THE RIOT.
The next morning the Police Master, "in order to avoid bloodshed,"
issued a proclamation forbidding Jews to leave their houses. The order
was copied from one that had been issued in other riot-ridden towns
where, as the Miroslav Police Master knew but too well, it meant that
the Jews were prevented from uniting for their self-defence and forced
to await the arrival of the mob, each family in its own isolated
lodgings. At the same time every soldier of the Jewish faith was called
back to barracks, none of their number being included in the patrol,
"for fear of embittering the Christian population."
A peculiar air hung about the city, an air at once of festive idleness
and suppressed bustle. It looked as it might on the eve of some great
fair. Gentile workmen, staying away from their shops, were parading the
streets, many of them shouldering axes, sledge-hammers, bores,
chisels--their tools of useful toil to be turned to weapons of
demolition and pillage; peasants from neighbouring villages were
arriving with sacks, pails, tubs, spades, axes, pitchforks, their
waggons otherwise empty and ready to be laden with booty. Among the
people in the streets were gangs of trained rioters, come from towns
where their work was at an end. The Jews were in their hiding places
where they had passed the night. Pavel went about alone, avoiding
company, asking himself questions to which his mind had no answer. He
was filled with the excitement of a sportsman a few minutes before the
beginning of a great race; with mental chaos and anxiety.
At one corner of Cucumber Market a group of peasants took off their
coarse straw hats and bowed to two policemen.
"We are only ignorant peasants," they said. "Will your High Nobleness
tell us when his Excellency the Police Master will give the order to
start in?"
"There won't be any order to start in," answered one of the policemen.
"Move along, move along."
The large market place became white with country people. They were
getting restive. Their sacks and tubs were hungry for the goods of
"Christ-killers." Four years ago many of these very people, dressed like
soldiers, had been driven to the Balkans by a force known to them as the
Czar, to fire at Turks without having the least idea what sort of
creatures those people called Turks were or what they had done to be
fired at. Now they had come here, in obedience to the same force, to rob
and do violence to Jews. Among the out-of-town looters were two tramps
who had it whispered about that they were two well-known generals in
disguise, personal emissaries of the Emperor sent to direct the attack
upon the Jews. These two were soon put in gaol, but that which they
personified, the idea that the anti-Jewish riots met with the Czar's
approval, was left at large. It seized upon soldier and civilian alike.
People who usually kept at a timid distance from everything in the shape
of a uniform, were now bandying jests with army lieutenants and police
captains. The question this morning was not whether one wore the Czar's
uniform or citizen's clothes, but whether one was a Jew or not. An
unusual feeling of kinship linked them all together, and the source of
that feeling was the consciousness that they were not Jews.
It was about nine o'clock when a large seedy-looking man with a bloated,
sodden face, stepped out of a vast crowd on Cucumber Market, and walked
jauntily up to a deserted fruit stand. Snatching a handful of hickory
nuts, he flung it high in the air, then thrust his two index fingers
into his mouth and blew a loud piercing blast, puffing himself up
violently as he did so. The sound was echoed by similar sounds in many
parts of the crowded market place.
"Hee-ee-eeee!" came from a thousand frantic throats.
A long stick was raised with a battered hat for a flag, a hundred human
swarms rushed in all directions, rending the air with their yells, and
pandemonium was loose.
There was a scramble for hardware shops, vodka shops and places where
Jewish women were said to be secreted. Another few minutes and the
streets were streaming with spirits. The air was filled with the odour
of alcohol, with the din of broken glass, with the clatter of feet, with
the impact of battering rams against doors; and coming through this
general clang, thud and crash of destruction, were smothered groans of
agony, shrieks of horror and despair, the terror-stricken cry of
children, the jeers of triumph and lust. Here a row of shops, their
doors burst in, was sending forth a shower of sugar, kerosene, flour,
spices, coats, bonnets, wigs, dry goods, crockery, cutlery, toys; there
a bevy of men were tearing up the street, piling up the cobble-stones
which others were hurling at shop windows. Some men and women were
carrying away bucketsful of vodka. Others were bending over casks,
scooping out the liquid with their caps, hands or even boots; others
were greedily crouching before barrels, their mouths to the bungholes.
