The Landsmen

by Peter Martin

  chilly that afternoon, as gray and as glum as November, suiting my mood. I began walking toward the door, knowing Aaron would follow.

  Moving down the lane toward our clumps of huts I turned to Aaron. “It must be a tremendous favor you want.”

  “Yes, doubtless. I’m only thinking, Yeersel. But . . . maybe you’re in a position to let me take your horse and wagon for a day?”

  Aaron spoke with such a helpless hopeless throwing-away of his words that I became immediately irritated; one would suppose, by the way he sounded, that I was the hardest-hearted person in the province. But in the next second I forgave him; after all wasn’t he the second tailor, competition? And he had no horse and wagon of his own, but had to trudge the roads weighed down with goods on his back and his heavy tailor’s iron hanging from his pants-belt. I grumbled, “What’s the matter?”

  “There’s business, I can use a few bolts of cloth.”

  “Is already good.” Then more softly, “Far away, eh, Aaron?”

  “No, only to the ParsovsY’

  “But that’s near, right here out of town. What’s the horse and wagon for?”

  “To get goods. In Minsk. I know, Yeersel, I know . . . it’s forbidden to buy goods anywhere but from our piggish agent here, but who can afford to pay a Rezatskin-price ? In Minsk they’ll wait for the money, too.”

  “Buying in Minsk is risky.”

  “Let it then be risky.”

  “It doesn’t pay to go to Minsk, Aaron. Further, the horse needs shoes and — ”

  “Shoes I’ll buy, I’ll take Gritka straight into Mottel’s the first thing.”

  “No good.” I was about to mention Mottel’s summons to me but I thought, “Why give Aaron another worry?” I simply added, “He’ll ask questions, and you well know he can’t be trusted to monkey up your monthly report.”

  “Well,” Aaron told me gently, “even though to Mottel a brother is like a dog’s brother, I don’t think he’ll monkey it down.”

  “To begin with, Gritka needs shoes immediately. Minsk isn’t just down the hill, you know — ”

  “I already said about the shoes, Yeersel, I myself will— ”

  “Then suppose you’re caught buying outside goods ? And it develops my horse and wagon brought it into the village? Hn?”

  “Oh, it’s certainly a tremendous favor,” he said, sighing.

  “Between two tailors in one village,” I replied, “is there such a thing as a ‘small’ favor?”

  We kept on clumping down the lane toward our huts. The wind had whistled itself up to a loud warning of something unseasonably sharp to come, and I had an unexpected “winter feeling” up and down my back. My stomach felt tighter, as it always did in the winter, and I felt smaller, and the whole world seemed to swell up larger. Our legs shuffled mounds of fallen leaves away from us, and I peered down the lane to spy the lights of my hut, where all was warm inside and the table set and everybody waiting to say, “Papa’s home.”

  “Of course,” Aaron added, “a person considering making tricks in cloth-buying shouldn’t drag in other people.”

  “Minsk isn’t Svutz, it’s forty miles. You can’t carry goods that far on your back, and to think of hiring someone to bring it to the village is only to hire yourself a police agent, I’m warning you.”

  “Push it here, push it there, it still doesn’t fall down ... I have business if I can get cloth. But I can’t pay for cloth.”

  “All right, Aaron — what cloth and how much?”

  “For coats. Black. Three overcoats and four jackets, one for a child.”

  “Ay, it’s a good order, so much I don’t have to spare. And anyway I haven’t for real winter coats.”

  “Well, then,” Aaron said, throwing up his hands suddenly. “Oh, to the devil with it!”

  He turned away and started up the lane toward the synagogue. I went after him. “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll sit in the synagogue, and something will come to me.”

  “But home — your wife — the boys ?”

  “And will they say something I can listen to?”

  Yeersel 19

  “Look,” I begged, “have a little sense, Aaron. Go to Rezatskin, talk t:it over, take credit!”

  “Take credit?” he flung at me. “Since when am I such a beautiful I risk? Since when can I go pick credit like a flower? If I’m such a good ocredit, go out and lend and give it to me!”

