Only Yesterday (25 page)
The train jolted and moved. Those who had taken a seat sat as if they were afraid the seat would be taken out from under them. Those who didn’t find a seat wandered around with expressions of rage and expressions of pleading. When all the passengers found themselves a seat and arranged their belongings, they started introducing one another and started talking, about Hakham Bashi, about whom a quarrel was still going on, and about the other kinds of quarrels that were increasing. Finally, they dropped general issues and talked about their own issues, finally they talked about the committee of all communities and the Distribution of charity, which involves both matters of the community and matters of the individual.
Isaac sat in a seat somewhere. Sometimes it seemed to him that he was still walking next to Sonya and sometimes it seemed to him that he was wandering and didn’t know why he was wandering or why he was going. He raised his head and looked around. All the people were strangers to him, and even he was like a stranger to himself. He recalled the day when he accompanied his friend Rabinovitch and compared Rabinovitch’s leaving with his own. How did it happen, Yedidya Rabinovitch traveled Outside the Land and he accompanied him and found Sonya. As he was comparing and thinking, he took out the chocolate Sonya had given him and broke off a piece. He saw a child looking at him and gave him the piece. The child’s father jumped up, snatched it out of the child’s hand, threw it out the window, and scolded the child’s mother, shouting, Cow, where are your eyes, don’t you see what he’s giving the child? Isaac’s neighbors sensed the insult and wanted to get him away from that foolish Hasid who didn’t know that Chikilld is kosher. As they talked, Isaac asked them about lodgings. They began discussing which lodging is good, Tallisman’s or Rabinovitch’s. And if it’s Rabinovitch’s, is it Rabinovitch from Warsaw or Rabinovitch from Grodno? And since they mentioned the two Rabinovitches, they started talking about them, that if one of them
moves, his competitor immediately rents himself a house across the way for his own hotel.
And when they mentioned the hotel, they mentioned the early days when there wasn’t a hotel in all Jerusalem. Some mentioned it as a defect, some mentioned it in praise, for since Jews were fond of the commandment to offer hospitality, it didn’t occur to a Jew to make a living out of it, but anyone who saw a guest, rich or poor, would bring him into his home and feed him and serve him beverages and offer him a bed and take care of him, for free, better than all hotel owners take care of their guests, for even a wink of their eye is for money.
Why did they mention Rabinovitch here, Isaac asked himself. And if chocolate is kosher, why did that Hasid throw it away? They’re advising me to stay at Rabinovitch’s, and so I’ll stay at Rabinovitch’s. Isaac raised his eyes to ask which Rabinovitch they advised him to go to. A man noticed him and gestured to him, as he would gesture to his comrade to listen to what people are saying.
The passengers sat and recalled the early days and all the good qualities the Children of Israel could boast of. On the train there was a scholar, one of the great scholars of Jerusalem. He said to his comrades, I hear that you’re talking about hotels. Well, then, I shall tell you what happened to me on that subject. Once I went to collect money for the Etz Hayim Yeshiva fund and came to Rishon LeTsion. My comrade, Rabbi Hayim Dov, found me and said to me, What are you doing here? I told him. And you, what are you doing here? He told me, I was appointed ritual slaughterer here. I asked him, How is your livelihood? He told me, Thank God, I get a little livelihood from my craft, and what it doesn’t give me is given by another livelihood. What? He said to me, I opened a kind of guest hos-tel they call a hotel, and I ask you to stay with me. You know that my house, Bless God, is absolutely strictly kosher. He immediately picked up my belongings and brought me to his house and set be-fore me a table filled with all kinds of delicacies and offered me a clean bed and took such good care of me. Three days later when it came time to go, I wanted to pay him. He smiled at me and said, What’s that, am I a hotelkeeper to take money? I knew you needed lodgings and so I gave you lodgings.
