The Promised Land | Page 9

for a sum of money. I suppose his family was starving, and he
saw a chance to provide for them for a few years. But it was a sinful
thing to do, to go as a soldier and be obliged to live like a Gentile, of
his own free will. And David knew how wicked it was, for he was a
pious man at heart. When he returned from service, he was aged and
broken, bowed down with the sense of his sins. And he set himself a
penance, which was to go through the streets every Sabbath morning,
calling the people to prayer. Now this was a hard thing to do, because
David labored bitterly all the week, exposed to the weather, summer or
winter; and on Sabbath morning there was nobody so tired and lame
and sore as David. Yet he forced himself to leave his bed before it was
yet daylight, and go from street to street, all over Polotzk, calling on the
people to wake and go to prayer. Many a Sabbath morning I awoke
when David called, and lay listening to his voice as it passed and died
out; and it was so sad that it hurt, as beautiful music hurts. I was glad to
feel my sister lying beside me, for it was lonely in the gray dawn, with

only David and me awake, and God waiting for the people's prayers.
The Gentiles used to wonder at us because we cared so much about
religious things,--about food, and Sabbath, and teaching the children
Hebrew. They were angry with us for our obstinacy, as they called it,
and mocked us and ridiculed the most sacred things. There were wise
Gentiles who understood. These were educated people, like Fedora
Pavlovna, who made friends with their Jewish neighbors. They were
always respectful, and openly admired some of our ways. But most of
the Gentiles were ignorant and distrustful and spiteful. They would not
believe that there was any good in our religion, and of course we dared
not teach them, because we should be accused of trying to convert them,
and that would be the end of us.
Oh, if they could only understand! Vanka caught me on the street one
day, and pulled my hair, and called me names; and all of a sudden I
asked myself why--why?--a thing I had stopped asking years before. I
was so angry that I could have punished him; for one moment I was not
afraid to hit back. But this why--why? broke out in my heart, and I
forgot to revenge myself. It was so wonderful--Well, there were no
words in my head to say it, but it meant that Vanka abused me only
because he did not understand. If he could feel with my heart, if he
could be a little Jewish boy for one day, I thought, he would know--he
would know. If he could understand about David the Substitute, now,
without being told, as I understood. If he could wake in my place on
Sabbath morning, and feel his heart break in him with a strange pain,
because a Jew had dishonored the law of Moses, and God was bending
down to pardon him. Oh, why could I not make Vanka understand? I
was so sorry that my heart hurt me, worse than Vanka's blows. My
anger and my courage were gone. Vanka was throwing stones at me
now from his mother's doorway, and I continued on my errand, but I
did not hurry. The thing that hurt me most I could not run away from.
There was one thing the Gentiles always understood, and that was
money. They would take any kind of bribe at any time. Peace cost so
much a year in Polotzk. If you did not keep on good terms with your
Gentile neighbors, they had a hundred ways of molesting you. If you

chased their pigs when they came rooting up your garden, or objected
to their children maltreating your children, they might complain against
you to the police, stuffing their case with false accusations and false
witnesses. If you had not made friends with the police, the case might
go to court; and there you lost before the trial was called, unless the
judge had reason to befriend you. The cheapest way to live in Polotzk
was to pay as you went along. Even a little girl understood that, in
Polotzk.
Perhaps your parents were in business,--usually they were, as almost
everybody kept store,--and you heard a great deal about the chief of
police, and excise officers, and other agents of the Czar. Between the
Czar whom you had never seen, and the policeman whom you knew
too well, you pictured to yourself a long row of officials of all sorts, all