The Little Russian

by Susan Sherman

  For weeks she wandered out of town and walked the rutted cart paths that bisected the fields of stubble and dried corn stalks. The crows came for what was left after the harvest, and clouds of insects rose up off the winter squash that had been left to rot in the field. She didn’t notice the heat and was grateful for the emptiness and the endless expanse of blackened fields fresh from the autumn burning. She was glad to be alone. It felt honest, and there was some comfort in that.

  Eventually she started sleeping again and for a few weeks she slept well into the morning, sometimes not even getting out of bed until after noon. Tateh soon lost patience with this schedule and told her she was needed in the grocery. She protested, saying that she wasn’t feeling well, that she was too tired, that she needed more time, but he wouldn’t be put off.

  It was lonely in Mosny. There was nobody to talk to. They were all so irritating in their fanatic adherence to Jewish law and custom, so stubborn and unchanging, without the least appreciation or understanding of culture. No one spoke Russian. They only read Yiddish newspapers and penny dreadfuls. They all dressed badly and bathed infrequently—this being particularly noticeable on hot summer days. No one had ever heard of Balzac, Stendhal, or Goethe or read poetry or listened to a symphony or even a piano sonata.

  On some days she would only speak French, even though no one else in town could. On other days she wouldn’t speak at all and addressed everybody with a sullen look of disapproval. She often wore her Muscovite silks for no reason, looking especially out of place among the plain head scarves and dusty black skirts. But her worst crime, the one that had won her the enmity of nearly the entire population, was sitting out in the town square under a horse chestnut tree reading a book on Saturday afternoons.

  Saturdays were always reserved for the parade of marriageable girls and boys around the town square. There were the girls in their muslin dresses walking arm in arm and the boys standing on the sideline in groups of twos and threes, watching the show and whispering to one another. It was a subtle performance involving ancient social cues: a flick of the eyes past a freshly scrubbed face, a nervous giggle and lingering look from beneath the brim of a straw sailor hat. Because the girls had to look their best, money that had been laid aside for necessities or emergencies was now freely spent on yard goods, gloves, hats, and spools of machine-made lace. It was an investment in the future and as necessary to a good match as a walk around the square, a veiled exchange of glances, and a visit from the matchmaker. It was how courtship was done in Mosny, how it had always been done, that is, until Berta Lorkis came home. Now the boys only wanted to look at her.

  Had Berta known the trouble she was causing, she would have picked another bench. She wasn’t interested in these boys. Half of them were yeshiva bocherim, students from the Talmudic academy in Bogitslav. The rest were apprentices to tradesmen or journeymen. What would she do with a boy like that, especially since they were all younger than she and beneath her in every way?

  The people of Mosny didn’t know how she felt. They thought she was having fun with them, torturing them by flirting with their boys. The mothers of the girls were incensed, as were the marriage brokers, the tailors, the dressmakers, and anyone else who made a ruble or two off the marriage trade. They all wanted her gone from her bench under the tree. But nobody said anything, so she continued to sit there week after week, unwittingly laying waste to the dreams of mothers and dressmakers.

  On this particular hot summer day the store was crowded with muzhiki, peasants who had come in for market day with their carts full of produce. They had lined them up in the town square, fruit here, vegetables there, dairy on one side, honey on the other, and the perimeter filled with livestock. The women left their daughters in charge of the stalls while they came into the grocery to buy staples. Jewish housewives tramped up and down the square, clutching the sweaty arm of a child, fingering the last kopeck, looking for the best potatoes, the firmest beets at the best price. Each side used bits and pieces of the other’s language, a price quoted, a counter offer, a sour look of mistrust. Nobody wanted to be cheated. Here there was a tenuous connection between town and country, Jew and gentile, a slender branch built on commerce. But it was also September 1904, exactly one year and five months after the bloody pogrom at Kishinev where forty-nine Jews were killed and more than five hundred injured. So it was no wonder that the Jews were holding their breath, waiting for the branch to snap.

