The next day--resumed the old man--the situation became a little
clearer to me. Marusya told me that according to the gossip of the
village her mother was a converted Jewess. She, Marusya, was not so
sure of it. Her father would call her mother a Jewess once in a
while, but that happened only when he was drunk. So she did not
know whether he merely repeated the village gossip, or had his own
information in the matter. And when she asked her mother, the
latter would fly into a temper.
"Papa himself," said Marusya, "likes Jews; but mother hates them. I
like papa more than mamma; I also like Jews; I often play with
Moshko's girls when mother is not around. I do not understand why
mother dislikes Jews so much."
Then Marusya insisted I should tell her the real truth about the
Jews, as they are at home: were they like myself, or like Jacob, the
wild one? But I stopped listening to her chatter, and began to
think of what she had told me about her mother. For in case it was
true that Anna was a convert, then--why, then Marusya herself was
half a Jewess. I decided to solve the mystery.
Now let me tell you that as a result of our Cantonist training we
were not only as bold as eagles, as courageous as lions, as swift as
the deer in doing the will of our patrons, but also as sly as foxes
in finding a way out of a difficulty. And, by the way, that was
also the opinion of our late commander, Colonel Pavel Akimovich. A
keen-eyed commander and a kind-hearted master was he, may his lot be
in Paradise among the godly men of the Gentile tribes. Yes, if he
was an eagle, we were his chicks; if he was a lion, we were his
whelps! This is what he used to say: "In time of need, you have no
better soldier than the Jew. But then you must know how to use him.
Do not give him too many instructions, and do not try to explain it
all to him from beginning to end. If you instruct him too much, he
will be afraid to do any scheming on his own hook, and you will be
the loser. Just give him your order, and tell him what the order is
for. Then you may be sure he will get it for you, even if he should
have to go to hell for it!" This is what Colonel Pavel Akimovich
used to say of us.
Now, once I decided to find out Anna's secret, I thought it all out
beforehand, as a Cantonist should; and I hit upon a plan.
That was at the beginning of spring. One day Khlopov left on a
journey to the neighboring villages to collect the taxes. He had to
stay away some time. The whole of that day Anna kept worrying me as
usual. She sent me on unnecessary errands, she wanted me to be in
two places at the same time. She yelled, she cursed, she shook me,
and mauled me, she pulled me by the ears. She knew well how to make
one miserable. When night came, I went to sleep in the anteroom;
that was my bedroom. Anna was abed, but not asleep. Marusya had
long been asleep. Then Anna remembered that she had forgotten to
close the door leading to the anteroom, and she ordered me to get up
and close it. I made believe I was sleeping soundly, and began to
snore loudly. She kept on calling me, but I kept on snoring.
Suddenly I began to cry, as if from the sleep: "O mother, leave
Anna alone. She too is a mother! Pity her family!"
Anna became silent. I half opened my eyes and looked at her through
the open door. A candle was burning on the table near her bed, and
I could see that she was frightened, and was listening intently.
then I continued, somewhat differently: "I beg of you, mother, is
it her fault? Doesn't she feed me? Isn't she a mother too?"
Then I began to cry as if in my sleep. "What?" I asked suddenly,
"Anna?! Anna--a Jewess too?!"
Then I noticed that Anna was watching Marusya's bed. I saw she was
afraid Marusya might overhear what was not intended for her ears.
She put on her night robe, came to my bed, and began in a whisper:
"Are you sleeping? Get up, my boy, wake up!"
I did "wake up," and put on a frightened appearance. "What did you
cry about?" she asked. "I dreamt something terrible." "What did
you dream about" I kept silent. "Tell me, tell me!" she insisted.
"I saw my mother in a dream." "Is she alive yet?" I told a lie. I
said my mother was long dead. "And what did she tell you?" "She
said that . . . ." "Tell me, tell me!" "I cannot repeat that in
Russian." "Then say it in Yiddish." I looked with make-believe
surprise at Anna. "She said: 'I shall come to Anna at night and
choke her, if she doesn't give up abusing you.'" At this Anna
turned red. I continued: "And she said also, 'Anna ought to have
pity on Jewish children, because she is a Jewess herself.'" . . . .
My scheme worked well. Anna began to treat me in an entirely
different way, and my position in the house not only improved, but
became the opposite of what it had been. At times, when no one was
around, she even spoke Yiddish to me. Apparently she liked to
remain alone in the house with me and chat with me. You must know,
her position in the village was all but agreeable. She had very few
acquaintances; and she would have been better off without any. When
she happened to have visitors, a mutual suspicion at once became
apparent, in their behavior and their talk. There was much more
flattery, much more sweetness of speech than is common among people.
One could see that each spoke only to hide her innermost thoughts.
Every conversation ended as it began: with gossip about women who
were not zealous enough in matters of church attendance. And when
it came to that, Anna invariably blushed, simply because she was
afraid she might blush. Then, feeling the blood coming to her face,
she would try to hide her confusion, and would chatter away
ceaselessly, to show how punctual she was herself in church matters.
On taking leave, Anna's friends would exchange significant glances,
and Anna would have been either too stupid or else too wise not to
notice the sting of those sly looks.
