_Tchemnovosk, Saturday (midnight)._--So! The first words have been
written. For the first time in my life I have commenced a diary. Will
it prove the solace I have heard it is? Shall I find these now cold,
blank pages growing more and more familiar, till I shall turn to them
as to a sympathetic friend; till this little book shall become that
loved and trusted confidant for whom my lonely soul longs? Instead of
either Black or White Clergy, this record in black and white shall be
my father confessor. Our village pope, to whom I have so often
confessed everything but the truth, would be indeed shocked, if he
could gossip with this, his new-created brother. What a heap of
roubles it would take to tranquillize him! Ah, God! _Ach_, God of
Israel! how is it possible that a man who has known the tenderest
human ties should be so friendless, so solitary in his closing years,
that not even in memory can he commune with a fellow-soul? Verily, the
old curse has wrought itself out, that penalty of apostasy which came
to my mind the other day after nearly forty years of forgetfulness,
that curse which has filled my spirit with shuddering awe, and driven
me to seek daily communion through thee, little book, even with my own
self of yesterday--"_And that soul shall be cut off from among its
people._" Yea, and from all others, too! For so many days and years
Caterina was my constant companion; I loved her as my own soul. Yet
was she but a sun that dazzled my eyes so that I could not gaze upon
my own soul; but a veil between me and my dead youth. The sun has sunk
forever below the horizon; the veil is rent. No phantom from the other
world hovers to remind me of our happiness. Those years, with all
their raptures and successes, are a dull blank. It is the years of
boyhood and youth which resurge in my consciousness; their tints are
vivid, their tones are clear.
Why is this? Is it Caterina's death? Is it old age? Is it returning to
these village scenes after half a lifetime spent in towns? Is it the
sight of the _izbas_, and their torpid, tow-haired, sheepskin-clad
inhabitants, and the great slushy cabbage gardens, that has rekindled
the ashen past into colours of flame? And yet, except our
vodka-seller, there isn't a Jew in the place. However it be,
Caterina's face is filmy, phantasmal, compared with my mother's. And
mother died forty years ago; the grass of two short years grows over
my wife's grave. And Paul? He is living--he kissed me but a few
moments back. Yet _his_ face is far-away--elusive. The hues of life
are on my father's--poor, ignorant, narrow-minded, warm-hearted
father, whose heart I broke. Happily I have not to bear the
remembrance of his dying look, but can picture him as I saw him in
those miserable, happy days. My father's kiss is warm upon the lips
which my son's has just left cold. Poor St. Paul, living up there with
your ideals and your theories like a dove in a balloon! And yet,
_golubtchik_, how I love you, my handsome, gifted boy, fighting the
battle of life so pluckily and well! Ah! it is hard fighting when one
is hampered by a conscience. Is it your fault that the cold iron bar
of a secret lies between our souls; that a bar my own hands have
forged, and which I have not the courage or the strength to break,
keeps you from my inmost heart, and makes us strangers? No; you are
the best of sons, and love me truly. But if your eyes were purged, and
you could see the ugly, hateful thing, and through and beyond it, into
my ugly, hateful soul! Ah, no! That must never be. Your affection,
your reverential affection, is the only sacred and precious thing yet
left to me on earth. If I lost that, if my spirit were cut off even
from the semblance of human sympathy, then might the grave close over
my body, as it would have already closed over my soul. And yet should
I have the courage to die? Yes; for then Paul would know; Paul would
obey my wishes and see me buried among my people. Paul would hire
mourners (God! hired mourners, when I have a son!) to say the
_Kaddish_. Paul would do his duty, though his heart broke. Terrible,
ominous words! Break my son's heart as I did my father's! The
saints--_voi!_ I mean God--forfend! And for opposite reasons. _Ach_,
it is a strange world. Is religion, then, a curse, eternally dividing
man from man? No, I will not think these blasphemous thoughts. My
poor, brave Paul!
To-morrow will be a hard day.
_Sunday Night._--I have just read over my last entry. How cold, how
tame the words seem, compared with the tempest with which I am shaken.
And yet it _is_ a relief to have uttered them; to have given vent to
my passion and pain. Already this scrawl of mine has become sacred to
me; already this study in which I write has become a sanctuary to
which my soul turns with longing. All day long my diary was in my
thoughts. All my turbulent emotions were softened by the knowledge
that I should come here and survey them with calm; by the hope that
the tranquil reflectiveness which writing induces would lead me into
some haven of rest. And first let me confess that I am glad Paul goes
back to St. Petersburg on Tuesday. It is a comfort to have him here
for a few days, and yet, oh, how I dread to meet his clear gaze! How
irksome this close contact, with the rough rubs it gives to all my
sore places! How I abhorred myself to-day as I went through the
ghastly mimicries of prayer, and crossing myself, and genuflexion, in
our little church. How I hate the sight of its sky-blue dome and its
gilt minarets! When the pope brought me the Gospel to kiss, fiery
shame coursed through my veins. And then when I saw the look of humble
reverence on Paul's face as he pressed his lips to the silver-bound
volume, my blood was frozen to ice. Strange, dead memories seemed to
float about the incense-laden air; shadowy scenes; old, far-away
cadences. And when the deacon walked past me with his _bougie_, there
seemed to flash upon me some childish recollection of a joyous
candle-bearing procession, whereat my eyes grew filled with sudden
tears. The marble altar, the silver candlesticks, the glittering
jewelled scene faded into mist. And then the choir sang, and under the
music I grew calm again. After all, religions were made for men. And
this one was just fitted for the simple muzhiks who dotted the benches
with their stupid, good natured figures. They must have their
gold-bedecked gods in painting and image; and their saints in gold
brocade to kneel before at all hours to solace themselves with visions
of a brocaded Paradise.
And yet what had I to do with these childish superstitions?--I whose
race preached the great doctrine of the Unity to a world sunk in vice
and superstition; whose childish lips were taught to utter the
_Shemang_ as soon as they could form the syllables; who _know_ that
the Christian creed is a monstrous delusion! To think that I have lent
the sanction of my manhood to these grotesque beliefs. Grotesque, say
I? when to Paul they are the essence of all lofty feeling and
aspiration! And yet I know that he is blind, or sees things with that
strange perversion of vision of which I have heard him accuse the
Jews--my brethren. He believes what he has been taught. And who taught
him? _Bozhe moi!_ was it not I who have brought him up in these
degrading beliefs, which he imagines I share? God! is this my
punishment, that he is faithful to the creed taught him by a father
who was faithless to his own? And yet there were excuses enough for
me, Thou knowest. Why did these forms and ceremonies, which now loom
beautiful to me through a mist of tears, seem hideous chains on the
free limbs of childhood? Was it my father's fault or my own that the
stereotyped routine of the day; that the being dragged out of bed in
the gray dawn to go to synagogue, or to intone in monotonous sing-song
the weary casuistries of the rabbis; that the endless precepts or
prohibitions, made me conceive religion as the most hateful of
tyrannies? Through the cloud of forty years I can but dimly recall
the violence of the repulsion with which things Jewish inspired me--of
how it galled me to feel that I was one of that detested race, that I
was that mockery and byword, a _Zhit_; that, with little sympathy with
my people, I was yet destined to partake of its burdens and its
disabilities. Bitter as my soul is within me to-day, I can yet
understand, can yet half excuse, that fatal mistake of ignorant and
ambitious youth.
