He broke off in the middle of the sentence. His allusion to the massacre of two centuries before inspired him with an appalling sense of the continuity of Jewish suffering. The others stood about gazing solemnly at him, until the scholarly old man of eighty with the very white beard broke silence. He raised his veined aged little hands over Vladimir’s head and said in a nervous treble:
“May God bless you, my son. That’s all I have to say.”
Vladimir was literally electrified by his words.
“But what do they want of us?” asked a man with a blueish complexion. “You say they are good-natured. Do you call it good-natured when one acts like a wild beast, bathing in the blood of innocent people?”
“Well, this is the Gentile way of being good-natured,” somebody put in, with a sneer, before Vladimir had time to answer.
“They have been turned into savages,” Vigdoroff then said. He maintained the low, mournful voice, though he now put a didactic tone into it. “They are blind, ignorant people. They are easily made a catspaw of.”
The man with the blueish complexion interrupted him. He spoke of Gentile cruelty, of the Inquisition, the Crusades, massacres, and almost with tears of rage in his eyes he defied Vladimir to tell him that Jews were capable of any such brutalities. Vladimir said no, Jews were not capable of any bloodshed, and went on defending the Russian people. The man with the sneer was beginning to annoy him. He was an insignificant looking fellow with very thin lips and a very thin flat blond beard. Even when his face was grave it had a sneering effect. He said very little. Only occasionally he would utter a word or two of which nobody else took notice. Yet it was chiefly to him that Vladimir was addressing himself. But the assembly was soon broken up. Rabbi Rachmiel’s wife came in at the head of several other women who were not afraid to walk through the streets after sundown in these days. They had grown uneasy about their husbands’ delay.
Vladimir saluted his aunt warmly. They exchanged a few words, but nothing was said of Clara. An “illegal” person like her could not be mentioned in public.
A LARGE crowd of peasants, in tall straw hats, many of them with their whips in their hands, congregated in front of the bailiff’s office at Zorki. It was a sultry afternoon in August. A single shirt of coarse white linen and a pair of trousers of the same material were all the clothes the men wore. The trousers were very wide and baggy but drawn tight at the bottom by means of strings, so that they dropped at the ankles blouse-fashion, and the loose-fitting shirt fell over the trousers with a similar effect. Most of the shirts were embroidered in red and blue. Sometimes, as a result of special rivalry among the young women, one village will affect gaudier embroidery and more of it than its neighbours. This could be seen now at one corner of the crowd where a group of peasants, all from the same place, defined itself by the flaming red on the upper part of their sleeves. There were women, too, in the crowd, the girls in wreaths of artificial flowers and all of them in ribbons and coral beads, though some of them were barefoot.
A strong smell of primitive toil emanated from their bodies; primitive ideas and primitive interests looked out of their eyes. The northern moujik—the Great, or “real,” Russian—who speaks the language of Turgeneff and Tolstoy, has less poetry than the Little-Russian, buthe also has less cunning and more abandon. To be sure, the cunning of the Zorki peasant is as primitive as his whole mind. Very few men in the crowd now standing in front of the bailiff’s office could have managed to add such two numbers as six and nineteen, or to subtract the weight of an empty pail from the weight of a pail of honey. Their book-keeping consists of notches on the door-jamb, and their armour in the battle of life is a cast-iron distrustfulness.
At last the bailiff made his appearance, adjusted the straps of his sword across his breast, and asked what they wanted. A tall old fellow with a drooping steel-grey moustache came out of the crowd, hat in hand, and bowed deeply, as he said:
“It’s like this, your nobleness. We wish to know when that paper from the Czar about the Jews will be read to us?”
“What paper from the Czar?” the bailiff asked. “What are you talking about?” He was a dry-boned man, but ruddy-faced and with very narrow almond-shaped eyes. As he now looked at the crowd through the sharp afternoon glare his eyes glistened like two tiny strips of burnished metal.
“Your nobleness need not be told what paper. It’s about beating the Jews and taking away their goods.”
The scene was being watched by several Jews, plucky fellows who had come in the interests of their people at the risk of being the first victims of mob fury. Among these was Yossl, Makar’s father, at once the most intellectual and strongest looking man in the delegation. In the meantime the other Jews, stupefied and sick with fear, had closed their shops and dwellings and were hiding in cellars and in garrets, in the ruins of an old churchand in the woods. Two women gave birth to stillborn children during the commotion, one of these at the bedside of her little boy who was too sick to be moved.
“You are a fool,” the bailiff said to the spokesman, with a smile, as he raised his narrow eyes in quest of some Gentile with whom he might share the fun. “You are a lot of fools. Better go home. There is no such paper in the world. Whoever told you there was?”
“Why, everybody says so. In most places they finished the job long ago. Only we are a lot of slow coaches, people say. And then, when the higher authorities find out about it, who will be fined or put in jail? We, poor peasants. As if we did not have troubles enough as it is.”
“What will you be put in jail for?” asked the bailiff, chuckling to himself.
Here a younger peasant whispered in thespokesman’sear not to let himself be bamboozled.
Speaking with unwonted boldness, born of the conviction that the bailiff was suppressing a document of the Czar, the tall fellow said:
“You can’t fool us, your nobleness. We are only peasants, but what we know we know.” And he went on to enumerate villages where, according to rumour, the paper had already been read and acted upon. “Although uneducated, yet we are not such fools as your nobleness takes us for. If it is a ukase direct from the Czar we aren’t going to take chances, sir. Not we, sir. Better read it to us and let’s be done with it. We have no time to waste, sir.”
One of the Jews was going to make a suggestion, but he was shouted down and waved aside.
The bailiff made a gesture of amused despair and turned to go back, when the peasants stepped forward, and chatteringexcitedly, they gave him to understand that they would not let him go until he had shown them the imperial ukase. The purport of their remonstrance was to the effect that the Jews had bribed him to suppress the document. The bailiff took it all good-naturedly. In his heart of hearts he was looking forward to the sport of an anti-Jewish outbreak with delight; but the noise brought the local priest upon the scene—a kindly elderly man with the face of a whimpering peasant girl. He was a victim of official injustice himself and he implored the crowd to listen to reason. His face, at once comic and piteous, was the main cause of his failures. He was a well-educated priest, yet he was kept in this obscure town. His sacerdotal locks, meant to be long and silken, hung in stiff, wretched little clumps. Nevertheless, as he now stood in his purple broad-sleeved gown, appealing to the multitude of white figures, his cross sparkling in the sun, the spectacle was like a scene of the early days of Christianity.
“It is a great sin to circulate wicked falsehoods like that and it is just as much of a sin to credit them,” he said in a pained heartfelt voice. “Ours is a good Czar. He does not command his children to do violence to human beings.”
“Oh, well, little father,” one peasant broke in. “You don’t seem to have heard of it. That’s all. If the Czar has not ordered it, then why do they beat the Jews everywhere else and the police and soldiers stand by and see to it that they do the work well?”
