We realize the seriousness of our predicament in being stranded in a city without hotels or restaurants, and with no food to be purchased for Soviet money, the only kind in our possession. While discussing the situation we observe a military supply train in slow motion on a distant siding. We dash forward and succeed in boarding it at the cost of a few scratches. The commissar in charge at first strenuously objects to our presence, at no pains to hide the suspicions aroused by our sudden appearance. It requires considerable argument and much demonstration of official documents before the bureaucrat is mollified. Over a cup of tea he begins to thaw out, the primitive hospitality of the Russian helping to establish friendly relations. Before long we are deep in the discussion of the Revolution and current problems. Our host is a Communist “from the masses,” as he terms it. He is a great admirer of Trotsky and his “iron broom” methods. Revolution can conquer only by the generous use of the sword, he believes; morality and sentiment are bourgeois superstitions. His conception of Socialism is puerile, his information about the world at large, of the scantiest. His arguments echo the familiar editorials of the official press; he is confident the whole of Western Europe is soon to be aflame with revolution. The Red Army is even now before the gates of Warsaw, he asserts, about to enter and to assure the triumph of the Polish proletariat risen against its masters.
Late in the afternoon we reach Fastov, and are warmly welcomed by our colleagues of the Expedition, who had spent anxious hours over our disappearance.
XXVIII
Fastov the Pogromed
—Our little company slowly trudges along the unpaved, dusty road that runs almost in a straight line to the marketplace in the center of the city. The place seems deserted. The houses stand vacant, most of them windowless, their doors broken in and ajar—an oppressive sight of destruction and desolation. All is silent about us; we feel as in a graveyard. Approaching the marketplace our group separates, each of us going his own way to learn for himself.
A woman passes by, hesitates, and stops. She pushes the kerchief back from her forehead, and looks at me with wonderment in her sad old eyes.
“Good morning,” I address her in Jewish.
“You are a stranger here,” she says kindly. “You don’t look like our folks.”
“Yes,” I reply, “I am not long from America.”
“Ah, from Amerikeh,” she sighs wistfully. “I have a son there. And do you know what is happening to us?”
“Not very much, but I’d like to find out.”
“Oh, only the good God knows what we have gone through.” Her voice breaks. “Excuse me, I can’t help it”—she wipes the tears off her wrinkled face. “They killed my husband before my eyes. … I had to look on, helpless. … I can’t talk about it. …” She stands dejectedly before me, bent more by grief than age, like a symbol of abject tragedy.
Recovering a little, she says: “Come with me, if you want to learn. Come to Reb Moishe, he can tell you everything.”
We are in the market. A double row of open stalls, no more than a dozen in all, dilapidated and forlorn-looking, almost barren of wares. A handful of large-grained, coarse salt, some loaves of black bread thickly dotted with yellow specks of straw, a little loose tobacco—that is all the stock on hand. Almost no money is passing in payment. The few customers are trading by exchange: about ten pounds of bread for a pound of salt, a few pipefuls of tobacco for an onion. At the counters stand oldish men and women, a few girls among them. I see no young men. These, like most of the able-bodied men and women, I am informed, had stealthily left the town long ago, for fear of more pogroms. They went on foot, some to Kiev, others to Kharkov, in the hope of finding safety and a livelihood in the larger city. Most of them never reached their destination. Food was scarce—they had gone without provisions, and most of them died on the way from exposure and starvation.
The old traders surround me. “Khaye,” they whisper to the old woman, “who is this?”
“From Amerikeh,” she replies, a ray of hopefulness in her voice; “to learn about the pogroms. We are going to Reb Moishe.”
“From Amerikeh? Amerikeh?” Amazement, bewilderment is in their tones. “Did he come so far to find us? Will they help us? Oh, good God in Heaven, may it be true!” Several voices speak at once all astir with the suppressed excitement of sudden hope, of renewed faith. More people crowd about us; business has stopped. I notice similar groups surrounding my friends nearby.
“Shah, shah, good people,” my guide admonishes them; “not everybody at once. We are going to see Reb Moishe; he’ll tell him everything.”
“Oh, one minute, just one minute, respected man,” a pale young woman desperately clutches me by the arm. “My husband is there, in Amerikeh. Do you know him? Rabinovitch—Yankel Rabinovitch. He is well known there; surely you must have heard of him. How is he, tell me, please.”
“In what city is he?”
“In Nai-York, but I haven’t had any letter from him since the war.”
“My son-in-law Khayim is in Amerikeh,” a woman, her hair all white, interrupts; “maybe you saw him, what?” She is very old and bent, and evidently hard of hearing. She places her hand back of her ear to catch my reply, while her wizened, lemon-like face is turned up to me in anxious expectation.
“Where is your son-in-law?”
“What does he say? I don’t understand,” she wails.
The bystanders shout in her ear: “He asks where Khayim, your son-in-law, is?”
“In Amerikeh, in Amerikeh,” she replies.
“In Amerikeh,” a man near me repeats.
“America is a big country. In what city is Khayim?” I inquire.
She looks bewildered, then
