The Little Russian

by Susan Sherman

  “What are they doing, Mameh?”

  “Taking our engine.”

  “Why?”

  “They probably ruined theirs. Or maybe they ran out of wood.”

  The passengers milled about on the track bed, talking in low voices, hands in pockets, looking lost. Nobody knew which way to go. Some were for finding a farmstead and asking the way. Others were for following the tracks. One man, a Jewish blacksmith holding a cloth bag containing his tools, told the others that he knew of a town about half a day’s walk.

  “What kind of a town?” asked a muzhik, his eyes narrowing.

  “A Jewish town.”

  “A zhydy town?” What good is that?” He spat on the ground and walked away.

  “What’s the name of this town?” asked a man in an expensive topcoat. He could have been a doctor or perhaps a lawyer.

  “Lipovec,” said the blacksmith. He was a spare man with muscular arms. “It’s small, but it’s on another line. There’s a chance we could catch a train from there. Anyway, I’m going. Come or stay, it’s all the same to me.”

  He picked up his tool bag and started off across the muddy field. Some of the passengers, Jews mostly, followed behind him. Berta and Samuil were among them. The others chose to wait for the Reds to leave. Then they planned on climbing back into the cold dead carriages and waiting, for what, they did not know.

  It was difficult getting across the field. A fine mist had begun to fall, gentle but insistent, adding more water to the muddy troughs between the furrows. Soon the water had soaked through Berta’s shawl, droplets dripping down her back and onto her face. It was impossible to stay out of the mud. Only by stepping on clumping weeds or skirting the deeper quagmires between the furrows were they able to make any progress at all.

  The going got easier once they reached a stand of birches that stood between the field and the road. There the path was solid as it wound under the chartreuse leaves fluttering in the ripening morning. Names were carved into the thick creamy trunks. Names like Mykola and Ostap spelled out in dark bark that had grown up through the knife marks.

  Once on the road they avoided the mud by walking on the shoulder or along the middle where newly sprouted grass had just begun to grow. The going wasn’t difficult and they made good time, although it turned out that Lipovec was farther than the blacksmith had remembered. They entered the town square that afternoon, worn out, mud up to their shins, and looked around at the shops that were all closed. Something was wrong. Even with the new edict, something should have been open. The street was deserted and the houses were shuttered. There was a visor cap in the middle of the street and a laundry basket full of wet clothes near the pump. There was a wheelbarrow on its side by the grocery and rakes and hoes still out on display in front of the hardware store.

  The passengers began to disperse, some going off down one lane or another looking for lodgings and something to eat. Berta and Samuil went down one cramped lane where the houses were all one story, peeling plaster over brick, with steep sloping roofs of rusty tin or crumbling shingles. The windows on all the houses were either shuttered or boarded up and many of the front doors had been reinforced with planks. They went from door to door, balancing on the boards that had been placed over the mud, calling out, but receiving no answer even though they could see smoke drifting out of the chimneys.

  “Where is everybody, Mameh?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked up at a ruined castle on a hill above the town and thought it might be Polish. She wondered if they would have to spend the night there without shelter from the rain or cold. Then she saw a woman in a checkered shawl running lightly over the boards a few houses up. She was small, half buried in her shawl, and she ran with a certain grace, keeping her skirts well up over her ankles and her boots relatively clean. She was carrying a loaf of bread under her arm and a sack of potatoes in her hand.

  “Mother, is there a place we could stay tonight?” asked Berta coming over to her.

  The woman looked annoyed. “I’m no one’s mother and no, there isn’t.”

  “Our train’s been requisitioned and we have no place to stay.”

  “Well, that’s not my problem,” she said, about to go on.

  “All we need is a sofa, a rug, a place on the floor. I’ll pay.”

  At this the little woman turned back. “How much?”

  “Five rubles.”

  “That’s not very much.”

  “Imperial rubles.”

