The Little Russian

by Susan Sherman

  “No!”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “Samuil, no!” she cried out.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.” Samuil climbed up the cellar stairs and ran out of the house into the street. He could hear his mother coming after him, but he had a head start and he was faster.

  The lane was lit by the glow of burning houses and littered with clothing, broken furniture, and household goods that had been thrown out the windows into the mud. The air was charged with the sound of gunfire and the smell of smoke. He heard a woman’s scream that was cut off abruptly, like lifting the needle off a phonograph record.

  He ran along on the boards, sometimes using sofa cushions and pieces of furniture to keep from plunging into the sucking mud. He hugged the houses until he found an open doorway or window, and if the house didn’t look too damaged, he went inside to hunt for food.

  In one house, he found a generous parlor and a dining room. It had probably been the home of a prosperous merchant. Now everything was gone, the doors and windows, the floors were bare, and even the wallpaper had been stripped from the walls. In the kitchen he found all the cupboards open, not a crumb left. He was about to leave when he saw a figure lying on its side facing the wall near the stove. He didn’t want to look at the body, but something drove him to it . . . perhaps a desire to make sure the man was really dead.

  When he turned the body over he found a middle-aged man whose throat had been cut. The man’s sightless white eyes stared up at him and his gaping wound and open mouth were black with dried blood. Samuil’s stomach turned and there was a sweet sticky taste in his mouth. He started to sweat and his legs began to tremble. Before he could faint he turned from the body and ran out of the house. He darted down the middle of the lane, forgetting about his attempts to stay hidden, leaping from cushion to tabletop to bureau drawer, to whatever would keep him from sinking into the mud. At one point he stepped on something soft that gave way and when he turned he saw another body, a woman whose ears were missing.

  He raced on blindly down the street until he came to the little grocery at the corner that stood open and vacant. The windows had been broken, the door was gone, and there were smashed bottles and barrels out in the street, spilling their contents into the mud, mixing pickles and mushrooms with the eclectic brew of annihilation. He ran in and almost slipped on the sticky mess that covered the floor. It smelled like molasses and cooking oil.

  He wanted more than anything to run back to the hole, but there in front of him were jars of herring, boxes of biscuits, smoked salmon, and crackers. He was starving—hungrier than he had ever been in his whole life and for the moment the gnawing in his belly trumped everything, the black blood, the gash in the throat, the lolling head, even the urge to run.

  He gathered up what he could and stuffed it into a potato sack. He was about to dash back into the night when he heard the drunken cries of the Cossacks coming down the street. Without thinking he ran to a barrel and lifted the lid.

  “Go away!” a young boy snapped. He was crouched in the barrel, standing on a layer of wheat flour, nearly doubled over so he could fit inside. He reached out and pulled the lid back down over the opening.

  Samuil tried a cupboard, but another child was hiding there. Another barrel was filled with pickles and vinegar and another one was nailed shut. The Cossacks were on the front steps. There was a high shelf, but no time to reach it . . . potato sacks in the corner . . . too late even for that. The first soldier tramped in shouting to the others that there was food inside. His blue face glistened in the square shaft of moonlight streaming in through a window. There was only the corner now. Samuil dropped to the floor and melded into the stucco wall. His heart was stuttering and he had a tremendous urge to pee. He didn’t know if this would work, if he could stay hidden. He had never become a corner in a room before.

  Chapter Twenty

  March 1920

  BERTA’S BOOTS shattered the icy puddles as she climbed up the steep path; her nose prickled from the cold; her fingers were stiff because she had lost her gloves. She could see a tree with white leaves at the top of the hill, silhouetted against the dawn, its thick roots gripping the ground like the talons of a bird. The grass beneath it was cluttered with what appeared to be boulders.

