482 SCHAPIEO
gave him no pleasure, although the Eebbe used to beat him; neither did it particularly grieve him. It prob- ably made no great impression on his mind. After all, what did it mean, exactly? Killed? and the question slipped out of his head unanswered, together with the Rebbe, who was gradually forgotten.
And then the real horror began. They were two days hiding away in the bath-house he and some other little boys and a few older people without food, without drink, without Father and Mother. Meyer was not allowed to get out and go home, and once, when he screamed, they nearly suffocated him, after which he sobbed and whimpered, unable to stop crying all at once. Now and then he fell asleep, and when he woke everything was just the same, and all through the terror and the misery he seemed to hear only one word, Goyim, which came to have a very definite and terrible meaning for him. Otherwise everything was in a maze, and as far as seeing goes, he really saw nothing at all.
Later, when they came out again, nobody troubled about him, or came to see after him, and a stranger took him home. And neither his father nor his mother had a word to say to him, any more than if he had just come home from Cheder as on any other day.
Everything in the house was broken, they had twisted his father's arm and bruised his face. His mother lay on the bed, her fair hair tossed about, and her eyes half-closed, her face pale and stained, and something about her whole appearance so rumpled and sluttish it reminded one of a tumbled bedquilt. His father walked up and down the room in silence, looking at no