It were easy for me now to acknowledge myself a Jew, even with the
risk of Siberia before me. I am rich, I have some of the education for
which I longed, above all, I have _lived_. Ah, how differently the
world, with its hopes and its fears, and its praise and censure, looks
to the youth who is climbing slowly up the hill, and the man who is
swiftly descending to the valley! But the knowledge of the vanity of
all things comes too late; this, too, is vanity. Enough that I
sacrificed the sincerity and reality of life for unrealities, which
then seemed to me the only things worth having. There was none to
counsel, and none to listen. I fled my home; I was baptized into the
Church. At once all that hampered me was washed away. Before me
stretched the free, open road of culture and well-being. I was no
longer the slave of wanton laws, the laughing-stock of every Muscovite
infant, liable to be kicked and cuffed and spat at by every true
Russian. What mattered a lip-profession of Christianity, when I cared
as little for Judaism as for it? I never looked back; my prior life
faded quickly from my memory. Alone I fought the battle of
life--alone, unaided by man or hope in God. A few lucky speculations
on the Bourse, starting from the risking of the few kopecks amassed by
tuition, rescued me from the need of pursuing my law-studies. I fell
in love and married. Caterina, your lovely face came effectively
between me and what vague visions of my past, what dim uneasiness of
remorse, yet haunted me. You never knew--your family never knew--that
I was not a Slav to the backbone. The new life lay fold on fold over
the old; the primitive writing of the palimpsest was so thickly
written over, that no thought of what I had once been troubled me
during all those years of wedded life, made happier by your birth and
growth, my Paul, my darling Paul; no voice came from those forgotten
shores, save once, when--who knows through what impalpable medium?--I
learnt or divined my father's death, and all the air was filled with
hollow echoes of reproach. During those years I avoided contact with
Jews as much as I could; when it was inevitable, I made the contact
brief. The thought of the men, of their gabardines and their pious
ringlets, of their studious dronings and their devout quiverings and
wailings, of the women with their coarse figures and their unsightly
wigs; the remembrance of their vulgar dialect, and their shuffling
ways, and their accommodating morality, filled me with repulsion. As
if to justify myself to myself, my mind conceived of them only in
their meanest and tawdriest aspects. The black points alone caught my
eye, and linked themselves into a perfect-seeming picture.
_Da_, I have been a good Russian, a good Christian. I have not stirred
my little finger to help the Jews in their many and grievous
afflictions. They were nothing to me. Over the vodka and the champagne
I have joined in the laugh against them, without even feeling I was of
them. Why, then, these strange sympathies that agitate me now; these
feelings, shadowy, but strong and resistless as the shadow of death?
Am I sane, or is this but incipient madness? Am I sinking into a
literal second childhood, in which all the terrors and the sanctities
that once froze or stirred my soul have come to possess me once more?
Am I dying? I have heard that the scene of half a century ago may be
more vivid to dying eyes than the chamber of death itself. Has
Caterina's death left a blank which these primitive beloved memories
rush in to fill up? Was it the light of her face that blinded me to
the dear homely faces of my father and mother? If I had not met her,
how would things have been? Should I have repented earlier of my
hollow existence? Was it the genuineness of her faith in her heathen
creed that made me acquiesce in its daily profession and its dominance
in our household life? And are the old currents flowing so strongly
now, only because they were so long artificially dammed up? Of what
avail to ask myself these questions? I asked them yesterday and I
shall be no wiser to-morrow. No man can analyze his own emotions,
least of all I, unskilled to sound the depths of my soul, content if
the surface be unruffled. Perhaps, after all, it is Paul who is the
cause of the troubling of the waters, which yet I am glad have not
been left in their putrid stagnation. For since Caterina's clay-cold
form was laid in the Moscow churchyard, and Paul and I have been
brought the nearer together for the void, my son has opened my eyes to
my baseness. The light that radiates from his own terrible nobleness
has shown me how black and polluted a soul is mine. My whole life has
been shuffled through under false colours. Even if I shared few of the
Jew's beliefs, it should have been my duty--and my proud duty--to
proclaim myself of the race. If, as I fondly believed, I was superior
to my people, then it behoved me to allow that superiority to be
counted to their credit and to the honour of the Jewish flag. My poor
brethren, sore indeed has been your travail, and your cry of pain
pierces the centuries. Perhaps--who knows?--I could have helped a
little if I had been faithful, as faithful as Paul will be to his own
ideals. Ah, if Paul had been a Jew--! My God! _is_ Paul a Jew? Have I
upon my shoulders the guilt of this loss to Judaism, too?
Analyze myself, reproach myself, doubt my own sanity how I may, one
thing is clear. From the bottom of my heart I long, I yearn, I burn to
return to the religion of my childhood. I long to say and to sing the
Hebrew words that come scantily and with effort to my lips. I long to
join my brethren at prayer, to sit with them in the synagogue, in the
study, at the table; to join them in their worship and at their meals;
to share with them their joys and sorrows, their wrongs and their
inner delights. Laugh at myself how I will, I long to bind my arm and
brow with the phylacteries of old and to wrap myself in my fringed
shawl, and to abase myself in the dust before the God of Israel; nay,
to don the greasy gabardine at which I have mocked, and to let my hair
grow even as theirs. As yet this is all but a troubled aspiration, but
it is irresistible and must work itself out in deeds. It cannot be
argued with. The wind bloweth as it listeth; who shall say why I am
tempest-tossed?
_Monday Night._--Paul has retired to rest to rise early to-morrow for
the journey to Moscow. For something has happened to alter his plans,
and he goes thither instead of to the capital. He is sleeping the
sleep of the young, the hopeful, and the joyous. _Ach_, that what
gives him joy should be to me--; but let me write down all. This
morning at breakfast Paul received a letter, which he read with a cry
of astonishment and joy. "Look, little father, look," he exclaimed,
handing it to me. I read, trying to disguise my own feelings and to
sympathize with his gladness. It was a letter from a firm of
well-known publishers in Moscow, offering to publish a work on the
Greek Church, the MS. of which he had submitted to them.
"_Nu vot, batiushka_," said he, "I will tell you that this book
_donnera a penser_ to the theologians of the bastard forms of
Christianity."
The ribald remark that rose to my lips did not pass them. "But why did
you not tell me of this before?" I asked instead, endeavouring to
infuse a note of reproach into my indifference.
"Ah, father, I did not want you to distress yourself. I knew your
affection for me was so great that you might want to stint yourself,
and put yourself to trouble to help me to pay the expenses of
publication myself. You would have shared my disappointments. I wanted
you to share my triumph--as now. It is two years that I have been
trying to get it published. I wrote it in the year before mother,
whose soul is with the saints, left us. But, _eka!_ I am recompensed
at last." And his pale face beamed and his dark eyes flashed with
excitement.
Yes, Paul was right. As Paul always is. Brought up, I think wisely, to
believe in my comparative poverty, he has become manlier for not
having a crutch to lean upon. Was it not enough that he was devoid
from the start of the dull, dead weight of Judaism which clogged my
own early years? Up to the present, though, he has not done so well as
I. Russian provincial journalism scatters few luxuries to its
votaries. Paul is so stupidly contented with everything that he is not
likely to write anything to make a sensation. He has not invented
gunpowder.
Paul's voice broke in curiously on my reflections. "It ought to make
some sensation. I have collected a whole series of new arguments,
partly textual, partly historical, to show the absolute want of _locus
standi_ of any other than the Orthodox Church."
"Indeed," I murmured, "and what _is_ the Orthodox Church?" Paul stared
at me.
"I mean," I added hastily, "your conception of the Orthodox Church."