Here and there a man leaning over a broken cask was guzzling at its
contents in a torpor of drunkenness. One rioter, holding a sealed bottle
in his hand and too impatient to look for a corkscrew, smashed its neck
against the sidewalk, while another man, by his side, broke two similar
bottles against each other, and then cursed the Jews as he licked wine
mixed with his own blood off his fingers. Nearby a woman carrying a shoe
full of vodka toward a four-year-old boy who was seated on a pile of
logs, yelled frantically:
"Here, my darling! Taste it, precious one, so that when you grow up you
may say you remember the day when the ill-gotten wealth of Jews was
smashed by people of the True Faith."
Women and children were serving vodka to the soldiers in cans, teapots,
saucers, ladles, paper boxes.
Orlovsky mounted a cask and began to shout, wildly:
"Don't drink too much, boys! Don't befog your minds! For this is a great
historical moment! Only why attack Jews alone? Behold, the Czar is at
the head of all the blood-suckers in the land!"
Scarcely anybody listened to him. The crowd was too deeply absorbed in
its orgy. His voice was drowned by a thousand other sounds; his flashing
eyes and his air-pounding fists were part of a nightmare of brutalised
faces, attitudes of greed, gesticulations of primitive humanity run
amuck. Presently, however, a group of belated rowdies came along in
search of drink. They stopped in front of Orlovsky, eyeing the cask
under his feet hopefully, the appearance of the bung showing that its
contents were still intact.
"Who are you, anyhow?" one of them said to the speaker. "It must be the
Jews who sent you here to talk like that to good Christian people."
"It isn't true. You're mistaken, old boy," Orlovsky answered hoarsely
and breathing hard, but with a kindly, familiar smile on his flushed,
perspiring face. "I am one of the best friends you and all the people
ever had, I mean the good of all of you fellows. What's the use
attacking Jews only, I say. We had better turn upon the authorities, the
flunkeys of the Czar----"
"Do you hear what he says?" one of his listeners said, in perplexity,
nudging the fellow by his side.
"He wants to get us in trouble, the sly fox that he is," somebody
remarked.
"Sure, he does. And it was by the Jews he was hired to come here. I know
what I am talking about," growled the man who had spoken first. "Down
with him, boys!"
"Down with him!" the others echoed, thirstily.
Orlovsky was pulled off and the group of belated rioters, re-enforced by
some others, rushed at the cask savagely.
Pavel was in another section of the same street. An old little Jewess
whom he saw run out of a gate struck him as the most pathetic figure he
had seen that day. Her fright gave her pinched little face something
like a pout, an air of childlike resentment, as it were. A Gentile boy
snatched off her wig and held it up, jeering to some bystanders,
whereupon she covered her gray head with her bony hands, her faith
forbidding her to expose her hair, and ran on with the same childlike
pout. A sob of pity caught Pavel in the throat. He was about to offer to
take her to a place of safety, when an elderly rowdy, apparently
provoked by her outlandish anxiety about her bare hair, struck her a
vicious blow on the head, accompanying it with profanity.
"Cur!" Pavel shrieked, springing up to him and landing a smart whack in
his face.
The rioter looked round with surprise, muttered something and joined the
looters.
"Come with me, don't be afraid of the scoundrels," Pavel said, taking
her by the hand. His heart was melting with pity for all the Jews at
this moment. He felt a rush of yearning tenderness for Clara, and he
wished she could see him taking care of this woman of her race.
When he saw two marauders hand out gold and silver watches--the spoils
of a raid--to the patrol, his blood was up again.
"Is that what you are here for, thieves, vermin that you are?" he
shouted.
"Who is that fellow? Run him in!" somebody said.
He fought desperately, cursing the authorities and calling to the mob to
turn upon the soldiers, but he was overpowered and carried away half
dead. When his identity was discovered at Police Headquarters, it caused
a panic among the officials of the place. He was reverently placed in a
carriage and taken to the Palace.
The Defence Guard gave the rioters fight in two places, and a desperate
encounter it was, but it was not to last long. Troops fell upon them,
beat them with the butts of their rifles and hurled execrations at them
for violating the police ordinance. Every Jew who was armed and every
Jew who looked educated, Elkin among them, was arrested. The others were
driven indoors. Vladimir was brought to police headquarters unconscious,
with blood gushing from his head.
When the first stack of bedding was pitched out on the sidewalk at
Nicholas Street, from a residence over a tobacco shop, a man with watery
eyes and a beautiful Great-Russian beard, one of the leaders, selected
a big, plump, tempting feather-bed, and opened his pocket-knife with
dignified deliberation. A crowd of about one thousand stood about in
breathless silence, as though attending a religious ceremony of great
solemnity. In order to prolong the spell, the man with the golden beard
played with the feather-bed awhile, kneading, patting, punching it,
brandishing his knife over it, like a barbaric high priest performing
some mystic rite over a captive about to be sacrificed. Then, grasping
it with sudden ferocity, his teeth a-glitter amid his enormous whiskers,
his watery eyes flashing murder, he cut a quick, long gash, rent the
pillow-case apart and hurled its snow-white entrails to the breeze.
