Books: In Those Days

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And as I was sitting there, full of gloomy thoughts, I did not
notice that the sun had set, and night had come. It got so dark
that I could not see my dog lying at my feet. Suddenly I felt
something touch me and pass lightly over my hair. I thought it was
an ant or a night moth, and I raised my hand to chase it away. Then
it changed its place, and I felt it at the nape of my neck. I tried
to catch the thing that was making my neck itch, and caught a hand,
soft and warm. I shuddered and started back: before me was Marusya,
bending over me. I wanted to get up, but she put her hands on me
heavily, sat down at my side, all the while pressing my hand between
hers.

"Why are you sitting here?" she asked.

"Didn't your mother chase me out?"

"That is nothing. Don't you know her temper? That is her way."

"She keeps nagging at me all the time, and calls me nothing but
Zhid, Zhid."

"And what of it? Aren't you a Jew? Should I feel insulted if some
one were to call me Christian?!"

I had nothing to say. And it dawned upon me at that moment that I
was really insulting myself by objecting to being called Zhid.
True, Anna meant to jeer at me and insult me; but did it depend on
her alone?

"And what are you going to do now?" asked Marusya.

"I want to run away."

"Without telling me?"

She peered into my face, and I felt as if two streams of warmth had
emptied themselves into me. My eyes had become somewhat accustomed
to the darkness, and I could discern every movement of her body. A
delicate smile was playing around her mouth, and my feeling of
despondency was giving way before it. I felt that after all I had a
friend in the house, a good, loving, and beautiful friend.

I shuddered and broke out into tears. Then she began to play
caressingly with my hair and pat me on my neck and face. She did
well to let me have my cry out. By and by I felt relieved. She
wanted to withdraw her hand, but then I held it fast.

"So you were going to run away, and that without my knowledge?" said
she.

"No," I said with a deep sigh.

"And if I should ever call you Zhid, will you be angry with me?"

"No," answered I, thoroughly vanquished.

"Well, then you are a dear boy, and I like you!"

I felt the touch of soft, warm lips on my neck . . . . I closed my
eyes, that the dark night sky and the shining stars might not see
me. And when I recognized what had happened to me, I felt ashamed.
Marusya disappeared, and soon returned with a bag in her hand.

"Papa said you should go out with the horses for the night. Here is
some food in the bag. Take it and go out."

This she shot out quickly, and in a tone of authority, as befits the
daughter of the patron, and as if what had passed between us were
nothing but a dream.

"Going out for the night" was a peculiar custom. You can have no
idea of what it meant. The logic of it was this: The cattle that
had been worked the whole of the day were, to be sure, earning their
fodder for the day. And the owners felt under obligation and
necessity to feed them during their working hours. But how about
the night, when the animals rested, and did no work? Where should
the fodder for the night time come from? So the custom developed of
letting the animals browse in some neighbor's meadow during the
night. That was cheaper. But that neighbor also had cattle; he,
too, had horses that did not earn their feed during the night. Do
you know what the neighbor did? He did the same. He, too, sent out
his horses stealthily, into his neighbor's meadow. So, in the long
run, every one had his cattle browse secretly in some neighbor's
meadow, and all were happy. But when the trespassing shepherd
happened to be caught poaching, he got a whipping. And yet,
strictly speaking, it was not stealing; it was a mere usage. The
land-owners seemed to have agreed beforehand: "If you happen to
catch my shepherd poaching, you may whip him, provided you do not
object if I give a whipping to your shepherd on a similar occasion."
In spite of all this I rather liked "going out for the night." I
loved those nights in the open field. When the moon gave but little
light, and one could see but a few steps away, I forgot my immediate
surroundings, and my imagination was free! I would peer into the
open sky, would bring before my mind's eye father and mother and all
who were dear to me, and would feel near to them; for the sky that
spread over all of us was the very same. I could imagine my father
celebrating the new moon with a prayer. I could imagine my mother
watching for the same star I was looking at; I could imagine that we
were really looking at the same spot. . . . Then tears would come
into my eyes. My mother, I would think, was crying, too. And the
night listened to me, and the stars listened to me. . . . The
crickets chirped, and if I chose, I could believe they shared my
sorrows with me, and were sighing over my fate. . . .

