Read Ebook: In Those Days: The Story of an Old Man by Steinberg Judah Jeshurun George Translator

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Ebook has 514 lines and 36275 words, and 11 pages

Young as I was, I considered myself as a Jew responsible for the wayward one. I lost control of myself, and ran out. But after I had been in the street for some time, I was seized with fear of the Catcher. Every stranger I met seemed to me to be a Catcher. I shrank into myself, walked unsteadily hither and thither, and did not know how to hide myself. Then a man met me. His large beard and curled side-locks made me think he was a good man. I looked at him imploringly. "What ails you, my boy?" he asked in a soft tone. "I am afraid of the Catcher," said I, tearfully.

"Whose son are you?"

I told him.

"Then come with me, and I shall hide you, my boy. Don't be afraid. I am your uncle. Don't you recognize me?"

He took me by the arm, and I went after him. Then I noticed that the children of my neighborhood were eyeing me terror-stricken. The womenfolk saw me, wrung their hands, and lamented aloud.

"What are they crying about?" I wondered.

"Do you want some candy? Your uncle has plenty of it," said he, bending over me, as if to protect me. "Or maybe your feet hurt you? Let your uncle take you on his arms." As soon as I heard "candy," I felt that the man was the Catcher himself, and I tried to break away. But the "uncle" held me fast. Then I began to yell. It was near our house, and the people of our alley rushed towards us, some yelling, some crying, some armed with sticks. Pretty soon I recognized my mother's voice in the mixture of voices and noises. You see, peculiar is the charm of a mother's voice: a knife may be held to one's throat, but the mere sound of mother's voice awakens new courage and begets new hope. Mother made a way for herself, and fell upon the Catcher like a wild beast. She struck, she pinched, she scratched, she pulled his hair, she bit him. But what can a woman do in the line of beating? Nothing! Her neighbors joined her, one, two, three; and all tried hard to take me out of the hands of the Catcher. What can a few women do against one able-bodied man? Nothing at all! That happened during the dinner hour. One of our neighbors got the best of the Catcher, a woman who happened rather to dislike me and my mother; they quarreled frequently. Perhaps on account of this very dislike she was not over-excited, and was able to hit upon the right course to take at the critical moment. She went to our house, took in one hand a potful of roasted groats, ready for dinner, and in the other a kettle of boiling water. Unnoticed she approached the Catcher, spilled the hot groats upon his hands, and at the same time she poured the boiling water over them. A wild yell escaped from the mouth of the Catcher--and I was free.--

There was no more tobacco in the pipe, and the old man lost his speech. That was the way of Samuel the Beadle; he could tell his story only from behind the smoke of his pipe, when he did not see his hearers, nor his hearers saw him. In that way he found it easy to put his boyhood before his mind's eye and conjure up the reminiscences of those days. Meanwhile the horses had stopped, and let us know that a high and steep hill was ahead of us, and that it was our turn to trudge through the mud. We had to submit to the will of the animals, and we dismounted.

After tramping a while alongside the coach, the old man lit his pipe, emitted a cloud of smoke, and continued:--

I do not know what happened then. I cannot tell who caught me, nor the place I was taken to. I must have been in a trance all the while.

When I awoke, I found myself surrounded by a flock of sheep, in a meadow near the woods. Near me was my brother Solomon; but I hardly recognized him. He wore peasant clothes: a linen shirt turned out over linen breeches and gathered in by a broad belt. I was eyeing my brother, and he was eyeing me, both of us equally bewildered, for I was disguised like himself.

A little boy, a real peasant boy, was standing near us. He smiled at us in a good-natured, hospitable way. It was the chore-boy of the Jewish quarter. On the Sabbaths of the winter months he kept up the fires in the Jewish houses; that is why he could jabber a few words of Yiddish. During the summer he took care of the flocks of the peasants that lived in the neighborhood.

When I awoke, my mother was with us too. She kissed us amid tears, gave us some bread and salt, and, departing, strictly forbade us to speak any Yiddish. "For God's sake, speak no Yiddish," said she, "you might be recognized! Hide here till the Catcher leaves town."

It was easy enough to say, "Speak no Yiddish"; but did we know how to speak any other language?

