172Uncle Aryeh Leyb's businesses had been going downhill these last years. He had already given up the podval (the cellar). For a certain time Lizer Henakh, the cantor, kept him on, but he too did not stay with him long. He moved his business to another place. The tavern, where the earnings had shrunk, was rented out to a young couple as a dwelling. The change made a sharp impression on me. Every change affected me that way. I pined for the rented-out tavern, and for the scenes that used to take place there.
The tavern now belonged to my parents; but they had no luck with it. They thrashed about like a fish in a net. Mother used to sit at the cash-box with pressed lips, with a brooding look, and Father used to spend whole days walking about the tavern with a darkened face, with a tragic gaze in his black, deep-sunken eyes.
Finally they gave up the tavern. They settled into a chamber in Preyses' courtyard, the second from Zhirmunski's, toward Zavalner Street. Father got a position as a bookkeeper in a general produce business that imported goods from Crimea and from 173southern European lands. His salary was small. But he counted himself lucky that he had been freed from his headaches.
I used to come to him often. The scent of oranges, of brown apples from distant regions, and of grapes was pleasant, but the unfriendly face of the black-eyed, very gaunt proprietress breathed frost upon me, and her proud manner toward my father embittered my life in those weeks.
Many years later, when I was already in America, I read in Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov" about the torments a boy felt when someone insulted and humiliated his father. I at once recalled the torments I used to have in that fruit-storehouse. The gaunt, black-eyed proprietress actually never insulted my father. She never called him anything but "R' Shakhne," and never without a certain respect in her tone of voice. But together with that there also rang in her tone something of dissatisfaction and contempt. As a bookkeeper he had little work. They expected him to help as a salesman too, and for that he was not fit.
Most of the fruit came from southern regions, and in this storehouse I heard for the first time the names of such cities as Trieste, Yalta, Simferopol. Trieste chiefly.
From Preyses' courtyard we moved to Shloyme Kisin's courtyard. There, on the level of the two zavauliks, a few little steps led up to the inn of an old widow, who was known as 174"the Ulanerke." She had a free room, and that became our new dwelling.
My father did not hold his position in the produce business for long. He was left without a livelihood, and for several months aunt Feyge and my Petersburg uncle, Khayim Leyb, supported us.
Then came the question of my future. What would become of me?
— You have a mirror before you — Mother said to me ten times a day. The "mirror" was naturally Father. Do I really want to grow up such a ne'er-do-well as he?
It was close to Passover, the end of my second term at the Flashtshadke yeshiva. Father, Mother, the aunt, uncle Mikhl — all agreed that I must learn a trade, a "genteel" one, naturally. The son of an acquaintance of my uncle's was a carver, an excellent craftsman and a good earner; so it was settled that I should apprentice to him. Father visited his workshop (it was on a Bakst Street), straight across from the entrance to the downhill street, which leads to Zaretshe. Coming back, he told with enthusiasm of the work that was done there.
I came to the carver right after Passover. I felt gloomy at heart. I felt degraded, dropped to a lower rung of life. The carvings I saw around me did not interest me. What my father had admired had already been taken away anyhow, and the main work now consisted of carving the wood of ordinary chairs.
175The oldest craftsman, a handsome lad, who had already served out his term and worked by the week, held in one hand a chisel in the form of a thick nail, and with the fist of his other hand he struck it; this drove the tool over a chair-leg and carved a rounded channel in it. As he did so the craftsman sang along in time to the blows of his fist. The tune went in chopped, measured notes. It was fitted to his work.
Besides me, there were two more boys. One of them treated me as a "dyadka" treats a new recruit. And this irritated me beyond measure. The proprietor had promised my father to take me on to learn the trade at once. But he did not keep his word. The first days my work consisted of carrying parts of chairs from a furniture-maker to the carver and then back to the furniture-maker. Walking with my load through the street I trembled lest a neighbor meet me. My occupation was a shame for me. I, a respectable householder's boy, a rabbi's grandson, should lug dumb wood! Even had they made there the most marvelous works of art, I would have felt no better at heart.
Friday morning the proprietor took up an important piece of work: a board, on which one had to carve, according to a drawing, a manifold flower-figure.
176There came in a dark, charming girl, a sister-in-law of the proprietor's.
— What is that? — she asked, examining his work.
To this he answered her with a scandalous word. She lowered her eyes, but did not grow as angry as I did. She was probably already used to such words.
