The Landsmen

by Peter Martin

  Aaron’s hut was crowded. Two dozen Golinskers filled it, waiting for Yeersel to return from his interview with Mottel. Everybody had something to say about the terrible accident except the victims, naturally, who lay covered side by side upon the bed. The talk ran like a quick river, each trying not to release his lament until the funerals. Suddenly I felt myself yanked into a corner by our meat slaughterer, Laib-Shmul. “Wouldn’t it be a blessing on the two orphans if you sat them down and told them a few holy words at a time like this?”

  “I have six things I could say to that, Laib-Shmul,” and my tone was plain ice. “But I’ll only say one. I don’t like to be handled like an unclean cow.”

  zMaisha 81

  “I don’t handle unclean cows,” Laib-Shmul barked, correctly taking my remark for an accusation.

  “Not by daylight,” I said shortly.

  I really didn’t know if Laib-Shmul slaughtered unclean cows on the side but he had always been, ever since I had him at my learning- table as a boy, one who had remained ignorant of the difference between a chicken and a human being. The man was gross to a fault, and even more irritating was his method of never making up his mind about something until he knew the majority’s opinion. In this way he managed always to feel at peace with himself; only he was nothing. He behaved as circumstances required, for the most part; and when he acted perhaps in some way which might have not been the majority’s, he fell back upon his favorite phrase, “It’s all a matter of interpretation.”

  Most of us Golinskers had long ago decided to be neither Hasids nor Misnagids, but just Jews. There wasn’t time enough both to study into the matter and to bring home bread every day. As a result the landsmen had quite agreed among themselves that though I was capable of sitting at the head of the learning-table, in other matters I had little aptitude and less sense. Laib-Shmul particularly enjoyed disputing with me, especially at our synagogue meetings, on anything from the right time for cutting firewood to the wrong time for cutting firewood.

  Yeersel came into Aaron’s hut, his face gray with strain. Everybody crowded about him. How was Mottel? Would he allow the funerals to take place that same day ?

  “Yes, yes,” Yeersel muttered, bending to unwrap his soaked foot- rags. “Only he begins to interest himself in the orphans, Shim and Laib.”

  “Interest, what interest?” came from Gershon, the shoemaker, in his hoarse ringing tenor.

  “He wants the boys, plainly.”

  “Impossible to allow,” I said immediately.

  Out of the high talk which followed, the voice of Tzippe-Sora rose

  like the crack of a spitzruten. Her old eyes filled with scorn. “Well, now ... if Mottel had a tongue for every hair on his head, and every one of his tongues told us, ‘The boys are my nephews and I’ll do with them as I want,’ I still wouldn’t think of fighting with him! Have you all forgotten how close Mottel stands to the Squire through Buzarov? Leave Mottel alone, at least until you men sit down and make a plan . . . how the two boys will live and with whom . . . then we’ll let Mottel know what we want for the boys.”

  “That’s what I thought all the time,” I heard Laib-Shmul saying loudly; and as usual, a little late.

  “Well, Yeersel?” asked Laib-Shmul.

  “Let it be as others say,” Yeersel mumbled. I had never seen him so shocked by death before.

  Then one of Tzippe-Sora’s sons, Yussel, came running in and shouting, “Did you hear about Mottel?”

  Yussel’s eyes glittered. I liked him, one of my worst pupils. The man had simple sweetness, though no brains, and seeing him often warmed me. This time, by his glints, I gathered the news was good. “If you want to see something, go to the police! He’s there!”

  “The police?”

  “He went too far this time.”

  “Killed someone?” from Nochim’s Zagzaigel.

  “He broke the shoulder of the postman, Dimitri, with one swing of his sledge,” Yussel explained with gestures. “Dimitri came back from his rounds needing a shoe for a horse and Mottel promptly broke his shoulder. It’s one thing to pick a fight — but this time it was a government employee, no less!”

  “Thank you, O Highest One,” said Tzippe-Sora. “Only be so good as to keep him there for a good ten years!”

