THE NIHILISTS' GUARD.
Pavel's mother, the countess, had not been in Miroslav since March. She
lived in retirement on one of her estates in another province, in a
constant tremour of fear and compunction. The image of Alexander II.
bleeding in the snow literally haunted her. She took it for granted that
Pavel had had a hand in the bloody plot, and she felt as though she,
too, had been a party to it.
To ascertain the situation with regard to the riot rumours Pavel called
on his uncle, the governor. He found him dozing on a bench in his
orchard, a stout cane in one hand and a French newspaper in the other.
The old satrap was dressed in a fresh summer suit of Caucasian silk,
which somehow emphasised the uncouth fleshiness of his broad nose. He
was overjoyed to see his nephew, and he plunged into the subject of the
riots at once and of his own accord. It was evidently one of those
situations upon which he usually had to unburden his mind to somebody.
"Can you tell me what they are up to in that great city of yours?" he
said, referring to St. Petersburg and the higher government circles and
blinking as he spoke. "There is an administration for you! Perhaps you
younger fellows are smarter than we oldsters. Perhaps, perhaps." He took
out a golden cigarette case, lit a cigarette and went on blinking,
sneeringly.
His words implied that Pavel, being one of the younger generation, was,
morally at least, identified with the administration of the young Czar.
"What do you mean, uncle?" he inquired.
"What do I mean? Why, I mean that they don't want those riots stopped.
That's plain enough, isn't it?"
This was a slap at the doctrine of Pavel's party concerning the
outrages, and he resented it as well as he could.
"But you have no evidence for such an accusation, uncle," he said.
"That's a mere theory of yours."
"I knew you would stick up for your generation. Ha, ha, ha! Quite
commendable in a young chap, too. Ha, ha, ha!"
"But where is your evidence?"
"You want to know too much, Pasha. Too young for that. If they wanted
the riots stopped, it would be a case of one, two, three, and there she
goes! That's as much as I can tell you, and if you are really clever you
can understand the rest yourself."
"He is in league with his fellow fleecers, the Jewish usurers," Pavel
remarked inwardly. "He simply cannot afford an anti-Jewish
demonstration, the old bribe-taker."
"Neither can you," a voice retorted from Pavel's heart, "though for
quite different reasons."
* * * * *
Prince Boulatoff called on Orlovsky, the government clerk in whose house
the local revolutionists held their meetings. The first thing that
struck him was Orlovsky's loss of girth.
"Hello, Aliosha," he said heartily, meeting him at the gate.
"Why, Pasha!" The clerk flung himself upon him, and they exchanged three
prolonged kisses.
"By Jove," Pavel went on, "you are so changed I came near letting you
pass. Why, what has become of your bulk, old boy? Have you been ill?"
"Not exactly," the other answered, leading the way indoors; then, as his
face broke into an expression of wan joy, he added: "Been in love, devil
wrench it. I take these things rather too hard, I suppose, but that's a
small matter. How have you been? Climbing upward in the service of the
revolution, aren't you?"
The room was the same. The huge tin samovar stood on the floor.
"Well, and how is your Circle? First-rate fellows all of them," Pavel
said.
"Yes, indeed. Only we miss Clara now more than ever."
"Anything specially the matter?" Pavel asked, colouring slightly.
"Well, it really used to be a splendid circle--in our humble way, that
is--but those riots have had a bad effect on us, deuce take it. Remember
Elkin? It was he who got us together, and now it's he who has brought
discord into our ranks. He is organising people who want to go to
America. This is his hobby now."
"Why, have the riots knocked all his socialism out of him?" Pavel asked,
grimly.
"Oh, no," Orlovsky answered with something like dismay. "I wouldn't say
that. It's as an organiser of communistic colonies that he is going to
emigrate. Only he says the Jewish people have a more direct claim upon
him than Russia."
"There is a revolutionist for you!" Pavel roared, bitterly. "I never did
attach much importance to that fellow. The sooner he goes the better.
God speed him."
