In Those Days | Page 9

would really seem to have been an
awful thing. They would pick out all the Cantonists that had so much as
a scratch on their bodies or the smallest sign of an eruption, paint the
wounds with tar, and put the boys, stripped, on the highest shelf in the
steam-bath. And below was a row of attendants armed with birch-rods.
The kettle was boiling fiercely, the stones were red-hot, and the
attendants emptied jars of boiling water ceaselessly upon the stones.
The steam would rise, penetrate every pore of the skin, and--sting!
sting!--enter into the very flesh. The pain was horrible; it pricked, and
pricked, and there was no air to breathe. It was simply choking. If the
boy happened to roll down, those below stood ready to meet him with

the rods.
All this is true. At the same time, was it mere cruelty? It is very simple:
we were a lot of Jewish lads snatched from the arms of our mothers. On
the eve of every Sabbath our mothers would take us in hand, wash us,
comb our hair, change our underwear, and dress us in our Sabbath
clothes. All at once we were taken into exile. Days, weeks, nay, months,
we passed in the dust of the roads, in perspiration and dirt, and sleeping
on the ground. Our underwear had not been changed. No water had
touched our bodies. So we became afflicted with all kinds of eruptions.
That is why we had to pass through what we called "the chamber of
hell." And this will give you an idea of the rest.
To make a long story short: there were many of us, and we were
distributed in various places. Many of the boys had taken ill; many died
on the road. The survivors were distributed among peasants, to be
brought up by them till they reached the age of entering the army. I was
among the latter. Many months, maybe even years, I passed in
knocking about from village to village, from town to town, till, at last, I
came into the joint possession of a certain Peter Semionovich Khlopov
and his wife Anna Petrovna. My master was neither old nor young; he
was neither a plain peasant nor a nobleman. He was the clerk of the
village. In those days that was considered a genteel occupation,
honorable and well-paid. He had no sons, but he and one daughter,
Marusya by name. She was then about fourteen years old, very
good-looking, gay, and rather wild.
According to the regulations, all the Cantonists in the village had to
report daily for military drill and exercise on the drill grounds before
the house of the sergeant. He lived in the same village. At the request
of my patron Khlopov I was excused from the daily drill, and had to
report but once a week. You see, Peter expected to derive some benefit
from me by employing me about the house and in the field.
Now it was surely through the merits of my ancestors that I happened
to be placed in the household of Peter Khlopov. Peter himself spent but
little of his time at home. Most of the time he was at the office, and his
free moments he liked to spend at the tavern, which was owned by the

only Jew in the village, "our Moshko" the Klopovs used to call him.
But whenever he happened to be at home, Peter was very kind to me,
especially when he was just a little tipsy. Perhaps he dreamt of
adopting me as his son: he had no sons of his own. And he tried to
make me like military service. "When you grow up," he sued to say,
"you will become an officer, and wear a sword. Soldiers will stand at
attention before you, and salute you. You will win distinction in battle,
and be found worthy of being presented to the Czar." He also told me
stories of Russian military life. By that time I had learned some
Russian. They were really nice stories, as far as I could understand
them; but they were made nicer yet by what I could not understand of
them. For then I was free to add something to the stories myself, or
change them according to my own fancy. If you are a lover of stories,
take the advice of a plain old man like myself. Never pay any attention
to stories in which everything has been prepared from the very start,
and you can tell the end as soon as you begin to read them or listen to
them. Such stories make one yawn and fall asleep. Stories of this kind
my daughter reads to me once in a while, and I always fall asleep over
them. Stories are good