Against the Current Part 1

Against the Current.

by Edward A. Steiner.

Foreword

Before I could speak one language, I cried in three, and the first words I uttered were in a tongue so foreign to my later life, that I have forgotten all but a few phrases which cling to me in spite of my neglect of them.

I played with the children of three distinct races and loved those best who hated my people most.

My soul awakened in the tumult of three alien faiths and grew into maturity in the belief furthest from that of my fathers. My mind struggled first with the mature if stagnant wisdom of Hebrew teachers, who treated children as if they were sages and sages as if they were children; but it escaped from that bondage into the untrammelled wisdom of the Greeks, their successors, then into that of the Germans, and later became reasonably disciplined under Slavic and Anglo-Saxon teachers.

Born in one country, I lived my early boyhood in another, my young manhood elsewhere and my later life on this side of the great sea--crossing and recrossing so often that I am nowhere an alien; although by my love of liberty and my faith in its spirit of fair play, I am a loyal American.

It is my calling to study races and groups, to discover in the individual what these have bequeathed to him, and having done this fairly successfully for others, I am now trying to do it for myself. I am searching the background of this complex life of mine, my childhood and boyhood, trying to discover just how much I owe to race and how much to my varying environments.

I have written this book for four cla.s.ses of people. First, for those who like myself wish to discover in these informal, yet, I trust, genuine sketches, material for the study of race psychology.

Second, for those who may like to have their faith in the unity of the human race strengthened, by concrete examples.

Third, for those who will find pleasure in reading the story of so complex a child life with all its tragedies and comedies which, at the time they occurred, seemed least significant when they were most full of meaning and most tragic when they were of least consequence.

Lastly, I am writing for those who, like myself, have struggled against the limitations imposed upon their faith and vision by narrow, racial ties, who believe themselves debtors to every race, who believe that their forefathers are all those who bequeathed to the world great thoughts to grapple with and fair visions to realize--whether their dust rests in the cave of the fields of Machpelah, the crowded Pere la Chaise or beneath simple headstones in the churchyards of the Puritans.

Without belittling the heritage left them by their race or people, or the obligation to share their lot of shame or ignominy, I trust that what I have written will enable such to ally themselves with the Son of Man and say with the same modesty and the same courage as He said it: "Behold My mother and My brethren!" ... "For whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother and sister and mother."

E. A. S.

_Grinnell, Iowa._

I

HOW I GOT MY NAME

The servants called me "Uri." When they petted me or wanted some favour, they called me "Urinku," and when they were angry, which was not seldom, they cried, "Uri!" giving the i a short, sharp sound. This made me very angry, for at best I did not like the name, which wasn't my name anyway.

When I asked my nurse why she insisted upon using it, she said, "Because it means awake, and you have kept us awake ever since you were born."

Then I hated the name still more.

One day--I think I was not yet four--I was brought to judgment before my mother for having scratched and beaten a young servant girl because she had called me by that hated nickname. My mother never could punish me, for whenever I offended, which was often, I threw my arms around her and kissed her, and the rising anger quickly vanished. Unconsciously this grew to be a trick which I knew would save me and I practiced it on this occasion. As I held my arms around my mother's neck and pressed kisses upon her responsive lips, she said, "I will tell you why the servants call you Uri, if you promise that you will not grow angry if they call you by that name."

Then she told me in that sweet, low voice which never had a harsh note, and which I shall never hear again in this world: "Before you were born, the sky was red at night for months; a comet, which is a star with a long tail, travelled through the heavens, and the peasants were so frightened that they did not leave their isbas at night, and the inns were silent and deserted. The witch"--and here I began to shudder; for she was still living and had frightened me many a time--"the witch went about through the street, crying: 'There will be war! There will be war!'" In the Slavic language the word for war is strangely euphonious--Voyna.

"Bude Voyna! Bude Voyna!" And mother imitated the voice of the witch so that I shook from fear; for war held unknown terrors and the sight of a gun always threw me into a panic. To this day I feel something of childhood's dread at sight of a gun or pistol.

"It wasn't long before soldiers came," mother continued--"and they blew the trumpet at the town hall and all the able-bodied men had to go to be examined. I wept day and night because your father was young and strong and the trumpet called him away from me and from four little children and from you who were not yet born.

"Many people who had money buried it in the garden or hid it in their bake-ovens and much of it was lost or destroyed; for numbers of the men were killed and when their wives started fires in the bake-ovens, the money went up the chimneys in smoke.

"'Just let them come!' your father said, 'just let those Prussians come, and we will wring their necks like chickens!'

"No, your father did not have to go away to war, the war came to us. One night the sky looked as if it were burning up and the stars were like fiery coals. A haze hung around them as if each star had a halo. The witch ran through the street as if possessed, crying: 'Bude Voyna! Bude Voyna!' and before morning, the battle came nearer and nearer to us.

Bullets flew through the window-panes and the peasants' straw-thatched isbas were set on fire. It was a terrible day and a frightful night.

"Your father was with the wounded and the dying and he came home in the gray morning with his hands and his garments covered with blood. The next day the war was over. The soldiers were gone and the Prussians were the victors.

"Then again the witch ran through the street, crying: 'There will be sickness! There will be sickness!' and evil smells rose from the ground and men were smitten by the cholera. Your father went out again to care for the sick and the dying; one evening when he came home he himself was a victim of the disease and in the morning he was dead.

