The Highwayman

  My old Auntie, Chana Dereviansky, nee Pelovski,  was a young girl in Zaludok when it happened and she told it me.  Also she was a very religious lady and would never ever not tell the truth or embroider anything.  At the time it must have been the talk of Zaludok and all around.  Things like that didn't happen every day.

Here it is, just as it was told me.

It must have been in the last years of the 19th century.  My greatgrandmother used to earn her living by baking.  She was the
breadwinner.  She had a little hut at the beginning of the forest - I would think the Choinwick, and she used to sell Brandy and Biscuits (Bronfen and Kichlach) to travellers.  She also used to sell her biscuits in the town square on market day.

There was this man who used to come through the forest regularly.  He was a Jew, richly dressed, with a high hat and good leather boots.  He also had a lovely horse.   One day he came to the market  and saw my greatgrandmother with one of her daughters, who was supposed to have been very beautiful.  He fell in love with her, and asked if he could marry her.  She was obviously flattered, and for my greatgrandparents it was wonderful, because they didn't have to find a dowry.  (I am sure they never aspired to such a match for their daughter).

They married, presumably in Zaludok, and then he took her away to his home.  She had everything her heart could desire.  She had servants and wanted for nothing.  He used to go away regularly.  He had told her she could have and do whatever she wanted, but in  the house there was a locked room, and he warned her never to try and go in there.

She must have been inquisitive about the locked room, but she could never get in there, until one day he left the key where she found it - or perhaps she watched to see where he hid it.  So being a woman, she had a baby girl by then, she waited until he had gone away and then opened the door of the room.  It had many valuable things in it, but what she saw most of all was
that there were knives, axes and rifles or guns.  This frightened her.  She knew about the bandits who frequented the forests paths and lonely roads, and she realised that was his profession.

She didn't know what to do.  She became afraid.  Afraid he would find out she knew his secret, and also afraid of him.  What did she do?   She cried and cried all the time.  He must have loved her very much, because he wanted her to stop crying.  When he questioned her, she said she was crying because she had a little baby her mother hadn't seen, and she was lonely for her family.  He then promised her that the next time he was going in that direction, he would take her home, do his 'business', and then call and take her back home.

So he did.  He left her in Zaludok, and as he left, she began crying and told her mother what she had found.Her mother immediately ran to the shule where my greatgrandfather spent all his time, and fetched him home.  (My aunt said "I remember him now, with the long peyot and the tzitsit down to his knees").  They were poor but they were honest, and they knew they could never let their daughter go back.  When he came back, they told him what she had found, and they must have threatened him with the police, because he agreed to a divorce.

What happened to her afterwards, I don't know.  My aunt said she didn't remember what had become of the child, but she couldn't imagine her grandmother letting him take the baby.

In my family he was alluded to as the Highwayman.  I often wonder what became of her.