Yiddish Tales/Löb Schapiro/If It Was a Dream
IF IT WAS A DREAM
Yes, it was a terrible dream! But when one is only nine years old, one soon forgets, and Meyer was nine a few weeks before it came to pass.
Yes, and things had happened in the house every now and then to remind one of it, but then Meyer lived more out of doors than indoors, in the wild streets of New York. Tartilov and New York—what a difference! New York had supplanted Tartilov, effaced it from his memory. There remained only a faint occasional recollection of that horrid dream.
If it really was a dream!
It was this way: Meyer dreamt that he was sitting in Cheder learning, but more for show's sake than seriously, because during the Days of Penitence, near the close of the session, the Rebbe grew milder, and Cheder less hateful. And as he sat there and learnt, he heard a banging of doors in the street, and through the window saw Jews running to and fro, as if bereft of their senses, flinging themselves hither and thither exactly like leaves in a gale, or as when a witch rises from the ground in a column of dust, and whirls across the road so suddenly and unexpectedly that it makes one's flesh creep. And at the sight of this running up and down in the street, the Rebbe collapsed in his chair white as death, his under lip trembling.
Meyerl never saw him again. He was told later that the Rebbe had been killed, but somehow the news
gave him no pleasure, although the Eebbe used to beat him; neither did it particularly grieve him. It probably made no great impression on his mind. After all, what did it mean, exactly? Killed? and the question slipped out of his head unanswered, together with the Rebbe, who was gradually forgotten.
And then the real horror began. They were two days hiding away in the bath-house he and some other little boys and a few older people without food, without drink, without Father and Mother. Meyer was not allowed to get out and go home, and once, when he screamed, they nearly suffocated him, after which he sobbed and whimpered, unable to stop crying all at once. Now and then he fell asleep, and when he woke everything was just the same, and all through the terror and the misery he seemed to hear only one word, Goyim, which came to have a very definite and terrible meaning for him. Otherwise everything was in a maze, and as far as seeing goes, he really saw nothing at all.
Later, when they came out again, nobody troubled about him, or came to see after him, and a stranger took him home. And neither his father nor his mother had a word to say to him, any more than if he had just come home from Cheder as on any other day.
Everything in the house was broken, they had twisted his father's arm and bruised his face. His mother lay on the bed, her fair hair tossed about, and her eyes half-closed, her face pale and stained, and something about her whole appearance so rumpled and sluttish it reminded one of a tumbled bedquilt. His father walked up and down the room in silence, looking at no one, his bound arm in a white sling, and when Meyerl, conscious of some invisible calamity, burst out crying, his father only gave him a gloomy, irritated look, and continued to span the room as before.
In about three weeks' time they sailed for America. The sea was very rough during the passage, and his mother lay the whole time in her berth, and was very sick. Meyerl was quite fit, and his father did nothing but pace the deck, even when it poured with rain, till they came and ordered him down-stairs.
Meyerl never knew exactly what happened, but once a Gentile on board the ship passed a remark on his father, made fun of him, or something—and his father drew himself up, and gave the other a look—nothing more than a look! And the Gentile got such a fright that he began crossing himself, and he spit out, and his lips moved rapidly. To tell the truth, Meyerl was frightened himself by the contraction of his father's mouth, the grind of his teeth, and by his eyes, which nearly started from his head. Meyerl had never seen him look like that before, but soon his father was once more pacing the deck, his head down, his wet collar turned up, his hands in his sleeves, and his back slightly bent.
When they arrived in New York City, Meyerl began to feel giddy, and it was not long before the whole of Tartilov appeared to him like a dream.
It was in the beginning of winter, and soon the snow fell, the fresh white snow, and it was something like! Meyerl was now a "boy," he went to "school," made snowballs, slid on the slides, built little fires in the middle of the street, and nobody interfered. He went home to eat and sleep, and spent what you may call his "life" in the street.
