'Guten Abend,' he said.
[316]She adjusted a pair of horn spectacles, and peered at him.
'Guten Abend,' she murmured.
'You don't remember me—Vroomkely.' He used the old childish diminutive7 of Abraham, though he had almost forgotten he owned the name in full.
'Vroomkely,' she gasped8, almost overturning her wheel as she sprang to hug him in her skinny arms. He had a painful sense that she had shrunk back almost to childish dimensions. Her hands seemed trembling as much with decay as with emotion. She hastened to produce from the well-known cupboard home-made Kuchen and other dainties of his youth, with no sense of the tragedy that lay in his no longer being tempted9 by them.
'And how goes your trade?' she said. 'They say you have never been slack. They must build many houses in Rome.' Her notion that he was a house-painter he hardly cared to contradict, especially as picture-painting was contrary to the Mosaic10 dispensation.
'Oh, I haven't been only in Rome,' he said evasively. 'I have been in many lands.'
Fire came into her eyes, and flashed through the big spectacles. 'You have been to Palestine?' she cried.
'No, only as far as Egypt. Why?'
'I thought you might have brought me a clod of Palestine earth to put in my grave.' The fire died out of her spectacles, she sighed, and took a consolatory11 pinch of snuff.
'Don't talk of graves—you will live to be a hundred and more,' he cried. But he was thinking how [317]ridiculous gossip was. It spared neither age nor sexlessness, not even this shrivelled ancient who was meditating12 on her latter end. Suddenly he became aware of a shadow darkening the doorway13. At the same instant the fire leapt back into his grandmother's glasses. Instinctively14, almost before he turned his head, he knew it was the hero of the romance.
Yossel Mandelstein looked even less of a hero than the artist had remembered. There had been something wistful and pathetic in the hunchback's expression, some hint of inner eager fire, but this—if he had not merely imagined it—seemed to have died of age and hopelessness. He used crutches16, too, to help himself along with, so that he seemed less the hunchback of yore than the conventional contortion17 of time, and but for the familiar earlocks pendent on either side of the fur cap, but for the great hooked nose and the small chin hidden in the big beard, the artist might have doubted if this was indeed the Yossel he had sometimes mocked at in the crude cruelty of boyhood.
Yossel, propped18 on his crutches, was pulling out a mouldering19 black-covered book from under his greasy20 caftan. 'I have brought you back your Chovoth Halvovoth,' he said.
In the vivid presence of the actual romance the artist could not suppress the smile he had kept back at the mere15 shadowy recital21. In Rome he himself had not infrequently called on young ladies by way of returning books to them. It was true that the books he returned were not Hebrew treatises22, but he smiled again to think that the name of Yossel's volume signified 'the duties of the heart.' The Bube Yenta [318]received the book with thanks, and a moment of embarrassment24 ensued, only slightly mitigated25 by the offer of the snuffbox. Yossel took a pinch, but his eyes seemed roving in amaze, less over the stranger than over the bespread table, as though he might unaccountably have overlooked some sacred festival. That two are company and three none seemed at this point a proverb to be heeded26, and without waiting to renew the hero's acquaintance, the artist escaped from the idyllic27 cottage. Let the lover profit by the pastry28 for which he himself was too old.
So the gossips spoke29 the truth, he thought, his amusement not unblended with a touch of his mother's indignation. Surely, if his grandmother wished to cultivate a grand passion, she might have chosen a more sightly object of devotion. Not that there was much to be said for Yossel's taste either. When after seventy-five years of celibacy30 the fascinations31 of the other sex began to tell upon him, he might at least have succumbed32 to a less matriarchal form of femininity. But perhaps his grandmother had fascinations of another order. Perhaps she had money. He put the question to his mother.
'Certainly she has money,' said his mother vindictively33. 'She has thousands of Gulden in her stocking. Twenty years ago she could have had her pick of a dozen well-to-do widowers34, yet now that she has one foot in the grave, madness has entered her soul, and she has cast her eye upon this pauper35.'
'But I thought his father left him his inn,' said the artist.
'His inn—yes. His sense—no. Yossel ruined himself long ago paying too much attention to the [319]Talmud instead of his business. He was always a Schlemihl.'
'But can one pay too much attention to the Talmud? That is a strange saying for a Rabbi's daughter.'
'King Solomon tells us there is a time for everything,' returned the Rabbi's daughter. 'Yossel neglected what the wise King said, and so now he comes trying to wheedle36 your poor grandmother out of her money. If he wanted to marry, why didn't he marry before eighteen, as the Talmud prescribes?'
'He seems to do everything at the wrong time,' laughed her son. 'Do you suppose, by the way, that King Solomon made all his thousand marriages before he was eighteen?'
