My Family Is Driven into Poverty, and an Old Servant’s Great Loyalty Costs Him a Christian Burial
AS I’VE SAID, MY FATHER USED to go on trading trips to Königsberg in Prussia. During one such trip, he bought several barrels of salt and herring, which he had loaded onto a ship that Prince Radziwil owned. When, upon his return, he went to pick up his goods, a customs official named Schachna flatly refused to allow it. My father’s response was to show him the receipt for the goods. But the official just snatched the receipt and threw it into the fire.
My father was now forced to initiate what would be long and costly legal proceedings, which in fact he had to postpone for a year. The next time he traveled to Königsberg, he obtained a receipt from the toll bureau documenting that, [52] under Schachna’s supervision, the goods in question had been loaded onto Prince Radziwil’s ship. On the basis of this receipt, the official was summoned to appear before court. He decided, however, that it would be best not to try to defend himself, and my father won the case on the first, second, and third levels of judicial authority. But the Polish justice system was in such bad shape then that my father had no way to enforce the verdicts. He was never even reimbursed for the costs of the trial he had won.
Moreover, my father had made an enemy of Mr. Schachna, who now tried to undermine him in all sorts of ways. And things very went well for Schachna in this. Through various kinds of intrigue, that cunning scoundrel managed to get himself appointed by the prince to be the chief administrator of all the prince’s estates. Having resolved to ruin my father, he waited for the right moment to exact his revenge.
He did not have to wait long. Indeed, a certain Jew who went by the name of the land he leased, Schwersen, and who was known as the greatest [53] villain in the region, soon offered him a helping hand. This Schwersen was a great ignoramus. He couldn’t even understand Yiddish and hence resorted to using Russian. His primary way of doing business was to look around the area for the most profitable leases, and then to acquire these leases by outbidding the leaseholders and bribing the estate administrators. Ignoring the chasaka laws, he drove away the legitimate leaseholders and thereby increased his wealth. He was prosperous and happy, and in that state he reached an old age.
Having long had his eye on my grandfather’s lease, this villain had been waiting for the chance to make it his own. Unfortunately for us, my granduncle Jacob, who lived in another of the villages included in grandfather’s lease, had been forced to go into debt to the very same miscreant. When my great uncle was unable pay off his debt—about fifty-six dollars—by the deadline, Schwersen wasted no time in confronting him. Schwersen brought some servants [54] along and threatened to take my great uncle’s cauldron, his sole possession of value. Utterly overwhelmed, my great uncle snuck the cauldron onto a wagon, drove it as fast as he could to my grandfather’s house, and, unbeknownst to any of us, hid it in the bog closest to the back of the house. His creditor, who had followed him on foot, soon arrived at my grandfather’s residence. He had the whole area thoroughly searched but couldn’t find the cauldron. Seething over his failed ploy, and hungry for revenge against my grandfather, who, he believed, had thwarted his efforts, Schwersen rode to town. He took along a handsome gift for the estate administrator, and he offered him twice as much lease-money as my grandfather had been paying as well as an annual gift.
The administrator was pleased to have such an offer, and remembering the insult that my father, a Jew, had dealt him, a Polish nobleman, through the above-mentioned lawsuit, he [55] wrote out a new contract for the odious man on the spot. He not only transferred the lease, along with all its attendant rights, before my grandfather’s lease time had ended, he also robbed my grandfather of all his property: barns full of grain, cattle, etc. He then split the booty with the new leaseholder.
In the middle of winter, my grandfather had to leave his home with his whole family and wander from place to place without knowing where he should try to settle. Our departure was a tragic affair. The whole neighborhood lamented our fate.
A loyal eighty-year-old servant named Gabriel, who had held my grandfather in his arms when my grandfather was a child, insisted on coming with us. He was warned about the harshness of the season, our present misfortunes, and our uncertain future. But nothing made a difference. He lay down in front of the gate through which our wagons had to pass and wailed for so [56] long that we felt compelled to bring him along. He did not travel far with us, however. His advanced age, the worry caused by our misery, and the brutal weather soon dealt him the final blow. He died, and since we had hardly covered more than a few miles, and no Catholic or Russian congregation would consent to give him a churchyard burial (he was Prussian and a Protestant), he was buried in an open field at our expense. [57]