The Little Russian (12 page)

Mameh gave Hershel a wan smile. “She’s not herself tonight, Reb Alshonsky. Girls have their days, you know.” She didn’t like discussing monthlies in front of a man, but she was desperate to explain why her daughter was such a
meshugeneh.

Later when Mameh and Hershel were settled on the settee and Tateh was in his chair with his Yiddish paper, Hershel told Mameh a
story about a man who had goat’s hooves for feet and was cured by a miracle rabbi. She pretended to listen, but she couldn’t keep her mind on the story. For the first time, news from her own house seemed more
tragical
than anything she could hear from the outside world. Everything was going wrong. Berta was determined to ruin them and drive them deeper into poverty and there was no reasoning with her. Like most young people, she had a head full of chicken feathers and didn’t know the first thing about common sense. Why she didn’t jump at the chance of marrying such a boy, so accomplished and well-mannered, such a
choshever mentsh
, was baffling to her.

 

THAT NIGHT Berta woke to what she thought was the sound of the mourners in the cemetery, until she realized that it was in the middle of the night, during a rainstorm. She lay there listening for the sound and when she heard it again she knew that it was Hershel having another one of his nightmares. She didn’t want to go to him. She wanted to ignore him and go back to sleep, but she could hear him struggling with something awful. So she swung her legs out of bed and walked on tiptoe across the damp floorboards to the door.

Out in the hall the roof was leaking in several places and the water was dripping into the pots her mother had placed throughout the rooms. For an instant the hallway was bathed in a cold blue light and a second later a crack of thunder shook the house.

“Berta . . . ?” He was calling to her from behind the curtain.

She hesitated. “Yes.”

He sat up and shoved aside the curtain. “I was dreaming again. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. Go back to sleep.”

“No, wait.” He reached out a hand for her and caught her wrist. “Stay with me for a while.”

“I want to go back. I’m cold.”

He pulled her over to the bed. “Just for a minute. Here, sit here.” He moved over to give her room. “Put your feet up on the bed. It’s warm.”

She stood there on the cold floor uncertain what to do. The water was dripping steadily from the ceiling, splashing out of a nearby pot
and seeping into the floorboards. The air was damp and smelled like mildew. After a struggle she sat down on the straw mattress and lifted her feet up off the floor. “What is it?”

“I want to explain about not writing and staying away for so long.”

“What’s there to explain? You have other friends. I don’t need to know anything else.”

“Friends? You mean women?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“It is your business and you’re wrong. There aren’t other women.”

“Then what?”

He watched the water drip into a nearby pot and then pushed himself up on the pillow. “I was in a shtetl.”

“A shtetl?” Her forehead crinkled in confusion. “Why?”

“I was helping people.”

“In a shtetl
?

“That’s right.”

“All this time?”

He nodded.

“And what were you doing in this shtetl?”

He pulled the blanket up over his chest. “Educating them, I guess you could call it.”

“A school?”

“Of sorts.”

She stared at him in the dark. Then she shook her head. He was playing with her and she didn’t like it one bit. “I have no idea what you’re talking about and I’m cold. I’m going to bed.” She stood up.

He grabbed her hand again. “No, don’t go yet?”

“Why not?”

“Look, I can’t tell you what I was doing there, but I can tell you why I went.”

She took her hand back but made no effort to leave.

“Please,” he said, “sit down. Give me a chance.”

She looked across the hallway through her bedroom to the little window framed by the white curtains she had made herself. It was a blank square in the dark until another burst of lightning lit it up with
the same blue light. Without looking at him, she slowly sank down on the edge of the bed, as far away from him as possible.

