Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance

IV STEMPENYU’S FIDDLE

No pen can describe how beautifully Stempenyu played the accompaniment to the bride’s enthronement. It was not an ordinary wedding march that he played, not by any means an ordinary melody, such as one might have heard anywhere. It was a god-like melody, pervaded with a certain spiritual meaning that was reminiscent of nothing anyone had ever listened to before. It was as if Stempenyu, having taken his stand in front of the bride, was desirous of playing on his fiddle a special sermon for her edification — a long, beautiful sermon touching on the life she had led hitherto, and the different life to which she was going, on the threshold of which she now found herself. Somehow, it seemed that he was particularly anxious to emphasize the contrast between the easy, careless days of maidenhood, and the deep responsibilities which the future held for her. Gone was her childhood, and in its place she would find a serious woman with covered locks, her beauty and her youth hidden under the cap which orthodoxy demanded she should wear. No more joyousness! No more play! No more ease! Farewell youth, farewell! Hail! all hail to the woman that has come forth to the light of day!

Despite the beauty of his playing, the solemnity of it all made it inexpressibly sad. The fiddle seemed to weep and wail after its own fashion, so much so that the women were moved to tears. They could not keep themselves from weeping out loud.

“How short a time it seems since I was a bride myself, sitting on a little throne,” murmured an old woman. “It seems but yesterday that I was waiting for the women to tie up my hair. And, I imagined that the angels that are in heaven had intervened in my life; for, it seemed to me that I was the most fortunate creature in the whole wide world. And, how is it in reality? What has it turned out to be?”

“Oh, God,” prayed another woman, half aloud. “Oh, God, let it be the fate of my eldest daughter to be married soon. Only let her have better luck than I had. God forgive me for my sinful words!”

While the women were musing thus, Stempenyu was playing. His orchestra now accompanied him at intervals. His fiddle did not play. It talked, saying a multitude of things which were sad, and melancholy to the verge of tears, almost a series of long drawn-out sobs. Not a murmur was to be heard, not a movement. Nothing but the low, thin, plaintive notes of the violin seemed to be in existence. Everybody held his or her breath, for fear of missing a single note. The people felt that it would be better to lose a fortune than a single note from Stempenyu’s fiddle. The old men fell into reveries; the women were stricken with dumbness; and the boys and girls clambered on to chairs and tables so as to see the musicians as well as hear them.

And, Stempenyu poured out his soul through the fiddle. He seemed to be melting away out of existence, as if he were wax before a fire. And, now and again, he seemed to come back to earth again, from his soarings in the blue vault of heaven. His thin, fine notes changed to deep, solemn tones that echoed and re-echoed through and through the hearts of his listeners.

A hand flying swiftly up and down — no more than this was to be seen; and yet, one heard all sorts of sweet sounds. A thousand delicious melodies and arias filled the air. And, all of them were so sad that they caught hold of one’s heart, and gripped it as with pincers. The people felt that their souls were leaving their bodies. They were dying slowly, inch by inch, their strength drawn out of them by the magic of Stempenyu’s playing.

And, who was Stempenyu? What was Stempenyu? No one saw him. No one remembered that he was an individual to himself. And, no one saw the fiddle. One only heard the sweet sounds that came from it — divine voices seemed to be flooding the room with song.

And, Rochalle the beautiful, who had never before heard Stempenyu playing, who had only heard his name, and only knew that such a person as he existed — but who had never heard such music in her life as that which now fell on her ears — Rochalle was standing and listening to the magical tones, the golden harmonies. Did she understand what they conveyed? She did not know what was going on at all. Her heart was filled with something which she had never felt in all her life. She lifted her eyes to the source from which the sweet sounds came, and they encountered a pair of wonderfully beautiful black eyes that burned like living coals. They penetrated her through and through, like sharp daggers. More, they seemed to her eloquent, as if they were filled with the desire to convey to her a special message. She tried to withdraw her eyes from the eyes that were piercing her to her core; but she could not. She was like hypnotized.

“And, so this is Stempenyu!” she thought within herself. But, she got no further than this. There was a sudden movement. The bride was about to be brought under the wedding canopy.

“Where are the candles?” asked one of the bridegroom’s relatives.

“The candles — where are they?” was the reply that one of the bride’s relatives had to the challenge that had been thrown out.

And, once again there arose the same noise and hubbub which had characterized the beginning of the wedding-day. Everyone took to running here and there, without having the least idea as to why and wherefore of their flight. Everybody was pushing and crushing, and treading on his neighbors’ toes. Dresses were torn. And, the people were sweating and abusing the waters and the waitresses, as well as the superintendents, the latter of whom, in turn, abused the guests back again. And, from one end of the room to the other, there passed from lip to lip the sarcastic remark—“Thank goodness, it is a bit lively here!”

In the disorder which prevailed at the time when the bride was being led back from the canopy to her daïs, Stempenyu managed to escape from the orchestra. In a moment, he had reached the spot to which his eyes had wandered a hundred times during the last half-hour, beside the beautiful Rochalle, Isaac-Naphtali’s daughter-in-law. He managed to exchange a few words with her, smiling into her blue eyes and showing the agitation which had come upon him by the way in which he kept twirling the stray lock of hair he kept at the side of his forehead. Rochalle blushed scarlet. She feared to look into Stempenyu’s eyes, and kept her face averted from him. She hardly knew what he was saying, and only with difficulty managed to say on word to his ten. She felt that it was not all right for a modest young woman to sand talking with a musician before a whole room fell asleep.