The Little Russian (15 page)

Berta had ordered robins, but she didn’t mind the ducks. She told the delivery boy that she would keep it and that his employers could bill her. He nodded but didn’t leave right away. Instead he glanced at the hot cup of tea that he would soon be leaving.

“Go ahead. Finish it. Nobody minds.”

He looked up at her and nodded gratefully. And for a moment nobody moved while they waited for her to leave.

“Yes, well, that’s it then.” She looked up and addressed the room. “Samuil . . . time to go.”

The others gaped at her. “He is not here, Madame,” Zina said.

And then to the shelves that lined the walls, to the dry goods, canned goods, cooking utensils, and the great wheel of cheese that sat up high on the top shelf, she called out again, “Come along, Samuil. I mean it.”

“If we see him, we will tell him you are looking for him.”

“That’s just it, you’ll never know he’s here.” This time she tried a different tack. “If you come out right now, I’ll take you to the concert next week.”

Silence . . . and then a muffled voice from the top shelf, from behind the cheese: “What are they playing?”

Zina looked at Vera in alarm. She was probably wondering what the boy had heard and more important what he would repeat.

Berta thought. “I don’t remember.”

“Then how am I supposed to know if I want to come?”

“Samuil . . .” she said wearily.

He peeked out from behind the wheel and then reluctantly climbed out of his corner and down the shelves, jumping the last few feet to the ground.

 

THURSDAYS RAN smoothly for the most part, but there were always problems along the way. Sometimes the wrong flowers would arrive, once the poultry man ran out of game hens, and another time there were no quinces in Cherkast. Any number of things could go wrong on Thursday. But nothing as catastrophic as the phone call she received that afternoon.

“I’m so sorry to be calling this late,” croaked the pianist from the other end of line. “I thought I could play for your guests, but the doctor says I’m not to go out. I have a horrible cold as you can hear. I hope you will forgive me.”

Berta struggled to hide her annoyance. “Of course,” she muttered. “Don’t give it another thought.” She wanted to say something about canceling this late, but the girl was a rising star in the musical circle and she couldn’t afford to alienate her. So she forced herself to sound solicitous, wished the girl well, and even offered a few home remedies that included teas made of mullein flower and yarrow to draw out the fever.

During the next hour, Berta telephoned every pianist, violinist, and cellist she knew in Cherkast. There weren’t many. While she pleaded and cajoled, flattered and bribed, she scratched a widening chip of
paint off the Chinese lacquer table. It was unusual to have a telephone alcove this elaborate in the Berezina. The houses in the neighborhood were large but nothing compared to the Moscow mansions. The Alshonsky house was the exception. It wasn’t larger than the rest, but it had been furnished at great expense. The house had once been owned by a fish merchant who had lost his business due to bad luck and the high cost of debt. Hershel often reminded Berta that it was about to do the same to them, especially if she didn’t stop throwing money away on furniture and draperies.

By the end of her fruitless search, she had chipped away a whole corner of the table. She was cleaning the paint out from under her fingernail when Galya happened to walk by carrying a tray for the children. Berta looked up and brightened with a sudden idea. “Galya . . . who is that famous medium you’re always talking about?’

“Marfa Gorbunova?”

“Yes. Is she good?”

“Very good, Madame. The best in all the Russias.”

“How do I get a hold of her?”

Galya put down the tray on the hall table. Her lips puckered in thought. “I know a woman who knows her. I could go around and see if she knows where to find her.”

“Good, could you do that for me?”

“Of course.”

“I mean right now. I’m in a bind. I need her to come here tonight.”

Galya stiffened. “You want her to come to your party?”

“What’s wrong that? I think she’ll be very entertaining.”

Galya pulled herself up and cradled her breasts in her arms. “I am very sorry, Madame, but Marfa Gorbunova does not entertain guests. She does not do party tricks. She communicates with those who have passed over to the other side.”

“Don’t worry. She’ll be treated with the utmost respect. Now go ask your friend where to find her. We don’t have much time.”

Galya hesitated. “She might not know.”

“Well, ask her anyway. And when you find this woman tell her that if she comes to us we’ll be very grateful. Tell her we understand money
is of little value to a spiritualist of her standing, but still there will be a generous compensation.”

