Chapter 3

The next morning Anna got up early, and made me stand before the ikon of the Virgin and recite a certain prayer. At dinner she seated me alongside of Peter, gave me some roast pork, and looked sharply at me. I guess, while making all those preparations, Anna had only one thing in mind: to put Peter up against me while he was drunk. I took fright, and began to chew away at the pork. But then the screeches and the grunts of the pig rang in my ears, and I thought they came right from within my insides; I wondered how they could listen to all that, and yet eat the pork in perfect comfort. Suddenly a lump in my throat began to choke me. . . . Nausea, retching . . . . and something happened to me: I vomited everything out, right on the table. Everybody jumped away from the table in disgust and anger. I met Marusya's eye, and was ashamed to look into it. Anna got up, boiling with rage, and took me by the ear, and pulled me outside: "Get out of here, you dirty Zhid; and don't you dare enter my house any more!"

Well, she chased me out. Peter and Marusya kept quiet. Thoroughly miserable, I dropped down on the bench behind the house; my dog stretched himself out on the ground at my feet and looked into my eyes. Then I began to talk to my fellow in misfortune: "Do you hear, doggie, we have been chased out. . . . What does that mean? did we come here of our own free will? It is by force that we were brought here; so what sense is there in chasing us out?"

And I thought my dog understood me; a sound came from the depths of his throat, and died away there. Then a thought began to haunt me: Maybe it is really time to run away. If they run after me and overtake me, I shall simply say that my patron chased me out of his house. And the thought, Home! to your parents! took possession of me, and tortured me ceaselessly. Said I to myself: "If they chase me out, I am certainly free!" But then, just see the power of the birch-rod: I knew well that much time would pass before my patron would notice my absence; and before the sergeant was informed, and people were dispatched to pursue me, more time would pass. Then I should be far away from the place. By that time I was quite hardened; I was not afraid to hide in the woods; devils and evil spirits I did not fear any more. I had learned well enough that no devil will ever trouble a man as much as one human being can trouble another. And yet, when I remembered the swish of the rods over the naked flesh, the spurting blood, the loose flaps of skin, and the futile outcries, I was paralyzed with fear. No, it was not really fear: it was a sort of submissive adoration. Had a birch-rod been lying near me, I should have kissed it with fear and respect. It is hard for me to explain to you. You youngsters are not capable of understanding.

And as I was sitting there, full of gloomy thoughts, I did not notice that the sun had set, and night had come. It got so dark that I could not see my dog lying at my feet. Suddenly I felt something touch me and pass lightly over my hair. I thought it was an ant or a night moth, and I raised my hand to chase it away. Then it changed its place, and I felt it at the nape of my neck. I tried to catch the thing that was making my neck itch, and caught a hand, soft and warm. I shuddered and started back: before me was Marusya, bending over me. I wanted to get up, but she put her hands on me heavily, sat down at my side, all the while pressing my hand between hers.

"Why are you sitting here?" she asked.

"Didn't your mother chase me out?"

"That is nothing. Don't you know her temper? That is her way."

"She keeps nagging at me all the time, and calls me nothing but Zhid, Zhid."

"And what of it? Aren't you a Jew? Should I feel insulted if some one were to call me Christian?!"

I had nothing to say. And it dawned upon me at that moment that I was really insulting myself by objecting to being called Zhid. True, Anna meant to jeer at me and insult me; but did it depend on her alone?

"And what are you going to do now?" asked Marusya.

"I want to run away."

"Without telling me?"

She peered into my face, and I felt as if two streams of warmth had emptied themselves into me. My eyes had become somewhat accustomed to the darkness, and I could discern every movement of her body. A delicate smile was playing around her mouth, and my feeling of despondency was giving way before it. I felt that after all I had a friend in the house, a good, loving, and beautiful friend.

