A PAPER FROM THE CZAR.
A large crowd of peasants, in tall straw hats, many of them with their
whips in their hands, congregated in front of the bailiff's office at
Zorki. It was a sultry afternoon in August. A single shirt of coarse
white linen and a pair of trousers of the same material were all the
clothes the men wore. The trousers were very wide and baggy but drawn
tight at the bottom by means of strings, so that they dropped at the
ankles blouse-fashion, and the loose-fitting shirt fell over the
trousers with a similar effect. Most of the shirts were embroidered in
red and blue. Sometimes, as a result of special rivalry among the young
women, one village will affect gaudier embroidery and more of it than
its neighbours. This could be seen now at one corner of the crowd where
a group of peasants, all from the same place, defined itself by the
flaming red on the upper part of their sleeves. There were women, too,
in the crowd, the girls in wreaths of artificial flowers and all of them
in ribbons and coral beads, though some of them were barefoot.
A strong smell of primitive toil emanated from their bodies; primitive
ideas and primitive interests looked out of their eyes. The northern
moujik--the Great, or "real," Russian--who speaks the language of
Turgeneff and Tolstoy, has less poetry than the Little-Russian, but he
also has less cunning and more abandon. To be sure, the cunning of the
Zorki peasant is as primitive as his whole mind. Very few men in the
crowd now standing in front of the bailiff's office could have managed
to add such two numbers as six and nineteen, or to subtract the weight
of an empty pail from the weight of a pail of honey. Their book-keeping
consists of notches on the door-jamb, and their armour in the battle of
life is a cast-iron distrustfulness.
At last the bailiff made his appearance, adjusted the straps of his
sword across his breast, and asked what they wanted. A tall old fellow
with a drooping steel-grey moustache came out of the crowd, hat in hand,
and bowed deeply, as he said:
"It's like this, your nobleness. We wish to know when that paper from
the Czar about the Jews will be read to us?"
"What paper from the Czar?" the bailiff asked. "What are you talking
about?" He was a dry-boned man, but ruddy-faced and with very narrow
almond-shaped eyes. As he now looked at the crowd through the sharp
afternoon glare his eyes glistened like two tiny strips of burnished
metal.
"Your nobleness need not be told what paper. It's about beating the Jews
and taking away their goods."
The scene was being watched by several Jews, plucky fellows who had come
in the interests of their people at the risk of being the first victims
of mob fury. Among these was Yossl, Makar's father, at once the most
intellectual and strongest looking man in the delegation. In the
meantime the other Jews, stupefied and sick with fear, had closed their
shops and dwellings and were hiding in cellars and in garrets, in the
ruins of an old church and in the woods. Two women gave birth to
stillborn children during the commotion, one of these at the bedside of
her little boy who was too sick to be moved.
"You are a fool," the bailiff said to the spokesman, with a smile, as he
raised his narrow eyes in quest of some Gentile with whom he might share
the fun. "You are a lot of fools. Better go home. There is no such paper
in the world. Whoever told you there was?"
"Why, everybody says so. In most places they finished the job long ago.
Only we are a lot of slow coaches, people say. And then, when the higher
authorities find out about it, who will be fined or put in jail? We,
poor peasants. As if we did not have troubles enough as it is."
"What will you be put in jail for?" asked the bailiff, chuckling to
himself.
Here a younger peasant whispered in the spokesman's ear not to let
himself be bamboozled.
Speaking with unwonted boldness, born of the conviction that the bailiff
was suppressing a document of the Czar, the tall fellow said:
"You can't fool us, your nobleness. We are only peasants, but what we
know we know." And he went on to enumerate villages where, according to
rumour, the paper had already been read and acted upon. "Although
uneducated, yet we are not such fools as your nobleness takes us for. If
it is a ukase direct from the Czar we aren't going to take chances, sir.
Not we, sir. Better read it to us and let's be done with it. We have no
time to waste, sir."
One of the Jews was going to make a suggestion, but he was shouted down
and waved aside.
The bailiff made a gesture of amused despair and turned to go back, when
the peasants stepped forward, and chattering excitedly, they gave him
to understand that they would not let him go until he had shown them the
imperial ukase. The purport of their remonstrance was to the effect that
the Jews had bribed him to suppress the document. The bailiff took it
all good-naturedly. In his heart of hearts he was looking forward to the
sport of an anti-Jewish outbreak with delight; but the noise brought the
local priest upon the scene--a kindly elderly man with the face of a
whimpering peasant girl. He was a victim of official injustice himself
and he implored the crowd to listen to reason. His face, at once comic
and piteous, was the main cause of his failures. He was a well-educated
priest, yet he was kept in this obscure town. His sacerdotal locks,
meant to be long and silken, hung in stiff, wretched little clumps.
Nevertheless, as he now stood in his purple broad-sleeved gown,
appealing to the multitude of white figures, his cross sparkling in the
sun, the spectacle was like a scene of the early days of Christianity.