For me, though, my cheeks flamed at the word. To such language I was not accustomed. And the thought that this is the world to which I must now belong was terrible to me.
A few minutes later the proprietor stopped working, took out also his tefillin and began to pray quietly. A minute later he went over to a corner where lay the matza left over from Passover. He broke off a piece of matza and began to chew — in the middle of praying and in the tefillin.
This poured oil on my hatred. Such a coarse fellow! Such a wild creature!
Later in the afternoon, when the time came to go home, the proprietor called me over to him.
— I have heard that you can read and write Russian. Is that true?
— Yes.
— If so, then tell me how much this is.
With these words he led me to the cabinet where the tools were kept. On one side of the cabinet two figures were written in chalk. He pointed to them.
— 77! — I answered.
— Correct! But do you know what is meant by that?
177I did not know, and he explained to me:
— It means that there are 77 pieces of tools, and you are now the youngest boy in the workshop, so you must watch over them. Understand? If anything is missing, you will "answer for it" (otvetshayen), be responsible.
I said that I understood, and went off home with a firm resolve not to come back.
What took place between me and my parents Friday night and Sabbath I do not remember. But what happened Sunday morning I remember only too well. Father left the house quite early, and I stayed with Mother. I told her that I would no longer go to the carver. She began to scream that I would remain "such a piece of misery as Father," and demanded that I go to work at once. To this I answered with such fire, with such wild rage, that she clutched her head.
I did not go to the carver anymore.
I remember how Mother afterward described my outcry to Father and to the aunt.
— I got frightened of him, — she said, — he screamed at me with such fury, I thought he would murder me. I thought he had gone out of his mind.
Long after that Sunday she used to retell it — such a deep impression had the scene left on her.
I went off to Ramayle's kloyz. They examined me and took me into R' Itzikel's shiur. 178The classes were divided into six: R' Motele's, R' Mosheles' smaller shiur, R' Mosheles' larger shiur, R' Itzikel's, R' Shmuel's, and R' Yankel Fesker's.
To R' Itzikel's I had indeed wished to be admitted. About him I had heard a great deal from Yeshaye Baltermanzer. And when I came home and told Father which rosh yeshiva I had been taken to, he was proud of me. And even Mother smiled too. She even said: "You'll end up a poor man like Father"; but to become a craftsman she no longer drove me. Still, both she and Father often reproached me that I do what I want; that I ask no one's opinion. Now, when he would grow angry at me, he used to call me "samovolyets" (willful one), or "hefker-yung." But I did not take these words seriously. When it was bitter on his heart, he would sometimes pour it out on me.
Ramayle's yeshiva was the largest in Vilna. A majority of the boys were from other towns and shtetls, and most of them "ate days." And when one was short a "day," a beadle would go with him from house to house until a family was found that took him in for that day. There were "day"-specialists, experts at appealing to pious wives and at prevailing on them to feed a poor yeshiva boy one day a week. Some of them used to take payment for their work — a gulden (15 kopecks) a "day," it seems.
By the word "day" one meant both the food and the householders at whose table one ate. The food consisted mainly of one meal — the midday meal (dinner). For supper the poor 179boy was usually given a few kopecks. And breakfast was not at all reckoned into this arrangement. The "day"-givers were mostly themselves paupers. The rich families for the most part conducted themselves more or less in the modern worldly way, and they did not want poor yeshiva boys at their table.
The day-eaters of Ramayle's kloyz lodged in the kloyz. They slept on a kind of platform of boards, mostly with a "sienik" (a sack of hay or straw) for a headrest. For breakfast the yeshiva gave them half a pound of bread. And if one was short a "meal," he received for that day-and-night another pound of bread, it seems.
He who had the means bought himself a piece of cheese for a groschen, and perhaps also for half a groschen hot water in a teahouse. Many of the poor boys, however, ate dry bread.
The sleeping-place was very filthy. The whole kloyz was filthy.
Every boy had his little trunk (a box), and almost every one a little knife too. The trunk-key, which used to hang on a string from the neck, and the little knife were the two implements by which the day-eater stood out in my eyes. Since I ate and lodged at home, I had no trunk, and a little knife was not needful for me either.
The poor-boys' world was a different one from mine. Every little trunk was a locked secret. Every little key excited my curiosity.