"My conception?" said Paul. "I suppose you mean how do I defend the
conception which is embodied in our ceremonies and ritual?" And before
I could stop him, he had given me a summary of his arguments under
which I would not have kept awake if I had not been thinking of other
things. My poor boy! So this wire-drawn stuff about the Sacrament and
the Lord's Supper is what has cost you toilsome days and sleepless
nights, while to me the thought that I had embraced one variety of
Christianity rather than another had never before occurred. All forms
were the same to me, from Catholicism to Calvinism; the baptismal water
had glided from my back as from a duck's. True, I have lived with all
the conventional surroundings of my Christian fellow-countrymen, as I
have lived with the language of Russia on my lips, and subservient to
Russian customs and manners. But all the while I was neither a Russian
nor a Christian. I was a Jew.
Every now and again I roused myself to laudatory assent to one of
Paul's arguments when I divined by his tone that it was due. But when
he wound up with a panegyric on "our glorious Russian State," and "our
little father, the Czar, God's Vicegerent on earth, who alone of
European monarchs incarnates and unites in his person Church and
State, so that loyalty and piety are one," I could not refrain from
pointing out that it was a pure fluke that Russia was "orthodox" at
all.
"Suppose," said I, "Wladimir, when he made his famous choice between
the Creeds of the world, had picked Judaism? It all turned on a single
man's whim."
"Father," Paul cried in a pained tone, "do not be blasphemous.
Wladimir was divinely inspired to dower his country with the true
faith. Just therein lay the wisdom of Providence in achieving such
great results through the medium of an individual. It is impossible
that God should have permitted him to incline his ear to the infidel
Israelite, who has survived to be at once a link with the past and a
living proof of the sterility of the soul that refuses the living
waters. The millions of holy Russia perpetuating the stubborn heresy
of the Jews--adopting an unfaith as a faith! The very thought makes
the blood run cold. Nay, then would every Russian deserve to be sunk
in squalor, dishonesty, and rapacity, even as every Jew."
"Not every Jew, Paul," I remonstrated.
"No, not perhaps every Jew in squalor," he assented, with a sarcastic
laugh; "for too many of the knaves have feathered their nests very
comfortably. Even the Raskolnik is more tolerable. And many of them
are not even Jews. The Russian Press is infested with these fellows,
who take the bread out of the mouths of honest Christians, and will
even write the leaders in the religious papers. Believe me, little
father, these Jewish scribblers who have planted their flagstaffs
everywhere have cost me many a heartache, many a disappointment."
I could not help thinking this sentiment somewhat unworthy of my Paul,
though it threw a flood of light on the struggle, whose details he had
never troubled me with. I began to doubt my wisdom in sending so
unpractical a youth out into the battle of life, to hew his way as
best he might. But how was I to foresee that he would become a writing
man, that he would be tripped up at every turn by some clever Hebrew,
and that his aversion from the race would be intensified?
"But surely," I said, after a moment of silence, "our Slavic
journalists are not all Christians, either."
"They are not," he admitted sadly. "The Universities have much to
answer for. Instead of rigidly excluding every vicious book that
unsettles the great social and religious ideals of which God designed
Russia to be the exponent, the works of Spencer and Taine, and Karl
Marx and Tourguenieff, and every literary Antichrist, are allowed to
poison faith in the sap. The censor only bars the superficially
anti-Russian books. But there will come a reaction. A reaction," he
added solemnly, "to which this work of mine may, by the grace of God,
be permitted to contribute."
I could have laughed at my son if I had not felt so inclined to weep.
Paul's pietism irritated me for the first time. Was it that _my_
reaction against my past had become stronger than ever, was it that
Paul had never exposed his own narrowness so completely before? I know
not. I only know I felt quite angry with him. "And how do you know
there will ever be a reaction?" I asked.
"Christ never leaves himself without a witness long," he answered
sententiously. "And already there are symptoms enough that the creed
of the materialist does not satisfy the soul. Look at our Tolstoi, who
is coming back to Christianity after ranging at will through the gaudy
pleasure-grounds of science and life; it is true his Christianity is
cast after his own formula, and that he has still much intellectual
pride to conquer, but he is on the right road to the fountain of
life. But, little father, you are unlike yourself this morning," he
went on, putting his hand to my hot forehead. "You are not well." He
kissed me. "Let me give you another cup of tea," he said, and turned
on the tap of the samovar with an air that disposed of the subject.
I sipped at my cup to please him, remarking in the interval between
two sips as indifferently as I could, "But what makes you so bitter
against the Jews?"
"And what makes you so suddenly their champion?" he retorted.
"When have I championed them?" I asked, backing.
"Your pardon," he said. "Of course I should have understood you are
only putting in a word for them for argument's sake. But I confess I
have no patience with any one who has any patience with these
bloodsuckers of the State. Every true Russian must abhor them. They
despise the true faith, and are indifferent to our ideals. They sneak
out of the conscription. They live for themselves, and regard us as
their natural prey. Our peasantry are corrupted by their brandy-shops,
squeezed by their money-lenders, and roused to discontent by the
insidious utterances of their peddlers, d----d wandering Jews, who
hate the Government and the Tschinn and everything Russian. When did a
Jew invest his money in Russian industries? They are a filthy,
treacherous, swindling set. Believe me, _batiushka_, pity is wasted
upon them."
"Pity is never spent upon them," I retorted. "They are what the
Russians--what we Russians--have made them. Who has pent them into
their foul cellars and reeking dens? They work with their brains, and
you--we--abuse them for not working with their hands. They work with
their hands, and the Czar issues a ukase that they are to be driven
off the soil they have tilled. It is AEsop's fable of the wolf and the
lamb."
"In which the wolf is the Jew," said Paul coolly. "The Jew can always
be trusted to take care of himself. His cunning is devilish. Till his
heart is regenerate, the Jew remains the Ishmael of the modern world,
his hand against every man's, every man's against his."
"'Love thy neighbour as thyself,'" I quoted bitterly.
"Even so," said Paul. "The Jew must be cut off, even as the Christian
must pluck out his own eye if it offendeth him. Christ came among us
to bring not peace but a sword. If the Kingdom of Christ is delayed by
these vermin, they must be poisoned off for the sake of Russia and
humanity at large."
"Vermin, indeed!" I cried hotly, for I could no longer restrain
myself. "And what know you of these vermin of whom you speak with such
assurance? What know you of their inner lives, of their sanctified
homes, of their patient sufferings? Have you penetrated to their
hearths and seen the beautiful _naivete_ of their lives, their simple
faith in God's protection, though it may well seem illusion, their
unselfish domesticity, their sublime scorn of temptation, their
fidelity to the faith of their ancestors, their touching celebrations
of fast and festival, their stanchness to one another, their humble
living and their high respect for things intellectual, their
unflinching toil from morn till eve for a few kopecks of gain, their
heroic endurance of every form of torment, vilification, contempt--?"
I felt myself bursting into tears and broke from the breakfast table.
Paul followed me to my room in amazement. In the midst of all my
tempest of emotion I was no less amazed at my own indiscretion.
"What is the matter with you?" he said, clasping his arm around my
neck. "Why make yourself so hot over this accursed race, for whom,
from some strange whim or spirit of perverseness, you stand up to-day
for the first time in my recollection?"
"It is true; why indeed?" I murmured, striving to master myself. After
all, the picture I had drawn was as ideal in its beauty as Paul's in
its ugliness. "_Nu_, I only wanted you to remember that they were
human beings."
"_Ach_, there is the pity of it," persisted Paul; "that human beings
should fall so low. And who has been telling you of all these angelic
qualities you roll so glibly off your tongue?"
"No one," I answered.
