Monsieur Brodsky brightened when he saw Berta at the door. She had been a valued customer once and they had enjoyed something of a friendship. She knew all about his mother, whom he doted on, and who had recently lost her foot to diabetes. She thought if anybody would give her work it would be S. I. Brodsky.
“Madame Alshonsky, we were so worried about you. We haven’t seen you in such a long time, and now here you are again and looking more beautiful than ever.” Monsieur Brodsky was a small man, very correct in a stiff collar and dark suit with his coat of arms embroidered over the pocket. She happened to know that his father was a Jew. Although he didn’t consider himself a coreligionist, it still brought a certain ease to their dealings. “Fortune has smiled on you. This is good news. So tell me what can I do for you.”
“Actually, I’m not here to buy anything.”
“Oh, you say that, but I bet we could entice you. We have such delicious new designs. Have you seen this one yet?” he said, pulling out a black satin decorated with braiding and jet beads.
“Monsieur, you don’t understand, I’ve come looking for work.”
“Here? You want to work here?”
“I have a fashion sense. You said so yourself. And I know everyone. I’d be valuable. And I don’t think I’d be wrong in saying that we were friends once.”
Monsieur Brodsky waved to a well-dressed woman who had stopped to look at the model in the window. She waved back and motioned to him that she liked the coat. He put his fingers together and gave her a little bow. “That’s Tatiana Tikhonova, do you know her? A lovely person. Her husband fell off a mountain before the war and died. Lucky for her, I hear he was impossible.”
Then he took Berta’s arm and led her to a secluded spot in the back of the store. “I want you to know that we’re still friends, Madame Alshonsky. And that’s why I’m not going to make an excuse and send you on your way. I’m going to tell you exactly why I can’t hire you. Why you would ruin my business in a week if I did.”
“But, Monsieur—”
“No, let me finish. You need to hear this. You need to know how things are. It’s very simple. You’re a Jew and nobody wants to buy from a Jew, especially not now, not with the war and the talk of spies. A peddler maybe, a window washer, but not a shopgirl in a fine salon. Nobody wants a Jew getting that close to them, seeing them in their underwear and touching them. It wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t do at all. I wish I could help you, and if it were a different time, you’re right, I would hire you.”
She nodded slowly, thanked him in a small worried voice that she hardly recognized, and left the shop. She knew he was telling her the truth. He would have no reason to lie; he was just trying to help her. But she couldn’t let him frighten her. She had to keep going. Something would come up. She would meet someone who knew someone who was looking to hire and she would hurry over and get there before anyone else. That’s how it would happen. All she needed was a bit of luck and so far, up until now, she had been very lucky in life.
She spent the rest of the afternoon trying every shop on Davidkovo Street, big and small, dress shops, milliners, a department store, even the green grocer on the corner. No one would hire her. Eventually the shops began to close, the wind came up, a light dusting of snow began to fall, and still she wouldn’t go home. So she walked down to the river. It was frozen solid and even though it was nearly dark, there were still ice fisherman hunched over their holes in the ice. Several of them were following the footpath up the bluffs with a catch of silvery fish dangling from a line.
When it got too cold to stand out on the bluffs, she turned back to the city and followed one of the main streets back into town. She walked through what was left of the German neighborhood and on past the Cherkast Agricultural Academy on Skakovaya Street. Slowly the reality of her situation began to sink in: She was alone with two children in a country at war. She had no money and no skill that could earn her a living, nothing of value left to sell, and there was no end to the war in sight. If her children were to grow up, it would be because she found a way to keep them from starving. If they received an education, she would have to pay for it. It was all up to her now, no one else, just her.
She kept going, not wanting to turn back and face the responsibilities that waited for her at home. The snow fell harder driven by the wind. It was wet and it ruined her hat, soaked through her clothes, and crimped her hair into frizzy ringlets about her face. She was shivering and her hands were starting to cramp despite her gloves. She kept thinking of the beggar woman on Podkolokony Street in the Lugovaya Market begging for kopecks with a rented infant. A phrase began to circle through her thoughts like the tail of a kite. Beg, borrow, or steal. Beg, borrow, or steal. It became like a tune in her head that wouldn’t leave. Beg, borrow, or steal. Beg, borrow, or steal. But she would not beg and she could not steal, so what did that leave her? Borrow. She would borrow the money. She stood in front of a burned-out shop that had once been a German bakery and looked up into the black sky, letting the snow fall on her cheeks and lips while she thought it over. She opened her mouth and the flakes landed on her tongue and melted instantly. She thought about where she would go, whom she would ask, and the more she thought, the more it began to look like a simple solution to a dreadful problem.
The next morning Berta went to see Aleksandra Dmitrievna and was told by her maid that she was still asleep. Berta would not be put off and pushed passed the girl, saying that it was all right, Madame Tretiakova had asked her to come around and get her up early. She went up the stairs, her hand gliding over the marble balustrade carved to look like waves on an ocean, and opened Alix’s door without knocking. She found her friend asleep under a mound of quilts and down-feather pillows and shook her awake.
“Berta, milochka… so early?” she croaked. “What time is it?”
“It’s time you were up.”
“But it’s still the middle of the night.” Alix never got up before noon, sometimes not even before two or three in the afternoon. She never went to sleep before dawn. She was fond of saying that she kept Moscow hours, even though she had never lived a day in Moscow or anywhere else except Cherkast and the little village near Kiev where she was born.
Her father had been a cotton mill owner. He had nine children, most of whom he didn’t like very much, but Alix was the baby and he loved her dearly. He always treated her like the baby until the day he died and that was fine with her. So fine, in fact, that even after she had five children of her own and had reached middle age she still couldn’t see why she should be treated any differently.
“I have to talk to you. It’s important,” Berta said, opening the drapes and letting in a rush of sunlight. Alix’s room was a great lagoon of green satin. The whole house was built around an ocean theme. It had a wavy iron fence out front and a wide frieze of shells and fantastic sea plants just under the roofline. The floors were decorated with inlaid shell patterns and seahorses made of exotic woods.