Only Yesterday (14 page)

Isaac had no better days than those. His bread he found, not in abundance, but not with grief either. And he lived in a room of his own, not like most of our comrades who lived three or four in one room. This is hardly comprehensible. A poor boy, the son of

poor people, who slept with his brother in one bed in a crowded house, wasted six and a half Francs on a room of his own. But Isaac followed the ways of his forefathers, for the way of poor people who come from well-bred families is to cover up their poverty and keep the eyes of people away from what happens inside their homes, so that they won’t be seen in their poverty. Hence, he rented a room for himself and spent what he spent, just so they wouldn’t see him in his poverty.

But a room of your own has something good about it, for when a person is free from his work, he can sit and read books. And we must say that Isaac did not deprive himself of what was good for him and read a lot. He expanded the scope of his knowledge and learned things he hadn’t known before. Aside from the books he read in his room, he also read in the Sha’arei Zion Library. And Alexander Ziskind Rabinovitch was good to him and didn’t keep any book from him, except for books in which he found heretical matters, since he thought that most of the troubles that befall Jewish boys come from the harmful opinions they learn from heretical books, and so he hid from them every book that might damage them. He also read newspapers and journals in Hebrew and Yiddish. Some he read for pleasure and some he read to acquire knowledge. There were things he understood and things he didn’t understand because he lacked the basics of knowledge. But even in those he didn’t understand, his reading wasn’t in vain, for when he heard his comrades talking about them, he didn’t stand there like a dummy.

There’s another advantage to a room of your own, that it’s conducive to dreaming. And even Isaac, who hadn’t wandered away in dreams ever since the day he had ascended to the Land of Israel, would sit within the walls of his room and see a good dream, for instance, that his brother Yudel came to him, and he brought him to his room.
Thou who art majestic on high, Who abidest in might,
Isaac who didn’t even get a bed in Father’s house, lived in a room like a bourgeois. And, good comrades, isn’t this in itself worth the rent of a whole room. And, God willing, if two or three extra Francs drop into his hands, he’ll buy himself a chair. For the time being, he’s got only the chair he’s sitting on, but he was already considering buying himself another chair. In truth, our comrade Isaac really isn’t looking for much, yet a man should complete his set of furniture and add a chair. For anyone who’s got a room, his comrades come to him, and it’s be-fitting for him to have a chair ready to seat a guest.

As we said, our comrade Isaac wasn’t looking for much. With the money he earned, he satisfied his needs. Isaac wasn’t used to del-icacies, and wasn’t eager for special treats, but every day he did buy himself an ounce of milk and sometimes even an egg, and of course bread and fruit and vegetables, and sometimes he would go in an eatery and eat a hot soup with a small piece of meat, for you had to heed what folks feared, that if a person doesn’t eat meat, his bones get soft.

And this too Isaac did. He bought himself cloth and had six new shirts made, for the ones he had brought from his father’s house were torn, not because they weren’t strong, but because he wore them to work. And for the shirts he bought he had to thank the convert to Judaism who did his laundry and hinted to him that it was time to make himself new ones and he obeyed her, even though in another matter he didn’t obey her, when she told him to let her launder the garment with ritual fringes too, for in her innocence, that convert never imagined that there are Jews who do not fulfill the Commandment of ritual fringes.

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Isaac was perfect both inside and out. What does a Jew need—bread to eat and a garment to wear and a home to live in. And he had all three. And now he was adding one penny to another to buy himself winter clothing. And he amused himself by saying, After I buy my-self some winter clothing, I’ll add one penny to another until they make up ten or twenty Francs and I’ll send Father some payment on the debt Father borrowed to pay for my trip. If Isaac hadn’t given that cook the leather vest, he wouldn’t have needed another garment for winter and would have put that money aside for Father. But what was done was done, and he had to do it, for the cook supported him on the sea. In any case, he didn’t stop thinking about that vest, which was Father’s main protection against the cold. And Father didn’t

think about himself and gave it to hm. Now that the days of winter came there and a fierce cold prevailed there, what would Father do without that vest?

At that time, Isaac thought a lot about his father. Now that he was far from his town and his home and all his quarrels with Fa-ther had ceased, Isaac saw his father’s deeds, how great was his compassion for his sons and daughters, and how much he toiled for them. Things he had at first taken for granted now assumed greater importance in his eyes. In truth, Isaac’s father was no different from all the simple people, but even a simple Jew, when you look at him up close, you see that he is exquisite and distinguished.