"Then you have invented them. Ha! ha! ha!" And Paul went off into a
fit of good-humoured laughter. That laughter was a sword between his
life and mine, but I let a responsive smile play across my features,
and Paul went to his own room in higher spirits than ever.
We met again at dinner, and again at our early supper, but Paul was
too full of his book, and I of my own thoughts to permit of a renewal
of the dispute. Even a saint, I perceive, has his touch of egotism,
and behind all Paul's talk of Russia's ideals, of the misconceptions
of their fatherland's function by feather-brained Nihilists and
Democrats possessed of that devil, the modern spirit, there danced, I
am convinced, a glorified vision of St. Paul floating down the vistas
of the future, with a nimbus of Russian ideals around his head. If he
has only put them as eloquently into his book as he talks of them he
will at least be read.
But I have bred a bigot.
And the more bigoted he is, the more my heart faints within me for the
simple, sublime faith of my people. Behind all the tangled network of
ceremony and ritual, the larger mind of the man who has lived and
loved sees the outlines of a creed grand in its simplicity, sublime in
its persistence. The spirit has clothed itself on with flesh, as it
must do for human eyes to gaze on it and live with it; and if, in
addition, it has swaddled itself with fold on fold of garment, even so
the music has not gone out of its voice, nor the love out of its eyes.
As soon as Paul is gone to-morrow, I must plan out my future life. His
book will doubtless launch him on the road to fame and fortune. But
what remains for me? To live on as I am doing would be intolerable. To
do nothing for my people, either with voice or purse, to live alone in
this sleepy hamlet, cut off from all human fellowship, alienated from
everything that makes my neighbours' lives endurable--better death
than such a death-in-life. And yet is it possible that I can get into
touch again with my youth, that after a sort of Rip Van Winkle sleep,
I can take up again and retwine the severed strands? How shall my
people receive again a viper into its bosom? Well, come what may,
there must be an end to this. Even at this moment reproachful voices
haunt my ear; and in another moment, when I put down my pen to go to
my sleepless bed, I shall take care to light my bed-room candle before
extinguishing my lamp, for the momentary darkness would be filled with
impalpable solemnity bordering on horror. Flashes and echoes from the
ghostly world of my youth, the faces of my dead parents, strange
fragments of sound and speech, the sough of the wind in the trees of
the "House of the Living," the far-away voice of the Chazan singing
some melancholy tune full of heart-break and weirdness, the little
crowded Cheder where the rabbi intoned the monotonous lesson, the
whizz of the stone little Ivanovitch flung at my forehead because I
had "killed Christ"--. No, my nerves are not strong enough to bear
these visions and voices.
All my life long I see now I have been reserved and solitary. Never
has any one been admitted to my heart of hearts--not even Caterina.
But now I must unburden my soul to some one ere I die. And to another
living soul. For this dead sheet of paper will not, I perceive, do
after all.
_Saturday Night._--Nearly a week has passed since I wrote the above
words, and I am driven to your pages again. I would have come to you
last night, but suddenly I recollected that it was the Sabbath. I have
kept the Sabbath. I have prayed a few broken fragments of prayer,
recovered almost miraculously from the deeps of memory. I have rested
from every toil. I stayed myself from stirring up the fire, though it
was cold and I was shivering. And a new peace has come to me.
I have heard from Paul; he has completed the negotiations with the
Moscow booksellers. The book is to have every chance. Of course, in a
way I wish it success. It cannot do much harm, and I am proud of Paul,
after all. What a rabbi he would have made! It seems these publishers
are also the owners of a paper, and Paul is to have some work on it,
which will give him enough to live upon. So he will stay in Moscow for
a few months and see his book through the press. He fears the distance
is too great for him to come to and fro, as he would have done had he
been at the capital. Though I know I shall long for his presence
sometimes in my strange reactions, yet on the whole I feel relieved.
To-morrow without Paul will be an easier day. I shall not go to
church, though honest old Clara Petroffskovna may stare and cross
herself in holy horror, and spoil the _borsch_. As for the
neighbours--let the _startchina_ and the _starostas_ and the retired
major from Courland, and even the bibulous Prince Shoubinoff, gossip
as they will. I cannot remain here now for more than a few weeks.
Besides, I can be unwell. No, on second thoughts, I shall not be
unwell. I have had enough of shuffling and deceit.
_Sunday._--A day of horrible _ennui_ and despair. I tried to read the
Old Testament, of course in Russian, for Hebrew books I have none, and
it is doubtful whether I could read them if I had. But the black cloud
remained. It chokes me as I write. My limbs are as lead, my head
aches. And yet I know the ailment is not of the body.
_Monday._--The depression persists. I made a little expedition into
the country. I rowed up the stream in a _duscehubka_. I tried to
forget everything but the colours of the forest and the sparkle of
the waters. The air was less cold than it has been for the last few
days, but the russet of the pine-leaves spoke to me only of melancholy
and decay. The sun set in blood behind the hills. Once I heard the
howl of the wolves, but they were far away.
_Monday._--So. Just a week. Nicholas Alexandrovitch says I must not
write yet, but I _must_ fill up the record, even if in a few lines. It
is strange how every habit--even diary-keeping--enslaves you, till you
think only of your neglected task. Ah, well! if I have been ill, I
have been lucky in my period, for those frightful storms would have
kept me indoors. Nicholas Alexandrovitch says it was a _mild_ attack
of influenza. God preserve me from a severe one! And yet would it not
be better if it had carried me off altogether? But that is a cowardly
thought. I must face the future bravely, for my own hands have forged
my fate. How the writing trembles and contorts itself! I must remember
Nicholas's caution. He is a frank, good-hearted fellow, is our village
doctor, and I have had two or three talks with him from between the
bedclothes. I don't think friend Nicholas is a very devout Christian,
by the by; for he said one or two things which I should have taken
seriously, had I been what he thinks I am; but which had an audacious,
ironical sound to my sympathetic, sceptical ears. How funny was that
story about the Archimandrite of Czernovitch!
_Thursday Afternoon._--My haste to be out of bed precipitated me back
again into it. But the actual pain has been small. I have grown very
friendly with Nicholas Alexandrovitch, and he has promised to spend
the evening with me. I am better now in body, though still troubled in
mind. Paul's silence has brought a new anxiety. He has not written for
twelve days. What can be the matter with him? I suppose he is
overworking himself. And now to hunt up my best cigarettes for
_Monsieur le medecin_. Strange that illness should perhaps have
brought me a friend. Nothing, alas! can bring me a confidant.
_11 p.m._--Astounding discovery! Nicholas Alexandrovitch is a Jew! I
don't know how it was, but suddenly something was said; we looked at
each other, and then a sort of light flashed across our faces; we read
the mutual secret in each other's eyes; a magnetic impulse linked our
hands together in a friendly clasp, and we felt that we were brothers.
