Broken Song

by Kathryn Lasky

  “Hey, Reuven, what about Smorgon? Tell me about it,” Muttle pressed.

  “Yeah, that was quite something.”

  “Quite something—an entire regiment’s rifles jam at the same moment when they had all these strikers lined up against a wall for a firing squad execution? My God! How did you do it?”

  “Easy. I got in the night before. Replaced their supply of percussion caps with ones filled with sand from the Black Sea, and a little thermite.”

  “Astounding.” It wasn’t at all astounding, Reuven thought. It was simple. Half the regiment had been drunk the night before. He had been prepared. He merely went in and swapped the caps. How vulgar this conversation suddenly seemed to him.

  “So you really don’t miss it all?” Reuven asked Muttle again.

  “I told you, I’ve got it all up here.” He tapped his head again. “And as I said, it is an indulgence. What is a world of words without a world of action? It cannot all be endless talking, talking, talking, picking at text.” He paused and his mouth curled into an almost bashful smile. “Sometimes you just have to blow something up. It was astounding what you did at Smorgon—and to think I didn’t even know it was you. My best friend from Berischeva. Oh, Reuven what justification. You redeemed all those who died there.”

  Reuven wanted to say no. He wanted to scream no. How could Muttle be saying this? The air in the little room had suddenly grown hot and fetid. It smelled almost like the study house, full of unwashed old rebbes sweating in their gabardines, belching their sauerkraut and herring odors. How could Muttle be saying these things now, Muttle who in his scholarly days cut into words and their meanings with all the skills and precision of a surgeon with a scalpel?

  But he was saying these things. “Smorgon was the most fantastic piece of work ever. So many of us wished we could have been there to see those rifles jam—the look of disbelief … it was a work of art.”

  It was destruction, thought Reuven. A lot of the rifles not only jammed but also blew up in the soldiers’ faces. How could Muttle be discussing this now as a work of art? As redemptive? Reuven never for one minute regretted what he had done at Smorgon, but it was what it was—a violent attack on men who were murderers themselves. It was not redemptive and it was not a work of art. Is this what happened to revolutionaries? Did they lose their sense of artistic and human values? Was everything reduced to what constituted survival of one group and destruction of another? Was this the motivating moral precept by which all things must be judged and measured? But if all the oppressed people were saved, what then?

  Would they know how to listen to a Brahms concerto? Would a piece of music move them so deeply that tears would fill their eyes? Would words—words of the Talmud, words of Shakespeare—stir their hearts? He looked at Muttle standing there, so different now from what he had been. He searched for the pale, fragile boy who had quivered like a leaf in the wind. “You’ll be like a living book, Muttle.” Wasn’t that what Reuven said to him all those years back? “You’ll have the memory, the tradition for everyone right up here.” But now he wasn’t so sure. He probably did have the words up there where he had tapped his head, but what if he could not attach them to any meaning? What if meaning had vanished?

  And he remembered how Muttle had said years before that the world did not need two living books, for who would be left to play the music? “You carry the music, Reuven. I carry the words.” But had the music receded too? Could Reuven string the notes into phrases to create melody to reveal tone to make meaning? He wasn’t so sure.

  Reuven looked at his friend and tried to piece together fragments of the Muttle he had known. Muttle was now jabbering on about the Bund, about the girls—”Aaah, lovely girls, and so uninhibited. I think the best thing about the revolution is the liberation of the women. It is ultimately the liberation of the men. Marriage is bourgeois.”

  But do you feel anything at all? Or is love only a revolutionary act? Reuven wondered. But he did not ask. Instead he got to the business at hand. “So, Muttle, speaking to me as an agent, for that is why we were to meet, I take it that you were supposed to give me my next assignment.”

  “Yes, yes of course.” Muttle busied himself with his pipe. He seemed to sense that there would be no more shared intimacies, that the meeting was shifting to a firm business footing.

