Chapter Six

202My interest in Hebrew had vanished. Only one language interested me: Russian. To know Russian well and to be an educated man — that was my chief ambition.

At home everything was shrouded in gloom. But of learning a trade I would not hear. I must study. Sooner or later — this wish of mine must be fulfilled.

Before long I resolved to go again to a "narodnoye uchilishche" (public school). What of it that I had already learned all that and already had a certificate? I would go through it once more. In any case I would again speak Russian under the supervision of a teacher, again practice grammar and arithmetic. But there was also a second reason why I decided to enroll again in the narodnoye uchilishche: precisely that heavy mood that prevailed in our home.

This does not mean that Mother drove me to go out and earn, or that she nagged me. Rarely did I hear an angry word from her; and from Father still more rarely. If he did sometimes 203call me "samovolyets" (willful one) or "hefker-yung" (wild, unbridled boy), I knew he meant nothing by it. But to sit and look at their grieved faces was hard for me.

And so I entered the narodnoye uchilishche again, the very one I had attended before — on the Horse Market; only not to go from 2 to 4 as before, but from 12 to 2. At that hour the teachers were different. Instead of Tsifkin and Walfer — Punkt and Margolin.

I could have enrolled in some other place, since, as already said, there were several such schools in Vilna. But of Margolin, who was the teacher of Russian reading and grammar, I had heard favorable opinions.

The teachers who gave instruction from 12 to 2 to boys taught girls from nine to eleven in the morning, and for the double work they received, besides their salary, lodgings. Punkt was the head (principal) of the whole school, and he had a larger apartment than Margolin.

Both of them were fair-haired. Otherwise, though, they looked quite different. One was the exact opposite of the other — I used to think. Margolin was tall and slender, and he wore a full beard, whereas Punkt was shorter and fleshier, and he shaved his beard in the middle, leaving side-whiskers along the sides.

It used to seem to me that for a teacher of grammar it suited to be tall and to wear a full beard, and for a teacher of arithmetic — to be short and wear side-whiskers.

They knew that I had already finished once. But that did not trouble them. On the contrary: they wanted to have a pupil who would make a good impression 204on the inspector. That the inspector would recognize me they did not consider likely.

My expectations regarding Margolin were realized. He did not have Walfer's talent as a pedagogue, nor his fire; but he was a fluent teacher and a good man, and he taught us not only in the two hours we sat in class, but in other hours as well. I became quite a frequenter at his home, and he often used to sit with me at his table, read with me, explain, dictate, look over what I had written. He was also a "fattened-up" bridegroom-in-waiting (a man kept on board at his father-in-law's). His father-in-law kept an inn not far from Shabes Zhirmunski's courtyard.

In the moments I spent in his class and at his home, I felt in the Russian language a natural tongue of my own. I already spoke it fluently, and I loved very much to speak it.

Of the boys who studied with me together in the second class of Punkt and Margolin's school, I am to this day acquainted with three. One of them — the son of a rich businessman — was named Zak; the second — a son of the head feldsher (medical orderly) at the Jewish hospital — was named Shtrik, and the third — the son of a private teacher of French and German — Goldblatt. The first two were close friends with each other, and one of the pupils, a fellow of about twenty, made a joke about them, that "the cord (shtrik) is tied around the sack (zak)."

Goldblatt pleased me, because his name sounded beautiful to me: a golden leaf. Later, though, 205he came to please me for himself, and we became intimate friends. He took Levenson's place in my heart. But he was a quite different type from the son of the painter-carpenter. Our real friendship actually began a little later.

I did not rest. I must study. It no longer mattered to me what or where. Only to make progress. I was not the only one of that kind.

From all sides I heard of boys who were preparing for some school. In Pskov there was a school of land-surveyors (surveying), so people prepared for the examination to enter there; in Gorki, in Mogilev province, there was a similar school, so people made ready to travel there. In Kiev province there was an institution where they taught gardening. One would think — how does a Jew come to such an occupation? Nevertheless, there were takers for that too. And whereas one could enter the university only with a certificate from a final gymnasium with many years of Latin, Greek, mathematics, and everything, thousands of Jewish young men would have flown off to study medicine or jurisprudence. Since that, however, was impossible, people picked out such courses of study for which no gymnasium certificate was required.

In Marianpol, in Suwałki province, there was a progymnasium where the director and the teachers were not as strict as in Vilna. So there had gathered 206several dozen Jewish boys who had not passed the examination in Vilna.

I resolved meanwhile to travel to Trok and enter the local "uyezdnoye uchilishche" (district school). Such a school the chief town of every uyezd (district) had, and Trok was the chief town, and no more than four miles from us. A school of this sort consisted of two classes; but it stood higher than the "narodnoye." Among other things they taught there geometry, "chertezhni" (drawing), and from it one was admitted to certain technical schools or schools of mechanics, such as the one at Pskov or at Gorki, for example. And no birth certificates were required there.

But one reason why I had chosen the Trok school was the fact that Dovid the Felkser lived there, and with him I could have a free lodging. And as for eating, a few gulden a week was enough for me. And should it come to going hungry, I was ready for that too. As for the trip to Trok, it cost a trifle — thirty kopecks, I think, for a ticket on the railway as far as Landwarów, and from there by a wagon.

I set to preparing for the second class of the uyezdnoye uchilishche. The one thing I lacked was geometric "chertezhenye." So I got hold somewhere of a notebook with figures and written explanations and an old compass, and set to the work.

Then I learned curious things. About the radius (the distance between the center point of a circle and the circle itself) I found out the following, for example: it is exactly as long as 207each side of a true six-sided figure that fits exactly into that same circle.

By this means I taught myself to draw a true six-sided figure. How from a six-sided figure to make a twelve-sided or a three-sided one, one can then understand by oneself.

I also taught myself to divide an angle into two or into many equal parts, and other matters belonging to practical geometry.

All this interested me strongly, and when I become interested in something, I am already lost to it. Wherever I could snatch a scrap of paper, I would turn my compass on it, "scribing" arcs, measuring, making figures. Day and night I busied myself with it.

— Hush, he already has some new madness! — Mother said.

I strove to have two compasses: one for sticking in a pencil and making circles, and one for measuring. That, though, I could not allow myself, so I used the same compass for both purposes, or I would take measurements with little strips of paper, the way an old-time tailor takes a measure.

When I finally set off for Trok, Mother wept as though I were going to America.

Dovid the Felkser was not at home. But his wife, his daughter and his son-in-law, who lived together, were very hospitable to me. The son-in-law was a tinsmith, and he did his work at home. It was crowded enough without me too. They did everything possible, though, to make me comfortable.

When I came, lessons had already begun at the uyezdnoye 208uchilishche, and both classes were already full.

Dovid the Felkser's son-in-law — a small, young, good-natured fellow, with a little beard and a kindly smile on his lips, took to doing something to soften the smotritel (supervisor). He bought several pounds of sugar and carried it off to him as a "gift." But the supervisor did not accept the "gift," and the tinsmith returned the sugar to the shopkeeper — that is how he settled the matter with him.

He wanted other "softening" remedies. But he could not find any.

With the same purpose as I, another Vilna boy then came to Trok. Him too they did not admit, and we spent those few days there together.

Trok, the one-time city of Lithuanian princes, is famous for three things: for its lakes, for the ruins of the old dominion, and for its Karaites. So we looked at all of it.

We saw how nets are mended for catching fish. Through a window we saw and heard how a Karaite teacher studies with a pupil; and on a lorke (a small boat) we rode out to an island where the historical ruins are to be found, and there spent about an hour's time.

All this was interesting to me. But the strongest impression on me was made by quite another thing.

The night was very dark. I and the other Vilna boy were walking along the main street and chatting. The lights of the houses looked from afar like stars in the sky. So it appeared to me. Everything looked to me like a world that 209lies very far from us. The sight was a new thing for me. In a big city such a night is not possible. And perhaps the impression came from the fact that I was now for the first time away from home.

One way or another — it seemed to me that the lights, which showed in the abyss of darkness, were shining in distant enchanted tents.

The next morning I left Trok. I was never there again, and this night-picture is the most vivid recollection that has stayed with me from it.

My father had to take up his old livelihood — being a melamed (teacher of small children). He did it not in Vilna, but in a village named Berezovke. In Vilna he was ashamed to drum out lessons. That, however, was only one reason, and not the most important. The main thing was that for setting up a kheyder (school) against the burning competition of the city melamdim he lacked the knack, the fighting capacity. In Berezovke, on the other hand, he did not need to set up a kheyder. A villager there found him to teach his three boys. The villager was a rich householder, and he paid him a good tuition and board.

Mother then settled with me into a small room in a passage-courtyard, which lay from the Zavalner (across from Zaval's courtyard) toward the "Busakes," near the place where uncle Meyer lived.

210There was probably enough to live on now, for Mother was in a better humor. She used to go often to uncle Meyer, where she loved to spend time with his beautiful and clever daughter, Itke. But more often she would naturally visit her father and sister in Kaminski's courtyard.

