If You Are There

by Susan Sherman

  ebook ISBN 9781619029750

  Copyright © 2017 by Susan Sherman

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available

  Names: Sherman, Susan, author.

  Title: If you are there / Susan Sherman.

  Description: Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016040260

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Literary.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.H4676 I34 2017 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040260

  Cover design by Jarrod Taylor

  Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

  COUNTERPOINT

  2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.counterpointpress.com

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  10987654321

  For my brilliant everything

  Lloyd Michael Peckner

  1956–2015

  It matters little what god one believes in: It is the faith and not the god that makes miracles.

  —Henri Poincaré, April 1906

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1. Warsaw, December 1901

  Chapter 2. Paris, September 1902

  Chapter 3. Paris, March 1902

  Chapter 4. September 1902

  Chapter 5. November 1902

  Chapter 6. November 1902

  Part II

  Chapter 7. March 1903

  Chapter 8. May 1903

  Chapter 9. Paris, August 1903

  Chapter 10. January 1904

  Chapter 11. February 1904

  Part III

  Chapter 12. April 1906

  Chapter 13. April 1906

  Chapter 14. May 1906

  Chapter 15. June 1906

  Acknowledgments

  I.

  CHAPTER 1

  Warsaw, December 1901

  It was uncommon for a girl from the slums of Warsaw to escape the mills. There were some who married a good earner, more that died, but no one Lucia Rutkowska ever knew went off to Paris. To her way of thinking, just purchasing a ticket made her somebody, or nearly so, and she hadn’t even gotten started yet.

  On the morning she left, Lucia walked all the way from Babusia’s house to the railway station in her new boots. They were her first pair of new shoes—truly new—had not been worn by another soul. On good days, when she was hopeful of making something of her life, she thought of them as a symbol of a bright future to come. On those days she saw nothing but fresh possibilities: a situation in a respectable house, money in her pocket, and a new dress to go with her new boots.

  When they were leaving the shop with the boots still in the box, Babusia told her to give them to the boy to break them in. Lucia had no intention of doing so. When she told Babusia as much, her grandmother turned on her in annoyance. “So willful. Just like your mother.” But Lucia heard the familiar stitch in her grandmother’s voice. It had been eleven years, yet Babusia still felt the keen loss of her daughter, Lucia’s mother, the brightest angel in heaven.

  As it turned out, the boots were scuffed by the time Lucia reached the station; her heels were rubbed raw just as Babusia said they would be. A ferocious blister had formed on her right heel and another was threatening on her left, making every step a trial. She prayed to Mary the Blessed Mother to ease her suffering, to make her shoes more comfortable. However, the Holy Mother must have been busy with other, more deserving requests, for she got no relief.

  Lucia tramped up the front steps of the columned portico, dragging a folding chair behind her, bumping it from one step to the next, wishing she could afford the fare for the omnibus. Even though it was only five grosze, Babusia had already given her all she could. Every expenditure had been accounted for, items added and subtracted, the list often copied fresh on a new piece of paper: so much for sausages and a loaf of bread; so much for a warm coat from the rag dealer that cost a little more because the stain was in the back; so much for a blanket, for a folding chair, for a warm pair of stockings; and all the rest for her ticket to Paris.

  Lucia was so impressed by the train station that she had to stop by the door to take it all in. She crossed herself twice, fingering the rosary in her hand. Even though she had lived in Warsaw all her life, the only train station she had ever seen was the old tottery platform down the road from Babusia’s house. This was something else. On the outside, the Vienna Station looked like a palace with its stone façade, wide colonnades, and two soaring clock towers at either end, each flying the Russian flag, but on the inside it looked like a cathedral with high windows and shafts of light pouring in through the clerestory. It reminded her of the painting of the Holy Mother and Child that hung in the Church of Mary Magdalene near Babusia’s house. She imagined angels floating down on the light and stepping over to the counter to buy a ticket to Vienna or Skierniewice. It was a blasphemous thought; she felt a stab of remorse for having it. She offered a quick prayer of contrition to Saint Lucyna, her patron saint, who was by now used to her heretical imaginings.

  She found a bench behind a pillar that had a good view of the doors. Babusia had warned that she wouldn’t be safe until she was on the train, so she had to be careful. Stay alert. She put her bundles down and leaned the folding chair up against the bench. She noted the location of all the gates, just in case. Across the way at the railway restaurant, she spotted a table that sat in deep shadow half hidden behind a column. She thought that if the worst happened, if he came for her and she couldn’t make it to the gates, she could hide there. She stuck her hand in a bundle and groped around for the medallion of Saint Ursula. She brought the little saint along for companionship, Saint Christopher for protection, and Saint Lucyna for everything else.