  “Well, the game is up with the String Man in the Cossack uniform of the elite guard. Now we feel that you should begin growing a beard. We are temporarily going to use your talents in a somewhat new way. Not so much as a wracker, but as a deliverer.”

  “Deliverer of what?” Reuven liked the sound of the word.

  “No explosives here. You shall be delivering people.”

  “People?”

  “Often families. Things are worse than ever in the Pale. Especially around here—Nikolayev, Kiev. It’s a hot spot for the secret police. Every day scores of Jews are being arrested for nothing, absolutely nothing. God knows where they are sent. And they arrest the women too, with increasing frequency. Now there is a new minister, Von Plehve. He’s been around for a while, but everyone says he will soon be made head of the secret police. He is a master of propaganda. That massacre in Buvok was his doing. There wasn’t a Cossack in sight; he let the Ukrainian peasantry do the dirty work. He started a rumor, he and his henchmen, about a ritual killing done by Jews for Passover—the murder of a Christian child whose blood was drunk as one of the four cups of wine at the seder table.” Reuven had heard about this. It was a horrid, grisly story.

  “So that was Von Plehve’s doing?”

  “Yes. We can’t wait for him to strike again. We actually have an assassination team training as we speak, but the fellow is slippery. In the meantime, we are helping families escape. It’s not easy. They have to go out under all sorts of covers. Some recently left dressed up as Russian Orthodox priests, if you can believe that. If we can get enough Cossack uniforms, the men can go as soldiers. We have stuffed children and small women into barrels with air holes drilled and put them out as supply convoys. In any case, we get them out of town, some way. There is a strange fellow we use to do a lot of the driving. His name is Wolf. He works in a factory on the edge of the city. Wolf drives them under cover to a few miles south of Chev. You know Chev?”

  Reuven nodded.

  “And that is where you meet them with a wagon and supplies. They are usually tired and hungry. But there is a forest there where they can hole up to recover. I’ll show you the exact spot on the map.”

  “And where do I get the wagon?”

  “Anywhere you can.”

  “And I don’t go with them from there?”

  “No. They must make it on their own. But between there and the border it has been very quiet the last few months. They must get as far as Nimsk the first night, and then within another day they are at the Bug River and the border.”

  “My work sounds easy enough.”

  “Compared to what you’ve been doing, it’s easy.” Muttle paused and lifted a finger. “And oh, by the way, if you can get your hands on a pot of chicken soup for when you meet them, it really helps. Put it in a jug and wrap it in blankets. They are always terribly cold by the time they get to the forest outside of Chev.”

  “So when do I go?”

  “Well, that’s the hard part. You have to have patience. We are never sure when a family or whoever is going to pass through. We have to rely quite a bit on Wolf and when he can help them. And this Wolf is a peculiar fellow. He came from Vishnagova—you know of it?”

  Reuven did know. Vishnagova, a much larger town than Berischeva, had been destroyed in one of the worst pogroms in history. He had not known of anyone who had survived. But then again, no one had known that he and Rachel had survived Berischeva. Maybe if you survived when everyone else had died, it made you strange. Maybe he appeared strange to Muttle.

  “We shall get a message to you when the time comes. In the meantime, it is good for you to go to that cafè every day, around the same time
we met there this evening. For that is where an agent will find you.”

  Then Muttle resumed the business of packing and lighting his pipe. Perhaps pipes were good, for they helped people over the awkward bits in conversation. One did not have to look at the other person; one could become totally absorbed in this mindless, rather messy activity.

  “And, Reuv, it is not good that we hang around together too much—you know, for security. The place, as I said, is swarming with secret agents.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “But there will be time again for us.” Muttle still did not look up from his pipe. A small rain of tobacco bits fell onto his shirtfront. He struck a match and puffed madly. Something began to glow in the pipe’s bowl. He removed the stem from his mouth and expelled a large puff of smoke. “Yes in the future, after the revolution—comrades!” His light brown eyes looked through the swirls of smoke.

  “Comrades,” Reuven said weakly. Then he turned to leave.

