Laish Page 5

  People made way for them, and they went up to the wagon under which Ploosh was sitting with his legs crossed.

  “So it’s you,” one of the gendarmes said without asking his name. Ploosh got to his feet.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  As they put the handcuffs on him, Ploosh did not resist. It was clear that he knew what awaited him and had not been surprised by their arrival. He strode ahead of them, so that they could not hurry him. There was a wild grin on his face, like that of an animal who had given his captors the slip and had then been caught after a hard chase.

  The dealer’s funeral was held that same evening. The old men washed his body, carried it on a stretcher, and buried the dealer with care. I kept seeing Ploosh’s wild smile. It seemed to me that he had joined the funeral procession and was baring his smiling teeth.

  After the funeral, one of the dealers tore the clothes of the deceased into strips and distributed his money to one and all. People grabbed whatever they could. It turned out that the dealer had put away quite a tidy sum. He had been engaged in more than just petty trade, and he must have kept some of his dealings a secret. Not even his surname or the name of his hometown was known. They stuck a simple wooden sign on his grave: HERE LIES REB MORDECHAI.

  That night the wagon drivers sat around the bonfire. They drank cognac and forced the fiddler to play sad songs for them. The fiddler was a man of around sixty, short and withdrawn. His entire family had been wiped out in a pogrom in his hometown, near Lemberg. He played quietly and with great intensity, as if he hadn’t been forced to play but was doing it for himself. Before the tragedy, he and his twin brother had been musicians at festive occasions. They were famous not only throughout Galicia, but as far away as Hungary. After the tragedy, he did not play again. He moved to Lemberg and there, with the few who had survived the pogrom, tried to regain a grip on life. He couldn’t, but people who remembered his music took pity on him and helped him make ends meet. And the Holy Man, who had been told about his playing, urged him to join the convoy. The Holy Man promised that in Jerusalem his anguish would be healed and that he would eventually be able to play as he once did. The promise came true well before its appointed time. In the convoy, the fiddler found a flutist and a drummer, and they filled him with the will to play again. The three of them would usually appear together, but at the weddings of very poor people he would play alone. Now, too, compelled by the wagon drivers, he played alone.

  That night the wagon drivers got drunk. They sang and rambled on until late at night. The old men’s entreaties were in vain. Wallowing in their drunkenness, the drivers kept taking swigs from the green bottles. Only toward dawn, after they had cursed the dealers all the way to hell, did they at last collapse into sleep.

  9

  We left Sadagora the following day. The wagon drivers were sick from their drinking, and they lashed at their horses’ backs in fury. We traveled on the dirt roads alongside the Prut. As if by their own accord, the events of the last few days played themselves over in my head. Everyone had witnessed the murder, and yet a mystery hung over the dealer’s death. People remembered that he had been depressed before his murder, keeping his distance from even the few who were close to him. Over the past year, successful trading had brought him a tidy profit but his face remained anguished, with a gray pallor, and he chain-smoked. On the day of his death he had been quiet, polite; he had given some clothes to Tzilla and even put in an appearance at morning prayers. He hadn’t shown signs of undue anxiety or fear. After prayers, he had gone over to Ploosh; a few people watched as he did so. He had walked as he always did, but death already dwelt within him.

  Only after he died did it emerge that no one knew what town the dealer came from, if he was married, if he had any children, or even the reason he had joined the convoy. Others recalled that the Holy Man had decreed that he be permitted to join. If the Holy Man had commanded it, it meant that the dealer was someone who had suffered.

  At the first encampment, I brought Blind Menachem a slice of bread spread with oil. He’s always forgotten when there is turmoil. I told him of the events of the past few days and how Ploosh had been taken away to jail. He was not happy. His sunken eye sockets registered shock, and his forehead was furrowed. He took in the world through those empty eye sockets, and he could always describe very precise details—a person’s height, for example, his shape, to say nothing of his voice. He had this to say about the dead dealer: “He had the voice of a child.” Still later, he added, “What a strange death.”