'Make not mock of holy things,' replied his mother angrily.
The monetary37 explanation of the romance, he found, was the popular one in the village. It did not, however, exculpate38 the grandame from the charge of forwardness, since if she wished to contract another marriage it could have been arranged legitimately39 by the Shadchan, and then the poor marriage-broker, who got little enough to do in this God-forsaken village, might have made a few Gulden out of it.
Beneath all his artistic40 perception of the humours of the thing, Schneemann found himself prosaically41 sharing the general disapprobation of the marriage. Really, when one came to think of it, it was ridiculous that he should have a new grandfather thrust upon him. And such a grandfather! Perhaps the Bube was, indeed, losing her reason. Or was it he himself who was losing his reason, taking seriously this [320]parochial scandal, and believing that because a doddering hunchback of seventy-five had borrowed an ethical42 treatise23 from an octogenarian a marriage must be on the tapis? Yet, on more than one occasion, he came upon circumstances which seemed to justify43 the popular supposition. There could be no doubt, for example, that when at the conclusion of the synagogue service the feminine stream from the women's gallery poured out to mingle44 with the issuing males, these two atoms drifted together with unnatural45 celerity. It appeared to be established beyond question that on the preceding Feast of Tabernacles the Bube had lent and practically abandoned to the hunchback's use the ritual palm-branch he was too poor to afford. Of course this might only have been gratitude46, inasmuch as a fortnight earlier on the solemn New Year Day when, by an untimely decree, the grandmother lay ill abed, Yossel had obtained possession of the Shofar, and leaving the synagogue had gone to blow it to her. He had blown the holy horn—with due regard to the proprieties—in the downstairs room of her cottage so that she above had heard it, and having heard it could breakfast. It was a performance that charity reasonably required for a disabled fellow-creature, and yet what medieval knight47 had found a more delicate way of trumpeting48 his mistress's charms? Besides, how had Yossel known that the heroine was ill? His eye must have roved over the women's gallery, and disentangled her absence even from the huddled49 mass of weeping and swaying womanhood.
One day came the crowning item of evidence. The grandmother had actually asked the village postman [321]to oblige her by delivering a brown parcel at Yossel's lodgings50. The postman was not a Child of the Covenant51, but Yossel's landlady52 was, and within an hour all Jewry knew that Yenta had sent Yossel a phylacteries-bag—the very symbol of love offered by a maiden53 to her bridegroom. Could shameless passion further go?
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1
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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cloistral
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| adj.修道院的，隐居的，孤独的 | |
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profane
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| adj.亵神的，亵渎的；vt.亵渎，玷污 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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diminutive
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| adj.小巧可爱的，小的 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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mosaic
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| n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的 | |
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consolatory
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| adj.慰问的，可藉慰的 | |
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meditating
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| a.沉思的，冥想的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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crutches
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| n.拐杖, 支柱 v.支撑 | |
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contortion
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| n.扭弯，扭歪，曲解 | |
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propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mouldering
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| v.腐朽( moulder的现在分词 )；腐烂，崩塌 | |
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greasy
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| adj. 多脂的，油脂的 | |
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recital
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| n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会 | |
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treatises
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| n.专题著作，专题论文，专著( treatise的名词复数 ) | |
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treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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mitigated
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| v.减轻，缓和( mitigate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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heeded
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| v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的过去式和过去分词 )；变平，使（某物）变平( flatten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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idyllic
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| adj.质朴宜人的，田园风光的 | |
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pastry
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| n.油酥面团，酥皮糕点 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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celibacy
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| n.独身(主义) | |
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31
fascinations
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| n.魅力( fascination的名词复数 )；有魅力的东西；迷恋；陶醉 | |
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32
succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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vindictively
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| adv.恶毒地；报复地 | |
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widowers
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| n.鳏夫( widower的名词复数 ) | |
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pauper
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| n.贫民，被救济者，穷人 | |
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wheedle
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| v.劝诱，哄骗 | |
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monetary
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| adj.货币的，钱的；通货的；金融的；财政的 | |
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exculpate
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| v.开脱，使无罪 | |
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legitimately
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| ad.合法地；正当地，合理地 | |
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40
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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41
prosaically
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| adv.无聊地；乏味地；散文式地；平凡地 | |
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42
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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43
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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44
mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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45
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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47
knight
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| n.骑士，武士；爵士 | |
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48
trumpeting
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| 大声说出或宣告（trumpet的现在分词形式） | |
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49
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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50
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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51
covenant
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| n.盟约，契约；v.订盟约 | |
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52
landlady
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| n.女房东，女地主 | |
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53
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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