And yet Nicholas is a whole world apart from me in feeling and
conviction. How strange and mysterious is this latent brotherhood
which binds our race together through all differences of rank,
country, and even faith! For Nicholas is an agnostic of agnostics; he
is even further removed from sympathy with my new-found faith than the
ordinary Christian, and yet my sympathy with him is not only warmer
than, but different in _kind_ from, that which I feel toward any
Christian, even Caterina's brother. I have told him all. Yes, little
book, him also have I told all. And he sneers at me. But there lurks
more fraternity in his sneer than in a Christian's applause. We are
knit below the surface like two ocean rocks, whose isolated crests
rise above the waters. Nicholas laughs at there being any Judaism to
survive, or anything in Judaism worth surviving. He declares that the
chosen people have been chosen for the plaything of the fates, fed
with illusions and windy conceit, and rewarded for their fidelity with
torture and persecution. He pities them, as he would pity a dog that
wanders round its master's grave, and will not eat for grief. In fact,
save for this pity, he is even as I was until these new emotions rent
me. He is outwardly a Christian, because he could not live comfortably
otherwise, but he has nothing but contempt for the poor peasants whose
fever-wrung brows he touches with a woman's hand. He looks upon them
only as a superior variety of cattle, and upon the well-to-do people
here as animals with all the vices of the muzhiks, and none of their
virtues. For my Judaic cravings he has a good-natured mockery, and
tells me I was but sickening for this influenza. He says all my
symptoms are physical, not spiritual; that the loss of Caterina
depressed me, that this depression drove me into solitude, and that
this solitude in its turn reacted on my depression. He thinks that
religion is a secretion of morbid minds, and that my Judaism will
vanish again with the last traces of my influenza. And, indeed, there
is much force in what he says, and much truth in his diagnosis and
analysis of my condition. He advises me to take plenty of outdoor
exercise, and to go back again to one of the great towns. To go back
to Judaism, to ally one's self with an outcast race and a dying
religion is, he thinks, an act of folly only paralleled by its
inutility. The world will outgrow all these forms and prejudices in
time is his confident assurance, as he puffs tranquilly at his
cigarette and sips his Chartreuse. He points out, what is true enough,
that I am not alone in my dissent from the religion I profess; for, as
he epigrammatically puts it, the greatest Raskolniks[2] are the
Orthodox. The religious statistics of the Procurator of the State
Synod are, indeed, a poor index to the facts. Well, there is comfort
in being damned in company. I do not agree with him on any other
point, but he has done me good. The black cloud is partially
lifted--perhaps the trouble was only physical, after all. I feel
brighter and calmer than for months past. Anyhow, if I am to become a
Jew again, I can think it out quietly. Even if I could bear Paul's
contempt, there would always be, as Nicholas points out, great peril
for me in renouncing the Orthodox faith. True, it would be easy enough
to bribe the priest and the authorities, and to continue to receive
my eucharistical certificate. But where is the sacrifice in that? It
is hypocrisy exchanged for hypocrisy. And then what would become of
Paul's prospects if it were known his father was a _Zhit_? But I
cannot think of all this now. Paul's silence is beginning to fill me
with a frightful uneasiness. A presentiment of evil weighs upon me. My
dear dove, my _dusha_ Paul!
_Friday Afternoon._--Still no letter from Paul. Can anything have
happened? I have written to him, briefly informing him that I have
been unwell. I shall ride to Zlotow and telegraph, if I do not hear in
a day or two.
_Saturday Morning._--All petty and stupid thoughts of my own spiritual
condition are swallowed up in the thought of Paul. Ever selfish, I
have allowed him to dwell alone in a far-off city, exposed to all the
vicissitudes of life. Perhaps he is ill, perhaps he is half-starved on
his journalistic pittance.
_Saturday Night._--A cruel disappointment! A letter came, but it was
only from my man of business, advising investment in some South
American loan. Have given him _carte blanche_. Of what use is my money
to me? Even Paul couldn't spend it now, with the training I have given
him. He is only fitted for the cowl. He may yet join the Black Clergy.
Why does he not write, my poor St. Paul?
_Sunday._--Obedient to the insistent clamour of the bells, I
accompanied Nicholas Alexandrovitch to _church_, and mechanically
asked help of the Virgin at the street corner. For I have gone back
into my old indifference, as Nicholas predicted. I have given the
necessary orders. The _paracladnoi_ is ready. To-morrow I go to
Zlotow; thence I take the train for Moscow. He will not tell me the
truth if I wire.... The weather is bitterly cold, and the stoves here
are so small.... I am shivering again, but a glass of vodka will put
me right.... A knock.... Clara Petroffskovna has run to the door. Who
can it be? Paul?
_Monday Afternoon._--No, it was not Paul. Only Nicholas
Alexandrovitch. He had heard in the village that I was making
preparations for a journey, and came to inquire about it, and to
reproach me for not telling him. He looked relieved when I told him it
was only to Moscow to look after Paul. I fancy he thought I had had a
fit of remorse for my morning's devotions, and was off to seek
readmission into the fold. Except our innkeeper, there is not a Jew in
this truly God-forsaken place. Of course, I don't reckon myself--or
the doctor. I wonder if our pope is a Jew! I laugh--but who knows?
Anyhow I am here, wrapped in my thickest fur cloak, while it is
Nicholas who is on the road to Moscow. He spoke truly in saying I was
too weak yet to undertake the journey--that springless _paracladnoi_
alone is enough to knock a healthy man up; though whether he was
equally veracious in professing to have business to transact in
Moscow, I cannot say. _Da_, he is a good fellow, is my brother
Nicholas. To-morrow I shall know if anything has happened to my son,
to my only child.
_Tuesday Night._--Thank God! A wire from Nicholas. "Have seen Paul. No
cause for uneasiness. Will write." Blessings on you, my friend, for
the trouble you have taken for me. I feel much better already. Paul
has, I suppose, been throwing himself heart and soul into this new
journalistic work, and has forgotten his loving father. After all, it
is only a fortnight, though it has seemed months. Anyhow, he will
write. I shall hear from him in a day or two now. But a sudden
thought. "Will write." Who will write? Paul or Nicholas? Oh, Paul;
Paul without doubt. Nicholas has told him of my anxiety. Yes.
To-morrow night or the next morning I shall have a letter from Paul.
All is well.
If I were to tell Paul the truth, I wonder what he would say! I am
afraid I shall never know.
_Thursday Noon._--A letter from Nicholas. I cannot do better than
place it here.
"MY DEAR DEMETRIUS,--I hope you got my telegram and are at ease
again. I had a lively journey up here, travelling in company
with a Government _employe_, who is very proud of his country,
and of the Stanislaus cross round his neck. Such a pompous ass I
have never met; he beats even our friend, Prince Shoubinoff, in
his Sunday clothes, with the _barina_ on his arm. As you may
imagine, I drew him out like a telescope. I have many a droll
story for you when I return. To come to Paul. I made it my
business at once to call upon the publishers--it is one of the
largest firms here--and from them I learnt that your son was
still at the same address, in the _Kitai-Gorod_, as that given
in the first and only letter you have had from him. I did not
care about going there direct, for I thought it best that he
should be unaware of my presence, in case there should be
anything which it would be advisable for me to find out for your
information. However, by haunting the neighbourhood of the
offices of his newspaper, I caught sight of him within a couple
of hours. He has a somewhat over-wrought expression in his
countenance, and does not look particularly well. I fancy he is
exciting himself about the production of his book. He has not
seen me yet, nor shall I let him see me till I ascertain that he
is not in any trouble. It is only his silence to you that makes
me fancy something may be the matter; otherwise I should
unhesitatingly put down his pallor and intensity of expression
to over-work and, perhaps, religious fervour. He went straight
to the Petrovski Cathedral on leaving the offices. I am here for
a few days longer, and will write again. It is frightfully cold.
The thermometer is at freezing point. I sit in my _shuba_ and
shiver. _Au revoir._
"NICHOLAS ALEXANDROVITCH."
There is something not quite satisfying about this letter. It looks as
if there was more beneath the surface. Paul is evidently looking ill
or ecstatic, or both. But, at any rate, my main anxiety is allayed. I
can wait with more composure for Nicholas's second letter. But why
does not the boy write himself? He must have got the letter telling
him I had been unwell. And yet not a word of sympathy! I don't half
like Nicholas's idea of playing the spy, though, as if my son is not
to be trusted. What can he suspect? But Nicholas Alexandrovitch
dearly loves to invent a mystery for the sake of ferreting it out.
