The Landsmen

by Peter Martin

  “Who’s they?”

  “No name, Papa ... just ‘Emigration Society.’”

  “What kind of ships?”

  “Not said, Yeersel.”

  “Over the sea, doubtless,” Yeersel said with irritation. “Ay, go give a jump to Hamburg only God knows how many hundred miles!”

  “Wait,” Nasan said with an eagerness that made me cold, “the paper says places in wagons can be bought, it’s a regular business like train tickets . . . wagons going from ghetto to ghetto over the borders . . . and in Shnavka they say they’re starting to do it!”

  “Ay, surely,” Yeersel groaned, “just buy the ticket!”

  “No, through the woods to Minsk,” corrected Nasan.

  “So smoothly?” Yeersel said; for the first time I heard a little snarl out of his gentle nature. “Don’t you see, boy? It’s their trick on the Shnavkers, letting out such papers so Jews will run and be caught and slaughtered!”

  “But in Shnavka they’re doing it,” he insisted.

  The light was coming, mist showed, the stream appeared. We sat with Nasan, telling him what to say when he got home . . . that he had remained in the synagogue to clean up after the others had left, that he had fallen asleep on a bench. Sending him on his way, I began with the day’s carries of buckets and Yeersel helped, we talking of this paper. In the end I said, “Well . . . Shnavka is Shnavka and Golinsk is Golinsk . . . and October is far away.” He grunted, relieved, then Elly a came to help me and Yeersel went to his hut.

  Ellya and I made eight carries before morning prayers; meanwhile I couldn’t push it out of me that, yes, Shnavka was Shnavka and Golinsk Golinsk — but the Shnavka paper was no inflammatory brief of the government as Yeersel believed but a genuine agitation. Other Jews were running against the conscription time in October believing that running was a better per cent than bribing. As well as I knew my own five fingers I knew the best month for running out of Golinsk should be July, good for night-traveling, well before conscription time and not too near to now when they were heated against us. Let it cool down, let them take a bribe meanwhile . . . and then we’d fix our run . . . not to some corner of a ghetto to stay there, but to begin an exploration, a run of seekers of new places by way of wagons through many nights over borders not seen twice. July, I thought. This was May.

  Now here is how July arrived in May.

  First, the rain. Neither loudly nor gently it began falling during morning prayers, in the way of a settled thing, without stopping until night when other settled things had fallen on us and had still to fall. Everybody put out pots and pans, this saved me some carries; yet with

  different things happening to everybody, and everybody so unprepared, we all went about as wet as in the bath. The weather fitted the day; one of cleansing for some, of drowning for others; the last day I lived in Golinsk.

  By nine o’clock something like a market was made on our side across from the carriage stop. Because of the rain Shmelke-the-Helper, Hertz’s youngest brother, brought some ancient fence posts and Zish some boards; together they hammered up a frame for a shed, roofing it with boughs and whatever pieces of tin and canvas they found lying about in the yards behind the huts. Under such leaky protection (the posts were short, you had to crouch under), Gershon brought shoes, Yeersel woolens, Laib-Shmul a box of nervous chickens, Daneel some bricked clay. Hertz a barrel of grease, Zish a few window frames, Yakov a keg of nails; and in one large box everybody threw whatever could be taken for a novelty — a skinning knife, a tambourine, a cane, a Cossack’s cap, bellows — in all a sorry market but good enough as an exhibition of our poverty, to keep the bribe-price down.

  Somewhere around ten that morning Ellya and I finished my last carries. The swelling in my groin had made itself into a hard knot by the time we came down to the market.

  We went under the shed, a crowdedness of sellers without a buyer. Hannah was sitting on a box next to Gershon’s shoes. She had made him go home. Hannah said, “And you too, Berel. And it wouldn’t have hurt Nasan to help you!”

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  “Nothing that a son sleeps while the father drags himself with buckets, soaked?”

  “Baylah is a bit sickish,” I said, thinking it wise to turn Hannah’s temper that way. The discovery of Nasan’s bad night would have made her tear hair from her head.

  “She thinks she’s carrying the Messiah, she’s so delicate,” Hannah mumbled. “Well, go . . . take a little tea.”

