The Little Russian (42 page)

“My uncle had it built after the ’05 pogroms. He liked to be prepared.”

Pessel threw down a rope ladder and went down first. Then they handed her the supplies and came down after her. Berta pulled the crates back over the door and covered it with more rubbish as she lowered it into place.

The hole was no more than six feet square. The walls were slick with water and the floor was damp and cold. Even so, they sat down on the bare dirt and shivered as the cold crept under their clothes, numbed their legs and buttocks, and seeped into their bones. As soon as they were settled Pessel blew out the light and they sat in the dark, shivering, wishing they had brought their coats, and listening to the screams of the pogrom that came in through the cellar window.

 

AT THE bakery, the Cossacks helped themselves to meat pies and bread. At the cobbler’s, they took the hides and shoes. At the silversmith’s, they took sacks of solid silver goblets, platters, and candelabras, every bit of the silversmith’s inventory. Yet they didn’t take his greatest possession until they climbed the stairs and found his fourteen-year-old daughter hiding in an armoire with her two younger brothers.

They took the girl into her parents’ bedroom and threw her down on her mother’s faded comforter, a wedding gift from a long-dead aunt. She struggled at first, but after the third Cossack, she settled down and even stopped screaming. After the fifth her eyes became fixed on the faded roses in the wallpaper that were splattered with her brothers’ blood. During the sixth something broke inside her and she died before the farm boy was finished.

 

SOMETIME during the night Berta heard the loud screech of boards being pried off the front door. It didn’t take long for the Cossacks to break it down and soon she heard the tramp of their heavy boots on the floorboards overhead. Moments later there were boots on the stairs, then in the cellar directly above them, kicking the crates about and rooting through the garbage.

“Well?” another one shouted from above.

“Nothing. And it smells like shit down here.” His voice sounded like it was in the hole right next to them.

“Look again. Look for fresh dirt.”

“Nothing. Just some old rubbish.”

“You sure?”

“I’m coming up. It stinks too bad down here. Something’s dead.”

He climbed the stairs and for a while longer there was more clumping about, glass shattering, and the heavy scrape of furniture. Then there was silence in the house, broken only by the sounds of destruction going on in nearby streets.

The pogrom continued for another day and into the night. By then the slop bucket was overflowing and the smell was overpowering. They had run out of water and food and Berta was worried about Samuil, who had begun to cough. “I’m going up,” she said, after the screams and the gunshots had drifted to another part of the neighborhood.

“No, Mameh. I’ll go.”

“Are you crazy? You’re just a boy. You stay here.”

“Why? I can hide and I’m fast.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“Maybe you should let him go,” said Pessel.

“I’m not letting my son go out there.” She struck a match and lit the lamp so she could see the ladder.

“But, Mameh, I can do this,” he insisted. “I’m better at it than you are.” His skin was pale in the lamplight. It was covered in a moist sheen like the underbelly of a frog.

“You’re not going.”

“I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

“No, and that’s the end of it.”

“I have to go. You’ll get caught and I won’t. You know I’m right.”

She stopped on the first rung and looked at him steadily in the eye. “You can really do this?”

“Easy.”

“No, not easy. This isn’t spying on the clockmaker’s wife. If they catch you, they will kill you. They will hack you to pieces.”

“I can do it.”

She sighed wearily and then climbed back down. “All right, but don’t leave the house. Just empty the slops, fill up the water pots, and bring back a little food. It shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes.”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, climbing the ladder.

Pessel said, “There’s a jar of pickled eggs in the cupboard and a box of biscuits on the top shelf. They might have missed them. It’s hard to see up there. They’ll be stale by now, but they’ll have to do.”

Berta reached up and touched his leg as he crawled through the opening. “Be careful. Here, take the bucket. No, leave the door open.”

“What if they come?”

“You’ll need it open.”