These scientific men are so sharp that they often cut themselves.
_Friday Afternoon._--At last Paul has written.
"MY DARLING PAPASHA,--I am surprised you should be anxious about
me. I am quite comfortable here, and have now conquered all the
difficulties that beset me at the first. How came you to allow
yourself to be unwell? I hope Nicholas Alexandrovitch is taking
care of you. By the by, I almost thought I saw him here this
morning on the bridge, looking over into the _reka_, but there
was a church procession, and I had hurried past the man before
the thought struck me, and the odds were so much against its
being our _zemski-doktor_, that I would not trouble to turn
back. I have already corrected the proofs of several sheets of
my book. It will be dedicated, by special permission, to
Archbishop Varenkin. My articles in the _Courier_ are attracting
considerable attention. I have left orders for the publishers to
send you my last, which will appear to-morrow. May the holy
Mother and the saints watch over you.
--Your devoted son, PAUL.
"P.S.--I am making more money than I want, and I shall be glad
to send you some, if you have any wants unsupplied."
My darling boy! How could I ever have felt myself alienated from you?
I will come to you and live with you and share your triumphs. No
miserable scruples shall divide our lives any more. The past is
ineradicable; the future is its inevitable fruit. So be it. My
spiritual yearnings and wrestlings were but the outcome of a morbid
physical condition. Nicholas was right. And now to read my son's
article, which I have here, marked with a blue border. Why should I,
with my superficial ponderings, be right and he wrong?
_Saturday Night._--I have a vague remembrance that three stars marked
the close of the Sabbath. And here in the frosty sky I see a whole
host scintillating in the immeasurable depths. The Sabbath is over and
once more I drag myself to my writing desk to pour out the anguish of
a tortured spirit. All day I have sat as in a dumb trance gazing out
beyond the _izbas_ and the cabbage fields toward the eternal hills.
How beautiful and peaceful everything is! God, wilt Thou not impart to
me the secret of peace?
Little did I divine what awaited my eyes when they rested fondly on
the first sentence of Paul's article. _Voi_, it was a pronouncement on
the Jewish question, venomous, scathing, mordant, terrific. It was an
indictment of the race, lit up with all the glow of moral indignation;
cruel and slanderous, yet noble and righteous in its tone and ideals;
base as hell, yet pure as heaven; breathing a savagery as of
Torquemada, and a saintliness as of Tolstoi. Paul in every line, my
own noble, bigoted, wrong-headed Paul. As I read it, my whole frame
trembled. A corresponding passion and indignation stirred my blood to
fever-heat. All my slumbering Jewish instincts woke again to fresh
life; and I knew myself for the weak, miserable wretch that I am. To
think that a son of mine should thus vilify his own race. What can I
do? _Bozhe moi_, what can I do? How can I stop this horrible,
unnatural thing? I dare not open Paul's eyes to what he is doing. And
yet it is my duty.... It is my duty. By that token I know I shall not
do it. Heaven have pity on me!
_Tuesday._--Heaven have pity on Paul! Here is Nicholas's promised
letter.
"DEAR DEMETRIUS,--I have strange news for you. It is quite
providential (I use the word without prejudice, as the lawyers
say) that I came here. But all is well now, so you may read what
follows without alarm. Last Thursday morning, during my
purposeful wanderings within Paul's usual circuit, I came face
to face with our young gentleman. His eyes stared straight at me
without seeing me. His face was ghastly white, and the lines
were rigid as if with some stern determination. His lips were
moving, but I could not catch his mutterings. He held a sealed
letter in his hand. I saw the superscription. It was addressed
to you. Instantly the dread came to my mind that he was about to
commit suicide, and that this was his farewell to you. I
followed him. He posted the letter at the post-office, turned
back, threaded his way like a somnambulist across the bridge,
without, however, approaching the parapet, walked mechanically
onward to his own apartments, put the latch-key into the
house-door, and then fell back in a dead faint--into my arms. I
took him upstairs, explained what had happened, put him to bed,
and--I write this from the bedside. For the crisis is over now;
the brain fever has abated, and he has now nothing to do but to
get well, though he will be longer about it than a young fellow
of his age has a right to be. His body is emaciated with fasts
and vigils and penances. I curse religion when I look at him. As
if the struggle for life were not hard enough without humanity
being hampered by these miserable superstitions. But you will be
wanting to know what is the matter. Well, _batiushka_, what
should be the matter but the old, old matter? _La femme_ is,
strange to relate, a fine specimen of our own race of lovely
women, my dear Demetrius. She is a Jewess of the most orthodox
family in Moscow, and therein lies the crux of the situation. (I
am not playing upon words, but the phrase is doubly significant
here.) Of course Paul has not the slightest idea I know all
this; but of course I have had it from his hot lips all the
same. As far as I have been able to piece his broken utterances
together, they have had some stolen love passages, each followed
by swift remorse on both sides, and--another furtive love
passage. Paul has been comparing himself to St. Anthony, and
even to Jesus, when Satan, _ce chef admirable_, spread a
first-class dinner in the wilderness. But the poor lad must have
suffered much behind all his heroics. And what his final
resolution to give her up cost him is pretty evident. I suppose
he must have told you of it in that letter. Isn't it the oddest
thing in the world? Rachel Jacobvina is the girl's name, and her
people keep a clothes' store round the corner, and her father is
the Parnass (you will remember what that means) of his
synagogue. She is a sweet little thing; and Paul evidently has a
taste for other _belles_ than _belles-lettres_. From what you
told me of him I fully expected this sort of thing. The poor
fellow is looking at me now from among his iced bandages with a
piteous air of resignation to the will of Nicholas
Alexandrovitch in bringing him back to this world of trouble
when he already felt his wings sprouting. Poor Paul! He little
dreams what I am writing; but he will get over this, and marry
some fair, blue-eyed Circassian with corresponding tastes in
fasting, and an enthusiastic longing for the Kingdom of God,
when the year shall be a perpetual Lent. In his failure to
realize history, he thinks it a crime to adore a Jewish virgin,
though he spends half his time in adoring the Madonna. How
shocked he would be if I pointed this out! People who look
through ecclesiastical spectacles so rarely realize that the
Holy Family was a Jewish one. But my pen is running away with
me, and our patient looks thirsty. _Proshchai_.
"NICHOLAS."
"P.S.--There is not the slightest danger of a relapse unless the
image of this diabolical girl comes before him again. And I
keep his attention distracted. Besides, he had finally conquered
his passion. This illness was at once the seal and the witness
of his unchangeable resolve. I have heard him repeat the terms
of the letter of farewell he sent her. It was final."
So this was the meaning of your silence; this the tragedy that lay
behind your simple sentence, "I have now conquered all the
difficulties which beset me at the first." This was the motive that
guided your hand to write those bitter lines about our race, so that
you might henceforth cut yourself off from the possibility of allying
yourself with it even in thought. I understand all now, my poor
high-mettled boy. How you must have suffered! How your pride must have
rebelled at the idea that you might have to make such a confession to
me--little knowing I should have hailed it with delight. That
temptation should have assailed you, too, at such a period--when you
were publishing your great work on the ideals of Holy Russia!
Mysterious, indeed, are the ways of Providence. And yet why may not
all be well after all, and Heaven grant me such grace as I would
willingly sacrifice my life to deserve? It is impossible that my son's
passion can be utterly dead. Such fires are only covered up. I will go
to him and tell him all. The news that he is a Jew will revolutionize
him. His love will flame up afresh and take on the guise and glamour
of duty. Love, posing as logic, will whisper in his ear that no bars
of early training can avail to keep him from the race to which he
belongs by blood and by his father's faith. In this girl's eyes he
will read God's message of command, and I, God's message of Peace and
Reconciliation. The tears are in my eyes; I can hardly see to write.
