Tarabas’s eyes fell; he took the bread and said: “I thank you.” He left the room. On the way down the narrow ladder which led to the attic, he began to eat the bread. It tasted of Shemariah’s sweat and bed.
“He didn’t recognize me,” said Tarabas to the shopkeeper Nissen, when he came downstairs again. “God be with you!”
“Here’s a maize-cob just done,” said Nissen. “Take it with you to eat on the way!” One should do good to all the poor, said the shop-keeper to himself. But a poor man may also be a thief; one need not let him remain in one’s shop longer than necessary.
“All in good order,” Tarabas thought, and went his way. “It is all in good order now.”
27
A FEW weeks later — the summer was already nearing its end, the chestnuts were ripening and the Jews of Koropta were getting ready to celebrate their high festivals — there came to the general store kept by the shop-keeper Nissen the gentle Brother Eustachius from the Lobra monastery near by. The good brethren of Lobra occupied themselves with the care of the sick; some of the brethren were accomplished surgeons and physicians, and there were even Jews in Koropta who, when they fell ill, went neither to the local quacks nor to the doctors, but to the monks.
Sometimes, at certain seasons of the year, they would come — always only two — to the little town to make a collection for the poor. A strange feeling would then take possession of the Jews — compounded of the alien and the familiar, of gratitude, respect, and fear. While the little round caps worn by the monks upon their shorn skulls were things that they knew well, so much the greater was their terror of the great metal crucifixes which hung like a weapon upon each brother’s hip, the cross which their forefathers were accused of having erected for an unspeakably dreadful purpose, which was a symbol to all the peoples of the earth that they would be blest, and to them only the token of suffering and damnation.
One of the monks had rid this Jew and that one of an aching tooth; another had applied the leech to others, or lanced an abscess. But only while they still endured their pains could the Jews feel close to their Samaritans; fear of the torment of sickness could banish for an hour or two the other, and far greater, fear — that which was born and bred in the blood. Yet in the days of health their gratitude to the godly brethren survived, and dwelt in them side by side with mistrust. As the brethren, unlike the lay healers, accepted no money for their services, one turned to them gladly, but when one was well again one asked oneself what reason these incomprehensible men could have for treating Jews for nothing. Now, it may be that the pious brethren knew, or at least divined, these sage reflections; at all events they combined with the commandment to waken their neighbours’ charity by means of pious exhortation to almsgiving, also the good purpose of hiding their strange selflessness a little from the shrewd Jews, and this was shrewd on their part.
In the Jewish houses the almsgiving was a rapid, almost hasty, ceremony. Money, clothes, and food were brought to the monks outside the door, in order that they might not cross the threshold. Their billowing, coarse brown frocks, the ample roundness of their well-fed bodies, their ruddy, shining faces, their unvarying gentleness, their complete indifference to cold and heat, rain, snow, and sun — these things all seemed unnatural to the Jews, inclined as they were to worry endlessly and always, yes, positively to wallow in their cares. Each morning they began by fearing what the day would bring; long before the winter came, they shivered in the frost to come, and in the summer they wasted away to skeletons; for ever agitated because they never did, and never could, feel that this land was home to them, they had long since lost what they once knew of calm, and lived their lives buffeted and tossed hither and thither between hate and love, anger and servility, protest, uprising, and pogrom.
For years they had been used to seeing the brethren from the monastery of Lobra appear in the little town at fixed seasons of the year. Now, however, when one of them arrived at quite another season, they began to dread the approach of some new disaster. What could be his errand? Whither was he bound? They stood in trembling suspense outside their shops, ready to plunge into hiding at a moment’s notice. Meantime the comfortable figure of the gentle monk Eustachius moved deliberately and unsuspectingly past all the fears on either side of him, down the miry middle of the street, lifting the skirts of his robe a little, and striding serenely in his thick high-boots with their double soles. Here and there an over-zealous peasant woman sprang down from the wooden sidewalk to kiss his hand. He was used to such things. With automatic dignity he put out his strong brown hand, let it be kissed, and wiped it on his robe. The anxious glances of the Jewish shop-keepers followed him. The watchers saw how he stopped at Nissen’s, read the sign above the door, and mounted the high sidewalk with one huge step. He vanished into the shop.
The dealer Nissen rose, startled and apprehensive, from the stool on which he sat. Brother Eustachius smiled gently, produced out of the depths of his robe an ivory box, and offered the Jew a pinch of snuff. The Jew reached into the box, sneezed heartily, and asked: “Reverend Father, what do you want of me?”
“Don’t be afraid,” said the monk, “but my errand is a very sad one. We have a sick man in our monastery; it will be all over with him very soon. The foolish Shemariah lives with you, I know. That was a good work of yours, to take him in. Yes, I wish such good hearts as yours could be found in all Christians.”
Somewhat calmed, but still mistrustful, Nissen answered with a general observation: “God commands us to be merciful.”
“But God is seldom obeyed by men,” replied Eustachius. “You took a burden on you of your own free will. It must be very difficult to get on with that Shemariah. Do you think that I could talk to him?”
“Reverend Father — it is impossible!” said the dealer Nissen. And his eyes considered the robe, the rosary, the crucifix. The monk followed the look and understood.
“Very well,” he said. “Will you go with me to him then? It is like this, you see. That sick man of ours says that he would like to die, but cannot. He says that he did this Shemariah great harm and wrong, and Shemariah must first forgive him. Do you know what the trouble was? Or what he means? It is possible,” continued Eustachius — for he had decided to make a concession to that common sense which rules the minds of Jews, “there is of course a possibility that he is only imagining it, for he is in a high fever, and he may be raving in delirium. But one must do what one can, so that he may die in peace. You understand?”
“Very well,” said Nissen. “I will go with you.”
And the dealer Nissen, not without trepidation, conducted the monk up the narrow ladder to Shemariah’s attic room. When they had reached the door, he said: “I had better go in first, Reverend Father.” He entered, but left the door open.
Shemariah glanced up from the great book which he seemed to pore over eternally. Behind his host and friend, Nissen, he became aware of the terrifying, fat, and alien figure of the brown-frocked monk. He shut the book sharply, got up, and went over to the wall, pressing close against it for protection. As he stood, with his emaciated head framed in the round sky-light, which was the only window in the room, he reminded the gentle Brother Eustachius of a saint or one of the apostles. Shemariah’s two thin hands, jutting far out of the sleeves of his caftan, were outstretched against his guests. His lips quivered. But he said nothing.