Only Yesterday (77 page)

All that time, Shifra was asleep. But she found no rest in sleep, because a cold wind blew on her head. Until her wedding night, her head was covered with soft, warm hair that came down below her waist, and when she lay in her bed at night, it was as if she lay on a soft couch of gold filaments. And now that they had shaved her head and taken away her hair, her bed pressed her and she found no rest. In her sleep, Shifra said, I’ll get up and cover my head. She got out

of bed and went to the mirror to wrap a kerchief around her head. From the mirror, the figure of a girl looked out at her. She wanted to ask the girl, What do you want here? But she was frightened to ask lest the girl answer things that shouldn’t be heard. Meanwhile, the new Rabbi who had ascended from Hungary came and sat at the head of the table and read the Seven Blessings. All those present nod-ded and sang,
in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of joy and gladness will be heard, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride
. But their voices were only the voice of Efraim the plasterer, who walks around at night and calls people to serve the Creator, and the voice is threatening and awesome, as if he were warning the sleeping people of great trouble about to appear. Shifra raised her eyes to look at her husband’s bed to see if he had heard and was warned. Her eyes closed in a heavy sleep.

End of the Tale

1
I

Before three weeks had passed, Isaac began feeling pain in his body in all the places where the dog had bitten him. His wounds began to swell up and turn red, and finally they opened by themselves and a stinking pus began bubbling out of them. His spirit turned bad, and he was so angry and afraid as if someone were pursuing him, that he grew restive and wanted to die. In those days, his swallowing apparatus contorted and his breathing apparatus shriveled and so did the muscles of his body and the muscles of his legs. He wanted to eat or drink and couldn’t, as the membrane shriveled in his mouth. And now Isaac was no longer thinking of his wife or anything else in the world. But he complained about the chill in his body and about his breathing which was heavy and about his heart that oppressed him and about the pain in his guts. His pulse became irregular. Sometimes it was weak and sometimes it was erratic. Because of bad thoughts and bad dreams, his sleep was scrambled. All those days, he sweated and sweated some more, and thirst seared his throat. If he saw water or something liquid or heard the sound of water, he quivered and contorted, and even a candle and a mirror caused him torments, perhaps because the candle and the mirror resemble water. Finally, his voice grew hoarse and his saliva began dripping, and when he tried to swallow it, he couldn’t. His face flushed and the pupils of his eyes became fixed. Finally, his contortions stopped and he seemed to be all right again and they could feed him. But because he was so weak, he couldn’t eat. His melancholy and his depression kept increasing. Sometimes Reb Fayesh looked at him from his pillows and blankets, and he seemed to know why that man was living

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in his house, and his colorless eyes turned dark with anger because everyone was busy with Isaac. And with special anger at Shifra. And Shifra who was always calm and quiet and never in her life had she made a useless gesture, and when her hand had moved, it had seemed to Isaac that something in the world had changed, now she was busy with him necessarily and unnecessarily, and he didn’t no-tice her. And once emotional serenity had beamed from her golden eyes, as if a gold radiance emanated from them, now panic was loom-ing up from them.

1. I
   

   Shifra and Rebecca took care of Isaac but didn’t neglect Reb Fayesh. In those days, Reb Fayesh seemed to have taken a slight turn for the better, and was already raising his head on his pillow and blurting out half words. Whenever Rebecca or Shifra heard Reb Fayesh’s voice, they would hurry to him. When they came to him, he fell silent. No doubt Reb Fayesh was trying to recover his tongue, but he didn’t mean for them to understand what he said. Whatever it was, they took great pains with him, in case they would hear a word from his mouth. They ran from Reb Fayesh to Isaac, and from Isaac to Reb Fayesh, until their strength gave out and they couldn’t stand up. And if not for Gitteshi, the wife of Mendel the upholsterer, who helped them, they wouldn’t have held out. That wretched woman was fear-ful that her husband’s emissaries would suddenly come to her house and serve her a writ of divorce, and from early morning to late at night she was in Reb Fayesh’s home, so that if the fiends came with the writ of divorce, Rebecca and Shifra would see them and warn her. And so she came every day and helped Rebecca and Shifra as much as she could. Help in trouble they found in Efraim the plasterer, for when he finished going around at night to wake the sleeping people to serve the Creator, he came and helped the sick.
   