In the passage-courtyard we lived only half a year. Then we moved back to the very Horse Market. But from there too it was not far to uncle Meyer.

The new dwelling was in a huge, huge courtyard — Kozlovski's; we lived there with a Jew who used to order furs from fur-cutters and then sell them. The chief role in the business was played by his daughter — no longer a young girl, who had a name for being clever and capable. She used to travel with the furs to the fairs.

Their dwelling was in a cellar, and there we had a narrow chamber.

I have already said that the Horse Market was in truth a grain market. Here peasants used to bring their rye, wheat, barley, oats, seeds, and here Jews used to buy it from them. Around the market lived Jewish merchants great and small, commission agents, dealers, brokers, all sorts of little brokers, who drew their livelihood here. The bigger merchants sent the grain off to Germany, and the name of the German city Königsberg one heard here oftener than the names of Vilna streets.

The ground on the market and round about was always dotted with kernels, and the air always 211carried the pleasant scent of grain — of "getreyde," as the younger merchants used to say.

Three sides of the market were bordered with courtyards. The third side, which was its length, was open. Here, in the middle of the open edge, stood a great wooden house where the city weigh-station was. Here goods used to be weighed. People called it "the Rathaus." Why, I do not know.

At one of the two shorter edges of the market, namely at Kozlovski's courtyard, a part of the area used to serve as a market for greens and light fruit. Here spring used to come directly from the village gardens, embodied in fresh-colored, fresh-juicy cucumbers, carrots, srutshkes (brutshkes), pea-pods, fartshekes, brusnitses (lingonberries) — chiefly cucumbers. Here was the cucumber-fair of Vilna.

A cucumber fresh from the moist earth, not too big, and not too thick, a green cucumber, not too dark, with "speckles" and with a white "little belly" — what, one would think, could be tastier? — A gift from God! the women used to say, gnawing a cucumber. — A greeting from nature! — an old freethinker once said, who fancied himself a poet. Trok cucumbers were the best.

Wagons of cucumbers. Mountains of cucumbers on the ground. Women with baskets jostle and shove, and rummage with greedy eyes. And when they begin to pick, it seems to you that from the mere touching they become as if drunk with wine.

On the market there used to prowl wagon-thieves and pickpockets, older and younger. Healthy young toughs and middle-aged criminals, who had busied themselves with the trade from childhood on.

Late in the afternoon, when the market was already over, 212they used to gather near the "Rathaus" and tell each other stories. Together with them used to stand "finger-craftsmen"; a couple of almost honest men, and sometimes even a fully honest man. They used to stand and talk with them, the way a pious Jew talks with an apostate acquaintance he has grown used to.

The honest dealers, men and women, were afraid of the pickpockets. When they could quietly warn a victim that someone was after his pocket, they would do it. To stop a thief openly no one wished to risk. But one must not think that the pickpockets made big business. Mostly it consisted in pulling a handkerchief from a pocket. Nor were they great in number. Had there been a fair-sized police force, one could have cleared them out in a single day.

I used to love to stand at the gate of Kozlovski's courtyard and look out on the market when it was in full swing. Only twice did I see the thieves at "work."

Once I saw from afar how a pickpocket robbed a young Christian carter-woman who had come with a basket for cucumbers. He pressed himself against her in the crush, lifted the side of her dress a little, there where the pocket was, so that she would not feel how he was "working," and took out a tin box with money. My soul sank within me as I looked on. But to run over and stop him I could not. And when the young woman reached for her pocket, to pay for the cucumbers, and caught herself that the box was gone, she wept with heart-rending cries.

A second time I saw such a scene: a peasant-woman 213sat in a wagon with her child. One of the older thieves came up, snatched the child and started to walk off. The peasant-woman, with a scream, jumped down and started to chase after the thief. Meanwhile another thief ran up and snatched a fur that lay on the wagon.

The peasant-woman caught up with the thief, and he returned her child, as though the whole affair were no more than a joke. And when she came to her wagon and caught herself that the fur was gone, a dreadful scene took place.

One of the pickpockets who "operated" on the market was a boy who had worked together with me in the carver's workshop, where I was supposed to learn the trade. My heart used to bleed looking at him. I used to be afraid he might speak to me. But he never did. He used to pass me by as though he did not know me.

Kozlovski's courtyard, then, was at one of the shorter sides of the market. The opposite short side is the beginning of Plashtshadke. Elye-Itshe's yeshiva was a minute's walk from us. In spirit, though, it was now thousands of miles from me. I studied only Russian booklets, and interested myself only in modern learning — in Russian. And my friends had the same intellectual interests as I.

One of them was a boy with sparse teeth, named Nodel — the son of a discharged soldier. To the householder class such fathers as his did not belong, and for any pedigree such an acquaintance did not count. Before the "new system" of military service was introduced, they used to give up for soldiers mostly boys from quite poor parents.

214They used to remain in service many years, and only a small number of them used to come back to the Jewish regions. In Petersburg, Moscow and other Russian cities some discharged Jewish soldiers became among the richest Jews. They had worked their way up there (Jews who were not former soldiers had no right of residence there). With us in Lithuania, though, they counted among the poorest and lowliest families. Ordinarily a boy of my class would not have made friends with the son of such a father. I, however, looked at it quite differently. A discharged soldier can after all speak Russian — grammatically or not, but a good deal better than my father and my uncle. And that with me was the chief of all chief things, and Nodel, the boy, really had an excellent Russian pronunciation. So he was for me precisely a man of authority.

Nodel and I, and several other boys, used to quiz each other on grammar. There developed among us a kind of grammar-sport, just as we had an arithmetic-sport.

Margolin had long since pronounced that I knew grammar excellently. Nevertheless I took it up again with diligence.

There were various books on the subject. "Tanavov's Grammar" and "Gavorov's Grammar" were larger and more thorough works than the ones I had studied before. So I "went through" these two as well. And with that I was still not content. One of the most important scholars of Russian grammar was Nikolai Grech. He had a little book for schools, and he also had a big, thick book on the same subject. There everything was much more detailed than in all the other booklets, with many explanations 215which those did not contain. This thick, big book used to be known as the "Polny Grech" (the complete Grech). A similar book was also by a scholar named Vostokov.

These two works actually belonged to an earlier generation. They were already out of use now. But I had set my mind stubbornly: I must become acquainted with them.

I used often to wander about in the "Literaturny pereulok" — a little blind alley not far from the post office, which was almost entirely taken up with shops of used Russian books. There I used to look for the problem-books (zadatshniks) and grammars, and there I got hold of a quite old "Polny Grech" and a quite old "Polny Vostokov."

Whole days and nights I used to sit in our cellar-chamber in Kozlovski's courtyard over these books.

In my boyish circle I got a name for being a grammar-scholar.

Of the other boys who belonged to this group, besides Nodel, I wish to mention here a boy named Goldman, a furrier's son, and a boy named Shaul Badanes, whose father had a post with the Vilna community.

The Badanes family lived on Daytshe Street, near Gitke Toybe's alley, and I used to go there. Badanes was younger than I. He was congenial to me with his character and with his love of arithmetic and grammar. His father too was a pleasant man, no fool, and — in his way — a thinker.

216Around the same time I became closely befriended with my former schoolmate Yankele Goldblatt, and bit by bit we began to spend much time together — sometimes at our place, but mostly at his parents'.

The Goldblatt family was a larger one than ours and of a quite different character. The father had, it seems, once lived in Paris. In any case he spoke French fluently and was acquainted with its literature. The lessons he gave in well-to-do households or at home with himself.

The house was run in the Jewish manner, but not so old-fashioned as ours. Goldblatt, the teacher, was dressed in the modern way, and had an intelligent appearance.

The family lived in Yasel-Elye's courtyard, on Zavalner Street, near Komnitsker, on a second (and perhaps on a third) story, in two or three very bright and very tidy little rooms. The mother was younger than the father and fairer. They had four children, all boys, of whom Yankele, my friend, was the eldest. Yankele was blond and very much like the mother.

The floors at their place were always clean as a just-washed table. In old-fashioned houses one was not used to such tidiness. Almost everything was conducted here not the way it was in the other houses I knew of.

The family was not rich. One had to reckon with every groschen. Still the children were 217dressed better and finer than I, and the whole life here went on a broader footing. Here, too, one felt in everything more precision than at our place or at my aunts'; a precision which was a part both of the general tidiness and of the careful reckoning with money.

When I became well acquainted with this family, I became for the first time conscious of the fact that every household is a separate little world, with a separate character. I did not, of course, then put it in this fashion. But the thought was clear enough with me.

Yankele used to read Russian books, mostly travel-descriptions, tales about wild Americans and their wars with Indians, or about slave-traders and their black slaves. The tales were translated from American works, mostly from Mayne Reid. He used to take the books on "loan" from a fellow named Mikhelson, who had a lending library, and whom I used often to see on the street with a mountain of books under his arm, with a strained, earnest look in his eyes, as though no other thing but his books and his customers existed for him. Ten times a day I used to see him.

