That Glimpse of Truth

by David Miller

  “Just of one of the beams, I think.”

  “You can go home then. You owe thanks to the Yanover rabbi. He found an obscure reference in Maimonides that favored you.”

  I seized the rabbi’s hand and kissed it.

  I wanted to run home immediately. It’s no small thing to be separated for so long a time from wife and child. Then I reflected: I’d better go back to work now, and go home in the evening. I said nothing to anyone, although as far as my heart was concerned it was like one of the Holy Days. The women teased and twitted me as they did every day, but my thought was: Go on, with your loose talk. The truth is out, like the oil upon the water. Maimonides says it’s right, and therefore it is right!

  At night, when I had covered the dough to let it rise, I took my share of bread and a little sack of flour and started homeward. The moon was full and the stars were glistening, something to terrify the soul. I hurried onward, and before me darted a long shadow. It was winter, and a fresh snow had fallen. I had a mind to sing, but it was growing late and I didn’t want to wake the householders. Then I felt like whistling, but I remembered that you don’t whistle at night because it brings the demons out. So I was silent and walked as fast as I could.

  Dogs in the Christian yards barked at me when I passed, but I thought: Bark your teeth out! What are you but mere dogs? Whereas I am a man, the husband of a fine wife, the father of promising children.

  As I approached the house my heart started to pound as though it were the heart of a criminal. I felt no fear, but my heart went thump! thump! Well, no drawing back. I quietly lifted the latch and went in. Elka was asleep. I looked at the infant’s cradle. The shutter was closed, but the moon forced its way through the cracks. I saw the newborn child’s face and loved it as soon as I saw it – immediately – each tiny bone.

  Then I came nearer to the bed. And what did I see but the apprentice lying there beside Elka. The moon went out all at once. It was utterly black, and I trembled. My teeth chattered. The bread fell from my hands, and my wife waked and said, “Who is that, ah?”

  I muttered, “It’s me.”

  “Gimpel?” she asked. “How come you’re here? I thought it was forbidden.”

  “The rabbi said,” I answered and shook as with a fever.

  “Listen to me, Gimpel,” she said, “go out to the shed and see if the goat’s all right. It seems she’s been sick.” I have forgotten to say that we had a goat. When I heard she was unwell I went into the yard. The nannygoat was a good little creature. I had a nearly human feeling for her.

  With hesitant steps I went up to the shed and opened the door. The goat stood there on her four feet. I felt her everywhere, drew her by the horns, examined her udders, and found nothing wrong. She had probably eaten too much bark. “Good night, little goat,” I said. “Keep well.” And the little beast answered with a “Maa” as though to thank me for the good will.

  I went back. The apprentice had vanished.

  “Where,” I asked, “is the lad?”

  “What lad?” my wife answered.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “The apprentice. You were sleeping with him.”

  “The things I have dreamed this night and the night before,” she said, “may they come true and lay you low, body and soul! An evil spirit has taken root in you and dazzles your sight.” She screamed out, “You hateful creature! You moon calf! You spook! You uncouth man! Get out, or I’ll scream all Frampol out of bed!”

  Before I could move, her brother sprang out from behind the oven and struck me a blow on the back of the head. I thought he had broken my neck. I felt that something about me was deeply wrong, and I said, “Don’t make a scandal. All that’s needed now is that people should accuse me of raising spooks and dybbuks.” For that was what she had meant. “No one will touch bread of my baking.”

  In short, I somehow calmed her.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s enough. Lie down, and be shattered by wheels.”

  Next morning I called the apprentice aside. “Listen here, brother!” I said. And so on and so forth. “What do you say?” He stared at me as though I had dropped from the roof or something.

  “I swear,” he said, “you’d better go to an herb doctor or some healer. I’m afraid you have a screw loose, but I’ll hush it up for you.” And that’s how the thing stood.

