“We’ll give him the lemon.”
“He doesn’t like lemon.”
There was a knock at the door and Vera went to see who it was.
“Then he can have the apple.”
“He’d rather have the chocolate.”
“Then you can share it with him.”
“But it’s so small, Mameh.”
Vera hurried back in and whispered, “It’s Aleksei Sergeevich Tre-tiakov. He wants to see you.”
Berta stared at her without blinking. “How did he look?” she asked, untying her apron with trembling hands.
“Stern.”
She went out to the front room, where she found him standing at the window, looking out on the street, with his hat in his hand, still wearing his overcoat. There was a red halo around his head from the setting sun. The potted ferns she had brought from Lubiansky Street cast leafy shadows on the walls and furniture and turned the little room into a jungle of chiaroscuro. Even with his back to her she could see that he was stiff and uncomfortable. When he turned at her approach he barely looked at her. She saw the firm set of his mouth under his moustache and the hard glitter in his eyes and her stomach dropped. She knew what he was going to say even before he opened his mouth. It was all over. She had lost and now they would be out on the street.
“Aleksei Sergeevich, how nice of you to call.” She was surprised at how calm she sounded.
“Yes… yes,” he said, not bothering to hide his impatience. Alix was always joking about how she managed Lenya, but nothing was further from the truth. Aleksei Sergeevich ruled his household the same way he ruled his export business: with a keen sense of propriety, moderation, and thrift. He didn’t inherit his fortune—he made it with hard work and his wife’s small inheritance. He was a Slavophile. He liked to collect Russian paintings, admired all things Russian, and had no patience for any schemes that he considered to be out of the bounds of common sense. Moreover he cared little for the sentimental wishes of his silly wife and long considered her money his.
“May I offer you some tea?”
“I’m not staying. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to get right down to it. My wife made you a promise this morning that she cannot possibly keep.”
“I see.”
“Although it is not my intention to add to your troubles and I am naturally sorry for them, I’m afraid you will have to look elsewhere for the loan. You see, my wife is not in control of her money, as she calls it, and has no right to make you such an offer.”
“I understand.”
“Yes, well, I’m very glad you do,” he said, casting his glance about him to see that he hadn’t forgotten anything. “I hope you are well… considering.”
“Yes, thank you, Aleksei Sergeevich. Very well.”
On the way to the door he asked about her children and about her new apartment and how she was getting along. Her answers were all positive and she seemed quite normal. She gave no indication of the storm raging inside her head, of the panic that froze her thoughts and the heavyweight on her chest that was making it hard to breathe. She had no idea what she was saying. Fortunately these little pleasantries were so much a part of her that they didn’t take any thought at all. After she closed the door, she came back into the kitchen and told Vera she was going out and not to wait tea for her.
“What about Professor Bardygin?” asked Sura, as she stood at the door and watched her mother put on her coat.
“Tell him I had to go out.”
“And what about the cake?”
“You have it without me,” she said putting on her hat.
“A whole chocolate one?”
She stopped and laid a hand on her daughter’s cheek. Then turning back to the door she said, “Whatever you like.”
She walked down Sretensky Street, ignoring the crowd all around her and keeping her eyes on the ground in front of her so that she wouldn’t have to speak to anyone. She didn’t go down to the bluffs or up to the Berezina; she avoided the streets where she might run into someone she knew and headed straight for Dulgaya Street.
There she found it crowded with refugees from Galicia and Lithuania—whole families huddled around fires built in metal drums with their belongings scattered around them, bundles of clothes and wheelbarrows filled with household items that they managed to save. It was so crowded that she had to walk down the middle of the street, skirting a mound of horse dung still steaming in the frosty air. Everywhere there were Jews who had been expelled from the towns along the front. There were old men and women; mothers with children; sick, starving people staring at nothing, seeing nothing, waiting for something to happen: death, disease, for somebody to tell them what to do now that they had lost everything—their families, their homes and businesses—everything that had once given their life meaning.
Berta glanced over at a group of children, orphans most likely, huddled together over a fire. They looked hardened and defiant as though they had been on the street for a long time. A boy of about ten looked up as she came closer and for a moment there was a glimmer of recognition in his eyes. She might have looked like his mother in the murky twilight. He might have thought he recognized the quick step or the hair or the figure. He was wearing a man’s overcoat with the sleeves rolled up and held a cigarette between his fingers. But in that instant the hardness left his face and hope returned, and for a moment he looked like a child again. Then he got a good look at her in the gaslight and his eyes went dull with disappointment. He shoved the cigarette between his lips, stuck his hands in his pockets, and hunched his shoulders against the cold until he looked to Berta like an old man.
She turned in at Lhaye’s apartment and walked up the steep flight to the musty hallway. She edged past the barrel of water on the landing with its collar of ice.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Lhaye asked, when she opened her door and found her sister standing there, wet and cold, a lost look in her eyes, her features smooth with fear. Lhaye was holding the baby on her hip and stepped aside to let her in. “You look horrible. You’re shivering… are you sick? Here, sit here. Let me get you a blanket.”
She shooed her older children into the kitchen and gave the baby to Vulia and went to get Berta a blanket. She came back in and tucked it around Berta’s legs and shoulders the way Mameh used to do when they were little and the winter winds were blowing outside. After that she went into the kitchen to make a glass of hot tea, brought it back, and sat down across from her. “So, tell me. What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t have any money.”
Lhaye laughed with relief. “Is that all?”
“All? I have no money for rent or food. We’re destitute. I tried to find work but no one will hire me. I sold my jewelry. I even tried to borrow, but it’s hopeless… all hopeless. We’re going to be out on the street like the people out there.” She burst into tears and buried her face in her hands. The children stuck their heads out to watch their aunt cry. Lhaye waved at them to go back into the kitchen. Then she put her arms around her sister and held her, rocking her like Mameh used to do.
“First of all, Bertenka, you will never be out on the street,” she said. You’ll stay by us.”
“Here?”
“And why not?”
Berta looked around at the water stain on the wallpaper and the dirty lace curtains. There was a basket of yarn beside her on the floor with a pair of rusty scissors sticking out of a skein. There were bedrolls against one wall where the children slept when it wasn’t too cold. “What will Zevi say?”
“He will be happy to have you. And he can find you work at the factory.”
She thought of the factory girls coming out of the ironworks that day, hard, sullen, eyes swollen with exhaustion, misery stamped on their dirty faces.