MEANWHILE a reform measure which subsequently became known as “the constitution of Loris-Melikoff” had been framed and submitted to the Czar by the Minister of the Interior. The project called for the convocation of a semi-representative assembly to be clothed with consultative powers. It was framed in guarded language, great pains having been taken to keep out anything like an allusion to parliamentary government.
“But it looks like the States-General,” the Czar said to Loris-Melikoff. The resemblance which the measure bore to the opening chapter in the history of the French revolution, where representatives of the three estates are convened in consultative parliament, made a disagreeable impression on him. Still, the project was ingeniously worded as a measure tending to “enhance the confidence of the monarch in his loyal subjects”; so, upon a closer reading, the Czar warmed to it, and returned the draft to Loris-Melikoff with his hearty approval. This took place at 12 o’clock on Sunday, March 13, 1881, one day after the search at the cheese store. It was decided to have the document read before the cabinet on Wednesday, after which it was to be published over the imperial signature in theOfficial Messenger.
The Czar was dressed in the uniform of the Sappers ofthe Guards, whose review he was about to attend at the Michaïl Riding Schools.
“I pray your Majesty to forego the trip,” Loris-Melikoff said, solicitously.
The Czar smiled. Princess Dolgoruki had made a similar request, and by accentuating his danger they both only succeeded in challenging his courage. He felt as if in the light of their appeal staying at home would mean hiding. Instead of pleading with him for caution Loris-Melikoff should have made an effort to secure a suspension of hostilities in the enemy’s camp. Had the revolutionists been aware of what was coming a truce on their part would have been assured. And then, little as the project to be divulged resembled a constitution in the western sense of the word, it was yet the first approach to representative legislation in the history of modern Russia. The Nihilists were pledged to abandon their Terror the moment free speech had been granted, and although no reference to questions of this character was made in the “constitution,” certain liberties in that direction might have followed as a matter of course, as an offspring of the new spirit which the measure was expected to inaugurate. Adistinguishedrevolutionary writer has pointed out how easy it would have been for Loris-Melikoff to bring his expectations to the knowledge of the Executive Committee of the Nihilists by setting a rumour on foot among the professional and intellectual classes, many of whose representatives, as the Vice-Emperor knew but too well, were in touch with the central organization of the Will of the People. Perhaps this method of communicating with the revolutionists had not occurred to Loris-Melikoff; perhaps the iron-clad secrecy that enclosed his project was a necessary protection against the enemies of reformat court. However it may have been, neither the revolutionists nor their liberal allies had any inkling as to the document about to be published in theOfficial Messenger. Instead, they saw the police and the gendarmerie continuing their riot of administrative violence; instead, they heard of an order by virtue of which a number of revolutionists who had served their term within prison walls at Kara, Siberia, and been admitted to partial freedom in the penal colony outside, had suddenly been put in irons and thrown back into their cells; whereupon some of them had committed suicide rather than return to the tortures of their former life. All of which had added gall to the bitterness of the revolutionists at large and whetted their distrust of the “crafty Armenian,” as they called Loris-Melikoff.
The Czar’s favourite coachman, a stalwart, handsome fellow, with a thick blond beard and clear blue eyes, sat on the box of the closed imperial carriage, waiting in the vast courtyard of the Winter Palace. An escort of six lusty Cossacks, two gendarme officers and one of the several chiefs of police of the capital held themselves in readiness near by, the Cossacks on their mounts, the other three in their open sleighs. Presently a great door flew open and the Emperor appeared, accompanied by an adjutant and a sergeant of the page corps. He wore a military cape-cloak and a helmet. While the page held the carriage door open, the Czar said to the coachman:
“By Songsters’ Bridge!”
This was not his habitual route to the Riding Schools. Not that he was aware of the suspicions which the cheese shop on Little GardenStreethad aroused. He had not the least idea of the existence of such a shop. He haddecided on the new route merely as a matter of general precaution, in case there was a mine somewhere. As to pistol shots he was sufficiently screened by the walls of his carriage as well as by the bodies of his cossacks and their horses.
That calm feeling of reverent affection with which the average Englishman hails his sovereign is unknown in Russia. But whether with reverence or mute imprecations, the coach of a Czar disseminates thrills of fright as it proceeds. The cavalcade of horsemen and sleighs, with the great lacquered carriage in the centre, was sailing and galloping along like a grim alien force, diffusing an atmosphere of terror. To those who saw it approaching the fiery cossacks on their fiery horses looked like a ferocious band of invaders, their every fibre spoiling for violence, rushing onward on an errand of conquest and bloody reckoning.
It was a cloudy day. The streets were covered with discoloured, brownish snow; the snow on the roofs, window-sills, cornices, gate-posts, was of immaculate whiteness, apparently devoid of weight, smooth and neat, as though trimmed by some instrument. There were few people along the route followed by the little procession and most of these were in their Sunday clothes. Now a civilian snatched off his cap spasmodically, now a soldier drew himself up with all his might, as though trying to lift himself off his feet. Here and there a drunken citizen was staggering along. Every person the carriage passed was scrutinised by every member of the escort, by the cossacks as well as by the chief of police and the gendarme officers. The Riding Schools were soon reached.
The Emperor left the building less than an hour later. He was accompanied by Grand Duke Michaïl, his brother,the two going to the Michaïl Palace, where they were to have lunch with the Czar’s niece.
Sophia, the ex-governor’s daughter, was watching the imperial carriage from a point of vantage. Presently she turned into a neighbouring street, and passing a fair-complexioned young man in a dark overcoat, who held a white package in his hand, she raised her handkerchief to her nose. The young man then hurried away toward Catharine Canal. Three other men, one of them a gigantic looking fellow, stood at so many different points, and at sight of Sophia with her handkerchief to her nose, they all started in the same direction as the first man, while the young woman walked over to the Neva Prospect from which she crossed a bridge to the opposite side of Catharine Canal.
It was half past two when the imperial carriage, surrounded by the six cossacks and followed by the gendarme officers and the chief of police, set out on their homebound journey. The handsome coachman let out his horses. The group was scudding along at top speed. The chief of police stood up in his sleigh, one of his gloved hands on the shoulder of his driver, as he strained his eyes now to the right now to the left, after the manner of the human figure on the face of a certain kind of clocks. The carriage turned to the right, passing a detachment of marines who saluted the Czar by presenting arms. The carriage was now on one of the banks of the Catharine Canal, an iron railing to the right, a row of buildings to the left. An employe of a horse-car company, who was levelling off a ridge of caked snow at this moment, hastily rested his crowbar against the iron railing and bared his head. Some distance in front of him a young man in a dark overcoat, and with a whitepackage in his hand, was trudging along the canal side of the street. He was passed and left in the rear by a man in the uniform of a hospital nurse of the guards. On the sidewalk to the left of the Czar, another man, also in military uniform, was moving rapidly along, while from the opposite direction, in the middle of the snow-covered street, came a boy pulling a little sled with a basket of meat on it. Sophia was looking on from the other side of the canal.