  To make a long story short, I lived twenty years with my wife. She bore me six children, four daughters and two sons. All kinds of things happened, but I neither saw nor heard. I believed, and that’s all. The rabbi recently said to me, “Belief in itself is beneficial. It is written that a good man lives by his faith.”

  Suddenly my wife took sick. It began with a trifle, a little growth upon the breast. But she evidently was not destined to live long; she had no years. I spent a fortune on her. I have forgotten to say that by this time I had a bakery of my own and in Frampol was considered to be something of a rich man. Daily the healer came, and every witch doctor in the neighborhood was brought. They decided to use leeches, and after that to try cupping. They even called a doctor from Lublin, but it was too late. Before she died she called me to her bed and said, “Forgive me, Gimpel.”

  I said, “What is there to forgive? You have been a good and faithful wife.”

  “Woe, Gimpel!” she said. “It was ugly how I deceived you all these years. I want to go clean to my Maker, and so I have to tell you that the children are not yours.”

  If I had been clouted on the head with a piece of wood it couldn’t have bewildered me more.

  “Whose are they?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “There were a lot … but they’re not yours.” And as she spoke she tossed her head to the side, her eyes turned glassy, and it was all up with Elka. On her whitened lips there remained a smile.

  I imagined that, dead as she was, she was saying, “I deceived Gimpel. That was the meaning of my brief life.”

  IV

  One night, when the period of mourning was done, as I lay dreaming on the flour sacks, there came the Spirit of Evil himself and said to me, “Gimpel, why do you sleep?”

  I said, “What should I be doing? Eating kreplech?”

  “The whole world deceives you,” he said, “and you ought to deceive the world in your turn.”

  “How can I deceive all the world?” I asked him.

  He answered, “You might accumulate a bucket of urine every day and at night pour it into the dough. Let the sages of Frampol eat filth.”

  “What about the judgment in the world to come?” I said.

  “There is no world to come,” he said. “They’ve sold you a bill of goods and talked you into believing you carried a cat in your belly. What nonsense!”

  “Well then,” I said, “and is there a God?”

  He answered, “There is no God either.”

  “What,” I said, “is there, then?”

  “A thick mire.”

  He stood before my eyes with a goatish beard and horn, long-toothed, and with a tail. Hearing such words, I wanted to snatch him by the tail, but I tumbled from the flour sacks and nearly broke a rib. Then it happened that I had to answer the call of nature, and, passing, I saw the risen dough, which seemed to say to me, “Do it!” In brief, I let myself be persuaded.

  At dawn the apprentice came. We kneaded the bread, scattered caraway seeds on it, and set it to bake. Then the apprentice went away, and I was left sitting in the little trench by the oven, on a pile of rags. Well, Gimpel, I thought, you’ve revenged yourself on them for all the shame they’ve put on you. Outside the frost glittered, but it was warm beside the oven. The flames heated my face. I bent my head and fell into a doze.

  I saw in a dream, at once, Elka in her shroud. She called to me, “What have you done, Gimpel?”

  I said to her, “It’s all your fault,” and started to cry.

  “You fool!” she said. “You fool! Because I was false is everything false too? I never deceived anyone but myself. I’m paying for it a
ll, Gimpel. They spare you nothing here.”

  I looked at her face. It was black; I was startled and waked, and remained sitting dumb. I sensed that everything hung in the balance. A false step now and I’d lose eternal life. But God gave me His help. I seized the long shovel and took out the loaves, carried them into the yard, and started to dig a hole in the frozen earth.

  My apprentice came back as I was doing it. “What are you doing boss?” he said, and grew pale as a corpse.

  “I know what I’m doing,” I said, and I buried it all before his very eyes.

  Then I went home, took my hoard from its hiding place, and divided it among the children. “I saw your mother tonight,” I said. “She’s turning black, poor thing.”

  They were so astounded they couldn’t speak a word.

  “Be well,” I said, “and forget that such a one as Gimpel ever existed.” I put on my short coat, a pair of boots, took the bag that held my prayer shawl in one hand, my stock in the other, and kissed the mezuzah. When people saw me in the street they were greatly surprised.