As to Peter, he treated Anna fairly well; and when they happened to
quarrel, it was mostly her own fault. One night--it was long after
I had found out Anna's secret--I happened to be sleepless, and I
overheard Anna talking angrily to Peter. She was scolding him for
having forgotten to prepare oil for the lamp before the ikon of some
saint. It was that saint's day, and Khlopov had either forgotten or
neglected it. He was very careless in church matters, and Anna
never got tired of taking him to task for it. This time she didn't
leave off nagging him, till he lost patience, and said: "Were I
really as religious as you want me to be, I should have taken to
wife a woman who--well, who is a real Christian herself." Perhaps
Peter never meant to insult Anna by reminding her of that which she
wished to forget. Or perhaps Peter thought he had offered a valid
excuse. But Anna was offended and turned around crying.
The trouble with Anna was that she was very sensitive. That was a
trait of hers. When she heard something said about herself, she
never was satisfied with the plain meaning of what was said, but
tried to give the words every other possible meaning. Every chance
remark she happened to overhear she took to be meant for herself.
Well, this same sensitiveness one may find in most of the
Cantonists. For instance, in the regiment of General Luders, in
which I served once, we had many Tatars, some Karaites, and a goodly
number of Jews. To all appearances there was no trouble; but let
one soldier call another "Antichrist," and every Jew in the regiment
would get excited. The Tatars and the Karaites rather liked to call
their comrades Antichrist, even if they happened to be Christians.
But it was only the Jews whom the word set a-shivering. It is as I
tell you--the Jew is painfully sensitive. Well, to cut my story
short, Anna did not have a happy time of it. She was all alone,
surrounded though she was by many people. She became taciturn in
spite of herself. And this is a great misfortune when it happens
with womenfolk. Women are naturally great talkers, and you may do
them much harm, if you do not give them a chance to talk. So I
became her crony as soon as I discovered her secret. Then she tried
to make up for the many years of silence by chattering incessantly.
In her long talks she often said things she had denied before. Once
she told me that she felt a longing to see her relations and
townspeople. But the next time she said that she hated them
mightily. Very likely she did not hate them. We all dislike that
which has caused us pain and harm. So Anna disliked her relations
for having caused her remorse, homesickness, and perhaps shame.
Once her tongue was loosed, she did not stop until she had poured
out the proverbial nine measures given to woman as her share of the
ten measures of speech in the world. She spoke Yiddish even in the
presence of Marusya and of Jacob, who used to visit me once in a
while. By and by Anna began to treat him in a very friendly way.
Only Marusya avoided him, and never spoke a word to him. She simply
hated him.
Thus in time the house of Anna became something like a Jewish
settlement, or rather like some sort of a Klaus, especially when
Pater was away from home. We all used to gather there, and talk
Yiddish, just as in a Klaus. For under Anna's roof we felt
perfectly free. She became a mother to the homeless Cantonists.
Even marusya took to jabbering a little Yiddish. Jacob began to
feel that the leadership of our little community was passing into
the hands of Anna, and he became jealous. He did not see that the
very fact that he too was falling under her spell was influencing
our community greatly, and that thus he was stamping it with his own
character.
Anna liked him more than she did any one of us. Moreover, she
respected him. At times it looked as if she were somewhat afraid of
him.
Now you must know that at bottom Anna had never deserted her
religion. Instead, she carried the burdens of both religions; to
the fear of the Jewish hell she seemed to have added the fear of the
Christian hell. I suspect that she was still in the habit of
reciting her Hebrew prayer before going to sleep. She also believed
in dreams. In this respect all women are the same. Of course, she
had her dreams, and Jacob thought himself able to interpret them; he
used to seek her company for that purpose.
So we all began to feel very much at home in Anna's house.
Once it happened that Peter entered the house at a moment when we
were all so much absorbed in our Yiddish conversation that we did
not notice his presence. He sat down quietly among us and took part
in our talk, smiling in his usual manner. He asked us some
questions, and we answered him. Then we asked him something, and he
answered us in pure, good Yiddish, as if there were nothing new or
surprising about it. At last Marusya awoke, and exclaimed with glad
surprise: "Papa, can you speak Yiddish too?" We all shuddered, as
if caught stealing. Peter's smile broadened, covering the whole of
his face.
"Did you imagine that I do not know it? I wish you could speak it
as well as I do."
That made me suspect that Peter might have been himself a convert
from Judaism, and I decided to ask Anna bout it. She cleared up my
doubts very soon. She told me that Peter had been brought up in an
exclusively Jewish town; he had been employed there as a clerk in
the Town Hall. As he always had to deal with jews, he finally
learned their language. She told me at the same time that Peter
rather liked Jews, and that he was a man of more than ordinary
ability; otherwise, she said, it would have been very foolish on her
part to leave the religion of her father for the sake of Peter.
"What did you say was the name of your native town?" I asked out of
sheer curiosity. She named my native town. I felt a shiver go
through me. "And what was your father's name?" I asked again,
trembling.
"Bendet."
"Was he a wine-dealer?"
"Yes; and how do you know it? Are you of the same town?"