To make a long story short, Isaac’s days are serene. And nothing changes the order of his life. A new chair he didn’t yet buy himself, nor did he buy himself winter clothing, but he did buy himself new friends and didn’t abandon the old ones for them.

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Our comrade Rabinovitch also settled in Jaffa. There was a clothing store in Jaffa and its owners were old and it was hard for them to tend to customers. Once one of our comrades had to leave the Land and Rabinovitch went with him to buy himself some clothes, for our comrade Rabinovitch is an expert in clothing since, for many years before he ascended, he worked in his father’s clothing store. The owners of the store sensed that that ragamuffin was an expert, and began chatting with him until they asked him if he wanted to work in the store with them, and he accepted.

Two years Rabinovitch had spent in the Land. There wasn’t a village he hadn’t been in. If he found work one day, that day he ate. If he didn’t find work, he went hungry. He got fed up with the vicis-situdes of the times and went to work in that shop. Two years Rabinovitch had spent in the Land, and some think he was even in the Galilee. But the Land did not think well of him and was cruel. His hoe grew rusty and his teeth grew blunt with hunger. When he had a chance to make a living from something else, he turned over his tools to somebody else and settled down in the city. When our comrade Rabinovitch left his father’s store, he didn’t imagine that he

would return to trade, since his mind was all on the village, in the end he left the village and went to the city.

Rabinovitch works in the store and earns more than he spends. And he eats and drinks like a human being and lives like a human being and wears nice clothes and patent leather shoes. Isaac used to say to Rabinovitch about that, You love yourself in those patent leather shoes, and I love you because I remember your crooked sandals. In truth, Isaac was fond of Rabinovitch all the time, but he liked to remind him of the day they met when he saw him walking around in his crooked sandals.

Even though Rabinovitch had abandoned his hoe, he hadn’t abandoned the idea of the conquest of work. He was a member of Ha-Po’el Ha-Tsa’ir and a subscriber to the journal
The Young Laborer,
and was more punctual about paying than in the days when he was a laborer, and he takes special care to preserve the newspaper. When he was a laborer, he used the newspaper
The Young Laborer
as a tablecloth for his bread and olives, and now he puts the issues down and there are no grease spots on them, but in the past, there wasn’t any article he didn’t read and now he tosses it aside and doesn’t give it a glance until the landlady or one of her daughters comes and puts it in the closet.

Rabinovitch’s landlady straightens up the room and fixes his meals and makes his bed and mends his linens and darns his socks and cherishes him like a member of the family, even though he’s a Jew and she’s a Christian. And the same is true of her daughters, who are very fond of the tenant, who gave them back their tongue. Before Rabinovitch came to live with them, they were about to forget a human language, for the Christians regard them as Jews and the converts pretend not to know them so that the Gentiles won’t say that birds of a feather flock together. Their forefathers who were Jews would have adorned them with gold coins, but the girls themselves who were born Christian, no one pays attention to them or seeks their company. The early days when their forefathers would serve their prayer house were gone. They had been cantors and sextons and priests, and even rose to be bishops, and lords and ladies, and consuls and the wives of consuls would come to hear their homilies. And

now the girls stand in the prayer house squeezed, pressed into a cor-ner and everybody gives them a wide berth. And as the Christians treat them, so do the Jews. But the Christians stay away from them because their ancestors were Jews, and the Jews keep their distance from them because their ancestors converted to Christianity. At first the new Christians got along all by themselves, for every year there were more new Christians. But when the Zionists came, the Jews stopped changing their religion, and thus they expire among themselves.

