There was plenty of noise arising from the care and haste whose only aim was to gain money; there was darkness because of mystic fears and dreams there was narrowness and suffocating because of merciless, grinding, dead orthodoxy.
The common people of the same faith throughout the whole country considered the people of Szybow as powerful, both materially and morally, wise, orthodox, almost holy.
Over the whole deep-sunk social valley hung a cloud. This cloud was composed of the darkest elements which exist in human kind, which are: respect for the letter from which the spirit has departed, dense ignorance, suspicious and hateful defence of self against everything which flows from broad, sunny, but 'foreign' worlds.
CHAPTER II
It happened three years ago.
Damp fog was rising from the muddy streets of the town and made dark the transparency of a starry evening. A breath of March wind mingled with the odour of freshly ploughed fields, flew over low roofs, but could not drive out the suffocating exhalations coming in clouds from the doors and windows of the houses.
Notwithstanding the mists and exhalations which filled it, the town had a gay and festive appearance. From behind gray curtains thousands of windows shone with bright illuminations, and from lighted houses came the sounds of noisy conversation or collective prayers. Whoever passed through the streets and looked into this or that window of this or that house, would see all around bright family scenes. In the centre of larger or smaller rooms were long tables, covered with white cloths, and all prepared for a feast. Around them bustled women in variegated dresses, carrying and leaving contributions with a smile on their faces, and admiring their own work in the decoration of the tables. Bearded husbands, holding their children in their arms, pressed their lips to the pink cheeks, or kissed the on the mouth with a loud smack. They tossed them up to the low ceilings, to the great mirth of the older members of the family. Others sat in groups on benches and talked of affairs of the past week. Others still, covered with the folds of their white talliths, stood motionless, facing the walls, rocking their figures back and forward. These were preparing themselves by fervent prayer to meet the holy Sabbath day.
For it was Friday evening.
In the whole town there was but one house in which reigned darkness, emptiness, and sadness. It was a little gray hut which seemed to have been clapped on to a small hill at the other end of the town—it was the only elevation on the waste plain. And even this hill was not natural. Tradition said that it was made by Karaites, who built it on their temple. Today there remained no traces of that temple. The bare, sandy hill, protected the little hut from the winds and snow storms, and the hut humbly and gratefully nestled in its shelter. Over its roof, on the side of the hill, grew a large pear tree. Through its branches the wind rushed sweetly—over it shone a few stars. A large, cultivated field separated this spot from the town. A deep quiet reigned here, interrupted only by muffled echoes of the remote noise of the town. Over the black beds thick clouds of steam and mist, coming from the streets of the town, crept toward the hut.
The interior of the hut was dark as a precipice, and from behind its small windows resounded the trembling but vigorous voice of a man: