A HUNTED PEOPLE.
IT was Friday night at the Old Synagogue, but the cheery voices of Sabbath Eve were not there. The air of having cast one’s cares aside was missing. Instead of a light-hearted turmoil of melody there was a hushed murmur that betrayed suspense and timidity. Ever and anon some worshipper would break off his hymn and strain his ears for a fancied sound outside. The half hour spent away from home seemed many hours. Very few people were present and none of these wore their Sabbath clothes. Most of the other synagogues were closed altogether. Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara’s father, and several others were abandoned to an ecstasy of devotion, but their subdued tones had in them the fervent plea of Atonement Day, the tearful plea for an enrolment in the Book of Life rather than the joyous solemnity that proclaims the advent of the Higher Soul. The illumination in honour of Sabbath the Bride was a sorry spectacle. The jumble of brass chandeliers hung unburnished and most of them were empty. The synagogue had a troubled, a cowed look. It dared not shine brightly, nor burst into song merrily lest it should irritate the Gentiles. Here and there a man sat at his prayer book weeping quietly.
Members of the congregation who had not been on speaking terms for years had made peace, as a matter of course. The spreading frenzy of the Gentile population impressed them as an impersonal, elemental force. They were clinging to each other with the taciturnity of ship-passengers when the vessel shudders in the grip of danger. And not only did they nestle to each other, but the entire present generation felt drawn to all the former generations of their hunted race. The terrors of the Inquisition, the massacres, the exiles, the humiliations, of which one usually thought as something belonging to the province of books exclusively, had suddenly become realities. The Bloody Spot, the site of the present synagogue, where 800 Jews had been slain more than two centuries ago, gleamed redder than ever in every mind. It was both terrifying and a spiritual relief to beseech the souls of those eight hundred martyrs to pray for their panic-stricken descendants. The Russian Jews of 1881 felt themselves a living continuation of the entire tearful history of their people.
When the service was over, at last, the usual “Good Sabbath! Good Sabbath!” always so full of festivity, was uttered in lugubrious whispers, which really meant: “May God take pity upon us.” Nor was there a rush for the door. Quick, noisy movements were carefully avoided in these days.
Some of the worshippers had slowly filed out, when there was a stir, and the crowd scrambled back with terrified faces.
“Two Gentiles are coming, an army officer and a man in civilian clothes,” said some of those who came running back.
The look of terror gave way to one of eager curiosity. The appearance of two refined Gentiles was not the way an anti-Jewish riot was usually ushered in.
The “two Gentiles” turned out to be Dr. Lipnitzky and Vladimir Vigdoroff, the one in his military uniform, and the other in a summer suit of rough duck. When they were recognised they were greeted with looks of affection and expectancy. The pious old-fashioned people who had hitherto regarded Dr. Lipnitzky despairingly as more Gentile than Jew, now thought of him tenderly as an advocate of Israel in the enemy’s camp.
“Don’t be so scared,” the little doctor said with friendly acerbity, as he paused in the centre of the synagogue. “We are Jews like yourselves—the same kind of Jews all of us. We were passing by, so we thought we would look in. We saw the synagogue was almost dark, though it is still so early. The lights could not yet have gone out. It’s enough to break one’s heart.” He was choking with embarrassment and emotion and his words produced a profound effect. People of his class were not in the habit of attending divine service. The doctor’s military uniform, in fact, had never been seen in a synagogue before. But the great point was that instead of Russian or Germanised Yiddish which he habitually affected with uneducated Jews he was now speaking in the plain, unembellished vernacular of the Ghetto. His listeners knew that he was the son of a poor illiterate brick-maker, a plain “Yiddish Jew” like themselves, yet they could scarcely trust their ears. They eyed his shoulder-straps and sword-hilt, and it seemed incredible that the man who wore these things was the man who was speaking this fluent, robust Yiddish. His halo of inaccessible superiority had suddenly faded away. Everybody warmed to him.
“We’ll be here to-morrow, we’ll attend the service. And next Saturday, too. Every Saturday. We’re Jews.” He could not go on. Some of his listeners had tears in their eyes. Vladimir was biting his lips nervously.
“Still, it is not to see you cry that we have come to you,” the doctor resumed: but he was interrupted by Clara’s father, who, advancing toward him with glaring eyes, said, in a voice shrill with rage:
“Now that Jewish blood is flowing in rivers you people come to do penance! It is too late. It is the sins of men like yourselves that have brought this punishment upon us. A Gentile Jew is even worse than a born Gentile.” He put up his fists to his temples and gasped: “Better become Christians! Better become Christians!”
The crowd had listened with bated breath, but at last somebody said: “Oh shut up!” and similar shouts burst from forty or fifty other men.
“We are all Jews, all brethren.”
“We’ll settle old scores some other time.”
“A good heart is as good as piety.”
“Yes, but why don’t you give the doctor a chance to speak?” Vladimir stepped up to his uncle and pleaded with him.
“Who is he?” said Dr. Lipnitzky with a smile. “Is he crazy?” And flying into a passion, he was about to address Rabbi Rachmiel, but held himself in check. A feeble old man of eighty with a very white beard was arguing from the Talmud with Clara’s father.
