Broken Song (11 page)

“THEY TOOK your violin?”

“He took it—one man, a Cossack.”

Reuven was sitting at the baron’s table. Despite the richness of the furnishings, Baron Radzinsky’s table was simply laid. There were not the piles of food that had been set out on the priest’s table, and nobody was trying to stuff Reuven and Rachel. In deference to the children’s coming from a kosher household, which forbade the serving of meat and dairy in the same meal, the baron had announced they would have a dairy meal.

“The baby needs milk, no doubt,” he had said.

They had eggs and cheese and milk and a thick vegetable soup. It tasted wonderful. There were some chocolate biscuits for dessert, no rich cream cakes with jewel-like decorations as in the priest’s house.

“So one man took away your dear Ceruti. How I looked for that for you. What the hell is a Cossack going to do with a violin like that?” The unspoken question hung in the air. How could someone who had just murdered a young girl play a beautiful instrument crafted by a family that had adored fine music for generations? Could a murderer play Brahms?

Suddenly a flood of images rushed into Reuven’s mind. He had tried so hard not to think about that day. He had tried to block the images of the blood from his sister’s throat, the crumpled bodies of his parents that lay outside their front door. But those horrible pictures were never far beneath the surface of his conscience. Another image now loomed up in his mind’s eye. It was the face of the Cossack. He had never realized until this moment that he had registered every feature, every small aspect of that face. The man had pale red hair. His face was pockmarked and there was a large pit in the side of his nose. His eyebrows were a much darker red than the color of his beard and the hair on his head. His brow protruded, and with the dark red eyebrows, it cast his eyes into a deep shadow. The eyes, a light icy blue, seemed to shine out from the shadow like two cold stars. Yes, Reuven remembered that face and would until the day he died.

“Reuven! Reuven!” The baron was speaking to him sharply and shaking his shoulder. “Are you all right, Reuven?”

Rachel was whimpering.

“Oh!” Reuven said softly. He felt as if he were being
called back from a distant place. He suddenly realized that his cheeks were wet. He must have been crying.

“You are very tired, Reuven,” the baron said. “I’ll show you to your room.”

The room was a large one with a fireplace in which three logs crackled. A young servant girl helped undress and bathe Rachel in a dressing room with a large porcelain tub. Fresh hot water was brought for Reuven. When he was finished and had tucked himself into bed, and Rachel into the small one that had been brought in for her, he heard a soft knock on the door.

“Come in,” Reuven said.

The baron peeked his head in the door. “I am only here to say good night. We can talk tomorrow.”

But now Reuven felt oddly untired.

“No, it is fine.” He paused. “I think I want to talk.” Rachel was almost asleep. The baron walked over and sat on the edge of Reuven’s bed. His shoulders sagged and he shook his head in a despairing manner.

“Well, I am glad that Chizor is alive somewhere, but I shudder when I think what you have experienced, my boy.”

“Before we ate when we were sitting in your library, I saw so many beautiful books. Some were Shakespeare.”

“You know about Shakespeare?”

“Oh yes. Uncle Chizor had many Shakespeare plays and he taught me and my sister to love him, and all the fairy-tale writers as well. He told us that you found most of these books for him.”

“Well, not exactly. Many, yes. But Chizor had a cousin or someone in Vilna who is a book dealer.”

“Sperling! Lovotz Sperling.”

“That’s the one.”

“How could I have forgotten he was a book dealer! He is the man I am supposed to go to.”

“Yes, yes. He deals mostly in old Jewish books, but he gets a few other things as well. There is more demand for Shakespeare now among the Jews.”

“Why is that, and why had I never heard Uncle Chizor or my father speak of this man before?”

“Actually, the answer to both your questions is strangely enough almost the same. The Jews, especially the Jews around Vilna, are no longer reading just Talmud.”

“They aren’t?”

“No, they are reading some Shakespeare and a lot of Marx.”

“Marx? Is he a playwright too?”

“No, hardly—or perhaps.” The baron paused, scratched his chin, and looked up at the ceiling in the bedroom. “Yes, perhaps he has some kind of a play in mind. Let me tell you.” Reuven was not sure if he was following this conversation. “Marx envisions a new world order where workers control the means of production and are paid according to their needs. A classless society. No aristocracy. No tsars, and”—a dim smile crossed his face—”no barons.” He shrugged. “But the important thing now is not just what the Vilna Jews are reading, but what they are doing. They have organized themselves into a league for political activity. And this league is called the Bund.”

Reuven propped himself up onto his elbow. “The Bund? What does it stand for? What do they do?”

“The full name is the Algemayner Yidisher Arbayter of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia—the Jewish Workers’ Federation. It is a social democratic movement. They have recently started a newspaper. They want workers to unite. They want to call strikes and boycotts to correct unfair working conditions. They want fair wages and better treatment for every worker, Jew or non-Jew. They want a modern world brought to Russia and Poland.”

“A modern world?” whispered Reuven. What did he know about a modern world? He had spent nearly his entire life in a little tiny Jewish shtetl in the Pale. It was only because of his Uncle Chizor that he knew of Shakespeare. It was only because his parents had believed in his talent as a musician that he played a violin and the old masters’ music. But what did he really know of the modern world?

