 | The Apostate of Chego-Chegg |  |
3. III.
WHEN Michalina, pale, weak, and beautiful, lay in bed, and the midwife bade her look at her daughter, the young mother opened her flashing black eyes and forthwith shut them again. The handful of flesh and her own splitting headache seemed one and the same thing. After a little, as her agonizing sleep was broken and her torpid gaze found the baby by the wall, she was overcome with terror and disgust. It was a shikse (Gentile girl), a heap of defilement. What was it doing by her side?
She had not nursed the baby a week before she grew attached to it. By the time little Marysia was a month old, she was dearer than her own life to her.
The little railroad-station about midway between the two settlements became Michalina's favorite resort. Her neighbors she shunned. She had been brought up to look down upon their people as "a race like unto an ass." At home she could afford to like them. Now that she was one of them, they were repugnant to her. They, in their turn, often mocked her and called her "Jew woman." And so she would often go to spend an hour or two in the waiting-room of the station or on the platform outside. Some of the passengers were Jews, and these would eye her curiously, as if they had heard of her. She blushed under their glances, yet she awaited them impatiently each time a train was due.
One morning a peddler, bending under his pack, stopped to look at her. When he had dropped his burden his face seemed familiar to Michalina. He was an insignificant little man, clean-shaven, with close-clipped yellowish hair, and he wore a derby hat and a sack-coat.
All at once his face broke into a broad, affectionate smile.
"How do you do?" he burst out in a deep,
"You look ten years younger," she said in a daze of embarrassment.
"I am Rabbi Nehemiah no longer," he explained bashfully. "They call me Nehemiah the Atheist now."
"Another sinner!" Michalina thought, with a little thrill of pleasure.
Nehemiah continued, with a shamefaced smile:
"When my coat and my side-locks were long my sight was short, while now — why, now I am so saturated with wisdom that pious Jews keep away from me for fear of getting wet, don't you know? Well, joking aside, I had ears, but could not hear because of my ear-locks; I had eyes, and could not see because they were closed in prayer. Now I am cured of my idiocy. And how are you? How are you getting along in America?"
His face beamed. Michalina's wore a pained look. She was bemoaning the fall of an idol.
"I am all right, thank you. Don't the Burkdale people trouble you?" she asked, reddening violently.
"Men will be men and rogues will be rogues. Do you remember that Saturday? It was not the only beating I got, either. They regaled me quite often — the oxen! However, I bear them no ill will. Who knows but it was their cuffs and buffets that woke me up? The one thing that gives me pain is this: the same fellows who used to break my bones for preaching religion now beat me because I expose its idiocies. I am like the great rabbi who had once been a chief of highwaymen. 'What of it?' he used to say. 'I was a leader then, and a leader I am now.' I was whipped when I was Rabbi Nehemiah, and now that I am Nehemiah the Atheist I am whipped again. By the way, do you remember how they hooted you? There's nothing to blush about, missus. Religion is all humbug. There are no Jews and no Gentiles, missus. This is America. All are noblemen here, and all are brothers — children of one mother — Nature, dear little missus." The word was apparently a titbit to his tongue. He uttered it with relish, peering admiringly into Michalina's face. "Go forth, dear little missus! Go forth, O thou daughter of Zion, and proclaim to all those who are groveling in the mire of Judaism —"
"S-s-s-sh!" she interrupted imploringly. "Why should you speak like that? Don't — oh, don't!"
He began a long and heated argument. She could not follow him.
Marysia was asleep in her arms, munching her little lips and smiling. As Michalina stole a glance at her, she could not help smiling, too. She gazed at the child again and again, pretending to listen. For the twentieth time she noticed that in the upper part of her face Marysia bore a striking resemblance to Wincas.
Michalina and Nehemiah often met. All she understood of his talk was that it was in Yiddish, and this was enough. Though he preached atheism, to her ear his words were echoes from the world of synagogues, rabbis, purified meat, blessed Sabbath lights. Another thing she gathered from his monologues was that he was a fellow-outcast. Of herself she never spoke. Being a mystery to him made her a still deeper mystery to herself, and their secret interviews had an irresistible charm for her.
One day Michalina found him clean-shaven and in a new necktie.
"Good morning!" he said, with unusual solemnity. And drawing a big red apple from his pocket, he shamefacedly placed it in her hand.
"What was it you wanted to tell me?" she inquired, blushing.
"Oh, nothing. I meant it for fun. It's only a story I read. It's about a great man who was in love with a beautiful woman all his life. She was married to another man and true to him, yet the stranger loved her. His soul was bewitched. He sang of her, he dreamed of her. The man's name was Petrarca and the woman's was Laura."
"I don't know what you mean by your story," she said, with an embarrassed shrug of her shoulders.
"How do you know it is only a story?" he rejoined, his eye on the glistening rail. "Maybe it is only a parable? Maybe you are Laura? Laura mine!" he whispered.
"Stop that!" she cried, with a pained gesture.
At that moment he was repulsive.
"Hush, don't eat your heart, little kitten. I was only joking."
| The Apostate of Chego-Chegg | |