“‘The sinner who returns to God may stand upon ground upon which the righteous are not allowed to stand,’” he quoted. “Again, ‘Through penance even one’s sins are turned to good deeds.’”
When Rabbi Rachmiel tried to reply, he was shouted down by the crowd. They were yelling and gesticulating at him, when somebody mounted a bench and fell to swishing his arms violently. “Hush!” he said in a ferocious whisper. “Do you want to attract a mob?” His words had an immediate effect, and then Rabbi Rachmiel said to his nephew, in much milder but deeply grieved accents:
“Do you know what the Talmud says? ‘As long as you shall do the will of God no strange people shall domineer over you, but if you don’t do the will of God, God will hand you over to a low people, and not merely to a low people, but to the beasts of a low people.’”
“All right, rabbi. This is not the time for argument,” the doctor said, kindly. “I have some important information for you all, for all of us. There won’t be any rioting in this town. You may be sure of it. That’s what my young friend and I have dropped in to tell you. I have seen the governor”—his listeners pressed eagerly forward—“there will be plenty of protection. The main point is that you should not tempt the Gentiles to start a riot by showing them that you dread one. Don’t hide, nor keep your shops closed, as that would only whet one’s appetite for mischief. Do you understand what I say to you? This is the governor’s opinion and mine too. Everybody’s.”
His auditors nodded vigorous and beaming assent.
“He particularly warns the Jews not to undertake anything in the way of self-defence. That would only arouse ill-feeling. Besides, it’s against the law. It could not be tolerated. Do you understand what I am saying or do you not? Every precaution has been taken and there is really no danger. Do you understand? There is no danger, and if you go about your business and make no fuss it will be all right. I have spoken to several officers of my regiment, too. Of course, you wouldn’t have to look hard to find a Jew-hater among them, but they spoke in a friendly way and some of them are really good-natured fellows. They assured me that if the troops were called out they would protect our people with all their hearts.”
Every man in the group looked like a prisoner when the jury announces an acquittal. Some, in a flutter of joy, hastened to carry the news to their wives and children. The majority hung about the uniformed man, as if ready to stay all night in his salutary presence, while one man even ventured to say quite familiarly: “May you live long for this, doctor. Why, you have put new souls into us.” Whereupon he was told by another man, through clenched teeth, that it was just like him to push himself forward.
Each man had his own tale of woe to tell, his own questions to ask. One man, whose appearance and manner indicated that he was a tin-smith, had a son at the gymnasium and a Gentile neighbour whose wife became green with envy as often as she saw the Jewish boy in his handsome uniform. She was much better off than the tin-smith yet her children were receiving no education.
“But why should you pay any attention to her?” Dr. Lipnitzky asked.
“I don’t, but my wife does. You know how women are, doctor. They take everything hard. Last week the Gentile woman said aloud that it was impudent on the part of Jews to dress their boys up in gymnasium uniforms, as if they were noblemen, and that it was time Miroslav did like all God-fearing towns and started a riot against the Jews. So my wife is afraid to let the boy wear the uniform, and I think she is right, too. Let the eyes of that Gentile woman creep out of their sockets without looking at the child’s uniform. It is vacation time anyhow. But the boy, he cried all day and made a rumpus and said the school authorities would punish him if he was seen in the street without his uniform. Is it true, doctor? I am only an ignorant workman. What do I know?”
“Yes, it is true, and tell your wife not to mind that woman,” answered Dr. Lipnitzky, exchanging a woebegone look with Vladimir.
“I have some goods lying at the railroad station for me,” said a little man with a puckered forehead. “It has been there about a month. ‘Shall I take it to the shop so that the rioters may have some more goods to pillage?’ I thought to myself. Would you really advise me to receive it, doctor?”
Dr. Lipnitzky took fire. “Do you want me to sign a guarantee for it?” he said. “Do you want me to be responsible for the goods? You people are an awful lot.”
“I was merely asking your advice, doctor,” the man with the puckered forehead answered, wretchedly. “You can’t do much business these days, anyhow. The best Gentiles won’t pay. One has nothing but a book full of debts. Besides, when the door flies open one’s soul sinks. And when a Gentile customer comes in you pray God that he may leave your shop as soon as possible. For who knows but his visit may be a put-up job and that all he wants is to pick a quarrel as a signal for a lot of other rowdies to break in?”
“And the Gentile sees your cowardice,” the doctor cut in with an effect of continuing the man’s story, “and becomes arrogant, and this is the way a riot is hatched.” By degrees he resumed his superior manner and his Germanised Yiddish, but his tone remained warm.