Isaac sat and rubbed the little finger of his left hand with the index finger of his right hand. Well, thought Isaac to himself, well, I’m going to Jerusalem. At any rate, I have to admit that Sonya treated me nicely, and even gave me food for the trip. But if she hadn’t given me chocolate, I wouldn’t have been shamed. And so in an hour I’ll come to Jerusalem because I am riding on a train to Jerusalem, and that’s something I know even though I never studied logic.
The train jerked slowly as it was wont to do. It made a short stop here and a short stop there until at sundown it arrived in Jerusalem. Everyone took his belongings and leaped over his companion and didn’t see him. Isaac remained alone in the railroad station and didn’t know where to go, like most people who come to a new place. A carter came and took his belongings. Isaac trudged along behind him and got into the cart.
Jerusalem
Outskirts of the City
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The cart is traveling between cliffs and rocks, hills and peaks. Some wear faces of wrath, some of menace, and all of them erupt like lit-tle volcanoes rolling down onto the crushed earth at their feet, and the crushed earth writhes like a snake twining around the cart and twisting its chains around it. Before the earth can swallow it up, the horses are pulling the cart out and the earth is dropping off in chunks and clods, limb after limb.
The carter looked back. He saw a group of people walking up the hills, groaning from the hardships of the road. He slowed his horses, held up a few fingers, and said, For so many pennies I’ll take you to the city. But those misers were more fond of money than of their bodies, they passed up the ride and chose to go by foot. The carter growled at himself for wanting to help those ingrates who, for three or four cents fare, would linger on the road and would miss the evening prayers. He waved his whip and cracked it in the air. The horses picked up their feet and raised dust until they were covered with it and so was everyone walking on two legs with his belongings in his hands. The cart went on again, ascended mountains, descended to valleys.
A wind came and started blowing. It shook the dust and flapped at the rocks. The air began to change, and a still small voice was heard like the voice of wailing in the mountains. Suddenly a sad stillness enveloped Isaac’s heart, as if they came to bring him tidings and he didn’t know if those tidings were for good or for bad. And because the measure of goodness is greater than the measure of calamity, he looked forward to the good; and because his heart was
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slack, he feared that it wasn’t good. The carter turned the horses and led them gently, and he whispered a melody of prayer.
Isaac looked before him and his heart began pounding, as a man’s heart pounds when he approaches the place of his desire. And because he was somewhat consoled by the voice of the old man sitting and singing melodies of prayer, he removed the gloom from his heart. Before him, the wall of Jerusalem suddenly appeared, woven into a red fire, plaited with gold, surrounded by gray clouds blended with blue clouds, which incise and engrave it with shapes of spun gold, choice silver, burnished brass, and purple tin. Isaac rose up and wanted to say something. But his tongue was hushed in his mouth as in a mute song. He sat down as if carried away by a sitting dance.
The carter asked Isaac, Where do you want me to take you? Isaac pointed toward the wall of Jerusalem. Said the carter, The Old City you want? Isaac shook himself and said, Take me to Rabinovitch’s inn. Said the carter, You point to the wall but you want to go outside the wall. Which Rabinovitch do you want? The one from Grodno or the one from Warsaw? Said Isaac, Which one do you ad-vise me to go to? Said the carter, If it’s my advice you’re asking, don’t go to either one of them, but go to Shoel Hershel Tefillinski. Said Isaac, Well, then, take me to Tefillinski. Said the carter, You changed your mind, young man? Didn’t you first want me to take you to Rabinovitch? Which Rabinovitch do you want? Said Isaac, I forgot which one they told me. Take me to Tefillinski.