Life among the poor boys had its own special interests, customs, laws — a special language even. For example: when one boy asked another boy for a piece of bread, a little cucumber, a piece of herring, or a bit of "hot water," 180that was called asking for a "shants." If they were friends, good comrades, the other did not refuse. But if what he ate he had himself received from another, he was permitted to refuse, for the law of the poor-boys' world was that "a shants from a shants is exempt."
The boys were called by the names of their towns: "the Oshmiany one," "the Navaredok one," "the Vilkomir one," and so forth. If there were two or three from one town, a nickname was added: "the big Navaredok one," "the pockmarked Vilkomir one," for example.
Each lesson was "recited" at a long table, which stood between two long benches. The rosh yeshiva sat in the middle, by the wall, with a row of boys on the right hand, a row of boys on the left hand, and a row of boys on the opposite bench. The best pupil usually sat exactly opposite the rabbi. If there was not enough room at the table for all the pupils, a very high, long bench was set up from behind — a "batrayke." Those who sat on the batrayke came out above the heads of those sitting at the table, opposite the rabbi. These were mostly the worse pupils. My place was at the table, next to the boy who sat exactly opposite the rosh yeshiva.
The whole kloyz with its yeshivas, with all that went on there, could have existed a thousand years ago — so little connection did it have with the nineteenth century.
R' Itzikel was a Jew of middle years, not an ugly one. His face was earnest and thoroughly that of a batlan (a recluse-scholar). We studied Chulin. From the 181manner in which he explained a topic, no trace has remained in my memory.
Of the boys who studied then in the six classes, I remember a few who distinguished themselves by something. One was a great swimmer. He could swim across the Viliya river there and back at one go. A second had the finest handwriting in Ramayle's kloyz; a third could eat up two pounds of bread at one go; a fourth was a great prankster (mischief-maker) and joker. From my own shiur I remember a thin, very pale boy, who made an impression on me with his piety and with the graceful fervor with which he used to study.
We two, this fervent boy and I, used to prepare the lesson in the Hasidim's minyan, though not together. We used to spend many hours there. We were little acquainted, and he befriended no one; he sat and studied with a savory diligence (hasmode). He had trained himself beautifully at the Gemara, and his tune was a fine one. His pale face used to shine with the bliss of diligence. I loved to watch and hear how he studied. His lectern was in an entirely different corner from mine. But I used to place myself not far from him and observe him. In my own studying I used to try to imitate him. But my voice and my movements did not have his grace, and I used to vex myself over it.
For several weeks I too had pleasure from studying. The spirit of the Hasidim's minyan captured me, especially in the evening, when the great kloyz was full of householder-scholars (lomdim). R' Yosele the moreh-horaah (decisor), a brother of the great R' Tzalel, used to sit then in his corner, 182up at the top by the Holy Ark, swaying over his Gemara, not letting out a sound. A rich Jew, a moneylender, used to sit not far from him. He did not sway, but his nearsighted eyes used to travel over the Gemara back and forth, and instead of singing with a Gemara-tune, he used to growl, like a hungry beast. People said that he was a great scholar and a great bloodsucker as a moneylender (protsentnik). But when he sat at the Gemara, it seemed that this was his whole life.
I used to sit on my grandfather's "spot," exactly opposite the Holy Ark and almost opposite R' Yosele. The great room, lit with lamps from above and with several dozen candles on several dozen lecterns, was full of Gemara-song. It carried you along. I used to study with zeal.
But Chulin did not interest me, and in the middle of studying I used to fall to musing. I used to study aloud, sway, say the words with fire. My thoughts, however, often used to carry themselves off into other worlds, and my ears did not hear what my mouth was saying.
Whether I studied with attention, or whether I thought about other things, the studying afforded me many moments of pleasure. I used to float in dream-lands. The mind worked, the heart was full.
But no real interest in the Gemara did I feel. If one had asked me then whether I would stay with the studying, I would have said "yes." But 183in my heart I would have known that I do not mean it. I myself did not pose such questions to myself.
But in an indistinct way I understood that, sooner or later, I would cast off the yeshiva and the Hasidim's minyan.
The upheaval came about in the middle of my first term as R' Itzikel's pupil.
Once, in an evening, in the Hasidim's minyan, three young men sat talking, and I stood and listened. One of the three was a bit of a teacher of Hebrew. In an evening he used to come here to study a page of Gemara. The talk came round to handwriting, and I had a hankering to hear the teacher's connoisseurship on my script. I got ink and pen with a little roll of paper, and wrote out a line.