Yankele used to tell me the contents of the blood-curdling stories he had read, and I used to listen with the deepest interest. But by myself I did not read such books. I could not pay the "loan" money.

We talked between ourselves sometimes in Yiddish, sometimes in Russian. The further on, the more in Russian.

We used to go strolling together, chatting, dreaming together. He was not only neatly dressed, but also a 218handsome boy, with longish blond locks, with a fine figure. He was handsomer than I (I held myself in general to be no beauty, but my mother did not agree with me on this). I liked him, although his neatness and precision used sometimes to drive me out of patience, and I used to say to him a few barbed words about it. But we never quarreled.

The question of God began to interest us quite seriously, and we used often to talk and argue about it. To no conclusion, though, could we come in the matter. We wandered astray in it. And anyone who might lead us out onto the road we did not have. His father was not very pious, but a believer he was.

Once when I came to him he showed me the picture of a little hen, which he had copied from a printed drawing. — I was astonished — so good was it. Then he copied the portrait of the German emperor of the day, Wilhelm the First, the old Wilhelm with the white "side-whiskers." That amazed me still more. Everyone said that Yankele had a talent for "drawing" (painting, sketching). So he went off to the risovalnaya shkola (drawing school). And later he urged me to enroll too.

My fingers did not stick to such work. But new experiences are always interesting for a boy. And the risovalnaya shkola was a Russian one. No language other than Russian was spoken there. For that alone I was ready to go. Besides, I had nowhere to put my time. There was no examination on entering.

219The drawing school was in a great courtyard on "Arop-Breyter Street," not far from the botanical garden and the cathedral square. When one went to the garden, it came out on the left hand.

The classroom was a great hall full of plaster figures and little tables with boards for drawing. At a couple of the windows sat two young Christians painting large pictures in oil paint. A small majority of the pupils consisted of Jews. Russians too were few. The rest were Poles. The teachers, though, were Russian, and in the school everyone spoke Russian.

I was received by a teacher named Riazanov — a tall man with a great, beautiful, white beard, with a picture-handsome face, a good one. He put very few questions to me.

— You want to learn to draw, eh? Well, good! We'll see how it goes.

With these words he gave me a sheet of paper, a pencil, and a simple printed figure, and he pointed me to a place where to sit down.

I drew, rubbed with an eraser, drew again; more rubbed than drew. I rubbed a hole in the paper. I wanted to run home. But I had no courage to admit that I had failed. Riazanov did not even come over to me.

The next morning I took from him a new sheet of paper. I copied the figure as best I could. Then they gave me a second, a third. The teacher used to come over to me for a couple of seconds, correct my work and vanish again. Once he sat down and copied the whole figure onto 220my paper. As he did so he talked to me, and as he talked he smiled good-naturedly.

— No painter will come out of you — he said — better sell oranges.

He said it in such a friendly tone that I, despite myself, broke into laughter. And my laughter pleased him.

— Now, don't take it to heart, my dear — he said, "menacingly" — we shall see. Perhaps you'll be good for something after all. Try drawing geometric figures.

He set up before me three white-painted little blocks — a four-sided one, on it a pyramid and beside it some other figure. I saw how another pupil measures with his pencil from afar the proportional length and breadth of a figure; so I did the same.

Riazanov now came over to me as to a good acquaintance. He looked at my work and said:

— You understand, you do understand; but your fingers are lame. You can't even make a straight line.

And he made over the whole drawing again.

Yankele Goldblatt sat at the farthest wall of the great hall — there where the more important pupils were. He drew from plaster human figures, and he went quickly forward. In a short time he began to draw living people.

Every day a Christian with a beard came, and the pupils of the highest group drew him, each from his own position.

To the topmost group there belonged also a yeshiva student with a face on which were 221set forth two things: that he was a yeshiva student and that he had talent. Such an impression he made on me.

To that group there belonged two more Jews: a boy named Pos, from Shloyme Kisin's courtyard, and a handsome lad named Botkovski, the son of a man who kept a summer place. Further, the group consisted of Christians.

When I saw how Yankele, the yeshiva student and Pos "drew," I became disheartened. I knew that I was here lost at a stranger's wedding. About that there was already no doubt with me. But I set my mind stubbornly: since I "understand," I must teach myself. If the fingers are no good, they will work so long until they will be good after all.

I "drew" at school and at home. In the middle of the night I would sometimes start up, light our little lamp and sit down to "draw."

Riazanov had already hung up for me an "ornament" — a flower-figure of plaster, and I painted it onto paper. Then he gave me a bigger and harder ornament.

As for the "contour" — the chief strokes of the figure — that was already "going at a good pace" with me. Once Riazanov even paid me a compliment. He said that I had "not a bad" eye.

Light the work did not come to me. I labored enough and made many tries before the contour was finished. But when it was finished it was correct and good.

Soon came the time when I began to learn "shading" — making shadows. There I noticed for the first time that on a round thing the light passes bit by bit into a light shadow, and from 222a light shadow into a darker one, and so forth. And when one does it as it ought to be, the roundness is felt. This and other such things I now learned for the first time, and from every discovery I made I became inspired.

The contour we used to make with a plain pencil on plain paper, a thick paper and not a glossy-white one. And when the contour was finished, they used to give us better paper, and a shading pencil — a soft and black one. The left side of the paper we used then to smear with charcoal, spread it over the better sheet of paper, and at the four corners pin it down with brass "knobs." Then we used to go over the strokes of the contour with a plain pencil until the whole contour was printed below, on the white paper, with charcoal. The plain paper we used to tear off and throw away, and then we used to set to shading.

For this I was no good. I understood where one needs shadow, what sort of shadow, and how one must do it; but that had to be worked out with patience; and patience I lacked.

Yankele used to "lay" the shadow in the form of strokes which crossed one another like the threads of a net or a fishnet. It was beautiful to see how the fine, even little lines of the strokes used to gather with him into drawn-out little boxes, or "leklekh" (little cakes). Here sparser, here denser, here only dense. He wrought the shadows with patience, but patience alone would have had no worth here. He worked them out with an artistic stroke, with taste and with grace. He used to sit with the pencil in his hand, his head a little to one side, the tip of his tongue a little out from his lips; and sitting thus he used to 223throw and throw the strokes, lengthwise, breadthwise, to one side, and bit by bit the figure used to gain with him vividness and soul — something as though it had lived in concealment, and he with the magic movements of his fingers had bit by bit coaxed it out into the white world. Such a feeling I used to have, looking at how he shaded.

To shade one piece I could do beautifully. For more, though, I had no patience. My pencil used to take to leaping and scraping, and used to ruin for me a good contour.

There were weeks when I covered a world with my shading "little boxes." Wherever I found an empty scrap of paper I covered it with crossed strokes.

The head teacher was not Riazanov, but one named Trotnev, a man of about fifty, tall and big as a giant; with a black, somewhat graying beard, and with dark-blue spectacles on his eyes. He was the principal of the school.

He used to walk with slow steps. That, and his dark spectacles, gave his big, tall figure an expression of tragic importance. Like a shadow he used to move across the hall. No fear, though, did he call forth. I had heard that he was an honest man and a good artist; so I felt toward him respect and pity. It seemed to me that he had some misfortune.

The Christian pupils were merrier and noisier than the Jewish ones. As though they felt more as if at home with themselves. But the talented Jewish pupils also felt good; they looked, however, 224more earnest — as though careworn. Only one Jewish pupil used to turn a world upside down together with the Christian mischief-makers. He was of a rich family, and talent he had none.

One of the Christians used to mimic how a Jew speaks Russian, and several days running he sang an indecent little song about a soldier and a Jewish street-girl. He had, though, made friends with a Jewish pupil, and everyone said he was a "diamond."

In my heart I knew that I would not stay long in the art school. The question was only how to take leave, what excuse to give. So fate slipped me an excuse: I fell ill in the eyes. They became red and they watered.

I do not remember whether I went to a doctor. I believe not, probably only to a feldsher. It dragged on for several weeks, and when I got well, my eyes were crooked. I had become cross-eyed.

I was ashamed to show my eyes in the literal sense of the expression. I suffered greatly from it.

Once, when I was walking through the market, near Plashtshadke, a boy who sat on a threshold, in an open door, called out to me:

— Hey! where did you get your crooked eyes?

Had he given me a stab with a knife, I would have felt no greater pain.

He was older than I and I barely knew him. I used to see him on the street, and all I knew about him was that he was a coarse 225fellow, not a thief, but a "white khevre-man," as it is called in other towns. I had no idea that he had ever noticed me.

His words caused me the deepest pain, and yet they pleased me too. The fact that I had even earlier had the honor of drawing this tough's attention, that he remembered how I had looked, was for me a pleasing compliment.

I buried myself in geography. In the Russian gymnasiums and other schools one then used Smirnov's textbooks on this subject, a work in three parts. I took up the first of them — an introductory treatise on the whole globe.

