The White Terror and The Red Part 42

"Not exactly," the other answered, leading the way indoors; then, as his face broke into an expression of wan joy, he added: "Been in love, devil wrench it. I take these things rather too hard, I suppose, but that's a small matter. How have you been? Climbing upward in the service of the revolution, aren't you?"

The room was the same. The huge tin samovar stood on the floor.

"Well, and how is your Circle? First-rate fellows all of them," Pavel said.

"Yes, indeed. Only we miss Clara now more than ever."

"Anything specially the matter?" Pavel asked, colouring slightly.

"Well, it really used to be a splendid circle--in our humble way, that is--but those riots have had a bad effect on us, deuce take it. Remember Elkin? It was he who got us together, and now it's he who has brought discord into our ranks. He is organising people who want to go to America. This is his hobby now."

"Why, have the riots knocked all his socialism out of him?" Pavel asked, grimly.

"Oh, no," Orlovsky answered with something like dismay. "I wouldn't say that. It's as an organiser of communistic colonies that he is going to emigrate. Only he says the Jewish people have a more direct claim upon him than Russia."

"There is a revolutionist for you!" Pavel roared, bitterly. "I never did attach much importance to that fellow. The sooner he goes the better.

G.o.d speed him."

"You're too hard on him, Pasha. He's a good fellow. If we had Clara here she would straighten it all out. We miss her very much. As a matter of fact, it was she--indeed, I don't see why I shouldn't tell it to you--it was she with whom I was in love."

"Was it?" Pavel asked, colouring.

He paused, in utter confusion, and resumed, without looking at him.

"Well, you must excuse me, Aliosha, but I fear your frankness goes a bit too far. Such things are not meant to be published that way."

"Why? Why? What a funny view you do take of it, Pasha! Suppose a fellow's heart is full and he meets an intimate old friend of his, is it an indiscretion on his part if he opens his mind to him?"

"I certainly am a friend of yours, and a warm one, too, old boy," Pavel replied with a smile. "But still, things of that sort are usually kept to oneself."

Several other members came in. The gigantic samovar, the improvised sugar bowl, a huge loaf of rye bread, some b.u.t.ter and a lamp made their appearance on the table. Elkin dropped in later in the evening. He and Pavel had not been conversing five minutes when they quarrelled.

"What you are trying to do is to blend the unblendable--to mix socialism with Jewish chauvinism," Boulatoff said in an ill-concealed rage.

"Am I?" the other retorted with one of the most virulent of his sneers.

"Can socialism be mixed with the welfare of the Russian people only?--the welfare of the Russian people with a pailful or two of Jewish blood thrown in; in plainer language, socialism can only be mixed with anti-Semitism. Is that it?"

"Oh, nonsense!" Pavel hissed. "There are other Jews in the movement, lots of them, and one does not hear that kind of stuff from them. They have not sickened of the bargain on account of the riots."

"I don't know whom you mean. Perhaps some of them are still under the spell of the fact that a Gentile or two will speak to them or even call them by their first names."

"Calm down, Elkin," the judge with the fluffy hair and the near-sighted eyes interposed. "Come, you won't say that of Clara, for instance?"

"No, not of Clara. But, then, you have not yet heard from her. Sooner or later she, too, will open her eyes and come to the conclusion that it is wiser to be a socialist for her own people than for those who will slaughter and trample upon them. I am sure she will give it all up and join the emigration--sooner or later."

"The devil she will," Pavel said quietly, but trembling with fury.

"Yes, she will," Elkin jeered.

Pavel felt like strangling him.

"She is too good a revolutionist to sneak away from the battlefield,"

snapped Ginsburg, the red-headed son of the usurer, without raising his eyes from the table. "Of course, America is a safer place to be a socialist in. There are no gendarmes there."

Elkin chuckled. "You had better save your courage for the time the riot breaks out in this town," he said. "You know it is coming. It may burst out at any moment, and when it does we'll have a chance to see how a hero like you behaves himself when the 'revolutionary instincts of the people are aroused.'"

"Very well, then, let him go back to the synagogue," Pavel shouted to the others, losing all his self-control. "But in that case, what's the sense of his hanging around a place like this?"

"Oh, I see, you are afraid I'll send spies to this house, are you? Well, there is less danger of that than that you should take a hand in the slaughter of Jewish shoemakers, blacksmiths or water-bearers as a bit of practical 'equality and fraternity,' I can a.s.sure you. But then, after all, you may be right. Good-bye, comrades! Don't judge me hard."

Tears stood in Orlovsky's eyes. He, the judge, and Mlle. Andronoff, the judge's fiancee, were for running after him, but the others stopped them.

