ON SACRED GROUND.
In 1648, when Chmyelnicki's Cossacks slaughtered 40,000 Jews, Miroslav
was among the cities that fell into their blood-dripping hands. It was a
small town then; the Jewish population did not exceed eight hundred, but
these unanimously decided to be slain rather than abandon their faith.
Not a man, woman or child was spared. The scene of the slaughter, a
small square in the vicinity of Cucumber Market, is sacred ground to the
Jews of Miroslav. The Bloody Spot they call it reverently. A synagogue
stands there and ten recluses find shelter under its roof, so that the
Word of God may be heard with unbroken continuity within its walls. If
this house of prayer and divine study were to fall silent for a single
minute, say the children of the town, the blood of the slain Jews would
burst into a roar of sobbing that could be heard for seven miles.
But the ten recluses were not the only Talmudists in the place. The Old
Synagogue, as it was generally called, was the favourite haunt of
scholars. It was here where Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara's father, spent every
day and evening in the week except Saturdays and holidays.
It was about eight o'clock of a warm evening, several days after the
disappearance of the political prisoner. The Old Synagogue was filled
with people. The evening service was over. Candles flickered on gaunt,
tallow-stained reading-desks and blazing oil-lamps dangled from the
ceiling. The recluses were freely gossiping or snoozing; there were so
many others to do the holy work--a medley of voices and melodies--from
the enthusiastic soprano of the schoolboy to the dignified drone of the
elderly merchant; from the conscious, over-elaborate intonation of the
newly-married young man to the absorbed murmur of the tattered old
scholar. As to the Talmudists themselves, they found stimulating harmony
in this chaos. To them it was as if the synagogue itself were singing in
a hundred voices, an inspired choir that quickened one's intellectual
passions and poured fire into one's gesticulations.
One of the younger men in the crowd was Makar. Seated in a snug corner,
with his reading-desk tilted against his breast, he was sincerely
absorbed in a passage on the slaying of cattle. The treatise is one of
the most intricate in the Talmud, and he had taken it up as he might a
game of chess. The lower part of his face was buried in the sloping
surface of a huge long book, the handle of a tin candlestick hooked to
the top of the folio. The flame of a guttering candle threw a stream of
light upon his dusky high forehead and heavy black eyebrows. Slightly
rocking the desk, he intoned the Chaldaic text and the Yiddish
interpretations, listening to his own sing-song as one listens, at some
distance, to a familiar voice.
Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara's father, was studying quietly in a corner, in
peaceful ignorance of the mad hunt that was going on for his daughter at
this moment. That this red-bearded little man was the father of the
Nihilist girl who had brought about his escape Makar had not the least
idea.
After bidding Clara good-bye on the evening of his rescue, he had taken
the first cab he came across, getting off at Cucumber Market, as
directed. After zig-zagging about for five minutes, he was going to hail
another cab, but checked himself because the man proved to be the same
who had brought him to Cucumber Market. A boy stopped to look at him,
whereupon he made up his mind that the official cap which he wore (and
which had been expected to give him the appearance of a teacher in a
government school for Jews) scarcely went well with his face, and that
it must be this cap of his which had attracted the boy's attention. He
therefore went to a capmaker's shop and bought an ordinary cap, such as
is worn by the average old-fashioned Jew, explaining to the artisan that
it was for his father, who had his size. This part of the town he knew
well, for it was in the centre of the Jewish quarter, not many minutes'
walk from his former lodgings. The Old Synagogue was in the same
neighbourhood, and it flashed upon him to seek temporary refuge in the
celebrated house of worship and learning. Living in such a place was
like hiding in the depths of the Fourth Century--the age of the Talmud,
which was still the soul of the Ghetto, still the fountain-head of the
spiritual and intellectual life of the orthodox Jew. He would be in his
native element there, at any rate, and would certainly feel more
comfortable than amid the imposing interiors of a noblewoman's mansion.
On his way to the synagogue he twisted the hair at his temples till he
looked as he used to, before he left Zorki. As to his shave, he prepared
an explanation: he was subject to a species of skin disease that made
shaving unavoidable.