  Indeed, a Mottel in jail meant a Mottel without a problem for us. And even as we buried Aaron and Leah that afternoon in the ground behind the synagogue, and heard their sons, Shim and Laib, stand saying the mourners’ prayer, the thought of having no contention from Mottel in the planning of the orphans’ future gave us who gathered

  zMatsha 83

  around the brown mounds in the snow a hint of the sweet goodness to come to them and to us all.

  Directly following the funeral, the landsmen took themselves into the synagogue and sat down, unwrapping their wet foot-rags. Being the beadle as well as the head at the learning-table, it was my duty to light the fire in the stove. But I had neglected to bring in firewood the day before and it was now completely soaked.

  Sitting then in their coats the landsmen began to talk about where Shim and Laib might live and what they would do. Being Golinskers, they started where they should have finished. “Of course it’s a simple thing,” said Hertz, the grease-maker, shrugging. “Aaron was a tailor and Shim helped him. Shim is now a man fourteen years old and well knows how to hold a needle in his hand. I don’t see the problem with him. He does for Yeersel what he did for his father, may he rest. As for Laib, he’s eleven, and an orphan, so he’ll be confirmed a year earlier, on his next birthday. And as to how they will live and who is to care for them, also obvious. . .

  A silence greeted Hertz when he finished, not the silence of agreement but the kind wherein everybody disagrees but waits for someone else to make the first attack.

  “There are different obstacles,” said Gershon, breaking the silence thoughtfully. “Remember they have an aunt and a grandfather in Minsk who might want something to say . . . let’s not hurry to a poor decision. . .

  “The grandfather sits paralyzed and the aunt is no bargain,” called out Zisha, Naftoli-Dovid’s eldest son, from the benches; a hard worker, quieter than his father, speaking little; a good man, far from bright, unlike his namesake, Zish, the old army corporal.

  Yeersel asked Zisha how he knew the aunt was no bargain and Zisha said, “Leah, may she rest, once told me how the aunt never gave milk to anybody from her cow unless they brought her potato peelings first. Not even to the sick did she give milk without potato peelings, and that’s no woman to leave orphans with!”

  “Wait, think a minute, brothers,” Nochim said excitedly, bitten by a

  84 L'he Landsmen

  sudden idea. “Why, in a word, can’t they stay in all our homes, for a month at a time?”

  Another silence, and then a harangue capped by Laib-Shmul’s empty zeal of spokesmanship. “In the name of your stupidity, Nochim, give yourself a blessing! Go empty yourself of what you’re splashing all over us!”

  “Hold your mouth in the synagogue,” Hertz warned.

  “It’s the height of foolishness,” the aroused Laib-Shmul insisted. “What are they, horses to be dragged from stable to stable every month ? ”

  The truth, it was too cold in the synagogue to do any clear thinking. They were shouting and pounding the learning-table only to keep a little warm. As time went on and they shivered and sputtered in their coats, I began to fear they were freezing themselves to spite me. More than once I announced that I would go around to collect dry firewood from the huts but each time I was waved back to my seat.

  I felt my days as beadle were beginning to be numbered. The demands of my asthma had made me careless about things like firewood; and as the afternoon wore on, and tempers kept rising as the temperature dropped, I spurred myself to think of something which would come down upon the matter with the clear sense of a Solomon and make them admire my brilliance. When nothing of the kind occurred I felt shamed in my heart. Me, a Karliner God-child
, unable to untie the knot of a blessing upon two orphans! What a failure for one who had once called himself a Hasid!

  I sat in the midst of all the useless noise and I said to myself, “Maisha, a piece of wood has more to it than you ... if it doesn’t grow at least it can be made to stand up ... or it can give heat when it’s burned . . . while you can’t give anything, you who sat at the head of the learning-table when all but three of these landsmen were children . . . and not only can’t you help them now, Maisha . . . how much could they have learned at your table, to be so futile today?”

  Finally when it seemed that the meeting must end in an empty uproar, there came to me, as if by special courier from The One Above,

  a magnificent conception which could lift me into the very bosom of God, a conception gaining me not only new respect from the landsmen but also the services of two pairs of young strong arms and legs in the performance of my beadle’s duties. I stood up and hobbled to the learning-table which had been the center of my life, giving myself courage by pretending that they were still my pupils at lesson time. Rubbing my knuckles against the table I said, “Children, children . . . I want a word.”