The first several pages were taken up with a beginning of "mathematical geography": how the earth looks, how it turns around itself and around the sun; whence come day and night, summer, winter, spring and autumn; the various phases of the moon, eclipse of the sun and eclipse of the moon.

The little book was written for schools and everything in it is very brief. The teacher will explain it more clearly, that is the idea. Since I had no teacher, not everything was clear to me. The hardest few lines for me were those that dealt with the four seasons of the year: summer, winter, spring and autumn. In the middle of that page was a drawing showing how the earth moves around the sun. The globe was shown in its four 226different positions. The explanation, though, was so brief that I understood neither the words nor the drawing.

For several days running I did not stop looking at the drawing. Again and again I read over the brief explanation, striving to penetrate into the sense of the words and the figure. And when I did not have the book in hand, it was also the same. I used to go ceaselessly back and forth across our narrow chamber, all the while tormenting myself to overcome the riddle. And when I walked along the street, the same problem lay on my mind. It literally pursued me. I fretted and racked my brain, and the riddle remained wrapped in darkness.

Once on a Sabbath afternoon, walking from the botanical garden, through Arop-Breyter Street, I stopped at the window of an engraver. In those years a seal played a far greater role than today. Every householder had his signet, and rich merchants and noblemen used to have seals with beautiful costly handles, thick above and narrower below, like a pear. I used to love to look at these articles, as they are displayed by an engraver in the window. Some of them, with handles of a shining, white-colored stone, used simply to enchant me. I used to dream of having such a signet with my name.

On a certain Sabbath afternoon, then, I stood and greedily examined the window-display at an engraver's on Arop-Breyter Street. Looked, admired the costly handles of the seals, and at the same time thought about the "sense" of the four seasons of the year. Suddenly everything became clear to me.

As soon as I came home, I 227seized upon Smirnov's geography. Yes, everything is clear! The cause why it is summer, winter, spring and autumn became as plain as the cause of day and night, or of an eclipse of the sun and an eclipse of the moon.

I was in the seventh heaven.

So deep, and yet such a simple sense! The discovery had on me a tremendous effect and led to other discoveries.

Since it is a simple sense, then what about God?

One of the greatest mysteries had turned out to be a quite comprehensible, natural thing. If so, then why should the same not be true of all the other mysteries? If I cannot yet explain them, that does not mean that it is impossible to explain them.

I felt happy and I was in a fever of restlessness. My brain worked without cease. I set myself new questions — ever newer ones about God and his miracles. To the answers to these questions I came easily now. It became to me ever clearer and clearer that there are no miracles and there is no God.

The first strong feeling at this was a feeling of liberation: there is no longer anyone to be afraid of!

Earlier my sins had disturbed my peace. I did not pray, profaned the Sabbath, I behaved like a non-believer; but in my heart I did believe or, in any case, doubted, lest perhaps there is a God and on the other world one will burn and roast. Now, though, I was sure that one would not burn and not roast. There is no other world!

This feeling of liberation had a special 228connection to my "sins"; chiefly to the debt I owed that shemernitse (woman caretaker), near Yeshaye Baltermantser's kheyder.

Now, then, I have no more fear of her! There is no God — there is no one to punish me for it!

To convince myself that I really did not believe in God, I cursed him. I uttered the curses aloud. I spoke them out quite freely, without a crumb of fear. I was myself astonished why I am not afraid.

Suddenly a question occurs to me: since there is no God, then whom are you cursing? If you curse, it is after all a sign that you are not yet entirely convinced that he does not exist. So I stopped cursing God.

I used to think about the heresy of Hirshke Levenson. He always made mockery of God, reviled him, joked about him. That means that he is not yet a real heretic. I, then, am a greater heretic than he.

A couple of weeks before these lines were written, one of my friends of that day reminded me of thoughts he had heard from me around the time at which we are here. I mean Grisha (Hirshke) Bielikov, of Groys-Stefan (Great Stefan) Street, the one who studied together with me at Khatskel the melamed's.(*) When he was about thirteen years old (I am two years older), I once said to him:

"There are so many religions, and each is sure that his is the right one. We think that the Jewish faith is

229the right one. Why? Because that is precisely the faith of our fathers. And if their belief had been the Christian one, we would have held the Christian religion for the true one."

The words had on him such an effect that on Yom Kippur, when his father took him into the kloyz, they disturbed him in praying.

This conversation of mine with Bielikov I do not remember. But I do remember the conversations I then had with other boys. I expounded my atheistic ideas to anyone I could. Most distinctly I recall my freethinking talks with a Nodel, a tidy yeshiva student who lodged in Strashun's little kloyz, and with a boy from the Horse Market.

We had long since stopped living near Strashun's courtyard. I went there on purpose to argue with the local yeshiva student, whom I knew well.

My chief argument with him consisted, roughly, of the following: the learned men, the pious Jews, know no geography, no astronomy, none of the sciences taught in gymnasium and universities. They do not study and do not understand. They say that there is a God. Whence do they know? It stands in the Khumesh (Pentateuch)! And the Khumesh, whence does it know? It gives no explanations. It bids one believe on its word. As if it matters what it bids! Who wrote down the words: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth"? What proof have we that one may believe it?

Our conversations used to take place in the women's section of Strashun's kloyz. There he slept, and there, under one of the benches, stood his little trunk.

230On one of the benches I drew with chalk the figures of Smirnov's geography, and gave him to understand "the sense" of day and night, of the four seasons of the year, of eclipse of the sun and eclipse of the moon; with great inspiration I set before him how the earth is "round like an apple." And how on that apple lies spread the water, and in the water lie three great pieces of land and many little pieces. I showed him how the earth turns and turns around itself and at the same time goes round and round the sun.

I remember how I brought him a parable of a spinning top. As it spins, it does not stand in one place; it travels. "Now let us imagine that in the middle of the table a lamp is burning, and that the top goes around it. The lamp — that is the sun, and the top — that is the earth."

In this fashion I used to talk and talk to him. And he used to listen with attention. But he himself did not answer a single word.

Then I thought that he was afraid to show heresy, lest he lose his "days" [of board] and have to look for another lodging. In later years, when I used to recall him and our talks, I used to picture him differently. He was simply one of those who have no opinion and cannot have one, unless the question touches some personal interest of theirs in the most ordinary sense of the expression. He was absolutely not capable of thinking, and he asked no questions. Whether there is a God, whether there is no God — to him it was all one. Everyone believes and prays, so he believes too and prays too! I prove to him that there is no God, he listens as one listens to a story, or a 231song. It is interesting. Beyond that it is no concern of his.

I said above that he was a neat one, a tidy one. Among yeshiva students he was a rarity. He slept in the kloyz, on benches, and yet he always looked clean and fresh as a new doll. And his speech was also so: to the point, with a pleasant smile, and not too many words.

The Horse-Market boy whom I "propagandized" had more warmth in him, and he responded to my talk. Once he came running to me, excited, happy, and reviled God with indecent words. I gave him to understand that this makes no sense, but more than this scene I do not remember about him; even how he looked I have also forgotten.

My new conviction I felt for whole days. I was like a newborn. The world had taken on for me a quite different face.

I had a few "uroki" (private lessons, "lessons"), and the geography I bought from my own earnings. I also bought "Ilyin's map" for beginners, a big book of nine beautifully-colored maps. I took to learning the names of islands, peninsulas, capes (capes), seas, gulfs (gulfs), straits (straits), rivers; I used to look them up on the map and learn further until I knew them by 232heart, in order, as they stood in Smirnov's geography.

I knew that not all the islands, for instance, that are listed are important, that in gymnasium or in a nachalnoye uchilishche one skips over them. But to skip over them my heart would not let me. Since they stand in Smirnov, one must not pass them by.

Remarkable: learning by heart was hard for me and I hated it. But in this case I did it with pleasure. As was explained in an earlier place, it was because I had taken it up by myself. No one forced the lessons on me. No one compelled me to learn them. The work was my own voluntary undertaking, so I did it with enjoyment. The sound of the words had in my ears a ring like a song. I used to walk back and forth and repeat them over and over. Even when I already knew them well by heart, I used to keep marching and "cramming." I used simply to become hypnotized by the rhythm of my steps and by the tune with which I hummed out the words. I used to go on against my own will, until I had no more strength to march.

Some of the islands or "capes" were hard to find on my map. So I used to sit for hours seeking them. Mother used to cry out that I would be left without eyes, and I used to do my own thing.

A real lamp we did not have. We had a kerosene lamp, which consisted of a kind of little bottle with a wick, and with a little wire which used to push up and down. The lamp had no glass. It was not fitted for it. It did not smoke much, though. By this lamp I used 233to sit until late in the night. Mother's bed stood behind the clothes-cupboard, and my little bed stood here, by the table. In the stillness of the night, when Mother slept, I used to sit over my geography or march while cramming or read Gogol's "Dead Souls" — very often until it grew light outside.