The assistant beadle at the Old Synagogue was a man with a luxurious
white beard. He was not learned in the Talmud himself, but he had served
in the great "house of study" so long that he was familiar with the
titles of the various volumes and sections in the same way as an old
servant at a medical college is familiar with anatomical nomenclature.
He danced attendance on every diligent scholar, and was the terror of
every boy who romped or talked "words of daily life" over his holy book.
He was in charge of the synagogue library and the candle supply. His
salary was no larger than that of a street labourer, yet he had the
appearance of a stern, prosperous merchant.
When Makar first applied for a book and a candle the assistant beadle
cast a knowing look at his smooth-shaven face, and then, handing him the
volume, said:
"You are in the army, aren't you?"
"How do you know, by my shaved face?" Makar asked, sadly.
The assistant beadle smiled assent. The skin-disease story proved
unnecessary.
"There is many a Talmudist among soldiers nowadays," the old man said.
"To think of a Child of Law having to live in military bondage, to wear
a uniform, to shave and to handle a gun!" He regarded Makar as a martyr.
When he saw him reading his book in a pleasing, absorbed sing-song, he
paused and watched him with a look of paternal admiration.
"Do you belong here?" he asked later.
"No." He named the first town that came to his tongue.
"Have you relatives here?"
"No. But I have obtained a furlough and am going home. I am waiting for
a letter and some money. I have left my uniform with a friend."
The assistant beadle asked Makar for news--whether there were any
rumours of some new war, or of some fresh legislation affecting the
condition of Jews. The query was made on the supposition that Makar, as
a member of the Czar's army and one who saw so many officers, could not
be unfamiliar with what was going on "up above"; and Makar appeased the
old man's curiosity with some suitable bits of information. The
assistant beadle was particularly interested in the story of a certain
colonel, a bitter anti-Semite, who used to beat the Jews in his regiment
because a Jewish money-lender had him under his thumb. Now this "Jews'
enemy" lay in bed, stricken with paralysis--a clear case of divine
reckoning. Did Makar know him? Makar said he did.
The discussion was interrupted by the appearance of a bewigged woman
with a pound of candles, in commemoration of the anniversary of a death.
She wanted to make sure that they were going to be used for diligent
study and not to be thrown away on loafers, and the assistant beadle
told her that it would be all right and that she had better go home and
put the children to bed. Another woman, whose boy was studying in a
corner, was watching his gesticulations with beaming reverence. She had
an apple for him and a copper coin for the assistant beadle, and when
she saw Makar looking at her son, she said, nodding her head blissfully:
"Praised be the Master of the World. It is not in vain that I am
toiling. The boy will be an adornment to my old age."
Later in the evening a woman burst into the synagogue, lamenting and
wringing her hands. She besought the recluses to pray for her
newly-married daughter, who was on her death-bed. Makar was deeply
touched. He felt like a foreigner amid these scenes that had once been
his own world, and the consciousness of it filled him with melancholy.
He slept at the synagogue. After the service next morning he sent out a
boy for some bread, butter and pot cheese, and at two o'clock a devout
widow brought him, at the assistant beadle's recommendation, a pot of
soup and boiled meat. He ate his dinner with Talmudistic bashfulness,
the woman looking on piously, and mutely praying to heaven that her
dinner might agree with the holy man and give him strength for the study
of God's laws.
Toward evening he ventured out on a stroll through the spacious
courtyard which lay between the Old Synagogue and several other houses
of worship. In this yard was a great octagonal basin, celebrated for its
excellent tea water, with moss-grown spouts and chained wooden dippers.
He watched the water-bearers with their pails and the girls with their
jugs--a scene that seemed to have sprung to life from certain passages
in the Talmud--until he came within a hair's breadth of being recognised
by his former landlady.
Rabbi Rachmiel was absent from the synagogue that day. When Makar
returned to the house of study he noticed signs of excitement. The
recluses and other students were absorbed in whispered, panic-stricken
conversation. They dared not discuss the news in groups, some even
pretending to be engrossed in their books, as much as to say: "In case
it comes to the knowledge of the police that you people are talking
about it, I want you to remember that I took no part in your gossip."
