Books: In Those Days

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

He told us that we should be taken very, very far away, that we
should be away many, many years, and should become soldiers when
grown up. Then he warned us never to eat of any food forbidden by
the Jewish law, and never to forget the God of Israel and our own
people, even if they tore our flesh with thorns. He told us also
the story of the Ten Martyrs, who sacrificed their lives to sanctify
the God of Israel. He told us of the mother and her seven children
that were killed for having refused to bow before idols; and he told
us many more such things. All those saints and martyrs, he said,
are now in Paradise, enjoying the bliss of the Divine Presence.
That night I really envied those saints; I longed with all my heart
to be forced to bow to idols, to have to withstand all sorts of
trials, so as to enjoy, after my death, the bliss of the Divine
Presence in Paradise.

Many more stories the rabbi told us; many more words of warning,
encouragement, and praise came from his lips, till I really believed
I was the one whom God had picked out from among my equals, to be
put through great trials and temptations. . . .

Morning came, and the guard entered the prison. Then the rabbi
turned towards us, and said: "Lambs of the God of Israel, we have to
part now: I am going to be lashed and imprisoned for having entered
this place by a trick, and you will be taken into exile, to undergo
your trials! I may hardly expect to be found worthy of surviving
till you return. But there, in the world-of-truth, we shall surely
meet. May it be the will of God that I may have no reason to be
ashamed of you there, before Him and His angels, in Heaven!"

We parted, and the words of the rabbi sank deep into my heart.

Then they began dumping us into wagons. The obstreperous boys, who
tried to run away, were many of them bound with ropes and thrown
into the wagon. Of course, we all howled.

I did not hear my own voice, nor the voice of my neighbor. It was
all one great howl. A crowd of men and women followed our
wagon--the parents of the boys. Very likely they cried, too; but we
could not hear their voices. The town, the fields, heaven and
earth, seemed to cry with us.

I caught sight of my parents, and my heart was filled with something
like anger and hatred. I felt that I had been sacrificed for my
brother.

My mother, among many other mothers, approached the wagon, looked at
me, and apparently read my thoughts: she fainted away, and fell to
the ground. The accident held up the crowd, which busied itself
with reviving my mother, while our wagon rolled away.

My heart was filled with a mixture of anger, pity, and terror. In
that mood of mixed feelings I parted from my parents.

We cried and cried, got tired, and finally became still from sheer
exhaustion. Presently a noise reached our ears, something like the
yelling of children. We thought it was another wagonload of boys
like ourselves. But soon we found out our mistake: it was but a
wagonload of sheep that were being taken to slaughter. . . .

Of course, we ate nothing the whole of that day, though the mothers
had not failed to provide us with food. Meanwhile the sun had set;
it got dark, and the boys who had been bound with ropes were
released by the guard: he knew they would not attempt to escape at
that time. We fell asleep, but every now and then one of the boys
would wake up, crying, quietly at first, then louder and louder.
Then another would join him; one more, and yet one more, till we all
were yelling in chorus, filling the night air with our bitter cries.
Even the guard could not stand it; he scolded us, and belabored us
with his whip. That crying of ours reminds me of what we read in
lamentations: "Weeping she hath wept in the night. . . ."

Morning came, and found us all awake: we were waiting for daylight.
We believed it would bring us freedom, that angels would descend
from Heaven, just as they had descended to our father Jacob, to
smite our guard and set us free. At the same time, the rising sun
brought us all a feeling of hunger. We began to sigh, each and
every one of us separately. But the noise we made did not amount
even to the barking of a few dogs or the cawing of a few crows.
That is what hunger can do. And when the guard had distributed
among us some of the food we had brought with us, we ate it with
relish, and felt satisfied. At the same time we began to feel the
discomfort we were causing one another, cooped up as we were in the
wagon. I began to complain of my neighbor, who was sitting on my
legs. He claimed that I was pressing against him with my shoulder.
We all began to look up to the guard, as if expecting that he could
or would prevent us from torturing one another.

Still I had some fun even on that day of weeping. I happened to
turn around, and I noticed that Barker, my dog, was running after
our wagon.

"Too bad, foolish Barker," said I, laughing at him in spite of my
heartache. "Do you think I am going to a feast? It is into exile
that I am going; and what do you run after me for?"--

This made old Samuel laugh; he laughed like a child, as if the thing
had just happened before his eyes, and as if it were really comical.
Meanwhile our coach had reached the top of the hill; we jumped into
our seats, and proceeded to make one another uncomfortable.