I saw then that I was in a sort of hiding-place--a hiding-place under the open sky! I realized that I had escaped from houses, garrets, and cellars, merely to hide in the open field between heaven and earth. I had fled from darkness, to hide in broad daylight!

Indeed, it was not light that I had to fear. Nor was it the sun, the moon, or the sheep. It was only man that I had to avoid.

Mother went away and left us under the protection of the little shepherd boy. And he was a good boy, indeed. He watched us to the best of his ability. As soon as he saw any one approach our place, he called out loudly: "No, no; these are not Jewish boys at all! On my life, they are not!"

As a matter of facet, a stranger did happen to visit our place; but he was only a butcher, who came to buy sheep for slaughtering.

Well, the sun had set, and night came. It was my first night under an open sky. I suffered greatly from fear, for there was no Mezuzah anywhere near me. I put my hand under my Shaatnez clothes, and felt my Tzitzis: they, too, seemed to be in hiding, for they shook in my hand.

Over us the dark night sky was spread out, and it seemed to me that the stars were so many omens whose meaning I could not make out. But I felt certain that they meant nothing good so far as I was concerned. All kinds of whispers, sizzling sounds of the night, reached my ears, and I knew not where they came from.

"Why don't you sleep?" asked the shepherd boy in his broken Yiddish.

"I am afraid!"

"What are you afraid of?"

"Of--of--the woods . . . ."

"Ha--ha--ha--I have good dogs with the flock!"

I wanted a Mezuzah, some talisman, a protection against evil spirits, and that fool offered me barking dogs! All at once he whistled loudly, and his dogs set up a barking that nearly made me deaf. The flock was panic-stricken. I thought at first that the earth had opened her mouth, and packs of dogs were breaking out from hell.

The noise the dogs made broke the awful hush of the night, and my fears were somewhat dispelled.

But there were other reasons why I liked to hear the dogs bark. I was myself the owner of a dog, which I had raised on the sly in my father's house. Imagine the horror of my brother Solomon, who as a real Jewish lad was very much afraid of a dog!

Here the old man stopped for a while. He was puffing and snorting, tired from the hard walk uphill. Having reached the summit, he turned around, looked downhill, straightened up, and took a deep breath. "This is an excellent way of getting rid of your tired feeling," said he. "Turn around and look downhill: then your strength will return to you."--

We had left the coach far behind, and had to wait till it overtook us. Meanwhile I looked downhill into the valley below: it was a veritable sea of slush. The teams that followed ours sank into it, and seemed not to be moving at all. The oblique rays of the setting sun, reflected and radiating in every direction, lent a peculiar glitter to the slushy wagons and the broken sheet of mire, as if pointing out their beauty to the darkening sky. So much light wasted, I thought. But on the summit of the hill on which I was standing, the direct rays of the sun promised a good hour more of daylight.

The old man drew breath, and continued his story:--

Well, I was caught, and put into prison. I was not alone. Many young boys had been brought there. Some were crying bitterly; some looked at their companions wonderingly. We were told that the next day we should be taken away to some place, and that the rabbi wished to come to see us, but was not permitted to enter our prison.

Yes, a good man was the rabbi, may he rest in peace; yet he was compelled to cheat for once. And when an honest man is compelled to cheat he may outdo the cleverest crook. Do you want to know what the rabbi did? He disguised himself as a peasant, went out, and walked the streets with the rolling gait of a drunkard. The night guards stopped him, and asked him what his business was. "I am a thief," said the rabbi. Then the guards arrested him, and put him into the prison with us.

In the darkness of that night the rabbi never ceased talking to us, swallowing his own tears all the while. He told us the story of Joseph the righteous. It had been decreed in Heaven, said the rabbi, that his brethren should sell Joseph into slavery. And it was the will of the Almighty that Joseph should come to Egypt, to show the Egyptians that there is only one God in Heaven, and that the Children of Israel are the chosen people.

Then the rabbi examined us: Did we know our Modeh-Ani by heart? did we know our Shema?

