A Meal For The Poor
Spector, Mordecai
A MEAL FOR THE POOR A Yiddish short story, translated by Milton Hindus SPECTOR I was invited to a wedding. Not to any of your newfangled weddings where dowagers and pretty young girls in...
...All the relatives and wedding guests were waiting impatiently for the ceremony to begin...
...Play something a little faster, louder, livelier, stronger...
...Some of the hecklers fired a few rocks after the wagons amid hoots and whistles and catcalls...
...Rubles...
...Are you alone...
...For the first time and perhaps the last, they had spoken out in loud voices and succeeded in getting their way...
...What's this...
...Weddings such as this don't come every day...
...I wasn't sure what to do...
...He requested us to go to the town and see if we couldn't manage to win over the poor...
...And Reb Yitzchok began to discuss this unlooked-for problem with his guests and also with himself...
...He hugged them affectionately and kissed their cheeks...
...Where's the sexton...
...An escort of urchins accompanied us some distance, crying loudly, "Hooray...
...And now it was the turn of his youngest daughter, his favorite child, and he had invited all the poor folk from the neighboring town of Lipowitz to the village in which he had lived all his life...
...And all the while he kept embracing the poor, each in tum...
...That is how a Jew is happy...
...It was now the wedding day, two o'clock in the afternoon, and still no sign of the poor, for whom a servant in charge of three huge wagons had been dispatched that morning...
...mocked some loafers in the crowd...
...For the first time these beggars felt that the well-fed people needed them, and they were determined to gain their point...
...Is my whole enjoyment to be spoiled...
...Long life to you...
...Fiddlers, strike up the tune...
...Reb Yitzchok danced out into the very center of the ring made by the poor...
...May God help the whole congregation of Israel, and you among the rest," Reb Yitzchok responded...
...Is he going to send to the next town for them...
...They demand higher pay...
...Look," cried the lanky one triumphantly as soon as he caught sight of us, "they've come to beg...
...I wasn't sure what to do...
...A wedding at which every last religious ceremony is observed, including, naturally, the one that commands the host to serve a free meal for the poor...
...His rage subsided and he came to ask me and a few others to do him a favor...
...But immediately he changed his mind and waved his hands...
...Wait a while...
...They made another horse and wagon ready for us, and we rode away...
...For a minute it looked like a real riot, but the lanky one on the wagon stretched himself to his full height and thundered at them, "Quiet...
...They'll be sorry later...
...We'll do without the paupers...
...It'll be a lot more expensive for the wagons, and besides the wedding will have to be postponed...
...To haggle wjth me...
...The merry beggars seated in the wagons started to jig with their feet...
...Bargained, of course...
...His eyes, from which tears of joy were freely running, seemed to be staring straight upward, while his thoughts soared higher than the Seventh Heaven...
...His satin coat-tails flew like the wings of an eagle...
...They say that unless each one is promised a ruble, under no circumstances are they coming to the wedding...
...They don't want to come," was the answer...
...Shall I prepare the bride...
...If they don't want to come, that's their business...
...It's the principle...
...Just because I want them to have a good free meal and a little donation besides...
...Beg...
...Yes, let them-no...
...Wait a while...
...But a strike, an ultimatum by paupers-paupers demanding a higher scale of pay for coming to eat a free meal...
...Money's not the question...
...I'll run back this instant and bring the wagons...
...Bedlam broke loose, pandemonium...
...Please realize, brothers, that unless we get a ruble each we won't move from here...
...Rubles," screamed the one with the flattened nose...
...the small horses were unharnessed and eating their bags of oats...
...In the main square of the town, in the market place, stood three great peasant wagons filled with straw...
...We can't tell exactly...
...Well, let it go...
...It's impossible to hear what these gentlefolk are saying to us...
...asked the sexton...
...But to the beggars it was as if they were being pelted with flowers and accompanied by bursts of triumphant song, so happy were they over their victory...
...Brothers...
...Twenty minutes later we entered the town of Lipowitz...
...Another, "Oh, my arm...
...The ringleaders you all know-there's that cripple with the crutches, the lanky beggar, also Feitel Dragfoot, and Flatnose Jake...
...You can start the final preparations...
...You bargained with them...
...We wish you long life, happiness from your children and even greater wealth...
...I'd be willing to give them half a ruble...
...The nerve of the beggars...
...The lanky beggar with a red plaster on his neck stood near him...
...He hasn't any sense...
...After the bridal ceremony, after the golden-yellow broth, the feast was served to the wedding guests and to the poor, seated at separate tables...
...That's something new...
...Nobody can force us to go...
...The poor men kept drinking toasts to him...
...Quiet, you miserable beggars...
...After debating with them for an hour and coming to no conclusion, I took one of the horses and have come back for more instructions...
...Around the wagons were at least a hundred people-the lame, the halt and the blind, and in addition half the loafers and urchins in town...
...The horses were harnessed and with much laughter the procession got under way...
...The nerve of them...
...R-r-r-ub-bles," stuttered a beggar...
...They won't take any less...
...The host, Reb Yitzchok Berkover, had provided a free meal for the poor at the marriage of each of his children...
...He then turned to us...
...Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin Inc...
...The three large wagons filled up in a twinkling...
...he cried out to them, dancing...