The old man glanced at his son, who was sitting opposite to him. It
was a loving and tender look, issuing from under long shaggy
eyebrows, a beautiful, gentle, almost motherly look, out of accord
with the hard-set face of an irritable and stern father.

The old man made his son's seat comfortable for him, and then fell
silent.

V

I am going to pass over a long time--resumed the old man later.
There was much traveling and many stops; much tramping on foot, with
legs swollen; but all that has nothing to do with the subject.

Once in a while our guard would get angry at us, curse us bitterly,
and strike us with his whip. "You cursed Jews," he would say, "do I
owe you anything that I should suffer so much on your account, and
undergo all the hardships of travel?"

Indeed, there was a good deal of truth in what he said. For,
willingly or unwillingly, we did give him much trouble. Had we
died, say the year before, or even at that very moment, he would not
have been put to the necessity of leading a crowd of half-dumb boys.
He would not have had to stand the hardships of travel, and would
not have been compelled to listen to the wailings of children torn
from the arms of their parents. Or do you think it is agreeable to
feel that little children consider you a hard and cruel man? When I
grew up and served in the army myself, and had people below me in
age and position under my command, I came to understand the troubles
of our guard; so that now, after having gone through many
experiences, after I have passed, as they say, through fire and
water, I may confess that I bear no malice towards all those at
whose hands I suffered. There are many ex-Cantonists who cannot
forget the birch-rod, for instance. Well, so much is true: for
every misstep, for every sign of disobedience a whipping was due.
If one of us refused to kneel in prayer before the crucifix; if one
of us refused to eat pork; if one of us was caught mumbling a Hebrew
prayer or speaking Yiddish, he was sure to get a flogging. Twenty,
thirty, forty, or even full fifty lashes were the punishment. But,
then, is it conceivable that they could have treated us any other
way? Why, hundreds of Jewish children that did not understand a
word of Russian had been delivered into the hands of a Russian
official that did not understand a word of Yiddish. He would say,
Take off my boots, and the boy would wash his hands. He would say,
Sit down, and the boy would stand up. Were we not like dumb cattle?
It was only the rod that we understood well. And the rod taught us
to understand our master's orders by the mere expression of his
eyes.

Then many of the ex-Cantonists still remember with horror the
steam-bath they were compelled to take. "The chamber of hell," they
called the bath. At first blush, it would really seem to have been
an awful thing. They would pick out all the Cantonists that had so
much as a scratch on their bodies or the smallest sign of an
eruption, paint the wounds with tar, and put the boys, stripped, on
the highest shelf in the steam-bath. And below was a row of
attendants armed with birch-rods. The kettle was boiling fiercely,
the stones were red-hot, and the attendants emptied jars of boiling
water ceaselessly upon the stones. The steam would rise, penetrate
every pore of the skin, and--sting! sting!--enter into the very
flesh. The pain was horrible; it pricked, and pricked, and there
was no air to breathe. It was simply choking. If the boy happened
to roll down, those below stood ready to meet him with the rods.

All this is true. At the same time, was it mere cruelty? It is
very simple: we were a lot of Jewish lads snatched from the arms of
our mothers. On the eve of every Sabbath our mothers would take us
in hand, wash us, comb our hair, change our underwear, and dress us
in our Sabbath clothes. All at once we were taken into exile.
Days, weeks, nay, months, we passed in the dust of the roads, in
perspiration and dirt, and sleeping on the ground. Our underwear
had not been changed. No water had touched our bodies. So we
became afflicted with all kinds of eruptions. That is why we had to
pass through what we called "the chamber of hell." And this will
give you an idea of the rest.

To make a long story short: there were many of us, and we were
distributed in various places. Many of the boys had taken ill; many
died on the road. The survivors were distributed among peasants, to
be brought up by them till they reached the age of entering the
army. I was among the latter. Many months, maybe even years, I
passed in knocking about from village to village, from town to town,
till, at last, I came into the joint possession of a certain Peter
Semionovich Khlopov and his wife Anna Petrovna. My master was
neither old nor young; he was neither a plain peasant nor a
nobleman. He was the clerk of the village. In those days that was
considered a genteel occupation, honorable and well-paid. He had no
sons, but he and one daughter, Marusya by name. She was then about
fourteen years old, very good-looking, gay, and rather wild.

