The Little Russian (23 page)

“Why can’t we just wait here?” Samuil wanted to know.

Before Berta could answer a man leaned in and said: “I have something to show you.”

A sudden icy chill. “What is it?” she asked breathlessly.

“Come over here, out of the way of the crowd. You will like it.” He motioned her over to the doorway of a small hotel. She followed him reluctantly. He had a round head and ears that stuck out on either side. The glare on his glasses obliterated his eyes.

He opened a leather case and showed her the contents. “Are they not beautiful?” The case contained rows of rings, watch chain fobs, and gold watches neatly displayed on a blue velvet mat.

She waved him off. “Oh no, I’m not interested.”

“Why don’t you at least take a look? A pretty lady like yourself?”

“I said I’m not interested.” She was about to push past him when something caught her eye. It was a white gold pocket watch with an ornate face and an intricate engraving of vines and flowers on the case. She reached for it. “Where did you get this?”

“Now if I told you that you could just—”

“It looks like my husband’s watch.”

He grabbed it and snapped the case shut. “I think you must be mistaken.” He turned and started to walk away.

“It looks just like it.”

“A very common watch.”

“It’s white gold.”

“Still, very common.”

“I just want to know where you got it.”

He shook his head and picked up his pace. She tried to follow him, but Sura slowed her down. “Please,” she shouted after him, “do you know where he is?”

The man ducked into a side street and when she reached the corner she found that he had disappeared. Now all she wanted to do was get away. She saw a tram across the street and took hold of Sura’s hand. “Hurry, we can catch it.”

“But it’s going the wrong way, Mameh,” Samuil told her.

They ran across the street, avoiding the carriages and a few noisy motorcars, and hurried to catch up as the tram doors were closing. Berta waved to the driver, who opened them again and waited for them to climb aboard. She shoved the necessary coins into his hand and took the first seats by the door.

“I’m going to be sick here,” Sura said.

“We’re not going far.”

“Still, I’m going to be sick.”

“Where are we going, Mameh?” asked Samuil.

“I don’t know.”

“Shouldn’t we get off and find a cab? We’re going in the wrong direction.”

“I know, Samuil. You don’t have to tell me.”

“Why did that man have Tateh’s watch?”

“It wasn’t Tateh’s.”

“You said it was.”

“I was wrong.”

“Why did you say it was?”

“I made a mistake. Samuil, please, I have to think.”

After a few stops they got off on Dulgaya Street, the street of butcher shops, in the heart of the Jewish neighborhood. It was crowded with housewives and their children and street vendors pushing carts of secondhand goods: shoes, books, and clothing, any bit of rag or piece of furniture that somebody might want to buy for a kopeck. There were several butcher shops on the street with slabs of beef hanging in the windows.

“Why are we here?” Samuil asked. He wrinkled his nose against the smell of blood on ice. He was about to say more when he spotted three boys playing goose in the street. They stopped to watch the strangers go by. The leader eyed Samuil and whispered to one of the smaller boys, who giggled.

“We’re here to see Mumeh Lhaye.”

Samuil was amazed. “They live here?” he asked. The children had never been to Lhaye’s apartment. She always came to them, so they never knew how their aunt and uncle and cousins lived.

Ten years ago Lhaye met a young factory worker named Zev Rosenbaum in a poultry market on Dulgaya Street. She was visiting Berta and had come to Dulgaya Street to buy a kosher chicken since Berta didn’t keep kosher and Lhaye refused to eat
traif
. As she stood at the counter and waited for the poultry man to wrap up her bird, she asked Zev for directions to the tram that would take her back up to the Berezina.

“Oh ho, the Berezina. You work there?”

“No, my sister lives there.”

“Is she rich?”

“Yes, but I’m not.”

“Well, in that case, I’ll walk you to the tram stop. It’s easy to miss.”

