In Those Days | Page 5

the best of the Catcher, a woman who
happened rather to dislike me and my mother; they quarreled frequently.
Perhaps on account of this very dislike she was not over-excited, and
was able to hit upon the right course to take at the critical moment. She
went to our house, took in one hand a potful of roasted groats, ready for
dinner, and in the other a kettle of boiling water. Unnoticed she
approached the Catcher, spilled the hot groats upon his hands, and at
the same time she poured the boiling water over them. A wild yell
escaped from the mouth of the Catcher--and I was free.--

There was no more tobacco in the pipe, and the old man lost his speech.
That was the way of Samuel the Beadle; he could tell his story only
from behind the smoke of his pipe, when he did not see his hearers, nor
his hearers saw him. In that way he found it easy to put his boyhood
before his mind's eye and conjure up the reminiscences of those days.
Meanwhile the horses had stopped, and let us know that a high and
steep hill was ahead of us, and that it was our turn to trudge through the
mud. We had to submit to the will of the animals, and we dismounted.

III
After tramping a while alongside the coach, the old man lit his pipe,
emitted a cloud of smoke, and continued:--

I do not know what happened then. I cannot tell who caught me, nor the
place I was taken to. I must have been in a trance all the while.
When I awoke, I found myself surrounded by a flock of sheep, in a
meadow near the woods. Near me was my brother Solomon; but I
hardly recognized him. He wore peasant clothes: a linen shirt turned
out over linen breeches and gathered in by a broad belt. I was eyeing
my brother, and he was eyeing me, both of us equally bewildered, for I
was disguised like himself.

A little boy, a real peasant boy, was standing near us. He smiled at us in
a good-natured, hospitable way. It was the chore-boy of the Jewish
quarter. On the Sabbaths of the winter months he kept up the fires in
the Jewish houses; that is why he could jabber a few words of Yiddish.
During the summer he took care of the flocks of the peasants that lived
in the neighborhood.
When I awoke, my mother was with us too. She kissed us amid tears,
gave us some bread and salt, and, departing, strictly forbade us to speak
any Yiddish. "For God's sake, speak no Yiddish," said she, "you might
be recognized! Hide here till the Catcher leaves town."
It was easy enough to say, "Speak no Yiddish"; but did we know how
to speak any other language?
I saw then that I was in a sort of hiding-place--a hiding-place under the
open sky! I realized that I had escaped from houses, garrets, and cellars,
merely to hide in the open field between heaven and earth. I had fled
from darkness, to hide in broad daylight!
Indeed, it was not light that I had to fear. Nor was it the sun, the moon,
or the sheep. It was only man that I had to avoid.
Mother went away and left us under the protection of the little shepherd
boy. And he was a good boy, indeed. He watched us to the best of his
ability. As soon as he saw any one approach our place, he called out
loudly: "No, no; these are not Jewish boys at all! On my life, they are
not!"
As a matter of facet, a stranger did happen to visit our place; but he was
only a butcher, who came to buy sheep for slaughtering.
Well, the sun had set, and night came. It was my first night under an
open sky. I suffered greatly from fear, for there was no Mezuzah
anywhere near me. I put my hand under my Shaatnez clothes, and felt
my Tzitzis: they, too, seemed to be in hiding, for they shook in my
hand.

Over us the dark night sky was spread out, and it seemed to me that the
stars were so many omens whose meaning I could not make out. But I
felt certain that they meant nothing good so far as I was concerned. All
kinds of whispers, sizzling sounds of the night, reached my ears, and I
knew not where they came from.
Looking down, I saw sparks a-twinkling. I knew they were stars
reflected in the near-by stream. But soon I thought it was not the water
and the stars: the sheen of the water became the broad smile of