ponedjeljak, 25. kolovoza 2025.
in the village of X., which is in the government of O., in Central Russia, there were two men: one was called Michael and the other was called Andrew. They were both deeply religious and concerned with the things of a world which is not this world. They spent days and nights in reading the Scriptures and in pondering over the meaning of difficult texts. They had both resolved in their early youth never to marry, for they considered that the human race had something so radically bad about it that the sooner it came to an end the better. They decided, therefore, that it was their duty not to prolong its existence. But when they attained to early manhood the parents of Andrew contracted an alliance for him, and he was wedded to a girl named Masha. Their union was not blessed with offspring, and Michael, who continued to lead a p. 215solitary life, with rigorous fasting and uninterrupted meditation, said such was the will of Providence. The young wife of Andrew did not share the views of the mystic, and she yearned to be the mother of a child. Unbeknown to her husband, she sought one night the Wise Woman of the village, who was skilled in finding lost objects, and who was versed in the properties of herbs, and knew the words of power which cured the sick of dreadful disease. Masha sought the Wise Woman in the night, and told her her trouble. The Wise Woman lit a candle, muttered a brief saying in which the name of King David was mentioned, and that of a darker Prince. She gave her a small green herb, telling her to eat it on the first moonless night in June, and that her wish would be fulfilled. Masha obeyed the Wise Woman’s behest. A year passed by and the wish of her heart was granted. A son was born to her. And Masha and Andrew greatly rejoiced over this. But when Michael heard of it his spirit was troubled. He consulted the Scriptures, and the meaning of the event became clear to him. He sought Andrew and said to him— p. 216 “This is the work of Satan. You have dabbled in black magic, and you are in danger of eternal perdition. Moreover, the truth has been revealed to me—the child which has been born to you is none other than the Antichrist, of which the Book of Revelation tells. And that is why our poor country is distressful, seething with trouble, sedition, and revolt, and why our Sovereign is vexed, and why evil days have fallen upon Russia, our Mother. We must slay the Antichrist, and immediately the dark cloud will be lifted from our land, and peace and prosperity shall come to us once more.” That night Michael convoked Andrew and Masha to his house. It was a small, one-storeyed, wooden cottage, thatched with straw. It was swept and clean, and in one corner of the room were many glittering images of the Queen of Heaven and the Saints, before which burned small red lights; and besides this Michael had erected a shrine on which more than a dozen thin waxen tapers were burning. Michael convoked Andrew and his wife to his house, and the elders of the village also, and they spent an hour in chanting and in prayer, p. 217each holding a candle in his hand, but to the priest he said no word of this matter, for he did not trust him nor believe him to be possessed of celestial grace. After they had prayed for an hour, Michael said to Masha— “Go home and fetch your child.” Masha obeyed, and returned presently, bearing the infant for whose advent she had so sorely longed, and which in coming had been the cause of such joy to her. Michael took the infant and said— “In the body of this child is the power of Satan: in the body of this child is the Antichrist of whom the Scriptures tell—this is the cause of the misfortunes which have visited our dear country, and vexed the spirit of our Lord and Sovereign.” He then extinguished all the lights and the tapers in the room: it was pitch dark, and no sound was heard save the muttering of Michael’s continuous prayer. Masha trembled, for she was afraid. Michael took the infant. It lay quite still, for it was asleep. And as Michael took the infant he said: “We must exorcise the spirit and slay the Antichrist, who has been born in this child p. 218to be the bane of Russia and to vex the heart of our Sovereign!” And Michael bade the people who were gathered together in the room—there were five men, the eldest in the village, and seven women—be prepared for the great event, and he lifted his voice, and in a wailing whisper he addressed the Evil Spirit. “Evil Spirit,” he said, “Antichrist, of whom the Holy Scriptures tell, through the dark dealings of our brother Andrew and his wife, who have trafficked with Satan, thou hast found a way into the body of this child, but it is written that the troubles of Russia and of our Sovereign shall be at their thickest at thy advent, but shall diminish and pass away with thy disappearance. Evil Spirit, I conjure thee, leave the body of this child.” Then the infant cried plaintively, twice. “Hark!” said Michael, in a solemn voice, “the spirit of the Antichrist is speaking. Hark to the cry of Satan, who is leaving the body of the child. Pray, pray with all your might, and help me to slay the Antichrist.” And fear came upon everybody, nor durst p. 219they utter in the stillness, but their spirits were spellbound and seemed to be drawn, tense and taut as stretched wires, in that effort of prayer for the passing of the spirit of Satan and for the slaying of the Antichrist. The infant cried once again—and then it cried no more!... “The Antichrist has been slain,” said Michael, and a deeper stillness came on the