'Come along then,' said Jacob kindly, beckoning him. 'It's all right.'
Looking at him mistrustfully and fearfully, Ro^^Md began to approach but stopped a few feet away.
'Don't hit me, I beg you.' He squatted downwn. 'It's Mister Moses has sent me again. Never fear, says he, you go to Jacob again—tell him we can't do without him, he says. There's a vedding on Vednesday. Aye, that there is. Mister Shapovalov is marrying his daughter to a fine young man. A rich folks' vedding this, and no mistake!' The Jew screwed up one eye.
'Can't be done.' Jacob breathed heavily. 'I'm ill, son.'
He again struck up, his tears spurting on to tlie fiddle. Rothschild listened carefully, standing sideways on, arms crossed on his breast. His scared, baffled look gradually gave way to a sorrowful, suffering expression. He rolled his eyes as if in anguished delight.
'A-a-ah !' he said as the tears crawled downwn his cheeks and splashed on his green frock-coat.
After that Jacob lay downwn all day, sick at heart. When the priest heard his confession that evening and asked whether he remembered committing any particular sin he exerted his failing memory and once more recalled Martha's unhappy face and the desperate yell of the Jew bitten by a dog.
'Give my fddle to Rothschild,' he said in a voice barely audible.
'Very well,' the priest answered.
Now everyone in town wants to know where Rothschild got such a fme fiddle. Did he buy it, did he steal it? Or did someone leave it with him as a pledge? He only plays the fiddle now, having given up the flute long ago. From his bow there flow those same poignant strains which used to come from his flute. But when he tries to repeat the tune Jacob had played in his doorway the outcome is so sad and mournful that his listeners weep and he ends by rolling his eyes up with an 'A-a-ah!'
So popular is this new tune in townwn that merchants and officials are always asking Rothschild over and making him play it a dozen times.
THE STUDENT
Thb weather was fine and calm at first. Thrushes were singing, and in the near-by swamps some creature droned piteously as if blowing into an empty bottle. A woodcock flew over and a shot reverberated merrily in the spring air. But when darknes fell on the wood an unwelcome, piercing cold wind blew up from the east and eve^^Mg grew silent. Ice needles formed on the puddles and the wood seemed inhospitable, abandoned, empty. It smelt of winter.
Ivan Velikopolsky, a student at a theological college and a sexton's son, was re^^mg home along the path through the water meadow after a day's shooting. His fingers were numb, his face b^ned in the wind. This sudden onset of cold seemed to have destroyed the order and harmony of things, s^^mg dread into Nature herself and M^rng the shades of night to thicken faster fha" was needful. Eve^^^^ was so abandoned, so very gloomy, somehow. in the widows'
aUotments near the river did a light gleam. But far around, where the village stood about three miles away, everything drcrwned in the de^ evening mist. The student remembered that, when he had left the house, his mother had been sitting barefoot on the lobby floor cleaning the samovar, while his father lay coughing on the stove. There was no cooking at home because today was Good Friday, and he felt famished. Cringing in the cold, he reflected that just such a wind had blo"wn in the days of Ryurik, Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. Their times had kno^ just such ferocious poverty and hunger. There had been the same thatched roofs with the holes in them, the same ignor^ra and misery, the same desolation on all sides, the same gloom and sense of oppression. All these horrors had been, still were, and would continue to be, and the passing of another thousand years would make things no better. He did not feel like going home.
The allotments were called widows' because they were kept by two widows, a mother and daughter. A bonfire was b^^rng briskly— crackling, lighting up the plough-land far around. Widow Vasilisa, a tall, plump old woman in a man's fur jacket, stood gazing pensively at the fire. Her short, pock-marked, stupid-looking daughter Lukerya sat on the ground washing a cooking pot and some spoons. They had just had supper, obviously. Men's voices were heard, some l^^ labourers watering their horses by the river.
'So winter's come back,' said the student, approaching the fire. 'Good evening.'
Vasilisa shuddered, but then saw who it was and smiled a welcome.
'Goodness me, I didn't recognize you,' she said. 'That means you'll be rich one day.'
They talked. Vasilisa, a woman of some experience—having been wet-nurse to gentlefolk and then a nanny—spoke delicately, always smiling a gentle, dignified smile. But her daughter Lukerya, a peasant whose husband had beaten her, only screwed up her eyes at the student, saying nothing and wearing an odd look as if she was deaf and dumb.
'On a cold night like this the Apostle Peter warmed himself by a fl.re.' The student held out his hands towa.rds the flames. 'So it must have been cold then. What a frightening night that was, Granny, what a very sorrowful, what a very long light.'
He looked at the da.rkness around and abruptly jerked his head. 'Were you in church yesterday for the Twelve Gospel Readings?'
'Yes,' Vasil.isa answered.
'At the Last Supper, you'll remember, Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, I am ready to go with Thee, both into prison, and to death.'' And the Lord said, "I say unto thee, Peter, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice." After supper Jesus prayed in mortal agony in tlie garden, while poor Peter was weary in spirit, and enfeebled. His eyes were heavy, he couldn't fight offsleep and he slept. Then, as you have heard, Judas that night kissed Jesus and betrayed Him to the torturers. They bound Him, they took Him to the high priest, they smote Him, while Peter—worn, tormented, anguished, perturbed, you understand, not having slept properly, foreseeing some fearful hap- pening on this earth—went after them. He loved Jesus passionately, to distraction, and now, afar, he saw Him being bufeted.'
Lukerya put do^wn the spoons and stared at the student.
'They went to the high priest,' he continued. 'They put Jesus to the question, and meanwhile the workmen had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, as it was cold, and were warming themselves. Peter stood with them near the fire—also warming himself, as I am now. A certain maid beheld him, and said, "This man was also with Jesus." In otlier words she was saying that he too should be taken for questioning. All the workmen round the fire must have looked at him suspiciously and sternly because he was confused and said, "I know him not.'' A little later someone recognized him as one of Jesus' disciples and said, "Thou also wast with him." But he denied it again. And for the third time someone addressed him. "Did I not see thee in the garden with Him this day?" He denied Him for the third time. And after that the cock straightway crowed, and Peter, looking at Jesus from afar, remembered the words which He had said to him at supper. He remembered, his eyes were opened, and he went out of the hall and shed bitter tears. The Gospel says, "And he went out, and wept bit- terly." I can imagine it was a very quiet, very dark garden and his hollow sobs could hardly be heard in the silence.'
The student sighed, plunged deep in thought. Still smiling, Vasilisa suddenly sobbed and tears, large and profuse, flowed do^ her cheeks. She shielded her face from the fire with her sleeve as if ashamed of the tears, while Lukerya, staring at the student, blushed and her expression became distressed and tense as if she was holding back a terrible pain.
The workmen returned from the river. One of them, on horseback, was already near and the light from the fire quivered on him. The studem said good lught to the widows and moved on. Agaui darkness came upon him, and his hands began to freeze. A cruel wind blew, it was real winter weather again, and it did not seem as if Easter Sunday could be only the day after tomorrow.