Colonel Dvorzhitzky (the chief of police) was scanning the sidewalk to the left, when a terrific crash went up from under the Czar’s carriage. It was as if a mass of deafening sound had lain dormant there, in the form of a vast closed fan, and the fan had suddenly flown open. The colonel’s horses reared violently, hurling him over the shoulder of his coachman. While he was surveying the left side of the street, the employe of the tramway company and several military people, coming up alongside the railing, had seen the young man in the dark overcoat lift his white package and throw it under the Czar’s carriage. The carriage came to a sudden halt amid a cloud of smoke and snow dust. A second or two passed before any of them could realise what it all meant. The young man turned about and broke into a run.
“Catch him! Hold him!” the pedestrians shrieked frantically, dashing after the running man.
He had reached a point some thirty feet back of the imperial carriage when he was hemmed in. One of the cossacks and the boy lay in the snow shrieking. One of the rear corners of the carriage was badly shattered. The rest of it was uninjured, but during the first minute or two its doors remained closed, so that the bystanderscould not tell whether the Czar was hurt or not. Then the chief of police rushed up to the vehicle and flung the right door open. The Czar was unhurt, but ghastly pale. He sat bending slightly forward, his feet on the bearskin covering the floor, a gilt ash receiver on a shelf in front of him.
“The guilty man has been caught, your Imperial Majesty!” Colonel Dvorzhitzky burst out.
“Has he?” the Emperor asked, in intense agitation.
“He has, your Imperial Majesty. They are holding him. May I offer you to finish the journey in my sleigh?”
“Yes, but I first want to see the prisoner.”
Pervaded by the conviction that another plot on his life had failed, the Czar stepped out of the carriage, and accompanied by a group of officers, some from his escort and others from among the passers-by, he crossed over to the sidewalk that ran along the canal railing, erect and majestic as usual, but extremely pale with excitement, and then turning to the right he walked toward where a group of uniformed men were holding a fair-complexioned beardless young fellow against the railing. People, mostly in military uniforms, came running from every direction.
Somebody asked: “How is the Emperor?”
“Thank God,” answered the Czar, “I have escaped, but——” and he pointed at the wounded cossack and boy.
“It may be too soon to thank God,” said the prisoner.
“Is this the man who did it?” the Czar asked, advancing toward him. “Who are you?”
“My name is Glazoff.”
The Czar turned back. He had made a few steps, when a man who stood no more than three feet from him raiseda white object high over his head and dashed it to the ground, between the Emperor and himself.
There was another explosion, still more violent and deafening than the first. The air was a turmoil of smoke, snow-dust and shreds of uniforms, concealing everything else from view. Sophia hurried away.
More than half a minute later, when the chaos had partly cleared away, the Czar was seen in a sitting posture on the snow-covered sidewalk, leaning against the railing, his large oval head bare, his cape-cloak gone. He was breathing hard. His face was in blood, the flesh of his bared legs lacerated, the blood gushing from them over the snow. A heap of singed, smoking tatters nearby was all that had been left of his cloak.
With cries of horror and of overpowering pity the bystanders rushed forward. Among them was a man with a bomb under his coat like the two which had just exploded. He was one of the four men who had shifted their posts when they saw Sophia raising her handkerchief to her nose. Had the second bomb failed to do its bloody work, this Terrorist would have thrown his missile when the imperial carriage came by his corner. As he beheld the Czar on the ground and bleeding, however, he instinctively flung himself forward to offer help to the suffering man.
At sight of the prostrated Czar the men who held the author of the first explosion, began to shower blows on him.
“Don’t,” he begged them, shielding his head and face. “I meant the good of the people.”
Two yards from the Czar lay bleeding the unconscious figure of a civilian. Further away were several other prostrated men, in all sorts of uniforms.
“Help!” the Czar uttered in a faint voice.
Somebody handed him a handkerchief, which he put to his face, muttering “Cold, cold.” Several of the marines who had saluted him a few minutes ago and two guardsmen placed him on Colonel Dvorzhitzky’s sleigh.
When Grand Duke Michaïl appeared on the scene he found his brother rapidly sinking.
“Sasha,[C]do you hear me?” he asked him, with tears in his eyes.
The bystanders, who had never before heard their Czar addressed in the form of affectionate familiarity, were thrilled with a feeling of heart-tearing pity and of the most fervent devotion. Most of them had sobs in their throats.
“Yes,” the Czar answered faintly.
“How do you feel, Sasha?”
“To the Palace—quick,” the Czar whispered. And upon hearing somebody’s suggestion that he be taken to the nearest house for immediate relief, he uttered:
“Bear me to the palace—there—die——.”
He reclined between two cossacks, with a gendarme officer facing him and supporting his legs. This is the way he returned home. Pedestrians met him with gestures of horrified perplexity and acute commiseration now.
The crowd at one corner of Catharine Canal was a babel of excitement and violence. In their mad rush for the man who threw the second bomb, the bystanders were accusing each other, grabbing at each other, quarrelling, fighting. As Nihilists were for the most part people of education, every man who looked college-bred was in danger of his life. Among those who were beaten to a pulp in this wild mêlée were two political spies who hadthe appearance of university students. A shout went up that the thrower of the fatal bomb had vaulted over the fence of the Michaïl gardens nearby, and then the mob broke down part of that fence, and ruined the gardens in a wild but vain search for the Terrorist. People were seized and hustled off to the station houses by the hundred.
The heir apparent, a fair-complexioned Hercules, was on his way to the Winter Palace surrounded by a strong escort of mounted men. It was the first time he had appeared in the streets so accompanied. The cluster of horsemen and sleighs that had left the palace three hours before never returned; this one was coming in its place; but the effect of grim detachment, of fierce challenge was the same.
An hour had elapsed. The flag over the Winter Palace which denotes Imperial presence was put at half-mast. Church bells were tolling the death of Alexander II. and the accession of Alexander III.
The new Czar was by his father’s bedside. He was even more powerfully built than he, but he lacked his grace and the light of his intelligent eyes—a physical giant with a look of obtuse honesty on a fair, bearded round face. An English diplomatist who understood him well has said that “he had a mind not only commonplace, but incapable of receiving new ideas.” When he saw his father breathe his last, he exclaimed: “This is what we have come to!”—a celebrated ejaculation which an archbishop uttered at the funeral of Peter the Great in 1725. This was his first utterance as Emperor of Russia. Its puerile lack of originality was characteristic of the man.
Princess Dolgoruki fainted, and she had no sooner beenbrought to than the packing of her trunks was ordered by the sons of her dead husband.
