The Landsmen

by Peter Martin

  show-off), “and make this vow with all my new manhood — to follow in his ways as a server and lover of the Lord.” That and the thanks I owed my parents for keeping me clean with their careful love, plus various other sublime realizations supposed to enter me on my twelfth birthday like a secret sunrise — that life is sweet but eternity’s wisdom is the real manna, that our enemies’ hate would destroy not us but themselves, and that The One Above in his wisdom has already seen to the everlasting salvation of Israel. To say these things as a confirmation boy meant getting and giving proof of the worth of our faith; in this lay the kernel of the confirmation. The words alone stood for little, the ideas accepted not in a thinking way but as waves, yet as more than moving salt water, as something moved and moving at the same time, and true forever.

  If the speech Reb Maisha had given me to learn had stopped there, if it had been the same as the other confirmation boys’, I would have been sold on the proposition; and probably the few things that had already begun to work on me and open me up — Uncle Mottel, a mandolin, the sound of a fiddle in the summertime, the nearness of a girl — I could have put aside as the foolishness a man outgrows. The luck of it was that Reb Maisha took me more personally. He put a few things into my confirmation oration that were deeper, things I twisted around in my head until it made itself into a meaning I found useful and which in the end upset Reb Maisha’s purpose. It confirmed me not so much as a man of Israel as of the world — the world I would love though it did not accept such a stubborn complainer against growing up as myself, the pain-in-the-neck of my family.

  The thing he put in the oration was against fear of punishment. “Let us be no more children,” he drilled into me, “let us understand why God punishes. Is it not childish to fear the cutting-off of a toe which saves the whole foot, and more? Remember the words of the sage of Mezeritz, ‘Having lost a toe you will be more careful in your play not to lose another and suffer again the pain you felt.’ Fear the wound, not the cure, and love him who punishes you.” This reminded me of Yeersel’s curing me of the sinfulness Uncle Mottel had put into

  me; but the more I practiced the pronunciation of this part, it made another sense. I thought, “If, really, Uncle Mottel is terrible, why do they still call out his name for a reading of the Law on the New Year even though he’s never in the synagogue?”

  If he was so bad, why wasn’t he cut off from the rest of us like a poisoned toe? Why in this case did the landsmen fear the cure more than the wound? . . . One night towards the end of the first winter that Shim and I lived with Reb Maisha, the three of us were undressing to go to sleep and I said, “Reb, tell me why Uncle Mottel gets a reading-call to the Law every New Year’s, when he’s such a God-hater.”

  “Who says he’s called every year?” Shim asked as Reb Maisha climbed to his shelf-bed over the stove and covered himself.

  “What for, what for,” sighed Reb Maisha. “Ay, such an asthma I’m cursed with, not to be able to breathe . . . and what for?”

  Every time Reb Maisha had to stop and think before answering he always mentioned his asthma, so I said, “No, really Reb . . . the truth spoken . . . he’s called to read the Law every New Year’s, isn’t it so?”

  “If you noticed it, maybe so,” he murmured, turning to the wall with a quick twist of his bones. “I didn’t. A good night.”

  “See?” Shim said to me, relieved.

  “But why then even once?” I demanded. “If Mottel, then why not Profim or Father Semyon or the Squire — if our uncle hates us, as is said, as much as they do, the gentiles?”

  Shim said, “Listen, Laib, don’t start saying crazy things, you hear.”

  “Quiet, quiet,” said Reb Maisha from the shelf-bed but I kept on, and louder. Some of what Yeersel had frightened me with came back into my thoughts. “A piece of flesh that breathes out poison, isn’t that what he is ? — a club in the gentiles’ hands that takes our blood, isn’t that so, Reb Maisha?”

  “Ay, quiet,” he sighed, turning to face us.

  “So or not so?” I demanded.

  “Of course, so,” Shim agreed.

  “All right,” Reb Maisha said, sitting up and letting his feet hang

  down close to the stove; and when he spoke it was with his asthma forgotten. “Laib asks the question, ‘Why do we honor the enemy and apostate?’ Now, Shim . . . what, let’s say, would be your word on that?”