Idle fancy, nonsense, you think; but when one has nothing real to
look up to, dreams are very sweet. A light breeze would steal over
me, refresh me, and bring me new hope; and I trusted I should not be
a prisoner always, the day of my release would surely come. At such
happy moments I would fall asleep gazing at the stars. And if the
sudden whip of the landowner did not put an end to my dreams, I
would dream away, and see things no language could describe.

Well, I took the bag and led the horses out into the open field.
But that time, out of sheer spite or for some other reason, I did
not go into our neighbor's field, but descended right into the
valley that my patron had left lying fallow, and stretched myself
upon the soft grass of the hospitable turf.

That night I longed to bring father and mother before my mind's eye
and have an imaginary talk with them. But I did not succeed.
Instead, the figure of the old rabbi hovered before my eyes. It
seemed to me that he was looking at me angrily, and telling me the
story of Joseph the righteous: how he lived in the house of
Potiphar, and ate nothing but vegetables.

But when I reminded myself of Joseph the righteous, I felt my heart
sink at the thought of what Marusya had done to me. I could not
deny that the good looks of the Gentile girl were endearing her to
me, that out of her hands I would eat pork ten times a day, and that
in fact I myself was trying to put up a defense of her. I took all
the responsibility on myself. I was ready to believe that she did
not seek my company, but that it was I who called her to myself. I
was a sinner in my own estimation, and I could not even cry. Then
it seemed to me that the sky was much darker than usual, and the
stars did not shine at all. With such thought in my mind I fell
asleep.

I awoke at the sound of voices. Some one is crying, I thought. The
sound seemed near enough. It rose and rose and filled the valley.
It made me shudder. The soft, plaintive chant swelled and grew
louder, as if addressed to me. It gripped my very heart. I stood
up all in a shiver, and started to walk in the direction of the
sound. But around me, up and down, on every side, was total
darkness. The moon had set long ago. I moved away only a few steps
from the horses, and could not make them out any more. By and by I
could distinguish some words, and I recognized the heart-gripping
chant of a Hebrew Psalm. . . .

"For the Lord knoweth the path of the righteous,
And the path of the wicked shall perish." . . .

My fears vanished, and gave place to a feeling of surprise.

"Where can that chanting come from," thought I, "and here in exile,
too?"

Then I began to doubt it all, thinking it was but a dream.

"Why do the nations rage,
And the peoples imagine a vain thing?"

The voices were drawing me forward irresistibly, and I decided to
join the chorus, come what might. And I continued the Psalm in a
loud voice:

"The kings of the earth stood up . . . . "

The chanting ceased; I heard steps approaching me.

"Who is there?" asked a voice in Yiddish.

"It is I," answered I, "and who are you?"

"It is we!" shouted many voices in chorus.

"Cantonists?"

"A Cantonist, too?"

Thus exchanging questions, we met. They turned out to be three
Cantonists, who lived in a village at some distance from Peter's
house. I had never met them before. They, too, had "gone out for
the night," and we had happened to use the same valley.

I love to mention their names. The oldest of them was Jacob, whom
you remember from the punishment he underwent. The others were
Simeon and Reuben. But there in the valley they introduced
themselves to me with the names they were called by at home: Yekil,
Shimele, and Ruvek. I found out later that the valley was their
meeting-place. It was a sort of Klaus, "Rabbi Yekil's Klaus" the
boys called it. Yekil was a boy of about fifteen, who was
well-equipped with knowledge of the Torah when he was taken away
from his home.

In the long years of our exile we had forgotten the Jewish calendar
completely. But Yekil prided himself on being able to distinguish
the days "by their color and smell," especially Fridays; and his
friends confirmed his statements. He used to boast that he could
keep track of every day of the year, and never miss a single day of
the Jewish holidays. Every Jewish holiday they met in the valley on
Peter's estate. According to Yekil's calendar, the eve of the Fast
of the Ninth of Av fell on that very day. That is why they had
gathered in the valley that night. "If so," said I, "what is the
use of reciting that Psalm? Were it not more proper to recite
Lamentations?"

"We do not know Lamentations by heart," explained Yekil, with the
authority of a rabbi, "but we do know some Psalms, and these we
recite on every holiday. For, at bottom, are mere words the main
thing? Your real prayer is not what you say with your lips, but
what you feel with the whole of your heart. As long as the words
are in the holy tongue, it all depends on the feelings you wish to
put into them. As my father, may he rest in peace, used to instruct
me, the second Psalm is the same as the festival hymn, 'Thou hast
chosen us from among the nations,' if you feel that way; or it may
be the same as Lamentations. It all depends on the feelings in our
heart, and on the meaning we wish to put into the words!"

