The End of Everything (New Yiddish Library Series) (26 page)

—She ought to look closely. This was truly a Sabbath sky; there on the western mountain even the green fields all around looked as though they were welcoming the Sabbath.

Glancing mechanically in that direction, Mirel saw nothing but a weary peasant still plowing his fields as twilight drew on. A great band of plowed earth stretched across the entire face of the verdant mountain, encircling it as though with a broad black belt. Uncertain of whether or not Herz’s words were ironic, she stared at him with startled, astonished eyes:

—She’d no idea what someone like him wanted of her, and found it impossible to understand him rationally.

His eyes twinkling even more ironically, he shrewdly appraised her as he asked, apparently for no reason other than in jest:

—Had she ever thought about Jews?

Something deep within Mirel seethed in anger. Pale with vexation, she did not look at him, kept her lips tightly compressed and breathed heavily and overmuch.

—Who’d sent for him?

Something made her think of the note he’d left in her room before he’d gone away the first time. “If he were ever to return to the shtetl here, it would be exclusively for her sake, for Mirel.” This was why the oddly cold and distant attitude he now adopted toward her, as well as the fact that he’d been talking about her behind her back in the midwife’s home, made her feel so deeply and powerfully insulted. No, there’d been something far worse than a frivolous joke in that note.

Accompanying her back down through the shtetl, he said:

—A few days previously he’d seen her father here …

But she immediately interrupted him:

—There were people who felt compelled to insult others with every word they uttered. The only good thing they could do was to be silent … She, Mirel, had asked him to do this once before.

And no longer even glancing round at her abashed escort, she stopped to speak with a woman approaching from the opposite direction to whom Reb Gedalye had only a few days previously paid the last installment of what he’d owed her, including the interest, and had forgotten to take back his notes of hand. The woman’s smiling, good-natured face beamed under the brightly colored silk scarf she wore only on Sabbath as she spoke with deep respect of Reb Gedalye:

—How could one esteem Reb Gedalye’s integrity highly enough? Hadn’t she said earlier that he’d never take what didn’t belong to him, God forbid, and that he’d never owe anyone a single kopeck?

And Herz, who was still standing there, afterward accompanied her right to her front door.

—Listen—he said, his face red with embarrassment yet wanting to conduct a worldly conversation with her—he knew young women who became particularly attractive at the very moment they were about to be married …

Unwilling to hear more, she stretched out her hand to him in parting.

—He’d have to excuse her; she had to go inside.

For some reason, he added:

—He thought she might be free at present; the midwife would return home only very late that night … He’d noticed an exceptionally pretty spot beyond the town’s orchards.

But leaving him standing there on his own, she went into the house and then into her own room. There, only a short while later, she felt drawn to him, wanted to see him again and had something to say to him, even though he’d gone back alone to the midwife’s cottage. Among the many thoughts that crowded her mind, a few kept thrusting to the fore and repeating themselves:

—On Monday she was traveling out to be married … Herz was alone in the house from which the midwife was absent.

Later she stood for a long time outside on the verandah, waiting until it had grown completely dark, until Jews started returning from prayers and Reb Gedalye, in his silk capote with a cheerful smile on his shining face, came up the stairs and repeated twice:

—A blessed Sabbath! A blessed Sabbath!

On Sunday morning, Herz wandered round the shtetl once again and on his own eventually called at Reb Gedalye Hurvits’s house.

Odd:

At the time, some five or six local Jews, all well known to each other, were seated round the table in the dining room in company with Avreml the rabbi, drinking to Reb Gedalye’s good health:

—May God grant that you travel safely and return safely.

—To life! God grant you success and blessing!

From the adjacent rooms came the sound of baskets being packed and crates nailed down, of Gitele’s out-of-town relative jangling her keys and shouting to someone outside through the open window:

—Come at noon tomorrow; by half past twelve we’ll already have left.

Quite unexpectedly the door opened to admit Herz, a tall, robust young man whom none of the company present knew, who was asking for Mirel.