"Hurrah! Hurrah!" the mob yelled savagely, as the breeze seized the down
and flung it in a thousand directions. "Hurrah! Hurrah!"
The other feather-beds and pillows were ripped up, disemboweled and
emptied by some of the other rioters. The summer-baked street seemed to
be in the grasp of a snow-storm.
It is one of the characteristics of the housewife of the Ghetto that she
will put up with a poor meal rather than with an uncomfortable bed. The
destruction of pillows and featherbeds is therefore the most typical
scene of anti-Semitic riots in Russia. An Anglo-Saxon crowd viewing a
prize-fight is not thrilled more deeply at sight of "first-blood" than
were the rioters of Miroslav at sight of the first cloud of Jewish down.
Now the outbreak was in full swing. Some of the men came out in
fashionable clothes, their pockets bulging with plunder. The same work
of devastation and pillage was going on in many places at once. About
ten thousand raiders, most of them covered with down, were skirmishing
about in groups of fifty to one hundred, preceded by one or two leaders
and accompanied, in some cases, with a band of toy-drums and whistles.
They went from street to street reconnoitering for houses or shops that
had not yet been visited. Now it looked like a real anti-Jewish riot.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
After the pillows came the furniture and other household goods, every
bit of it either shivered to flinders or carried off. While some were
busy smashing things or throwing them out of the windows, others were
stripping off their own clothes and arraying themselves in the best
coats, trousers, dresses, bonnets, the raided houses contained. A frowzy
drunken scrub-woman emerged in a gorgeous ball dress, a costly fur cap
on her head, with two gold watches dangling from her neck. One of these
gangs was led by a man who wore a woman's jacket of brown plush and a
high hat. Another leader was decked out in a fashionable summer suit and
a new straw hat, but his feet were bare and encrusted with dirt. A third
gang was preceded by a flag consisting of the torn skirt of an outraged
Jewish woman, the flag-bearer celebrating the exploit as he marched
along.
Following the looters were dense crowds of spectators, many of them well
dressed and with the stamp of education and refinement on their faces.
These included some well known families, members of the aristocracy, who
watched the scenes of the day from their fashionable equipages.
Officials, merchants, people of the middle class were out in their best
clothes. Miroslav made a great gala day of it. The aristocracy was in a
complacent, race-track mood. Occupants of carriages were exchanging
greetings and pleasantries. Cavaliers were interpreting to their ladies
the bedlam of sound, odour and colour. The appearance of a drunken jade
in a ball dress, strutting with her arms akimbo, in besotted imitation
of a lady, brought forth bursts of facetious applause. The well-dressed
spectators tried to steer clear of down and feathers, but that was
almost impossible. Many streets were so thickly covered with it that it
deadened the sound of traffic. But then to catch some of the Jewish down
on one's dress or bonnet or coat was part of the carnival. Where the
street was strewn with jewelry, silverware or knicknacks, costly
carpets, fabrics, many a noblewoman scanned the ground with the haze of
temptation in her eye. "Isn't that cameo perfectly lovely!" And in many,
many instances the cameo, or the silver tray, or the piece of tapestry
found its way into the lady's carriage. This was during the early stage
of the riot. Later on, when all restraint had been cast off, phaetons
with crests on their sides were filled with plunder. The lame princess
took home one carriage-load and hurried back for more. At every turn one
saw a cavalier offering his lady some piece of finery as he might a rose
or a carnation, and in most cases it was accepted, on the cogent ground
that if left on the pavement it would be destroyed. On the other hand
many of the rioters themselves disdained to appropriate anything that
was not theirs. Very often when a Jew offered his assailants all the
money he had about him as a ransom the paper money was torn to pieces
and silver or coppers was flung out into the street, whereupon the crowd
outside would fall over each other in a wild scramble for shreds of the
paper or the metal. In one place a man offered the mob all he had in the
world as a ransom for his daughter's honour, but his money was
destroyed, his daughter assaulted and he himself mortally wounded. When
a peasant woman was seen carrying an armful of linen and ribbons out of
a small shop, she was stopped by one of the rioters.
