The Little Russian (10 page)

“No, they ’re hiding.”

“Well, you better call them out.”

“Now?”

“Right now.”

He thought about it. “Yes, all right.” Then he lowered his voice as he labored up the stairs. “Just don’t say anything in front of my wife. She’s frightened enough as it is. She doesn’t know about the rumor.”

From up above they could hear his wife calling down to them. Her voice was brittle with fear. Reb Polik called back, assuring her that everything was all right. Everyone would be safe. The strangers had arrived.

 

WHEN HERSHEL walked into the firehouse that evening, he had only to glance around to understand the politics that divided Smotrich. On one side of the room were the shopkeepers and officials in folding chairs. These were the Zionists, the righteous men, who longed for a homeland in Palestine. On the other side, sitting on benches or leaning up against the wall, were the workers from the sugar beet refinery and the tannery. They were Bundists and believed, like the Mensheviks, in revolution and a new socialist order. Usually the Zionists went to synagogue and the Bundists to the tearoom, both taking pains to avoid the other. But last week a pogrom broke out in Frampol and twenty people were murdered. Today there were no Bundists or Zionists in Smotrich, only frightened men desperate to protect their families.

Hershel didn’t have the words for an inspiring speech, nor was there time. The best he could do for them was to give them a job to do. The carpenters were told to make pikes out of ash wood, and the blacksmith was ordered to make spearheads for them. The roofer was sent to help households reinforce their doors and windows, and the locksmith was told to replace flimsy locks with strong ones. He ordered sentries to stand guard day and night on the road leading into town and on the bridge. He ordered night patrols for the town. He picked men at random, often pairing a Zionist with a Bundist. Nobody seemed to notice. Then he told the rest to meet him in the morning for target practice.

 

THAT NIGHT they went back to Yudel Polik’s apartment and sat down to supper with his four young sons and his wife. She was a plump woman, twenty years younger than her husband. She had a round, pleasant face, but her features were still with fear. After the blessing, she put a bowl of beets and potatoes on the table and passed around a platter of beef. While Reb Polik helped himself to an enormous slab, she asked Scharfstein about his wife and children. Her voice was strained and her eyes kept straying to the window at every sound. Once she stopped midsentence and looked up, alert, tense, perhaps listening for something beneath the wind.

“What is it?” whispered her eldest son.

“Shush!”

The boy looked like his mother, big round eyes set far apart, his mouth a nervous line of worry.

Her husband patted her hand. “It’s nothing, Hannah. The wind,” he said patiently.

His wife listened for a moment longer, then got up, went to the window, and, leaning over a side table crowded with porcelain figurines of shepherdesses and court ladies, peered out through the glass. “Did you bring up the knives?”

“You asked me that three times already.”

“Well, did you?”

“
Υes!
Now come, sit down, Hannah. You have to eat something. You’re going to worry yourself to death.”

She did as she was told and they ate in silence. When they were done, Froy Polik got up without saying good night, left the dishes on the table, gathered up her children, and took them to her bed.

 

IT SNOWED all night and by morning the clouds had drifted away. It was a fragile dawn softened by a swirling mist. Hershel stood on the road and watched Scharfstein in the sledge gliding over the bridge, past the sugar beet refinery, heading west for the Austrian border. Since there were only four handguns in the town, one of them misfiring and probably dangerous, they decided that he would have to leave as soon as the sun was up.

Hershel shivered despite his greatcoat and wished he could’ve been the one to go. He and Scharfstein had been doing this together for five years, since he was sixteen, and they had never been in a situation like this before, without arms or seasoned comrades to help. With growing apprehension, he watched Scharfstein’s retreating figure disappear over the hill. Overhead a wavering line of crows, black stains on the white counterpane, flew over the sugar refinery and landed in the linden trees that grew on the river’s edge.

