“WHAT’S THE ORE MIKLET where you want to take me?” asked Eizerman with a smile.
“You’ll find out when we get there!” replied Uler in a conspiratorial tone of voice. “You see, it’s an apartment where any of us can stay,” he began to explain immediately. “That’s why we call it an Ore Miklet. Three people are living there now. You’ll see what sort of group it is, what fine people they are!
“You just mentioned robbers and criminals,” he recalled. “You should see Sonya Beryasheva’s father, the one Mirkin was just talking about—and then you’d understand what a robber and a criminal really is!”
“What are you talking about? Who is he?”
“You see,” Uler began heatedly, “this Sonya Beryasheva’s a young woman who’s just out of this world! Believe me when I say it. She’s not a young woman at all, but a real human being. You can talk to her about anything. She’s read absolutely everything! Mirkin gave lessons to her younger brother for half a year. He made her acquaintance, lent her books on the sly, and turned her into a free thinker. Now she’s no less than we are.”
Uler planned to go on but suddenly hesitated and straightened up. Glancing at his interlocutor with glistening eyes, he began in an inspired manner, “Do you know what ideal love is?” (He pronounced it “idil luv.’ ”) “I mean, ‘i-deal,’ the most ideal! Well, now I’m confessing to you!! I love Sonya with that kind of love. Now do you understand what sort of young woman she is?”
Uler, after blurting out his confession, continued to stare at Eizerman with a euphoric look, expecting that his words would elicit ecstasy. But he was mistaken. Eizerman didn’t understand. He had no conception of ideal love, and from Uler’s words understood merely that Uler was in love with a young woman. Such a confession seemed so strange, so unusual, and even indecent that he blushed deeply from shame and lowered his eyes. Uler felt at once that the young man didn’t understand and, as if apologizing, set about explaining heatedly and hastily, “You don’t know what ‘ideal love’ really is! It has no relation whatsoever to ordinary love! It’s—divine love, an ideal! Do you understand? I’ve seen Sonya only twice and don’t even know her. But one doesn’t have to be acquainted for ideal love. It’s even better not to be acquainted, understand?”
“I understand, I do!” Eizerman replied hastily, still not raising his embarrassed eyes. “It’s ‘Ahave sheloy tole bedover’ . . . as in the Song of Songs.1 . . . So, what’s happening to her, this . . . young woman? You began by saying something about her father,” he added hastily, to change the uncomfortable subject.
“Hey! You don’t understand a thing!” Uler muttered in chagrin. “Who’s her father? A criminal, a thief, of course,” he continued without his former passion. “An old man, a fanatic, an animal, a terrible tyrant. He found out that Sonya was reading books and she’d made Mirkin’s acquaintance; he became furious. He canceled his son’s lessons, took away Sonya’s books, and began to follow her everywhere. A week ago he found her strolling outside town with a gymnasium student from our group. Having no fear, the two of them were conversing loudly, arguing about some book. All of a sudden, from around the corner, the old man jumped out and fell upon them like a wild beast. He struck the student in the chest, grabbed Sonya by the arm, and dragged her off home. He beat her, burned all her books, and now keeps her under lock and key. He doesn’t let her out of the house.”
“Awful! It makes my hair stand on end!” Eizerman exclaimed.
“We wouldn’t have known anything about it,” Uler continued, “but fortunately the yeshiva student Gigel has a meal at the Beryashevs’ once a week; he’s a secret maskil, one of Mirkin’s pupils. He’s the one who told us what happened. You see what sort of things go on?”
“Terrible . . . just terrible!” Eizerman uttered in a disconsolate voice.
After a brief silence he began talking about himself: “I’d like to find some space to rent, even a very small room. . . . It’s more convenient to study when you have a separate corner,” Eizerman added, as if trying to justify himself. “I’d rather save money on food . . . that doesn’t matter to me. . . .”
“I have my eye on just such a little room, not far from here,” Uler replied with enthusiasm. “It’s first-rate! If you bargain for it, they’ll let you have it for seventy-five kopecks a month. You can live there like a count, completely alone. . . . I’ll come spend nights at your place.”
