In Those Days: The Story of an Old Man

by Judah Steinberg

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 Saturday 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.

Then we made a point of abstaining from work at least one hour every Saturday and on the days that were the Jewish holidays according to Jacob's calendar. On the other hand, work was considered obligatory on Sundays and on Christian holidays. Tearing up some papers or starting a fire was thought sufficient.

These and many other usages we invented, slowly, one after another. In time we got into the habit of observing them very punctiliously, even after we had made ourselves at home in Anna's house. But over and above all Jacob never gave up preaching to me that it was wrong on the part of an oppressed Jew to accept favors from a non-Jew. And this he preached without ever noticing that he was himself giving in to temptation when he accepted favors and kindnesses from Anna. As to Marusya, he always found a pretext to separate us whenever he met me in her company. I was very angry with him for that, but I could not tell him so openly. At last it came to such a pass that Marusya lost all patience, and made me the scapegoat. She stopped having anything to do with me.

Now that was a real misfortune as far as I was concerned. For only then did I come to realize how much I was attached to the girl. I felt an utter emptiness in my heart; I began to feel myself a total stranger in the house. When everybody was talking merrily, I kept quiet, as if I were a mourner. I was always looking for Marusya, I was always trying to catch her eye. I hoped that our eyes would meet, that she would at least look at me. But she kept on avoiding me. No, she did not avoid me: she simply did not seem to know that I was in the house. I was exasperated; and when once I came face to face with Jacob, I lost my temper, and berated him roundly, attacking him on his weakest side:

"Is it on me that you are spying? How many favors, if you please, have you accepted yourself from Anna? Perhaps your father gave you a special dispensation in your dreams?"

To all of this Jacob replied very calmly: "First of all, your analogy does not hold, for you and Marusya are both youngsters. And, second, even supposing I were sinning, it is your fault then, too; for it is clearly your duty to warn me. At the same time, you can imagine how much the whole thing grieves me."

Well, after all, I was ready to forgive him his sins, provided he overlooked mine. . . . .

Yes, that happened on a Saturday. We were all standing in line on the drill grounds. I was in the first line, and Jacob was directly behind me in the second line. We were going through the paces of the so-called three-step exercise. It was this way: the soldier had to stretch his left leg forward on a somewhat oblique line, so that the sole of his foot touched the ground without resting on it. That was the first pace, the hardest of all, as we had to stand on one leg, with the other a dead weight. In this position we had to keep standing till the command was given for the second pace. At that moment we had to shift to our left leg, and quickly bend the right leg at the knee-joint at a right angle. Thus we had to stand till the command was given for the third pace, when we had to unbend the right leg and bring it forward. On that day we were kept at the first pace unusually long. My muscles began to twitch, and I felt as if needles were pricking me from under the skin. Suddenly I felt as if I had lost my footing, and was suspended in the air. Then I fell. This was my first mishap on that day. The sergeant made believe that he did not notice it, and I congratulated myself, hoping it would pass unremarked.

The sergeant was busy with the last of our line: somehow he did not like the way he was standing. Just then, in a crazy fit of contrariness, I felt a sudden desire to fulfil my duty of talking a few words of Yiddish on Saturday. I turned my head and whispered to Jacob in Yiddish: "He is going to keep us here the whole day! When shall we have our hour's rest?" At that moment the sergeant passed between the lines, and overheard me speaking Yiddish. O yes, they have sharp ears, those drill-masters. As you know, speaking Yiddish was considered a great breach of discipline, which never passed unpunished. It always meant a whipping. So I had made myself guilty of two offenses. On that day I did not go home empty-handed: I got an order to report the next morning to receive my twenty lashes. I received my order like a soldier, saluted, and seemed cool about it—for the time being. That pleased the sergeant greatly; he was a thorough soldier himself, and heartily hated tenderfeet and cowards. He looked at me approvingly, and said: "Because you have always been a good soldier, I shall make the punishment easier for you. You have the privilege of dividing the number of lashes in two: ten you get to-morrow, and ten you may put off for some other time." That was the customary way of making the punishment easier in the cases when the Cantonist was either too weak to take in the whole number of lashes at once, or was thought to deserve consideration otherwise. A temporary relief it certainly was; but in the end the relief was worse than the punishment itself. Between the first half of the punishment and the other half, life was a burden to the culprit: he could neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep in peace. Every moment he felt as if his back were not his own, that he merely had borrowed it for a while, and sooner or later he would have to stretch himself on the ground, to bear the weight of a rider on his neck and of another on his feet, and have the rods fall on him with a swish: one, two, three. . . .

And the pain was awful. It felt as if the skin were being torn away in strips. A new lash on the fresh cut, and another strip was torn out; then another strip across the two. One felt like yelling, but the throat was dry. One felt like scratching the ground, but the finger nails had long become soft. One felt like biting one's own flesh, but one had no power over himself so long as a man was sitting on his neck and pinning it tight to the ground. It was hard enough to stand the ordeal itself, as hard as hell. But it was still harder to bear in mind that such a punishment was coming. It felt as if one was being flogged every moment. So, in the stress of the moment, I found my speech. "Sir," said I, saluting, "I would rather stand twenty-five lashes at once than have the twenty lashes divided in two parts."

"Why?" asked the sergeant.

"Because a Russian soldier has no time to keep accounts that concern only his own back. He has no right to forget his military duties even for a single moment."