The palace was surrounded by a strong cordon of cossacks. Palace Square was thronged, the neighbouring streets were tremulous with subdued excitement. Some people were sincerely overcome with grief and horror; others were struggling to conceal their exultation. There were such as wept and cursed the Nihilists by way of displaying their own loyalty, and there were such as burst into tears from the sheer solemnity and nervousness of the moment. But the great predominating feeling that pervaded these crowds, eclipsing every other sentiment or thought, was curiosity. “What is going to happen next?”—this was the question that was uppermost in the minds of these people in their present fever of excitement. Had a republic been proclaimed with the Executive Committee of the Nihilists as a provisional government, they would have sworn their allegiance to the bomb-throwers as readily as they did, on the morrow, to the son of the assassinated Emperor. Had the Terrorists succeeded, the same bearded bishops who blessed and sounded the praises of the new Czar would have blessed and sounded the praises of those who had killed his father.
Pavel was in a suburb of the capital, when he first heard the melancholy tolling of the church bells.
“What’s the matter?” he asked an elderly man who was walking with a sleigh-load of bricks, the reins in his hands.
“They say our little father, the Czar, has been killed,” the other answered, making the sign of the cross with his free hand. “People say the Czarowitz is going to cut down the term of military service. Is it true, sir?”
“What is true?” Pavel asked. He was literally dazed with excitement.
“A son of mine is in the army, sir,” the other explained reverently. “So I wonder if the new Czar will be easier on the soldiers, sir.”
Pavel hailed the first hackman he came across. He was burning to know the details of the assassination and to tell Clara that the first man he accosted on the great news of the hour had shown indifference to the death of the monarch.
When his sleigh reached the Neva Prospect, he saw the new Czar, surrounded by a cohort of officers in dazzling uniform, passing along the thoroughfare. The crowds were greeting him with wild cheers. They cheered their own emotions at sight of the man whose father had come to so tragic a death, and they cheered their own servility to the master of the situation.
These shouts filled Pavel with a mixed sense of defeat and triumph. The gloomier feeling predominated. The world looked as usual. It did not look as if this cheering, servile, stolid mob would ever rise against anything.
That evening placards bearing the name of the Executive Committee appeared on the walls of public buildings. They announced the death of Alexander II. and admonished his successor to adopt a liberal policy.
EVERY resident in the capital was being scanned and spied after, and every house-porter was kept peeking and seeking and reporting at the police station of his precinct. The railway stations were teeming with spies and a system was introduced by which every hack-driver was expected to spy on his fare. The effect of it all was that the great majority of St. Petersburg’s population was in a state of unspeakable terror. Curiosity, pity and everything else had given way to a nervous feeling of self-preservation. People walked through the streets hastily. The sight of a policeman was enough to send a twinge of fright into the heart of the most loyal government clerk; everybody was afraid of everybody else. One avoided to utter such words as “Czar,” “police,” “government.” As to the Nihilists, one literally dreaded to think of them. People who had never had a liberal thought in their brain were tremulous with distrust of their own souls.
And through all this all-pervading panic Clara was busy posting revolutionary proclamations in the streets, distributing tracts among students and working-people, keeping “business” appointments with her “illegal” friends. Pavel, in his turn, had all he could do to attend to the needs of some of the out-of-town “circles.” The revolutionists throughout the country were clamouring for information,for proclamations, for speakers; so that the seventy or eighty men and women who formed the innermost organisation were as feverishly busy in their way as the police and the gendarmes were in theirs.
The authorities were ransacking the capital for Nihilists in general and for the cheesemonger couple in particular, but during the first few hours following the two explosions their eagerness was centered on the man who had thrown the fatal bomb. The search for that man soon proved superfluous, however.
The civilian who was picked up unconscious near where the Czar was stricken down had been taken to a hospital. Late in the evening he had a brief interval of consciousness.
“Who are you?” an officer then asked him.
“I don’t know,” he answered. He had a relapse from which he never awoke. The front of his body, particularly the inner side of one arm, was covered with ghastly wounds, from which experts inferred that at the time of the explosion he could not have stood more than three feet from the Czar. This, according to some eye-witnesses of the catastrophe, was the distance between the deceased monarch and the man who threw the second bomb. After two days of searching and sniffing the police discovered the unknown man’s lodging, where they found some revolutionary literature and other evidence that pointed to him as the author of the fatal explosion. He had stood so close to the Czar that it was impossible for him to make a target of his victim without making one of himself. His real name still remained unknown.
As to the first bomb-thrower, he proved to be a college student named Rysakoff. In the hands of the gendarme officers and the procureur he broke down and told all heknew; but it appeared that he knew very little. He had been one of a number of volunteers who offered to attack the Emperor under the command of Zachar. When Zachar’s arrest became known to the Executive Committee things had begun to be rushed. Sophia Perovskaya, the ex-governor’s daughter, had taken his place, and it was decided to make the assault without delay. Zachar had been arrested on Friday evening. As it was known to Sophia that the Czar would visit the Riding Schools on the next Sunday, the attempt was fixed for that occasion. The Terrorists immediately connected with the plot held their gatherings at a “conspiracy lodgings” kept by a man and woman Rysakoff did not know. There the volunteers met Sophia and one of the inventors of the self-igniting shell (the man with the priestly face whom we saw at the meeting of the Executive Committee at which Clara’s wedding was to be celebrated). On Sunday morning (the day of the assassination) the volunteers—three college men and an artisan—called at the same gathering place. They found two finished bombs there and soon Sophia arrived with two more. Where the bomb factory was Rysakoff did not know. Sophia explained that it took a whole night to make the four portable machines and that more than four volunteers could not be accommodated. She then drew a rough map of the Czar’s expected route, with four dots for the posts of the four bomb-throwers. There were two sets of dots on the diagram. In case the Czar failed to include Little Garden Street in his route, the Terrorists were to shift their positions to Catharine Canal and two neighbouring streets.
That afternoon, as Rysakoff stood on his post near Little Garden Street, Sophia passed by him, her handkerchief to her nose (the same sort of signal which the same youngwoman had given a year and a half before to the man who fired the mine which blew up the imperial train near Moscow). That meant that the Czar was not passing through Little Garden Street. Accordingly, Rysakoff hastened over to Catherine Canal. There, after he had thrown the bomb and while the Czar was speaking to him, he saw the three other volunteers each on his post.
The second bomb-thrower was known to Rysakoff under the name of “the Kitten.” His real name he did not know.
He also gave the police the address of the “conspiracy lodgings,” which were located on the sixth floor of a house on Waggon Street, and an hour or two later, at midnight, two days after the killing of the Czar, the procureur, accompanied by gendarmes and police, knocked at one of the doors of that apartment.
“Who is there?” a masculine voice asked from within.
“Police and the procureur.”
“What do you want?”
“Open the door at once or we’ll break it down.”
While they were raining blows on the door, a succession of pistol shots was heard within. Another door flew open, at the end of the corridor, and a woman made her appearance.
“We surrender,” she said. “Pray send for a doctor. Look out, don’t pass through this door. There are explosives there.”
