Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance (15 page)

It was only at that instant that she began to see the light—to understand the secret—on the moment when Stempenyu and his orchestra were close beside her window, almost at the door of her house. Stempenyu came forward, and began to play a solo with much vivacity and spirit. Then it was that Rochalle understood everything—why he had dragged all the wedding guests, as well as the orchestra around the village, a dozen streets away from their destination. And, for whom had he done this bold thing? She felt that he was paying her a high compliment, and her heart was filled with pleasurable sensations. It leaped up within her so that she thought it would fly out of her bosom altogether. She never thought for a moment that he was compromising her. She was only glad of that compliment that he was paying her. Unconsciously, unwittingly, she began to laugh softly within herself—a joyous, mirthful laugh that betokened her deep sense of pleasure and satisfaction. But, she was startled at the sound of her own voice. She was wide awake now, and saw herself as she was, standing in the window, in the scantest attire, her head thrust forward and her hair flying loose about her shoulders. She darted from the window, and jumped back into bed. “Ah, woe is me! Ah, woe is me!” she murmured. “See to what a pass
one can come if one does not consider beforehand what one is about, and where one is in the world. There was I, in the window, at dead of night, only half-dressed, a crowd of men around me, and my mind completely filled with foolish, empty nonsense. More than that! I carry about in my heart the most sinful thoughts, and am filled with pictures, not of my husband, but of Stempenyu. And Stempenyu? He has a cheek to drag a crowd of Jews over the half the village for nothing. One must have a fine set of nerves that permit one to do such a thing. Where did he get the idea? I must ask him. And, I must make an end to this sort of thing, once and for always. He wants to bring about my ruin. I will talk the whole business over with him, and tell him exactly what I think of him. What is it that they say about the first quarrel being better than—something or another—I forget what. He tells me a whole yarn about love. Rubbish! It’s a good joke, as I live! ‘Next Saturday evening,’ he says, ‘on the Monastery Road, there he will explain everything to me.’ I wish the Sabbath would come quicker, so that I might not be kept long waiting to tell him what I think of him. And, at the same time, to hear what he has to say. I will surely go. What have I to be afraid of? Whom do I care about? One has no right to be afraid of any person—of anyone but the Lord himself.

“Stempenyu is a nuisance; but, I will make an end of everything. It’s not for nothing that there are so many stories told about him. But, what has it to do with me? Why should I waste my young years bothering about him? And, who is to blame for everything if not I myself? One must never permit the least liberty. If Moshe-Mendel were here, he would have told Stempenyu a
thing or two. But, where is he? A lot he cares what happens to me! What is it to him that I am annoyed, in pain almost? Ah, but what good is all this? I had better say my night’s prayer. It is wrong to fall asleep without saying it:

“ ‘For Thy Salvation have I hoped, O Lord! I have hoped, O Lord, for Thy Salvation! O Lord, for Thy Salvation have I hoped!’ ”

Rochalle buried her head in the pillows, and drew up the cover as high as possible, so that she might not hear the playing of the orchestra. And, she repeated aloud: “For Thy Salvation have I hoped, O Lord!”

But, through the open window stole the sweet strains of Stempeyu’s fiddle—the strains that were growing softer and fainter and more remote. And, again Rochalle repeated the lines from the night prayer:

“For Thy Salvation have I hoped, O Lord! I have hoped, O Lord, for Thy Salvation! O Lord, for Thy Salvation have I hoped!”

And, Stempenyu’s fiddle sounded still further off, until its tones were barely audible. At last they died away altogether.… Gradually Rochalle’s eyes were closing in sleep. Her lips hardly moved. The whispered lines were dying into a faint blue murmur: “For Thy Salvation.… For Thy Salvation.…”

And, Rochalle was fast asleep.

Rochalle fell asleep, and dreamt that Stempenyu was fastening a row of corals around her neck. On one side of her stood her father-in-law, wearing his phylacteries and praying shawl; and, Freidel was beating him, was smacking his face for him, as furiously as she could. Moshe-Mendel was dead drunk, and was riding on a pony, and making it perform all sorts of tricks, while Stempenyu
was still hanging the corals around her neck. On the other side of her stood Chaya-Ettel, dressed in her Sabbath clothes. She was covered with the most beautiful jewels, like a “Queen’s Daughter,” and she was smiling pleasantly and kindly, as she went on lighting a number of candles one after the other.

“What are you doing, Chaya-Ettel?” asked Rochalle. ‘Why are you lighting so many candles?”

