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.

So I fought with her shadow, and, indeed, got the best of it as long

as she herself was away. But the moment she appeared, all my

weapons became useless. She made me feel like one drunk. I could

not withstand the wild-fire of her eye, nor the charm of her merry

talk, nor the wonderful attraction of her whole person. At the same

time there was not a trace of deviltry about her: it was simply an

attraction which I could not resist. And when she laid her soft

hand on me, I bent under it, and gave myself up entirely. And she

did what she wanted: where buttons were missing, she sewed them on;

and where a patch was needed, she put it in. She was a little

mother to me. She used to bring me all kinds of delicacies and

order me to eat them; and I could not disobey her. In short, she

made me forget Jacob and his teachings. But the moment I met Jacob

I forgot Marusya's charms, and reminded myself that it was sinful to

accept favors in exile. Then I would repent of my past actions from

the very depths of my heart--till I again was face to face with

Marusya. I was between the hammer and the anvil.

My meetings with Jacob were regular and frequent. After what

according to Jacob's calendar was the Ninth of Av, we met nightly in

the valley on Peter's estate, till a disagreement broke out among

us. I would not permit the cattle of the whole neighborhood to

browse on the estate of my patron, and Simeon and Reuben would not

agree to let my patron's horses be brought to the meadows of their

patrons. Our congregation nearly broke up. But here Jacob

intervened with his expert decision.

"Boys," said he, "you must know that 'going out for the night' is

really a form of stealing. True, we do not steal for our own

benefit. Yet, as long as we have a hand in it, we must manage it in

a fair way. So let us figure out how many horses every one of our

patrons possesses. And let us arrange the nights according to the

number of horses each of the patrons has. According to this

calculation we shall change places. We shall spend more nights in

the meadows of those who have more horses. That will make 'fair

stealing.'"

The plan of Jacob was accepted, not as a proposition, but as an

order. Since that time we began to "steal with justice." And our

patrons slept peacefully, delighted with their unpunished thievery,

till a Gentile boy, one Serge Ivanovich, joined us on one of his own

"nights." He was the son of the village elder, and a cousin of

Peter Khlopov. He was compelled to obey Jacob, but the next morning

he blabbed about it all over the village.

Of course, our patrons were angry. Jacob took the whole blame on

himself, and suffered punishment for all of us. Then "Jacob's

Klaus" was closed, because our patrons gave up sending us out "for

the night."

Well, if you please, their dissatisfaction was not entirely

groundless: they found themselves fooled by us, and cheated in a

way. For every one of them had been thinking that his horse would

bring him some profit every night, equal to the value of the horse's

browsing. Seven nights, seven times that profit; thirty nights,

thirty times that profit. . . . All at once these "profits" had

vanished: it turned out that every horse had been browsing at the

expense of his own master; so the expected profits became a total

loss. Of course, stealing is stealing. But then, they argued, had

the Zhid youngsters any right to meddle with their affairs? Was it

their property that was being stolen? As one of my Gentile

acquaintances told me once: "The trouble with the Jews is that they

are always pushing themselves in where they are not wanted at all."

Indeed, it was this fault of ours that Serge kept pointing out to me

and berating us for. Well, Jacob's Klaus had been closed. But we

managed to get together in different places. Once in a while we

came to see one another at our patron's houses, and they did not

object.

I do not know who told Marusya what kind of a chap Jacob was, and

what he thought of her; but she hated him from the moment she first

saw him, when he came to visit me.

"He is a real savage," she would say. "I never saw such a Jew. I

am simply afraid of him. I am afraid of those wild eyes of his. I

detest him, anyway." That is what she used to tell me.

Whenever Jacob came to see me, and Marusya happened to be in the

room, she would walk out immediately, and would not return before he

was out of the house. I rather liked it. I could not be giving in

to both of them at the same time.

Such were the surroundings that shaped my life during those days.

Peter befriended me; but Anna kept on worrying me and making me

miserable. Marusya loved me as a sister loves a brother, and the

fire of her eyes ate into my heart. Jacob kept preaching to me that

it was wrong to accept favors from Gentiles, and that we had to

fight for our faith. Serge became my bitter enemy from the time he

betrayed our scheme of "honest stealing."

To top it all, my sergeant tried to put me through the paces of the

military drill, and succeeded.

But my own self seemed to have been totally forgotten and left out

of the account.

By and by the summer passed, and most of the following winter; and

in the Khlopov household preparations were made for some holiday, I

forget which. Those days of preparation were our most miserable

days in exile. When Anna was busy on the eve of a holiday, I could

not help remembering our own Sabbath eves at home, the Sabbath days

in the Klaus, as well as the other holidays, and all the things that

are so dear to the heart of the Jewish boy. That was the time when

I felt especially lonely and homesick; it was as though a fever were

burning within me. Then neither tears nor even Marusya's company

did me any good. I felt as if red-hot coals had been packed up

right here in my breast. Did you ever feel that way? I felt like

rolling on the ground and pressing my chest against something hard.

I felt I was going mad. I felt like jumping, crying, singing, and

fighting all at once. I felt as if even lashes would be welcome,

simply to get rid of that horrible heartache.

On that particular day Khlopov was late in coming home. Marusya

remarked that she had seen her father enter the tavern. Then Anna

began to curse "our Moshko," the tavern keeper. Marusya objected:

"Tut, tut, mother, is it any of Moshko's fault? Does he compel papa

to go there? Does he compel him to drink?"

Then Anna few into a temper, and poured out a torrent of curses and

insults on Marusya. I don't know what happened to me then. My

blood was up; my fists tightened. It was a dangerous moment; I was

ready to pounce upon Anna. I did not know that Marusya had been

watching me all the while from behind, and understood all that was

passing within me. Presently the door opened, and Khlopov entered,

rather tipsy, hopping and jigging. That was his way when in his

cups. When he was under the influence of liquor, his soul seemed to

spread beyond its usual limits and light up his face with smiles.

At such moments he would be ready to hug, to kiss, or to cry; or

else to curse, to fight, and to laugh at the same time.

Right here you can see the difference between the Jew and the

Gentile. The finer soul of the Jew may contract and settle on the

very point of his nose. But the grosser soul of the Gentile needs,

as it were, more space to spread over. This, I believe, is why

Khlopov never failed to get a clean shave on the eve of every

holiday.

As soon as Khlopov had entered the room, he began to play with me

and Marusya. He gave us candy, and insisted on dancing a jig with

us.

Anna met him with a frown: "Drunk again?" But this time her eyes

seemed to have no power over Khlopov. He could not stand it any

longer, and gave tit for tat. "Zhidovka!" he shouted. I looked at

Anna: she turned red. Marusya blushed. Khlopov sobered up, and his

soul shrank to its usual size. Anna went to her room. The spell

was broken.

The word "Zhidovka" hurled at Anna made me start back. What could

it mean, I wondered. I felt sorry for Khlopov, for Marusya, for

Anna, and for the holiday mood that had been spoilt by a single

word. And it seemed to me it was my fault to some extent. Who, I

thought, had anything in common with Zhidovka if not myself? Or was

it Khlopov?--

Here the old man was interrupted by the neighing of the horses.

The forward horse seemed to be getting proud of the comparative

freedom he enjoyed, and bit his neighbor, only to remind him of it.

The latter, unable to turn around in the harness, resented the

insult by kicking. But then the driver plied the whip, and there

was peace again.

"Would you take the trouble to dismount? Just walk up that hill: it

will do you good to warm yourselves up a little after sitting so

long in one place."

That was the driver's suggestion; and as no one refuses obedience to

drivers on the road, we dismounted.