Although he wasn’t pious, his father was and that was good enough for Mameh, who gave Lhaye her blessing. They were married in Mosny. Then she went to live with him in Cherkast, where they had three children in quick succession. He had contacted poliomyelitis from the local baths when he was a child and walked with a heavy brace on his left leg. But that didn’t slow him down. He had a reputation for being responsible and smart, a hard worker despite his infirmity, so it didn’t take him long to work his way up at the Nicholas Sugar Refinery, where he operated the vacuum pans and was popular with the workers that he helped to organize. Lhaye had recently given birth to a fourth child and now they all lived in the one-bedroom apartment over one of the butcher shops with no running water, a shared commode out back in an overgrown field, and several troublesome neighbors. Berta had offered her a nicer place to live, but Lhaye always refused, saying that she liked to be in the neighborhood, by which she meant the Jewish neighborhood. Berta suspected the real reason was that Hershel and Zev often fought over politics. Zev was a hothead Bolshevik and wouldn’t accept help from Hershel, the Bundist, if his life depended on it.

At the end of the block Berta entered through a dark doorway and climbed up the steep wooden staircase. She and the children walked down the hallway, past a line of clothes drying overhead and several bags of garbage that gave the building its characteristic smell. When
she reached Number 5 she stopped and knocked on the door. Receiving no answer she knocked again and this time she heard a voice asking her to be patient. A moment later the door opened and Lhaye was standing there holding her sleeping baby.

“What a surprise! Come in. Come in. Please excuse the mess. Oh, don’t you look lovely, Sura. New gloves?” She kissed the children and Berta as they came in. “Sit! Sit! What can I get you?”

“Nothing, we just had tea. I have to talk to you.”

“Of course. Children, why don’t you go outside and play.”

“No,” Berta said.

“Vulia is outside. He can watch them.” Vulia was only a year older than Samuil, but seemed so much older from all his years in the neighborhood.

“No, please, Lhaye.” She didn’t want to insult her sister’s neighborhood, but on the other hand, she didn’t want her children going out there and catching some disease.

“All right. You know best.” And then to the children she said, “How about some honey cake, yes? I made some delicious cake.” She gave the sleeping baby to Berta and took the children into the kitchen.

While she was gone Berta held the fat baby in her arms and kissed his downy hair. It smelled like milk mixed with lotion and cornstarch and it reminded her of her own babies. She could hear Lhaye putting the kettle on and setting out the plates while she hummed a tune Mameh used to sing. If Berta closed her eyes, she could almost believe that she was back in Mosny upstairs over the grocery—the same smells, the same noise outside in the street, the same scratchy furniture. It brought back the old feelings of her adolescence, of familiarity and alienation, of inclusion and entrapment. It was both disconcerting and comforting.

In fact, the furniture was Mameh’s from the grocery. After Tateh’s heart gave out, she decided she wanted to follow him. Her family and friends told her that she was too young to die, that she should learn to live with her loss, perhaps make a new life for herself near her grandchildren. But she wouldn’t listen. Instead, she sat down and wrote a long letter to her daughters. In it she explained that while she loved
them both equally, she was giving everything to Lhaye since Berta had married a rich man. Then she sold the store and waited. It took two years.

“I think the Okhranka is following me.” Berta said, barely above a whisper, once her sister had returned to the front room and settled down in the chair across from her. They were speaking Yiddish. Berta had tried to teach her Russian, but Lhaye never wanted to learn. Lhaye preferred the old ways, the Jewish cycle of observances, keeping kosher, bringing to Cherkast the life she once had in Mosny.

She looked worried. “Why?”

“I don’t know. It must have something to do with Hershel. When he left I thought they wouldn’t be interested in me, but I think I was wrong.”

“Are you sure?”

Berta kissed the baby again and handed him back to Lhaye. “I don’t know. That ’s just it. I don’t know what ’s real and what ’s not.” She got up and went to the window. She could see Vulia playing hoops with his friends in the street. “Last night someone was knocking at the door.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. When I went down to see, no one was there. I found an old suitcase in the bushes. I thought it was Hershel’s. The one he took the night he left.”

“How could that be?”

She shrugged and came back to the sofa and sat down.

“Have you heard from him?”

She shook her head. “I think he was arrested.” She kept her voice down so the children wouldn’t hear.