  “Where are you going?” they said.

  I answered, “Into the world.” And so I departed from Frampol.

  I wandered over the land, and good people did not neglect me. After many years I became old and white; I heard a great deal, many lies and falsehoods, but the longer I lived the more I understood that there were really no lies. Whatever doesn’t really happen is dreamed at night. It happens to one if it doesn’t happen to another, tomorrow if not today, or a century hence if not next year. What difference can it make? Often I heard tales of which I said, “Now this is a thing that cannot happen.” But before a year had elapsed I heard that it actually had come to pass somewhere.

  Going from place to place, eating at strange tables, it often happens that I spin yarns – improbable things that could never have happened – about devils, magicians, windmills, and the like. The children run after me, calling, “Grandfather, tell us a story.” Sometimes they ask for particular stories, and I try to please them. A fat young boy once said to me, “Grandfather, it’s the same story you told us before.” The little rogue, he was right.

  So it is with dreams too. It is many years since I left Frampol, but as soon as I shut my eyes I am there again. And whom do you think I see? Elka. She is standing by the washtub, as at our first encounter, but her face is shining and her eyes are as radiant as the eyes of a saint, and she speaks outlandish words to me, strange things. When I wake I have forgotten it all. But while the dream lasts I am comforted. She answers all my queries, and what comes out is that all is right. I weep and implore, “Let me be with you.” And she consoles me and tells me to be patient. The time is nearer than it is far. Sometimes she strokes and kisses me and weeps upon my face. When I awaken I feel her lips and taste the salt of her tears.

  No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world. At the door of the hovel where I lie, there stands the plank on which the dead are taken away. The grave-digger Jew has his spade ready. The grave waits and the worms are hungry; the shrouds are prepared – I carry them in my beggar’s sack. Another shnorrer is waiting to inherit my bed of straw. When the time comes I will go joyfully. Whatever may be there, it will be real, without complication, without ridicule, without deception. God be praised: there even Gimpel cannot be deceived.

  GUESTS OF THE NATION

  Frank O’Connor

  Born in Cork, Ireland, Frank O’Connor (1903–1966) was brought up by his adored mother. He joined the IRA when he was fifteen and was imprisoned for his views between 1922 and 1923. He worked as a teacher, librarian and in the theatre, most notably the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. He began publishing his work in 1931 – this story was his first – and wrote novels, criticism, history, travel writing, autobiography and translated poetry. Asked by The Paris Review in 1957 why he preferred the short story, he said “because it’s the nearest thing I know to lyric poetry.” Although he lived in the USA from the early 1950s, he suffered a fatal heart attack in Dublin and was buried there.

  At dusk the big Englishman, Belcher, would shift his long legs out of the ashes and say “Well, chums, what about it ?” and Noble and myself would say “All right, chum” (for we had picked up some of their curious expressions), and the little Englishman, Hawkins, would light the lamp and bring out the cards. Sometimes Jeremiah Donovan would come up and supervise the game, and get excited over Hawkins’ cards, which he always played badly, and shout at him as if he was one of our own, “Ah, you divil, why didn’t you play the tray?”

  But ordinarily Jeremiah was a sober and contented poor devil like the big Englishman, Belcher, and was looked up to only because he was a fair hand at documents, though he was slow even with them. He wore a small cloth hat and big gaiters over his long pants, and you seldom saw him with his hands out of his pockets. He reddened when you talked to him, tilting from toe to heel and back, and looking down all the, time at his big farmer’s feet. Noble and myself used to make fun of his broad accent, because we were both from the town.

  I could not at the time see the point of myself and Noble guarding Belcher and Hawkins at all, for it was my belief that you could have planted that pair down anywhere from this to Claregalway and they’d have taken root there like a native weed. I never in my short experience saw two men take to the country as they did.

