The White Terror and The Red Part 38

I had put him to shame before a lady, he said. He was good for forty times forty dollars, and all the Jews were a lot of cut-throats and blood-suckers; that all we were good for was to ask officers to protect us against rioters, and that my shop was made up of ill-gotten wealth anyhow. I had never seen the man before and I insisted upon being paid; but he made such a noise, I was afraid a crowd might gather. So I let him go, but I sent out my salesman after him and he found out his name.

Then I went before his colonel" (the jeweller named the regiment), "but what do you think the colonel said: 'He's a nice fellow. I shall never believe it of him. And if he owes you some money, he'll pay you. At a time like this you Jews oughtn't to press your claims too hard.' That's what the colonel said."

When a shabby cap-maker with thick bloodless lips told how he had let a rough-looking Gentile leave his shop in a new cap without paying for it, the doctor flew into a pa.s.sion.

"Why did you? Why did you?" he growled, stamping his feet, just as he would when the relatives of a patient neglected to comply with his orders. "It is just like you people. I would have you flayed for this."

This only encouraged the cap-maker to go into the humour of the episode.

"I was poking around the market place, with a high pile of caps on either hand," he said, "when I saw a Gentile with a face like a carrot covered full of warts. 'Aren't you ashamed to wear such a cap?' says I.

'Aren't you ashamed to spoil a handsome face like yours by that rusty, horrid old thing on your head?'"

"Oh, I would have you spanked," the little doctor snarled smilingly.

Whereupon several of the bystanders also smiled.

"Hold on, doctor. I spanked myself. Well, the Gentile was not hard to persuade, though when we got at my place he was rather hard to please.

He kept me plucking caps from the ceiling until the very pole in my hand got tired of the job. At last he was suited. I thought he would ask how much. He didn't. He did say something, but that was about anti-Jewish riots. 'This cap will do,' he then said, 'Good-bye old man,' and made for the door. And when I rushed after him and asked for the money he turned on me and stuck the biggest fig[D] you ever saw into my face.

Since then when I see the good looks of a Gentile spoiled by a horrid old cap I try not to take it to heart."

[D] A sign of contempt and defiance consisting in the thumb being put between the next two fingers.

The doctor laughed. "And you let him go without paying?" he asked.

"I should say I did. I was glad he didn't ask for the change."

Another man confessed to having had an experience of this kind, a customer having exacted from him change from a ruble which he had never paid him.

"He was a tough looking customer, and he made a rumpus, so I thought to myself, 'Is this the first time I have been out of some cash? Let him go hang himself.' And the scoundrel, he gave me a laugh, called me accursed Jew into the bargain and went his way."

"Did you ask him to call again?" the cap-maker demanded, and noticing Clara's father by his side, he added: "This is not the way Rabbi Rachmiel's wife does business, is it? She would make him pay her the dollar and the change, too."

The doctor burst into laughter, the others echoing it noisily. Only Vladimir's face wore a look of restless gravity. It was the restlessness of a man who is trying to nerve himself up to a first public speech. His heart was full of something which he was aching to say to these people, to unburden himself of, but his courage failed him to take the word.

Presently a man too timid to seek information in the centre of the a.s.sembly addressed a whispered inquiry to Vladimir and Vladimir's answer attracted the attention of two or three bystanders. Gradually a little colony branched off from the main body. He was telling them what he knew from the newspapers about the latest anti-Jewish outbreaks in various towns; and speaking in a very low voice and in the simplest conversational accents, he gradually pa.s.sed to what weighed on his heart. He knew Yiddish very well indeed, yet he had considerable difficulty in speaking it, his chief impediment lying in his inability to render the cultured language in which he thought into primitive speech. His Yiddish was full of Russian and German therefore, but some of his listeners understood it all, while the rest missed but an occasional phrase.