His opinion was roughly this: "Separate letters are excellent, but fine letters are not yet a script. The letters must stand as they ought to. With you they stand badly. One letter holds its head to the east, a second — to the west; like a company of drunken soldiers they stand."
I was greatly cast down within myself, and the young teacher awoke great respect in me.
I wanted opportunities to talk with him.
A second time I spoke with him about reading Russian. He examined me and said that I read well and have a better pronunciation than he. He also examined me in arithmetic. He gave me a clever "zadatshe" (problem, exercise). And I "solved" it (found the right answer).
— He will not stay with the Gemara, — he remarked to a young man who sat by.
The conversations I had with the teacher 184gave my thoughts a new direction. I began to understand myself. It became clear to me that I have no more desire for the Gemara, and that I am drawn to the "little book."
I skipped one shiur in Ramayle's kloyz, a second, a third.
While we lived in Preyses' courtyard, I became acquainted there with a boy from Malat, named Hirshke Levenson. Later he called himself Spiez.
The landlord of our dwelling, who was also from Malat, told us that Hirshke's father was a carpenter, but that he knew Holy Tongue and astronomy (tkhune) well, and that he was a great heretic (apikoyres).
Despite that, Hirshke had studied Gemara in Vilna. Since we moved to Kisin's courtyard, I had not seen him.
But I heard that he had already cast off the Gemara and that he attends the "narodnaya uchilishche" (public school) on the Fed-mark. So I sought him out.
— There they teach with relish, — he praised the school, — grammar and "drob" (fractions) one learns thoroughly.
Right the next morning I went over there. They examined me and took me into the second class. For a few days I still went to the yeshiva too. But I did not finish out the week. Monday I was no longer at the shiur. And that was the end of my Gemara studying.
When my father learned of it, he shrugged his shoulders and said "hefker-yung." But he was not greatly angry.
He had then hired himself out for a few rubles a week to the 185Podbreze collector (sbarshchik) Volfe Egoz, at communal work. And he was too taken up with his new occupation to interest himself in me.
Still, from time to time he used to ask me about the subjects I was studying in "class." And I could see that it pleased him. Only when he would grow angry at me, he used to call me "samovolyets" and "hefker-yung" — titles I heard from him over three years' time.
Had I, instead of cheders and yeshivas, attended a gymnasium, or an American public school, I would have known more at eleven than I do now at fourteen. But the Gemara, with which my mind had been occupied from my eighth year on, one cannot just wave away with the hand either.
However foolish it is to torment a child with the matters of Ksuvos, Gittin, Bava Kama, Bava Basra, or Pesachim, as gymnastics for the brain it is, all the same, not useless.
When I took up "drob," it came easily to me. The mind was used to "reasoning it out" (to shokel), and the strict logic it found in arithmetic, instead of the doubtful twists of the Tannaim and Amoraim, was a pleasant change.
I entered the "uchilishche" in the middle of the term; but I soon caught up with the other pupils of the second class.
My melamdim and roshei-yeshiva had said that I have a good head, and Tsifkin — my present teacher of arithmetic — paid me the same compliment. He used to teach us with zeal, though he also liked 186to idle too. One door of our classroom led into the dwelling of a teacher who had classes in the morning hours; Tsifkin used to open that door in the middle of the lesson (urok) and strike up a conversation with that man's wife.
He had black hair and a black mustache, Tsifkin, and his head, together with the hair, had a truly round form. A laughing black figure — that is how he presents himself to me in my memory.
In those times Russian teachers used to beat the pupils with the ruler (lineyke). The guilty one had to stretch out his hand and they would "honor" him once, twice, three times. Tsifkin loved to tease his victim (korbn). The other stands with his hand stretched out like a beggar, and he, Tsifkin, takes aim and takes aim at it with the wooden instrument. The boy blinks his eyes in fright; and it ends perhaps with nothing. Tsifkin only wanted to scare him.
This reminded me of Yankel Foyzner, my rebbe. Besides, in Tsifkin's class there was a boy who could endure blows of the ruler and used to tease the teacher, just as Folke used to tease Yankel Foyzner.
And when a hard "zadatshe" came up, and the pupils toiled over it, Tsifkin used to take pleasure watching them. And when one "solved" it, he would shout: "Molodets!" (Well done!).
