Part 9

“I couldn’t go on account of my sister. She fell sick. They sent me to the meadow to gather rib-wart. We boiled it and in the late evening she was better. It was either the rib-wart or old Zefa who came to rub her.”

“Yes--listen, Jagica! This fool of a Tono--he better look out for me. Does he think because he is better off than I--I don’t dare to think. Don’t you say a single word to him!”

“Ha, ha--ha! Must I quarrel with him?”

“Don’t joke about such things! I will not and I will not--If he comes near you he’ll lose his head.”

“Have you drunk it all? Give me the bottle! How you talk about Tono! I’ve promised you. Look at the Reaper[9]--what a way it has travelled. You’ve got two hours’ walk.”

“I wish Jagica you knew how easy the walk is for me now. I’d walk five hours to see you.” He grabbed her hand, then let it drop.

“God grant--and the Holy Mother of God--that we marry soon. Please--_please_--go quick to the city and see about the land settlements. Tell the gentlemen that you want to marry. Fall is not far off.”

“What do gentlemen care about peasant weddings! Well, I’ll try anyway. Tomorrow early I’ll go.”

A cry rang over the meadow. In the quiet air of night it was something mighty, and three times, four times, the hill-tops answered back.

“The horse herdsmen,” said the girl trembling.

“Hide, Janko--quick! They are coming home. Day is near now.”

He obeyed and they hid together in the bushes beside the apple tree. For a time they whispered. When the hoofs came nearer, they stopped. She gestured with one hand, for him not to stick his head out, but she followed the herdsmen eagerly with her eyes. Loud laughter, merry jokes, and the tramp, tramp of horses’ feet, as they swept past.

“Is Tono there?”

“Wait. _Pst!_--yes--I hear his voice.”

“Is he looking this way?”

“Keep still! _A--h_--they are gone. Thank God! and now Janko, you must go!”

“Yes, I’ll go! Goodbye. I’ll come again.”

They did not shake hands when they said good-bye. Jagica stood long where he left her and looked after him. He walked away with long, swinging strides. His shadow hopped along beside him. Soon the white moonlight and the mist blotted him out. Then his song rang clear--a song of youth and love. Astonished I said: was this a meeting of lovers? To me it was incomprehensible. With difficulty could I believe that such peasant hearts could love.

* * * * *

Soon I had an opportunity to be convinced. I heard about Janko’s affair. The _Zadruga_ was to be settled. To him fell the largest share of the land, but just on that account, no argument could be reached with the rest of the family. They knew how to impel the lawyers to some new subterfuge to hinder the allotment. Janko was all but crazy. He was especially upset because Jagica’s father favored Tono, and reproached him with the delay of the allotment.

“Well, can’t you rely upon the _Zadruga_?”

“No, it doesn’t progress. They can’t carry it through--always something is wrong, and the old man won’t give me the girl, until I am safely written down in the land-book.”

“Are you really so much in love with her?” I ask.

“Of course, I love her. She is good. She can do all kinds of work.”

“The affair can drag itself out even when the proclamation of the division has been made. After that comes the _appellation_. That can last months and months, and even when that is finished there can be another delay in handing over the land to you. Say that you will take less. Perhaps it will expedite matters.”

The boy looked at me suspiciously. I knew how the peasants cling to every inch of ground.

“If you are so much in love with the girl--and if you know by taking less the settlement can be hastened--then do it.”

The boy looked down upon the ground for a long time as if he were estimating every bit of dirt, and replied: “Very good! I’ll do it then!”

That very day he went to the city.

But even now the affair was not hastened. Janko’s house-companions tried to slip out of the agreement, and when the engineer made the division they found a hundred mistakes. Poor Janko was miserable. He was in torture for fear he would lose Jagica, and on top of this the constant quarrels with the household and the delay over the division.

The autumn was drawing nearer and nearer. Jagica’s father said frankly he would not forgive Janko for giving up so much land.

Tono was a regular visitor at the house. Jagica wept and begged Janko to hurry with the land. Almost every day he went to the city, where every day he heard the same thing: it was necessary--_first_--to do this, to do that.

