"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.