Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance Read Online Free

Rochalle the beautiful. “You go, Jeremiah,” he added, toone of the apprentices, “and find out for me who she is. Be quick about it!”
    Jeremiah was not away many minutes. He returned with definite information.
    “She is not a maiden. She is a married woman. She is Isaac-Naphtali’s daughter-in-law, and comes from Yehupetz. That is her husband in the velvet skull-cap. Do you see him? He is just turning towards us.”
    “To the devil with you!” cried Stempenyu excitedly. “You were not long finding all this out! Oh, she is very beautiful. Quick! Look at the expression in her wonderful blue eyes!”
    “If you wish me to,” began the swollen-faced Jeremiah, “if you wish me to, I will start a conversation with her and find out more for you.”
    “To the devil with you, you hideous monster! Nobody wants you to open your hideous mouth. I can talk to her myself if I want to!”
    “Nu!” said someone to Stempenyu, seeing that there was likelihood of a quarrel. “Nu! Stempenyu, make a start. Let them see how you can pierce their hearts with your fiddle; and, how you can tear out their bowels.”
    Stempenyu needed no further reminder. He took up his fiddle, winked at the men, who at once put themselves in readiness for the signal, and he began to play the opening overture.

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 bebetter to lose a fortune than a single note from Stempenyu’s fiddle. The old men fell into reveries; the women