Only Yesterday (41 page)

It wasn’t long before his name became known in the city, and on every single issue, the Rabbis asked Reb Fayesh’s opinion. Envy entered the heart of his colleagues. They began worrying that power would pass into his hands. And even though both he and they had the same intention, to uproot heresy and to purify the antechamber, even so, his colleagues’ minds weren’t easy about him, for a man has a vested interest, especially about Commandments, for everyone wanted the Commandment to be done by him. Satan started danc-ing among them, for in that generation the freethinkers were not yet important, and Satan desired to dwell among the pious. A strong dispute erupted between Reb Fayesh and his colleagues. He bans and they allow, he excommunicates and they release. He pastes up excommunication posters and they tear them down, some openly and some secretly. But Reb Fayesh mocked their efforts. If he found his proclamations torn down, he wrote other proclamations harsher than the first, and hung them up at night when everyone was sleeping. That night, Balak found him and what happened happened.

When he got sick, his colleagues forgot what they had done to him, but were sorry for what the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He had done to him. And they sighed about Reb Fayesh who ran like a deer to do the will of his Father in Heaven, and now he is laid in his bed like a dove struck by a vulture. That Reb Fayesh who was a vessel full of purity is lying like a broken clay pot. Reb Fayesh should have spent his days and years in enjoyment and in the end he is sick and oppressed with suffering. Not to denounce the severity of the judgment did they intend, but to break their own heart recalling that if the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He doesn’t favor even a great man like Reb

Fayesh, what can we infer about human beings who have not ac-complished such good deeds as Reb Fayesh?

Reb Fayesh lies amid his pillows and blankets, and his loved ones and friends surround his bed, all of them respectable people, pious and perfect, men of renown and men of action, the first in all practice of the Commandments. But Reb Fayesh doesn’t notice them and doesn’t know where he is. Reb Fayesh squints his eyes and makes an effort to remember where he is. A kind of mist rises, like the mist that rises from the waters of a river close to the holiday of Sukkot, and that mist enters his clothes and they are permeated and a chill emanates from them and a cold sweat emanates from him. He looked straight ahead and didn’t see any river, but he knew that the river was nearby, and there are the young boughs where they take twigs for Hoshana Raba. Now he and his comrades are going to cut boughs for themselves. And other lads who aren’t from the village are also coming to cut branches. And he urged his comrades to run so the strange lads wouldn’t get there first. That mist began to thicken and started swallowing up his comrades until they were enveloped in the mist and disappeared, and the only one left was him. And the other lads who came from other places also disappeared. And they didn’t disappear within the mist, but ran away because of the village dogs who chased them. He walked on alone and came to the young branches. He plucked as many as he plucked and loaded them on his shoulders. And he heard a pleasant voice coming from the branches on his back. He began to fear that it was the voice of a panther, for everyone who hears that voice is tempted and follows him until he comes to his hole and the panther sucks his blood. He was scared and trembled and threw away his branches. The branches began flagellating one another. He raised his voice and shouted for help. Reb Fayesh’s colleagues saw that he was moving his lips. They bent their ears to hear. Reb Fayesh looked at them in fear and shouted, Dogs. His words became confused and he fell silent.

Rebecca saw all that had happened to her husband. But her heart couldn’t accept that calamity. Is it possible that Fayesh, who had never been sick in his life and had never been idle, could be lying in bed and nothing happens? This body that was nimble to

carry out all Commandments and good deeds, how can it spend its days and nights with no Torah and no prayer? Great was Rebecca’s grief for her husband, and greater than her grief was the amazement of her heart. This amazement sometimes made her forget the truth, and she would imagine that his illness would pass and Fayesh would be himself again, but they had to hasten his cure, and the doctors and nurses and medicines weren’t doing that. She would come to his bed and examine every single one of his movements and wait to hear something from his mouth, for who could give advice better than Fayesh. And sometimes she would come to hear a word or a rebuke from him. But no word came from the mouth of Reb Fayesh and no rebuke was heard on his tongue, but his eyelashes were stuck like a man who fell asleep from a heart attack. She would consider and seek something to say, and would talk to him and say, Fayesh, have pity and compassion on your wife and tell her a word. Don’t withhold your pity from me, if not for my sake, then for Shifra our daughter. Sometimes Reb Fayesh would look at her with eyes that stood like two clods of lead, but mostly he didn’t notice her.

