The Accidental Anarchist (17 page)

As Glasnik spoke, I felt my eyelids droop. I was not partial to stories about wonder-working rabbis; they made me nervous. Especially since I believed in them.

“The widow,” Glasnik said, “poured out her heart to the holy man, and he told her to go home and be concerned no longer. Why? Because, within a week, a handsome young man would appear at her house and take her daughter just as she was, clumsy-handed and without a kopek to her name.”

I sat up, outraged. No self-respecting rabbi, with or without miraculous powers, would make such an insane promise. Glasnik glared me into silence and continued.

“The daughter, naturally, laughed at the holy man’s prediction. Especially when six days went by and no one had shown up who, in any way, matched his far-fetched description of the girl’s intended.

“But late that evening in her little attic bedroom, she emptied out her chamber pot in the customary way, that is, by spilling it out the window. As luck would have it, a handsome young city official was passing by and got thoroughly drenched. He burst into the house, furious, and what do you think he did? He took the girl, just as she was, without a kopek, straight to jail.”

Upon the arrival of morning, my friends and I learned that, while we had had the good breeding to wait until the time we were invited, some of our less scrupulous comrades had ventured out the previous night in search of the Queen’s palace. After hours of blundering, they found the place at close to midnight and had the insolence to knock on her door.

Not only did this exemplary woman’s servants not set the dogs on the men, but the staff bustled to relight lamps and stoves, and in short order set before the soldiers a late-night snack of the most exquisite leftovers. How was it possible not to fall in love with a woman like that?

We were strictly forbidden to leave the area, but since our officers were recuperating at a local hotel and no one seemed to be in charge, my friends and I contained our raging hunger only until mid-afternoon. Then, with rifles slung over our shoulders as though en route to a distant guard post, we strolled briskly into town.

Irkutsk, although in many ways a modern city, proved to be somewhat short of signposts and streetlights. Before long, we found ourselves so utterly lost in a spider web of alleys and lanes that Glasnik said we should have left a trail of breadcrumbs to help us find our way back. But, of course, if we had had breadcrumbs, we would have eaten them by now.

At last we spotted a policeman. Before he could open his mouth to ask what we were doing at large, I firmly demanded the address of the woman known as “Queen Esther.” Like any good Russian civil servant, he pretended not to understand a word I said.

So with all possible tact, I shouted at him, “Get the dirt out of your ears! We are looking for the woman who is kind to soldiers.”

At this, his face brightened in a repulsive leer, and he pointed to a dingy tavern whose upstairs rooms were clearly not designed to host prayer meetings.

At the end of my patience, I asked whether this pitiful town of his had a synagogue, and drew my bayonet. The policeman stopped trembling only when he saw me use it to draw a Star of David in the dirt. Suddenly, his faculties returned and, eager to be rid of such violent characters, guided us in the right direction.

What we found was, indeed, a synagogue, but most of the Jews gathered there for evening prayers were descendants of soldiers who had been forcibly resettled in Irkutsk. Exiled from Jewish learning and traditions for who-knows-how-many generations, their religious practices had decayed into such a sad patchwork of what they remembered (or misremembered) from their parents or grandparents that I could only marvel that they were Jews, at all.

At the synagogue, we were given proper directions, and at last found the Queen’s mansion in the midst of a small private park whose trees and shrubs were aligned as neatly as troops on parade.

We were greeted at the front door by a tall, bearded, broad-shouldered Jew. Even in a butler’s uniform, he looked more like a general than most of our generals. (It turned out that he had once been a high-ranking officer until ruined by a jealous rival.)

Following his instructions, we marched in brisk cadence toward an adjoining structure built of squared logs. It looked like a woodcutter’s cabin, but inside it sparkled as brightly as any ballroom in Petersburg. Tables had been set in long rows with tablecloths and dishes, silverware, candles and flowers, as though we were the kind of guests for whom only the best was good enough.

