EVENTS APRIL 17, 1940. ENTRY APRIL 22, 1940. FROM LAZAR SLONIM. At Berson’s apartment last night, and largely for Berson’s benefit, Slonim opened up. He began by talking about Menkes, but soon by that route he arrived at a more interesting topic: the event which has given Slonim a certain small fame among us — or notoriety, depending on the viewpoint.
[INSERT. FROM ENTRY JANUARY 12, 1940. N.L. Lazar Slonim is a romantic Socialist. He comes from a wealthy background, and he is in the movement for excitement, mainly. When he speaks of Polish Socialism, he does not talk of wages, hours, and rents; no, he tells about how the mountaineer Dembowski fell resisting the charge of the dragoons in a courtyard in Podgorz, in the Krakow uprising of 1846, or he quotes from the eloquent letter from the martyrs of the Tenth Pavilion, in Warsaw in 1886. He has a cynical twist, a bantering manner; he has no enthusiasm for doctrine. Berson says Slonim is such a clever fellow that it seems he can never stifle his own brilliance: in every discussion, his incisive but unsubtle mind displays itself, and almost always in argument. Slonim uses Socratic questions as if they were bludgeons, and he grows surprised and truculent if a single series of blows does not render his opponent senseless and silent. He has a narrow face, with juicy but stiff lips, like two sections of a tangerine. A handle of hair, on which he tugs constantly, falls over his forehead. He mumbles his words. He has a thin, hard body, as if made of waterpipes and pipe joints. But in spite of his aggressive manner and strange appearance, he has a kind of charm—a charm of energy, stubbornness, and romanticism.
Slonim is about thirty years old. His father was a wealthy leather merchant who died eight or ten years ago, leaving everything to Lazar, who was an only child. Slonim studied in Polish schools and at Bonn, where he formed a close friendship with Berson: perhaps one should call it a running debate rather than a friendship. It was at Bonn that he was first attracted to Socialism—dabbled in theory, as he said to Symka the day of the Community Building mass meeting (ENTRY DECEMBER 3, 1939). After the University, he joined the Jewish Socialist Bund, and worked as an activist and organizer. They say he did splendid work in the printers’ union, the strongest here in Warsaw. He is married and has two children, but I gather he almost never produces his wife in public. He is a reserve officer in the Polish Army, but was not called up when the Germans invaded the country: this infuriates him more than most “capitalistic injustices.”]
…and then he told us how the thing had come to take place:
Rapaport pushed back his chair, shoved his green eyeshade up onto his forehead, stretched his arms, and lit a cigaret. It was nearly midnight, but old Rapaport was apparently far from done with his work. He sat in his room beside a round table, and the smoke-lines from his cigaret ascended like inconclusively swinging fists and reaching hands through the cone of light falling from a single shaded bulb. Before him on the table, glistening and promising, was his pride: a new Polish typewriter, which Slonim says Rapaport had acquired, after months of haggling, from a Polish Socialist comrade. Now the Jewish Socialist Bund, cried Slonim in his sarcastic manner, would march ahead, shoulder to shoulder with every other workers’ movement that could afford a typewriter. Except, he added, that Rapaport’s stenography, like Rapaport’s reasoning, is slow: a longhand revolution would come just as fast.
Slonim: —— You wanted to see me?
Rapaport: —— I did. Two decisions of the Central Committee.
[NOTE. N.L. The Central Committee! The Bund has made no secret of its directorate in the past, and I happen to know that three of the six members of the Central Committee left Warsaw during the siege and have not yet returned, and that one of the other three, Spieser, has been ill. Of all people, Slonim, with his rebellious mind, must have known what Rapaport meant by “the Central Committee.”]
Rapaport: —— First. You have heard about the attacks on Jewish stall shopkeepers by Polish hooligans from the trade school on Leszno Street, no doubt. The Central Committee has decided to teach those ruffians a lesson. Day after tomorrow, at six in the afternoon, after the school’s late session is recessed, our cadres will intercept the students. The meatworkers and transport-workers have been mobilized. I want you to organize whatever you can among the bricklaying labor battalion, in the district Franciszkanska-Nalewki-Zamenhofa.