  “You too, Mama,” Ellya said. “I’ll stay with Gershon’s shoes.”

  “Hn,” Hannah complained, “and what’s the matter with his Faiga? Such a lady, where is she?”

  “With Gramma,” my nephew Hatzkel shouted over from where he crouched as he fitted a board to a hole in the covering. “The rupture came out again.”

  “Come, Hannah, you’ll make tea,” I said. Moving out into the cold sheets of wet, I heard Hatzkel give a shout, “Uncle, Gramma wants you ... I forgot!”

  We stopped off at Tzippe-Sora’s. She lay in bed with warmed stones in a sack put to the rupture, a shawl tight on her head. “Put a few more pillows,” Hannah said, seeing the old woman’s head straining as she was sorting out some things into a box from a pile between her knees.

  “Mama,” Faiga begged her mother, “leave the box alone.”

  With calm indifference Tzippe-Sora told her daughter, “It helps to throw a junk or two into a trade,” and continued reaching into the pile of whatnots, examining them one by one before she put them into the box — pins, combs, homemade rings, bits of fur, old calendars, obscene verses in Russian on faded paper, buttons, key-rings. But Faiga needed to exhibit her worry and snatched the box away.

  Hannah said, “Be a good daughter, let her live,” with a sharpness that made Tzippe-Sora smile.

  “Out of here,” Faiga shrilled, “with those thin lips of yours!”

  “Don’t worry, Faiga, shrouds have no pockets!”

  “To your funeral I’ll cry my eyes out, but with joy,” she shrieked.

  “Two things weaken the eyes,” Hannah threw back. “Crying too much and looking to count other people’s money . . . both such pleasures of yours, you’ll go blind without God’s help!”

  Faiga went to scratch Hannah’s eyes; I stood between them and waited until Hannah was out. “Ay, women,” Tzippe-Sora said from her bed, not disturbed. “Come, Faiga dear,” she said sweetly, “be so good, bring me a few pillows . . . and I’m not finished with the box, daughter dear.”

  Obediently Faiga brought the box and propped the pillows to her. “Thank you,” the little widow said with a nod of pleasure, “my dear

  one, my good one. Go cook something for Gershon now. He must be coughing in such a rain.”

  “And leave you alone?”

  “Is Berel nobody?” she smiled. “And won’t you be back?”

  “Let it be as you say,” Faiga agreed, sniffing, suddenly quieted. When the door closed I said, “Well, Hannah didn’t have to open such a mouth.”

  “Lies she didn’t speak,” Tzippe-Sora whispered. “Faiga’s not bad . . . but a good person and not-bad are different.”

  “Too much insulting, too much screaming . . .”

  “I let them get rid of themselves . . . you and I have business, Berel.”

  “What business in such weather?”

  “This assembly of theirs at noon,” she said, pointing to where a place in the roof began to leak. I took a pot from the stove and put it on the floor, watching drops fall into the center of it as Tzippe-Sora spoke. “I’ll make a price with Selenkov. Meanwhile, Berel . . . you’ll go and take out my money.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re better for this than my sons. It’s hidden near the stream, it won’t look strange, you being there, and the best place to pay it over is away from everyone . . . down at the stream, clear?”

  “If they’ll take, only,” I said.

  “Was it ever hard for them?”

  Saying not
hing I kept my eyes on the pot, the drops falling in the center, a picture of Mottel rising in my mind; the way he smoked, the cigarette always in the exact center of his mouth ... a puzzle. Had he refused my bribe or had he been too drunk to hear it and in either case, still, why had he gone for Varya? Or had he? Was it, as the landsmen said, his way of stealing a horse and rig?

  “Hear me, Berel,” Tzippe-Sora called, “don’t fall asleep there. Listening?”

  “Listening.”

  “You’ll go down the side of the water there, the left side. About thirty yards from the bridge there’s an old big tree, dead on one side.

  Go eight feet up to the dead side of the trunk, you’ll see a piece hacked out and put back with clay. You’ll take out this piece, clear?”

  “Clear.”

  “Inside will be an old boot, and in the boot wrapped in canvas . . . forty rubles.”

  “Clear.”

  “Tie it around you, inside your drawers, and after I see Selenkov I’ll tell you where to pay it over.”