   Once Menahem happened to come to Jerusalem. For the sake of two things had Menahem come up from Motza to Jerusalem, to buy himself a new pitchfork and to exchange one tractate of the Talmud for another, for the tractate he had brought with him from his hometown he already knew by heart, and the pitchfork he had
   

   brought with him from Petach Tikva was broken. And his success in those two matters exceeded his expectations. The pitchfork could be mended and he didn’t have to spend his money on a new one, and since that was the case, he could get himself a new tractate and keep the old one as well. As he walked in the marketplace and looked into the Talmud, he came upon the woodcarver who told him all that had happened to Isaac. Menahem went to visit the sick man. As he stood at his bed, he took out the new Talmud to look at it. When he looked at the Talmud he didn’t budge from it. Rebecca and Shifra who were weary lay down to rest from their toil and Menahem’s voice sweet-ened their sleep as in the days when Reb Fayesh was healthy and the world was in its proper order.
   

   Once Hinda Puah came. She didn’t know what had happened to Isaac, but one night Isaac’s mother Judith came to her in a dream and her face was dark and her winding sheet was torn and she said to her, Perhaps you have heard what my Itzikl is doing? My heart tells me that wrath has been poured out on him. Hinda Puah got up in the morning and told her dream to her Alter, and she thought her Alter would laugh at her and her dreams. Her Alter said to her, There is something to it. I looked in my notebook and I saw that the letters of Isaac’s name were blurred. And so, she left her house and her Alter and dashed over to see why Itzikl’s mother shocked her at night. When she came to the houses of the Hungarians, she heard what had happened. She grew faint and thought she was dying. But she took herself in hand and came.
   

   Hinda Puah saw Isaac. She repressed the tears in her eyes and scolded him,
   Feh, feh, Itzikl, vos makhtsi dikh narish. Iz epes a koved far dayn mame aleya hasholem az ihr libe kind lebn zol zikh azoy oyffihrn.
   That is, Itzikl, why are you playing the fool? Is it an honor for your mother, may she rest in peace, that her beloved son should behave like that? Isaac looked at her with saliva dripping and he tried to gulp it and couldn’t. Hinda Puah took her apron and wiped her eyes. Rebecca took her in her arms and said to her, Tell me, good woman, why did he do that to my daughter? Said Hinda Puah to Rebecca, Who do you mean? Said Rebecca, Who do I mean? I mean the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He. Said Hinda Puah, Why
   

   did He do that to our Itzikl? Said Rebecca, A baby who never in her life ever even harmed a fly, oh what has befallen her?
   

   Efraim the plasterer heard the women’s conversation. He shook his head from side to side and said, Instead of asking why the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He did that to Isaac and Shifra, ask what are we and what are our merits, that The Blessed One gives us mercy to make us a living. The Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He knows what He’s doing, and everything He does He does according to the law, and it’s not for us to ponder His judgment. And if we do ponder, what do we gain, this is stupidity and nothing. Reb Fayesh is certainly a proper person. And now I’ll ask you, Rebecca, why did that befall him? Let me see, can you answer my question. Oh, good women, there is one answer to all the questions in the world, that’s an answer coming from our bad deeds. And now I’ll ask you, is there in the world a city that is holier and dearer and nicer than Jerusalem, and why have so many troubles come upon it? And it’s not bad enough that all those troubles often come upon it, but we don’t even have water to drink. Or I’ll ask you, is there in the world a nation finer than the Children of Israel, and yet we are stricken and afflicted. And if a person tells me all kinds of reasons, will that get you anything? Said Hinda Puah, At any rate, it’s a hard question. Don’t we know that the mercy of the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He is great, so why doesn’t He have mercy on us? Efraim shook his head from side to side and said, King David already screamed, Why standest thou afar off, O Lord? Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? And what did the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He reply to David? He said to him, I am the one whose glory fills the world, before the Lord there is neither near nor far, but times of trouble cause a man to think that The Blessed One is far away from him.
   