Slonim: —— Isn’t that treating a symptom?
Rapaport: —— I know. The Poles have reason to hate the Germans, and the Jews have better reason to hate the Germans; so the Jews fight the Poles. But, Slonim, we have to teach these Poles that we are not supine. We will deal with the Germans when we can and as we can. That takes preparation. We have to do this first.
Slonim: —— And what do we use to teach this lesson?
Rapaport: —— You have bricks. From all I have been hearing, you handle them rather well—for an intellectual.
[INSERT. FROM ENTRY APRIL 23, 1940. N.L. I am afraid that Rapaport’s gibe at Slonim, about being an intellectual mason, the other day, must have been heartfelt, and therefore pathetic. Rapaport, who is earthy indeed, resents intellectuals, I am told. He is not one himself: he is even slow-witted. Of course this does not prevent him from being a much bigger man than Slonim.
Rapaport is a worker’s worker. He came up from the very bottom of the pit. He began as a chalupnik, one of those fantastically poor drones who do piece work for tailors, hatmakers, and so on. Rapaport has stated that one employer for whom he worked got things done so cheaply by his chalupniks that he was able to export to India. From this beginning. Rapaport climbed so far that at last he went to France to study as an engineer—a rise which cannot be demeaned by the fact that he failed his courses in France. He was a leader in the Jewish Socialist youth movement, Zukunft, and later joined the Bund. He has always been much loved: he speaks the workers’ language, and he has a friendly manner. He is an intuitive Socialist, a humanist rather than a strict Marxist. He feels concern for the individual rather than for the mass, and they say that he always has time for the personal problems of a working man. He has a quiet dignity, and always maintains a rigid self-control in rancorous or dangerous situations. They say that in the Semperit strike in Krakow in 1936 he showed great personal courage. Everyone seems to call him “old Rapaport,” though I believe he is just past fifty: he has a mane of pure white hair and a lion’s face. As is often the case with men who have a wonderfully calm exterior, his turmoil is all internal: he has some kind of bad stomach trouble.]
Rapaport: —— The other thing: the Bund foresees food as a difficult problem….
Slonim, breaking in: —— The Bund amazes one!
Rapaport: ——…and the Bund intends to enlist as many bakers as possible in its work. They will be invaluable later on. Can you help with any of these?
Rapaport handed Slonim a slip of paper on which was a list of names, typed, with errors, erasures, and eccentricities in the left-hand margin: Abramowicz, Dant, Feiwicz, Haleazar, Menkes….
Slonim: —— Menkes. I will try Menkes.
Rapaport: —— Do you know him well, or do you patronize him?
Slonim says that Rapaport bore down rather heavily on that “patronize.”
Slonim: —— He is a friend of a friend.
Rapaport: —— Good. Do not approach him as from the Bund. Try to get him interested in the abstract ideas of resistance and underground. When he has had peripheral testing and then training, it will be time enough to discuss the Bund.
Slonim: —— Do you take me for a novice?
Rapaport: —— As the years go by, one learns to repeat and repeat and repeat; to you, I suppose I should apologize. (With a sudden change in manner, from that of a stiff tutor to that of a warm friend:) Come to me on May Day. I’m having a few comrades in to celebrate.
In telling Berson all this, Slonim had seemed to put most of his emphasis on his own conflict with, and superiority to, Rapaport. But as he finished he said:
—— Rapaport sat there with his chin on his fists and his elbows on the table bracketing the precious typewriter. That takes preparation, he had said to me. What a patient fellow! His whole life has been preparation: hardening up the periphery, forming the Groups, always getting ready; and always losing, too, defections to the left and right, death, jail, war — and then preparations to compensate for the losses. And the tortuous road of policy, favoring Marxism and opposing Stalinism: preparation of line and counter-line and counter-counter-line. And “teamwork” with the Polish Socialists, preparation for the brotherhood of the working masses—which, speaking of Pole and Jew, does not, cannot, will not exist. And the preparation of himself, for half a century. Foundations to be put down: sharp and troublesome Slonims to be persuaded, bricks to be laid for Nazis and thrown at Polish hooligans. What a patient man!…He gave me some material he had written to read, and before I had finished a page, he had put his white head down on his forearms on the edge of the table and had fallen asleep, with his forehead just touching the cool keys of the new typewriter, whose platen still held the old man’s unfinished work. I wonder if he will ever finish anything….
