Chapter 1, Part 1 Summary

The novel opens with Yakov Bok watching from his bedroom window, as his townspeople flee. Concerned, he hides his money stash and goes outside to investigate. The people are all running toward a cave, where the murdered body of a young boy was found. As rumors circulate about the murder, a local group, called the Black Hundreds, accuses the Jews of killing the child.

Yakov grows very uneasy reading the propaganda against the Jews. A Jewish man himself, he is living in secret and working in an area where Jews are forbidden. He thinks back to his own encounters with Anti-Semitism and remembers how his father was murdered just for being a Jew. He remembers a horrible scene from his childhood where a Jewish man was murdered and left in the street, pork sausage stuffed into his mouth, while pigs ate...