Yekil's talk and the sounds of Yiddish speech, which I had not heard
since I left home, impressed me in a wonderful way. Here I found
myself all at once in the company of Jews like father and mother.
But I felt very much below that wonderful boy who could decide
questions of Jewish law like some great rabbi. Indeed, he seemed to
me little short of a rabbi in our small congregation. Then I began
to feel more despondent than ever. I considered myself the sinner
of our little community. I knew I was guilty of eating pork and of
other grave trespasses, and I felt quite unworthy of being a member
of the pious congregation.

Meanwhile little Reuben discovered the contents of my bag.

"Boys, grub!" exclaimed he, excitedly. At the word "grub" the
congregation was thrown into a flutter. That was the way of the
Cantonists. They could not help getting excited at the sight of any
article of food, even when they were not hungry at all. In the long
run our patrons fed us well enough, and on the whole we could not
complain of lack of food. But we were fed according to the
calculations of our patrons, and not according to our own appetites.
So it became our habit to eat whenever victuals were put before us,
even on a full stomach. "Eat whenever you have something to eat, so
as not to go hungry when there may be no rations." That was a
standing rule among the Cantonists. They began fumbling in my bag,
and I was dying with shame at the thought that soon they would
discover the piece of pork, and that my sin would become known to
the pious congregation. Then I broke down, and with tears began to
confess my sins.

"I have sinned," said I, sobbing, "it is pork. I could not
withstand the temptation."

At that moment it seemed to me that Yekil was the judge, and the
boys who had found the pork were the witnesses against me. Yekil
listened to my partial confession, and the two "witnesses" hung
their heads, and hid their faces in shame, as if they were the
accused. But I sobbed and cried bitterly.

"Now, listen, little one," Yekil turned to me. "I do not know
whether you have suffered the horrors of hell that we have suffered.
Did they paint your body with tar, and put you up on the highest
shelf in the steam-bath, and choke you with burning steam? Did they
flog you with birch-rods for having been caught mumbling a Hebrew
prayer? Did they make you kneel for hours on sharp stones for
having refused to kiss the ikon and the crucifix? Did they discover
you secretly kissing the Arba-Kanfos, and give you as many lashes as
there are treads in the Tzitzis? If you have not passed through all
that, uncover our backs, and count the welts that still mark them!
And to this you must add the number of blows I have still to get,
simply because my little body could not take in at once all it was
expected to take in. And yet, not a day passed without our having
recited our Modeh-Ani. As to eating pork, we abstained from it in
spite of the rods. Then they gave up flogging us; but, instead of
that punishment, they gave us nothing but pork to eat. Two days we
held out; we did not touch any food. We did not get even a drink of
water. Do you see little Simeon? Well, he tried to eat the grass
in the courtyard. . . . On the third day of our fast I saw my
father in my dream. He was dressed in his holiday clothes, and
holding the Bible in his hands he quoted the passage, 'Be ye mindful
of your lives.' Suddenly, the earth burst open, and the Angel of
Death appeared. He had rods in one hand and a piece of swine's
flesh in the other. He put the piece of pork into my mouth. I
looked up, terror-stricken, to my father, but he smiled. His smile
filled the place with light. He said to me, 'Eatest thou this of
thy own free will?' Then he began to soar upwards, and called out
to me from afar: 'Tell all thy comrades, the Cantonists: Your
reward is great. Every sigh of yours is a prayer, every good
thought of yours is a good action! Only beware, lest you die of
hunger; then surely you will merit eternal punishment!'

"I awoke. Since then we eat all kinds of forbidden food. The main
thing is that we have remained Jews, and that as Jews we shall
return home to our parents. It is clear to me now that the Holy
One, blessed by He, will not consider all that a sin on our part!"

I felt as if a heavy load had been taken off my shoulders. My eyes
began to flow with tears of gladness. Then, having once started my
confession, I decided to confess to my second sin also. Meanwhile
Simeon had pulled the bread and the meat out of my bag.

"Glutton!" exclaimed Yekil, angrily. "Have you forgotten that it is
the night of the Fast of the Ninth of Av?"

