I’d like to be a peasant. I tell you that – and I’m not drunk …’

Shemariah shrugged his shoulders. They walked farther. Towards morning they heard the cocks crowing in distant barnyards. ‘That must be Yurki,’ said Shemariah.

‘No, it’s Bytók!’ said Jonas.

‘Call it Bytók,’ said Shemariah.

A cart clattered and rattled around the next turn of the road. The day was cloudy as the night had been. No difference between moon and sun. Snow began to fall. Soft falling snow. Ravens started up, cawing.

‘Look at the birds,’ said Shemariah, only as an excuse to make up with his brother.

‘They’re ravens, that’s what they are!’ said Jonas. ‘Birds!’ he mocked his brother scornfully.

‘All right!’ said Shemariah. ‘Ravens!’

It was really Bytók. An hour later they came to Yurki. Three hours more and they would be home.

The snow became thicker and softer as the day wore on, as though it fell from the hidden sun. In a few minutes the whole country was white, even the isolated willows along the way, and the scattered groups of birches among the fields, white, white, white. Only the two young Jews, striding along, were black. The snow also fell on them but it seemed to melt more quickly on their backs. Their long black coats flapped. The skirts struck with a hard regular beat against the shafts of their high leather boots, and the thicker it snowed, the faster they walked. Peasants who passed them walked slowly, with bent knees. They were white; on their broad shoulders lay the snow as upon thick boughs, at once heavy and light. At peace with the snow they walked about in it as in a home. Sometimes they stopped and looked back after the two black men as if they were unusual apparitions, although the sight of Jews was not strange to them.

The brothers arrived home out of breath. Twilight had already begun. From afar they heard the sing-song of the studying children. It was wafted towards them like a mother’s voice, like a father’s words; it carried their whole childhood out towards them. It meant and contained everything that they had seen, comprehended, smelled, and felt since the hour of their birth: the singsong of the studying children.