The happiness I foresee is too great. Blessings on your sweet face,
Rachel Jacobvina, my own darling daughter that is to be. To you is
allotted the blessed task of solving a fearful problem, of rescuing
and reuniting two human lives. Yes, Heaven is indeed merciful.
To-morrow I start for Moscow.
_Thursday._--How can I write it? No, there is no pity in Heaven. The
sky smiles in steely blankness. The air cuts like a knife. Paul is
well, or as well as a convalescent can be. He must have had a heart of
ice. But it is fortunate he had, seeing what the icy fates have
wrought. I arrived at Moscow, and hurried in a _droshky_ across the
well-known bridge to Paul's lodgings. A ghastly procession stopped me.
Some _burlaks_ were bearing the corpse of a young girl who had thrown
herself into the ice-laden river. A clammy foreboding gathered at my
heart, but ere I had time to say a word, an old, caftan-clad man, with
agonized eyes and a white, streaming beard, dashed up, pulled off the
face-cloth, revealing a strange, weird loveliness, uttered a scream
which yet rings in my ears, threw himself passionately on the body,
rose up again, murmured something solemnly and resignedly in Hebrew,
rent his garments, readjusted the face-cloth, and followed weeping in
the rear. And from lip to lip, that for once forgot to curl in scorn,
flew the murmur: "Rachel Jacobvina."
_Saturday Night._--I slouched into the synagogue this morning, the
cynosure of suspicious eyes. I nearly uncovered my head in
forgetfulness. Somebody offered me a _Talith_, which I wrapped round
myself with marked awkwardness. The service moved me beyond measure. I
have neither the pen nor the will to describe my sensations. I was a
youth again. The intervening decades faded away. Rachel's father said
the _Kaddish_. The peace of God has touched my soul. Paul is asleep. I
have made Nicholas take his much-needed rest. I am reading the Hebrew
Psalms. The language comes back to me bit by bit.
_Monday._--Paul is sitting up reading--proofs. I have been to condole
with Rachel's father, as he sat mourning upon the ground. I explained
that I was a stranger in the town, and had heard of the accident. I
have given five hundred roubles to the synagogue. The whole
congregation is buzzing with the generosity of the rich Jewish farmer
from the country. Fortunately there is no danger of Paul hearing
anything of my doings. He is a prisoner; and Nicholas and myself keep
watch over him by turns.
_Tuesday._--I have just come from a meeting of the Palestine
Colonization Society. Heavens, what ideals burn in these breasts
supposed to throb only with cupidity and cunning! Their souls still
turn to the Orient, as the needle turns to the pole. And how the
better-off among them pity their weaker brethren! With what enthusiasm
they plot and plan to get them beyond the frontier into freer
countries, but chiefly into the centre of all Jewish aspiration, the
Holy Land! How they wept when I doubled their finances at a stroke. My
poor, much-wronged brethren!
* * * * *
_Odessa, Monday._--It is almost a year since I closed this book, and
now, after a period of peace, I am driven to it again. Paul has made
an irruption into my tranquil household. For eleven months now I have
lived in this little two-storied house overlooking the roadstead, with
Isaac and the _ekonomka_ for my sole companions. So long as I could
pour my troubles into the ear of the venerable old rabbi (who was
starving for material sustenance when I took him, as I was for
spiritual), so long I had no need of you, my old confidant. But this
visit of Paul has reopened all my sores. I have smuggled the rabbi out
of the way; but even if he were here, he could not understand the
terrible situation. The God of Israel alone knows what I feel at
having to deny Him, at having to hide my faith from my own son. He
must not stay. The New Year is nigh, with its feasts and fasts.
Moreover, surrounded as one is by spies, Paul's presence here may
lead to discoveries that I am not what the authorities imagine.
Perhaps it would have been better if I had gone back to the village.
But no. There was that church-going. A village is so small. In this
great and bustling seaport I am lost, or comparatively so. A few
roubles in the ecclesiastical palm, and complete oblivion settles on
me.
To-night I shall know to what I owe this sudden visit. Paul is
radiant. He plays with his untold news like a child with a new toy. He
drops all sorts of mysterious hints. He frisks around me like a fond
spaniel. But he reserves his tit-bit for to-night, when the tramp of
the sailors and the perambulating peasantry shall have died away, and
we shall be seated cosily in my study, smoking our cigarettes, and
looking out toward the quiet lights of the shipping. Of course it is
good news--Heaven help me, I fear Paul's good news. Good news that
Paul has come all the way from St. Petersburg to tell me, which only
his own lips may tell me, must, if past omens speak truly, be
terrible. God grant I may survive the telling.
What a coward I am! Have I not long since made up my mind that Paul
must go his way and I mine? What difference, then, can his news make
to me? He will never know now that I am a _Zhit_ unless he hears it
from my dying lips as I utter the declaration of the Unity. I made up
my mind to that when I came here. Paul threatens to make his mark as
a writer on theological subjects. To tell him the truth would only
sadden him and do him no good; while to reveal my own Judaism to the
world would but serve to damage him and injure his prospects. This may
seem but a cover for my cowardice, for my fear of State reprisals; but
it is true for all that. _Bozhe moi_, is it not punishment enough not
to be able to join my brethren in their worship? I must remain here,
where I am unknown, practising my religion unostentatiously and in
secret. The sense of being in a Jewish city satisfies my soul. We are
here more than a fourth of the population. House-rent and fuel are
very dear, but we thrive and prosper, thanks to God. I give to our
poor, through Isaac, but they hardly want my help. I rejoice in the
handsome synagogues, though I dare not enter them. Yes, I am best
here. Why be upset by my boy's visit? Paul will tell me his news, I
shall congratulate him, he will go back to the capital, and all will
be as before.
_Monday Midnight._--No, all can never be as before. One last step
remained to divide our lives to all eternity. _Voi_, Paul has taken
it.
All came off as arranged. We sat together at my window. It was a
glorious night, and a faint, fresh wind blew in from the sea. The
lights in the harbour twinkled, the stars glistened in the sky. But as
Paul told me his good news, the whole horizon was one great flame
before my eyes. He began by recapitulating, though with fuller details
than was possible by letter, what I knew pretty well already; the
story of the great success of his book, which had been reviewed in all
the theological magazines of Europe, and had gone through four
editions in the year, and been translated into German and Italian; the
story of how he had been encouraged to come to St. Petersburg, and how
he had prospered on the press there. And then came the grand news--he
was offered the editorship of the _Novoe Vremia_, the great St.
Petersburg paper!
In an instant I realized all it meant, and in my horror I almost
fainted. Paul would direct this famous Government and anti-Semitic
organ, Paul would pen day after day those envenomed leaders, goading
on the mob to turn and rend their Jewish fellow-citizens, denying them
the rights of human beings. Paul would direct the flood of sarcasm and
misrepresentation poured forth day after day upon my inoffensive
brethren. The old anguish with which I had read that article a year
ago returned to me; but not the old tempest of wrath. By sheer force
of will I kept myself calm. A great issue was at stake, and I nerved
myself for the contest.
"Paul," said I, "you are a lucky fellow." I kissed him on the brow
with icy lips. He saw my great emotion, but felt it was but natural.
"_Da_," said he, "I am a lucky fellow. It is a great thing. Few men
have had such an opportunity at twenty-five."