assembly. “The Antichrist,” said Michael, “must be buried.” And he walked out of his cottage into the yard where in a shed his horse and cart were kept. He unloosed his horse and said: “Whither the horse shall lead, thither must we follow.” The horse trotted slowly down the deserted street. That night there was neither moon nor stars in the sky. Beyond the village was a marshy plain. It was just before dawn, and in the thick velvet darkness of the sky there was a glow as of a living sapphire. They reached the marsh, and there the horse stopped, and began to browse. “It is here that the Antichrist must be buried,” said Michael. And they buried the infant by the reedy marsh. And all this time p. 220neither Andrew nor Masha, nor the elders, nor the women who were there, spoke a single word; and when they had finished burying the infant a breeze came from the east, and the dawn, grey and chilly, trembled over the horizon, and the wild ducks rose from the marsh, uttered their cry, and flew away into distance, seeking the fields. The spell that had kept this assembly mute and speechless vanished with the vanishing darkness. The noises of life began: the creaking of carts was heard from the village, and the cocks were crowing. Andrew and Masha looked at each other, and a great fear came upon them, and indeed upon all the assembly, for what they had done. They did not speak, but returned severally to their homes; and Masha, when she reached her home, too frightened to cry or even to speak, sat motionless before the swinging cradle which hung from the roof of her cottage, and which was now empty. And Andrew durst not look at her. Presently he left the house and sought the dwelling of the priest. The priest let him in, and there he found Michael, who, likewise overcome with terror p. 221and misgivings as to what had been done, had come to tell the story. The priest reported the whole matter to the local policeman, who in his turn reported it to the police captain of the district, and three days afterwards Michael, Andrew, Masha, and the others were locked up in the prison of a neighbouring town, and a day after their arrest an old woman of the village sought out the police captain and asked to see him. “I was present,” she said to him, “at the slaying of the Antichrist. I held the candle in my hands myself when the evil spirit was exorcised, and the cause of all Russia’s trouble was destroyed. They say the Tsar has given money to the others for having destroyed his enemy; and I, who am poor and old, and who was there also, have received nothing. Let me receive my due. Give me the money that the Tsar owes me, for I also helped to slay the Antichrist.” This story is true. It happened last September, and was recorded in the newspapers, with many more details than I have told. And at the station of Kozlov, as I have p. 222already related, in the government of Tambov, between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m., a railway guard told it to myself and a newsvendor, and when he had finished telling it he sighed and bewailed the blindness of his fellow-creatures, the peasants of Russian villages, who, as he wisely said, had so much kindness in their hearts, but were often led through their ignorance to do dreadful deeds.
nedjelja, 24. kolovoza 2025.
count x was a landowner who lived in the south of Russia, not far from one of the large manufacturing towns. He spent the whole summer in a small country house, about six miles from the town, with his wife and children. Not far from the house, at about a mile’s distance, was a village which was bigger than an ordinary village and less big than an ordinary town. The greater part of the population consisted of Jews; they were poor Jews mostly, some of them very poor indeed. The Count and his wife knew the people of the place well, and their relations with the poor Jews were of the friendliest description; they were constantly employing them to do small jobs, and their special friends were the tailor and the bootmaker, p. 204whose shops were in the Jewish bazaar, the poorest quarter of the place. The bootmaker’s name was Gertzel, and the tailor was called Daniel. When the Dreyfus case was drawing to its close, the whole of this population was in a great state of excitement, and the Countess X. used every afternoon to go and give Gertzel and Daniel the latest news. Just before the result of the final court-martial at Rennes was known, Countess X. received a telegram from a friend of hers abroad saying that Dreyfus had been acquitted. She went post haste with the news to the village, and soon the whole place was in a tumult of thanksgiving and rejoicing. Next day, when the authentic news of the verdict arrived, she was obliged to go and tell the disappointing news. During all those summer months nothing else had been discussed in this little place; and, as everywhere else, the world was split up into two factions; and in the Countess’ family, while she and her husband believed violently in the innocence of Dreyfus, her brother-in-law and her uncle were equally p. 205firmly convinced of his guilt, and equally violent in their affirmations of it. In the village there was a strong orthodox faction which earnestly longed for the death of the traitor, and the Jewish populace cared more for his acquittal than for their own affairs. When Countess X. imparted to them the disappointing verdict, they lamented bitterly: all the more so on account of the false joy they had experienced the day before. And in the whole population there were no two beings more downcast and upset