—Every day his mother nagged him to have a half-dozen sets of fresh underwear made … Given all his expenses, in the end he wouldn’t have enough to get to the city next winter.
By the time this thought had ceased to bedevil him, Mirel, her eyes alive with interest, was leaning intently toward the midwife and listening with great absorption to every word that came slowly from her mouth in a cloud of cigarette smoke.
—So Mirel wanted to know whether Herz corresponded with her? Firstly, he was far too clever for that sort of thing and disliked doing foolish things, and secondly …
Drawing so deeply on her cigarette that its glowing tip illuminated her face, she exhaled the smoke from her mouth, adding with a grimace of aggrieved incredulity:
—One might think that she really missed not receiving letters from him …
Lipkis pulled a mocking face:
—Quite true: evidently the midwife never missed what she’d never had and would never have.
This was seemingly the way in which he wanted to pay her back for her earlier remark: “Too bad for you, Lipkis! Too bad for you!” but he restrained himself, glanced at her agitated features with hostility, and held his peace.
This single illuminated room in the midwife’s cottage was remarkably quiet. Since it was evidently very late, the silence itself seemed audible. Through the calm of deep night that lingered in all the dimly lit corners, the only thing that could be heard was the way Lipkis leaned his head against the bedstead, and the dying fall of the carefully considered words about her acquaintance that the midwife Schatz tossed into the stillness:
—Two years ago he’d poked fun at himself and told her: To write during the day was a disgrace to him personally as well as to the entire Jewish population of the shtetl who had no need of it, so he wrote only at night, when people were asleep. At night, he said, everyone’s sense of shame was diminished. And then he’d smiled and held his peace. Nothing else was left to him, he said, except this smiling silence.
The wandering shadow of this homeless young man seemed to hover in the very air of the room, creating the strong impression that somewhere in a nearby corner behind them he himself was standing at his full sturdy, somewhat stooped height. With blond, freshly barbered hair and equally fair, close-cut mustache and sideburns, he was placidly glancing in this direction with smiling eyes, listening to what the midwife Schatz was saying about him:
This winter, too, this rootless wanderer was doubtless drifting about in that tiny, desolate Lithuanian shtetl, passing his days rambling for great distances over the snow-covered fields.
Mirel broodingly called to mind her own situation every time the midwife related that he never spoke with any intellectuals over there, and even kept his distance from ordinary townsfolk. But if somewhere far, far away from the shtetl he encountered a peasant striding along somewhere, he’d stop and engage in a lengthy conversation with him.
—From what village did he come? Did he have a wife and children? And whose was the land he tilled: his own or a stranger’s?
Then Mirel looked at the midwife again, listening as she disclosed more of the same:
—There, Herz would say, between the silent, craggy mountains and the tranquil lakes of Switzerland, the conviction grew in him that human beings would soon cease their hurly-burly and would encounter life and death alike with the same smile.
—He certainly regarded life with dread—she added in passing—yet this didn’t prevent him from composing one of his loveliest pieces there in Switzerland.
Embarrassed to look directly at Mirele and Lipkis, the midwife turned her head away.
With shining eyes that flickered on the brink of a smile, she stared up into the topmost reaches of the wall opposite and slowly and quietly began reciting from memory this little piece of his:
“And I, the exiled vagabond, wandering thus all alone over the earth for years on end, less and less frequently encountered a human settlement anywhere, and in time I have forgotten how to compute the difference between weekday and Sabbath. One by one I have cast away the objects in the heavy pack I bore on my shoulders and have told myself:
Neither I nor anyone else has need of these things. Why then should I carry them with me and bow my back under their weight?
And when nothing remained in the sack full of holes on my shoulders, it too I cast aside and began my self-examination.
I am still comparatively young, I reflected, power and might sleep within me, yet dare I hope that I might yet again have need of myself?
And forgetting that which I had left behind me, I began slowly striding forward.
I reflected:
There is value in investigating what goes on there, in that region of the world which lies beyond the horizon. And perhaps … perhaps I might yet arrive somewhere.
And once, as dusk was falling, I did indeed arrive in a dead city, and there I found the doors of all the houses open.
In that dead city the dusk was neither of winter nor of summer, and I was not cold, and no fear overcame me. I went from house to house and saw that everywhere on the beds, stiff in the rigor of death, lay bodies clutching stones tightly in their fists. Before their deaths they had, it seemed, desired to hurl these stones at someone.
In a corner of one house I saw only a single, slender woman and, glancing at her, was transfixed. Darkly graceful, of lifeless pale complexion, clad in a long black robe, she stood leaning against the wall, staring into the distance with exhausted ebony eyes and had evidently already forgotten that she constantly clutched to her breast a child’s waxen doll.
—You have come so late, she murmured to me with quiet indifference.—We have been waiting for you so long here, and now look: they are all dead.
I made no response, because in her eyes there already burned that fire that burns in the eyes of all who are deranged, and she continued to direct my attention to the doll that lay at her breast and said:
—Do you know what is here? It is a mistake that has been covered up.
