In Those Days: The Story of an Old Man Part 6

Here the old man was interrupted by the neighing of the horses.

The forward horse seemed to be getting proud of the comparative freedom he enjoyed, and bit his neighbor, only to remind him of it.

The latter, unable to turn around in the harness, resented the insult by kicking. But then the driver plied the whip, and there was peace again.

"Would you take the trouble to dismount? Just walk up that hill: it will do you good to warm yourselves up a little after sitting so long in one place."

That was the driver's suggestion; and as no one refuses obedience to drivers on the road, we dismounted.

VII

The next day--resumed the old man--the situation became a little clearer to me. Marusya told me that according to the gossip of the village her mother was a converted Jewess. She, Marusya, was not so sure of it. Her father would call her mother a Jewess once in a while, but that happened only when he was drunk. So she did not know whether he merely repeated the village gossip, or had his own information in the matter. And when she asked her mother, the latter would fly into a temper.

"Papa himself," said Marusya, "likes Jews; but mother hates them. I like papa more than mamma; I also like Jews; I often play with Moshko's girls when mother is not around. I do not understand why mother dislikes Jews so much."

Then Marusya insisted I should tell her the real truth about the Jews, as they are at home: were they like myself, or like Jacob, the wild one? But I stopped listening to her chatter, and began to think of what she had told me about her mother. For in case it was true that Anna was a convert, then--why, then Marusya herself was half a Jewess. I decided to solve the mystery.

Now let me tell you that as a result of our Cantonist training we were not only as bold as eagles, as courageous as lions, as swift as the deer in doing the will of our patrons, but also as sly as foxes in finding a way out of a difficulty. And, by the way, that was also the opinion of our late commander, Colonel Pavel Akimovich. A keen-eyed commander and a kind-hearted master was he, may his lot be in Paradise among the G.o.dly men of the Gentile tribes. Yes, if he was an eagle, we were his chicks; if he was a lion, we were his whelps! This is what he used to say: "In time of need, you have no better soldier than the Jew. But then you must know how to use him.

Do not give him too many instructions, and do not try to explain it all to him from beginning to end. If you instruct him too much, he will be afraid to do any scheming on his own hook, and you will be the loser. Just give him your order, and tell him what the order is for. Then you may be sure he will get it for you, even if he should have to go to h.e.l.l for it!" This is what Colonel Pavel Akimovich used to say of us.

Now, once I decided to find out Anna's secret, I thought it all out beforehand, as a Cantonist should; and I hit upon a plan.

That was at the beginning of spring. One day Khlopov left on a journey to the neighboring villages to collect the taxes. He had to stay away some time. The whole of that day Anna kept worrying me as usual. She sent me on unnecessary errands, she wanted me to be in two places at the same time. She yelled, she cursed, she shook me, and mauled me, she pulled me by the ears. She knew well how to make one miserable. When night came, I went to sleep in the anteroom; that was my bedroom. Anna was abed, but not asleep. Marusya had long been asleep. Then Anna remembered that she had forgotten to close the door leading to the anteroom, and she ordered me to get up and close it. I made believe I was sleeping soundly, and began to snore loudly. She kept on calling me, but I kept on snoring.

Suddenly I began to cry, as if from the sleep: "O mother, leave Anna alone. She too is a mother! Pity her family!"

Anna became silent. I half opened my eyes and looked at her through the open door. A candle was burning on the table near her bed, and I could see that she was frightened, and was listening intently.

then I continued, somewhat differently: "I beg of you, mother, is it her fault? Doesn't she feed me? Isn't she a mother too?"

Then I began to cry as if in my sleep. "What?" I asked suddenly, "Anna?! Anna--a Jewess too?!"

Then I noticed that Anna was watching Marusya's bed. I saw she was afraid Marusya might overhear what was not intended for her ears.

She put on her night robe, came to my bed, and began in a whisper: "Are you sleeping? Get up, my boy, wake up!"

I did "wake up," and put on a frightened appearance. "What did you cry about?" she asked. "I dreamt something terrible." "What did you dream about" I kept silent. "Tell me, tell me!" she insisted.