EVENTS APRIL 12–18, 1940. ENTRY APRIL 20, 1940. FROM DOLEK BERSON. There are twenty-two men in the bricklayers’ battalion in which Berson and Mordecai Apt and Slonim work. The first day Berson reported, the group marched from its concentration point in Grzybowski Place northward to the ruins of two bombed-out houses on Franciszkanska Street. There some of the men were told to load the fallen brick into handcarts and others were detailed to push the carts to various intersections, mostly streets leading off Franciszkanska and Bonifraterska, and still others were assigned to arrange the dumped bricks into neat piles at those crossways.
Berson stayed close by Mordecai Apt, who had been working with the battalion for some time and would be able to pass on what he had learned. For one thing, Apt told Berson to take it easy at first. He himself, not knowing his capacities, had worked too fast in the beginning, had developed aching shoulders and blisters on his hands, had been in real pain in following days, and had had to exert himself from then on with stiff economy. Berson worked gingerly in any case, for he was extremely nervous about his piano-playing fingers.
Berson, Apt, and Slonim were all assigned to the group that was working on demolishing the ruins. As they lifted bricks onto a handcart, Slonim talked in his self-assured way:
—— Well, my friends, we have chosen an excellent profession! There is a future in this trade. In a year when there is lots of rain coming down, be a farmer, or a ditch-digger, or if you have grandiose tendencies, a flood-control engineer. In a year when there have been bombs coming down, select some kind of work close to bricks. The legal profession? I am declassed. There is no sense litigating under a lawless regime. [NOTE. N.L. How right he is! I heard of a Jew the other day who tried to sue the Germans for confiscating his shoestore. The case was tried in a so-called Sondergericht. He lost. He was not permitted to summon either Poles or Jews as witnesses. He was not permitted to apply for disqualification of the judge on grounds of bias. He was not permitted to appeal. He was permitted to pay court expenses, however.] I shall work now where I am needed, around bricks. Just like these other intellectuals here. I’ll wager there’s not a single bricklayer among us. What a structure we will build! Kurtz may have handled bricks before, but I doubt it. [NOTE. N.L. This was Avigdor Kurtz, the Communist, who had registered as a bricklayer, as we have seen (ENTRY DECEMBER 12, 1939).] I’ve never been near a brick before. Here’s the only real workman in the battalion, I imagine….
Slonim pointed to a cheerful, broad-faced man named Fein, who had just brought an empty pushcart back from an unloading, and who came over now to pick up the cart Slonim, Berson, and Apt had nearly filled.
Slonim: —— Tell me, Fein, what is your regular work?
Fein: —— Regular? Pfui! I have been a carpenter, a roadworker, a field hand, everything. I have even worked in the sewers. The only “regular” work is with a needle or a little oilcan—tailor, mechanic, barber, furrier, something like that. In a crowded room. Not for me. I have to move around. So now (he grinned) I move bricks around.
With a ludicrous groan, Fein pushed the loaded cart away. Slonim said:
—— You see, a workman. One workman. The rest of us educated men, with or without political ideas. What social levelers the Germans are! (Slonim was speaking in Polish, and this last remark was ironically aimed in the direction of a sleepy young German sentry who was leaning on his rifle not far from the group.) They have accomplished in a few weeks what we Socialists have been unable to accomplish in years. (The drowsy young German shifted from one foot to the other. Slonim spoke louder:) They are revolutionaries! (The German yawned.) The Germans are Reds! (As there was no sign of life in the German boy, Slonim tried the same remark in Yiddish—a much riskier joke, considering how close the Yiddish phrase is to the German:) The Germans are Reds!
