Page 68 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Wisoka Mazovieck

education, he can learn by himself at home. We only paid half the
fare, and tuition was free, so it was an easy matter to go down to
Wisoka without asking permission from father. After Passover, when
the season for school was beginning in the yeshiva in Wisoka, I left
with my cousin David. I said goodbye to my mother, but my father
did not know until he came home on Friday. He was very agitated by
my leaving home and never wrote or asked how my studies were
coming along.
We went on foot to the railroad station in Praga. It was quite a
distance, and took several hours. One can get on the train without
buying a ticket in the little office, by paying the conductor instead. A
wise person could pay half the fare to the conductor, who would not
register it. But one who tries to steal a fare from both the company
and the conductor is not welcome on the train. David bought his
ticket, and I sneaked into the railroad car. The trains in that country
at that time were not as luxurious as American trains. The narrow
aisles, lit by kerosene lamps, were filled with suitcases, trunks, sacks,
farm women with baskets loaded with eggs or chickens, and Jewish
peddlers with bundles.
I slipped in among the crowd and crawled under the benches until
I reached David. He covered me with his suitcase, and the other
people sitting around him did not know I was there, curled up among
the sacks and boxes like a dog. Lying there for six hours is not very
pleasant, but the worst thing happened during the night. It was stuffy,
I was getting tired, the continual sound of the wheels on the track
relaxed me, and I fell asleep. it is wrong to say one is half-asleep; in
fact, one is half-awake, thinking, talking, trying to walk, and all the
time stretching himself to straighten his tired sides. When a drunken
man walks in a slouch and mumbles to himself, he is sleeping from
the effect of alcohol hypnotism, like one falls asleep from the
tiredness of hearing constant musical noises. Further, few people ever
lie down in bed on one side and wake up on the same side, as we act
in sleep as we do when awake: we are restless, looking for activity.
We must have motion, because life is just motion—even inanimate
things cohere and exist by constant motion.
So my body under the bench looked for expansion, for a wider
field and more air, and the legs whose duty is to scout and explore
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