“I wanted to, but my father-in-law was against it. He said the old woman was just as good. I suspect he didn’t want to pay. I can tell you when Olga grows up she will go to school. She won’t be like her mother. She’ll be able to make her own way. She’ll be smart and maybe even have a trade.”
Sura got up and came over to Olga and held out her doll. Olga sat up and took it tentatively. She fingered the delicate lace collar and the velvet dress and moved over so that Sura could sit down beside her.
After Kata Chaneko introduced herself and took out her embroidery, their little encampment began to take on the flavor of a domestic scene. “So, what have you heard?” Berta asked, watching Kata’s deft fingers move the needle back and forth through the yoke of a child’s blouse.
“A train is coming. They say it’s a big passenger train, big enough to take us all, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’ve seen lots of trains come and go since I’ve been here, but all of them were going the other way, to the front. Troop and supply trains mostly, hardly any passenger trains. Once I saw one of those special trains, the kind with the red curtains. It whizzed by here like a lightning bolt. People said it was the czar and the czarevitch, but who can tell?” Kata tied a knot and cut the thread with her teeth. “So where are you going?” she asked, looking up briefly.
“To Vladivostok and then to America.”
“Such a long way. Why are you going there?”
“My husband.”
“He is not in the war?”
“No, he was in America when it started.”
“This is good, yes? You still have a husband. Mine is dead.”
“He was in the war?”
Kata nodded. “The Jews killed him. They tell the Germans where to bomb. They have a lotion, you know. The Jews I mean. They put it on and it makes them safe from the bombs.”
Berta stared at her new friend, then let her eyes travel to an old sleeping couple lying nearby. After that she let the conversation slip away. She would’ve liked to look for another place to sit, but Sura was too comfortable with Olga and she didn’t want to make her move. So instead she lay back on her bundles and closed her eyes. Vladivostok was so far away. America was halfway around the world. What would she find when she got there? Would she find Hershel? Would he be alive? And what would she do if he weren’t?
Berta thought she would never get to sleep in the crowded room. There were people all around her, coughing and snoring and talking in loud whispers. The wounded were groaning and there was a cholera patient who kept calling out for a nurse. But she must’ve fallen asleep because sometime in the middle of the night she was awakened by an approaching train whistle. She got up along with the rest of the crowd and started to gather up her things. She could hear the blasts of steam from the locomotive and the clanking of wheels as it changed tracks and pulled into the station. Soon the crowd was on its feet, lumbering forward in an insomnious haze. She called to Mitya, who was already behind her with the bundles. Berta picked up Sura, ignoring her sleepy protests, and took Samuil’s hand.
At first the crowd was hardly moving, inching forward to the platform, a human tide at Berta’s back, pushing her along onto the heels of the people in front of her. A shout from the platform alerted the crowd that the train was boarding. After that they became more insistent, jostling one another for a better position, pushing forward with growing impatience, unmindful of the belongings of others that they trampled under their feet. A shriek was heard in the crowd. It sounded terrified and put everyone on edge.
“It’s the bird, Mameh,” shouted Samuil over the tumult. “It’s only the bird.” And to prove him right the bird screamed again, but this time his scream was answered by another across the room on the other side. It was the scream of a terrified woman, followed by shouts of men. Then, more screams.
The crowd began to panic. It surged forward, carrying Berta and the children along, trampling everything in its path, an insensible mass of humanity that threatened to eat itself alive. Mitya soon disappeared as the crowd closed in around him and Sura began to cry. In an instant Samuil’s hand was torn from Berta’s. “Samuil!” she screamed. “Samuil!”
“I’m here, Mameh,” he shouted back, and then miraculously his hand found hers.
She saw an old man trip and fall and heard him screaming as the mob crushed him. His wife tried to help him up, but she went down too. Her shrieks were ignored until they were cut off. Kata and Olga were ahead of them. Kata screamed as Olga was torn from her arms. She bent down to pick up her child and was knocked off her feet by the oncoming throng. By the time Berta reached the spot where they had gone down she thought she could see a blue-black arm barely visible beneath the tramping boots.
“Don’t let go!” she shrieked, holding tight to her children while she frantically searched for a way out. They were trapped in the howling blanket of people that stretched from one wall to the other. People were screaming and clawing at one another, struggling to stay on their feet. Clothes were torn from victims’ bodies, their faces misshapen, teeth broken, limbs at odd angles. The floor was sticky with blood and vomit.
Then she saw that even in their panic the people were avoiding the cholera patients. They were going around them as if they were surrounded by a solid wall of fire. Inside, the patients lay on mats breathing their infected air, sweating through their bedclothes and watching the desperate crowd with feverish, glassy-eyed stares. The crowd skirted their perimeter, sometimes tripping over the invisible line, but always leaping back, choosing the possibility of being crushed into a bloody mass to shitting themselves to death.
Berta allowed herself to be carried along, but she kept edging closer to the north wall. A woman to her right tripped and screamed. She was trampled despite her husband’s efforts to fight off the crowd. He fell too and a man tripped over them both, several more went down, and for an instant she could see a way to the wall. She didn’t hesitate. She got a good grip on Sura and held on to Samuil’s hand and, leaping over a crushed body, she pushed her way through the crowd. At one point she nearly lost her footing but regained her balance and made one last effort to get through, until, at last, she succeeded in breaking free and came stumbling into the north wall and the relative safety of the infected area.
A patient looked over at her as she crumpled to the floor next to his cot, hugging her children, crying and thanking a god that may or may not exist. He tried to say something to her, but his voice was too feeble. It was lost in her tears and the chaos all around them.
Chapter Thirteen
January 1915
THE MORNING was brilliant and bitterly cold after the snowstorm. The snow was so deep it nearly covered the first-floor windows. A boy arrived in a sledge and handed Berta a note through the kitchen door. It was from Hershel’s attorney, Mendel Levy, and in it he requested to see her in his office as soon as possible. No appointment necessary. It was that phrase, more than anything, that made her feel queasy. After her first fearful thoughts she reasoned that it couldn’t be that bad or Mendel Levy would have come up to see her himself. It might even be good news. He had heard from Hershel and everything was all right. There was money she didn’t know about. He had figured out a way to get them out of Russia. They were going to America. She knew it could be dangerous to think like this. She could be disappointed or worse. It was such a long-held belief in the shtetlekh, thinking too positively invited disaster, that she just accepted it without question.