“What a question!” answered Chaya-Ettel, with a little laugh. “Isn’t it the Sabbath eve, and quite time to light the Sabbath candles?”

Rochalle looked at the candles. How brightly and clearly they were burning. And all the time Stempenyu was still hanging the corals around her neck. He was standing so close to her that she could hear his breath coming and going. He was staring straight into her eyes. And, again his glances seemed to warm her through and through. She was delighted with herself. She laughed joyously and sang. And Stempenyu was still hanging the corals about her neck.

Suddenly the lights were extinguished, and all those who had stood around her had disappeared. It grew pitch dark and very cold, as in a cellar or in a grave. The wind blew and whistled, and there arose a sad and mournful sound—a wailing chant. The sound of a fiddle was also to be heard—the familiar sounds played on Stempenyu’s fiddle. Stempenyu himself was gone, but his fiddle was still to be heard. And, it was terribly sad and lonely. It was like the sound of someone weeping.… It was Chaya Ettel weeping for her lost youth, for the days which had fled from her as if they were no more than a dream. She was weeping, too, after her lover, Benjamin, who had
given her up for another woman—who had forgotten all the vows he had made to love her forever. He had forgotten her completely.

“Oh, mother!” cried Rochalle, wakening up with a start. But, in the next moment she had turned over on her side and was fast asleep again, only to continue the dream which had visited her before. The whole night she was completely entangled in her dreams, in which Stempenyu was always standing near her and trying to hang around her neck the inevitable row of corals. And, yet again Chaya-Ettel came forward, carrying the black candles and weeping and moaning, and sobbing and repeating from the prayer-book the words: “Almighty Father in Heaven! All-Powerful Creator! Lord of all Flesh! King of all kings, who from everlasting until everlasting art the One God! Let my prayers be acceptable unto Thee! Let the petition of my heart find favour in Thy eyes. Let the prayers of the upright be heard, and their petitions fulfilled! Behold! They prostrate themselves before Thy footstool! They beseech of Thee Thy mercy for all created beings as well as for themselves. They seek of Thee forgiveness; for, everything that is upon the earth is full of sin!”

Chaya-Ettel was repeating the words aloud, and weeping and moaning in the most pitiful accents, between each word.…

A little later, and she was gone.

In the village of Tasapevka there was a monastery. It had been built, according to legend, by the national here, Mazeppa. A high, white stone wall encircled the monastery on all sides. And, the ground that the monastery and its garden covered was equal in size to about three-fourths of the area of the village itself. Facing one wall were the shops and the warehouses of the village. At another wall were built a number of underground passages and cellars in which had hidden long ago a whole army of Haidemaks; but, now they were used for storing away apples and other thing which need to be kept in a cold place. The third wall was covered with thorns and briars, and was overhung with poplars and other trees which grew in the monastery garden, on the other side of the wall. The fourth wall was bare and smooth. In several places there were holes, where the
mortar had fallen out from between the bricks, loosening them. The wall had cried out for repairs years ago, but had been neglected. And, opposite this wall, with only the roadway intervening, there stood a group of houses and wooden
isbas
, farmsteads and villas, occupied by Jews as well as Christians, in about equal proportions. The little road upon which the houses stood, and which was bounded by the dead wall of the monastery, was called the Monastery Road. And, there at the corner of the road, where the first clump of trees overhung the wall, there took place the first meeting between Rochalle and Stempenyu.

The reader, who has probably been accustomed to highly interesting romances, has surely been tortured enough in reading this romance down to this particular point in the narrative, for it contains neither stirring scenes nor extraordinary happenings. No one was shot, and no one was poisoned. And neither dukes nor earls have come upon the stage, so to speak. All the characters are the most ordinary, commonplace folks of everyday life—commonplace men, ordinary musicians, and plain women of rather course grain. And, the reader is probably waiting for the Sabbath evening to come round, when will be enacted the great melodramatic scene—the romantic meeting between the hero and the heroine on the Monastery Road. But, I must say in advance that the expectation is in vain. There took place no melodramatic scene; because Rochalle did not come here after the fashion of an abandoned woman—not at all like one of those wicked women of highly spiced romances who runs to kiss her lover in secret in every dark corner. No such thing! Rochalle only wanted to see Stempenyu in order
to ask him how he—a mere musician—had the audacity to write her such a letter? How he dared to forget for a moment that she was the daughter-in-law of Isaac-Naphtali, and the wife of Moshe-Mendel?