  “I’ll do it later.”

  “No good,” she said. “Go now. Take a fish-pole. Who knows, maybe their new enactment is a water-tax and they’ll keep you the whole afternoon in one questioning.”

  Seeing how I didn’t stir, she said, “Don’t look at the pot, look at me.” I turned to her. “Say what, Berel.”

  “Supposing,” I said slowly, “it was something true, a bit . . . what the Squire said . . . about landsmen from other villages commandeering themselves.”

  “To what, commandeering?” she said suspiciously.

  “Just so, commandeering. Who knows to what? But enough for them to say it’s a conspiracy. Would a bribe help, then?”

  “Fool that you are,” she said but with softness, “if others are giving trouble and we are giving a bribe ... ?”

  “Let it be as you say, Tzippe-Sora.”

  I got to my feet with a heaviness of which my painful groin was but a part. Seeing my discomfort, Tzippe-Sora told me to be done with getting the money and then to lie down. “And don’t worry,” she ended, “the more we bribe them, the more we own them.”

  “And when we can’t bribe any more?”

  “Ay,” she said with a smile, “that’s when we’ll have to rob them.”

  “. . . Why look to make ourselves into thieves?”

  “It’s a thieves’ world, no?”

  “But we’ll end in jails, not they!”

  “And today, Berel, we’re not already in jail?”

  “All right, Tzippe-Sora , . . you’re the smart one, I’m the Ox.

  Tell me why we can’t go for something better, a bit? Must we stay as we are, always?”

  “Ay,” the widow said without a smile this time. “This is what you mean by commandeering, I see. So . . . you’ve heard something from other villages. . . .”

  “Well . . . that they’re running.”

  “Where?”

  “To ships . . . over the sea.”

  “Who?”

  “The Shnavkers.”

  “From Shnavker wisdoms let The One Above protect us!” In a tremble of anger the little woman let out a bitterness. “Over the sea! Why not better over the moon? And if we had wings of iron to fly a hundred years without stopping even to drink the rain, you think we’d arrive where a Jew could live? We mustn’t look for heavens, we’ll find only worse hells! Here we know how to work with our bastards! Over the sea,” she spat. “It’s a different world there, you think, over the sea?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “we should find out.”

  “Turn it around, better,” she said. “If Jews can yes-live anywhere, it will find usT

  “Well . . . I’ll go.”

  “Wait — who came from Shnavka?”

  She meant, “Who went?” I put my finger to my lips. “Well, who?”

  “Nasan,” I told her. “Be quiet about it.”

  She pushed the box away from her. “Those Shnavkers,” she said with disgust. “See what they’ve done . . . they’ve raised the price.”

  Sobered by the widow’s criticism, I headed towards the stream for the bribe-money. In a mix of rain and my own peltings I hungered for a sign of what to think. Passing the synagogue I saw all the boys fixing the roof with Reb Maisha’s direction; among them was Laib and I remembered his fiddle. Varya was gone, there was no one to teach him further; the fiddle was worth a good few rubles; after the bribe we would be needing every penny, all of us.

  I called to him and he came down the ladder, small for a lad of twelve but with a serious old-man face, his nose spread out like his father’s, his chin pointed, his head held as though waiting for the next to happen — a quick thin fellow. He ran to me with some push of fear in his legs, his eyes staring as I bade him follow me a way toward the stream. When I mentioned the fiddle he said quickly, “Yes, I was in Profim’s looking, but there was trouble.”

  “I know. Mottel had it. I think he brought it back there.”

  “Well, it’s gone.”

  “Was it worth anything, Laib?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you’ll find it and let us sell it?”

  “It’s my fault, everything,” he said gravely. “Without the fiddle they wouldn’t have smelled the perfume, and without that Nochim may- he-rest wouldn’t have sent for her . . . and she wouldn’t have run away, the Squire wouldn’t have angered himself . . . and Mottel wouldn’t have gone.”

  “Don’t sadden yourself, Laib. Maybe he didn’t take the fiddle with him at all.”

  “If he took it he had a reason.” He made as to go. “Well, I’m sorry.”

  “And for what?”

