Part 23
Yes, Paul was right. As Paul always is. Brought up, I think wisely, to believe in my comparative poverty, he has become manlier for not having a crutch to lean upon. Was it not enough that he was devoid from the start of the dull, dead weight of Judaism which clogged my own early years? Up to the present, though, he has not done so well as I. Russian provincial journalism scatters few luxuries to its votaries. Paul is so stupidly contented with everything that he is not likely to write anything to make a sensation. He has not invented gunpowder.
Paul's voice broke in curiously on my reflections. "It ought to make some sensation. I have collected a whole series of new arguments, partly textual, partly historical, to show the absolute want of _locus standi_ of any other than the Orthodox Church."
"Indeed," I murmured, "and what _is_ the Orthodox Church?" Paul stared at me.
"I mean," I added hastily, "your conception of the Orthodox Church."
"My conception?" said Paul. "I suppose you mean how do I defend the conception which is embodied in our ceremonies and ritual?" And before I could stop him, he had given me a summary of his arguments under which I would not have kept awake if I had not been thinking of other things. My poor boy! So this wire-drawn stuff about the Sacrament and the Lord's Supper is what has cost you toilsome days and sleepless nights, while to me the thought that I had embraced one variety of Christianity rather than another had never before occurred. All forms were the same to me, from Catholicism to Calvinism; the baptismal water had glided from my back as from a duck's. True, I have lived with all the conventional surroundings of my Christian fellow-countrymen, as I have lived with the language of Russia on my lips, and subservient to Russian customs and manners. But all the while I was neither a Russian nor a Christian. I was a Jew.
Every now and again I roused myself to laudatory assent to one of Paul's arguments when I divined by his tone that it was due. But when he wound up with a panegyric on "our glorious Russian State," and "our little father, the Czar, God's Vicegerent on earth, who alone of European monarchs incarnates and unites in his person Church and State, so that loyalty and piety are one," I could not refrain from pointing out that it was a pure fluke that Russia was "orthodox" at all.
"Suppose," said I, "Wladimir, when he made his famous choice between the Creeds of the world, had picked Judaism? It all turned on a single man's whim."
"Father," Paul cried in a pained tone, "do not be blasphemous. Wladimir was divinely inspired to dower his country with the true faith. Just therein lay the wisdom of Providence in achieving such great results through the medium of an individual. It is impossible that God should have permitted him to incline his ear to the infidel Israelite, who has survived to be at once a link with the past and a living proof of the sterility of the soul that refuses the living waters. The millions of holy Russia perpetuating the stubborn heresy of the Jews--adopting an unfaith as a faith! The very thought makes the blood run cold. Nay, then would every Russian deserve to be sunk in squalor, dishonesty, and rapacity, even as every Jew."
"Not every Jew, Paul," I remonstrated.
"No, not perhaps every Jew in squalor," he assented, with a sarcastic laugh; "for too many of the knaves have feathered their nests very comfortably. Even the Raskolnik is more tolerable. And many of them are not even Jews. The Russian Press is infested with these fellows, who take the bread out of the mouths of honest Christians, and will even write the leaders in the religious papers. Believe me, little father, these Jewish scribblers who have planted their flagstaffs everywhere have cost me many a heartache, many a disappointment."
I could not help thinking this sentiment somewhat unworthy of my Paul, though it threw a flood of light on the struggle, whose details he had never troubled me with. I began to doubt my wisdom in sending so unpractical a youth out into the battle of life, to hew his way as best he might. But how was I to foresee that he would become a writing man, that he would be tripped up at every turn by some clever Hebrew, and that his aversion from the race would be intensified?
"But surely," I said, after a moment of silence, "our Slavic journalists are not all Christians, either."