The meaning of Clara's disappearance was not quite clear to them. They
knew in a very dim way that there were people, for the most part
educated people, who wanted to do away with czars in general, and now it
appeared that Rabbi Rachmiel's daughter was one of those mysterious
persons. Those of the Talmudists who knew Clara were trying to imagine
her as something weird, preternatural, and when her familiar face came
back to them they uttered subdued exclamations of amazement.
When the news reached Makar he wondered whether it would not be
advisable for him to decamp at once. But he was so snugly established in
his present berth that he was loath to abandon it.
Some of the worshippers who dropped in to read a page or two of an
evening would gather in groups, bandying gossip or talking foreign
politics, of which, indeed, they had the most grotesque conceptions.
Here Makar picked up many a side-splitting story illustrative of the
corruption, intemperance and childlike ineptitude of government
officials. His attention seized with special eagerness upon a
description of the demoralised state of things in the printing shop
connected with the governor's office. There is not an article of
merchandise over which the Russian authorities maintain a more rigorous
control than they do over type, every pound, almost every letter of it,
used in the empire being registered and supposedly kept track of; yet
the foreman of that shop often offered some of the Czar's own supply for
sale, and in default of buyers (the licensed private printers of the
town being too timid to handle this most dangerous species of stolen
goods) he had once molten a large quantity of new type and sold it for
scrap lead. Makar could not help picturing the revolutionists in regular
communication with this man. Nor did his fancy stop there. Gradually all
the typesetters under that foreman would be supplanted by
revolutionists, and the Czar's printing office would print the _Will of
the People_!
Two days elapsed before Rabbi Rachmiel returned. When he did he scarcely
spoke to anybody. Naturally a man of few words, he now spent every
minute reading his book with ferocious absorption.
The next day was Friday. In the evening the turmoil of Talmudic accents
gave way to an ancient chant, at once light-hearted and solemn--the song
of welcome to Sabbath the Bride. The brass chandeliers, brightly
burnished, were filled with blazing candles. About half of the seats
were occupied by worshippers, freshly bathed and most of them in their
Sabbath clothes. Rabbi Rachmiel wore a beaming face, "in honour of the
Sabbath," that was plainly the result of effort. As Maker watched him
chant his Sabbath-eve psalms, the heart of the escaped Nihilist was
contracted with sympathy and something like a sense of guilt.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Count Loris-Melikoff had abolished the Third Section,
transferring the secret service to the Interior Department, and while
the change had not displaced the Dandy from office, yet it materially
impaired his usefulness to his party.
When Makar returned to St. Petersburg Pavel met him with kisses and hugs
and punches. The Janitor, whom he saw the next day, shook his hand
heartily.
"It's all right," he said, looking Makar over with an amused air.
"What are you smiling at?" Parmet demanded, colouring.
"At you. I can't get myself to believe it was really you who made such a
neat job of it."
"I!" Makar protested, exultingly. "Any idiot would know how to be
arrested. It's Clara that carried the scheme through."
"Still, there is better stuff in you than I gave you credit for."
Makar was quivering to know something of the use that had been made of
his arrest, but conspirators ask no questions. Indeed, to try to know as
little as possible, to avoid information upon anything except that in
which one was personally participating was (or was supposed to be) an
iron law of the movement; and now Makar was more jealous of his
reputation as a conspirator than ever.
"Well, it's all right," the Janitor said, reading his thoughts.
"Something has been done and it's all right; only under the new system
it's rather slow work."
Makar did not understand. The abolition of the Third Section had taken
place while he was in prison. When he heard of the change he said in
dismay: "Will that affect my scheme?"
"Your scheme? I don't think it will," the Janitor answered mysteriously.
"Of course, we'll first have to see how the new system works. We must do
some sounding and watching and studying before we know how to go about
things. Can't you wait a month or two?"
Makar was silent, then his face broke into a roguish smile.
"I will if you get me into an underground printing office for the
interval," he returned.
The Janitor took fire. "What has that got to do with your cursed
scheme?" he said with a slight stutter. "As if I had printing jobs to
give away!"