He told us that we should be taken very, very far away, that we should be away many, many years, and should become soldiers when grown up. Then he warned us never to eat of any food forbidden by the Jewish law, and never to forget the God of Israel and our own people, even if they tore our flesh with thorns. He told us also the story of the Ten Martyrs, who sacrificed their lives to sanctify the God of Israel. He told us of the mother and her seven children that were killed for having refused to bow before idols; and he told us many more such things. All those saints and martyrs, he said, are now in Paradise, enjoying the bliss of the Divine Presence. That night I really envied those saints; I longed with all my heart to be forced to bow to idols, to have to withstand all sorts of trials, so as to enjoy, after my death, the bliss of the Divine Presence in Paradise.

Many more stories the rabbi told us; many more words of warning, encouragement, and praise came from his lips, till I really believed I was the one whom God had picked out from among my equals, to be put through great trials and temptations. . . .

Morning came, and the guard entered the prison. Then the rabbi turned towards us, and said: "Lambs of the God of Israel, we have to part now: I am going to be lashed and imprisoned for having entered this place by a trick, and you will be taken into exile, to undergo your trials! I may hardly expect to be found worthy of surviving till you return. But there, in the world-of-truth, we shall surely meet. May it be the will of God that I may have no reason to be ashamed of you there, before Him and His angels, in Heaven!"

We parted, and the words of the rabbi sank deep into my heart.

Then they began dumping us into wagons. The obstreperous boys, who tried to run away, were many of them bound with ropes and thrown into the wagon. Of course, we all howled.

I did not hear my own voice, nor the voice of my neighbor. It was all one great howl. A crowd of men and women followed our wagon--the parents of the boys. Very likely they cried, too; but we could not hear their voices. The town, the fields, heaven and earth, seemed to cry with us.

I caught sight of my parents, and my heart was filled with something like anger and hatred. I felt that I had been sacrificed for my brother.

My mother, among many other mothers, approached the wagon, looked at me, and apparently read my thoughts: she fainted away, and fell to the ground. The accident held up the crowd, which busied itself with reviving my mother, while our wagon rolled away.

My heart was filled with a mixture of anger, pity, and terror. In that mood of mixed feelings I parted from my parents.

We cried and cried, got tired, and finally became still from sheer exhaustion. Presently a noise reached our ears, something like the yelling of children. We thought it was another wagonload of boys like ourselves. But soon we found out our mistake: it was but a wagonload of sheep that were being taken to slaughter. . . .

Of course, we ate nothing the whole of that day, though the mothers had not failed to provide us with food. Meanwhile the sun had set; it got dark, and the boys who had been bound with ropes were released by the guard: he knew they would not attempt to escape at that time. We fell asleep, but every now and then one of the boys would wake up, crying, quietly at first, then louder and louder. Then another would join him; one more, and yet one more, till we all were yelling in chorus, filling the night air with our bitter cries. Even the guard could not stand it; he scolded us, and belabored us with his whip. That crying of ours reminds me of what we read in lamentations: "Weeping she hath wept in the night. . . ."

Morning came, and found us all awake: we were waiting for daylight. We believed it would bring us freedom, that angels would descend from Heaven, just as they had descended to our father Jacob, to smite our guard and set us free. At the same time, the rising sun brought us all a feeling of hunger. We began to sigh, each and every one of us separately. But the noise we made did not amount even to the barking of a few dogs or the cawing of a few crows. That is what hunger can do. And when the guard had distributed among us some of the food we had brought with us, we ate it with relish, and felt satisfied. At the same time we began to feel the discomfort we were causing one another, cooped up as we were in the wagon. I began to complain of my neighbor, who was sitting on my legs. He claimed that I was pressing against him with my shoulder. We all began to look up to the guard, as if expecting that he could or would prevent us from torturing one another.

Still I had some fun even on that day of weeping. I happened to turn around, and I noticed that Barker, my dog, was running after our wagon.

"Too bad, foolish Barker," said I, laughing at him in spite of my heartache. "Do you think I am going to a feast? It is into exile that I am going; and what do you run after me for?"--

This made old Samuel laugh; he laughed like a child, as if the thing had just happened before his eyes, and as if it were really comical. Meanwhile our coach had reached the top of the hill; we jumped into our seats, and proceeded to make one another uncomfortable.

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