My friend Levenson-Spiez was a wizard at problems, but I, in a short while, became his equal. There were also a couple more boys who 187distinguished themselves in arithmetic, and we four used to wager among ourselves on untangling hard problems.
Arithmetic became a great sport with me. I was not content with the calculations we did in class. I used to carry problems about with me outside of school too. There were three different "zadatshniks" (special booklets of arithmetic exercises): Malinin's, Yevtushevsky's, and Busse's; I bought or borrowed them all, and worked through every hard "zadatshe" in each of them. And if I heard that someone had some new problem, a profound one, I used to enter into negotiations to obtain it. Then I used to give it to Levenson and a couple of other comrades. There came to be among us a kind of problem-club.
All these problems dealt with ordinary "drob." Further than that we did not go in this school. Decimal fractions (desyatichnye drobi) were on the far side of the border.
Mikhail Walfer, the teacher (uchitel) who taught us Russian reading, spelling, and grammar, was one of the best schoolteachers the Jews of Vilna then had. He was a born pedagogue, and he did his work with the love that an artist feels for his art.
He had blond hair and a little blond beard. The difference between him and Tsifkin, in their appearance, we used to mark with the words: "the blond one" and "the black one."
Walfer had more fire, and Tsifkin — more humor. Walfer used to explain the lesson with such a loud and hearty voice that he often grew hoarse. He was one of those rabbinical-school men (rabintshiskes) whom 188well-to-do Jews had snapped up as bridegrooms for their daughters.
The whole time he studied at the rabbinical school, he had lodged with a furrier (futer-kirzhner), a tall, black-bearded Jew, whom I used to see often at my grandfather's neighbor, the shtrykher. Walfer's wife — a tall, beautiful one, with beautiful big eyes — was the furrier's younger daughter. His older daughter was also married to a government (kazyonny) teacher.
In the Jewish schools one then used a Russian grammar by a certain Horwitz, or Gurwitz. This Gurwitz had earlier been a teacher at the rabbinical school. Afterward he converted, and his name was transformed into Gurev. In the first edition of his grammar the title page bore "Gurwitz." In the new edition, though, there already stood the apostate's name. This booklet was given to us in class.
Walfer, however, made little use of it. He had his own method. His explanations we used to write down, and so there accumulated for us a written grammar as well.
I studied grammar with as much zeal as arithmetic. But Walfer used to assign us Krylov's fables (mesholim) to learn by heart, and for that I had no desire. I never had it in me to "cram" by rote; and forced learning I could not do. So I used to have troubles with these little fables. Walfer used to scold me, shout at me, give me a bad "grade"*. But it helped little.
* The "grades," or "otmetki" (marks), ran from 1 to 5 (1 — very bad; 2 — bad; 3 — satisfactory; 4 — good; 5 — excellent). So it was in the most various sorts of schools for boys or yeshiva lads. In the gymnasiums for girls the "grades" ran from 1 to 12.
189Something similar used to happen when one was assigned to copy out a few printed pages, or to do a few easy problems at home. In such mechanical work I had no interest. I used to put it off until the last minute, and I often used to come to class with an excuse. Nevertheless Walfer used to show me attention, and often declared me his best pupil, only a lazy one.
At the end of summer a public-school inspector came. He examined us, and those who passed the examination received a "svidetelstvo" (certificate). I was one of them.
Both teachers presented me to the inspector as a boy of very good abilities, "but a lazy one." So in my certificate they wrote a "four."
In August of that summer the number of Jewish gymnasium students in Vilna greatly increased. Suddenly there appeared some fifty or sixty Jewish boys in the fine gymnasium uniforms and "kepi" caps, like those the Russian soldiers then wore. In my eyes the whole city began to glitter with silver buttons and silver "galloons."
Earlier there had been only one gymnasium among us, and in it very few Jews were to be found. "Goyish" (secular) education was still a novelty, and only families of the rich, modern class had dared to make their boys into gymnasium students. In my mind, Jewish families were divided 190into such where the children call their parents "tate" and "mame," and such where they call them "papasha" and "mamasha." To the gymnasium went only boys of the "papasha" class.
But the single gymnasium had become too small even for the Christian population; so a six-class "progymnasium" was added to it — that is, a gymnasium with only the first six classes. He who finished the progymnasium could pass into the 7th class of the old gymnasium. Into the new educational institution a great many Jewish children flocked.
