When I descended into the valley, I
decided to cross the cemetery, and so shorten my way. The coach was
far behind, and I was walking very slowly, that it might reach me at
the other side of the cemetery. My path lay among the gravestones,
some of them gray with age, dilapidated, bent forward, as if trying
to overhear the talk of the nether world: some clean and upright, as
if gazing proudly heavenwards. It was a world of silence I was in;
and heavy indeed is the silence I was in; it is really a speaking
silence. I think there is something real in the belief that the
dead talk in their graves. To me it seemed as if the gravestones
were casting evil glances at me for my having disturbed the silent
place with the glitter of my buttons. And it was with difficulty
that I could decipher the inscriptions on the stones. I do not know
why it was so: either my Hebrew had got rusty, or else graveyard
inscriptions make hard reading in general.
"Here lieth . . . . the righteous man . . . . modest, pious . . . .
Rabbi Simhah . . . . Shohet. . . . "
I read it all, and shuddered: why, under that very stone lay the
remains of my own brother Simhah!
I wanted to shed tears, but my tears did not obey me.
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