• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3227 0

don’t pretend to know how much claptrap and “superstition there is in his soul or what purpose it serves. But he is not a fool, I assure you. He knows our history and is quite familiar with the law though not greatly responsive to its spirit. He surely knows that Alexander I, in 1817, and Nicholas I, in 1835, by official ukase prohibited blood libels against Jews living on Russian soil, although it is quite true that these libels have been revived within the last generation to provoke pogroms for political purposes. I do not have to tell you there has been a disappointing retreat of progress in recent times, whatever it is we call progress, especially disappointing because of the little we have had since the Emancipation. There’s something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil. Still, the original decrees have not been withdrawn and are therefore the law. If Grubeshov has at all looked into this subject, as I have recently, he will also know, for instance, that certain Roman Catholic Popes, including an Innocent, a Paul, a Gregory, and a Clement, whose numerical designations I have forgotten, issued certain interdictions against this accusation. I believe one of them called it ‘a baseless and wicked invention.’ Interestingly, I learned that this very same blood accusation made against the Jews was used by pagans of the first century to justify the oppression and slaughter of the early Christians. They too were called ‘blood drinkers,’ for reasons you would understand if you knew the Catholic mass. The blood mystique arose in a belief of primitive people that there is a miraculous power in blood. It is, of course, a most dramatic substance in color and composition.”

“So if the Pope said no, why does the priest say yes?”

“Father Anastasy is a charlatan. He has written a stupid anti-Semitic brochure in Latin which brought him to the attention of the United Nobility, who have urged him to testify against you. Around him much of the pogrom agitation is centered. It is interesting to me that quite shortly after the appearance of his brochure, Zhenia Golov was murdered. He is a defrocked Catholic priest, for some disgraceful act, we think an embezzlement of church funds, who only latterly came from Poland and joined the Orthodox Church, whose Synod, incidentally, does not support the accusation against you, although it does not deny it. The Metropolitan of Kiev has informed me he will not issue a statement.”

“That won’t keep the water from boiling,” the fixer muttered.

“I’m afraid not. Do you know any French, Yakov Shepsovitch?” Bibikov asked.

“Not that I can think of, your honor.”

“The French have a saying, ‘The more it changes, the more it remains the same.’ You must admit there may be a certain truth to that, especially with reference to what we call ‘society.’ In effect it has not changed in its essentials from what it was in the dim past, even though we tend loosely to think of civilization as progress. I frankly no longer believe in that concept. I respect man for what he has to go through in life, and sometimes for how he does it, but he has changed little since he began to pretend he was civilized, and the same thing may be said about our society. That is how I feel, but having made that confession let me say, as you may have guessed, that I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small thing to offer—he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.

“Be that as it may,” he went on, “if the Prosecuting Attorney had indulged in a bit of Old Testament research he would, I am sure, be familiar with the prohibitions in Leviticus that Jews may not eat