The Family Moskat (40 page)

"Where's the gentleman going?"

"It's all right, Jan. He's our guest," Hadassah answered and pulled at Asa Heshel's sleeve. She hurried through the gate, Asa Heshel following her uncertainly. For a moment he could see nothing, as though he had been swallowed up in darkness. Ap--

254-parently the walls enclosing the court were blank. A small rectangle of sky reared high up over his head, studded with stars.

It was as though he were at the bottom of a pit. For a moment he was alone, then Hadassah materialized near him. They put their arms around each other. Her hat fell to the ground.

"Come with me," she whispered. Her lips touched the lobe of his ear.

She took his wrist. He followed blindly. "Whatever happens will happen," he thought. He was full of fear and recklessness.

"She's taking me to her husband. I don't care. I'll tell him openly that she belongs to me." The yard was a long one. He stumbled against a cart, barrels, and boxes. There was a smell of oil and brine. Hadassah drew him after her into a doorway. He followed her to the stairs. They went silently, walking on tiptoe. Hadassah halted on the third floor. She tried to open a door, but it was locked.

"One second."

She disappeared somewhere and he was alone, with the feeling of a small boy who has been left to wait for his guardian to return. He put his hand on the door, felt the wood, the knob, the keyhole. He pushed the door open. How was that possible?

Only a moment before it had been locked. He wanted to call Hadassah, but he didn't dare to make a sound. Inside it was pitch black. His nostrils sniffed the dust of a long-uninhabited apartment. Where had she gone? Maybe to get a key. Yes, she had brought him to an empty flat in the house belonging to her husband. Everything was explained now. Where was she? She might stumble and fall. Was he happy now? Yes, this was happiness. Now he would be ready to die.

He heard footsteps.

"Hadassah, where are you?"

"I am here."

"The door is open."

"Did you force it?"

"No. It opened."

"But how? Never mind."

He opened the door wide and went in, Hadassah after him. He reached out to take her hand, but his fingers met something warm and wooly. She was carrying a shawl, or a blanket. They entered a narrow corridor. Then they were in a large room, crowded with furniture. Asa Heshel brushed against a rocking-chair; it began -255-to sway back and forth. He bumped his head against the edge of a tiled stove.

Hadassah took his hand and led him after her. She pushed open a door with the toe of her shoe and they passed into a smaller room.

Now his eyes were getting accustomed to the darkness. He could make out wallpaper, a metal bed, a dresser, a looking-glass. A ray of light flashed across the mirror. A torn curtain hung over the window. Hadassah put the blanket down on the mattress.

"What room is this?"

"Our room."

They embraced and stood close to each other in silence. He could hear the beating of her heart. She took his wrist in her hand and pressed it tight.

She let go of him and spread the blanket on the mattress. They lay down. A patch of sky showed through the torn curtain at the window. A strange and secret, never before experienced warmth enclosed Asa Heshel. He passed his hands over Hadassah's body, like a blind man, touching her eyes, her forehead, her nose and cheeks, her throat and breasts. They gazed at each other, the pupils of their eyes enormous and filled with the mystery of night.

-256-

A few days after the war broke out, the Tereshpol Minor town crier read aloud in the market square an order that all Jews were to leave the town within twenty-four hours. Immediately pandemonium set in. To the elders of the Jewish community the magistrate announced that the orders had come from Zamosc.

Two of the town's prominent Jewish householders immediately took a coach into Zamosc, but the
nachalnik
would not even receive them. The order, he sent out word, had come from the Czar's uncle, Nikolai Nikolaievich, commander-in-chief of the Russian armies.

Those who had horses and wagons immediately began to pack their belongings together. The others tried to hire or buy any sort of conveyance from the neighborhood peasants. The Poles who lived in the town acted as though what was going on was none of their affair. They went unconcernedly about their daily chores.

Markevich, the slaughterer, slit the throat of a pig; Dobush, the butcher, went on with his corn-threshing and apple-gathering.

Antek Liss, the bootmaker, left his bench to stroll over to the shop of Mottel, the leather dealer, and propose that the stock of leather be sold to him for a third of its value.