"_Nutchozh?_ And how do you propose to utilize it?" I asked.
"_Och_, I must conduct the paper on the same general lines," he said;
"of course, with improvements."
"Amongst the latter the omission of the anti-Semitic bias, I hope."
He stared at me. "Certainly not. The proprietors make its continuance
on the same general lines a condition. They are very good. They even
guard me against possible prosecutions by paying a handsome salary to
a man of straw. _Ish-lui_, it is a fine berth that I've got."
Should I tell him the thing was impossible--that he was a Jew? No;
time for that when all other means had failed. "_Och_, you have
accepted it?" I said.
"Of course I have, father. Why should I give them time to change their
minds?"
"I should have thought you would have consulted me first."
"_Nu, uzh_, I have never consulted you yet about accepting work," he
said in a wondering, disappointed tone.
"_Nuka_, but this puts you finally into a career, does it not?"
"Certainly. That is why I accepted it, and I thought you would be
glad."
"That is why you should have refused it. But I _am_ glad all the
same."
"I do not understand you, father."
"_Nuka_, _golubtchik_, listen," I said in my most endearing tone,
drawing my arm round his neck. "Your struggles for existence were but
struggles for the sake of the struggle. You are not as other young
men. You have succeeded; and the moment you win the prize is the
moment for retiring gracefully, leaving it in the hands of him who
needs it. Your fight was but a game I allowed you to play. You are
rich."
"Rich?"
"Rich! Nearly all my life I have been a wealthy man. I own land in
every part of Russia; I hold shares in all the most successful
companies. I have kept this knowledge from you so that you might enjoy
your riches more when you knew the truth."
"Rich?" He repeated the word again in a dazed tone. "_Ach_, why did I
not know this before?"
"You had not succeeded. You had not had your experience, my son, my
dearest Paul. But now your work is over, or rather your true work
begins. Freed from the detestable routine of a newspaper office, you
shall write your books and work out your ideas at leisure, and
relieved from all material considerations."
"_Da_, it would have been a beautiful ideal--once," he said; then
added fiercely: "Rich? And I did not know it."
"But you were the happier for your ignorance."
"No, father. The struggle is too terrible. Often have I sat and wept.
_Ish-lui_, time after time my book--destined as it was to
success--came back to me from the publishers. And I could have
produced it myself all along!"
Pangs of remorse agitated me. Had my plan been, indeed, a failure?
"But you have the pride of unhelped success."
"And the bitter memories. And once--" He paused.
"Once?" I said.
"Once I loved a girl. She is dead now, so it doesn't matter. There
were many and complicated obstacles to our union. With money they
would have been overcome."
"Poor boy!" I said wonderingly, for I knew nothing of this apparently
new love episode. "Forgive me, my son, if I have acted mistakenly.
Anyhow, from this moment your happiness is my sole care."
"No," he said, with sudden determination. "It is too late now. You
meant it for the best, _papasha_. But I do not want the money now. I
have money of my own--and glory. Why should I give up what my own
hands have won?"
"Because I ask it of you, Paul; because I ask you to allow me to make
reparation for the mischief I have done."
"The truest reparation will be to let things go unrepaired," he said,
with a touch of sarcasm. "I shall be happier as editor of this paper.
What finer medium for my ideas than a great newspaper? What more
potent lever to my hand for raising Holy Russia to a yet higher plane?
No, father. Let bygones be bygones. Give my share of your wealth to a
society for helping struggling talent. I struggle no longer. Leave me
to go on in the path my pen has carved out."
I fell at his feet and begged him to let me have my way, but some
obstinate demon seemed to have taken possession of his breast. I
opened my desk and showered bank-notes upon him. He spurned them, and
one flew out into the night. Neither of us put out a hand to arrest
its flight.
I saw that nothing but the truth had any chance to alter his resolve.
But I played one more card before resorting to this dangerous weapon.
"Listen, my own dearest Paul," I burst out. "If money will not tempt
you, let a father's petition persuade you. Learn, then, that I dread
your taking this position because you will perpetually have to attack
the Jews--"
"As they deserve," he put in.
"Be it so. But I--I have a kindness for this oppressed race."
He looked at me in silence, as if awaiting further explanation. I
gave it, blurting out the shameful lie with ill-concealed confusion.
"Once upon a time I--I loved a Jewess. I could not marry her, of
course. But ever since that time I have had a soft place in my heart
for her unhappy race."
A look of surprise flashed into Paul's eyes. Then his face grew
tender. He took my hand in his.
"Father, we have a common sorrow," he said. "The girl I spoke of was a
Jewess."
"How?" I exclaimed, surprised in my turn. It was the same affair,
then.
"Yes, she was a Jewess. But I taught her the truth. Christ was
revealed to her prisoned soul. She would have fled with me if we had
had the means, and if I had been able to support her in some other
country. But she did not dare be baptized and stay in Moscow or
anywhere near. She said her father would have killed her. The only
alternative was for me to embrace Judaism. Impossible as you may think
it, father, and I confess it to my eternal shame, at the very period I
was correcting the proofs of my book, I was wrestling with a
temptation to embrace this Satanic heresy. But I conquered the
temptation. It was easy to conquer. To renounce the faith which was my
blessed birthright would, as you know, have cost me dear. Selfishness
warred for once on the side of salvation. Rachel wished to fly with
me. I knew she would have been poor and unhappy. I refused to take
advantage of her girlish impetuousness. I heard afterward that she had
drowned herself." The tears rained down his cheeks.
"We had arranged to wait till I could save a stock of money. _Voi_,
the delay undid us. One day Rachel's father called on me. He had got
wind of our secret. He fell at my feet and tore his hair, and wept and
conjured me not to darken his home and his life. A Jewess could only
wed a Jew, he said. If I had only been born a Jew all would have been
well. But his Rachel had, perhaps, talked of becoming a Christian. Did
I not know that was impossible? As well expect the sheep to howl like
the wolf. Blood was thicker than baptismal water. Her heart would
always cleave to her own religion. And was my love so blind as not to
see that even if she spoke of Christianity it was only to please me?
that she only kissed the crucifix that I might kiss her, and knelt to
the Virgin that I might kneel to her? At home, he swore it with
fearful oaths, she was always bitterly sarcastic at the expense of the
true faith. I believed him. My God, I believed him! For at times I had
feared it myself. I would be no party to such carnal blasphemy, and
charged him with a note of farewell. When he went I felt as if I had
escaped from a terrible temptation. I fell on my knees and thanked the
saints."
"But why did you not tell me this at the time?" I cried in intolerable
anguish.
"_Nu_; to what end? It would only have worried you. I did not know you
were rich."
"And at this time you offered to send _me_ money!" I said, with sudden
recollection.
"Since I had not enough, you might as well have some of it. Anyhow,
father, you see all this has made no difference to me. I shall never
marry now, of course; but it hasn't altered the opinion I have always
had of the Jews--rather corroborated it. Rachel told me enough of the
superstitious slavery amid which she was forced to live. I have no
doubt now that her father lied. But for his pigheaded tribalism,
Rachel would have been alive to-day. So why your love for a Jewish
girl should make you tender to the race I do not see, dearest father.
There are always exceptions to everything--Rachel was one; the woman
you loved was another. And now it is very late; I think I will go to
bed."
He kissed me and went out at the door. Then he came back and put his
head inside again. A sweet, sad, winning smile lit up his pale,
thoughtful face.
"I will put you on the free list of the _Novoe Vremia_, father," he
said. "Good-night, _papasha_."
What could I say? What could I do? I called up a smile to my trembling
lips.
"Good-night, Paul," I said.