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He felt ashamed because he had drunk and fallen down like a peasant. In the places where the path was so narrow that the two brothers could not walk side-by-side, Jonas let his younger brother go ahead. He preferred to have Shemariah walk in front of him.When the path widened again, he slowed his pace in the hope that Shemariah would walk on without waiting for his brother. But it was as if the younger one feared losing the older. Since he’d seen that Jonas could be drunk, he no longer trusted him, doubted the older one’s reason, felt responsible for him. Jonas surmised what his brother was feeling. A great senseless rage boiled in his heart. “Shemariah is ridiculous,” thought Jonas. “He’s thin as a ghost, he can’t even hold the stick, he shoulders it again and again, the bundle is going to fall in the dirt.” At the idea that Shemariah’s white bundle could fall from the smooth stick into the black dirt of the road, Jonas laughed aloud. “What are you laughing at?” asked Shemariah. “At you!” answered Jonas. “I’d have more right to laugh at you,” said Shemariah. Again they fell silent. The pine forest grew blackly toward them. From it, not from themselves, the silence seemed to come. From time to time a wind arose from an arbitrary direction, a homeless gust. A willow bush stirred in its sleep, branches cracked dryly, the clouds ran brightly across the sky. “So now we are soldiers!” Shemariah suddenly said. “That’s right,” said Jonas, “and what were we before? We have no profession. Should we become teachers like our father?” “Better than being a soldier!” said Shemariah. “I could become a merchant and go out into the world!” “Soldiers are world too, and I can’t be a merchant,” Jonas declared. “You’re drunk!” “I’m as sober as you. I can drink and be sober. I can be a soldier and see the world. I’d like to be a peasant. That I tell you – and I’m not drunk . . .”
    Shemariah shrugged his shoulders. They walked on. Toward morning they heard the cocks crowing from distant farms. “That must be Yurki,” said Shemariah.
    â€œNo, it’s Bytók!” said Jonas.
    â€œFine, Bytók!” said Shemariah.
    A cart clattered and rattled around the next bend of the path. The morning was pale, as the night had been. No difference between moon and sun. Snow began to fall, soft, warm snow. Ravens took wing and cawed.
    â€œLook at the birds,” said Shemariah; only as a pretext to placate his brother.
    â€œThose are ravens!” said Jonas. “Birds!” he mimicked mockingly.
    â€œFine!” said Shemariah. “Ravens!”
    It really was Bytók. Another hour and they’d be home.
    It snowed thicker and softer as the day progressed, as if the snow were coming from the rising sun. In a few minutes the whole country was white. Also the individual willows along the path and the scattered groups of birches among the fields, white, white, white. Only the two young striding Jews were black. They too were showered with snow, but on their backs it seemed to melt faster. Their long black coats fluttered. The skirts knocked with a hard regular beat against the shafts of the their high leather boots. The thicker it snowed, the faster they walked. Peasants coming toward them walked very slowly, with bent knees, they turned white, ontheir broad shoulders the snow lay as on thick branches, at once heavy and light, intimate with the snow, they walked along in it as in a home. Occasionally they stopped and looked back at the two black men as at strange apparitions, even though the sight of Jews wasn’t foreign to them. Out of breath, the brothers arrived home, dusk was already falling. They heard from a distance the singsong of the studying children. It came toward them, a motherly sound, a fatherly word, it carried their