There are only four weeks now to St. Catherine’s day, which is the time when peasant weddings are celebrated, and he has heard nothing definite about the division. Then the report came to his ear that Tono and Jagica were to be married. And a proof of it seemed to be that he could not meet Jagica as of old. In vain, night after night, he stood by the apple tree and waited. He sang all his songs. With Tono he had frequently quarreled and come to blows. If they had not been forcibly separated, one or the other would have been killed.

“If I could only speak with her! I want to hear her say that she has been unfaithful to me. The gentlemen in the city are the cause of this.” The last days he did not go near the house. Without sleep, he ran about the highways, across the meadows, into the city, without any plan. His clothes were torn, his hair disheveled and uncombed.

“I will murder him! I will murder him! Jagica is mine and nobody else’s,” he shrieked, running through forest and field, then breaking into sobs--or trilling shrilly one of his old songs.

On the evening before St. Catherine’s Day--which was the wedding day, he disappeared. People said he had gone into the city. There was a sigh of relief, because they feared trouble on the wedding day.

The next morning the wedding procession started from Jagica’s house. The bride was pale and her eyes showed she had been weeping. With difficulty she held erect upon her head the crown, trimmed with gold-paper flowers. She wrapped her wedding mantle about her as if she shivered. When the procession reached the highway, the musicians blew a ringing blast. Suddenly Janko leaped upon them. He was ragged, barefooted, without coat or hat. In his hand he carried a club. He swung it toward Tono. But in the same moment he let it fall, burst into wild laughter and turned and ran away. Far, far-echoing among the hills they heard his laughter.

He was mad.

JOACHIM FRIEDENTHAL

A POGROM IN POLAND[10]

High and clear rang the cantor’s voice. It was as if with musical fervor it tried to reach heaven itself, to plead that a door be opened and mercy granted, to plead that an ear be made sympathetic, to plead that the suffering in the heart of Jehova make it tremble with pity.

Never so splendidly before sang Reb Chajim’s voice, sang the ancient melodies of the Day of Atonement. The voices of the men joined with it. With heaven-storming power they rose to heights of melody and then sank to depths again, as the pain of despair increased within them and opened up their measureless grief.

The men stood in their white grave-clothes as was proper. The silver embroidered prayer cloth they had thrown over their heads to cover themselves in the torturing hour in which, there above, the great judgment was made. Now would be decided whether they would be inscribed in the Book of Life, or cast into outer darkness. And in that outer darkness perhaps now armed Cossacks were standing and caring nothing at all about the Atonement and the Book of Life. Praying, the men stretched their arms above their heads, storming the footstool of Almighty God, wrestling for His grace, because once He had set them free.

And long centuries prayed with them. Long centuries which had weighed heavily upon the backs of these Polish Jews, and bent them; long centuries of want, disgrace, persecution--the persecution of the wanderer--and the curse. And the long centuries seemed to rise up again on these holy days, rise upon the bent backs, and stretch up toward the God of Righteousness, with the heaven-storming arms of prayer, and to ring out boldly in the voice of the cantor, to announce their woe.

The women, according to the old custom, sat apart, upon the horse-shoe curved balcony fronting the altar. Here the women wept softly. Sometimes a sob was heard and it cut tragically across the gentler melody of tears. And they wept long just as they do by the graves of their dead. Each one had a grave within. Reflected grief from the melancholy of this hidden grave was visible in the wide, hopeless sorrow of the eyes. Even the eyes of the young women and girls were veils of grief. They all hummed together the ancient songs of Israel. Perhaps the meaning of the ancient words did not penetrate their minds at all and only the melody made them holy. Sometimes it was as if the antique words of Israel became life because their hearts hung upon them with such faith. But if a glance wandered away from the meditation it was sure to fall upon the stony face of Rivkele Kalischer. She had fled from Klodova to her mother. Rivkele Kalischer was not praying with the others, although her lips kept moving.