Without warning, and with a sickening chill, he recalled an image from one of his nightmares—the body of an old woman lying on the ground with a mutilated face. He quickly swore out loud to dispel the image and shoved his trembling hands into his pockets. He and Scharfstein had come up with a plan, but he didn’t think much of it. Given more time, he liked to think he would’ve come up with something better. He stood there a moment longer, watching the crows and thinking of Berta, missing her, thinking of the spot on the back of her neck that he liked to nuzzle, remembering what she smelled like and wondering if he would ever nuzzle that spot again. Then, with an enormous effort of will, he turned away from the bridge and started back to town.

He checked on the carpenter and the blacksmith. He made sure the sentries were in place and the houses were being secured. Then he gathered up the rest of the men and took them out into the forest for target practice. He had his doubts about teaching them how to shoot and suspected that he might just be wasting bullets. If
threatened, he knew they would most likely panic and fire wildly, if they fired at all. Even so, he found a clearing on top of a small hill not far from town and hung several paper targets on the trees. He had the men gather around while he showed them his revolver, a Rast-Gasser from Vienna. He taught them how to use it, and one by one they came up to a line in the snow to shoot. There weren’t enough cartridges to allow them to fire off more than a few rounds, but at least everyone got a chance to sight, squeeze the trigger, and feel the recoil.

They hadn’t even gone through half the cartridges when they heard a shout from below and saw Yossel Feisis, the water carrier, yelling, waving his arms, and running up the hill. “They are coming!” he shouted as he struggled to climb the hill in the snow. “They are coming into the town.”

“How many?”

He fought to breathe, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “Ten sledges. Maybe more. I didn’t wait to see. I saw the first one though. A pile of potato sacks.”

Instantly, some of the men turned and ran down the hill. Others held back and looked to Hershel with panic in their eyes. “All right,” he said quietly, making his voice even and calm. “We’ll get ready. We’ll be all right. But we have to hurry, there’s much to do.”

When they got back to the square, he took the best shots aside and gave them the guns and what cartridges he had left. He called them the naturals, to build their confidence. In reality he knew they couldn’t hit anything, but at least they wouldn’t shoot each other. He told them to go to the firehouse and put on the uniforms, including the brass helmets. He told them to then go up to the rooftops. He pointed out spots along the roofline that took in the entire square. “There and there, one there, and two over there. When I give you the signal you start shooting. You won’t hit anything from that distance, but it doesn’t matter. Just empty your barrels, but don’t do it all at once.”

“What is the signal?” asked the tailor.

Hershel thought for a moment. “I don’t know yet. But you’ll know when you see it.”

The little tinsmith looked up at the snowy rooftops and paled. “How are we supposed to get up there?”

“Get the roofer. The rest of you get the axes from the firehouse and barricade yourselves in your homes.”

“There aren’t enough to go around,” someone called out from the back.

“I have some in my store,” offered the grocer.

“Good. Now go.”

The men ran off in all directions, some to the firehouse, some to the grocer’s, the rest to their homes. Hershel found a spot between two buildings that had a good view of the square and took in most of the roofline. He stood there among soggy newspapers, a rusted-out skillet, and rotting garbage and listened for the bells on the harnesses.

He soon heard them in the distance, ringing out in a variety of pitches, sounding all the more unnerving for their childish gaiety. Soon the square was filled with sledges, packed in so tightly that it was easy for a man to hand a bottle of vodka to his neighbor. Hershel looked up at the rooftops and willed the naturals to hurry.

A peasant stood up in a sledge and addressed the crowd in Surzhyk. He wore a filthy
tulup
, a long sheepskin coat, and
valenki
, long winter felt boots. His head was bare and his hair was straight and thick. He was drunk, but that didn’t stop him from standing up and addressing the crowd.

“Friends,” he said, swaying slightly on his feet. “Every day the
zhyd
cheats us, and what do we do about it? Every day he charges us more for sugar and tobacco. He takes our beetroots and pays us practically nothing. He says he doesn’t set the prices. Well, I would like to know who does. Do you? Does your neighbor? Maybe Baba Yaga sets the prices?” The crowded hooted at this and several men clapped.