...After the meal the musicians began to play again, and the poor danced around in a great ring, holding Reb Yitzchok by the hands...
...In short, as I have already said, dear reader, I've been to a Jewish wedding...
...Not to any of your newfangled weddings where dowagers and pretty young girls in decollete are surrounded by a halo of powder as they move like goddesses, or where gentlemen in frock coats, white gloves and waxed black mustaches reek of scented pomade...
...Reb Yitzchok and his closest relatives observed the commandment to wait on the poor with their own hands and to anticipate whatever their hearts desired in the way of food or drink...
...Fiddlers...
...Those ragamuffins are going to dictate what I should do...
...There'll be a good meal, and each of you will get some money to take home with him too...
...You see, there's already been one wedding in Lipowitz today, complete with a free meal for the poor...
...The guests were unanimously in favor of forgetting the beggars, but Reb Yitzchok's face suddenly underwent a profound change...
...I've done my share...
...Now for the first time they were tasting the same pleasure as the well-to-do...
...called out the cripple, bringing his crutches down with a crash...
...Why shouldn't I have the pleasure of giving a free meal to the poor at the wedding of my youngest child...
...They refuse to work...
...If not, we stay put...
...If they're not given a ruble each they won't budge...
...Not at all...
...asked his master...
...I was afraid you would be angry...
...We've no fear that Reb Yitzchok will marry off his favorite daughter without us...
...asked a chorus of voices...
...A ruble each or we don't go...
...I'll get along without them, they'll see...
...Your health, Reb Yitzchok...
...The sky will fall in if you don't go...
...Let us be merry as only Jews know how to be merry...
...Where can he get another gang of paupers on the spur of the moment...
...So they're all full...
...we asked them...
...There's no use depending on him," he said, nodding at the servant...
...We roared with laughter at the thought of this bizarre uprising, but Reb Yitzchok went into a rage...
...The servant on his horse lagged behind us...
...Then why did you leave the wagons behind...
...Their stock of merchandise must have gone up in price lately," snapped Reb Yitzchok with an angry laugh...
...he was completely blind in one eye, and he had a rag tied around his jaw as if to keep his teeth from falling out...
...Drink hearty...
...Copyright © 1953, 1954 by The Viking Press, Inc...
...Who ever heard of such a thing...
...What did I do to deserve such a fate...
...A third, "My leg...
...At last the servant, out of breath and galloping on a horse that had been unhitched from a wagon, arrived by himself...
...They won't take a kopek less...
...Why aren't you at the wedding...
...They were making a terrific noise...
...Rubles...
...he screamed at the messenger...
...Listen to them...
...Rubles," sang out two merry beggars, doing a dance...
...Don't be in such a hurry...
...We must be merry...
...Wait...
...The cripple who had been described as one of the chief ringleaders was sitting in the driver's seat of one of the wagons and banging his crutches on the wood...
...Lipowitz was only a few miles away...
...But you'll take what you can get...
...The poor, as well as the rest of the wedding guests, clapped their hands in time to the music...
...The two were haranguing the crowd...
...A ruble maybe...
...Even the chief of police and the governor general himself can't do anything to us...
...A mutiny, a strike of the poor-how do you like that...
...If I gave them a quarter of a ruble each, they couldn't afford to take it, of course...
...We'll get along without them...
...Do you think that just because we're poor they can do as they like with us...
...One pauper cried, "Oh, my broken back...
...My leg...
...That is how a real Jewish wedding ought to be...
...How much...
...And your health, your health too, brothers...
...Not to a wedding, you understand, where one eats according to a printed timetable-Fish a la Prince So-and-So, Bouillon La Falutin, Meat Diplomatique, Salad Wiltedgreen, Dessert Fifi, Wine Antediluvian-that is to say, served in bottles plentifully smeared with last year's mud...
...The beggars raised their sticks and ran at their tormentors...
...We all burst into laughter,' out the servant continued with this story...
...The kind of wedding where the "smorgasbord" consists of homemade honeycake and strudel, followed by gefilte fish, warm fresh rolls, golden-yellow broth, stuffed spring chicken, roast duck and wine drunk out of large, immaculate white jugs...
...Their overhead is too high...
...cried one of the rebels perched on top of a wheel...
...He laughed and he cried at the same time, like a child...
...screamed all the poor together...
...I've heard of strikes by workingmen...
...Naturally they're in rebellion...
...It's still early...
...From A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg...
...What could the matter be...
...They had done exactly as they wanted...
...we asked in astonishment...
...Bargain with me...
...All their lives they had been condemned to silence, forced to swallow with their spittle every insult anyone cared to offer them, anyone who had given them a kopek or thrown them a crust of dry bread or a gnawed bone...
...I must give each one precisely a ruble, they say...
...I was invited to an old-fashioned Jewish wedding, a wedding, in other words, where respectable Jewish men and women gather together, dressed in the same holiday attire they use for going to the synagogue every Sabbath...
...That's the tone we talked in the whole way...
...The rest would probably come, but these four won't let them...
...And sure enough, even as we were arguing with them, there came another message from Reb Yitzchok with word for the poor to set out at once and each would receive his ruble...
...What do you mean, "They don't want to come...
Vol. 10 • April 1985 • No. 4