"They are not," he admitted sadly. "The Universities have much to answer for. Instead of rigidly excluding every vicious book that unsettles the great social and religious ideals of which God designed Russia to be the exponent, the works of Spencer and Taine, and Karl Marx and Tourguenieff, and every literary Antichrist, are allowed to poison faith in the sap. The censor only bars the superficially anti-Russian books. But there will come a reaction. A reaction," he added solemnly, "to which this work of mine may, by the grace of God, be permitted to contribute."
I could have laughed at my son if I had not felt so inclined to weep. Paul's pietism irritated me for the first time. Was it that _my_ reaction against my past had become stronger than ever, was it that Paul had never exposed his own narrowness so completely before? I know not. I only know I felt quite angry with him. "And how do you know there will ever be a reaction?" I asked.
"Christ never leaves himself without a witness long," he answered sententiously. "And already there are symptoms enough that the creed of the materialist does not satisfy the soul. Look at our Tolstoi, who is coming back to Christianity after ranging at will through the gaudy pleasure-grounds of science and life; it is true his Christianity is cast after his own formula, and that he has still much intellectual pride to conquer, but he is on the right road to the fountain of life. But, little father, you are unlike yourself this morning," he went on, putting his hand to my hot forehead. "You are not well." He kissed me. "Let me give you another cup of tea," he said, and turned on the tap of the samovar with an air that disposed of the subject.
I sipped at my cup to please him, remarking in the interval between two sips as indifferently as I could, "But what makes you so bitter against the Jews?"
"And what makes you so suddenly their champion?" he retorted.
"When have I championed them?" I asked, backing.
"Your pardon," he said. "Of course I should have understood you are only putting in a word for them for argument's sake. But I confess I have no patience with any one who has any patience with these bloodsuckers of the State. Every true Russian must abhor them. They despise the true faith, and are indifferent to our ideals. They sneak out of the conscription. They live for themselves, and regard us as their natural prey. Our peasantry are corrupted by their brandy-shops, squeezed by their money-lenders, and roused to discontent by the insidious utterances of their peddlers, d----d wandering Jews, who hate the Government and the Tschinn and everything Russian. When did a Jew invest his money in Russian industries? They are a filthy, treacherous, swindling set. Believe me, _batiushka_, pity is wasted upon them."
"Pity is never spent upon them," I retorted. "They are what the Russians--what we Russians--have made them. Who has pent them into their foul cellars and reeking dens? They work with their brains, and you--we--abuse them for not working with their hands. They work with their hands, and the Czar issues a ukase that they are to be driven off the soil they have tilled. It is AEsop's fable of the wolf and the lamb."
"In which the wolf is the Jew," said Paul coolly. "The Jew can always be trusted to take care of himself. His cunning is devilish. Till his heart is regenerate, the Jew remains the Ishmael of the modern world, his hand against every man's, every man's against his."
"'Love thy neighbour as thyself,'" I quoted bitterly.
"Even so," said Paul. "The Jew must be cut off, even as the Christian must pluck out his own eye if it offendeth him. Christ came among us to bring not peace but a sword. If the Kingdom of Christ is delayed by these vermin, they must be poisoned off for the sake of Russia and humanity at large."
"Vermin, indeed!" I cried hotly, for I could no longer restrain myself. "And what know you of these vermin of whom you speak with such assurance? What know you of their inner lives, of their sanctified homes, of their patient sufferings? Have you penetrated to their hearths and seen the beautiful _naivete_ of their lives, their simple faith in God's protection, though it may well seem illusion, their unselfish domesticity, their sublime scorn of temptation, their fidelity to the faith of their ancestors, their touching celebrations of fast and festival, their stanchness to one another, their humble living and their high respect for things intellectual, their unflinching toil from morn till eve for a few kopecks of gain, their heroic endurance of every form of torment, vilification, contempt--?" I felt myself bursting into tears and broke from the breakfast table.
Paul followed me to my room in amazement. In the midst of all my tempest of emotion I was no less amazed at my own indiscretion.