by the result than Gertzel and Daniel. It was in the autumn of that year, shortly after the result of the Dreyfus case became known, that one morning Gertzel and Daniel appeared in Countess X.’s garden and requested to see her. Gertzel was a thin, solidly built man, with dark tangled hair and mild soft eyes. He had a thick, untidy beard, a dirty loose shirt with a torn collar. Daniel was smaller, and younger; he wore no beard, and his eyes were penetrating and glistening; he was quiet and modest, and was passionately fond of reading books. p. 206 The Countess came out and asked them whether they wanted work. “No, it is not work that we want,” said Gertzel, “we want to know if we may bring our furniture to-day, and put it in your stables? It will not take up very much room,” he added. “Certainly you may,” said the Countess; “but why do you want to get rid of your furniture? Is it your feast day?” “No, it is very far from being our feast day—it is little enough a feast day,” said Gertzel; “but we want you in your kindness to let us store our furniture in your stables—in the barn perhaps. It will take little room. There are some chairs, a table, and the tools and implements that are necessary for our work. And Daniel has a lot of books he would like to bring, too—some of those which your Brightness gave him, if your Brightness remembers, last year.” “You may certainly bring your things,” said the Countess, “and put them in the stables or in the barn or anywhere else you please. But why do you want to do this?” p. 207 “It is because,” said Gertzel, “to-morrow morning there will be a Pogrom.” “How a Pogrom?” asked the Countess. “A Pogrom,” said Gertzel, “an ordinary Pogrom. It has been arranged; the date is fixed for to-morrow. It will be all right if we may store our furniture in your barn; and if we may ask as much, we have several friends who would like to do the same. For in that case all will be well, and we shall incur no loss. We cannot afford the loss this year: we are all poor people; we cannot afford to lose our property.” “But,” said the Countess, “I don’t understand. Who is going to make this Pogrom? The people here?” “God forbid!” said Gertzel. “We are living with all the people here in peace. They are coming from O. (O. was the big manufacturing town) and from A. (another town about fifty miles distant). They are coming by train; they will arrive early to-morrow morning. The Pogrom will take place in the morning; it will be all over by the evening, and they will go back by the night train.” “But who?” the Countess asked, “and what are they?” p. 208 “They say they have been sent; some people say it is the Tsar’s orders; others that it is the Governor, but what does it matter? In any case, they have been sent to make a Pogrom.” “Surely,” said the Countess, “if you inform the police, measures will be taken to prevent this. It is absurd! It can’t possibly happen!” “It must be,” said Gertzel, and Daniel nodded his head in agreement, and repeated: “It must be: it is so decreed!” “It has all been arranged,” said Gertzel. “To-morrow there will be the Pogrom. Let us bring our furniture to your barn, our furniture and our friends’ furniture, and all will be well.” “It must be prevented!” said the Countess, “You must go to the police.” “It is useless,” said Gertzel; “it cannot be prevented; it has been arranged for to-morrow.” And no argument was of any avail; they merely repeated over and over again that the Pogrom was to be, and they left, with tears of gratitude in their eyes for having been p. 209allowed to store their furniture in the Count’s stables. The Countess went to her husband and related what had happened. They sent for Ivan, the moujik, who washed the plates, and who, being a native of the place, would be likely to know what was going on, and they asked him if it were true that there was to be a Pogrom. “Yes, your Brightness,” he said, “it is quite true. There will be a Pogrom to-morrow; it has been arranged.” “Who has arranged it?” asked the Countess. “I cannot know,” answered Ivan; “but it has been arranged.” “You mean the people here?” asked the Countess, “they will attack the Jews?” “God forbid!” said Ivan. “The Jews are a nice people. We live with them in peace; but everything may happen. Sometimes an orthodox Russian is worse than a Jew. But the Jews were much offended by the last Pogrom, and they have been giving false evidence, and attributing to many people crimes which they had not committed.” p. 210 “When was the last Pogrom?” asked the Countess. “It was in the spring,” said Ivan, “when your Brightness was away.” “And did they kill the Jews?” asked the Count. “God forbid!” Ivan answered. “They sinned a little, and they destroyed some of the Jews’ property, but murder—God forbid! they were innocent of that!” “But who is going to do this?” asked the Count. “They will come from various places,” said Ivan. “They will come by the night train from O. and A. They will arrive in the morning; there will be a Pogrom, and they will go away.” “But who?” asked the Count. “Those who are sent,” said Ivan. “But who is sending them?” repeated the Count. “I cannot know,” said Ivan. “How do you know this is so?” asked the Countess. “Everybody knows it,” said Ivan—“all the morning carts have been arriving from p. 211all the neighbouring villages just as when there is a fair.” “What for?” asked the Countess. “To take away all that is left after the Pogrom,” said Ivan. “It is advantageous for the peasants to get the property of the Jews and to pay nothing at all for it.” “It must be prevented,” said the