  Her eyebrows flared and she considered the offer. The imperial ruble was the only money left in Russia beside the kerenki that had any value. “Just the two of you?”

  Berta nodded.

  She shifted the potatoes to her hip. “Well . . . I suppose I could use the company.” Berta started to thank her, but the woman held up her hand. “Just pay me in advance. That’s all I ask. The words you can keep.”

  The woman led the way to a low house with peeling whitewashed walls under a sagging tin roof. It was fronted by a picket fence that had lost a few posts and was listing badly. From the street they crossed on several boards that led up to a stone step and a front door that had been reinforced like the others. There were six small windows on either side of the door, all shuttered and secured with pieces of scrap lumber that had been hammered into place with big square nails. When the woman reached the door, she shifted her packages to one arm and stuck a key into the lock. Then, after looking up and down the street, she opened the door. “Hurry up. Get in,” she hissed, holding the door open.

  The interior was dim, the only light coming from the slats of the shutters. Once a lamp was lit Berta could see that they were in one big room that served as both kitchen and parlor. There was a stove and a faded sofa covered in a silk shawl, and displayed on the walls and side tables were framed photographs, posters, and memorabilia from the Yiddish stage. White suede gloves lay next to a vase full of palm fronds that had been painted gold. Sequined slippers sat under a bell jar, and hanging on a hook was an opera cloak decorated with jet beads and ostrich feathers. The photographs showed actors in dramatic poses, heavily made up against painted scenery. The posters announced the productions of various Goldfadn plays: A Little Letter to a Bride, The Daughter of Jerusalem, Koldunye, and others.

  The woman watched as Berta and Samuil examined her treasures. “You like my mementos?” she asked, smiling for the first time.

  “Is this you?” Berta asked indicating a photograph of a woman, dramatically lit, dressed in a shroud and heavy black eye makeup, rising up from a coffin.

  “Yes, I was Leah’le in The Dybbuk. An electrifying performance, that’s what they said. Breathtaking was the word they used. And here I am as Sappho and that’s Lev Polgar, very famous in his time. I’m Pessel Landau, you’ve heard of me?”

  They looked blank.

  “No?” she sighed. “And here I’m Dina in Bar Kokhba. It was before we were allowed to speak Yiddish. Before your time I imagine.” She looked at the photograph and smiled. “I remember we were in Zem-khov or maybe it was Kitai-Gorod and the gendarmes came and we all had to speak gibberish so they’d think we were speaking German.”

  Pessel Landau was small with jet-black hair and large, heavily made-up eyes. In the gloom she could almost pass for a girl with her little steps and the coy tilt of her head. On closer examination it was easy to see that her hair was dyed and that she wore too much face powder and rouge. Even in the subdued light one could see the sag of her jawline and the hardness around her mouth. She went over to the sideboard to light the samovar and Berta asked, “So why are all the windows boarded up? What’s everybody afraid of?”

  Pessel blew out the match with her red, red lips. “You don’t know?”

  A FEW HOURS later as the sky clouded over and heavy drops began to fall, a squadron of the Petliura Brigade of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Third Haidamak Regiment, rode into Lipovec at a gallop, eager for the battle that lay ahead. There was no resistance, no battle. The inhabitants were in hiding,
but this didn’t keep the corporal from proclaiming a victory over the revolutionary scum and ordering a “celebration” to follow.

  There was a proclamation that was nailed to the door of the main synagogue. It demanded that all the Jewish men come to the town square by sunset. The residents of Lipovec had not avoided two pogroms by following such an order. Instead the men stayed in their homes and Rabbi Dimanshtein of the Stambulski Synagogue, carrying a Torah and wearing a satin caftan, a prayer shawl, shtreimel, and phylacteries, led fourteen of his most pious congregants into the town square. There they presented the corporal with a Torah scroll, a souvenir plaque written in Hebrew commemorating the acquittal of Mendel Beilis, and three thousand rubles. The plaque looked like gold but it was only brass. “What’s this for?” the corporal wanted to know. He hadn’t even bothered to get off his horse. He just slung one leg over the saddle and leaned down to accept the gifts.