  Shim fell happily into the old student way of discourse, his fist held before him with the thumb up. “If,” he said, raising his fist slowly as he stated the question, “it is indeed truth spoken that Uncle Mottel gets called to read the Law every year though he is an absolute hater of our God . . . then ...” and as he gave his answer he started bringing his list down from over his head, his thumb leading the way, “. . . it must be so only because The One Above asks us to believe that the outcast will, however far away he is, one time hear his name being called and come to the synagogue, and make himself a Jew among Jews again!” Shim finished by bringing up his thumb in a quick curve, a triumphant sealing of the argument.

  “Not badly spoken,” Reb Maisha murmured. “However, it is necessary to poke a little deeper. First, he is called, you say, the absolute hater of our God.”

  “Right,” Shim said.

  “We’ll see,” Reb replied. “Second, Uncle Mottel carries the name of outcast.”

  “Again right,” Shim said.

  “Let’s see,” Reb Maisha said softly, “if what a man is, and what a man is called, is always the same thing.”

  “What, you’re taking his side?” Shim cried, surprised and a little frightened.

  “Taking his side?” Reb Maisha said, looking from one to the other of us. “This worries you?”

  “Reb — he has no God!”

  “Ay, Shim; so he says. But between what a man calls himself and what he really is, is sometimes a difference. I question whether your uncle is a hater of God, an outcast, and without a God.” Then he smiled with a nod of his head, and gave his toes a twiddle. “I’ll tell you what I don’t question. Your uncle says all these things about him-

  self and everybody among us believes him. Yet we call him to read the Law once a year — why is it? Because we don't believe him? Ay, no . . . we believe that when Mottel says he has no God, well, he lies. We believe, in our hearts, that in his own he knows he is a liar and, the truth spoken, that he is one of ours, after all."

  Shim said, “How can he be one of ours? The things he doesn't do, and the things he does . .

  “Ay, Shim ... a little too deep for you?" Reb Maisha grinned in such a way that I hardly noticed his greenish uneven stumps of teeth. It was the face of a person alone yet in peace, with a gentle scorn about him for those who might not care to look too deeply.

  As we climbed into bed Reb Maisha remained sitting on his bed- shelf, still grinning. “Did you hear that?" Shim whispered to me. “The Reb is getting mixed-up."

  “He knows what is; he knows more than us,” I whispered back.

  “The light," Reb Maisha called. “Forgotten."

  Shim gave me a poke in the rib. I got up and blew the lamp out. Then Reb Maisha said, “Laib, come here." He leaned his head down and whispered from under his cover, “Today a bird told me your uncle is back from the jail. The four months are over and they say he’s even friendly again with Dimitri."

  “So?"

  “Did you know why they took him away?”

  “He slugged Dimitri."

  “He also took money Dimitri gained by selling the goods in the wagon."

  “He took it from Dimitri?"

  “And gave it to me. Eleven rubles remained over, after paying the Minsker for the goods he sold your Papa, may-he-rest. These will be for your confirmation suit, and for your own goods, scissors, needles and tape-measures when you go to tailor. A nice little confirmation present." (But who wanted to be a tailor?) “If he wasn’t a real one of ours, you see," Reb continued, “he wouldn't have sat four months in jail for this,
but don't say anything."

  122 The Landsmen

  Back in bed, Shim gave me another poke. “What was the old one chippering about?”

  “Beans and raisins, raisins and beans.”

  Shim fell asleep; my head kept filling itself with pictures one after the other ... of my uncle slugging Dimitri, then sitting in jail, of Reb Maisha sending goods-money to Minsk, of myself saying my confirmation speech in the synagogue, dressed in my new suit, “Is it not childish to fear the cutting-off of a toe which saves the whole foot, and more? Remember the words of the sage of Mezeritz, ‘Having lost a toe you will be more careful in your play not to lose another and suffer again the pain you felt/ Fear the wound, not the cure, and love him who punishes you.”

