The White Terror and The Red Part 27

Otherwise she would have been forced to escape and join the army of the "ne-legalny" (illegal), of political outlaws like the majority of Pavel's intimate friends in St. Petersburg. About twenty minutes had elapsed from the time she had parted from Makar, when she saw human figures burst from the prison-gate, accompanied by the violent trill of a police whistle. Her heart sank at the sound. From this minute on Miroslav would be forbidden ground to her. A _ne-legalny_ is something neither dead nor alive, the everlasting prey of gendarmes, policemen, spies--of the Czar himself, it seemed; a "cut-off slice;" an outcast without the right of being either an outcast or a member of the community, a creature without name, home or ident.i.ty. She was appallingly forbidding to herself. But then in the underground world _ne-legalny_ is a t.i.tle of indescribable distinction, and at this moment Clara seemed to feel in her own person the sanct.i.ty which she had been wont to a.s.sociate with the word.

By ridding herself of her starched collar and ribbon and hastily rearranging her hair into a coa.r.s.e, dishevelled knot she was sufficiently transformed to look like a young woman of the ma.s.ses to strangers. She could not go to the Palace without a hat, however, and buying one at this hour would have attracted undesirable attention. So she first went to the house of Beile, her uneducated sister. Her father's address or full name being unknown at the prison, it would be some time before the police came to look for her at her sister's.

Beile was a little woman of thirty with glowing dark eyes and a great capacity for tears and nagging. She resembled her parents neither in looks nor in character, and her mother often wondered "whence she came into the family." Her husband, a man learned in the Talmud, was absorbed day and night in an effort to build up a small business in hides. As a consequence, the s.p.a.ce under Beile's bed was usually occupied with raw skins and the two-room apartment which they shared with a tailor was never free from odours of putrefaction.

Clara entered the room with a smile. The first thing she did was to kiss and slap Ruchele, her sister's little girl, and to tickle her baby brother under the chin.

"Why, where is your hat?" Beile screamed in amazement.

Her own hat was a matronly bonnet which she never wore except on Sat.u.r.days, when she would put it on over her wig, tying its two long, broad ribbons under her chin.

"It blew off into the river as I was crossing the bridge," Clara replied. "That's what brings me here. I want you to get me a hat, Beile, but you must do it quickly."

"Are you crazy? Whatever is the matter with you, Clara? Whoever heard of a girl taking so little care of her hat that it should drop into the water? You don't think you are a daughter of Rothschild, do you? Did you ever!"

"That's all right, Beile. We'll talk it all over some other time. Every minute is of great value to me."

Beile thought her sister was in a hurry to attend a lesson, so she started. As she reached the door, with the baby in her arms, she couldn't help facing about again.

"Didn't you go down the bank to look for it?" she asked.

"But I am telling you I have not a moment's time now."

The more irritation she betrayed, the more the other was tempted to nag her.

"But somebody must have picked it up. It cost you five rubles and you've not worn it ten times."

"Beile! Beile!" Clara groaned.

"Tell me where it is. I'll go and look for it myself. Maybe it is not yet too late. Lord of the World, five rubles!"

Clara was left with Ruchele, but she changed her mind.

"I think I'll wait at Motl's house," she said, overtaking her sister, with the child by her side. "It's nearer to my lesson."

Motl, the trunk-finisher employed by their mother, lived a considerable distance from here. Beile gave her a look full of amazement and dawning intelligence.

"At Motl's!" she whispered, sizing up Clara's dishevelled appearance.

"Where is your collar? A rend into my heart! What have you been doing to yourself? Anyhow, go to Motl's. Or, no, go to Feige's. That's much better. I'll bring you a hat in ten minutes." Feige was a poor old relative of Beile's by marriage.

When Clara, in a large shepherdess hat and genteel looking, bade her sister a hurried good-bye and made for the open gate, Ruchele ran after her, yelling so that her mother had to catch her in her arms and carry her gagged indoors. That was the only adventure Clara encountered on her way to the Palace.

Makar was not there.

She told Pavel of the rescue in general outline, explaining that an unexpected opportunity had presented itself and that there had been no time for sending word to him. He flew into a rage. So far from being the central figure in the affair for which he had been priming himself these many weeks he had been left out of it altogether, left out like a ninny caught napping. But this was no time for wounded pride. Clara had unexpectedly become a _ne-legalny_ and--what was of more immediate concern--what had become of Makar?