"Drop that, you old hag," he shouted. "We are no robbers, are we?" He
added a torrent of unprintable Russian and kicked the woman into a swamp
of syrup, whisky and flour. A short distance from this spot other
peasant women were stuffing their sacks lustily, whereupon some of them
preferred loud linen to black silk and cheap spoons to silver ones. In
several places large sums of money were plundered. As the bank and check
system was (and still is) in its very infancy in Miroslav, this meant in
most cases that people of means were literally reduced to beggary. One
family was saved from personal violence as well as from the loss of its
fortune by an iron safe which the looters spent the whole day in vainly
trying to open. But then, while they were at work on the safe, the
mother of the family went insane with fright.
Marching side by side with the leaders of the various bands were the
competitors of Jewish tradesmen or mechanics who acted as guides, each
pointing out the stores or workshops of his rivals. Thus Rasgadayeff,
after instructing his wife and servants to see to it that no harm was
done to his tenants, the Vigdoroffs, had gone to the scene of the
outbreak, where he directed a crowd of rowdies to the store of his most
formidable business opponent. The place was raided. A wealth of costly
furs was cut to pieces and flung into the street, where cans of kerosene
and pails of tar were emptied over the pile, while more than half as
much again was carried off intact.
"Boys, no stealing," Rasgadayeff said, in a drunken gibberish, when it
was too late. All he could save from the marauders for the slashers was
a sable muff over which two women rioters were fighting desperately.
In the meantime Rasgadayeff's tenants and the people who sought shelter
in their house,--the family of Clara's sister and the two or three
strangers--had had a narrow escape from coming face to face with an
infuriated band of hoodlums. Their presence had been indicated by a
Gentile woman across the street. Mme. Rasgadayeff had tearfully begged
the rioters to desist and after some parleying it had been agreed that
the Vigdoroffs and their guests should be allowed to escape to their
landlord's apartments before the mob invaded their rooms. From an attic
window commanding the street Vladimir's parents then saw their household
effects and their celebrated library--the accumulations of thirty
years--flung out on the pavement where it was hacked, torn, slashed,
trampled upon, flooded with water, mixed with a stream of preserves,
brine, kerosene, vinegar, until the contents of eight rooms and cellar,
all that for the past thirty years had been their home, were turned into
two mounds of pulp. The Vigdoroffs watched it all with a peculiar sense
of remoteness, with a sort of lethargic indifference. When old Vigdoroff
saw the rioters struggling with the locked drawer of his desk, he
remarked to his wife:
"Idiots! Why don't they knock out the bottom?" When one of the mob hurt
his fingers trying to rend an old parchment-bound folio, he emitted a
mock sigh, quoting the Yiddish proverb: "Too much hurry brings nothing
but evil." Only when Clara's little niece began to shake and cry in a
paroxysm of childish anguish, upon seeing her doll in the hands of a
little girl from across the street, did the whole family burst into
tears.
"I'm going to kill them. Let them kill me!" the old man said, leaping to
his feet. But his wife and daughters hung to him, and held him back.
Later on, when the rioters had gone, the family returned to their nest.
The eight rooms were absolutely empty, as though their occupants had
moved out.
Gradually the various bands of rioters got into the swing of their work
and did it with the system and method of an established trade. First the
pavement was torn up, the cobblestones being piled up and then crashed
into the windows; the padlocks were then knocked off by means of
crowbars, hammers or axes and the doors battered down or broken in. Next
the contents of pillows were cast to the wind, after which, the street
having thus received its baptism of Jewish down, the real business of
the rioters was begun by the wreckers and the looters. If the shop
raided was a clothier's and the freebooters had not yet prinked
themselves they would do so to begin with, some of them returning to the
streets in two pairs of trousers, two coats and even two hats. After a
house or a shop had been gutted and its contents wrecked or plundered it
would be left to children who would then proceed to play riot on its
ruins. Here and there a committee followed in the wake of some band,
ascertaining whether some Jewish dwelling or shop had not been passed
over, or whether a roll of woollen or a piece of furniture had not been
left undestroyed. Not a chair, not a pound of candles was allowed to
remain unshattered. Kerosene was poured over sugar, honey was mixed with
varnish, ink or milk. It was hard, slow work, this slashing and rending,
smashing and grinding. Some raiders toiled over a single article till
they panted for breath. A common sight was a man or a woman tearing at a
piece of stuff with broken finger-nails and bleeding fingers,
accompanying their efforts with volleys of profanity at the expense of
the Jews whose wares seemed as hard to destroy as their owners. In one
place the mob was blaspheming demoniacally because a heap of ground
pepper from a wrecked grocery store had thrown them into a convulsion of
sneezing.