  Well . . . Yeersel had hacked Uncle Mottel out of me, thinking my sin with Rochel came from Mottel’s hating God. But according to Reb Maisha, my uncle in his heart loved God. Therefore Yeersel’s cure mightn’t have been correct. If the sin was not my uncle’s but all mine, then why should I fear my uncle, who had sat in prison to give me a confirmation suit?

  In this way I tapped walls I couldn’t see, finding that secret believ- ings hide themselves everywhere, even in the hearts of teachers, and that what makes a wound a Wound and a cure a cure did not originate in Golinsk and would remain unsettled there. These things did not lay themselves out immediately in such neat notes. The orchestration I would make later but the melody was in me and it pulled me to Profim’s.

  The next morning I woke up sneezing and coughing but did the usual, dressing and rousing the landsmen to morning prayers, then sliding on the ice to the synagogue to throw wood in the stove. Later at the learning-table the boys noticed my red face and told Reb Maisha. He sent me home with Yeersel’s Mayer who helped me undress and then went for his mother.

  Her hand felt like ice. The raspberry tea she gave me made me feel only colder. She put all the covers in the house on my bed but the germ got to its real work and the walls went dark before my eyes with

  a great zizzing turning in my head like bumblebees. It was a pneumonia; they didn’t know the name of it but they knew what to do. Hot bricks were wrapped and put to my feet. The women took turns sitting with me day and night. I saw Bosha’s face and Tzippe-Sora’s, and Gershon’s Faiga’s, and Naftoli-Dovid’s, and Rochel’s . . . and when I couldn’t keep my eyes open I heard all kinds of zizzings. Sometimes I would turn words in my head, from the songs Uncle Mottel taught me, around and around . . .

  Two, three, my head hurts me . . .

  . . . and until a woman’s voice would say, “Laib, your head, what?” I wouldn’t know I was talking. Then it went into my sides, the pain, and another part of the mandolin song gave itself a turnaround . . .

  Nuts are dry, my sides they cry Nuts are dry, my sides they cry . . .

  Yushin the druggist came with his cupping-glasses, placing them hot against my sides to suck the sickness out. Then the fever boiled over; I lay in sweat for a week but began to eat. One evening when the men were at prayers and the women all home getting supper, Shim gave me chicken soup. He sat watching me, his hands ready to help if I dropped the bowl. “I didn’t know you spoke such a good Russian, Laib.”

  “From where, a good Russian?”

  “When you were very sick. Russian songs. You didn’t stop a minute.”

  “When I was sick?”

  “When you were out of your head. Everybody noticed.” He held the bowl from the bottom. “Yeersel said you must have learned it from the Mottel. Is he right?”

  “Uncle isn’t so terrible. I’m going to talk to him again.”

  “Still out of your head. . . .”

  I told him Reb Maisha’s parceling-over of Uncle Mottel, but Shim shook his head. “He’s getting like a baby. Don’t tell anybody. If they find this out they’ll look for a new beadle.”

  “So . . . he’ll be out-beadle.”

  “Have pity. If be goes out-beadle he’ll die from the disgrace. Talk with a little sense. Do you want to put him in his grave?”

  “I’ll say nothing. But only if you’ll say nothing about who I’m going to talk to.”

  “We’ll twist that out later. When you’re better.”

  “Agreed now? Or no?”

  “Let’s talk it over when you’re better,” he said, giving his neck a little sideways twist that told me he was beginning to give in. “Now or no?” I pressed him. “Give your hand.”

  We slapped our palms together good and hard the way they did in the market. Shim never broke his promise. For this I respected him to the end of his ridiculous days.

  They kept me mostly in the hut for half the winter, letting me out only when there was sun. I would go with Reb Maisha to the synagogue in the morning and sit with the boys at the learning-table until noon, then go home to eat what the women had warmed for me. After, I was supposed to take a nap but this became very boring. I studied my confirmation speech, polishing my ritual-chanting for the Sabbath services and the reading of the Law, trying new little shadings and finding the best places to breathe — until one afternoon I put my hands in my pockets and crossed to the gentile side of the village.