Her lips framed these words: “Hanged! Because they would not change a three ruble note!” Her glance was dull and dead. It pierced the light-filled Temple and saw the picture that was engraven upon her soul. It was Friday evening, three weeks ago. Two men swing in the wind like phantoms--from the balcony of her own house. And for four and twenty hours she, and all the rest of the Jews of the neighborhood, were forced to see, because they were forbidden to close their doors or windows. There they had stood and looked upon the distorted features and the swinging dead men. And they were obliged to read, too, the piece of paper pinned upon them by the Cossacks: “_Hanged! Because they refused to change a three ruble note!_”

_Refused!_ Had she not peacefully prepared the evening meal, said the prayer, lighted the candles, set out the Shabbes’ bread, covered it with an embroidered cloth, while across in the Temple she listened to the singing: “We greet thee, Shabbes, beauteous bride!” Then the men came from the Temple. They stopped to talk a bit together. Her husband and brother-in-law were among them; she heard their voices beneath the door. Just then a troop of Cossacks rounded the corner. There were questions and curses. Her heart trembled. There were blows from whips. A kick threw the door open. A cruel voice called for a rope. She did not understand at first. What did they want with a rope? Then a kick sent her across the room. The Cossack struck her across the face with a knout. “_A rope! A rope!_”

And the Cossacks hanged them on the balcony. The Shabbes’ candles were still burning and the bread was waiting for a blessing. The woman recognized in the dead men, her husband and her brother-in-law. And she read the words aloud: “Hanged!” Her face became like stone and she could not look away from the balcony where they were swinging; for four and twenty hours she could not look away.

Night came. The tall candles burned lower. The air was heavy with the breath of praying men. It came, the great hour of the falling of judgment. And there was not one among the men who was not wearing the sacred robe in which to appear before his God. Many an one seemed scarcely to be recognizable, his features had changed so under the reverence of prayer. And it really seemed as if in the hearts of these men who had been faithful in so many wanderings--even in the money lender--there was hidden a priest. But among none of them could be found the descendents of the Macabees who had arisen in wrath and slain their enemies. And no one breathed with the soul of Samson, whose mighty shoulders shook down the temple of the Philistines. Not one of them prayed that one day he might be the master of those Russians who scorned him and persecuted him, who took away the power of his eyes and the freedom of his body, and make to fall and crash about their heads the mighty palaces of power, even if he himself perished with them. Every one prayed for his own life. And there was fanaticism in the prayer.

Now the mighty trumpets of judgment rang out just as they will on the day of the resurrection, and the people, standing, answered seven times just as in the hour of death. Seven times they uttered that word in which long centuries tremble, in which to-day resound the battles and the sorrows of the race of Israel, the word which plunged them from victory and triumph to disgrace and exile, the word which recurs again and again, increasing in resonance and power as if the voice of the world had uttered it:

“_Hear Israel!--the Eternal, the one God--the eternally One!_” And the shofar threw forth its fabulous tones just as on the Day of Judgment. It seemed to them all that the voice of God, just as when it had overthrown the walls of Jericho, had spoken; that it had pardoned their sins, and promised redemption and grace. And the people in the Temple trembled. The clang of the shofar had not died away when the voice of a boy was heard: “The Cossacks! The Cossacks! They have surrounded the Temple!”

The boy’s voice fell like a sword. The cantor stopped his sweetest singing. There was silence. Then a babel of frightened questions. Voice fell upon voice. Arms shook in wild excitement. A body fell. A woman’s hand drew back the curtain of the balcony above. Someone shrieked: “We must hide.” Plunged from ecstatic heights of meditation, faces distorted, they tried to bend down and hide.

The voice of old Rabbi Zaddik fell upon them like a restraining hand. He told them to be calm and pray on to their God who would not desert them. He would be the one the Cossacks sought. They were all in the hands of God.

Then a man spoke whom they adored like a saint, because he was filled with the wisdom of the Talmud; they reverenced him as a judge in Israel.

Already Reb Chajim, at a signal from the Rabbi, had cleared his throat, and taken up the singing where he broke off; already the replies of the congregation were beginning, timid at first, when blows thundered on the door. It rang out like the thunder of Judgment Day. The words froze on their lips. Eyes swelled to bursting. But not a sound was heard. The men did not even turn their heads.

