The Knife Sharpener's Bell (21 page)

I bundle myself up, head downstairs, fuming. I can't be bothered to pick my way through the drifts on the sidewalk and before I know it I've lost my footing and tumbled into a snowbank. That cools me down some. No one has shovelled the snow; there's no one to shovel it. The city feels empty, hollowed. Like me. They've moved Raisa's clinic into one of the vacant schools – most of the children have been evacuated. Only a few people are in line at the cinema and there's no lineup at all at the newspaper kiosk.

By the time I get back to the apartment building, my mind has gone into neutral. It's good to get out, even though my hands are going numb with cold.

A big black car is parked in front of the entry.

I can hear some sort of racket upstairs, then light steps running down the stairs: it's Vladimir. The back of his hand is against his mouth, the corner torn and bleeding, his face dark with anger.

“Vladimir, what is it?”

“Comrade Polankov . . .”

“Polankov hit you?”

“No, no. He was screaming, so I went to help. These big men were hitting him.”

“Hitting him?”

“I tried to stop them and one of them slapped me.”

“He what?” I take the steps two at a time, all my fury returned, walk through the open doorway of Polankov's apartment. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

There are three large men in overcoats, fashionable,
good quality. They look at me, smile at one another. I don't care who they are; I hardly know who I am. I'm shaking with rage. Polankov is on the worn davenport, head in his hands, sobbing. I don't give a damn about Polankov.

“You go to your own apartment, missy,” one of the men says. “This is none of your business.”

I close my hands into fists, unclose them. “You slapped my cousin. That's my business.”

“Look, missy – nobody meant to hurt the boy. He bit my friend over there, and he got a little smack for it. No harm done. And you tell your little cousin –” the man is inches away from me, “– he shouldn't be defending enemies of the Revolution.” The sweet smell of candy on his breath.

NKVD. They must be NKVD. Polankov has done something wrong and the NKVD have come to arrest him.

The men are so calm, so amused by me. Because they know they can do anything, and I can do nothing. I must be nuts – what've I done, barging in here, shouting at NKVD?

Vladimir's still in the doorway. “Vladimir,” I say quietly, “listen to the comrade. Go upstairs to your father.” He vanishes.

Polankov is weeping so dramatically that it's impossible to feel sorry for him. The arrest documentation is on the table, proof that everything is official, everything has been approved. Proof that the men who are quietly, methodically going through the apartment are just doing their job, guarding the Soviet state from enemies of the people. They've beaten Polankov, but he must have been resisting arrest. As long as you cooperate, everything will go smoothly. It's not their fault Polankov made a fuss, made this unpleasantness necessary . . .

“You're not needed here, missy,” the man says.

I meet Pavel on the stairs. “Go see to Vladimir,” he says. Then I hear his voice in Polankov's apartment. “What's the problem, Comrades?”

“No problem at all, Comrade,” one of the men says.

“Pavel Efron, Professor of Agronomy at Moscow University. I live on the third floor.”

“Your papers, Comrade.”

I run to our apartment. Vladimir meets me at the door, his hand against the injured mouth. “Where's Poppa?”

“Talking with those men.”

He goes pale.

“It's all right, Vladimir. Don't worry.” We hear the murmur of voices downstairs, Pavel and the men. What if they take him too? What if Pavel doesn't ever come back up the stairs? What will I do; what will Vladimir do? I pull him to me, hold him against me, feeling something move through me and into him. “Vladimir, it'll be all right.”

“Promise?” he says, speaking into my body.

“Promise, Vladimir. I promise. He'll be fine.”

I make the promise knowing I have no right to, that they may take Pavel, bundle him along with Polankov into a Black Raven paddy wagon, and that will be the end. My words do nothing. I can no more stop the men from taking Pavel than I could stop my father's train, and where it took us all. Than I can keep my parents safe from whatever has taken them in Odessa. We're specks spun along this current; we count for nothing.

And yet, that shock of love still moving through me, I promise myself, Vladimir, that, wherever
my
father is gone to, his will come back. Knowing, certain, that I will, if I have to, put my body between this boy and any harm, will do all the nothing I can do for him.