The boy, ashamed, returned the things to the bag, and moved away a
few steps. Then I told Yekil all that had passed between me and
Marusya, and tried unconsciously to defend her in every way. I
think I exaggerated a good deal when I tried to show that Marusya
liked the Jews very much, indeed.

"And what was the end of it?" asked Yekil, with some fear. "Did she
really kiss you?" The other boys echoed the question. I looked
down, and said nothing.

"Is she good-looking?"

I still gave no answer.

"I have forgotten your name. What is it?"

"Samuel."

"Now listen, Samuel, this is a very serious affair. It is much
worse than what is told of Joseph the righteous. Do you understand?
I do not really know how to make it clear to you. It is very
dangerous to find good and true friends right here in exile, in the
very ranks of our enemies."

"Why?" wondered I.

"I cannot tell you, but this is how I feel. Insulted and outraged
we have been brought here; insulted and outraged we should depart
from here. Ours is the right of the oppressed; and that right we
must cherish till we return home."

"I do not understand!"

Jacob looked at me sharply, and said: "Well, I have warned you; keep
away from her."

His words entered into the depths of my heart. I bowed my head
before Yekil, and submitted to his authority. That was the way we
all felt: Yekil had only to look at us to subject us to his will.
It was hard to resist him.

I felt a great change in myself: I had been relieved of the weight
of two sins. Of one I had been absolved completely, and the other I
had confessed in public and repented of. I gladly joined the little
congregation, and we returned to our Psalms, which we recited
instead of Lamentations. At the conclusion I proposed that we chant
the Psalm "By the rivers of Babylon," which we all knew by heart.

And we, a congregation of four little Jews, stood up in the valley
on the estate of Peter Khlopov, concealed by steep hills and by the
darkness of the night: thieves for the benefit of our masters, and
mourners of Zion on our own account. . . . And we chanted out of
the depths of our hearts:

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, remembering Zion."
. . .

We chanted the whole of it, sat down and wept, remembering at the
same time all we had gone through ourselves, and also the position
we were in at that time.--

Here old Samuel shuddered and stopped abruptly. The sun had set,
and he reminded himself that he had forgotten to say his afternoon
prayer. He jumped down hastily, washed his hands in a near-by pool,
returned to his seat, and became absorbed in his devotion.

VI

By and by the streaks of light disappeared in the twilight sky, and
the wintry night threw the mantle of thick and misty blackness over
us.

Presently I heard the old man conclude his prayer: "When the world
will be reclaimed through the kingship of the Almighty; when all
mortals will acknowledge Thy name. . . . on that day the Lord will
be One, and His name will be One!"

Out of the darkness came the devout words; they seemed to take wing,
as though to pierce the shrouding mist and scatter it; but they
themselves were finally dissolved in the triumph and blackness.
. . .

I did not have to urge the old man to continue his tale. His
prayers over, he picked up the thread of his narrative, as if
something were driving him to give a full account of what he had
passed through.--

The day I became acquainted with Jacob--continued the old man--I
consider the beginning of a new period in my life. I became
accustomed to consider him my superior, whose behavior had to be
taken as an example. Jacob spoke as an authority whenever he did
speak, and he never wavered in his decisions. Whenever he happened
to be in doubt, his father would "instruct" him in his dreams. Thus
we lived according to Jacob's decisions and dreams. I got used to
eating forbidden food, to breaking the Sabbath, and trespassing
against all the ordinances of the ritual without compunction. And
yet Jacob used to preach to us, to bear floggings and all kinds of
punishments rather than turn traitor to our faith. So I got the
notion that our faith is neither prayers, nor a collection of
ordinances of varying importance, but something I could not name,
nor point to with my finger. Jacob, I thought, certainly knows all
about it; but I do not. All I could was to _feel_ it; so could
Anna. Otherwise she would not have called me Zhid, and would not
have hated me so much, in spite of seeing me break all the
ordinances of the Jewish ritual.

At times I thought that I and my comrades were captains in God's
army, that all His ordinances were not meant for us, but for the
plain soldiers of the line. They, the rank and file, must be
subjected to discipline, must know how to submit to authority; all
of which does not apply to the commanding officers. It seemed to me
that this was what the Holy One, blessed be He, had deigned to
reveal to us through the dreams of Jacob: there is another religion
for you, the elect. _You_ will surely know what is forbidden, and
what is permitted. . . .

