Miriam didn’t raise her voice, even her questions didn’t sound like questions, it was as if she were saying unimportant things, as if she were giving information about the prices of greens and eggs. “She is right,” thought Deborah. “Help, dear God, she is right.”
Deborah called all the good spirits to her aid. For she felt that she had to admit that her daughter was right, she herself spoke out of her daughter. Deborah began to be afraid of herself as much as she had been afraid of Miriam a short while ago. Threatening things were happening. The song of the soldiers wafted incessantly over. A small streak of the red sun still shone above the violet.
“I have to go,” said Miriam, separated from the wall against which she had been leaning, light as a white butterfly she fluttered from the sidewalk, walked with quick coquettish feet along the middle of the road, out toward the barracks, toward the calling song of the Cossacks.
Fifty paces from the barracks, in the middle of the little path between the great forest and Sameshkin’s grain, she waited for Ivan. “We’re going to America,” said Miriam.
“You won’t forget me,” Ivan admonished. “At this hour, when the sun goes down, you’ll always think of me and not the others. And perhaps, with God’s help, I’ll follow you, you’ll write to me. Pavel will read me your letters, don’t write too many secret things between the two of us, or else I’ll be ashamed.” He kissed Miriam, strongly and many times, his kisses rattled like shots through the evening. A devilish girl, he thought, now she’s going away, to America, I have to find another. No one else is as beautiful as she, four more years I have to serve. He was tall, strong as a bear and shy. His gigantic hands trembled when he was to touch a girl. And he was not at home in love, Miriam had taught him everything, what ideas had she not already had!
They embraced, as they had yesterday and the day before, in the middle of the field, embedded among the fruits of the earth, surrounded and overarched by the heavy grain. The stalks lay down willingly when Miriam and Ivan sank to the ground; even before they sank, the stalks seemed to lie down. Today their love was fiercer, briefer and, so to speak, frightened. It was as if Miriam already had to go to America tomorrow. The parting already trembled in their love. As they merged together, they were already far apart, separated from each other by the ocean. How good, thought Miriam, that he’s not the one leaving, that I’m not the one staying behind. They lay for a long time exhausted, helpless, mute, as if they were seriously wounded. A thousand thoughts reeled through their brains. They didn’t notice the rain that had finally come. It had begun gently and sneakily, it was a long time before its drops were heavy enough to break through the dense golden enclosure of stalks. Suddenly they were at the mercy of the pouring water. They awoke, began to run. The rain confused them, transformed the world completely, deprived them of their sense of time. They thought it was already late, they listened for the bells from the tower, but only the rain roared, heavier and heavier, all the other voices of the night were uncannily hushed. They kissed each other on their wet faces, squeezed each other’s hands, water was between them, neither could feel the body of the other. Hastily they said goodbye, their ways parted, already Ivan was enveloped and invisible in the rain. Never again will I see him! thought Miriam, as she ran home. The harvest is coming. Tomorrow the peasants will be frightened, because one rain brings others.
She arrived home, waited awhile under the overhang as if it were possible to get dry in a short minute. She decided to enter the room. It was dark, everyone was already asleep. She lay down softly, wet as she was, she let her clothes dry on her body and didn’t move. Outside the rain roared. Everyone knew already that Mendel was going to America, one pupil after another stopped coming to the lessons. Now there were only five boys left, and they didn’t come at regular times either. The papers Kapturak had not yet brought, the ship tickets Sam had not yet sent. But the house of Mendel Singer already began to decay. How rotten it must have been, thought Mendel. It has been rotten, and we haven’t known it. He who cannot pay attention is like a deaf man, and is worse off than a deaf man – so it is written somewhere. Here my grandfather was a teacher; here my father was a teacher, here I was a teacher. Now I am going to America. My son Jonas the Cossacks have taken, Miriam they want to take from me too. Menuchim-what will become of Menuchim?
On the evening of that same day he visited the Billes family. It was a happy family, it seemed to Mendel Singer that they had much undeserved luck; all the daughters were married, down to the youngest, to whom he now wanted to offer his house, all three sons had escaped the military and gone out into the world, one to Hamburg, another to California, the third to Paris. It was a happy family, God’s hand rested over it, it lay cozily bedded in God’s broad hand. Old Billes was always cheerful. Mendel Singer had taught all his sons. Old Billes had been a pupil of the old Singer. Because they had already known each other so long, Mendel believed he had a small right to the luck of the strangers.