  Berta stayed in the grocery that day, waiting on customers, trying to keep her mind far away from Moscow. But there was always something to trigger the memories, a word, a phrase, or a picture of a sled on a can of chestnuts, and she’d be back riding in an open sleigh down Petrovka Street. It was just before dawn and she was bundled up in furs and leather blankets, coming home from a party at the Kokorevs’. Standing there in one of the aisles of the market she could just about smell the signal bonfires at the intersections and hear the sleigh bells and the whoosh of the runners on the hard-packed track. She remembered the way icicles bearded the birdbaths on Leontievsky Street and how it felt to look up to the sky, close her eyes, and let the snow fall on her face, icy and wet, thudding down on her cheeks and lips with the softness of goose down.

  “Berta!”

  “What?” she asked in annoyance, wrenched from her daydream.

  “I am talking to you.”

  “I know, Mameh. I can hear you. I’m not deaf.”

  “But you weren’t listening. You get that faraway look on your face and a whole mountain could fall on your head.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want you should go over and watch that woman by the ribbons. I think she’s about to steal something.” Mameh had been born into the grocery business and had a second sight for thieves. At one time her family owned two shops in Mosny, but had to sell the hardware store to pay the bribes that were necessary to keep her brother out of the army. In those days, there was a quota that had to be filled for each townlet. Every year so many Jewish boys were chosen for a twenty-five-year stint in the military. Fortunately, deferments were easy to come by for the right price, but they were expensive. For a time her parents considered dressing their son as a girl for six years and saving the store. But he was skinny and had a prominent Adam’s apple, and they were afraid of getting caught. So they sold the hardware store, paid the bribes, and kept the grocery. Eventually Mameh’s brother went to the yeshiva and became a popular rabbi though an indifferent scholar. When her parents grew too old to mind the store they gave it to Mameh and Tateh.

  Berta spotted the woman her mother was pointing out and had to admit she did look suspicious. She kept fingering the lace and glancing up at the counter where they were standing. So Berta kept an eye on her while edging past the customers and as a result she nearly collided with a young man who was just coming in the door. Their near collision startled her and she swore in French, calling him an imbecile.

  “Je suis si désolé, mademoiselle. J’ai été tout à fait un idiot et prie votre remission,” he replied hastily, giving her a little bow.

  A prick of surprise. She had never heard a word of French spoken in Mosny that she didn’t utter herself. In one sweep she took him in. He was Jewish, though not devout, because his hair was cut short and he was clean-shaven except for a dark moustache. He was young, younger than she. His eyes were small like a Tartar ’s but intelligent. His clothes were shabby; his vest and jacket had come from different suits. Maybe he had learned a bit of French along the way, a few words here and there, but it was clear that he was just another inhabitant of the Pale, unschooled except in the Talmud and the Torah, stolid, unchanging, and ultimately uninteresting.

  She went back to the thief and stood there until the woman was shamed into leaving the store. Then she returned to the counter and waited on a young mother with a fussy baby in her arms. When his turn came, the young man stepped up and, after giving her a quick smile, glanced behind her to the shelves where the factory-made cigarettes were kept. �
�You have Kollis?” he asked in Yiddish, requesting the most expensive brand.

  She nodded, got a package down, and laid it on the counter. “Ninety kopecks.” It was a ridiculous sum even for readymade cigarettes. She half expected him to walk out. Without hesitation he reached into his pocket, picked out the coins, and gave them to her. Then he picked up his cigarettes, thanked her in French, and left the store to the sound of the jingling bell.

  A few days later, just after sunrise, Berta was out walking a track in the fields. She had just come upon a farmstead a few versts outside of town, where the old bol’shak, the head of the household, sat with his sons on the porch, eating his bulgur wheat from a wooden bowl. They looked her over with an appraising eye as she passed. They knew her. She was that pretty thing from the grocery where they bought their axle grease and kerosene. She tossed them a look of scorn and quickened her pace.

