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‘Then, you won’t inform?’ David breathed.

‘Not unless you publish seditious Yiddish. Keep your pistols out of print. If my own skin is safe, that doesn’t mean I’m made of stone like these Tartar devils. Landlord, the vodka. We’ll drink confusion to them.’

‘I–I have none,’ stammered the landlord. ‘I haven’t the right.’

‘There are no rights in Russia,’ said the censor good-humouredly.

The landlord furtively produced a big bottle.

‘But the idea of asking me to join the Self-Defence!’ chuckled the burly Jew. ‘You might as well ask me to play the violin!’ he added with a wink.

David felt this was the first really sympathetic hearer he had met that morning.

VII

The vodka and a good three-course dinner (Plotki for fish, Lockschen for soup, and Zrazy for joint) brought David new courage, and again he sallied out to recruit.

This time he sought the market-place–a badly-paved square, bordered with small houses and congested with stalls and a grey, kaftaned crowd, amid which gleamed the blue blouses of the ungodly younger generation. He had hitherto addressed himself to the classes–he would hear the voice of the people.

On every side the voice babbled of the Duma–babbled happily, as though the word was a new religious charm or a witch’s incantation. Crude political conversations broke out amid all the business of the mart. He had only to listen to know how he would be answered:

A blacksmith buying a new hammer stayed to argue with the vendor.

‘We must put our trust in the Constitutional Democrats.’

‘And why in the Cadets? Give me the Democrats.’

‘Nay, we must put our trust only in the Czar.’ (This came from the Rabbi’s wife, who was cheapening fish at the next stall.)

‘For shame, Rebbitzin! Put not your trust in Princes.’

The bystanders hushed down the text-quoter–a fuzzy-headed butcher-boy.

‘Miserable Monarchists!’ he sneered. ‘We Jews will have no peace till the Republicans—-‘

‘A Republic without Socialism!’ interrupted a girl with a laundry basket. ‘What good’s that? Wait till the N.S.’s—-‘

‘The D.R.’s are the only—-‘ interrupted a phylactery-pedlar.

‘And who but the Labour group promises equal rights to all nationalities?’ interrupted a girl in spectacles. ‘Trust the Trudowaja—-‘

‘To the devil with the Labour Parties!’ said an old-clo’ man. ‘Look how the Bundists have betrayed us. First they were bone of our bone; now it is they who by their recklessness provoke the pogroms.’

The blacksmith brought his hammer down upon the stall. ‘There is only one party to trust, and that’s the C.D.’s,’ he repeated.

‘Bourgeois!’ simultaneously hissed the Republican youth and the Socialist lass.

‘My children!’ It was the bland voice of Moses the Shamash (beadle). ‘Violence leads to naught. Even the Viborg Manifesto was a mistake. As a member of the Party of Peaceful Regeneration—-‘

‘Peaceful Regeneration?’ shouted the blacksmith. ‘A Jew ally himself with the Reactionary Right, with the—-!’

A Cossack galloped recklessly among the serried stalls. The Jews scattered before him like dogs. The member of the P.P.R. crawled under a barrow. Even the blacksmith froze up. David drew the moral when the Cossack had disappeared.

‘Peaceful Regeneration!’ he cried. ‘There will be no Regeneration for you till you have the courage to leave Russian politics alone and to fight for yourselves.’

‘Ah, you’re a Maximalist,’ said the beadle.

‘No, I am only a Minimalist. I merely want the minimum–that we save our own lives.’

It was asking too little. The poor Russian Jews, like the rich Russian Jews, were largely occupied in saving the world, or, at least, Holy Russia. Crushed by such an excess of Christianity, David wandered round the market-place, looking into the bordering houses. In one of the darkest and dingiest sat a cobbler tapping at shoes, surrounded by sprawling children.

‘Peace be to you,’ called David.

‘Peace have I always,’ rejoined the cobbler cheerily.

David looked at the happy dirty children; he had seen their like torn limb from limb. ‘But have you thought of the danger of a pogrom?‘ he said.

‘I have heard whispers of it,’ said the cobbler. ‘But we Chassidim have no fear. Our wonder-rabbi, who has power over all the spheres, will utter a word, and—-‘