"People like myself--those who have studied at the gymnasia and universities"--he went on in a brooding, plaintive undertone, "feel the misery of it all the more keenly because we have been foolish enough to imagine ourselves Russians, and to keep aloof from our own people. Many of us feel like apologising to every poor suffering Jew in Russia, to beg his forgiveness, to implore him to take us back. We were ashamed to speak Yiddish. We thought we were Russians. We speak the language of the Gentiles, and we love it so dearly; we have adopted their ways and customs; we love their literature; everything Russian is so dear to us; why should it not be? Is not this our birthplace? But the more we love it, the more we try to be like Russians, the more they hate us. My uncle, Rabbi Rachmiel, says it is too late to do penance. Well, I do feel like a man who comes to confess his sins and to do penance. It is the blood and the tears of our brothers and sisters that are calling to us to return to our people. And now we see how vain our efforts are to be Russians. There was a great Jew whose name was Heinrich Heine." (Two of the men manifested their acquaintance with the name by a nod.) "He was a great writer of poetry. So he once wrote about his mother--how he had abandoned her and sought the love of other women. But he failed to find love anywhere, until ultimately he came to the conclusion that the only woman in whom he was sure of love was his own dear mother. This is the way I feel now. I scarcely ever saw the inside of a synagogue before, but now I, like the doctor, belong here. It is not a question of religion. I am not religious and cannot be. But I am a Jew and we all belong together. And when a synagogue happens to stand on a site like this----"

He broke off in the middle of the sentence. His allusion to the ma.s.sacre of two centuries before inspired him with an appalling sense of the continuity of Jewish suffering. The others stood about gazing solemnly at him, until the scholarly old man of eighty with the very white beard broke silence. He raised his veined aged little hands over Vladimir's head and said in a nervous treble:

"May G.o.d bless you, my son. That's all I have to say."

Vladimir was literally electrified by his words.

"But what do they want of us?" asked a man with a blueish complexion.

"You say they are good-natured. Do you call it good-natured when one acts like a wild beast, bathing in the blood of innocent people?"

"Well, this is the Gentile way of being good-natured," somebody put in, with a sneer, before Vladimir had time to answer.

"They have been turned into savages," Vigdoroff then said. He maintained the low, mournful voice, though he now put a didactic tone into it.

"They are blind, ignorant people. They are easily made a catspaw of."

The man with the blueish complexion interrupted him. He spoke of Gentile cruelty, of the Inquisition, the Crusades, ma.s.sacres, and almost with tears of rage in his eyes he defied Vladimir to tell him that Jews were capable of any such brutalities. Vladimir said no, Jews were not capable of any bloodshed, and went on defending the Russian people. The man with the sneer was beginning to annoy him. He was an insignificant looking fellow with very thin lips and a very thin flat blond beard. Even when his face was grave it had a sneering effect. He said very little. Only occasionally he would utter a word or two of which n.o.body else took notice. Yet it was chiefly to him that Vladimir was addressing himself.

But the a.s.sembly was soon broken up. Rabbi Rachmiel's wife came in at the head of several other women who were not afraid to walk through the streets after sundown in these days. They had grown uneasy about their husbands' delay.

Vladimir saluted his aunt warmly. They exchanged a few words, but nothing was said of Clara. An "illegal" person like her could not be mentioned in public.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

A PAPER FROM THE CZAR.

A large crowd of peasants, in tall straw hats, many of them with their whips in their hands, congregated in front of the bailiff's office at Zorki. It was a sultry afternoon in August. A single s.h.i.+rt of coa.r.s.e white linen and a pair of trousers of the same material were all the clothes the men wore. The trousers were very wide and baggy but drawn tight at the bottom by means of strings, so that they dropped at the ankles blouse-fas.h.i.+on, and the loose-fitting s.h.i.+rt fell over the trousers with a similar effect. Most of the s.h.i.+rts were embroidered in red and blue. Sometimes, as a result of special rivalry among the young women, one village will affect gaudier embroidery and more of it than its neighbours. This could be seen now at one corner of the crowd where a group of peasants, all from the same place, defined itself by the flaming red on the upper part of their sleeves. There were women, too, in the crowd, the girls in wreaths of artificial flowers and all of them in ribbons and coral beads, though some of them were barefoot.

