by Peter Martin
“Well, let it be as Berel says,” Hertz intoned with a prayerlike rising and falling of his strong voice. He slapped his palm down upon the table. “Let Yeersel go to Mottel and sound him out. Who knows, Mottel might feel something for his brother now. And if Mottel should sound like he’s going to enjoy himself in arguments, in threats, in jokes with us — ”
“Then we’ll ask no questions,” Laib-Shmul said. “We’ll have the funerals right away, this afternoon!”
“Let’s not decide until Mottel is spoken to,” Nochim replied. “Or else what’s the sense of asking him?”
“Ay, it’s a terrible thing,” Berel said, “to hold the bodies from today until Sunday morning. They’ll change, you know.”
“The snow isn’t running away,” Hertz remarked, sighing.
“But to bury on Sunday morning and then to go into the synagogue that afternoon to begin the Kol Nidre, the services for the eve of the Day of Atonement . . . what a sad, heavy business!”
“And to bury today, then, makes everything lighter, happier?” Nochim demanded.
“Leave off, leave off,” I asked them. “I’ll talk to Mottel right away.”
“I’m sorry, Yeersel, I shouldn’t be waggling my tongue that way,” Berel told me. “Mottel must be at the smithy now. Shall we all walk with you there?”
“No. No. I’ll go alone.”
Nochim the fiddler, flighty but goodhearted . . . Hertz the grease- maker, a man of balanced patience . . . Berel the watercarrier, with his bit of beard and stoical word-stinginess (my quiet brother-in-law not yet fully pleased with the sounds of the world and the people in it, even nearly a full dozen years after he had regained his hearing) . . . and Laib-Shmul, the meat slaughterer, rich-voiced and pounding . . . all had agreed that I was best fitted to contend with our contemptible one, our traitor-atheist, Mottel. On the way to the smithy, alone, my feet walked on mountains of shame. Oh, how mistaken, how unnecessary !
I bent an eye into the smithy but found only Profim Alexi Buzarov, the proprietor. A length of rope was about his neck from which hung several new shiny horseshoes; they made me think of Gritka now lying in Parsov’s gully. “It’s Yeersel,” he said with a cold squint.
“A pretty necklace,” I said to humor him, pointing to the horseshoes.
“The finest and the lightest.” He jingled them. “The Squire plans
I
a bit of moving-about this winter. Have you seen his new sled? Beautiful, solid as a railroad car! Wood covered with leather, all closed in! Real windows!”
“Remarkable. Excuse me, where might I find Mottel?”
“In his room down the street.”
“Thank you.”
“But better don't go now. He’s sleeping and he's been drunk.”
“Drunk? Since when, Profim?”
“Since always,” he smiled. “One look at him this morning and I sent him to sleep it off.”
“There has been a tragedy,” I said carefully. “His brother and sister- in-law.”
“Oh, yes,” Profim replied. “He mentioned being told about it by Dimitri, down the road.”
I hurried out. Good, very good. Mottel would be sleeping off his carouse for the next several hours, during which we could attend to the funerals. In my own mind I had come to the opinion that waiting until Sunday would be a mistake. Such a long period of waiting would only extend the ordeal of the two orphans, Shim and Laib; would only prevent us from going to the bathhouse on Sunday and making ourselves clean for the most important holy day of the year; but, also, that Leah’s sister and paralyzed father could make the journey from Minsk in this snow was extremely doubtful, and even so, even so . . . there were other questions. Would it be proper to tell the sick old man the news and risk another stroke and his own death? And could Leah's sister get away by herself? Who would care for the invalid?
As my mind opened to these new thoughts, I made my way to the broken-down inn several doors from the smithy, to make my token visit to Mottel. One look at his sleeping form would be enough to say I had tried to talk to him.
The inn was church property managed by two elderly cousins of Father Semyon, the sisters Lukov. Entering into the hallway, I knocked on the door of the main inner entrance. Nina, the younger one (said to have been a beauty and a onetime favorite of the Squire’s father),
looked me up and down as she stood at the door, and told me to get out. But I put a coin into her withered hand and told her why I had come. She pushed the coin into her purse and showed me upstairs to Mottel’s closed door.