The door was thrown open and Cossacks rushed in. One went along the central aisle to the altar. He asked if that accursed traitor Rab----

“Hear Israel, the eternal, the one God, the eternally One!” Then a voice in deadly fear interrupted the leader before he could finish his question. It came from the back of the room and filled the Temple with woe such as was never heard before. Then all together the voices called: “_The eternally One_.” It was as if they were trying to throw up a wall of defense.

Angrily the leader commanded silence. And the wandering song stuck in their throats and trembled convulsively upon their lips.

The Rabbi spoke: “Sir, they are praying. Do you not see it? To-day is the holy day of the Jews.”

The officer replied that that was a matter of indifference to him. For traitors there was no holy day. He, Rabbi Zaddik was accused of aiding the Austrian troops. He went to meet them fourteen days before their entry and had given them information. That was enough.

The Rabbi replied that he went to meet the German and Austrian armies, but he went with a Polish officer and certain citizens; they went to beg the soldiers to spare the people.

“It’s a lie!” responded the leader. He likewise declared that there was a telephone concealed upon the altar which was to be a signal to the enemy. The Rabbi, and eleven others from the front seats--in order to make a round dozen--were to be hanged. “And the rest of you are to go at once into exile.”

A wail of such wildness arises that it does not seem to come from a human throat.

At the command, the Cossacks jumped to the altar, seized the Rabbi, the cantor, and grabbed blindly for the others.

“Have pity!--Not me--not me! My husband is innocent. Jacob--” thus they screamed.

The leader counted: “One, two, three, four, five--Bring me a rope!” Then a voice yelled from the woman’s balcony: “I’ll bring the rope--right away!” She swung her arms and beat her breast, and then leaped from the railing to the stone floor below. Still she gasped: “I’ll bring the rope right away!”

“Then merely the eleven,” said the leader sharply. “But quick--quick!” Upon the eight pillars the Cossacks quickly put up a scaffold.

While the women wept and cried for mercy, the men, dressed in their grave clothes, cowered in the corners and covered their heads in order to shut out the sight.

And now the congregation called aloud seven times--as in the hour of death--the ancient words of their faith: “Hear Israel! the Eternal, our God, the eternally One!”

That was their salvation, their consolation, their faith. And the shrieks of the dying deadened the voice of prayer--and the words of both were the same.

The murderers stamped upon the altar, broke the sacred shrines, threw the roll of the Torah upon the floor, and stole the gold and silver.

And still the Jews prayed on, the immortal death-prayer of their race for the eleven who were hanged. Then the Cossacks’ leader commanded silence; they should leave the city at once, because they had betrayed the city to the Germans. Upon the moment, just as they were, they should go, men, women, children, not one should be permitted to escape.

They begged to go home just for a moment. They had left babies in the cradle, they had left sick people. They had fasted since the day before; not a bit of bread had they swallowed, nor water. They begged to take a little food. Then the Cossacks laughed: “Search all you want to! Everything is burned! Everything is destroyed!” With their bayonets they drove them from the Temple. Outside they met other Jews in the same condition. About ten thousand men, women and children were driven from the city on the Day of Atonement.

For miles their cries extended. Groaning, the exiles were driven on through the night. To the Vistula they had been ordered, as they were driven through the gate--to the Vistula, on the left bank, but it would be better still if they jumped into the river.

A Rabbi from another Temple had saved the roll of the Torah; he headed the procession and carried it under his arm.

It was something ghostly to look upon, this white-clad procession of Jews in their death robes; it was like a procession of the century long sorrows of their race. About ten thousand living corpses wandered on through the night.