* * * * *
The most hideous delirium of brutality was visited upon Paradise,--upon
that district of narrow streets and lanes in the vicinity of Cucumber
Market which was the seat of the hardest toil and the blackest need, the
home of the poorest mechanics, labourers and tradesmen. As though
enraged by the dearth of things worth destroying, the rioters in this
section took it out of the Jews in the most bestial forms of cruelty and
fiendishness their besotted minds could invent. The debris here was made
up of the cheapest articles of furniture and mechanics' tools. It was
here that several Jewish women were dragged out into the street and
victimised, while drunken women and children aided their husbands and
fathers in their crimes. One woman was caught running through a gale of
feathers and down, her child clasped in her arms. Another woman was
chuckling aloud in a fit of insanity, as she passed through the district
in a cab, when she was pulled off the vehicle. A good-looking girl tried
to elude the rioters by disguising herself as a man, but she was
recognised and the only thing that saved her was a savage fight among
her assailants. A middle-aged woman came out of a house with shrieks of
horror, imploring an intoxicated army officer to go to the rescue of her
daughter. The officer followed her indoors, but instead of rescuing the
younger woman the only thing that saved her own honour was his drunken
condition. One woman who broke away from two invaders and was about to
jump out of her window, was driven back at the point of the bayonet by
one of the soldiers in front of the house.
"We are under orders not to allow any Jews to get out," he explained to
her, good-naturedly.
"Take pity, oh, do take pity," she was pleading, when her voice was
choked off by somebody within.
Every synagogue in town was sacked, the holy ark in many cases being
desecrated in the most revolting manner; while the Scrolls of the Law
were everywhere cut to ribbons, some of which were wound around cats and
dogs. One woman met her awful fate upon scrolls from the Old Synagogue
at the hands of a ruffian who had once heard it said that that was the
way Titus, the Roman emperor, desecrated the Temple upon taking
Jerusalem. Two strong Jews who risked their lives in an attempt to
rescue some of the scrolls were seen running through the streets, their
precious and rather heavy burden hugged to their hearts. The mob gave
chase.
"'Hear, O Israel!'" one of the two men shrieked, "'God is God. God is
one.'"
But the verse, which will keep evil spirits at a respectful distance
from every Jew who utters it, failed to exercise its powers on the
rioters. The two men were overtaken and beaten black and blue and the
scrolls were cut to pieces.
A white-haired musician, venturing out of his hiding place, begged the
mob to spare his violin which he said was older than he; whereupon the
instrument was shattered against the old man's head. On another street
in the same section of the city another Jewish fiddler was made to play
while his tormentors danced, and when they had finished he had to break
the violin with his own hands. Pillows were wrenched from under invalids
to be ripped up and thrown into the street. In one tailoring shop a
consumptive old man, too feeble to be moved, was found with a bottle of
milk in his trembling hands, his only food until his children should
find it safe to crawl back to the house.
"You have drunk enough of our milk, you scabby Christ-killer!" yelled a
rioter as he knocked the bottle out of the tailor's hand and hit his
head with a flat-iron.
Little Market in front of Boyko's Court, the home of Clara's father and
mother, glistened with puddles of vodka, in which cats and dogs,
overcome by the alcoholic evaporations, lay dead or half-dead. Now and
then a drunken rioter would crouch before one of these puddles, dip up a
handful of the muddy stuff with his hands and gulp it thirstily, with an
inebriate smile of apology to the bystanders. The corner of a lane
nearby was piled with brass dust and with broken candle-stick moulds. A
horse trough in the rear of the police booth was full of yolks and
egg-shells. When the goose market next door to Boyko's Court was raided
some of the fowls were stabbed or had their necks wrung on the spot,
while others were driven into the vodka ponds on the square. A hundred
geese and ducks went splashing through the intoxicating liquid,
fluttering and cackling. A number of rioters formed a cordon preventing
them from waddling out and then fell to stabbing them with knives and
pitchforks, till every pool of vodka was red.
"Jewish geese, curse them! Jewish geese, curse them!" they snarled.
Not very far off, hard by a wall, a Jewish woman was giving birth to a
child. Presently a Gentile woman with a basket half filled with loot
took pity on the child and took it home, giving the policeman her
address, while the mother was left bleeding to death.
