CHAPTER XXXVI.
A PAPER FROM THE CZAR.
A LARGE crowd of peasants, in tall straw hats, many of them with their whips in their hands, congregated in front of the bailiff’s office at Zorki. It was a sultry afternoon in August. A single shirt of coarse white linen and a pair of trousers of the same material were all the clothes the men wore. The trousers were very wide and baggy but drawn tight at the bottom by means of strings, so that they dropped at the ankles blouse-fashion, and the loose-fitting shirt fell over the trousers with a similar effect. Most of the shirts were embroidered in red and blue. Sometimes, as a result of special rivalry among the young women, one village will affect gaudier embroidery and more of it than its neighbours. This could be seen now at one corner of the crowd where a group of peasants, all from the same place, defined itself by the flaming red on the upper part of their sleeves. There were women, too, in the crowd, the girls in wreaths of artificial flowers and all of them in ribbons and coral beads, though some of them were barefoot.
A strong smell of primitive toil emanated from their bodies; primitive ideas and primitive interests looked out of their eyes. The northern moujik—the Great, or “real,” Russian—who speaks the language of Turgeneff and Tolstoy, has less poetry than the Little-Russian, but he also has less cunning and more abandon. To be sure, the cunning of the Zorki peasant is as primitive as his whole mind. Very few men in the crowd now standing in front of the bailiff’s office could have managed to add such two numbers as six and nineteen, or to subtract the weight of an empty pail from the weight of a pail of honey. Their book-keeping consists of notches on the door-jamb, and their armour in the battle of life is a cast-iron distrustfulness.
At last the bailiff made his appearance, adjusted the straps of his sword across his breast, and asked what they wanted. A tall old fellow with a drooping steel-grey moustache came out of the crowd, hat in hand, and bowed deeply, as he said:
“It’s like this, your nobleness. We wish to know when that paper from the Czar about the Jews will be read to us?”
“What paper from the Czar?” the bailiff asked. “What are you talking about?” He was a dry-boned man, but ruddy-faced and with very narrow almond-shaped eyes. As he now looked at the crowd through the sharp afternoon glare his eyes glistened like two tiny strips of burnished metal.
“Your nobleness need not be told what paper. It’s about beating the Jews and taking away their goods.”
The scene was being watched by several Jews, plucky fellows who had come in the interests of their people at the risk of being the first victims of mob fury. Among these was Yossl, Makar’s father, at once the most intellectual and strongest looking man in the delegation. In the meantime the other Jews, stupefied and sick with fear, had closed their shops and dwellings and were hiding in cellars and in garrets, in the ruins of an old church and in the woods. Two women gave birth to stillborn children during the commotion, one of these at the bedside of her little boy who was too sick to be moved.