"It happened in winter. I stood in the trunk of a rotten tree till nightfall. All day I could hear the women screaming and the horses of the Kossacken storming in from the country. They set fire to Miriam's house, and when she came to the window holding her hands out to the crowd ... they threw a broken wine bottle in her face...."
When Reb Monash fell into his best anecdotic form, Philip sometimes, only a year or two ago, had been afraid to venture beyond the front door, in fear of Kossacken galloping in with drawn sabres from Doomington Road. Indubitably the night was compact with their menace. Only gradually he shook off these alarms. England, he realized, the very filth of the Mitchen river impressing it upon him, and the grime of these grassless, clangorous streets, England was not Russia—a knowledge won only after thick agony and his brow soaked with midnight terror. Russia—the first Babylon—the dread, the enmity, faded into the murky Doomington skies.
One scene remained with him to consummate this nightmare. Reb Monash told the story frequently. If he had played a part whereat women lowered their respectful eyes with a fleeting gesture of disapproval or impatience, his piety none the less was confirmed, if it needed confirmation, in the eyes of the Lord Himself.
It was many years ago now, years before Philip was born. Reb Monash at last was emigrating from Russia to the Western world. His family and half a dozen other families had been packed into the uncovered emigrants' cart which was to take them to the railway terminus many leagues away, where they would entrain for Germany and Hamburg. It was a matter of no interest to the authorities that at most a dozen people could breathe comfortably and stretch their limbs in the vehicle they provided. Family after family was bundled in, every half-foot of extra space was crammed with bedding and the few household goods which, the more cumbrous they were, they found the more indispensable.
Why, indeed, Reb Monash was emigrating he had not precisely satisfied himself. Though fear of a pogrom hovered ever on the horizon, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, but liable, any wind of prejudice blowing, to streak the sky with more sanguine hues than sunset, this had been beyond memory so much a normal feature of existence that it could not have been the determining factor. If the traditional wanderlust animated him, he was too much in demand as an orator in the synagogues hundreds of miles round Terkass to lack means to gratify his instinct. It cannot have been the sentiment that young Jewry in England and America (where he was intending to end his provisional pilgrimage) had so far fallen from grace that it needed the example of his physical presence before it could resume the narrow road; it can hardly have been that—for such ungodliness as prevailed in England and America needed to be seen before it could be imagined.
"But there we were," said Reb Monash, "Chayah," this being Mrs. Massel, "with little Rochke, peace be upon her, at her breast, and myself and Dorah and little Channah. Oh, what a wind was blowing! Knives! Packed like dead men in coffins we were! Then the driver cracked his whip and we were away. It was a desolate country, only we could see the long road in front and overhead the cold clouds and the fir trees running along the road by our side, patiently, like wolves! We could only hear the wind and the bells of the horses and their hoofs, click-click, click-click, hour after hour. But though the wind blew so cold in our faces, there was no room to breathe, no room. To stretch out the chest, an impossible thing. And then there was a station at the roadside where we stopped and—imagine it! they put another five, six people in the cart. Think of it! We started to grumble and some of the women and girls began to cry. What do you expect? They were half-dead for sleep. But how could they sleep, crushed like that, standing, with no room to bend, let alone lie down, and the wind driving through their chattering teeth. There was an official there. 'Curse you!' shouted he, when he heard us lift our voices, 'Curse you!'
"May he be cursed to his father's father!" every one in the kitchen muttered bitterly.
"'Curse you for a lousy lot—you beggars, you rats! Ugh!' He spat into the cart, in amongst us. Nu, we did what possible was to let the new people come in. Can you picture for yourselves—Oh! you can't—what it was like? Rochke, peace be upon her, was at the breast. We could hear the poor baby crying for food, eh, Chayah?"
But Mrs. Massel could never bear the telling of this tale. She would be in the scullery peeling potatoes. Not washing up. It was indiscreet to make a noise when Reb Monash was talking. If Philip dropped a book, Reb Monash had to pause a full minute until he recovered the evenness of his flow.
"Poor little Rochke, peace be upon her, crying for food! And so crushed were we that there wasn't even room to feed the child, though everybody understood and tried to make room. Now, perhaps you'll realize what it was like. As the child became more and more hungry she became too weak even to cry. It was getting dark and I started my night prayers. Then I heard Chayah shout to me, 'Monash! Monash!' It was not the first time she'd cried 'Monash!' to me that day. What could I do? What help was there? I just went on davenning. Ah, the poor child, the poor child, God wanted thee!"