"I saw my mother in a dream." "Is she alive yet?" I told a lie. I said my mother was long dead. "And what did she tell you?" "She said that . . . ." "Tell me, tell me!" "I cannot repeat that in Russian." "Then say it in Yiddish." I looked with make-believe surprise at Anna. "She said: 'I shall come to Anna at night and choke her, if she doesn't give up abusing you.'" At this Anna turned red. I continued: "And she said also, 'Anna ought to have pity on Jewish children, because she is a Jewess herself.'" . . . .

My scheme worked well. Anna began to treat me in an entirely different way, and my position in the house not only improved, but became the opposite of what it had been. At times, when no one was around, she even spoke Yiddish to me. Apparently she liked to remain alone in the house with me and chat with me. You must know, her position in the village was all but agreeable. She had very few acquaintances; and she would have been better off without any. When she happened to have visitors, a mutual suspicion at once became apparent, in their behavior and their talk. There was much more flattery, much more sweetness of speech than is common among people.

One could see that each spoke only to hide her innermost thoughts.

Every conversation ended as it began: with gossip about women who were not zealous enough in matters of church attendance. And when it came to that, Anna invariably blushed, simply because she was afraid she might blush. Then, feeling the blood coming to her face, she would try to hide her confusion, and would chatter away ceaselessly, to show how punctual she was herself in church matters.

On taking leave, Anna's friends would exchange significant glances, and Anna would have been either too stupid or else too wise not to notice the sting of those sly looks.

As to Peter, he treated Anna fairly well; and when they happened to quarrel, it was mostly her own fault. One night--it was long after I had found out Anna's secret--I happened to be sleepless, and I overheard Anna talking angrily to Peter. She was scolding him for having forgotten to prepare oil for the lamp before the ikon of some saint. It was that saint's day, and Khlopov had either forgotten or neglected it. He was very careless in church matters, and Anna never got tired of taking him to task for it. This time she didn't leave off nagging him, till he lost patience, and said: "Were I really as religious as you want me to be, I should have taken to wife a woman who--well, who is a real Christian herself." Perhaps Peter never meant to insult Anna by reminding her of that which she wished to forget. Or perhaps Peter thought he had offered a valid excuse. But Anna was offended and turned around crying.

The trouble with Anna was that she was very sensitive. That was a trait of hers. When she heard something said about herself, she never was satisfied with the plain meaning of what was said, but tried to give the words every other possible meaning. Every chance remark she happened to overhear she took to be meant for herself.

Well, this same sensitiveness one may find in most of the Cantonists. For instance, in the regiment of General Luders, in which I served once, we had many Tatars, some Karaites, and a goodly number of Jews. To all appearances there was no trouble; but let one soldier call another "Antichrist," and every Jew in the regiment would get excited. The Tatars and the Karaites rather liked to call their comrades Antichrist, even if they happened to be Christians.

But it was only the Jews whom the word set a-s.h.i.+vering. It is as I tell you--the Jew is painfully sensitive. Well, to cut my story short, Anna did not have a happy time of it. She was all alone, surrounded though she was by many people. She became taciturn in spite of herself. And this is a great misfortune when it happens with womenfolk. Women are naturally great talkers, and you may do them much harm, if you do not give them a chance to talk. So I became her crony as soon as I discovered her secret. Then she tried to make up for the many years of silence by chattering incessantly.

In her long talks she often said things she had denied before. Once she told me that she felt a longing to see her relations and townspeople. But the next time she said that she hated them mightily. Very likely she did not hate them. We all dislike that which has caused us pain and harm. So Anna disliked her relations for having caused her remorse, homesickness, and perhaps shame.

Once her tongue was loosed, she did not stop until she had poured out the proverbial nine measures given to woman as her share of the ten measures of speech in the world. She spoke Yiddish even in the presence of Marusya and of Jacob, who used to visit me once in a while. By and by Anna began to treat him in a very friendly way.

Only Marusya avoided him, and never spoke a word to him. She simply hated him.

