“If by scamps you mean people who will be tortured or hanged for opposing the tyranny that is crushing us all rather than feather their own nests, then it is useless for us to continue this talk.”
“Be calm, Clara. You don’t wish to misjudge me, do you? Of course, I needn’t tell you that what you say about sacrificing oneself and all that sort of business is no news to me. Some other time, when you are not excited, I may have something to say about these things——”
“That everlasting ‘something to say!’ People are being throttled, butchered and you—you have ‘something to say.’ We are speaking in two different languages, Volodia.”
“Maybe we are. And I must say you have picked up that new language of yours rather quickly. I am not going to enter into a lengthy discussion with you to-night. All I will say now is this: You know that four Jewish revolutionists have been hanged within the last few months—in Odessa, Nicolayeff, Kieff and St. Petersburg. If you think that does the Jewish people any good I am very sorry.”
“What else would you have Jews do? Roll on feather-beds and collect usury? Would that do ‘the Jewish people’ good?”
“You talk like an anti-Semite, Clara.”
“There is no accounting for tastes. You may call it anti-Semitism. You may be ashamed of four men who die bravely in a terrible struggle against despotism.”
He cast an uneasy look in the direction of the police booth, but his courage failed him to urge her to lower her voice.
“As for me,” she went on, “I certainly am proud of them. I hold their names sacred, yes, sacred, sacred, sacred, do you understand? And if you intend to continue calling such people scamps then there is nothing left for us to say to each other. And, by the way, since when have you been a champion of ‘the Jewish people’—you who have taught me to keep away from everything Jewish; you who are shocked by the very sound of Yiddish, by the very sight of a wig or a pair of side-locks; you who are continually boasting of the Gentiles you are chumming with; you who would give all the Jews in the world for one handshake of a Christian?”
“Well, I am prepared to take abuse, too, to-night. As to my hatred of Yiddish and side-locks, that does no harm to anybody. If all Jews dropped their antediluvian ways and became assimilated with the Russian population half of the unfortunate Jewish question would be solved.”