The Little Russian (45 page)

Berta couldn’t sleep, so she lay there listening to the sounds of the sleeping city, the rain on the pavement, the occasional automobile splashing through the puddle at the intersection and the rhythmic
drip
,
drip
,
drip
from the rain spouts, which seemed to underscore the rhythmic throbbing of her leg and head. She eventually fell asleep and dreamed about Fichmann and about the river, not the one they had to cross to get to Poland, but the gentle tributary by the widow’s house. In her dream he was trying to coax her out of the water, but she didn’t want to leave. The water was cool and she was hot and thirsty, and it felt good against her skin. She woke to find a soldier shaking her shoulder and speaking to her in a language she didn’t understand.

“It’s open, Mameh,” Samuil was telling her. He was on his feet and trying to help her up, but she didn’t want to get up. She wanted to stay in the river.

The soldier pulled her to her feet and held on to her until she was steady enough to stand on her own. He kept motioning to the street and speaking in a raised voice as if she were hard of hearing. She told him she had business in the embassy and couldn’t understand why he didn’t step aside. It took her a moment to realize she was speaking Russian and he was an American. Samuil gestured that they had business inside and finally the soldier understood and let them go in.

“You have to look healthy, Mameh,” Samuil whispered anxiously,
as he helped her through the heavy glass door and into the marble foyer. “They won’t let you in otherwise. They won’t let sick people into their country.”

She knew that well enough. She knew that she had to appear in good health, so she smoothed out her clothes and brushed her hair with her fingers. She straightened her back and looked straight ahead, even though she still had to shuffle to keep her shoes on and couldn’t put much weight on her bad leg. Because of this it took them a long time to cross the great expanse of marble to the reception desk.

A girl in her twenties sat behind the counter typing at a desk. She was copying a list of names and telephone numbers from a handwritten list on a pad. Her red lacquered fingernails flew over the keys, while her eyes kept traveling from the list to the keyboard and back again. Another girl about the same age was talking on a telephone at a nearby desk. Both were smartly dressed in suits with long straight skirts, crisp white blouses, and ties. Their hair was cut in the same bob and they wore the same red lipstick that matched their nail polish, despite the fact that both were expressly forbidden by the foreign service dress code.

Berta couldn’t understand the telephone conversation because it was in English, but she could tell it was a personal call by the way the girl cradled the receiver between her ear and shoulder and picked at her freshly manicured nails.

“Mademoiselle . . .
S’il vous plaît.
” Berta held on to the desk for support. She was dizzy and feeling nauseous. Her words came out in a breathy rush.

The girl’s eyes slid over to her and she held up a finger. She chatted on for a minute more and then with exaggerated reluctance put the receiver back in its cradle and regarded Berta with undisguised annoyance.

“Yes?”

“
Mon nom est Madame Alshonsky. Pouvez-vous m’aider à trouver mon mari
.”

“Oh, French.” She sounded disappointed. “I’m not very good at French. I don’t suppose you speak English?”

Berta shook her head. “
Son nom est Alshonsky. Il habite en l’Amérique. Pouvez-vous m’aider à le trouver.
”

“Look, I have no idea what you’re saying.” She turned to her friend, who had stopped her typing and had been following their conversation with interest. “Francis, don’t we have someone here who speaks French?”

“Iris, wait.” Francis pushed back her chair and stood up. “You’re not listening to her. Did you hear what she said?” She came over and considered Berta from across the counter. “Did you say
Alshonsky
?”

Berta hesitated because she had thought she had heard her name, but it was so badly mangled that it was nearly unrecognizable. “__,” she said, dropping the French. “__, ___ ___
Alshonsky
.” Her heart was pounding in her chest. There was a sickly sweet metallic taste in her mouth. Black shapes drifted down through her field of vision.

“Now what is she speaking?”

“Russian, I think. But, Iris, listen.” And then to Berta she repeated: “Alshonsky.”

“
Oui
,” said Samuil hopefully. Then under his breath he added: “Open your eyes, Mameh. They’re watching you.”

“Iris . . . it’s that woman and her son.”

“No.”

“
It is.
”

“But she had a daughter too.”