"You're too hard on him, Pasha. He's a good fellow. If we had Clara here
she would straighten it all out. We miss her very much. As a matter of
fact, it was she--indeed, I don't see why I shouldn't tell it to you--it
was she with whom I was in love."
"Was it?" Pavel asked, colouring.
He paused, in utter confusion, and resumed, without looking at him.
"Well, you must excuse me, Aliosha, but I fear your frankness goes a bit
too far. Such things are not meant to be published that way."
"Why? Why? What a funny view you do take of it, Pasha! Suppose a
fellow's heart is full and he meets an intimate old friend of his, is it
an indiscretion on his part if he opens his mind to him?"
"I certainly am a friend of yours, and a warm one, too, old boy," Pavel
replied with a smile. "But still, things of that sort are usually kept
to oneself."
Several other members came in. The gigantic samovar, the improvised
sugar bowl, a huge loaf of rye bread, some butter and a lamp made their
appearance on the table. Elkin dropped in later in the evening. He and
Pavel had not been conversing five minutes when they quarrelled.
"What you are trying to do is to blend the unblendable--to mix socialism
with Jewish chauvinism," Boulatoff said in an ill-concealed rage.
"Am I?" the other retorted with one of the most virulent of his sneers.
"Can socialism be mixed with the welfare of the Russian people
only?--the welfare of the Russian people with a pailful or two of Jewish
blood thrown in; in plainer language, socialism can only be mixed with
anti-Semitism. Is that it?"
"Oh, nonsense!" Pavel hissed. "There are other Jews in the movement,
lots of them, and one does not hear that kind of stuff from them. They
have not sickened of the bargain on account of the riots."
"I don't know whom you mean. Perhaps some of them are still under the
spell of the fact that a Gentile or two will speak to them or even call
them by their first names."
"Calm down, Elkin," the judge with the fluffy hair and the near-sighted
eyes interposed. "Come, you won't say that of Clara, for instance?"
"No, not of Clara. But, then, you have not yet heard from her. Sooner or
later she, too, will open her eyes and come to the conclusion that it is
wiser to be a socialist for her own people than for those who will
slaughter and trample upon them. I am sure she will give it all up and
join the emigration--sooner or later."
"The devil she will," Pavel said quietly, but trembling with fury.
"Yes, she will," Elkin jeered.
Pavel felt like strangling him.
"She is too good a revolutionist to sneak away from the battlefield,"
snapped Ginsburg, the red-headed son of the usurer, without raising his
eyes from the table. "Of course, America is a safer place to be a
socialist in. There are no gendarmes there."
Elkin chuckled. "You had better save your courage for the time the riot
breaks out in this town," he said. "You know it is coming. It may burst
out at any moment, and when it does we'll have a chance to see how a
hero like you behaves himself when the 'revolutionary instincts of the
people are aroused.'"
"Very well, then, let him go back to the synagogue," Pavel shouted to
the others, losing all his self-control. "But in that case, what's the
sense of his hanging around a place like this?"
"Oh, I see, you are afraid I'll send spies to this house, are you? Well,
there is less danger of that than that you should take a hand in the
slaughter of Jewish shoemakers, blacksmiths or water-bearers as a bit of
practical 'equality and fraternity,' I can assure you. But then, after
all, you may be right. Good-bye, comrades! Don't judge me hard."
Tears stood in Orlovsky's eyes. He, the judge, and Mlle. Andronoff, the
judge's fiancee, were for running after him, but the others stopped
them.
Left to themselves, the group of Nihilists began to discuss the coming
outbreak. Everyone felt, in view of Elkin's charge, that whatever else
was done, no effort should be spared to keep the mob from attacking the
Jewish poor. Much was said about "directing the popular fury into
revolutionary channels," and "setting the masses upon the government,"
but most of those who said these things knew in their hearts that they
might as well talk of directing the ocean into revolutionary channels or
of setting a tornado upon the Russian government. Orlovsky alone took it
seriously:
"It begins to look something like, by Jove," he said beamingly. "We'll
go out, and when the mob gets going, when the revolutionary fighting
blood is up in them, we'll call out to them that Jewish usurers are not
the only enemies of the toiling people; that the Czar is at the head of
all the enemies of the nation. And then, by Jove, Miroslav may set the
pace to all Russia. See if it doesn't."