At this the German seemed to come to life, and the Jews bent swiftly over their work—but the sentry’s awakening appeared to have been coincidental….
On Berson’s fifth day, he, Apt, and Slonim were all shifted to the handcarts. On the first trip Berson made, he was directed to take the cart to a certain corner on Nalewki Street. When he reached the crossing, he saw there a large pile of stacked brick, a cone of sand, some bags of quicklime, a drum of water, a bin with some mortar mixed in it—and then, in front of him, where a group of Jews were at work, he saw, knee-high and growing, and shutting off one whole side of the intersection, a wall.
EVENTS APRIL, 1940. ENTRY APRIL 21, 1940. N.L. What is the meaning of these sections of wall? Here, there, a few blocks apart. Some pattern is forming, I feel sure. I can get no satisfaction from the Judenrat committee which has responsibility for supplying the building materials for the wall: its members shrug their shoulders and say they are only responsible for raising money and collecting mortar and sand and so on, they know nothing of plans, they say. The name of the committee may or may not be revealing. Instandhaltung der Seuchensperrmauern. Maintenance of Epidemicwalls. Dr. Breithorn, that morose man, says he thinks the Germans are going to try to drive all the lice in Warsaw into a hundred-block area this summer! His way, I suppose, of saying that they may try to set up a real quarantine area. Dr. Breithorn says that the place where the walls are being built actually was one of the worst typhus epidemic sections summer before last, but he points out that another of the worst sections then was in Praga, across the Vistula—no walls being put up there.
One stretch of the wall, on Bonifraterska, is finished. It goes straight from the building on one side of the street to the one on the opposite side. It is a little less than three meters high. [NOTE. EDITOR. About nine feet.] The top is rounded off with mortar, and into the mortar is stuck an ugly barbing of broken glass, pottery, and china. This wall is not just a fence or a marker. This wall is actually intended to keep human beings from passing. At the bottom, there are small gutter drainage holes—too small for the smallest human infant to get through. Rats can get through, though, and rats carry lice. Epidemicwalls?
The occupation authorities are building this wall as they do everything else—section by section, episode after episode, separately, without apparent sequence. Here and there, now and then. Casual looting of Jewish property; kosher slaughter forbidden; Kehilla disbanded and Judenrat formed; public worship forbidden; census; registration for labor; ghetto decree; ghetto decree called off; armbands; bank accounts frozen; limitations on change of residence; registration of Jews’ jewelry; schools closed; restrictions on travel; registration of property; Jews barred from trolleys and buses; restrictions on postal savings; prohibition of purchase of gold; wall sections built. Each episode comes at a different time. Each affects a different group. And when each group raises a clamor, all the other Jews cry:
—— Hush! Do you intend to endanger the majority? Hush, friends!
Yet I think we are all going to wake up one of these mornings, hear a loud click in the sky, and see all these puzzle-parts fall into place around us. I wish I could understand the real meaning of the sections of wall….
EVENTS APRIL 19, 1940. ENTRY APRIL 23, 1940. FROM PAVEL MENKES. Menkes has told me, with a blustery indignation, how Slonim approached him the other day on the subject of underground work:
Slonim: —— May I walk home with you, Menkes?
Menkes: —— It’s not on your way, is it?
Slonim: —— I want to talk with you.
It was Sunday afternoon. Slonim, Menkes, the young Apts, the Mazur girl, and one or two others had gathered at the Bersons’ apartment to hear Dolek play the piano. Menkes says he was not made for music: in broad daylight, and in all that clangor, he had to wrestle frightfully with sleep, until his jaw and throat ached from their resistance to yawns. On the stairs, as he descended with Slonim, he finally surrendered to one, a huge and voluminous one:
—— Awum-hum-hum-hum!
Slonim: —— Am I boring you?
Menkes: —— You haven’t started talking yet….Don’t be offended until you actually hear snoring.
