On the Gentile Sabbaths the village teachers would also come into town. These tutors were especially hired for the children of the gentry, each of whom would hire one, provide him with food and drink at his table, and pay him his stipend. Part the teacher would give to his poor parents and part he would save toward entering the university. When a teacher came into town he would go into the bookseller’s and buy two or three books. You must know that before the war the town even had a bookshop, with books for study, and books for teaching, and romances to while away the time. Today they still make books they call romances, just as they still call our town a town. The teacher would take his books, put them under his arm and go into a friend’s house. His friend would have a sister — perhaps pretty, perhaps not, but she who has luck needs neither beauty nor cleverness. The girl’s mother would come in and see a young man sitting with her son. She would say in surprise, “Your honor is here? Perhaps you would be good enough to eat with us.” While she is standing and talking, her daughter comes in, dressed like a lady. The mother goes back to her cooking, while the daughter sits down with the teacher. She tells him things she has read in her romance and he tells her things he has read in his romance; so the outcome is a third romance. When dinner is ready, in comes the girl’s father, greets the visitor and sits down at the table, with a square skullcap on his head, like a rabbiner. That day the girl’s mother has cooked many dishes, so they sit a long time over the meal. For the longer the meal, the longer the conversation. A merchant’s conversation is always about business, and normally he talks about the transactions in which he has made a profit. But not so in the case of the girl’s father, for he tells about his losses, and really great losses he had, yet he talks about them so easily, as if he had taken only a copper out of his pocket. Says the teacher to himself: With this money I could finish my studies, and become a doctor, a lawyer, or a notary. Great is the power of money, for though the teacher is a socialist and criticizes the men of means who make money out of the sweat of the poor, nevertheless he is not hard on his friend’s father. And not even that, he even feels honored at sharing the merchant’s talk about his business. After all, the teacher eats at the table of his master, who is richer than that merchant. But his master looks at him as if he were not there, while the girl’s father is polite to him and talks to him about his business. As a result, he comes again. Someone approaches him and hints that the girl’s father can support him until he finishes his studies, so that he need not waste time in the village. He falls in with the idea, leaves his pupils, and goes to the university, where the girl’s father looks after him until he becomes a doctor or a lawyer. His master hires another teacher for his children and the fathers of girls treat him as they did his colleague. And if the girl’s father cannot keep his promise, he quickly arranges a wedding before the young man has a chance to withdraw. Once he is married and has produced sons and daughters, he forgets his studies and looks for a living in some other quarter.
This is what happened to the host of my hotel, Mr. Nissan Zommer. In the second year after he left high school, he happened to visit a friend in the town, a hatter’s son, whose mother was an excellent cook and his sister a handsome brunette. Now he reads no books and no longer speaks in the language of the romances; but in the past, when he was a village teacher, he was never without some books under his arm, and all his conversation was of romances. It is the same with his wife. She stands between the oven and the stove, and you would never imagine that she once attracted a boy’s heart. The burden of earning a living, advancing years, and the experiences of wartime can change anyone, especially one who has gone through all of them and suffered many wounds. Nissan’s wounds have healed already, and if he closes his eyes it is not in pain, but he closes his bodily eyes so as to see with the eyes of his spirit the things that have happened to him.
While he was still young he set out to earn his own living; his father was partly a seller of provender and partly an agent, who used to provide tutors for the villagers’ sons, and he did not earn enough to keep his family, so Nissan used to teach his wealthy schoolfellows for pay while he was still a student at high school. When he left high school and it became time for him to go to the university, his father found him a place with one of the village gentry. But he suddenly fell in love with a girl and then fell under the yoke of earning a living, for the girl’s father was a man of imaginings, and imagined he could keep Nissan until he finished his university studies. But when the father found himself unable to do this, he introduced Nissan to matrimony and business. Nevertheless, this particular occupation, selling hats, is not especially burdensome; you might even call it light and pleasant work. You take a hat, turn it this way and that, put it on the customer’s head, stand him in front of the mirror, and look delighted; immediately he sees from your delight that the hat suits him, so he buys it and gives you money. As you do to this one, so you do to everyone else. Thus you see the heads of your townsfolk and know what is going on in each of them.
As time went on and Nissan fathered sons and daughters, he forgot that he had studied Latin and Greek and began to behave like all the other pious Jews. He went to the Beit Midrash to pray, sent his little sons to the religious school, and was not ashamed of his father and mother — unlike the doctors in our town, who are ashamed of their parents. Had he not been caught by the war, he would have stood and sold hats all his life. But war is not light and easy, nor is it pleasant. The head is king of the limbs; you wash it in hot water and rinse it in cold; soap it, and comb it, and crown it with a new hat every year; but suddenly some villain fires a shell and knocks it off. And perhaps we were mistaken when we said that the innkeeper closes his eyes to preserve what he has seen; maybe he closes them so that he should not see what he has seen. Human beings are deceptive; you think you know what they are like, but they are not like that at all.
Sometimes Babtchi brings him a newspaper. If the newspaper is spread out before him with the front page uppermost he reads till he gets to the end of the page, and does not turn it over even if he is in the middle of a story. If the back page is uppermost, he reads it from the top, and even if he is in the middle of a story he does not turn back to find out the beginning. If you think he does that because he is lazy, you are mistaken, for if his pipe goes out he gets up from his chair and goes to the kitchen to get an ember, even if matches are lying before him. But let us leave the innkeeper and go back to the subject with which we started.
Chapter eleven. The Tailor and the Shopkeeper
All the winds in the world are blowing and shaking the town; from end to end you can hear the sound of doors banging, windows shattering, tiles dropping. The Stripa rages and screams, the bridge above it groans and roars. The sun has darkened, dust storms rise from earth to heaven. The townsfolk shiver, and it is natural that they should shiver, for their clothes are torn and cannot keep them warm.
I said to myself: These people are accustomed to the cold, but I, who have come from the Land of Israel — where one ray of the sun is stronger than the whole of the sun we see here — I cannot stand the cold, and surely I must make me a coat.
So I made an appointment and went to the tailor’s. The tailor knew I was coming to see him — still he did not raise his head from his needle, like a craftsman busy with his work, who must not be idle.