On the way, Madame Gorbunova took her time to look around. She stopped to finger a pair of brightly colored majolica parrots on a perch. “You have a lovely home here, Madame Alshonsky. I have never been in a Jewish home before. I didn’t think they were so nice and clean.” Berta did what she always did when faced with comments like that: She kept her expression neutral and said nothing.
Later, after everyone had filed into the room and found a seat, Monsieur Fevrier turned off the lights. The only remaining light, apart from the firelight that escaped through the cracks around the grate and door of the tile stove, came from two ruby red globes that stood on either side of the little table at the front of the room. They glowed and threw blood red patterns on the walls and on the ceiling.
Madame Gorbunova waited for a few minutes to let the tension build. Then she entered the room, walked over to the little table, and greeted her audience. Her gestures were a little too large and her words a little too deliberate. Berta guessed that she finished off the two whiskeys and hadn’t bothered to share with Monsieur Fevrier. In a prepared speech Madame Gorbunova requested that the audience remain quiet throughout the communion. She said that while she could not promise anything, her spirit guide, Prince Pietro Cribari, had told her there were spirits asking to be heard. She explained that she could not be responsible for anything that was said during the communion, that she was just a vessel, a human telephone, if you like, and nothing more.
Then she took her seat behind the table and closed her eyes. Slowly she relaxed; her chin slumped forward until it came to rest just above her large bosom. After a while her breathing became deep and regular and her hands fell out of her lap and hung by her sides. She appeared to be in a deep trance.
“You may sit up now,” Monsieur Fevrier said quietly.
Madame Gorbunova sat up and opened her eyes. She stared straight ahead, seemingly blind to the twenty or so people who sat in their chairs leaning forward, holding their breath.
Nothing happened.
The audience sat waiting, growing bored, whispering among themselves, and fidgeting in their seats. Berta was beginning to worry. But soon Madame Gorbunova’s eyes began to flutter liked moth wings and she started to speak in a husky man’s voice. It was the voice of Prince Cribari, an Italian who always spoke Russian, a fact that nobody bothered to question.
“There are three of us here tonight,” the Prince said through Madame Gorbunova. She shifted her position in the chair, crossing one arm over her stomach and using it to brace her other arm. She held an invisible cigarette between her fingers and occasionally took a puff.
“Can you describe them?” asked Monsieur Fevrier.
A long pause. “A soldier with medals on his chest. He is angry because he wasn’t supposed to be shot. He says it was a mistake. It was supposed to be the other fellow who ducked to light his cigarette. He is looking for his wife. He sees that she is not here tonight, so he has agreed to step aside.”
Another long pause. “A foundry worker from Moscow. He is upset because he says he is late for work and they will fine him if he doesn’t hurry. He cannot understand why he is so cold, since he works in front of a furnace all day long. He doesn’t know he is dead. The others have been trying to explain it to him, but he refuses to listen.”
She sat up and craned her neck as if trying to see something at the back of the room. “I see a little girl over there with brown curls. She is coming over. A sweet little thing. She has something to say.”
“What is her name?”
Madame Gorbunova took a long puff on her invisible cigarette and blew out invisible smoke. “Eva.”
There was urgent whispering in the room. The Rosensteins huddled together, speaking in low intense voices.
“May we speak to her now?” the assistant said, quietly.
Madame Gorbunova’s head slumped down on her chest. Then, after a moment or two, she slowly raised it again. This time she uncrossed her legs and twirled a finger around an imaginary curl. Even though she was well over forty with baggy cheeks and thinning dark hair, she had transformed herself into a little girl.
“Mameh, I didn’t hide Bobbeh’s teeth.”
“Oh my God.” Madame Rosenstein rose from her seat.
Monsieur Rosenstein grabbed her arm and pulled her back down again. “Sit down,” he whispered fiercely. “You’re making a spectacle out of yourself. It’s only a trick.”
“It wasn’t me, Mameh.”
“It’s Eva!” Madame Rosenstein cried out in a hoarse sob.
Her husband said, “It’s not Eva. She is dead and in the Garden of Paradise.”
“I was just looking at them. I wasn’t going to hide them.”
“I know, darling. She’s not angry with you.”
“They fell, Mameh.”
“I know. We found them. They were behind the bed.”
“Bobbeh is angry with me.”
“No, she’s not angry, my precious. She loves you.” Her voice broke and tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Bobbeh is angry because she can’t find her teeth.”
A mist began to form over Madame Gorbunova’s head. A shock rippled through the audience followed by a cry from Madame Rosenstein. Monsieur Rosenstein’s hand shook as he took hold of his wife’s arm. “We’re leaving,” he said firmly. But when he tried to get up, his legs buckled out from under him and he sat down.
A hand reached out for Berta’s shoulder. “Madame…”
She jumped, turned, and found Vera standing behind her. “What is it?” she hissed.
“A telegram.”
“Not now, Vera.”
“It’s from His Honor.”
“For God’s sakes, we’re right in the middle of—”
As she said these words the mist evaporated. After a moment of darkness, Monsieur Rosenstein led his sobbing wife from the room. Madame Gorbunova opened her eyes and watched them leave. Then she looked around at the crowd and asked Monsieur Fevrier what had happened.
Chapter Eight
December 1913
HERSHEL stepped off the train and screwed up his face against the cold. Behind him the train was belching and spewing out a curtain of steam that evaporated in the cold air. The snow blew in sideways under the platform roof and blanketed the worn boards, piling up against the benches and hurrying the passengers inside. Clutching his hat with one hand and his suitcase with the other, Hershel ran for the station door, slipping on a patch of ice and catching himself on the back of a nearby bench.
The station was stifling and smelled of burned butter and pickled vegetables. There was a railway restaurant on one side of the terminal with its display of blue mineral water bottles stacked in a pyramid. He caught his reflection in the glass partition that separated it from the rest of the station. Flakes of snow still clung to his beard and he brushed them off, reminding himself that it needed trimming.
Hershel strode to the ticket counter where he called over the stationmaster and gave him his suitcase to watch and a ten-kopeck coin. On his way out through the big glass doors he checked his pocket watch and found that it was half past seven. He had left instructions in Kherson that morning that he wanted a telegram delivered to Berta at this time so she would think he was still there. He knew she wouldn’t be happy with him when she read it and that he would have to make it up to her when he got home. He pictured her in the foyer, dressed for her salon, tearing open the telegram, reading it, crumpling it, and handing it back to Vera. He knew after that she’d take a moment to compose herself before returning to her guests, adopting that strained half smile that she reserved for public disappointments. He didn’t like disappointing her, but there was nothing to be done about it. His presence in Poltava was unavoidable.