He began his story with the girl on the tightrope. He told her about the shoe peddler; his father, the
starusta
; and all the events that followed. When he had finished she sat there looking at him for some time and then slowly moved into his arms. At first he seemed surprised that she was even in the room with him. His mind was still on that night long ago and it took him several moments to come back to her. When he did, he kissed her and buried his lips in her neck. In a rush of relief she believed that she knew him, that he was a good man, and that she loved him. These were simple thoughts, uncomplicated, but so immense, so grand, that they threatened to overwhelm her. As close as she felt to him, she had to get closer. So she picked up the blankets and climbed in beside him. He rubbed her shoulders and drew her close to his bare chest. His feet found hers and he rubbed them with his instep to warm them. She had entered the nest of a wintering animal. It smelled of sleep and country roads.

They lay with their arms wrapped around each other, listening to the rain and the bony scratching of the bare branches on the roof. He kissed her again and this time his tongue searched out hers. His hands were flat on the small of her back gently guiding her up on top of him. With their breath all around them, they began their nearly silent lovemaking. The fact that they could be caught at any moment and had to stifle the sound of their pleasure only heightened it. Even the quick pain of her first time didn’t dampen the extraordinary sensation of having him inside her, all around her, enveloping her, absorbing her, until she was only vaguely aware of the storm outside and the rustling straw beneath them.

 

THAT FALL they were married in the
groyse
shul, the grand synagogue, the largest and most elaborate shul in Mosny. Since Hershel hadn’t asked for a dowry, most of the money the Malkiels had sent to Tateh—what was left after the odd emergency—was put into the wedding. There were flowers, fancy foods, famous musicians from Kiev; even the invitations were printed on linen, with two envelopes, one inside
the other and tissue paper separating the pages. Everyone was invited, all the relatives, Aunt Sadie and Uncle Sol, the Rosenthals and the bunch from Smelo: all their friends from the village including the official mourners Aviva Kaspler and her business partner, Yael Schlaifer.

The procession started at the grocery door and proceeded on through the town and down to the Street of Synagogues to the main shul. Old women danced in front of the bridal couple, the klezmor band played a march, and children made a game of running through the crowd to keep up. As the crowd followed the bride and groom into the synagogue, there were audible sighs of relief, since it was a hot day and the interior of the stone shul was cool. The center aisle was decorated with swags of roses that looped from pew to pew. Nobody in Mosny had ever seen anything like it. Aviva Kaspler whispered to Yael Schlaifer that she thought it looked Christian and Yael Schlaifer was inclined to agree. They were both wearing their customary black, although, as a concession to the wedding, they each wore a bunch of silk flowers at their waist.

That night everybody gathered in the
shalash
, the three-sided enclosure that Tateh had built against the side of the store where the banquet and dancing were to take place. There was a platform built on one side for the orchestra and another on the other side for the bride and groom. All around the perimeter were tables and benches for the guests. There were delicacies on the banquet tables that no one had ever tasted in their entire life. Little bits of heaven they said, although some refused to touch them and whisperings of
traif
moved from table to table, especially among the older guests.

Moses Kumanov and his
klezmorim
had not been hired to play at the wedding. Once the guests had gathered in the
shalash
, the musical duties were turned over to a small orchestra that had been brought all the way from Kiev. Reb Kumanov was philosophical about it and was heard to say that it was perfectly fine with him. “A bride has a right to choose her own music.” But then in a stage whisper he added, “Although, what kind of music these fellows are playing is anybody’s guess. You can’t dance to it. No
froelichs
, no
volochel
, no
bolgar
. Certainly no
kazatska
. Forget Jewish,” he said with a dismissive wave of
his hand, “it is not even Russian.” Some said it was from Germany, and like everything from Germany, it was well put together but lifeless.

The oddest thing about the evening was that there was no
badchen
, nobody to tell funny stories and jokes and make up rhymes about the guests and the presents they brought. Nessie Laiser, Yaffa Hamerow, and the milkman’s wife were disappointed by this and were complaining to the official mourners when Berta drifted over. Ordinarily, they would have a few choice words to say about her too, once she was out earshot. But this time they were so taken by her radiance, her beatific smile, and the love that poured out of her for Hershel Alshonsky, for the guests and musicians, even for them, that it left them speechless.