At the old gymnasium one was used to looking as on a school where very few Jews go. From earlier years, when "goyish" education was reckoned among us a "treyf" dish, there was rooted a notion that it is not for Jews. With the progymnasium, however, this notion was not bound up. And the wish to give a child a modern education had grown strong.
In short, even before the progymnasium was opened, people began to say that a great many Jewish pupils would come there. And it became a kind of fashion to prepare a boy for it. Even the question of writing on the Sabbath no longer hindered.
At the beginning of August, then, there appeared several dozen Jewish pupils of the new progymnasium. And among them were not only boys of the "papasha" class, but also of the "tate" class.
Among the new gymnasium students I had one good acquaintance. This was my "ben gil" (exact contemporary), Sheptse Mitskin, with whom I had studied in Khatskele's cheder. He was now a tall boy with broad shoulders, and the 191uniform suited him very well. Since he had put it on, we had met several times, and each time he treated me in a friendlier way than I had expected. To walk through the street with a gymnasium student was a great honor for me.
I was then very poorly dressed. And my kapote was a long, old-fashioned, brown, old, wrinkled one. I wondered that he was not ashamed to go about with me. And going about with him, I was ashamed of my wretched kapote far more than when I walked alone.
Once he saw me on the great Cathedral Square, beside the Botanical garden. It was at a performance by an old German who walked on a rope. He came over to me with his usual friendliness, and after the performance we walked home strolling. Soon we noticed a Jew looking at us with a smile. A minute later the Jew came over to us and said to Mitskin:
— Why do you always go about with him? In two years, in three years' time too?
What Mitskin answered, or whether he answered at all, I do not remember. But the scene engraved itself in my mind. That is why I remember it. That brown, twisted, long kapote of mine. All the other kapotes I wore as a boy have vanished from my memory. This one, though, I have not forgotten.
I remember its familiar fabric, its rust-brown color; I remember how its edge, by the buttons, curled inward, and how the lower hem hung crookedly.
192Mitskin used to tell me what goes on in his class, about the teachers, about the pupils, and about everything that was studied.
A short while later a Realschule was opened in Vilna. And there too came many Jewish boys. The uniforms of the "realists" were made exactly like those of the gymnasium students, only the color was different. With the gymnasium students the costume was of blue cloth, trimmed with white piping and with silver galloons and silver buttons; and with the "realists" — of brown cloth, trimmed with yellow and gold.
To meet Jewish boys in the "lordly" (fritsish) uniforms of these two sorts became, in those few years, a quite ordinary thing, though a few years earlier no one would have dreamed of it.
In the spiritual history of Vilna, and of all Lithuania probably, these few years are marked in bold letters. That they had an effect on my own spiritual strivings is easy to imagine.
In the previous year — that is, in 1873 — the government closed the rabbinical school, and in its place founded a teachers' institute — one in Vilna and one in Zhitomir. The purpose was to train teachers for a new sort of Russian elementary schools ("nachalnye uchilishcha") for Jewish children.
193All the students of the institute were at government expense ("kazyonne"). The whole time they studied, they were given lodging, food, footwear-and-clothing. And when the student finished, he was provided with a teaching post in one of the "nachalnye uchilishcha."
The institute consisted of four classes. For the first class one had to be not less than sixteen and not more than seventeen years old.
So that the students of the institute should have a place to practice their future profession — to learn to teach — there was opened at each of the two institutes a "nachalnaya uchilishche." It was called the "odnoklassnaya" (one-class), but the single class consisted of three divisions, and in each division the boy had to remain two years. And before the first division there was also a preparatory class for quite small children.
The whole affair was ludicrous to behold. And one must note that in the "nachalnaya uchilishche" one spent not two hours a day, but six — from nine to three.
He who finished the Vilna (or Zhitomir) "nachalnaya uchilishche" could enter the institute. Four years all provided for, for education, and then sure of a government teaching post, a frock-coat with brass buttons, a cap with a cockade, and the standing of a "chinovnik" (official) — what, in those times, could be a finer prospect for a boy of my economic condition? Of gymnasium or Realschule one could not even think. For tuition alone one had to pay a hefty sum there. That, together with the 194glittering uniform, was not for my father's empty pocket.