Inside they found the fresh corpse of a man lying in a pool of blood. It was the gay poet; and the woman was Hessia Helfman, the dark little Jewess with the frizzled hair who was married to Purring Cat. It was she and the man now lying dead from his own pistol shots who had been in charge of this “conspiracy lodgings.” Amongthe things found in the apartment were the two bombs which had been brought back from the scene of the assassination; the rough map made by Sophia on the morning before the attack and a large quantity of revolutionary literature.
The former “conspiracy lodgings” were now a police trap, and on the very next morning it caught a big burly man whom Rysakoff identified as Timothy Michailoff, the one mechanic among the four men who had been armed with bombs on the fatal morning. Michailoff’s memorandum book furnished the police some important addresses, but the great surprise of that eventful week did not come until the following day, March 17th, and when it did it was anything but a source of self-congratulation to the authorities.
About ten o’clock in the morning of that day the porters of the house on Little Garden Street where the Koboseffs kept their shop reported to the roundsman that the cheese dealer and his wife had not been home since the previous evening, and that their shop was still closed. The roundsman, who, like every member of the St. Petersburg police during those days, was overworked and badly in need of rest, made no reply. An hour later the porter accosted him again:
“The shop is still closed. Customers have been around and there is nobody in.”
“Oh, I have no time to bother about it.”
“But I think I saw something in that store, some strange looking tools,” pleaded the porter.
“The devil you did,” the roundsman said, as much with irritation as with amazement.
The statement was reported to the captain, who communicated it to his superiors, until finally an order wasobtained to raid the shop. A search was made, more thorough than the first, and with quite different results. The lounge in the living room upon which General Mrovinsky had sat while speaking to Koboseff was found to contain a heap of earth, and when the planks under the window of the middle room were removed—the very ones which General Mrovinsky had made a feeble attempt to detach in the presence of Koboseff and the police—a large yawning hole presented itself to view. When this part of the wall had been torn down, the aperture proved to be the mouth of a subterranean passage enclosed in wood. Seven feet from the shop began a charge of a hundred pounds of dynamite with an electric battery near by and wires running along the gallery back to the middle room. Everything was in complete readiness. All that was necessary to explode the mine was to connect the wires.
As was learned subsequently, this mine had been the leading feature of the plot, the bombs having been added in case the Czar left Little Garden Street out of his route or the mine failed of its deadly purpose for some other reason. Of the existence of such a mine Rysakoff had not the remotest idea until he heard of it at the trial.
On the Friday afternoon immediately preceding the arrest of Jeliaboff (Zachar) the porter of the house where he and Sophia were registered as brother and sister met them at the gate as they were leaving the house together; and later, at 9 o’clock in the evening, he saw Sophia return alone. The next morning, after Jeliaboff had spent his first night in prison, the police, in their effort to discover his residence, ordered every porter in the city to ascertain who of his tenants had been absent from home that night. When the porter rang Sophia’s bell that morning therewas no response. He reported it at the police station where he was told to try again. At 2 o’clock he saw Sophia.
“I have received some blanks from the police,” he said. “Every tenant must state his occupation and place of business.”
“My brother is working now,” Sophia answered. “When he comes home I’ll tell him about it.”
Two hours later she went out again, and in order to avoid passing the porter at the gate, she gained the street through a little dry goods shop that had a rear door into that yard, buying something for a pretext. She came back, by way of the same dry goods shop, at 9 o’clock in the evening and that was the last that was ever seen of her in that neighbourhood. The next morning the porter reported the disappearance of the couple.
When the police searched the deserted apartment they found a number of revolutionary publications, several tin boxes like those which formed the shells of the two exploding machines seized at the “conspiracy house” kept by Hessia and the “gay poet,” and several cheeses bearing the same trade-mark as those in Koboseff’s shop.
Meanwhile Jeliaboff had heard the solemn tolling of the bells in his prison cell. In the excitement of the hour a gendarme on duty in the prisoncorridoranswered his questions through the peep-hole, in violation of regulations. Jeliaboff at once sent word to the procureur, assuming responsibility for the entire plot, as an agent of the Executive Committee.
Sophia knew through a certain high official all that transpired between Jeliaboff and the procureur. She knew that the authorities were turning the capital inside out in their search for the woman who had lived withJeliaboff as his sister and for the Koboseff couple, yet in spite of all the pressure the Nihilists brought to bear on her, persuading her to seek temporary retirement, she, like Urie and Baska, remained in the heart of St. Petersburg, in the very thick of her party’s activity. Clara saw her at a meeting during that week.
“You need rest, Sonia. You look tired.”
“Do I?” Sophia answered with a smile. “So do you. Everybody does these days.”
Her smile was on her lips only. Her blue eyes were inscrutably grave, but Clara saw a blend of lofty exaltation and corroding anguish in them. She knew how dear Jeliaboff was to her. She had been craving to speak to her of him, of Hessia and of the “gay poet,” who had committed suicide at the time of Hessia’s arrest; but at this moment it was Sophia herself who filled her mind.
“Sonia!” Clara said, huskily.
“What is it, child?” the other asked, kindly.
For an answer Clara looked her in the face, smiling shame-facedly. She did feel like an infant in her presence, although Sophia, with her small stature and fresh boyish face, looked the younger of the two. She did not know herself what she wanted to say. She was burning to cover her with kisses and to break into sobs on her breast, but Sophia was graver and more taciturn than usual to-day, so she held herself in check. Her passion for tears was subdued. She sat by Sophia’s side absorbed in her presence without looking her in the face, tingling with something like the feeling of people in a graveyard, in a moment of solemn ecstasy.
Clara came away burdened with unvoiced emotion. She said to herself that when she saw Pavel she would find relief in telling him how she adored Sophia and howthirsty her heart was because she had not unbosomed herself of these feelings to her; but when she and Pavel were alone she said nothing.
The porters of the house from which Sophia had vanished were asked at the police station whether they would be able to single her out in a street crowd. They had to admit that they were not sure whether they would. She had lived under their eye for eight months, but she had always managed to pass through the gate, where they were usually on duty, so as to leave no clear impression of her features on their minds. Finally, on the sixth day, it was discovered that the proprietress of the little dry goods store had a clear recollection of her face. This woman, accompanied by a police officer, then spent hours driving about through the busiest streets, until, with a shout of mixed joy and fright, she pointed out Sophia in a public sleigh.
It was not many days before Kibalchich, the man with the Christlike face, who was one of the inventors and makers of the four bombs, and another revolutionist were arrested in a café, through an address found in Timothy Michailoff’s note-book.
The trial of the six regicides so far captured, Jeliaboff, Sophia, Kibalchich, Hessia, Rysakoff, and Timothy Michailoff, was begun by a special Court of the Governing Senate for Political Cases, on April 8. That Purring Cat and the man with the Tartarian face, both of whom were in prison now, had taken part in the digging of the Koboseff mine, was still unknown to the police. Nor had the authorities as yet been informed of the fact that another “political” in their hands—the undersized manwho had played the part of shop-boy to the cheese-dealer—had had something to do with the same conspiracy.
Complete reports of the trial appeared in the newspapers, and the testimony and speeches of the accused were read and read again.
