MIRKIN WOKE UP the next morning feeling dejected—and he decided at once that the reason for his bad mood, his quarrel with Shifrin, portended unfortunate consequences. Shifrin was the only person who at critical moments could obtain large sums of money, that is, five or even ten rubles, for urgent or chronic needs. Now this source had dried up, and it was precisely at such a moment when it was necessary to pay the metalworker and when other needs were anticipated. . . . Mirkin was tormented by the idea that he had no right to quarrel with Shifrin. Why had he become so angry with him? In essence, much of what Shifrin had said was actually true. . . . “Some people are terribly harsh to others,” he thought with caustic irony, reflecting on his own behavior.
First he set off for the synagogue and asked one of the yeshiva students to divide four rubles and fifty kopecks between two young men who’d left the yeshiva to prepare for the gymnasium and who were now living somewhere outside town, all alone. The remaining four rubles he brought to the Ore Miklet to support those living there for the next month. Meanwhile everyone was gathered there and only waiting for Mirkin to bring the principal “token of betrothal,” the silver coin.
At about 2:00 PM the conspirators set off for Beryashev’s shop. Uler walked ahead, on reconnaissance. The rest—Mirkin, Faevich, Tsiporin, and Kornblat—ducked into the municipal garden nearby. They were all in an elated mood.
“How did you decide to forsake your textbooks for a few hours?” Mirkin addressed Kornblat, half-joking.
“Never mind, I’ll make up for it!” Kornblat replied cheerfully with a sly look, as if he’d cleverly managed to fool someone. “I’ve decided to forgo sleep tonight, so I’ll save a few hours.”
Uler came running up, gasping for breath.
“Come on, hurry up, let’s go!” he hastened his comrades. “She’s just entered the shop with her mother. . . . Her father’s there, too!”
“Let’s go!” Faevich commanded.
“Wait!” Uler stopped him. “You’re the bridegroom; we have to bless you!”
Extending his hand over Faevich’s head, he pronounced in a voice of prayer, “May the Lord God of Abraham . . . Michailishker,1 bless you, and of Isaac . . . Lebensohn,2 and of Jacob . . . Reifmann,3 of Moses . . . of Dessau,4 of Aaron . . . Shatzkes. . . .”5
“Enough! Enough! We have no time!” Mirkin interrupted him. “Let’s go! And remember: Kornblat and Tsiporin go in first and then, a minute later, after they’ve been shown the goods, Faevich, you go in. . . . Go on, now! We’ll wait for you here. . . .”
When Kornblat and Tsiporin entered the shop, there were no other customers present. Old woman Beryasheva stood behind the counter, folding pieces of cotton fabric. Sonya stood idle next to her. Old man Beryashev sat on the side with an old Jew who was speaking in a low voice, but with passion, trying to convince his neighbor of something or other, hastily turning down the fingers of his left hand with his right, finger by finger. Beryashev listened to him in silence, frowning, distrustful, stroking his coarse beard streaked with gray.
Kornblat and Tsiporin boldly strode into the shop; without even glancing at Sonya, who’d turned pale at the sight of them and who even took one step back, they approached the counter and addressed her mother.
“Show us some linen for shirts,” requested Kornblat.
The old woman took a piece of linen from the shelf and began unfolding it.
Old man Beryashev cast a fleeting look at the young men. He rarely saw such customers in his shop. It was usually women who come in to buy linen. What sort of strange lads were these, ragged fellows, wearing short jackets? “They must be from ‘that’ group,” the thought flashed through his mind, and he glanced instinctively at Sonya, who stood behind the counter, pallid and confused. Vague anxiety seized the old man. He wrinkled up his forehead and, though still listening to his neighbor with one ear, began to follow the moves of these suspicious customers very carefully.
At that moment Faevich came in, holding the silver twenty-kopeck piece firmly in his hand. He entered hastily, walked directly up to Sonya, and announced in a somewhat shaky voice, too loud and too quickly, as if rattling off a phrase he’d memorized, “Show me a scarf, a warm one, of good quality, not too expensive!”
“What sort of . . . scarf?” Sonya asked him, now totally distraught. Stuttering, she added quickly, “Right away! I’ll show you one immediately!”
She began pulling a bundle of scarves down from the shelf.
The appearance of the third young man resembling the first two convinced the old man beyond a shadow of a doubt that something shady was afoot. He cast an inquisitive glance at Faevich, whose appearance seemed somehow familiar. Suddenly he recalled that he’d seen that young man’s face in the company of the principal culprit of all Sonya’s foolishness—Mirkin. The old man shuddered at this discovery. “What do they want?” This question flashed through his mind—and the answer followed instantly: “To betroth her!”
Beryashev swiftly and powerfully lowered his hand to his neighbor’s knee, thus urging him to fall silent. That man immediately stopped talking and glanced around in astonishment, not understanding anything. Then Beryashev stood up and walked behind the counter. He cast a razor-sharp, probing look at Faevich and asked harshly, “What kind of scarves do you need, young man?”
“I can . . . show them . . . to him,” Sonya muttered in a lowered, trembling voice.
“Go over there!” her father commanded her. He pushed her powerfully, almost shoving her away into a small room behind the counter. “I’ll deal with this customer myself!”
Casting an inquisitorial glance at Faevich, he repeated maliciously, “So, you need a scarf, eh?”
“Yes!” Faevich replied with the boldness of despair. “Better than this one!” he added, examining the scarf that Sonya had shown him.
Seeing that all was lost, Kornblat and Tsiporin began looking for an easy means of retreat.
“No, no! Not that kind of linen!” Kornblat said hurriedly. “We need a . . . a different one, a very different sort of linen. . . . Linen . . . with polka dots, with black polka dots!” he added with deep embarrassment.
“Linen with . . . polka dots?” Sonya’s mother asked in surprise. “Perhaps you’re thinking of chintz. . . .”
“Oh, no! You don’t know! You don’t have anything like that! Let’s go!” He left speedily, together with Tsiporin.
“Maybe you need a scarf with black polka dots, too? Huh?” Beryashev asked in a threatening tone and stood up straight.
“Go to hell, you old fool!” Faevich shouted at him with fury and rushed out of the shop.
“Ah, you apostate!!!” cried Beryashev in a rage, advancing as if to chase Faevich, but not going any further than the threshold of his shop.
The distraught conspirators, flushed from shame and anguish, gathered in the garden.
“Well? So? Should I congratulate you?” Uler rushed to meet them.
“We made a mess of it!!” Faevich and Kornblat shouted in despair. “The old buzzard guessed what we were up to!”
1. After his marriage, Abraham Lebensohn spent eight years with his wife’s parents in Michailishok. This gave him the surname “Michailishker.” What follows is a parody on the traditional Jewish blessing, calling on the patriarchs.
2. Micah Joseph Lebensohn (1828–52), son of Abraham Lebensohn; a Russian Hebrew poet and translator.
3. Jacob Reifmann (1818–95), a Russian author and philosopher.
4. Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86), a German-Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the Haskalah was indebted.
5. Moses Aaron Shatzkes (1825–99), a Russian Hebrew author.