What the baron was saying, however, was so exciting he almost dared not think about it too much. These people, these members of the Bund were trying to make Russia a world in which everyone could live—Jew or non-Jew. If they could succeed—well it was too late for his mother and father and Shriprinka, but think of all the other mothers and fathers, all the other Shriprinkas who were still alive in little shtetls… . Were they just waiting to be killed?

“They are revolutionaries,” the baron said in a low voice.

“Revolutionaries!” The very air in the room seemed
to quiver with the word. “And the second part of the question?” Reuven remembered suddenly.

“Ah yes, why you never heard your uncle or father speak of Lovotz Sperling.”

“Yes.” Reuven nodded. “Why?”

“Your cousin Sperling is the very center of the Bund. It was on his little alley, in the attic of his shop, where the first meeting took place in Vilna. It was there that the original members of the Bund—representatives from cities all over Poland and Russia, from Vilna, Bialystok, Minsk, Kovno, Vitebsk, Moscow, and Warsaw—first gathered.”

“My cousin?”

“Yes, your cousin. It is a dangerous position to be in—that is probably why your uncle and father never mentioned him. I knew of him because of your uncle, and of course my interest in collecting books had led me to him some years back, even before I had become close with Chizor.”

“But you say he is dangerous. Is this where Rachel and I should be going?”

“There is no safe place for any Jew now. Lovotz will know how to take care of you. He shall know what to do.”

“He is a revolutionary, then.”

“He is the Firebrand! That is his nickname in Yiddish,
bren
.”

FOURTEEN

“‘IF I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”’ This was a firebrand. Yes, the words that came from his mouth were as fiery and bright as little licks of flame, but Lovotz Sperling was not what Reuven had imagined. He was a little wisp of a man, at least a head shorter than Reuven. His dark eyes were obscured behind spectacles with the thickest lenses Reuven had ever seen. He had a withered left arm that had grown not much bigger than a baby’s and hung limply by his side. And now he was reciting the motto of the Bund to Reuven.

“It is not all that original. It comes from Hillel, a Jewish sage. We adopted it. It describes our philosophy perfectly.” His wife, Basia, a large woman, beamed as her husband spoke.

Reuven and Rachel had arrived on the little alley off Szeroka Street three days before, delivered in the baron’s coach. Lovotz and Basia welcomed them. They had already heard of the terrible massacre in Berischeva and they were completely stunned that anyone, let alone relatives of theirs, had survived. They both wept. They wept as if they had known Rachel and Reuven all their lives.

Lovotz and Basia had three very young children, one
just slightly older than Rachel. They were all fascinated by the new arrivals in their home. One by one the children came out with a toy or a biscuit or a piece of dried fruit and offered it to Rachel. Then the oldest child, a girl of about eight called Miri, took Rachel by the hand.

“Do you want to see our house for dollies?” she asked.

“No. I want to show her the secret place,” said her brother Yossel, who was about four.

Soon Rachel was playing with them—looking at their dolls, spinning their tops, sitting at a child-size table being served pretend tea. It was not until the next day that Lovotz sat down and explained about the Bund to Reuven.

“So you see,” Lovotz said, “we are all interlocked, like this.” With difficulty he raised his withered arm and laced his fingers together, turning them inward toward his palms, so that only the knuckles showed. “It does not matter that I am a bookseller and that Shlomo is a cobbler or Yakov is a knitter. Our struggles are the same, and through sharing our struggles, we gain strength. You say well, as a book dealer, I am not a tradesman. And the cobbler and the knitters and the glove makers are merely tradesmen. There is no ‘merely’ with a revolution. Everything and everyone counts.

“We go full steam, full blast for one another no matter who we are as individuals. In that way, we succeed. Three years ago the weavers had a strike, and it was a victory. We are now extending and coordinating our strike activities. We are planning strategies with our trade unions. And believe me, this is the way to revolution and the way to end all the suffering of the enslaved. You see,
we print these.” He took a leaflet out of his pocket. There was a picture of the tsar drawn on the front and the words:
Prepare for the coming bloody struggle with despotism. End the suffering of the weak, the enslaved, the exploited
. Reuven could feel Lovotz watching him as he read the pamphlet.

“We print them—right here, as a matter of fact. But we have many supporters from all over. We get money and even paper for printing from America. The Jewish people in America are as excited about our Bund as the people here in Russia and Poland. We get lots of support. And that is why Basia and the children are going soon to America.”

“What? They are going to America?”

“Yes, and we must talk about this. Basia is our best fund-raiser. She speaks Russian and Polish and Lithuanian and has even been learning English.” Reuven had sensed that Basia was different from most traditional Jewish wives. She participated more in conversations. He rarely saw her without a book in one hand, even when she was stirring a pot on the stove or feeding a child.

“It is getting too dangerous now for Basia and the children.” Lovotz paused. “I do not need to tell you how dangerous it is getting. And it will get worse before it gets better, before the revolution.” He stopped again. When he spoke again he did not look directly at Reuven. “The baron Radzinsky is a truly noble man. He is an aristocrat not simply of birth but of spirit. He has given me enough money for both you and your sister’s passage to America.”

Reuven could hardly believe
his ears. “I can’t believe it! This is too wonderful.” He gasped. He was to go to the
Goldeneh Medina
. He would find Uncle Chizor. He and Rachel would get out of the
farshtinkener
country forever. To America! Rachel toddled into the room. He swept her up.