Laish Read online

  To make me a better person, Old Avraham has given me the task of waking people up in the morning for prayers. It’s not pleasant to awaken people from their sleep; they’re often angry, and at times they throw things at me. When I complain, he says, “Don’t have so much self-pity. This world isn’t an amusement park. We must do what life metes out to us without complaining.” There’s a kind of frightening honesty in his voice, and I find myself submitting to his gaze. Sometimes it seems to me that he hates me, and I would like to ask him why.

  After prayers, the old men sit under a tree and study from a book. They swallow the words, and their talk comes only in spurts. It’s hard for me to understand what they are talking about, but I love to sit and watch them. Their faces are like skeins of patience. After an hour of study I make coffee for them. I sometimes hear them say, “Laishu is a good boy.” It moves me.

  After studying, the old men go back to their wagons to doze and I sit, enveloping myself in the morning light and daydreaming of Jerusalem. Among us there’s a man by the name of Ya’akov Yitzhak who tells miraculous stories about Jerusalem. It’s hard to know if he’s a spinner of tall tales or a cheat. In his stories, there are only good people, only the saintly, and miracles seem to happen all the time. Fingerhut hates him and calls him “a cheat, and the son of a cheat.” He has lined up witnesses so that Ya’akov Yitzhak will receive not a penny of his inheritance. I also don’t like exaggerations. When I picture Jerusalem, it is as a broad, light-filled city—a place where there is no frost or dampness, where a man can lay his head on a stone and fall asleep. I must surely be wrong.

  —

  In the winter, there’s a sense that the convoy is making progress. At times it seems that our journey is not an illusion—as Fingerhut claims it is—and there is hope that it will come about soon. In the summer we move on lazily, lingering in town squares. The men wander about the villages, trading with zeal; the women go begging; the weak and the sick shake their alms boxes, calling out loudly, “Alms for the pilgrims, alms for the pilgrims! Whoever denies alms to pilgrims will go to hell.”

  There’s a violinist among us, and a flutist, too, and someone who plays the drums. In the evening, after prayers, they play for hours. If there is a wedding in a village they are invited, and all of us are invited along with them. These are hours of wonderful forgetfulness. Afterward, it’s very difficult to wake people up for morning prayers, and if the truth be told, only the old men get to prayers on time.

  I heard that in the beginning it was very different. Shimon the Righteous was the leader of the convoy. He fixed the times for prayer, for study, and for moving on. Whoever lagged behind would be reprimanded. But since his death the dealers have taken over the convoy, and everyone goes his separate way. True, sometimes the old men rebel, rise up, and try to afflict the money-grubbers; if that proves ineffective, they then declare a fast. Once they fasted from one Sabbath to the next, and forced the dealers to give money to the poor. Their protest was not forgotten, and if the dealers ever have the chance to do something bad to the old men, they do. It has been like this for as long as I can remember.

  3

  In summer we make sluggish progress, setting up in town squares or alongside streams, trading and getting whatever money we can from people. There are various methods: the women and children move people to pity, the old men pray, and the wagon drivers threaten and cast fear. This three-pronged approach has proved wondrously successful in the past; over the course of time, it has been honed and improved, so now there’s a strange kind of coordination among the various methods. Of course we all stand to gain, eventually.

  Fingerhut keeps announcing that were it not for his seizures and bouts of weakness, he would not remain here for an extra minute. He says that life for Jews over there is no earthly paradise, but it’s not a sham. No one declares morning, noon, and night that he’s making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and no one aspires to bring redemption to the Jews. For many years, Fingerhut has threatened to abandon the convoy, but he doesn’t carry out his threat. Many owe him money, and until they repay their debts, he’ll give them no rest. In the evening he gets up, girds his loins, and proceeds to collect his debts. One of the wagon drivers assists him in this loathsome task. Invariably, there is a huge commotion. People scream at him: Man cannot live by bread alone! There’s something higher than us all! Widows and orphans shouldn’t be threatened! Fingerhut doesn’t hold back, but gets right in there and stands his ground, rebuking them outright. He claims that the widows aren’t wretched; they keep their savings sewn in their clothes. Loans must be paid back. His successes are not impressive, yet he does manage to retrieve something. I help him sew this money into his shirt, which he never removes from his body.