"When autumn came the cholera was over and again the witch went through the street crying: 'There will be famine! There will be famine!' The poor had no bread. The little flour which the king sent them, they mixed with bran or ground roots or even sawdust. To this day the peasants count time as so many years before the famine or after it. A hard winter it was for every one. We lived in constant dread; for robber bands were pa.s.sing through the town at night and many Jewish homes were broken into and plundered.

"One morning, just as the beadle was going from house to house, waking the people to go to the synagogue--striking the door with a hammer and crying: 'Uri, Uri!' 'Awake, Awake!'--just as he came to our door, you were born, and ever since you have been called Uri. Of course you received another name, the name of your sainted father, but Uri seems to cling to you. Remember that when I see you, you awaken much sorrow and much joy. When the servants call you Uri, you must not be angry with them."

I remember the story almost word for word, as mother told it to me; for it was the time when my little brain began to retain impressions, and, moreover, mother insisted upon my apologizing to the servant girl whom I had scratched and beaten, and an apology was not to my liking.

After that a certain kind of sadness crept over me which I could never quite shake off. An intense fear of guns gripped me. I remember this well, for the next day an Hungarian shepherd came into the kitchen and brought his old blunderbuss with him. Old Istvan had fierce moustaches and coal black eyes; he wore strange trousers which looked like divided skirts, and a sheepskin coat with the head of the sheep hanging over his shoulder; but I know it was the gun that I most dreaded, for I cried and shook from fear until Istvan carried it out of the house.

I never forgot what my mother told me about my name, and I did not grow angry again at the servants for calling me Uri. Even now there is a hut in the Carpathians where one of our servants of that period lives. When last I went to see her and told her who I was, a smile spread over her care-worn face and she said as she drew me close to her, "Muy Urinku."

She was the girl I beat and scratched, and as she recalled that incident, she said, "Alle bilie ste hundsut"--"But you were a little rascal."

II

THE PERIOD OF RACE UNCONSCIOUSNESS

Up to my fifth year I did not know that I was not like my playmates.

Democratic, as all children are, I played with the boys and girls belonging to the peasant families living in our neighbourhood. I visited them in their wretched and ill-smelling homes, and was eager to help them with their field work, but was often carried away bodily by my older sisters, who could not understand why I should behead cabbages for the cross-eyed, drunken day-labourer whose son Martin was my age and my boon companion. I a.s.sisted in many a pig killing, much to the disgust of my wiser and race-conscious brothers and sisters, and at one time I ate a piece of pork. I realized that it must have been a dreadful thing to do when I had my mouth washed with strong soap. Once I was caught chewing a piece of bacon rind which I carried in my pocket, and the punishment was so severe that for a long time I found it inconvenient to sit down. I never cultivated a distaste for pork, and in later years I heard my elder sister say that she believed this was due to the fact that I had been vaccinated with virus taken from the arm of a Gentile boy and that my blood became contaminated.

Be that as it may, I always enjoyed the society of the Gentile boys and girls. In the spring, I made whistles with them, and I knew the Slavic chant which would evolve a sweet-toned instrument from a willow twig. I even made willow switches at Easter time and went about with the Gentile boys who were bought off from beating the girls, by their gifts of coloured eggs.

At the tender age of six, the boy, to whom I was related by vaccination, became a "Mendic," that is, a helper in the household of the Lutheran pastor. He rang the bells for church and carried the cross at funerals.

For these services he received his schooling free and such board as fell from the pastor's table. I think I rang the bells for Christian worship as often as he rang them. Once I polished the communion set, pumped the organ for the schoolmaster many a time, and took my full share of those pleasant tasks, as behooves one who finds that his brother has too much to do, even if he be a brother only by vaccination.

I recall delightful springs at that period, when I went far a-field with the Gentile boys; and when everything had its young I followed a flock of geese and goslings to the meadow, in the centre of which stood a Roman Catholic chapel shaded by a huge beech tree. The girl who had charge of the geese, and whose a.s.sistant I became, although older, was also in that blissful state of race unconsciousness--and did not know that she, a Magyar and a Roman Catholic, was different from me.

The boys teased me for going to the meadow with the girl, but as I recall it now it was the fluffy little goslings that drew me after her, although it may have been the girl, for I early developed a liking for the opposite s.e.x.

I did some mild gambling with b.u.t.tons; marbles had either not been invented or had not yet penetrated into our stage of civilization. I also remember getting myself red all over with brick dust; for there was a game, not unknown in this country, I believe, which required the cutting of six cubes out of brick and then carefully polishing them by means of a flat stone and the free application of saliva.

I am not sure that the Gentile children who played with me were as unconscious of their race and religion as I was, or that they were unconscious of my own. I suspect that as they were usually a little older than I, they knew more than I knew, and that some of them, at least, served me for the "loaves and fishes." I had a ten o'clock breakfast of bread and b.u.t.ter--a huge slice from a loaf of rye bread more than half as large as a wagon wheel and spread thick with sweet b.u.t.ter and a few kernels of coa.r.s.e salt. The Gentile boys had big mouths and big appet.i.tes and they never had a second breakfast of bread and b.u.t.ter.

Many a time I was caught purloining Sabbath cakes which I carried among the unholy Gentile groups of children who, although they may have been ignorant of my Jewish faith, were very conscious that the food which came from my home had a peculiarly delicate flavour unknown in the coa.r.s.e fare to which they were accustomed.