Galya shook her head doubtfully, picked up the tray, and started up the stairs. She groaned occasionally and stopped frequently to catch her breath. Berta wanted to hurry her along, but knew that if she said anything, there would be a long-winded complaint about aching legs and a weak back, and that would take much longer than if she didn’t say anything at all.

 

BERTA REALIZED, with a pang of disappointment, that Hershel wasn’t coming to her party. She was sitting at her dressing table while Vera pinned the last silk rose in her hair. He would be missing another party and she would once again have to make excuses for him and pretend it didn’t matter. A brief spasm of irritation crossed her face as she stared vacantly at the little porcelain box filled with hairpins.

“Madame is not pleased?” asked Vera.

“Uh?” She looked up briefly. “Oh no, it’s lovely. Perfect.”

“More roses perhaps?”

“No, it’s fine. It’s done, Vera. You’ve done a wonderful job. Thank you.”

They paused to listen when they heard the first guests arriving downstairs. “Well, that’s it then,” Berta said. She rose with a sigh of resignation and checked her reflection in the full-length mirror. Not even the yards of chiffon and the girdle of beading at her waist could lift her spirits now.

On the way down the stairs she reminded herself that it did no good to be angry. It only got in the way of her duties as a hostess and made her party a miserable chore. And besides, she had no right to object. They had made their bargain a long time ago. In exchange for her lovely life Hershel had the freedom to come and go without question. He never stayed away for more than a few weeks at a time and he always came home greedy for her company. She never begrudged him his good works in the
shtetlekh
, until now, when he had begun to miss her parties. No one said anything of course, but she knew his recent absences were beginning to stir interest.

Downstairs, she pushed open the double doors leading to the parlor and fixed what she hoped was an optimistic smile on her face. Inside she found her first guests, the Tretiakovs, struggling to their feet to greet her. “My two early birds,” Berta said, meeting them halfway among the palms and ferns and heavily fringed furniture.

Aleksandra Dmitrievna kissed her first on one cheek and then on the other. “That’s just it. Who wants to be the first? Just for once I’d like to be a little late.” She looked pointedly at her husband, Aleksei Sergeevich.

“What difference does it make?” he grumbled, taking Berta’s hand. He had no patience for his silly wife. He was a short man with a moustache resembling a furry creature that had stretched out under his nose and died. He looked directly into Berta’s face and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Madame Alshonsky.” She liked Lenya and he liked her. It was an odd sort of friendship because they rarely spoke, at least not directly, but there were often moments like this.

“Doesn’t she look lovely, Lenya.”

Without taking his eyes off her, he said, “Of course she looks lovely. She always looks lovely.”This was not a compliment. Aleksei Sergeevich did not give compliments, as he saw no use for them. It was merely the truth as he saw it.

Aleksandra Dmitrievna and Berta had become friends since that day they met on the train to Mosny. Berta hadn’t lost Alix’s card but kept it as a memento and looked her up when she arrived in Cherkast. She thought their friendship would be an entrée into Alix’s world, but Berta soon found that the society in Cherkast was even more closed to Jews than the one in Moscow. In fact it was something of a mystery to Alix’s friends why the Tretiakovs socialized with the Alshonskys. They were Jews and, worse, Jews of an indeterminate origin. Hardly the social equals of the Tretiakovs.

When Berta realized that she wouldn’t be included in Alix’s set, she made up one of her own. In contrast, her circle was made up almost entirely of mongrels. Her guests were castoffs of the prominent families : disinherited black sheep, progressive thinkers, radicals, and artists. There was a Jewish textile mill owner and a few Jewish wheat
merchants, but mostly their set was young, smart, and chic. This was the draw for Alix. While she was not young, she thought of herself as spirited and every bit as modern as Berta and her crowd.

Soon after the parlor began to fill up, Olga Nikolaevna, the painter, arrived with a new lover in tow. She was small with a pixie’s face and the first in their circle to wear her hair in a bob, which she secured by a satin headband and an ostrich feather. Her new lover was older than his predecessors and acted as if he were used to better company. Olga introduced him only as Valya and added in a loud conspiratorial whisper that he was extremely rich and had a wife and a whole herd of children.