I shuddered and broke out into tears. Then she began to play caressingly with my hair and pat me on my neck and face. She did well to let me have my cry out. By and by I felt relieved. She wanted to withdraw her hand, but then I held it fast.

"So you were going to run away, and that without my knowledge?" said she.

"No," I said with a deep sigh.

"And if I should ever call you Zhid, will you be angry with me?"

"No," answered I, thoroughly vanquished.

"Well, then you are a dear boy, and I like you!"

I felt the touch of soft, warm lips on my neck . . . . I closed my eyes, that the dark night sky and the shining stars might not see me. And when I recognized what had happened to me, I felt ashamed. Marusya disappeared, and soon returned with a bag in her hand.

"Papa said you should go out with the horses for the night. Here is some food in the bag. Take it and go out."

This she shot out quickly, and in a tone of authority, as befits the daughter of the patron, and as if what had passed between us were nothing but a dream.

"Going out for the night" was a peculiar custom. You can have no idea of what it meant. The logic of it was this: The cattle that had been worked the whole of the day were, to be sure, earning their fodder for the day. And the owners felt under obligation and necessity to feed them during their working hours. But how about the night, when the animals rested, and did no work? Where should the fodder for the night time come from? So the custom developed of letting the animals browse in some neighbor's meadow during the night. That was cheaper. But that neighbor also had cattle; he, too, had horses that did not earn their feed during the night. Do you know what the neighbor did? He did the same. He, too, sent out his horses stealthily, into his neighbor's meadow. So, in the long run, every one had his cattle browse secretly in some neighbor's meadow, and all were happy. But when the trespassing shepherd happened to be caught poaching, he got a whipping. And yet, strictly speaking, it was not stealing; it was a mere usage. The land-owners seemed to have agreed beforehand: "If you happen to catch my shepherd poaching, you may whip him, provided you do not object if I give a whipping to your shepherd on a similar occasion." In spite of all this I rather liked "going out for the night." I loved those nights in the open field. When the moon gave but little light, and one could see but a few steps away, I forgot my immediate surroundings, and my imagination was free! I would peer into the open sky, would bring before my mind's eye father and mother and all who were dear to me, and would feel near to them; for the sky that spread over all of us was the very same. I could imagine my father celebrating the new moon with a prayer. I could imagine my mother watching for the same star I was looking at; I could imagine that we were really looking at the same spot. . . . Then tears would come into my eyes. My mother, I would think, was crying, too. And the night listened to me, and the stars listened to me. . . . The crickets chirped, and if I chose, I could believe they shared my sorrows with me, and were sighing over my fate. . . .

Idle fancy, nonsense, you think; but when one has nothing real to look up to, dreams are very sweet. A light breeze would steal over me, refresh me, and bring me new hope; and I trusted I should not be a prisoner always, the day of my release would surely come. At such happy moments I would fall asleep gazing at the stars. And if the sudden whip of the landowner did not put an end to my dreams, I would dream away, and see things no language could describe.

Well, I took the bag and led the horses out into the open field. But that time, out of sheer spite or for some other reason, I did not go into our neighbor's field, but descended right into the valley that my patron had left lying fallow, and stretched myself upon the soft grass of the hospitable turf.

That night I longed to bring father and mother before my mind's eye and have an imaginary talk with them. But I did not succeed. Instead, the figure of the old rabbi hovered before my eyes. It seemed to me that he was looking at me angrily, and telling me the story of Joseph the righteous: how he lived in the house of Potiphar, and ate nothing but vegetables.

But when I reminded myself of Joseph the righteous, I felt my heart sink at the thought of what Marusya had done to me. I could not deny that the good looks of the Gentile girl were endearing her to me, that out of her hands I would eat pork ten times a day, and that in fact I myself was trying to put up a defense of her. I took all the responsibility on myself. I was ready to believe that she did not seek my company, but that it was I who called her to myself. I was a sinner in my own estimation, and I could not even cry. Then it seemed to me that the sky was much darker than usual, and the stars did not shine at all. With such thought in my mind I fell asleep.