The two men walked in silence for a while through the far-from-silent streets, which were crowded with idle, Sunday chatterers. Menkes says he waked up now; he says he always feels stimulated and amused by the constant activity of the streets in the Jewish section: they have a nervous vibration, as if every commonplace moment were exciting and even desperate: remarks on the weather are uttered in a tone of conspiracy, greetings are shouted like arguments, hands are thrown to the head in utter amazement at trite remarks, beards are pulled rabbinically to ease the most trivial thoughts, feet hurry even in slowness, and all about one hears or sees tappings, twitchings, noddings, chuckles, wails, exclamations, whistles, and sharp, melancholy bursts of high-pitched laughter. Slonim, tugging at his forelock and walking jerkily, like ambulatory plumbing, fitted well into this agitated scene, Menkes says. As they walked, the baker regarded his companion with a mixture of interest and envy. He says he envied Slonim’s adaptability: here was a highly trained man, a professional, who had faced up to events as he met them, had thrown over his whole career, and had taken up physical labor, and did not seem to be angry or upset over the loss of his habits. [NOTE. FROM DOLEK BERSON. It is natural that this aspect of Slonim would interest Menkes, since the baker is himself a creature of routine, according to Berson. Menkes is a conservative in this sense: he lives by, loves, and depends upon his habits, and therefore resists any change. Up at three in the morning, a session over the mixing tub, a wrestling match with batter, the shaping of loaves, the setting of the dough to rise, the clean, quick, long-stroked work with the oven-shovel, and so through the patterned day, indistinguishable from yesterday and the day before, and exactly like a well-assured tomorrow. Change one fixture in the daily exercise, and the next day at once seems less certain, less dependable. Menkes is nearly forty. He is over six feet tall, bald as a light bulb, and a little bit round, as is suitable for a man so intimate with bread. The rigidity of his routine does not prevent him from being jovial and, as I have noted before (ENTRY DECEMBER 3, 1939), full of bluster and mockery.] At last Slonim spoke out, in his blunt way:
—— What I wanted to talk with you about, Menkes, was our situation as Jews. What do you intend to do? Have you thought at all about joining the underground?
One can imagine the reaction of a habit-ridden man to this direct approach: No! Preserve the daily routine! Keep exhausting oneself in the familiar! No such adventures! Menkes says he asked cautiously:
—— What do you mean?
—— I mean that we cannot just sit around listening to piano-playing while we are engulfed….You’re a huge, powerful man. You would be very useful in the work of resisting our enemies.
—— I am a baker. Baking takes all my time.
—— They need bakers.
—— Not this one. I would be a hindrance. I am an open man.
—— Most of the bakers will be joining.
Menkes says he thought he heard some kind of threat in that remark. He said:
—— Leave me alone! Let me do the best I can!
—— Can a man your size be afraid?
This question, which Menkes should have expected from Slonim, made the baker furious, and he burst out:
—— You can’t shame me! I have nothing to be ashamed of. I am honest. Nobody can say that I ever cheated them. Now leave me alone! I warn you, Slonim: leave me alone.
—— Very well, Menkes….But remember what I told you: most of the bakers will be joining.
EVENTS APRIL 21, 1940. ENTRY APRIL 22, 1940. FROM DOLEK BERSON. Berson says that both he and Mordecai Apt had for several days noticed a marked change in Slonim. He had grown more serious, and even dull. He had dropped his jocular manner, and he had talked, soberly and long-windedly, two or three times, about Jewish history and about the place of the Jews in Poland’s economy. He was out of character: he was a torrent of facts.
—— Jews paid thirty-five per cent of all taxes in Poland in 1930, though we were only ten per cent of the population….Of all the tailors in Poland five years ago, eighty per cent were Jewish. Of all the shoemakers, forty per cent Jewish. Of the glaziers, one third Jewish. Of the capmakers…
Mordecai, once when he was alone with Dolek: —— He’s a nudnik, he’s a bore. I wish we could get away from him.
Dolek —— I don’t know. Something’s bothering him.
Early in the afternoon of the twenty-first, during one of their rest periods, Slonim suddenly said to Dolek and Mordecai, all in a rush:
—— Listen! Make it your business to be passing the corner of Nalewki and Franciszkanska with loaded carts at exactly six fifteen this evening. Both of you!
