The Little Russian (24 page)

“They sleep in tents, Mameh,” added Sura. “And eat from tin plates. And they sit around fires and tell stories.”

“What kind of stories?”

“I don’t know. It’s silent. You can’t hear what they ’re saying. You can only see their lips move and read the words at the bottom of the screen. But I can’t read that fast and Galya can’t read at all and Samuil won’t tell me, so I don’t know.”

“Why should I have to stop and explain every two minutes,” grumbled Samuil.

“I’ll tell you,
maideleh
,” Berta said, smiling down at her.

Sura looked up at her mother and beamed and then took her hand. They walked on to the tram stop and waited in the shade of a lime tree. Berta was glad there were no others there. Even though she hadn’t seen anything unusual in months, she still kept an eye out. She looked at the men who passed her. She was always on the watch for strangers who held her gaze a little too long or looked at her from out of the corner of their eyes. At night, she always listened for tapping at the front door. For this reason, she rarely went out, so it felt good that day to feel the sun on her back.

The Iliuziia Theater was nothing but a storefront on a little side street in the factory section. Berta paid the few kopecks at the door and she and the children walked into the darkened room. There were folding chairs lined up in rows in front of a screen. A few people had already taken their seats. A young girl came down the aisle and lowered the gas lamps that lined the walls. When it was dark, the projector hummed into life and men with leathery faces were shown trekking in the Caucasus. They carried bulky packs on their backs and wore lambskin hats with earflaps and laughed and talked directly into the camera on their way up the steep trail. After a newsreel,
Cossacks of the Don
came on and for nearly half an hour the children sat transfixed by the flickering images on the screen.

When it was over they left the theater and stood out on the sidewalk, dazed and blinking in the afternoon sunshine. They walked past a shoe factory, where Berta could hear the workers tapping nails into the soles of boots. The sound reminded her of the nocturnal tapping at her front door and for the moment it threatened to darken her mood.

When they got closer to Davidkovo Street, they heard shouting and singing and the roar of a large crowd. Two women hurried out of a milliner’s shop and ran up the street to see what was happening. Shop assistants from the confectionary shop of Brassov and Sons stuck their heads out of the door and a boy ran past carrying toys for sale on a tray. “What is?” Berta asked the boy.

He shouted back over his shoulder. “It’s war! We’re at war!”

“With whom?” Berta shouted back. But he was gone before he could answer.

When they reached the boulevard they found it filled with throngs of people, some hugging each other as if there had already been a victory, others shouting out blessings for the czar and Russia. Storefronts and cafés were emptying out. The big brass doors of the commodities exchange swung open wide and traders and secretaries ran out in twos and threes. Everywhere strangers kissed each other on both cheeks. There were sporadic shouts of “God save the czar!” Someone began singing the national anthem and instantly others joined in. A boy raced past with newspapers under his arm, shouting “It’s war! It’s war! We’re at war!”

Berta stopped a waiter who was running by. “Who’s at war?” she asked.

“We are,
mamushka
! Russia is! We are all at war.”

“With whom? With America?”

“No, silly woman,” said an advanced-courses girl with several books under her arm. “With Germany! With the bastard Hun! The kaiser has declared war on us. He woke up the sleeping bear.”

A young man with a bowl-shaped haircut was calling up to another young man, who was hanging over a balcony waving a Russian flag. “You know Leo?” he shouted up.

“The one with the English mother?”

“He signed up.”

“Already?”

“He is there now.”

“Wait for me. We can’t let him beat us to the front.”

Russian flags began appearing in more windows. Two horse trams stopped in the middle of the street as the drivers leaned out and
shouted to one another. “Now they ’ll get what’s coming to them. God bless Mother Russia!”

“God bless the Little Father!”

Berta took the children in hand and turned onto Malo-Vasilkovskaya Street to get out of the crowds. “Where are we going, Mameh?” asked Sura. “I want to see.” She tore her hand away.

“Can’t we stay, Mameh?” pleaded Samuil.

