Yiddish Tales/Abraham Raisin/Avrohom the Orchard-Keeper

 

AVRÒHOM THE ORCHARD-KEEPER

When he first came to the place, as a boy, and went straight to the house-of-study, and people, having greeted him, asked "Where do you come from?" and he answered, not without pride, "From the Government of Wilna"—from that day until the day he was married, they called him "the Wilner."

In a few years' time, however, when the house-of-study had married him to the daughter of the Psalm-reader, a coarse, undersized creature, and when, after six months' "board" with his father-in-law, he became a teacher, the town altered his name to "the Wilner teacher." Again, a few years later, when he got a chest affection, and the doctor forbade him to keep school, and he began to deal in fruit, the town learnt that his name was Avròhom, to which they added "the orchard-keeper," and his name is "Avròhom the orchard-keeper" to this day.

Avròhom was quite content with his new calling. He had always wished for a business in which he need not have to do with a lot of people in whom he had small confidence, and in whose society he felt ill at ease.

People have a queer way with them, he used to think, they want to be always talking! They want to tell everything, find out everything, answer everything!

When he was a student he always chose out a place in a corner somewhere, where he could see nobody, and nobody could see him; and he used to murmur the day's 428 RAISIN

task to a low tune, and his murmured repetition made him think of the ruin in which Rabbi Jose, praying there, heard the Bas-Kol mourn, cooing like a dove, over the exile of Israel. And then he longed to float away to that ruin somewhere in the wilderness, and murmur there like a dove, with no one, no one, to interrupt him, not even the Bas-Kol. But his vision would be destroyed by some hard question which a fellow-student would put before him, describing circles with his thumb and chanting to a shrill Gemoreh-tune.

In the orchard, at the end of the Gass, however, which Avrohom hired of the Gentiles, he had no need to exchange empty words with anyone. Avrohom had no large capital, and could not afford to hire an orchard for more than thirty rubles. The orchard was conse- quently small, and only grew about twenty apple-trees, a few pear-trees, and a cherry-tree. Avrohom used to move to the garden directly after the Feast of "Weeks, although that was still very early, the fruit had not yet set, and there was nothing to steal.

But Avrohom could not endure sitting at home any longer, where the wife screamed, the children cried, and there wag a continual "fair." What should he want there? He only wished to be alone with his thoughts and imaginings, and his quiet "tunes," which were always weaving themselves inside him, and were nearly stifled.

It is early to go to the orchard directly after the Feast of Weeks, but Avrdhom does not mind, he is drawn back to the trees that can think and hear so much, and keep so many things to themselves. AVROHOM THE ORCHARD-KEEPER 429

And Avrohom betakes himself to the orchard. He carries with him, besides phylacteries and prayer-scarf, a prayer-book with the Psalms and the "Stations," two volumes of the Gemoreh which he owns, a few works by the later scholars, and the Tales of Jerusalem ; he takes his wadded winter garment and a cushion, makes them into a bundle, kisses the Mezuzeh, mutters farewell, and is off to the orchard.

As he nears the orchard his heart begins to beat loudly for joy, but he is hindered from going there at once. In the yard through which he must pass lies a dog. Later on, when Avrohom has got to know the dog, he will even take him into the orchard, but the first time there is a certain risk one has to know a dog, otherwise it barks, and Avrohom dreads a bark worse than a bite it goes through one's head ! And Avrohom waits till the owner comes out, and leads him through by the hand.

"Back already?" exclaims the owner, laughing and astonished.

"Why not?" murmurs Avrohom, shamefacedly, and feeling that it is, indeed, early.

"What shall you do?" asks the owner, graver. "There is no hut there at all last year's fell to pieces."

"Never mind, never mind," begs Avrohom, "it will be all right."

"Well, if you want io come !" and the owner shrugs his shoulders, and lets Avrohom into the orchard.

Avrohom immediately lays his bundle on the ground, stretches himself out full length on the grass, and mur- murs, "Good ! good !"

28 430 RAISIN

At last he is silent, and listens to the quiet rustle of the trees. It seems to him that the trees also wonder at his coming so soon, and he looks at them beseechingly, as though he would say :

"Trees you, too! I couldn't help it ... it drew me ..."

And soon he fancies that the trees have understood everything, and murmur, "Good, good!"

And Avrohom already feels at home in the orchard. He rises from the ground, and goes to every tree in turn, as though to make its acquaintance. Then he con- siders the hut that stands in the middle of the orchard.

It has fallen in a little certainly, but Avrohom is all the better pleased with it. He is not particularly fond of new, strong things, a building resembling a ruin is somehow much more to his liking. Such a ruin is inwardly full of secrets, whispers, and melodies. There the tears fall quietly, while the soul yearns after some- thing that has no name and no existence in time or space. And Avrohom creeps into the fallen-in hut, where it is dark and where there are smells of another world. He draws himself up into a ball, and remains hid from everyone.

But to remain hid from the world is not so easy. At first it can be managed. So long as the fruit is ripening, he needs no one, and no one needs him. "When one of his children brings him food, he exchanges a few words with it, asks what is going on at home, and how the mother is, and he feels he has done his duty, if, when obliged to go home, he spends there Friday night AVKOHOM THE ORCHARD-KEEPER 431

and Saturday morning. That over, and the hot stew eaten, he returns to the orchard, lies down under a tree, opens the Tales of Jerusalem, goes to sleep reading a fantastical legend, dreams of the Western Wall, Mother Rachel's Grave, the Cave of Machpelah, and other holy, quiet places places where the air is full of old stories such as are given, in such easy Hebrew, in the Tales of Jerusalem.

But when the fruit is ripe, and the trees begin to bend under the burden of it, Avrohom must perforce leave his peaceful world, and become a trader.

When the first wind begins to blow in the orchard, and covers the ground thereof with apples and pears, Avrohom collects them, makes them into heaps, sorts them, and awaits the market-women with their loud tongues, who destroy all the peace and quiet of his Grarden of Eden.

On Sabbath he would like to rest, but of a Sabbath the trade in apples on tick of course is very lively in the orchards. There is a custom in the town to that effect, and Avrohom cannot do away with it.

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Young gentlemen and young ladies come into the orchard, and hold a sort of revel; they sing and laugh, they walk and they chatter, and Avrohom must listen to it all, and bear it, and wait for the night, when he can creep back into his hut, and need look at no one but the trees, and hear nothing but the wind, and sometimes the rain and the thunder.

But it is worse in the autumn, when the fruit is getting over-ripe, and he can no longer remain in the orchard. With a bursting heart he bids farewell to 432 RAISIN

the trees, to the hut in which he has spent so many quiet, peaceful moments. He conveys the apples to a shed belonging to the farm, which he has hired, ever since he had the orchard, for ten gulden a month, and goes back to the Gass.

In the Gass, at that time, there is mud and rain. Town Jews drag themselves along sick and disheartened. They cough and groan. Avrohom stares round him, and fails to recognize the world.

"Bad!" he mutters. "Fe!" and he spits. "Where is one to get to?"

And Avrohom recalls the beautiful legends in the Tales of Jerusalem, he recalls the land of Israel.

There he knows it is always summer, always warm and fine. And every autumn the vision draws him.

But there is no possibility of his being able to go there he must sell the apples which he has brought from the orchard, and feed the wife and the children he has "outside the land." And all through the autumn and part of the winter, Avrohom drags himself about with a basket of apples on his arm and a yearning in his heart. He waits for the dear summer, when he will be able to go back and hide himself in the orchard, in the hut, and be alone, where the town mud and the town Jews with dulled senses shall be out of sight, and the week-day noise, out of hearing.