bread. Hershel and Jakob came in as the food was placed on the table, Hershel carrying an easel and frame, on which he was sketching a scene of the river, and Jakob holding his prayer book. He said a brief prayer when they assembled at the table, and then they fell to.
Hanna ate quickly and left the cleaning to the girls so she could get to work. She had lost half a day already, but did not expect that Mrs. Merkys would deduct it from her salary, since there were many occasions when she had worked overtime. At the shop, she forced herself to concentrate only on the dress and not on the money she needed for the doctor. She accomplished a lot by quitting time, straightened up her work area, then left. On her ride back from Kaunas, she had gone over in her mind the people she dared approach for a loan. Her Uncle Samuel was out of the question, since he was little better off than themselves. But then, Mrs. Merkys had contributed more than she expected, and that was a relief. There were two other prospects, and quickly she walked to Mr. Feldman’s store. She had dealt with him for years, and they had struck up a form of friendship. He was a small, thin, wizened man, married to a mouse of a woman, who had given him two children with almost every ailment that youngsters could have.
Like everyone in the village, Feldman knew that Motlie was very ill, and suspected, like everyone else, that she had cancer. He also was aware that the family was impoverished, but he remembered that Israel always paid his debts to the kopek. There was more. He was a pious man, and he believed as surely as there is a living God that an act of charity would be returned threefold to his unfortunate children.
“Hanna,” he said, as soon as the request, delivered with a discomfort that only desperation could overcome, was made. “I have ten rubles for you. It is not a loan. It is a gift. I only ask that you pass on this gift someday when you are able to.”
Tears came to her eyes. How little she had actually known this man. He was not rich by any means, and the ten rubles represented a good part of his savings. She did not insist that she would accept the money only as a loan, for it was his mitzvah, his thanks to the Lord, and this must never be taken from a person. The Lord smiles at mitzvahs. She thanked him with a lump in her throat, and then she was back on the street, with ten rubles still to go.
The next one to see was George Wilson, a most unusual person to be living in the district. An American from a town called Morrisville in Pennsylvania, he had been a sailor on a freighter which had made port at Riga in Latvia over seventy years before, when wind and sails were the main form of sea locomotion. Wanderlust had brought him to Lithuania, and a Jewish girl from a neighboring village had captured his heart. For over sixty years, he had transported goods up and down the Nemunas, like her father. He had converted to Judaism directly before his marriage, and had become as orthodox as the Gaon of Vilnius, the head of the Jewish community throughout Eastern Europe. Never having been blessed with children, he and Ida, his wife, had adopted the world at large, and Jews in particular. Being a bright sort of person, before his marriage, while still legally a gentile, he had obtained permission to buy a large farm of unusually fertile land, and this had posed a problem after conversion, since Jews were prohibited from owning land. They could buy buildings, but not the ground upon which they sat. Actually, the Russians had also excluded Catholics from owning land, which took in almost all of the Lithuanians. After a few years of filling out forms and holding hearings, the Russian authorities decided to do nothing, so Wilson plied the river while Ida hired Jewish neighbors to till the farm, and in time they had become financially secure. Ida had fallen victim to a palsy eight years ago, and up to her death two or three years later, Motlie had frequently walked the four versts out of Gremai to their trim, sawn lumber home to bring dishes that Ida loved, especially her kugel, noodles baked with cheese. She had continued doing the same for Wilson himself up to the time of Israel’s accident, when food for just the family became a problem.
Over the years, though, small amounts of money and baskets of food had found their way to Israel’s door from an unknown donor, who, Israel and Motlie both knew was a transplanted American. And as often as Israel and Wilson met in the synagogue, not one word passed between them about the gifts, for this was the second most mitzvah-like deed–that is, to give charity without being identified. The premier gift, in Jewish custom, was that from a person who concealed his identity to one who would never be known to him.
The ninety-two-year-old man was delighted to have Hanna pay him a visit. His health and mental capabilities were still first class, and since the death of his beloved Ida, matchmakers from versts about had attempted to pair him off with hopeful, vigorous widows. To no avail. Wilson still took each meal with Ida, setting a place for her at the table, putting a token bit of food on her plate, and holding a two way conversation in which Ida’s comments came from a knowledge so deep and aware of the woman he loved that he knew exactly what she would have said during a talk. It was not difficult for Hanna to explain the purpose of her visit to Wilson, for he was the type to inspire confidence, and like Feldman, he did not hesitate to give her the remaining ten rubles, but with a different stipulation–that it be a gift without strings attached.
“Thank you, Mr. Wilson,” she said, relief flooding over her that the awesome sum had been collected. “One day I will give your gift to another person.”
He raised his hands to stop her, the etched lines in his wind tanned face growing deeper with the thought that the Lord might attach such a gesture to his offer. “Please, please, my child. Do as your heart dictates. I only hope that God will be merciful to Motlie. I will pray for her.”
Motlie was worse by the time Hanna got home, and after a quick supper of bread and tea, Hanna told Israel that she would leave at once for Kaunas to see the doctor. Hershel, aware of what was going on, was ready to offer his horse, but since it was too late for her to ride alone, he borrowed a wagon from a neighbor and drove her to the city.
The nurse was not on duty when Hanna arrived, and the doctor himself answered the pull bell. She told him in a rush of words what she was there for, and that she had the money, holding it out towards him, the bills crumpled from the tightness with which she had clasped them. He looked into her drawn face, the anxiety mirrored by the sharp glare of the electric lights of his vestibule, and he said, “I will be there tomorrow afternoon.”
Hanna nodded in relief. “Please, doctor, do not say anything to my mother or father which will give them additional worry. Just tell me.”
His eyes suddenly grew cold. He was not in the habit of discussing cases with a mere child when the father still lived. “We will see,” he said brusquely, regretting that he had answered the bell instead of waiting until his manservant returned from an errand.
As Hershel and Hanna were driving home, breezes from the Nemunas bringing relief from the heat of the sun’s harsh rays only hours before, he glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
“When will he come?” he asked.
“He said tomorrow afternoon.”
Hershel was also under no delusions about the seriousness of Motlie’s condition. As a university graduate, a chemical engineer, who had taken a number of additional courses in sciences that contained several medical students, he had discussed cancer occasionally with them. They had rolled their eyes and raised their hands in helplessness when the disease was mentioned.
“We don’t have the least idea what causes it,” they echoed each other. “We are not even sure whether or not it is contagious.” One thing they did know, though, was that anyone with cancer was doomed, especially after having looked inside cadavers during autopsies and seen the widespread damage.
Hershel had remarked that two or three thousand years ago Egyptian surgeons had opened skulls and removed cysts as large as lemons. A couple of the cynics had laughed and said that all of the patients had quickly died, except for one who became a vegetable. When Hershel wanted to know more about the survivor, the students had cried out in unison, “Our ass-hole professor!”
Hershel smiled at the recollection. “About the doctor,” he said to Hanna. “He’s a specialist, isn’t he?”
“Yes. My Uncle Samuel said he is the best.”
He wanted to ask where she had gotten the money for such a physician, but her