Those around the table stared at him; so did Reb Gedalye, raising his pointed nose with his gold-rimmed spectacles, clearly under the impression that this was some kind of traveling musician who’d come to the shtetl to play at quite another wedding and had blundered into the wrong house.

At that point, Herz began smiling at Mirel who’d heard his voice in the salon and, greatly startled, now appeared in the doorway.

For half an hour they spoke together behind the locked door of the salon. When they emerged, Mirel’s face was burning with indignation. She avoided looking at him, and he walked calmly in front of her, smiling to himself.

They stopped on the steps of the verandah to make way for some of the visitors who’d already taken their leave of Reb Gedalye.

Mirel glanced up at the blue summer sky over the shtetl, and said coldly, to spite Herz:

—She was so pleased that the last few days had been so fine and clear. The day of her wedding would certainly be just as beautiful as well.

And he merely smiled more obviously, nodded his head, and made his way slowly back to the cottages on the outskirts of town.

In town, report circulated that on Monday, a few hours before her scheduled departure, Mirel had walked all round the shtetl on her way to the midwife Schatz, had found no one there, and had learned from Schatz’s peasant landlady:

—Herz had gone abroad the evening before and wouldn’t return.

Very early that morning, both master and mistress left Burnes’s house for the provincial capital.

Later that day, when Reb Gedalye’s house was deserted and locked up, someone called on Burnes’s children to assure them that the local tailors, who hadn’t been entrusted with the preparation of Mirel trousseau, had written an anonymous letter about Herz and Mirel to Shmulik’s parents, a letter that would unfailingly reach them on the Sabbath immediately preceding the wedding ceremony.

There was excessive jollity round the tea table in Avrom-Moyshe Burnes’s dining room, where the photographer Rozenboym’s wife sat with her guitar while the children made far too much noise at play in the adjacent rooms. These little ones were finally allowed to run on ahead when everyone went for a walk across the shtetl. Now that there was no one living in Reb Gedalye’s house, the air seemed far less confining.

Walking past this locked house, however, everyone suddenly felt strangely cheerless at the sight of its bolted outer shutters and its inner abandonment. In broad daylight the watchman, a peasant in a fur coat, sat on the steps of the verandah guarding its close-fastened front door. And the house itself wordlessly related something about those who’d gone away and about the enormous reception room at a distant railway station where Mirel’s marriage would be solemnized the next day.

An image formed in the minds of passersby:

There in that distant, paved little shtetl on the other side of the railway tracks, the same quiet summer afternoon was passing in the same way as here; there musicians were playing at the celebratory lunch given by the groom’s family, and Mirel, preparing to make her way there, was attiring herself in her new silk gown with its ample train.

When someone in the walking party proposed that they turn back and go instead to the little oak coppice, everyone did so indolently, without any real motivation. From a distance Burnes’s younger daughter suddenly caught sight of the buggy that had only just drawn up before their front door. Without the slightest understanding of the situation, she yelled out:

—Just look, it’s Velvl’s buggy! … Velvl’s come!

All the others in the walking party knew full well why for the last month and a half Velvl hadn’t come to the shtetl even once.

On her own, the elder daughter quickly made her way there, entered the dining room and saw:

In his light dust coat, with his head bowed, Velvl was standing by himself looking down at the outstretched finger with which he was idly rotating the water left behind on the oilcloth after tea.

Thinking of him and of Mirel, the young woman stupidly called out:

—Just look—Velvl! …

She wanted to convey her joy at his arrival, but he made no reply and did not raise his head.

For a while all was silent. His sister felt awkward. She went over to one of the windows, drew back the curtain, and for a long while stared out disconsolately. Finally she turned to face him once again:

—Velvl—she asked—will you be spending the night here?

Only then did he cease rotating the water with his finger, hid both his hands in the side pockets of his dust coat and, without looking at her, queried:

—Eh? … What? … No, he was going back home.