  I spoke as one long acquainted with the position of beadle, with just enough of a humble tone to show I considered myself only another such as they, baffled but still stubbornly seeking an answer. “Children,” I began. “It’s nearly Sabbath-time and the stone we hammer still remains a stone in one piece. Let me look at this stone. Who knows but maybe I’ll find the one little crack, that when hit just right will break it?”

  “We are now looking at stones?” Hertz said sadly.

  “Let him open his mouth,” Yeersel told him.

  “Let me be pardoned,” I began again, “but up to now all of us have been twisting ourselves around like a fart in the borsht.”

  “Ay, it’s late,” moaned Laib-Shmul. “We’re frozen into blocks of ice and he brings up a good hot borsht! First it’s stones and then borsht and in the end he’ll serve up a whole German lecture!”

  No one answered Laib-Shmul but I felt their mood of limited patience. “To call the nephew of Mendel the Karliner a German word- juggler is very foolish,” I said softly, bending low over the table, looking from face to face to find the glimmer of a wedge. Yeersel’s was the kindliest and the saddest and I addressed him directly. “Yeersel, look at me. Am I not a person you could truly call an orphan ? Alone, old, and getting to be a problem? To snatch the matter by the back of the neck, isn’t my heart fitted by experience to know the weight of orphaning better than any of you ? I’ll only mention Gitel, may she rest, and my Haim, may he rest wherever he is. . . .”

  “Oh, let up, let up,” roared Laib-Shmul, “why talk of what we know when it’s what we don’t know that hurts more?”

  “Very well, then. I wish to take Shim and Laib and be responsible. I want to be their mother and father.’'

  “But, Maisha,” Gershon said, “you don’t even take the right care of yourself, I mean ... ?”

  “I’m used to them and they to me. I’m their teacher, we know each others’ little habits, and it will work. Shim can be apprenticed to Yeersel, eat with him, and sleep with me in my hut. Laib will be twelve next May and until then he will study for his orphan’s confirmation as a man of Israel. Both of them can live in my hut, and Tzippe-Sora can finally have her heart’s desire by paying the boys a rent for their hut . . . she’ll have a quiet place of her own away from her crowd of family boarders until it’s time for Shim or Laib to move back to the hut . . . whoever has a wife first. Well, there . . . plain enough?”

  “Plain, plain,” said Yeersel, frowning with worry. “Maisha . . . please pardon me . . . but don’t you think maybe you’re just a little too, too ... ?”

  “Too old?” I replied, trembling. “Yes, without a question! But where is a younger man to say he’ll dedicate himself to the boys?” I saw guilt in the eyes that stared at me and I stared back at them, my eyes making a circle around the table. In that moment I saw I had them; allowing myself to breathe more deeply, I spoke in a wild surge of confidence as I had in the years of my youth when nothing I said could be wrong. “Why are we shivering and wasting time ? And tell me why in my last years there shouldn’t be young sounds in my house again, and warmer walls, and newer jokes? Let The One Above take you to Him for throwing me this blessing, of guiding two sweet children of good parents, may they rest, into a Jewish manhood, into a life of bread and joy of which it will truly be said, ‘The Lord became attentive to them, for they sang in the midst of their troubles.’. . . Oh, before I push myself into The Next World, let me leave something of myself growing in two fine young Jewish hearts. . . .”

  For a few moments, nothing . . . then beginning with Yeersel the landsmen gaveled the table one by one with their open palms; a decision! And Laib-Shmul too, of course, smacking his palm down

  louder than any other. They rose and stamped their feet as I turned to the altar and got out the candles, seeing the sun already slanted to twilight.

  In the next minute we were at our evening prayers; and on that Sabbath eve the ritual was chanted with more than the usual adoration for the blessing which had been rewarded. In triumphant cantillations which I made soar fervently over all the others’, I gave thanks to The One Above for having managed so well.

