“Get Kardvarnya,” Zalmund whispered to the boy who answered the door. He disappeared behind a curtain to the right of the doorway, while Zalmund and Deena stood to adjust their eyes to the dim light. The sweet and pungent aroma of smoked hashish drifted to the front. Zalmund wasn’t the only one who found the Firebird a convenient place to do business, and Kardvarnya proved a cooperative partner. Hashish, opium and cocaine poured into Kyiv, which continued its long tradition even during the war years as a gateway to the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. The cocaine in particular was not the seven percent laudanum that gentlemen sipped in the tea rooms of Vienna and London. This was the white powder that each week put down one or two of the all-night partygoers and juiced henchmen in the fast lane of Kyiv. Hashish was favored by the homeless desperados who filled up the cracks of the city, ready to do anything, legal or otherwise, for a day’s pay.
Kardvarnya appeared from behind the curtain, wearing a sportsman cap, grey flannel undershirt and wool military jodhpurs, tied at the waist with a stained white silk sash. His beard was salt and pepper, but his eyes were bright under dark bushy eyebrows. He spoke quickly and quietly into Zalmund’s ear, and Zalmund occasionally nodded. He pulled a sheaf of bills from his pocket and handed it to a surprised Zalmund.
“One in the back is asking for Starfish,” Kardvarnya said to Zalmund so that Deena could hear. Starfish was Zalmund’s street name among the underground.
“Who’s he with?”
“He won’t say.”
“Take a note. I want a name.”
“Fine.”
Kardvarnya slapped him on the back, and Zalmund and Deena left. They squinted as they walked back to Foundoukleevskaja.
“What was that money, Zalmund?” Deena asked.
“Someone wants to meet me very soon. It was a down payment.”
“Who?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. Someone who can afford to let this out of his hand.” He clutched the bills in his pocket. “So now, let’s go crazy!”
Zalmund hailed a cab to the shops on Andrievsky Uzviz, in the shadow of St. Sophia’s church. With money in their pocket, and more stashed under the floorboards in their apartment, they were energized. Deena bought a red satin drop-waist dress from a Paris designer right out of a boutique window, together with a matching skullcap hat and a pearl string, in the new flapper style. She found a grey and black striped cravat and pearl stickpin for Zalmund to wear under his new white silk shirt. They sipped cappuccino and looked out on the boulevard from a bistro filled with scions of the noble families.
At the end of the day, Deena insisted on visiting the Cathedral of St. Sophia, where for centuries the princes of Kyiv were crowned. It was modeled on Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and contained mosaics, frescoes, and icons dating back to the 11th century. In truth, Deena hoped in there to make sense of her day. She knew she should feel guilt, but she didn’t, that she should feel apprehension, but her heart only showed exhilaration. She needed to pray at the Cathedral as she was taught as a little girl. This she thought would reconnect her with moral certainties that were missing in her life. Was it wrong to survive? She had not hurt anyone, she thought, but had been chased away from helping people. Now in her own way she was fighting against that great wrong. She could receive forgiveness in the Holy Mother Church and begin again with a clean soul.
“Absolutely not!” Zalmund spat out at her.
“You only need to stand at the back.”
“I won’t cross the door. These are the people who want to destroy us. The same as in Moscow.”
“Oh, stop it!”
“And where was your God when we had nothing?” Zalmund asked her.
After a long pause, she asked him “Is it because you are a Jew?”
“Is that why,” he replied, “you must go, for forgiveness because I am a Jew?”
Deena’s face turned red to match her hair. She turned and entered the Cathedral. Zalmund left and returned to the apartment, to wait for her.
In that same Fall season, the influenza arrived in Kyiv. In the early spring a few recruits in US army camps were consumed in days with dark fluid in their lungs, but not before boatloads of their fellow soldiers landed in Europe to help in the War. By April both soldiers and civilians were sick in France, and then Spain. When the flu came to England in June, they called it the Spanish Influenza, and it killed 200,000 souls in a six weeks. After a dormant summer, the second wave of influenza began in September. The Germans call it “blitz catarrh” and it lasted about six weeks in each city as it spread its death. King Alfonso XIII of Spain took sick in September, and the court physician Dr. Gomez Casas was ordered to deny the existence of an epidemic. When he refused, he was dismissed. One-third of all Spaniards were struck down before it was over. But in Kyiv, the people thought this problem, like all the others of the world, belonged to someone else.
That was until the influenza struck the city like a warm, putrid seepage from the West. It called on people like a lottery, and they coughed for two days, gasped for a third, before their lungs filled with sticky goo and they suffocated. Soon news spread of the suddenly dead. By the end of September, the Bessarabka produce market was nearly deserted. But that was where Zalmund had arranged a rendezvous with his patron who had paid just to meet him. He was met by a mismatched team of thugs, one a big brawny intimidator and the other a scrawny, nervous type.
They took him to an aging hotel, near the edge of the Podol district, which had passed its prime at the turn of the century. They walked up the front stairs, past the bellman in a worn topcoat with faded gold epaulets and to the creaky elevator up to the mezzanine floor with suites. At the end of the hall, they knocked on the door, and after a peak from the door keeper, they were admitted to the rooms of Vladimir Dragomirov, the chief Kyiv politico and a General in the former Polish army. The outer reception room had a couch in front of a fireplace with an ornate stone mantle, and two circular tables with white tablecloths on either side of the couch. Gold-gilded sconces with light bulbs only recently replacing candles hung on the walls.
Dragomirov nodded and stood from the couch to greet Zalmund. He shook his hand but did not introduce his cronies seated at the circular tables. They wore dark coats and leaned their heads together in the table center to discuss the intruder.
“Hello, young man,” Dragomirov bellowed. “I’m glad you could come. Sit, sit.” He motioned to the couch. “Olga!” he cried.
In a moment from a side room emerged an aging blond in a short red maid’s dress with a low-cut front and puffy sleeves. She carried a tarnished silver tray with a crystal decanter of vodka and several small crystal shot glasses. She made a show of pouring the frozen vodka into each glass and carrying the tray to each man in the room.
“Nostrovya!” and Dragomirov knocked back the drink. The others followed. Olga repoured each glass. “Dobre!” and they all drank again.
Dragomirov and Zalmund sat and the cronies returned to their conspiracies. “You’ve made a name for yourself, Starfish,” Dragomirov began, his grey eyes fixed on Zalmund. His grey hair, thinning in front, hung down his forehead, and his mustache was a mix of dark and grey over thick lips.
“I try to stay low,” Zalmund replied. He leaned forward on his knees and tossed his cap nervously between his hands.
“To most, maybe. But not to me.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Not to me.” Zalmund looked up at him directly. “You have been in Moscow,” Dragomirov continued.
“Yes, for a little,” Zalmund replied.
“In the belly of fear, eh?” Dragomirov said. Zalmund paused. Maybe Dragomirov wanted some stories from the Cheka, but Zalmund wasn’t interested. “Dosyt! You have something of interest for me?” he continued.