Left to themselves, the group of Nihilists began to discuss the coming outbreak. Everyone felt, in view of Elkin's charge, that whatever else was done, no effort should be spared to keep the mob from attacking the Jewish poor. Much was said about "directing the popular fury into revolutionary channels," and "setting the ma.s.ses upon the government,"

but most of those who said these things knew in their hearts that they might as well talk of directing the ocean into revolutionary channels or of setting a tornado upon the Russian government. Orlovsky alone took it seriously:

"It begins to look something like, by Jove," he said beamingly. "We'll go out, and when the mob gets going, when the revolutionary fighting blood is up in them, we'll call out to them that Jewish usurers are not the only enemies of the toiling people; that the Czar is at the head of all the enemies of the nation. And then, by Jove, Miroslav may set the pace to all Russia. See if it doesn't."

The son of the usurer called attention to the extreme smallness of their number, but he thought it enough to keep the mob from a.s.saulting working people. He knew that his own relatives were all safe personally. As to his father's property, he said he would be glad if it was all destroyed by the "revolutionary conflagration," and he meant it.

Pavel took no hand in the discussion. Instead, he was pacing to and fro mopingly.

At last, after some more speeches, including one by the gawky seminarist, who came late and who disagreed with everybody else, it was decided that in case of a riot every Gentile member of the Circle should be out in the streets, "on picket duty," watching the mob, studying its mood and "doing everything possible to lend the disturbance a revolutionary character."

Eight Jewish women, including three little girls, were brought to the Jewish hospital of Miroslav from a neighbouring town, where they had been outraged in the course of an anti-Semitic outbreak. The little girls and the prettiest of the other five died soon after they arrived.

The next day the Gentile district bubbled with obscenity. To be sure, there were expressions of horror and pity, too, but the bulk of the Christian population, including many an educated and tender-hearted woman, treated the matter as a joke. Where a Jew was concerned the moral and human point of view had become a reeling blur. The joke had an appalling effect. While the stories of pillaged shops kindled the popular fancy with the image of staved vodka barrels and pavements strewn with costly fabrics, the case of the eight Jewish women gave rise to a hideous epidemic of l.u.s.t. There were thousands of Gentiles for whom it became no more possible to pa.s.s a pretty Jewish woman than to look into the display window of a Jewish shop without thinking of an anti-Semitic outbreak.

The storm was gathering. The mutterings of an approaching riot were becoming louder and louder. Many Jewish shops were closed. Taverns serving as stations for stage lines were crowded with people begging to be taken away from the city before it was too late.

The Defence Committee did not rest. The volunteers of the several Jewish districts were organised into so many sections, and a signal system was perfected by which the various sections were to communicate with each other. The raiders were sure to be drunk, it was argued, while the Defence Guard would be sober and acting according to a well-considered plan. The Guard was spoiling for a fight.

The Nihilists "on picket duty" were strolling around the streets.

Troops were held in readiness and placards had been posted forbidding people to a.s.semble in the streets. Having ordered this, Governor Boulatoff announced himself ill and in need of a fortnight's leave of absence. When a delegation implored him to postpone the journey, he replied curtly that all had been done to insure order. He was in bad spirits and treated them with unusual rudeness.

He left Miroslav in the morning. At about noontime of the same day the town was full of sinister rumours. One of these was about the poisoning of twelve Christian wells by Jews.

A few yards off a retired government clerk, in dilapidated though carefully s.h.i.+ned boots and with a red nose, stood in front of one of the governor's placards forbidding people to congregate in the streets, with a crowd of illiterate Gentiles about him.

"'So by an All High ukase,'" he pretended to read, "'all people of the orthodox Christian faith are hereby ordered to attack the Jews, destroy their homes and shops, tear their pillows and drink their vodka and wine, take from them all they have plundered from Christians and administer a drubbing to them.'"

As he proceeded he worked himself up to a tone of maudlin solemnity.

"Aye, the day of reckoning hath come," he went on. "Let not a man of that unchristian tribe escape. Let the blood of Jesus and of his followers be avenged." Here, however, he spoiled it all by suddenly breaking off with a grin of inebriate roguishness.

The revolutionary seminarist was watching this man philosophically.

Similar scenes occurred in other neighbourhoods. When in one instance they had led to an attack upon a rabbinical looking old man who was left bleeding and unconscious on the pavement, the troops were ordered out.

Then there was a scramble for rooms in Gentile hotels. Twenty-five rubles a day was charged for a ruble room, and there were a dozen applicants for each room. Still, those who had money contrived to find shelter. Much greater difficulty was encountered in many cases in getting a Christian cabman to take a Jew to a place of refuge. Many a Gentile rented part of his dwelling to Jews at an enormous price, a guarantee of safety being included in the bargain. Then, too, there was a considerable number of Gentiles who received some of their prosperous Jewish neighbours into their houses without accepting any offer of payment. Prosperous, because the poorer Jews for the most part lived huddled together in the Ghetto and were far removed from the Gentile population. At Pavel's instance Orlovsky went to take Clara's sister and her family to the house of a relative of his, but he found their door locked. They were taking refuge with the Vigdoroffs.