The little window of our cellar-room came out onto the sidewalk (sidewalk) of the street that goes from Zavalner Street to Astra-Bram. Through there people from certain districts used to go to the summer places — Lyubavitsh's orchard, Novy Rai and the Zheleznaya khatka — and back home. Our table stood right under this little window.

Once on a summer night, around one o'clock, when I was buried in my map, looking for something, I heard a conversation. A couple of the passers-by had bent down and looked in.

— Look, look! — said a woman's voice, in Yiddish. — A map he sits over! And just look at the lamp! A little bottle! Not even a lamp in the house! This one is growing into a great doctor!

I mentioned above the "uroki" I got. The beginning was made in Kaminski's courtyard and — directly or indirectly — through my aunt Feyge. (In passing I wish to note that the dwelling where she and her family lived together with my grandfather gradually came to be called by her name. Earlier people used to call it "grandfather's"; with time, though, when he became old, and she with her husband played the whole role, the name changed. Of itself it happened. Instead of saying 234"I'll go to grandfather's" I took to saying "I'll go to my aunt's." And in a similar fashion my father and all the relatives used to speak. Only my mother used to say "I'll go to father's," as ever.) Through her liveliness, activity and friendliness, the aunt was the central figure not only at home, but also in the whole courtyard, and on her account the neighbors treated me as one of their own.

My first pupils I got at the family of Avrom Dovid Rit, the shtraykher (a dyer of fur-goods), who lived above my aunt's dwelling, and whom I mentioned in an earlier chapter.

Since at this family I used to have a lesson almost every day, and it lasted close to three years, I will make the reader acquainted with it.

The stairs that led to the Rits' began at the very door of my aunt's dwelling, and the two families were always very friendly to each other. Two of Rit's sons, Khaymke and Shimke, were of my age, and until a year earlier we used to play "hares" together, as has already been mentioned above. We were friends since I was eight or nine years old. When I was already fourteen years old, their mother hired me to give them and their younger little brother, Meyerke, lessons.

Avrom Dovid the dyer had inherited his trade from his father, and together with it he had also inherited a secret, how to make the various colors. It was not only a trade, but a business too. In any case the dyeing brought him a handsome income, and the household was conducted quite broadly.

Their dwelling actually consisted of one big room; only from it were partitioned off, with wooden 235partitions, three tiny little chambers. The space that was left over, though, was big enough. Everywhere it always smelled of fur-goods and of paint. The big room, which was at once the workshop, the dining room, and the parlor, was almost always hung and strewn with all sorts of pelts.

Avrom Dovid, a Jew of middle years, rather tall, slender, with a grayish-black beard, was a stutterer (a stammerer), and in that fault five of his six children also shared. His fingers were entirely black — always black; even when he came from the bath. On the Sabbath he used to be dressed quite tidily and a bit modern too; but the fingers remained black all the same.

This was a household of people with golden hearts. Whoever was in need received support here. Whoever had something to sell found here a buyer, simply because they could not refuse him. They gave openly and they also gave hiding it from one another. Each was afraid that the others would reproach him, that he or she is too good. To be able to be sparing and hard-hearted was reckoned in the family for a great virtue, and each member of it used to strive to show forth this virtue. Each member knew, though, that the others were "no better" than he.

Avrom Dovid was a hot-tempered man, like many stutterers, and he used to shout at his wife and children for throwing money about; but in truth he too refused no one. One only had to make for him a wry face.

His wife, Rokhl Leye, a big, fat Jewess, with protruding naive eyes, was a person literally without a gall. She was always for buying things she 236absolutely did not need, only because she had pity on the peddler-women (peddlers). Each time she used to haggle hard, in order to show the husband and the children that she is a "wicked" one, and reckons with every groschen. The peddler-women, though, already knew that she would pay much more than the thing is worth.

This trading was mostly done "secretly," so that no one should know. Then a question used to begin: where does one put the bundle, or the bit of wool, or the various arshins of linen, or the "bast-cloth"? She used only to keep looking for a place where to hide something. Every little corner in the house, every concealed, or supposedly concealed, place, was stuffed with "contraband." Her chest of drawers was so crammed and tangled that she had long since stopped having any use of it. Under the beds and under the sofa lay packs and little packs of secret goods. The bedroom and one more room looked like the storehouse of a rag-dealer.

The servant girl — Rokhlke she was named — was actually the true mistress in the house, and everyone was afraid of her. In later years, when I read An-sky's brilliant tale "In a Jewish Family," I saw Rokhlke as if before my eyes. The author had not known her. He had in mind another house with another servant. But such Rokhlkes there are many.

Rokhlke the servant was as honest a soul as her mistress. She had, though, more character and also more sense than Rokhl Leye, and loyal she was to the house no less than she. She was neither too young nor too beautiful either. And when the children used to quarrel with her, they used in their stuttering fashion to call her sometimes "old fashion." Then they used to have pangs of conscience over it, and fawn upon her.

237Isaac, the eldest son — a tall, strong, handsome lad, with broad shoulders, but also a stutterer, had finished the rabbinical school, and now he studied to be a veterinarian in Dorpat.

His father used to complain that his studies dragged on so long, and he used to make fun of him. In truth, though, Isaac was his pride. Only him did they call at home by the Russian form of his name. All the rest of the children they called in the ordinary Jewish fashion.

The eldest daughter had married in another town. The remaining children — three boys and a little girl — were at home.

Me as a teacher I began with Meyerke — a very congenial little boy of about ten or eleven. He had entered the prigotovitelny class (preparatory class) of the new "nachalnoye uchilishche," at the institute. So Rokhl Leye took me on to go over the lessons with him (the father used not to meddle in such matters).

She could have hired him an older and more important teacher. She wanted, though, to give me a chance to earn. I studied with Meyerke with great interest and devotion, and a friend of their Isaac's, who once listened to how I teach the boy, praised me highly to his parents.

Through this I also got Khaymke, the eldest of the three home sons, for a pupil. He already had a teacher and already knew a little Russian. But he had thrown away his studies, and taken to dyeing. He worked at his father's and was regarded as the future heir of the business. To him Avrom Dovid entrusted his technical secrets. He was handsomely grown, 238Khaymke, and had a handsome face (he was strongly like Isaac), and he stuttered only a little. He used to wear good modern clothes, but his fingers too were always black as pitch.

Since I had begun to give Meyerke lessons in the year of my Krylov-enthusiasm, and when I talked the matter to everyone who only wanted to hear, I used to set before Khaymke some facts, show him what dear little words lie in them, and how beautiful their language is. And he used to hear me out, a little supposedly mocking my enthusiasm, as was his way and his father's way. My explanations, though, interested him.

Once, when his mother listened to such a conversation between us, she said to him:

— Why should you too not know this? Do you know what, let the old one give you a lesson too.

He agreed. Besides Krylov I studied with him Russian grammar. For grammar he had at first no desire. I did not let him be, though, until he learned both subjects.

A good deal helped me in this a kind of competition-feeling which Khaymke had toward a friend of his, the son of a good friend of Avrom Dovid's. The friend was more educated than Khaymke. He worked for a prosbe-writer, as one used to call in Lithuania an advocate, before people grew used to a trained jurist. He read Russian books and wrote "melitse" (florid rhetoric) in Russian. He was a great show-off, the friend. Each time he used to come to the Rits', he used to read aloud some fine piece that he had "composed." That used to kindle a feeling of envy and chagrin not only in Khaymke, but in the whole family. When he used to leave, they used 239to mimic his boasting. So they all wanted Khaymke and Shimke not to be so far behind the friend.

Once the friend read aloud to us a description of a sunrise. It was really beautiful, wondrously beautiful. It was, though, not his, but Turgenev's. Turgenev's work itself I had not yet then read; but as an excerpt I had seen it in a chrestomathy (reader); in which one — I did not remember. I did not even remember that the description is Turgenev's. But that I had seen it somewhere in a book, of that I was sure.

— It is not yours! — I burst out.

The friend took to swearing that it was indeed his, and I argued that I had seen it in print.

He took to floundering; he turned red. It was plain that what I say is true. And when he left, Khaymke and his mother scolded me, why I had "spilled his blood." The affair, though, gave them pleasure.

The next morning I sought and found the mentioned description — in Turgenev's work. I took the volume on loan at Strashun's bookshop and brought it to the Rits'. When Khaymke and Shimke read it over, they were delighted. Yet, when the friend came to them again, they winked at me with stern faces, that I should "not spill his blood." The friend pretended not to know, and with me he was more than cordial.

My standing at the Rits' rose strongly.

Shimke had a teacher, and he was further along than Khaymke, but for grammar he hired me.

— Now you'll already have with us steady work, —

240Rokhl Leye then said to me. The word "tshangle" (continually, "steady") made an impression on me, for my mother and my aunt had never used it.

I also gave a lesson at Rokhl the butter-woman's — her older boy. But beyond the general fact I do not remember. My aunt got me yet another lesson at yet another family from Kaminski's courtyard. But about that I remember still less.

