The Little Russian

by Susan Sherman

  “I have to get to Vladivostok and you have to help me,” she said. Up ahead they could just make out the lights on the bridge that spanned the ravine. Once they were across they would be out of the market and the neighborhood would gradually get better.

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to America.”

  “It’s too late to go to America.”

  “Not if I leave from Vladivostok. But I need you to get me a travel permit.”

  “Do you know how far that is?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Nine thousand versts.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “It ’ll take you a month, maybe more. It’s hard traveling. What about your children? Berta, be reasonable. It’s impossible.”

  “Don’t tell me what’s possible. I want you to talk to your father.”

  “I’m not even speaking to him. I can’t ask him for a favor.”

  “Misha . . . I need this.”

  “He makes me grovel. He can be awful.”

  “Then ask your uncle.”

  “What makes you think I’m on better terms with him? He’s just like my father. They even look alike. People are always getting them confused.”

  “Then ask somebody.”

  “I don’t even know where to begin. Berta, I love you, but you’re asking too much.”

  “Do I have to list all the things I’ve done for you? Is that really necessary?”

  Yuvelir took in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. He shook his head in consternation and kept his eyes on the ground in front of him as he walked beside her. “Sometimes, I don’t know how you get me to do these things.”

  She laughed and took his arm. “My poor dorogoy.”

  “And I suppose you’re going to need rail tickets?”

  Yuvelir walked her all the way back up the hill and slept on the sofa in her parlor. The next morning he had breakfast with her in the kitchen because the breakfast room had been closed up. She sat with him at the long worktable in the center of the room and watched him sip his tea and butter his scone. He wasn’t used to getting up in the morning, so he wasn’t very talkative and didn’t even complain about missing a night with his friends.

  THE CHERKAST train station had been donated by the rich merchants of the city as a testament to their wealth and good taste. It was supposed to rival Iaroslavl Station in Moscow. It had a medieval spire on one side, an elaborate rotunda of glass in the middle, and two round moderne turrets on either side of the large double doors. It was costly to build, but it gave the people of Cherkast a beautiful railroad terminal and the merchants a sense that they were every bit as wealthy, as cultured and as worthy of respect, as their Muscovite counterparts.

  That was before the war. Now when Berta walked in through the massive double doors, carrying her bundles and trailing her children and Mitya, the gardener’s helper, whom she had hired to see her safely on the train, she found that most of the expensive tile floor, the one that had cost thousands and thousands and months of negotiation, was covered with men, women, children, and all their belongings. There were families, old couples, and wounded soldiers who had been treated and released; most were stretched out on blankets on the cold floor, napping, smoking, and playing cards. Against the north wall were recovering cholera patients who had been dumped there because their beds were needed by the wounded. Children made a game of leaping over them, until their mothers saw what they were doing and screamed at them in panic.

  Berta had expected this. She had heard what the train stations were like and had prepared for a long wait. But when she walked in that day and actually saw it, smelled the multitudes, heard the hacking coughs, and saw the mass of bodies stretched from one wall to the other, she had to force herself to enter.

  “I don’t want to go in, Mameh,” Sura said, holding on to the folds of Berta’s skirt.

  “I know, darling,” said Berta, “but remember, I said there would be lots of people. And you said it would be all right, because they were just like us. Just people who wanted to take the train, remember?”

  Sura nodded wordlessly but kept clinging to Berta’s skirt. Samuil spotted a boy with a bird in a cage and went over to investigate. “Don’t go far,” Berta called after him, but he didn’t need his mother to tell him not to get lost.

  When Berta looked around for a place to put her things, nobody would meet her eye. They all ignored her and let her stand there with her bundles and her frightened child clinging to her skirt. She had to step over several old men, peasants who grumbled at the intrusion but made no effort to give her room. Then a young woman in the crowd motioned her over. She was a mother too and had a daughter about Sura’s age sitting next to her on a mat. She was a peasant in a rumpled skirt and felt boots, who looked up with puffy, sleepless eyes. Berta and Mitya moved forward on tiptoe, stepping over several people before getting to the little place that the woman had made for them by gathering in her bundles.

  “Thank you. I don’t know what we would’ve done,” Berta said, spreading out a mat.

  “That’s all right,” the young mother replied in broken Russian. “An old man gave me this spot two days ago. He said he’d had enough and went home. Funny thing was a train came shortly after that, but he wouldn’t have gotten on anyway. He was too old and not very strong.”

  Berta and Mitya made a little encampment by arranging the bundles in a circle around their mats and blankets.

  “Mameh, I want to go home,” Sura whispered, her round, frightened eyes soon filling with tears.

  The woman’s little girl watched her, glancing at Sura’s doll. She was a pretty girl, dark like her mother, with soft eyes and a full mouth that looked as if it had been stung by a bee.

  “Why don’t you show this nice little girl your doll?” Berta said to Sura.

  Sura looked over at her and shook her head.

  “Why not, it might be fun.”