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Tefillinski’s hotel stands on a steep hill, half of it is hewn in the rock and half seems steeped in a dungheap. You ascend to the rock side on crooked steps and come to a hall three times longer than it is wide and that has rooms on both sides, like the houses of rich Arabs who marry many wives and make a section for every wife. How many years and how many cycles and how many jubilees has this place stood within the desert of Jerusalem entangled with the fearsome rocks and stumbling blocks and hurdles, and putting forth thorns and briars, and no one paid any heed to it. When the Jews started building themselves houses, the Arab who owned those grounds went and built
himself a house in the middle of his field and lived joyfully with his wives and concubines. Until the envoys of the Angel of Death came, who grow entwined in every person against his own good, especially in old men in the hour of their enjoyment. And when he saw that there was no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Angel of Death, he took his wives and his concubines and returned to the home of his forefathers inside the walls of the Old City, to give back his soul in the place where he had received it. When he was dead, his sons came and rented the house to Jews and Shoel Hirshl Tefillinski came and rented it and made it an inn.
Shoel Hirshl is an innkeeper who knows how to treat guests, for he was trained from birth for this metier. In Heder, and afterward in Yeshiva, when tourists came to see the institutions of learning, and the students pretended they didn’t see them and swayed over their books so the tourists would see that they were diligently studying Torah, he clung to the guests and told them things they liked to hear. He did the same at the Western Wall and every place tourists come. When he grew up and got married, he put the dowry in Yeshiva bonds. But a curse befell the bonds and he was left without a cent. He accepted God’s judgment and didn’t quarrel with the treasurers of the Yeshiva, but on the contrary he defended them, and silenced his comrades who were in the same predicament, saying it was out of love of Torah that the treasurers did what they did, that they wanted to increase the money of the Yeshiva students so they would study Torah in wealth. And if they erred and lost all the money, it was proper to grieve for them and not to cause them grief. Later on, he went to the treasurers of the Yeshiva to consult with them about an inn he wanted to establish. They encouraged him and gave him an apartment of a Society. He expanded the place but the place wasn’t enough for him. Then he went and rented that Arab’s house and made himself a big inn.
Shoel Hirshl walks around among his rooms with a smooth charm on his lips, not a charm to deceive folks, but one that comes from a happy mind and generous eyes. He tries to help every single guest, both for his good and his pleasure, either with a sharp rumor or with a wise saying from the Torah. He shares a hot drink with this
one and a cold drink with that one, with this one a drop of brandy, with that one a pipe, and he behaves like one of the guests, whether he likes them or not, just so they like him. And his wife helps him in her own way. She stands in the kitchen between four kerosene Primus stoves and does the cooking. And a little orphan girl helps her, brings up water from the cistern and coal from the cellar, peels vegetables and plucks chickens, washes the floor and lights the stove with the big kettle for the tea drinkers, and does all the other things that have to be done in an inn, for her forefathers, who came to set-tle in the lands of the living, died before their time and left her in the hotel and didn’t leave her anything but the mercy of Heaven. Shoel Hirshl added his mercy to the mercy of the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He and gave her lodging in his house until Heaven would have mercy on her and she wouldn’t need the mercy of folks, whose mercy is greater for themselves than for their fellow men. And since she is small and can’t do everything an inn needs, Shoel Hirshl brought Manoah Shtapaneshti, who shortened his name and calls himself Noah, to help her a little in the inn.
Noah, that is Manoah, was born in a ship on the way to the Land of Israel, when his father and mother ascended with some Romanian refugees who had bought themselves a field in the Land of Israel, where Zikhron Ya’akov was later built. While they were still on the ship on the high seas, it was decreed that Romanian exiles were not allowed to set foot in the Land. They wandered around the sea for a month, two months, three months. Whenever they came ashore, they were returned to the ship, and when they returned to the ship, they were returned to shore. They wandered from one port to another and were not allowed to land. At last, with bribes and pleas and interventions and supplications and temptations, they were allowed to enter the Land. They ascended to their soil, an earth filled with boulders and rocks and cliffs with no paths and no roads, far away from any settlement. They were robbed by robbers and slandered by slanderers and everything they had left was taken and they were left with nothing but the bones in their skin. They sat among the mountains with no food and no livelihood. Things reached such a pass that on the eve of Shavuoth, the holiday of the giving of the