According to the regulations, all the Cantonists in the village had
to report daily for military drill and exercise on the drill grounds
before the house of the sergeant. He lived in the same village. At
the request of my patron Khlopov I was excused from the daily drill,
and had to report but once a week. You see, Peter expected to
derive some benefit from me by employing me about the house and in
the field.

Now it was surely through the merits of my ancestors that I happened
to be placed in the household of Peter Khlopov. Peter himself spent
but little of his time at home. Most of the time he was at the
office, and his free moments he liked to spend at the tavern, which
was owned by the only Jew in the village, "our Moshko" the Klopovs
used to call him. But whenever he happened to be at home, Peter was
very kind to me, especially when he was just a little tipsy.
Perhaps he dreamt of adopting me as his son: he had no sons of his
own. And he tried to make me like military service. "When you grow
up," he sued to say, "you will become an officer, and wear a sword.
Soldiers will stand at attention before you, and salute you. You
will win distinction in battle, and be found worthy of being
presented to the Czar." He also told me stories of Russian military
life. By that time I had learned some Russian. They were really
nice stories, as far as I could understand them; but they were made
nicer yet by what I could not understand of them. For then I was
free to add something to the stories myself, or change them
according to my own fancy. If you are a lover of stories, take the
advice of a plain old man like myself. Never pay any attention to
stories in which everything has been prepared from the very start,
and you can tell the end as soon as you begin to read them or listen
to them. Such stories make one yawn and fall asleep. Stories of
this kind my daughter reads to me once in a while, and I always fall
asleep over them. Stories are good only when told the way Khlopov
used to tell them to me.

But that is all irrelevant. In short, Khlopov was kind to me.

As to Anna, she was entirely different. She was close-mouthed,
ill-tempered, and a great stay-at-home. She never visited her
neighbors, and they, in turn, called on her very rarely. In the
village she was spoken of as a snob and a hypocrite. Peter was
afraid of her as of the plague, especially in his sober hours. All
her power lay in her eyes. When that strong man--he who had the
whole village in the palm of his hand--felt her eye fixed on him,
his strength left him. It seemed as if some devil were ready to
jump out of that eye and turn the house topsyturvy. You fellows are
mere youngsters, you have seen nothing of the world yet; but take it
from me, there are eyes that seem quite harmless when you first look
into them, but just try to arouse their temper: you will see a
hellish fire spring up in them. Have you ever looked into my
Rebekah's eyes? Well, beware of the eyes.

The look Anna gave me when I first entered her house promised me
nothing good. She hated me heartily. She never called me by my own
name. She called me "Zhid" all the time, in a tone of deep hatred
and contempt.

Among the orders the Cantonists had to obey were the following: to
speak no Yiddish; to say no Jewish prayer; to recite daily a certain
prayer before the image of the Virgin and before the crucifix, and
not to abstain from non-kosher food.

With regard to all injunctions except the last, Anna was very strict
with me. But she was not very particular as to the last injunction.
Out of sheer stinginess she fed me on bread and vegetables, and
that in the kitchen. Once she did offer me some meat, and I refused
to touch it. Then she got very angry, flew into a temper, and
decided to complain to the sergeant. But Peter did not let her be
so cruel. "Let him grow up, he will know better," said Peter,
waving his hand at me.

Then Anna made up her mind to force me to eat forbidden meat. But I
was obstinate. And she decided once more to complain to the
sergeant. Just at that time another Cantonist had been found guilty
of some offense. He belonged to the same village; his name was
Jacob. I did not know him at that time. His patron complained that
Jacob had persisted in reciting Hebrew prayers, and that he
abstained from meat. Jacob was condemned to twenty lashes with
rods. An order was issued that all Cantonists should assemble to
witness the flogging of the offender.

