The Little Russian (38 page)

“No, there were others. As a reminder, they said. There was a woman with three plucked chickens under her skirt and others, I forget.”

They stood in silence. They may have been wondering how long it
would be before they suffered the same fate. Then the one with the flapping shoes asked: “
Nu
, you looking for someone?”

“Selensky. You heard of her? An old woman from Spasova.”

The other one shook his head.

“Her son is looking for her. Big reward. You hear of her, you tell me. We’ll split the reward.”

The peddlers were often looking for lost family members. There were families in America and Europe who offered big rewards to anybody who located their relatives. They passed the word from one to another and in that way the search extended beyond the borders and spread throughout the Pale. Samuil was never much interested in missing relatives. He was about to move on when he heard the one with the turned-up toes ask, “
Nu
, what about you? What do you have?”

“A woman and two children.”

“There are lots of women and children.”

“This one lives in the Berezina. She has a girl and boy. A pretty woman. Lives in a big house on a hill. You heard of her?”

This stopped Samuil and for a moment he didn’t know what to do.

“A Jew in the Berezina? This shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

Samuil jumped out from behind the drum and asked, “What’s her name?”

The peddlers gasped, startled by his sudden appearance, and the one with the turned-up toes snapped: “Hey, you little
pisher
, you don’t sneak around like that. You could give a person a heart attack.”

“I just want to know her name.”

“What for?”

“I just do, that’s all.”

“You know this woman? A big shot like you. You’re acquainted with a fine lady from the Berezina?”

“Maybe.”

The peddlers laughed. The one with the flapping shoes rubbed his hands together to warm them. “So how much you going to pay me for this information?” Samuil looked at him in confusion. “You expect it for free?”

He shook his head, thought for a moment, then dug into his pocket
and pulled out a pearl button and a piece of hard candy that a woman in his building had given him because his sister was dead. The button belonged to Sura and he was going to put it on his mantel, but then he thought his mother might miss it so he was bringing it back. Now he had another change of heart and held out his hand. The peddler took the button and turned it over and over. Then he looked up at Samuil. “Debishonki. Her name is Debishonki.”

“Debishonki?”

“That’s right.”

Samuil thought for a moment. “It couldn’t be Alshonsky?”

“It could. But Debishonki is what I heard.”

“Who is looking for them?”

“The father. He lives in America. I forget where.”

That’s all Samuil had to hear. He ran home and found his mother as he had left her that morning, lying on the straw mattress in front of the stove in the kitchen. She had been like that since Sura’s funeral, curled up with her knees to her chest, staring at nothing. She was dressed in the same blouse she had worn that day and her hair was unwashed. The only light in the room came from the gaslight flickering outside in the street. The room was cold and the fire had gone out. He heard scratching in the walls and tried to remember if he covered the bread that morning. He was hungry and was counting on it for supper. He didn’t want to have to go next door and lie to Mumeh Lhaye about where he had been all day.

“Mameh, wake up.” He squatted down beside her and shook her gently. She stirred and opened her eyes.

“Not now, please, Samuil.”

“I heard two peddlers talking.”

“I’m tired, let me sleep.”

“They’re looking for a woman and two children. She lives in the Berezina.”

“I don’t care.”

“But it’s us, Mameh. They’re looking for us.”

She closed her eyes again and rolled over. The straw rustled beneath her and a few feathers that had escaped the quilt floated effortlessly on the currents in the room. “Go next door. Mumeh Lhaye will feed you.”

“It’s Tateh, Mameh. He’s looking for us.”

“Tateh is dead,” she said dully, pulling the quilt up over her ears. “Now, go away.”

“No, he isn’t. He’s looking for us. They say we have to go to Warsaw.”

She laughed softly without opening her eyes. “Warsaw, is it? What name did they give?”

“Debishonki.”

She rolled back and put her arm under her head for a pillow. Her eyes were open now and dull in the half-light. “Debishonki is not Alshonsky, my son.”