It was also in this district of toil and squalor where the most
desperate fighting was done by the Jews. One lane was held by five of
them against a mob of fifty for more than half an hour until the five
men were lugged off to jail, and then the remaining inhabitants of the
lane became the victims of the most atrocious vengeance in the history
of the day. A mother defended a garret against a crowd of rioters by
brandishing a heavy crowbar in front of them. The maddened Gentiles then
scaled the wall and charged the roof with axes and sledge-hammers. Part
of the roof gave way. The woman continued to swing the crowbar until she
fell in a swoon.
* * * * *
The houses of the richest Jews were closely guarded by the soldiery and,
barring one exception, rioters were kept at a safe distance from them.
Even the house of Ginsburg, the most repugnant usurer in town, was taken
care of. Some army officers, indeed, directed various bands of roughs to
the place on the chance of having their promissory notes destroyed, but
the roughs failed to get near it. There was an instinct in official
circles that the wrecking of wealthy Jewish homes was apt to develop in
the masses a taste for playing havoc with "seats of the mighty." For
after all a man like Ginsburg and a titled plunderer of peasant lands
are not without their bonds of affinity. The great point was that in
dealing with Jewish magnates Popular Fury was liable to confuse the Jew
with the magnate, the question of race with the question of class.
As to the Gentile magnates their attitude toward the rioters was one
which seemed to say: "You fellows and we are brothers, are we not?" And
their mansions were safe. Members of the gentry openly joined the
rioters, some out of sheer hatred of the race, others for the sport of
the thing, still others honestly succumbing to the contagion of
beastliness. In the horrid saturnalia of pillage, destruction and rapine
many a peaceful citizen was drawn into the vortex. A man stands looking
on curiously, perhaps even with some horror, and gradually he becomes
restless as do the legs of a dancer when the floor creaks under a medley
of sliding feet. But then there was a large number of Gentiles who acted
like human beings. Among these were members of the priesthood, although
there were holy "little fathers" who pointed out the houses of their
Jewish neighbours to the mob.
* * * * *
The best friend of the Jews during that day of horrors was Vodka. The
sons of Israel were made a safety valve of by the government and Vodka
rendered a similar service to the sons of Israel. It saved scores of
lives and the honour of scores of women. Hundreds of the fiercest
rioters were so many tottering wrecks before the atrocities were three
hours old, while by sundown the number of dead and wounded looters was
as large as the number of murdered and maimed Jews. Two men were found
drowned in casks of spirits into which they had apparently let their
heads sink in a daze of intoxication. A handsome young rioter in a
crimson blouse staggered over the balustrade of a balcony, hugging a
Jewish vase, and was killed on the spot. One man was killed in a
struggle over a Jewish woman and several others had simply drunk
themselves to death, while a countless number were bruised and disabled
in the general melee, falling, fighting, injuring themselves with their
own weapons of destruction.
Toward evening some of the streets had the appearance of a battlefield
after action. Hundreds of men and women, swollen, bleeding, were
wallowing in the gutters, in puddles, on the sidewalks, between piles of
debris, in a revolting stupor of inebriety. Some of them slept several
hours in this condition and then struggled to their feet to resume
drinking. The trained rioters had thoughtfully seen to it that some
casks of vodka, as also some accordions, should be reserved for the
closing scenes of the bacchanalia.
The moon came out. Her soft mysterious light streamed through the rugged
holes of shattered unlit windows; over muddy pavements carpeted with
silks, velvets, satins; over rows and rows of debris-mounds on streets
snowed under with down; over peasants driving home with waggons laden
with plunder; over the ghastly figures of sprawling drunkards and the
beautiful uniforms of patrolling hussars. Silence had settled over most
of the streets. For blocks and blocks, east and west, north and south,
there was not an unbroken window pane to be seen, not a light to glitter
in the distance. The Jewish district, the liveliest district in town,
had been turned into a "city of death." In other places one often saw a
single illuminated house on a whole street of darkness and ruin. The
illuminated house was invariably the abode of Christians. Officers on
horseback were moving about musingly, the hoofs of their horses silenced
by thick layers of down. Most streets were impassable for the debris.
Here and there the jaded sounds of revelry were heard, but there were
some peasants who had come out of the day's rioting in full control of
their voices.
Seated on empty boxes and barrels, their fingers gripping new
accordions, their eyes raised to the moon, a company of rioters on
Little Market were playing and singing a melancholy, doleful tune. The
Jews were in their hiding places.