Poor Pavla arrived next, looking grim and out of place. Everyone called her poor Pavla because her husband had been sent to Verkhoyansk, a remote outpost in eastern Siberia, for hiding a few SRs, social revolutionaries, at his summer estate. Now, in order to survive, Pavla had to sell off everything. Everyone pitied her, but no one wanted to spend much time with her.

Yuvelir arrived after that with a few of his friends and introduced them around as the new wave in poetry. Yuvelir was a poet, a vegetarian, and a hypochondriac and often complained about his cruel childhood to anybody who would listen. His family owned several mills in the region; he was poor because he refused to come into the business. He considered himself an artist and above the concerns of the material world, that is, until he had to pay the rent. Then he would go to his mother, who had money of her own and no qualms about supplying her son with all the material comforts he so proudly eschewed.

Mademoiselle Zuckerkandl and her brother, the writer David Zuckerkandl, arrived with Valentin Guseva, the son of the textile manufacturer. Valentin was pretty like a girl with a full feminine mouth, long lashes over dark eyes, and delicate fingers. They called him
Her Majesty
in school and he never got over it. Although it nearly destroyed his academic career, it also drove him to shooting, which is why he became a crack shot and famous all over Cherkast.

After that, a whole crowd of odds and ends arrived: a sculptor, a doctor and his wife, a minor composer, and the Rosensteins. When
Berta saw the Rosensteins her hand flew to her mouth and she gave a little gasp. She had forgotten to tell them of the change in program. They had lost their daughter to consumption some years back and she thought they might not be comfortable with a séance. But Madame Rosenstein assured her that it would be all right. “We don’t believe in such things, my dear,” she said in her breathy voice. She was one of those hectic little women who spent their life seeing to the needs of others. “We’ve been invited to three this year already.”

Petr came in with a calling card on a silver tray. Since nobody in Berta’s set bothered with such formality, she picked it up with interest. It belonged to Marfa Gorbunova and she had written a message on the back:
I must see you out in the foyer. Υour evening depends on it.

Madame Gorbunova had very definite ideas on how Berta could best secure the success of her evening. They all had to do with making sure that Madame Gorbunova was comfortable and her needs were met. After she introduced herself and her assistant, a correct little man named Monsieur Fevrier, she launched right into the list.

“First, I never see the guests before I perform a communion. Next, I’ll need a small table with a tablecloth and two candles. I’ll need two whiskeys, no water, no ice, and a linen napkin. In addition, I’ll need a comfortable chair and a small footrest that will fit under the table. A lap blanket of pure wool is essential and a little pillow for my back is preferable. Monsieur Fevrier will see to everything, but we will need to be shown to the communion room as soon as possible and provided with all my necessities.”

At first Berta was a little put off by this speech. She thought that since she had hired Madame Gorbunova for the evening, the medium would treat her with a certain amount of deference. Now she could see that she had been wrong. Since she didn’t want to jeopardize her party over a question of pride, she agreed to everything on the list and even showed them into the breakfast room herself.

On the way, Madame Gorbunova took her time to look around. She stopped to finger a pair of brightly colored majolica parrots on a perch. “You have a lovely home here, Madame Alshonsky. I have never been in a Jewish home before. I didn’t think they were so nice and clean.”
Berta did what she always did when faced with comments like that: She kept her expression neutral and said nothing.

Later, after everyone had filed into the room and found a seat, Monsieur Fevrier turned off the lights. The only remaining light, apart from the firelight that escaped through the cracks around the grate and door of the tile stove, came from two ruby red globes that stood on either side of the little table at the front of the room. They glowed and threw blood red patterns on the walls and on the ceiling.

Madame Gorbunova waited for a few minutes to let the tension build. Then she entered the room, walked over to the little table, and greeted her audience. Her gestures were a little too large and her words a little too deliberate. Berta guessed that she finished off the two whiskeys and hadn’t bothered to share with Monsieur Fevrier. In a prepared speech Madame Gorbunova requested that the audience remain quiet throughout the communion. She said that while she could not promise anything, her spirit guide, Prince Pietro Cribari, had told her there were spirits asking to be heard. She explained that she could not be responsible for anything that was said during the communion, that she was just a vessel, a human telephone, if you like, and nothing more.