One of my pupils was a nephew of my one-time Russian teacher, the "rabbiner," who used to come and study with me in our shenk (tavern). Now he was already married (to a notary-woman who supported him). The rabbinical school, though, he had not finished. The wife ran a workshop, and he gave lessons. His nephew, my pupil, was a red-haired boy of about twelve. Paying for him was not his father, but actually his uncle. He paid me, though, only with promises. His intention was good. He simply did not have it.

— You put me off and you put me off, — I said to him once, catching him on the street, and speaking to him in Russian. It was on the corner of Daytshe Street and Gitke Toybe's alley.

— As long as I'll pay you off, — he answered me in Yiddish. That I remember too on account of a word. In Vilna one says "abi," not "abile." My former teacher was from a little town in Kovno province.

I also gave a lesson to a married young man. He and his wife kept a shop of piece-goods, and the lesson I used to give him in the shop. Every little while he used to fall into talk with a customer, or with the wife, and then I used to have to make up the time he had spent on this. Instead of one hour I used 241to have to sit with him an hour and a half, or even more. How this pupil looked and where his shop was, I do not remember. The lesson lasted only a short time.

With Khaymke I often talked about religion. I tried to convert him. He, though, used each time to put me off with a joke. He was not pious, but write on the Sabbath he would not, although money he did handle on the Sabbath. To enter, though, into the question of whether there is a God or not, he did not want.

Every Friday night he used to go to the theater, then he used to tell me what he had seen there. So I once put a question to him: since he is not afraid to buy a ticket on the Sabbath, then why is he afraid to write on the Sabbath? — He made a joke of my question.

One pupil I taught without money. That was a yeshiva student whom I knew from the Hasidim's minyan. To him I gave the lesson chiefly because he listened to my heretical propaganda. He really did interest himself in my explanations and he understood them. He was a capable fellow; but he had a tremendously high opinion of himself. Often he used to argue with me about the sense of a Russian word, although for the most part his own interpretation was no more than a guess out of thin air. Once through such a debate we quarreled and I stopped teaching him.

Every new step I took was the result of hard work, or of a chance. The world became broader for me, but very slowly. When I 242would have had a guide, I would have spared myself much toil and time. I groped like a blind man, and went slowly like a blind man. A boy of Vilna today, even a poor one, need not go through such a hard and long spiritual journey. The fathers are different and the children are different. A ten-year-old Vilna boy in the most ignorant family knows today many things which we barely learned by fourteen or fifteen years.

For example: I was already more than fourteen years old before I learned that in Vilna there is a free library, which belongs to the government and into which anyone may come, sit in a fine hall and read the best books. And before I prevailed upon myself to go there, I was already more than fifteen years old. My father and the fathers of my friends had no need of this library, and they did not know of it.

The library stood in a beautiful corner, across from the governor-general's courtyard, where the Emperor used to stop each time he visited Vilna. Close by was also the gymnasium. On the building of the library glittered two great golden words: "Publichnaya biblioteka." I used often to pass there almost from childhood on, because through there we used to go to look at the great beautiful fountain that spurted by the "Emperor's palace" — that is, by the governor-general's dwelling. What that was, I did not know, though, and asked no questions about it.

There were, though, by then already Jewish young people, gymnasium students, institute students, former "rabbinchiks," who visited the library and felt in it as at home, and through a couple of them I finally made the discovery that one could enter there as easily as into a Hasid's kloyz.

243I went off there. I opened the great beautiful door with a feeling of awe. I went to the catalog, looked up the card for Turgenev's works, filled out the slip and handed it to the librarian, who sat up high, in a corner, by the door.

I remember how he looked: gaunt, with smoothly combed hair, without a beard, with thin lips. He made on me the impression of a German. He received me politely, and at once brought me the first volume of Turgenev's works. I took myself straight to the long reading table.

But the librarian held me back:

— You must first take off your overcoat, — he said, pointing to the anteroom, — in an overcoat it is forbidden to read.

— It is not an overcoat, — I answered, turning red.

It was summer, and my kapote — of a dark violet color — was not a short one. It was actually neither a coat nor an overcoat, but both together. A special summer overcoat I had never had at all. But the librarian ruled that it is an overcoat, and I had to leave the place. Like one flustered I went out.

I did not rest until I got a short jacket. A distant relative of my mother's, an apothecary, gave me as a gift a coat of his of blue cloth. The cloth was a good one; the coat, though, was too big for me; for the apothecary was several years older than I. So the coat was sent to be made over (for my own earned money).

Three times a day I ran to the tailor, and he was just busy with more important orders. Finally 244my coat was finished — the first "short coat," which I wore as soon as it was done. Feeling myself in it like a bride in her wedding-dress, I ran off to the library.

Wearing the "new" jacket below, and my violet kapote above, I took off my "overcoat" with an air of importance and handed it to the doorman, who gave me a brass check with a number. I went into the reading hall with a triumphant air. I demanded and received the first volume of Turgenev's works and sat down to read. I felt as though I had suddenly become ten times more of a gentile than before.

I read with great diligence. If I was not sure of the meaning of a word, I looked it up in Dahl's dictionary, which consisted of several large volumes. And Dahl's dictionary filled me further with respect and with delight. The Russian explanations of the "difficult" Russian words I wrote down. That writing-down took time, and disturbed me greatly in reading; for I used to record not only the meaning I needed, but all the meanings the word has. It was a wasted labor. But it also gave me pleasure.

Every day I went there, and spent there four to five hours a day. I remember the library's scent of the hall and the stillness that hovered in it. I remember the binding of the book; I remember the taste of the brass check, which I used to hold in my mouth and chew quietly while I read. That taste of the cool metal is in my memory specially bound up with the taste of Turgenev's lines about the death of the great writer Gogol — an article for which they had arrested him.

245In this library I read through all of Turgenev's works, from beginning to end. I also read there Ostrovsky's drama "Groza" (The Storm) and Dobrolyubov's criticism of it.

I have already said that Pisarev was a forbidden writer, but only two of his volumes were forbidden: the second and the ninth. So I took other books of his, and in one of them there just happened to be a criticism of Chernyshevsky's famous novel "What Is to Be Done?", which was a good deal more "treyf" (unkosher) than Pisarev's "most dangerous" work. And in what this treyf-ness consisted I knew very dimly. And the criticism was for me like a fog.

I could not even say that I understand Turgenev well. His language was to me clear as crystal, and also beautiful as crystal. But what Turgenev wants with his Bazarov or with his Insarov, I did not understand. I read for the sake of the pleasure that the language gave me and for the sake of the new words that came to me from reading, with the help of the dictionary.

The Vilna public library was for me a temple of spiritual progress, and in the course of many months I spent in it happy hours.

It came out a law that the ages of certain Jewish young men were to be determined according to their "naruzhny vid" (outward appearance). This concerned those who had to present themselves for the "prizyv" (call to military service) and whom one had not registered at the time of 246their birth; there was thus no clear proof of how old they are, and the government suspected that such "prizyvniki" (conscripts) give their ages falsely, with the aim of dodging out of service. So commissions were appointed to look over each such young Jew and assess his age. One judged by his appearance, and whether one hit the mark or not — the assessment was accepted as his age.

In this there occurred much comedy and much antisemitic malice, idiocy and bribe-taking.

In Jewish towns and shtetls there was an uproar.

The commission with us sat in the building of the duma (town hall, city hall) on Troker Street. Each candidate had to submit a "zayavlenye" (a declaration), a statement that he wishes to "present himself for the naruzhny vid," and the several lines had to be written in Russian, naturally. So a couple of my acquaintance fellows made out of it a "handsome coin" there.

One of them was the above-mentioned Goldman, the son of a furrier; the second's name I do not remember. When I learned of it, I too went there.

In the anteroom of the "duma," around a window, there was a whole fair. The zayavlenyes were written on the window, and around the writers stood people with small change in their hands, waiting for their turn.

I provided myself with ink and pen and also took to "business." Goldman, who was a friend of mine and not bad by nature, had nothing against it. The second, though, did not want to suffer it. But I spoke Russian better than he, and when I took to speaking to him in Russian and mocking his "monopoly," he changed his tone. A couple of days later 247we set up a cooperative. One stood out on the street and caught the customer as soon as he came to the door of the duma, and the other two wrote.

Competitors appeared, but against our "trust" they were helpless.

For a zayavlenye one used to pay a gulden — fifteen kopecks. When someone tried to lower the price, he also found no takers, for the public had trust only in us.

The first two weeks it rained guldens. Then they became rarer. Until there came an end to the whole livelihood.

In this place I earned up to sixty rubles — a huge sum for me!

Of our customers I remember only one. And not so much himself, as his wife, who enchanted us all. She was from Poland, and her "drawled" speech was full of charm in our Lithuanian ears. Perhaps we would not have noticed it, had her round, clear-white little face not been full of childlike grace.

She did not cease to wail and to sigh, and to make sorrowful faces. And we did not cease to comfort her and assure her that her husband would get a good "naruzhny vid."