“You don’t know that.”

“There was a man in the magic shop.”

“What magic shop?”

“He asked about Hershel. I think he was trying to tell me something. But I don’t know what it was. I don’t know, Lhaye. I don’t know anything.” She started to cry.

Lhaye moved over beside her and put her free arm around her shoulder. “Oh, Berta, you’re all worked up. Look at you. You’re seeing
things that aren’t there. Listen to me, sometimes when people go to America they don’t want to write at first. They don’t want to write until they have good news to share. That ’s probably what Hershel is doing. He’s waiting until he has something good to say.”

Berta didn’t answer her. She wrapped her arms around her chest and hugged herself even though it wasn’t cold in the apartment.

“If you’re so worried about him, why don’t you go?”

She looked up. “To America?”

“Why not?”

“What if I can’t find him?’

“He’s at his sister’s.”

“What if he’s angry and doesn’t want to see me? What if he’s done with me?”

“Berta, such silliness. He loves you. You’re everything to him. Why would he leave you? He’s a good man. Good men don’t leave their families.”

She laughed a little. Sometimes she grew impatient with Lhaye’s innocence.

“What? You don’t think I know a thing or two? You think I’m so simple I’d believe anything, is that it? Well, I’ve got news for you—everything isn’t all black either. There are bright spots too.”

 

THAT NIGHT Berta lay in bed and tried to recall the face of the man on the tram. She remembered the leather jacket and the way his pink scalp showed through the stubble on the back of his head. She remembered his deep-set eyes. Then she tried to recall the man in front of the restaurant. She tried to picture that moment when he turned toward the window and she saw his face. But was he really looking at her? Could he actually see her through the glass, or was it too bright outside ? Maybe he was only looking at own his reflection. Maybe he could only see the things around him on the sidewalk, the passersby, and the traffic in the street. And did he really look like the man on the tram? True, he was clean-shaven with short hair, but his hair was thick and blond, his jaw jutted out, and his chin wasn’t right. He couldn’t have been the same man.

After that she began to relax under the covers. She rolled over on her side and brought her knees up to her chest. The rest seemed ridiculous too, the suitcase in the hedge, the watch, even Reb Rubenstein, a harmless shopkeeper asking after a valued customer. Lhaye was right about seeing things. She was on edge. In the morning she would write and tell Hershel she was coming. She would wait for his answer, pack up her things, and walk away from her house. The thought of being with him again made her feel light and sleepy. She closed her eyes, letting the knot in her neck ebb away. Vague images of a sparkling lake came to her in the dark behind her eyes: a beach, a boat, a tree-lined shore.

Then she heard it: faint tapping at the front door.

August 1914

 

BERTA SOLD the motorcar and gave notice to Karl the driver because she could no longer afford him. He couldn’t have been very surprised—she had already let Vasyl and Petr go. There were no more salons or dinner parties or ice sculptures. When she wanted flowers for the table she picked them from her garden or stole them from a neighbor. Hershel had been gone for seven months.

It was late morning and she was standing at the window in the breakfast room watching Karl and the new owner lean over the open hood and inspect the engine. Karl had brought out his special tools and was showing the young man how to use them. He had been washing and waxing the motor all morning, as if he were laying out a corpse for viewing.

That afternoon Berta took the children down the hill to the Iliuziia Theater to see
Cossacks of the Don
. Usually she would’ve sent Galya, because she didn’t like to be seen in such places, but she wanted to spend time with the children and they had been pestering her all week to take them even though they had seen it many times before. As they walked down to the tram stop, Samuil chattered on about the film, describing all the scenes and getting so tangled up in his descriptions that eventually she stopped listening.

“If you’ve seen it so many times, why do you want to see it again?” she asked.

“It ’s wonderful, Mameh. You’ll see. The riders stand on their hands in the saddle even when they ’re galloping really fast. And they do other tricks too. They turn around so they’re facing the wrong way and then they stand up and let go altogether and hold their arms out like this.” He held out his arms and pretended to lose his balance.