  Through the open smithy door I saw him shoeing a horse and laughing with the peasant holding the horse’s head. When he dropped the horse’s foot and stood up straight my uncle’s face came into the light. He looked like a horse himself now, his chin and cheekbones sticking out more than ever, his beard extra straggly and thin, his body somehow narrower. “Ay, in the prison they must have really hungered him out,” I thought.

  He didn’t notice me until I stepped out of the way when the peasant led the horse past me. Then he said as though he’d seen me yesterday, “Well . . . it’s you,” sticking a cigarette into his mouth.

  Not knowing what to answer, I said, “I was sick.”

  “Yes, I heard you were better.”

  “I came to tell you I can’t stay long,” I said quickly. “I mean about the money.”

  “What money?”

  “From Papa’s-may-he-rest-in-peace goods.”

  “Well, so.”

  “Im getting a confirmation suit with it.”

  “So?”

  “A good thank-you.”

  “For what?”

  “For giving the money to Reb Maisha.”

  “Flah.” He sounded not pleased. I felt no connection. The mandolin was long ago, a goner, and suddenly so was he. Thin from prison, with the face of a horse . . . “So this is how things change,” I thought.

  “What are you squirming for?” he asked me.

  “I have to go.”

  “So go,” he gestured behind him.

  “I mean home.”

  “Why?”

  “They’ll be mad,” I lied, afraid to say I didn’t like the smithy any more, or him.

  “Mad,” he repeated with an annoyed bray, “they’ll be mad!” He gave me a good-by shove and walked to the back of the smithy. I ran home. I didn’t think he would bother with me any more. I didn’t want him to.

  One morning just before prayers Nochim’s fifteenish Zagzaigel came into the synagogue with a run and a jump, his eyes shining with good news. Laib-Shmul thought Daneel’s Lippe had twins and Naftoli-Dovid that the Squire had died. “No,” Zagzaigel cried, “it’s even better! It’s our Mr. Poison, our Mottel — last night he got himself thrown out of the second floor window of Profim’s brothel, his good friend, and now he’s lying like a bagful of broken sticks, waiting for the devil to take him in for a partner!”

  The landsmen finished morning prayers in a hurry that day for they had to decide where Mottel would be buried. Finally they agreed he

  could be in the Golinsker cemetery but only in the far corner, in the marsh, an unused part normally thought unsuitable. But after a week of waiting he still hadn’t died and it dawned upon the Golinskers that he wouldn’t. This frightened them. During the four months Mottel had sat in prison, the rendering of the monthly reports to the Squire had been attended to by Vassil
y Buzarov in keeping with the local law that all such reports had to be written in Russian. Buzarov drove hard bargains but at least the landsmen could negotiate; now that Mottel would recover and pick up where he left off as the translator of the monthly reports, they expected he would make them pay good blood through the nose for the way they had waited for his death without lifting a finger to help him; for the way they had planned to bury his body in the marsh which would quickly have sucked his bones down deep into the mud.

  Tzippe-Sora thought of something. “We’ll roast him a chicken and take it to him with a pot of soup,” she said to her worried son-in-law, Laib-Shmul, “and tell him the men kept away because we heard he wanted to confess to Father Semyon.” Laib-Shmul took this suggestion to the others as something that would work, but Yeersel didn’t like it. “No, brothers, a chicken and a pot of soup can’t answer questions . . . and he’ll have questions.”

  Then Gershon said, “Maybe if Reb Maisha takes it to him it’ll go better . . . Reb Maisha, you know a million quotations from the sages, surely you’ll think of things to fit questions?”

  But Reb Maisha wouldn’t do it. “The truth spoken, brothers,” he said gently, “we acted like a bunch of oxen.”

  “A great help!” cried Laib-Shmul with a dry snort. But the rest said nothing and they knew why.

  In the end Yeersel said, “I think I remember something. There was a time when Mottel amused himself with corrupting Laib by showing him tricks on a mandolin, with inflaming songs. If then the boy offered him pleasure, why not now for a good purpose ? If Laib brought him chicken and soup, say, it might occur to him to have at least a little mercy.”