The bailiff burst into a horse-laugh and slapped his knees violently. The priest’s face bore a look of despair.
“Can it be that you believe such foolishness?” he said.
“What do we know? We are only common people. All we do know is that whatever happens it is our skin that ispeeled off. If we can’t get the paper we’ll do our duty without it.”
“That’s it, without it!” the others chimed in in excited chorus.
Further parleying made it clear that many of them had no inclination to do any personal harm to the Jews or to their property. They were on friendly terms with their Jewish neighbours, and all they wanted was to get rid of a disagreeable duty. The rest, about half of the entire crowd, had had their heads turned with stories of lakes of vodka and fabulous piles of loot, but even these proved susceptible to argument.
“Here,” Yossl shouted at the top of his voice and with great fervour. “I have a scheme, and what will you lose by it if you hear me out? If you don’t like it, I’ll take it back and it won’t cost you a cent.” The intensity of his manner took them by storm. He was allowed to finish. “My scheme amounts to this: The Jews will sign a paper taking upon themselves all responsibility for your failure to smash their shops and houses, so that if the authorities call you to account for violating the imperial ukase, we will answer and you will come out clear.”
First there was perplexed stillness, then a murmur of distrust, and finally a tumult of rejection.
“Crafty Jew! There must be some trick in it!” they yelled sneeringly.
The priest was wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Finally he shoutedhuskily:
“Very well, I’ll sign such a paper.”
After some more arguing, the plan, in its amended form, was adopted. The older men flaunted their experience by insisting upon a formal “certificate” bearing the priest’s official seal and signature, so that when the Czar’s inspectorsarrived the peasants might have something tangible to present. When all this had been complied with, there was some portentous talk about the Jews sprinkling the bargain with vodka; but having followed the “little father’s” advice in the main point the peasants were now in a yielding mood toward him generally, and the vodka shops being closed, he had no difficulty in getting them to go home sober.
A large number of them had to cross the river. To occupy their minds while they were waiting for the ferry—a small antediluvian affair which could only accommodate about one-fifth of the crowd at a time—the priest asked them for a song. And then the quiet evening air resounded with those pensive, soulful strains which for depth of melancholy have scarcely an equal in the entire range of folk-music. Thus the men who might now have been frenzied with the work of pillage, devastation and, perhaps, murder, stood transfixed with the poetry of anguish and pity. Race distinctions and ukases—how alien and unintelligible these things were to the world in which their souls dwelt at this minute! The glint of the water grew darker every second. The men on the ferry continued their singing. Then somebody on the other side joined in and the melody spread in all directions. The fresh ringing treble of a peasant girl, peculiarly doleful in its high notes, came from across the water. A choir of invisible choirs, scattered along both banks, sang to the night of the sadness of human existence.
The Jews returned from their hiding-places, but very few of them went to bed that night. The tragedy in many houses was intensified by the circumstance that the heads of these families were absent from the town, having gone to the Good Jew for prayer and advice as to the spreadingcalamity. Weinstein’s spacious rooms were full of neighbours and their families. The presence of the man whom one had been accustomed to regard as a monument of worldly power had a special attraction for the poorer Pietists this evening. Besides, one dreaded the hallucinations of solitude and in Weinstein’s house one was sure to find company. Most of them sat in the large prayer room, keeping close to each other, conversing in subdued, melancholy voices, comfortable in the community of their woe, as though content to remain in this huddle until the end of time. Yossl was curling his black side-locks morosely. The other people in the room importuned him for details of the scene in front of the bailiff’s office, but he was not in the mood for speaking. Weinstein was snapping his fingers at his own florid neck, as he walked backward and forward. Presently Maria, his Gentile servant, who spoke good Yiddish, addressed him, with sad, sympathetic mien:
“Master dear,” she said in Yiddish. “Will you let me break a couple of windows?”
He did not understand.
“You see,” she explained bursting into tears. “If they get at me because I did not smash things in your house, I’ll be able to swear that I did.” For an instant he stood surveying her, then, in a spasm of rage and misery, he shrieked out:
“Why, certainly! Go ahead! Break, smash, everything you set your eye on. You are the princess, we are only Jews. Go smash the whole house.” And in his frenzy he went breaking windows and chairs, shrieking as he did so:
“Here! Look and let your heart rejoice.”
“Madman,” Yossl said calmly, “you’ll alarm the town. They’ll think it’s a riot and the Gentiles will join in.”
Weinstein sat down pale and panting. “Go and tell your people to come and delight in the sight of a Jew’s broken windows,” he said to the Gentile woman.
She put her hands to her face and left the room sobbing.
THE little man who played the part of errand boy at the cheese shop and who was arrested before the work on the mine was well advanced had ultimately turned state’s evidence. Among the revolutionists he betrayed was Pavel, but the prince was known to him under a false name. Still, the information furnished by his man, added to some addresses found on other captured Nihilists, led to a series of new arrests. The ranks of the Will of the People were being rapidly decimated. Grisha, the dynamiter, and several other members of the innermost circle were seized shortly after the killing of the Czar. The few surviving leaders withdrew to the provinces, in some cases only immediately to fall into the hands of the police there. Thus in April, after a Jewish student girl was arrested in Kieff, the “trap” at her lodgings caught a woman and a man who proved to be Baska, the “wife” of the “cheesemonger” couple, and her real husband, “the German.” Urie (the “cheesemonger”), Makar and several other active revolutionists were in Moscow.
One late afternoon Clara was slowly pacing the painted floor of her room, her hands clasped behind her, while her lover lay on the lounge, watching her through the gathering dusk.
“St. Petersburgistoo hot now,” he said, breaking a long silence. “Everybody is going away.”
“There is really no use staying here just at present,” she assented, sadly, without pausing.
They grew silent again. The gloom of the little parlour was thickening so rapidly that it seemed as though the outline of Clara’s face, as she walked back and forth, became vaguer every time she turned in Pavel’s direction.
Presently, with a burst of amorous tenderness, he got up, saying:
“Clanya! Let us go for a rest somewhere. You know you need it.”
“You need it even more than I do, poor boy,” she replied, stepping up close to him. “I do wish you would go home for a month or two—or somewhere else. As to myself, I should first like to see my parents. The riots may strike Miroslav at any moment. If any harm came to them, I should never forgive myself. I must get them away from there. That’s all I can think of.” There was an obvious blank in her words. She left something unsaid, and the consciousness of it made him uncomfortable.
“But that’s easily arranged,” he urged. “You can send them money and invite them to some safe place.”
“That’s what I have been thinking of. I am so restless I wish I could start to-morrow. It couldn’t be arranged too soon. There are persistent rumors that a riot is coming there. I shan’t be gone long, dearest.”