“But they always get it wrong. You know how it works. One person hears something different and the next a little more and so on. By the time it comes all the way across Little Russia, it’s been changed. Debishonki, Mameh, it’s just like Alshonsky.”

“I don’t think so.”

“They’re looking for a rich woman with two children who live in the Berezina. That’s us, Mameh. That’s where we used to live. And he doesn’t know about Sura, that’s why he’s looking for two children. Can’t you see I’m right? Mameh?”

But it was too late. She was gone and there was no reaching her. He stood and looked around for the bread. It wasn’t until he was eating it at the table that he realized how much he wanted company. So he wrapped it up and put it into a heavy pot with a lid to protect it from the mice and went next door. There he was fed and fussed over. After dinner he lay down between his cousins and, comforted by the warmth of the litter, drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

 

THE NEXT morning Berta lay on her side staring at the floor. It was dark beneath the stove and there were wispy clouds of dust laced with mouse droppings and the dried husks of roaches. She thought that if she ever got up again, she would clean under there, and took this as a good sign. There was an implication of life after Sura’s death in that thought and, although she still didn’t believe it, at least she had begun to consider it.

Outside she could hear Froy Wohlgemuth’s shuffling step in the hall. She would be bringing Berta two pieces of bread on a chipped
china plate and a glass of tea. She had been bringing this every morning since shiva had begun and today, the last day, was no different. Berta heard her at the door trying to turn the knob. Her hands were bent with arthritis and it took her a while to open it. She considered getting up to help and thought this too was a good sign.

“Wake up,
mein teier
. Wake up,
mein faigeleh
.” She always called Berta
mein faigeleh
, my little bird. She walked into the front room and put the glass and plate on the table.

“What is it?”

“You must get up. The peddler is downstairs. He is looking for you.”

“He’s not looking for me.”

“Oh, yes he is. He is looking for a woman and two children from the Berezina. How many Jewish women are from the Berezina? Come now, it’s time to get up.” Froy Wohlgemuth tried to help Berta up, but the old woman wasn’t very strong. She had thin arms, a prominent hump on her back, and one hip was noticeably higher than the other.

“You have it all wrong. He is not looking for me. He is looking for another woman by a different name.”

“Ah feh! It’s always the wrong name. He is looking for you. Why is that so hard to believe? Your husband is alive. He has sent for you. This is happy news. Now come and eat.
Essen
, my brave girl
. . .
you need your strength.” She grabbed Berta’s forearm with her twisted fingers and attempted to pull her up.

Berta resisted at first, but she knew Froy Wohlgemuth was right. It was time to get up. There was no food in the house and no money to buy it. She had to find something to sell, something she could trade out in the countryside for food. She couldn’t keep relying on Lhaye and Pavel and neighbors for food. She had to start living again. Gathering her strength, she crawled out of bed and stood on the cold, damp floor.

When Berta had finished dressing, Froy Wohlgemuth helped her down the stairs and together they went out into the bright sunshine to see the peddler with the flapping shoes. They found him leaning up against the building watching two housewives argue in the street. He straightened when he saw them coming and studied Berta for a
moment. Maybe he was trying to picture her as the grand lady from the Berezina.

“You lived in the Berezina?”

“Yes, but my name isn’t Debishonki.”

“It’s Alshonsky, close enough. The names always change from one mouth to the next.” He studied her a moment longer. “You could be her. Fixed up a little, you could definitely be her.”

Froy Wohlgemuth clapped her hands. “See? What did I tell you? This is very good news.”

“He’s just guessing, Froy Wohlgemuth. He doesn’t know. They’re probably looking for someone else.”

The peddler said, “I don’t think so. I’ve been looking for a long time and you’re the closest I’ve come.” He examined a callus on his thumb. “You know, there is one way to find out for sure.”

“And how is that?”

“Go to Poland.”

She laughed without mirth. “I could just as easily go to the moon.”

The peddler shrugged. “It’s not impossible. It can be done. If you go, then you go to Warsaw. To the American embassy. You give them your name and you give them this.” He handed her a grimy piece of paper. “It’s got my name on it and an address. It’s important, otherwise I don’t get paid.”