“Hear Israel! the Eternal, our God, the eternally One! _Hear Israel!_”

KOLOMAN MIKSZÁTH

KOLOMAN MIKSZÁTH _(born in Sklebonya in 1849) is without doubt the best loved writer of Hungary. Why should he not be? He has something of the witty descriptive powers of Heine, the fluent unforced narrative of Dumas, and a peculiar charm which is all his own. He is a painter of inimitable miniatures, glowing with color, truthful in action, a veritable Meissonier of the pen._

_In these, spiritedly drawn, richly peopled, diminutive little pictures we see all Hungary pass before us: the burger class, the petty nobility, the church, the state and the peasant. Sometimes these stories are ironic--because Mikszáth is numbered among the humorists--sometimes idyllic, sometimes realistic, and sometimes they are bitter and incisive, and strike home with a certain fatal touch of intimité, telling truths from which we can not get away. He has been a productive writer, and we do not need to go out of his native Hungary for a worthy parallel, when we pause to recall that Maurice Jokai wrote three hundred novels and tales._

_Mikszáth is author of a novel, “Mácsik the Mighty,” which reproduces the life of the petty nobility in upper Hungary. His short stories are collected into many volumes, such as “Club and Corridor,” which stories were first published in the daily he himself edited, “Pesti Hirlap” (The Times of Budapest)._

_Other books are “Slovak Brothers,” “Madame Paul Szontagh,” “The City That Had No Men,” “The Magic Caftan,” “The Miraculous Umbrella.”_

_We include two stories; one, from the writers own experience in a small community where he was made judge at the age of twenty three; the other--“Fiddlers Three,” from that remarkable book of fantastic and imaginative writing, which is strung together in a series of tales under the name of “The Deaf Blacksmith.”_

_In 1887 he began to take an interest in politics and became a member of the Reichstag, where he threw his influence with the Liberal party._

_This union of the poet and the wit, the romantic dreamer and the shrewd and bitter critic of life, is one of the gifts of Hungary and its neighboring peoples to the world of letters. It is seldom found in the Teuton or the Latin, even in a slight degree._

_A volume of the short stories of Mikszáth was published in America some years ago. His first appearance in English was the short story, “The King’s Clothes,”[11] which antedated the book._

A TRIP TO THE OTHER WORLD

The people of my country do not like to travel. The high, blue mountains that surround them, shut out the world. Besides, what could there be that is different on the other side of the mountains? And the rich people and the influential are of just the same opinion.

There is only one man in this part of the country--Franz Nagy--(and he lived a century or more ago!)--who has traveled. Once he went _almost_ to Prague. After that all the people of his name went by the title of “the Prague Nagys.”

If there was one who had been _almost_ to Prague, there were hundreds who had not been as far away as the next village, and among the latter is Paul Rediki. Once, because of an important law suit, upon the result of which all his property depended, he was called to Vienna. But he declared: “Rather would I lose all I have than travel to Vienna.” And he did just as he said and he became a sort of popular hero.

This affair in some way or other came to the knowledge of the Administration. Just what he did do or did not do I have forgotten, but the fact remains that King Ferdinand V invited him by letter to Vienna _ad audiendum verbum regium_.

When Paul Rediki received this invitation he seated himself at the table and penned a dignified refusal. He explained that he had just taken an oath never to go to Vienna, and he hoped that His Majesty would be gracious and pardon him, that he was very sorry that he could not possibly come. How very different was he from men of today.

However, it happened after many, many years that old Vienna bestirred herself and moved nearer. The wing-swift railroad had been built. Our great blue mountains were pierced through and through, and the velvet-soft, green meadows were covered with iron ribbons, upon which wheels were to roll.

Paul Rediki was in favor of the railroad, and worked lustily for it. “It will bring money and prosperity to our community,” he declared, “and it will make our harvests of value.”

Too bad that he was not at home when the first flower-decked coaches rolled in; but he lay ill in an hospital where he had been sent by order of the doctor.

Upon the important day the entire country-side assembled. “We shall see now,” argued the peasants “whether it is true or not.” “It’s all just foolish talk,” declared Martin Saki, the cobbler of Tiszle. “Nothing will come of it. I’ll bet you, brothers--it can’t move ten paces.”

“How could it go without horses?” questioned Mathias Kozka, laughing. Gabor Kovacz, who took care of the church, said he was willing to lie right down on the track in front of the engine, but the village watchman would not let him.

“Well, if it doesn’t do any good, it won’t do any harm!” he consoled himself by saying.