"They'll take it away from you anyway," he announced. "And there are rumors that they're going to kill all the Jews." He drew his finger suggestively across his gullet. "K-k-k-k!"

-257-The Jewish

housewives ran to their gentile neighbors to wail and sob, but the gentiles were too busy to listen to them. They were occupied with sifting flour, putting up preserves, churning butter, making cheese.

The older women sat spinning flax, while the children played with dogs and cats or dug in the ground for worms. They could get along very well without the Jews.

Some of the Jewish housewives tried to store furniture with their neighbors for safe keeping, but the latter complained that their houses were already too crowded. Just the same, they were ready to take bundles of clothing, linen, silverware, and jewelry.

It was on a Monday morning that the town crier read out the proclamation. By noon on Tuesday three quarters of the Jews had left. The Lublin road was jammed with wagons, carts, and pedestrians. The Jewish butchers drove their livestock ahead of them. The poor folk had packed their few possessions in bundles and were carrying them on their backs. The scrolls of the law from the synagogue had been carefully placed on beds of straw in a wagon, the holy objects covered with prayer shawls and Ark curtains. A group of men and women walked alongside to guard them. The peasants and their wives came to the doors of their cottages. Some brought out pannikins of water to the fleeing Jews; others laughed and jeered.

"
Oi, oi! Sheenies! Pappele, Mammele
!"

Rabbi Dan and his family left the village with the last group to go. The old man had given orders that the books in his study be hidden in the garret. He was carrying with him his prayer-shawl bag and a couple of cherished volumes. He crammed his manuscripts into the mouth of the stove and then watched them burn.

"The world will survive without them," he remarked.

The rabbi leaned against the doorpost as the papers burned. Three sackfuls of manuscripts and letters had accumulated in the more than forty years that he had occupied the rabbinical chair. How, he wondered, could he have written so much? There had been a time when he had entertained the idea of publishing some of his commentaries. Now that was all in the past. The flames were in no hurry. Gusts of down-drafts blew some of the pages out of the fire, and the rabbi had to pick them up and throw them back. The thick bundles of manuscripts were too slow to catch on; it was necessary first to tear the pages apart. In the -258-heart of the flames a yellowed sheaf of paper lay for a long time uncharred as though by a miracle. When at last it did burn, the pages kept their shape for a while, the glowing lines of writing standing out in fiery characters.

When the sacks were emptied the rabbi went out of the house to the waiting wagon. He kissed the mezuzah on the lintel of the door and took a last glance backward over the yard, thickly over-grown with wild grasses and weeds. He looked at the apple tree, the shingled roofs, the chimney, the windows, the outdoor booth built for the Feast of Tabernacles. Over the roof of the prayerhouse a stork hovered. The panes of the study-house windows threw back the golden rays of the sun. A column of smoke rose from the chimney of the communal bathhouse; the village Christians were going to use it now that the Jews were being driven out. The hearse still stood at the door of the poorhouse.

The rabbi's wife, his daughter, Finkel, and her daughter, Dinah, were already seated in the wagon among pillows, packages, and bundles of bedclothes. The old woman was weeping. Dinah's head was bandaged with a towel. Her husband, Messassah David, was lost somewhere in Galicia. Reb Dan took his seat in the wagon and looked up at the sky.

"Well, it's time to go," he said.

The wagon went by the
shulgass
and the market place. A crowd of people stood near the church; there was a funeral going on, or a wedding. The gilded crucifixes shone in the sun. From the dim interior came the sound of the organ and the chanting of the choir. A little farther on, on the left, was the Jewish cemetery.

Among the gravestones, beneath the white beeches, stood the tomb of the great rabbi Menachem David, who here, in Tereshpol Minor, had written fifty-two books of Talmudic commentary: on top of the tomb a crow perched, gazing off into the distance. At the far side of the turnpike the wagon came to a halt near an inn.

The owner was a Jewish widow. Since this was in a different administrative district it was probable that the expulsion order did not apply, and the innkeeper had stayed on. In one of the back rooms some of the sick from the poorhouse lay on straw pallets.