  “Aaron-ben-Kalman,” I said firmly, holding him by the sleeve, angry with him for being so forlorn. “Be not such an infant, be a man with a brain! Go to your big customer, three coats and four jackets, and grind him into giving you at least a small cash payment in advance — then run with the advance to Rezatskin, put it down against the bill for the goods, and start sewing!”

  “That would be fine,” Aaron replied. “Very easily fine, only my arrangement with the family Parsov is that for the three coats and four jackets, I am to get two chickens a week for a year together with not less than eight eggs a time.”

  “Ay,” I nodded, when Aaron sighed again after quoting to me from his agreement with the Parsovs. It was a good bargain, two chickens a week for a year, and eggs ... but no cash, not even a ruble, for the agent. “Come on, Aaron, let’s go home. We’ll think of something yet.”

  The sky seemed to hang low, under the wind. There were no stars. I thought again of my wife Bosha and the supper waiting for me, and it passed through my mind with such a rip, “Aaron won’t be able to wriggle out safely with the two chickens a week for a whole year.” And then as we walked towards our huts together for the second time, it fell into my mind — “How simple! I’ll go to Shnipsel the Innkeeper in Pukop and borrow five rubles for Aaron to give the agent!” I had heard that Shnipsel sometimes put out formidable sums at interest (impious to us Golinskers, a sin, but innkeepers were known to live dangerous lives). “Don’t worry any more, Aaron,” I cried out suddenly, “it’s all settled!”

  I must have taken him by surprise for he almost jumped out of his foot-rags when my voice boomed at him. “Thank God!” he choked out. “So you’re letting me take the horse after all!”

  I had nothing like that in my head. I was about to let him know I’d get the cash he needed for his advance from Shnipsel; but exactly in this kind of a crazy way is how a circumstance pushes itself into a matter between living men. Once Aaron had said, “So you’re letting me take the horse after all,” with such relief in his voice, such a feeling of having been saved by some miracle of reckless generosity on my part, it shot through my head like lightning that Mottel still expected me to appear at the smithy to get my orders for hauling contraband during the week of the High Holidays. But if I could truthfully say, “Mottel, I can’t. I haven’t the use of my horse and wagon,” then I had an excuse; I would then be unable to dirty the High Holidays by hauling contraband. By giving Aaron the horse and wagon I was really getting rather than granting a favor; so I forgot all about Shnipsel in 'a flash. “Aaron . . . and suppose you started out for Minsk right away, tonight, and kept Gritka to a walk until you reached the smithy in Ludva . . . then it wouldn’t be too hard on his forelegs, it’s only that I wouldn’t want him to lose a loose shoe . . .”

  “No,” Aaron replied quietly, holding back his joy in deference to my worry about the horse. “I wouldn’t let him go faster than a walk until Ludva, naturally, and at night the road will be empty and it will be no problem at all.”

  “And once in Minsk — ”

  “In Minsk there are a hundred blacksmiths.”

  “So in hell, Rezatskin. Take the horse.”

  “Well . . . Yeersel . . . live only to be a hundred, you and your children’s children.”

  “But you’ll stop in Ludva’s smithy for the two front shoes?”

  “Of course.”

  “You won’t wait until Minsk?”

  “No. When I mentioned the hundred blacksmiths in Minsk, Yeersel ... I really didn’t know what I was saying. Ay, I’m happy!” H
e began to weep tears of relief, and as it was in my own nature to bring up tears when another wept, I cried with him. I cried in thanks for the blessing Aaron had unknowingly granted me. “Well,” I said finally, wiping

  my nose, “enough of this or we’ll both drown before anything else. When can you bring back the horse and wagon?”

  “Tomorrow is Wednesday. Thursday night, easily.”

  “All right. Another thing, very important. Don’t bring the goods into the village, Aaron. Stop off at the Parsovs’ and leave it with them.”

  “Naturally.”

  “And better take Leah. In case there’s to be any questioning, you went with Leah to visit her sister in Minsk, right?”

  “Her sister and her paralyzed father.”

  “So it then becomes entirely a family visit, right?”

  “What else?”