The son of the usurer called attention to the extreme smallness of their
number, but he thought it enough to keep the mob from assaulting working
people. He knew that his own relatives were all safe personally. As to
his father's property, he said he would be glad if it was all destroyed
by the "revolutionary conflagration," and he meant it.
Pavel took no hand in the discussion. Instead, he was pacing to and fro
mopingly.
At last, after some more speeches, including one by the gawky
seminarist, who came late and who disagreed with everybody else, it was
decided that in case of a riot every Gentile member of the Circle should
be out in the streets, "on picket duty," watching the mob, studying its
mood and "doing everything possible to lend the disturbance a
revolutionary character."
* * * * *
Eight Jewish women, including three little girls, were brought to the
Jewish hospital of Miroslav from a neighbouring town, where they had
been outraged in the course of an anti-Semitic outbreak. The little
girls and the prettiest of the other five died soon after they arrived.
The next day the Gentile district bubbled with obscenity. To be sure,
there were expressions of horror and pity, too, but the bulk of the
Christian population, including many an educated and tender-hearted
woman, treated the matter as a joke. Where a Jew was concerned the moral
and human point of view had become a reeling blur. The joke had an
appalling effect. While the stories of pillaged shops kindled the
popular fancy with the image of staved vodka barrels and pavements
strewn with costly fabrics, the case of the eight Jewish women gave rise
to a hideous epidemic of lust. There were thousands of Gentiles for whom
it became no more possible to pass a pretty Jewish woman than to look
into the display window of a Jewish shop without thinking of an
anti-Semitic outbreak.
The storm was gathering. The mutterings of an approaching riot were
becoming louder and louder. Many Jewish shops were closed. Taverns
serving as stations for stage lines were crowded with people begging to
be taken away from the city before it was too late.
The Defence Committee did not rest. The volunteers of the several Jewish
districts were organised into so many sections, and a signal system was
perfected by which the various sections were to communicate with each
other. The raiders were sure to be drunk, it was argued, while the
Defence Guard would be sober and acting according to a well-considered
plan. The Guard was spoiling for a fight.
The Nihilists "on picket duty" were strolling around the streets.
Troops were held in readiness and placards had been posted forbidding
people to assemble in the streets. Having ordered this, Governor
Boulatoff announced himself ill and in need of a fortnight's leave of
absence. When a delegation implored him to postpone the journey, he
replied curtly that all had been done to insure order. He was in bad
spirits and treated them with unusual rudeness.
He left Miroslav in the morning. At about noontime of the same day the
town was full of sinister rumours. One of these was about the poisoning
of twelve Christian wells by Jews.
A few yards off a retired government clerk, in dilapidated though
carefully shined boots and with a red nose, stood in front of one of the
governor's placards forbidding people to congregate in the streets, with
a crowd of illiterate Gentiles about him.
"'So by an All High ukase,'" he pretended to read, "'all people of the
orthodox Christian faith are hereby ordered to attack the Jews, destroy
their homes and shops, tear their pillows and drink their vodka and
wine, take from them all they have plundered from Christians and
administer a drubbing to them.'"
As he proceeded he worked himself up to a tone of maudlin solemnity.
"Aye, the day of reckoning hath come," he went on. "Let not a man of
that unchristian tribe escape. Let the blood of Jesus and of his
followers be avenged." Here, however, he spoiled it all by suddenly
breaking off with a grin of inebriate roguishness.
The revolutionary seminarist was watching this man philosophically.
Similar scenes occurred in other neighbourhoods. When in one instance
they had led to an attack upon a rabbinical looking old man who was left
bleeding and unconscious on the pavement, the troops were ordered out.
