Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

He paused on the little patch of earth at the inn door trampled hard by the numberless human feet that jostled each other there every week day and shouted:

“Yankel! Hey, Yankel! Are you at home or not?”

“He isn’t at home, can’t you see that?” answered the servant from behind the counter.

“Where is he, then?”

“Where should he be? In the city of course,” answered the servant. “Don’t you know what today is?”

“No, what is it?”

“Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement!”

“Ah, so that’s the explanation!” thought the miller.

And I must tell you that even though Kharko was a common servant and the servant of a Jew at that, he had been a soldier, and could write, and was a very proud person. He liked to turn up his nose and give himself airs, especially before the miller. He could read in church no worse than the miller himself, except that he had a cracked voice and talked through his nose. In reading the prayers he always managed to keep up with Philip the miller, but in reading the Acts he was left far behind. But he never yielded an inch. If the miller said one thing, he always said another. If the miller said “I don’t know,” the servant would answer “I do.” A disagreeable fellow he was! So now he was delighted because he had said something that had made the miller scratch his head under his hat.

“Perhaps you don’t know even yet what day this is?”

“How can I keep track of every Jewish holiday? Am I a servant of Jews?” retorted the miller angrily.

“Every holiday, indeed! That’s just it; this isn’t like every holiday. They only have one like this every year. And let me tell you something: no other people in the whole world have a holiday like this one.”

“You don’t say so!”

“You’ve heard about Khapun, I suppose?”

“Aha!”

The miller only whistled. Of course, he might have guessed it! And he peeped in through the window of the Jewish khata. The floor was strewn with hay and straw; in two and three branched candlesticks slender tallow candles were burning; he could hear a humming that seemed to come from several huge, lusty bees. It was Yankel’s young second wife and a few Jewish children mumbling and humming their unintelligible prayers with closed eyes. There was, however, something remarkable about these prayers; it seemed as if each one of these Jews were possessed by some alien creature, sitting there in him weeping and lamenting, remembering something and praying for something. But to whom were they praying, and for what were they asking? No one could have said. Only whatever it was, it seemed to have no connection either with the inn or with money.

The miller was filled with pity and sadness and dread as he listened to the prayers of the Jews. He glanced at the servant, who could also hear the humming through the door of the inn, and said:

“They’re praying! And so you say Yankel has gone to the city?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he want to do that for? Supposing Khapun should happen to get him?”

“I don’t know why he went,” answered the servant. “If it had been me, though I’ve fought with every heathen tribe under the sun and got a medal for it, no silver roubles on earth could have tempted me away from here. I should have stayed in my khata; Khapun would hardly snatch him out of his hut.”

“And why not? If he wanted to catch a man he’d get him in his khata as well as anywhere else, I suppose.”

“You think he would, do you? If you wanted to buy a hat or a pair of gloves, where would you go for them?”

“Where should I go but to a store?”

“And why would you go to a store?”

“What a question! Because there are plenty of hats there.”

“Very well. And if you looked into the synagogue now you would see Jews aplenty in there. They are jostling one another, and weeping and screaming so that the whole city from one end to another can hear their lamentations. Where the gnats are there the birds go. Khapun would be a fool if he trotted about hunting and rummaging through all the woods and villages. He has only one day in the year, and do you think he would waste it like that? Some villages have Jews in them, and some haven’t.”

“Well, there aren’t many that haven’t!”

“I know there aren’t many that haven’t, but there are some. And then, he can pick and choose so much better out of a crowd.”

Both men were silent. The miller was thinking that the servant had caught him again with his clever tongue, and he was feeling uncomfortable for the second time. The humming and weeping and lamenting of the Jews still came to them through the windows of the hut.

“Perhaps they are praying for the old man?”

“Perhaps they are. Anything is possible.”

“Does it really ever happen?” asked the miller, wishing to tease the servant, and at the same time feeling a twinge of human pity for the Jew. “Perhaps it’s only gossip. You know how people will gabble silly nonsense, and how everyone believes them.”

These words displeased Kharko.

“Yes, people do gabble nonsense; like you, for instance!” he answered. “Do you think I invented the story myself, or my father or my father-in-law, when every Christian knows it is true?”

“Well, but have you seen it happen yourself?” asked the miller irritably, stung by the servant’s scornful words.

Now you must know that when the miller was in a passion he sometimes said that he didn’t believe in the Devil himself, and wouldn’t, until he saw him sitting in the palm of his hand. And he was flying into a passion now.

“Have you seen it happen yourself?” he repeated. “If you haven’t, don’t say it’s true, do you hear?”

Then the servant hung his head, and even went so far as to cough. Though he had been a