Sometimes, again, I imagined that I might best prove true to my
faith if I set my heart against the temptation that Satan had put
before me in the person of Marusya. If I turned away from her, I
thought, I might at once gain my share in the future world. So I
armed myself against Marusya's influence in every possible way. I
firmly resolved to throw back at her any food she might offer me.
If she laid her hand on me, I would push it away from me, and tell
her plainly that I was a Jew, and she--a nobody.

So I fought with her shadow, and, indeed, got the best of it as long
as she herself was away. But the moment she appeared, all my
weapons became useless. She made me feel like one drunk. I could
not withstand the wild-fire of her eye, nor the charm of her merry
talk, nor the wonderful attraction of her whole person. At the same
time there was not a trace of deviltry about her: it was simply an
attraction which I could not resist. And when she laid her soft
hand on me, I bent under it, and gave myself up entirely. And she
did what she wanted: where buttons were missing, she sewed them on;
and where a patch was needed, she put it in. She was a little
mother to me. She used to bring me all kinds of delicacies and
order me to eat them; and I could not disobey her. In short, she
made me forget Jacob and his teachings. But the moment I met Jacob
I forgot Marusya's charms, and reminded myself that it was sinful to
accept favors in exile. Then I would repent of my past actions from
the very depths of my heart--till I again was face to face with
Marusya. I was between the hammer and the anvil.

My meetings with Jacob were regular and frequent. After what
according to Jacob's calendar was the Ninth of Av, we met nightly in
the valley on Peter's estate, till a disagreement broke out among
us. I would not permit the cattle of the whole neighborhood to
browse on the estate of my patron, and Simeon and Reuben would not
agree to let my patron's horses be brought to the meadows of their
patrons. Our congregation nearly broke up. But here Jacob
intervened with his expert decision.

"Boys," said he, "you must know that 'going out for the night' is
really a form of stealing. True, we do not steal for our own
benefit. Yet, as long as we have a hand in it, we must manage it in
a fair way. So let us figure out how many horses every one of our
patrons possesses. And let us arrange the nights according to the
number of horses each of the patrons has. According to this
calculation we shall change places. We shall spend more nights in
the meadows of those who have more horses. That will make 'fair
stealing.'"

The plan of Jacob was accepted, not as a proposition, but as an
order. Since that time we began to "steal with justice." And our
patrons slept peacefully, delighted with their unpunished thievery,
till a Gentile boy, one Serge Ivanovich, joined us on one of his own
"nights." He was the son of the village elder, and a cousin of
Peter Khlopov. He was compelled to obey Jacob, but the next morning
he blabbed about it all over the village.

Of course, our patrons were angry. Jacob took the whole blame on
himself, and suffered punishment for all of us. Then "Jacob's
Klaus" was closed, because our patrons gave up sending us out "for
the night."

Well, if you please, their dissatisfaction was not entirely
groundless: they found themselves fooled by us, and cheated in a
way. For every one of them had been thinking that his horse would
bring him some profit every night, equal to the value of the horse's
browsing. Seven nights, seven times that profit; thirty nights,
thirty times that profit. . . . All at once these "profits" had
vanished: it turned out that every horse had been browsing at the
expense of his own master; so the expected profits became a total
loss. Of course, stealing is stealing. But then, they argued, had
the Zhid youngsters any right to meddle with their affairs? Was it
their property that was being stolen? As one of my Gentile
acquaintances told me once: "The trouble with the Jews is that they
are always pushing themselves in where they are not wanted at all."

Indeed, it was this fault of ours that Serge kept pointing out to me
and berating us for. Well, Jacob's Klaus had been closed. But we
managed to get together in different places. Once in a while we
came to see one another at our patron's houses, and they did not
object.

I do not know who told Marusya what kind of a chap Jacob was, and
what he thought of her; but she hated him from the moment she first
saw him, when he came to visit me.

"He is a real savage," she would say. "I never saw such a Jew. I
am simply afraid of him. I am afraid of those wild eyes of his. I
detest him, anyway." That is what she used to tell me.

Whenever Jacob came to see me, and Marusya happened to be in the
room, she would walk out immediately, and would not return before he
was out of the house. I rather liked it. I could not be giving in
to both of them at the same time.

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