Out on the street Berta searched for a cab and found that they all had fares. “We’ll have to find a tram,” she muttered, more to herself than the children.
Samuil looked up at his mother in annoyance. “What is wrong, Mameh?”
“Nothing is wrong. It’s just late, that’s all.”
She hurried up the street to the tram stop, but it was empty. It had come and gone and they would have to wait a long time for the next one. “We can always walk from here.”
“From here?” Sura moaned miserably. “All that way?”
“It won’t be so bad. If we hurry, maybe we can catch a tram farther on.”
“Why can’t we just wait here?” Samuil wanted to know.
Before Berta could answer a man leaned in and said: “I have something to show you.”
A sudden icy chill. “What is it?” she asked breathlessly.
“Come over here, out of the way of the crowd. You will like it.” He motioned her over to the doorway of a small hotel. She followed him reluctantly. He had a round head and ears that stuck out on either side. The glare on his glasses obliterated his eyes.
He opened a leather case and showed her the contents. “Are they not beautiful?” The case contained rows of rings, watch chain fobs, and gold watches neatly displayed on a blue velvet mat.
She waved him off. “Oh no, I’m not interested.”
“Why don’t you at least take a look? A pretty lady like yourself?”
“I said I’m not interested.” She was about to push past him when something caught her eye. It was a white gold pocket watch with an ornate face and an intricate engraving of vines and flowers on the case. She reached for it. “Where did you get this?”
“Now if I told you that you could just—”
“It looks like my husband’s watch.”
He grabbed it and snapped the case shut. “I think you must be mistaken.” He turned and started to walk away.
“It looks just like it.”
“A very common watch.”
“It’s white gold.”
“Still, very common.”
“I just want to know where you got it.”
He shook his head and picked up his pace. She tried to follow him, but Sura slowed her down. “Please,” she shouted after him, “do you know where he is?”
The man ducked into a side street and when she reached the corner she found that he had disappeared. Now all she wanted to do was get away. She saw a tram across the street and took hold of Sura’s hand. “Hurry, we can catch it.”
“But it’s going the wrong way, Mameh,” Samuil told her.
They ran across the street, avoiding the carriages and a few noisy motorcars, and hurried to catch up as the tram doors were closing. Berta waved to the driver, who opened them again and waited for them to climb aboard. She shoved the necessary coins into his hand and took the first seats by the door.
“I’m going to be sick here,” Sura said.
“We’re not going far.”
“Still, I’m going to be sick.”
“Where are we going, Mameh?” asked Samuil.
“I don’t know.”
“Shouldn’t we get off and find a cab? We’re going in the wrong direction.”
“I know, Samuil. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Why did that man have Tateh’s watch?”
“It wasn’t Tateh’s.”
“You said it was.”
“I was wrong.”
“Why did you say it was?”
“I made a mistake. Samuil, please, I have to think.”
After a few stops they got off on Dulgaya Street, the street of butcher shops, in the heart of the Jewish neighborhood. It was crowded with housewives and their children and street vendors pushing carts of secondhand goods: shoes, books, and clothing, any bit of rag or piece of furniture that somebody might want to buy for a kopeck. There were several butcher shops on the street with slabs of beef hanging in the windows.
“Why are we here?” Samuil asked. He wrinkled his nose against the smell of blood on ice. He was about to say more when he spotted three boys playing goose in the street. They stopped to watch the strangers go by. The leader eyed Samuil and whispered to one of the smaller boys, who giggled.
“We’re here to see Mumeh Lhaye.”
Samuil was amazed. “They live here?” he asked. The children had never been to Lhaye’s apartment. She always came to them, so they never knew how their aunt and uncle and cousins lived.
Ten years ago Lhaye met a young factory worker named Zev Rosenbaum in a poultry market on Dulgaya Street. She was visiting Berta and had come to Dulgaya Street to buy a kosher chicken since Berta didn’t keep kosher and Lhaye refused to eat traif. As she stood at the counter and waited for the poultry man to wrap up her bird, she asked Zev for directions to the tram that would take her back up to the Berezina.
“Oh ho, the Berezina. You work there?”
“No, my sister lives there.”
“Is she rich?”
“Yes, but I’m not.”
“Well, in that case, I’ll walk you to the tram stop. It’s easy to miss.”
Although he wasn’t pious, his father was and that was good enough for Mameh, who gave Lhaye her blessing. They were married in Mosny. Then she went to live with him in Cherkast, where they had three children in quick succession. He had contacted poliomyelitis from the local baths when he was a child and walked with a heavy brace on his left leg. But that didn’t slow him down. He had a reputation for being responsible and smart, a hard worker despite his infirmity, so it didn’t take him long to work his way up at the Nicholas Sugar Refinery, where he operated the vacuum pans and was popular with the workers that he helped to organize. Lhaye had recently given birth to a fourth child and now they all lived in the one-bedroom apartment over one of the butcher shops with no running water, a shared commode out back in an overgrown field, and several troublesome neighbors. Berta had offered her a nicer place to live, but Lhaye always refused, saying that she liked to be in the neighborhood, by which she meant the Jewish neighborhood. Berta suspected the real reason was that Hershel and Zev often fought over politics. Zev was a hothead Bolshevik and wouldn’t accept help from Hershel, the Bundist, if his life depended on it.
At the end of the block Berta entered through a dark doorway and climbed up the steep wooden staircase. She and the children walked down the hallway, past a line of clothes drying overhead and several bags of garbage that gave the building its characteristic smell. When she reached Number 5 she stopped and knocked on the door. Receiving no answer she knocked again and this time she heard a voice asking her to be patient. A moment later the door opened and Lhaye was standing there holding her sleeping baby.
“What a surprise! Come in. Come in. Please excuse the mess. Oh, don’t you look lovely, Sura. New gloves?” She kissed the children and Berta as they came in. “Sit! Sit! What can I get you?”
“Nothing, we just had tea. I have to talk to you.”
“Of course. Children, why don’t you go outside and play.”
“No,” Berta said.
“Vulia is outside. He can watch them.” Vulia was only a year older than Samuil, but seemed so much older from all his years in the neighborhood.
“No, please, Lhaye.” She didn’t want to insult her sister’s neighborhood, but on the other hand, she didn’t want her children going out there and catching some disease.
“All right. You know best.” And then to the children she said, “How about some honey cake, yes? I made some delicious cake.” She gave the sleeping baby to Berta and took the children into the kitchen.
While she was gone Berta held the fat baby in her arms and kissed his downy hair. It smelled like milk mixed with lotion and cornstarch and it reminded her of her own babies. She could hear Lhaye putting the kettle on and setting out the plates while she hummed a tune Mameh used to sing. If Berta closed her eyes, she could almost believe that she was back in Mosny upstairs over the grocery—the same smells, the same noise outside in the street, the same scratchy furniture. It brought back the old feelings of her adolescence, of familiarity and alienation, of inclusion and entrapment. It was both disconcerting and comforting.