  Though some are even worse than he, people recoil in disgust from Fingerhut, perhaps because sick people usually do not create such an uproar, but curl up in a corner and simply ask for compassion. Fingerhut is audacious in his sickness; he’s declared that he intends to die with all his money. What the robbers will do with his money after his death, he doesn’t care. This announcement, and others that he comes out with from time to time, are well known by now and have become an exemplar for one and all, but it doesn’t stop him. In the past month, his face has taken on a strange determination, and it is clear that he’s ready for a long struggle.

  Meanwhile, I’ve overcome my fear and have been reading the notebook that Old Ya’akov entrusted to me. It turns out that it is filled almost to overflowing. At the beginning he wrote: A List of the Faithful Pilgrims Who Have Died on Their Way to the Land of Israel. Old Ya’akov made no distinction among people, and he listed them in the order of their deaths. Next to the name of everyone who died he wrote a verse from the Bible, and by his own name he wrote: God watches over simple people. In the notebook I found a few things that Shimon the Righteous had said, and things that Old Ya’akov had copied from books. His handwriting is clear and round, and the verses are clearly understandable. I would really like to sit quietly and read, but Fingerhut doesn’t let me. He keeps me busy from early morning, preparing his hot-water bottles. Everyone talks about his death, entreating him to give some of his money to the poor, because if he doesn’t, the dealers will get their hands on it. These heartless pleas frighten me, but not Fingerhut. He just keeps declaring that it is his intention to recover, collect all the money that people owe him, and live for many years. Every announcement of his attracts shouts of derision. One of the wagon drivers, a vicious man who murdered his wife a long time ago and was imprisoned for years on account of it, joined the convoy after his release at the recommendation of the Holy Man. This sturdy man, whose grimness always terrified me, went up to Fingerhut and asked, “Why are you talking such crap?” Clearly, these were words that he acquired in jail—people here don’t speak like that.

  “I don’t want anything. I’m not asking anyone for anything.” Fingerhut raised himself slightly to lean on his forearm.

  “Everyone is saying that you should give alms. Why don’t you give some out?” He spoke plainly.

  “They want my money and I don’t want to give it to them. That’s it, in a nutshell,” Fingerhut sneered at him.

  “If everyone says that you should give alms, give them out and don’t talk crap. Get it?”

  “They’re all thieves,” said Fingerhut without batting an eyelash.

  “What?” he said, his jaw dropping open.

  “It’s true,” said Fingerhut in a clear voice.

  The wagon driver apparently did not understand what Fingerhut was saying or perhaps became confused. He came up close to Fingerhut, grabbed his coat, shook him, and said, “Don’t you speak like that—you understand?” Fingerhut chuckled, a slight laugh, as if to himself. Ploosh, as he was called, took that as an insult, and again set upon him, this time shaking him hard.

  “Why are you shaking me?” Fingerhut asked him coldly.

  “Because you’re talking crap. Do as you’re told to do. Understand?”
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br />   “I understand, I understand,” and something of Fingerhut’s former thin smile played about his lips.

  Now Ploosh talked to Fingerhut as the wardens must have spoken to him in prison—abruptly, his words full of hard and bony syllables. “In another place they’d put you in solitary,” he concluded.

  Fingerhut, to everyone’s surprise, opened his eyes wide and gazed at Ploosh with astonishment, as if the person standing over him were not a notorious killer but a wondrous creature.

  “Why are you silent?” Ploosh raised his voice.

  On hearing this outcry, the wonderment left Fingerhut’s face and he closed his eyes.

  “Anywhere else, they’d beat the life out of you,” Ploosh muttered furiously. Fingerhut did not even react to this. Ploosh turned aside, spitting.

  That night, Fingerhut complained of sharp pains in his loins. The hot-water bottles did not ease them, and he asked me to rub his back with witch hazel. I did, and it must have relaxed him, for he fell asleep.

  The next day I saw Ploosh sitting on the ground, a man of around sixty eating soup that he had prepared for himself. The dark viciousness that had shrouded his face the previous day hung over him now. People did not try to approach him, and he made no effort to be liked. Most of the day he would just sit on the ground. His years in jail were reflected in all his movements: he found it hard to speak, and his torn words and unclear syllables seemed to emerge from deep within him. The old men tried to draw him into their prayers, but he rarely came. For my part, I didn’t dare wake him in the morning. He would be deeply asleep, entangled in his bedding.