Modecai: —— But we stop work at six.
Slonim: —— Take one extra trip today. (With a brief return of his twisted smile:) Load up that time with broken bricks—with bad little pieces.
Later in the afternoon, Dolek and Mordecai discussed whether they should obey or ignore Slonim’s strange command. Slonim avoided them all afternoon. Mordecai was inclined to be cautious, Dolek to be curious. Mordecai said they might be arrested, if trouble started, and arrests these days were dangerous; Dolek said they had legs, they could run….
At five minutes past six, the two young men were on their way along Franciszkanska Street, eastward toward Nalewki, pushing carts loaded with brick fragments. Dolek was a hundred yards ahead of Mordecai. [NOTE. N.L. I shall give the rest of this account as I got it FROM MORDECAI APT, as his telling of it made a certain point.] Fein, the cheerful workman, ran up behind Mordecai and said:
—— Hey! Don’t you know when it’s time to stop work?
Mordecai, between his teeth: —— Last trip.
Fein, walking along beside: —— Want a hand?…That’s a rotten load you have.
Mordecai: —— No, thanks.
Mordecai saw Rapaport hurrying along the opposite side of the street. At exactly six fifteen, the two carts bracketed the intersection of Franciszkanska and Nalewki. Dolek and Mordecai both stopped, as if to rest. Mordecai saw Slonim talking with a stranger on the opposite corner. Fein paused with Mordecai.
Fein: —— Something is doing. Why have you come this way? None of our routes come by here. What are you trying to do?
As Mordecai tried to think of an answer, he saw that it would not be necessary to answer. Out of Nowolipki Street, a couple of blocks down Nalewki, a gang of young Poles ran, shouting and singing. They turned up Nalewki. Their leaders darted from side to side, just like bloodhounds, Mordecai thought. Jews ducked from the street before the pack, like scattering ground-animals. One of the Poles out in front gave a whoop when he came to a candler’s stall, about fifty yards from the corner of Franciszkanska. The others gathered around. Candles flew out over their heads. Fists beat on the sides of the stall. Mordecai saw a small, Hasidic vender, his beard flopping and his black gown being ripped, handed out overhead by the strong boys. They let the screaming man down on the pavement.
Fein, muttering: —— The dirty bullies!
Mordecai wanted to run away. He looked across at Dolek, and saw the husky, strong-faced man standing beside his pushcart, with a piece of brick in each hand. Mordecai realized in fear the part he would have to play.
The Polish students were playing with the vender, plucking at his beard and tearing off his kaftan. Suddenly the stranger who had been talking to Slonim across the way ran down Nalewki toward the hurly-burly, and began shouting something in Polish at the Poles. The students turned toward him, by twos and threes, until at last the whole mob, dropping the vender, surged toward the cursing Jew. He moved away from them toward the corner—a decoy, Mordecai realized. Mordecai looked across at Slonim, who put his fingers to his mouth, whistled shrilly, and ran toward Dolek’s cart. Mordecai felt himself pushed aside and nearly knocked down, and saw five or six big men, all wearing Star-of-David brassards, swarm around his pushcart, grabbing for pieces of brick, and throwing them.
Fein, shrieking: —— Oi, misery, the bastards!
The round-faced workman, with an expression of delight, reached for a missile and hurled it, in a stiff, wheeling delivery.
Mordecai leaned back on the wall against which he had been thrust, panting. He looked across at Dolek and saw his husky, musical friend, with a distorted, demoniac expression, throwing again and again. Mordecai’s eyes swept across the street to Rapaport, standing near the corner watching, with his hands in his pockets, his face weirdly calm. Mordecai’s look swung back toward the mob, and he had a glimpse of one amazed Polish face just as a fragment hit it. Blood started from the cheek, and the startled mouth screamed.
