The White Terror and The Red Part 28

But the ten recluses were not the only Talmudists in the place. The Old Synagogue, as it was generally called, was the favourite haunt of scholars. It was here where Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara's father, spent every day and evening in the week except Sat.u.r.days and holidays.

It was about eight o'clock of a warm evening, several days after the disappearance of the political prisoner. The Old Synagogue was filled with people. The evening service was over. Candles flickered on gaunt, tallow-stained reading-desks and blazing oil-lamps dangled from the ceiling. The recluses were freely gossiping or snoozing; there were so many others to do the holy work--a medley of voices and melodies--from the enthusiastic soprano of the schoolboy to the dignified drone of the elderly merchant; from the conscious, over-elaborate intonation of the newly-married young man to the absorbed murmur of the tattered old scholar. As to the Talmudists themselves, they found stimulating harmony in this chaos. To them it was as if the synagogue itself were singing in a hundred voices, an inspired choir that quickened one's intellectual pa.s.sions and poured fire into one's gesticulations.

One of the younger men in the crowd was Makar. Seated in a snug corner, with his reading-desk tilted against his breast, he was sincerely absorbed in a pa.s.sage on the slaying of cattle. The treatise is one of the most intricate in the Talmud, and he had taken it up as he might a game of chess. The lower part of his face was buried in the sloping surface of a huge long book, the handle of a tin candlestick hooked to the top of the folio. The flame of a guttering candle threw a stream of light upon his dusky high forehead and heavy black eyebrows. Slightly rocking the desk, he intoned the Chaldaic text and the Yiddish interpretations, listening to his own sing-song as one listens, at some distance, to a familiar voice.

Rabbi Rachmiel, Clara's father, was studying quietly in a corner, in peaceful ignorance of the mad hunt that was going on for his daughter at this moment. That this red-bearded little man was the father of the Nihilist girl who had brought about his escape Makar had not the least idea.

After bidding Clara good-bye on the evening of his rescue, he had taken the first cab he came across, getting off at Cuc.u.mber Market, as directed. After zig-zagging about for five minutes, he was going to hail another cab, but checked himself because the man proved to be the same who had brought him to Cuc.u.mber Market. A boy stopped to look at him, whereupon he made up his mind that the official cap which he wore (and which had been expected to give him the appearance of a teacher in a government school for Jews) scarcely went well with his face, and that it must be this cap of his which had attracted the boy's attention. He therefore went to a capmaker's shop and bought an ordinary cap, such as is worn by the average old-fashioned Jew, explaining to the artisan that it was for his father, who had his size. This part of the town he knew well, for it was in the centre of the Jewish quarter, not many minutes'

walk from his former lodgings. The Old Synagogue was in the same neighbourhood, and it flashed upon him to seek temporary refuge in the celebrated house of worship and learning. Living in such a place was like hiding in the depths of the Fourth Century--the age of the Talmud, which was still the soul of the Ghetto, still the fountain-head of the spiritual and intellectual life of the orthodox Jew. He would be in his native element there, at any rate, and would certainly feel more comfortable than amid the imposing interiors of a n.o.blewoman's mansion.

On his way to the synagogue he twisted the hair at his temples till he looked as he used to, before he left Zorki. As to his shave, he prepared an explanation: he was subject to a species of skin disease that made shaving unavoidable.

The a.s.sistant beadle at the Old Synagogue was a man with a luxurious white beard. He was not learned in the Talmud himself, but he had served in the great "house of study" so long that he was familiar with the t.i.tles of the various volumes and sections in the same way as an old servant at a medical college is familiar with anatomical nomenclature.

He danced attendance on every diligent scholar, and was the terror of every boy who romped or talked "words of daily life" over his holy book.

He was in charge of the synagogue library and the candle supply. His salary was no larger than that of a street labourer, yet he had the appearance of a stern, prosperous merchant.

When Makar first applied for a book and a candle the a.s.sistant beadle cast a knowing look at his smooth-shaven face, and then, handing him the volume, said:

"You are in the army, aren't you?"

"How do you know, by my shaved face?" Makar asked, sadly.

The a.s.sistant beadle smiled a.s.sent. The skin-disease story proved unnecessary.

"There is many a Talmudist among soldiers nowadays," the old man said.

"To think of a Child of Law having to live in military bondage, to wear a uniform, to shave and to handle a gun!" He regarded Makar as a martyr.

When he saw him reading his book in a pleasing, absorbed sing-song, he paused and watched him with a look of paternal admiration.

"Do you belong here?" he asked later.

"No." He named the first town that came to his tongue.

"Have you relatives here?"

"No. But I have obtained a furlough and am going home. I am waiting for a letter and some money. I have left my uniform with a friend."

The a.s.sistant beadle asked Makar for news--whether there were any rumours of some new war, or of some fresh legislation affecting the condition of Jews. The query was made on the supposition that Makar, as a member of the Czar's army and one who saw so many officers, could not be unfamiliar with what was going on "up above"; and Makar appeased the old man's curiosity with some suitable bits of information. The a.s.sistant beadle was particularly interested in the story of a certain colonel, a bitter anti-Semite, who used to beat the Jews in his regiment because a Jewish money-lender had him under his thumb. Now this "Jews'

enemy" lay in bed, stricken with paralysis--a clear case of divine reckoning. Did Makar know him? Makar said he did.

The discussion was interrupted by the appearance of a bewigged woman with a pound of candles, in commemoration of the anniversary of a death.

She wanted to make sure that they were going to be used for diligent study and not to be thrown away on loafers, and the a.s.sistant beadle told her that it would be all right and that she had better go home and put the children to bed. Another woman, whose boy was studying in a corner, was watching his gesticulations with beaming reverence. She had an apple for him and a copper coin for the a.s.sistant beadle, and when she saw Makar looking at her son, she said, nodding her head blissfully:

"Praised be the Master of the World. It is not in vain that I am toiling. The boy will be an adornment to my old age."