  We were at the foot of the path. Before us lay the clumps of our huts, and I felt a straining to run home. “I’ll tell my Bosha you’re leaving your two boys with us. Come for Gritka in an hour. And when you’re in Minsk, give a look into the Muddytown synagogue for me.”

  He went to his hut and I to mine. In an hour his sons, Laib and Shim, were guests in my house, playing games with my children, and Aaron and Leah were on their way to Minsk in my wagon; and I never saw them alive again.

  The next day, the Wednesday, passed well. At morning prayers in the synagogue I explained Aaron’s absence. I had to use a few lies but this did not bother me to any extent. I knew the landsmen would have approved had they known why. They accepted what I said: “Aaron came to me last night and told me his wife had a dream that frightened her, that her paralyzed father in Minsk had died. He asked me for my horse and wagon. They’re on their way to Minsk.”

  Later that morning, I sent my youngest, Mayer, to Mottel with the news that Aaron and Leah had my wagon until at least the following night, and the afternoon I spent in the house of Yushin, the druggist, making over an old coat of his for his father-in-law who lived somewhere in the Novgorod district. Yushin’s wife hovered over me like a horsefly, correcting my measurements and counting the stitches. The coat was to be her Christmas present to her father and she wanted it

  sent right away, and a perfect fit. “You understand, now?” she kept repeating in her grating, nervous voice which made the Russian words sound even more irritating. “It’s for our Christmas, you understand, and Papa gets so cold in the winter, it must fit correctly the first time, it mustn’t be traveling back and forth between here and Novgorod all winter, is that understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “They say it’s going to be a bad winter, and Papa freezes in winter, is that understood? I mean about the fit, that his collar must rise very high, well above the ears?”

  “Understood, understood.”

  With winter work in my hands and the skies holding gray and gloomy, and yesterday’s wind still sending clouds of leaves down in big circles, the summer was already something far gone. In four days it would be our most solemn holiday, the Day of Atonement, and I could not remember so winterlike a High Holiday week. Meanwhile I kept wondering whether Aaron had really stopped at the smithy in Ludva; I’d forgotten to make sure he had enough money for horseshoes. But Wednesday passed, much like any other day. It was a novel thing to have Aaron’s boys with us, but then we were used to having Shim and Laib run in and out of the house. Several years before I had surprised Laib and my daughter Rochel together, playing a childish game with their little bodies, and it had been a big upset to me at the time. But that was all forgotten now and I really felt they were almost my own, the two boys. Which, of course, actually happened later on when Shim married Rochel. But at the time of which I tell they were simply the children of our second tailor who had gone to Minsk in my wagon for the purpose of gaining himself and his family two chickens a week for a year, and eggs.

  But by nightfall of the next day, the Thursday I expected to see Aaron swing my horse and wagon into my yard, there was a different face on me. That afternoon the weather had passed from “winterlike” to real winter. An angry snow slanted down from the clouds that had been glowering for two days, and the wind opened its mouth and

  showed its teeth. The children of the village rejoiced in snow-fights but at evening prayers my frame shook with the tenseness of my praying, and when I came to the part of the ritual that said, “Forgive us, O our Father, for we have sinned; pardon us, O our King, for we have transgressed; for Thou dost pardon and forgive. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who art gracious and dost abundantly forgive. Look upon our affliction and plead our cause, and redeem us speedily for Thy name's sake," I took it as a most personal matter of supplication.

  When Aaron and Leah failed to arrive at nine that night, I felt annoyance with them for not having come on time; I urged myself to believe that the storm was delaying them, and that they should have had the sense to leave earlier. At midnight I rose from bed, put on clothes, wrapped my feet in winter burlap, and dragged myself through the one-foot snow to Aaron's hut, only to find them not there. On the way back I cursed them for not having come on time, and then in the next minute thanked them for being so smart as to not to have tried to make it through the storm. What a fool I called myself! I went home and slept.

  Tomorrow ... of course they'd come tomorrow.

