The Little Russian (34 page)

“Reds? You sure?”

A bitter laugh. “Of course, I’m sure. I was here, wasn’t I?”

“What did they want?”

“They wanted to be fed, what else? And naturally there was no question of payment.”

“Did she feed them?”

“What else is she going to do? But her sons were out in the back putting away some wood and they came running in. She begged them to go away, but they wouldn’t listen to her. Stupid boys. What could
they do against those men? They didn’t even have guns. The soldiers took what they wanted and shot them in the head.” She held a finger up to her forehead. “And the whole time this poor woman was standing there watching.”

The woman sighed, shook her head, and took the stack of plates into the kitchen. Berta picked up the saucers and cups and followed her in. “After they shot her sons they told her they’d be back for lunch the next day. That was yesterday, only God help me it seems like a lifetime ago.” They put the dishes in the dry sink and went back for more. “She buried her sons this morning. And then they came back just as they said they would and she fed them soup. One of them didn’t like it.” She nodded to the splatter on the wall while clearing the second table. “They took everything, all the food and the bread, everything from the kitchen, and left. After that she sat down in that chair and hasn’t moved since.”

Berta helped the woman clear the tables. When they had washed and put away the dishes they got the old woman up and walked her back to the bedroom. It was a neat little room off the kitchen with a clean coverlet over a straw mattress, a coat and a good dress hanging on a hook on the wall, and a pair of shoes in the corner. They undressed her and pulled a nightdress over her head and shoulders. Her arms remained limp at her sides, her face blank, her eyes flat and black like dirty coins. Her will was gone. She had retreated into her own world where the dishes were always clean, the floors smelled of carbolic soap, and her sons were out in the yard stacking firewood for her oven.

The woman found some bread that the soldiers had missed and gave it to Berta. “Be careful on the road,” she said at the door, as she watched Berta shoulder her bundles. “Three men disappeared yesterday. So stay off the main road and look out for yourself.”

Berta nodded. But on the way out of town she wondered how she was going to get to where she wanted to go if she didn’t take the main road. So she stayed on it, passing the outlying houses and taverns, the deserted yards and the brittle sticks still standing in the frozen kitchen gardens, until she came to a cart track that led off through the snowy fields.

The going was slow because she was carrying her bundles and
wearing a pair of men’s boots stuffed with newspaper to make them fit. The sun was past its zenith, a raw globe behind the clouds and not much brighter than the moon. The wind was picking up and she clutched the bundles to her chest to block it. She had one last delivery to make and wanted to hurry so she could get back for the early train. The farmstead wasn’t far, but it would be hard to find because of the mist that clung to the hollows and spiraled up through the trees. She had never come this way before. She kept thinking that out here it would be easy to freeze to death. Be only steps away from the house and never know it.

Ihor Kochubey’s son was getting married and this meant that gold chains had to be bought since it was the custom among the kulaks to cover their brides in gold. Because Ihor Kochubey had already married off two sons the previous year, this bride would have to be satisfied with a necklace and perhaps a bracelet or two. For this reason she would not be the youngest or the prettiest of the eligible girls, but then Ihor Kochubey’s son was not exactly a catch either. He was slow-witted and often seen talking to himself.

Berta had borrowed several chains from a jeweler and had sewn them into the hem of her skirt. As she walked through the deep snow across the fields she could feel the soft thud of their weight hitting against her leg. It wasn’t easy walking. She had to curl her toes to keep her feet from sliding around in the boots while shifting her bundles from arm to arm, trying to find a comfortable way of carrying them.

Finally she came to a drive that she thought might lead down to the house. It was smoother than the surrounding fields and lacked the undulating corn row pattern beneath the snow. There was a frozen stream beside it that looked familiar, though she couldn’t be sure, since she had always seen it in the summer, when it came crashing down from the hillside or in the fall, when the water was nearly gone and barely covered the gravelly bottom. Now it was covered with a thick layer of ice imbedded with bits of leaves and twigs. She crouched down and peered through the milky ice and saw the water flowing beneath it like long, blue fingers. Wedged between two rocks was a clump of human hair trailing in the gentle current. The shock of it
knocked her back off her heels. When she came back to take a closer look she told herself that it had to be some strange river reed. Fear was playing tricks with her mind.