“Arrogant!” said a tall, stooped, neatly-dressed jeweller. “You have told us of some honest officers, doctor. Well, the other day an army officer came into my place with a lady. He selected a ring for her, and when I said it was forty rubles, he made no answer, but sent the lady away with the ring, and then—you should have seen him break out at me. I had put him to shame before a lady, he said. He was good for forty times forty dollars, and all the Jews were a lot of cut-throats and blood-suckers; that all we were good for was to ask officers to protect us against rioters, and that my shop was made up of ill-gotten wealth anyhow. I had never seen the man before and I insisted upon being paid; but he made such a noise, I was afraid a crowd might gather. So I let him go, but I sent out my salesman after him and he found out his name. Then I went before his colonel” (the jeweller named the regiment), “but what do you think the colonel said: ‘He’s a nice fellow. I shall never believe it of him. And if he owes you some money, he’ll pay you. At a time like this you Jews oughtn’t to press your claims too hard.’ That’s what the colonel said.”
When a shabby cap-maker with thick bloodless lips told how he had let a rough-looking Gentile leave his shop in a new cap without paying for it, the doctor flew into a passion.
“Why did you? Why did you?” he growled, stamping his feet, just as he would when the relatives of a patient neglected to comply with his orders. “It is just like you people. I would have you flayed for this.”
This only encouraged the cap-maker to go into the humour of the episode.
“I was poking around the market place, with a high pile of caps on either hand,” he said, “when I saw a Gentile with a face like a carrot covered full of warts. ‘Aren’t you ashamed to wear such a cap?’ says I. ‘Aren't you ashamed to spoil a handsome face like yours by that rusty, horrid old thing on your head?’”
“Oh, I would have you spanked,” the little doctor snarled smilingly. Whereupon several of the bystanders also smiled.
“Hold on, doctor. I spanked myself. Well, the Gentile was not hard to persuade, though when we got at my place he was rather hard to please. He kept me plucking caps from the ceiling until the very pole in my hand got tired of the job. At last he was suited. I thought he would ask how much. He didn’t. He did say something, but that was about anti-Jewish riots. ‘This cap will do,’ he then said, ‘Good-bye old man,’ and made for the door. And when I rushed after him and asked for the money he turned on me and stuck the biggest fig[D] you ever saw into my face. Since then when I see the good looks of a Gentile spoiled by a horrid old cap I try not to take it to heart.”
The doctor laughed. “And you let him go without paying?” he asked.
“I should say I did. I was glad he didn’t ask for the change.”
Another man confessed to having had an experience of this kind, a customer having exacted from him change from a ruble which he had never paid him.
“He was a tough looking customer, and he made a rumpus, so I thought to myself, ‘Is this the first time I have been out of some cash? Let him go hang himself.’ And the scoundrel, he gave me a laugh, called me accursed Jew into the bargain and went his way.”
“Did you ask him to call again?” the cap-maker demanded, and noticing Clara’s father by his side, he added: “This is not the way Rabbi Rachmiel’s wife does business, is it? She would make him pay her the dollar and the change, too.”
The doctor burst into laughter, the others echoing it noisily. Only Vladimir’s face wore a look of restless gravity. It was the restlessness of a man who is trying to nerve himself up to a first public speech. His heart was full of something which he was aching to say to these people, to unburden himself of, but his courage failed him to take the word. Presently a man too timid to seek information in the centre of the assembly addressed a whispered inquiry to Vladimir and Vladimir’s answer attracted the attention of two or three bystanders. Gradually a little colony branched off from the main body. He was telling them what he knew from the newspapers about the latest anti-Jewish outbreaks in various towns; and speaking in a very low voice and in the simplest conversational accents, he gradually passed to what weighed on his heart. He knew Yiddish very well indeed, yet he had considerable difficulty in speaking it, his chief impediment lying in his inability to render the cultured language in which he thought into primitive speech. His Yiddish was full of Russian and German therefore, but some of his listeners understood it all, while the rest missed but an occasional phrase.
“People like myself—those who have studied at the gymnasia and universities”—he went on in a brooding, plaintive undertone, “feel the misery of it all the more keenly because we have been foolish enough to imagine ourselves Russians, and to keep aloof from our own people. Many of us feel like apologising to every poor suffering Jew in Russia, to beg his forgiveness, to implore him to take us back. We were ashamed to speak Yiddish. We thought we were Russians. We speak the language of the Gentiles, and we love it so dearly; we have adopted their ways and customs; we love their literature; everything Russian is so dear to us; why should it not be? Is not this our birthplace? But the more we love it, the more we try to be like Russians, the more they hate us. My uncle, Rabbi Rachmiel, says it is too late to do penance. Well, I do feel like a man who comes to confess his sins and to do penance. It is the blood and the tears of our brothers and sisters that are calling to us to return to our people. And now we see how vain our efforts are to be Russians. There was a great Jew whose name was Heinrich Heine.” (Two of the men manifested their acquaintance with the name by a nod.) “He was a great writer of poetry. So he once wrote about his mother—how he had abandoned her and sought the love of other women. But he failed to find love anywhere, until ultimately he came to the conclusion that the only woman in whom he was sure of love was his own dear mother. This is the way I feel now. I scarcely ever saw the inside of a synagogue before, but now I, like the doctor, belong here. It is not a question of religion. I am not religious and cannot be. But I am a Jew and we all belong together. And when a synagogue happens to stand on a site like this——”
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.