He had it at the tip of his tongue to force a discussion of their party’s attitude toward the riots and to have it out once for all. In his imagined debates with her on the subject he had often exclaimed: “I happen to belong to a class of land-robbers and profligates; now, suppose the revolution breaks out and my class is attacked by thepeople, will that affect me? A nice revolutionist I should be if it did!” This and other arguments were all ready; what he lacked, however, was the courage to bring up the topic. As to her promise to marry him when the great conspiracy was out of the way, her redeeming it now, while she was so tremulously absorbed in the question of her parents’ safety, could not be thought of.
He gathered her to him and kissed her, at once sympathetically and appealingly.
“Go home, Pasha,” she besought. “But not to Miroslav. You won’t rest there. Go to some of your mother’s country places, or, perhaps some other place would be safer for you. Go and take good care of yourself. It would be too terrible if I found you arrested when I got back.”
“Will you marry me then?” he asked, impersonating a pampered child.
She nodded, in the same playful spirit, and again her reticence brought disquiet to his heart. “Something tells me she’ll never be mine,” he thought with a sigh.
While the government was actively fomenting the riots, making an electric rod of the Jews, the Nihilists persisted in mistaking them for revolutionary kindling wood. While the “Chronicle of Arrests” in the revolutionary organ included a large number of Jewish names, several of them of persons conspicuous in the movement and noted for their pluck, another page of the same issue contained a letter from the riot-ridden district that was strongly flavoured with anti-Semitism. Moreover, a proclamation, addressed to the peasantry, was printed on an “underground” press, naming the Czar, the landlords and the Jews as enemies of the people. This proclamation met with a storm of disapproval, however, on the part of Gentilesand Jews alike, and was withdrawn from circulation. Chaos reigned in the minds of the Nihilists. Their party was disorganised, their thinkers for the most part buried, dead or alive, the editorial management of their publications in the hands of the weakest man on the Executive Committee, of one who several years later sent, from Paris, a most servile petition to the Czar, abjuring his former views and begging permission to return home as an advocate of unqualified absolutism and panslavism.
The attitude of the Nihilists toward the Jewish population in general was thus anything but sympathetic; and yet, so far as the higher strata of the movement were concerned, the personal relations between Jew and Gentile were not affected by this circumstance in the slightest degree. The feeling of intimate comradeship and mutual devotion between the two elements was left unmarred, as if one’s views on the Jewish question were purely a matter of abstract reasoning without any bearing on the Jew of flesh and blood one happened to know.
More than this, in their blind theorising according to preconceived formulas, most of the active Jewish Nihilists shut their eyes to the actual state of things and joined their Gentile comrades in applauding the riots as an encouraging sign of the times, as “a popular revolutionary protest.”
Pavel longed to discuss the riots with Makar. When he saw him, however, he found him far more interested in the “new revolutionary program” upon which he was engaged than in the anti-Semitic crusade.
“As if it was the first time Jewish blood had been shed,” he said, answering a question from Pavel, half-heartedly. “The entire history of the Jews is one continuous riot. Indeed, the present outbreaks are a mere flea-bite to whatthey have undergone before. So, what has happened to make one revise one’s views on the movement? One might as well stay away from theWill of the Peoplebecause, forsooth, Jews were burned by Gentiles in the 15th century. Nonsense.”
“Clara doesn’t seem to take it quite so easy,” Pavel thought to himself.
“Clara has gone to meet her parents,” he said, thirsting to talk of her.
“Has she? There may be a riot in Miroslav at any time. I wonder how Zorki is getting along. But then my father will be able to take care of himself,—and of Miriam, too,” he added, lukewarmly. The only thing of which he could have spoken with enthusiasm in these days was his program.
Pavel came away hankering for more conversation about his fiancée and about the riots. Instead of seeking rest and safety, as he had promised Clara to do, he coveted a new sort of excitement and danger. He felt that there was something wrong about that crusade, and he had a sportsmanlike craving to see it for himself. Lacking the courage to criticise his party, he accused himself of allowing his revolutionary convictions to be affected by the interests of his love; yet he continued to pray in his heart that the Jews of Miroslav, at least, might be spared. He read all he found in the newspapers about the atrocities, and on taking up a paper he would tremble lest it should contain news of a riot in his birthplace.
When he read of the Miroslav panic he went there at once.
“If it’s really a riot she’ll never come back to me,” he brooded, wretchedly.
The rumours of an impending catastrophe were assuming definite outline in Miroslav. A date was mentioned and tall Great-Russians in red shirts—specialists at the business—were said to have been seen about town. Great-Russia is and has always been strictly without the pale of Jewish settlement, it being one of the characteristic features of the anti-Semitic riots of the period that their leaders were imported from the rabble in those districts in which very few people had an idea what a Jew looked like.
The Jews of Miroslav sent a snug bribe to Pavel’s uncle, but their agent came back with the money. The governor had commissioned him to assure them that everything would be done to make an outbreak impossible, but “gratitude” he would not accept. The Jews took alarm. “If he doesn’t eat honey,” they said, in the phrase of a current proverb, “then it looks bad indeed.” When a deputation of representative men called on him he lost his temper.
“You Jews are too intense, that’s what’s the trouble with you,” he said, blinking his eyes. “I have let you know twice that there is no cause for alarm, yet it seems that it is not enough for you.” When he had softened down he talked quite at length, although in a haughty tone of authority and immeasurable aloofness, of the steps he had taken. The main point was that the Jews should not tempt people to lawlessness by betraying anxiety. He delivered quite a lecture on the point. The deputation came away greatly encouraged. They knew of the extensive business relations which the managers of his estates had with Jewish merchants, and they argued, among themselves, that a riot, involving as it usually did the wholesale destruction of Jewish property and a general demoralisation of business, could not but entail serious financial lossesupon himself. This was in keeping with declarations made by the boards of trade at Moscow, Warsaw and Kharkoff, the three chief centres of Russian commerce, regarding the anti-Jewish crusade. These bodies had pointed out the importance of the Jews of the south as the prime movers of local industry, as almost the exclusive connecting link between the south of Russia and the world markets of Germany and England; accordingly, they had protested against the anti-Semitic campaign as a source of ruin to the economic interests of the whole empire. All this the members of the deputation were aware of, so they saw no reason to doubt the sincerity of the governor’s pledges. His advice not to put the thought of a riot in the popular mind by a demonstration of timidity produced a strong impression.
The upshot was that the Jews of Miroslav were afraid to be afraid. A singular mood took hold of them. Everybody made an effort to act upon the presumption that Miroslav was immune, that it was in an exceptional position, and at the same time everyone read suspense and mortal fear in the eyes of everyone else. It was like walking in one’s stocking feet with a spectacular effect of making a noise. Jewish women still avoided the proximity of Christian men, and a Jewish face that did not look Jewish was still eyed enviously as a shield against violence. The only tangible manifestation of the spirit advocated by the governor was a slight lengthening of business hours. Since the beginning of the panic Jewish tradesmen had been closing their shops before it was quite dark—three or four hours earlier than usual. Now they compromised on keeping them open until the street lamps were lit. Nevertheless those of them who depended on Christian trade continued to treat their customers with a gentleness anda fawning attention that had nothing to do with the ordinary blandishments of the counter. Inveterate rogues among Jewish tradesmen became honest men. On the other hand a most respectable Gentile often yielded to temptation that amounted to downright robbery, while the license of “shady Christian characters” was asserting itself more portentously every day.
