449Together with me, my classmate Osip Zilshteyn was appointed as a teacher at the Velizh nachalnaya uchilishche (elementary school), and we traveled to the post together. The vacation had not yet ended; but we had to arrive in Velizh a week before the school was to open.
From Vilna we came, after a few hours' journey by train, to Dünaburg*; and from there, after a whole night's travel, also by train, we reached Vitebsk.
An institute student (institutshchik) named Branzburg, who that summer had passed from the third class into the fourth, met us at the railway station and showed us around the town. He was a Vitebsker and was then home with his parents for the vacation. He was a lively, witty young fellow, and we spent a couple of days quite pleasantly.
From Vitebsk to Velizh there was no railway. We traveled by post-horses. The road runs over 80 450verst, and every twenty verst one stopped to change horses. All told, this part of the journey took a whole day.
* Later the town was given the name Dvinsk.
The last coachman (bal-egole), a Christian, could imitate the howl of a wolf, and with it he so frightened the horses that they flew as if possessed.
We arrived at night.
Earlier there had been in Velizh, for Jewish children, an uchilishche of the old type. The nachalnaya uchilishche was now due to open shortly. Besides the two of us, there was a managing teacher, and he had come a couple of weeks before us, to organize everything. His lodging was together with the school.
We decided to put up at a guesthouse and to report to him only the next morning.
We were tired from the road and went to sleep right after supper.
When we got up in the morning, there greeted us through the windows a great expanse of mud with great puddles — a sight to which one was not accustomed in Vilna, even on a ploshchadka (square). It made us quite gloomy at heart.
After breakfast we put on our new coats (my overcoat — palto — was chocolate-colored, and Zilshteyn's about a similar color). On our heads we put — for the first time — our blue caps with the cockades, and we went out into the street. The caps were blue and wide, of blue cloth. Above and around they had an "okolysh" (cap-band) of blue velvet. The cockade — a metal "badge" with rays around a little circle — was attached in front above the velvet band.
451The inn (akhsanye) was in the middle of town, on the marketplace; yet we had a hard trek (yozde) springing across puddles and bogs before we got "safely" to the other side, where our uchilishche was located.
From every shop people ran out to look at us.
The uchilishche was right in the middle of the commercial center, on the second floor, above a row of shops.
Our "zaveduyushchiy" — that is, the managing teacher (principal) — was a young man of some twenty-odd years, not tall, somewhat stout, with red cheeks, not ugly, even handsome, but without charm and without any intellectual flavor in his look.
He too had finished the Vilna teachers' institute. But that had been four years earlier; he had arrived there when the institute opened. The whole four years he was the best pupil in his class, and as the best pupil he also graduated (in the summer when Zilshteyn and I were admitted into the first class).
He had the abilities to teach lessons and to get good marks (otmetki), but only that. Zilshteyn and I were at least four years older than he.
Yet we were astonished at his undevelopedness and complacency.
He was a chinovnik, with a chinovnik's soul, and he was a power (tokef) with the authorities (nachalstvo) of the folk-schools, just as four years earlier he had been a power with the teachers of the institute.
He had married a beautiful girl, who bore him a beautiful little boy. They, his householderliness 452and his money, were his whole life. He used to go himself to the market to buy eggs, potatoes, beets; and he was forever boasting to us of the bargains he had struck. He was stingy, sly, petty, and superstitious.
He never took a book in his hand. It would have suited him far better to be a little shopkeeper or a little broker than a teacher.
Zilshteyn — slender and very dark — belonged to quite another type. He was neither stingy, nor sly, nor petty. He loved to read and had a fine style in writing. I have already told of his pleasant voice and pleasant singing; also of his neatness and punctuality. He was inclined to be elegant and romantic. I believe he would have suited an artistic career, as a singer, a composer, or a pianist perhaps.
I had known him since childhood, for the wife of my former rebbe, Khatskel, was his sister, and a brother of his — who later actually became an opera singer — had studied at Khatskel's together with me.