Then there was a scramble for rooms in Gentile hotels. Twenty-five
rubles a day was charged for a ruble room, and there were a dozen
applicants for each room. Still, those who had money contrived to find
shelter. Much greater difficulty was encountered in many cases in
getting a Christian cabman to take a Jew to a place of refuge. Many a
Gentile rented part of his dwelling to Jews at an enormous price, a
guarantee of safety being included in the bargain. Then, too, there was
a considerable number of Gentiles who received some of their prosperous
Jewish neighbours into their houses without accepting any offer of
payment. Prosperous, because the poorer Jews for the most part lived
huddled together in the Ghetto and were far removed from the Gentile
population. At Pavel's instance Orlovsky went to take Clara's sister and
her family to the house of a relative of his, but he found their door
locked. They were taking refuge with the Vigdoroffs.
Toward five o'clock, when the crimson sunlight was playing on the gold
steeple of the Church of Our Saviour and the dazzling blue and white of
hussars' uniforms, a small crowd of men and boys came running to the
square in front of the sacred structure.
"We want to carry out the holy vessels and banners," said a spokesman to
an officer. "We hear the Jews have decided to set fire to God's temple."
"We won't let them, you may be sure of that," the hussar officer
answered. "You can safely go home."
The crowd was slowly dispersing, when a man in a red shirt shouted:
"Boys, I know a Jewish cellar where twenty-five Christian corpses are
kept in empty vodka casks. Come on!"
The officer did not interfere, and the crowd followed the red-shirt
round the corner to a closed drink-shop. Half an hour later the streets
in that locality rang with a drunken sing-song: "Death to the Jews!
Death to the Christ-killers!"
The shop was the property of a Jew, who was hiding with his family
somewhere, but the street was inhabited by Gentiles. Meanwhile on a
little square near Nicholas Street, the best street running through the
Jewish quarter, a mob of five hundred men and boys, mostly from the scum
of the population, had seemingly dropped from the sky. A savage
"Hee-hee-hee!" broke loose, scattered itself, died away, and was taken
up again with redoubled energy. All over the district Jews, men and
women, most of them with children clasped in their arms, were running
along the middle of the streets as people run at the sound of a volcano.
Some were fleeing from their shops to their homes and some from their
homes to the hiding places which they had prepared for themselves. The
eyes of most of them had the hollow look of mortal fear. They ran in
family groups, holding close to each other. Here and there a man, his
feet giving way under him, sick and dizzy with fright, would slacken
pace for a minute, as if giving himself up for lost; then, wiping the
cold sweat from his face, he would break into a fresh run, more
desperate than before. Some simply walked quickly, a look of grim
determination on their faces. Here and there an aged man or woman, too
feeble to run, were making a pitiful effort to keep up with the younger
members of their families, who were urging them on with a look of
ghastly impatience. Often a frail little woman with two or three
children in her arms could be seen running as she might down a steep
hill.
Christians stood on the sidewalks, jeering and mimicking their fright
and making jokes.
Pavel watched the spectacle in a singular state of mental agitation. His
heart leaped at sight of that chaotic mob as it paraded through the
streets. Visions of the French Revolution floated through his brain,
quickening his pulse. "So our people are _not_ incapable of rising!" he
felt like exclaiming. "The idea of a revolution is _not_ incompatible
with the idea of Russia!" It was as if all the sacrifices he had been
making during the past few years had finally been indorsed by life
itself, as if they were once for all insured against proving to be the
senseless sacrifices of a modern Don Quixote. He could have embraced
this mass of human dregs. And while his mind was in this state, the
panic-stricken men, women and children with oriental features who were
running past him were stranger than ever to him. He simply could not
rouse himself to a sense of their being human creatures like himself at
this moment. It was like a scene on a canvas. Clara did not seem to
belong to these people; and when it came fully home to him that she
did, and how these scenes were apt to stand between him and her, his
heart grew faint within him; whereupon he felt like a traitor to his
cause, and at the same time he was overcome with a sense of his inward
anarchy and helplessness.