"What is the matter with you?" he said, clasping his arm around my neck. "Why make yourself so hot over this accursed race, for whom, from some strange whim or spirit of perverseness, you stand up to-day for the first time in my recollection?"
"It is true; why indeed?" I murmured, striving to master myself. After all, the picture I had drawn was as ideal in its beauty as Paul's in its ugliness. "_Nu_, I only wanted you to remember that they were human beings."
"_Ach_, there is the pity of it," persisted Paul; "that human beings should fall so low. And who has been telling you of all these angelic qualities you roll so glibly off your tongue?"
"No one," I answered.
"Then you have invented them. Ha! ha! ha!" And Paul went off into a fit of good-humoured laughter. That laughter was a sword between his life and mine, but I let a responsive smile play across my features, and Paul went to his own room in higher spirits than ever.
We met again at dinner, and again at our early supper, but Paul was too full of his book, and I of my own thoughts to permit of a renewal of the dispute. Even a saint, I perceive, has his touch of egotism, and behind all Paul's talk of Russia's ideals, of the misconceptions of their fatherland's function by feather-brained Nihilists and Democrats possessed of that devil, the modern spirit, there danced, I am convinced, a glorified vision of St. Paul floating down the vistas of the future, with a nimbus of Russian ideals around his head. If he has only put them as eloquently into his book as he talks of them he will at least be read.
But I have bred a bigot.
And the more bigoted he is, the more my heart faints within me for the simple, sublime faith of my people. Behind all the tangled network of ceremony and ritual, the larger mind of the man who has lived and loved sees the outlines of a creed grand in its simplicity, sublime in its persistence. The spirit has clothed itself on with flesh, as it must do for human eyes to gaze on it and live with it; and if, in addition, it has swaddled itself with fold on fold of garment, even so the music has not gone out of its voice, nor the love out of its eyes.
As soon as Paul is gone to-morrow, I must plan out my future life. His book will doubtless launch him on the road to fame and fortune. But what remains for me? To live on as I am doing would be intolerable. To do nothing for my people, either with voice or purse, to live alone in this sleepy hamlet, cut off from all human fellowship, alienated from everything that makes my neighbours' lives endurable--better death than such a death-in-life. And yet is it possible that I can get into touch again with my youth, that after a sort of Rip Van Winkle sleep, I can take up again and retwine the severed strands? How shall my people receive again a viper into its bosom? Well, come what may, there must be an end to this. Even at this moment reproachful voices haunt my ear; and in another moment, when I put down my pen to go to my sleepless bed, I shall take care to light my bed-room candle before extinguishing my lamp, for the momentary darkness would be filled with impalpable solemnity bordering on horror. Flashes and echoes from the ghostly world of my youth, the faces of my dead parents, strange fragments of sound and speech, the sough of the wind in the trees of the "House of the Living," the far-away voice of the Chazan singing some melancholy tune full of heart-break and weirdness, the little crowded Cheder where the rabbi intoned the monotonous lesson, the whizz of the stone little Ivanovitch flung at my forehead because I had "killed Christ"--. No, my nerves are not strong enough to bear these visions and voices.
All my life long I see now I have been reserved and solitary. Never has any one been admitted to my heart of hearts--not even Caterina. But now I must unburden my soul to some one ere I die. And to another living soul. For this dead sheet of paper will not, I perceive, do after all.
_Saturday Night._--Nearly a week has passed since I wrote the above words, and I am driven to your pages again. I would have come to you last night, but suddenly I recollected that it was the Sabbath. I have kept the Sabbath. I have prayed a few broken fragments of prayer, recovered almost miraculously from the deeps of memory. I have rested from every toil. I stayed myself from stirring up the fire, though it was cold and I was shivering. And a new peace has come to me.