Reb Dan's wagon drew up alongside the cart on which Jekuthiel the watchmaker sat, the tools of his trade piled around him. He looked at the rabbi and smiled sadly.

"
Nu
, rabbi?" he said.

It was clear that what he meant was: Where is your Lord of the -259-Universe now?

Where are His miracles? Where is your faith in Torah and prayer?

"Nu
, Jekuthiel," the rabbi answered. What he was saying was: Where are your worldly remedies? Where is your trust in the gentiles? What have you accomplished by aping Esau?

The innkeeper came out and invited Reb Dan and his family into the house, where a separate room had been prepared for him.

There would be a wait while the horses were watered and plans were made for the next stage of the journey. The rabbi took his prayer-shawl bag, got down from the wagon, and went to the room that had been prepared for him. For a long time he paced back and forth. A Channukah lamp hung on a wall; a few books stood in a small bookcase. There were two high, can-opied beds.

In the courtyard near the window a goat stood. The animal shook its white whiskers, raised its head to scratch its back with its horns, and pawed with its hoof. The rabbi looked at the goat, and the goat stared back at him. He suddenly felt a rush of affection for the creature, the "valiant among the grass-eaters,"

which the Talmud compared to Israel, the "valiant among the nations." He felt like caressing the poor beast or giv-ing it some tasty tidbit. After a while he took a copy of the Talmud from his bag and began to read. Not in a long time had the rabbi found so much sweetness in poring over the ancient texts.

His wife came in to tell him that they were ready to continue the journey. She looked at him as he sat, a transported expression on his face. She started to say something, but could not because of the lump in her throat. In these strange surroundings her husband seemed to her like one of the venerable ancients, a
tanna
. She felt a wave of ecstasy mixed with sadness at the thought of the goodly portion that was hers in having lived for nearly sixty years with this saint.

2

It was about two o'clock when the wagon started off again. The rabbi's sons, Zaddok and Levi, with their wives and children, had gone on ahead. It was expected that the ride to Zamosc would take no more than four hours, but the procession of vehicles stood motionless more than it moved. The road was crowded with soldiers, mounted cannon, and military wagons, -260-moving toward the river San, where the Austrians were launch-ing an attack.

There was a bewildering variety of uniforms to be seen: Cossacks with long spears and round hats, earrings in the lobes of their ears; Circassians in fur caps and ankle-length coats, with an array of daggers thrust into the front of their uniforms; Kalmuks, small as pigmies, with slanting eyes. Teams of eight or ten horses pulled the heavy cannon along, the powerful wheels crushing the stones on the road. The yawning mouths of the cannon were hung with branches and festooned with flowers. In the middle of the fields at either side of the road army cooks at field kitchens were preparing huge vats of food. Mounted soldiers dashed back and forth shouting and cracking the air with their whips. The horses neighed and reared up on their hind legs, foam spattering from their mouths. Flocks of birds flew noisily overhead. Clouds of dust glowed in the sun above the columns of bayonets. The few vehicles carrying the fleeing Jews aroused the scorn of the soldiers.

"The Christ-killers are on the march already," they grumbled.

"Like rats from a sinking ship."

Some of the fugitives tried to explain that it was not of their own choice that they were leaving their villages, but the officers ordered them to turn back, lashing at them with their crops. The women began to sob and the children to wail. The gentile peasants who were driving the wagons complained that they did not intend to drive around forever with this Jewish junk; they wanted to get rid of the whole pack of them and get back to their farms. The one the soldiers gaped at most was Rabbi Dan. His white beard, his velvet hat, his silk caftan, all of these seemed strange to them.

Where the devil were they dragging themselves to, these cursed Antichrists? What side were they on in the war? What did they want? Why didn't the dogs adopt the true Orthodox faith? They felt like seizing these unbelievers by the beards or by those damned sidelocks of theirs, or sticking a bayonet into them. Their hands itched to tear the wigs off their women, to find out what was under the dresses of the younger ones. Why wait until they could confront the Austrian enemy at the other side of the San?--

the Jewish enemy was right here, stumbling around under the wheels of their military carts.