  Down in the street she could hear the shul klopfer calling the men to morning prayers. Someone was chopping wood and from various quarters came the clamor of carpenters working full tilt to fill the coffin orders. It had been four days since the squadron of Zaporozhian Cossacks had pulled out, leaving twenty dead and the town in ruins. It was getting warmer and there were still bodies lined up on the synagogue floor that wouldn’t wait another day. Even at this hour the town was alive with people laboring for the dead: the gravediggers, the shroud makers, the men at the sawmill. All working to put the dead to rest.

  The tree was festooned with scraps of paper that quivered in the early morning breeze. Berta had brought her own scrap and worked to tie it to a branch using a small piece of twine. On it she had written a few lines from a woman’s prayer, an ancient plea for her dead child, addressed to a god she didn’t believe in. The tree was alive with fluttering prayers: Some were for children, others for husbands and parents; some were for luck or simply for the gift of continued life. They looked like butterflies poised on a branch, ready to fly up to heaven with their messages on behalf of the dead and the ones who were left behind to mourn them.

  She turned and joined the other women who had come up before her, who were sitting on the grass together and yet apart. No one spoke. No one had to because they understood each other, why they had come and why they were together. Their shawls were pulled up over their heads and their skirts were splayed out around them, solid women, easily mistaken for boulders in the predawn light. Berta pulled her shawl up too and sat among them, her skirts spread out all around her, giving her the same look of solidity, another sad boulder on the scruffy winter grass. She lowered her head and closed her eyes, but instead of a prayer she hummed an old Tartar song about horses on the steppes that she used to sing.

  Stop pretty one and let me up

  Let me up and we will ride the wind

  Ride the wind around the world

  Just you and me around the world

  Sura and the horse around the world

  When Berta came back down she found Pessel running out of the house with laces untied, her coat thrown over her nightdress, wearing a kerchief over her wild hair that fell in disarray down her back. She ran along the boards that lay over the mud, extending her arms out for balance and calling out to Berta. “A merchant has come,” she said, nearly bursting with the news. “I just heard it from the old woman in the back. I know him. He lives near Zhvanets.”

  Pessel knew all about Berta’s destination and her intention to cross the river into Poland. “Why are you just standing there?” Pessel asked impatiently. “Go, go. You’ll miss him.”

  “What do you think he’ll charge?”

  “He’ll be fair. He won’t take advantage. He isn’t like that. He’s harmless.” It was the highest praise Pessel could give any man.

  Berta found the merchant in front of the stable harnessing his horse to a cart that was filled with sacks of potatoes. “Are you going to Zhvanets?” she asked.

  “Eventually,” the merchant said, glancing up briefly.

  “Will you take me and my son?”

  This time he studied her more closely before shaking his head. “I cannot. Sorry.”

  “Even if I pay you?”

  “That’s not it. I can’t overload Esther. She won’t have it.” The chestnut mare looked around when she heard her name. “Yes, you, my beauty, I’m talking about you.” He kissed her nose and stroked her flank. “She won’t pull a heavy load over these roads. I know her. She’ll be cross and make everyone miserable.”

  As it turned out, Mottel Fichmann was able to sell a lot of potatoes that day. He gave a pood to the rabbi for the destitute an
d sold several more by midmorning. By the afternoon, his cart was considerably lighter and this caused him to reconsider. He asked around for the whereabouts of the pretty widow and her boy and was told they could be found at the actress’s house.

  It only took a few minutes for Berta and Samuil to pack up their things and say good-bye to Pessel. She hugged them and gave them each an autographed picture of herself as Fanitshke in Mentshn. The photographs were dull with dirt and creased by the many boots that had ground them into the floor. Still, they were a good likeness of her.

  They went to the stables and found Mottel Fichmann already loaded up and ready to go. He moved over so there would be room on the bench. Once they were settled in, he gave Esther a flick of the reins and a string of endearments designed to get her moving. After that, they moved along so slowly that soon Pessel grew tired of waving her handkerchief and went home even though they were still well in sight.