  The little girl got up and took a cautious step forward. “No,” Sura said, clutching the doll to her chest.

  “That’s not very nice,” Berta said.

  “I don’t care. I don’t want to be nice. I want to go home,” said Sura, tears spilling down her cheeks.

  Berta shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry,” she said to the little girl. “Maybe another time.”

  “That’s all right,” the woman said, drawing her daughter to her. “She’s shy too. We understand.”

  Berta suddenly sat up. “Samuil?” She jumped to her feet and Mitya did the same. “Samuil!” she cried out, looking in every direction.

  “Here, Mameh!”

  She whipped around and found him over by the boy with the bird in a cage. “Oh,” she sighed in relief. “Well, don’t go far,” she called out. He ignored her and went back to the bird. “It’s just like him to get lost. He’s always wandering off.” She sat down, ignoring all the exhausted faces that were glancing over in her direction.

  “They are such a worry, aren’t they?” said the young mother. “They like to keep us worrying from one minute to the next.” Her daughter lay in her lap and she stroked her long hair, rocking her back and forth like a baby. “We almost lost this little one last winter . . . she had a high fever. I thought she was going to burn up.”

  “Sura had a fever like that two years ago. The doctor said she was lucky to survive.”

  “Lucky to have a doctor, I’d say. There was an old woman in our village who came whenever there was sickness, but I never believed in her spells. She cut a length of Olga’s hair and wound it around a knife and put it under her bed. That was supposed to cut her fever.”

  “Couldn’t you get a real doctor?” Berta asked.

  “I wanted to, but my father-in-law was against it. He said the old woman was just as good. I suspect he didn’t want to pay. I can tell you when Olga grows up she will go to school. She won’t be like her mother. She’ll be able to make her own way. She’ll be smart and maybe even have a trade.”

  Sura got up and cam
e over to Olga and held out her doll. Olga sat up and took it tentatively. She fingered the delicate lace collar and the velvet dress and moved over so that Sura could sit down beside her.

  After Kata Chaneko introduced herself and took out her embroidery, their little encampment began to take on the flavor of a domestic scene. “So, what have you heard?” Berta asked, watching Kata’s deft fingers move the needle back and forth through the yoke of a child’s blouse.

  “A train is coming. They say it ’s a big passenger train, big enough to take us all, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’ve seen lots of trains come and go since I’ve been here, but all of them were going the other way, to the front. Troop and supply trains mostly, hardly any passenger trains. Once I saw one of those special trains, the kind with the red curtains. It whizzed by here like a lightning bolt. People said it was the czar and the czarevitch, but who can tell?” Kata tied a knot and cut the thread with her teeth. “So where are you going?” she asked, looking up briefly.

  “To Vladivostok and then to America.”

  “Such a long way. Why are you going there?”

  “My husband.”

  “He is not in the war?”

  “No, he was in America when it started.”

  “This is good, yes? You still have a husband. Mine is dead.”

  “He was in the war?”

  Kata nodded. “The Jews killed him. They tell the Germans where to bomb. They have a lotion, you know. The Jews I mean. They put it on and it makes them safe from the bombs.”

  Berta stared at her new friend, then let her eyes travel to an old sleeping couple lying nearby. After that she let the conversation slip away. She would’ve liked to look for another place to sit, but Sura was too comfortable with Olga and she didn’t want to make her move. So instead she lay back on her bundles and closed her eyes. Vladivostok was so far away. America was halfway around the world. What would she find when she got there? Would she find Hershel? Would he be alive? And what would she do if he weren’t?

  Berta thought she would never get to sleep in the crowded room. There were people all around her, coughing and snoring and talking in loud whispers. The wounded were groaning and there was a cholera patient who kept calling out for a nurse. But she must’ve fallen asleep because sometime in the middle of the night she was awakened by an approaching train whistle. She got up along with the rest of the crowd and started to gather up her things. She could hear the blasts of steam from the locomotive and the clanking of wheels as it changed tracks and pulled into the station. Soon the crowd was on its feet, lumbering forward in an insomnious haze. She called to Mitya, who was already behind her with the bundles. Berta picked up Sura, ignoring her sleepy protests, and took Samuil’s hand.

  At first the crowd was hardly moving, inching forward to the platform, a human tide at Berta’s back, pushing her along onto the heels of the people in front of her. A shout from the platform alerted the crowd that the train was boarding. After that they became more insistent, jostling one another for a better position, pushing forward with growing impatience, unmindful of the belongings of others that they trampled under their feet. A shriek was heard in the crowd. It sounded terrified and put everyone on edge.

  “It’s the bird, Mameh,” shouted Samuil over the tumult. “It’s only the bird.” And to prove him right the bird screamed again, but this time his scream was answered by another across the room on the other side. It was the scream of a terrified woman, followed by shouts of men. Then, more screams.

  The crowd began to panic. It surged forward, carrying Berta and the children along, trampling everything in its path, an insensible mass of humanity that threatened to eat itself alive. Mitya soon disappeared as the crowd closed in around him and Sura began to cry. In an instant Samuil’s hand was torn from Berta’s. “Samuil!” she screamed. “Samuil!”