The Billes family – they did not live in affluence – was pleased with Mendel Singer’s proposal. Good! – the young couple will take over the house and Menuchim with it. “He’s no work at all,” said Mendel Singer. “And he does better from year to year. Soon, with God’s help, he will be healthy. Then my older son, Shemariah, will come over or he will send someone and bring Menuchim to America.”
“And what do you hear from Jonas?” asked old Billes. Mendel hadn’t heard anything for a long time from his Cossack, as he inwardly called him – not without contempt, but also not without pride. Nonetheless, he answered: “Nothing but good things! He’s learned to read and write, and he has been promoted. If he weren’t a Jew, who knows, maybe he’d already be an officer!” It was impossible for Mendel to stand there in the face of this lucky family with the heavy burden of his great misfortune on his back. That’s why he stretched his back and feigned a bit of joy.
It was arranged that Mendel Singer would turn over the use of his house to the Billes family before simple witnesses, not before officials, because that cost money. Three or four respectable Jews sufficed as witnesses. In the meantime Mendel got an advance of thirty rubles, because his pupils no longer came and the money at home was running out.
A week later Kapturak rolled once again in his small light yellow wagon through the little town. Everything was there: the money, the ship tickets, the passports, the visa, the head tax for each of them and even the fee for Kapturak. “A punctual payer,” said Kapturak. “Your son Shemariah, known as Sam, is a punctual payer. A gentleman, they say over there . . .”
Kapturak would accompany the Singer family as far as the border. In four weeks the steamer “Neptune” was leaving from Bremen to New York.
The Billes family came to take inventory. The bedding, six pillows, six sheets, six red and blue checkered covers Deborah was taking along, they were leaving behind the straw sacks and the sparse bedding for Menuchim.
Though Deborah didn’t have much to pack, and though she kept in her head everything she possessed, she nonetheless remained incessantly active. She packed, she unpacked again. She counted the dishes and counted them again. Menuchim broke two plates. He seemed on the whole to be gradually losing his stupid calm. He called his mother more often than usual, the only word he’d been able to speak for years he repeated, even when the mother wasn’t near him, a dozen times. He was an idiot, that Menuchim! An idiot! How easy it is to say that! But who can say what a storm of fears and anxieties Menuchim’s soul had to endure in those days, Menuchim’s soul, which God had hidden in the impenetrable garb of stupidity! Yes, he was afraid, Menuchim the cripple! Sometimes he crawled on his own out of his corner to the door, crouched on the threshold in the sun like a sick dog and squinted at the passersby, seeming to see only their boots and pants, their stockings and coats. Sometimes he reached unexpectedly for his mother’s apron and grumbled. Deborah picked him up, though he already weighed a considerable amount. Nonetheless, she rocked him in her arms and sang two or three fragmented verses
of a nursery rhyme that she herself had already completely forgotten and that began to reawaken in her memory as soon as she felt her unfortunate son in her arms. Then she let him crouch on the floor again, and went back to work, which for days had consisted entirely of packing and counting. Suddenly she stopped again. She stood still for a while with pensive eyes, which were not unlike Menuchim’s; so without life were they, so helplessly searching in an unknown distance for the thoughts that the brain refused to provide. Her foolish gaze fell on the sack into which the pillows would be sewn. Perhaps, it occurred to her, they could sew Menuchim into a sack? Immediately she trembled at the idea that the customs officers would stick long sharp spears through the passengers’ sacks. And she began to unpack again, and the decision to stay flashed through her mind, as the rabbi of Kluczýsk had said: “Do not leave him, as if he were a healthy child!” The strength that belonged to faith she could no longer muster, and gradually she was also abandoned by the powers that a person needs to endure despair.
It was as if they, Deborah and Mendel, had not voluntarily made the decision to go to America, but rather as if America had come over them, set upon them, with Shemariah, Mac and Kapturak. Now that they realized it, it was too late. They could no longer escape from America. The papers came to them, the ship tickets, the head taxes. “What if,” Deborah asked at one point, “Menuchim suddenly recovers, today or tomorrow?” Mendel shook his head for a while. Then he said: “If Menuchim recovers, we’ll take him with us!” And both of them yielded silently to the hope that, tomorrow or the day after, Menuchim would stand up healthy from his bed, with strong limbs and perfect speech.