And even as she sank down in death on the bed that stood beside her, quietly, extraordinarily quietly, she completed her thought:
—And overall … overall—it was—nothing more than a mistake that has been covered up.
Then I left the house and went to sit at the gate of the city.
Where then shall I go from hence? I murmured to myself. Rather let me sit here in the gateway forever and remain a guardian over this dead city.
And thus have I been sitting for so long at the gate of this city, into which no one enters and from which no one leaves.
Everything I once knew I have now forgotten, and in this mind of mine no more than a single thought remains:
All, all have long since died, and I alone am alive, and no longer await anyone.
And when I look about me once more, and feel the power and might that sleep in me, I no longer even sigh, but simply think:
I am the guardian of a dead city.”
The midwife fell silent.
Mirel suddenly rose from her place, intending to take Lipkis and go home, but as the mood evoked by the tale still lingered with her, she stood sadly and silently where she was, still thinking of the dead city and of the midwife’s expression which had undergone so strange an alteration as she was reciting.
Because the midwife had wanted to look her age, like someone wise and experienced, all the frenzy of her hidden love for this young man had leapt out on her … While she’d been reciting, there had been certain moments when her expression had seemed as foolish as the look on the face of an idiot.
And again the mood of the tale affected her. She stared at the window panes to which the blackness of the night beyond clung fast, and her ears no longer heard the quiet whispering of her own lips:
—This person whom the midwife called Herz … he seemed to go on living against his will and to go on writing against his will … How did the midwife put it: was there anything left for him except to go mad?
Bu
t now the midwife Schatz once more busied herself at the box of tissue papers where she rolled herself a fresh cigarette.
—He’s as healthy as a peasant—she responded from over there.—He can endure everything in silence.
God alone knew why she also felt obliged to add cruelly:
—It makes no matter; the devil won’t grab him there.
After Mirel had left, she was interested to look back into the room from outside and to see:
In absolutely no hurry to go to bed, the midwife Schatz had not even extinguished the lamp. Cross-legged like a man, with the burning cigarette in her mouth, she went on sitting motionless on the bed, staring out into the vacancy of her room.
Being well past midnight, no lamps were burning anywhere.
Deep, deep down toward the distant night-shrouded horizon beyond the snow-covered fields, only the oak trees in the copses spread out in long, black single file, and it seemed as though they too wanted to doze off but could not, that they were disturbed by the far-reaching ruddy glow from the midwife Schatz’s illuminated window, and were continually jerked awake by yet another stray breeze that came rushing hither between the young trees, spreading among them the nocturnal melancholy of a misfortune newly born elsewhere.
Mirel continued to see before her the midwife Schatz, remembered the tale of the dead city, and fretted despondently:
—Now she’d undoubtedly dream all night about the dead city with its madwoman clad in black … all night.
But passing the slumbering house of her former in-laws with its blue outer shutters tightly closed, she noticed their aged night watchman there, and stopped to speak with him:
—Oh, Zakhar! Why did he never call on them, Zakhar?
Swept o. his feet with joy, old Zakhar stood bareheaded before her:
—Oh, oh, oh! How many times hadn’t he driven the barishniya, the young mistress, home at night? How many notes hadn’t he brought her during the muddy season? … And now, now they’d told him in the kitchen that she was no longer betrothed … Was this really true, what they’d told him in the kitchen?
And she smiled and yelled into his ear:
—It’s true, Zakhar, quite true.
She asked far too many questions about the members of the Burnes household, was evidently eager to find out whether her former fiancé currently spent the nights in town, but felt unable to inquire, either because Lipkis was standing at her side or simply because the aged Zakhar was quite capable of reporting whatever she asked to those indoors.
Lipkis was delighted when she finally broke off and turned away, though even he felt that the question he now asked was superfluous:
—He was curious to know one thing: what interest could she possibly have in passing a full half hour chatting to that old peasant?
But she made him no answer, stopped once more, reminded herself that the night watchman had to be given a tip so he could buy tea, and demanded a whole ruble from Lipkis for this purpose. In an instant he was again overwhelmed with anger, and snatching the silver coin from his pocket regarded her with fury:
—Unbelievable how plainly and crudely she demanded money from him! She took it by right, as though from a husband.
2.4
In Reb Gedalye Hurvits’s house, preparations were being made to receive someone.
The imported rose-colored drapes were once again hung at all the windows, the chilly salon was heated daily, and the velvet runners were spread over all the floors. The whole house appeared to have invested commonplace weekdays with an air of festive sanctity, and seemed aware of nothing but the rumors about Mirel that spread through the entire shtetl:
—She was probably about to become engaged again, this time to Yankev-Yoysef Zaydenovski’s refined son, in fact, that Yankev-Yosl Zaydenovski who stemmed from the nearby village of Shukey-Gora, who’d lived for the past ten years in a suburb of the distant metropolis where he owned his own distillery, and who still to this day exercised a great deal of influence locally because of his extensive oxen stables. Lipkis was furious every time someone asked him about these rumors, and would reply angrily:
—How on earth should he know?
—And anyway … why was he, of all people, being asked about all this?
