174
PARTISAN REVIEW
Then the chairman stirred, beetling his heavy eyebrows, and
spoke with gruff, ironical severity:
((Haver
Yudka, I call you to
order!
If
you have something to say, please, say it briefly, no wander–
ing off the subject. And if it's history you want to talk about, then
the university
is
the place for you!"
"It's on the subject, it's on the subject!'' Yudka hastened to
reply with a propitiating smile. "I can't proceed now without his–
tory. I've thought a great deal about it, many nights, every night
when I'm on guard...."
The chairman shrugged and spread his hands as one who is
skeptical. "Speak!" he ordered, to cut it short.
Yudka became as before: confused and harried, as though at
that very moment some
ill
fortune had befallen
him
and he had
come to pain and torment.
"You've already heard that I'm opposed to Jewish history."
He coughed in shame and unease, as he began the sermon. "I want
to explain why. Just be patient a little while.... First, I will begin
with the fact that we have no history at all. That's a fact. And
that's the
zagvozdka.
I don't know how to say it in Hebrew.... In
other words, that's where the shoe pinches. Because we didn't make
our own history, the
goyim
made it for us. Just as they used to put
out our candles on Sabbath, milk our cows and light our ovens on
Sabbath, so they made our history for us to suit themselves, and
we took it from them as it came. But it's not ours, it's not ours at
all! Because we didn't make it, we would have made it differently,
we didn't want it to be like that, it was only others who wanted it
that way and they forced it on us, whether we liked it or not, which
is a different thing altogether.... In that sense, and in every other
sense, I tell you, in every other sense, we have no history of our
own. Have we? It's clear as can be! And that's why I'm opposed
to
it,
I don't recognize it, it doesn't exist for me! What's more, I
don't respect it, although 'respect' is not the word, still I don't respect
it ... I don't respect it at all! But the main thing is, I'm opposed
to it. What I mean is, I don't accept it...."
The storm within him made him shake from side to side like an
ox refusing the yoke, he swung his hands about as
if
he were moving
stone or sorting lumber, and he was swept along in his speech so
that he could no longer halt.