In the course of time we got used to such sights; but the first time
we were terribly shocked. Just imagine: a lad of about fifteen is
stripped, put on the ground face downwards; one man sits on his
head, and another on his feet. Two men are put on either side of
him, each with a bundle of birch-rods in his hand. Ten times each
of them has to strike him with the rods, to make up the twenty
lashes. I looked at the face of the culprit; it was as white as
chalk. His lips were moving. I thought he was reciting the prayer:
"And He, the Merciful, will forgive sin, and will not destroy.
. . ." Up went the rods, down they went: a piercing cry . . . .
blood . . . . flaps of loose skin . . . . cries . . . . "one, two,
three" . . . . again cries . . . . sudden silence . . . . more cries
. . . . again silence . . . . "four, five" . . . . "stop!"

Because the culprit fainted, the sergeant in the goodness of his
heart divided the punishment into two parts. Jacob was carried off
to the hospital, and it was put down in the book that he was to get
ten more lashes after his recover.

I went home.

Had Anna given me a piece of pork to eat that evening, I do not know
what I should have done.

That night I saw the old rabbi in my dream. He was standing before
me, with bowed head and tears dropping from his eyes. . . . .

I do not remember the way Marusya treated me at first. But I do
remember the look she gave me when I first entered her father's
house. There are trifling matters that one remembers forever. Hers
was a telltale look, wild and merry. It is hard to describe it in
words--as if she wanted to say, "Welcome, friend! You did well in
coming here. I need just you to pass my leisure hours with me!"
And she really needed someone like myself, for she never associated
with the children of the village. The beautiful lively girl used to
have her fits of the blues. Then it was impossible to look at her
face without pitying her. At such times her mother could not get a
word out of her, and the whole expression of her face was changed to
such an extent that she seemed to have aged suddenly. She would
look the very image of her mother then. And a peculiar expression
would steal over her face, which estranged her from other people,
and perhaps brought her nearer to me. During those fits of
despondency she was sure to follow me if I happened to leave the
room and go outside. She would join me and spend hour after hour in
childish prattle with me, and her merriment and wildness knew no
limits. Little by little I got used to her, and fell, in turn, a
longing for her company during my own fits of lonesomeness.

The day after I had witnessed Jacob's punishment I felt miserable.
I was restless and excitable, and did not know what to do with
myself. I thought my heart would burst within me. I asked myself
all kinds of questions: What am I doing here? What did I come here
for? What are all those people to me? As if I had come there only
the day before, and of my own free will. . . .

Marusya looked sharply at me. Very likely she recognized that
something was worrying me. I felt a desire to share my feelings
with her. I got up and walked out into the garden behind the house.
In a moment she followed me. I made a clean breast of it, and told
her all I had to witness the day before.

She listened, shivering, and asked in a tremulous voice:

"And what did they beat him for?"

"He said a Hebrew prayer, and refused to eat meat."

"And why did he refuse to eat meat?"

"It is forbidden."

"Forbidden? Why?"

I was silent.

She also became silent; then she laid her hand on me, and said with
her usual merriment:

"They will not beat you."

"How do you know?"

"The sergeant is a good friend of ours."

"But if your mother should complain about me?"

"Then I shall go in your stead, if they should decide to switch
you."

She laughed heartily at her own suggestion. Her laughter made me
laugh too; we both laughed, and laughed without knowing why. And in
a mood completely changed I returned to the house. After that I
felt very near to the girl.

Well, time passed, months and years: I lost track of them. But I do
remember that the time had come when I knew enough Russian to make
myself understood, and fit for any kind of work about the house and
in the field, and could give my patron entire satisfaction.

One day, I remember, I tried very hard to have my work well and
promptly done, so as to earn, for once, the good-will of Anna
herself. I felt a longing for the friendly smile of a mother. But
Anna kept going in and out, and did not pay the least attention to
me. I was sitting on the bench outside the house alone. My dog was
lying at my feet, looking at me very intently. His eyes seemed to
be full of tears. And let me tell you by the way, his lot in the
house was entirely different from mine. When he first entered
Peter's courtyard, the dogs met him with howls. He tried to find
shelter in the kitchen, but was chased out with sticks. "Where did
that tramp come from?" wondered the people. Then my Barker saw that
he could expect no charity from the people, and he put his trust in
his own teeth. He stood up bravely, and fought all the dogs of the
household till blood flowed. Then only did the masters of the house
appreciate his doggish virtues and accomplishments. They befriended
him, and allowed him his rations. So my Barker saved his skin. Yet
his lot did not seem to please him. He recognized, by some peculiar
dog-sense, that I, his fellow in exile, was unhappy myself and sorry
for him too. He felt that somehow his own days of prosperity would
not last long. Whenever I sat about lonely and moping, he would
stretch himself at my feet, and look straight into my eyes, with an
expression of earnestness and wonderment, as if he wanted to ask me,
How is that, why don't you fight for your rights the way I did?

