The Inheritance

Grandmother Rokhel had lived for several years as an poor, lonely widow in the village of Luskela. Her two sons and two daughers had long since been scattered throughout the wide world.. The eldest son, Tuvia-Falk, went with the first group of "Byalistock Immigrants" all the way to Argentina and became a peasant farmer with the help of the AIC (Argentina Immigrant Committee?). Her second son was off in "Golden America"; the eldest daughter, my mother, was in the neighboring village of Zastavia; the second, the younger daughter, was somewhere off in a cast-off village in the County of Vilna, where her husband was a cantor-slaughterer. The grandmother was all alone in the town. But she refused to leave town and move to the city, to be among Jews. Indeed, the forge where Grandfather Jeremiah had for years hammered out ploughs, scythes, axes, and knives, was now occupied by a Gentile blacksmith...even so, the ever-present banging of the hammer on the anvil reminded her of her dear, beloved husband, who was long since departed from this world.

Here she felt that she was still connected with her husband: here she could see him still...she could feel his presence with every step. Late at night, in the dimly-lit tavern, where she would go to talk to him, she used to spill out her bitter heart over her misfortune in being left a poor, lonely widow. So she didn’t want to leave town. However, as she got older, she began to worry that God forbid she might die all alone, in the old tavern, among Gentiles...after much agonizing, she finally agreed to a marriage proposal and got married to a well-to-do citizen of Brisk, who owned a big building. And so she gave her old tavern to my mother as an inheritance.

This presented my parents with a fresh problem: what does one do with the inheritance? My father was ready to cast aside his teaching, go back to the village, and become once more a manual laborer...only one obstacle stood in his way, like a stumbling block. That obstacle was der Russian Tsar, who didn’t want that his holy Orthodox villages should God forbid be polluted with the Children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Besides which, mother was deathly afraid lest her growing children, God forbid, should become Russified, as had already happenned with many other townsfolk. And so my mother fell upon a plan: to move the entire tavern to our village, where it would be rebuilt from its own four walls!

My father, however, who knew the bitter humiliation of having to go to an employer to borrow a ruble for Sabbath, wanted to hear nothing of our mother’s "craziness", as he called it. "Listen," he would argue, "what do I, a teacher, know about building houses!? And how do you plan to get the cat to cross the river? The tavern is in the town, who is going to bring it for you to the village? And where are you going to find a place, a piece of land, to put up a house? And in any case," he continued, "the minute you try to disturb this tavern of yours, which is already a relic, built over a hundred years ago, it will crumble to dust and ashes. You should sell it where it stands, to a Gentile, and be done with it..."

But for mother, this was absolutely unthinkable...that her father’s property, which had for so many years been a place of so much Torah, from her grandfather, from her father, from passing-through scholars, preacher, Hasids, and countless other such "religious Jews"...that from these same walls should now hang, God help us, a statue of "Jesus"?! "Never!" she cried bitterly, "I will never allow the mezzuzoth to be torn from the doorposts!" No! No! ! !"

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Early one bright, clear, summer morning, the small, frail mother stole out from the house, leaving the irate father with his class and the children in God’s hands, and set off for the Town of Luskela. She went to the mayor, who was her good friend since childhood, to ask him he should call on all the menfolk to attend an important meeting. The mayor quickly agreed to her request, and indeed, that very afternoon, when the peasants were returning home from their field-work, he called together all the house-holders to come to the town hall, to hear what their former neighbor, "Esterkeh", had to say. My mother adressed the large assembly with these words:

"Neighbors of mine, good friends of mine! Here, among you, I was born. We were raised together...your troubles were my troubles; your joys were my joys. Whoever from you came to me asking for help, an solution for a problem, a remedy for a sick person, or to borrow something, did I not help each one? No one will deny it, not so?, neighbors of mine, friends of mine?"

"True, true!" replied all the Gentiles with one voice.

