Tales From Jokai Part 10

"Indeed! What was it?"

"Well, we had been strolling in the garden for an hour or more, mooning and spooning, and I had also been reciting verses to her, and she had laughed at them, and it seemed to me that only the angels could laugh like that, when suddenly there came bouncing towards us a little pet puppy, a tiny beast about five weeks old, just able to patter along the ground with his little paws, who wagged his little tail and fawned upon Nelly in the most comical manner when he got up to her, at the same time sticking up one little ear high in the air, and holding the other little ear down. Why he should do so I didn't know; perhaps he had been taught it, I thought. Nelly thereupon stooped down towards the little dog, and, seizing the point of its little erected ear with two of her pretty snow-white fingers, raised it into the air. The little puppy wriggled and whined, but Nelly, smiling all the time, threatened it with the index finger of the other hand. 'Come! stop it, stop it! no whining!

It's not pretty,' she said, till the poor little creature gradually grew quiet, and remained suspended in the air by its ear. Then Nelly put it on the ground again, and the little puppy, softly whimpering, tripped off again, while Nelly never ceased smiling at it. Well, after that I scarce waited to get into my overcoat and wish her good-bye. I think that's all the leave-taking she deserves, and don't suppose I shall ever meet her again. No, my friend, _my_ ears could never stand such manuvres."

Thus it was that the little puppy-dog saved my friend Toni from a life-long danger.

VI

THE RED STAROSTA

CHAPTER I

THE JUDAS-MONEY

Have you ever heard of the Bialystok Dominion? There lie the huge Sylvan wildernesses of Lithuania, the native home of the Ure-ox, the ancestor of horned cattle, the king of all oxen; in every other part of Europe it has been exterminated. They are now the quarry of the Russian Tsar, and only the Romanovs and their guests possess the privilege of hunting them down.

But Bialystok is still more famous for its wondrously beautiful Palace, which worthily bears the name of "the Polish Versailles." Built in the Italian renaissance style, embellished within and without by the sculptures and the paintings, the bronzes and the mosaics of the most eminent masters, surrounded by the most lovely ornamental gardens in the world, in which the exotic trees in winter time have whole wooden houses built around them, so that pomegranate and citron trees bloom in the open air during the spring, and Bruin comes from the depths of the surrounding forests to pluck the citrons from the trees and roar over his unaccustomed food--the Palace of Bialystok is one of the most wonderful places in the world.

And this famous Palace is connected with no one family name. At every fresh human generation it carries a different family name on its forehead. It has belonged successively to the Moskowskis, the Potoccy, the Branickis, and the Czernuskis. And popular tradition says that before it belonged to them it was the possession of the "Red Starosta."

But whether purchased or won by confiscation it never descended from father to son, for there was this odd thing about it, that its proprietor never had male issue, and consequently it always pa.s.sed through his daughter to his son-in-law. To explain this condition of things, popular tradition tells the following story:--

In the days of the Red Starosta, the Jews had great influence in the Grodno district; indeed, it would be difficult to imagine Poland without them. Bialystok was their head-quarters, and there they had their synagogue. The Starostas allowed them to multiply and get rich, just as a highly practical agriculturist allows the bees to collect their stores throughout the summer, and when the autumn winds begin to blow does not treat them after the manner of ungrateful and unreasonable bee-keepers, who smoke out the industrious insects with sulphur, no, but in the most approved modern fas.h.i.+on he subtracts the honey, leaves the bees just enough to live upon, and then puts back the empty cells into the hive that the bees may fill them full again.

The bees themselves regard this method as perfectly normal, for otherwise they would leave the hive and go into the forest and fill the stumps of trees with honey. But then the bears would eat them and it, so that, after all, it is very much better for the bees to have to do with the bee-keepers.

On one occasion the Red Starosta (he was just about to marry for the third time, and wanted a lot of money rather badly for the wedding feast) hit upon a new method of obtaining a voluntary contribution by attacking the Jews in their synagogue on one of their holy days. Every one of them was compelled to pay liberally. There were a good many treasures concealed in the synagogue, and these also they had to hand over. The Jews lamented and paid up; they had not even courage enough to curse.

But in the strong-box of the sanctuary there was a secret drawer, and in this secret drawer there was a single piece of silver. Now, when this secret drawer was opened by the Starosta, the Rabbi, Jitzchak Ben Menachim, quickly seized the coin and thrust it into his mouth. They could only get it out again by breaking his teeth, while a heyduke squeezed his throat tightly the whole time so that he should not swallow it.

What merit could there be in suffering so much for the sake of a single piece of silver? The whole thing was no bigger than a Mary-dollar, which is only worth 5 polturas.[15] On one side of it was a fig-tree with the inscription: "Jerusalem the Holy," in Hebrew letters, with a burning altar beneath the fig-tree with the words: "Shekel: Israel." On the obverse side was a crowned head with the inscription: "Melach Herodes."

[Footnote 15: Worth about 6d.]

When this silver piece had been taken from the Rabbi, the whole congregation began to rend their garments and cast ashes on their heads.

