The Family Moskat by Bashevis Singer Isaac

Author:Bashevis Singer, Isaac
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Goodreads Press
Published: 2022-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

1

ALREADY the reverberations of the cannon fire on the battlefront were causing Warsaw windows to tremble. The German line was advancing against a Russian counterattack. Regiments of soldiers were steadily marching through the Warsaw streets-Cossacks, Kirghiz, Bashkirs, Caucasians, Kalmuks. The hospitals of the city were full of the wounded. City officials had hurried to move their families out of town somewhere to the rear. There was talk to the effect that the Governor-General was preparing to leave and that the bridges across the Vistula were being mined. There were rumors that the retreating Russian armies would put Warsaw to the torch. Nevertheless, the Feast of the Rejoicing of the Law was celebrated as always. The official liquor shops were closed, but the celebrants managed to get enough of the spirits from unlicensed distillers. There was no lack of either wine or beer. In the Bialodrevna prayerhouse the faithful began their drinking on the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles. Early in the morning of the Feast of Rejoicing of the Law the Chassidim were already drunk.

It was stiflingly hot in the prayerhouse. The children carried paper pennants, and apples stuck at the end of sticks, candles spluttering in the apples. Women and girls crowded forward to kiss the silk covering of the Torah scrolls. Young men and boys engaged in every kind of mischievous play. They stealthily poured water into the pockets of the unsuspecting worshippers; they knotted the fringes of the men's ritual shawls; they hid prayerbooks and skullcaps. The reader intoned the additional service, but none of the congregation made the proper responses. Nathan Moskat was chosen as warden. He complained that he was a sick man and had no energy to devote to community affairs. Besides, his brother Joel was deathly ill. But the Chassidim refused to listen to his excuses, and when the formality of his election was completed, the younger men seized the new warden, stretched him out full length on a table, and pommeled him in good humor. Nathan groaned and protested, while the young men chanted:

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