As soon as he caught sight of the Jew, a stout man wearing a long white gown which fell almost to the soles of his feet, called out: “First, off with the cap!” He was standing by the weighing machine. At the heels of his brown boots his spurs clinked with a light, silvery sound. The gold facings of a staff officer’s uniform were protruding from the collar of the white gown. The black ear-piece of a stethoscope was visible in his left pocket. This was Surgeon-Major Dr Jellinek.
The Jew did not want to remove his skull-cap. It isn’t done. Even a goy ought to know that an orthodox Jew stands with his head bared on one single occasion only—after death, facing the Eternal. But in his lifetime and in the presence of others, even if they are the representatives of the Emperor, or indeed the Emperor himself, he may not bare his head. This is why the skull-cap is worn underneath the hat. In courtrooms and administrative offices, at court and in the presence of a mayor, only the hat is removed, while the skull-cap is kept in place.
When he continued to stand in silent defiance, refusing to remove his skull-cap, Corporal Kuryluk approached and viciously swept it off. The Jew remained silent, but his eyes emitted dark flames, scorching Dr Jellinek’s white gown.
“Another candidate for the office of rabbi!” exclaimed the surgeon-major with a sneering smile directed towards the Commission, which was presided over by a grey-haired, dried-up old colonel brought out of retirement as a wartime measure. Only the two clerks gave it cognizance, while the tribunal ignored it. Notwithstanding the alliance between Mars and Asclepius, the Commission held Dr Jellinek in contempt. But nobody present despised Jellinek as much as he despised himself. He found his own remark most distasteful. From the depths of this distaste emerged the impact of all the bitter pain that had afflicted him throughout his life. It was hurtful to him that he was obliged for no good reason to pretend to the Commission, and to the whole world, on which he wanted to make an impression, that he was not Jewish. Everyone knew he was. As for the sneer, by which he intended to ingratiate himself with the colonel, the exclamation “Another candidate for the office of rabbi!” was justified in so far as so many Jews pretended to be candidates, because candidates for the priesthood of all creeds were automatically exempt from military service. Embarrassed by his failure to impress, Jellinek decided that he had to rehabilitate himself, not only in the eyes of the Commission but also in the eyes of his victim, and above all in his own eyes. Jellinek had never held a good opinion of himself, either in a military or a medical capacity. The army looked down on him because he was merely a doctor, and a Jew at that, while the medical world looked down on him because he served in the army. Even his closest relatives availed themselves of his expertise only to a very limited extent, in trivial cases such as a sore throat or stomach upsets. In more serious cases they called on “proper” doctors. And so life spared him no humiliation, and he took his revenge on life by humiliating those who were weaker than himself. Before the war, he had often had to dine in the mess with junior officers, although as a staff officer he was entitled to dine alongside the captains. And it sometimes happened that captains, especially cavalry captains, would salute him in the street in a casual, non-committal manner. There were situations in which Dr Jellinek would gladly have given up his medical degree if he could have commanded more personal respect from his fellow officers.
He wore his spurs all the time. He had the right to a mount, but he had not ridden a horse for years. His spurs were for his own encouragement, not for spurring on a horse. Those spurs were not for goading the flanks of his steed, but to spur himself on. The sound of his own spurs revived his flagging, so frequently trampled dignity. He was deluded into thinking that his spurs made an impression on those around him, not just on himself. He would not part from them all day. He wore them from morning till night, unwilling to take them off even when he was alone. He would have liked most of all to attach them to his slippers and fall asleep to the sound of their jingling. Or to his bare feet, so as not to wake in the morning to the customary unpleasant sensation. He wished to take the first step of the new day both morally and physically fully armed. The jingle of his spurs sometimes called up visions of famous horsemen, proud knights that he had learnt about in world history classes—heroes, not doctors of medicine. He identified with the image of those cavalrymen. On his imaginary charger, brandishing his sabre, he overcame every obstacle life presented him with because he was Jewish. He galloped over the dead bodies of those numerous enemies he in reality met with a friendly greeting. He massacred them with his sabre, trampled them beneath his horse’s hooves. Including that German language teacher at the Gymnasium in Olomouc, who teased him for his guttural pronunciation of the letter “R”. For how many Jews in Central and Eastern Europe has this letter been the bane of their lives! Including the colleagues at Prague University, who had denied him the satisfaction of the “honourable solution”, and all those ladies who declined to dance with him at garrison balls. He hacked and cut his way through, and trampled, all the affronts and calamities of his life, smashed down all the doors where he had been denied entry, pulverized all the pedestals he was unable to clamber on. Such was the potency of those spurs. At this moment, however, in the presence of the colonel, who remained silent, they lost their magical power. The colonel had spurs too. There was only one thing for it: act simple. By treating the Jew “humanely”, Jellinek hoped to retrieve his reputation at the Recruiting Commission, at the same time as recovering his own self-esteem. He glanced benignly at the pale, fearful body, the sunken cheeks nestling among a dark, irregular beard which must never be clipped. Beneath the heavy eyelids with no lashes, his deep-set eyes were bloodshot. Beneath the bloated belly, which was out of proportion to the narrow chest, the symbol of his manhood hung pitifully among densely matted hair. The proud symbol of the covenant between Ephroim Chaskiel Blumenkrantz and his Creator was revealed before the eyes of Doctor Jellinek, the eyes of the entire Commission, the eyes of the whole world, and even the eyes of the Emperor in the portrait. “And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.” (Genesis 17:9–10).
This symbol therefore united Ephroim Chaskiel Blumenkrantz with staff surgeon Jellinek. But they were united only in the eyes of the Lord. An appeal to the brotherhood of Israel would be in vain, now that the war with Tsar Nicholas had turned everyone in Śniatyn and throughout the Empire into brothers of Emperor Franz Joseph. Dr Jellinek did not wish to throw the defenceless body of Blumenkrantz to the Sodomites or to the Amalekites, or even to the Egyptians, but to the Russians or the Serbs, of whom there is no mention in the Holy Scriptures of Moses. How poor now were the loins in which God had placed a promise of the eternal seed!