Berta had stopped listening because she had spotted a young girl standing across the street with a baby in her arms. She was waiting for her mother to finish buying potatoes. The girl was only a child, all arms and legs, looking bored and impatient with her baby brother on her hip. Her mother ignored her and continued to take her time picking through the sack. When Berta became aware that the peddler was still going on about the best way to cross the border, she interrupted him and told him that she wasn’t the woman he was looking for, that she wasn’t going to Poland and, in fact, she wasn’t going anywhere. She thanked Froy Wohlgemuth, turned back to the stairs, and went back up to her room, where she lay down on the pallet and stayed there for the whole day and a few more weeks after that.

BERTA OPENED her eyes and for a moment she had no idea where she was. Then it came to her that Sura was dead and she had spent the night on a bench in the Bogitslav train station. It had been a few months since Sura died and still she woke every morning to the shock of her daughter’s death. It always took her a while to steel herself against the coming day. But this morning was different. This time she bolted upright because she remembered her bundles and wanted to make sure that none of them had been stolen while she slept. They were all there, tucked under her arms and legs for safety, except for the one that she had been using for a pillow.

To the casual observer her bundles looked like a jumble of old rags. In reality they were sacks of potatoes and beets hidden under lengths of fabric. In one were hidden three bottles of homemade vodka, the favorite currency in Cherkast. In another was a roast chicken wrapped up in newspaper; and in the third, a bag of kasha and a bag of dried white beans. She had spent most of yesterday trudging the muddy roads around Bogitslav, trading yard goods, soap, and tobacco for the contents of the bundles. It had been a long day, spent mostly with her skirt hiked up to her knees, trying to stay out of the sucking mud or else pulling her shoe out when she misjudged a step. Now that she had her vodka and food, she wasn’t about to lose them to thieves.

She was only twenty versts outside of Cherkast, and yet it would take her three days to come out and go back again. The station had started to fill up sometime during the night and now most of the benches were taken. There were muzhiki playing cards and smoking
makhorka
, peddlers with their bundles of contraband, and a few soldiers on the bench in the corner playing cards or dozing. Among the waiting passengers were three women in long skirts and heavy plaid shawls who had become friendly during the night and had staked out a bench in the middle of the room by the stove. Now they were sitting in a row like crows on a wire, their bundles at their feet, drinking tea and discussing the merits of magic against pogroms. One of the women, younger than the rest, with a dark complexion, long nose, and large black eyes, was passing around an amulet.

“I’m telling you, it saved my life,” she was saying to the others as she
watched it pass from hand to hand. She tossed a glance in the soldiers’ direction and lowered her voice. “I was caught with a dead rabbit in my bundle. He was a Red and he said he was going to shoot me. You should’ve seen all the people they shot that day. I was doomed. I knew it. So I prayed and held on to the amulet. And I got down on my knees and begged for my life, but he wouldn’t hear any of it. He pointed his rifle at my head and pulled the trigger.” The amulet came back to her and she turned and handed it to Berta, to include her in their circle.

“He pulled the trigger?” said another woman with a look of incredulity.

“The rifle jammed.”

“Jammed?”

“A miracle. Just like Rabbi Rollenstein said. “A miracle from God.”

“He didn’t try it again?”

“Oh, he was about to, but then someone called him out. Apparently he was late for a meeting with his unit. He told me not to move. He would deal with me later.”

“Did you stay?”

“Are you joking? Of course I didn’t stay. How much can you expect from one amulet. No, I was gone in a minute and I’ve never been back.”

For their midday meal the women decided to pool their food. Everyone put out a dish and they shared evenly. Someone put out kasha, someone else bread, someone had a bowl of pickled beets, and another boiled potatoes. Berta only had the chicken. She thought about it for a while before she put it out. But she figured by the time she got home it wouldn’t be fit to eat anyway and besides she always had the vodka to trade for another one closer to home. The women were overjoyed when they saw the chicken. Everyone agreed that she should have a larger share, but she said she would be satisfied with the same as everyone else.