“Having a look at a runaway engine is easier said than done, though. Who’s to say what went on in it? All we can do is take Berl Vinegar’s word. Granted, his account is full of such wonders that even if only half of it were true, it would be more than enough; still, if I know Berl as I think I do, it’s not like him to exaggerate.
“According to Berl, then, his mind went blank when the locomotive pulled out of the station. It wasn’t the fright, he says, it was simply not understanding why the engine didn’t obey him. Logically speaking, it should have come to a stop with the second turn of the throttle, whereas in actual fact it only picked up more speed. You would have thought that ten thousand devils were pushing it from behind! It was traveling at such a clip that the telegraph poles were dancing like gnats before his eyes, and he felt dizzy and weak all over … After a while, though, when he came to his senses, he recalled that a locomotive had a brake. There were indeed — he drew them for me in the air — two brakes: a hand brake and an air brake, which was a kind of wheel that, when given a good turn, did something to the crankshaft, or maybe it was the connecting rod, and brought the engine to a halt. How in the world could it have slipped his mind? And so he took hold of the wheel and was just about to turn it hard to the right when — don’t think another hand didn’t grab his own. ‘Stop!’ Who was it? It was the priest, don’t you know, white as a sheet and barely able to talk. ‘What are you doing now?’ he asked Berl, trembling like a leaf.
“ ‘Nothing,’ said Berl. ‘I’m just putting on the brake.’
“ ‘God help you,’ said the priest, ‘if you so much as touch another thing! You better listen to me or I’ll take you by the collar and throw you out of here so fast that you’ll forget your name was ever Moshko!’
“ ‘It’s not Moshko, it’s Berko,’ said Berl, and tried to explain the principle of the air brake. It didn’t do a bit of good, though, because that priest was pretty far gone. ‘I don’t want to hear about any brake,’ he said. ‘The only brake that interests me is seeing you break your neck, you little bastard! What did I do to deserve you turning up in my life?’
“ ‘Father,’ said Berl, ‘do you think you value your life more than I value my life?’
“ ‘Your life?’ said the irate priest. ‘Who gives a damn for the life of a dog like you?’
“Well, that got Berl’s goat so it wasn’t even funny, and he gave that priest a piece of his mind. ‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘even a dog has feelings. Our religion forbids us to be cruel to it, because it too is a living creature.’ Secondly, said Berl, he wanted to ask the priest something. ‘What makes you think that my blood is any less red in God’s eyes than yours? Aren’t we all descended from Adam? And won’t we all be buried in the same earth in the end?’ That was number two. And there was something else that Berl told him too. ‘Just look at the difference, Father, between you and me. I’m doing my best to stop this locomotive, because I’m trying to save us both, and all you can think of is throwing me out of it — in other words, of murdering your fellow man!’
“He went on laying into him, Berl did, giving that priest such hell that the Father almost had a stroke. He was still going strong, he says, when what did they see go by but Zatkevitz station with its stationmaster and its policeman. They both began waving their hands, but no one seemed to understand them, and there was unfortunately no choice but to head on for Heysen. By now, Berl says, the priest had calmed down a bit, but he still wouldn’t let him touch the brake. ‘Listen, Liebko,’ he said. ‘I have a proposal to make to you.’
“ ‘My name isn’t Liebko,’ said Berl. ‘It’s Berko.’
“ ‘Then Berko,’ said the priest. ‘Tell me, Berko, what do you say to the two of us making a jump for it?’
“ ‘What for?’ asked Berl. ‘So that the two of us can be killed?’
“ ‘We’ll be killed anyway,’ said the priest.
“ ‘What makes you so sure?’ Berl challenged him. ‘There’s no guarantee of that. If God has something else in mind for us — ai, ai, ai, you’d be surprised at the things He can do.’
“ ‘Such as what?’ asked the priest.
“ ‘I’ll tell you such as what, Father,’ said Berl. ‘We Jews have a day today called Hoshana Rabbah. That’s the day on which the fate of every one of us is sealed in the Book of Life for the year — and not only who lives and who dies, but who dies what sort of death. Think of it this way, then: if it’s God will that I die, there’s nothing I can do about it — what difference does it make to me if it’s in a locomotive, or jumping out of it, or getting hit by a thunderbolt? Do you think I can’t slip and break my back in the street if that’s what God’s put me down for? On the other hand, though, if I’m down for another year of life, why kill myself trying to jump?’
“What can I tell you? According to Berl Vinegar of Sobolivke, who swears to the truth of his story with so many oaths that you’d have to believe him even if he weren’t a jew, he can’t remember the exact order of things, but as they neared Heysen and saw its big factory chimney in the distance, the locomotive began to go slower and slower until it was going so slow that it decided to stop altogether. What had happened to it? Apparently, says Berl, it had no more coal — and when an engine has no more coal, he says, the water stops boiling, it runs out of steam, and kaput! It’s the same, he says, as it is with a man if he doesn’t get anything to eat … And you can be sure he said to that priest right then and there: ‘Well, Father, what did I tell you? If God hadn’t written me down for another year of life, who knows how much steam this locomotive might still have and where we might be in it right now?’
“Those were Berl’s very words — and the priest, don’t you know, just stood there staring at the ground. It was only later, says Berl, when it was time to say goodbye, that the priest stuck out his hand and said to him, ‘All the best, Itzko.’
“ ‘My name,’ said Berl, ‘isn’t Itzko. It’s Berko.’
“ ‘All right,’ said the priest, ‘Berko. You know something, Berko? I never would have guessed that you were such a—’
“But Berl never heard the rest of it, he says, because the priest hitched up the skirts of his gown and began wending his way home to Golovonyevsk, while he, Berl, walked into town to visit his friends in Heysen. And in Heysen, don’t you know, he celebrated the holiday, and thanked God for his deliverance, and told the story of the runaway engine at least a thousand times from A to Z, each time with more miraculous details. All of us insisted on hosting Berl Vinegar in our own homes and hearing about the Miracle of Hoshana Rabbah straight from the horse’s mouth, and a merry Simkhes Toyroh was had by all. In fact, we never had a merrier!”
(1909)
THE WEDDING THAT CAME WITHOUT ITS BAND
“I do believe I promised to tell you about another of our Slowpoke’s miracles, thanks to which, don’t you know, we were saved from a horrible fate. If you’d like to hear about it, why don’t you stretch out on this seat and I’ll lie down on that one. That way we’ll both be more comfortable.”
So said my friend, the merchant from Heysen, as we were traveling one day on the narrow-gauge train called the Slowpoke Express. And since this time too we were all by ourselves in the car, which was rather hot, we took off our jackets, unbuttoned our vests, and made ourselves right at home. I let him tell his story in his jovial, unhurried manner, making a few mental notes as he did so that I could write it down later in his own words.