by Chaim Potok
Every Sunday morning he rode that horse. I never ceased marveling at the sight of him riding.
I asked him once, “Where did you learn to ride, Papa?”
“In Poland.”
“From a Jew?”
“No. From a Cossack.”
I stared at him.
“A deserter. He ran away from his army and we captured him.”
“Can I ride with you, Papa?”
“I will ask Dr. Weidman.”
But I never found out if he asked Dr. Weidman for he did not speak to me again about riding. I watched him from my window and that seemed wonder enough for me that summer.
The days passed slowly, quiet summer days that seemed to linger and expand until, by the middle of August, I began to feel that all the world was sun and warmth and a singing of grasshoppers in the night. Sometimes it rained and a mist would come up from the lake and cover the beach and the dirt road. A hush would fall upon the world and through that hush I would hear the soft pattering of the rain and the call of a bird. Early one morning a deer came out of the forest in the rain. I felt a fever of excitement watching it through my window. It was a young, tawny, light-antlered buck. It crossed our back lawn and came up to our screened-in rear porch. I saw its head held high, its ears up, its nose twitching. I wanted to touch its nose and caress its head and feel its antlers. Then it must have heard a noise, for it pivoted suddenly, plunged back across the lawn, and vanished into the mist and bluish darkness of the forest. That was the day one of our neighbors came over with the news of the massacre in Hebron.
She was the wife of the man who had wrestled with my father during the picnic of the Am Kedoshim Society. She lived in the cottage on the other side of the tall grass. She was a short, thin, excitable woman and she came over in the rain, carrying an umbrella, and asked if we had heard the news on the radio. We did not have a radio in the cottage. My father disliked having the world trail after us while we were on vacation. It was enough to read the Yiddish papers. On the radio there had been news of a terrible massacre of Jews in Hebron a few days ago. Jews had also been killed in Jerusalem, Safed, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. But Hebron had been terrible. Yeshiva students had been slaughtered. She had a nephew in the yeshiva in Hebron, the son of one of her brothers who lived in Chicago. Could my father find out what had happened to her nephew? She had just called her brother and he did not know and was frantic with dread. Her brother was not a well man. He had had a heart attack three months ago. Could my father help her?
It was the first week of the two-week vacation my father and uncle had reserved for themselves that year. My father had been sitting in the kitchen over a glass of coffee. He got up, took an umbrella, and went out into the rain. We saw him go into my uncle’s cottage where there was a telephone. My mother put a glass of coffee and a piece of cake in front of the woman, who had sat down at the kitchen table, murmuring to herself in Yiddish. My mother’s hands trembled. The drawn look had returned to her face. She responded soothingly to the woman in Yiddish. Then they sat in silence at the kitchen table. The coffee and cake remained untouched.
I went into my room and stared out the front window at the mist on the lake. Then I gazed out my rear window at the dripping trees of the forest. I saw my brother playing one of his favorite games on the screened-in back porch. He was lining up his toy soldiers and knocking them down with his toy cars. I watched him for a while, then lay down on my bed and covered my eyes with my hands.
Sometime later my father returned and I heard him talking very quietly to the woman. He could find out nothing more than what she had heard on the radio. The people he had telephoned had no additional information. Yes, there had been a pogrom in Hebron. Yes, yeshiva students had been killed, dozens of people had been killed. That was all he knew at the present time.
My mother went out with the woman and walked with her in the rain back to her cottage. Our cottage was very still. The rain fell softly on the roof and against the screens of the porch. Then I heard a sudden crashing sound and my father’s voice. “The murdering bastards!” He choked back the rage, but the words were clear. “Where was the protection? Were they blind?” I lay very still on my bed. My mother came back to the cottage. I heard them talking together but their words were indistinguishable. They went into their bedroom and continued talking. There was a noise outside. I got off my bed. Through the front window I saw a car come down the road and stop in front of our cottage. My uncle came out of his cottage, wearing a suit and a raincoat and rain hat, and carrying a small dark valise. He climbed into the back of the car. I heard my father’s heavy tread and saw him come out onto the porch, followed by my mother. They spoke quietly together for a moment near the screen door. Then my father went down the steps. He too wore a suit and a raincoat and rain hat, and carried a small valise. He walked quickly, ignoring the puddles that had accumulated in the ruts and dips of the road, and climbed into the car next to my uncle. The driver, the same man who had taken us to the movie house to see the Charlie Chaplin film, carefully turned the car around, leaving tire tracks on the wet grassy slope beyond the dirt road, turned into the paved road, and was gone.
The house echoed with silence.
My Aunt Sarah and Cousin Saul came over and had supper with us that evening. The meal was dense with my mother’s fearful darting glances and my aunt’s apprehension.
I went out to the front porch with Saul after the meal. The rain fell steadily through the dark grayness of the early evening. I could hear it on the grass and in the elm. I glanced around the porch. The wicker chair was outside; no one had thought to bring it in. I could not see the lake for the mist and the rain.