He graduated with better "marks" than I, and his post was reckoned a better one than mine. He was the teacher of the preparatory class. And I — "under-teacher" (unter-lehrer) to the principal over the three higher otdeleniya (divisions, grades). I took to teaching the same boys as the principal and the same subjects as he. He even handed over to me the highest parts in arithmetic, in grammar, or in both. But Zilshteyn's post was reckoned the higher, and he received more salary than I 453(he was paid, I think, ten rubles a week, and I — eight).
Therefore he had to rent a lodging himself, while I was given quarters in the uchilishche. But our principal took all the good rooms for himself and left me a narrow little chamber, right beside the classrooms; so I decided to stay there only a few weeks, and arranged with Zilshteyn to settle together somewhere, as quickly as we could find suitable quarters. At best, in the official lodging I would not have had the privacy and freedom that we would have in an independent dwelling.
It was hard for me to get used to the small-town pettiness of Velizh. But that was not the only drawback.
Velizh was a deeply Hasidic and deeply "fanatical" little town. Of such a thick cloud of superstition one no longer knew in Vilna by then. For example: a man was not allowed to go out walking with his own wife. People would have declared them dissolute. And this spirit made itself felt in the whole daily life.
Not far from Velizh lies the Hasidic capital of that time, Lyubavitsh, and Velizh was thoroughly under the rule of the Lyubavitsher rebbe.
But it was not only in regard to religious life that Velizh was different from our mitnagdic Vilna. The difference made itself felt in many other things too. The hard "reshes" (the hard "r") of that region, with many words and expressions not used among us, grated on our ears. When I used to hear them say "brik" for a podlonge (a floor), it was hard for me to bear. Much the same was the case with the Velizh manner of 454cooking. It was not easy for me to get used to it.
The Christians too are quite different from those in Vilna. They are Belarusians. True, a certain part of the Vilna population also consists of Belarusians. But in Vilna there were many Poles. The non-Jewish public mostly spoke Polish. In Velizh, again, one heard not a single Polish word. Besides: Velizh is quite near to Great Russia; therefore the language of the local population is closer to true Russian; and the masses cross themselves in the true-Russian way too. On Sundays the market would simply blaze with red shirts. We did not like this. This Russianness was actually to my own heart; but it added to the difference between Velizh and Vilna and to the strangeness of the town.
The first while, I was strongly homesick.
The rule of the new revolutionaries was to mingle with the town's society, in order to be able to have an influence on it. Therefore I decided to go several times to pray in the synagogue, as a means of becoming acquainted with people.
On a certain Sabbath, then — the second or the third that I spent in Velizh — I went off to the most important bes-medresh of the town. Zilshteyn went too.
There was no "must." The old-fashioned piety of Ve455lizh had no bearing on us. If we, the "educated ones," the "uchitelya" (teachers), had never once shown ourselves in the synagogue, no one would have been surprised either. For they looked upon us as upon Gentiles.
When they caught sight of us in the bes-medresh, they received us like good guests. They gave us honorable seats and honored Zilshteyn with a "Peter" (penultimate) aliyah and me — with maftir.
The Hebrew (ivre) I recited as it should be; but with the cantillation (trop) there was trouble. Earlier I had had maftir only once, and that was at my bar-mitzvah, that is, eight years before. And for the last six or seven years I had altogether grown unaccustomed to synagogue ceremonies. In short, it did not go. I became confused and began to fake it, mumbling under my teeth.
And here the congregation was listening to my every word, to my every note!
My face flamed. I barely lived to finish; and afterward I was ashamed to look the householders in the eyes.
The next morning a young man, a maskil, with whom I was already acquainted, met me. He spoke with me in a different kloyz; but he had heard about my experience of the day before.
— How do you do, Pan Cahan? — he says to me with good-natured young fellowship. — I heard that yesterday you "botched off" a maftir, that there was something to hear!
He said this in such a tone and with such a smile in his eyes, as if his words had a double meaning: first, a compliment, that I am so far advanced in learning and freethinking (apikorsut) that I cannot read a maftir; and secondly — a mockery of 456me, for being such an ignoramus (am-haaretz) that I cannot read a maftir.
His "botched off a maftir" long stung in my ears.
I went to pray no more. And as for acquaintances, I made them anyway.
