“So maybe it isn’t true, but everybody knows that 90 percent of them are traitors and the rest are spies. If they didn’t do that, then they did something else. I’d bet my life on it.”
Berta pretended not to hear their conversation. She stared blankly into her coffee cup and then looked up out the window at a passing convoy of army trucks that belched out clouds of blue smoke from their exhaust pipes. She had heard the rumors of Jews hiding gold in corpses and sending them to the Germans, of floating messages in bottles and signaling the German artillery with lanterns and flags in the trees. Everyone was convinced that Jews were collaborators. Nobody thought to question otherwise.
Whenever she was confronted with something like this she pretended not to hear. Over the years she had perfected a look of disinterest, as if it had nothing to do with her, as if she had no thoughts on the subject. In truth it had everything to do with her. It filled her with humiliation for being a Jew and for not defending them. She was angry at the anti-Semites but also angry at the Jews for holding themselves apart and making themselves so conspicuous. It made her miss her parents. Sometimes she thought she ought to do something, say something, but she never did. Instead she kept quiet and justified her cowardice by reasoning that it was important to get along and not make a fuss.
“And I suppose they had something to do with Odessa?”
At that Berta looked over at them.
“Could be, hadn’t thought about it.”
“Absurd. Now you’re really stepping over the line. I wash my hands of you.”
“Blaming me for the truth?”
“What happened in Odessa?” she asked, not bothering to make an excuse for interrupting.
The two men looked over at her, obviously pleased by her question. “It was in the papers tonight, Miss. The Turks shelled the city and sank a gunboat and blocked us in.”
“A blockade?”
“So it seems. There were two German battle cruisers.”
“And there’s no way out?”
The officers exchanged a look. “Well, no, that’s the idea of a blockade, you see.”
“So we’re trapped here?”
“I suppose you could put it that way.”
The officers wanted her to stay and tried to entice her with details of the event, even though she had no interest in any of it. When the waiter came by, she gave him a ruble without glancing at the check, gathered up her things, and left. Out on the street she went first in one direction and then another, knowing that something had to be done but not knowing quite what.
IT WAS after midnight when Berta arrived at the Cat Gut Club, located in the cellar of a warehouse on Podkolokony Street in the heart of the Lugovaya Market. It was a popular gathering place for artists and poets and scions of wealthy families out for an exotic evening of poetry readings and music. On special nights the dancer Marianna Golitsyn dressed as a gypsy and performed on a mirror sometimes wearing underthings, sometimes not, depending on her mood. Mostly it was a place for all the classes to come together and drink “pineapple juice” from teacups. It’s what they were calling vodka since the czar outlawed it at the beginning of the war. It was also the place for paying bribes, selling information, and buying cocaine.
When Berta came down the steps the first thing she noticed was the smell, which only grew steadily worse as she descended into the club. Despite the vases of flowers that lined the wall, the whole place stank of faulty plumbing. It was worse in the lobby, so bad she had to keep her gloved palm over her mouth and nose until she managed to weave through the crowd and enter the main room.
The club proper was a cavernous space built beneath the street. The ceiling and walls had been covered with rough patches of gray plaster to give it the appearance of a cave. Berta stood on the bottom step and scanned the crowded room looking for Yuvelir. It was packed with a rowdy crowd of officers and enlisted men, their women drinking alongside them, smoking cigarettes right out in public. Everyone was singing and clapping while in the center of the room enlisted men were dancing the kazatska, their arms folded across their chests, their legs shooting out from under their torsos as they jumped up and down.
Berta was surprised by the gaiety in the room. How could they be in such high spirits with a war going on? Didn’t they realize that hundreds of thousands of their compatriots were dying at the front? She looked at their drunken faces—at the young officer grabbing a woman and pulling her down on his lap, another falling backward into the crowd, a girl with smeared lip rouge squinting through a haze of cigarette smoke—and realized it wasn’t gaiety that filled the room that night, but a desperate attempt to deny the inevitable. These were officers about to lead thousands of untrained peasants to their death. These were enlisted men about to meet the enemy without guns or bullets. Since there weren’t enough arms to go around, they would be expected to earn their rifles by prying them out of the hands of their dead comrades. Looking around at the singing and dancing and drunken lovemaking, she understood that it wasn’t a party she was witnessing, but a last supper.
Berta spotted Yuvelir seated in the back with five young officers and walked over to join them. He jumped to his feet and reached out for her hand. “Madame Alshonsky,” he said with mock formality. “What is the world coming to when Berta Alshonsky graces us with her presence in a hole like this?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your party. I really can’t stay.”
“Nonsense. Come sit with us.” He kissed her on both cheeks and pulled over a chair. “Gogochka, get Madame Alshonsky a pineapple juice.”
The talk was all about war: stories of horror and heroism, who was gone and who wasn’t coming back, of the government’s mismanagement, the crumbling supply lines, and the faltering munitions factories that were struggling to keep up with demand. The usual spy rumors came up, but thankfully no one mentioned the Jews. They all knew she was Jewish. No doubt they were raised to be anti-Semites, but civilized ones, who kept a check on their views when in the company of Jews of Berta’s class.
She waited for as long as she could and then she leaned in. “I have to speak to you,” she said to Yuvelir. The waiter had just come and put down a platter of zakuski in the center of the table.
“What now? Can’t it wait?”
“No, it can’t.”
He’d been turned down for service when he tried to sign up during the initial flush of wartime patriotism. The army said his politics were too radical and they didn’t want him. With all his friends gone he had nothing to do but help in the various wartime charities and write his memoir, which he thought was interesting enough to be published. But tonight a few of his closest friends were back and the last thing he wanted was to be pulled away from them.
She rose and the gentlemen got up in deference. She said her goodbyes and then turned to Yuvelir. “Come along, Misha, you’re going to walk me home.”
It was late and Podkolokony Street was shrouded in thick fog. It had snowed while she was in the club and now the wind swirled the snow into drifts around the lampposts and up against the buildings. Every now and then a candle appeared in a window, but mostly the street was dark and deserted. Occasionally, a figure materialized out of nowhere, a leering face in the gloom. There was a distant screech of laughter, then a man’s drunken cry. Someone was calling for help. They passed an old woman sitting on a curb with a baby in her arms. She held out her hand for a coin. Berta ignored her and walked on. Everyone knew where these beggars got their babies—they rented them by the hour off the nursing mothers, hoping for a little pity and a few kopecks to buy lodging for the night.