  Meanwhile, it was a warm and pleasant summer, and people took off their shoes and dipped their feet in the river. In this quiet season the Prut was still swift-flowing, but not as dangerous as it was during other times of the year. This unusual immersion brought to mind a mourning ritual. Perhaps because of the red feet.

  In my heart of hearts, I fear the coming days. Fingerhut no longer asks anyone else for help, just me, and whenever I bring him a hot-water bottle or a warm compress, he presses a coin into my palm. He’s scarcely eaten in the past few days, and when I ask if I should bring him something to eat, he gives me one of his piercing looks and says, “Don’t need it now. What Fingerhut needs now is a little rest. When this pain lets up, he’ll be on his feet.”

  He calls his body “bad flesh” and his legs “pins.” When the pains around his loins sharpen, he says: “Ssh, pain! Ssh, you pest!” He once told me, “When someone’s healthy, he doesn’t even know he’s got a body.” Now Fingerhut knows each limb of his body.

  People no longer come to beg him for alms, and he writhes in pain like a snake. At times he will turn to me and say, “Laishu, you’re still young. You’re going to see a great many wicked men in this world.” In his last days, although he goaded me, he did not make me hate him, even though his wickedness overflowed from him.

  He even had bad words for the old men. “They always want to be pure,” he said, aiming his poison dart in their direction. Once I found him sitting and staring straight at the corner where Ploosh, who had tormented him, sat. “Strange,” he said to me, “I don’t hate that thug. I should hate him, shouldn’t I?”

  Fingerhut died the next morning. I still saw the whisper of that suspicious smile on his pale lips. At his death he was wrapped in a coat, a pillow under his head, and the small bundle of his clothes was tied to his body. There was astonishment, for no one imagined that he would die quietly. In his final days, he had fought fiercely with the Angel of Death. A day before his death he had called out, “Fingerhut will not go quietly! He’s got a foothold in this world!”

  An hour after he died, the dealers were already picking apart Fingerhut’s shirt. There was money in it, but not as much as they had imagined. The dealers had been sure that he had buried his treasure in one of the ditches, but they searched in vain. They cross-examined me as well. I showed them what he had given me and swore I had no more. The funeral was silent, and apart from the words of the prayer book, no one spoke. After the funeral, the poor were given charity. Fingerhut’s clothes and his list of those who owed him money were burned. I took the notebook that Old Ya’akov had entrusted to me, and I sat and read through it. Whenever I’m in great pain or feel sorrow coming over me, I draw out the notebook from my lining and read it. As I wrote Fingerhut’s name and the day of his death, my hand shook.

  4

  After every funeral, the wagons are rapidly hitched and we flee the place. That evening the horizon blazed fiery until late. Ploosh drove the horses with a mighty hand, cursed in Romanian, and lashed at their backs in fury. The horses pulled with all their might, but it enraged him that our wagon moved slowly, lagging behind the others.

  Toward morning, we reached the village of Shazov. I hurried to wake people for prayers. One of the men, among the more wretched, when awoken from his sleep fixed his blurry gaze on me and exclaimed, “Are you out of your mind?” The others, too, hardly hastened to rise. Ploosh caught hold of me later and said, “Why are you waking people up, you scum?”

  Only the old men came to the prayers. They prayed almost silently and without undue emphasis. One of them said Kaddish. The morning light was soft, and it warmed those who were still sleeping. The sun was low, and from a distance the hoarse barking of a dog threatened to break the silence, but not a sound was heard. Everyone’s morning sleep was quiet and undisturbed.

  After prayers, the old men tossed back a few shots of whiskey and called out together, “A good ascent to the soul and heavenly merit!” As I heard this, I saw Fingerhut’s soul, shaped like a transparent bubble, leaving his body and rising to the heavens.

  The sun climbed high in the sky, and tall women came out of the low doorways of the houses, bringing us cups of coffee and slices of bread spread with butter. The sight of these tall women brought to my mind a well-ordered life nourished by sturdy trees and water. From my first sight of them, these women amazed me. I loved their calm movements. In the cities, women are short and noisy and never quiet for a moment, and our women are worn to the bone. But country women are full-figured and not embittered.