  The first thing that fell into my senses when I opened my eyes that Friday morning was, “I’ll go get Aaron and together we’ll walk to the synagogue for morning prayers." The snow still fell, but now gently, as I rapped the shutters of his hut. “Still not home?" I whispered. No, not home. Now it became a question of what to do. Should I go to morning prayers and then think of some way to make a search — yes! go to the Parsovs', perhaps they laid over the night there! — or try to catch Dimitri, the postman, who had a horse and wagon, right away ? Because of the storm Dimitri was going to start off on his rounds either much earlier or much later than the usual seven o’clock . . . but I didn't know which, and I therefore decided I would have to miss morning prayers. The few times before when I had missed, I had experienced an emptiness no matter how logical the reasons for my absences. There were too few of us for even one to miss; we needed our full strength each time to raise up the vision which was to bulwark

  us against the onslaughts of the day. We needed, too, the presence of every one of us to heighten the buoyancy of our private contemplations, to give rich volume to our “Amens,” to guarantee no lessening in the daily renovation of our faith. We needed every voice of yesterday, save those God chose to take away, as we remembered and considered and sustained each other in our adorations. And what I needed to be sure of on that Friday morning, what I needed even more than the blessing of attending morning prayers, was to know that God had not seen fit to take away Aaron and Leah in the storm. Such a tragedy, I already knew, would not lend itself to easy explanations in my mind. I feared the ordeal of such an attack on my faith and more than all I feared the finger of guilt pointed at me, and the voice of God saying, “Yeersel, it is your sin. Yes, you did commit the sin of Micah.”

  So I crossed the road to their side of the village in high quick steps, avoiding the drifts and trying to keep my knees dry, for they used to stiffen and become painful with dampness. I had a good chance of catching Dimitri before he carried the post to the district. Dimitri had little use for himself, much less for me, but he appreciated the worth of a ruble and for a ruble he would ride me up to the Parsovs’.

  I thought of this as I made my way up to his hut. It was one thing to console myself with the thought that I would find Aaron and Leah at the Parsovs’, but quite another not to be certain they were in fact there. Shim and Laib had already begun to miss their parents; and truthfully speaking, I had already begun to feel the weight of the sin of Micah, of having been “pure with wicked balances and with a bag of deceitful weights.”

  With these thoughts tumbling about in my sleepy and miserable head, I knocked on the door cf Dimitri’s hut, which sat off the lane
behind Father Semyon’s house. Waiting for the door to open, I realized that Dimitri must have already gone; there were wagon tracks and hoofmarks in the snow. Without waiting for the door to open, then, I ran down the lane, stumbling in the wettish snow, just in time to see Dimitri passing down the lane to the highroad; he had evidently been around on the other side of Father Semyon’s.

  “Dimitri, Dimitri!” I gave him my highest call, and he turned his head as he sat under the canvas hood of the mail-wagon, the reins in his hand, startled a bit out of his morning calm by the sound of a voice in the snow. I ran to the wagon, my chest bursting with unaccustomed exertion; without saying anything I climbed up on the seat next to him. He took a good look at me, then. “Hey — get off!”

  I put my hand in my pocket and took out a ruble note. “If, please, you will be so good to take this?”

  “Where were you coming from?” he said, putting it under his fur cap.

  “From your house.”

  “I suppose you woke Yulga.”

  “I didn’t notice.” Without waiting to explain further, I added, “And now, sir, if you will please be so good — ”

  “How good?” he interrupted. “I’ll tell you ... for one rotten ruble’s worth . . . and I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “You pass the Parsovs’ on your rounds, just drop me off there, I ask no more.”

  A look of weary annoyance darkened his face, and he spoke as a child whines petulantly to a harsh father. “So for one miserable ruble I’m to misuse a government conveyance! For one miserable ruble I’m to say ‘Yes, my Baron’?”

  “Sir,” I said to him, tears in my eyes, “I appreciate your joking this way, but relieve me of my troubles, take me to the Parsovs’ now.”

  He shoved me in what he considered was just a light way, but his elbow felt like a club on my chest. “It’s breaking rules, I mean taking passengers in an official government vehicle. Here we are side by side. For one rotten ruble you become a guest of the Tsar. Suppose Buzarov or somebody official sees it, what next?” He spit across my face into the snow. “Thoughts . . . they will think Dimitri favors Jews, pursues operations with them, takes bribes. Clear?”