Jeliaboff (“Zachar”) declined a lawyer, taking his defence in his own hands. His legal battles with the presiding judge, his resource, his tact and his eloquence, made him the central figure of the proceedings. He began by challenging the court’s jurisdiction in the case. “This court represents the crown, one of the two parties concerned,” he said, “and I submit that in a contention between the government and the revolutionary party there could be only one judge—the people; the people either by means of a popular vote, or through its rightful representatives in parliament assembled, or, at least, a jury representing public conscience.” Declarations of this kind, Kibalchich’s narrative as to how the blind brutality of the government had transformed peaceful social workers into Terrorists, and the effect of simple, dignified sincerity which marked the conduct of all the prisoners produced such a profound impression, that at the time of the next important political trial scarcely any reports were allowed to be published.
The six regicides were sentenced to death, the execution of Hessia Helfman, who was about to become a mother, being postponed and later commuted. When the parents of Kolotkevich (Purring Cat) asked to be allowed to bring up their son’s child, the request was refused on the ground that it was the child of two regicides and should be brought up under special care. The result of this special care was that the child, like its pardoned mother, soon died.
Sophia and the four condemned men died on the gallows, on a public square. They were taken to their death on two “shame waggons,” dressed in convict clothes, each with a board inscribed with the words “criminal of state” across his or her breast. The procession was accompanied by a force of military large enough to conquer a country like Belgium. Sophia was the first woman executed on Russian soil since 1719.
ALEXANDER III. and his court moved to the long-deserted imperial palace at Gatchina, a village 28 English miles from St. Petersburg. The young Czar and his entourage were in a state of nervous tension. Economically, the country was in the throes of hard times. Districts rich in the potentialities of industry and prosperity were in the grip of famine. Driven by bad crops and extortionate taxes, thousands of village families were abandoning their homes to go begging. Cities were crowded with such mendicants from surrounding villages, and the industrial centres were full of workmen out of employment. Politically, a demoralising feeling of suspense hung over the empire. The masses had seen one Czar—the ward of a vigilant guardian angel—prostrated. The crown’s prestige was shaken, and the Czar’s seeking refuge in a secluded village did anything but retrieve it. The number oflèse majestécases had suddenly grown so large that by a special imperial ukase these offences were transferred from the publicity of the courts to the obscure depths of “justice by administrative order.” From several places came reports of riots against the police, while the universities manifested their hostility to the throne quite openly. Subscription lists for a monument to the assassinated Czar were torn to pieces and those who circulatedthem were publicly hissed and insulted. The portents of turbulence were in the air.
Loris-Melikoff submitted to the new Czar the “constitution” of which Alexander II. had approved an hour before his violent death. Alexander III. read it and wrote on the margin of the paper: “Very well conceived”; and two days later, after the project had been carried at a cabinet meeting by a vote of eight against five, the Czar, while conversing with his brother, Grand Duke Vladimir, on the measure to be introduced, said, joyfully:
“I feel as though a mountain had rolled off my shoulders.”
But the conservative party at court had the support of a new power behind the throne. M. Pobiedonostzeff, formerly tutor of the present Czar and now his favourite adviser, was a man of much stronger purpose than Loris-Melikoff. He fought against the innovation tooth and nail, and the publication of it in theOfficial Messengerwas postponed from day to day. The leader of the Panslavists was invited from Moscow; every conservative influence was brought to bear upon a Czar who was absolutely incapable of forming his own opinion. All this was done in the strictest secrecy from Loris-Melikoff.
Meanwhile, during Easter week, seven days after the approval of the “constitution” by a majority of the ministers and twelve days subsequent to the execution of the regicides, a furious anti-Jewish riot broke out in Elisavetgrad, a prosperous city in the south. A frenzied drink-crazed mob had possession of the town during two days, demolishing and pillaging hundreds of houses and shops, covering whole streets with debris and reducing thousandsof people to beggary. And neighbouring towns and villages followed the example of the larger city.
The Czar took alarm. It looked like the prelude to a popular upheaval.
“It’s only an anti-Semitic disturbance, your Imperial Majesty,” Pobiedonostzeff reassured him. “There was one like that ten years ago, in Odessa.”
The Elisavetgrad outbreak was, indeed, a purely local affair, but it happened at a time that was highly favourable to occurrences of that nature. Originally organised by some high-born profligates, victims of a gang of Jewish usurers, it had nothing to do with the general situation save in so far as there was in the hungry masses a blind disposition to attack somebody; a disposition coupled with a feeling that the usual ties of law and order had been loosened. When, in addition, the target of assault happened to be the stepchild in Russia’s family of peoples, the one forever kicked and cuffed by the government itself, the rioters’ sense of security was complete. Moreover, among the victims of Jewish usurers were hundreds of army officers and civil officials who lived beyond their means, and from these came a direct hint at impunity. The attack had been carefully planned, but the imbruted mob acted on its own logic, with the result that thousands of artisans, labourers, poor tradesmen, teachers, rabbis, dreamers, were plundered and ill-treated while the handful of usurers escaped.
The promise of impunity was fulfilled. Neighbouring towns and villages followed the example of Elisavetgrad, and ten days later, May 8-9, similar atrocities, but with a far greater display of fury and bestiality, occurred in Kieff, where a dozen murders and an enormous list of wounded and of outraged women was added to the work of devastationand plunder. The Kieff authorities encouraged all this in a thousand ways, while individual officers and men took part in the pandemonium of havoc and rape.
“Easy, boys,” said the governor of the province, with an amused smile, as he drove past the busy rioters at the head of a procession of fashionable spectators.
Loris-Melikoff was scarcely to be held responsible for these occurrences. He had his own cares to worry him. The reins were fast slipping out of his hands. Indeed, the attitude of governors, chiefs of police, military officers, toward the spreading campaign against the Jews was a matter of instinct. The “spirit of the moment,” as it had become customary to denote the epidemic of anti-Jewish feeling in official circles, gleamed forth clear and unequivocal, and local authorities acted upon it on their own hook. The real meaning of this “spirit of the moment” lay in the idea that if there was a state of general unrest threatening the safety of the throne, it was spending itself on anti-Semitic ferocity; that if a storm-cloud was gathering over the crown, an electric rod had been found in the Chosen People.
The Czar took courage.
Two days after the Kieff riot he promulgated a manifesto, framed by Pobiedonostzeff, and proclaiming the continuance of unqualified iron-handed absolutism. The “constitution” went into the archives. Loris-Melikoff’s public career had come to a close. General Ignatyeff, a corrupt time-server, was appointed Minister of the Interior and a policy of restriction and repression was adopted that brought back the days of Nicholas I.
Ignatyeff encouraged the “spirit of the moment” with all the means at his command. One of the very first things he did was to order the expulsion of thousands ofJews from Kieff. At the trial of some of the rioters the state attorney unceremoniously acted as advocate for the defendants.
