“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.