"And now," continued the mameh, "I have come to ask you should help to provide me and my family with a roof over our heads; help me to move my old inheritance to the village; and if you do, then may the Good Lord give you good health, and send his blessing over your fields, your sheep and cattle, prosperity in your barns, good luck in your house. And now, let’s all drink "To Life"!

Mother had laid out on the table a jug of liquor, with white braided loaves, with tasty pickled herring. The crowd became warm and cheerful. Soon the mayor asked them to sign a resolution, whereby each one promised and swore "by Holy Jesus Christ" that he would do anything in the world for the good, dear, clever, "Esterkeh".

Early the next morning, right on schedule, the whole village, with axes and crow-bars, made their way down to the old tavern. Mother was the first one there, and greeted each one with a joyful "Good Day!". She rejoiced that soon, the old inheritance would be rebuilt as her new home....but she simply wasn’t prepared for the sight of how her "helpers", the the Gentile towns-folk, started tearing apart the walls of the old tavern with their axes and crow-bars. She was struck by a feeling of shock...hot, bitter tears began to flow from her eyes. She felt as though her own rib was being torn out of her side...

The Gentiles cheerfully loaded up the scraps of lumber, mother’s inheritance, onto long wagons, and set off on their way. Their wheels cut deep furrows in the muddy roads. Mother, riding on one of the loaded wagons, kept looking back over her shoulder, trying to catch one last glimpse her own piece of land, which was now nothing but a mound of stones and broken glass. And as that little pile of rubble got farther and farther away, and disappeared from sight, it was swallowed up by the surrounding,Gentile, foreign soil.

The whole village, seeing the long Gentile "convoy", which stretched almost the whole length of the street, came out to watch the spectacle unfold. The wood was stacked on a piece of empty communal land, which lay behind the HOuse of Study. The only one who didn’t come to see mother’s inheritance, was....our father. He sat stubbornly at his table with his pupils, and took no notice of the entire procedings, as though whatever happenned was no concern of his.

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Mother soon bought from a neighbor a part of his back garden...a place for the house. Then she rememberd that a house needed a foundation, that would surely cost "a king’s ransom". So she went back once more to the town, to the good, dear, Danilko, who was very much a God-fearing Gentile...one of the true "righteious among the nations". With tears in her eyes, she begged him he should save her. Danilko promised to help. One dark night, he and his two strapping young sons went to the nobleman’s forest, and stole a pair of thick logs, and delivered them to mother. And as Danilko and his sons were unloading the stolen logs from the long wagon, he kept crossing himself and whispering under his breath to himself:"I did it for your, Esterkeh...for you, for you....may the good Lord not punish me)"

The neighbors set out with enthusiasm to help mother build her house. And when he saw what was taking place, even father came out to make his peace with mother, and to lend a hand.

Every day the house grew, bigger and bigger, and as the walls grew so did the joy in the hearts of my parents...and even more so for us small-fry. A little more, and we would have our own four walls! No longer would we have to drag ourselves from one rented lodgings to another. Our mother herself would be a householder! How happy we would be when the day would come to move into our mother’s own house!

At last, before us stood the frame, the four walls. The only thing missing now was the door...and the windows, and an oven, not to mention the roof and chimney. And suddenly it was a case of "the well running dry"...there was nowhere to borrow from and nowhere to beg. Our mother’s mountain of cushions, the quilts, our few pieces of brass and copper had long since been pawned. Summer was fading away, and the chilly New-Year’s winds had already begun to blow. Rain began to fall on the naked four walls of the house, and it seemed to us to be crying and pleading, "Good people, cover me up, protect me from the cold and rain!"

My father, who had from the very beginning been afraid of this enormous, risk-filled undertaking, now went about in a foul mood, muttering constantly to himself: "She had to have a "house"...a teacher’s wife, a pauper’s wife, she had to show she was as good as anybody..."

Our tiny mother, who seemed to be smaller than ever before, wept silently to herself. We small-fry huddled together in our dark corner, terrified to let out even a peep. Our hearts were torn...we felt sorry not only for our poor mother, but also for the naked house, which stood there outside bare naked, with no one to put a roof over its head...