At that time he rarely encountered Mirel, so as though to spite someone, he behaved with unusual arrogance and self-importance, pretending not to know that all the rumors had been provoked by nothing more than an unpretentious out-of-town matchmaker who’d stopped for a few days at the home of Avrom-Moyshe Burnes and had there complained:
—Of what benefit was it that Zaydenovski had a good-natured unmarried son? During the previous summer, Mirel had stayed in the same inn as he somewhere in the provincial capital, had stopped to chat with him a few times in the corridor and, it would seem, had completely turned his head.
But day after day passed and still no one arrived at Reb Gedalye’s house. Mirele merely grew paler and more silent, and soon it seemed that she knew nothing and heard nothing, that it was all one to her whether she was praised or abused in town, with the result that she was impervious to the effect of such ill-considered, self-indulgent actions as stopping her former fiancé’s sisters in the middle of the street, complaining that they never visited her, and protesting with the air of a social outcast on whom everyone turned their backs:
—In any event … she was certainly no worse than the photographer Rozenboym’s wife to whom they ran twice a day.
After this encounter, Avrom-Moyshe Burnes’s daughters stared at each other, and followed her with amazement in their eyes:
—Can you understand her?—the elder sister asked the younger.
And by herself Mirel continued on her way up through the shtetl. At the pharmacy, situated among the last of the Jewish-owned houses, she stopped in the middle of the road and looked around. No one was about except a ragged little urchin going into town; the pharmacy’s glass door with its little bell was covered from within by a red half-curtain. She beckoned the boy over and asked him to call the pharmacist’s assistant Safyan out to her. Embarrassed, the lad did as he was asked, and she stood waiting by herself until Safyan had finished what he was doing, had put on his coat, and had come out with his bulging, colorless eyes. Meanwhile some men returning to town in a hired peasant sleigh glanced at her in astonishment and began smiling oddly at one another. Pretending not to notice their smiles, with an earnest demeanor she remarked to the pharmacist’s assistant Safyan:
—Earlier she’d wanted to ask him to escort her to the midwife Schatz. But now … now she had no desire to visit the midwife Schatz. Did he have time to walk with her a little way out of town?
In response to this question, the pharmacist’s assistant Safyan was obliged to stretch his neck, swallow convulsively, and do up the topmost button of his winter overcoat:
—Did he have time? Actually, he was … He could, actually, walk a little way.
And, tense and agitated, he walked on her left without ever glancing at her, fixed his big bulging eyes on the mist that was spreading outward from the shtetl and, as malign chance would have it, found nothing to say and was silent. Since a peculiar heaviness made itself felt in his silence, Mirel glanced at him from time to time and finally asked him:
—She believed that Safyan was descended from an ancient family … She’d been told this not long before, if she remembered correctly.
And a short while later, again on the same subject:
—Her father was also descended from an ancient family that had settled in Germany and had for a long time intermarried among its members so that now, apparently, it was degenerating with age. This was possibly why she sometimes felt such purposelessness and was fit for nothing.
Walking across the snow-covered promenade, they were slowly approaching their destination. The agitated pharmacist’s assistant unconsciously began fingering a letter of some kind in his overcoat pocket and, without looking round at her, asked in a tense, trembling voice:
; —Of course this was none of his business, and she wasn’t obliged to answer him … He merely wanted to ask why she didn’t prepare herself for some public examinations and so equip herself for some kind of cultivated profession. He’d heard that she was only twenty-two years old.
And for some reason Mirel stopped and began looking down at where she’d dug into the snow with the tip of one of her galoshes:
—Yes, many people had already asked her the same question.
The misty gray air all around was still; in the vicinity, not even black ravens flew past now, and no living soul appeared in this wintry desolation. Mirel gave something like a sigh, glanced slowly and pensively to one side, and equally slowly and pensively began relating how one wintry Friday evening their maid had complained to her:
—How would she be able to survive until eleven o’clock without any sunflower seeds to chew? She’d go mad here.
A short time after that, strolling in the provincial capital, she’d overheard a young woman student complaining to a friend:
—Dear God! She had absolutely nothing to read at home. She’d lose her mind sitting there all alone.
Only now did she turn to look at Safyan, walked on with him, and asked:
—Do you understand, Safyan? One person needs sunflower seeds and another person needs a book to drive it away, but it’s exactly the same desolation. Do you understand?
The pharmacist’s assistant Safyan’s bulging, colorless eyes widened even more and one side of his nose began twitching from nervous enthusiasm for abstract speculation.
—Delo v tom—here’s the thing—Mirel had just confused two quite discrete ideas …
But Mirel interrupted him to point out some footprints in the snow:
—Did he recognize them, these male footprints? She and Lipkis had wandered about in the same place here not long before.
Did she simply wish to cut him short with this remark? Or did she actually want him to repeat it to Lipkis later on and so awaken in him a chagrined yearning for these footprints in the snow?
For a long, long time afterward she wandered about over the snow-covered fields with Safyan, continually asking him whether he found it pleasant to walk with her, and whether his employer, the priest’s son-in-law, would be angry with him.
The End of Everything (New Yiddish Library Series) Page 10