noon
Tears had their way with her , prideful , joyful at her son 's new estate , sometimes bitterly salt at the life in the naked his eyes must look upon . Once , during the recital of the defendant , Sara almost seemed to bleed her tears , so poignantly terrible they came , scorching her eyes of a pain too exquisite to be analyzed , yet too excruciating to be endured . Venture back , will you , to the ice and red of that Russian dawn when on the snow the footsteps that led toward the horizon were the color of blood , and one woman , who could not keep her eyes ahead , moaned as she fled , prayed , and even screamed to return to her dead in the bullet-riddled horse trough . Toward the noon of that day , a gray one that smelled charred , a fugitive group from a distant village that was still burning faltered , as it too fled toward the horizon , in the blackened village of Vodna , because a litter had to be fashioned for an old man whose feet were frozen , and a mother , whose baby had perished at her breast , would bury her dead . Huddled beside the horse trough , over a poor fire she had kindled of charred wood , Hanscha , the midwife -LRB- Hanscha , the drunk , they called her , fascinatedly , in the Pale of generations of sober women -RRB- , spied Mosher 's flung coat and reached for it eagerly , with an eye to tearing it into strips to wrap her tortured feet . A child stirred as she snatched it , wailing lightly , and the instinct of her calling , the predominant motive , Hanscha with her fumy breath warmed it closer to life and trod the one hundred and eight miles to the port with it strapped to her back like a pack . Thus it was that Schmulka , the red twin , came to America and for the first fourteen years of his life slept on a sour pallet in a sour tenement he shared with Hanscha , who with filthy hands brought children into the filthy slums .