A queer story came from one of the suburbs. When three Gentiles wearing red shirts entered an out-of-the-way house to inquire the road, their appearance frightened the two Jewish women they found there out of the place, whereupon one of these, in a frenzy of terror, jumped into a well and was drowned. Meanwhile the three strangers, finding themselves alone, stripped the house of its valuables—a finale which struck the fancy of a notorious thief and his gang, who then put on red shirts and made a practice of plundering Jewish houses after scaring away their occupants. The thief was known as Petroucha Sivoucha, which, foregoing the rhyme, may be rendered as Cheap Vodka Pete. When he was arrested at last he said, impersonating a simple-minded peasant:
“But it was only Jewish stuff and everybody says a Gentile is welcome to it nowadays, that such is the will of our little father, the Czar.”
The riots continued to spread, and while they did, General Ignatyeff, the new Minister of the Interior, announced measure after measure against the Jews. In a country where every official is perpetually craning his neck toward the capital, it was only natural that an attitude like this on the part of the Minister of the Interior should create an atmosphere of anti-Semitic partiality amid which justice to the Jew became impossible. Ignatyeff knew of the widespread rumour as to the existence of an imperialukase ordering the peasantry to plunder and commit violence upon the Jews. Apart from his official sources of information, the newspapers were full of instances showing the effect of that rumour, yet he did nothing to stop it or to disabuse the minds of the peasantry in that connection. This was interpreted by the officials as a sign that the rumour was not meant to be stopped, and it was not.
Governor Boulatoff’s encouraging answers to the Jews of his province brought to Miroslav hundreds of people from other towns. Some of these were victims of former atrocities, left without shelter in their native places; others had not yet been through an anti-Semitic outbreak, but dreaded one.
While people from other provinces were flocking to Miroslav in quest of safety the leading Miroslav families were quietly sending their wives and children abroad and taking their valuables to the government bank. The offices of Dr. Lipnitzky and of Sender the Arbitrator, Vladimir’s father, were visited by scores of panic-stricken people daily.
“The rich people put their money and their plate in the bank,” said a teamster’s wife to Vladimir and his father, “but what shall we do with our traps?”
“Don’t worry, my dear woman, there will be no riot in Miroslav,” the Arbitrator reassured her.
“It’s all very well to say don’t worry,” the woman retorted sharply. “You people can afford to say it, because your house is safe. But if they kill my husband’s horse and destroy his truck, we’ll have to go begging. It did not come easy, I can assure you.” She burst into tears. “The years that it has taken to save it all up, the pinching, the scrimping—all in order that a thousand ghosts might have something to grab. And what are we going to dowith ourselves? Where shall we hide? As to my husband and myself, well, all they can do is to kill us, but how about the children?” And again she burst into sobs.
When an old woman who had two unmarried daughters, “both as handsome as a tree,” described her despair concerning them, Vladimir’s mother invited the girls to stay with her until the storm was over. And then scores of other mothers begged her, with heart-breaking lamentations and kisses, to take pity on their daughters also; which she could not do for sheer lack of room.
The Vigdoroffs felt reasonably safe because Rasgadayeff, their Gentile landlord and friend, was sure to keep the marauders away. Indeed, the example of all previous outbreaks had shown that in most cases it was enough for any Gentile to tell the rioters that he was the proprietor of the house and that there were no Jews on his premises for them to pass cordially on, and Rasgadayeff was one of the conspicuous and popular figures in the Gentile community of the town. It is true that he was looking forward to an anti-Semitic upheaval with joy himself, but his liking for the Vigdoroffs was sincere.
Vladimir’s father went about among his depositors asking to be relieved of their money, jewelry or silver spoons. They refused to accept it. Finally he moved his iron safe to Rasgadayeff’s apartment.
Vladimir was in despair. He felt it quite likely that the panic should be father to a catastrophe, as the governor had said. Once when he spoke in this strain at his father’s table, his mother remarked with light irony:
“Look at the brave man. Look at the Cossack of straw.”
The retort struck cruelly home. He knew that his heart grew faint every time the anti-Semitic mobs picturedthemselves vividly in his brain, although often, indeed, he had a queer feeling as if it would be disappointing to see Miroslav left out of the list of towns that were sharing in the tragic notoriety of the year, and visioned himself going through the experiences of a most brutal outbreak without facing its dangers. The tragedy of his people filled his heart. He watched them in their terror, in their misery, in their clinging despairing love of their children; he studied their frightened look, their shrinking, tremulous attitudes. Every Jewish woman he met struck him as a hunted bird, on the alert for the faintest sound, trembling over the fate of her nest. He saw many of them packing their things to flee, they did not know whither. Indeed, the whole historical life of his race seemed to have been spent in packing, in moving, in fleeing without knowing whither. “Oh, my poor, my unhappy people!” Vladimir said to himself, in a spasm of agony, yet with a glow of pleasure in calling them his people. In his heart of hearts he knew that while he told everybody to take courage his own mind was barren of conviction as to what was the best thing to do. He felt crushed. He lost his head.
One day, as Vladimir walked along the street, his attention was arrested by a rough-looking young man who was circling round him, and scrutinising him now on this side, now on that. He felt annoyed. He was not sure that the young man was a Jew, and as he asked him sternly, “What are you looking at?” he was conscious of a little qualm of timidity.
“Excuse me, sir,” the other answered, in Yiddish. “I saw you at the synagogue that Friday night. Do you remember?”
They paused. The young man had the manner of a Jewish horse-driver or blacksmith. He was robust andbroad-shouldered with small very sparse teeth, somewhat bow-legged and somewhat cross-eyed. His coat was literally in tatters and gave off a strong smell of herring.
“Well?” asked Vladimir.
“I have been wanting to see you, sir, only I have been too bashful.” He gave a smile, his tongue showing between his sparse teeth.
Vigdoroff rather liked his manner and invited him to his father’s house. On their way thither the young man said that his name was Zelig and that he was a cooper by trade, making a specialty of herring barrels. When they found themselves alone in Vladimir’s room, Zelig grew still more bashful, and after surveying the room, to make sure that they were not overheard, he said:
“I want to belong to the committee.”
“What committee?”
“You need not be on the lookout with me, sir; I am no babbler.”
It appeared that there was a defence committee in town, with educated young men at the head, and that in case of a riot it was expected to fight “to the last drop of a fellow’s blood,” as Zelig phrased it. That there should be such a thing in Miroslav without him being so much as aware of its existence hurt Vladimir keenly.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said, blankly.
