In a little while, the doctor arrived with a stretcher and two attendants from Nahman Bialik Jewish Hospital. He knelt down beside Wissotzky. After a moment he stood. “Bother about him later,” he said to the attendants. Then he moved on to Zev. He checked for a pulse, examined his pupils, and parted his hair to look at the head wound. “This one is still alive.” He nodded to the bearers, who lifted him onto the stretcher. Soon they were out the door with Lhaye hurrying to keep up.
It was decided that somebody should walk Madame Alshonsky home. The general consensus was that she didn’t look so good. The kosher wine merchant offered and since nobody objected he gave her a few moments to gather herself together and then helped her to her feet. Once outside he escorted her past the crowd, holding himself erect, with an air of self-importance, his revolver tucked into the waistband of his pants for all to see.
“You do not have to worry, Froy Alshonsky. You are safe with me.” He patted his gun. “Not to brag or anything, but Pincus came to me first because I’m the best shot in the neighborhood.” They were walking under clotheslines of drying laundry that stretched out from the second-story windows. “That is how I got there first. Wissotzky was already dead and Zev would have been too. Once they saw me they ran away. It didn’t take much. Your husband always told us it wouldn’t take much and he was right.”
Berta looked up at the mention of Hershel. “My husband?”
“Reb Alshonsky, a fine man, a righteous man, a real tsaddik. You can tell him I said so. Tell him Shammai Eggel said he is a real tsaddik. He’ll remember me, I’m the sharpshooter. That’s what he used to call me, the sharpshooter.”
THAT NIGHT Berta got word from Lhaye that she would be staying all night at the hospital, so Berta brought the children over to her apartment, fed them, and put them to bed with Samuil. She put the kettle on for tea and brought the chair over to a little table by the window so she could sit and look out on the street. The shops were closing. The shopkeepers were bringing in what little merchandise they had to sell and lowering the shutters. She was watching the hardware store owner roll in a barrel when her attention drifted to a young man. He was lanky, with stooped shoulders, and greasy blond hair hung in clumps from under his lambskin cap. He was holding an overcoat and carrying a bag and didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He didn’t look before he crossed the street, sidestepping a passing sledge and walking in the direction of her building.
A few moments later she heard someone on the stairs and knew it had to be the stranger. She could hear him coming up slowly, taking care to be quiet, and stopping on the landing to listen. She went over and put her ear to the door. Taking the knob in her hand, she turned and held it. When she heard him right outside, she yanked it opened and startled him. He jumped back. In one sweep she took in the bag on the doorstep and the coat on top of it. It was Zev’s coat. It had been cleaned and pressed. The bag contained potatoes.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He didn’t answer her. Instead he turned and started back down the steps.
“Wait. Why are you doing this?” She hurried after him and grabbed his sleeve. “Who are you?” There had been a steady stream of little presents left on her doorstep since that first tin of kerosene.
“Nobody,” he said tonelessly, yanking his arm free.
“No, wait, please. I want to thank you.”
“No need,” he said over his shoulder.
She leaned over the railing. “Did you know my husband?” This time he turned back reluctantly and looked up at her. “Met him once.”
“Did you work with him?”
“Once.”
“Won’t you come in?”
“No.”
“Please. I want to thank you properly.”
“I told you. There’s no need.”
She noticed that the index finger of his left hand was missing. “Then at least come in and have a cup of tea. I would like that very much.”
He considered it for a moment and then halfheartedly turned and followed her back up the stairs. Once inside, she showed him to the little table by the window. “Sit here. I’ll get the tea. We have to be quiet, because the children are sleeping.” He sat down heavily and surveyed the street outside. She kept an eye on him while she made the tea to make sure he didn’t leave.
When she came back in with the cups and a plate of buns, she set them down in the center of the table. She took the other chair and handed him a bun on a plate and a cup of tea. He began to eat in silence, his jaw working as he chewed. She could see that he took no pleasure in the food. He was only there because she had insisted.
“How did you lose your finger?”
He shrugged. “Frostbite.”
“Do you know where my husband is?”
He shook his head.
“He didn’t send you?”
“Of course not.”
“I thought he might’ve sent you to take care of us.”
“No, I’ve been away. When I got back, they said he went to America and told me where you lived.”
At first, she thought he looked like he had spent his childhood in the factories and had gotten prematurely old through hard work. But when he spoke, she knew she’d been wrong. Even though he only said a few words, she could hear that his speech was cultured. He had been educated. He wasn’t a worker, although judging by his creased and calloused hands and weathered face he had been doing hard work.
“Would you like another bun?”
He stood up. “No.”
“Will you come back to see us?”
He nodded as he put on his coat.
“What’s your name?”
He buttoned it up and pulled up the collar. “Pavel,” he said, barely above a whisper.
Once he was gone, she went to the window to catch a glimpse of him as he left the building. He looked exhausted as he walked down the street, his hands in his pockets, his head thrust slightly forward on his neck. A dead man walking among the living through a colossal effort of will.
Chapter Sixteen
February 1919
THERE WAS a restaurant in Kamenka, a large town not far from Cherkast, where Berta usually stopped for a bowl of soup and bit of bread whenever she was in the area making her rounds. The restaurant was situated on an island in the middle of the square in the Jewish neighborhood. It was a squat building of peeling plaster with a rusty tin roof and tall windows flanked by broken shutters. When Berta climbed the steps that day she was tired and hungry. She wore a tangled bunch of cheap beads around her neck. This was what remained of her inventory after spending the morning traveling around to the farmsteads and trading them for potatoes and beets, and bundles of feathers, flax, and pig bristles to sell to the merchants back in Cherkast.
Berta knew the proprietress of the restaurant. She was thin with a loose flap of skin under her chin and practically no breasts on a sunken chest. She liked to brag about her two sons who were getting rich working for the Polish estate owner down the road. She was an indifferent cook but kept the inside of her restaurant in spotless order by scrubbing the tables with salt and mopping the floors with carbolic soap. The odor from the soap often overpowered the food and made everything taste bitter and clean.