“Well, call louder. Maybe no one heard us.”
They had arrived in the town square late in the afternoon just as the sleet was turning to snow. They had found the town deserted and locked up tight. They drove around the square looking for the starusta, but so far no one had appeared, only a yellow dog picking his way down a snowy lane. Before Hershel had time to call out again, the door to the butcher shop opened and a man clutching a greatcoat over his round belly poked his head out and called to them.
“You Reb Alshonsky?” he asked. He had graying red hair and wore a visor cap.
Hershel prodded the horse and she ambled up toward the man. “Yes. We’re looking for the starusta.”
“I’m Yudel Polik, the butcher. We have been waiting for you.”
“Is there some place for the horse?”
“Don’t worry about the horse. They will come for her.” He held the door open.
They jumped down, grabbed their bags from the sledge, and followed the butcher inside. The shop smelled of meat and was nearly as cold as it was outside. The glass case was empty, but hanging above it were a dozen sausages.
“It’s gotten worse,” Polik said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Much worse.” He was leading them back behind the counter to the staircase. “The babas in the village are saying a Christian girl has been raped. They’re saying it was a Jew.”
Hershel exchanged a look with Scharfstein. The old women in the peasant villages were always starting rumors. And it was always about the next village over and about girls no one knew. “Where is everybody ? Did they run away?”
“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.”