Within the Jewish houses and on their courtyards there was a rush for
sub-cellars, garrets, barrels. As they ran, clambered, tiptoed,
scrambled, they smothered the cries of their frightened babies with
several cases of unconscious infanticide as a result. Christians
hastened to assert the immunity of their houses by placing the image of
the Virgin (a Jewess!) in their windows; and so did many a Jew who had
procured such images for the purpose. Some smashed their own windows and
piled up fragments of furniture in front of their doors, to give their
homes or shops the appearance of having already been visited by mob
fury. Here and there a man was chalking crosses on his gate or shutters.
While this was in progress several hundred Jews burst from gateways on
and about Nicholas Street and bore down on the enemy with frantic yells
in Russian and in Yiddish. They were armed with crowbars, axes, hammers,
brass knuckles, clubs and what-not. As to the rioters they were mostly
unarmed. Following the established practice of the crusade, they had
expected to begin with some hardware store and there to arm themselves
with battering rams and implements of devastation--an intention which
they had not yet had time to carry out. At sight of this armed
multitude, therefore, they were taken aback. Resistance was not what
they had anticipated. Indeed, for some seconds many of them were under
the impression that the crowd now descending on them was but another
horde of hoodlums. They wavered. A crowd of Jewish butchers, lumberers,
blacksmiths, truck-drivers--the advance guard of the Defence--made a
dash at them, jeering and howling at the top of their lungs, in Yiddish:
"Let's hack them to pieces! Lively boys! Let's drive right into their
lungs and livers! Let's make carrot-pudding of them! Bravely, fellows,
they're drunk as swine!"
At this point Orlovsky and the seminarist instinctively joined the
rioters. Elkin and Vigdoroff were on the other side. Pavel was looking
on from the sidewalk.
The Defence was mistaken. The rioters were almost as sober as they, for,
indeed, it was another part of the stereotyped program of anti-Semitic
riots that drink-shops should be among the very first targets of attack,
so that the invaders might fit themselves for the real work of the riot
by filling themselves full of Jewish vodka. But the Jews, as we have
seen, descended upon them before they had torn down a single door. What
the outcome would have been had the two opposing crowds been left to
themselves is unknown, for a troop of hussars whose commander had been
watching the scene charged on both when they were a few inches apart,
and dispersed them both. Some fifty arrests were made, more than
two-thirds of the prisoners being Jews. The arrested Gentiles went to
police headquarters singing an anti-Semitic refrain and mimicking the
frightened cry of Jewish women. Bystanders, some of the Nihilist
"pickets" among them, shouted:
"Don't fear, boys. You'll soon go home." And the answer was:
"Sure we will, and then we'll give them a shaking-up, the scurvy Jews,
won't we?"
On another business street some boys threw a few tentative stones at a
shop window. There being no interference on the part of the military, a
mob of grown men sprang up. Doors were burst in and rolls of silk and
woollen stuffs came shooting to the pavement.
"Don't, boys; you had better go home," said a handsome young lieutenant,
affecting the basso of a general.
The raiders did not desist. While some went on emptying the shop into
the street others were slashing, tearing or biting at the goods. They
did it without zest and somewhat nervously, as if still in doubt as to
the attitude of the authorities. A servant girl unrolled a piece of blue
velvet over a filthy spot on the cobblestones before a lieutenant of the
hussars, saying:
"Here, sir! Why dirty the dear little feet of your horse? Here is Jewish
velvet for them."
"Thank you, my dear girl, but you had better go home," the lieutenant
answered, smiling. A crumpled mass of unrolled fabrics, silk, woollen,
velvet, satin, cotton, lay in many-coloured heaps on the pavement and in
the gutter. The rioters, whose movements were still amateurish and
lacked snap, soon wearied of the job. Several of them then broke into a
grocery store and brought forth a barrel of kerosene.
"What are you going to do?" asked the lieutenant.
"We'll pour it over the stuff and set fire to it, your high nobleness."
"That you can't do," the officer returned decisively. "You'll have to go
home now."
The rioters obeyed at once, many of them taking rolls of silk or velvet
along.