Read The Family Moskat for Free Online Page A

crates and yelled out in hoarse voices. Crowds went in and out of buildings. At the entrance to a store a revolving door spun around, swallowing up and disgorging people as though they were caught in some sort of mad dance.
    The lodging-house where Asa Heshel hoped to find a room had three courtyards. It was almost like a town in itself. Peddlers called out their wares, artisans repaired broken chairs, sofas, and cots. Jews in faded coats and heavy boots fussed about their carts, which were hung with wooden buckets and lanterns. The meek-looking nags with their thin protruding ribs and long tails nuzzled at a mixture of oats and straw.
    In the middle of the courtyard a group of jugglers was performing. A half-undressed man with long hair was lying on the ground, his naked back resting on a board studded with nails, while with the soles of his raised feet he juggled a barrel. A woman in red pantaloons, her head cropped close, padded back -22-and forth on her hands, her feet waving in the air. A ragpicker, with a dirty white beard and a sack on his shoulder, came in from the street, raised his eyes to the upper stories, and cleared his throat.
    "What'll you sell? What'll you sell?" he shouted in a rasping, hoarse voice. "I buy pots and pans, old shoes, old pants, old hats, rags, rags."
    The ragpicker must have some deeper meaning, it seemed to Asa Heshel. What he really meant was: "Rags, that's all that's left of our striving."
    "And Rabbi Hiyah taught: One man says, you owe me one hundred gulden, and the other answers, I owe you nothing." The words came in the traditional chant from a study house in a room off the courtyard. Through the dust-laden window pane Asa Heshel caught a glimpse of a dark face framed in disordered sidelocks. For a moment the singsong voice prevailed over the tumult in the court.
    The steps up to the hotel were littered with mud and refuse. At the left, in a kitchen, a woman bent over a steaming washtub. At the right, in a room with four windows, and with moist, sweating walls, a group of men and women sat about a large table. A fair-haired man was gnawing at the leg of a chicken; an old Jew with a beard growing askew from his chin and a parchment-yellow forehead, furrowed with wrinkles, muttered over an open volume.
    A plump young man in a sweat-stained vest held a stick of sealing wax to a candle and dabbed the heated end on an envelope. The women sat somewhat removed from the men, the older of them with kerchiefs over their matron's wigs. A man in a quilted jacket, below which protruded the fringes of a ritual garment, was repairing a sack with a heavy needle and ropelike thread. A gas lamp snored and flickered. The hotelkeeper, a youngish man, came forward. He was wearing gold-rimmed glasses and under his collar a stringlike, typical Chassidic tie.
    "A newcomer? What can I do for you?"
    "Is it possible to get lodging here?"
    "What else? First 1 have to see your papers. A pass or birth certificate."
    "I have a pass."
    "Good. A hundred per cent. What's the name?"
    " Asa Heshel Bannet."
    -23-" Bannet.
    Any relation to Rabbi Mordecai Bannet?" "Yes. A great-grandson."
    "An aristocratic family, eh? And where are you from?"
    "Tereshpol Minor."
    "What brings you to Warsaw? To see a doctor, I suppose."
    "No."
    "What, then? To go into business?"
    "No."
    "Maybe to enter a yeshivah?"
    "I don't know yet."
    "Who else would know? How long do you want to stay?
    Overnight or longer?"
    "In the meanwhile just overnight."
    "You'll have to share a bed with someone else. It'll come out cheaper."
    Asa Heshel made a wry mouth and started to say something, but he composed his lips and was silent.
    "What's wrong with it? It isn't good enough for you? This is Warsaw. You have to take things the way you find them. This isn't the Hotel Bristol. The biggest merchants sleep two in a bed when the place is full."
    "I thought I could get a room for myself."
    "Not here."
    A silence fell on the group at the table. The man who was