“I’m telling you. It’s her.”

Iris turned back to Berta. “Alshonsky, right?” Samuil nodded vigorously. “Oh my goodness, we found her.” And then to Berta: “Mrs. Alshonsky, we’ve been looking all over Europe for you.”

Berta held on to the counter and tried to stop the room from spinning. Samuil caught her arm just as she was about to slip to the floor. “Look healthy, Mameh,” he whispered fiercely. “You have to look healthy.”

“Oh God, she’s ill. She’s going to faint.” Francis rushed around the counter and took her other arm.

“She is fine,” Samuil said in French. “She is healthy.”

“I’ll call a doctor,” Iris said, reaching for the phone.

Francis was already helping her to the bench. “No. She’s burning up. Call an ambulance.”

Across the hall a crowd of hopeful émigrés lined up at the windows, waiting to get their papers stamped. Their faces turned to watch the boy help his mother to the bench. They stared openly, not bothering to hide their interest. It didn’t seem to matter. The woman was obviously beyond caring. Her face was sickly white, glistening with sweat, her eyes bright with fever, and she was shivering, even though she was wearing a coat.

“Mrs. Alshonsky,” Francis said in her flat American accent. She crouched down in front of Berta and took her hand. “Hang on there, Mrs. Alshonsky. We’re calling an ambulance.”

“It’s no good, Mameh. They know you’re sick. They’re not letting us in,” Samuil said plaintively.

With a great effort of will Berta opened her eyes and for a brief moment she saw the concern on the girl’s face. She knew Samuil was right. It was hopeless. She didn’t know what to tell him. She didn’t know where he should go for help or how he was going to get there. There was no money left. The girl kept talking and, although Berta didn’t understand a word, she knew this young woman meant well. She could hear the sympathy in her foreign words.

“You’re going to be all right, Mrs. Alshonsky. We’re taking care of everything. We’ve been waiting for you. Your husband has been looking all over Europe for you.”

She seemed like such a nice girl and she wasn’t that young. Surely, she could take care of a child like Samuil. He was so smart and almost full grown. How hard would that be? Maybe she wanted a boy to take care of. Maybe she would be willing to be Samuil’s mother. In time she would love him. How could she not? She would see how special he is and eventually he would grow fond of her too.

“Do you understand, Mrs. Alshonsky? He’s been looking for you. He left word at all the embassies around Russia. You are an American citizen. You’re safe now.”

Berta leaned back as the blackness swirled behind her closed eyes. She could hear nothing now but the slowing beat of her heart. Samuil
was in good hands, she could see that. This woman would take care of him. It would be all right. He was safe. She could sleep now. She didn’t have to fight anymore.

“What’s wrong with her?” the young woman said in clumsy French.

“She’s fine. She’s healthy,” Samuil answered desperately.

The last thing Berta heard was the woman replying, “No, she’s not fine. She’s not fine at all.”

And then she was riding in an open sleigh with Sura by her side. They were sailing down Petrovka Street, bundled up in furs and leather blankets, coming home from a party at the Kokorevs’. She could smell the signal bonfires at the intersections and hear the sleigh bells and the whoosh of the runners on the hard-packed track. There was a candle burning in one of the upper-story windows of a large house. It melted the frost on the glass in a perfect semicircle.

Sura looked up into the sky and closed her eyes. She let the snow fall on her face, icy and wet, thudding down on her cheeks and lips with down-feather softness. Berta put an arm around her daughter and breathed in the smell of her hair and felt her silky cheek, wet and cold against her own.

May 1921

 

THE FLIVVER was parked in front of the Hoenig Brothers hardware store and undertaker, a brick building adorned with new awnings and wrought-iron chairs that sat out in front. Painted on the side of the building was a huge sign proclaiming in big block letters THE FARMER UNION BETS ON
YOU!
Up the road, a work crew labored to lay down a new wood-block road. Hershel had talked the other business owners into pitching in for it.
It will be good for business
, he had told them.
New roads for a new day
.