Later in the evening a woman burst into the synagogue, lamenting and wringing her hands. She besought the recluses to pray for her newly-married daughter, who was on her death-bed. Makar was deeply touched. He felt like a foreigner amid these scenes that had once been his own world, and the consciousness of it filled him with melancholy.

He slept at the synagogue. After the service next morning he sent out a boy for some bread, b.u.t.ter and pot cheese, and at two o'clock a devout widow brought him, at the a.s.sistant beadle's recommendation, a pot of soup and boiled meat. He ate his dinner with Talmudistic bashfulness, the woman looking on piously, and mutely praying to heaven that her dinner might agree with the holy man and give him strength for the study of G.o.d's laws.

Toward evening he ventured out on a stroll through the s.p.a.cious courtyard which lay between the Old Synagogue and several other houses of worship. In this yard was a great octagonal basin, celebrated for its excellent tea water, with moss-grown spouts and chained wooden dippers.

He watched the water-bearers with their pails and the girls with their jugs--a scene that seemed to have sprung to life from certain pa.s.sages in the Talmud--until he came within a hair's breadth of being recognised by his former landlady.

Rabbi Rachmiel was absent from the synagogue that day. When Makar returned to the house of study he noticed signs of excitement. The recluses and other students were absorbed in whispered, panic-stricken conversation. They dared not discuss the news in groups, some even pretending to be engrossed in their books, as much as to say: "In case it comes to the knowledge of the police that you people are talking about it, I want you to remember that I took no part in your gossip."

The meaning of Clara's disappearance was not quite clear to them. They knew in a very dim way that there were people, for the most part educated people, who wanted to do away with czars in general, and now it appeared that Rabbi Rachmiel's daughter was one of those mysterious persons. Those of the Talmudists who knew Clara were trying to imagine her as something weird, preternatural, and when her familiar face came back to them they uttered subdued exclamations of amazement.

When the news reached Makar he wondered whether it would not be advisable for him to decamp at once. But he was so snugly established in his present berth that he was loath to abandon it.

Some of the worshippers who dropped in to read a page or two of an evening would gather in groups, bandying gossip or talking foreign politics, of which, indeed, they had the most grotesque conceptions.

Here Makar picked up many a side-splitting story ill.u.s.trative of the corruption, intemperance and childlike inept.i.tude of government officials. His attention seized with special eagerness upon a description of the demoralised state of things in the printing shop connected with the governor's office. There is not an article of merchandise over which the Russian authorities maintain a more rigorous control than they do over type, every pound, almost every letter of it, used in the empire being registered and supposedly kept track of; yet the foreman of that shop often offered some of the Czar's own supply for sale, and in default of buyers (the licensed private printers of the town being too timid to handle this most dangerous species of stolen goods) he had once molten a large quant.i.ty of new type and sold it for sc.r.a.p lead. Makar could not help picturing the revolutionists in regular communication with this man. Nor did his fancy stop there. Gradually all the typesetters under that foreman would be supplanted by revolutionists, and the Czar's printing office would print the _Will of the People_!

Two days elapsed before Rabbi Rachmiel returned. When he did he scarcely spoke to anybody. Naturally a man of few words, he now spent every minute reading his book with ferocious absorption.

The next day was Friday. In the evening the turmoil of Talmudic accents gave way to an ancient chant, at once light-hearted and solemn--the song of welcome to Sabbath the Bride. The bra.s.s chandeliers, brightly burnished, were filled with blazing candles. About half of the seats were occupied by worshippers, freshly bathed and most of them in their Sabbath clothes. Rabbi Rachmiel wore a beaming face, "in honour of the Sabbath," that was plainly the result of effort. As Maker watched him chant his Sabbath-eve psalms, the heart of the escaped Nihilist was contracted with sympathy and something like a sense of guilt.

Meanwhile Count Loris-Melikoff had abolished the Third Section, transferring the secret service to the Interior Department, and while the change had not displaced the Dandy from office, yet it materially impaired his usefulness to his party.

When Makar returned to St. Petersburg Pavel met him with kisses and hugs and punches. The Janitor, whom he saw the next day, shook his hand heartily.

"It's all right," he said, looking Makar over with an amused air.

"What are you smiling at?" Parmet demanded, colouring.

"At you. I can't get myself to believe it was really you who made such a neat job of it."

"I!" Makar protested, exultingly. "Any idiot would know how to be arrested. It's Clara that carried the scheme through."

"Still, there is better stuff in you than I gave you credit for."

Makar was quivering to know something of the use that had been made of his arrest, but conspirators ask no questions. Indeed, to try to know as little as possible, to avoid information upon anything except that in which one was personally partic.i.p.ating was (or was supposed to be) an iron law of the movement; and now Makar was more jealous of his reputation as a conspirator than ever.

"Well, it's all right," the Janitor said, reading his thoughts.

"Something has been done and it's all right; only under the new system it's rather slow work."

Makar did not understand. The abolition of the Third Section had taken place while he was in prison. When he heard of the change he said in dismay: "Will that affect my scheme?"

"Your scheme? I don't think it will," the Janitor answered mysteriously.

"Of course, we'll first have to see how the new system works. We must do some sounding and watching and studying before we know how to go about things. Can't you wait a month or two?"

Makar was silent, then his face broke into a roguish smile.

"I will if you get me into an underground printing office for the interval," he returned.

The Janitor took fire. "What has that got to do with your cursed scheme?" he said with a slight stutter. "As if I had printing jobs to give away!"

CHAPTER XXVII.