  Mottel Fichmann was a Jew who looked like a peasant in a scruffy sheepskin coat and felt boots. He seemed bigger than he was because of his broad shoulders and the way he planted his feet firmly on the ground. Because he had a deep appreciation for his own voice, it wasn’t long before he was telling them about his life in Zhvanets, about his lovely wife and their five children, about his travels and his get-rich schemes and anything else that happened to pop into his head as they plodded along over the muddy roads. When he wasn’t talking, he was singing to Esther, or stopping for the night with an obliging widow, of which there seemed to be an endless supply from Kiev Province to Podolia.

  One afternoon they wound down a steep embankment and came to a small tributary of the Buh River where several women were washing their clothes on the rocks. The women stood in the shallows with their skirts hoisted up and tucked into their waistbands, their brown arms glistening in the sunlight, their hair tied up under white kerchiefs. They beat the clothes against the rocks while they laughed and gossiped, oblivious to the approaching potato cart.

  When Fichmann saw the women he pulled Esther up and announced, “It’s Shabbes. We’re stopping here.”

  “Can’t we go a little farther?” Berta asked. “It’s early. The weather is fine. The roads are drying out. We can make some real progress today.”

  “Travel on Shabbes? But it’s against God’s will.”

  “It’s only noon. Sunset is hours away.”

  “Still, no sense in pushing it. We might as well call it a day. We’ll stop with Froy Katzenberg, lovely woman, and such a cook as you never saw.”

  Berta and Samuil exchanged a look. It had become apparent that Reb Fichmann was not fond of pushing it. It didn’t matter to him if their journey took an extra day or an extra week as long as there were plenty of widows along the way to make him a hot meal and give him a place in their bed.

  Before long they came to a little townlet on the river. The town had only one road running through it, so it wasn’t too difficult to find Froy Katzenberg’s house, a cobbled-together structure that was only standing because there were two other ramshackle houses on either side holding it up. Even before he had a chance to get down from the cart, the front door flew open and a shapely woman came running out to greet him. She had a thick dark braid twisted into a bun at the base of her neck and two bright spots of color on her cheeks where she had just pinched them. Her chin had a deep cleft like a fist and her round head stood straight and firm on a long stalk of neck.

  “Gut Shabbes!” he cried, opening his arms and encircling her in his sheepskin coat, tenderly kissing her cheek, her neck, and her lips.

  “I didn’t think you were coming.”

  “Not coming? Of course I’m coming. Why wouldn’t I come to see my little swallow?” He called all his widows this, indulging them, flattering them, and, most of all, giving them the affection and attention they sorely needed.

  When the widow noticed Berta and Samuil, she cooled visibly until Fichmann introduced them as his paying fares. After that she relaxed and invited them all in for tea. They sat in her front room, on rickety chairs, eating stale poppy seed cake with their fingers and drinking glasses of hot tea. The widow was talking about her late husband, whose hand-tinted photograph hung over the chimneypiece and showed him in the uniform of the infantry.

  “Killed at Brest,” she said with a sigh. “Or at least he was shot there. They wouldn’t treat him at the front, because he was a Jew. He had to be transported to another hospital and they said he died on the way. Such a genius with a violin. Such a gentle man.” Her eyes misted over as she stared up at his photograph.

  Seeing how his widow had suddenly turned glum, the potato merchant jumped in and in a hearty voice that was more peasant than Jew, he asked, “So, my little sunshine, what have you got for me today? I’m in the mood for work.”

  “Oh, Mottel,” she said, looking at him with tender affection. Then, like a general in the field addressing her troops, she rose and announced to the assembled that first they’ll clean and then they’ll cook.

  Berta could see that a timely departure was impossible. The widow was determined to make this a special Shabbes and soon she had Fichmann carrying the front door, the armoire, and the kitchen table down to the river so she could clean them properly. When she wasn’t scrubbing furniture, she was cooking soup or baking a pie. She put everybody to work. Samuil gutted and scaled the fish. Berta plucked the chicken until her fingers bled.