In their room were cold, piercing draughts, which made it feel dreary and dismal. Meyer's father, a lean, large-boned man, with a dark, brown face and black beard, had always been silent, and it was but seldom he said so much as "Are you there, Tzippe? Do you hear me, Tzippe?" But now his silence was frightening! The mother, on the other hand, used to be full of life and spirits, skipping about the place, and it was "Shloimeh!" here, and "Shloimeh!" there, and her tongue wagging merrily! And suddenly there was an end of it all. The father only walked back and forth over the room, and she turned to look after him like a child in disgrace, and looked and looked as though forever wanting to say something, and never daring to say it. There was something new in her look, something dog-like! Yes, on my word, something like what there was in the eyes of Mishke the dog with which Meyerl used to like playing "over there," in that little town in dreamland. Sometimes Meyerl, waking suddenly in the night, heard, or imagined he heard, his mother sobbing, while his father lay in the other bed puffing at his cigar, but so hard, it was frightening, because it made a little fire every time in the dark, as though of itself, in the air, just over the place where his father's black head must be lying. Then Meyerl's eyes would shut of themselves, his brain was confused, and his mother and the glowing sparks and the whole room sank away from him, and Meyerl dropped off to sleep. IF IT WAS A DEEAM 485
Twice that winter his mother fell ill. The first time it lasted two days, the second, four, and both times the illness was dangerous. Her face glowed like an oven, her lower lip bled beneath her sharp white teeth, and yet wild, terrifying groans betrayed what she was suffering, and she was often violently sick, just as when they were on the sea.
At those times she looked at her husband with eyes in which there was no prayer. Mishke once ran a thorn deep into his paw, and he squealed and growled angrily, and sucked his paw, as though he were trying to swallow it, thorn and all, and the look in his eyes was the look of Meyerl's mother in her pain.
In those days his father, too, behaved differently, for, instead of walking to and fro across the room, he ran, puffing incessantly at his cigar, his brow like a thunder- cloud and occasional lightnings flashing from his eyes. He never looked at his wife, and neither of them looked at Meyerl, who then felt himself utterly wretched and forsaken.
And it is very odd, but it was just on these occasions that Meyerl felt himself drawn to his home. In the street things were as usual, but at home it was like being in Shool during the Solemn Days at the blowing of the ram's horn, when so many tall "fathers" stand with prayer-scarfs over their heads, and hold their breath, and when out of the distance there comes, un- folding over the heads of the people, the long, loud blast of the Shofar.
And both times, when his mother recovered, the shadow that lay on their home had darkened, his father 486 SCHAPIEO
was gloomier than ever, and his mother, when she looked at him, had a still more crushed and dog-like expression, as though she were lying outside in the dust of the street.
The snowfalls became rarer, then they ceased altogether, and there came into the air a feeling of something new what exactly, it would have been hard for Meyerl to say. Anyhow it was something good, very good, for everyone in the street was glad of it, one could see that by their faces, which were more lightsome and gay.
On the Eve of Passover the sky of home cleared a little too, street and house joined hands through the windows, opened now for the first time since winter set in, and this neighborly act of theirs cheered Meyerl's heart.
His parents made preparations for Passover, and poor little preparations they were: there was no Matzes-baking with its merry to-do; a packet of cold, stale Matzes was brought into the house; there was no pail of beet-root soup in the corner, covered with a coarse cloth of unbleached linen; no dusty china service was fetched from the attic, where it had lain many years between one Passover and another; his father brought in a dinner service from the street, one he had bought cheap, and of which the pieces did not match. But the exhilaration of the festival made itself felt for all that, and warmed their hearts. At home, in Tartilov, it had happened once or twice that Meyerl had lain in his little bed with open eyes, staring stock-still, with terror, into the silent blackness of the night, and feeling as if IF IT WAS A DREAM 487
he were the only living soul in the whole world, that is, the whole house; and the sudden crow of a cock would be enough on these occasions to send a warm current of relief and security through his heart.
His father's face looked a little more cheerful. In the daytime, while he dusted the cups, his eyes had some- thing pensive in them, but his lips were set so that you thought: There, now, now they are going to smile! The mother danced the Matzeh pancakes up and down in the kitchen, so that they chattered and gurgled in the frying-pan. When a neighbor came in to borrow a cook- ing pot, Meyerl happened to be standing beside his mother. The neighbor got her pot, the women ex- changed a few words about the coming holiday, and then the neighbor said, "So we shall soon be having a rejoi- cing at your house?" and with a wink and a smile she pointed at his mother with her finger, whereupon Meyerl remarked for the first time that her figure had grown round and full. But he had no time just then to think it over, for there came a sound of broken china from the next room, his mother stood like one knocked on the head, and his father appeared in the door, and said :
"Go !"
