“Oh, nonsense!” Pavel hissed. “There are other Jews in the movement, lots of them, and one does not hear that kind of stuff from them. They have not sickened of the bargain on account of the riots.”
“I don’t know whom you mean. Perhaps some of them are still under the spell of the fact that a Gentile or two will speak to them or even call them by their first names.”
“Calm down, Elkin,” the judge with the fluffy hair and the near-sighted eyes interposed. “Come, you won’t say that of Clara, for instance?”
“No, not of Clara. But, then, you have not yet heard from her. Sooner or later she, too, will open her eyes and come to the conclusion that it is wiser to be a socialist for her own people than for those who will slaughter and trample upon them. I am sure she will give it all up and join the emigration—sooner or later.”
“The devil she will,” Pavel said quietly, but trembling with fury.
“Yes, she will,” Elkin jeered.
Pavel felt like strangling him.
“She is too good a revolutionist to sneak away from the battlefield,” snapped Ginsburg, the red-headed son of the usurer, without raising his eyes from the table. “Of course, America is a safer place to be a socialist in. There are no gendarmes there.”
Elkin chuckled. “You had better save your courage for the time the riot breaks out in this town,” he said. “You know it is coming. It may burst out at any moment, and when it does we’ll have a chance to see how a hero like you behaves himself when the ‘revolutionary instincts of the people are aroused.’”
“Very well, then, let him go back to the synagogue,” Pavel shouted to the others, losing all his self-control. “But in that case, what’s the sense of his hanging around a place like this?”