I awoke at the sound of voices. Some one is crying, I thought. The sound seemed near enough. It rose and rose and filled the valley. It made me shudder. The soft, plaintive chant swelled and grew louder, as if addressed to me. It gripped my very heart. I stood up all in a shiver, and started to walk in the direction of the sound. But around me, up and down, on every side, was total darkness. The moon had set long ago. I moved away only a few steps from the horses, and could not make them out any more. By and by I could distinguish some words, and I recognized the heart-gripping chant of a Hebrew Psalm. . . .

"For the Lord knoweth the path of the righteous, And the path of the wicked shall perish." . . .

My fears vanished, and gave place to a feeling of surprise.

"Where can that chanting come from," thought I, "and here in exile, too?"

Then I began to doubt it all, thinking it was but a dream.

"Why do the nations rage, And the peoples imagine a vain thing?"

The voices were drawing me forward irresistibly, and I decided to join the chorus, come what might. And I continued the Psalm in a loud voice:

"The kings of the earth stood up . . . ."

The chanting ceased; I heard steps approaching me.

"Who is there?" asked a voice in Yiddish.

"It is I," answered I, "and who are you?"

"It is we!" shouted many voices in chorus.

"Cantonists?"

"A Cantonist, too?"

Thus exchanging questions, we met. They turned out to be three Cantonists, who lived in a village at some distance from Peter's house. I had never met them before. They, too, had "gone out for the night," and we had happened to use the same valley.

I love to mention their names. The oldest of them was Jacob, whom you remember from the punishment he underwent. The others were Simeon and Reuben. But there in the valley they introduced themselves to me with the names they were called by at home: Yekil, Shimele, and Ruvek. I found out later that the valley was their meeting-place. It was a sort of Klaus, "Rabbi Yekil's Klaus" the boys called it. Yekil was a boy of about fifteen, who was well-equipped with knowledge of the Torah when he was taken away from his home.

In the long years of our exile we had forgotten the Jewish calendar completely. But Yekil prided himself on being able to distinguish the days "by their color and smell," especially Fridays; and his friends confirmed his statements. He used to boast that he could keep track of every day of the year, and never miss a single day of the Jewish holidays. Every Jewish holiday they met in the valley on Peter's estate. According to Yekil's calendar, the eve of the Fast of the Ninth of Av fell on that very day. That is why they had gathered in the valley that night. "If so," said I, "what is the use of reciting that Psalm? Were it not more proper to recite Lamentations?"

"We do not know Lamentations by heart," explained Yekil, with the authority of a rabbi, "but we do know some Psalms, and these we recite on every holiday. For, at bottom, are mere words the main thing? Your real prayer is not what you say with your lips, but what you feel with the whole of your heart. As long as the words are in the holy tongue, it all depends on the feelings you wish to put into them. As my father, may he rest in peace, used to instruct me, the second Psalm is the same as the festival hymn, 'Thou hast chosen us from among the nations,' if you feel that way; or it may be the same as Lamentations. It all depends on the feelings in our heart, and on the meaning we wish to put into the words!"

Yekil's talk and the sounds of Yiddish speech, which I had not heard since I left home, impressed me in a wonderful way. Here I found myself all at once in the company of Jews like father and mother. But I felt very much below that wonderful boy who could decide questions of Jewish law like some great rabbi. Indeed, he seemed to me little short of a rabbi in our small congregation. Then I began to feel more despondent than ever. I considered myself the sinner of our little community. I knew I was guilty of eating pork and of other grave trespasses, and I felt quite unworthy of being a member of the pious congregation.

Meanwhile little Reuben discovered the contents of my bag.