Within Mordecai, all at once, he says, was released an intolerable sense of shame and resentment. He saw himself as a boy at the Polish Gymnasium (I have always tried to give you the best that was available, his father often has said, according to Mordecai); he remembered that he had almost never been beaten up, had seldom been openly teased; always he had wondered why he was being spared—whether it was because of his respected father, or because he did not look particularly Semitic, or because of his own ways of avoiding trouble, or because the Poles simply weren’t as cruel as they were supposed to be. Now, suddenly, seeing the blood on the astounded Polish face, Mordecai realized he had not, at last, been spared: today, vicariously, in the body of the shrieking vender, he, Mordecai Apt, had been tortured and brutalized for mere Jewishness. At last!
He pushed himself away from the wall. In a frenzy, he scrabbled in the cart for objects suitable for throwing. He found two, straightened his back, drew his arm for a pitch—and threw. Only then did Mordecai see that the pack had turned and was running down Nalewki again, away from the ambuscade. His brickbat fell short. He was too late with his anger.
EVENTS MAY 1, 1940. ENTRY MAY 3, 1940. FROM LAZAR SLONIM.
Little sun, beautiful eye, eye of the beautiful day,
Your ways are not those of our overseer.
You get up when your proper time comes,
While he would have you rise at midnight,
Little sun!
The old Socialists at Rapaport’s May Day party were softly singing laborers’ songs. Slonim says that he was feeling on top of the world. The old hands had all congratulated him warmly for his organization of the Franciszkanska-Nalewki ambush, which had been talked about all over Warsaw. No more raids by the Polish hooligans. How close a thing the ambush had been, Slonim says he thought, as the famous Bundists patted him on the shoulder: it had all depended on the acquiescence of the two men with the ammunition-carts, his friend Berson and young Apt, and he had staked everything on putting a mysterious idea into the mind of Berson and then staying away to let Dolek’s curiosity do the job. This had worked, thank God; and now Slonim was himself a famous Bundist, in a manner of speaking. Now he had a romantic story of his own.
But as the party wore on, Slonim felt the flattery and the congratulations curdling in him. [NOTE. N.L. I have this FROM DOLEK BERSON, to whom Slonim apparently speaks with utter frankness.] After he had been permitted to retell his story of the ambush, he had been left out of the conversation, to a certain extent, and the talk of his Socialist elders, trivial and personal, trading animosities and scraps of scandal, had alienated him, and made him feel that the glowing adventure of party work was being cheapened and dulled by these people. Especially by Rapaport. Slonim says he wondered whether Rapaport had gone along all these years on his appearance: he certainly looked the part of a great, iron-hearted revolutionary, with his white mane and his leathery, deep-lined skin, his hard lips and his warm, friendly eyes. In the past few weeks, though, Slonim had caught Rapaport in so much procrastination, had seen him put off so many important decisions, had heard him make, and waited to see him break, so many promises, that his respect for the “old man” had been diminished.
Slonim says he wondered whether Rapaport had come, so late in his career, to that state which is fatal for a Socialist: doubt. Doubt that the hopeful abstraction for which he had been working so many years could be brought into being by individuals like Rapaport and himself. No single man could possibly be absolutely selfless. Concert the inconsistencies, the lapses of faith, the unconsciously selfish acts of many men—and you had the weaknesses of the Bund, of the Party, of the Idea itself. Rapaport liked holding the reins of the Bund in Warsaw; and why not? Who would not? But when would he relinquish them to younger men with more vigor and at least a fresher zeal? Slonim says he recollected his own pride and satisfaction, at the beginning of this day’s celebration, when the old Socialists here had crowded around him and praised him: he says he had thought for one vindictive moment of what it would be like to command these others, to be in charge of old Rapaport. The germ of the invitation of power had been there. Now, with an astringent resolve, Slonim consciously killed the germ—or says he thinks he did.
Rapaport was in a wild mood. He threw his head back, and with an evil and comical grin, holding his voice down to a simulated shout, sang the bitter song of the contract wage-laborers in the fields, the song of the Polish fornals:
He is well off, he is well off,
Who knocks someone on the head.
But he is better, better off,
Who gouges out someone’s eyes!