  “I’m here, Mameh,” he shouted back, and then miraculously his hand found hers.

  She saw an old man trip and fall and heard him screaming as the mob crushed him. His wife tried to help him up, but she went down too. Her shrieks were ignored until they were cut off. Kata and Olga were ahead of them. Kata screamed as Olga was torn from her arms. She bent down to pick up her child and was knocked off her feet by the oncoming throng. By the time Berta reached the spot where they had gone down she thought she could see a blue-black arm barely visible beneath the tramping boots.

  “Don’t let go!” she shrieked, holding tight to her children while she frantically searched for a way out. They were trapped in the howling blanket of people that stretched from one wall to the other. People were screaming and clawing at one another, struggling to stay on their feet. Clothes were torn from victims’ bodies, their faces misshapen, teeth broken, limbs at odd angles. The floor was sticky with blood and vomit.

  Then she saw that even in their panic the people were avoiding the cholera patients. They were going around them as if they were surrounded by a solid wall of fire. Inside, the patients lay on mats breathing their infected air, sweating through their bedclothes and watching the desperate crowd with feverish, glassy-eyed stares. The crowd skirted their perimeter, sometimes tripping over the invisible line, but always leaping back, choosing the possibility of being crushed into a bloody mass to shitting themselves to death.

  Berta allowed herself to be carried along, but she kept edging closer to the north wall. A woman to her right tripped and screamed. She was trampled despite her husband’s efforts to fight off the crowd. He fell too and a man tripped over them both, several more went down, and for an instant she could see a way to the wall. She didn’t hesitate. She got a good grip on Sura and held on to Samuil’s hand and, leaping over a crushed body, she pushed her way through the crowd. At one point she nearly lost her footing but regained her balance and made one last effort to get through, until, at last, she succeeded in breaking free and came stumbling into the north wall and the relative safety of the infected area.

  A patient looked over at her as she crumpled to the floor next to his cot, hugging her children, crying and thanking a god that may or may not exist. He tried to say something to her, but his voice was too feeble. It was lost in her tears and the chaos all around them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  January 1915

  THE MORNING was brilliant and bitterly cold after the snowstorm. The snow was so deep it nearly covered the first-floor windows. A boy arrived in a sledge and handed Berta a note through the kitchen door. It was from Hershel’s attorney, Mendel Levy, and in it he requested to see her in his office as soon as possible. No appointment necessary. It was that phrase, more than anything, that made her feel queasy. After her first fearful thoughts she reasoned that it couldn’t be that bad or Mendel Levy would have come up to see her himself. It might even be good news. He had heard from Hershel and everything was all right. There was money she didn’t know about. He had figured out a way to get them out of Russia. They were going to America. She knew it could be dangerous to think like this. She could be disappointed or worse. It was such a long-held belief in the shtetlekh, thinking too positively invited disaster, that she just accepted it without question.

  Since she had to go to her bedroom for suitable clothes, she put on a heavy coat and gloves. She and the children had been living in the kitchen all winter because she couldn’t afford to heat the rest of the house; now, whenever she had to go out to the other rooms, she had to bundle up as if she were going outside. She pulled on gloves as she walked through the butler’s pantry to the dining room, where the table and chairs sat huddled together under sheets. All the furniture in the house had been covered in white sheets and now the interior seemed to merge with the white snow outside, as if the house had turned itself inside out.

  Later that morning, Mendel Levy met her in the reception area of his office and took her hand in greeting. He ushered her down the hall to his private office, all the time chattering about how lucky they were that they lived in Cherkast and not in Moscow, where the shortages were bad and the
lines were impossible. “I hear they have to be up before dawn just to get a can of kerosene. They ’re even burning the fences,” he said, showing her into his office. It was an overheated affair stuffed with leather furniture and the Matisses he was fond of collecting.

  After they were settled and tea had been offered and declined, he told her the bad news: The bank was repossessing her house. She stared at him and for a moment didn’t know what to say. Even though she knew the mortgage hadn’t been paid in months, she still couldn’t quite believe it. Staring vaguely at a bronze bear on his desk, she said, “I thought you were going to say you found a way out of Russia for us.”

  “Berta, we’ve been through all that,” he said, with a note of impatience. “There is no way out.”

  “Not even through Finland?”

  “I told you about Finland. It’s impossible. It’s all impossible. Now it’s time to put away these ridiculous notions and start thinking about how you’re going to make it through the war. It won’t be easy and there’s no telling how long it will last. That’s why the first thing we must do is sell your furniture.”

  She looked up in alarm. “All of it?”

  “I don’t think you understand your circumstances. Your accounts have been wiped out. You have no more money. That ’s why it’s important to start living within your means. Fortunately, I know a little apartment not far from the Berezina. You and the children will be quite comfortable there. It’s a nice apartment. A friend of mine had it for years.”