"Boys, grub!" exclaimed he, excitedly. At the word "grub" the congregation was thrown into a flutter. That was the way of the Cantonists. They could not help getting excited at the sight of any article of food, even when they were not hungry at all. In the long run our patrons fed us well enough, and on the whole we could not complain of lack of food. But we were fed according to the calculations of our patrons, and not according to our own appetites. So it became our habit to eat whenever victuals were put before us, even on a full stomach. "Eat whenever you have something to eat, so as not to go hungry when there may be no rations." That was a standing rule among the Cantonists. They began fumbling in my bag, and I was dying with shame at the thought that soon they would discover the piece of pork, and that my sin would become known to the pious congregation. Then I broke down, and with tears began to confess my sins.

"I have sinned," said I, sobbing, "it is pork. I could not withstand the temptation."

At that moment it seemed to me that Yekil was the judge, and the boys who had found the pork were the witnesses against me. Yekil listened to my partial confession, and the two "witnesses" hung their heads, and hid their faces in shame, as if they were the accused. But I sobbed and cried bitterly.

"Now, listen, little one," Yekil turned to me. "I do not know whether you have suffered the horrors of hell that we have suffered. Did they paint your body with tar, and put you up on the highest shelf in the steam-bath, and choke you with burning steam? Did they flog you with birch-rods for having been caught mumbling a Hebrew prayer? Did they make you kneel for hours on sharp stones for having refused to kiss the ikon and the crucifix? Did they discover you secretly kissing the Arba-Kanfos, and give you as many lashes as there are treads in the Tzitzis? If you have not passed through all that, uncover our backs, and count the welts that still mark them! And to this you must add the number of blows I have still to get, simply because my little body could not take in at once all it was expected to take in. And yet, not a day passed without our having recited our Modeh-Ani. As to eating pork, we abstained from it in spite of the rods. Then they gave up flogging us; but, instead of that punishment, they gave us nothing but pork to eat. Two days we held out; we did not touch any food. We did not get even a drink of water. Do you see little Simeon? Well, he tried to eat the grass in the courtyard. . . . On the third day of our fast I saw my father in my dream. He was dressed in his holiday clothes, and holding the Bible in his hands he quoted the passage, 'Be ye mindful of your lives.' Suddenly, the earth burst open, and the Angel of Death appeared. He had rods in one hand and a piece of swine's flesh in the other. He put the piece of pork into my mouth. I looked up, terror-stricken, to my father, but he smiled. His smile filled the place with light. He said to me, 'Eatest thou this of thy own free will?' Then he began to soar upwards, and called out to me from afar: 'Tell all thy comrades, the Cantonists: Your reward is great. Every sigh of yours is a prayer, every good thought of yours is a good action! Only beware, lest you die of hunger; then surely you will merit eternal punishment!'

"I awoke. Since then we eat all kinds of forbidden food. The main thing is that we have remained Jews, and that as Jews we shall return home to our parents. It is clear to me now that the Holy One, blessed by He, will not consider all that a sin on our part!"

I felt as if a heavy load had been taken off my shoulders. My eyes began to flow with tears of gladness. Then, having once started my confession, I decided to confess to my second sin also. Meanwhile Simeon had pulled the bread and the meat out of my bag.

"Glutton!" exclaimed Yekil, angrily. "Have you forgotten that it is the night of the Fast of the Ninth of Av?"

The boy, ashamed, returned the things to the bag, and moved away a few steps. Then I told Yekil all that had passed between me and Marusya, and tried unconsciously to defend her in every way. I think I exaggerated a good deal when I tried to show that Marusya liked the Jews very much, indeed.

"And what was the end of it?" asked Yekil, with some fear. "Did she really kiss you?" The other boys echoed the question. I looked down, and said nothing.

"Is she good-looking?"

I still gave no answer.

"I have forgotten your name. What is it?"

"Samuel."

"Now listen, Samuel, this is a very serious affair. It is much worse than what is told of Joseph the righteous. Do you understand? I do not really know how to make it clear to you. It is very dangerous to find good and true friends right here in exile, in the very ranks of our enemies."