  Soon after this happened, I became someone else’s property. My teacher, Old Avraham, grabbed my forearm, went up to the new wagon driver, and said, “Sruel, I’m entrusting Laishu to you; don’t be harsh, and don’t mock him. He has to study Torah in the mornings. In the afternoons, he’s yours. That’s when he can help you. Laishu is an orphan, and the Torah commands us to look after orphans.”

  Sruel bowed his head, as Christians do, and said, “So be it.”

  Sruel was a tall, strong man, and his eyes were as clear as a child’s. Years earlier, while he was still a young boy, peasants who had been incited attacked his father, beating and injuring him. Sruel, in the garden at the time, saw the danger from afar. Taking his life in his hands, he went to his father’s aid. The peasants misjudged Sruel’s hidden strength and started attacking him, too. Though he was brought down, Sruel rallied quickly and felled two of the peasants, strangling them to death. His father was saved, and the sentence meted out to Sruel was life imprisonment. He served a full thirty years, and by the time he was released, neither his father nor his mother nor his older brothers were still alive. He joined the convoy a month before the Holy Man died. The Holy Man had noticed him and said, “Why shouldn’t he join us? He’s a strong Jew.”

  At first Sruel helped the wagon drivers; later he became a wagon driver himself. The old men liked him and drew him into their prayer group, but he found praying and studying difficult. He said the prayers awkwardly, like someone for whom the words were foreign. When he was called to the Torah, two old men would stand next to him and help him pronounce the blessings. After he was called up, his face would be red and perspiration would bead up on his forehead; he would be embarrassed and mutter incomprehensibly. Once a week, sometimes twice a week, he would get drunk. His drunkenness was not violent and obscenities did not escape his lips, yet there was something frightening about his high spirits. After he got drunk he would wander about among the wagons and call out to anyone standing nearby, “Lehayim! Cheers! Jews, you mustn’t despair! We’ll soon be in Jerusalem!”

  Then he would sit on the ground, shouting and singing songs that he had learned in jail. The next day, a bashful Sruel would apologize to the old men and to people in the wagons. For a time the old men tried to insist that he wean himself off alcohol. He would promise, but he could never keep his word. Eventually their demands ceased, since he helped the old men and showed them respect. Apart from this glaring weakness, he was a likeable man whom everyone found easygoing.

  Sruel seldom mentioned his years in jail. Once he was asked if he had suffered on account of being Jewish. “No,” he replied simply, and a wide smile spread across his face. Even the dealers depended on him, and they would entrust him with their money on the nights when he wasn’t drunk. In return for the favor, they would reward him handsomely. Sruel could have become wealthy, he could have left the convoy and built himself a house, but he was deeply bound to the convoy and rooted in its way of life. When he would start drinking, his eyes would shine and he would promise everyone that it would not be long before we reached Jerusalem. There, and only there, would everything that ailed us be healed.

  “Who can guarantee that’s how it will be?” the dealers occasionally taunted him.

  “May God in heaven be my witness.” Sruel would raise his hands and blot out his detractors.

  His years in jail had not extinguished the childlike brightness from his face, and even when he was annoyed there was s
till a softness to his lips. Were it not for his drunkenness, people would have loved him unconditionally. Once when he was drunk, he sat on the ground and wept. For some reason, no one went over to him, and he sank even deeper into his tears. I asked my teacher if Sruel was crying about the years that he had spent in jail.

  “Not necessarily,” he answered. “He’s crying over his mother.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “By the tears.”

  My teacher surprised me with his insight. Because of his closeness to the holy books and to worlds that I will never even glimpse, his perceptions are clear and unmarred by extraneous shadows. I came to appreciate his keen understanding much later. At that time, I just detected a special flavor to his words. Of a cat who stood next to him and fixed its gaze upon him, he said, Cat-Person. There’s devotion in his contemplation. He feels close to dogs and gives them signals. I have yet to see a dog bark at him.