  After the prayers, women and their sick children come for the old men’s blessing. The old men close their eyes when they give their blessing. This short ceremony, which lasts only a few minutes, always moves me. Afterward, the women look embarrassed and the children scream. I once saw a mute child, after receiving a blessing from the old men, begin uttering disconnected syllables from his sealed mouth. I’ve seen many miracles with my own eyes, but I don’t like to talk about them.

  “One shouldn’t talk about miracles,” Old Avraham, my teacher, once told me. Since he told me that, I make sure to do as he said.

  There was a local woman, stocky and with wild hair, who spoke against the wealthy people of Shazov who neglected the poor, the widows, and the orphans. No one went over to her, and she just stood there, cursing the men and wishing them all kinds of dreadful things.

  Much later she was still talking, and two local men approached her and pulled her aside. At first she resisted, calling them all kinds of terrible names, but eventually they took her away as she spoke nonstop, mentioning the names of people and places. But her protests were of no use; the men insisted that she be silent.

  The next day she appeared again, even wilder and more enraged. This time she talked about many things, mentioning names and years, even mentioning the dead rabbi of Shazov. Now the men no longer stood on ceremony with her. They dragged her off by force to somewhere far away. Her shouts echoed in the village, and then suddenly she fell silent, as if her mouth had been sealed.

  Angry women appear wherever we set up camp. It seems that just the name “Jerusalem” stirs up words and anger in them, perhaps because they believe that we have the power to right life’s wrongs. Whenever he saw women who shouted like that, Fingerhut would raise himself up on his forearm and call out to them, “There are no righteous men and no prophets among us! We’re nothing
but a rabble of rotten, godforsaken Jews. Harbor no illusions! Do not expect salvation!”

  We have a saying, “One mustn’t dwell on the memory of the dead.” But try as I might to forget him, Fingerhut’s face still floats before my eyes almost every day. I recall his gestures so well; they were mostly careless, but whenever he would voice his objections to something, his forearms would appear to stretch and he would seem taller than his actual height. Without being aware of it, I have been taking on some of his gestures.

  Tragedies and wanderings have not brought my Torah study to a stop. In addition to the weekly Bible portion and a page from the Talmud, I’m studying the book of Jonah. At this time of the year, Old Avraham is completely immersed in the book of Jonah. Whenever we read a chapter, his eyes light up. But his test at the end of the week frightens me. Why is it only me that he tests? Why do only I have to learn things by heart? Doesn’t he see that my knees are buckling from the strain? I’ve learned that it is forbidden to ask. Complaints and questions annoy old people. They think that the questioner is trying to either contradict or dishonor the sacred texts. Even Old Avraham, an easygoing man, comes down hard on me. He takes me to task over the slightest thing. Fingerhut asked nothing more of me than to get him his morning coffee on time. After he had drunk it, he would light a cigarette and say, “Anyone who steals from a thief should not be punished.” And that, if the truth be told, was his entire philosophy in a nutshell.

  People no longer mention Fingerhut. His place in the wagon has been taken by a woman named Tzilla. Something terrible must have happened to her, but she refuses to speak of it. Her face is mute, impenetrable, and most of the day she sits in her corner and mends shirts and socks. In exchange for her repairs to their clothing, people give her either a coin or some basic necessities. She neither asks for more nor haggles. Whatever people give her, she accepts without reacting. People say that she is deaf. From others I’ve heard that she has taken a vow of silence upon herself until we reach Jerusalem. She works from early in the morning. In the evening, she climbs down from the wagon and makes herself vegetable soup. It looks like she was once tall. Her movements are dexterous, without haste or anger. After the meal, she sits without stirring. At times, it seems to me that her gaze is fixed on another place. When I contemplate her muteness, I start believing that the journey to Jerusalem is no fraud. Once a month, I also lay my torn clothes next to her, together with a coin. In the evening the clothes are returned to the same place, mended and folded. I thank her but she doesn’t answer me. Everyone in the convoy has a dreadful story or a sickness. People don’t speak about the horrors, though sometimes it will show in their faces or seep into some meaningless squabble.