His voice sent a quiver through the window-panes, as if a heavy wagon were just crossing the bridge outside at a trot, the startled neighbor turned, and whisked out of the house.
Meyerl's parents looked ill at ease in their holiday garb, with the faces of mourners. The whole ceremony of the Passover home service was spoilt by an atmos- phere of the last meal on the Eve of the Fast of the
Destruction of the Temple. And when Meyerl, with the indifferent voice of one hired for the occasion, sang out the "Why is this night different?" his heart shrank together; there was the same hush round about him as there is in Shool when an orphan recites the first "Sanctification" for his dead parents.
His mother's lips moved, but gave forth no sound; from time to time she wetted a finger with her tongue, and turned over leaf after leaf in her service-book, and from time to time a large, bright tear fell over her beautiful but depressed face onto the book, or the white table-cloth, or her dress. His father never looked at her. Did he see she was crying? Meyerl wondered. Then, how strangely he was reciting the Haggadah! He would chant a portion in long-drawn-out fashion, and suddenly his voice would break, sometimes with a gurgle, as though a hand had seized him by the throat and closed it. Then he would look silently at his book, or his eye would wander round the room with a vacant stare. Then he would start intoning again, and again his voice would break.
They ate next to nothing, said grace to themselves in a whisper, after which the father said:
"Meyer, open the door!"
Not without fear, and the usual uncertainty as to the appearance of the Prophet Elijah, whose goblet stood filled for him on the table, Meyerl opened the door.
"Pour out Thy wrath upon the Gentiles, who do not know Thee!"
A slight shudder ran down between Meyerl's shoulders, for a strange, quite unfamiliar voice had sounded through the room from one end to the other, shot up against the ceiling, flung itself down again, and gone flapping round the four walls, like a great, wild bird in a cage. Meyerl hastily turned to look at his father, and felt the hair bristle on his head with fright: straight and stiff as a screwed-up fiddle-string, there stood beside the table a wild figure, in a snow-white robe, with a dark beard, a broad, bony face, and a weird, black flame in the eyes. The teeth were ground together, and the voice would go over into a plaintive roar, like that of a hungry, bloodthirsty animal. His mother sprang up from her seat, trembling in every limb, stared at him for a few seconds, and then threw herself at his feet. Catching hold of the edge of his robe with both hands, she broke into lamentation:
"Shloimeh, Shloimeh, you'd better kill me! Shloimeh! kill me! oi, oi, misfortune !"
Meyerl felt as though a large hand with long finger-nails had introduced itself into his inside, and turned it upside down with one fell twist. His mouth opened widely and crookedly, and a scream of childish terror burst from his throat. Tartilov had suddenly leapt wildly into view, affrighted Jews flew up and down the street like leaves in a storm, the white-faced Eebbe sat in his chair, his under lip trembling, his mother lay on her bed, looking all pulled about like a rumpled counterpane. Meyerl saw all this as clearly and sharply as though he had it before his eyes, he felt and knew that it was not all over, that it was only just beginning, that the calamity, the great calamity, the real calamity, was still to come, and might at any moment descend upon their heads like a thunderbolt, only what it was he did not know, or ask himself, and a second time a scream of distraught and helpless terror escaped his throat.
A few neighbors, Italians, who were standing in the passage by the open door, looked on in alarm, and whispered among themselves, and still the wild curses filled the room, one minute loud and resonant, the next with the spiteful gasping of a man struck to death.
"Mighty God! Pour out Thy wrath on the peoples who 'have no God in their hearts! Pour out Thy wrath upon the lands where Thy Name is unknown! 'He has devoured, devoured my body, he has laid waste, laid waste my house!'";
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Pursue them—o'ertake them!
O'ertake—them destroy them,
From under Thy heavens!"