“But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you exactly what happened and how it all came about. It started with the peasant riots. We had a good scare in our town when they broke out, because we were afraid pogroms would come next. By some miracle, though, everything turned out for the best. How was that? A regiment of soldiers was sent from the provincial capital, and not only did they restore such order that it was a pleasure, they were a windfall for the whole town. What could be better for business than an entire regiment complete with officers, and adjutants, and quartermasters, and barber-surgeons, and camp followers?”
“That’s for sure!”
“Go be a prophet and guess that the cantor’s daughter would fall in love with an officer and announce that she was going to baptize herself and marry him! That put the town into a panic. Not to worry, though: the cantor’s daughter wasn’t baptized and she didn’t marry the officer, because by then the peasant riots were over and he was so involved in decamping with his regiment that he forgot all about saying goodbye to her … Except that she couldn’t forget about him. Imagine her poor father and mother! It was no joke what they went through. The whole town was in an uproar, wherever you went no one talked about anything else. There were even some bigmouths who spread the word that the cantor’s wife had sent for the midwife and went about asking the cantor who he planned to name the child for … although to tell you the truth, it’s perfectly possible that the whole thing was a figment of their imagination. You know how people in a small town like to gossip …”
“Don’t they!”
“I felt so sorry for the two of them, the cantor and his wife, that it broke my heart, because when you get right down to it, what fault was it of theirs? I had a daughter of my own, though, and don’t think I didn’t put my foot down and tell her once and for all, ‘Whatever was, was, but from now on you’re not friends with that girl any longer!’ When I lay down the law, I expect to be obeyed; she may have been an only child, but respect for a father comes first. Go guess that she would go on seeing the girl secretly without anyone knowing about it! When did I find out? When it was already too late …”
From behind me came the sound of someone half coughing and half groaning in sleep. The Jew telling the story fell silent for a few moments, then resumed his tale in a lower tone than before.
“It happened at the beginning of Elul. I remember it as though it were yesterday. You should have heard our cantor lead the midnight prayer: why, the way he wept could have moved a stone to tears! No one, but no one, knew what he was feeling as well as I did — believe me, being the father of today’s children is no great joy … It was already light out when we finished, so I went home, grabbed a bite to eat, took the keys, went to the marketplace, opened the business, and waited for the shopboy to come. I waited half an hour. I waited an hour. Still no shopboy. Finally he appeared. ‘Berl,’ I said, ‘why so late?’ ‘I was at the cantor’s house,’ he says. ‘What on earth were you doing at the cantor’s?’ I asked. ‘What!’ he says, ‘Haven’t you heard what happened to Chaika?’ (That was the cantor’s daughter.) ‘No,’ I said, ‘what happened?’ ‘You won’t believe this,’ he says, ‘but she went and poisoned herself!’ ”
“Dear me!”
“As soon as I heard that, I ran right home. My first thought was, what will Etke say? (My daughter’s name was Etke.) ‘Where’s Etke?’ I asked my wife. ‘She’s still sleeping,’ she says. ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘You won’t believe this,’ I say, ‘but Chaika poisoned herself.’ The words weren’t out of my mouth when my wife grabs her head in her hands and screams: ‘Oh, my God! Oh, dear God! Oh, God help her!’ ‘Who? What?’ I said. ‘You won’t believe this,’ she says, ‘but Etke spent at least two hours with her just last night.’ ‘Etke with Chaika?’ I say. ‘What are you talking about? How can that be?’ ‘Don’t ask me that now!’ she says. ‘I had to give in to her. She begged me not to tell you that she was seeing her every day. Oh, God! If only this were all a bad dream …’ And she turns around, my wife, runs into Etke’s room, and collapses there on the floor. I ran in after her, straight to the bed. ‘Etke! Etke!’ I called. What Etke? Who was I calling? She was gone.”
“Gone?”
“Dead. In her own bed. There was a bottle on the table with a note beside it, written in her own hand — not in Russian, but in Yiddish. It was a thing of beauty, her Yiddish! ‘Dear, darling Papa and Mama,’ she wrote. ‘Please forgive me for causing you such grief and shame. A hundred times I beg your forgiveness. We promised each other, Chaika and I, that we would die a single death, because we can’t live without each other. I know, my dearest ones, that I’m doing a terrible thing to you. I’ve gone through all kinds of torment. But my fate is my fate, and I must go to meet it … I have only one request of you, my dears — that you bury me in a grave next to Chaika’s. Be well, and please, please forget you ever had a daughter named Etke …’ Did you hear that? We should forget we had a daughter named Etke …”
There was a sound of stirring behind me, followed by a yawn or a groan and the hoarse, sleep-constricted voice of a woman calling:
“Avreml?… Avreml!..”
“Gitke, are you up? How did you sleep? Would you like a hot drink? There’s a station coming up soon. Where’s the thermos? Where did you put the tea and sugar?”
(1909)
THE SLOWPOKE EXPRESS
Would you like to know what the best train of all is? The best, the quietest, and the most restful? It’s the Slowpoke Express.
That’s what the Jews of Bohopoli call the narrow-gauge local that connects several towns in their district: Bohopoli, Heysen, Teplik, Nemirov, Khashchevate, and a few other such blessed places that are far from the beaten track indeed.
According to the Bohopolians, who have a reputation for being jokesters, the Slowpoke Express is no ordinary train. In the first place, you needn’t ever worry about missing it: whenever you arrive at the station, it’s still there. Secondly, they say, where else can you find a train on which you never have to fight for a seat — on which, in fact, you can travel for miles all by yourself, stretched out at full length on a bench like a lord and sleeping as much as you please? And they happen to be right on both counts. I’ve been riding the Slowpoke Express for several weeks now, and I’m still practically in the same place. I tell you, it’s magic! Don’t think I’m complaining, either. Far from it. I couldn’t be more satisfied, because I’ve seen so many fine sights and heard so many fine tales that I don’t know when I’ll ever get the chance to jot them all down in my journal.
First, though, let me tell you how this railway came to be built. That’s a story in itself.
When word arrived from St. Petersburg that a line was going to be laid (Witte was the minister in charge then), the Jews refused to believe it. What did Teplik, or Golte, or Heysen, need a railroad for? Hadn’t they gotten along famously without one until now? And the biggest sceptics were the Bohopolians, who received the news, as was their custom, with a spate of jokes. “Do you see this?” they said, holding up the palms of their hands. “We’ll have a railroad the day hair grows here.” After a while, however, when an engineer arrived with a team of surveyors, the Jews ate their words and the Bohopolians hid their hands in their pockets. (One good thing about the Bohopoli Jews is that they don’t take it to heart when they’re wrong. “Even a calendar,” they say, “sometimes has the wrong date on it.”) Soon the engineer was besieged with documents, references, letters of recommendation, requests for favors — in short, with applications for jobs. A Jew, unfortunately, has to make a living, and it was common knowledge among the good burghers of Teplik, Bershed, Heysen, and Bohopoli that building a railroad was the way to get rich quick. Why, just look at Poliakov in Moscow …