And almost immediately he went outside and seated himself once more in his buggy.

The walking party heard him instruct the driver:

—Back home … Back to the farm.

Everyone in the street stood staring idly after him:

The horse and the well-sprung buggy sped swiftly back between the last houses on the outskirts of the town, and high up in the vehicle and slightly bowed, Velvl sat with his back to the shtetl and did not turn round even once.

*
In the Jewish religious tradition, a single day is measured from sunset to sunset in eight equal watches, namely, every three hours. The night is divided into three watches, as indicated by the phrase “the middle watch” (Judges 7:19).

†
Elul is the twelfth month of the Jewish civil year and the sixth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar, usually corresponding to the months of August–September on the Gregorian calendar. It is a time of repentance in preparation for the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

*
Since Reb Gedalye was born and raised in Galicia, he is a follower of the Hasidic
rebbes
of Sadagura and Husiatyn.

*
In strictly observant Ashkenazi communities, women crop their hair close when they marry and wear a ritual wig, known in Yiddish as a
sheytl
, to observe the requirements of Jewish law regarding female modesty.

†
In the Ashkenazi fashion of the nineteenth century, this kind of skullcap was very large, shaped more like a toque, and covered most of the head.

*
Before World War I the small town of Sadagura, eighteen kilometers north of the city of Czernowitz and two kilometers from the town of Ruzhin, was located in Bukovina (Galicia) and was thus part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its Hasidic dynasty was founded by Rabbi Yisroel Friedman of Ruzhin (1796–1850), who settled in Sadagura in 1842 and established a luxurious court there. His six sons all subsequently founded Hasidic dynasties of their own: the youngest of them, Dovid-Moyshe and Mordkhe-Shrage, moved respectively to Chortkov and Husiatyn in Galicia, where they perpetuated their father’s aristocratic manners and his fashionably elegant way of life. From all over Eastern Europe, thousands of Jews made pilgrimages to the court at Sadagura, which was distinguished as much by worldly as by spiritual riches. In contrast with other Hasidic leaders who lived in poverty and isolation, the rebbe of Sadagura claimed descent from the royal line of King David, conducted his court regally, and insisted that God be served with all the splendors of the world.

*
Tsholnt
is an Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jewish stew simmered inside an oven at a low temperature. Because kindling fire on the Sabbath is forbidden, the stew is left in a preheated oven for as long as twenty-four hours before being served as the hot meal on the Sabbath.

*
Phylacteries, known in Hebrew as
tefilin
, comprise two boxes containing biblical verses and the leather straps attached to them. An essential part of the Orthodox morning prayer service, they are donned every day, except Sabbaths and festivals, by observant Jewish men above the age of thirteen.

*
The
Kuzari
, by the medieval Jewish philosopher and poet of Spain, Judah ha-Levi (c. 1075–1141), is a defense of revealed religion in the form of a dialogue between the pagan king of the Khazars and a Jew who has been invited to instruct him in the tenets of Judaism. Isaac ben Judah Abravanel (1437–1508), a medieval statesman, financier, philosopher, and exegete, took the social and political issues of his time into consideration in his commentaries on the Bible.

*
The choice of blue as a color for the newly painted shutters of this house is another of Bergelson’s satiric comments on the attempts of Avrom-Moyshe Burnes to acculturate himself and his family, of a piece with the university student he hires to tutor his children in secular subjects. It was customary in Ukraine for Gentiles to paint their shutters and window frames blue; the normative color for Jews was brown.

*
In the tsarist empire, fully qualified pharmacists were among those categories of Jews permitted to live outside the Pale of Settlement, together with merchants of the first guild, exceptionally talented craftsmen, and university students.

*
Yiddish affectionate diminutive of the word bobe, “grandmother.”

*
Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit in ihrem organischen Aufbau
[
The Evolution of Culture
] was published in 1886–87 by the Czech historian Julius Lippert (1839–1909). Its Hebrew translation was published in three volumes in Warsaw between 1894 and 1908.