  Not long after that, she heard the groan of wheels behind her and turned to find the same young man from that day in the store riding up in a broken-down cart pulled by an old horse. She had already asked Meshia Partnoy ’s son, the seltzer man, about him and had found out that he was a wheat merchant from Cherkast. She found out from Meshia Partnoy herself, who put him up in her front room whenever he came to town, that his name was Haykel Gregorvich Alshonsky.

  “They call him Hershel. He is very rich, though you wouldn’t know it,” Meshia said in a conspiratorial whisper when she came in to buy her usual order of Shabbes herring.

  “How do you know?” Berta asked.

  “He smokes Kollis. I could make a whole meal out of what he pays for those readymades. He can’t roll his own like everyone else?”

  Hershel Alshonsky pulled up the horse and wished her a good day. “Would you like a ride, Mademoiselle? I’m going into town.”

  “No, thank you,” she replied crisply. “I prefer to walk.” It was better not to encourage these boys.

  “Suit yourself. But it’s a dusty road. Better turn your back when I drive off and cover your eyes.”

  “I assure you I’ll be fine.”

  He tipped his hat and gave the reins a flick.

  A few days later he met her on the same road. When he saw her, he pulled up on the reins and waited until she caught up with him. She was carrying a book, a thin volume, and he asked about it.

  “It’s poetry.”

  “What kind of poetry?”

  “Good poetry, not nursery rhymes or silly limericks. It’s Yeats . . . I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him?”

  He thought for a moment. “Can’t say as I have. Is he famous?”

  “I don’t know,” she said irritably. “Who cares whether he’s famous or not. He’s good, isn’t that enough?”

  “Suppose it is. Maybe I should pick up a copy?”

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself. Although, I don’t think it would be of much interest to you. For one thing, it’s in English. Do you read English?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there you are then,” she said primly, with a note of satisfaction.

  He regarded her with a half smile. “Are you angry with me, Mademoiselle ?”

  She reddened. “Certainly not. Why should I be angry with you? I don’t even know you. I don’t even know why I’m standing here talking to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  The next time they met he told her to wait as he pulled up on the horse. By the time she decided not to wait, he was already coming around to meet her. “I brought you something. I thought you might like it.” He held out another slim volume. This one had a green cover.

  She eyed it suspiciously. “What is it?”

  “Go on. It’s by that poet of yours.” He shoved it into her hand.

  Reluctantly, she read the title and then looked up at him in surprise. “Where did you get it?”

  “In a little shop.”

  “It ’s in French. I didn’t know there was a translation. I’ve been struggling with the English.” She smiled up at him with something akin to gratitude. He returned her gaze, full in the face, without a trace of embarrassment. She found this disconcerting and not a little annoying, but she kept quiet and turned her attention back to the book. She fingered the title, The Wind Among the Reeds, which was embossed in gold above the author’s name. When she turned back to the flyleaf she saw his name, Haykel Gregorvich Alshonsky, written at the top in a cramped hand. She looked at him in surprise. “This is your book.”

  “I may have put my name in it,” he said indifferently. His eyes slid past her to a cart rumbling by on a parallel track. A young barefoot girl sat in the back and hung on to the slats, while the cart bucked erratically over the ruts.

  She flipped through the pages again and this time found faint pencil notations in the margins in the same cramped hand. “This is your book.”

  His eyes traveled back to her. “Is it?” He gave her a teasing smile.

  She studied him for a moment. “You’ve been playing a trick on me.”

  He flicked a horsefly off her shoulder. “Well, what if I have? You deserved it, you know.”

  “I did? And why is that?”

  “You haven’t exactly been friendly. In fact, you’ve been pretty rude. And all because you thought I was unschooled and dressed badly and drove around in a broken-down cart. Is that anyway to treat a fellow traveler who only wanted to be sociable?”

  Of course, she knew he was right.

  “And what was I supposed to do? I just wanted to be left alone.”

  “Is it such a bother to receive a friendly greeting now and then?”