I opened it a bit and peered inside. I saw a couch but it was empty. I opened the door just enough to step through; there was the couch, a small round table, a chair, piles of empty bottles in two corners, a pair of shoes, hobnailed and blackened by smoke . . . but no Mottel. I turned to leave and saw him in the doorway, his brows knit, frowning at the unbelievable sight of me. He stood in his bare feet, the rest of him dressed; and in his mouth was the tiny stub of a cigarette. As always with Mottel’s cigarettes, it sat in the exact center of his mouth. His straight black hair fell sideways and over his right eye; his beard was clipped close; his nose seemed to spread almost from one cheek to the other, as though it had been pressed out with an iron. As always, he wore his private smile. Now as he looked at me he swayed a little, and put his hand against the side of the doorway to lean on it. “Well, it’s Yeersel,” he said; and in any other person it would have sounded quite cordial, but once you knew Mottel it was impossible to accept such an impression. The man had been a stranger to us for so long, had so long ago thrown his lot in with Profim and Vassily Buzarov that to think for a moment he was our friend, much less a landsman, was to be out of mind.
“Ay,” he said, closing the door, “what a fine surprise to return lightened in the bowels and find a fine Golinsker Jew.” There it was, as I expected . . . first the smile and then the sly kick. “Let’s sit down a little and solve a few problems of the world, eh?”
“I have but one problem today.”
“Sit down, sit down.” He lay on the bed and shoved the one chair at me. I watched him as he stretched himself out on his back. “It’s been a hard few hours, a hard few hours,” he mumbled. Then he closed his eyes. “Mottel,” I began, thinking I must at all times be shrewd, be tactful, “the one problem I do have — all of us— is with the burial situation.”
The Landsmen
38
“Aaron and Leah?” he asked, as though half asleep, his eyes remaining shut, his breathing coming slow and very heavy.
“Yes.”
“To be through with it ... I don’t care to think about the burial situation. Put them into the ground, that’s the situation, yes, that’s the situation. . .
“Well, yes,” I continued carefully, “I agree. Now, as you know, they will lie next to your parents, one on either side.”
“A grave is a grave. . . .”
“True, only, Mottel . . .”
“Only what?”
“You do not object to Aaron lying beside your father?”
“No.”
“Then all I have to mention, Mottel is ...” I took a deep breath . . . “well, the funerals are today.”
His eyelids moved a little and his head turned to me. “Who decided?”
“It’s not yet a decision . . . it’s only a plan.”
“Well, it’s a good plan.”
My heart gave a happy jump. No objections at all! Even in favor of burial today! “Well, Mottel — perhaps you’ll feel well enough to come this afternoon ... to the funerals?”
“I don’t go to funerals.” He raised himself on one elbow, spit his cigarette butt out, opened his eyes, and leaned toward me. “Bury them or don’t bury them, funeral them or don’t funeral them. To me it’s the same. To me, what happens to people when they die isn’t of interest. You see, I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe I’ll eat pickled herring in heaven.” He swung his legs down to the ground and leaned down, gripping his calves in his hands. “
I’m not concerned with what’s good only to bury.”
“People are entitled to have an opinion,” I muttered, making myself remember to be shrewd and tactful, not to lose my temper at this sinful kind of talk. “Well, Mottel — I’ll leave you to your rest.”
“Wait, how often are my humble walls flattered with your presence?”
He laughed, and he missed a breath, or something choked up in his nose; anyway he began to gasp in his laughter. “See how well I know how to speak, how literary-like, and in Yiddish!”
“You speak very well, indeed. Now let me say good-by-and-be- well. . . .”
“But I want you to stay! Stay!”
“No, really . . . you must be exhausted.”
“I’m only tired ... it would be very good to be exhausted. Never mind. But listen, this I want to say . . . oh, sit down, Yeersel ... I won’t hurt you, go take your chair on the other side of the room if I’m near enough to contaminate you. . . .”
“Well . . .”