Once they were settled in, Hershel pulled out the carburetor choke, pressed the starter button, and when she caught he released the brake. They drove out past the business section, which was still composed of mostly empty lots, but here and there were clapboard and brick buildings fronted with signs that said simply FURNITURE; LUMBER; SINGER SEWING MACHINE.

At the edge of town they passed bungalows with wide covered porches known by the names of the families who lived there: the Bronfstead house, the Kilbourn house, the Kempers’. Set back from the road was a large clapboard house hidden by a screen of bare branches. It needed paint and the widow’s walk was boarded up. This was the Leinenkugal house, husband and son killed in the war.

They drove on past the cemetery with its starched rows of white crosses. Here the farm boys of Barron County were laid to rest after the Great War. The war to end all wars. A few American flags had survived the snows of Armistice Day and were still stuck in the ground next to vases of dead flowers.

Since Hershel discovered that the power of the engine and the
feel of the road could take him out of himself, he pressed down hard on the accelerator and kept his foot there, turning onto Highway 48 because it had just been graded and strewn with hay to keep down the dust. Soon they were doing nearly thirty on the straightaways, passing lines of mailboxes with Norwegian and Swedish names on them like Korvold, Vicklund, and Sjodahl. Occasionally, he glanced over at his son and was gratified to see how much he was enjoying the ride. He seemed to take everything in while he trailed a hand out the window, holding it stiff against the oncoming wind. For years Hershel dreamed of afternoons like this. Only he had thought there would be two children in the car.

To rid himself of this thought he stepped on the gas and they sped around a curve going too fast. He had to focus to bring the car back to equilibrium and that brought him out of his reverie, back to the road, to the day, to the rolling pasturelands and the puckered surface of a passing lake.

Eventually 48 got bad and Hershel had to slow down, but he was still content to ride along and listen to the drone of a well-tuned engine. They had the windows down and the split window shield open despite the gathering clouds. Soon there was a chill in the air that hadn’t been there before and the smell of fresh earth and rain. Fat drops began to fall on the windshield, mixing with the dust and insect splatter. Hershel pulled over to close the windows and thought about turning around, but just then the sky opened up again and brilliant rays of sunshine shot through the layers of clouds. They seemed to illuminate a part of the landscape not too far off. He took it as a sign that the rain was moving on. That they could keep going.

“What should we do, Son? Should we turn around?”

Samuil shook his head. “Let’s keep going.” They spoke mostly English now. It had been more than a year since Samuil had come to Rice Lake and already he was fluent.

 

IT WASN’T unusual for Hershel to take his son out for a drive in the coupelet on Tuesday afternoons. They usually started out from the dealership on South Main and rode out of town on 53 to Haugen or 48 to Cumberland, depending on the condition of the roads. That day
Samuil came over after school and Hershel told his partner, Marty Zelig, a fancy dresser from Lithuania, that he was going home early. Zelly made a face, but what could he do? Hershel was a full partner and could go home whenever he damn pleased.

When Hershel first arrived in Wisconsin, he lived with his sister, Rachel, in Cumberland. She and her husband ran a grocery and set him up with a cart and sundries to peddle to the local farmers. It didn’t take him long to see that, just like the muzhiki in Little Russia, the farmers didn’t want to buy from him; they wanted to sell. So he and his little mare traveled the countryside buying up rags for the paper mills and pelts for the furriers in Green Bay and Chippewa Falls. He was personable. He spoke English and told stories about the goings-on in town and on the neighboring farms. It wasn’t long before he had four carts working for him, a nice house on North Wilson Avenue, and a membership in the chamber of commerce. He wanted to join the Masons, but he was a Jew. Lines had to be drawn, even in Rice Lake.

One day he watched the Ford dealership go up on South Main Street. He had his eye on it even before it opened with balloons and flags on the Fourth of July. He knew the future when he saw it, but he also knew that the future was not easily abided in Rice Lake and that there would be stumbles and perhaps a fall before it finally took hold. He waited for the fall before approaching Martin Zelig with an offer to buy in as a full partner. Zelly put him off for a while, but in the end he took it because he had no choice. Since then they built it into a growing concern, and Zelly, who still complained that he had been cheated, never regretted his decision, not for a minute.