Stories and Pictures Part 30

the falsely-servile: "A citizen, an inhabitant!" the eternal quivering of the putty-colored faces, the startled, half-extinguished eyes, the market with its cowering, aimlessly restless shadows of men--the whole thing weighed on me like lead--not to be able to breathe, not to feel free! And my heart grew sick with a great longing. And I resolved to go to meet the Messiah.

I got into the first conveyance that presented itself. The driver turned round and asked:

"Where to?"

"Wherever you please," I answered, "only a great way--a great way off from here!"

"For how long?"

"For as long as the horse can go!"

The driver gathered up the reins, and we set off.

We drove on and on. Other fields, other woods, other villages, other towns, everything different; but the difference was only on the surface, below that everything was the same. When I looked into things, I saw everywhere the same melancholy, every face wore a look of frightened cunning, speech was everywhere broken and halting--the world seemed overspread with a mournful mist that hid every gleam of light and extinguished every joy. Everything shrank together and stifled. And I kept shouting: "Go on!" But I depended on the driver, and the driver, on the horse--the horse wants to eat, and we are obliged to stop.

I step into the inn. A large room, divided into two by means of an old curtain, reaching from one wall to the other. On my side of the curtain, three men sit round a large table. They do not remark me, and I have time to look them over. They represent three generations. The oldest is gray as a pigeon, but he sits erect and gazes with sharp eyes and without spectacles into a large book, lying before him on the table. The old face is grave, the old eyes unerring in their glance, and the old man and the book are blent into one by the white beard, whose silver points rest on the pages. At his right hand sits a younger man, who must be his son; it is the same face, only younger, less unmoved, more nervous, at times more drawn and weary. He also gazes into a book, but through gla.s.ses. The book is smaller, and he holds it nearer to his eyes, resting it against the edge of the table. He is of middle age; beard and ear-locks just silvered over. He rocks himself to and fro. It seems every time as if his body wished to tear itself away from the book, only the book draws it back. He rocks himself, and the lips move inaudibly. Every now and then he glances at the old man, who does not notice it.

To the old man's left sits the youngest, probably a grandson, a young man with glossy black hair and a burning, restless glance. He also is looking at a book, but the book is quite small, and he holds it close to his bright, unquiet eyes. He continually lowers it, however, and throws a glance of mingled fear and respect at the old man, another, with a half-ironic smile, at his father, and then leans over to hear what is going on, on the further side of the curtain. And from the further side of the curtain come moans as of a woman in child-birth--

I am about to cough, so that they may be aware of me. At this moment a fold of the curtain is pushed aside and there appear two women: an old one with a sharp, bony face and sharp eyes, and one of middle age with a gentle, rather flabby face and uncertain glance. They stand looking at the men, and waiting to be questioned. The oldest does not see them--his soul has melted into the soul of the book. The middle-aged man has seen them, and is wondering how best to rouse his father; the youngest starts up--

"Mother! Grandmother! Well?"

The father rises anxiously from his chair; the grandfather only pushes the book a little away from him, and lifts his eyes to the women.

"How is she?" inquires the young one further, with a trembling voice.

"She is over it!"

"Over it! over it!" stammers the young one.

"Mother, won't you say, Good luck to you?" asks the second. The old one reflects a moment and then asks:

"What has happened? Even if it is a girl--"

"No!"--the grandmother speaks for the first time--"it is a boy."

"Still-born?"

"No, it lives!" answers the old woman, and yet there is no joy in her tone.

"A cripple? Defective?"

"It has marks! On both shoulders--"

"What sort of marks?"

"Of wings--"

"Of wings?"

"Yes, of wings, and they are growing--"

The old man remains sitting in perplexity, the second is lost in wonder, the youngest fairly leaps for joy.

"Good, good! Let them grow, may they grow into wings, big, strong ones!

Good, good!"

"What is there to be glad about?" inquires his father.

"A dreadful deformity!" sighs the old man.

"Why so?" asks the grandson.

"Wings," said the old man, sternly, "raise one into the height--when one has wings one cannot keep to the earth."

"Much it matters!" retorts the grandson, defiantly. "One is quit of living here and wallowing in the mud, one lives in the height. Is heaven not better than earth?"

The old man grows pale, and the son takes up the word:

"Foolish child! What is one to live on in the height? Air doesn't go far. There are no inns to hire up there, no 'contracts' to sign.

There's no one of whom to buy a bit of shoe-leather--in the height--"

The old man interrupts him: "In the height," he says in hard tones, "there is no Shool, no house-of-study, no Klaus to pray and read in; in the height, there is no pathway, trodden out by past generations--in the height, one wanders and gets lost, because one does not know the road.

One is a free bird, but woe to the free bird in the hour of doubt and despondency!"

"What do you mean?" and the young man starts up with burning cheeks and eyes.

But the grandmother is beforehand with him:

"What fools men are," she exclaims, "how they talk! And the rabbi? Do you suppose the rabbi is going to let him be circ.u.mcised? Is he likely to allow a blessing to be spoken over a child with wings?"

I give a start. The night spent outside the town, the drive, and the child with wings were all a dream.

XIV

KABBALISTS

When times are bad, even Torah, "the best ware,"[54] loses in value.

In the Lashewitz "academy," there remain only the head, Reb Yainkil, and one pupil.