The effect of all this upon the public mind was a foregone conclusion. The general inference was that anti-Jewish riots met with the government’s approval. The outrages passed from Kieff to neighbouring cities; from there to Odessa; from Odessa to other sections of the south. They were spreading throughout the region in which Miroslav is located with the continuity of a regular crusade and with a uniformity of detail that was eloquent of a common guiding force.
It was a new phase of White Terrorism.
To Pavel the crusade against Clara’s race was a source of mixed encouragement and anxiety.
“Hurrah, old fellow,” he said to Godfather one morning. “It does look as though the Russian people could kick, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, if they can attack Jewish usurers, I don’t see why they could not turn upon the government some day.”
“And, while they are at it, upon the land-plundering nobility, upon fellows like you and me, eh?” He poked Urie in the ribs gleefully.
In his conversations with Clara, however, the subject was never broached, and this gave him a sense of guilt and uneasiness. He could not help being aware that instead of usurers the chief target of attack in every riot, without a single exception, were Jewish artisans, labourers, teachers and the poorest tradesmen. And this, so far as Clara was concerned, meant that the common people of Pavel’s race, for whose sake she was facing the solitary cell and the gallows, that these Christian people were brutally assaultingand pillaging, reducing to beggary and murdering poor honest, innocent people of her own blood, Jews like her father, mother, sister, like herself.
But this bare fact did not fit in with Nihilist theory. That golden halo which had been painted about the common Christian people by the ecstasies of the anti-serfdom movement of twenty years ago had not yet faded. The Gentile masses were still deified by the Nihilists. Whatever the peasant or workman of Slavic blood did was still sacred,—an instinctive step in the direction of liberty and universal happiness. The Russian masses were rioting; could there be a better indication of a revolutionary awakening? And if the victims of these riots happened to be Jews, then the Jews were evidently enemies of the people.
That the crusade was part and parcel of the “white terror” of the throne had not yet dawned upon the revolutionists.
As to Clara, she was so completely abandoned to her grief over the death of Sophia and the four men that so far the riots (no unheard-of thing in the history of the Jews by any means) had made but a feeble appeal to her imagination. Centuries seemed to divide her from her race and her past. The outbreaks seemed to be taking place in some strange, distant country.
The execution of the five regicides had been described quite fully in theOfficial Messengerand the account had been copied in all other newspapers. Clara kept the issue of theVoicecontaining the report in a book, and although she knew its salient passages by heart, she often consulted the paper, now for this paragraph, now for that. There was a sacred mystery in the letters in which the description was printed.
“The five prisoners approached the priests almost at the same moment and kissed the cross; after which they were taken by the hangmen each to his or her rope.” Clara beheld the ropes dangling and Sophia placed under one of them, but her aching heart coveted more vividness. Her imagination was making desperate efforts to reproduce the scene with the tangibility of life. Each time she read how the hangman, dressed in a red shirt, slipped the noose about Sophia’s neck amid the roll of drums, and how he wrenched the stool from under her feet, so that she plunged with a jerk, and how the next instant her body hung motionless in the air, each time Clara read this she was smitten with an overpowering pang of pity and of helpless, aimless, heart-tearing affection. Sometimes she would fancy Sophia and her four comrades rescued from the hangman’s hands a second before their execution, and carried triumphantly through the streets by an army of victorious revolutionists, but the next moment it would come back to her that this had not been the case, and then the re-awakening to reality was even more painful than the original shock. If a rescuing force were now ready to attack the hangman and the thousand-bayoneted guard around him, it would be too late. Sophia was dead, irretrievably dead; there was nobody to rescue. And Clara’s heart sank in despair. At such moments she would seek relief in those passages of the report where the calmness of the condemned revolutionists was depicted. “Jeliaboff whispered to his priest, fervently kissed the cross, shook his hair and smiled. Fortitude did not forsake Jeliaboff, Sophia and particularly Kibalchich (the man with the face of Christ) to the very moment of donning the white-hooded death-gown”—these passages gave Clara thrills of religious bliss.
Pavel often talked to her about the execution, raved, cursed the government; but Clara usually remained gloomily taciturn. The wound in her soul was something too sacred to be talked about. Words seemed to her like sacrilege. Their hearts understood each other well enough, why, then, allow language to intrude upon their speechless communion? Some of his effusions and outbursts jarred on her. On the other hand, her silences made him restless.
“You’ll go insane if you keep this up,” he once said, irascibly.
“I don’t care if I do,” she answered. “Don’t nag me, Pashenka, pray.”
“But the thing is becoming anidée fixein your mind, upon my word it is. Can’t you try and get back to your senses? What is death after all? Absolute freedom from suffering, that’s all. There is nothing to go crazy over anyhow. There is nothing but a dear, a glorious, a beautiful memory of them, and that will live as long as there is such a thing as history in the world.”
She made no reply. She tried to picture Sophia free from suffering, but this only sharpened her pain. Sophia not existing? The formula was even more terrible than death. In reality, however, her atheism was powerless to obliterate her visions. Sophia existed somewhere, only she was solemnly remote, as though estranged from her. Clara could have almost cried to her, imploring for recognition.
But this mood of hers could not last forever. Sooner or later she would awaken to the full extent of the riots and to the fact that they were raging in the vicinity of Miroslav, threatening the safety of her nearest relatives. Howwould she take it then? The question intruded upon Pavel’s peace of mind again and again.
For the present, however, she was taken up with her thoughts of Sophia, Zachar or Hessia. Poor Hessia! They had robbed her of her baby, the thugs, even as they had that woman of the “gay bard’s” poem. “To lead a married life under conditions such as oursispure madness,” she said to herself.
One afternoon, as she and her lover sat on the lounge, embracing and kissing deliriously, she suddenly sprang to her feet, her cheeks burning, kissed Pavel on his forehead and crossed over to the window.
He shrugged his shoulders resentfully.
IT was Friday night at the Old Synagogue, but the cheery voices of Sabbath Eve were not there. The air of having cast one’s cares aside was missing. Instead of a light-hearted turmoil of melody there was a hushed murmur that betrayed suspense and timidity. Ever and anon some worshipper would break off his hymn and strain his ears for a fancied sound outside. The half hour spent away from home seemed many hours. Very few people were present and none of these wore their Sabbath clothes. Most of the other synagogues were closed altogether. Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara’s father, and several others were abandoned to an ecstasy of devotion, but their subdued tones had in them the fervent plea of Atonement Day, the tearful plea for an enrolment in the Book of Life rather than the joyous solemnity that proclaims the advent of the Higher Soul. The illumination in honour of Sabbath the Bride was a sorry spectacle. The jumble of brass chandeliers hung unburnished and most of them were empty. The synagogue had a troubled, a cowed look. It dared not shine brightly, nor burst into song merrily lest it should irritate the Gentiles. Here and there a man sat at his prayer book weeping quietly.