Yaffa Hamerow watched Berta glide over to the next table. Nessie Laiser said nothing and shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Aviva Kaspler murmured something about how in love they were and wasn’t that fine. Yael Schlaifer said nothing. A memory had percolated up from her own wedding and took her by surprise. It was just a fleeting image of her hand in Yakov ’s as they walked out of the synagogue into the sunshine. Pausing at the top of the steps for a kiss, he whispered something that she couldn’t quite remember. Maybe he told her they would always be together or they would have many children or he would always strive to make her happy. It didn’t matter, because two years later there was a cholera epidemic and she buried him in a plot overlooking the river. It was her first funeral.

December 1913

 

TO THE casual traveler, Pavel Ossipovich Lepeshkin looked relaxed. He was seated in the dining car at a table laid for tea. Just inches from his fingertips stood a small, three-tiered silver tray of forgotten finger sandwiches and pastries. A cold cup of tea sat on a sturdy saucer stamped with the crest of the Nord Express. The cream in the cup was congealing, the sandwich bread was growing stale, and the pastries were looking decidedly gray.

Staring out the window at the Alexandrovo station, Pavel looked like a young gentleman dulled by train travel on his way home from school for the holidays. But his face was beaded with sweat and nearly the color of the tablecloth and his hands were trembling. His blond hair was swept back off his forehead, his nose was flat and led down to a pointy chin, and his intense brown eyes hardly seemed to blink as he stretched to look up and down the track. He resembled a burrowing animal caught halfway out of his den by the screech of an owl and the thunder of flapping wings.

The trains from Berlin on their way to Kiev and Moscow always stopped at the Alexandrovo station when first crossing the Russian frontier. After changing trains to accommodate the wider-gauge track, second and third-class passengers were expected to line up, their baggage and passports at the ready, and wait their turn in the customs office. First-class passengers were allowed to send a porter with their passports and remain in the comfort of their compartment. But recently there had been an incident and now the authorities were asking to see their luggage as well. Pavel wanted to go with his traveling case but was told to wait in the carriage so as not to draw attention to
himself. So he waited, and had been waiting for nearly an hour, wondering if in the next moment the gendarmes would appear or, worse, agents of the imperial secret police.

Pavel didn’t want to speak to anyone. The last thing he wanted was a friendly passenger chatting him up, so he kept his face turned to the window and his arms crossed over his chest hoping in this way to keep away any interlopers.

An elderly woman seated across the aisle took no notice of these precautions. In a voice that was a little too loud, she declared in barely accented French, “My, what a wait. We’ve been sitting here for nearly an hour. You’d think they ’d get on with it.” She was a wisp of a woman with a visible line of powder at her throat and long knobby fingers, who seemed lost in her fur wrap and enormous hat. “I dislike these long delays, don’t you?” she went on, undeterred by his reticence.

A diamond and ruby brooch winked at her throat and reminded him of a similar one his mother owned. Even though he had just been there a few months before, he longed to go home again. He wanted to be back in the nursery, eating bliny and sour cream with his Slavic nanny, Mariasha, to be gathered up in her arms and held to her abundant breasts, to be fussed over and pampered, to be told what a good boy he was and how he would always be loved and, above all,
kept safe
. The fact that he had outgrown his nanny and the nursery years ago did little to ease the ache he felt now.

“You haven’t touched your cakes, dear. Aren’t you hungry?”

“Guess not,” Pavel said, swallowing hard.

“On holiday, then? Coming home from school?”

Pavel nodded.

“University?”

He nodded again and mentioned the name of the university he attended. It was a fashionable one, favored by the aristocracy and the
kupechestvo
, the wealthy merchant class.

“Ah yes, my nephew went there. But of course that was a long time ago. You wouldn’t know him, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Chaliapin?”