"Why?" wondered I.

"I cannot tell you, but this is how I feel. Insulted and outraged we have been brought here; insulted and outraged we should depart from here. Ours is the right of the oppressed; and that right we must cherish till we return home."

"I do not understand!"

Jacob looked at me sharply, and said: "Well, I have warned you; keep away from her."

His words entered into the depths of my heart. I bowed my head before Yekil, and submitted to his authority. That was the way we all felt: Yekil had only to look at us to subject us to his will. It was hard to resist him.

I felt a great change in myself: I had been relieved of the weight of two sins. Of one I had been absolved completely, and the other I had confessed in public and repented of. I gladly joined the little congregation, and we returned to our Psalms, which we recited instead of Lamentations. At the conclusion I proposed that we chant the Psalm "By the rivers of Babylon," which we all knew by heart.

And we, a congregation of four little Jews, stood up in the valley on the estate of Peter Khlopov, concealed by steep hills and by the darkness of the night: thieves for the benefit of our masters, and mourners of Zion on our own account. . . . And we chanted out of the depths of our hearts:

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, remembering Zion." . . .

We chanted the whole of it, sat down and wept, remembering at the same time all we had gone through ourselves, and also the position we were in at that time.--

Here old Samuel shuddered and stopped abruptly. The sun had set, and he reminded himself that he had forgotten to say his afternoon prayer. He jumped down hastily, washed his hands in a near-by pool, returned to his seat, and became absorbed in his devotion.

VI

By and by the streaks of light disappeared in the twilight sky, and the wintry night threw the mantle of thick and misty blackness over us.

Presently I heard the old man conclude his prayer: "When the world will be reclaimed through the kingship of the Almighty; when all mortals will acknowledge Thy name. . . . on that day the Lord will be One, and His name will be One!"

Out of the darkness came the devout words; they seemed to take wing, as though to pierce the shrouding mist and scatter it; but they themselves were finally dissolved in the triumph and blackness. . . .

I did not have to urge the old man to continue his tale. His prayers over, he picked up the thread of his narrative, as if something were driving him to give a full account of what he had passed through.--

The day I became acquainted with Jacob--continued the old man--I consider the beginning of a new period in my life. I became accustomed to consider him my superior, whose behavior had to be taken as an example. Jacob spoke as an authority whenever he did speak, and he never wavered in his decisions. Whenever he happened to be in doubt, his father would "instruct" him in his dreams. Thus we lived according to Jacob's decisions and dreams. I got used to eating forbidden food, to breaking the Sabbath, and trespassing against all the ordinances of the ritual without compunction. And yet Jacob used to preach to us, to bear floggings and all kinds of punishments rather than turn traitor to our faith. So I got the notion that our faith is neither prayers, nor a collection of ordinances of varying importance, but something I could not name, nor point to with my finger. Jacob, I thought, certainly knows all about it; but I do not. All I could was to _feel_ it; so could Anna. Otherwise she would not have called me Zhid, and would not have hated me so much, in spite of seeing me break all the ordinances of the Jewish ritual.

At times I thought that I and my comrades were captains in God's army, that all His ordinances were not meant for us, but for the plain soldiers of the line. They, the rank and file, must be subjected to discipline, must know how to submit to authority; all of which does not apply to the commanding officers. It seemed to me that this was what the Holy One, blessed be He, had deigned to reveal to us through the dreams of Jacob: there is another religion for you, the elect. _You_ will surely know what is forbidden, and what is permitted. . . .

Sometimes, again, I imagined that I might best prove true to my faith if I set my heart against the temptation that Satan had put before me in the person of Marusya. If I turned away from her, I thought, I might at once gain my share in the future world. So I armed myself against Marusya's influence in every possible way. I firmly resolved to throw back at her any food she might offer me. If she laid her hand on me, I would push it away from me, and tell her plainly that I was a Jew, and she--a nobody.