Rebecca didn’t despair and when she left him and went away from him, she would come back to him immediately, lest he would consent to tell her something. Since Fayesh was silent, she would lift her eyes to heaven and say, Master of the Universe, how can you leave him lying there with no Torah and no Commandments? For You surely know that he walked before You with an innocent heart in pri-vate as in public. Please take pity on him, You don’t have many like him in This World. When she saw that the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He didn’t respond to her prayer, she would go back to her husband and say, Fayesh, Fayesh, why are you silent? Why don’t you pray with me? For the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He yearns for the prayer of a Saint, and if you pray He will surely hear your prayer. And since she knew herself that she wasn’t as important as her husband, she would take Shifra and lead her to the sick man and say as she wept, You pray for father. The two of them would stand and weep over the sick man and weep for one another.

Isaac Comes and Goes at Reb Fayesh’s House

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When Reb Fayesh got sick, the doors of his house were opened to Isaac. Reb Fayesh lies like a silent stone and has no control over his limbs, his hands and his tongue don’t obey him, and the rest of his body also seems removed from the world. Only his eyes are still under his rule, but they were changed too, as if he had abandoned the world and withdrawn his attention from it.

Two or three times a week Isaac came to feed the sick man. Praise to the healthy man who tends the sick, especially a sick man no one tends. At first, the neighbors came in, after a few days their number decreased, and after a few more days no one came in. Some stopped coming because they were busy with community needs, and some refrained from coming because they didn’t want to sit with women, and others didn’t come because of both reasons together. And there was one more reason, they remembered what Reb Fayesh did to them when he was healthy. God Forbid they should bear a grudge against him, but even Solomon said be not righteous over much. And his father-in-law and mother-in-law, where were they? In Safed. Reb Moyshe Amram saw that he couldn’t live with his son-in- law, and if he lived in the same city as his son-in-law and didn’t live with his son-in-law, folks would have said that they didn’t get along. And when he ascended to Meron on Lag b’Omer, he saw Safed and found its setting beautiful, and he rented an apartment there. Rebecca wrote her father and mother and didn’t get a reply. Either the letter remained in the post office in Jerusalem or their letter remained in Safed. For sending a letter through the Turkish post office is like throwing it into the Dead Sea.

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Isaac supports the sick man, and sometimes brings food. He is used to such things from his experience with Bloykof. And when he brings he brings stealthily so Shifra won’t notice, and he claims that it cost less than he really paid. Great are the compassionate who lie for the good of others and enjoy more than any liar enjoys from his lie for his own good. His pocket is small and his coins are few. He is only a laborer who works a lot and earns a little. But he shrinks his belly and expands his hand and does mercy to three souls.

The market is crowned with fruits and vegetables. Isaac se-lects the finest and doesn’t haggle, for things bought generously are a double blessing. From the fruit market, Isaac goes to the egg and poultry market. Isaac is not an administrator or an inspector to buy a chicken, but he buys eggs. In that year when we ascended to the Land of Israel, eighteen eggs cost a Bishlik, and at the Kinneret, our comrades bought thirty for a Bishlik. When the railroad track began going out of the Land, they started exporting eggs to neighboring countries and their price rose a lot.

The shopkeeper sits in the doorway of his shop like a hen sitting on her eggs. He remembers days when he got up early and went out to where the roads meet to the village girls to buy chickens and eggs from them and went around all day long with his baskets. Now he sits in a shop like a merchant. Isaac puts his hand in his pocket and clinks his coins and says to the shopkeeper, How many for a Bishlik? The shopkeeper responds, Seven for a Bishlik. Says Isaac, Seven for a Bishlik, but nice ones I want. Says the shopkeeper, Nice ones I sell. From today? From today. Says Isaac, Then, choose for me, it’s for a new mother. For Isaac is sly in purchasing and knows how to trap people with his words. So the shopkeeper won’t say to himself, Can’t this young fellow eat an old egg, Isaac tells him it’s for a new mother so that he’ll give him nice ones. The shopkeeper puts his hands in the box or the basket and takes an egg and examines it in the light and gives it to the customer, takes an egg and holds it up to the light and gives it to the customer. And Isaac takes his wares and brings them to Rebecca.