  “Why are we afraid of dogs?” I asked him once.

  “Because there’s fear in us.”

  I obey all his strictures and bathe in the river, saying the verses he instructed me to say. Sometimes it seems that fear is almost extinguished within me. But of course it isn’t any more than a momentary ebbing. At night I’m racked by bad dreams, and I wake up shaking in terror.

  Last night I saw my mother in a dream. Her face was clear and her eyes stared at me with wonder. I told her that I had been in the town where she was born but that the town had not treated me kindly, and that Ploosh was cruel to me. For some reason, my mother didn’t ask for details about his cruelty, but she showed an interest in the fate of the dealer who was murdered. I didn’t know how to reply; I was just surprised at her fear. Finally, in a voice that reverberates within me until this very day, she said to me, “Don’t worry, my son. I will be with you wherever you go. I am very close to you.”

  The next day it rained, and we found shelter in one of the sheds in which the summer grain had been stored. When the owner of the shed heard that we were on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he crossed himself and said, “You can stay here as long as you want to. Anyone on his way to Jerusalem is blessed.” I was greatly moved on that rainy day. The thought that my mother was so near to me relieved my heart of some of the anguish that had weighed on me like a stone. I lit a bonfire and prepared some soup for Menachem and myself.

  10

  The rain prevented us from pressing on and kept us imprisoned under the awning. The nights filled with screams: again the thieves were stealing whatever came to hand. The old men were more vulnerable than anyone else. They stood alongside the dark wagons, their nightshirts covering their nakedness, and were silent. Years ago they also would have shouted, but now, if truth be told, there was nothing left to steal. Even so, people steal from them, too.

  “Robber!”

  “Sodom and Gomorrah!”

  The shouts were useless; anyone used to stealing was hardly going to stop. Those who were caught admitted it, but they would not return what they had taken.

  Not every night was so desolate. There were nights when a pleasant sort of hominess enveloped us. The bonfires burned softly and the aroma of coffee seeped into every corner. Man did not hate his fellow man, but raised his eyes with brotherly love and a measure of compassion. In these rare hours of grace the dealers would hand out charity, the wagon drivers did not torture their helpers, and from every wagon a small shot glass of liquor would emerge. Such a time of grace occurred two years ago. One of the dealers, a violent and compulsive man who had cast fear even upon the thugs, suddenly became drunk, ripped open the lining of his coat, and started handing his gold out to every outstretched hand. He was a man whose business dealings had extended as far as Hungary, but he had never once given charity. The old men refused to accept anything from him, because one doesn’t accept charity from a drunk. The man pleaded and promised to drink no more. Eventually the old men consented, on the condition that he wouldn’t be stingy and would give charity to those who needed it. The dealer accepted their terms and swore his allegiance; the old men acquiesced and accepted his money.

  After he had distributed the gold, there was a marked change in his behavior. He confined himself to his wagon and severed all ties with those who had worked with him or for him. At first this seemed to be a ploy, but it quickly became evident that the man had really changed. Since then, he has lived a withdrawn and detached life; he neither troubles another living soul nor is troubled by one. Everyone calls him the Gold Man. The thieves don’t steal from him, and those who are in the same wondrous state treat him kindly, as if he were suffering.

  Still, he does not come to morning prayers. A few of the old men tried to persuade him, but though he listened to their words with his head lowered, he did not obey them. They eventually stopped bothering him about this. He would spend most of his time stretched out in his wagon, or sitting cross-legged. I heard people say that his soul was in the clutches of a dank humor and that he didn’t have the willpower to pull himself out of it. Others told me that he abandoned his father years ago in one of the hospices, and though he promised to come back to look after him, he never kept his word. It must have weighed upon him; the day he learned that his father had passed away, he opened the lining of his coat with its store of treasure and distributed his money to one and all. It’s hard to know the truth. The man doesn’t speak, and there is no one who knows him. Sometimes, as he rises to his feet, some of his former arrogance returns. This must be an illusion: he has changed, and it is doubtful that any amount of wandering can restore him to what he once was.