“I must prevent the like from ever happening again,” she said to herself. “I will tell him what I think of him once and for all. How does the saying go, ‘Better the first tiff than the last quarrel!’ ”

That thought did not come to her suddenly. Rochalle had time all the week, and especially on the Sabbath day, to think of everything. And oh, what she had suffered on that last day! What a terrible struggle she had had with the Spirit of Evil—with temptation. No, the name of the Spirit of Evil hardly fits in here. How could it come near her—near such a good woman, a pure and virtuous woman? How could she be connected with such a fearful person as the Spirit of Evil? How could he come near to a woman like Rochalle who had never read a romance in her life, and who knew nothing at all about love affairs, excepting the one story of Chaya-Ettel—peace be unto her! How could she come to be struggling with the Evil One? Love? Nonsense! If she were not married it might have been different. She would then have been, as they say, a free bird, her head unadorned with the matron’s cap—an individual for herself. But, a married woman—and a pious woman into the bargain, of good family, full of pride—she herself stood in the way of doing what was wrong. Her own conscience was aflame with righteous indignation. She thought that she had already committed a great wrong, and felt that she could never again lift her head for shame. She wandered about the house, finding no place for herself. Now she lay down on her bed, and
again she rushed out in the open air; for it seemed to her as if she were choking—as if she could not draw her breath. And, then she was overcome with a curious feeling, as if her soul could not hold itself within her, but was trying to make its escape out into the broad world. In distraction, she betook herself to the Bible. She opened the book at random, and her eyes fell upon the following passage:

“And Dinah the daughter of Leah,… went out to see the daughters of the land.

“And when Shechem the son of Hamor saw her … he took her.” And, the commentary added, “Shechem persuaded her.”

Rochalle went on reading from the Bible which Dvossa-Malka had given her for a present before she was married. She forgot, by degrees, that she was reading. Her imagination took hold of the story, and her thoughts wandered off, carrying her away towards Stempenyu, to the Monastery Road, under the beech trees, where he promised to wait for her.… He was surely waiting there.

No sooner did Stempenyu come into her mind than she felt drawn towards him, as if he were a magnet and influenced her movements. She did not understand her own heart, and her own weakness.

“I should like to ask him only this,” she repeated a dozen times, for her own personal satisfaction. “I should like to know what I am to him that he should bother me in this way. What does he want of me?”

And, again Rochalle remembered her comrade, Chaya-Ettel—peace be unto her! And all that she had suffered through the falseness of Benjamin.…

But, Benjamin had been Chaya-Ettel’s own cousin
and foster-brother; and, at the time when she fell in love with Benjamin, she was not married, neither was he. Whilst she, Rochalle, was another man’s wife when Stempenyu came into the road; and, he too was married. Oh, how terrible it was to knock up against such hard facts as these! She shuddered at the thought of them.

And he, Stempenyu? He was no more than a wandering musician. Why did he get in her way? What was he to her that he should write her letters? Surely, he had no right whatever to do any such thing. The cheek of him—the cheek of that good-for-nothing!

“If the world were to turn upside down,” she said to herself repeatedly, “if the world were to turn itself upside down, I must see him, and must tell him what I think of him. Why should I be afraid of him? I will see him—I will see him without fail. No one will see me. I will steal out for a minute. It is not far. It is only over the road. I shall be home again before they miss me.”

And, Rochalle looked through the open window, on the Monastery Road, and saw the trees—the tall beeches and poplars as they stood erect in all their pride and glory. And, she heard the songs of the birds that had their nests in the branches. How beautifully they sang from out the garden! Rochalle’s fanciful thoughts, her fantasies, went out yonder, where, in an hour, or perhaps less she would talk to Stempenyu and see him, eye to eye. And, she felt her heart beating wildly within her. She was breathing heavily, as if a great struggle were going on within her. And, the truth—the truth must be told—was that the minutes were terribly long to her. She could hardly contain herself. She wished that it were evening already. She counted the minutes until her
father-in-law and her husband came back from the evening prayer at the synagogue, and when her mother-in-law would change her Sabbath dress for her everyday one, and begin to fuss around the
somovar
, and heat the oven, to make the great Saturday night supper, at which there were always a houseful of visitors. Then would come the moment when she, Rochalle, would throw a shawl about her shoulders and steal out, quietly, through the door, and into the street, as if she were going for a walk. Who would notice that she was going to—? Where? Her limbs trembled and her cheeks were aflame. And her heart? Oh, her heart was almost throbbing out of her body. As the minutes went by, she felt herself being drawn more and more to the spot where Stempenyu was waiting for her, until she could think of no one and nothing else.