  The next day was the Sabbath. After evening prayers I sat down with Yeersel and Gershon for an hour and we agreed that the boys should sit the full week of the mourning period where they had started it, in Yeersel’s hut. Meanwhile Daneel and Zagzaigel would attend to moving the boys to my hut. That same night I changed everything around to make it right for three. I gave them the bed and also the full use of my chest of drawers, throwing my clothes into the horsehair trunk and saving the top lid for family objects . . . Gitel’s locket, Haim’s first prayer books, and the Book of Mendel written in my own hand. I was happy in my heart as I did these things, imagining how they would look sleeping as I watched them from my pallet above the stove . . . the grave Shim, with his tender eldest son’s dignity, and Laib, three years younger and a child compared to the serious other. I made my bed on the stove-pallet and lay long, looking at the empty one to be occupied after their mourning period ended. I thought of Haim and Gitel, and of my father and Uncle Mendel, and told myself, “Why sorrow after them now? They are passed-over, and have perhaps wiped out some of my sins for me. Why shouldn’t I feel joy in them as well as in Shim and Laib?” I began thinking of Laib-Shmul and how I might curb my dislike of him. Now that I had risen to make myself guardian of the boys, my every action would be watched and weighed in the light of my pledge. I had no fears of making a bad job of it but I saw the benefit of keeping on good terms with our meat slaughterer; better with him an insincere peace than a sincere quarrel. In this calm fashion I fell asleep.

  The Landsmen

  On the following morning, the Sunday, I thought to make an early visit to the bathhouse, it being the day of the Atonement Eve; I enjoyed bathing in quiet and had yet to overcome the shame of m)’ crippled feet, wishing not to have them seen by too many. Directly after morning prayers I walked down the lane to the bathhouse superintended by Yakov, Tzippe-Sora’s, a jolly young curser of nineteen or so, with a big mat of hair, coarse but good-natured. Tzippe-Sora paid Buzarov a stiff rent for the bathhouse plot (which she denied, Tzippe- Sora being superstitious about giving out information concerning her private affairs). She lived as humbly as any of us, yet it was known, for example, that Laib-Shmul had exacted a dowry of forty rubles, gold, I for marrying Tzippe-Sora’s now departed Hendel; Hendel said her mother borrowed it from Vassily Buzarov, with the mother saying only, when hints were made to her face about her wealth, “With your brains and my money, Rothschild couldn’t steer such a world.” . . . But walking down to the bathhouse that Sunday morning, exchanging greetings with landsmen and seeing the new deference in their eyes, I thought only of how excellent it was to be seventy and alive enough to command a respect.

 
As I came to the-bathhouse I saw a number of landsmen anxiously grouped around the figure of Sergeant Kuizma Oblanski, his white cap and epaulets high above them, his tunic unbuttoned as usual, and his sword hanging carelessly to within an inch of the ground. The sight of the policeman standing outside our bathhouse on the day before the hallowed Day of Atonement, and the disdainful indifference with which he was spitting against the wall . . . what on earth did he want ?

  “Here he comes,” Yakov called out, pointing, and Oblanski turned and walked toward me in his slow waddle.

  “You,” Oblanski said in his squeak of a voice that came out so strangely from behind his red beard. I began to tremble.

  “What does he want?” I cried to the landsmen standing about — and to Oblanski — “Yes, sir, Sergeant. Please what is it?”

  “You are to come with me.”

  I said nothing to Kuizma Oblanski. He led me across the road and through the dirty doors of the police building with its soiled flag waving outside. In the hall we passed a large portrait of the Tsar wearing an expression of great royal kindness; and without ceremony Oblanski walked me through a door leading to steps and the basement, and thence to a row of strongly bolted wooden doors. He opened one and pushed me in.

  Without a window and. even without a candle, I sat on the dusty wooden floor unable to see the hand before my eyes. For me the night had already come and I began to mutter the opening prayer for Atonement Eve, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us by Thy commandments and has commanded us to robe in the garment with fringes.” I was without a praying garment but I made to lift a fringe and touch it to my lips, continuing, “By authority of the Court on high and by the authority of the Court on earth: with the knowledge of the All-Present and with the knowledge of this congregation, we give leave to pray with them that have transgressed.”