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seats. Each of them wanted to sit by the window for a little while and look into the landscape. To Shemariah the world appeared tremendously vast. It was flat in Jonas’s eyes, it bored him. The train ran smoothly through the flat land like a sleigh over snow. The fields lay in the windows. The colorful peasant women waved. Where they appeared in groups, the peasants in the car greeted them with resounding howls. Black, shy and anxious, the two Jews sat among them, pushed into the corner by the exuberance of the drunken peasants. “I’d like to be a peasant,” Jonas suddenly said.
    â€œNot I,” replied Shemariah.
    â€œI’d like to be a peasant,” repeated Jonas, “I’d like to be drunk and sleep with the girls there.”
    â€œI want to be what I am,” said Shemariah, “a Jew like my father Mendel Singer, not a soldier, and sober.”
    â€œI’m a little bit glad that I’m going to be a soldier,” said Jonas.
    â€œYou’ll experience your pleasures! I’d rather be a rich man and see life.”
    â€œWhat is life?”
    â€œLife,” declared Shemariah, “is to be seen in big cities. The trams run in the middle of the streets, all the shops are as bigas our gendarmerie barracks, and the display windows are even bigger. I’ve seen postcards. You don’t need a door to enter a shop, the windows reach down to your feet.”
    â€œHey, why are you so gloomy?” a peasant suddenly cried from the opposite corner.
    Jonas and Shemariah acted as if they hadn’t heard or as if his question hadn’t been directed at them. To pretend to be deaf when a peasant talked to them was in their blood. For a thousand years nothing good had ever come of it when a peasant asked and a Jew answered.
    â€œHey!” said the peasant, standing up.
    Jonas and Shemariah stood up at the same time.
    â€œYes, I was speaking to you, Jews,” said the peasant. “Have you had nothing to drink yet?”
    â€œAlready had our drink,” said Shemariah.
    â€œI haven’t,” said Jonas.
    The peasant pulled out a bottle he’d been carrying on his breast under his jacket. It was warm and slippery and smelled more strongly of the peasant than of its contents. Jonas put it to his mouth. He bared his full blood-red lips, on both sides of the brown bottle his strong white teeth could be seen. Jonas drank and drank. He didn’t feel his brother’s light hand, which touched his sleeve admonishingly. With both hands, like a gigantic infant, he held the bottle. On his raised elbows, his shirt shimmered white through the worn thin material. Regularly, like a piston ina machine, his Adam’s apple rose and sank under the skin of his neck. A soft muffled gurgle rumbled from his throat. Everyone watched as the Jew drank.
    Jonas was finished. The empty bottle fell out of his hands and into his brother Shemariah’s lap. He himself sank down after it, as if he had to take the same path. The peasant held out his hand, silently asking Shemariah for the bottle back. Then he caressed a little bit with his boot the broad shoulders of the sleeping Jonas.
    They reached Podvorsk, where they had to get off. It was seven versts to Yurki, the brothers had to hike on foot, who knows whether someone would take them on a wagon along the way. All the travelers helped lift the heavy Jonas to his feet. Once he stood outside, he was sober again.
    They hiked. It was night. They sensed the moon behind milky clouds. Scattered, irregularly contoured patches of earth darkened on the snow-covered fields like the mouths of craters. Spring seemed to waft from the woods. Jonas and Shemariah walked quickly on a narrow path. They heard the fine crackle of the thin brittle shell of ice under their boots. Their white round bundles they carried on sticks over their shoulders. A few times Shemariah tried to start a conversation with his brother. Jonas didn’t reply.