The most important trade of Velizh was in timber. The little town stands on the Dvina, which runs from it to Vitebsk, from Vitebsk to Dünaburg (Dvinsk), and from Dünaburg to Riga, where it falls into the sea. Over the Dvina, then, used to go the rafts (plitn) of the Velizh timber merchants to Riga. The name Riga one heard a thousand times a day.
The rich Velizh householders were timber dealers, and the richest of them were the Berlins and the Zarkhis.
The Velizhers loved to boast that "Khaim Berlin owns more land than the king of Denmark." But this same Khaim Berlin lived in a quite old-fashioned manner. The coachman of his carriage was a little Jew with curled peyes and a yarmulke under his cap. Once, when he was waiting for his master on the box of the carriage, I saw him holding a tehillim and reciting a chapter with great relish.
One of the Zarkhi householder-women invited me to give her only son (ben-yokhid) lessons. I came and found a boy full of medieval ignorance and wildness. The son, a "young fellow" of about fifteen or sixteen, shoved at me a crazy "sholem-aleykhem" and sat down none other than with me on a single chair. When 457it came to the price, the "millionairess" mama took to haggling, as she would surely have wrangled with a peasant over a wagon of wood. The upshot was that I made some excuse and left.
Yet one cannot say that all the Velizh rich men were cast in the same mold. There were some exceptions, and among them was a family named Bas — also timber dealers. Their house was run quite humanly and rather up-to-date.
A short time before we came to Velizh, they had married off their younger daughter — a beautiful, dark, charming girl — to a quite intelligent young man (from Pinsk, it seems). The son-in-law was no foolish man, a tactful and progressive one, and he was dressed completely in the European fashion. Zilshteyn and I became friends with him, and we often used to come into their house.
There were a few more sons-in-law with whom one could talk. And they all attached themselves to us.
It was no longer as boring as before. But taken as a whole, Velizh life still made a heavy impression on me. And from my experiences in the uchilishche it became no lighter.
The lessons in the classes had begun. The pupils were small-town Hasidic boys with big peyes. But they had thoroughly Russian names, as if for a joke. I call out, for instance, the 458renowned Russian name "Lomonosov," and there stands up under it a twelve-year-old little Hasid with a nose that badly needs a handkerchief.
Various details of this kind worked badly on my mood. I often used to feel unhappy. "Am I then condemned to spend year after year like this?" — I would ask myself in despair.
My best pastime was to imagine that it was already near Passover, and that we would be let go home for the holiday.
In an earlier chapter mention was made of a pupil of the Christian teachers' institute who belonged to our revolutionary "kruzhok." This Christian happened to have a friend in Velizh — a Russian named Medvedev, whom he had recommended to me as one of "ours." Medvedev too was an institutshchik. But he had remained for a year at home, because of the poor state of his health.
Velizh stands on the Dvina, which cuts it into "the big side" and "the small side." In winter, when the river stands frozen, one crosses from one side to the other on foot. In summer one takes a "prom" (ferry). Our uchilishche was on the "big side," and Medvedev was staying on the "small side," at an old man's, who had a business there.
I ferried myself across there with the "prom." The 459grandfather — a Russian merchant of the usual type — explained to me that his grandson too had gone away for a certain time to a village. He did not, however, let me go so quickly. He gave me refreshment and chatted hospitably with me about our uchilishche and about Velizh in general. To be a guest in such a house was for me an interesting new experience.
I was greatly disappointed by his grandson's absence, but fate that very day rewarded me with a pleasant surprise, which led to other welcome acquaintances.
Zilshteyn and I went to look at a lodging (kvartir). It was a "fligel" (a small building belonging to the main edifice), the property of an old doctor named Yatskevich. Yatskevich was the owner of the uchilishche building, of the shops beneath it, and of a few other buildings on the market.
His own dwelling, however, was elsewhere — on a quiet street of wooden houses and gardens, in the middle of a courtyard with an orchard; and the "fligel" stood facing the street.
When we came, he explained to us that in the lodging he wanted to rent us, his son Henrik was living for the time being — Henrik who had just finished the Vitebsk gymnasium and was preparing to go to a university. He showed us three little rooms with an attic. That was the whole "fligel." But the little rooms were lovely and comfortable.
