AFTER CATCHING UP with the gymnasium student, Eizerman walked behind him for several minutes, unable to decide whether to call out to him and not knowing how to do it. At last, summoning his courage, he gently pulled on his coattail from behind and said in a trembling voice, “Look here! Gymnasium student!”
The fellow quickly turned around and, seeing before him a young man in a long coat, asked sternly, “What do you want?”
“Excuse me. . . . I want to ask you something. . . .”
“What?”
“Could you possibly direct me to some teacher . . . ? Or—I’ll be completely frank with you—could you identify some ‘modern man,’ a maskil? I’ve come here to study,” he concluded decisively.
Kapluner keenly and carefully looked Eizerman over from head to toe and asked in a haughty manner, “You’re from a yeshiva, of course.”
“No, straight from home. . . .”
“Where’s your home?”
“Miloslavka. You’ve probably heard of it.”
“Did you run away?”
“How do you know?” Eizerman asked in surprise.
Noticing another gymnasium student in the distance, Kapluner called out to him, “Kalmanshtein, come over here!”
When he’d drawn near, Kapluner, pointing at Eizerman, said indignantly and, at the same time, mockingly, “Feast your eyes! God has sent us a new recruit! As if we didn’t have enough already! So, what do you think of him? Quite something, isn’t he?”
“Where’s he from?” asked Kalmanshtein, fixing his nearsighted gaze on Eizerman.
“From where? Some little village, of course! He’s run away from his parents! Now he’s wandering the streets searching for some ‘modern people,’ some maskilim. . . .”
“Terrible,” replied Kalmanshtein, though rather calmly. “For what reason?”
“Well, why have you come? What for?” Kapluner turned sternly to Eizerman.
“What do you mean, for what?” Eizerman said in astonishment. “I’ve come in search of the Haskalah, to study, to become a person.”
“To study,” Kapluner repeated with irritation, turning to Kalmanshtein and shrugging his shoulders. “They all sing the same song!”
“Awful!” Kalmanshtein seconded him, again without irritation.
“To study? You want to become a doctor? Right?” Kapluner continued with deep irony, definitely assuming the role of accuser.
Eizerman failed to understand the reason for Kapluner’s irritation and, hearing his indignant exclamations, transferred his clear, innocently interrogative gaze from his accuser’s thin nervous face to Kalmanshtein’s generous freckled face. From Kapluner’s last words he realized that the gymnasium students hadn’t understood him at all. He said hastily, “No, no! You haven’t understood me! I haven’t come here to study to be a doctor. . . . I’m looking for the Haskalah. Don’t you see: I’m also a maskil! Don’t you understand . . . ?”
“I understand, I understand!” Kapluner interrupted him. “But how will you live here? Do you understand: live how? Of course, you don’t have even half a kopeck!”
“You’re wrong!” Eizerman replied joyously and triumphantly. “I do have money! I have all of six rubles and fifty-eight kopecks!”
“Ha, ha, ha! Rothschild!”1 Kalmanshtein guffawed affably. “Well, what will you do with all that money? We have to take him off somewhere.”
Eizerman’s triumphant declaration of his six rubles and fifty-eight kopecks forced even Kapluner to smile. After that, he immediately shed the guise of an indignant accuser and began speaking in a simple manner, with only a trace of bitterness.
“Well, of course, we can’t just leave him on the street! Let’s take him to Mirkin. He’s got a whole horde of these people thirsting and hungering to learn the Russian alphabet. Let him make the arrangements.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to take him to Geverman?” Kalmanshtein proposed. “He’s such an energetic lad. . . .”
“We won’t find him at home. You know, he’s become a blacksmith. So help me God!”
“Is he working?”
“He is—I’ll say he’s working! I met him last night. In a smock, his face covered with soot. And he was out in the street like that. He said hello and showed me his hand: ‘Calluses,’ he said. He called me a ‘drone,’ then he went on his way.”
“Well done!” Kalmanshtein replied with delight.
While the students were chatting, Eizerman remembered his purchase and pulled the book out of his sack; glancing from side to side, he showed it to his new acquaintances.
“Look at what I have!” he said in a somewhat singsong voice, with an enigmatic smile, certain that the students would be impressed at the sight of the book. “I just acquired this find! You’ve read it, of course?”
“Sancta simplicitas!”2 Kapluner replied, posturing, and added with some irritation, “Put it away, put your find away—we’ve seen it!”
And, turning to Kalmanshtein, he asked, “Where shall we take him?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Well then, to Mirkin!” Kapluner decided. “Let’s go!”
Kalmanshtein said goodbye to his friend and turned to Eizerman: “We’ll probably meet again. . . . Don’t lose heart!”
“I won’t lose heart! Why should I?” Eizerman asked in surprise.
“Let’s go!” Kapluner said, calling to him.
“Where to?” asked Eizerman trustingly.
“To a maskil!” sarcastically replied the other to reassure him.
“To a real maskil?”
“That’s enough from you!”
“What’s his name?”
“His name is ‘rebbe maskil.’ . . . Come on, let’s go!”
At last Eizerman finally understood that his new acquaintance was not eager to chat, and he followed him in silence. But, unable to refrain, he asked again, “Do you study in school?”
“Not in school, but in a gymnasium!” Kapluner corrected him pedantically.
“What do they study there?”
“Tsukn.”
“You’re joking, of course!” Eizerman surmised. “Do they study tishboyres?”
“Not only tishboyres, but also algebra and geometry!” Kapluner replied just as didactically. “Have you heard of them?”
“Now, for the first time!” said Eizerman. “Are they also part of the ‘rules of calculation’?”
“Why should I explain it to you? You still won’t understand!”
“When I saw you,” Eizerman said, after a brief pause, “I thought you were a soldier. Ha, ha! Word of honor! But that you were a Jew—that idea never entered my mind!
“On the other hand, I guessed from the first glance that you were a Jew!” Kapluner replied with a laugh.
“It must have been very difficult to guess that I’m a Jew, when I was wearing such a long kapote!” Eizerman exclaimed ingenuously.
Then he added in a reassuring tone of voice, “After I get a little settled, I’ll immediately cut my kapote off at the knees, cut off my peyes, and start looking like a human being!”
1. Meyer Rothschild (1743–1812), German-Jewish financier and founder of an enormous European banking dynasty.
2. (Latin) “O holy simplicity!”