On her way down the drive she thought about a warm fire in the stove, sipping a mug of hot tea, and sharing a loaf of bread and salt. They would want the news before they got down to business. They wouldn’t want the usual gossip. The goings-on of their neighbors held little interest for them now that the war was over and the Germans had left.

A year ago, in March of 1918, the Congress of Soviets ratified the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which gave Lenin peace with Germany, something he had to have if he wanted to stay in power. In return he signed away half of Russia’s western domain. Under the treaty the Germans were given the Baltic provinces and the nominally sovereign provinces of Poland, Georgia, and the Ukraine, which, in fact, were not sovereign states at all, but German-controlled protectorates. Under German rule the fledgling Ukrainian state enjoyed a period of peace and a certain measure of autonomy. This continued until the end of the war, when the Germans were driven out, taking any semblance of law and order with them. Now, no one wanted to hear about gossip anymore. All they wanted to talk about were the troubles on the farmsteads, in the cities, about the fighting between the Reds and Whites, about the warlords and the Directory troops who took what they wanted from farms like theirs and moved on. Of less interest were the widespread pogroms that were raging in the
shtetlekh
and in the cities like Kiev and Poltava and the frequent attacks on Jewish travelers on the trains and roads.

She would give them all the news she knew and in exchange they would buy her gold. They would haggle with her and she would pretend to lower the price, but it would be the one that she had been after all along. They needed the gold as much as she needed to sell it, so she was confident it would end well and all this anxiety, the uncertainty, the agonizing slog through the snow would be worth it.

She didn’t have far to go before she caught a glimpse of the house through the bare branches of the trees. It was the Kochubey house;
the fancy blue shutters and wide porch were unmistakable. She pushed on with the expectation that soon she would be hearing the dogs bark and see smoke curling out of the chimney. So she was surprised when she reached the bottom of the drive and found the yard empty and the chimney cold, the barn door open and the house deserted and dark. Ihor Kochubey was a careful man and wouldn’t leave his barn door open on a day like this. There should have been children out in the yard, bundled up in felt boots and sheepskin jackets. There should have been women in the kitchen and chickens clucking in the coop. Nothing was right about Ihor Kochobey’s farmstead and for a moment she wanted to drop her bundles and run. Instead she stood in the snow and waited until the panic subsided. Then she told herself that there were no signs of violence. There were no bodies, no blood in the snow. The house was intact. It was only the quiet that was frightening her. She crossed the yard to the barn, sidestepping a mound of frozen horse manure, and stepped into the darkness of the gaping doorway.

“
Kto-nibyd yest
?” she called out.

The stalls were empty and the hooks were bare where the harnesses usually hung. Her heart sped up. She turned and walked back across the yard. The windows of the house were blank. She walked up the steps and peered in through one of them, but could see nothing but the edge of a curtain and the cold fireplace across the room. She called out again, even though it was considered rude to call out over the threshold.

She waited for a few moments and then tried the doorknob. It turned easily in her hand. She called out once again before stepping inside. It was freezing in the kitchen. It smelled of a dead fire and spilled kerosene. The chairs were pushed back from the table as if the occupants had shoved them out in a hurry. There were wooden bowls of kasha on the worn planks with spoons frozen in place. Next to the bowls sat mugs of frozen tea. A cupboard stood across the room, open and empty. Beneath the table was a glass jar of canned peaches that must have rolled under and then been forgotten. She hesitated before picking it up and then shoved it into one of her bundles.

She checked the other rooms: a bedroom with several unmade beds
and another one with a wardrobe and a straw mattress covered in a blanket. She was about to turn and leave the house when she heard a rustling from the back room. This time she didn’t call out. She was sick with fear as she crept down the hall to the half-closed door. Behind it was a small room that smelled of mold. There were benches against one wall, a pair of felt boots in the corner, and a few goat hides tacked to the plaster walls, a feeble baton of light straying in through a tiny window. A chicken stood in the middle of the room plucking at something in the dirt. It was a clump of blond hair. This time it was unmistakable. Some of the strands ended in tiny points of blood as if it had been pulled out by the roots.