On Sunday they are to leave. Today is Thursday. For the last time Deborah stands before her stove to prepare the Sabbath meal, the white poppy-seed bread and the braided rolls. The open fire burns, hisses and crackles, and the smoke fills the room, as on every Thursday for thirty years. It’s raining outside. The rain drives the smoke back out of the chimney, the old familiar jagged stain in the lime of the ceiling shows itself again in its damp freshness. For ten years the hole in the roof shingles should have been repaired, the Billes family will do it. The large ironbound brown suitcase stands packed with its sturdy iron bar over the slit and two gleaming new iron locks. Sometimes Menuchim crawls up to them and swings them. Then there’s a merciless rattle, the locks strike against the iron bands and tremble for a long time and refuse to stand still. And the fire crackles, and the smoke fills the room.
On the Sabbath evening Mendel Singer took leave of his neighbors. They drank the yellowish green schnapps that someone had brewed himself and mixed with dry mushrooms. Thus the schnapps tastes not only strong, but also bitter. The farewell lasts longer than an hour. All wish Mendel luck. Some gaze at him doubtfully, some envy him. But all tell him that America is a glorious land. A Jew can wish for nothing better than to reach America.
That night Deborah left the bed and went, her hand carefully cupped around a candle, to Menuchim’s pallet. He lay on his back, his heavy head was leaning on the rolled-up gray blanket, his eyelids were half open, one saw the white of his eyes. With each breath his body trembled, his sleeping fingers moved incessantly. He held his hands on his breast. In sleep his face was even paler and flabbier than during the day. His bluish lips were open, with white drops of foam in the corners of his mouth. Deborah extinguished the light. She crouched for a few seconds next to her son, rose and crept back into bed. Nothing will become of him, she thought, nothing will become of him. She didn’t fall asleep again.
On Sunday, at eight o’clock in the morning, comes a messenger from Kapturak. It’s the man with the blue cap who once brought Shemariah across the border. Today, too, the man with the blue cap remains standing at the door, declines to have tea, then wordlessly helps roll out the suitcase and puts it on the wagon. A comfortable wagon, there’s room for four people. Their feet rest in soft hay, the wagon is redolent of the whole land in late summer. The backs of the horses shine, brushed and lustrous, brown curved mirrors. A broad yoke with many little silver bells spans their slender and haughty necks. Even though it’s daylight, one sees the spraying sparks that their hooves strike from the gravel.
Once more Deborah holds Menuchim in her arms. The Billes family is already there, surrounds the wagon and doesn’t stop talking. Mendel Singer sits on the coach box, and Miriam leans her back against her father’s. Only Deborah is still standing outside the door with Menuchim the cripple in her arms.
Suddenly she parts from him. She sets him gently on the threshold as one lays a corpse in a coffin, stands up, stretches, lets her tears flow, over her naked face naked tears. She is resolved. Her son is staying. She will go to America. No miracle has occurred.
Weeping, she climbs into the wagon. She doesn’t see the faces of the people whose hands she squeezes. Her eyes are two great seas full of tears. She hears the clatter of the horses’ hooves. She is leaving. She cries out, doesn’t know she’s crying out, the cry bursts from her, her heart has a mouth and cries. The wagon stops, she jumps out of it, light-footed as a youth. Menuchim is still sitting on the threshold. She falls down before Menuchim. “Mama, Mama!” babbles Menuchim. She remains lying.
The Billes family lifts Deborah up. She screams, she resists, she finally stays still. They carry her back to the wagon and lay her down on the hay. The wagon rolls very swiftly toward Dubno.
Six hours later they sat on the train, the slow passenger line, together with many unknown people. The train ran gently through the land, the meadows and the fields, on which people were harvesting, the peasant men and women, the huts and herds greeted the train. The soft song of the wheels lulled the passengers to sleep. Deborah hadn’t yet spoken a word. She slumbered. The wheels of the train repeated incessantly, incessantly: Do not leave him! Do not leave him! Do not leave him!
