Wissotzky examined the fabric, feeling the thickness of the embossed floral design between his fingertips. Despite his efforts to look unimpressed, Zev saw the excitement on his face. To Zev the material looked like any other in the workshop, but apparently, judging by Wissotzky’s reaction, this was something special. Zev watched him chew on the end of his moustache and run his tongue over his thin upper lip while he struggled to appear bored and even annoyed by the intrusion. Zev had known him a long time and he knew that Wissotzky didn’t excite easily, which went a long way to explain why Avner Wissotzky would buy stolen goods from men like these.
“How much?”
“Sixty.”
Wissotsky snorted. “Forty, and that’s more than fair.”
“Forty? It is an insult.”
“Not for stolen merchandise. All right, forty-five, but not a kopeck more.”
“Stolen? I bought it, free and clear. I even have the bill of sale. Fifty-five.”
“Fifty and I won’t go to the police.”
“Fifty and you’ll take back the lie.”
Wissotzky examined his thumbnail. “All right, so you didn’t steal it. Maybe you found it. Am I asking questions?”
Wissotzky sighed, heaved himself up, and went into the back room for the cash. When he came back out, he handed it to the leader, who counted out the bills, grunted his satisfaction, and pocketed the money. Then the three of them left without closing the door.
When they had gone Wissotzky called Pincus over. “I got the Guch-kov fabric,” he said. “Stop whatever you’re doing and start on the sofa.”
“But I haven’t finished the Maretsky order.”
Wissotzky gave him a look.
Pincus sighed. “Yes, yes.” He picked up the fabric and took it back over to his worktable.
The Cossacks returned shortly after that. This time they burst through the door and stormed over to Wissotzky’s desk. The leader threw down the money. “I want it back. Where is it?”
“We had a deal,” Wissotzky protested.
“Not anymore. Rosenblatt offered us sixty and I want it back.”
“It’s gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“I mean cut up into pieces, gone. See for yourself.”
Pincus had been working steadily on the order since they had left and already the fabric had been cut up into several large pieces. When the soldiers went over to the table and saw what had happened, the leader whipped around. “Cheating zhyd,” he sputtered. “Keep it then. But I want the rest of my money. Ten rubles plus another ten for trying to cheat me.”
“I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Liar!” he shouted. “I want it or I’m going to take it out of your hide.” The Cossack grabbed a sewing machine and held it over his head ready to smash it on the floor. “I mean it. You have three seconds.”
Pincus and the other workers had stopped what they were doing and were watching in growing alarm.
“Hold it!” Zev said. “Just hold it a minute.”
“Sixty rubles…” the leader shouted.
“He’s crazy,” Wissotzky said with a wave of his hand. Wissotzky was famous for being pigheaded. His neighbors had stories.
“Calm down now. We’re all brothers here,” Zev said. “The laboring masses, workers and soldiers, a brotherhood. Comrades, please.
The leader held the sewing machine up higher. “Sixty…”
“I told you I don’t have it. Give me a year and I still wouldn’t have it.” He crossed his arms and jutted out his chin.
“Wait!” shouted Zev.
The leader hurled the sewing machine down on the floor. The bobbin and bobbin case went flying across the room. Pincus and the others ran out the door. Zev struggled to his feet. “Wait, wait,” he shouted. He took a step toward them, but his leg gave out, pitching him forward. He ended up on the floor.
For a moment the soldiers stared at him and then, forgetting their anger, burst out laughing.
Wissotzky tried to help him up, but Zev pushed him away and fought to get up by himself. When he was nearly on his feet, a soldier pushed him down again, delighting in the new game. This time Wissotzky shoved the man aside and went to help his friend. Zev looked behind him and saw that the leader had grabbed a chair leg and was whipping it back over his head. “No!” he screamed. Before Wissotzky had time to react the soldier brought it down on the back of his head, caving in his skull and breaking his neck. Wissotzky collapsed forward, landing on top of Zev, blood gushing out of the wound and soaking through Zev’s coat. The soldiers watched in fascination as Wissotzky’s blood ran in a rivulet down the floorboards.
Zev laid him gently aside and struggled to pull himself up. When he got to his feet he smashed his fist into the face of the soldier standing next to him. He felt the small bones of the man’s nose turn to mush and heard the gurgling sound of blood bubbling down the man’s throat.
The other two turned on him. He swung wildly at them, twisting at the waist, weighed down by the brace and his withered leg. It was easy for them to walk around and come at him from behind. The leader picked up a mallet from a worktable.
“SURA, open your mouth.”
“I don’t want it, Mameh.” They were in the bedroom and Sura was sick in bed. Berta had brought in a bowl of soup on a tray. “Please, Sura, a little more.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“The doctor says you must eat. It has meat in it. He says you must have meat.”
“All right, but I can do it myself. I’m not a baby.”
Every time Sura got sick and ran a high fever Berta told herself that she must work harder and make more money. She must move out of this place and into a better neighborhood where her daughter could get well. She was living in her own apartment now, but all she could afford was the one next to Lhaye’s, with the same rats and the same toxic miasma rising up from the sewers. The air was fetid and carried a filth that infected Sura’s lungs. It made her cough without letup, a telling sign that Berta was failing to keep her children safe.
To make more money she would have to go out to the countryside and be a house Jew to the kulaks and the wealthy estate owners, filling their specialty orders and bringing the hard-to-find merchandise directly to their doors. But it was dangerous out there. The countryside was overrun with bandits and deserters who preyed on Jewish townlets and travelers. So she kept putting it off, hoping that Sura would get better. For a time it seemed that she did, but then winter came and with it more illness, more fever and the cough that exhausted them both.
“Berta!” It was Lhaye screaming from next door. “Berta, it’s Zev!”
Berta jumped up and ran to the door. She pushed it open and nearly tripped over a bag of beets and a tin of cooking oil that hadn’t been there before. Lhaye was running past her on the landing.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
“They beat him up.”
“Who?”
“He’s at Wissotzky’s. I don’t know if he’s alive.”
“Wait, I’ll come with you.” She went back for her coat and told Samuil to stay with his sister. Then she and Lhaye ran down the stairs and out into the street. They raced together to the upholstery shop where they found a crowd blocking the entrance. Lhaye pushed her way through and rushed into the shop. There she found Zev lying unconscious in a pool of blood. She screamed and sank to her knees by his side. “Zevi! Zevi, wake up!” she sobbed.
Berta crouched down beside her. “Look, he’s not dead. He’s breathing.”
His chest was rising and falling and there was still a little color in his face. Berta looked up at the confusion of faces that surrounded her. She recognized most of them—neighbors, the Jewish wine seller, the tinker, the bristle sorter, the barber, the horse trader—and others she did not. They were young men and not so young, serious, concerned faces, milling about, whispering to one another and glancing over at her from time to time. They carried revolvers like the kind she found in Hershel’s suitcase—identical Browning automatics, spitters, as he called them. They fingered them self-consciously, not knowing quite what to do with them.