  During dinner, the potato merchant was especially attentive to his widow. He touched her lightly on the arm to make a point. He kissed the back of her neck when he thought no one was looking and held her hand under the table. The widow soaked it up and her cheeks flamed with pleasure. After dinner, the Shabbes goy came to set the kitchen right and the four of them sat by the stove and listened to Fichmann’s stories about his travels and how he outsmarted the Cossacks by pretending to be a deaf mute peasant so he wouldn’t give himself away with his thick Yiddish accent.

  When it got late, the widow gave Berta a few mats and some blankets and said she and Samuil could sleep by the stove. Then she and the potato merchant climbed the stairs and closed their door. Samuil was asleep before the sounds of their lovemaking drifted down from above. Despite Berta’s attempt to drown them out by pulling a blanket over her head, she could still hear, quite plainly, that Fichmann was making his widow very happy. This was unfortunate. She thought if the widow didn’t sound so enthusiastic maybe they wouldn’t have to spend all of Shabbes with her. Fichmann wasn’t particularly religious. Berta could persuade him to travel on Shabbes provided there was a monetary incentive or better yet a fresh widow at journey’s end. But this current one sounded so passionate, so ecstatic and grateful, that Berta thought it was very possible they could be stuck there for weeks.

  To drown out the widow’s pleasure, Berta pulled her coat over her head on top of the blanket. Still she could hear the moans, which were worse than annoying—they were arousing. They reminded her of her own drought, of the steady metronome of loneliness, a sparse existence, where her needs went unmet year after year. It had been so long since she had been with Hershel that she had nearly forgotten what it was like. She put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to remember, not now, not in this way.

  By Sunday morning, Froy Katzenberg was hinting at a more permanent situation for her and Reb Fichmann. She was serving him breakfast at the little table in the kitchen, kasha and eggs, his favorite. Berta was out on the porch with Samuil, sitting on the steps, soaking up the sun, and pretending not to listen to the conversation going on inside.

  The widow was saying that she thought it might be a good idea if he started keeping some things with her, a change of clothes perhaps or an extra harness for Esther. Just in case. Maybe they should make plans, have a few set visits when she could expect him. That way she could have his supper waiting for him when he arrived home. She tossed off the word home as if it had already been decided that he lived there.

  The potato merchant paused for a mome
nt to appear that he was giving it some thought. “Let me sleep on that, my love,” he said, pouring milk over his kasha. “I love the way you cook the little kernels. The way the little hard bits are mixed in with the softer ones.”

  As soon as the widow mentioned set plans, Berta knew they would be off soon. Right after breakfast, the potato merchant announced that there were hungry people waiting for his potatoes and he couldn’t, in good conscience, keep them waiting another minute. As much as he wanted to spend his days with his beautiful peach blossom, he had to say good-bye and get back on the road, even though he knew it would break his heart.

  After a tearful good-bye, he turned Esther around and soon they were heading out of town under a pale sky. They made good time that day because the roads were dry and Fichmann was tired and not in the mood for widows. They stopped several times for Esther’s benefit, but mostly they plodded on in the fine spring weather, keeping an eye out for Hryhoriiv’s army and Directory troops. Fortunately Fichmann knew all the roads and kept to the less traveled ones, the ones that were little more than cart tracks and wouldn’t have been passable even a week ago.

  That night they shared a room at a little inn in a townlet that the potato merchant jokingly referred to as Ganaiden, Garden of Eden, because of the open sewer running down a trench in the back. There was a wedding in town and every room at the inn was booked. Even so the innkeeper didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to make a little more coin, so she offered them her room, saying she could sleep at her sister’s over the bakery.

  The innkeeper’s bed was a lumpy straw mattress that was only big enough for one. Fichmann insisted that Berta take it, saying that he and Samuil could spread blankets on the floor. At first it was hard to sleep because of the wedding party downstairs, but they were so tired that not even the music and drunken laughter could keep them up.

  Later Berta woke up in the middle of the night to find a hand moving up her thigh. “What are you doing?” she asked, pushing his hand away.