  After that she relaxed some, unlaced her boot, and lifted her heel out to let it breathe through her stocking. She knew she still had to buy a ticket, but she had come such a long way that even Babusia would give her a little time to rest. Besides, the train didn’t leave for hours, and looking around at her fellow travelers, well-dressed gentlemen and ladies coming and going in their furs flecked with snow, she couldn’t believe there’d be much call for a place in a freezing fourth-class carriage, where you were expected to sit on your own folding chair and shiver under your own blanket.

  Two girls, perhaps a year or two older than Lucia, came in through the big double doors, laughing at some private joke and stumbling over each other in their haste to get out of the cold. They weren’t Poles. They were too well dressed in their fur coats and hats and expensive leather boots. The taller one had a matching muff that she carelessly tossed on a bench before collapsing on it and pulling her friend down to whisper in her ear. They were Russians—too noisy, too grand, their gestures too large and careless. Poles moved about in their own country as if they were in someone else’s parlor. Russians made themselves at home, spreading out, claiming the most comfortable chairs.

  Lucia tried to ignore them while keeping an eye on the door, but her attention kept straying back. She hated to admit that she envied those girls. After they removed their coats, she noticed that the thinner one, the one with the full mouth and almond eyes, wore a tailored skirt with braiding all around
the useless little pockets. The same braiding on her gloves and on her boots. Lucia wanted to spend her time worrying about braiding, not about keeping warm and getting enough to eat, not of head lice and ruinous work in the factories, of cholera and typhus, of criminals in the streets. She wanted to be Russian, as shameful as that sounded. She wanted Russian worries.

  Suddenly, the Russian girls rose up and headed toward the restaurant. As they passed, the taller one stumbled over Lucia’s bundles, even though they were well out of the way. In that instant Lucia heard something break, a muffled snap like the delicate bone of a bird. They heard it too, for they hesitated, only for a moment, before going on without a word of apology or glance back.

  Lucia opened the bundle and hunted around until she found the gromnica, the thunder candle that Babusia had given her when her mother died. It was in pieces. It had been a beautiful candle with her mother’s name inscribed in gold at the base and decorated with a white ribbon and paper lilies. It was supposed to keep Lucia safe from lightning and flooding. At first she was furious, but then she hoped that God would strike them down, as every Pole knew he would, when he got as fed up with the Russians as she and her people were. She knew that things were not right in Poland. She also knew in her heart that God would put things right again as soon as he found the time.

  Lucia was grateful for the many gifts that God had given her. Among them was her hair, which she wore in a thick braid down her back. Sometimes she would pile it on top of her head like a grand lady, but only when Irina wasn’t around to scold her for acting above her station. She could cook and do complicated sums. People said her embroidery was accomplished. But her greatest gift of all was her vocabulary. It was nothing to use big words almost every day of the week. She had learned these words and many more in a dictionary that she had won at school for being an exemplary student. Exemplary.

  She went to an underground school for the poor that had no name. They had to stay hidden because they spoke Polish and read Polish history and literature and wouldn’t bow to the czar even if he were in front of them. Although, Lucia supposed Mademoiselle Wolfowicz would have told them to bow out of courtesy. Their teacher was exceedingly polite, even to her servants, even to the peddlers and beggars on the street.

  The school was always on the move from back rooms to basements to the dark recesses of warehouses. They had to be careful not to get caught. Mademoiselle Wolfowicz would certainly be sent to Siberia. She was brave to run the school. She wasn’t even paid, and she bought all the supplies herself. It was true that her father owned a big department store and they lived in a fine house on Nalewki Street, in the good section where all the rich Jews lived. Still, she spent a lot of her own money on the children, many of whom were not even Jewish. Once she even invited them to her house for little cakes and sandwiches. They were allowed to eat all they wanted and when the food ran out, she rang for more.

  Mademoiselle Wolfowicz was the nicest lady Lucia had ever met. That’s why whenever Tata or Irina called Mademoiselle the little zhyd or asked about her tail or her horns, Lucia wouldn’t answer. She would just escape to Babusia’s house. She always tried to respect her father and her stepmother, but sometimes it was a prodigious task.

  “Prodigious,” she whispered under her breath as she wrapped up the pieces of her broken thunder candle.

  Lucia and her best friend, Ania Brodowska, lived on Dobra Street in tenements that looked very much alike. Both buildings had the same rundown rooms, the same rubbish in the courtyard, the tap in front where everyone lined up for water, and the wrought iron balconies that occasionally gave way under the weight of a tenant. To the south, across Krakowskie Przedmieście and Nowy Swiat, were the fine shops, houses, and government buildings. But this was Powiśle, a poor section of Warsaw, located along the river. Here the rutted streets lay mired in mud, the taverns stayed open late, and the occasional cry for help went unheeded. This is where the mill workers lived in a collection of doleful shacks that miraculously survived each passing winter despite their crumbling walls and patched roofs.