  “For the hard life of a soldier,” said the Rabbi in Russian. “Please take them with our gratitude and our prayers for your good health and prosperous future.”

  The corporal opened the bag of money and began to count. There had to be at least a few thousand rubles, which was not a great sum, but more than he had ever seen in his life. He liked the idea of having a few thousand rubles all to himself; he had already decided not to share the money with any of his men. He was the corporal after all, and could make these kinds of decisions.

  The problem was his commander, Otaman Semesenko, a twenty-year-old farm boy laid up in Proskuriv with what he thought was influenza but was really the tertiary stage of syphilis, had given him precise orders not more than two days before. They were not to take bribes, not to loot, not to rape or anything else that would bring dishonor to the regiment. They were only to kill Jews. The corporal wanted to do what was right, but a few thousand rubles was a lot of money. It was a dilemma. How could he take the money and the gold plaque and still be true to his orders? The answer didn’t come to him until well after they had left the town and were nearly halfway to their next destination. What law said he couldn’t keep the rubles and still kill the Jews? He was the corporal after all. He could make these kinds of decisions.

  It was late by the time the Cossacks rode back into Lipovec and most of the town was sleeping. The rain had stopped and the clouds were beginning to move off. Before going into “battle” they took the usual precautions, which included smearing black grease paint on their faces. In the cold light of the moon their glistening skin looked decidedly blue.

  Their first stop was the Howling Dog Tavern on the outskirts of town. It was so far out that no one heard the screams of the tavern keeper’s wife when they threw her out of the second-story window. The tavern keeper tried to comply with their orders, but his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t insert the key into the lock of his storeroom. So they hung the little man from a spindly oak at the side of the tavern. Even though he was barely five feet tall and as thin as a whip, the branch broke under his weight and he and the rope tumbled to the ground. The Cossacks took this as a sign from God that the little zhyd should be spared from hanging, so they shot him in the head and turned on his four daughters and young son, whom they had found hiding under the beds.

  WHEN PESSEL heard the first screams of the pogrom, she grabbed several pots of water, the bread, and a bowl of boiled potatoes. She told Berta to bring the kerosene lamp and an empty bucket and follow her down to the cellar. There she led them to a pile of moldering fruit crates that lay among the rubbish on the dirt floor.

  “Help me,” she said, putting down her things. She and Berta flung the crates aside until Berta could see by the light of the lantern that there was a trap door half buried in the dirt. Together she and Samuil pulled on a heavy iron ring at the top of the door until it rose up on its hinge revealing a hole in the floor.

  “My uncle had it built after the ’05 pogroms. He liked to be prepared.”

  Pessel threw down a rope ladder and went down first. Then they handed her the supplies and came down after her. Berta pulled the crates back over the door and covered it with more rubbish as she lowered it into place.

  The hole was no more than six feet square. The walls were slick with water and the floor was damp and cold. Even so, they sat down on the bare dirt and shivered as the cold crept under their clothes, numbed their legs and buttocks, and seeped into their bones. As soon as they were settled Pessel blew out the light and they sat in the dark, shivering, wishing they had brought their coats, and listening to the screams of the pogrom that came in through the cellar window.

  AT THE bakery, the Cossacks helped themselves to meat pies and bread. At the cobbler’s, they took the hides and shoes. At the silversmith’s, they took sacks of solid silver goblets, platters, and candelabras, every bit of the silversmith’s inventory. Yet they didn’t take his greatest possession until they climbed the stairs and found his fourteen-year-old daughter hiding in an armoire with her two younger brothers.

  They took the girl into her parents’ bedroom and threw her down on her mother’s faded comforter, a wedding gift from a long-dead aunt. She struggled at first, but after the third Cossack, she settled down and even stopped screaming. After the fifth her eyes became fixed on the faded roses in the wallpaper that were splattered with her brothers’ blood. During the sixth something broke inside her and she died before the farm boy was finished.