  He found the place on Kliminsky Street where it had been arranged for him to stay. It was a dingy little basement room with one narrow soot-stained window that let in a weak sliver of light. It was damp. There was a coal-burning stove, but the ventilation was so poor he was sure that he would asphyxiate himself. He stretched out on the dirty mattress. In a corner across the room he had his small bundle of belongings, even smaller now that he did not have the Cossack uniform. Heavy serge trousers, boiled wool shirts, some underwear, his violin, and yes, a small volume of Shakespeare. That was it. He did not feel hungry, nor did he feel like a drink. He felt as if he were in some strange state of suspension.

  He did not quite believe what had just happened. It had an aura of unreality about it. If he were asked to describe his reunion with his long-beloved and lost friend Muttle, the word that would first pop into mind was “trick.” But perhaps he too had appeared as some sort of trick to Muttle. He had changed as well. There was no denying it. He was no longer the violin prodigy. He was String Man, explosives virtuoso. Still, it did not make it any easier. This man who called himself Muttle was not the Muttle Reuven had mourned and yearned for.

  He remembered so vividly those first days that stretched into months after Muttle had been snatched. The pain had been terrible, the loss seemed to permeate every atom of his being, every second of every hour of his day. It was all he had thought about. In some ways it was worse than when his parents and sister were killed. Then he had had so much to think about. It was as if he didn’t have time to grieve. When had there been time to mourn? But for Muttle, he had mourned. Oh, he had mourned!

  Reuven walked over to the corner and opened the violin case. He tucked the violin under his chin. He raised his bow. He did not know until he set the bow to the strings what he would play. A decisive strong chord sounded. He was playing Chaconne by J. S. Bach, complicated and filled with harmonic beauty. He had not tried it in years. Why now? He did not know, but he was determined to play it as it should be played—decisive, the chords given great breath, sustained so as to obtain a big tone. He could hear Herschel’s voice. “This is not for sissies—you play this big… . The up bow … the up bow, that is what draws out the chords. No frills, no frills, boy. This is austere. Nothing brutal, no crassness with these chords… . That is it, my boy … concentrate … not too abruptly on the detached notes. That is it …”

  Reuven could almost feel the sun coming through the window of Herschel’s cottage, Reb Itchel bent over his books, the wisps of his beard. Were they blending with the smoke from Muttle’s pipe? Concentrate boy … concentrate … He focused on the dust motes in the sliver of light circulating to his rhythm the way he had watched Reb Itchel’s beard. “Now draw back and play the next measures with tenderness … think of the down of the baby chick … think of a flower trembling in a field, a butterfly flitting like gold. Shade the music … give it color, nothing in life is simply one color … shade it … a little dark here and a little light there. Never high noon. It is because of shadows we find light… .”

  Reuven did not know how long he had been playing—a quarter of an hour, an hour? Suddenly he heard a timid knock on his door. He jumped up and went to open it.

  “I am sorry.” A woman of middle years stood before him. She wore the traditional Jewish wig of a married woman. “I do not mean to disturb you.”

  “Oh, no. Do I play too loud?”

  “Not loud enough.” She smiled shyly.

  “Oh,” Reuven said softly.

  “I have a special request.”

  “Yes.”

  The woman started to raise her hands to her mouth as if to stop the words from coming out. She flushed.

  “Go on.”

  “My father. He is a very old man, and before we came to the Pale, he was a music teacher at the conservatory in St. Petersburg, a pianist. He was an accompanist for the Imperial Ballet, and that is how he met my mother.”

  “Oh! How wonderful.”

  “Yes, but now he is very sick. He is in constant pain. However, when he heard your music… .” Another pause. “And I was just wondering …”

  “But of course! But of course!” Reuven was jubilant. “It would be my honor to play for your father.” A part of his life had started to come back to him. Reuven turned to shut his door as he followed her out. He looked back at the room. It was still the same old dingy room, but in some ineffable way it had been transformed. It was as if the ghosts of music—Herschel, J. S. Bach, even Reb Itchel, Isaac, the baron, the Cerutis—had gathered there, leaving their shadows behind, mingling with dust motes caught in the sliver of light.