Here the sergeant gave me an approving smile, and reduced the twenty lashes to ten. Then Jacob stepped forward, stood at attention, saluted, and said:

"Sir, it is not his fault, but mine. It was I who spoke to him. He was silent. As to his falling during the drill, that was also my fault: I made him stumble. I am ready to stand the punishment, because I am the guilty one."

The sergeant threw a quick, admiring glance at Jacob, and said:

"Your intentions are certainly good, because you wish to sacrifice yourself for your friend. You might serve as a model for all the young soldiers. Boys, do you hear? Love one another as Jacob loves his guilty friend! But you must know that your sergeant is not to be fooled; his eyes are everywhere, and he certainly knows the guilty one!"

When I went home, I felt neither glad nor despondent; I felt as if I did not exist at all—as if my very body did not belong to me, but had been borrowed for a few hours. That night I woke up many times; I felt as if snakes were crawling over my flesh. I got up early the next morning. Marusya was yet in bed, half awake.

"Where are you going?" asked Anna, standing in my way. I kept silent for a while, then I made a clean breast of it all. Anna shook her head at me, and said with tears glistening in her eyes: "Poor fellow, and where are you going to?"

"I am going to the sergeant's; if it has been decreed, let it be done quickly."

"Why should you go hungry?"

"That does not matter." I waved my hand, and walked away slowly. One the way I met some people, but I did not greet them; some people overtook me, but I did not even notice them pass. I had nothing in my mind except my own shoulders and the stinging rods. And for a moment I really lost heart; I acted like a tenderfoot instead of a Cantonist. I was ready to cry; my tears were choking me, as if I were mamma's only darling. It was about a two hours' walk to the sergeant's. When I arrived there, I stood outside and waited for him. Then I thought I heard the sound of some not unfamiliar voice: arguments, expostulations, again arguments. Somebody was talking earnestly behind the closed door. I could not make out what was said. Neither did I have any desire to know what it was all about. I was very impatient. I longed for the sergeant to come out and do the thing he had to do to me. I wished for all to be over and done with—that I had already been carried to the hospital and been bandaged; that the days in the hospital had gone; that I had recovered and had been dismissed. But at the same time I hoped the sergeant might be a little slow in coming out, and that my pain might be postponed for a little while. In short, I was divided against myself: I had two wishes, one excluding the other. Suddenly the door opened, and on the threshold was standing—do you know who? Marusya! Yes, dear God, it was Marusya. She was standing at the right of the sergeant. With one hand he was playing with her locks, and in the other he was holding both her hands. Then he turned to me:

"Hourvitz, this young lady has interceded in your favor. And a soldier is in honor bound to respect the request of such a nice girl. So, for her sake, all is forgiven this time. Go home!"

At that moment I was ready to take forty lashes, if only I might remove the sergeant's hands from off Marusya. I went home at a very slow pace, so that Marusya might overtake me on the road. I thought she might talk to me then. I meant to ask her how she had gotten ahead of me without my noticing her. The minutes seemed hours; I thought she would never come out of the house. Then a crazy idea struck me—to return to the sergeant's house and see what had happened to Marusya. After all, I thought, what can the sergeant do to me more than have me whipped? At that moment I thought little of the rods; it seemed to me just then that the rods did not hurt so much after all, and the pain they caused was only temporary; it was hardly worth while giving the matter much thought. And, I am sure, for the moment I had lost all sense of pain. Had they flogged me then, I should not have felt any pain. I turned back. Luckily I did not have to go as far as the sergeant's house; I met Marusya on the way. She passed me, looking right and left, as if I were a mere stone lying on the roadside.

"Marusya!" I called after her. But she kept on walking ahead, as if she had not heard me. "Marusya," I cried again, "is that the way you are going to treat me?! Why, then, did you save me from the rods?"

She stopped for a moment, as though thinking of something. Her handkerchief fell from her hand. She sighed deeply, picked up the handkerchief, and resumed her walk. I returned to the village alone. Anna met me with tears of joy in her eyes. I broke out into tears myself, without really knowing why. I caught Marusya's eye, but her look was a puzzle to me.—

Presently our horses began to trot at a lively pace; they felt the road sloping downhill. The driver, who had long been nodding in his seat, was suddenly shaken out of his slumbers. He woke up with a start, and flourished his whip; which is a habit acquired in his trade. Uphill or downhill, your coach-drive is bound to work with his whip. Let him be disturbed, no matter when,—even when he drops into a doze in his Klaus on a Yom-Kippur night—he will invariably shake his hand at the intruder as if swinging his whip.

As the horses increased their speed, the baying of dogs became audible; a village was not far off. Cheering and inviting as the distant chorus sounded, it resolved itself by and by into single barks, and every bark seemed to say, "Away with you," "Stand back," "No strangers admitted," and the like. A gust of wind brought to our nostrils warmish air laden with all kinds of smells: smells of smouldering dung, of garbage, and of humanity in general. Soon lights began to twinkle from huddled shanties and from broad-faced houses, as if welcoming our arrival. It looked as if the village were priding itself on its lights, and boasting before Heaven: "See how much stronger I am: sunk in the deep slush of a dirty valley, I have my own lights, and my own stars within myself."

The village seemed to have shrunk within the limits of its own nest, glad that it need not know the ills and the hardships of travel.

The driver ordered an hour's rest.