On the table and on the chest of drawers lay portrait-pictures of radical writers and thinkers, like Pisarev, Dobrolyubov, and Lassalle.
— Can it be that this Henrik is one of "ours"? — I asked myself in a delightful sur460prise. That he was radically inclined — about that there could be no question.
Later, when the father introduced Henrik to us, his appearance — a blond fellow, with an interesting, palish, very intelligent face — confirmed for me the impression that the pictures had made on me.
Our conversation was at first very cautious. Bit by bit, however, we both felt that we could trust one another. And we began to speak more openly. He was a member of the Vitebsk "kruzhok." I showed him my "Sovremenniks" and a few numbers of "Narodnaya Volya" that I had brought from Vilna; and he showed me a photographic picture of Chernyshevsky and an underground booklet that ostensibly contained a religious sermon*. The sermon was a revolutionary one, and it was written in a peasant tongue; for the booklet had been specially printed for distribution in the village.
* The name of the booklet was "Slovo v veliki pyatok" — that is, a sermon on the fifth Friday of the great fast (Lent).
The next several days I spent whole afternoons and evenings with Henrik.
Before the young Yatskevich went away (to Warsaw), he brought us together to Sivvets, an estate (mayontek), seven verst from Velizh, and there he introduced us to a radical gentry family named Lakhov.
When Henrik went away, we moved into the "fligel." A tiny little house, but a whole house to itself. We delighted in it like a boy with his first pair of trousers.
461I spread out my books. The 23 numbers of Chernyshevsky's "Sovremennik" were the pearls of my little library.
Officially, the old numbers of the journal had never been forbidden. They were simply hard to come by; and in the libraries they would not lend them out for reading. In a big city, keeping such books was not a safe matter. They would have drawn attention and aroused a suspicion that you were one of "those."
But that in a remote little town like Velizh the police and the gendarmerie should have so developed a sense for such things — that was not to be believed. So I laid them out in one of the open drawers of the chest of drawers, which served me as a bookcase.
Henrik Yatskevich left me his photographic picture of Chernyshevsky and the "sermon" booklet. These, and my two numbers of "Narodnaya Volya," I naturally kept in another place.
I read various articles in the "Sovremenniks," and I began to learn French.
Time was occupied; life was broader and more interesting. But the homesickness did not let up the whole first while, and therefore, on Sukkos — about six weeks after our arrival in Velizh — we traveled to visit our two comrades from the institute, our "zeyde" Tratski and Yunovitsh, who held teaching posts in Nevel, also in Vitebsk province.
Nevel is as big as Velizh and had the same Hasidic and small-town character. Our visit there was therefore a sensation.
462We were invited to meals, to evening parties (vetsherinkes). A whole series of carousings (hulyankes) began. In the street people ran after us. A matchmaker (shadkhn) took an interest in us. But we did not let him near us.
After Sukkos, when we had returned to Velizh, the regular school work began. And my acquaintances grew still wider.
Into Velizh there came a true intellectual — a doctor, a short-built young man with black hair and a face as dark as Zilshteyn's — a very capable and well-read young man. Isaac Merson was his name. He was the son of a Velizh scholar (lamdn). He had passed the examination for all the classes of the gymnasium and was preparing to go to a university. But for the time being he settled in Velizh for the winter. We became acquainted with him, and he often used to visit us.
Medvedev, the Christian institutshchik, came back from the village, and he introduced us to yet another Medvedev — a former pupil of the Petersburg teachers' institute, a picture-handsome young man.
The Lakhov family, the gentry family with whom the young Yatskevich had acquainted us before his departure, often sent a carriage for us from their estate (mayontek), and we used to spend sometimes an evening with them and sometimes from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning.
463The family consisted of a widow, her two daughters, her son, and a governess for the younger girl. The mother was a brunette, not tall, a clever one, a careworn one. Her elder daughter, Vera, made the impression of a girl with a strong character. She spoke little. When she would give a smile, her white teeth and her gray eyes would shine with an interesting light. The younger one, Liana, was very beautiful, but frivolous. Their brother, Kolya, was a lively lad, good-hearted, a hot-head of the truly Russian sort. The family lived in the Russian-gentry style; and like many gentry, they ran the estate without sense, relying too much on a hired manager, a German from the Baltic region, who barely spoke Russian. The hospitality of the house was a broad, a warm, a truly Russian one.