I have heard from Paul; he has completed the negotiations with the Moscow booksellers. The book is to have every chance. Of course, in a way I wish it success. It cannot do much harm, and I am proud of Paul, after all. What a rabbi he would have made! It seems these publishers are also the owners of a paper, and Paul is to have some work on it, which will give him enough to live upon. So he will stay in Moscow for a few months and see his book through the press. He fears the distance is too great for him to come to and fro, as he would have done had he been at the capital. Though I know I shall long for his presence sometimes in my strange reactions, yet on the whole I feel relieved. To-morrow without Paul will be an easier day. I shall not go to church, though honest old Clara Petroffskovna may stare and cross herself in holy horror, and spoil the _borsch_. As for the neighbours--let the _startchina_ and the _starostas_ and the retired major from Courland, and even the bibulous Prince Shoubinoff, gossip as they will. I cannot remain here now for more than a few weeks. Besides, I can be unwell. No, on second thoughts, I shall not be unwell. I have had enough of shuffling and deceit.
_Sunday._--A day of horrible _ennui_ and despair. I tried to read the Old Testament, of course in Russian, for Hebrew books I have none, and it is doubtful whether I could read them if I had. But the black cloud remained. It chokes me as I write. My limbs are as lead, my head aches. And yet I know the ailment is not of the body.
_Monday._--The depression persists. I made a little expedition into the country. I rowed up the stream in a _duscehubka_. I tried to forget everything but the colours of the forest and the sparkle of the waters. The air was less cold than it has been for the last few days, but the russet of the pine-leaves spoke to me only of melancholy and decay. The sun set in blood behind the hills. Once I heard the howl of the wolves, but they were far away.
_Monday._--So. Just a week. Nicholas Alexandrovitch says I must not write yet, but I _must_ fill up the record, even if in a few lines. It is strange how every habit--even diary-keeping--enslaves you, till you think only of your neglected task. Ah, well! if I have been ill, I have been lucky in my period, for those frightful storms would have kept me indoors. Nicholas Alexandrovitch says it was a _mild_ attack of influenza. God preserve me from a severe one! And yet would it not be better if it had carried me off altogether? But that is a cowardly thought. I must face the future bravely, for my own hands have forged my fate. How the writing trembles and contorts itself! I must remember Nicholas's caution. He is a frank, good-hearted fellow, is our village doctor, and I have had two or three talks with him from between the bedclothes. I don't think friend Nicholas is a very devout Christian, by the by; for he said one or two things which I should have taken seriously, had I been what he thinks I am; but which had an audacious, ironical sound to my sympathetic, sceptical ears. How funny was that story about the Archimandrite of Czernovitch!
_Thursday Afternoon._--My haste to be out of bed precipitated me back again into it. But the actual pain has been small. I have grown very friendly with Nicholas Alexandrovitch, and he has promised to spend the evening with me. I am better now in body, though still troubled in mind. Paul's silence has brought a new anxiety. He has not written for twelve days. What can be the matter with him? I suppose he is overworking himself. And now to hunt up my best cigarettes for _Monsieur le medecin_. Strange that illness should perhaps have brought me a friend. Nothing, alas! can bring me a confidant.