Thus in time the house of Anna became something like a Jewish settlement, or rather like some sort of a Klaus, especially when Pater was away from home. We all used to gather there, and talk Yiddish, just as in a Klaus. For under Anna's roof we felt perfectly free. She became a mother to the homeless Cantonists.

Even marusya took to jabbering a little Yiddish. Jacob began to feel that the leaders.h.i.+p of our little community was pa.s.sing into the hands of Anna, and he became jealous. He did not see that the very fact that he too was falling under her spell was influencing our community greatly, and that thus he was stamping it with his own character.

Anna liked him more than she did any one of us. Moreover, she respected him. At times it looked as if she were somewhat afraid of him.

Now you must know that at bottom Anna had never deserted her religion. Instead, she carried the burdens of both religions; to the fear of the Jewish h.e.l.l she seemed to have added the fear of the Christian h.e.l.l. I suspect that she was still in the habit of reciting her Hebrew prayer before going to sleep. She also believed in dreams. In this respect all women are the same. Of course, she had her dreams, and Jacob thought himself able to interpret them; he used to seek her company for that purpose.

So we all began to feel very much at home in Anna's house.

Once it happened that Peter entered the house at a moment when we were all so much absorbed in our Yiddish conversation that we did not notice his presence. He sat down quietly among us and took part in our talk, smiling in his usual manner. He asked us some questions, and we answered him. Then we asked him something, and he answered us in pure, good Yiddish, as if there were nothing new or surprising about it. At last Marusya awoke, and exclaimed with glad surprise: "Papa, can you speak Yiddish too?" We all shuddered, as if caught stealing. Peter's smile broadened, covering the whole of his face.

"Did you imagine that I do not know it? I wish you could speak it as well as I do."

That made me suspect that Peter might have been himself a convert from Judaism, and I decided to ask Anna bout it. She cleared up my doubts very soon. She told me that Peter had been brought up in an exclusively Jewish town; he had been employed there as a clerk in the Town Hall. As he always had to deal with jews, he finally learned their language. She told me at the same time that Peter rather liked Jews, and that he was a man of more than ordinary ability; otherwise, she said, it would have been very foolish on her part to leave the religion of her father for the sake of Peter.

"What did you say was the name of your native town?" I asked out of sheer curiosity. She named my native town. I felt a s.h.i.+ver go through me. "And what was your father's name?" I asked again, trembling.

"Bendet."

"Was he a wine-dealer?"

"Yes; and how do you know it? Are you of the same town?"

I told her my father's name, and we clasped hands in surprise.--

While the old man was telling his tale, the clouds dispersed. I looked upwards: the dark sky spread vaultlike above us studded with stars, some in groups, some far apart. Then I remembered what the Lord had promised to our father Abraham: "And I shall multiply thy seed as the stars in heaven." And I thought I saw in the sky naught but so many groups of Jews: some kept in exile, some confined within the nebulae of the Milky Way. . . . But even then, it seemed to me, there was a strong attraction, a deep sympathy between them all, far apart and scattered though they were. Even so they formed aggregations of s.h.i.+ning stars--far apart, yet near. . . .

VIII

The wind began to grow cold; we pressed close to one another to keep warm. The old man drew his old coat tightly about him, and continued his story:--

Well, we of our little community threw off the yoke of the old Torah, yet refused to accept the yoke of the new Torah.

Nevertheless our lives were far from being barren. Our longing for the things we were forbidden to practise prompted us to invent a good many new usages. For instance, long before we had the freedom of Anna's house, we managed to meet every Sat.u.r.day to exchange a few words in Yiddish; two or three words were sufficient to satisfy our sense of duty. Those meetings were among the things for the sake of which we were ready to run any risk of discovery. Of course, we dared not recite our Modeh-Ani: our patrons might have overheard us, and that meant a sure flogging. But we practised repeating the prayer mentally, and we always managed to do it with our faces turned in the direction from which we thought we had come, and where our native towns were situated. Jacob had a little piece of cloth, a remnant of an Arba-Kanfos. The Tzitzis had long been torn away, to prevent discovery and avoid punishment; but what was left of it we kept secretly, and we used to kiss it at opportune moments, as if it were a scroll of the Torah.