Page 90 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

A job in Warsaw
Warsaw at five o’clock, so she hardly closed her eyes the whole night;
we knew nothing of the modern alarm clock. At three o’clock I was
up and dressed and out on the highway watching for a milk wagon,
but in vain. Nothing was to be seen.
I could still hear my father’s lectures and bitter sarcasm scorning
me on Friday evening after the Sabbath meal; my mother and sisters
huddled together in a corner, their faces expressing sympathy for me
but not a word uttered. The thought tormented me and I began to
walk faster and faster toward Warsaw. I was making good time, as I
dared not look backwards, and the slightest noise or chirp of a bird in
the trees meant to me a soul from the other world, from purgatory,
was coming back to suffer and expiate its sins. I had read these tales
many times in the rabbinical books. They were burned into my soul,
and I believed them—especially when alone in the dark and
frightened. I was about a quarter of a mile from the tollhouse,
looking at the lights in it and feeling composed and secure from the
imaginary furies, when suddenly I heard hoof beats. Looking around
I saw in the distance a rider on a horse galloping toward me from the
fields to the right of the road.
He rode so fast that before I could determine what it was and
where it was coming from, he was on top of me—or, rather, circling
around me like the wind. The next thing I felt were several sharp cuts
on my back. My tongue was paralyzed, stars were before my eyes, my
arms were over my head, and all I could utter was “Mama! Mama!”
Then I began to run down the embankment toward the tollhouse.
But the horseman was after me, whipping my back as I cried for
Mama. Fortunately, a policeman came running toward me and
separated me from the rider, pleading with the man on the horse not
to beat me. Then I looked up and saw hovering over me a Don
Cossack with a nagaika in one hand and a sabre in the other.
The policeman told me not to go any further but to stay where I
was, since the czar was coming through on the railway to Warsaw,
and nobody was allowed to come within half a mile of the tracks. I
stood there with thousands of other people, horses, and wagons until
nine o’clock when the czar’s train passed through. The Vistula
railroad crossed the new bridge, and all traffic had to be suspended to
protect the czar’s train from being derailed or blown up by assassins.

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