Samuil climbed up out of the hole and stood on the dirt floor breathing in the musty air of the cellar. It smelled like an ocean breeze compared to the air in the hole. He turned back and pulling his shirt up over his nose he picked up the bucket and climbed out of the cellar. The house was in shambles. It smelled of urine, whiskey, and smoke. The boards over the two windows had been ripped off and the front door dangled by a hinge. Nearly every piece of furniture had been smashed or thrown out the door into the street. The photographs lay in pieces on the floor, the contents of a costume trunk scattered over the wreckage. Through the broken windows, he could see the part of town that was burning. There was a dull glow over the houses and ash was raining down on the muddy lane. He carried the slop to the back door and standing on the steps poured it slowly into the dirt so it wouldn’t splatter. Then he stood on the porch listening to the sporadic
pop
,
pop
,
pop
of rifle fire.

He went to the water barrel and plunged the scooper into the cold water and drank his fill. Then he poured some over his hands and on his head and filled the water pots. He hunted for food, but found nothing, not even a raw potato to ease the hunger pangs. He climbed up the counter and checked the top shelves, but there was nothing, only a few rat droppings. He took the water pots and the empty slop bucket back down to the hole and handed them down his mother.

“There’s no food in the kitchen. I’m going out to look for some.”

“No!”

“I’ll be right back.”

“Samuil, no!” she cried out.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.” Samuil climbed up the cellar stairs and ran out of the house into the street. He could hear his mother coming after him, but he had a head start and he was faster.

The lane was lit by the glow of burning houses and littered with clothing, broken furniture, and household goods that had been thrown out the windows into the mud. The air was charged with the sound of gunfire and the smell of smoke. He heard a woman’s scream that was cut off abruptly, like lifting the needle off a phonograph record.

He ran along on the boards, sometimes using sofa cushions and pieces of furniture to keep from plunging into the sucking mud. He hugged the houses until he found an open doorway or window, and if the house didn’t look too damaged, he went inside to hunt for food.

In one house, he found a generous parlor and a dining room. It had probably been the home of a prosperous merchant. Now everything was gone, the doors and windows, the floors were bare, and even the wallpaper had been stripped from the walls. In the kitchen he found all the cupboards open, not a crumb left. He was about to leave when he saw a figure lying on its side facing the wall near the stove. He didn’t want to look at the body, but something drove him to it . . . perhaps a desire to make sure the man was really dead.

When he turned the body over he found a middle-aged man whose throat had been cut. The man’s sightless white eyes stared up at him and his gaping wound and open mouth were black with dried blood. Samuil’s stomach turned and there was a sweet sticky taste in his mouth. He started to sweat and his legs began to tremble. Before he could faint he turned from the body and ran out of the house. He darted down the middle of the lane, forgetting about his attempts to stay hidden, leaping from cushion to tabletop to bureau drawer, to whatever would keep him from sinking into the mud. At one point he stepped on something soft that gave way and when he turned he saw another body, a woman whose ears were missing.

He raced on blindly down the street until he came to the little grocery at the corner that stood open and vacant. The windows had been broken, the door was gone, and there were smashed bottles and barrels out in the street, spilling their contents into the mud, mixing pickles and mushrooms with the eclectic brew of annihilation. He ran in and almost slipped on the sticky mess that covered the floor. It smelled like molasses and cooking oil.

He wanted more than anything to run back to the hole, but there in front of him were jars of herring, boxes of biscuits, smoked salmon, and crackers. He was starving—hungrier than he had ever been in his whole life and for the moment the gnawing in his belly trumped everything, the black blood, the gash in the throat, the lolling head, even the urge to run.

He gathered up what he could and stuffed it into a potato sack. He was about to dash back into the night when he heard the drunken cries of the Cossacks coming down the street. Without thinking he ran to a barrel and lifted the lid.

“Go away!” a young boy snapped. He was crouched in the barrel, standing on a layer of wheat flour, nearly doubled over so he could fit inside. He reached out and pulled the lid back down over the opening.