“No, I have to take you home,” she said, reaching for Sura’s hand.

“Will there be fighting?” asked Samuil, his eyes glowing with excitement.

“Yes, but we won’t be here to see it.”

“Why not?”

“We’re going to America.”

Samuil looked up at her in surprise. “To see Tateh?”

“Yes. But first I have to buy the tickets.”

“I want to see Tateh,” Sura said, suddenly excited.

“When are we going?” asked Samuil.

“As soon as possible.”

“Can’t we stay for the fighting?”

“No, it’s too dangerous.”

“Even if we watch from the rooftop like we did when they had fireworks?”

“No.”

Samuil looked disappointed, until he had another thought. “Are we going on a big ship?”

“Yes.”

“Will I be sick?” asked Sura.

“Maybe at first. But you’ll get used to it.”

“And we can have our own cabin?” asked Samuil.

Berta nodded.

“Will Masha be sick?” Sura asked.

“Masha will stay here with Vera.”

“We can’t take Masha?” Sura said, her eyes filling with tears.

“No. Cats don’t like the ocean.”

She started to cry. “I don’t want to leave Masha.”

“Sura, please, just walk with me. I have to get to the steamship office.”

“Masha is going to be very sad.”

“Masha will get over it. And so will you. When we get to America, I’ll get you two cats.”

Sura looked up at her mother and wiped her eyes. “Can they be kittens?”

By the time Berta came back down the hill the crowd had swelled to thousands and was overflowing into the surrounding streets. The steamship office was located in Davidkovo Square directly across from the little patch of grass where the Merchant’s band had set up their instruments to play patriotic songs. The recruitment center was also on the square and crowded with young men, their eyes shining, their heads erect because they were following God’s will and pledging their lives to Mother Russia. Berta watched these able-bodied boys with their broad shoulders, strong backs, and blond hair. These were the heroes of the black earth. Their mothers clung to them and begged them not to go. But how could they not? It was the adventure of a lifetime. They would go fight and come back heroes. They would do their part for the Little Father. As she watched them from across the square, their eyes glazed with the fervor of the newly converted, she thought how easy it was to convince them to give up their young lives . . . and for what? For a flag and an indifferent czar who, if he considered them at all, thought of them only as a burden of an office he never wanted nor was qualified to occupy.

 

SHE COULDN’T book passage until late October on a ship departing from Odessa, bound for Liverpool and then on to New York. She was not happy about the delay, but at least it gave her time to wrap up her affairs. Over the intervening months she let go of the staff, closed up the house, and said good-bye to her friends. On her last day in the city, she stood on the bluff overlooking the river, shrinking into her coat, shivering and stiffening against the wind. She had come down to the shops to pick up a few things for the trip and was grateful when she found that they still carried sewing kits, lambskin caps with earflaps,
and yarn. As she stood there watching the barges pull into the docks she brought her muff up to cover her mouth and nose and smelled the perfume on the fur mixed with the clean, cold smell of the river. Below her on the little beach by the docks were lines of brightly colored rowboats that had been hauled out of the water and turned upside down, proof that winter had come. She remembered hiring the blue one on a bright, hot Sunday afternoon with Hershel and the children. There were a dozen boats for hire on the river that day, bobbing in the water, looking like pieces of colored licorice in a glass bowl.

Now that she was about to leave for Odessa, there was nothing to distract her from her worries. She still hadn’t received word from Hershel and didn’t know where he was or how to find him. She had his sister’s address and would start there, but she worried that his sister had moved or didn’t know where he was or, worse, that it was the unthinkable. The thought that something had happened to him rarely left her mind. It gnawed at her during the day, and at night it robbed her of sleep. Now, on the eve of her departure, she steeled herself against these thoughts. She had to keep going. She had to find him.

She walked in the park along the bluffs for the last time. She passed the merry-go-round that was shuttered and dark and the Merchant’s Club where the brass band used to play in the flower garden before they were sent off to the front. The park was deserted of course. The ice cream girls in their white aprons and blond hair were gone, as was the man with the monkey who begged for coins. The kvass sellers were gone and so was the old lady who sold hats and Russian flags: They were all gone. Soon she would be too.