Saul stood with his face very close to the screen, staring out at the rain and the encroaching darkness of the night. He had been strangely silent all through supper, staring at his plate, picking at the food and eating very little. He had helped my mother feed my brother but with a grim silence that had brought a puzzled look to my brother’s eyes. Now he kicked moodily at the wood frame of the porch screening, his face pallid, his eyes wide and dark.
“Saul?” I heard myself say.
He said nothing.
“I thought pogroms were only in Europe, Saul. How could there be a pogrom in Eretz Yisroel?”
Still he said nothing.
“Did they really kill yeshiva boys, Saul?”
He nodded faintly.
“How old were they, Saul?”
“Older than you,” he murmured. “The Hebron Yeshiva is for older students, I think.”
“Older than you, Saul?”
He shrugged.
I hesitated a moment. Then I said, “If you were going to that yeshiva, you might have been killed, Saul.”
He turned his head slightly and gazed down at me. Then he looked back through the screening. “How could I be going to that yeshiva? I’m here, not there.”
“But if you were there, Saul. If.”
He was quiet.
I gazed out through the screening at the rain and the slow coming of the night.
My mother and aunt had been talking quietly inside the cottage. They stood on the other side of the front door and I could hear them through the open window.
“Will you be all right, Ruth?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I should sleep here with you tonight.”
“No, darling. Thank you.”
“Are you sure, Ruth?”
“Yes.”
“How will I know if you need me during the night?”
“I’ll be all right, I won’t need you.”
The door opened and they came out onto the porch. My aunt’s face looked gray beneath her dark tan.
“Good night, Ruth. Be a good boy, David.”
They went out into the rain.
It rained all that night. I lay awake and listened to it falling. Across the room from me my brother slept silently in his crib. I slid down beneath my sheet and closed my eyes and suddenly heard a voice chanting softly
in Hebrew. I dared not move. It was my mother’s voice. How had my mother come into the room without my seeing or hearing her? Unless I had fallen asleep without knowing it and now my mother was in the room, chanting in Hebrew. The darkness was impenetrable. My mother’s soft chanting voice floated toward me eerily out of the chilling blackness.
“Mama.”
The voice ceased abruptly. There was silence.
“I’m not sick, Mama.”
I heard nothing.
“Is it you, Mama? I can’t see. Is it you?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, darling.” There was a queer tremulous hesitation to her voice. I could barely hear her.
“I’m all right too, Mama. We don’t need Mrs. Horowitz.”
“I know, darling. Go to sleep, my David. You need rest. You’ll be all better soon and we’ll leave.”
“But I’m not sick, Mama.”
“Of course. Don’t I know? And I love you. Your mother loves you. Go to sleep, my David. I’ll watch and keep them away. The soldiers with the dogs won’t find us.”
But I could not sleep. I lay with my eyes closed beneath my sheet and listened to her soft chanting. Finally it ceased.
My father and uncle returned by car late the next afternoon. That evening all the people who lived in the cottages along the dirt road crowded into our parlor. The owner of the camp across the lake came too. He was a tall thin man in a white suit. He reminded me vaguely of Mr. Bader: his manner was gracious and suave. Had my father found the machine and driver useful? Yes, my father had found them very useful, and he wanted Mr. Shenker to know how grateful he was. Mr. Shenker nodded cordially. Any time he could be of help. Any time.
We sat around—seventeen men and women, Saul, myself, and a few boys and girls my age; my father had insisted that all the children, except my brother, be present—and my father reported to them the information he had gathered from his own sources regarding the Hebron pogrom. He spoke in a soft, urgent voice. The summer of sun was all gone from him now. He was as he had been before, tight, rigid, but smoldering with new rage. He would be brief, he said. He did not like to make speeches. But he did not want to repeat the story to each of us separately, so he had called us together. He especially wanted the children to hear it, he said, though he was certain it would give them nightmares. Sometimes it was important to have nightmares, he said. One could learn from a nightmare. He asked the children to pay attention and sit quietly until he was done. On the fifteenth of August, Tisha B’av, there had been Arab disturbances in Jerusalem. The British said these had been in reaction to the demonstration staged by the followers of Jabotinsky at the Western Wall protesting new British regulations that interfered with Jewish religious services at the Wall. But we knew all about the British, he said. Our dear friends, the British. They announced that they washed their hands of the Jews as a result of this demonstration, and the Arabs took the hint. The day after the demonstration, on Tisha B’av, a group of Arabs beat up Jews gathered at the Wall for prayers, and then burned copies of the Book of Psalms which were left lying nearby. Then the Mufti of Jerusalem spread the rumor that the Jews were ready to capture and desecrate the holy mosques on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Arabs began coming into Jerusalem from all over the country. In Hebron, Arabs who were friends of the Jews reported that messengers of the Mufti had been in the city and had preached in the mosque near the Cave of Machpelah that the Jews had attacked Arabs in Jerusalem and desecrated their mosques.