Hershel kept scanning the rooftops. It was taking them too long.

“And now the
zhyd
wants our daughters,” continued the peasant. “He wants to use them as whores. To dishonor them and humiliate us.” His gestures were grander, his voice louder as he grew bolder on the approbation of the crowd. “He has taken an innocent and fouled her with his filth. Does anyone here doubt that she is as good as dead?”

Finally there was a figure on one of the rooftops. He had climbed up from the other side and was crawling over the icy shingles to the peak. There he rose cautiously to his feet, balancing in the bank of snow.

“It is time we got our own back. It is time for justice. They need a lesson. They need to know what happens to a
zhyd
who ruins our daughter.” The crowd was on its feet. There were shouts of agreement from all around. One man fell out of his sledge and the others laughed at him, calling him a castrated ass and other obscenities. He was too drunk to be offended.

Another figure appeared on a roof across the square from the first. He was more comfortable with heights and walked easily into place, straddling the snowy peak, keeping an eye on the square, looking for the signal.

Someone shouted from the back of the crowd: “Kill the
zhydy
and save Russia and the czar!”The crowd roared. Someone else picked up the cry
. Kill the zhydy and save Russia and the czar!

Hershel saw two more figures get into position, their brass helmets blazing in the noonday sun. Then he saw the last figure, the tinsmith no doubt, crawling through the snow on his belly across the roof to the chimney piece, where he wrapped his arms around the bricks and clung on for dear life.

By now the crowd was stirred up from the chanting. Hershel knew that in a few moments the men would take up their axes and smash the doors down. They would hack to pieces anyone who got in their way. They would take what they wanted, including the women, kill the children, and set fire to the town.

When he stepped into the square he didn’t know exactly what he was going to do. He only knew that it all depended upon his performance and so he concentrated on that, on pacing, on slowing everything down. He slowed the way he walked into the square, the way he stepped up on the bench.

He studied the crowd while they studied him. He was a stranger and they were curious. When they had quieted down, he began to speak. He said in Surzhyk: “I am a Jew.” He looked into their faces, into their eyes. He wasn’t in a hurry and they saw that. “And you have come to kill me. But I can tell you right now that you won’t.”

A man muttered to his neighbor. Another straightened and stood up in his sledge. Someone reached for his axe and stepped out into
the snow. Others stood their ground and waited to hear what the mad Jew would say next.

He saw all of this and continued. “And why won’t you kill me?” he asked the crowd. “Why wouldn’t you just cut my head off or my arm and watch me bleed to death?”

There were shouts of
Υes, why don’t we? Why not?

“You won’t,” he shouted back. “And the reason is not because I’m such a good fighter. Or that you are such good men that you wouldn’t kill an unarmed man. The reason is . . .” and here he paused as his eyes swept the crowd. “The reason is very simple, my friends. You value your families. You value your farms and your homes. What you don’t know is that at this very minute there is a man at every barn and at every house with a bottle of coal gas, a long rag, and a match waiting for my signal to burn your farms to the ground.”

For a moment the crowd stood there in silence. Then someone shouted, “He is lying!” And another bellowed, “He is bluffing!” There were cries of fear and disbelief that soon turned to fury. The crowd began to surge forward.

“You don’t believe me?” shouted Hershel. “You want proof ?” He looked up at the rooftops and nodded. Instantly shots rang out from every side of the square.

There were screams. The crowd dropped to the ground in the snow and covered their heads. Some looked up to see where the gunshots were coming from and found avenging angels straddling the rooftops wearing golden helmets all aglow, like a crown of fire.

More shots and the crowd scattered. Some leaped into their sledges and flew off down the road. Others tried to quiet panicked horses but were trampled to death as the terrified animals galloped off, dragging their overturned sledges behind them.

It took less than five minutes, but when it was over the square was empty except for the dead. The sledges were gone. Some pogromists could still be seen on the road chasing after their horses through the snow. The only sound was the tinsmith, still clinging to the chimney, calling for help because he was afraid to let go.