In Those Days: The Story of an Old Man

by Judah Steinberg

Zagrubsky departed, hissing "Zhid" under his breath. It was the way he had treated me. My patience was gone. I put myself in his way, stopped him and asked him: "Now listen, you Pollack, how do you come to find out so quickly who is a Jew, and who is not? As far as I can see, you cannot speak Russian correctly yourself: why, then, do you spy on others? I have not yet forgotten that it was on account of my tobacco that you recognized I was a Zhid, too."

"O, that is all very simple," said he. "I never saw such lickspittles as the Jews are. They are always ready to oblige others with their favors and refuse honors due to themselves. That is why the authorities favor them so much. Do you wish to know what a Jew is? A Jew is a spendthrift, a liar, a whip-kisser, a sneak. He likes to be trampled on much more than others like to trample on him. He makes a slave of himself in order to be able to enslave everybody else. I hate the Jews, especially those from whom I ever get any favors."

Well, by this time I am ready almost to agree with many of the Pole's assertions. The Jew is very lavish in his dealings with Gentiles. He is subservient, and always ready to give up what is his due. All that is a puzzle to the Gentiles, and every Jew who has been brought up and educated among them knows that as well as I do. Sometimes they have a queer explanation for it. A gentile who has ever tasted of Jewish kindness and unselfishness will say to himself, "Very likely the Jew feels that he owes me much more."

To be brief: Zagrubsky and I became very much attached to each other. But we never tried to disguise our feelings. I knew he was my enemy, and he knew that I was repaying him in kind, with open enmity. That was just what Zagrubsky liked. We loved our mutual cordial hatred. When one feels like giving vent to his feelings, like hating, cursing, or detesting somebody or something, one's enemy becomes dearer than a hundred friends.

Then there came a certain day, and that day brought us closer together for a moment, closer than we should ever be again. It happened at night . . . . cursed be that night! swallowed up the following day! . . . .

We soldiers had long become tired of our drill and our manoeuvres; we got tired of "attacking" under the feint of a "retreat," and of "retreating" under the feint of an "attack." We were disgusted with standing in line and discharging our guns into the air, without ever seeing the enemy. In our days a soldier hated feints and make-believes. "Get at your enemy and crush his head, or lie down yourself a crushed 'cadaver'"—that was our way of fighting, and that was the way we won victories. As our general used to say: "The bullet is a blind fool, but the bayonet is the real thing."

At last, at last, we heard the quick, nervous notes of the bugle, and the hurried beats of the drum, the same we used to hear year in, year out. But till that moment it was all "make-believe" drill. It was like what we mean by the passage in the Passover Haggodah: "Any one who is in need may come, and partake of the Passah-lamb. . . ." Till that moment we used to attack the air with our bayonets and pierce space right and left, "as if" the enemy had been before us, ready for our steel. We were accustomed to pierce and to vanquish the air and spirits, and that is all. At the same time there was something wonderful, sweet, and terrible in those blasts of the bugle, something that was the very secret of soldiery, something that went right into our souls when we returned home from our drill. . . .

But on that day it was not drill any more, and not make-believe any more, no! Before us was the real enemy, looking into our very eyes and thirsting for our blood.

Then, just for a moment I thought of myself, of my own flesh, which was not made proof against the sharp steel. I remembered that I had many an account to settle in this world; that I had started many a thing and had not finished it; and that there was much more to start. I thought of my own enemies, whom I had not harmed as yet. I thought of my friends, to whom I had so far done no good. In short, I thought I was just in the middle of my lifework, and that the proper moment to die had not yet come. But all that came as a mere flash. For in the line of battle my own self was dissolved, as it were, and was lost, just like the selves of all who were there. I became a new creature with new feelings and a new consciousness. But the thing cannot be described: one has to be a soldier and stand in the line of battle to feel it. You may say, if you like, that I believe that the angel-protectors of warring nations descend from on high, and in the hour of battle enter as new souls into the soldiers of the line.

Then and there an end came also to the vicissitudes of my Barker. I found him dead, stretched out at full length on a bank of earth, which was the monument over the grave of the heroes of the first day's fighting. In the morning they all went to battle in the full flowering of strength and thirsty for victory, only to be dragged down at night into that hole, to be buried there. Well, the earth knows no distinction between one race and another; its worms feed alike on Jew and Gentile. But there, in Heaven, they surely know the difference between one soul and another, and each one is sent to its appointed place.