The End of Everything (New Yiddish Library Series) by David Bergelson Page A

sought a small loan with which to cover the costs of the coming summer’s work, left the house empty-handed, sighed very deeply, pulled the flaps of his fur hat down over his ears and reflected that as it made no difference now where he ended up, he might as well take himself off wherever his eyes might lead him.
    She wandered about aimlessly until it began to grow dark outside and an even darker night began to descend on the shtetl. Not far from her father’s house she met her former fiancé’s eighteen-year-old cousin on his way to take tea with his uncle, and in a despondently quiet monotone she complained to him:
    —Did he have any explanation for the blank emptiness that had started taking hold of everything here in town? … There was simply no one here with whom to exchange a word.
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    Virtually every day thereafter she stood outside next to the house and saw:
    With the approach of the midwinter festival of Christmas, the mild frosts grew more severe, and for long gray days on end the dirty, frozen, snow-covered district faced that depressingly murky region toward which the searing wind blew ever more strongly. From that direction, the town awaited yet another ill-starred, drifting snowstorm, hearing the violent sorrow with which the bare languishing trees all around creaked in expectation of it:
    —Eventually this new snowstorm must break loose … it must …
    In various corners of the town, warmly clad children returned one by one to heder * after their lunch. They walked slowly and sluggishly, stopping every now and then with their backs to the wind to muse:
    —The blind night’ll come … It’ll definitely come very soon.
    Every now and then, along the road that led hither from the dismal murkiness of the fields, a new out-of-town sleigh would arrive, bringing someone else for the festive season, perhaps a lightly dressed and severely chilled telegraph clerk who’d arrived in these parts very early by train. In the teeth of the burning wind, the sleigh swept him farther and farther onward, wordlessly making him fine promises:
    —Soon, very soon: there’ll be a cheerfully warm and brightly lit cottage, a home … there’ll be a friendly smile from peasant parents and a long, dark village night—it’s the festive season.
    A local Jew who remained arrogant despite being unemployed and having come down in the world approached Mirel slowly, his back stooped. With his arms folded into his sleeves, he stopped, looked into the distance with a sigh, and slowly began telling about his young daughter, a former friend of Mirel’s, who was now in her third year of study in Paris:
    —From there she wrote home to say that she’d not be returning any time soon, this daughter of his … She’d not come back until she’d completed her studies.
    The man looked broodingly into the distance along the road that led to that substantial, distant village with its sugar refinery where the perpetually jolly and perpetually busy Nokhem Tarabay ran his wealthy household in the style of a nobleman, and even more slowly began relating that this Nokhem Tarabay’s children had all arrived in the village for the Gentile festive season.
    —His younger son, the student at the polytechnic, was already there in the village, as well as his older son, a student at the science-oriented high school … and another young polytechnic student, a friend of his son’s, so they say.
    Great longing could be heard in the voice of this Jew who’d come down in the world, and he spoke of these two newly arrived polytechnic students with as much tenderness as though both were nothing less than bridegrooms for his pampered daughter who was now in her third year of study in Paris. When he’d finally grown bored with standing here and had wandered away to impart the same information to someone else, Mirel stood near the house for a long time, thinking about herself and about the days that were slipping by:
    —Her life dragged by in such a banal