A strong smell of primitive toil emanated from their bodies; primitive ideas and primitive interests looked out of their eyes. The northern moujik--the Great, or "real," Russian--who speaks the language of Turgeneff and Tolstoy, has less poetry than the Little-Russian, but he also has less cunning and more abandon. To be sure, the cunning of the Zorki peasant is as primitive as his whole mind. Very few men in the crowd now standing in front of the bailiff's office could have managed to add such two numbers as six and nineteen, or to subtract the weight of an empty pail from the weight of a pail of honey. Their book-keeping consists of notches on the door-jamb, and their armour in the battle of life is a cast-iron distrustfulness.

At last the bailiff made his appearance, adjusted the straps of his sword across his breast, and asked what they wanted. A tall old fellow with a drooping steel-grey moustache came out of the crowd, hat in hand, and bowed deeply, as he said:

"It's like this, your n.o.bleness. We wish to know when that paper from the Czar about the Jews will be read to us?"

"What paper from the Czar?" the bailiff asked. "What are you talking about?" He was a dry-boned man, but ruddy-faced and with very narrow almond-shaped eyes. As he now looked at the crowd through the sharp afternoon glare his eyes glistened like two tiny strips of burnished metal.

"Your n.o.bleness need not be told what paper. It's about beating the Jews and taking away their goods."

The scene was being watched by several Jews, plucky fellows who had come in the interests of their people at the risk of being the first victims of mob fury. Among these was Yossl, Makar's father, at once the most intellectual and strongest looking man in the delegation. In the meantime the other Jews, stupefied and sick with fear, had closed their shops and dwellings and were hiding in cellars and in garrets, in the ruins of an old church and in the woods. Two women gave birth to stillborn children during the commotion, one of these at the bedside of her little boy who was too sick to be moved.

"You are a fool," the bailiff said to the spokesman, with a smile, as he raised his narrow eyes in quest of some Gentile with whom he might share the fun. "You are a lot of fools. Better go home. There is no such paper in the world. Whoever told you there was?"

"Why, everybody says so. In most places they finished the job long ago.

Only we are a lot of slow coaches, people say. And then, when the higher authorities find out about it, who will be fined or put in jail? We, poor peasants. As if we did not have troubles enough as it is."

"What will you be put in jail for?" asked the bailiff, chuckling to himself.

Here a younger peasant whispered in the spokesman's ear not to let himself be bamboozled.

Speaking with unwonted boldness, born of the conviction that the bailiff was suppressing a doc.u.ment of the Czar, the tall fellow said:

"You can't fool us, your n.o.bleness. We are only peasants, but what we know we know." And he went on to enumerate villages where, according to rumour, the paper had already been read and acted upon. "Although uneducated, yet we are not such fools as your n.o.bleness takes us for. If it is a ukase direct from the Czar we aren't going to take chances, sir.

Not we, sir. Better read it to us and let's be done with it. We have no time to waste, sir."

One of the Jews was going to make a suggestion, but he was shouted down and waved aside.

The bailiff made a gesture of amused despair and turned to go back, when the peasants stepped forward, and chattering excitedly, they gave him to understand that they would not let him go until he had shown them the imperial ukase. The purport of their remonstrance was to the effect that the Jews had bribed him to suppress the doc.u.ment. The bailiff took it all good-naturedly. In his heart of hearts he was looking forward to the sport of an anti-Jewish outbreak with delight; but the noise brought the local priest upon the scene--a kindly elderly man with the face of a whimpering peasant girl. He was a victim of official injustice himself and he implored the crowd to listen to reason. His face, at once comic and piteous, was the main cause of his failures. He was a well-educated priest, yet he was kept in this obscure town. His sacerdotal locks, meant to be long and silken, hung in stiff, wretched little clumps.

Nevertheless, as he now stood in his purple broad-sleeved gown, appealing to the mult.i.tude of white figures, his cross sparkling in the sun, the spectacle was like a scene of the early days of Christianity.

"It is a great sin to circulate wicked falsehoods like that and it is just as much of a sin to credit them," he said in a pained heartfelt voice. "Ours is a good Czar. He does not command his children to do violence to human beings."

"Oh, well, little father," one peasant broke in. "You don't seem to have heard of it. That's all. If the Czar has not ordered it, then why do they beat the Jews everywhere else and the police and soldiers stand by and see to it that they do the work well?"