   Thus they wrestled with the issue that everyone who has ever come into the world has wrestled with from the day the world was created until now. And to every single question that Rebecca or Hinda Puah asked, Efraim answered them from the Psalms, and stressed the verse to them with a fine melody, and they repeated their questions. They didn’t find an answer to their questions and Efraim didn’t see that there was a question after his answers. At last, Efraim
   

   hunched his shoulders and said in a pleasant voice in a melody of Psalms, My soul cleaveth unto the dust: quicken thou me according to thy word.
   

   Efraim wasn’t content only with words, but went with a group of ten men to the Wailing Wall, and didn’t budge from there until they had completed the entire Book of Psalms. And when they came to the chapter Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog, he wrote Isaac’s name and his mother’s name on a slip of paper and put the slip of paper between the stones of the Wailing Wall. And since the breath of children who haven’t sinned is very important to the Lord, he gathered a few children from the streets and recited Psalms with them. And when he came to the verse Deliver my soul, etc., my darling from the power of the dog, he repeated the verse two hundred and eight times as the numerical value of Isaac’s name. But none of those things helped, for the decree was already sealed.
   

   And now, good friends, as we observe the adventures of Isaac, we are shaken and stunned. This Isaac who is no worse than any other person, why is he punished so harshly? Is it because he teased a dog? He meant it only as a joke. Moreover, the end of Isaac Kumer is not inherent in his beginning. By his nature and his apti-tudes, Isaac should have stood on the soil and seen life on the earth and brought his father and his brothers and sisters up to the Land of Israel. Those miserable people who hadn’t seen a good moment in their lives, how devoted they were to the Land. Isaac’s sisters would have found their mates here and Yudele would have plowed his land and composed pleasant lyrics for her. And Reb Simon Kumer, the father of our comrade Isaac, who was still hounded by usurers, would have seen the happiness of his sons and daughters and would have been happy. And you, Rock of Our Salvation great in counsel and mighty in work, from the mouths of those who thirst for Your Salvation You would have heard Your praise all the days. It’s easy for those who don’t bother with too much thinking, either because of too much innocence or because of too much wisdom, but a person who is not very innocent and not very wise, what will he answer and what will he say?
   

2. I
   

   And now the neighbors were talking about Isaac and saying that Reb Fayesh’s son-in-law’s mind is not sane. And imaginative people imagined they saw him crawling on all fours and shouting like a dog and running after every person to bite him. Fear fell on folks and they complained about the officers of the society for letting a dangerous person walk around in public. The officers of the society heard those words and sent a doctor to him. The doctor saw Isaac and said, We have to take him to Egypt to the Pasteur Institute. Meanwhile, the bitten man has to be bound with ropes and put in a separate room behind a locked door.
   

   They bound Isaac with ropes and put him in a room by himself and locked the door behind him and closed the shutters, and they brought him water and food. Because he was so weak, he didn’t eat and didn’t drink. Isaac sat alone in the dark room and lamented from the Book of Lamentations, She weepeth sore in the night and her tears were on her cheeks. And everyone who heard his voice wept for him and for his wife. Sometimes, his mind would come back and he would warn his attendants to be careful that he didn’t bite them, and sometimes he tried to sleep. But sleep didn’t come. And sometimes he looked with vacant eyes and didn’t want anything.
   

   The dog’s venom penetrated all of Isaac’s limbs. His face turned dark, his eyes glazed over like glass, his tongue swelled up like a shriveled date. A harsh thirst choked and strangled him. If he took some water to drink, he imagined a delegation of small dogs was dancing in the water. (And people said that he too started barking like a dog.) In the end, the muscles of his body and the muscles of his face became paralyzed. Finally, his pained soul passed away and he returned his spirit to the God of spirits for whom there is no joke and no frivolity.
   

   The dog disappeared, but his bites indicated that he was alive. Since he had tasted the taste of human flesh, he went on bit-ing. Many were injured by him and many mentioned him with hor-ror. Until the troubles of the great war came and that trouble was forgotten.
   

3. I
   

On the day that Isaac was buried, the sky was covered with clouds. The sun was overcast and a wind came and with it came lightning flashes and thunderbolts. The firmament was shaken with the rum-ble of their might and began to bring down rare, warm drops. The next day, the clouds scattered and the sun shone, and we knew that all our expectations were in vain. And even the winds we imagined would refresh us didn’t bring any gain, as they were hot and piercing as leeches.