Against the Current: Simple Chapters from a Complex Life. Edward Alfred Steiner
and a wagon load of refreshments in charge of the beadle who had a great reputation for ministering to the palate and neglecting his work in the synagogue.
On reaching the pine forest we found a clearing decorated in the national colours, a band stand and long tables for the dinner. It was a new world, out-of-doors, which opened like Paradise to us Jewish children, shut in since our birth in a small, dusty town. We ate with ravenous appetites, went through the exercises to the satisfaction of our exacting teacher, the rabbi, the president of the congregation and the rest of the Jewish dignitaries—and as the Hungarian officials, headed by the judge, appeared, we sang the national anthem, baring our heads, a grievous offense in the eyes of the conservative Jews. Our teacher made a great speech; I still remember certain eloquent words which I then heard for the first time: “Patriotism, Fraternity, Humanity.”
It was a speech that fired one’s blood. He closed by calling for three cheers for the judge, after which he received the congratulations of everybody, including my orthodox uncle. Wine was passed and the judge proposed a toast to the king, another to the rabbi, one to the teacher and one to our great country; toasts enough to shake the temperate Jews somewhat out of their sober atmosphere and to carry the teacher quite off his feet. He embraced everybody, drank more and more and when the dance began it was he who led his young wife to the judge for the first waltz.
I do not know how long into the night the dance lasted; it ended scandalously. The Magyar officials taunted the Jewish youths, made the gypsies play anti-Semitic songs and finally remained victors in the field, consuming the fat kosher geese, the no less kosher wine, and did not scruple to kiss the kosher maidens who were still half children and delighted in the attention they received.
The next day was a gloomy one at school. The teacher whipped us; he even whipped me, his favourite, until my back was blue. At recess he did not play with us; in fact, he never played with us again.
Many months after, as I was going to school, I found my way blocked by a great crowd in front of the judge’s house; Jews and Gentiles alike pressed around the entrance gate in front of which stood the teacher with a bundle of pillows in his arms. His cries of anguish and the terrible curses, which he called down upon the judge, rang in my ears for weeks afterwards. He pulled the bell at the gate until he broke the wire; he beat upon the iron bars with the handle of the gate which he had wrenched from it; he broke all the windows of the house within reach, with the stones he threw, and when no one from within responded, he laid his bundle on the step and left it there.
I knew nothing then of the mystery of life, but felt the awe of it while scarcely understanding what it meant; at least I could not have explained it to any one.
I had known for some time that the teacher was in deep trouble; in fact, I had caught a sentence here and there from my elders which hinted at a terrible disaster.
Here, then, was the tragedy. “This is your brat, yours, yours! Keep it and may it grow up to curse you and damn you as it already has cursed and damned me!”
Those were the last words I heard him speak. There was no school that day or the next or the next. Fishermen found his body upon the shores of the river where it had been washed up by the waves.
They buried him in an obscure corner of the God’s Acre, with his head as near the highroad as possible. There was no public funeral for he was a suicide and there is no stone to mark his grave. Yet he is not forgotten; because he was the first man who opened for me a window into this beautiful world and who showed me the rivers and the mountains. Through him I received my first uplift towards “Patriotism, Fraternity and Humanity,” and learned that those of us who believe in them must pay the price.
V
THE THREE WISE MEN
IT was a bitter winter in the valley of the Waag. Motionless in its crooked bed lay that swift river, whose roar and rush neither the drought of summer nor the cold of winter had silenced within the memory of a generation. Only the roofs of the peasants’ cottages were visible above the all-conquering, drifted snow, as for days, men, women and children battled with it in the attempt to release one another from its embrace.
No one asked: “Is this a Jew’s house or a Magyar’s isba?” “Is it the home of a Roman Catholic or a Protestant, to which we are making a path?” The common danger broke down ancient barriers, even as the snow filled the valleys, and the frozen river united isolated shores. As the older people became one in their common danger, so the children became one in the pleasurable excitement which these changes brought into the routine of their lives.
There was no school, no church and no synagogue service, and as we coasted down great mountains of snow, piled high by the patient toilers, we forgot the antagonisms to which so early in life we had fallen heir. I shared freely the sleds of the Gentile boys whose fathers were skillful in making them, and they shared as freely my luncheon, which the more provident Jewish home provided.
While sandwiched on a sled between two Gentile boys, one of them, my brother by vaccination, called my attention to the fact that Christmas was at hand, and that as chief choir boy, it was his prerogative to train the three wise men who go about on Christmas Eve from house to house, singing carols and gathering such gifts as may be bestowed upon the celebrants.
The boy on the back of the sled was to be one of them, and as the third boy was snow-bound in an isolated farmhouse, and not likely to be liberated before Christmas Eve, it was proposed that I should take his place. I accepted.
In a very vague way I knew the meaning of Christmas; it came in the dreariness of our winter, unrelieved by Jewish holidays, and the Christmas trees, the candles, and the happy children had long ago aroused my childish envy. Realizing that all this was not for me, I was content to see the twinkling lights, and hear the merry laughter of the children from afar, never even asking why I could not have a share in those things. Consequently it came about that when the sled reached the bottom of the roadway and I was released from my close fellowship with the Gentile boys, I was initiated into the duties of a wise man and duly accepted the post with all its obligations. Being a Jew, the financial responsibilities of the affair were thrust upon me. These consisted of purchasing paste, pins and several sheets of gilt paper for crowns and a huge star. My room was made the studio in which the various symbols were to be designed and manufactured.
It is safe to say that I was fairly unselfish in the matter, inasmuch as I could not hope to share in the returns from this enterprise, which would be largely in food which I did not need and could not have eaten had I needed it. Of course, being a wise man and wearing a crown were in themselves compensations worthy the sacrifice I was making, which at first consisted merely in diverting a few pennies from my small allowance, but which grew beyond my calculations, the more I entered into the experiences of a wise man.
While I provided the material things, as behooved my station in life, the acolyte provided things spiritual, and in a snow cave dug by our united efforts, he taught me my part in the dramatic performance of the “Three Wise Men.” Incidentally I learned how to sing a Christian hymn and had my first lesson in Latin; and of both there were more, later in life and under less trying circumstances.
I spent the day before Christmas in feverish excitement, mumbling my part in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, as it was not safe for me to be heard by my family, reciting: “Christo nostro infantia”; three words of the hymn which I have never forgotten. When evening came, I had the difficult task of smuggling the Gentile boys into my room and then converting those ragamuffins into kings from Eastern lands. Their ill-smelling sheepskin coats were hidden in my bed, and the red garments of the acolytes, readorned by gilt paper, were thrown over the scanty clothing which remained. Then with gilt star, sceptre and crowns, we started out into the bitter cold to seek the Child in the Manger. I carried the star, and being cast for the part of the wise man from the land of the Moors, my face was blackened with stove-polish, generously applied by my brother by vaccination.
We made