“Annette?” It's as though he can feel what I'm thinking.

My hand goes to the sore cheek. “This doesn't look too bad. I'll put a cold cloth on it.”

“He'll come back?”

“He's just talking with the men; he'll be right back.” And it's true: we can hear voices in the hall, the regular rhythm of conversation, Pavel's tenor steady against the men's bass. Maybe this promise will be kept. “See. He'll be upstairs in just a minute.”

“Annette, they called Comrade Polankov an enemy of the Revolution.” Vladimir's mouth is trembling, with indignation now, not fear.

“I heard.”

“They said he'd ‘abandoned his duties.' I guess because he didn't do anything to stop the looting.”

“Olga Moiseyevna's apartment . . .” I dab at his lip with the cloth. He flinches, and tears start in the hazel eyes, the colour almost transparent now. It'll be all right. We'll be all right. “Did you really bite one of them?”

He flushes red, nods.

“Vladimir – what were you thinking?”

“I wasn't thinking. I was just mad. Like you when you yelled at them.”

Neither of us was thinking. How valiant we are when we don't think. “Mouths heal quickly. It won't be too bad.” I can hear the convincing calmness of my voice.

“Annette?” Pavel's voice calls softly. “Can you come downstairs for a moment?”

I touch Vladimir's shoulder, whisper to him that I'll be right back, believing it. When I get downstairs, Polankov is gone. Pavel is there, composed, talking with the smallest man, who's shorter than Pavel but twice as broad. His voice
sounds even and I feel my jaw unclench, my heartbeat steady.

“My wife and I will vouch for Polankov. He rushed to the clinic to get my wife when our neighbour was attacked. My wife will verify that.” He's speaking very quietly, standing very straight.

“We'll take that into consideration, Comrade.”

“Here's my niece. You wanted to see her papers?”

The man waves his hand tolerantly, sucks his teeth. “It's all right, Comrade.”

“I can come down to your bureau and make my statement as soon as my wife is back from the clinic.”

“Very well, Comrade.” He looks me up and down. I straighten, try to look at him directly but can't quite. “You keep an eye on these youngsters.”

Pavel's mouth tightens; he nods.

And the man is gone. Pavel too, gone – to check on Vladimir.

For the first time I notice the smell of cabbage cooking. A few potatoes have been left half-peeled beside the white enamel pot. The lacey bedspread on the brass bed is rumpled. I turn off the hot plate, close the door carefully behind me.

I wonder if that winter of 1942 was the worst. Every night had its own nightmare. I would dream about my parents, the delicatessen. I'd be back in Winnipeg, smelling pickle brine, smelling the dust on the tins of fruit, the vinegar my father used to clean the counter. Everything completely real, but backwards, the counter on the wrong side of the room, the stools green instead of red. Sometimes I'd discover the building was on fire, sometimes that I had gone into the backroom to find Poppa, but the backroom wasn't the backroom any
more, there was another room behind it, and yet another room after the second room. Or I'd be trying to lock the front door against something terrible, but the bolt wouldn't latch, the workings coming apart in my hands.

I would dream hunger dreams, too: my mother cooking chicken soup. I'd be able to smell the clingy, rich smell of it, a tang of garlic. I could feel the smooth wooden boards of the kitchen floor under my bare feet. My mother would have her back to me, skimming the scum off the top of the soup. She never noticed me, and I knew in every dream that I mustn't ever disturb her, mustn't get her upset or – or what? Or she'd pack her bags and go. Home. Home to Odessa. I'd lean my elbows on the table, lean my whole body towards her, but I could only watch as she sorted with her fingers through the chicken bones, pulling the meat away. Her fingers quick, busy but calm, she'd strip off every bit of meat. I was hungry, but not allowed to eat. Her long elegant fingers would pick up the bones, put them in her mouth, cracking them carefully, sucking out the marrow, taking everything good.