  Every morning Lucia would stop under Ania’s window and call up to her. One particular morning, they walked down Dobra Street to the square on Bednarska. It had snowed the night before, but the morning was bright under a clear sky. It was during Advent, right after Saint Barbara’s feast, and here and there in sunny windows they could see bare cherry branches poking out of jam jars filled with water. Usually they made fun of the older girls who put them there hoping they would flower on Christmas Eve so they would find husbands on zapusty. At fourteen they were still too young to think of hanging their hopes on cherry branches, but they weren’t so young that they didn’t devour the latest romantic serials in the illustrated weeklies.

  On most days Lucia and Ania made it a habit of stopping in Saxony Square at the obelisk erected by Czar Alexander II. It had been a gift to his Polish subjects. These were the same Poles who betrayed their countrymen and fought on the side of the tyrant, so spitting on the monument was something of a tradition among patriots. Lucia always spit first, because Ania needed time to screw up her courage. Generally, Ania was too scared to get up much spit. She had good reason to be scared. Spies were everywhere: the street cleaner on the corner, the waiter taking an order, even the fine-looking greengrocer’s son, who teased them about being late for school. They could all be spies and you’d never know, until it was too late.

  This time Ania didn’t even try to spit, because she didn’t like the look of the barber, who was watching them from the doorway of his shop. Instead she pulled on Lucia’s sleeve and they walked on together, plowing through a deep pile of snow, letting it come all the way up to the tops of their boots.

  Now that Lucia was at the ticket window, she hunted through her bundles for the coin purse. The clerk watched with growing impatience, his eyes drifting to the few respectable travelers waiting behind her with an undisguised look of contempt.

  “I have it right here,” she said, her anxiety growing. For one frantic moment she rummaged through her linens until her fingers clutched the little embroidered bag beneath the copy of Madame Bovary that Babusia had given her as a reward for improving her French. “Here. Here it is,” she said with some relief. The clerk exchanged a knowing look with a well-dressed matron standing directly behind Lucia.

  Lucia counted out the bills and offered them, shoving them through the window on the counter. He hesitated, regarding them with a look of disgust because they were dirty from Babusia’s hiding place behind the hearth. Finally, he held them gingerly by a corner and counted them out again. Satisfied, he handed her a ticket and called to the next person in line without waiting for her to collect her things.

  She took the ticket back to her bench and shoved it into one of her bundles. Then she sat down and unlaced her boot to check on the blister. It had begun to drain and the stocking was damp, sticking to the wound. She worked it free and held the stocking above the ankle to let it dry. She was just thinking that she could roll down her stocking to get a better look—it would have been gruesome, but also interesting in a strange way—when, with an icy thrill, she realized that crowds had been coming and going and she hadn’t been paying attention. She bolted upright and surveyed the room: Two gentlemen stood checking the boards; an older couple sat hunched over the paper; a line of bored travelers stretched from the ticket counter.

  She let out a breath and made a solemn promise to Saint Lucyna that she wouldn’t let her mind wander again. A few minutes later when passengers came flooding in from an arriving train, she searched their faces, even though she couldn’t believe he would be coming from the tracks and not through the front door. And yet, there in the crowd, among the wool papakhi and the fur hats, she spotted a man wearing a visor cap. The cap alone wouldn’t have set off an alarm; most of the workers at the station wore them. But when she saw that he was also wearing a long dirty apron that covered his shirt and pants and an old cloth jacket with a torn hem, her chest went cold.

/>   She jumped up, nearly tripping over her bootlace. With so many escape routes to choose from, she couldn’t make up her mind. Finally she crossed to the restaurant, dragging her unlaced boot along, and took the table of last resort. There she crouched down in the chair, drawing herself in, becoming as small as possible.

  She laced up her boot, unconsciously tying it into a pretty bow, while she tracked the man’s progress across the crowded station. She couldn’t see his face, only the cap, the apron, and the jacket, and that lumbering walk she knew so well.

  A Polish boy carrying a tray full of dirty dishes stopped by her table. “What are you doing there?” he asked. He kept his voice down as he glanced around to make sure they weren’t being watched.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  His red hair was shorn at the sides making the crown of his head look like the comb of a rooster. She kept her eyes on the man in the apron. He was coming closer, but his features were still hidden under his hat. She couldn’t be certain if she could not see his face. It felt like cold fingers were poking around in her stomach. “You can’t sit there, you know,” the boy said impatiently.

  “I’m not bothering anybody.” She was surprised at how unperturbed she sounded even though she could barely breathe.

  “You have to order something. They won’t let you just sit there.”

  “I’ll have some tea.”

  He gave her an appraising look and shook his head. “You couldn’t afford it.”

  She watched while a well-dressed gentleman surrounded by luggage, a wife, and four children stopped the man in the apron. They conferred and after a moment the man in the apron began loading their luggage onto the cart. In her fright she hadn’t seen the cart, even though it had been there the whole time. When it was fully loaded the man followed the gentleman and his family back through the gate and down to the platform.