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.