Surrounded by comrades from a dozen other units, I was struck by the rich variety of Jews, and how many dialects of Yiddish or Hebrew they spoke. Mountain Jews from Kurdistan and Georgia, who looked as though they could uproot trees with their bare hands, were seated beside scholarly men from Carpathia and dark-skinned warriors from Bokhara, Samarkand and other exotic parts of Asia. There were also some more familiar-looking Jews from Poland, Lithuania and the Ukraine, including some whose Yiddish sounded more like professorial German.

But even as we ate and drank and our voices overlapped in songs from every corner of the Czar’s domain, I continued to peer in all directions for a glimpse of our mysterious hostess. How could I propose marriage to a woman I had never seen?

A few drinks later, I began to speculate why our hostess remained hidden from our eyes. Could it be that she bore some terrible disfigurement that she was ashamed to display to the world? I refused to believe it. A woman of such holy dedication could not help but radiate an inner beauty that would outshine any physical blemish.

I asked the ‘general,’ “Where is our hostess so we can thank her in person?”

He smiled, and said she was away on business. Possibly she would return the following day. Or the one after. Or maybe next week.

I plucked up my courage to ask, “Is she as beautiful as people say?”

I saw it was a question he was weary of answering. “Why not judge for yourself?”

“But we may leave any day.”

He shrugged. “Then I suppose you will never know.”

Somewhat rashly, I wondered aloud, “How is it that such a woman has not yet found another husband?”

His smile mocked my question. “Are you volunteering for the job?”

My face burned with confusion. It was suddenly obvious to me that he, himself, was in love with her. Hopelessly, of course. And if she would rebuff even a ‘general,’ what chance was there for an unwashed ruffian like me?

Nevertheless, I was determined to return the next day, and the following day, and the day after that, until I met this extraordinary woman, even if our train left without me, even at the risk of being shot as a deserter. I would not have been the first man to die for love.

That evening, my fantasy tormented me with schemes for achieving a meeting face to face so that I could introduce myself in some way that would mark me in her eyes as not just another grateful soldier, but a man supremely qualified to end her widowed loneliness. While fumbling for the right words in which to clothe my proposal, I fell asleep.

When I awoke, I remembered that, in my dream, I had been on the very verge of delivering a speech guaranteed to win any woman’s heart. The trouble was, I couldn’t remember a single word of it. But before I had time to fret about it, we were all herded back onto the train and headed home.

Drifting in and out of sleep, I felt our train clank to an unscheduled halt. The rain-blinded windows offered no clue, but in the darkness someone guessed that we had reached Tomsk. But beyond our windows lay no glimmer of a city, large or small, or even a railroad station.

Packed together like herrings, we fretted and grumbled and waited for the engine to pull into the depot. Nothing moved. With all the authority of my corporal’s insignia, I accosted a conductor. Being a civilian, he was not afraid to reveal why we could see no station. The engine driver was instructed, for the sake of “maintaining order,” to halt in an open field at a “safe” distance from the city. How far? He shrugged.

This bit of news infuriated even the most docile among us, stranded as we were in the midst of a wilderness churned up by an exploding sky. Meanwhile, several fine coaches had arrived from town to transport our officers to a hotel suited to their delicate tastes, leaving us half mad with sleeplessness and thirst.

I looked at Glasnik. No discussion was necessary. If Tomsk were reachable on foot, nothing would stop us from stretching our legs on civilized wooden sidewalks, gaping in wonder at the shop windows of a modern metropolis, and maybe even learning to smile at passing ladies once again. In short, to feel for a brief spell like human beings. We also planned to get a decent night’s sleep, whether by a warm stove in the railroad station or, if we were lucky, at the home of a fellow Jew able to give us a hot meal and a dry floor to sleep on.