Members of the congregation who had not been on speaking terms for years had made peace, as a matter of course.The spreading frenzy of the Gentile population impressed them as an impersonal, elemental force. They were clinging to each other with the taciturnity of ship-passengers when the vessel shudders in the grip of danger. And not only did they nestle to each other, but the entire present generation felt drawn to all the former generations of their hunted race. The terrors of the Inquisition, the massacres, the exiles, the humiliations, of which one usually thought as something belonging to the province of books exclusively, had suddenly become realities. The Bloody Spot, the site of the present synagogue, where 800 Jews had been slain more than two centuries ago, gleamed redder than ever in every mind. It was both terrifying and a spiritual relief to beseech the souls of those eight hundred martyrs to pray for their panic-stricken descendants. The Russian Jews of 1881 felt themselves a living continuation of the entire tearful history of their people.
When the service was over, at last, the usual “Good Sabbath! Good Sabbath!” always so full of festivity, was uttered in lugubrious whispers, which really meant: “May God take pity upon us.” Nor was there a rush for the door. Quick, noisy movements were carefully avoided in these days.
Some of the worshippers had slowly filed out, when there was a stir, and the crowd scrambled back with terrified faces.
“Two Gentiles are coming, an army officer and a man in civilian clothes,” said some of those who came running back.
The look of terror gave way to one of eager curiosity. The appearance of two refined Gentiles was not the way an anti-Jewish riot was usually ushered in.
The “two Gentiles” turned out to be Dr. Lipnitzkyand Vladimir Vigdoroff, the one in his military uniform, and the other in a summer suit of rough duck. When they were recognised they were greeted with looks of affection and expectancy. The pious old-fashioned people who had hitherto regarded Dr. Lipnitzky despairingly as more Gentile than Jew, now thought of him tenderly as an advocate of Israel in the enemy’s camp.
“Don’t be so scared,” the little doctor said with friendly acerbity, as he paused in the centre of the synagogue. “We are Jews like yourselves—the same kind of Jews all of us. We were passing by, so we thought we would look in. We saw the synagogue was almost dark, though it is still so early. The lights could not yet have gone out. It’s enough to break one’s heart.” He was choking with embarrassment and emotion and his words produced a profound effect. People of his class were not in the habit of attending divine service. The doctor’s military uniform, in fact, had never been seen in a synagogue before. But the great point was that instead of Russian or Germanised Yiddish which he habitually affected with uneducated Jews he was now speaking in the plain, unembellished vernacular of the Ghetto. His listeners knew that he was the son of a poor illiterate brick-maker, a plain “Yiddish Jew” like themselves, yet they could scarcely trust their ears. They eyed his shoulder-straps and sword-hilt, and it seemed incredible that the man who wore these things was the man who was speaking this fluent, robust Yiddish. His halo of inaccessible superiority had suddenly faded away. Everybody warmed to him.
“We’ll be here to-morrow, we’ll attend the service. And next Saturday, too. Every Saturday. We’re Jews.” He could not go on. Some of his listeners had tears in their eyes. Vladimir was biting his lips nervously.
“Still, it is not to see you cry that we have come to you,” the doctor resumed: but he was interrupted by Clara’s father, who, advancing toward him with glaring eyes, said, in a voice shrill with rage:
“Now that Jewish blood is flowing in rivers you people come to do penance! It is too late. It is the sins of men like yourselves that have brought this punishment upon us. A Gentile Jew is even worse than a born Gentile.” He put up his fists to his temples and gasped: “Better become Christians! Better become Christians!”
The crowd had listened with bated breath, but at last somebody said: “Oh shut up!” and similar shouts burst from forty or fifty other men.
“We are all Jews, all brethren.”
“We’ll settle old scores some other time.”
“A good heart is as good as piety.”
“Yes, but why don’t you give the doctor a chance to speak?” Vladimir stepped up to his uncle and pleaded with him.
“Who is he?” said Dr. Lipnitzky with a smile. “Is he crazy?” And flying into a passion, he was about to address Rabbi Rachmiel, but held himself in check. A feeble old man of eighty with a very white beard was arguing from the Talmud with Clara’s father.
“‘The sinner who returns to God may stand upon ground upon which the righteous are not allowed to stand,’” he quoted. “Again, ‘Through penance even one’s sins are turned to good deeds.’”
When Rabbi Rachmiel tried to reply, he was shouted down by the crowd. They were yelling and gesticulating at him, when somebody mounted a bench and fell to swishing his arms violently. “Hush!” he said in a ferocious whisper. “Do you want to attract a mob?” His wordshad an immediate effect, and then Rabbi Rachmiel said to his nephew, in much milder but deeply grieved accents:
“Do you know what the Talmud says? ‘As long as you shall do the will of God no strange people shall domineer over you, but if you don’t do the will of God, God will hand you over to a low people, and not merely to a low people, but to the beasts of a low people.’”
“All right, rabbi. This is not the time for argument,” the doctor said, kindly. “I have some important information for you all, for all of us. There won’t be any rioting in this town. You may be sure of it. That’s what my young friend and I have dropped in to tell you. I have seen the governor”—his listeners pressed eagerly forward—“there will be plenty of protection. The main point is that you should not tempt the Gentiles to start a riot by showing them that you dread one. Don’t hide, nor keep your shops closed, as that would only whet one’s appetite for mischief. Do you understand what I say to you? This is the governor’s opinion and mine too. Everybody’s.”
His auditors nodded vigorous and beaming assent.
“He particularly warns the Jews not to undertake anything in the way of self-defence. That would only arouse ill-feeling. Besides, it’s against the law. It could not be tolerated. Do you understand what I am saying or do you not? Every precaution has been taken and there is really no danger. Do you understand? There is no danger, and if you go about your business and make no fuss it will be all right. I have spoken to several officers of my regiment, too. Of course, you wouldn’t have to look hard to find a Jew-hater among them, but they spoke in a friendly way and some of them are really good-natured fellows. They assured me that if the troops werecalled out they would protect our people with all their hearts.”
Every man in the group looked like a prisoner when the jury announces an acquittal. Some, in a flutter of joy, hastened to carry the news to their wives and children. The majority hung about the uniformed man, as if ready to stay all night in his salutary presence, while one man even ventured to say quite familiarly: “May you live long for this, doctor. Why, you have put new souls into us.” Whereupon he was told by another man, through clenched teeth, that it was just like him to push himself forward.
Each man had his own tale of woe to tell, his own questions to ask. One man, whose appearance and manner indicated that he was a tin-smith, had a son at the gymnasium and a Gentile neighbour whose wife became green with envy as often as she saw the Jewish boy in his handsome uniform. She was much better off than the tin-smith yet her children were receiving no education.
“But why should you pay any attention to her?” Dr. Lipnitzky asked.
