said, quite resignedly, "How can
I help you, my poor child? Vanka is a Gentile. The Gentiles do as they
like with us Jews." The next time Vanka abused me, I did not cry, but
ran for shelter, saying to myself, "Vanka is a Gentile." The third
time, when Vanka spat on me, I wiped my face and thought nothing at
all. I accepted ill-usage from the Gentiles as one accepts the
weather. The world was made in a certain way, and I had to live in it.

Not quite all the Gentiles were like Vanka. Next door to us lived a
Gentile family which was very friendly. There was a girl as big as I,
who never called me names, and gave me flowers from her father's
garden. And there were the Parphens, of whom my grandfather rented his
store. They treated us as if we were not Jews at all. On our festival
days they visited our house and brought us presents, carefully
choosing such things as Jewish children might accept; and they liked
to have everything explained to them, about the wine and the fruit and
the candles, and they even tried to say the appropriate greetings and
blessings in Hebrew. My father used to say that if all the Russians
were like the Parphens, there would be no trouble between Gentiles and
Jews; and Fedora Pavlovna, the landlady, would reply that the Russian
_people_ were not to blame. It was the priests, she said, who taught
the people to hate the Jews. Of course she knew best, as she was a
very pious Christian. She never passed a church without crossing
herself.

The Gentiles were always crossing themselves; when they went into a
church, and when they came out, when they met a priest, or passed an
image in the street. The dirty beggars on the church steps never
stopped crossing themselves; and even when they stood on the corner of
a Jewish street, and received alms from Jewish people, they crossed
themselves and mumbled Christian prayers. In every Gentile house there
was what they called an "icon," which was an image or picture of the
Christian god, hung up in a corner, with a light always burning before
it. In front of the icon the Gentiles said their prayers, on their
knees, crossing themselves all the time.

I tried not to look in the corner where the icon was, when I came into
a Gentile house. I was afraid of the cross. Everybody was, in
Polotzk--all the Jews, I mean. For it was the cross that made the
priests, and the priests made our troubles, as even some Christians
admitted. The Gentiles said that we had killed thei