Then they abased themselves before the Starosta and implored him to give them back their one piece of silver. They promised to give him for it twice as much, eight times as much as he had already extorted from them, thereby betraying the secret that this piece of money was of great value to them.

"Why is this silver coin so precious to you?" inquired the Starosta.

At this question every Jew present closed his mouth so tightly that not even a sigh escaped from it.

"Very well," said the Red Starosta, "you won't tell me, eh? Then I'll find a way of making your Rabbi tell me."

So the Red Starosta flung the Rabbi into a dungeon, and for a whole week he experimented upon him with the latest and most approved instruments of torture. But Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim remained steadfast. Neither fire, nor water, nor the Spanish boot could extract from him the secret of the piece of silver.

Now the Rabbi had a grown-up son, Jaikef by name. On the eighth day he could endure no longer the spectacle of his father tortured there before his eyes, so he went to the Starosta and said to him--

"Let my father go free, and I will tell you the secret of the silver coin."

And thus Jaikef told the story whose preliminaries are well known to us all.

There was once a Jew named Judas Iscariot, who sold to the Priests of Jerusalem "The Son of Man," the "King of Nazareth," above whose head on the cross was nailed the inscription "I.N.R.I." The price paid to him for this was thirty pieces of silver. But when they crucified "the Master" on Golgotha, he repented him of what he had done and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the Priests. They would not accept them. Then he flung down the money in the Temple, and went and hanged himself on a maple-tree. But the Priests resolved with the rejected money to buy a portion of land from the Potters. The Priests entrusted the business of the purchase to Kramoi-Chita Anselm, and this enterprising man beat down the price to nine and twenty pieces of silver, the thirtieth piece he kept for himself. His son Nathan inherited it from him. Solomon, the son of Nathan, inherited it in his turn, till at last, in the period of the exodus of the Jews from Palestine, it fell into the possession of Joisef Zedek, who brought it away with him. This one remaining piece of Judas-money puts power and riches into the hands of the Jews. This is their living hope, their talismanic treasure--and now Jaikef gave the secret away.

"Then it is a very good thing that I have got it," said the Red Starosta, and, as promised, he set free the Rabbi, at the same time telling him that as he now knew the secret of the piece of silver, he would not give it back to the Jews for all the treasures in the world.

The Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim thereupon, first of all, cursed his own son:

"As thou couldst not close thy mouth, henceforth thou shalt open it in vain."

And the curse was accomplished. From that time forth poor Jaikef was expelled from every Jewish threshold, not a single Jew would thenceforth give him meat and drink, whilst the law of the Talmud forbade him to eat food prepared by Christians. So he starved to death.

But upon the Red Starosta the Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim p.r.o.nounced this curse--

"A manchild shall never be borne in thy family!"

And this curse also took root and abided.

Henceforth the mortars on the terrace in front of the Palace of Bialystok never thundered forth in honour of the birth of an heir male.

Of girls there were plenty and to spare, but what's the good of a girl to an ancient Lithuanian ancestral house? Up to her twelfth year she is allowed to trot about like other little kids, and then they clap her into a convent, where she is taught gold and silver embroidery till she reaches a marriageable age, when they bring her home again. What else can _she_ talk about except saints and angels!

How different with the male children. A boy is taught by his papa all manner of sensible things. You can take him off with you to hunt bears and wild boars and elks. He'll not learn much about the book of martyrs from his chums, perhaps, but all the more knowing will he be in the folklore of the chase, in the mythology of the ancient Lithuanian deities. He will know all about Bagan, the protector of the brute creation, who makes the cattle fruitful; about the White G.o.d, Belim, who gives rich increase to the earth; about the G.o.ddess Vastrulia, who gives luck in love; while in the day of battle and the hour of danger he must call upon Father Dedka! At great banquets, too, Holyada will defend him from the disgrace of being the first to fall down drunk, while Lado will send him good dreams.

A girl would not understand this--it is part of the lore of the ancients.

And besides that, a girl does not pa.s.s the name of her father on to her children, so that if the grandson hears the name of his grandsire, he will ask--who is that?

So the curse of the Rabbi Jitzchak Ben Menachim was accomplished in the families of the Castellans of Bialystok. At every great funeral, when they carried forth the head of the family, they hung up his ancestral s.h.i.+eld on the corner of his tomb as a sign that the family history had run out. And thus it went on through half a century, during which time the lords of the Castle never let the Judas-money out of their hands.

The rich Jews of Grodno offered them a million for it, but in vain. They would not give up the talisman even for that.

The last magnate proprietor was Prince Moskowski. When his wife was in good hopes of offspring he made a vow that if she bare him a son he would give the Judas-money as a donation to the Blessed Virgin. And sure enough a son _was_ born.

The Prince, faithful to his vow, bestowed the Judas-money upon the Monastery of Supraseli which was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.

And then the Rabbi of Bialystok, the descendant of Jitzchak Ben Menachim, on the original curse thus becoming void, imposed a fresh curse on the head of Prince Moskowski: "Thy son and thy son's son,"

said he, "shall become the lowliest serfs in the Russian Empire!"

And to a Lithuanian n.o.ble family this was an even more terrible curse than the former one.