Then he bent over the table toward Leiba making him shrink back as far as possible, and whispered: “You just wait till Easter night! We’ll pick red eggs together! Then you’ll find I’ve reckoned up your account!”
The guests entered the rest-house.
“Goodbye till Easter, Mr. Leiba!” added George as he went out the door.
Leiba went to the authorities, put the case before them and asked for protection. The sub-prefect—a merry young fellow—was the first one to learn the modest request preferred by Leiba, and he began at once to laugh and to make fun of the trembling Jew. Leiba tried to make him comprehend the danger of the situation. He explained that the rest-house was in a lonely place, far from a village—yes, even off the highway. But the sub-prefect merely told him in a jocular manner to brace up and try to be sensible. Moreover he didn’t wish to talk about such things in a village where the people were so quarrelsome and poor, because it might put notions of insubordination into their heads.
Some days later George was sought by mounted police at command of the sub-prefect. A crime had been committed and suspicion pointed to him.
“How much better it would have been,” Leiba thought, “if he had put up with him until the people came! Because now no one knew where he was.”
Although this had happened a long time ago, it all lived again tonight in his memory, accelerated with fever and suffering. He saw him grab at his clothes as if for a concealed weapon, he heard again the threat, and he suffered again just as he did then at the import of the words. Why did the memory happen to come back so vividly just now, he kept asking himself.
It was the night before Easter.
In the little village, some two kilometers away upon the hills, between the big ponds—he could hear the church bells ringing. And they sound so strangely when they echo through a brain made sensitive with fever. Sometimes the bells are very loud and sometimes they scarcely whisper. Easter eve was at hand. This was the time set by George for fulfillment of his threat.
“Now, of course, he is safely in prison somewhere,” said Leiba, reassuringly.