“I don’t, but my wife does. You know how women are, doctor. They take everything hard. Last week the Gentile woman said aloud that it was impudent on the part of Jews to dress their boys up in gymnasium uniforms, as if they were noblemen, and that it was time Miroslav did like all God-fearing towns and started a riot against the Jews. So my wife is afraid to let the boy wear the uniform, and I think she is right, too. Let the eyes of that Gentile woman creep out of their sockets without looking at the child’s uniform. It is vacation time anyhow. But the boy, he cried all day and made a rumpus and said the school authorities would punish him if he was seen in the street without his uniform. Is ittrue, doctor? I am only an ignorant workman. What do I know?”
“Yes, it is true, and tell your wife not to mind that woman,” answered Dr. Lipnitzky, exchanging a woebegone look with Vladimir.
“I have some goods lying at the railroad station for me,” said a little man with a puckered forehead. “It has been there about a month. ‘Shall I take it to the shop so that the rioters may have some more goods to pillage?’ I thought to myself. Would you really advise me to receive it, doctor?”
Dr. Lipnitzky took fire. “Do you want me to sign a guarantee for it?” he said. “Do you want me to be responsible for the goods? You people are an awful lot.”
“I was merely asking your advice, doctor,” the man with the puckered forehead answered, wretchedly. “You can’t do much business these days, anyhow. The best Gentiles won’t pay. One has nothing but a book full of debts. Besides, when the door flies open one’s soul sinks. And when a Gentile customer comes in you pray God that he may leave your shop as soon as possible. For who knows but his visit may be a put-up job and that all he wants is to pick a quarrel as a signal for a lot of other rowdies to break in?”
“And the Gentile sees your cowardice,” the doctor cut in with an effect of continuing the man’s story, “and becomes arrogant, and this is the way a riot is hatched.” By degrees he resumed his superior manner and his Germanised Yiddish, but his tone remained warm.
“Arrogant!” said a tall, stooped, neatly-dressed jeweller. “You have told us of some honest officers, doctor. Well, the other day an army officer came into my place with a lady. He selected a ring for her, and when I said it wasforty rubles, he made no answer, but sent the lady away with the ring, and then—you should have seen him break out at me. I had put him to shame before a lady, he said. He was good for forty times forty dollars, and all the Jews were a lot of cut-throats and blood-suckers; that all we were good for was to ask officers to protect us against rioters, and that my shop was made up of ill-gotten wealth anyhow. I had never seen the man before and I insisted upon being paid; but he made such a noise, I was afraid a crowd might gather. So I let him go, but I sent out my salesman after him and he found out his name. Then I went before his colonel” (the jeweller named the regiment), “but what do you think the colonel said: ‘He’s a nice fellow. I shall never believe it of him. And if he owes you some money, he’ll pay you. At a time like this you Jews oughtn’t to press your claims too hard.’ That’s what the colonel said.”
When a shabby cap-maker with thick bloodless lips told how he had let a rough-looking Gentile leave his shop in a new cap without paying for it, the doctor flew into a passion.
“Why did you? Why did you?” he growled, stamping his feet, just as he would when the relatives of a patient neglected to comply with his orders. “It is just like you people. I would have you flayed for this.”
This only encouraged the cap-maker to go into the humour of the episode.
“I was poking around the market place, with a high pile of caps on either hand,” he said, “when I saw a Gentile with a face like a carrot covered full of warts. ‘Aren’t you ashamed to wear such acap?’says I. ‘Aren't you ashamed to spoil a handsome face like yours by that rusty, horrid old thing on your head?’”
“Oh, I would have you spanked,” the little doctor snarled smilingly. Whereupon several of the bystanders also smiled.
“Hold on, doctor. I spanked myself. Well, the Gentile was not hard to persuade, though when we got at my place he was rather hard to please. He kept me plucking caps from the ceiling until the very pole in my hand got tired of the job. At last he was suited. I thought he would ask how much. He didn’t. He did say something, but that was about anti-Jewish riots. ‘This cap will do,’ he then said, ‘Good-bye old man,’ and made for the door. And when I rushed after him and asked for the money he turned on me and stuck the biggest fig[D]you ever saw into my face. Since then when I see the good looks of a Gentile spoiled by a horrid old cap I try not to take it to heart.”
The doctor laughed. “And you let him go without paying?” he asked.
“I should say I did. I was glad he didn’t ask for the change.”
Another man confessed to having had an experience of this kind, a customer having exacted from him change from a ruble which he had never paid him.
“He was a tough looking customer, and he made a rumpus, so I thought to myself, ‘Is this the first time I have been out of some cash? Let him go hang himself.’ And the scoundrel, he gave me a laugh, called me accursed Jew into the bargain and went his way.”
“Did you ask him to call again?” the cap-maker demanded, and noticing Clara’s father by his side, he added: “This is not the way Rabbi Rachmiel’s wife does business,is it? She would make him pay her the dollar and the change, too.”
The doctor burst into laughter, the others echoing it noisily. Only Vladimir’s face wore a look of restless gravity. It was the restlessness of a man who is trying to nerve himself up to a first public speech. His heart was full of something which he was aching to say to these people, to unburden himself of, but his courage failed him to take the word. Presently a man too timid to seek information in the centre of the assembly addressed a whispered inquiry to Vladimir and Vladimir’s answer attracted the attention of two or three bystanders. Gradually a little colony branched off from the main body. He was telling them what he knew from the newspapers about the latest anti-Jewish outbreaks in various towns; and speaking in a very low voice and in the simplest conversational accents, he gradually passed to what weighed on his heart. He knew Yiddish very well indeed, yet he had considerable difficulty in speaking it, his chief impediment lying in his inability to render the cultured language in which he thought into primitive speech. His Yiddish was full of Russian and German therefore, but some of his listeners understood it all, while the rest missed but an occasional phrase.
“People like myself—those who have studied at the gymnasia and universities”—he went on in a brooding, plaintive undertone, “feel the misery of it all the more keenly because we have been foolish enough to imagine ourselves Russians, and to keep aloof from our own people. Many of us feel like apologising to every poor suffering Jew in Russia, to beg his forgiveness, to implore him to take us back. We were ashamed to speak Yiddish. We thought we were Russians. We speak the language ofthe Gentiles, and we love it so dearly; we have adopted their ways and customs; we love their literature; everything Russian is so dear to us; why should it not be? Is not this our birthplace? But the more we love it, the more we try to be like Russians, the more they hate us. My uncle, Rabbi Rachmiel, says it is too late to do penance. Well, I do feel like a man who comes to confess his sins and to do penance. It is the blood and the tears of our brothers and sisters that are calling to us to return to our people. And now we see how vain our efforts are to be Russians. There was a great Jew whose name was Heinrich Heine.” (Two of the men manifested their acquaintance with the name by a nod.) “He was a great writer of poetry. So he once wrote about his mother—how he had abandoned her and sought the love of other women. But he failed to find love anywhere, until ultimately he came to the conclusion that the only woman in whom he was sure of love was his own dear mother. This is the way I feel now. I scarcely ever saw the inside of a synagogue before, but now I, like the doctor, belong here. It is not a question of religion. I am not religious and cannot be. But I am a Jew and we all belong together. And when a synagogue happens to stand on a site like this——”