And so, to the solemn and Talmud teachings of Mosher and the
wide-bosomed love of this mother who lavishly nurtured them, these sons,
so identically pitched, grew steady of limb, with all the thigh-pulling
power of their parents, the calves of their little legs already tight
as fists. And from the bookkeeping one snow-smelling night, to the
drip-drip of tallow, there came the decisive moment when America looked
exactly four months off!
Then one starlit hour before dawn the pogrom broke. Redly, from the very
start, because from the first bang of a bayonet upon a door blood began
to flow and smell.
There had been rumors. For days old Genendel, the ragpicker, had
prophetically been showing about the village the rising knobs of his
knotting rheumatic knuckles, ill omen of storm or havoc. A star had shot
down one night, as white and sardonic as a Cossack's grin and almost
with a hiss behind it. Mosher, returning from a peddling tour to a
neighboring village, had worn a furrow between his eyes.
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