That hungry winter we brewed dried pumpkin peel for tea. Raisa would hunt and hunt and come home from the market with the trophy of an onion. I felt the emptiness, the cold crouching inside me like it had made itself a home in me. It wasn't just Poppa, my mother. Ben was gone. Not long after the news about Odessa he enlisted. For a day he just vanished, and when he came back, he was in uniform. What could we say? For me he was gone but not gone because he was somewhere; he was at war. I would try to imagine that somewhere, and then stop myself, because what I imagined scared me.

I comforted myself with writing to him, though I was
careful about what I wrote. The letters have their own folder. Of all that didn't come back to me, they did come back to me, bringing their own news.

January 23, 1942
Dear Ben,
I'm writing to let you know we're well here. Please don't worry about us. Since early December, when Germany abandoned the attack, the city has been secure. After all those months of noise – the air-raid sirens and fire engines, the slow screams of bombs and shells, the rumble and grind of truck engines – it seems strangely quiet here. Things are getting back to normal. The civilians who were evacuated are slowly coming home, the bureaucrats too.

I worry about you all the time. The newspapers are reporting such terrible losses, so many dead.

We have our own small battles. Winter has been hard. We're short of oil, coal for heating, for cooking. Clothes, shoes, tobacco, matches, eggs. No gasoline for civilian cars, so horse-drawn sleds are back in the streets. Pots, pans, chinaware, hairpins, combs, brushes, soap, razor blades – they're all but impossible to find. No toys. No boots, no overshoes for sale. You see people patching their shoes on the curb so they'll hold together for the walk home. Don't think we've given up, though. The opera and the ballet are still on, the ballerinas performing Swan Lake by night and cutting firewood by day. We all cut wood, loading it onto trucks or trains and then delivering it all through Moscow, stacking it roof high in the city's squares.

And of course, now that the Americans are in the war, everyone is more hopeful.

Since you enlisted I've gotten two of your letters. They take months to get to me. Please write more often. And
write more. You tell me what you're eating, what you're reading – those war thrillers sound pretty dumb, but I'm glad you've got your hands on the Pushkin – but you don't say anything about how you are.

I've started helping Raisa at the clinic. The workload's too much for her. The clinic is to serve civilian war workers, but it's very hard for Raisa to turn anyone away. It's tough finding the most basic supplies: Aspirin, bandages, adhesive tape.

And then we're still doing the paperwork for this business with Polankov. Pavel and Raisa have to file affidavits, give statements, all in defense of that horrible little man. The thing is, we heard that after the looting house managers – “lickspittle remnants of the defeated classes,” according to the newspapers – were being shot to restore public order.

At least his wife makes it seem worthwhile. “We're so obliged,” she keeps saying, “so obliged.” She's broken-hearted that she can't make us one of her famous apple cakes – but butter, sugar, eggs, where would you find them now? There are hungry faces all over the city, people with their clothes hanging off them. At the brigades, people work as if they were under water. They're so ground down by the shortage of food they can barely lift a shovel.

Just writing about food makes my mouth water. But don't worry. We're having bread and cheese and soup for dinner. Raisa makes sure there's always something. And because there are three of us working now, since I started helping most days at the clinic, our ration allowance is good.

I do have Raisa and Pavel, and Vladimir. We all look at Vladimir and thank our lucky stars he's still a kid. Those stories in the papers about mothers giving up their sons gladly – I don't buy it. Who could be glad?

Yesterday Raisa told me more of the story about why they named Vladimir after Lenin. She was pregnant with him in 1932, just eight years after Lenin's death, in the middle of the first Five Year Plan. She was on a trolley listening to two women grumble, the usual complaints about the food shortages, the lineups, all the hard times of those early years. And then – a minute later – they were talking about their factories' goals for the Five Year Plan, the figures, strategies. There was such determination in their faces, she said, such optimism that the sacrifices that they were making would bring better times for their children . . .

That's what made her want to name him after Lenin. The Revolution was young then, fifteen years old. In those days, she said, they were all living in, for, the future. All that sacrifice was going to pay off. I'll write down the lines from this Mayakovsky poem that she recited – she still remembered it: