Life as a Tutor
MY FIRST JOB AS A FAMILY TUTOR was an hour away from where I was living at the time. I worked for the miserable leaseholder I., in the even more miserable town of P., for a salary of five Polish thalers. The poverty and ignorance of the population were indescribable, as was the crudeness of its lifestyle. The leaseholder was a man of about fifty, whose whole face was grown over with hair ending in a thick, dirty, coal-black beard. His speech was a kind of muttering, comprehensible only to the peasants with whom he had dealings every day. He not only spoke no Hebrew, but also not a word of Yiddish; he could only speak a Russian dialect, the common language of peasants in the region. Add to this scene [199] a wife and child cut from the same cloth and also his home, which was a sooty shack, blackened inside and out, with no chimney. Instead there was just a small opening in the ceiling that served as a smoke vent. The hole was carefully closed as soon as the fire was extinguished, so that the heat wouldn’t escape.
The windows were narrow strips of pinewood laid over each other crosswise and covered with paper. The dwelling had one space: living room, drinking room, dining room, study, and bedroom all in one. Imagine, as well, that it was kept very hot, and that the wind and the dampness—ever-present in winter—would send the smoke back into the room, filling it with fumes to the point of asphyxiation. Blackened laundry and various filthy articles of clothing are hanging from rods placed along the length of the room, so that the vermin suffocate from all the smoke. Over here sausages have been strung up to dry, their fat steadily dripping down onto people’s heads. Over there are tubs of bitter cabbage and red beets (the staple of the Lithuanian diet). In a corner, [200] the jugs filled with drinking water stand next to the dirty water. Dough is being kneaded, the cooking and baking are being done, the cow being milked, etc.
In this splendid dwelling, peasants would sit on the bare floor—you wouldn’t want to sit any higher if you didn’t want to suffocate—and drink brandy and make a racket, while the people doing housework would sit in a corner. I would sit behind the oven with my dirty, half-naked students, translating an old and tattered Hebrew Bible into Russian-Jewish dialect. Taken together, they made up the most magnificent group in the world. It deserved to be drawn by a Hogarth, sung by a Buttler.1
My readers can easily imagine how terrible this place was for me. Brandy was the only means available to help me forget my troubles.2 On top of all else, the Russians—who were rampaging through Prince R.’s lands at the time with an almost unimaginable brutality—had a regiment stationed in the village and neighboring areas. The house was constantly [201] full of drunken Russians engaging in every possible act of excess. They smashed tables and benches, threw glasses and bottles at the maids’ and housekeepers’ heads, etc.
To cite a single example, a Russian was stationed as a guard in the house where I was working; he was charged with making sure that the house wasn’t plundered. One time, he came home very drunk and demanded something to eat. He was given a bowl of millet that had butter mixed into it. He pushed the bowl away and shouted: It needs more butter. A large container full of butter was brought. He shouted: Bring a second bowl of food. Another bowl was brought immediately, whereupon he dumped all the butter into the bowl and then demanded brandy. He was given a whole bottle, which he emptied into his food. Next, he called for large quantities of milk, pepper, salt, and tobacco, which he dumped in and began to devour. After he had eaten several spoonfuls, he started swinging his fists wildly. He grabbed the innkeeper’s beard and repeatedly smashed his fist into the innkeeper’s face, causing blood to gush out of [202] the man’s mouth. After that, the Russian poured his marvelous mush down the innkeeper’s throat and raged on until he was overcome by his drunkenness, at which point he collapsed to the ground in a stupor.
Such scenes were common all over Poland. Whenever the Russian army passed through a place, they took a guide, whom they kept until the next town. Instead of having the mayor or a local magistrate choose one, they tended to grab the first person they saw. Young or old, male or female, sick or healthy—it didn’t matter, since they already knew the way from their special maps and were simply looking for another chance to brutalize people. If the person they took didn’t know the right way, they wouldn’t let themselves be steered off course. But they would beat the poor guide until he or she was half dead, just for not knowing the right way! [203]
I, too, was once snatched up to be a guide. Even though I didn’t know the right way, I managed to guess what it was. Thus I arrived at the correct place feeling fortunate, having been punched and elbowed in the ribs many times, and also given the warning that if I led the soldiers off course they would skin me alive (something the Russians were capable of).
All the other jobs I had as a family tutor were more or less the same.
During one of them, a remarkable psychological event took place, with me as its protagonist. I will describe what happened when I reach the right point in my story. But an event of the same kind—which occurred at a different time, and which I merely witnessed—should be recounted here.
The tutor in the neighboring village was a sleepwalker. He rose one night and went to the churchyard with a volume of Jewish ritual laws in his hand. After spending a while there, he returned to his [204] bed. The next morning, he woke up remembering nothing about what had taken place during the night. He went over to the chest where he always kept the volume locked up, with the intention of getting out the first part, the Orach chayim(a) , which he read every morning. To his astonishment, only three of the four parts, bound as separate volumes, were there, the missing part being the Jore deah(b): All four had been locked safely in the chest.
Because he was aware of his condition, he looked for the missing part everywhere, until he finally searched the churchyard and found the Jore deah opened to the chapter Hilchot Ewelot(c). He saw this as a bad omen, and he went home deeply disquieted. When asked why, he related what had [205] happened, adding: “God only knows how my poor mother is doing!” He asked his employer for a horse and permission to ride to the next town, where his mother lived, so that he could find out how she was. To reach the town, he had to pass through the place where I was working as a tutor. When I saw him riding in a state of dismay—he wouldn’t dismount even for a short time—I asked him what was wrong. It was then that I heard the story I have just described.
I was struck not so much by the particular circumstances of the incident as by the general phenomenon of sleepwalking, which I hadn’t known about. The other tutor assured me, however, that sleepwalking is common, and that one shouldn’t necessarily attach a deeper meaning to it. Only the episode with the Jore deah, Hilchot Ewelot chapter of the Jore deah had filled him with foreboding, he said. He rode off, and when he got to his mother’s house, he found her sitting at her loom.
She asked him why he had come. He said that he [206] hadn’t seen her in a while and simply wanted to visit. After resting awhile, he rode back without incident. But he remained uneasy and could not stop thinking about the Jore deah, Hilchot Ewelot. Three days later, there was a fire in the town where his mother lived and the poor woman died in the blaze. When the sleepwalker heard about the fire, he cried out in anguish over her horrible death, then rode straight to the town to behold what he had foreseen. [160]
1 Maimon has in mind the didactic works of the great English artist William Hogarth (1697–1764) such as “The Rake’s Progress” and “The Harlot’s Progress.”
2 This may have been the beginning of Maimon’s alcoholism, a problem mentioned by his contemporaries and perhaps alluded to later in his confrontation with Mendelssohn.
a [Maimon] Orach chajim, the way of life.
b [Maimon] Jore deah, instructor of wisdom.
c [Maimon] Hilchoth Eweloth, laws of mourning.