“Excellent. . . . Then, I’d also like to . . . ,” Eizerman began again indecisively, “how to put it, well, I’d like to acquire a more normal appearance. . . . It’s embarrassing to walk along the streets dressed as I am. If you had some scissors, I’d trim this greatcoat and cut off my side curls—and I’d begin to look more like a human being. . . .”
“You’ll have time to do that later,” replied Uler. “You know, if I were in your place, I wouldn’t hurry to change my appearance. . . . I wore a disguise for two whole years. I dressed so that I looked like a wild animal. It was precisely then that I committed unheard-of deeds, led the entire yeshiva astray. . . . You saw the red-haired lad, how he was dressed, how he was wearing a disguise! Besides, if you wear such a mask, you can deceive your parents, make them think you’re studying the Torah, and they’ll keep sending you money. . . .”
“I don’t give a damn about my father’s money and, as a matter of fact, even about my father himself!” Eizerman suddenly burst out in anger. “I no longer want to wear any masks! I can’t do it! I suffered long enough in Miloslavka. Now on purpose, just for spite, I want to walk along the street smoking a cigarette on the Sabbath,2 even though I don’t smoke. You’ll see!”
Uler burst out laughing.
“I believe,” he began in a Talmudic melody, “that you’ll walk down the street with a cigarette in your mouth. But I doubt very much whether you’ll walk back up the street alive, without getting your head cracked open and all your bones broken. Just you try walking through town on the Sabbath with a cigarette in your mouth. You’ll be given such a terrible beating the likes of which even your parents and your grandparents have never seen. Ha, ha, ha!”
“So be it! I don’t want to wear any more masks!” replied Eizerman with fanatical obstinacy.
“As for beatings in honor of the Torah, you can ask me,” Uler continued, growing livelier. “I have lots of experience in that regard. I’ve received more than enough beatings. What beatings they were! Beatings, I tell you, from the land of beatings! Ha, ha, ha!”
“You still remember them?”
“I’ll say!” exclaimed Uler enthusiastically. “When they drove me out of a yeshiva, they’d give me a first-class beating, even try to maim me. They’d hit my face! They slapped me so many times I lost count. The blows rained down on me from all sides. What fierce slaps, if you only knew! Ha, ha, ha!
“On the other hand,” he began in a different tone, more serious, with a note of sorrow in his voice. “That was the way life was then. Ah, what a life! I remember it well—and feel some longing for it now.”
“For life in the yeshiva?” Eizerman asked in astonishment.
“What do you know about that life when you’ve never been there?” cried Uler. “Just imagine: an enormous synagogue, long tables, nighttime. Thirty to forty students sitting at a table, rocking back and forth, loudly chanting from the Talmud. There’s a continuous drone in the synagogue. It seems that all those cries fly straight up to heaven and you’ll be carried along with them. . . . It’s a completely different world, a different life, and different sensations . . . There was nothing to eat, but we managed to live! I remember after a particularly hungry day, you receive a few half-kopeck pieces. You buy a crust of bread. You know—hard, dry crust, with grains. You eat it and it crunches in your teeth. What a heavenly taste! It’s better than any pork! At times, so help me God, I’d give anything to relive even one day there, as I used to. . . . Eh! You could never understand!”
He broke off again, stood up, looked around, and said hurriedly and coldly, “Well, enough foolish chatter. Let’s go. We’ll drop by the synagogue and then go to the Ore Miklet.”
1. (LK) “Love that does not depend on a thing.” The source is not the Song of Songs, but Pirkei Avot (Sayings of the Fathers), part of the Mishnah that contains wise sayings of Jewish elders. The full proverb is “All love that depends on a thing—when the thing vanishes, love vanishes. Love that does not depend on a thing—never ever vanishes.”
2. The Russian papirosa is composed of a hollow cardboard tube extended by a thin paper tube with tobacco. Observant Jews are prohibited from smoking on the Sabbath (Saturday).