Count. Ivan smiled, and merely repeated that there would be a Pogrom on the following day, for so it had been arranged, and nothing more could be got out of him. The Count went and interviewed the local police sergeant and spoke seriously to him about the matter. The police sergeant shrugged his shoulders and wrung his hands, and said that he could do nothing; what was his authority in the place? What could he and two policemen do against the populace? “If there is to be a Pogrom there will be a Pogrom,” he said. “We can do nothing. We should only be killed too. There is nothing to be done.” All day long Jews from the village who knew the Count and the Countess came to their house, bringing with them furniture and p. 212goods of every description, till the whole stables were filled with them, and all day long large creaking carts drove slowly into the village from the neighbouring villages, bringing the peasants who had come to bear off the booty when the Pogrom should be over. And they met and conversed with the Jews in the friendliest manner possible, discussing the Pogrom merely as an event of not very considerable importance, but as a fact, such as an eclipse or a feast day, about which there could be no possible doubt, and no possible change. The Countess had a further interview with Sasha, the cook, a peasant woman who was also a native of the place; but she, like Ivan, merely repeated over and over again that the Pogrom was fixed for the morrow, and that it would be executed by people sent for the purpose, who would come by train from the various big towns. The Count went once more to the police sergeant, and told him to take some steps; he replied that he would do his best, but that he was a married man, and the Count must have pity on him, that there were no steps to be p. 213taken—that he could do nothing—that nothing could be done—that nobody could do anything! The next morning, as soon as the Countess awoke, Sasha the cook came into her room and said— “There will be no Pogrom: it has been put off!”
subota, 23. kolovoza 2025.
This is a story told by the late Benson Foley of San Francisco: “In the summer of 1881 I met a man named James H. Conway, a resident of Franklin, Tennessee. He was visiting San Francisco for his health, deluded man, and brought me a note of introduction from Mr. Lawrence Barting. I had known Barting as a captain in the Federal army during the civil war. At its close he had settled in Franklin, and in time became, I had reason to think, somewhat prominent as a lawyer. Barting had always seemed to me an honorable and truthful man, and the warm friendship which he expressed in his note for Mr. Conway was to me sufficient evidence that the latter was in every way worthy of my confidence and esteem. At dinner one day Conway told me that it had been solemnly agreed between him and Barting that the one who died first should, if possible, communicate with the other from beyond the grave, in some unmistakable way—just how, they had left (wisely, it seemed to me) to be decided by the deceased, according to the opportunities that his altered circumstances might present. “A few weeks after the conversation in which Mr. Conway spoke of this agreement, I met him one day, walking slowly down Montgomery street, apparently, from his abstracted air, in deep thought. He greeted me coldly with merely a movement of the head and passed on, leaving me standing on the walk, with half-proffered hand, surprised and naturally somewhat piqued. The next day I met him again in the office of the Palace Hotel, and seeing him about to repeat the disagreeable performance of the day before, intercepted him in a doorway, with a friendly salutation, and bluntly requested an explanation of his altered manner. He hesitated a moment; then, looking me frankly in the eyes, said: “‘I do not think, Mr. Foley, that I have any longer a claim to your friendship, since Mr. Barting appears to have withdrawn his own from me—for what reason, I protest I do not know. If he has not already informed you he probably will do so.’ “‘But,’ I replied, ‘I have not heard from Mr. Barting.’ “‘Heard from him!’ he repeated, with apparent surprise. ‘Why, he is here. I met him yesterday ten minutes before meeting you. I gave you exactly the same greeting that he gave me. I met him again not a quarter of an hour ago, and his manner was precisely the same: he merely bowed and passed on. I shall not soon forget your civility to me. Good morning, or—as it may please you—farewell.’ “All this seemed to me singularly considerate and delicate behavior on the part of Mr. Conway. “As dramatic situations and literary effects are foreign to my purpose I will explain at once that Mr. Barting was dead. He had died in Nashville four days before this conversation. Calling on Mr. Conway, I apprised him of our friend’s death, showing him the letters announcing it. He was visibly affected in a way that forbade me to entertain a doubt of his sincerity. “‘It seems incredible,’ he said, after a period of reflection. ‘I suppose I must have mistaken another man for Barting, and that man’s cold greeting was merely a stranger’s civil acknowledgment of my own. I remember, indeed, that he lacked Barting’s mustache.’ “‘Doubtless it was another man,’ I assented; and the subject was never afterward mentioned between us. But I had in my pocket a photograph of Barting, which had been inclosed in the letter from his widow. It had been taken a week before his death, and was without a mustache.”
petak, 22. kolovoza 2025.
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