Mendel Singer prayed. He prayed by heart and mechanically, he didn’t think about the meaning of the words, their sound alone sufficed, God understood what they meant. Thus Mendel benumbed his great fear of the water on which he would find himself in a few days. Sometimes he cast an absentminded glance at Miriam. She sat opposite him, beside the man with the blue cap. Mendel didn’t see how she snuggled up to the man. The man didn’t speak to her, he was waiting for the short quarter of an hour between the fall of dusk and the moment the conductor would light the tiny gas flame. From this quarter of an hour and later from the night, when the gas flames would be extinguished again, the man with the blue cap was expecting all sorts of delights.
The next morning he took an indifferent leave of the old Singers, only Miriam’s hand he squeezed with silent warmth. They were at the border. The officers took their passports. When they called Mendel’s name he trembled. Without cause. Everything was in order. They crossed.
They boarded a new train, saw other stations, heard new bell signals, saw new uniforms. They journeyed for three days and changed trains twice. In the afternoon of the third day they arrived in Bremen. A man from the shipping company bellowed: “Mendel Singer.” The Singer family presented itself. The official was expecting no less than nine families. He arranged them in a row, counted them three times, read out their names and gave each a number. Now they stood there and didn’t know what to do with the metal tags. The official went away. He had promised to come back soon. But the nine families, twenty-five people, didn’t move. They stood in a row on the platform, the metal tags in their hands, their bundles at their feet. At the farthest corner to the left, because he had announced himself so late, stood Mendel Singer.
During the whole journey he’d spoken scarcely a word with his wife and daughter. Both women had been silent too. But now Deborah seemed unable to bear the silence any longer. “Why aren’t you moving?” asked Deborah. “No one is moving,” replied Mendel. “Why don’t you ask the people?” “No one is asking.” “What are we waiting for?” “I don’t know what we’re waiting for.” “Do you think I can sit down on the suitcase?” “Sit down on the suitcase.”
But the moment Deborah had spread her skirts to sit down, the official from the shipping company appeared and announced in Russian, Polish, German and Yiddish that he now intended to escort all nine families to the port; that he would put them in a shack for the night; and that tomorrow at seven in the morning the “Neptune” would weigh anchor.
In the shack they lay, in Bremerhaven, the metal tags tight in their balled fists, even while they were asleep. From the snoring of the twenty-five and from the movements each made on the hard beds, the beams trembled and the little yellow electric bulbs swung softly. It had been forbidden to make tea. With dry palates they had gone to sleep. Only Miriam had been offered red candies by a Polish barber. With a large sticky ball in her mouth Miriam fell asleep.
At five o’clock in the morning Mendel awoke. He climbed laboriously out of the wooden container in which he had slept, looked for the water faucet, went outside to see where the east lay. Then he returned, stood in a corner and prayed. He whispered to himself, but as he whispered, a loud pain seized him, clawed into his heart and tore at it so fiercely that Mendel heaved a loud groan in the midst of whispering. A few sleepers awoke, looked down and smiled at the Jew who hopped and wobbled in the corner, rocked his upper body forward and back, and performed a miserable dance to the glory of God.
Mendel wasn’t yet finished when the official flung open the door. A sea breeze had blown him into the shack. “Everybody up!” he cried a few times and in all the languages of the world.
It was still early when they reached the ship. They were permitted to cast a few glances into the dining rooms of the first and second class before they were pushed into the steerage. Mendel Singer didn’t move. He stood on the highest step of a narrow iron ladder, at his back the port, the land, the continent, his home, the past. To his left beamed the sun. White was the ship. Green was the water. A sailor came and commanded Mendel Singer to leave the step. He placated the sailor with a hand motion. He was completely calm and without fear. He cast a fleeting glance at the sea and drank consolation from the endlessness of the choppy water. It was eternal. Mendel was aware that God himself had created it. He had poured it out of His inexhaustible secret wellspring. Now it rolled between the solid lands. Deep down on its bottom coiled Leviathan, the holy fish, whom the pious and righteous will eat on the Day of Judgment. “Neptune” was the name of the ship on which Mendel stood. It was a large ship. But compared with the Leviathan and with the sea, with the sky and with the wisdom of the Eternal, it was a tiny ship. No, Mendel felt no fear. He mollified the sailor, he, a little black Jew on a gigantic ship and before the eternal ocean, he turned again in a semicircle and murmured the blessing that is to be spoken at the sight of the sea. He turned in a semicircle and scattered the individual words of the blessing over the green waves: “Praised are you, Eternal One, our Lord, who created the seas and with them divides the continents!”