“Don’t you really?” said Zelig. “I was sure you were in it and that you could get me in, too. Why, everybody knows about it. Only the committee is strict, because if the police hears of it, they’ll all be arrested. It’s against the law.” As he offered him more detail of the matter he became patronisingly enthusiastic and confided to him the names of Elkin and of several university students now on their vacation as the organisers and leaders of themovement. Vladimir knew these young men and his pain became sharper still.
“But what good will it do?” he said, drily. “It will only lead to trouble.”
“Trouble! The idea of an educated man speaking like that! Can there be more trouble than the Jews are in now? I don’t see why we should sell ourselves so cheap. Once we are going to be licked, why act like a lot of sticks? Let us pay them for their bother at least. Come what may, when they attack us, let us go to work and crack their skulls at least—with lumps of iron, clubs or even pistols. Let us fondle them so that a ghost may get into every bone of theirs.” His words were accompanied with mighty swings of his shoulders and arms and these gesticulations of his had a peculiar effect on Vladimir. They stirred his blood, they hypnotised him. “What is the danger? They’ll kill us? Let them. As if the life of a Jew were worth living! Besides, aren’t they killing and maiming us anyhow?”
“But look here,” Vigdoroff said seriously. “The governor has promised us protection and he is perfectly sincere about it. Now if he learns that our people take the law in their own hands, it may do us great harm. It is a very serious matter.”
“Spit upon him, sir! I’m an uneducated man, but the governor—a ghost into his father’s father!—may all he wishes the Jews befall his own head.”
“That’s all true enough, but now he has promised us protection, and an organisation of that kind is against the law and may lead to trouble,” Vigdoroff said with perfunctory irritation.
“And an organisation of rioters is not against the law? And robbing and killing innocent people is notagainst the law? Long life to you, sir; you’re so wise, so educated and yet you are speaking like a baby. Look here, sir! If the governor—a plague take him—is as good as his word, and he does not allow the riot to get started, well and good. Then we’ll call the bargain off. But suppose he proves to be neither better nor worse than all governors?”
Zelig knew of a number of other Jewish artisans who were anxious to join the “committee,” and he urged Vigdoroff to visit their gathering and to give them a talk like the one Zelig had heard from him at the Synagogue on that Friday night. “Oh, that was sweet as sugar,” he said, kissing two of his dirty fingers. “You see, when it comes to striking a scoundrel’s snout such a blow as will set his eyes raining sparks, we want no help. That we can manage ourselves, but we are only common people, and when a smart man like you says a couple of words, they simply go melting in a fellow’s bones.”
“But I don’t know anything about the ‘committee.’”
Zelig laughed familiarly. “Sender-the-Arbitrator’s son doesn’t know! If you only had the desire, you could belong to it yourself and introduce us fellows, too.”
“Very well. I’ll consider it. And I should advise you men to do the same.”
“Consider it! We are only plain uneducated people, but we aren’t going to do any considering. I have a sister, sir, and if a Gentile lays a finger on her he’ll be a dead man, I can tell you that. Jewish blood is being spilled by the bucket and here you are talking of ‘considering.’” He insisted that Vladimir should attend the meeting of his informal society, and Vladimir, completely in his power, promised to do so.
That evening, in a spacious barn, half of which was crowded with barrels of herring, Vladimir found Zelig and some fifteen chums of his. Zelig was playing with a huge iron key. He was employed here and the meeting was held by his employer’s permission. For more than nine persons to assemble without a police permit is a crime; so it gave Vigdoroff satisfaction to reflect that he was now incurring risks similar to those incurred by Clara and her friends. The gathering seemed to be made up of mechanics and labourers exclusively. One of the men present was the sneering fellow whom Vigdoroff had seen at the synagogue. Of the others Vladimir’s attention was attracted by two big burly young butchers with dried-up blood about their finger-nails, a chimney-sweep, who looked like a jet-black negro, with white teeth and red lips, and three men with medals from the late war which they apparently expected to act as an amulet against Gentile rowdies. The chimney-sweep sat apart, cracking sunflower seeds. Now and again he made as though to throw his sooty arms round somebody’s neck and then burst into laughter over his own joke. All the others looked grave. They showed Vigdoroff much respect and attention. Even the sneering man made a favourable impression on him to-night. Only he himself was so ill at ease he could scarcely take part in the conversation. Other men came. When one of these proved to be Motl, the trunk-maker in his aunt’s employ, Vigdoroff felt somewhat more at home.
One of the retired soldiers took to bragging of the courage he and his two comrades had shown at the taking of Plevna, and when one of the other two signed to him to stop boasting, he said, with a blush:
“I am saying all this because—because—what good did it do us? Does the Czar pat us on the head for it?We risked our lives and many of our people died under Plevna, and yet if we tried to settle in Great-Russia we would be kicked out neck and crop, wouldn’t we?”
“Indeed we would, war record, medal and all,” one of the other two chimed in.
“And why? Because we are Jews. We were not chased home from the firing line because we were Jews, were we?”
“Talk of Great-Russia,” somebody put in. “As if in a place like Miroslav we were allowed to live in peace.”
Another man assented with a sigh, adding: “If a thousandth part of the courage shown by the Jews in the war was shown in our self-defence against Gentiles, the Gentiles would have more respect for us.”
The conversation turned on the subject of pistols, but the proposition was overruled.
“Before we get pistols and learn to use them we’ll be asleep under a quilt of earth,” said Zelig. “Why, what ails my cooper’s hatchet, or a hammer, or a plain crowbar?”
Every time Vigdoroff opened his mouth the faces of the others would become tense with expectation. But he had nothing to say except to ask an occasional question, and every time Zelig, playing with his enormous iron key, pressed him for a speech, he would adjure him, in a flutter of embarrassment, to let it go this time.
They talked of the prospective fight in phrases like “forwarding a remittance to one’s snout” or “pulling up sharp under a fellow’s peeper,” which amused and jarred on him at once. For the rest, there was a remarkable flow of common sense, humour and feeling. The gathering cast a spell over him. He had come with the partial intention of speaking against their scheme, yet now he felt that he could much more readily face a gang of armedGentiles than betray a faint heart to these Jewish artisans. Moreover—and this was the great point with him at the present moment—he felt that with these men by his side he could fling himself into the very thick of the hottest fight. A peculiar sense of solemnity and of gratification came over him. He followed their talk reverentially. He humbly offered to call on one of the leaders of the Defence Committee and to apply for the admission of this group with himself as one of its members.
