The Jewish Voice (St. Louis, Missouri) (July 10, 1896)
PARSLEY PUSS
By Sacher Masoch.
Her name was Fradel Levi, and not Parsley Puss, as might have been supposed. Her nickname had been given her because of two reasons; first, that she invariably lay curled up like a cat when she slept; secondly, that she always bad on her window-sill a bottle containing an infusion of parsley, — this mixture being ber sovereign remedy against the large freckles which rather disfigured her piquant little face. A poor, hard-working girl with a good clear mind that helped her to see her duty plainly, and follow it unresistingly. That duty was to work from early morning till late at night helping her parents, second-hand dealers, to buy, sell, and remodel old clothes.
Care sat heavily on the girl's brow and burdened her with a look beyond her years. How she longed for just one day of rest! To people as miserably poor as the Levis there is no Sabbath.
More than one of the young men in the little town had cast admiring glances at Puss's well rounded figure and attractive face; but who would have been bold enough to ask her hand in marriage? A rich man only could have taken such a rash step, and where was the Croeus whose parents would receive a daughter-in-law without a substantial marriage-portion? Sheva Levi and his wife Hündel had renounced all hope of seeing their pretty little girl married.
Puss, on her part, had never time to think of a husband. Her most ambitious dream was for a jacket, not a fine one like a boyar's wife would wear, but a common one, trimmed and lined with squirrel.
Confinement and deprivation had told on the girl's health. In the close shop in winter, she would oftentimes be seized with prolonged and violent trembling, while, even in midsummer, her unstrung nerves would affect her similarly, and she would appear shivering with cold. Ah, if she could only wrap herself up in soft, warm furs, if she could but once knew that luxury, she would be well, this trembling would leave her, she would be happy!
Busy one day in the shop, gilding a curtain-pole, she glanced up at the opening door, and saw a wizen-faced, long-bearded little man come sidling toward her. He smiled, made his bow, and offered to tell her fortune. Her visitor was none other than Chas Messing, who was blessed by Dame Fortune with the gift of chochmath yad, [one who tells fortunes by palmistry] and supported himself (humbly be it understood) by his calling of prophet.
Puss thanked him; she had nothing to spend for luxuries.
“I will be satisfied with a birch-bark snuff box,” he said.
She gave him the trifle, and he began to examine her hand knowingly.
"I see happiness,” he cried, "and what happiness! Riches, and such riches! A man, ah, what a man!"
Puss gave an incredulous smile; but scarce a week had passed when Barom, a schadchen (professional match' maker) from Jassy, presented himself at Sheva Levi's door.
After he had seen Puss, his mental soliloquy ran in this wise; “The girl is bright and pretty, honest and brave withal. The very woman that rich old Paschelles wants for his son. Her family has not its like in the whole kingdom; one of the old fellow's indispensable requisites was that his daughter-in-law should be of the tribe of Levi. It is God alone who has led me to this girl of noble lineage!"
A few days after this, Barom appeared again, this time accompanied by Modrach Pasebelles, whom he introduced as a suitor for the young lady's hand. A month later, the wedding took place, and the day after the festivities Puss was installed as mistress in her husband's house at Jassy.
Was it all a dream? She shuddered at the thought of awakening. The sense of luxury she experienced as she glided into the great cloak her husband bad bought her, and nestled in the costly fur; the bliss of lying back in the soft velvet cushions of the railway carriage, —all this must be real, it dare not be a miserable mockery of fate, a delusion of the senses!
These horses that drove her and her husband through the streets of Jassy were creatures of flesh and blood, no vision of the imagination; and this marble staircase of the little palace she was to call home did not sink away as she placed her feet upon it. No, it was all real, all true, this happiness that Chas Messing bad read across her band, and predicted for in exchange for a birch-bark snuff box.
She never tired of swinging the heavy damask curtains of her bedchamber to and fro that she might see them sink back into their rich deep folds; she never wearied of passing her bands across the velvet of the furniture, nor of caressing the lustrous sable that trimmed her red-velvet house-gown.
Care seemed banished forever and a day. It found no room for lodgment within the lordly dwelling where choice paintings, statues from the antique, and gorgeous exotics transformed the rooms into a fairy-land of beauty!
Parsley Puss moved about amid all this splendor like the wife of a nabob. Her seizures of trembling attacked her no more. She had but to press her finger on the ivory button and the electric current carried her commands to any part of the house, or even into the town if she desired it, and set an army of servants in motion.
Her husband was her most devoted slave. After the birth of her first child, a boy, she fairly blossomed into radiant beauty, her slender figure became charmingly rounded, and the obnoxious freckles disappeared as by magic.
But the misery which had weighed upon her childhood and youth, and which had been frightened away by pleasure and joy, was not to be so easily routed. It crept silently back to her heart, and pressed upon it with more intense and cruel torture than it bad done in the luckless days of yore when it bad formed a fitting background for the old-clothes shop and its surroundings. Poor Puss, who had floated in bliss for a few days, who had enjoyed happiness for a few months, and had rested in sweet peace for a whole year, knew now not a moment's contentment or tranquility.
She was driven by a sort of fever from room to room, from her house to the factory, from factory to the town, and then again and again over the weary round. She was urged resistlessly by a force mightier than her own. Walking or sleeping, the spirit of unrest harassed and oppressed her.
She would start from sleep with the thought of fire, and hurriedly putting on her silk stockings and Turkish slippers, slipping Into her gold-embroidered fur-trimmed gown, and throwing a red Persian scarf about her bead, she would go stealthily through the entire house looking for an unextinguished lamp or candle, and end by visiting the kitchen, where she would throw water on the dying embers. At the theatre, listening to a bright operetta, she would suddenly exclaim: "Suppose, my husband should lose his money!" and leaving her box would be driven to the factory, and reassure herself by a personal inspection of the books.
Were she giving a dinner-party, she would abruptly leave the table, and fly to her baby's cradle to convince herself that her darling was not dead.
Naturally, Modrach suffered at seeing his wife the victim of such disquiet. In vain he tried to reason with her, and exhausted argument after argument in proving that her ills were all of her imagination; he would grow stern, and tell her that she was not alone making herself miserable, but inflicting pain on every one about her. For all response, he would receive a melancholy smile.
One afternoon when she was particularly nervous, he brought the boy into her room, saying, as he laid the laughing burden on her lap, ''Puss, can he not make you happy?" She looked at him tenderly through her tears, and answered gently: “Yes, love, in a measure, and you, Modrach—how good you are; but happiness came too late!"
It was an oppressive morning. The sun shone fiercely through half naked trees denuded of their leaves by autumn wind and rain. Puss paced her garden restlessly, her hands bidden in its ample flowing sleeves. She trembled, a vague feeling of alarm possessed her, her eyes were lustrous with unshed tears.
( TO BE CONCLUDED. )