  She shrugged indifferently. The fact that she treated everyone in Mosny with the same discourtesy didn’t seem much of a defense.

  “Look, there’s no sense in arguing about it,” he said with a generous smile. “The sun is barely up and already it’s hot. Why don’t you get in and I’ll drive you back.”

  She was still feeling the sting of his reproach. “And why would I want to do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe for the conversation. You might be in need of it just now. I imagine you still think a lot about Moscow. It can’t very be easy living here after your life there.”

  A pang of grief and for a terrible moment she felt her eyes welling up with tears. She looked up into the sky to keep them back and shielded her eyes with a hand even though the sun was still low and not very bright. When the moment had passed and she was once again on solid footing, she said, “I suppose it is going to be hot today.”

  “Good, then it’s settled.” He took her hand and helped her up to the bench. As she climbed up she was acutely aware of a hole in her stockings just above her right ankle that she had been meaning to mend. She didn’t want him to see it and was careful to stoop as she climbed up to keep her skirts over the spot.

  When she was comfortable, he went around and climbed up beside her. “Do you believe in fairies, Mademoiselle?” It was an allusion to Yeats.

  She smiled with pleasure. “Of course I do, don’t you?”

  He laughed and picked up the reins and gave them a snap. The horse started up and the cart dipped and bounced over the ruts. All the way back they talked about fairies, ghosts, and gods. They quoted passages, sometimes in unison.

  A FEW WEEKS later, Hershel pulled up to the store in a new droshky. Berta was the first one to see it.

  “Is that yours?” she called out as he jumped down.

  “All mine. You like her?” He turned back to admire the carriage.

  “She’s beautiful. I like her very much.”

  Berta had to admit that the droshky didn’t look all that new; the paint was peeling off the chassis and the mudguards were cracked and needed repair. But the brass lamps had been recently polished and the spoke wheels had been painted yellow and the seats seemed to be in good condition.

  “I bought her off a cabman in Cherkast. Come out with me. I have to see a man about a load, but it won’t take long. It’s a beautiful day.”

  Berta went up to change in
to her lavender tea dress. She wore her straw hat with the matching hat band and carried her lace parasol. After she was seated alongside Hershel, he urged the horse on and it trotted out to the clatter of hooves on the hard dirt. She watched her reflection ripple in the shop windows and caught the women at the town pump giving her hard, envious looks. She closed her eyes and it felt like Moscow again, the same heady sense of entitlement, of being special and apart, of being up high where she couldn’t be reached.

  They drove out on the Cherkast road that led north to the wheat center of the same name. It was a wide ribbon of gravel bisecting the rolling fields of half-reaped wheat, the tawny shafts standing straight and tall in the sunlight, casting straight-edged shadows over the stubble left behind by the scythe. Here and there were one-story houses built of logs and plaster, covered with thatched mansard roofs and surrounded by a variety of defeated outbuildings. The yards were typically littered with years of farm trash: broken-down carts, rusted-out tubs, bits and pieces of old scythes and sledge runners and stacks of moldy crates. There was always a dog or two in the yard that barked as they rode past.

  They turned in on one of the back roads, the droshky bouncing along the dusty track, the bells jingling on the harness, the springs squeaking like startled mice. It was one of those hypnotic days, warm and drowsy. There was a hectic surge of excitement inside Berta, an urge to let it all in: the sun, the smell of the black earth, the caress of muslin against her back. Her senses were alive and for the first time in a long while she felt the thrill of freedom—from the store, from the town, from the life she had fallen into since leaving Leontievsky Street.

  Hershel pulled into a rutted drive that led down to a farmstead just off the main road. “This shouldn’t take long,” he said, bringing the droshky to a stop in front of a threshing shed whose roof nearly sagged to the ground. He jumped down. “Want to come along?”

  She nodded and held out her arms so that he could help her down. Together they went up to the house, skirting rusting barrel hoops, a dung heap, beehives, and barking dogs the color of parched earth. At the door he stopped and waited. “Why don’t you just call out?” she asked.