He stood there a moment longer and she thought he was going to say something, but instead he picked up his traveling case and left the room.
At the front door she watched him put on a clean coat and pull a fresh pair of gloves from the pockets. “Where will you be?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
He put on the gloves then a papakha and stepped out into the frosty morning. The towering black clouds on the horizon were lit from beneath by the rising sun.
“Hershel…”
“I’ll write,” he called back over his shoulder. “If you need money, see Levy. There isn’t much, so be careful. I’ll send you more.”
“I’ll miss you.”
He ignored her, threw his case in the back, and climbed in after it. Once he was settled in with the leather rugs on his lap, the driver urged the horse on and the sled plunged forward. She stood at the top of the stairs and shivered in her evening dress waiting to see if he’d turn around. When the sled disappeared beneath the crest of the hill, she came back into the house and shut the door. Her legs gave out and she slumped into a nearby chair. She hugged her chest and trembled. There was a glossy spot of red on the floor, hard and smooth. She bent down to touch it and found that it was nail varnish.
Chapter Eleven
May 1914
IT WAS hours before dawn when Berta first heard knocking at the front door, not knocking exactly, more like tapping, so soft that she couldn’t even be sure she heard it at all. Then, after a short silence, it started up again, only this time it grew louder, slow beats, evenly spaced, until they tapered off into silence. At first she thought it might be a branch in the wind. But there were no branches by the front door, and it was a still night with hardly a breeze. Then she thought it might be some kind of prank, but certainly not by children. Not this time of night.
She’d been in bed for hours and hadn’t yet slept. Falling asleep was difficult now that Hershel was gone. She usually stayed up alone most nights worrying. He had been gone for four months and still she hadn’t received a letter: not a card, nothing, not even after she found his sister’s address among his things on his desk and had written to him several times. Not knowing was becoming more and more intolerable with each passing day. She’d made inquiries with friends who would have known if he’d been arrested, but nobody had heard anything. He wasn’t in any of the prisons or hospitals. He had simply disappeared.
The tapping began again, only this time it was so faint that she could barely hear it. She considered ignoring it, trying to get some sleep. Then it grew louder. She sat up and threw back the covers. She put on her dressing gown and found her slippers. She thought about ringing for Vera or Petr, but for reasons she couldn’t explain, she didn’t want them to know about it.
By the time she walked out into the darkened hallway, it had stopped again. She stood there listening, her eyes settling on a puddle of moonlight that had formed on the landing. When she reached the top of the stairs, she could see an irregular patch of light jutting out over the parquet floor. She followed it across to the front door.
“Who’s there?”
Her voice sounded muffled, tremulous, like it was coming from a wax cylinder for a phonograph player. She tried to peer out through the windows on either side of the door, but the angle was too sharp. She could only see a portion of the doorstep.
“Who’s there?”
She hesitated, then turned the latch and heard the bolt retract. After a moment she turned the handle and slowly opened the heavy door. From where she stood, the front step looked deserted, but she couldn’t be sure. She opened the door a little farther and peered out until she could see the whole portico, the wide steps, and the drive beyond it. Nobody was there. It was quiet except for the crickets and a gentle rustling in the trees overhead. The moon was full, shadows flitted across the drive, and the branches of the trees were silhouetted against the black sky. She was about to close the door when she noticed something in the drive. She thought it might be a dead animal lying half hidden under the box hedge that lined the gravel. She thought of Masha the cat. Poor little Masha had been left out all night and had disappeared. Now, here was her body, killed by some wild animal. She hurried down the steps and strode out across the drive. Maybe it wasn’t too late to save her. She couldn’t imagine how she would tell Sura that Masha was dead.
When she got closer she could see that it wasn’t an animal, but an old traveling case, half buried under the hedge. She would’ve left it there, if there hadn’t been something familiar about it. She couldn’t be sure in the dark, but it looked a little like one of Hershel’s traveling cases. She picked it up gingerly, and holding it away from her night dress, she brought it back inside and carried it up the stairs, a litter of dirt and leaves trailing behind her. She went down the hallway to her bedroom and put the case on the floor before turning on the lamp. It smelled of mold and leaf rot and seemed to be more like a living plant than a manufactured object. There were trails of snail slime on the lid that glistened in the lamplight and attached to the handle were old spider’s webs encrusted with leaves and bits of insects. The locks had been pried open and the hinges were rusty. Even with these insults to its integrity, Berta could see that it had once been a fine case. It was made of leather and although there were no engraved initials on the backing plate, it most likely had belonged to someone who knew quality. She tried to remember if all Hershel’s cases had initials on them.
When she opened the lid she found that it was empty, as were all the interior pockets, except for one that contained the stub of a train ticket to Kiev. Even though it had been a good case, it was a common one. There had to be thousands of them in Little Russia. How could she say with any certainty that this one had belonged to Hershel? How absurd to think there was even a remote possibility that it was the one he took with him. And yet as she lay back in bed and closed her eyes, she tried to picture him packing, throwing his shirts into the case, closing it up, grabbing the handle, and walking off with it down the hallway. She tried to picture the case as he threw it into the sled and then climbed in after it, ignoring her, adjusting the lap rugs before signaling the driver.
A FEW DAYS later Berta took the children down to the shops. It was such a warm and inviting day that she decided not to take the motor but walk down the hill. The Berezina was busy that afternoon. Gardeners and their helpers stooped over hillocks of bare earth, shoving bulbs into the ground, while nannies kept an indifferent eye on their charges and gossiped with their colleagues in the private parks. Samuil was excited and wanted to run down the hill. Berta told him he could only go to the corner but then must wait for her before crossing the street. A motorcar sped past, belching black smoke from the exhaust pipe, and startled everyone with an explosive backfire. Berta had promised Samuil a new trick from the magic shop and he had pestered her all morning, until she gave up trying to enjoy her breakfast.
“What if I find two tricks, Mameh?”
“What if you do?”
“Could I get both?”
Sura, who had no interest in magic, was cranky and complaining about the walk even though they had only gone a few blocks. She wanted to go back and get the motor. As a compromise Berta agreed to wait on the corner for the next tram.
Among the passengers waiting at the tram stop was a well-dressed woman in a large hat making a list in a little book with a pencil. There was a gentleman reading a paper with a headline proclaiming STRIKE! in large black letters. There were several girls in plain skirts and white blouses, servants most likely on their day off, and several young men, also servants, who eyed the girls and whispered among themselves.