I began to think about forging birth certificates and preparing to enter the institute.

My mother was delighted with my sixty rubles and admired my cleverness; but that I would enter the institute, where all the pupils are kept "at state expense" and afterward each of them is given a state teaching post — that such luck should befall me, she did not believe.

248Three young men, all much older than I, kept a lodging together, and I used to while away whole days and evenings at their place. Only to eat and sleep I used to go home.

To reckon exactly when this was is impossible for me. I know that I was by then already close to sixteen years. Much of that time is in my memory not only clear, as though it had been yesterday, but it has a distinct order too. There are, though, facets which are deeply etched in my brain, but about which it is hard for me to say to what time they belong. So it is with the several months I spent at the three young men's.

Their room was located in a remarkable place.

In Vilna there was then a special market of geese (I do not remember whether they used to sell there only "tulem"-geese, which are already slaughtered, plucked and ready for roasting — or live ones too). It was on a great courtyard, a few steps from the great market, on a little lane that leads to Komnitsker Street. The courtyard was called "Genz-larnye."

This courtyard and the next belonged to the Hebrew writer Rozenson, who used to write half-mad little books of a half-missionary character.

The two courtyards were, in their upper stories, joined by long, twisting corridors — a tangle from which it was not easy for a stranger to disentangle himself. They had a name, these 249corridors. Not many dwellings were in them. You walked and walked before you caught sight of a door. One of the doors belonged to the lodging of my three friends. Their room was a handsome one, with a partitioned-off part, without a door, which served as a spalnye (bedroom). The window came out facing a dead wall. Between the window and that wall was a narrow lit space. But neither street nor people could be seen from there.

A writer of trashy melodramas would have chosen those corridors with that room for the headquarters of a band of thieves, counterfeiters, or "kidnappers." How my three friends discovered the place, I do not know. Cheap it was enough, but its seclusion was for them even more important than the price.

Two of the three young men were intelligentsia; one of them was named Katskel Novik, a healthy, broad-shouldered, cheerful lad. I had known him from the Plashtshadsker yeshiva. He gave lessons in reading and writing Russian and a little arithmetic.

The second intelligent was named Layzer (his family name I do not remember). He had earlier studied at a Ramayle's kloyz, and now he sat whole days over a Russian grammar or an algebra. He got support from his mother, a widow, who kept some little shop.

Layzer was the tallest in stature, a tall fellow, with no smooth face, with great honest eyes, with an ungainly large figure.

The third — not tall, but well-grown, with a great "mop" of curly hair — used to go from house to house with a siddur and a pointer and teach girls to pray. Ordinarily such little melamdim were old-fashioned Jews 250of middle years and of a quite poor and boorish appearance. This teacher was a young dandy. His hair he used to have styled at a barber's, and on the Sabbath he used to be decked out to the nines. Ignorant, though, he was no less than other house-to-house melamdim of that time. When his intelligent fellow-lodgers and their guests used to sit and talk about "black dots," he used to listen with respect.

The three young men were good, nature-friendly people, and to them used to come young people of various classes: yeshiva students, maskilim; such as had learned and read Russian books, and ignorant young artisans.

Of any workers who were to draw near to the socialist movement and be developed through it, one knew nothing yet then. The "Bund" had not yet been dreamed of. In Vilna there was then a type of artisan who used to go and study "Khayei Adam" (a book of Jewish law) in the "Khevre Poyelim" (Workers' Society). Some of this type were inspired pious zealots. Of workers who would be idealists in a modern fashion, one had then no conception yet.

The few young artisans who used to come to the "Genzelnye" (so we used ordinarily to call the dwelling of the three young men) were workers, like all Jewish workers of those years. The majority of the regulars consisted of fellows or boys who strove for an education in Russian, like Novik, Layzer, and I. We used to read and share what we read. We used to make "zadatshes" (problems), talk about the progymnasium and about the institute.

Among the guests were a couple of Hebraists, well-read men, who used to talk about God, nature — philosophical 251thoughts with which they were acquainted. I used to listen to their talk with a deep interest.

Novik and Layzer treated me as a younger brother who is more educated than they. And that was chiefly because I spoke Russian a good deal better than they, whereas in mathematics Layzer was further along than I. He was already a real expert with algebra, and I had only just taken to learning algebra. For that, though, besides Russian I knew more geography than he.

Whole days Layzer used to sit and make algebraic zadatshes, holding a tiny pencil with a great, ungainly finger, and loudly drawing in his breath from time to time. So he sealed himself into my memory.

His thirst for education glowed in him, but he had begun a bit too late, and the struggle without a teacher was a hard one.

Earlier, when he had studied at the yeshiva, his mother, the widow, had mirrored in him her future kaddish-sayer. Now she did not understand at all what was going on. She saw that he was somehow absorbed not in any Jewish matters, and I wondered. But she asked no questions. She was sure that whatever he does is good.

He was a capable man, a congenial one, and an earnest one. His great eyes often had a melancholy expression in them. A quite different sort of man was Novik. He was almost always cheerful. Often he used to make a joke, tell an anecdote, or simply amuse himself.

A few young people used to come in who were further along in Russian education than I. One of them was a former pupil of the rabbinical school. A second, whom I always picture with two little books under his 252arm, was preparing for the fourth class of the gymnasium. A third was a good Hebraist, who was studying Russian and had great troubles with the pronunciation.

Layzer and Novik also had a hard struggle with the Russian sounds. They used often to turn to me about it, and I used to show them how one must pronounce such-and-such a word. Similar help the Hebraist used to ask of me. I used to read for him and he used to repeat the words after me.

The reader must not forget that here we are dealing with Vilna, where to pronounce distinctly a "shin," differently from a "samekh," is an art. The "myagky znak" (soft sign) was also a quite hard affair. To say the word "gorky" (bitter) in the correct Russian fashion was for Jews in general not easy.

Other young people used to come in who were drawn to education and to new thoughts. The dwelling of the three young men had become a nest of spiritual strivings and of spiritual freedom. But that was not the only thing. Together with the spiritual longing there was also a longing for love and for sex-interests of no romantic character.

To the dandyish little melamed used to come two handsomely-grown tailor-lads with their brides and with a couple of other girls. They used mostly to come on the Sabbath by day, and their chief aim was dancing. And we all used to take part. There they taught me a quadrille and a lancers. There were no musicians. One used to dance by oneself and sing the tune by oneself.

For a certain time I was so absorbed in quadrilles and lancers that I used to wait with impatience for the next Sabbath, when one would dance again.

253When the guests were these young tailors with their brides and their lady-friends, the relations between the two sexes were highly proper. There used, though, also to come in other girls, though not often. And even these belonged to the proper class. No street-girls would have been let in here. Yet there were merry hours of a sort about which one cannot write. Here I became acquainted for the first time with such experiences. The three fellow-lodgers were four or five years older than I.

Once there came in there a grandchild of Ayzik Meyer Dik, a gymnasium student of the fourth class. He wore his glittering gymnasium clothes. He had committed some transgression, and was afraid to come home. Here, at the hospitable fellows', he spent several nights.

He spoke Russian and German and also a little French. Yiddish he could almost not speak. And that only enchanted us. That a boy, born in Vilna, should not be able to speak Yiddish — that was then a great rarity. We danced attendance on him as though he were a crown prince.

Some of the young people pelted him with questions about the gymnasium, about his father's house; others asked about his grandfather. And when he did not know how to answer, he used to invent some answer. I felt that what he says is often neither here nor there. But I also felt that he too is no liar by nature and that we ourselves bring him to it with our flatteries.

During the time that I was a regular at the 254Genzlarnye, I read through Mikhailov's two novels:

"When You Chop Wood, Chips Fly" and "The Messrs. Obnoskov."

Mikhailov's novels were very popular. But into literature one did not reckon them.

Around the same time I also read through "One Alone Cannot Wage War," by the German writer Spielhagen, in a Russian translation. The novel has a radical tendency, and contains an allusion to Ferdinand Lassalle. I cannot say, though, that I understood in it more than the story.

I also read through "The Summer Villa on the Rhine," by Berthold Auerbach, also in a Russian translation (with a preface by Turgenev), and "On the Heights," by the same writer.

Once, on an afternoon, when several of us were sitting in the room, the door opened and there came in a little boy with a printed paper in his hand.

— A Jew told me to carry it in to you, — he said, handing one of us the document.

The printed lines had an unusual appearance. We at once sensed that it is no "kosher" article.

— Where is he? Where is he? — we asked the boy.

— I don't know. He told me to carry it in.

The boy said that the "Jew" had led him to our door. We opened the door, looked over the corridors. There was no Jew anymore.

On the sheet of paper there were printed on one side Yiddish lines, and on the other side — Hebrew (it is possible that I am mistaken and that it was on Yiddish and 255on Russian. That it was in two languages — that I remember clearly).

