Similar scenes occurred in other neighbourhoods. When in one instance they had led to an attack upon a rabbinical looking old man who was left bleeding and unconscious on the pavement, the troops were ordered out. Then there was a scramble for rooms in Gentile hotels. Twenty-five rubles a day was charged for a ruble room, and there were a dozen applicants for each room. Still, those who had money contrived to find shelter. Much greater difficulty was encountered in many cases in getting a Christian cabman to take a Jew to a place of refuge. Many a Gentile rented part of his dwelling to Jews at an enormous price, a guarantee of safety being included in the bargain. Then, too, there was a considerable number of Gentiles who received some of their prosperous Jewish neighbours into their houses without accepting any offer of payment. Prosperous, because the poorer Jews for the most part lived huddled together in the Ghetto and were far removed from the Gentile population. At Pavel’s instance Orlovsky went to take Clara’s sister and her family to the house of a relative of his, but he found their door locked. They were taking refuge with the Vigdoroffs.
Toward five o’clock, when the crimson sunlight was playing on the gold steeple of the Church of Our Saviour and the dazzling blue and white of hussars’ uniforms, a small crowd of men and boys came running to the square in front of the sacred structure.
“We want to carry out the holy vessels and banners,” said a spokesman to an officer. “We hear the Jews have decided to set fire to God’s temple.”
“We won’t let them, you may be sure of that,” the hussar officer answered. “You can safely go home.”
The crowd was slowly dispersing, when a man in a red shirt shouted:
“Boys, I know a Jewish cellar where twenty-five Christian corpses are kept in empty vodka casks. Come on!”
The officer did not interfere, and the crowd followed the red-shirt round the corner to a closed drink-shop. Half an hour later the streets in that locality rang with a drunken sing-song: “Death to the Jews! Death to the Christ-killers!”
The shop was the property of a Jew, who was hiding with his family somewhere, but the street was inhabited by Gentiles. Meanwhile on a little square near Nicholas Street, the best street running through the Jewish quarter, a mob of five hundred men and boys, mostly from the scum of the population, had seemingly dropped from the sky. A savage “Hee-hee-hee!” broke loose, scattered itself, died away, and was taken up again with redoubled energy. All over the district Jews, men and women, most of them with children clasped in their arms, were running along the middle of the streets as people run at the sound of a volcano. Some were fleeing from their shops to their homes and some from their homes to the hiding places which they had prepared for themselves. The eyes of most of them had the hollow look of mortal fear. They ran in family groups, holding close to each other. Here and there a man, his feet giving way under him, sick and dizzy with fright, would slacken pace for a minute, as if giving himself up for lost; then, wiping the cold sweat from his face, he would break into a fresh run, more desperate than before. Some simply walked quickly, a look of grim determination on their faces. Here and there an aged man or woman, too feeble to run, were making a pitiful effort to keep up with the younger members of their families, who were urging them on with a look of ghastly impatience. Often a frail little woman with two or three children in her arms could be seen running as she might down a steep hill.
Christians stood on the sidewalks, jeering and mimicking their fright and making jokes.
Pavel watched the spectacle in a singular state of mental agitation. His heart leaped at sight of that chaotic mob as it paraded through the streets. Visions of the French Revolution floated through his brain, quickening his pulse. “So our people are not incapable of rising!” he felt like exclaiming. “The idea of a revolution is not incompatible with the idea of Russia!” It was as if all the sacrifices he had been making during the past few years had finally been indorsed by life itself, as if they were once for all insured against proving to be the senseless sacrifices of a modern Don Quixote. He could have embraced this mass of human dregs. And while his mind was in this state, the panic-stricken men, women and children with oriental features who were running past him were stranger than ever to him. He simply could not rouse himself to a sense of their being human creatures like himself at this moment. It was like a scene on a canvas. Clara did not seem to belong to these people; and when it came fully home to him that she did, and how these scenes were apt to stand between him and her, his heart grew faint within him; whereupon he felt like a traitor to his cause, and at the same time he was overcome with a sense of his inward anarchy and helplessness.