Liana's governess was a Christian girl from Vitebsk, and she belonged to the Vitebsk "kruzhok." Vera too sympathized with the revolution, and the mother as well.
When we used to visit them, we would spend the time in conversation, reading together, singing, and a little spreading of propaganda among the Sivvets peasants.
A few times, when the widow traveled to Vitebsk, she brought back from there the latest numbers of "Narodnaya Volya," which she received from the governess's sister.
Once I rode with the Lakhovs in their carriage to Vitebsk, where I became acquainted with some members of the local "kruzhok" — Jews and Christians. One of them lent me Karl Marx's "Capital" in Russian (more than the first volume had 464not yet appeared). I took the book with me to Velizh and sat whole evenings, reading and penetrating into the depths of its content.
In Velizh itself a whole "kruzhok" of Christian and Jewish members had gathered around us. Among the first were the Christian teachers of two village schools, not far from Velizh. One of them, a tall man of about forty, with a peasant face, was then engrossed in political economy, and he latched onto me for Chernyshevsky's translation of Mill's work.
The second teacher was a younger and shorter-built one. He rarely (if ever) uttered a word. He used to sit and listen to our revolutionary conversations. When one spoke about the heroic fighters and their martyrdom, he would swallow every word and so suck himself full of inspiration.
The acquaintances whom we could trust used to gather at our lodging, to read, to talk, to debate. Underground literature I received several times from the Vitebsk "kruzhok." When I received a few copies of a proclamation or a new number of the underground organ "Narodnaya Volya," I would distribute part of them to trustworthy acquaintances. I used to wrap the "treyfe merchandise" in underdrawers, or socks, and so send it off by post, as a parcel of new linen.
Chernyshevsky's picture, which the young Yatskevich had left me, I carried to a Velizh 465photographer and ordered from him a couple of dozen copies (I told him it was a cousin of mine). The pictures were afterward sold in Vitebsk for the benefit of the "Red Cross" of the revolutionary movement.
The New Year we spent in Sivvets, with a meal, stories, and singing for the children of the peasants. The spirit of the holiday was mixed with the spirit of revolution.
The "trusted ones" were, naturally, not the only ones who visited our dwelling. There also used to come in to us several Jewish young men, who needed to know nothing of our revolutionary interests. Most of them were simply "modern worldly types"; they would come in to smoke a cigarette on the Sabbath, to hear a few "apikorsish" (heretical) words, and so to pass an hour with the "uchitelya" (teachers). There also used to visit us a few "half-modern" ones: a few sons-in-law of householder families, the town's feldsher (medic), who was full of interesting tales, and a few others. One had to remember how, and with whom, to speak.
A few words about the house where I lived.
I have already mentioned that the landlord of my quarters 466was an old doctor named Yatskevich. He had two daughters and two sons. With the elder son, who was now in Warsaw, the reader is already acquainted. The younger was in the last class of the Vitebsk gymnasium, and the younger daughter was in the Vitebsk gymnasium for girls. At home there was only the elder daughter, unmarried. The doctor had long since given up his practice. He lived on the rent he received from his houses and shops.
A tall, gaunt, weak, and very good man was this Doctor Yatskevich. And all his children were good too. He was a Pole. Polish he could not speak a single word; but this did not prevent him from being a Polish patriot.
He suffered greatly from the bitter drop. For several days running he would be dead-drunk. Then, when he would take to sobering up, he would for a few days find himself in a nervous state, with a trembling in all his muscles, like a paralytic. Then would come a few sober days, and after that he would again fall into the habit, against which he was powerless. But whether he found himself in this state or that, a good soul he always was.
Once, at night, he sent Maria, the servant, to call me, to ask me to come in to him. I came in and found him drunk. When he caught sight of me, he took to pressing my hands and sobbing: "Abram Safanovich, Abram Safanovich!* In Warsaw there is to this day no canalization (plumbing)." And he wept aloud.
* That is how they used to call me there, in the Russian fashion. Shakhne, my father's name, was transformed into the Russian name "Safon." Later, when my father found out about it, it greatly upset him.
