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Updated: June 29, 2025
While trying to belittle the good intentions of jacob, I tried at the same time to belittle my obligation to him, whose authority was fast becoming irksome. Marusya, on the other hand, refused to accept my thanks. . . . . Well, by that time I had long considered myself a good young soldier. I knew I was growing in the favor of my superiors.
It was a mutual murderous attraction, a bloodthirsty love, a desire to embrace and to kill. It was very much like the pull I felt towards Marusya.
When I went outside, Marusya followed me, and handed me a small parcel. What I found there, among other things, was a small Hebrew prayer book, which Marusya must have gotten at Moshko's, and a small silver cross which she had always worn around her neck. We looked at each other and kept silent: was there anything to be said?
The sergeant looked at me approvingly, as if wishing to say, "Well done!" This prevented the young men from attacking me. Marusya left the house, and I followed her. Once outside, she broke into tears. She said something between sobs, but I could not make out what she meant. I thought she was complaining of someone, probably her mother. I wished very much to comfort her, but I did not know how.
And it dawned upon me at that moment that I was really insulting myself by objecting to being called Zhid. True, Anna meant to jeer at me and insult me; but did it depend on her alone? "And what are you going to do now?" asked Marusya. "I want to run away." "Without telling me?" She peered into my face, and I felt as if two streams of warmth had emptied themselves into me.
Marusya looked sharply at me. Very likely she recognized that something was worrying me. I felt a desire to share my feelings with her. I got up and walked out into the garden behind the house. In a moment she followed me. I made a clean breast of it, and told her all I had to witness the day before. She listened, shivering, and asked in a tremulous voice: "And what did they beat him for?"
To be sure, he hated the Jews: they always managed to intrude where they were least wanted; and he never missed an opportunity of insulting Anna and her daughter. But that is just the way they all are: they will spit to-day, to lick it off to-morrow. At the same time he knew well enough that Marusya would not be willing to have him.
I looked at Marusya, and it seemed to me that her face had become longer and her lips more compressed; her eyes seemed wider open and lying deeper in her sockets. She looked shrunken and contracted, very much like my mother on the eve of the Ninth of Av, when she read aloud the Lamentations for the benefit of her illiterate women-friends.
As soon as Khlopov had entered the room, he began to play with me and Marusya. He gave us candy, and insisted on dancing a jig with us. Anna met him with a frown: "Drunk again?" But this time her eyes seemed to have no power over Khlopov. He could not stand it any longer, and gave tit for tat. "Zhidovka!" he shouted. I looked at Anna: she turned red. Marusya blushed.
"No," answered I, thoroughly vanquished. "Well, then you are a dear boy, and I like you!" I felt the touch of soft, warm lips on my neck . . . . I closed my eyes, that the dark night sky and the shining stars might not see me. And when I recognized what had happened to me, I felt ashamed. Marusya disappeared, and soon returned with a bag in her hand.
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