She crossed the street, her feet creaking on the snow, and walked down to Svetlanskaya. There she passed the Niklolaev Iron Works factory, a brooding hulk with grimy windows and smokestacks jutting up into the sky. On the other side of the street were the neglected apartment buildings that housed the workers, cold water flats without heat or gas, surrounded by empty lots full of trash and horse manure.

She jumped when the whistle blew and a minute later two guards in company uniforms pushed opened the great iron gates. Soon a crowd of women poured out of the factory floor dressed in heavy
coats, woolen hats, stockings, and boots. Berta wasn’t surprised to see that all the workers were women. She knew that the men had all gone to the front and many were now in their graves. In the past three months these women had taken their places, making cannons instead of farm machinery. They stared at her as they passed. They looked her up and down with envy etched in every line of their work-worn faces. They took in her furs, her gloves, and her expensive boots, whispering and giggling to each other, even once or twice jostling her on purpose. They were menacing enough to make her want to turn up the first side street.

Back on Davidkovo Street, she passed shops she used to frequent that were now shuttered for lack of goods. Here and there were burned-out buildings, blackened timbers littered with broken glass and twisted iron. These were once German shops. The war was going badly and Russia had suffered terrifying defeats. A whole army was lost at Tannenberg; army corps turned into divisions, brigades into regiments. There were hundreds of thousands if not a million Russians dead on the battlefields only three months into the war. Hatred of the Germans was running high. Everyone with a German name was suspected of being a spy; even the empress, who was German, was suspected of treachery.

The war had changed so much in Cherkast. Supply trucks parked in the streets were waiting to go to the front. Curtains were drawn over many of the windows, garbage left to rot on the stoops, a sure sign that a son or husband had just been lost. The air was acrid with the smell of smoke—not the smoke of factories, but of burning fields. Berta told herself that it was only the muzhiki burning what was left of the summer wheat, but it made her nervous all the same. She thought she could smell burning villages. She imagined the war was coming closer, even though she knew it was still hundreds of versts away.

It was growing dark and because the motor had been sold she had to walk home. There weren’t many cabs left because most of the motorcars had been requisitioned and the horses too, so the trolleys weren’t running either. Before trekking up the hill she decided to warm up with a cup of coffee. Fortunately the English Room was still open, so
she stopped in there. The lunch trade was over and since no one had the time or money for a formal tea, the place was empty. The waiters in starched white aprons sat in the back eating their lunch at a long table and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. They looked over at her when she came in, but no one made an effort to greet her. Eventually a heavyset waiter with a round, oily face sighed deeply and got to his feet. He sauntered over with a look of indifference.

“Good afternoon, Madame,” he said patiently, taking her coat and hat.

“Just coffee, please,” she said, following him over to a table by the window. It was covered in a white tablecloth and decorated with a red carnation. Overhead was a clumsy painting of Red Square and another of the czar and his family. She sat down and put her things on the empty seat beside her and looked out the window at the street traffic. There was a group of soldiers, deserters most likely, standing on the corner in front of the restaurant, selling cigarettes and sunflower seeds.

“So I say to him, it is not my war, it ’s his war. Let him fight it,” grumbled a waiter from the back table.

“That is what I say,” echoed his colleague.

“Why should I go?” said another. “I do not even know this kaiser. Why do I have to go and die in a trench because the czar does not like his cousin?” These were all the older men who hadn’t been called in the first wave but would certainly be called now that Russia had suffered such heavy losses.

“Did I tell you about old lady Demianova?” said the first. “The one who lost three sons? She went crazy after that and now she wanders around the village looking for them. I nearly jumped out of my skin one night when I looked out the window and found her looking back at me with those crazy eyes. My mother says they ought to take her away and lock her up, but I think she’s suffered enough. ‘Let the old lady be,’ I told my mother. Anyway, she will freeze to death by winter’s end. You can be sure of that.”