As raindrops rattled like stones upon our roof, we jumped down into mud that sucked at our feet like some diabolic magnet bent on pulling us straight down into the earth. I looked at my friend and couldn’t help laughing. We looked like escapees from a lunatic asylum, what with our crudely patched uniforms, gray, collapsed skin, lusterless eyes and such stubble on our jaws as you might find sprouting on a corpse. How did scarecrows like us ever manage to keep the Japanese from chasing us all the way back to Petersburg, or even Warsaw?

The rain had blotted out the moon and the stars, and there was no road to speak of, so Glasnik and I set out to follow the track. For a good hour, while the rain kept up a steady drumbeat upon our heads, we stumbled toward the invisible station.

Glasnik found it difficult to maintain a cheerful spirit. He cursed not only the Czar’s army, but demanded to know why the station was not getting any closer, and what I, as his superior in rank, proposed to do about it.

“You want to turn back?” I asked. He did not.

By the time we were able to make out blurred lights of the station less than a kilometer in front of us, it was three or four o’clock in the morning. Once we reached the depot, I understood why our train had been ordered not to pull in to the station: the platform was packed with soldiers left behind by a previous train for Heaven-only-knows what excellent reason. Had our train suddenly materialized in front of them, they would have tried to force their way into our cars, which might have led to some fraternal bloodshed.

At the far corner of the platform, I noticed a man in a European-style suit deep in conversation with the stationmaster. His animated way of speaking reminded me of something I had not seen in almost two years – a Jew in civilian clothes.  

I drew closer simply to stare. He looked at me in my Russian uniform and what I assumed to be my brutalized features, and (a miracle!) addressed me in Yiddish. “You’re alone?”

“We’re two Jewish soldiers looking for a place to sleep.”

“So come.” Without another word, he led the way. It was as if he had been waiting for us.

Outside the terminal, our rescuer’s son was drowsing in his coach. Yawning, he blinked at Glasnik and me, then blinked again as though seeing double.

We introduced ourselves, and learned that our hosts’ surname was Grodner. To judge by their vehicle’s upholstery, they weren’t in need of charity.

But what were they doing at the railroad station at that unlikely hour? With a touch of vexation, the father explained that they had come to pick up a young man from Odessa who had been recommended as a bridegroom for his daughter. The Candidate had sent a telegram announcing that night as his date of arrival. But no one at the station seemed to know why the train had not turned up, or even when the next train from Europe was due.

As our coach raced through torrents of mud, I fell into a deep sleep, which ended all too soon.

When we arrived, Grodner’s house was dancing with lights. Friends and neighbors overflowed the parlor, all eager for a first glimpse of the visitor from Odessa. Each had brought something to eat or drink, as one would back home. . .after a funeral. Either Siberian Jews, isolated by time and distance, had evolved strange new practices, or their view of marriage was a great deal more somber than ours.

The guests became abruptly silent at the sight of their friend hauling in not one but two strapping, if slightly soiled, young Jewish soldiers. In their eyes, we were not a pack of beaten and exhausted men who had just lost a war, but veritable statues of conquering heroes cast in bronze.

The prospective bride had made a commendable effort to stay awake. Her name was Sonya, and although I could feel my heart begin to pound at the mere sight of a civilized female, she was, in truth, simply a plump, pleasant-looking young woman with a nervous voice. But after not having set eyes on a Jewish girl in almost two years, and especially after a drink or two, I found myself fully prepared to overlook her small nose and placid personality and offer her my heart.

But Glasnik, the scoundrel, pushed himself ahead of me. It had taken only a few drops of high-proof vodka to transform this diffident tailor’s apprentice into a well-spoken military strategist ready to explain how, contrary to the common impression, Russia had actually won the war. It was thanks, in no small measure, to the bravery of “ordinary Jewish boys” like
Yankel
Marateck, he added, flaunting his generosity of spirit toward his lesser comrade.

Without regard for the clock, we sat down to celebrate as though the Candidate from Odessa had arrived and already declared himself. Even Sonya entered into the spirit of things, serving and laughing and treating us to a very pretty Siberian song before she put her cheek on the table and fell asleep with her thumb in her mouth.