  They were passed on to us by the Second Battalion when the search for them became too hot, and Noble and myself, being young, took them over with a natural feeling of responsibility, but Hawkins made us look like fools when he showed that he knew the country better than we did.

  “You’re the bloke they call Bonaparte,” he says to me. “Mary Brigid O’Connell told me to ask what you’d done with the pair of her brother’s socks you borrowed.”

  For it seemed, as they explained it, that the Second had little evenings, and some of the girls of the neighborhood turned up, and, seeing they were such decent chaps, our fellows could not leave the two Englishmen out. Hawkins learned to dance “The Walls of Limerick,” “The Siege of Ennis” and “The Waves of Tory” as well as any of them, though he could not return the compliment, because our lads at that time did not dance foreign dances on principle.

  So whatever privileges Belcher and Hawkins had with the Second they just took naturally with us, and after the first couple of days we gave up all pretence of keeping an eye on them. Not that they could have got far, because they had accents you could cut with a knife, and wore khaki tunics and overcoats with civilian pants and boots, but I believe myself they never had any idea of escaping and were quite content to be where they were.

  It was a treat to see how Belcher got off with the old woman in the house where we were staying. She was a great warrant to scold, and cranky even with us, but before ever she had a chance of giving our guests, as I may call them, a lick of her tongue, Belcher had made her his friend for life. She was breaking sticks, and Belcher, who had not been more than ten minutes in the house, jumped up and went over to her.

  “Allow me, madam,” he said, smiling his queer little smile. “Please allow me,” and he took the hatchet from her. She was too surprised to speak, and after that, Belcher would be at her heels, carrying a bucket, a basket or a load of turf. As Noble said, he got into looking before she leapt, and hot water, or any little thing she wanted, Belcher would have ready for her. For such a huge man (and though I am five foot ten myself I had to look up at him) he had an uncommon lack of speech. It took us a little while to get used to him, walking in and out like a ghost, without speaking. Especially because Hawkins talked enough for a platoon, it was strange to hear Belcher with his toes in the ashes come out with a solitary “Excuse me, chum,” or “That’s right, chum.” His one and only passion was cards, and he was a remarkably good card player. He could have skinned myself and Noble, but whatever we lost to him, Hawkins lost to us, and Hawkins only played with the money Belcher gave him.

  Hawkins lost to us beca
use he had too much old gab, and we probably lost to Belcher for the same reason. Hawkins and Noble argued about religion into the early hours of the morning, and Hawkins worried the life out of Noble, who had a brother a priest, with a string of questions that would puzzle a cardinal. Even in treating of holy subjects, Hawkins had a deplorable tongue. I never met a man who could mix such a variety of cursing and bad language into any argument. He was a terrible man, and a fright to argue. He never did a stroke of work, and when he had no one else to argue with, he got stuck in the old woman.

  He met his match in her, for when he tried to get her to complain profanely of the drought she gave him a great comedown by blaming it entirely on Jupiter Pluvius (a deity neither Hawkins nor I had ever heard of, though Noble said that among the pagans it was believed that he had something to do with the rain). Another day he was swearing at the capitalists for starting the German war when the old lady laid down her iron, puckered up her little crab’s mouth and said:

  “Mr. Hawkins, you can say what you like about the war, and think you’ll deceive me because I’m only a simple poor countrywoman, but I know what started the war. It was the Italian Count that stole the heathen divinity out of the temple of Japan. Believe me, Mr. Hawkins, nothing but sorrow and want can follow people who disturb the hidden powers.”

  A queer old girl, all right.

  II

  One evening we had our tea and Hawkins lit the lamp and we all sat into cards. Jeremiah Donovan came in too, and sat and watched us for a while, and it suddenly struck me that he had no great love for the two Englishmen. It came as a surprise to me because I had noticed nothing of it before.

  Late in the evening a really terrible argument blew up between Hawkins and Noble about capitalists and priests and love of country.

  “The capitalists pay the priests to tell you about the next world so that you won’t notice what the bastards are up to in this,” said Hawkins