  Over time, his wagon became a meeting place. Sometimes you would hear in the camp: Let’s meet this evening by the Gold Man. Ploosh did not like him and would mock him, but the Gold Man would only clench his jaw and bear the ignominy in silence.

  Sometimes I want to give him a handful of firewood, but something stops me. You never know how a silent man will react. One evening, without any warning, he went up to poor, wretched Tzilla and began to berate her. It was hard to know what he was talking about. At first she did not react, but as he stood there, ticking off a list of her misdeeds, she burst into tears. People put him in his place, and he was silenced. Since then, his silence has deepened. I have already noticed that there is a hidden bond among silent people, mainly a bond of resentment. This resentment is not to be found amid those who speak freely. I have learned that there can be violent people among the silent. When their silence overwhelms them, they burst out. Beware of those who are too silent, the old men warn, and there’s truth in their words.

  —

  Sruel is good to me. He has already told me a bit about his life in jail, and every evening he tells me more. At times he sounds as though he is still amid murderers. “Even among criminals there can be decent people,” he reveals to me. I believe him. When he is drunk, he speaks with enthusiasm and shouts, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” He promises that the journey to Jerusalem will not be drawn out and that we will soon gaze upon the face of the Messiah. One evening, in his drunkenness, he surprised me by turning to me and saying, “So we’ll be friends, won’t we?”

  I was frightened. “I will do everything you tell me to do,” I said.

  “Don’t be afraid, Laishu. We’ll overcome all the setbacks and together we’ll reach Jerusalem.”

  At that moment Sruel did not seem like a drunk to me, but like a Jew who had forgotten his learning.

  That night he told me that in his jail they would beat the prisoners every day, on the days when they rioted and on the days when they didn’t riot. The prisoners would also hit one another. Jews did usually not end up there. Once a Jew arrived who had lost his mind along the way. The man kept muttering, “I’m in big trouble, I’m in big trouble.” He lasted a week and then passed away.

  Our wagon drivers have been in tough jails, punished with solitary confinement and strokes of the lash; it was there that their mutterings and sullen expressions became part of them. They
take their anger out mostly on animals, but people also do not escape their clutches. When someone in the camp is not to their liking, they play tricks on him and mock him, and even beat him. Sruel is different from the other wagon drivers, not in his outward appearance and not in some of the mannerisms that they all share, but in the timbre of his voice. There is a light in his face, and something of its softness is transferred to the animals he looks after. The horses love him and obey his commands. Apart from the horses, he has two German shepherds and a falcon that eats out of his hand and sleeps with him. The falcon circles around us most of the day, always high in the sky and always alone. In the evening it lands upon Sruel’s shoulder. Sruel feeds it scraps of chicken that he has saved. The sight of the falcon is not really pleasant, but on Sruel’s hand or on his shoulder at least it’s not frightening. When it lands, it shakes its head with a look of happiness. Sruel’s love for animals does not cloud his love for human beings. If he has a spare loaf of bread or sack of sugar he will give it to the needy. If someone is in need of a bandage or even some charity, he won’t hesitate to turn to Sruel. Sruel is never stingy, and when he is drunk, the generosity of his heart knows no bounds.

  11

  The distance from Sadagora to Czernowitz is an hour’s travel, but heavy rains and disputes delayed us, and we arrived in Czernowitz two weeks later. The old men have little affection for large towns and cities, and whenever we approach one their faces tense and anxiety clouds their eyes. Not so the ex-convicts and the dealers—they appear much happier and become quite animated. Big cities seem to energize them, filling them with daring. I saw how they were in Lemberg, where we spent several weeks. There they were like devils, trading whatever they could lay their hands on. In the city they are generous spendthrifts, stuffing banknotes into the old men’s pockets. After a day of fervid trading they tire from their efforts and make their way to the gaiety of the taverns. Toward morning, they return to the wagons with flushed faces and clothes that reek of cognac and tobacco.