  With a curl-up of lips, a shadow of annoyance darkening his eyes, he said with a sigh, “It’s as Reb Maisha advises. I’m to follow the word of the Bratzlaver rabbi now that I’m a confirmed man.”

  “Well, then . . . fine.”

  “Reb Maisha says the Bratzlaver said a man should reprove himself every morning.”

  “True,” I said, pushing him with a joking gentleness, “but if here and there you miss a day, the Angel Gavreel won’t write it down.”

  “I’m helping fix the roof,” he said, and ran back to the synagogue.

  We had confirmed him to manhood in Israel; this had not dried the boyhood out of him, nor something more, hidden from me at the time, the need of his runaway uncle.

  I went deeper down the path, turned east at the stream and found

  the half-dead old oak Tzippe-Sora had picked for her bank. Now here the stream narrowed itself to about ten yards, the trees stood high on both sides and rich with new leaves, the lower boughs sending branches over the water to make a great umbrella under which I many times sat. The spot was one of my best friends; a jutting rock provided a place to sit holding a fishpole, the quiet making a trifle of the world around. One caught few fish there in the spring, the rush of water running white through the narrow channel from under the nearby bridge and carrying the perch and carp fast through; but I kept a pole there anyway for when I went to sit. Now the rain made splashes in the trees and dropped only a thin sheet to the middle of the stream; my rock-throne was merely speckled, like some side of a huge fish. Standing under the widow’s oak I took my blouse off and wrung it damp.

  About eight feet up on the dead side, as Tzippe-Sora had said, I spied the thin gray circle of clay and looked for a few heavy stones. A dozen throws and the piece was loose enough to be pried off with a length of dead bough. To get at the boot inside the trunk became a harder thing. A ladder was needed or a shoulder to stand on. To raise a hand and jump was simple, but to reach in at the same time and grab the boot was impossible. I took the fishpole kept in the brush and tried to work with the hook; but no good. With an axe I could have hacked myself a foothold; but no axe. Removing the hook I probed for the boot with the end of the pole, found it, lifted it out, then took the canvas-wrapped roll, about the size of a thumb, into my fingers. I thought first to put it in the crotch of my drawers, but this would
have aggravated my sore groin as I walked. Instead I used some of the string to make a chain for about my neck and put the roll under my shirt.

  Turning from the tree to my blouse which I had left on the rock — there he was, a high black shiny boot crossed over his knee, his heavy campaign tunic opened at the throat, the imperial-eagled cap pushed up to his brow — sitting and watching (of course an officer by the quality of his boots), as though at the exercising of some caged animal. He

  was a tall one but young and wore one of those hazy mustaches trimmed down to nothing, the kind worn to the whim of somebody else, missing fastidiousness. His eyes played upon me as he sat on the rock; they showed an interest disproportioned to what he needed to know of me. Bending a bit forward he asked what I had been doing, in the way of a traveler’s gambit to a fellow passenger, not certain the stranger wishes to be disturbed.

  Puzzled by the friendliness and apparently “equal” tone I could only strive to seem as harmless and “peasantlike” as possible. “Well, sir, we’ve quite a forest here,” I said proudly, inserting a giggle to assure him I understood my own foolishness. “Boots grow in our trees, you see, the way money should in bushes!”

  “Oh,” he said with a gentle smile; and then with refined diffidence, “Now whatever did you hang about your neck there?” He waved at me, generally, still leaning forward with rapt eyes, still so interested in this forest phenomenon of a peasant fishing for boots in trees, the educated glance of a student in discovery. Strange — gentleness, interest, shy curiosity! From an officer! “Really, now,” he smiled again, a bit more broadly. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

  Ah, well . . . perhaps I remind you of some peasant baba’s son on father’s estate, perhaps you’re homesick, lad, for amusing simplicities. I said the first interesting thing I could drag out of my head. “Well, sir . . . it’s only the foot of a fox,” I said, patting my chest.

  “Really?” he replied, almost in a squeak of so-interested.

  “Yes, sir.” I tried to go along as if not making it up word to word. “We believe if you take the foot of a fox, wrap it well, put it in one of your oldest boots, and place it in a dead tree for six months . . . well now, after the six months you take it down and wear it. And that makes bad luck impossible to catch you.”