Had I prepared myself a little, I could have entered the third division of the "nachalnaya uchilishche." That is, in two years' time I would have entered the institute; but into the "nachalnaya uchilishche" it was not so easy to get in as into the "narodnaya." One had to have a "metric" (birth certificate), and at my birth they had not registered me. To obtain a "sworn metric," again, would have cost ten or fifteen rubles — a sum I could not come up with. Besides that, it was bound up with ceremonies and difficulties that a fourteen-year-old boy of my class did not find easy to overcome.
Hirshke Levenson was in the same situation. We used to spend whole days talking about the pupils of the third division of the "nachalnaya." We knew each of them by name, knew who their parents were.
One of them was Shimke Aronovitsh of Farbreze, whom his mother had, as a child, set up on the shelf in a pot of feathers. He was now a handsome lad, with a beautiful red color in his cheeks. And when I used to see him going with books under his arm, my heart would go out from envy, mixed with love, toward him.
We interested ourselves in everything that went on in the "nachalnaya" and in the institute. We had various anecdotes about the teachers (one of them — in the "prigotovitelny" [preparatory] class — was now Mikhail Walfer).
195I used to spend much time with Levenson. He was very capable, and we used to do "zadatshes" together, chat, fantasize. He used to tell me about his town, Malat, and about his interesting father.
Hirshke was a heretic, like his father. But in converting me he did not succeed. He was older and more developed than I, but despite that, and despite his good abilities, he was not able to answer the questions I used to put to him. That does not mean, though, that he had nothing to answer. He was one of those people who hate to debate. If they do not believe in a thing, they make fun of it. Instead of getting into arguments, they laugh it off. Of God, Levenson used to make jokes, say poisonous quips about Him.
I was by then no longer pious. Praying I had long since left off. And to write on the Sabbath I was no longer afraid either. But to stop believing — that I did not.
Hirshke lodged, without paying, with his townsman in Preyses' courtyard. And for food he earned a few rubles a month from lessons (private tutoring). He often went hungry. But he always made himself cheerful. He talked a great deal about sexual matters. Being older, he had experiences that were still foreign to me. Such things he used to treat without ceremony, with the same tone of irony with which he used to speak of religion. I disliked that. I wished such questions to be approached in a more decent, a more romantic language. I used to grow angry and bitter, and he used to laugh at me.
196Hirshke Levenson and I took up Krylov's fables. Many of them were scattered through the Russian chrestomathies ("readers," reading-books) for schools. But we got hold of a book that contained all of Krylov's fables, and we read and studied it in order, from beginning to end.
It became a Krylov fever with me. Whole days I used to sit at the fables, talk about them, quiz myself on them with Levenson. Many of them I learned by heart. It did not come easily to me, but now I did it of my own will. No one had assigned me the fables.
I was deeply interested, and, as always, my interest made the hardest work easy for me.
Krylov brought Hirshke and me into close acquaintance with Hirshke Reicherson, the son of the Hebrew writer who had translated the whole of Krylov into Hebrew. They lived on Little Stefan Street (in the courtyard where Isaac Meir Dik had lived, and where my first cheder, under Yeshaye Baltermanzer, had been). A few times a day he used to spend in Preyses' courtyard. And — I do not remember how — we became acquainted.
He was the same age as Levenson — two or three years older than I. Earlier he had gone for a few years to a rabbinical school. So he spoke Russian well. But he knew Hebrew too, 197and under his influence Hirshke Levenson and I began to read Hebrew books.
Levenson soon went off to Sventsyan, where he got some position. My interest in Hebrew books lasted a certain time afterward too.
At first it did not come easily to me. Little by little, though, I got used to it and read them almost as easily as Krylov's fables. I read through Mapu's "Ahavat Zion" and "Ashmat Shomron"; a romantic tale named "Ha-Pode u-Matsil," Judah Leib Gordon's "Olam ke-Minhago," and a Hebrew translation of "The Eternal Jew" ("Ha-Tsofeh be-Eretz Nod").
From Mapu's genuinely biblical language I had great pleasure. I remember the delight with which I read "Ahavat Zion" a second time. Because of the antiquity of the language I was carried back into the generations of the prophets. I vividly pictured to myself the persons of the naive novel and their biblical (Tanakh) life.
This was my third strong literary enjoyment. The first had been some four or five years earlier, on Friday nights, when I used to read the sedras (weekly Torah portions) "Vayeshev," "Miketz," "Vayigash," and "Vayechi," and the "Sefer ha-Yashar"; and the second — when I heard the tale of the treasure-diggers who heard the song of a sleeping child.