It was a socialist proclamation. Later I learned that the proclamation had been written by Lieberman,(*) the editor of the Vienna "Ha-Emes," the first socialist newspaper in Hebrew.

It was the first forbidden document I had ever seen. It shook us all, but no one of us had any clear conception of the thoughts the proclamation expressed.

A little later someone brought Chernyshevsky's above-mentioned forbidden novel "What Is to Be Done?", and we read it aloud. Since the window came out facing a dead wall, no one could look in. Still we read it only at night, behind closed shutters.

While I read Pisarev's criticism of this novel, I barely understood what I am reading; and now, when I read the novel itself, I understood it not much more. I knew that one holds it for a great work, and that one deifies it. But in what this greatness consists, I did not understand. I could not even see why the book is forbidden. In my head there was a tumult. The novel bored me beyond measure; but to not finish it I did not dare.

256The few months I spent in the "Genzlarnye" were a mixture of impressions and desires, of beautiful spiritual passions and others. The four walls that hid forbidden fruit of one kind also hid forbidden fruit of a quite different kind.

Here I became more distinctly acquainted with the restlessnesses, spiritual and physical, that a boy lives through in the years when both body and soul begin to unfold.

Around that time I became acquainted with the taste of romantic longing.

My parents went with me to a wedding. The bride's older brother showed a warm devotion to her and to the whole family. He was also the merriest in-law at the celebration — never ceasing to dance and to romp. He pleased me greatly.

The bride's younger little sister, a girl of about fourteen, with beautiful black eyes, he called by a beautifully-drawn-out name. Then he, singing, took her to himself on his lap and caressed her.

The scene electrified me so that a tremor ran through my heart. From that moment on I did not take my eyes off her. And the whole evening I was drawn to them both.

The next morning I pined for the whole scene; but for the fourteen-year-old girl, as the chief figure.

I was in love. But more than two or three days it did not last.

257I took to preparing for the institute. That gradually swallowed my whole interest. I knew the name of every institute student and details about his person. When I used to catch sight of one of them on the street, in his black costume with his black broad cap, with its shining "cockade," I used to feel respect and envy. I used sometimes specially to cross over to the place where the institute stood, and used to stand and look at the building. To go inside no outside person dared. The gate was mostly closed, only a "fortotshke" (little window) was open, and that only by day, naturally.

The windows of the dining hall came out onto the street. They were, though, high above the ground, and one could look into them only when one stood at a distance. A couple of times I stood facing the windows at the noon hour. Before eating and after eating the pupils used to sing a choral verse in Russian; and their voices rang to me like the dearest music.

Once, at the end of summer, I found myself wandering about at the time of the examinations for the new candidates. I knew the name of almost every candidate, and those who were admitted were for me the happiest people in Vilna.

I remember how they ate their first "state" meal at the institute. The tailor had not yet brought their costumes, so they wore their 258own, homely clothes. And all that had a rare charm in my eyes.

They were mostly not from Vilna;(*) and also their faces were so cast that they were "not from here." But that only increased the respect I had for them. As though the more distant towns had created more important people.

This was in August 1876. I was by then actually ready for the entrance examination; but a delay arose with the birth certificates, and I lost a year.

Among my friends and acquaintances there existed a notion about the institute, that however much one prepares, it will all be little. People used to tell of the strictness of the teachers, of their endless demands. Chiefly such tales went around with respect to Russian. In part they were true.

Jews cannot speak Russian; they have a bad Russian pronunciation, and the institute trains Russian teachers for Jewish Jews. So one must see to it that these Jewish teachers should speak Russian with a good Russian "prononciation" (pronunciation). This word we always held in our mouth. Jewish boys were with us divided into two classes: into those who have a good "prononciation" and into those who have a bad "prononciation."

Everyone said that I belonged to the first class. But still one must polish the "prononciation" further. How can one risk it? It is, after all, something to enter the institute!

259Russian, then, was the chief thing. But with respect to the other subjects too one was strict at the entrance examination. In short, I took a teacher, and, naturally, none other than an institute student, one who had himself had the privilege of entering the "Holy of Holies" and whose teachers were going to examine me.

The teacher I took not alone, but together with two more candidates. One of them, Levinski, was a very capable boy, a mild one, a congenial one. We became close friends. My intimate partner was named Lemelman; at his parents' home, in Mayerke's courtyard, on Gitke Toybe's lane, the teacher gave us the "uroki."

Lemelman's father was a peculiar little Jew. His livelihood consisted of petition-writing, and he had to do with government offices. He was a characterless, befuddled, good-hearted man, but very hot-tempered. When he used to fall into a rage, he used to flare up like a match, and make wild scenes at home. His wife, though — a quiet one, a clever one — knew how to calm him. The son, an only son, was with them "the eye in the head." They fed him well and dressed him well.

I remember him with his tidy appearance and chiefly with his peculiar gait. He used not to walk, but to stride, as though with each step it came out for him to have to leap over a puddle.

Our teacher — a tall young man, no homely one — was named Shimel. He had that summer passed into the last class. It was during the vacation months, and he was free to give "uroki."

Actually all three of us had a better "prononciation" than he. With him the Jewish accent rang more distinctly than with us. And yet I used to try 260to imitate how he pronounces Russian words — not the pronunciation, but the tune.

The Lemelmans had a chamber to rent out, and there lived a tailor, with whom his daughter worked — a tall, big-boned girl, with very blond hair, with great white eyes and with bloodless white cheeks. Often she used to stand on the threshold of the chamber and listen to how Shimel gives us the lesson.

Making the birth certificates was no easy matter. One had to approach various "chinovniks" (officials). Since at the time of my birth one had not registered me in the government books, one now had to have two witnesses to swear that I was born on a [particular] day. To play such a role, two uncles of mine took it on: uncle Mikhl and uncle Aronchik (the husband of my aunt Tsherne — a sister of my father's). They had to swear before a "pristav" (police captain), or before an assistant of his, that they precisely remember the date when I was born; and the oath-ceremony had to be conducted by the Vilna state rabbi, in the pristav's presence. All this was bound up with great inconveniences. But for a couple of rubles one could avoid them.

Klyachko, our then state rabbi, prepared the document, and with it I went off to an 261under-pristav named Pevtsov, and he signed that my two uncles had sworn in his presence. Although he never once looked them in the eyes.

With his foot he pushed out the drawer of his writing desk; I laid in there two rubles, and the desk drawer closed. That was the official "oath" he was present for.

With this "oath" I had to pass through several departments of the Vilna "duma." I had to see several chinovniks and each one had to be given something. One more, another less. One, a "registrar," with a face like a cucumber covered with "pocks," merely wrote down a number on my certificates; and him I tipped fifteen kopecks.

In a lucky hour the birth certificates were finished.

The luck, though, was bound up with bad luck. I got the paper in the summer of 1877; on the seventeenth of Tammuz of that summer I turned 17 years old, and the examinations were a couple of months later; and according to the regulations of the institute one had to be, on entering, no more than seventeen years old.

I hoped that one would not stop over the couple of months and would admit me. But I doubted strongly, and was greatly worried.

Fate, though, had prepared a remedy for the affliction — a remedy in the shape of a tailor with a red beard.

Hirshke Bielikov was also preparing to enter the institute, and with his age there was also a difficulty; but of an opposite sort to mine. He was too young, by several months less than sixteen years.

In such a case the Jews had a rule: one must 262find the nobleman's tailor. A tailor is naturally a Jew, and he will perhaps obtain a favor from the nobleman. So Bielikov's uncle found out who sews for the director of the institute. That was the tailor with the red beard.

The red Jew went over with the little Bielikov to the director, presented him as a nephew of his, and asked that he be admitted to the examination. They admitted him, and he came [in].

Lemelman and Goldman the furrier's son also came.

When Hirshke's mother saw my despair, she told me how her son had been admitted to the examination. In short — I went off to the same tailor and — for three rubles, I think, I too became his nephew.

He told me to wait until a certain day, when he would take over a garment for the director's wife. Then he took me along. The door opened and we came in. The director appeared — a gaunt man, of middle stature, with "side-whiskers," without a mustache. The tailor said in his "troubled" Russian that I am a son of his wife's sister (Bielikov he had made out a nephew from another side).

It rings in my ears how he says the word "siostra" (sister). He said it in the Polish fashion. But he thought it was Russian. The director put no questions and granted his request.

Since the examinations had already ended and at the institute the "uroki" had already begun, they examined me in the classrooms, during the time of lessons.

263I had to go from class to class. In one room the Russian teacher was just then occupied, so I held the examination with him there. From there I went into the room where the teacher of arithmetic was then to be found, then into the room where the teacher of geography, Russian history, and so forth, was to be found.

While I was examined, the pupils sat with eyes wide open. That, though, did not disturb me. I answered all the questions briskly, and correctly. Anyhow, they would probably have admitted me even had my answers been not satisfactory. "Protection" is "protection."

My desire, my ideal had thus finally been realized. I had become a pupil of the Vilna Jewish Teachers' Institute, at state board and clothing.