The Jew and Other Stories | Page 9

you save me,' the Jew articulated in a whisper, 'I'll
command her... I... do you understand?... everything... I'll go to every
length....'
He was trembling like a leaf, and looking about him hurriedly. Sara
silently and passionately embraced him.
The adjutant came up to us.
'Cornet,' he said to me; 'his Excellency has given me orders to place
you under arrest. And you...' he motioned the soldiers to the Jew...
'quickly.'
Siliavka went up to the Jew.
'Fiodor Karlitch,' I said to the adjutant (five soldiers had come with
him); 'tell them, at least, to take away that poor girl....'
'Of course. Certainly.'
The unhappy girl was scarcely conscious. Girshel was muttering
something to her in Yiddish....
The soldiers with difficulty freed Sara from her father's arms, and
carefully carried her twenty steps away. But all at once she broke from
their arms and rushed towards Girshel.... Siliavka stopped her. Sara
pushed him away; her face was covered with a faint flush, her eyes
flashed, she stretched out her arms.
'So may you be accursed,' she screamed in German; 'accursed, thrice
accursed, you and all the hateful breed of you, with the curse of Dathan
and Abiram, the curse of poverty and sterility and violent, shameful
death! May the earth open under your feet, godless, pitiless,
bloodthirsty dogs....'
Her head dropped back... she fell to the ground.... They lifted her up
and carried her away.
The soldiers took Girshel under his arms. I saw then why it was they
had been laughing at the Jew when I ran up from the camp with Sara.
He was really ludicrous, in spite of all the horror of his position. The
intense anguish of parting with life, his daughter, his family, showed

itself in the Jew in such strange and grotesque gesticulations, shrieks,
and wriggles that we all could not help smiling, though it was
horrible--intensely horrible to us too. The poor wretch was half dead
with terror....
'Oy! oy! oy!' he shrieked: 'oy... wait! I've something to tell you... a lot
to tell you. Mr. Under-sergeant, you know me. I'm an agent, an honest
agent. Don't hold me; wait a minute, a little minute, a tiny minute--wait!
Let me go; I'm a poor Hebrew. Sara... where is Sara? Oh, I know, she's
at his honour the quarter-lieutenant's.' (God knows why he bestowed
such an unheard-of grade upon me.) 'Your honour the
quarter-lieutenant, I'm not going away from the tent.' (The soldiers
were taking hold of Girshel... he uttered a deafening shriek, and
wriggled out of their hands.) 'Your Excellency, have pity on the
unhappy father of a family. I'll give you ten golden pieces, fifteen I'll
give, your Excellency!...' (They dragged him to the birch-tree.) 'Spare
me! have mercy! your honour the quarter-lieutenant! your Excellency,
the general and commander-in-chief!'
They put the noose on the Jew.... I shut my eyes and rushed away.
I remained for a fortnight under arrest. I was told that the widow of the
luckless Girshel came to fetch away the clothes of the deceased. The
general ordered a hundred roubles to be given to her. Sara I never saw
again. I was wounded; I was taken to the hospital, and by the time I
was well again, Dantzig had surrendered, and I joined my regiment on
the banks of the Rhine.

AN UNHAPPY GIRL
Yes, yes, began Piotr Gavrilovitch; those were painful days... and I
would rather not recall them.... But I have made you a promise; I shall
have to tell you the whole story. Listen.
I
I was living at that time (the winter of 1835) in Moscow, in the house
of my aunt, the sister of my dead mother. I was eighteen; I had only
just passed from the second into the third course in the faculty 'of
Language' (that was what it was called in those days) in the Moscow
University. My aunt was a gentle, quiet woman--a widow. She lived in
a big, wooden house in Ostozhonka, one of those warm, cosy houses
such as, I fancy, one can find nowhere else but in Moscow. She saw

hardly any one, sat from morning till night in the drawing-room with
two companions, drank the choicest tea, played patience, and was
continually requesting that the room should be fumigated. Thereupon
her companions ran into the hall; a few minutes later an old servant in
livery would bring in a copper pan with a bunch of mint on a hot brick,
and stepping hurriedly upon the narrow strips of carpet, he would
sprinkle the mint with vinegar. White fumes always puffed up about his
wrinkled face, and he frowned and turned away, while the canaries in
the dining-room chirped their hardest, exasperated by the hissing of the
smouldering mint.
I was fatherless and motherless, and my