"It is a great sin to circulate wicked falsehoods like that and it is
just as much of a sin to credit them," he said in a pained heartfelt
voice. "Ours is a good Czar. He does not command his children to do
violence to human beings."
"Oh, well, little father," one peasant broke in. "You don't seem to have
heard of it. That's all. If the Czar has not ordered it, then why do
they beat the Jews everywhere else and the police and soldiers stand by
and see to it that they do the work well?"
The bailiff burst into a horse-laugh and slapped his knees violently.
The priest's face bore a look of despair.
"Can it be that you believe such foolishness?" he said.
"What do we know? We are only common people. All we do know is that
whatever happens it is our skin that is peeled off. If we can't get the
paper we'll do our duty without it."
"That's it, without it!" the others chimed in in excited chorus.
Further parleying made it clear that many of them had no inclination to
do any personal harm to the Jews or to their property. They were on
friendly terms with their Jewish neighbours, and all they wanted was to
get rid of a disagreeable duty. The rest, about half of the entire
crowd, had had their heads turned with stories of lakes of vodka and
fabulous piles of loot, but even these proved susceptible to argument.
"Here," Yossl shouted at the top of his voice and with great fervour. "I
have a scheme, and what will you lose by it if you hear me out? If you
don't like it, I'll take it back and it won't cost you a cent." The
intensity of his manner took them by storm. He was allowed to finish.
"My scheme amounts to this: The Jews will sign a paper taking upon
themselves all responsibility for your failure to smash their shops and
houses, so that if the authorities call you to account for violating the
imperial ukase, we will answer and you will come out clear."
First there was perplexed stillness, then a murmur of distrust, and
finally a tumult of rejection.
"Crafty Jew! There must be some trick in it!" they yelled sneeringly.
The priest was wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Finally he
shouted huskily:
"Very well, I'll sign such a paper."
After some more arguing, the plan, in its amended form, was adopted. The
older men flaunted their experience by insisting upon a formal
"certificate" bearing the priest's official seal and signature, so that
when the Czar's inspectors arrived the peasants might have something
tangible to present. When all this had been complied with, there was
some portentous talk about the Jews sprinkling the bargain with vodka;
but having followed the "little father's" advice in the main point the
peasants were now in a yielding mood toward him generally, and the vodka
shops being closed, he had no difficulty in getting them to go home
sober.
A large number of them had to cross the river. To occupy their minds
while they were waiting for the ferry--a small antediluvian affair which
could only accommodate about one-fifth of the crowd at a time--the
priest asked them for a song. And then the quiet evening air resounded
with those pensive, soulful strains which for depth of melancholy have
scarcely an equal in the entire range of folk-music. Thus the men who
might now have been frenzied with the work of pillage, devastation and,
perhaps, murder, stood transfixed with the poetry of anguish and pity.
Race distinctions and ukases--how alien and unintelligible these things
were to the world in which their souls dwelt at this minute! The glint
of the water grew darker every second. The men on the ferry continued
their singing. Then somebody on the other side joined in and the melody
spread in all directions. The fresh ringing treble of a peasant girl,
peculiarly doleful in its high notes, came from across the water. A
choir of invisible choirs, scattered along both banks, sang to the night
of the sadness of human existence.
The Jews returned from their hiding-places, but very few of them went to
bed that night. The tragedy in many houses was intensified by the
circumstance that the heads of these families were absent from the town,
having gone to the Good Jew for prayer and advice as to the spreading
calamity. Weinstein's spacious rooms were full of neighbours and their
families. The presence of the man whom one had been accustomed to regard
as a monument of worldly power had a special attraction for the poorer
Pietists this evening. Besides, one dreaded the hallucinations of
solitude and in Weinstein's house one was sure to find company. Most of
them sat in the large prayer room, keeping close to each other,
conversing in subdued, melancholy voices, comfortable in the community
of their woe, as though content to remain in this huddle until the end
of time. Yossl was curling his black side-locks morosely. The other
people in the room importuned him for details of the scene in front of
the bailiff's office, but he was not in the mood for speaking. Weinstein
was snapping his fingers at his own florid neck, as he walked backward
and forward. Presently Maria, his Gentile servant, who spoke good
Yiddish, addressed him, with sad, sympathetic mien:
"Master dear," she said in Yiddish. "Will you let me break a couple of
windows?"
He did not understand.
"You see," she explained bursting into tears. "If they get at me because
I did not smash things in your house, I'll be able to swear that I did."
For an instant he stood surveying her, then, in a spasm of rage and
misery, he shrieked out:
"Why, certainly! Go ahead! Break, smash, everything you set your eye on.
You are the princess, we are only Jews. Go smash the whole house." And
in his frenzy he went breaking windows and chairs, shrieking as he did
so:
"Here! Look and let your heart rejoice."
"Madman," Yossl said calmly, "you'll alarm the town. They'll think it's
a riot and the Gentiles will join in."
Weinstein sat down pale and panting. "Go and tell your people to come
and delight in the sight of a Jew's broken windows," he said to the
Gentile woman.
She put her hands to her face and left the room sobbing.