The pleasure I had from reading "Ashmat Shomron" I remember more faintly. I recall only my delight at a certain passage, where it is depicted how, on a festive day, the crowd is leaving a gathering at which Isaiah had spoken; the persons of the novel converse about the prophet's discourse. To weave invented happenings into the Tanakh, 198as though they had really occurred in the days when Isaiah lived — that I considered a wonderful idea. And through the scene I felt a new taste of reality in the novel.
This was my first acquaintance with historical fiction.
"Olam ke-Minhago" afforded me pleasure too, but of a different sort. I had my enjoyment from the satire and humor the tale contains. Most clearly there has remained in my memory the scene where a whole crowd performs kapores with a single rooster, which is tied to the end of a pole. The pole with the rooster is held up high and swung over everyone's heads.
That I read Hebrew books pleased my father. A few of them he had read long before me, and a few he now read. "Olam ke-Minhago" we read together. Nevertheless, when it grew bitter on his heart, and I drove him out of patience, he used to call me by my usual name: "hefker-yung."
My friendship with Reicherson continued even after Levenson had gone away.
His mother was dead, and his father had married a second time. His stepmother — a young woman with red hair, which she used to let creep out from under her headscarf — was hospitable and cheerful; Levenson and I used to go up to them; and after he had gone away, I used to go up alone.
The family then lived in another dwelling, on a long iron gallery, in a great courtyard on Franciscan Street. They lived very poorly.
199The father was busy all day at his lessons, and when he was indeed at home, one rarely heard his voice either. He was always occupied with writing, reading, or thinking. Sometimes he would pace about the room and whisper to himself. "He is composing a poem," Hirshke once explained to me.
Hirshke was more sociable and talkative than his father, and his tone was almost always pleasant. To his stepmother he behaved in a friendly way, and when she made some cheerful remark, he used to laugh with a sympathetic laughter.
He was not a healthy one, Hirshke. His face was always pale. His black eyes had a lively look; but when he smiled, those black eyes, together with his white teeth, flashed with a tragic foreboding. His appearance used to cause me sorrow.
Hirshke Reicherson had begun to translate Krylov into Yiddish, and he used to read me almost every fable of his that he had translated.
Once I too tried to translate a fable. I did it only for fun. But Hirshke praised my translation, and between us a plan was worked out, that I should help him: I should translate a part of Krylov's fables and he should take my translations into his work, under his name.
I was in seventh heaven. That my name would not be mentioned did not trouble me — so long as my rhymes would be printed.
We were so inexperienced regarding authors' rights and authorial honor that we saw nothing unnatural in the plan. Neither did Reicherson 200mean to rob me, nor did I feel that he was doing me an injustice. On the contrary: the fact that he let me take part in his literary work I held to be a favor.
To translate Krylov's Russian into Yiddish — and not merely to translate, but to put the words together in rhymes — this work afforded me a great pleasure.
This was my first acquaintance with the bittersweet demon (klipe) called authorial ambition.
But no flower-wreaths did this first attempt bring me.
"The Liar" — one of the longest fables in Krylov's collections — I held to be his greatest masterpiece. I knew it by heart. I loved to declaim it. So I chose it for my beginning.
Strolling with an acquaintance, the liar tells of a cucumber as big as a mountain. They have to cross over a bridge, and his companion tells him that the bridge has such a nature that, when a liar steps onto it, it throws him into the river. The liar takes fright and begins to "climb down" from the exaggeration: the cucumber was not as big as a mountain, but as a house. Then it grows smaller still with him; and so it goes on. By the time the two passersby are already at the bridge, the cucumber is already like all cucumbers.
When I took up the work, it turned out that the most important word in the fable is a stumbling-block for the verses. The Russian word "ogurets" rhymes easily. To the Yiddish word "ugerke," however, it is hard to find a rhyme. So I hit upon this device: I turned the cucumber into a nut. To "nut" it is easier to find a rhyme.
201The mild, good Hirshke, who was content with everything, was pleased with the plan, and with my translation he was delighted.
The next morning, though, he brought me a piece of bad news: his father was not only against my "nut," but against our whole plan.
A translation must be a translation — he said. What in the original is told about a cucumber must remain a cucumber. Krylov wrote no fable about a nut. And as concerns my collaboration, that cannot be permitted at all, because the translation goes under Hirshke's name and not under mine — and an author must not make use of someone else's work.