His first dawn of consciousness as he opened his eyes next morning was of something exceedingly important and solemn which somehow had the flavour of herring. The active participation of a man like Elkin in the work of the Defence Committee was a source of disappointment to him. He usually kept out of Elkin’s way, as much for his venomous pleasantry as for his revolutionary affiliations which he divined from his friendship with Clara. He wondered whether he meant to give the affair a revolutionary character. “He must have warned the other members against me as a silk stocking and a coward,” Vigdoroff said to himself bitterly. “That’s probably the way Clara describes me.”
The next morning he was surprised by a visit from Elkin himself. The revolutionist frowned as he spoke, but this was clearly a disguise for his embarrassment.
“Look here, Vigdoroff,” he said. “There has not been much love lost between you and me, but that’s foolish—at a time like this anyhow. We must all work together. We are all Jews. I understand you have organised a number of good fellows. Let them join the others.”
Vigdoroff’s heart beat fast, with emotion as well as with a sense of flattered pride. He would never have expected Elkin capable of such soulful talk. Moreover his speakingof himself as a Jew seemed to imply that he had abandoned Nihilism. “So we ‘cowards’ were not so very wrong after all,” he thought to himself triumphantly.
“In the first place,” he answered, “it wasn’t I who organised them. It was just the other way, in fact.”
“Well, anyhow, let them join the rest.”
“Of course we will. Only look here, Elkin. You have been frank with me——”
“I know what you mean, but you need not worry. I won’t get you in trouble,” Elkin replied with his usual venom in his lozenge-shaped sneer. And then, kindly: “It is not as a Russian revolutionist that I have gone into this thing. I am one, as much as ever; I have not changed my views a bit, in fact. But that’s another matter. All I want to say is that in this thing I am as a Jew, as a child of our unhappy, outraged, mud-bespattered people.”
PAVEL’S mother, the countess, had not been in Miroslav since March. She lived in retirement on one of her estates in another province, in a constant tremour of fear and compunction. The image of Alexander II. bleeding in the snow literally haunted her. She took it for granted that Pavel had had a hand in the bloody plot, and she felt as though she, too, had been a party to it.
To ascertain the situation with regard to the riot rumours Pavel called on his uncle, the governor. He found him dozing on a bench in his orchard, a stout cane in one hand and a French newspaper in the other. The old satrap was dressed in a fresh summer suit of Caucasian silk, which somehow emphasised the uncouth fleshiness of his broad nose. He was overjoyed to see his nephew, and he plunged into the subject of the riots at once and of his own accord. It was evidently one of those situations upon which he usually had to unburden his mind to somebody.
“Can you tell me what they are up to in that great city of yours?” he said, referring to St. Petersburg and the higher government circles and blinking as he spoke. “There is an administration for you! Perhaps you younger fellows are smarter than we oldsters. Perhaps, perhaps.” He took out a golden cigarette case, lit a cigarette and went on blinking, sneeringly.
His words implied that Pavel, being one of the younger generation, was, morally at least, identified with the administration of the young Czar.
“What do you mean, uncle?” he inquired.
“What do I mean? Why, I mean that they don’t want those riots stopped. That’s plain enough, isn’t it?”
This was a slap at the doctrine of Pavel’s party concerning the outrages, and he resented it as well as he could.
“But you have no evidence for such an accusation, uncle,” he said. “That’s a mere theory of yours.”
“I knew you would stick up for your generation. Ha, ha, ha! Quite commendable in a young chap, too. Ha, ha, ha!”
“But where is your evidence?”
“You want to know too much, Pasha. Too young for that. If they wanted the riots stopped, it would be a case of one, two, three, and there she goes! That’s as much as I can tell you, and if you are really clever you can understand the rest yourself.”
“He is in league with his fellow fleecers, the Jewish usurers,” Pavel remarked inwardly. “He simply cannot afford an anti-Jewish demonstration, the old bribe-taker.”
“Neither can you,” a voice retorted from Pavel’s heart, “though for quite different reasons.”
Prince Boulatoff called on Orlovsky, the government clerk in whose house the local revolutionists held their meetings. The first thing that struck him was Orlovsky’s loss of girth.
“Hello, Aliosha,” he said heartily, meeting him at the gate.
“Why, Pasha!” The clerk flung himself upon him, and they exchanged three prolonged kisses.
“By Jove,” Pavel went on, “you are so changed I came near letting you pass. Why, what has become of your bulk, old boy? Have you been ill?”
“Not exactly,” the other answered, leading the way indoors; then, as his face broke into an expression of wan joy, he added: “Been in love, devil wrench it. I take these things rather too hard, I suppose, but that’s a small matter. How have you been? Climbing upward in the service of the revolution, aren’t you?”
The room was the same. The huge tin samovar stood on the floor.
“Well, and how is your Circle? First-rate fellows all of them,” Pavel said.
“Yes, indeed. Only we miss Clara now more than ever.”
“Anything specially the matter?” Pavel asked, colouring slightly.
“Well, it really used to be a splendid circle—in our humble way, that is—but those riots have had a bad effect on us, deuce take it. Remember Elkin? It was he who got us together, and now it’s he who has brought discord into our ranks. He is organising people who want to go to America. This is his hobby now.”
“Why, have the riots knocked all his socialism out of him?” Pavel asked, grimly.
“Oh, no,” Orlovsky answered with something like dismay. “I wouldn’t say that. It’s as an organiser of communistic colonies that he is going to emigrate. Only he says the Jewish people have a more direct claim upon him than Russia.”
“There is a revolutionist for you!” Pavel roared, bitterly. “I never did attach much importance to that fellow. The sooner he goes the better. God speed him.”
“You’re too hard on him, Pasha. He’s a good fellow. If we had Clara here she would straighten it all out. We miss her very much. As a matter of fact, it was she—indeed, I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell it to you—it was she with whom I was in love.”
“Was it?” Pavel asked, colouring.
He paused, in utter confusion, and resumed, without looking at him. “Well, you must excuse me, Aliosha, but I fear your frankness goes a bit too far. Such things are not meant to be published that way.”
“Why? Why? What a funny view you do take of it, Pasha! Suppose a fellow’s heart is full and he meets an intimate old friend of his, is it an indiscretion on his part if he opens his mind to him?”
“I certainly am a friend of yours, and a warm one, too, old boy,” Pavel replied with a smile. “But still, things of that sort are usually kept to oneself.”
Several other members came in. The gigantic samovar, the improvised sugar bowl, a huge loaf of rye bread, some butter and a lamp made their appearance on the table. Elkin dropped in later in the evening. He and Pavel had not been conversing five minutes when they quarrelled.
“What you are trying to do is to blend the unblendable—to mix socialism with Jewish chauvinism,” Boulatoff said in an ill-concealed rage.
“Am I?” the other retorted with one of the most virulent of his sneers. “Can socialism be mixed with the welfare of the Russian people only?—the welfare of the Russian people with a pailful or two of Jewish blood thrown in; in plainer language, socialism can only be mixed with anti-Semitism. Is that it?”
