 | The Apostate of Chego-Chegg |  |
2. II.
ABOUT three quarters of an hour had passed when, following the pious little man, she came in sight of a new town that looked as if it had sprung up overnight. It was Burkdale, the newest offshoot of an old hamlet, and it owed its existence to the "Land Improvement Company," to the president of which, Madison Burke, it owed its name. Some tailoring contractors had moved their "sweat-shops" here, after a prolonged strike in New York, and there were, besides, some fifty or sixty peddlers who spent the week scouring the island for custom and who came here for the two Sabbath days — their own and that of their Christian patrons. The improvised little town was lively with the whir of sewing-machines and the many-colored display of shop windows.
As the man with the red girdle made his appearance, a large, stout woman in a black wig greeted him from across the street.
"Good Sabbath, Rabbi Nehemiah!" she called out to him, with a faint smile.
"A good Sabbath and a good year!" he returned.
Michalina was thrilled once more. She was now following close behind the pious man. She ran the risk of attracting his attention, but she no longer cared. Seeing a boy break some twigs, Rabbi Nehemiah made a dash at him, as though to rescue him from death, and seizing him by the arms, he shook the sticks out of his hands. Then, stroking the urchin's swarthy cheeks, he said fondly:
"It is prohibited, my son. God will give
A sob rose to Michalina's throat.
A short distance farther on Rabbi Nehemiah paused to remonstrate with a group of young men who stood smoking cigarettes and chatting by a merchandise wagon.
"Woe! Woe! Woe!" he exclaimed. "Do throw it away, pray! Are you not children of Israel? Do drop your cigarettes."
"Rabbi Nehemiah is right," said a big fellow, with a wink, concealing his cigarette behind him. The others followed his example, and Rabbi Nehemiah, flushed with his easy victory, went on pleading for a life of piety and divine study. He spoke from the bottom of his heart, and his face shone, but this did not prevent his plea from being flavored with a certain humor, for the most part at his own expense.
"The world to come is the tree, while this world is only the shadow it casts," he said in his soft, thick voice. "Smoking on the Sabbath, staying away from the synagogue, backbiting, cheating in business, dancing with maidens, or ogling somebody else's wife — all this is a great pleasure, is it not? Well, the sages of this world, the dudes, the educated, and even a high-priced adornment like myself, think it is. We hunt for these delights. Behold, we have caught them. Close your fist tight! Hold the precious find with might and main, Rabbi Nehemiah! Presently, hark! the Angel of Death is coming. 'Please, open your hand, Rabbi Nehemiah. Let us see what you have got.' Alas! it's empty, empty, empty — Ai-ai!" he suddenly shrieked in a frightened, piteous voice. While he was speaking the big fellow had stolen up behind him and clapped his enormous high hat over his eyes. The next moment another young man slipped up to Rabbi Nehemiah's side, snatched off his bandana, and set it on fire.
"Woe is me! Woe is me! On the holy Sabbath!" cried the devout man, in despair.
Michalina, who had been looking on at a distance, every minute making ready to go home, rushed up to Rabbi Nehemiah's side.
"Don't — pray don't!" she begged his tormentors, in Yiddish. "You know he did not touch you; why should you hurt him?"
A crowd gathered. The learned man was looking about him with a perplexed air, when along came Sorah-Elka, the bewigged tall woman who had saluted him a short while ago. The young men made way for her.
"What's the matter? Got a licking again?" she inquired, between a frown and a smile, and speaking in phlegmatic, articulate accents. Her smile was like her voice — pleasingly cold. She was the cleverest, the most pious, and the most ill-natured woman in the place. "Serves you right, Rabbi Nehemiah. You look for trouble and you get it. What more do you want? What did they do to him, the scamps?"
"Nothing. They only knocked his hat over his eyes. They were fooling," answered a little boy.