And why did their ancestors decide to change their religion? When they ran away from their home because of the persecutions and ascended to the Land of Israel, they found the Land ruined and des-olate and didn’t find anything to live on, so they wallowed in the trash without food and no housing, until they got sick from hunger and suffering. The missionaries got hold of them and cured their diseases and quelled their hunger, and as soon as they recuperated, they were bap-tized into Christianity. They said, What do we care if they sprinkle a little water over us? But the water sprinkled on the body reached the soul. They made a bald spot in Israel and left the community. And so did others. And then destruction seemed to come upon the foes of the Jews. Something suddenly happened and changed the face of the Land. From Russia and Romania and other countries, Jewish youths ascended, and not like their fathers, to hew themselves graves in the Land, but to plow and to rake its soil. Some were amazed at them and said, The Land doesn’t have the power to feed a human being and the Jew doesn’t have the power to work its soil.
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind
. Until everyone grew dis-couraged, they went and bought themselves land and made themselves settlements. They plowed their soil, sowed fields, planted vineyards, dug wells, and built themselves houses. The Land produced a harvest and the vineyards ripened their bunches of grapes. They rel-ished the great peace and brought bread out of the earth. And those who left the community of Israel were cursed and perished. And those who remained were rotting among themselves.

That woman and her daughters walk around in the wooden house they inherited from their ancestors in the German Colony.

Sometimes they wonder at that Jewish tenant who behaves as if the whole Land were his, and they give praise and thanks to God for sending them a man who resurrected them to themselves. Sometimes one of the daughters raises her eyes to Rabinovitch and takes them back, for Rabinovitch is taken by another, by Sonya Zweiering. Sometimes one of the daughters raises her eyes to Isaac and takes them back, for Isaac is modest and doesn’t raise his eyes to a woman.

Isaac Parts from His Friend and Finds Himself a Girlfriend

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Like most of the fellows of Galicia in that generation, Isaac was excellent and modest. Men friends had Isaac, but no girlfriends. The whole time Isaac lived in his hometown, he hadn’t talked with a woman, aside from his mother and his sisters, like the sons of good families who don’t know women before they are betrothed, aside from Gymnasium students and university students who broke out of the fold and court girls, and there are girls who respond to them and stroll with them in public. And as Isaac behaved in his hometown, so he behaved in the Land of Israel, he paid no attention to women and didn’t seek their intimacy. And perhaps it didn’t occur to him that a fellow like him could get close to a girl, even though he saw that some of his comrades did. The habit Isaac had adopted in his youth stood him in good stead in his manhood. And as he got used to it, that was it. The merit of his mother also stood him in good stead, so that he wouldn’t behave frivolously in matters where others be-have frivolously. And when his mother appeared to him, she didn’t appear withered, as she was just before her death, but as she was in his childhood, when it seemed to him there was no mother more beautiful in all the world. Sometimes she appeared to him as on Yom Kippur, wearing white garments, her voice full of compassion; and sometimes she appeared to him as in the early days when she still wore a bluish chapeau Father had brought her from the fair. Sometimes part of her appeared, like a white hand stretched out to him, as when they sent him to congratulate her when his sister was born. And sometimes all those forms came together into one whole form, and it was clear to him that there was no woman in the world like his

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mother. And since his mother died, another woman who would come take her place would be modest and pious as his mother. Ugly sufferings did not afflict him, the frailties of human beings didn’t hurt him, by virtue of his mother who was perfect in her qualities. And even when his faith slackened, his modesty did not.

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And so it happened that Rabinovitch left the Land. When he went to work in the shop, he went only to get away from the disgrace of hunger, but eventually he forgot the original reason and once again became a merchant as he had been in his hometown, but all his years he lived in his hometown he made the shop secondary and the Land of Israel the essential; when he went to work in a shop in the Land of Israel, once again he made the shop the essential. And the exper-tise he brought from his father’s house and the dread of hunger hanging over him stood him in good stead to make his name and he was fortunate that everyone was satisfied with him. The customers, because he gave them what they wanted; and the shopowners, because he could win the hearts of the customers. The activist and the merchant, the shopkeeper and the clerk buy there regularly; for from the day Rabinovitch started working in the shop, they have found clothes that fit them. And even someone with a crooked back or a bulging pot belly finds a solution from an iron hoop that tightens his coat col-lar and adapts the coat to his body. And after the customer pays, Rabinovitch spreads out the garment and smooths it and stands him in front of the mirror and shows him the fine merchandise he has bought. A person who buys merchandise from a shopkeeper in the Land of Israel isn’t used to lavish service, especially after he has paid, for most of the shopkeepers in the Land of Israel regard customers as if they were created only for their profit, and when a customer sees Rabinovitch’s affection, he is drawn to his shop.