  SOMETIME during the night Berta heard the loud screech of boards being pried off the front door. It didn’t take long for the Cossacks to break it down and soon she heard the tramp of their heavy boots on the floorboards overhead. Moments later there were boots on the stairs, then in the cellar directly above them, kicking the crates about and rooting through the garbage.

  “Well?” another one shouted from above.

  “Nothing. And it smells like shit down here.” His voice sounded like it was in the hole right next to them.

  “Look again. Look for fresh dirt.”

  “Nothing. Just some old rubbish.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m coming up. It stinks too bad down here. Something’s dead.”

  He climbed the stairs and for a while longer there was more clumping about, glass shattering, and the heavy scrape of furniture. Then there was silence in the house, broken only by the sounds of destruction going on in nearby streets.

  The pogrom continued for another day and into the night. By then the slop bucket was overflowing and the smell was overpowering. They had run out of water and food and Berta was worried about Samuil, who had begun to cough. “I’m going up,” she said, after the screams and the gunshots had drifted to another part of the neighborhood.

  “No, Mameh. I’ll go.”

  “Are you crazy? You’re just a boy. You stay here.”

  “Why? I can hide and I’m fast.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Maybe you should let him go,” said Pessel.

  “I’m not letting my son go out there.” She struck a match and lit the lamp so she could see the ladder.

  “But, Mameh, I can do this,” he insisted. “I’m better at it than you are.” His skin was pale in the lamplight. It was covered in a moist sheen like the underbelly of a frog.

  “You’re not going.”

  “I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

  “No, and that’s the end of it.”

  “I have to go. You’ll get caught and I won’t. You know I’m right.”

  She stopped on the first rung and looked at him steadily in the eye. “You can really do this?”

  “Easy.”

  “No, not easy. This isn’t spying on the clockmaker’s wife. If they catch you, they will kill you. They will hack you to pieces.”

  “I can do it.”

  She sighed wearily and then climbed back down. “All right, but don’t leave the house. Just empty the slops, fill up the water pots, and bring back a little food. It shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes.”

  “
Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, climbing the ladder.

  Pessel said, “There’s a jar of pickled eggs in the cupboard and a box of biscuits on the top shelf. They might have missed them. It’s hard to see up there. They’ll be stale by now, but they’ll have to do.”

  Berta reached up and touched his leg as he crawled through the opening. “Be careful. Here, take the bucket. No, leave the door open.”

  “What if they come?”

  “You’ll need it open.”

  Samuil climbed up out of the hole and stood on the dirt floor breathing in the musty air of the cellar. It smelled like an ocean breeze compared to the air in the hole. He turned back and pulling his shirt up over his nose he picked up the bucket and climbed out of the cellar. The house was in shambles. It smelled of urine, whiskey, and smoke. The boards over the two windows had been ripped off and the front door dangled by a hinge. Nearly every piece of furniture had been smashed or thrown out the door into the street. The photographs lay in pieces on the floor, the contents of a costume trunk scattered over the wreckage. Through the broken windows, he could see the part of town that was burning. There was a dull glow over the houses and ash was raining down on the muddy lane. He carried the slop to the back door and standing on the steps poured it slowly into the dirt so it wouldn’t splatter. Then he stood on the porch listening to the sporadic pop, pop, pop of rifle fire.

  He went to the water barrel and plunged the scooper into the cold water and drank his fill. Then he poured some over his hands and on his head and filled the water pots. He hunted for food, but found nothing, not even a raw potato to ease the hunger pangs. He climbed up the counter and checked the top shelves, but there was nothing, only a few rat droppings. He took the water pots and the empty slop bucket back down to the hole and handed them down his mother.

  “There’s no food in the kitchen. I’m going out to look for some.”