_11 p.m._--Astounding discovery! Nicholas Alexandrovitch is a Jew! I don't know how it was, but suddenly something was said; we looked at each other, and then a sort of light flashed across our faces; we read the mutual secret in each other's eyes; a magnetic impulse linked our hands together in a friendly clasp, and we felt that we were brothers. And yet Nicholas is a whole world apart from me in feeling and conviction. How strange and mysterious is this latent brotherhood which binds our race together through all differences of rank, country, and even faith! For Nicholas is an agnostic of agnostics; he is even further removed from sympathy with my new-found faith than the ordinary Christian, and yet my sympathy with him is not only warmer than, but different in _kind_ from, that which I feel toward any Christian, even Caterina's brother. I have told him all. Yes, little book, him also have I told all. And he sneers at me. But there lurks more fraternity in his sneer than in a Christian's applause. We are knit below the surface like two ocean rocks, whose isolated crests rise above the waters. Nicholas laughs at there being any Judaism to survive, or anything in Judaism worth surviving. He declares that the chosen people have been chosen for the plaything of the fates, fed with illusions and windy conceit, and rewarded for their fidelity with torture and persecution. He pities them, as he would pity a dog that wanders round its master's grave, and will not eat for grief. In fact, save for this pity, he is even as I was until these new emotions rent me. He is outwardly a Christian, because he could not live comfortably otherwise, but he has nothing but contempt for the poor peasants whose fever-wrung brows he touches with a woman's hand. He looks upon them only as a superior variety of cattle, and upon the well-to-do people here as animals with all the vices of the muzhiks, and none of their virtues. For my Judaic cravings he has a good-natured mockery, and tells me I was but sickening for this influenza. He says all my symptoms are physical, not spiritual; that the loss of Caterina depressed me, that this depression drove me into solitude, and that this solitude in its turn reacted on my depression. He thinks that religion is a secretion of morbid minds, and that my Judaism will vanish again with the last traces of my influenza. And, indeed, there is much force in what he says, and much truth in his diagnosis and analysis of my condition. He advises me to take plenty of outdoor exercise, and to go back again to one of the great towns. To go back to Judaism, to ally one's self with an outcast race and a dying religion is, he thinks, an act of folly only paralleled by its inutility. The world will outgrow all these forms and prejudices in time is his confident assurance, as he puffs tranquilly at his cigarette and sips his Chartreuse. He points out, what is true enough, that I am not alone in my dissent from the religion I profess; for, as he epigrammatically puts it, the greatest Raskolniks[2] are the Orthodox. The religious statistics of the Procurator of the State Synod are, indeed, a poor index to the facts. Well, there is comfort in being damned in company. I do not agree with him on any other point, but he has done me good. The black cloud is partially lifted--perhaps the trouble was only physical, after all. I feel brighter and calmer than for months past. Anyhow, if I am to become a Jew again, I can think it out quietly. Even if I could bear Paul's contempt, there would always be, as Nicholas points out, great peril for me in renouncing the Orthodox faith. True, it would be easy enough to bribe the priest and the authorities, and to continue to receive my eucharistical certificate. But where is the sacrifice in that? It is hypocrisy exchanged for hypocrisy. And then what would become of Paul's prospects if it were known his father was a _Zhit_? But I cannot think of all this now. Paul's silence is beginning to fill me with a frightful uneasiness. A presentiment of evil weighs upon me. My dear dove, my _dusha_ Paul!
_Friday Afternoon._--Still no letter from Paul. Can anything have happened? I have written to him, briefly informing him that I have been unwell. I shall ride to Zlotow and telegraph, if I do not hear in a day or two.
_Saturday Morning._--All petty and stupid thoughts of my own spiritual condition are swallowed up in the thought of Paul. Ever selfish, I have allowed him to dwell alone in a far-off city, exposed to all the vicissitudes of life. Perhaps he is ill, perhaps he is half-starved on his journalistic pittance.
_Saturday Night._--A cruel disappointment! A letter came, but it was only from my man of business, advising investment in some South American loan. Have given him _carte blanche_. Of what use is my money to me? Even Paul couldn't spend it now, with the training I have given him. He is only fitted for the cowl. He may yet join the Black Clergy. Why does he not write, my poor St. Paul?
_Sunday._--Obedient to the insistent clamour of the bells, I accompanied Nicholas Alexandrovitch to _church_, and mechanically asked help of the Virgin at the street corner. For I have gone back into my old indifference, as Nicholas predicted. I have given the necessary orders. The _paracladnoi_ is ready. To-morrow I go to Zlotow; thence I take the train for Moscow. He will not tell me the truth if I wire.... The weather is bitterly cold, and the stoves here are so small.... I am shivering again, but a glass of vodka will put me right.... A knock.... Clara Petroffskovna has run to the door. Who can it be? Paul?