46
PARTISAN REVIEW
perhaps was not really hidden within them but which was evoked,
carried by them. The Slavic
woda
is still for me, to this day, a fluid
which is drawn from the well, the Hebraic
majim
bubbles up out of a
spring, and the German
Wasser
comes out of a faucet, which a little
child can turn on or off at will .
I think of the tall, powerful man who brought water to the
house in all seasons . Two full buckets which he carried on his
shoulders on a long pole like a yoke. He walked upright along the
path to the well, his head held high. But his neck and back were
deeply bowed when he returned from the well heavily laden.
Ordinarily he was paid for one run, that is for two buckets, or
on a weekly fee, for which he took care of his customers according to
their needs. We sat in the warm, often overheated rooms; sometimes
we saw him through the iced-over window as a gigantic shadow bob–
bing by . I imagined that the man who carried on such work must
make a lot of money at it, that he might possibly be the richest man
in the shtetl. But if that were so, why didn't he stay in the warmth,
near a tall tiled stove, and why did he stick at such hard work so late
into the night? I raised these questions at the dinner table - as so
often, we had guests with us - and aroused a peal of laughter. The
four-year-old's observation was soon quoted as an example of
childlike wisdom, not of precocity.
I was told that the work of the water carrier was indeed hard,
but so simple that anyone who had not learned anything proper
could perform it. That was why the man had to haul water from
morning to night, merely to earn his daily bread. This was quite
fair, even self-evident, but I found myself on the side of the water
carrier. I am still on his side....
The water carrier's lack of transcendence was a misfortune. But
what did I feel as good fortune and happiness? Our faith, which
governed everything and dictated our way of life down to the
smallest detail? Yes and no. I realized soon enough that it drew
upon us the hostility of all those who did not share that faith. I knew
from childhood on that clinging to it could be more perilous than
war and cholera. I was outraged that God rewarded us so badly for
this faith, that in fact he punished us and never rewarded us. We
were God's water carriers.
If
he were just, how could he let us go on
being his water carriers through all the ages, to say nothing of
demanding it of us?
All my early doubts about God's justice, about the goodness of
people, about myself, who secretly skipped whole passages in my
