At first he thought his comrades were coming back and very nearly hurried out to the street so they wouldn’t know he had abandoned his post. But then he realized the voices weren’t coming from across the street, but from down the block, from the direction of the town. He froze. He peered out from his hiding place and saw two gendarmes coming his way. He jumped back and flattened his body against the wall. His heart was racing. He couldn’t think. His mind was a jumble. He wanted to run to the warehouse, but it was too late for that. Instead he tore off his glove with his teeth thinking that he would whistle. But he was never very good at it and now his lips were numb. In any case, the wind was too loud.
As the two policemen approached, he fell to his knees and held his breath. He could hear the crunch of their feet on the snow and even made out most of their conversation above the wail of the wind. One of them thought he had heard a noise in the warehouse and wanted to investigate. The other wasn’t for it. He argued that they ought to go to the sugar refinery to get warm and have a cup of tea. More was said that Pavel couldn’t hear, but the first one must have prevailed for they never passed him by. When he got up his courage to look out again he could see them crossing the tracks and trudging through the snow up to the warehouse windows. They brushed off the snow and shined their lights inside. Then they went on to the next set of windows and then around to the back.
Pavel waited in the doorway trying to get up the courage to run over to the warehouse and warn the others. At first nothing happened; he thought maybe they had heard the gendarmes and were hiding somewhere inside. Then he heard shouts and a couple of shots and before he knew it he was running blindly up the street toward the refinery, slipping on the ice, catching himself on a rusted beet cart and racing on past the boarded-up shacks and broken-down outbuildings that lined the street. He didn’t stop until he came to the edge of the ravine. Looking over the ledge he saw only a sheer snowy rock face and a black void beneath it. He turned back and this time ran to the refinery yard, where the men were still loading the beetroots onto the conveyor belt. Without a word he stooped to join them, piling the roots onto the belt, keeping his head down and ruining his fine calfskin gloves on the dirt that encrusted the tubers.
When the police ran by he looked up with studied unconcern and in doing so caught the eye of the other workers, who were watching him. There were three of them, dirty, careworn faces, wearing patched coats and felt boots. They stopped their work and studied him. Then the one with the raggedy beard took Pavel’s gloves right off his hands. The other one took his fur hat and the last one took his coat. In exchange the flat-faced little man gave Pavel his coat, a filthy assortment of mismatched patches. Pavel took it without a word, and put it on. It was too small. After that the men returned to their work, and Pavel did the same.
He was just beginning to wonder how long he would have to stay there, in the cold, with his back beginning to ache, when a new contingent of police arrived and approached the workers.
“See any suspicious men around here?” asked the captain.
Pavel’s heart began to thump in his chest. The workers shook their heads.
“Some men run past here? Maybe they headed off into the gulley or down over there,” he said, pointing to the edge of the ravine.
A sullen silence.
The captain looked at them and shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Then Pavel saw his eyes flick to the new gloves, to the fur hat and the coat.
“There is a reward, you know.” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders against the wind.
They looked up.
Pavel’s heart stopped.
“A reward?” asked the one wearing Pavel’s gloves.
“How much?” asked the one wearing his hat.
“Twenty rubles.”
Pavel looked at them, silently pleading with them. But they knew he was a Jew. A Jew owned the corner store. Jews did business with the devil and some even had horns and a tail. The shame of it was that Pavel could’ve easily outbid the police for his life. He could’ve offered them any amount they wanted. But it was too late. His options had just run out and all he could do now was slump down on a pile of roots and watch his end unfold.
Chapter Ten
January 1914
IT WAS nearing dawn and only the members of Berta’s inner circle were left lounging about on the settees and chairs, among the ferns and orchids, with their ties loosened and shirt collars unbuttoned, tiaras and ostrich feathers lying where they had dropped them. Olga and her lover, Valya, were on the floor sitting on cushions. She was using her considerable talents as an artist to paint his toenails. Her bobbed hair fell around her face as she leaned over his bare foot resting in her lap. There was a bottle of nail varnish wobbling precariously on the rug next to her.
“Stay still,” she said impatiently. “How am I supposed to do this if you keep moving?”
“I hope you know this is ridiculous.”
“Oh, stop being so dull.”
“It’s going to spill.”
“It’s not going to spill. Not if you stay still and let me ply my trade.”
“You’ve already got it on your dress.”
“Olga…” Berta said with annoyance. “Do you have to?” She was standing by the window watching the horizon turn from black to a deep blue. She had been expecting Hershel to walk through the door all evening. He told her that he had to go out and wouldn’t be home for her salon. Still, she didn’t expect him to stay out all night.
“I’m almost done,” Olga replied. “But he keeps moving.”
“I’m not moving. You’re drunk.”
“I am not drunk.”
“Yes, you are. It’s so like you to think that it’s the world that’s swaying and not your own body. She’s drunk,” announced Valya to the assembled. “Let the world know that the great painter and love of my life, Olga Nikolaevna,” he took her chin in his hand and leaned over to kiss her lips, “is nothing but a common drunk.”
Valentin Guseva was stretched out on the sofa, his arm thrown back supporting his head, his girlish mouth plump and slightly open. Across from him on a matching sofa was Aleksandra Dmitrievna, bundled up in a blanket, her arm resting on a pillow beside her, the rings on her fat fingers winking in the firelight. Yuvelir was seated in a chair at the edge of their little circle with his bare feet propped up on a hassock. His toenails were painted purple.
Valya looked down at his blood red toenails and wiggled his toes. “I actually do like them.”
Olga laughed. “Told you,” she said triumphantly. “And you put up such a fuss. You never listen to me.”
“I always listen to you. I have no choice. You never stop talking.”
She ran the brush up from his toe to his ankle, leaving a line of varnish on his leg. “Olga!” he said, pulling his leg back.
“Yes, my darling?” she said feigning innocence.
“Such a child.” He took out a handkerchief and tried to wipe off the varnish, but it smeared all over the hair on his legs.
“I’m bored. What should we do now?” Yuvelir said.
“Something fun,” said Olga, returning the brush to the bottle with the deliberate concentration of a drunk. “Something dangerous and morally reprehensible. Maybe we should kidnap someone.”
“Who shall we kidnap?” asked Yuvelir with growing interest.
“Someone helpless. Someone who couldn’t put up much of a fight. A child perhaps. I know, a Christian child. We’ll make matzos out of his blood. Berta will show us how.”