The Rabbi chanted the words while the men said them silently to themselves or sang them in a cacophony of discordant notes, rocking back and forth on the balls of their feet, praying to God in their own way. Pavel stood apart and watched the men chanting the words, the Akedah L’Olam, Yehei Adam, and the rest. His lips moved silently, but no sound came out.
His grandfather had brought him to a prayer house when he was little that reminded him of this shul. His father was busy running his factories and had little time for his son. So his grandfather took him by the hand and walked with him on Mondays and Thursdays and let him stand beside him to watch the proceedings. He promised Pavel that on his thirteenth birthday he would give the boy his prayer shawl. Pavel waited patiently for that day, but his grandfather died before he was ten and the old man’s shawl went to another relative.
He didn’t know whether it was the memory of his grandfather, the singsong of the prayer, or the smoke from the stove, but something took hold of him in the half-light of the shul. Even cynical Morris seemed to be affected by the rhythms of the prayers, the power of the words, and the community of the ancient tribe. Pavel wanted to join them. He wanted to feel their connection with God and talk to Him as they did… as his grandfather did. But when he tried to recite the prayers, his reedy voice embarrassed him. He felt awkward davening with the others and his thoughts kept wandering away from God. He tried to focus on the Almighty, but he kept thinking about breakfast, a hot cup of coffee, Inessa’s breasts, and wondering how much longer this would take. When he looked at Morris, who seemed so engrossed in the service, so a part of the congregation and comfortable with God, he couldn’t help but envy him.
Later that afternoon, Pavel and Morris were enjoying schnapps by the fire. The snow was drifting down in a silent mass. He was thinking it had been a supremely satisfying afternoon when the clock downstairs struck the hour.
Morris looked up from his book. “Is that four then?”
Pavel checked his pocket watch. “Half past.”
Morris sighed and closed his book. He got up and stretched. “Well, that’s it then. We have to be going.”
“Going? Where are we going?”
“Didn’t I tell you? We’re meeting old friends for tea.”
“No, you didn’t tell me. Who are these friends?”
“You don’t have to come. I just thought you might be interested. They ’re factory workers, Pavlech. Members of the Bund. I thought you might want to meet real workers for once in your life.”
“I’ve met real workers. Plenty of times. I don’t need to meet more.”
“But I already told them about you. They want to meet the big hero who eluded the Okhranka at the Polish border.”
“I told you, I made that part up. There was no Okhranka. And in any case it was Lublin and not the border.”
“Still, they want to meet you. Come, you’ll like these men. They ’re good comrades, the real thing. And besides, if you stay here, you’ll have to go to maariv with my father.”
“Who says?”
“I happen to know he’s going to ask you. And you won’t say no.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you won’t. You never do. You’re too much of a coward. So what’ll it be, evening prayers or tea?”
An hour later they walked into the tearoom located on a miserable little street in the factory district. Inside, the air smelled of sweat and rotten eggs since it was across the street from a sulfurous paper mill. There was a young girl working the place, who didn’t look to be much over nine or ten. Too short to reach the counter, she had to drag over a wooden crate to take the orders and then drag it back to the stove to fill them.
Morris ordered a pot of tea and two cups and they took it to the reading room in the back. It was nearly empty except for a woman who sat reading a tabloid, looking suspicious and sullen, with a bruised arm still showing the shape of the fingers that had grabbed it. Behind her were two babas, old women, who sat hunched over their tea and coughed into twisted handkerchiefs wrapped around their fingers.
When Morris’s friends arrived, he rose to greet them, hugging them and clapping them on the back. “Pavel, meet these savages. This is Zolman and Yosele. They work in the brickyard. And this wild man is Yankele.” Morris grabbed his friend in a headlock and rapped his head with his knuckles. “He’s a danger to life and limb, so better keep your distance.”
Yankele tore himself free. “I’m the wild one. Hardly. You should’ve seen this boy. A holy terror. Had the whole town waiting to thrash him.”
Morris feigned surprise. “Me?”
“Dyeing the water carrier’s horse green?”
“That was Zolman.”
Zolman was dragging over a chair. “Horseshit… that was you, Morris. That was your idea.”
These men didn’t look very wild, nor did they look much like men. They were boys, no more than nineteen, but already exhausted from marrying young and having too many babies to support. Zolman had been the best of them at the heder and everybody thought he’d have a bright future as a scholar or a teacher. But when his father broke his leg in three places, Zolman had to go out and earn a living. He was thirteen at the time and lucky to get a job at the factory loading bricks into the kilns. Yosele’s entire family was wiped out in a cholera epidemic when he was six. He came to Cherkast to live with his aunt. Unlike Zolman he wasn’t disappointed with his life in the brickyard, because there had never been talk of anything else. Yankele was the youngest of three and the happiest because he had a wife he still liked to look at, only two children, and a trade, tailoring. There were so many tailors in the Pale that he considered himself a lucky man to have a job at all, even if it did entail laboring in an airless room for twelve hours a day stitching army uniforms on a pedal-driven sewing machine.
Morris said, “Come, sit down. I’ll get us some tea. And I brought a little schnapps.”
Zolman said, “Who can say no to that? And get some cakes too. You’re the rich man.”
Morris came back with tea and cakes and passed around the flask. Soon everyone was eating and getting drunk. At first the talk was innocent enough and centered on their childhood exploits. Loud arguments broke out over details that were of great importance to them but meant nothing to Pavel. Their talk reminded him of his brothers. Pavel was the baby of the family, years younger than the others, and was never included in their adventures or their late-night talks. Here too he seemed to be an outsider and once again he envied Morris.
“So, tell me what you’ve been up to?’ Morris asked.
The young men exchanged glances and at first no one spoke up. “What do you mean?” asked Zolman. He glanced at Pavel.
Morris screwed up his face in annoyance. “I told you he’s all right. I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known you. He’s the hero of Lublin.”
Yankele took a pull on the flask and handed it to Yosele. Yosele passed it on to Zolman without taking a drink. Zolman didn’t take one either and let it sit there.
“We’re moving out in a circle,” he said, keeping his voice low. It was an unnecessary precaution since they were speaking Yiddish in a Russian tearoom. “We’re moving out from Cherkast. Training them in the shtetlekh and the towns. Sometimes we can arm them, but it’s getting harder to buy guns.”
Yankele leaned in and fingered a lump of sugar from a bowl that sat in the center of the table. “Have you heard of Medvin?”
Morris shook his head.