Presently Anna came out, shot a glance at me, and said:

"Well, now, there is the lazy Zhid sitting idle, and I have to work
and prepare meals for him, so that he may find everything ready!" I
got up, and began to look around for something to do.

"Go, catch the little pig and bring it over here," ordered Anna.

The day before I had overheard her say that it was time to kill the
little pig. I did not relish the job by any means. I felt sorry
for the porkling: mere pig though it was, it had after all grown up
in our house. And it was hard on me to have a hand in the affair.
But one angry word of Anna's set me a-going. In a moment my hand
was on the animal, which trusted me and believed in me implicitly.
Then Anna handed me a rope to bind it. I did as she wanted; the pig
started to squeal and squeak horribly. To me it sounded like "Zhid,
Zhid, is that the way to treat _me?"_

Then Anna handed me a knife, and showed me where to make the cut.
. . . The pig began to bleed fearfully, gurgling, and choking with
his own blood. Forthwith Anna ordered wood to be brought, a fire to
be kindled, and the pig to be put upon it. I did all as I had been
ordered. My dog was watching me intently, greatly bewildered; the
pig groaned and groaned; the flames licked his body and embraced
it--and my dog was barking and yelping away up into the sky.

That night I dreamt that my brother the Shohet and I were on trial
in Heaven before the seat of judgment, with various animals
complaining against us. Only clean fowl, such as geese, pigeons,
and the like were complaining against my brother, and they all
pleaded in clear, good Hebrew, saying, "Was it for your own
consumption that you killed us all?" . . . . But it was only the
pig that complained against me, and it pleaded in screeches and
grunts that nobody could understand. . . .

The next morning Anna got up early, and made me stand before the
ikon of the Virgin and recite a certain prayer. At dinner she
seated me alongside of Peter, gave me some roast pork, and looked
sharply at me. I guess, while making all those preparations, Anna
had only one thing in mind: to put Peter up against me while he was
drunk. I took fright, and began to chew away at the pork. But then
the screeches and the grunts of the pig rang in my ears, and I
thought they came right from within my insides; I wondered how they
could listen to all that, and yet eat the pork in perfect comfort.
Suddenly a lump in my throat began to choke me. . . . Nausea,
retching . . . . and something happened to me: I vomited everything
out, right on the table. Everybody jumped away from the table in
disgust and anger. I met Marusya's eye, and was ashamed to look
into it. Anna got up, boiling with rage, and took me by the ear,
and pulled me outside: "Get out of here, you dirty Zhid; and don't
you dare enter my house any more!"

Well, she chased me out. Peter and Marusya kept quiet. Thoroughly
miserable, I dropped down on the bench behind the house; my dog
stretched himself out on the ground at my feet and looked into my
eyes. Then I began to talk to my fellow in misfortune: "Do you
hear, doggie, we have been chased out. . . . What does that mean?
did we come here of our own free will? It is by force that we were
brought here; so what sense is there in chasing us out?"

And I thought my dog understood me; a sound came from the depths of
his throat, and died away there. Then a thought began to haunt me:
Maybe it is really time to run away. If they run after me and
overtake me, I shall simply say that my patron chased me out of his
house. And the thought, Home! to your parents! took possession of
me, and tortured me ceaselessly. Said I to myself: "If they chase
me out, I am certainly free!" But then, just see the power of the
birch-rod: I knew well that much time would pass before my patron
would notice my absence; and before the sergeant was informed, and
people were dispatched to pursue me, more time would pass. Then I
should be far away from the place. By that time I was quite
hardened; I was not afraid to hide in the woods; devils and evil
spirits I did not fear any more. I had learned well enough that no
devil will ever trouble a man as much as one human being can trouble
another. And yet, when I remembered the swish of the rods over the
naked flesh, the spurting blood, the loose flaps of skin, and the
futile outcries, I was paralyzed with fear. No, it was not really
fear: it was a sort of submissive adoration. Had a birch-rod been
lying near me, I should have kissed it with fear and respect. It is
hard for me to explain to you. You youngsters are not capable of
understanding.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7