“Now listen to this,” my father said. “And if anyone understands it, please explain it to me. I challenge anyone to explain it to me. The leaders of the Jewish community of Hebron met secretly. They were informed that the Jewish self-defense organization had sent a message from its headquarters in Jerusalem that it was prepared to dispatch a group of armed young men to defend the Jews of Hebron. At the same time, the leaders were informed that the British district commander had guaranteed the safety of the Jews of Hebron on condition that the Jews do nothing to provoke the Arabs and that no one who was not a resident of the city should enter it. Arab leaders had promised to do all in their power to help preserve the peace of the city. The Jews decided to reject the offer of the self-defense organization. They believed the goyim. They were possessed by the mentality of Tulchin. Explain it to me. They could not bring those boys in secretly? They could not hide them and their weapons somewhere? I do not understand it. On Friday, the twenty-third of August, a band of Arabs returned to Hebron from a mass meeting led by the Mufti and his followers in Jerusalem. They ran through the city attacking Jews. They killed a student they found in the yeshiva. They stabbed him to death with their knives and swords. On Shabbos morning, very early, Arabs began coming into the city from all over. They carried rifles and revolvers and knives and swords. The Jews locked themselves in their houses. The police warned the Jews to remain inside. Like sheep, they remained inside. And like sheep, they were slaughtered. They were shot and stabbed and chopped to pieces. They had their eyes pierced and their hands cut off. They were burned to death inside their homes and inside the Hadassah Hospital in Hebron. They were—”
A woman gasped. The group stirred. A child began to cry.
“Max!” my mother broke in sharply. “The children!”
“Let the children hear,” he said. “Let them hear. Let them know what a pogrom is so they will not shrug their shoulders when they hear the word in the future.”
“Max, Max,” said my uncle gently. “Think a moment.”
My father was quiet. He closed his eyes. His face, which had turned dark with his accumulating rage, slowly lightened. He took a deep breath, then shook his head. “I am sorry,” he said. “Forgive me. I was talking of Hebron, but I had in mind—someplace else. It is all the same. No matter where it is, it is the same horror, the same heartbreak, the same helplessness. It is even the same story of one or two good goyim who risk their lives to save Jews. I am sorry. It is the killing of the yeshiva students that is the horror in this pogrom. It was a yeshiva that moved from Slobodka to be in Hebron. There were geniuses in that yeshiva. They came from Europe to die in a pogrom in Hebron. The irony. Do you understand it? I do not understand it. Three American boys who went to study in the Hebron Yeshiva were killed.” I saw heads turn toward the woman who had come to our cottage yesterday; she and her husband sat together, staring down at the floor. “The Genius of Shklov was killed. Twenty-four yeshiva boys were killed; another thirteen were injured. I do not know how many of the injured are expected to live. I also do not know yet the exact toll of all the dead. It is somewhere around sixty. What else can I tell you? I have the list of names here if any of you want it. Meyer had copies made. We wired a large sum of Am Kedoshim Society money to our person in Jerusalem to use as he sees fit to help the survivors. We have also contacted Jabotinsky. But I will tell you more about that later. There is something else we must do now.”
He went on talking. I looked around the room. Saul was listening avidly to my father, who was saying something about public opinion and the JOAC and Mr. Bader. Then I was no longer listening. I did not want to hear any more talk. I slipped from my chair, went past the kitchen and through the small hallway to my room. I stood at the back window, staring out into the darkness. The night was clear and filled with stars. I could make out the sudden blackness that was the tall wall of the forest. Through the open window I felt the cool dry air of the mountain night and heard the sounds of the forest. Grasshoppers were doing their job: they were singing even though they knew their hearts would burst. I undressed and washed and climbed into my bed. Tomorrow, I thought. We pay you back tomorrow. David Lurie son of Max Lurie will pay you back tomorrow. For everything. Tomorrow. Master of the Universe, why do they do this to us? But tomorrow we will do our job and pay them back.
The morning was warm and brilliant with sunlight. After breakfast I crossed the back lawn and came up to the forest. I stood in the warm sunshine a long time
, gazing deep into the forest, looking at its gray and blue-green shadows, at the slender fingers of golden light that probed through the dense foliage and shone upon the fallen leaves and branches that were the ragged carpet of the forest floor. A narrow boundary of shade separated the sunlight of the lawn from the darkness of the forest. Slowly I stepped through the shade and came inside the line of trees.
The air was cool, almost cold, and pungent with the odor of decaying leaves. I walked in the chill shadows of the trees and felt the moist black earth and the slippery wet-paper texture of the leaves beneath my feet. The leaves were yellow and brown and stained with death. Twigs and branches littered the earth, some brittle with age, others delicate and young, knocked down by the weight of the recent rain, with leaves the color of green apples still clinging to them. A vast stillness covered the forest. Even the breeze from the lake did not penetrate beyond the first line of trees. And the stream, full though it was and running swiftly, moved in utter silence over its shallow bed of black earth. I stopped at the stream and waited, listening. The stream was a little over a foot wide and about six inches deep. Roots and pebbles lay across its bed, yet the stream ran on soundlessly, carrying along in its current an occasional twig or leaf that bobbed and swayed and whirled around at the mercy of the swift current. I bent and put my hand into the water and felt its icy coldness. As I straightened, a bird called from somewhere deep inside the forest, one long piercing raucous call that terminated abruptly. There were no echoes. Then someone screamed.