“Oh, nonsense!” Pavel hissed. “There are other Jews in the movement, lots of them, and one does not hear thatkind of stuff from them. They have not sickened of the bargain on account of the riots.”
“I don’t know whom you mean. Perhaps some of them are still under the spell of the fact that a Gentile or two will speak to them or even call them by their first names.”
“Calm down, Elkin,” the judge with the fluffy hair and the near-sighted eyes interposed. “Come, you won’t say that of Clara, for instance?”
“No, not of Clara. But, then, you have not yet heard from her. Sooner or later she, too, will open her eyes and come to the conclusion that it is wiser to be a socialist for her own people than for those who will slaughter and trample upon them. I am sure she will give it all up and join the emigration—sooner or later.”
“The devil she will,” Pavel said quietly, but trembling with fury.
“Yes, she will,” Elkin jeered.
Pavel felt like strangling him.
“She is too good a revolutionist to sneak away from the battlefield,” snapped Ginsburg, the red-headed son of the usurer, without raising his eyes from the table. “Of course, America is a safer place to be a socialist in. There are no gendarmes there.”
Elkin chuckled. “You had better save your courage for the time the riot breaks out in this town,” he said. “You know it is coming. It may burst out at any moment, and when it does we’ll have a chance to see how a hero like you behaves himself when the ‘revolutionary instincts of the people are aroused.’”
“Very well, then, let him go back to the synagogue,” Pavel shouted to the others, losing all his self-control. “But in that case, what’s the sense of his hanging around a place like this?”
“Oh, I see, you are afraid I’ll send spies to this house, are you? Well, there is less danger of that than that you should take a hand in the slaughter of Jewish shoemakers, blacksmiths or water-bearers as a bit of practical ‘equality and fraternity,’ I can assure you. But then, after all, you may be right. Good-bye, comrades! Don’t judge me hard.”
Tears stood in Orlovsky’s eyes. He, the judge, and Mlle. Andronoff, the judge’s fiancée, were for running after him, but the others stopped them.
Left to themselves, the group of Nihilists began to discuss the coming outbreak. Everyone felt, in view of Elkin’s charge, that whatever else was done, no effort should be spared to keep the mob from attacking the Jewish poor. Much was said about “directing the popular fury into revolutionary channels,” and “setting the masses upon the government,” but most of those who said these things knew in their hearts that they might as well talk of directing the ocean into revolutionary channels or of setting a tornado upon the Russian government. Orlovsky alone took it seriously:
“It begins to look something like, by Jove,” he said beamingly. “We’ll go out, and when the mob gets going, when the revolutionary fighting blood is up in them, we’ll call out to them that Jewish usurers are not the only enemies of the toiling people; that the Czar is at the head of all the enemies of the nation. And then, by Jove, Miroslav may set the pace to all Russia. See if it doesn’t.”
The son of the usurer called attention to the extreme smallness of their number, but he thought it enough to keep the mob from assaulting working people. He knew that his own relatives were all safe personally. As to his father’s property, he said he would be glad if it was alldestroyed by the “revolutionary conflagration,” and he meant it.
Pavel took no hand in the discussion. Instead, he was pacing to and fro mopingly.
At last, after some more speeches, including one by the gawky seminarist, who came late and who disagreed with everybody else, it was decided that in case of a riot every Gentile member of the Circle should be out in the streets, “on picket duty,” watching the mob, studying its mood and “doing everything possible to lend the disturbance a revolutionary character.”
Eight Jewish women, including three little girls, were brought to the Jewish hospital of Miroslav from a neighbouring town, where they had been outraged in the course of an anti-Semitic outbreak. The little girls and the prettiest of the other five died soon after they arrived. The next day the Gentile district bubbled with obscenity. To be sure, there were expressions of horror and pity, too, but the bulk of the Christian population, including many an educated and tender-hearted woman, treated the matter as a joke. Where a Jew was concerned the moral and human point of view had become a reeling blur. The joke had an appalling effect. While the stories of pillaged shops kindled the popular fancy with the image of staved vodka barrels and pavements strewn with costly fabrics, the case of the eight Jewish women gave rise to a hideous epidemic of lust. There were thousands of Gentiles for whom it became no more possible to pass a pretty Jewish woman than to look into the display window of a Jewish shop without thinking of an anti-Semitic outbreak.
The storm was gathering. The mutterings of an approaching riot were becoming louder and louder. ManyJewish shops were closed. Taverns serving as stations for stage lines were crowded with people begging to be taken away from the city before it was too late.
The Defence Committee did not rest. The volunteers of the several Jewish districts were organised into so many sections, and a signal system was perfected by which the various sections were to communicate with each other. The raiders were sure to be drunk, it was argued, while the Defence Guard would be sober and acting according to a well-considered plan. The Guard was spoiling for a fight.
The Nihilists “on picket duty” were strolling around the streets.
Troops were held in readiness and placards had been posted forbidding people to assemble in the streets. Having ordered this, Governor Boulatoff announced himself ill and in need of a fortnight’s leave of absence. When a delegation implored him to postpone the journey, he replied curtly that all had been done to insure order. He was in bad spirits and treated them with unusual rudeness.
He left Miroslav in the morning. At about noontime of the same day the town was full of sinister rumours. One of these was about the poisoning of twelve Christian wells by Jews.
A few yards off a retired government clerk, in dilapidated though carefully shined boots and with a red nose, stood in front of one of the governor’s placards forbidding people to congregate in the streets, with a crowd of illiterate Gentiles about him.
“‘So by an All High ukase,’” he pretended to read, “‘all people of the orthodox Christian faith are hereby ordered to attack the Jews, destroy their homes and shops, tear their pillows and drink their vodka and wine,take from them all they have plundered from Christians and administer a drubbing to them.’”
As he proceeded he worked himself up to a tone of maudlin solemnity.
“Aye, the day of reckoning hath come,” he went on. “Let not a man of that unchristian tribe escape. Let the blood of Jesus and of his followers be avenged.” Here, however, he spoiled it all by suddenly breaking off with a grin of inebriate roguishness.
The revolutionary seminarist was watching this man philosophically.
Similar scenes occurred in other neighbourhoods. When in one instance they had led to an attack upon a rabbinical looking old man who was left bleeding and unconscious on the pavement, the troops were ordered out. Then there was a scramble for rooms in Gentile hotels. Twenty-five rubles a day was charged for a ruble room, and there were a dozen applicants for each room. Still, those who had money contrived to find shelter. Much greater difficulty was encountered in many cases in getting a Christian cabman to take a Jew to a place of refuge. Many a Gentile rented part of his dwelling to Jews at an enormous price, a guarantee of safety being included in the bargain. Then, too, there was a considerable number of Gentiles who received some of their prosperous Jewish neighbours into their houses without accepting any offer of payment. Prosperous, because the poorer Jews for the most part lived huddled together in the Ghetto and were far removed from the Gentile population. At Pavel’s instance Orlovsky went to take Clara’s sister and her family to the house of a relative of his, but he found their door locked. They were taking refuge with the Vigdoroffs.