Rebecca asks, How much are these eggs? And she sighs because her hands are empty and she hasn’t any money to pay, for they

deduct from her Distribution the fee for the doctor and the medicine and other expenses that don’t seem to do any good. Says Isaac to Rebecca, These eggs cost me nothing. How is that? I painted a chicken coop and they gave me eggs as my fee and I brought them to you, since I eat in a restaurant and I don’t know what I’ll do with them. From the beginning of the world until now, we have never heard of anyone painting a chicken coop. But Rebecca hears and believes. And as for the grapes he brought, that was from his friend from the Sharon Valley who came up to sell his fruit in Jerusalem and gave him a basket of grapes. Lest you think that Isaac ran out of lies, a few days later, he came back and brought eggs, for ever since he painted that chicken coop, the hens began laying more because its color is white and they think it’s daytime. And when the egg sellers saw that, they hired him to paint their chicken coops and paid him with eggs, and they were going to give him some every week.

He who has an egg boils it and makes himself a meal. If he has grapes he adds grapes to it. The Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He feeds the world with His good things. Some take their sustenance from liv-ing things, some take their sustenance from things that grow in the ground, and some take their sustenance from both together. Until Reb Fayesh got sick, he supported his household with hens and fish, since Reb Fayesh got sick he supported it with similitude. But mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting, if the livelihood is deprived, He invents compensation for it and if you lose it here, it is raised somewhere else. Isaac doesn’t weary of making up new things every day. If his pocket is small, his imagination is big. Every day he makes up something, just so Shifra and her mother won’t lack food.

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But the quality of grace isn’t always rewarded. Evil neighbor women began looking at Isaac and slandering Shifra. And when he comes, Rebecca asks him if her neighbors noticed him. And when he sits down, her eyes and Shifra’s eyes seem to ask him to get up and go on his way. Not as at first when they brought him a glass of cold water and jam. Jam imported from Outside the Land in colorful jars with a smiling virgin painted on them may be sweeter, but it doesn’t have

a real taste. For that jam isn’t made of fruit grown by the sun that warms your limbs by day and the moon and stars that light you by night and poems and songs aren’t sung as it is made. In vain do you spread your lips, naughty girl. Your smile doesn’t please Isaac’s heart. He likes Shifra’s light smile better than the smiles of a thousand painted girls.

Shifra is a thin girl and you can circle her with the ring of a bolt. Her hair is the color of nuts and her lips aren’t thin like her fa-ther’s or full like her mother’s. Her eyes are more closed than open, either because of fatigue or because of piety. Eyes like those are usually called dreamy eyes. And her mother calls them eyes of gold. And in truth, a golden thread did seem to stretch from them. And it is this thread that bound Isaac’s soul to Shifra’s soul.

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At that time, the season of Muharram began, the season of moving, when people move out of one apartment and into another. Everyone who moves into a new apartment renews something in it and changes its color, for not all tastes are the same. Some like one color and some like another color, and some don’t like this color or that color, but a blend of many colors. Some say tastes depend on the stars. A person born in the sign of Mars likes red, in the sign of Jupiter likes white, and some say it all depends on bile. Those with black bile are drawn to black, and those with green bile to green. And both admit that even bile is dependent on the stars, for bile is attuned to a person’s sign. Others say, on the contrary, everything follows from the banners carried in the desert, that every single tribe had a flag and a color on every single flag, like the color of gems on Aaron’s breastplate. And the heart of every single Jew is drawn to the color of his banner.

Isaac stands in a house and grinds colors and dissolves them in water and dips his brush and paints the walls and the ceiling. This grain which is nothing but dust can change the way things look. If you want, you draw angels and seraphim with it, if you want you draw Devils and Demons and Ghosts. And since those are days of work and not of idleness, Isaac shuts his heart and fills his hands. No longer