“Listen, listen,” Mottel began. The words fell out of him like stones from a beggar’s bag, all piled up and slinking against each other, drunken words, angry words, foolish words, human words. “Oh yes yes yes . . . you can’t take away from me that I’m a Golinsker because whatever else, I can still talk anybody’s head off, drunker better than any other way. . . .”
“Well, I suppose . . (Shrewd, tactful.)
“You’re looking at me now and thinking what a terrible crime, what a terrible thing I’ve done to myself, eh ? ... a drunken worthless piece of flesh to become, no different from any gentile, eh ? ... and there’s my brother dead and to be buried and I don’t even go to take a look at him, I don’t think of watching him go into the ground, eh?”
“The One Above watches for you,” I murmured, hoping I could leave quickly, yet guarding against antagonizing him into turning my victory into a catastrophe; so I sat there, humoring him. “After all, it’s got to be in your heart.”
“All right . . . it’s got to be in my heart . . . but if as you say The One Above watches, then why didn’t he watch that the horse shouldn’t fall into the gully?” He waved his hand disgustedly. “Dimitri told me about it.” He laughed. “Oh, that Dimitri, he’s sorry now he ever saw me today.” Then he pointed his finger at me, shaking it. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Explain why The One Above wasn’t watching that the horse shouldn’t — ”
“You aren’t really serious? You want an answer?”
“There isn’t any.”
“Pardon me, Mottel, you are mistaken. It is written of The One Above, ‘He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him; he will also hear their cry, and will save them.’ ”
“Did he save Aaron and Leah ? ”
“Of course,” I cried. “He saved them from a miserable life! He took them to Himself, to eternal peace!”
“If I was so sure of it. I’d kill myself and enjoy life in heaven — only it just isn’t the way you think.” He stood up and began searching in his pockets for matches and cigarettes. “No, no ... it isn’t that way at all, excuse me. When you’re dead you’re dead — and when you’re alive you’re dead most of the time, too, so what’s the difference?”
“Mottel, listen,” I begged, suddenly wanting, for the first time, to try to pierce into him. “What’s the use of being alive if you don’t believe in something?”
“Take a smoke?”
“Mottel — ”
He lit his cigarette and threw the match to the floor, and in the way he flicked his wrist I could see how angry I was making him. “I believe in something, yes!”
“Well, then, that’s good,” I replied, starting to edge near the door, “and when I have a little more time, I’d like to — ”
“Excuse me,” he said grimly, taking hold of my shoulders, “I’m not finished with you.” The smoke from his cigarette made me sneeze; he pushed me away. “I shouldn’t have started with you at all . . . you don’t know what it is to believe anything except the Holy Law. You’re not even in the world any more. You think to be a man in the world is to forget to be a Jew . . . and that to be like your father is the one and only all. Yes, I believe in something — in myself and what I’d have done if only I’d been left alone.”
“Very well,’" I replied, seeing him go to the corner stacked with bottles and pick up one that was not empty. ‘Til leave you alone now. I’ll let you do what you want.”
“Don’t bother about me,” he grunted, uncorking the bottle. He lifted it to drink, then changed his mind. “I’ll live until I die,” Mottel said, pointing at me with the hand that held the bottle, “and after I die there’ll be a difference, people will know I’m dead, understand? But after you are dead, you and your fellow walking corpses, nothing will be different, nothing at all.”
“Let it be as you say, Mottel. As for me, I’m going.”
“Wait, here’s another one ... I don’t care what you do with the two bodies, but the boys, the two sons, Shim and Laib . . .” He stopped to take a drink, a long one.
“Never mind now about the two boys. . . .”
“But I’m their only living uncle,” he grinned, “and they interest me. Tell them I’ll see them.”
At the door I gripped the knob in my hand and found courage. “Never mind about seeing them. We don’t throw young souls into the hands of apostates.”
“You’re interested only in dead bodies. Well, dead bodies you can have . . . but living flesh and blood of my brother, well — ”
“Better me to be dead than to watch you press Shim and Laib into your shape.”