Toward five o’clock, when the crimson sunlight was playingon the gold steeple of the Church of Our Saviour and the dazzling blue and white of hussars’ uniforms, a small crowd of men and boys came running to the square in front of the sacred structure.
“We want to carry out the holy vessels and banners,” said a spokesman to an officer. “We hear the Jews have decided to set fire to God’s temple.”
“We won’t let them, you may be sure of that,” the hussar officer answered. “You can safely go home.”
The crowd was slowly dispersing, when a man in a red shirt shouted:
“Boys, I know a Jewish cellar where twenty-five Christian corpses are kept in empty vodka casks. Come on!”
The officer did not interfere, and the crowd followed the red-shirt round the corner to a closed drink-shop. Half an hour later the streets in that locality rang with a drunken sing-song: “Death to the Jews! Death to the Christ-killers!”
The shop was the property of a Jew, who was hiding with his family somewhere, but the street was inhabited by Gentiles. Meanwhile on a little square near NicholasStreet, the best street running through the Jewish quarter, a mob of five hundred men and boys, mostly from the scum of the population, had seemingly dropped from the sky. A savage “Hee-hee-hee!” broke loose, scattered itself, died away, and was taken up again with redoubled energy. All over the district Jews, men and women, most of them with children clasped in their arms, were running along the middle of the streets as people run at the sound of a volcano. Some were fleeing from their shops to their homes and some from their homes to the hiding places which they had prepared for themselves. The eyes of most of them had the hollow look of mortal fear.They ran in family groups, holding close to each other. Here and there a man, his feet giving way under him, sick and dizzy with fright, would slacken pace for a minute, as if giving himself up for lost; then, wiping the cold sweat from his face, he would break into a fresh run, more desperate than before. Some simply walked quickly, a look of grim determination on their faces. Here and there an aged man or woman, too feeble to run, were making a pitiful effort to keep up with the younger members of their families, who were urging them on with a look of ghastly impatience. Often a frail little woman with two or three children in her arms could be seen running as she might down a steep hill.
Christians stood on the sidewalks, jeering and mimicking their fright and making jokes.
Pavel watched the spectacle in a singular state of mental agitation. His heart leaped at sight of that chaotic mob as it paraded through the streets. Visions of the French Revolution floated through his brain, quickening his pulse. “So our people arenotincapable of rising!” he felt like exclaiming. “The idea of a revolution isnotincompatible with the idea of Russia!” It was as if all the sacrifices he had been making during the past few years had finally been indorsed by life itself, as if they were once for all insured against proving to be the senseless sacrifices of a modern Don Quixote. He could have embraced this mass of human dregs. And while his mind was in this state, the panic-stricken men, women and children with oriental features who were running past him were stranger than ever to him. He simply could not rouse himself to a sense of their being human creatures like himself at this moment. It was like a scene on a canvas. Clara did not seem to belong to these people; and when it camefully home to him that she did, and how these scenes were apt to stand between him and her, his heart grew faint within him; whereupon he felt like a traitor to his cause, and at the same time he was overcome with a sense of his inward anarchy and helplessness.
Within the Jewish houses and on their courtyards there was a rush for sub-cellars, garrets, barrels. As they ran, clambered, tiptoed, scrambled, they smothered the cries of their frightened babies with several cases of unconscious infanticide as a result. Christians hastened to assert the immunity of their houses by placing the image of the Virgin (a Jewess!) in their windows; and so did many a Jew who had procured such images for the purpose. Some smashed their own windows and piled up fragments of furniture in front of their doors, to give their homes or shops the appearance of having already been visited by mob fury. Here and there a man was chalking crosses on his gate or shutters.
While this was in progress several hundred Jews burst from gateways on and about NicholasStreetand bore down on the enemy with frantic yells in Russian and in Yiddish. They were armed with crowbars, axes, hammers, brass knuckles, clubs and what-not. As to the rioters they were mostly unarmed. Following the established practice of the crusade, they had expected to begin with some hardware store and there to arm themselves with battering rams and implements of devastation—an intention which they had not yet had time to carry out. At sight of this armed multitude, therefore, they were taken aback. Resistance was not what they had anticipated. Indeed, for some seconds many of them were under the impression that the crowd now descending on them was but another horde of hoodlums. They wavered. A crowdof Jewish butchers, lumberers, blacksmiths, truck-drivers—the advance guard of the Defence—made a dash at them, jeering and howling at the top of their lungs, in Yiddish:
“Let’s hack them to pieces! Lively boys! Let’s drive right into their lungs and livers! Let’s make carrot-pudding of them! Bravely, fellows, they’re drunk as swine!”
At this point Orlovsky and the seminarist instinctively joined the rioters. Elkin and Vigdoroff were on the other side. Pavel was looking on from the sidewalk.
The Defence was mistaken. The rioters were almost as sober as they, for, indeed, it was another part of the stereotyped program of anti-Semitic riots that drink-shops should be among the very first targets of attack, so that the invaders might fit themselves for the real work of the riot by filling themselves full of Jewish vodka. But the Jews, as we have seen, descended upon them before they had torn down a single door. What the outcome would have been had the two opposing crowds been left to themselves is unknown, for a troop of hussars whose commander had been watching the scene charged on both when they were a few inches apart, and dispersed them both. Some fifty arrests were made, more than two-thirds of the prisoners being Jews. The arrested Gentiles went to police headquarters singing an anti-Semitic refrain and mimicking the frightened cry of Jewish women. Bystanders, some of the Nihilist “pickets” among them, shouted:
“Don’t fear, boys. You’ll soon go home.” And the answer was:
“Sure we will, and then we’ll give them a shaking-up, the scurvy Jews, won’t we?”
On another business street some boys threw a few tentative stones at a shop window. There being no interferenceon the part of the military, a mob of grown men sprang up. Doors were burst in and rolls of silk and woollen stuffs came shooting to the pavement.
“Don’t, boys; you had better go home,” said a handsome young lieutenant, affecting the basso of a general.
The raiders did not desist. While some went on emptying the shop into the street others were slashing, tearing or biting at the goods. They did it without zest and somewhat nervously, as if still in doubt as to the attitude of the authorities. A servant girl unrolled a piece of blue velvet over a filthy spot on the cobblestones before a lieutenant of the hussars, saying:
“Here, sir! Why dirty the dear little feet of your horse? Here is Jewish velvet for them.”
“Thank you, my dear girl, but you had better go home,” the lieutenant answered, smiling. A crumpled mass of unrolled fabrics, silk, woollen, velvet, satin, cotton, lay in many-coloured heaps on the pavement and in the gutter. The rioters, whose movements were still amateurish and lacked snap, soon wearied of the job. Several of them then broke into a grocery store and brought forth a barrel of kerosene.