  SEVENTEEN

  EVERY EVENING at seven Reuven went to the cafè, and every afternoon at three he went upstairs to the Cahans’ apartment to play for Anna Cahan’s father, Moses, and his wife, Sarah. He loved playing for the old man. When he arrived, Moses would be collapsed in his bed, often groaning with the pain from his illness. His face was a deathly gray color, his eyes were unfocused and sometimes rolled back in his head. But then Reuven would begin to play, and as the music swelled in the room, it was as if breath and blood were pumped back into the raglike heap in the bed. Moses’ eyes would focus, his fingers would tap the rhythm on the bed-sheets. Sarah would begin to smile as she saw the pain seeming to vanish from her husband’s body. Anna and her husband, David, would beam happily.

  Reuven often thought to himself, I am a blessed man, for no musician has ever had such an audience. And he played everything: Dvo?ák: Bach, Beethoven, Kreutzer, Paganini, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Mozart. It didn’t matter if they were violin solos or not. He would work his way around the parts for accompanying instruments. He didn’t have to think about artillery and cartridges, or black powder and thermite and velocities of bullets and trajectories. He was no longer String Man the wracker. He was String Man the violinist.

  So his days fell into a pleasant rhythm. He found himself thinking more and more about Rachel. She would be five now. He wrote letters to her in care of Basia. Perhaps twice a year he received letters from Basia when he went back to Vilna. Isaac saved them for him. In the last letter there was a little drawing Rachel had made. They lived on the Lower East Side of New York. Basia wrote that she had been in correspondence with his uncle Chizor who, after spending some time in San Francisco, had gone to Minnesota, where he had opened up a haberdashery shop. He was encouraging Basia and the children to come there.

  “It seems cold and far,” she had written.

  Now as Reuven sat at his usual table in the cafè, he tried to remember that map of America he had looked at nearly five years ago. He had been fifteen; now he was almost twenty. He had grown a thick mustache. Not a beard, the beard interfered with the violin.

  He had just ordered another glass of tea when the rowdy hoots and guffaws of some soldiers coming through the door interrupted his pleasant daydreams. They are such boors, all of them. That was his last conscious thought before his blood ran cold. The soldiers took a table next to him.

  “Pla
y us a tune, Fyodor!” said one of the soldiers.

  The man drew something from a case. A warm light emanated from the violin case like a small sun rising in the smoke of the cafè. Reuven’s eyes locked onto the violin. His violin! His Ceruti from Berischeva, stolen on that bloody night. He held tightly on to his glass of tea. This simply could not be. Carefully he lifted his eyes toward the man. The pasty pockmarked face. The large pit in the side of his nose. The dark red eyebrows. The pieces began to reassemble themselves. It was a bland face, exceedingly bland, but it was the face of a killer.

  The man lifted the violin and tucked it under his chin. His large meaty fist encircled the bow. A thin wail came out of the violin and then a cheap little staccato tune. It was all Reuven could do not to rip the instrument from the soldier’s hands.

  “He plays good,” one of the soldiers said as he turned to Reuven and smiled quickly.

  “Yyyess,” Reuven stammered. In a split second he was back to his senses. He nearly thanked the soldier who had turned to him, for he had been on the brink of standing up and taking the violin. But now he would do nothing like that. He would be patient. He would watch this man, he would follow him, and when they were alone, he would kill him. His task was clear. His focus absolute. Nothing else mattered.

  So began the strangest interlude in Reuven Bloom’s life. If anyone asked how long he had stalked the Cossack who had murdered his sister, he would not have been able to say exactly. A few days, no, more like a week, possibly two weeks, maybe the better part of the month. He would learn so completely this Cossack, his habits, his gestures, his small idiosyncrasies, as perhaps only a mother knows a young child. Reuven began following him that night, always at a careful distance. The soldiers left the cafè and went to another for dancing.