The daughter laughed her good laughter, and the two of them gradually calmed him, assuring him that they would yet make a canalization in Warsaw.
The daughter, who used to smoke a great deal, like Madame 467Lakhov, was always in good spirits. I never saw her dejected or angry. Whatever happened in the house, she would view it all from a humorous standpoint.
She played the piano. The instrument was an old one, and the little keys (klavishn) were indeed made of bone — very dried out and yellowed with age. The sounds the piano gave out were also somehow dried out and yellowed. She used to play popular, light pieces on it. No great musician was she; but in her playing there rang her eternally good-natured spirit.
At Christmas there came from Vitebsk her younger brother and younger sister. We became acquainted, and Zilshteyn and I spent those several days together with them. Henrik's younger brother did not interest himself in political questions. He was a lively lad, an indefatigable mischief-maker, and he drew us into his carousings.
The younger Fräulein Yatskevich was a quiet one, a bit pensive. She came to me insisting that I should teach her the Jewish alphabet (alef-beys). I thought it was nothing more than a whim, and I indulged her the whim. But she took to the alphabet quite seriously, and a few weeks later, when she was already back in Vitebsk, I received from her a Russian letter, written in Jewish letters. A good part of the letter had such a character that the police had no need to know about.
The whole Yatskevich family was unusually friendly and attached to us — to Zilshteyn and to me. Their old servant, Maria, too. This servant was a very 468religious one, and the fact that we were in Velizh without parents awakened in her pious soul a special interest in being a mother to us. She used to cook for us, bake, look after us — truly like a mother. The fact that we were not Christians did not disturb her in this. Perhaps it was because we spoke Russian like the Christians and were dressed like "chinovniks"; and perhaps the main thing consisted in the fact that the Yatskevich children, whom she had raised on her own hands, were so befriended with us.
Almost every day brought new impressions. This, and my new independence, the role I played in the town, the role I played in the secret "kruzhok," and the high moral feeling that was bound up with my socialist enthusiasm — all this together was, like wine, in my young years.
In an earlier chapter I told about the spiritual revolution that had taken place in me, and about the calming effect it had on me in regard to my eyes. This remained. A wish to look handsome, too, I always regarded with contempt.
This does not mean, however, that, being in Velizh, I never had any coquettish awareness of my new costumes, of the official frock-coat with the brass buttons, which I used to wear in class, and of the official blue cap with the cockade, which I used to wear 469in the street. Nor does it mean that I never felt elevated by my Christian acquaintances. And when I would catch myself at such a feeling, I would chastise myself (muser) — perhaps with my whole heart and perhaps not — as a pious Jew chastises himself when he catches himself at a sinful thought.
From the pains that my crossed eyes used to cause me earlier, I was now in any case free. Perhaps this was because I now, on the whole, had more confidence in myself. I had convinced myself that I play a role and draw attention, in spite of my crooked eyes…
Not long after my coming to Velizh I saw myself in print for the first time. I had sent a short article to the "Russki Yevrey"* and it was printed. The article was about the necessity of having a technical school, to teach trades, in Velizh.
* One of the three weekly papers for Jewish interests that then appeared in Russian.
It had no significance, and of talent there could of course be no question. And yet this article made an impression in the town. Those who knew even a little Russian got hold of the number, read the article, and marveled at the fact that "Cahan the uchitel writes into the Russian newspapers."
I dreamed of bigger articles. Reading the "Russki Yevrey" or the "Rassvet," or even an article in my "Sovremennik," I had a new awareness, that I am no longer like all readers — that an article of mine too is in print.
470Life kept growing fuller, richer in interesting experiences and plans. It would, however, be a mistake to think that I was always content. There were other moods too, and indeed often. There were many hours and days when Velizh was a burden to me. The prospect of remaining "a little teacher" in a remote province hung over me like a dark fate, and I had in myself too much zest for life and enterprising spirit to content myself with such a future. I often used to fall into a melancholy (more-shkhoyre). "How does one get out of here?" — I would think to myself.
I longed for Vilna. I longed for a broader world in general. That I should for long remain a Velizh teacher — that I altogether refused to imagine, even when I was in the best of moods.