"I hope he was not taken in the street," he whispered.

"Masha might know. Could you send Onufri?"

Pavel disliked to use the old hussar for errands of this nature, but in the present juncture there seemed to be no way out of it.

Onufri brought back a note in which the words were all but leaping with excitement.

"No! No! No!" Masha wrote. "He has not been caught. My brother has not yet been home. Everybody is nearly crazy! But I can almost see my brother chuckling--in his heart of course! Hurrah! Hurrah! Long live the revolution!"

"Thank G.o.d!" said Clara, shutting her eyes, in a daze of relief.

"He's a trump, after all. If they haven't caught him so far I don't see why he should be caught now. He may come in at any moment. But where can he be?"

The next morning, at about ten o'clock, when the countess heard the doorbell she declared, with intense agitation, that something told her it was the governor, and so it was. Clara went into her room.

"Don't leave me for a moment, Pasha," Anna Nicolayevna entreated her son. "I am afraid to face him alone. I should be sure to put my foot in it, if I did."

"Just leave uncle to me," said Pavel.

The old man looked wan and haggard, and was blinking harder than ever.

He began by joking Pasha on the rarity of his visits at the gubernatorial mansion, but the young man cut him short.

"By the way, uncle, is it true that that fellow, the Nihilist, has escaped?" he asked.

"How did it reach you so soon?" the governor asked. "The town must be full of it."

"I heard it from a cab-driver last night. It's awful. But how did he get out? Say what you will, they are a clever set, those Nihilists."

"Clever nothing! Our gendarmes are the most stupid lot on G.o.d's earth.

That's where the trouble comes in. There was a governess at the warden's house. It was she who seems to have managed the whole affair. Of course, the warden is a scoundrel, but what does he know of these things? It's for the gendarme office to scent a bird of that variety, but then the gendarme office is made up of rogues and blockheads. To clip one's wings, that's all they are good for. Wherever one turns, he b.u.mps his head against the 'independent power' of the gendarmerie. It's a government within a government, that's what it is. Else one would be able to show St. Petersburg that Miroslav was not the kind of place for Nihilists and all sorts of ragam.u.f.fins to play the mischief with. Those swaggering gendarmes go around poking their noses everywhere, smelling nothing but their own grand epaulets, and yet they are beyond the control of civil authorities. The consequence is that when something happens somebody else is held responsible, because the prisons, forsooth, are under the Department of the Interior! To set an example of idleness and stupidity is all they seem to be needed for, the gendarmes; that's all, that's all."

Pavel agreed with him.

Another week pa.s.sed. The police and the gendarmes were still searching for Makar and the governess, as much in the dark as ever.

Yossl Parmet, Makar's father, was brought to Miroslav a prisoner, but he was soon discharged. He was proud of his son. He now fully realised that his Feivish belonged to a secret society made up of educated people who preached economic equality and universal brotherhood as well as political liberty, and that they were ready to go to prison for their ideas. This made a strong appeal to his imagination and sympathies, and the fact that his Feivish had outwitted the authorities and escaped from prison inclined him to shouts of triumphant laughter. He searched the Talmud for similar sentiments, and he found no stint of pa.s.sages which lent themselves to favourable interpretation. A new vista of thought and feeling had opened itself to Yossl.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ON SACRED GROUND.

In 1648, when Chmyelnicki's Cossacks slaughtered 40,000 Jews, Miroslav was among the cities that fell into their blood-dripping hands. It was a small town then; the Jewish population did not exceed eight hundred, but these unanimously decided to be slain rather than abandon their faith.

Not a man, woman or child was spared. The scene of the slaughter, a small square in the vicinity of Cuc.u.mber Market, is sacred ground to the Jews of Miroslav. The b.l.o.o.d.y Spot they call it reverently. A synagogue stands there and ten recluses find shelter under its roof, so that the Word of G.o.d may be heard with unbroken continuity within its walls. If this house of prayer and divine study were to fall silent for a single minute, say the children of the town, the blood of the slain Jews would burst into a roar of sobbing that could be heard for seven miles.