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 haswrought 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 theizbas, 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 yearsago; 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. Yethisface 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 alreadyclosed 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 theKaddish. 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 itisa 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 hisbougie, 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 theShemangas soon as they could form the syllables; whoknowthat 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 dimlyrecall 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, aZhit; 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 havelived. 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 caredas 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!isPaul 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 bookdonnera à penserto 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 ofJudaism 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 oflocus standiof any other than the Orthodox Church."
"Indeed," I murmured, "and whatisthe 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 havelived 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 Russiaperpetuating 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 Tourguénieff, 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 thatmyreaction 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 Tolstoï, 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 rightroad 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 Æsop'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 theirsanctified homes, of their patient sufferings? Have you penetrated to their hearths and seen the beautifulnaïvetéof 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 whohas 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 spirithas 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 havemade! 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 theborsch. As for the neighbours—let thestartchinaand thestarostasand 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 horribleennuiand 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 aduscehubka. I tried to forget everythingbut 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 Imustfill 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 amildattack 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 forMonsieur le médecin. 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 inkindfrom, that which I feel towardany 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 morbidminds, 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 tocontinue 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 aZhit? 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, mydushaPaul!
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 himcarte 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 Alexandrovitchtochurch, 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. Theparacladnoiis 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 springlessparacladnoialone is enough to knock a healthy man up; though whether he was equally veracious in professing tohave 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 Governmentemployé, 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 thebarinaon 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. Imade 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 theKitai-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 myshubaand shiver.Au revoir."Nicholas Alexandrovitch."
"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 Governmentemployé, 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 thebarinaon 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. Imade 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 theKitai-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 myshubaand 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 NicholasAlexandrovitch 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 thereka, 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 ourzemski-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 theCourierare 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 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 thereka, 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 ourzemski-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 theCourierare 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, markedwith 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 theizbasand 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 Tolstoï. 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 canI 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.