“Die, die, die . . . what’s dying to you?” He breathed upon me, his stench moved past, all the smells of a man floating on top of the garbage of the world, the liquor, the faint sign of women, their perfume and powder, and the stink of horses. “To you dying is easy, Yeersel, as easy as my taking a drink! The quicker you die the quicker, you believe, you will enter heaven. So the piouser and piouser you make yourself!”
“When a person lives like a dog, he thinks like a dog,” I said quietly. “Now good-by.”
“But how can you stand and be so patient with me?” he demanded. “Why can’t I insult you, what’s the matter with you?”
“You’re a lost one, a wanderer. I don’t blame you, Mottel. It was the
priests. The priests got into you when you were in the army, those nine long years away. They, the army, the priests I blame and curse — not you!” Then I put my arms out. “Wash your face, Mottel, make a beginning. Come with me and sit beside your brother. Pray for him.”
“They don't belong to me — they belong to God, right?”
“Don’t make a joke!”
“So . . . they’re safe.”
“The worst sin is to dishonor the name of The One Above. He will never forgive you.”
“Well, that’s all right,” he smiled, “I’ll never forgive Him, either.”
I gave up. “Better sleep now.” Under my breath I added, “And The One Above willing it, may you never wake up.”
For the third time I turned to the door. But again Mottel kept me. “By the way,” he shouted suddenly, harshly. “About the goods, Yeersel.”
“What goods?” (The goods? Mottel knew?)
“Yes,” he said to me over his shoulder as he went to the bed and then threw himself on it, still holding the bottle. “That Aaron had,” he added, as he set the bottle on the floor near him.
“What Aaron had,” I shrugged, “he had.”
“But really, Yeersel, who owned those goods?”
Ay, now the blow would fall. Now the traitor in him was peeping out. He would wring the buying of the goods out of me and twist the blame on my shoulders, and through his connection with the village agent, Rezatskin, he would set a pretty toll and force me to pay it. “Who owned the goods, if not Aaron?”
“Really? Out of the need to help a fellow tailor you loaned him your horse and wagon, your competitor, to buy goods?”
Already he spoke as the inquisitor, yet it was with a tease, with a grin, with a little giggle embroidered around it. Was he really probing, or was he too drunk for anything but toying? Yet our talk began to have the shape of a trial, and next would be Mottel going to Buzarov and Buzarov to the Squire and then the Squire to Selenkov; and then finally the knock on my door. “I didn’t ask him what he wanted the
horse and wagon for,” I cried. “Leave off, I did nothing, I broke no regulations — ”
“You knew he was going to Minsk.”
“Who asked him where?”
“That’s a foolish lie.” Mottel sat up in bed. “Not your goods that he bought in Minsk?”
“Not my goods. Well, what do you want of me? I’m in enough difficulties already with losing my horse and wagon.”
“True,” he said, leaning down for the bottle. “They were counting on your wagon for this week. Something for the Squire, the Konayev, you know.”
“So I understood when you sent the boy Monday with the message. But Aaron came to me the same day. He needed help. He had no place else to ask but me. If he could have gone, for instance, to his well- placed brother, and his well-placed brother would have arranged for him to buy goods here in Golinsk through the Squire’s agent, on a fair credit, then he wouldn’t have had to run to Minsk to try for a living of two chickens a week for a year. But with such a well-placed brother he had to go to Minsk and die.”
“Politely said, Yeersel. And true.” He laughed his private laugh again.
“Mottel, how can you gain such joy from admitting a sin?”
“I wasn’t admitting,” he snorted, throwing the empty bottle into the corner on the other side of the room. “I’m just wondering,” he added, shaking his head in mock anxiety, “if maybe the whole blame doesn’t actually fall on you, Yeersel, the great pious one.”
“How on me?” I demanded, but before the words were out my face was beginning to feel wooden with the thought that had been stabbing me since the first opening of my eyes that morning.
Mottel came toward me again, leaning into my face, peering down into my raised eyes. “Listen, little beaver,” he said, taking hold rather gently of my beard, “and consider a fact. Aaron and Leah died in your horse-and-wagon, as the result of your favor.” He spoke slowly, savoring the morsels of pleasure in each mocking word. “And was it a favor