Sorah-Elka's humor and her calm, authoritative manner won Michalina's heart. Oh, if she were one of this Jewish crowd! She wished she could speak to them. Well, who knew her here? As to Rabbi Nehemiah, he did not seem to recognize her, so she ventured to say, ingratiatingly:
"He didn't do them anything. He only talked to them and they hit him on the head."
Many eyes were leveled at the stranger. The young fellow who had burned Rabbi Nehemiah's handkerchief was scanning her face.
Suddenly he exclaimed:
"I sha'n't live till next week if she is not the meshumedeste of Chego-Chegg! I peddle over there."
The terrible untranslatable word, the most loathsome to the Yiddish ear, struck Michalina cold. She wondered whether this was the great calamity which her heart had been predicting. Was it the beginning of her end? Rabbi Nehemiah recognized her. With a shriek of horror, and drawing his skirts about him, as if for fear of contamination, he proceeded to describe his meeting with Michalina at the Polish village.
"What! this plague the meshumedeste who has a peasant for a husband!" said Sorah-Elka, as she swept the young woman with contemptuous curiosity. "May all the woes that are to befall me, you, or any good Jew — may they all strike the head of this horrid thing — fie upon her!" And the big woman spat with the same imperturbable smile with which she had drawled out her malediction.
Michalina went off toward Chego-Chegg. When the crowd was a few yards behind her somebody shouted:
"Meshumedeste! Meshumedeste!"
The children and some full-grown rowdies took up the cry:
"Meshumedeste! Meshumedeste! Meshumedeste!" they sang in chorus, running after her and pelting her with stones.
Michalina was frightened to death. And yet her pursuers and the whole Jewish town became dearer to her heart than ever.
"Don't! Don't! People are looking!" she protested, in her quietly strenuous way.
The village was astir. Children were running about; women sat on the porches, gossiping; two fiddles were squeaking themselves hoarse in the tavern. A young negro, lank, tattered, and grinning, was twanging a banjo to a crowd of simpering Poles. He it was who got the peasants to forsake their accordions, or even fiddles, for banjos. He was the civilizing and Americanizing genius of the place, although he had learned to jabber Polish long before any of his pupils picked up a dozen English words.
"Tell me where you have been," raged Wincas.
"Suppose I don't? Am I afraid of you? I felt lonesome — so lonesome! I thought I would die of loneliness, so I went for a walk and lost my way. Are you satisfied?"
They went indoors, where their landlady had prepared for them a meal of herring, potatoes, and beef-stew.
Half an hour later they were seated on the lawn, conversing in whispers amid the compact blackness of the night. The two tavern windows gleamed like suspended sheets of gold. Diving out of these into the sea of darkness was a frisky host of banjo notes.
"How dark it is!" whispered Michalina.
"Are you afraid of devils?"
"No — why?"
"I thought you might be," he said.
After a pause he suddenly pointed at his heart.
"Does it hurt you?" he asked.
"What do you mean, darling?" she demanded, interlacing her fingers over his shoulder and peering into his beardless face.
"Something has got into me. It's right here. It's pulling me to pieces, Michalinka!"
"That's nothing," she said. "It's only homesickness. It will wear off."
Wincas complained of his employer, the queer ways of American farming, the tastelessness of American food.
"God has cursed this place and taken the life out of everything," he said. "I suppose it's all because the people here are so wicked. Everything looks as it should, but you just try to put it into your mouth, and you find out the swindle. Look here, Michalinka, maybe it is the Jewish god getting even on me?"
She was bent upon her own thoughts and made no reply. Presently she began to caress him as she would a sick baby.
"Don't worry, my love," she comforted him. "America is a good country. Everybody says so. Wait till we get used to it. Then you won't go, even if you are driven with sticks from here."
They sat mutely clinging to each other, their eyes on the bright tavern windows, when a fresh, fragrant breeze came blowing upon them. Wincas fell to inhaling it thirstily. The breeze brought his native village to his nostrils.
"Mi-Michalinka darling!" he suddenly sobbed out, clasping her to his heart.
| The Apostate of Chego-Chegg | |