Samuil tried a cupboard, but another child was hiding there. Another barrel was filled with pickles and vinegar and another one was nailed shut. The Cossacks were on the front steps. There was a high shelf, but no time to reach it . . . potato sacks in the corner . . . too late even for that. The first soldier tramped in shouting to the others that there was food inside. His blue face glistened in the square shaft of moonlight streaming in through a window. There was only the corner now. Samuil dropped to the floor and melded into the stucco wall. His heart was stuttering and he had a tremendous urge to pee. He didn’t know if this would work, if he could stay hidden. He had never become a corner in a room before.

March 1920

 

BERTA’S BOOTS shattered the icy puddles as she climbed up the steep path; her nose prickled from the cold; her fingers were stiff because she had lost her gloves. She could see a tree with white leaves at the top of the hill, silhouetted against the dawn, its thick roots gripping the ground like the talons of a bird. The grass beneath it was cluttered with what appeared to be boulders.

Down in the street she could hear the shul
klopfer
calling the men to morning prayers. Someone was chopping wood and from various quarters came the clamor of carpenters working full tilt to fill the coffin orders. It had been four days since the squadron of Zaporozhian Cossacks had pulled out, leaving twenty dead and the town in ruins. It was getting warmer and there were still bodies lined up on the synagogue floor that wouldn’t wait another day. Even at this hour the town was alive with people laboring for the dead: the gravediggers, the shroud makers, the men at the sawmill. All working to put the dead to rest.

The tree was festooned with scraps of paper that quivered in the early morning breeze. Berta had brought her own scrap and worked to tie it to a branch using a small piece of twine. On it she had written a few lines from a woman’s prayer, an ancient plea for her dead child, addressed to a god she didn’t believe in. The tree was alive with fluttering prayers: Some were for children, others for husbands and parents; some were for luck or simply for the gift of continued life. They looked like butterflies poised on a branch, ready to fly up to heaven with their messages on behalf of the dead and the ones who were left behind to mourn them.

She turned and joined the other women who had come up before
her, who were sitting on the grass together and yet apart. No one spoke. No one had to because they understood each other, why they had come and why they were together. Their shawls were pulled up over their heads and their skirts were splayed out around them, solid women, easily mistaken for boulders in the predawn light. Berta pulled her shawl up too and sat among them, her skirts spread out all around her, giving her the same look of solidity, another sad boulder on the scruffy winter grass. She lowered her head and closed her eyes, but instead of a prayer she hummed an old Tartar song about horses on the steppes that she used to sing.

When Berta came back down she found Pessel running out of the house with laces untied, her coat thrown over her nightdress, wearing a kerchief over her wild hair that fell in disarray down her back. She ran along the boards that lay over the mud, extending her arms out for balance and calling out to Berta. “A merchant has come,” she said, nearly bursting with the news. “I just heard it from the old woman in the back. I know him. He lives near Zhvanets.”

Pessel knew all about Berta’s destination and her intention to cross the river into Poland. “Why are you just standing there?” Pessel asked impatiently. “Go, go. You’ll miss him.”

“What do you think he’ll charge?”

“He’ll be fair. He won’t take advantage. He isn’t like that. He’s harmless.” It was the highest praise Pessel could give any man.

Berta found the merchant in front of the stable harnessing his horse to a cart that was filled with sacks of potatoes. “Are you going to Zhvanets?” she asked.

“Eventually,” the merchant said, glancing up briefly.

“Will you take me and my son?”

This time he studied her more closely before shaking his head. “I cannot. Sorry.”

“Even if I pay you?”

“That’s not it. I can’t overload Esther. She won’t have it.” The chestnut mare looked around when she heard her name. “Yes, you, my beauty, I’m talking about you.” He kissed her nose and stroked her flank. “She won’t pull a heavy load over these roads. I know her. She’ll be cross and make everyone miserable.”