She turned and ran back down the hall and out into the kitchen. She grabbed her bundles and made for the door, stumbling down the steps and out into the yard. She blindly pushed her way through the snow, no longer thinking, no longer seeing her surroundings or where she was going, but lurching ahead, scrambling back up the drive until she realized that she had missed the track and was thoroughly turned around.

When she set out across the snowy expanse of corn rows she had no idea how to get back to Kamenka. The wind had picked up and now it was whipping across the fields, sending vapors of snow swirling up into the air. It sliced through her clothing, cutting her face; her eyes teared and her lungs ached. There was no cover in the fields. She was a dark figure in a blinding white expanse, easy to spot from horseback, a moving target against a sweeping counterpane.

When the field ended at the base of a craggy hill, Berta decided to climb it to get a better a view of her surroundings. It was a steep climb, over icy ground, and she kept sliding back down. She realized that if she threw her bundles up the slope and grabbed hold of a tree branch, she could drag herself up to the next handhold. In one steep place a bundle came sliding back down again. She tried to catch it, but it tumbled past her and came to rest in a tangle of ice-covered branches below her. She had to climb back down to retrieve it and then struggle back up again.

Finally she pulled herself up to the rocky summit and stood unsteadily in the howling wind. The view was disappointing. She
turned first in one direction and then in the other, looking for a break in the fields, for any hint of a road beneath the snow. She was beginning to think that she would have to go back to the farmstead and start over again, when the clouds parted and for a brief moment a shaft of sunlight lit up the horizon. There she saw a spot of gold winking in the sunlight. She recognized it as the dome of the Church of St. Damian the First Called, a famous landmark in Kamenka. Now, as she half slid, half walked down the hill, at least she could comfort herself with the knowledge that she was heading in the right direction and with luck might make it back before nightfall.

It didn’t take her long to find the cart track and she followed it back to the main road. Fortunately, only a few passing sledges broke the solitude of the road. No one stopped to offer her a ride. It wasn’t safe to help strangers or to request help for that matter. Everyone knew you were on your own. No one expected kindness.

Not far from town Berta came to a large oak whose heavy branches hung over the road and were laden with snow and ice. The finer branches higher up were strung with icicles and etched a confused pattern against the colorless sky. When she got closer, she let out a yelp and sat down hard in the snow.

Hanging above her from a rope around their necks were three Orthodox Jews in belted caftans. They were stiff and blue, their blackened tongues hanging out of their mouths. Eyes open and glassy. Beards thick with snow. Two of them had been robbed of their hats and shoes, the third wore a visor cap and boots that weren’t worth stealing. For the moment she could do nothing but stare up at them, at the frozen agony on their faces, the straining rope, the bulging eyes, and the black hands and feet swaying in the wind.

That night when Berta came out through the doors of the Cherkast train station, she found a crowd outside in a tight circle fascinated by something in the street. It was dark and bitterly cold. She pushed her way through the crowd to see what was keeping them from their beds. In the center of the circle was a compulsory labor detail clearing out the snow and horse manure with shovels. Since the Bolsheviks had come to power, it wasn’t unusual to see details of ordinary citizens
forced into labor. It was unusual, however, to see one like this, made up entirely of men and women in evening clothes. The men were wearing starched white shirts and cutaway coats. The women wore crushed velvet dresses, furs, and long gloves. Berta recognized one of them. She was a customer. She was a young woman and beautiful. Her evening slippers were soaked through, her hair hanging limp and wet beneath her once elaborate headdress. She was shoveling snow, but making a bad job of it. She tried to take too much with each shovelful and lost most of it on the way to the gutter. She glanced up at Berta and a light of recognition came into her eyes. For a moment Berta thought she was going to say something. But then a soldier, who had been trying to light a cigarette, looked up from his cupped hands and ordered her back to work.