University of Virginia Library

4. IV.

MICHALINA ventured to visit Burkdale once again. This time she was not bothered. Only here and there some one would whisper, "Here comes the apostate of Chego-Chegg." Little by little she got to making the most of

her purchases in the Jewish town. Wincas at first stormed, and asked whether it was true that the Jew had bedeviled his wife's heart; but before long she persuaded him to go with her on some of her shopping expeditions. Michalina even decided that her husband should learn to press coats, which was far more profitable than working on a farm; but after trying it for a few days, he stubbornly gave it up. The soil called him back, he said, and if he did not obey it, it might get square on him when he was dead and buried in it.

By this time they had moved into a shanty on the outskirts of the village, within a short distance from Burkdale.

At first Michalina forbade Wincas to write to his father, but he mailed a letter secretly. The answer inclosed a note from Michalina's father, in Yiddish, which Wincas, having in his ecstasy let out his secret, handed her.

"What does he write?" asked Wincas.

"Nothing. He is angry," she muttered. In her heart she asked herself: "Who is this Gentile? What is he doing here?" At this moment she felt sure that her end was near. NEHEMIAH and Michalina had taken root in the little town as the representatives of two inevitable institutions. Burkdale without an atheist and a convert seemed as impossible as it would have been without a marriage-broker, a synagogue, or a bath-house "for all daughters of Israel."

Nehemiah continued his frenzied agitation. Neglecting his business, half-starved, and the fair game of every jester, but plumed with some success, the zealot went on scouting religious ceremonies, denouncing rabbis, and preaching assimilation with the enlightened Gentiles. Nehemiah was an incurably religious man, and when he had lost his belief disbelief became his religion.

And so the two were known as the appikoros (atheist) and the meshumedeste. Between the two there was, however, a wide difference. Disclaim Judaism as Nehemiah would, he could not get the Jews to disclaim him; while Michalina was more alien to the Mosaic community than any of its Christian neighbors. With her child in her arms she moved about among the people of the place like a lone shadow. Nehemiah was a Jew who "sinned and led others to sin"; she was not a Jewess who had transgressed, but a living stigma, all the more accursed because she had once been a Jewess.

Some of the Jewish women were friendly to her. Zelda the Busybody exchanged little favors with her, but even she stopped at cooking-utensils, for Michalina's food was treife [1] and all her dishes were contaminated. One day, when the dumpy little woman called at the lonely hovel, the convert offered her a wedge of her first lemon-pie. It was Zelda who had taught her to make it, and in her exultation and shamefacedness Michalina forgot the chasm that separated her from her caller.

"Taste it and tell me what is wrong about it," she said, blushing.

Zelda became confused.

"No, thank you. I've just had dinner, as true as I'm living," she stammered.

The light in Michalina's eyes went out. For a moment she stood with the saucer containing the piece of pie in her hand. When the Burkdale woman was gone she threw the pie away.

She bought a special set of dishes which she kept kosher, according to the faith of the people of Burkdale. Sometimes she would buy her meat of a Jewish butcher, and, on coming home, she would salt and purify it. Not that she expected this to be set to her credit in the world to come, for there was no hope for her soul, but she could not help, at least, playing the Jewess. It both soothed and harrowed her to prepare food or to bless Sabbath light as they did over in Burkdale. But her Sabbath candles burned so stern, so cold, so unhallowed. As she embraced the space about them and with a scooping movement brought her hands together over her shut eyes and fell to whispering the benediction, her heart beat fast. She felt like a thief.

"Praised be Thou, O Lord, King of the world, who hast sanctified us by Thy commandments and commanded us to kindle the light of Sabbath."

When she attempted to recite this she could not speak after the third word.

Michalina received another letter from

her father. The old man's heart was wrung with compunction and yearning. He was panting to write to her, but, alas! who ever wrote a meshumedeste except to curse her?

Written by me, who curse the moment when I became your father.

Michalina was in a rage. "We cannot raise our heads"? Who are "we"? He and his sorceress of a wife? First she makes him drive his own daughter to "the impurity" of the Gentile faith, and then she gets him to curse this unhappy child of his for the disgrace she brought on her head! What are they worrying about? Is it that they are afraid it will be hard for Michalina's stepsister to get a husband because there is a meshumedeste in the family? Ah, she is writhing and twitching with pain, the sorceress, isn't she? Writhe away, murderess! Let her taste some of the misery she has heaped on her stepdaughter. "Rejoice, apostate, rejoice!" Michalina did rejoice. She was almost glad to be a meshumedeste.

"But why should it have come out like this?" Michalina thought. "Suppose I had never become a meshumedeste, and Nehemiah, or some handsomer Jew, had married me at home. . . . Would not the sorceress and her daughter burst with envy! Or suppose I became a Jewess again, and married a pious, learned, and wealthy Jew who fainted with love for me, and my stepmother heard of it, and I sent my little brother lots of money — wouldn't she burst, the sorceress! . . . And I should live in Burkdale, and Sorah-Elka and the other Jews and Jewesses would call at my house, and eat, and drink. On Saturdays I should go to the synagogue with a big prayer-book, and on meeting me on the road people would say, 'Good Sabbath!' and I should answer, 'A good Sabbath and a good year!'"

Michalina began to cry.