating his father at prayer, "A num-num--a num-num."

"Listen to him praying!" and Cheike turned delightedly to her husband. "His soul is piously inclined!"

Selig made no reply, he only gazed at his Kaddish with a beaming face. Then an idea came into his head: Alterke will be a Tzaddik, will help him out of all his difficulties in the other world.

"Mame, I want to eat!" wailed Alterke, suddenly.

He was given a piece of the white bread which was laid aside, for him only, every Sabbath.

Alterke began to eat.

"Who bringest forth! Who bringest forth!" called out Reb Selig.

"Tan't!" answered the child.

"It is time you taught him to say grace," observed Cheike.

And Reb Selig drew Alterke to him and began to repeat with him.

"Say: Boruch."

"Bo'uch," repeated the child after his fashion.

"Attoh."

"Attoh."

When Alterke had finished "Who bringest forth," Cheike answered piously Amen, and Reb Selig saw Alterke, in imagination, standing in the synagogue and repeating Kaddish, and heard the congregation answer Amen, and he felt as though he were already seated in the Garden of Eden.

* * * * *

Another year went by, and Reb Selig was feeling very poorly. Spring had come, the snow had melted, and he found the wet weather more trying than ever before. He could just drag himself early to the synagogue, but going to the afternoon service had become a difficulty, and he used to recite the afternoon and later service at home, and spend the whole evening with Alterke.

It was late at night. All the houses were shut. Reb Selig sat at his little table, and was looking into the corner where Cheike's bed stood, and where Alterke slept beside her. Selig had a feeling that he would die that night. He felt very tired and weak, and with an imploring look he crept up to Alterke's crib, and began to wake him.

The child woke with a start.

"Alterke"--Reb Selig was stroking the little head--"come to me for a little!"

The child, who had had his first sleep out, sprang up, and went to his father.

Reb Selig sat down in the chair which stood by the little table with the open Gemoreh, lifted Alterke onto the table, and looked into his eyes.

"Alterke!"

"What, Tate?"

"Would you like me to die?"

"Like," answered the child, not knowing what "to die" meant, and thinking it must be something nice.

"Will you say Kaddish after me?" asked Reb Selig, in a strangled voice, and he was seized with a fit of coughing.

"Will say!" promised the child.

"Shall you know how?"

"Shall!"

"Well, now, say: Yisgaddal."

"Yisdaddal," repeated the child in his own way.

"Veyiskaddash."

"Veyistaddash."

And Reb Selig repeated the Kaddish with him several times.

The small lamp burnt low, and scarcely illuminated Reb Selig's yellow, corpse-like face, or the little one of Alterke, who repeated wearily the difficult, and to him unintelligible words of the Kaddish. And Alterke, all the while, gazed intently into the corner, where Tate's shadow and his own had a most fantastic and frightening appearance.

AVROHOM THE ORCHARD-KEEPER

When he first came to the place, as a boy, and went straight to the house-of-study, and people, having greeted him, asked "Where do you come from?" and he answered, not without pride, "From the Government of Wilna"--from that day until the day he was married, they called him "the Wilner."