“Well, you won’t give me a silver rouble, I suppose? It’s worth it, you know,” said the would-be borrower winking at Isay Fomitch.
“A silver rouble, no, but seven kopecks maybe.”
And those were the first words uttered by Isay Fomitch in prison. Everyone roared with laughter.
“Seven! Well, give me seven then; it’s a bit of luck for you. Mind you take care of the pledge; it’s as much as your life’s worth if you lose it.”
“With three kopecks interest makes ten,” the Jew went on jerkily in a shaking voice, putting his hand in his pocket for the money and looking timidly at the convicts. He was fearfully scared, and at the same time he wanted to do business.
“Three kopecks a year interest, I suppose?”
“No, not a year, a month.”
“You are a tight customer, Jew! What’s your name.”
“Isay Fomitch.”
“Well, Isay Fomitch, you’ll get on finely here! Goodbye.”
Isay Fomitch examined the pledge once more, folded it up carefully and put it in his sack in the midst of the still laughing convicts.
Everyone really seemed to like him and no one was rude to him, though almost all owed him money. He was himself as free from malice as a hen, and, seeing the general goodwill with which he was regarded, he even swaggered a little, but with such simple-hearted absurdity that he was forgiven at once. Lutchka who had known many Jews in his day often teased him and not out of ill-feeling, but simply for diversion, just as one teases dogs, parrots, or any sort of trained animal. Isay Fomitch saw that clearly, was not in the least offended and answered him back adroitly.
“Hey, Jew, I’ll give you a dressing!”
“You give me one blow and I’ll give you ten,” Isay Fomitch would respond gallantly.
“You damned scab!”
“I don’t care if I am.”
“You itching Jew!”
“I don’t care if I am. I may itch, but I am rich; I’ve money.”
“You sold Christ.”
“I don’t care if I did.”
“That’s right, Isay Fomitch, bravo! Don’t touch him, he’s the only one we’ve got,” the convicts would shout, laughing.
“Aie, Jew, you’ll get the whip, you’ll be sent to Siberia.”
“Why, I am in Siberia now.”
“Well, you’ll go further.”
“And is the Lord God there, too?”
“Well, I suppose he is.”
“Well, I don’t mind then. If the Lord God is there and there’s money, I shall be all right everywhere.”
“Bravo, Isay Fomitch, you are a fine chap, no mistake!” the convicts shouted round him, and, though Isay Fomitch saw they were laughing at him, he was not cast down.
The general approval afforded him unmistakable pleasure and he began carolling a shrill little chant “la-la-la-la-la” all over the prison, an absurd and ridiculous tune without words, the only tune he hummed all the years he was in prison. Afterwards, when he got to know me better, he protested on oath to me that that was the very song and the very tune that the six hundred thousand Jews, big and little, had sung as they crossed the Red Sea, and that it is ordained for every Jew to sing that song at the moment of triumph and victory over his enemies.
Every Friday evening convicts came to our ward from other parts of the prison on purpose to see Isay Fomitch celebrate his Sabbath. Isay Fomitch was so naively vain and boastful that this general interest gave him pleasure too. With pedantic and studied gravity he covered his little table in the corner, opened his book, lighted two candles and muttering some mysterious words began putting on his vestment. It was a parti-coloured shawl of woollen material which he kept carefully in his box. He tied phylacteries on both hands and tied some sort of wooden ark by means of a bandage on his head, right over his forehead, so that it looked like a ridiculous horn sprouting out of his forehead. Then the prayer began. He repeated it in a chant, uttered cries, spat on the floor, and turned round, making wild and absurd gesticulations. All this, of course, was part of the ceremony and there was nothing absurd or strange about it, but what was absurd was that Isay Fomitch seemed purposely to be playing a part before us, and made a show of his ritual. Suddenly he would hide his head in his hands and recite with sobs. The sobs grew louder and in a state of exhaustion and almost howling he would let his head crowned with the ark drop on the book; but suddenly in the middle of the most violent sobbing he would begin to laugh and chant in a voice broken with feeling and solemnity, and weak with bliss. “Isn’t he going it!” the convicts commented. I once asked Isay Fomitch what was the meaning of the sobs and then the sudden solemn transition to happiness and bliss. Isay Fomitch particularly liked such questions from me. He at once explained to me that the weeping and sobbing were aroused at the thought of the loss of Jerusalem, and that the ritual prescribed sobbing as violently as possible and beating the breast at the thought. But at the moment of the loudest sobbing, he, Isay Fomitch, was suddenly, as it were accidentally (the suddenness was also prescribed by the ritual), to remember that there is a prophecy of the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. Then he must at once burst into joy, song, and laughter, and must repeat his prayers in such a way that his voice itself should express as much happiness as possible and his face should express all the solemnity and dignity of which it was capable. This sudden transition and the obligation to make it were a source of extreme pleasure
