“Mameh, wake up.” He squatted down beside her and shook her gently. She stirred and opened her eyes.
“Not now, please, Samuil.”
“I heard two peddlers talking.”
“I’m tired, let me sleep.”
“They’re looking for a woman and two children. She lives in the Berezina.”
“I don’t care.”
“But it’s us, Mameh. They’re looking for us.”
She closed her eyes again and rolled over. The straw rustled beneath her and a few feathers that had escaped the quilt floated effortlessly on the currents in the room. “Go next door. Mumeh Lhaye will feed you.”
“It’s Tateh, Mameh. He’s looking for us.”
“Tateh is dead,” she said dully, pulling the quilt up over her ears. “Now, go away.”
“No, he isn’t. He’s looking for us. They say we have to go to Warsaw.”
She laughed softly without opening her eyes. “Warsaw, is it? What name did they give?”
“Debishonki.”
She rolled back and put her arm under her head for a pillow. Her eyes were open now and dull in the half-light. “Debishonki is not Alshonsky, my son.”
“But they always get it wrong. You know how it works. One person hears something different and the next a little more and so on. By the time it comes all the way across Little Russia, it’s been changed. Debishonki, Mameh, it’s just like Alshonsky.”
“I don’t think so.”
“They’re looking for a rich woman with two children who live in the Berezina. That’s us, Mameh. That’s where we used to live. And he doesn’t know about Sura, that’s why he’s looking for two children. Can’t you see I’m right? Mameh?”
But it was too late. She was gone and there was no reaching her. He stood and looked around for the bread. It wasn’t until he was eating it at the table that he realized how much he wanted company. So he wrapped it up and put it into a heavy pot with a lid to protect it from the mice and went next door. There he was fed and fussed over. After dinner he lay down between his cousins and, comforted by the warmth of the litter, drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
THE NEXT morning Berta lay on her side staring at the floor. It was dark beneath the stove and there were wispy clouds of dust laced with mouse droppings and the dried husks of roaches. She thought that if she ever got up again, she would clean under there, and took this as a good sign. There was an implication of life after Sura’s death in that thought and, although she still didn’t believe it, at least she had begun to consider it.
Outside she could hear Froy Wohlgemuth’s shuffling step in the hall. She would be bringing Berta two pieces of bread on a chipped china plate and a glass of tea. She had been bringing this every morning since shiva had begun and today, the last day, was no different. Berta heard her at the door trying to turn the knob. Her hands were bent with arthritis and it took her a while to open it. She considered getting up to help and thought this too was a good sign.
“Wake up, mein teier. Wake up, mein faigeleh.” She always called Berta mein faigeleh, my little bird. She walked into the front room and put the glass and plate on the table.
“What is it?”
“You must get up. The peddler is downstairs. He is looking for you.”
“He’s not looking for me.”
“Oh, yes he is. He is looking for a woman and two children from the Berezina. How many Jewish women are from the Berezina? Come now, it’s time to get up.” Froy Wohlgemuth tried to help Berta up, but the old woman wasn’t very strong. She had thin arms, a prominent hump on her back, and one hip was noticeably higher than the other.
“You have it all wrong. He is not looking for me. He is looking for another woman by a different name.”
“Ah feh! It’s always the wrong name. He is looking for you. Why is that so hard to believe? Your husband is alive. He has sent for you. This is happy news. Now come and eat. Essen, my brave girl… you need your strength.” She grabbed Berta’s forearm with her twisted fingers and attempted to pull her up.
Berta resisted at first, but she knew Froy Wohlgemuth was right. It was time to get up. There was no food in the house and no money to buy it. She had to find something to sell, something she could trade out in the countryside for food. She couldn’t keep relying on Lhaye and Pavel and neighbors for food. She had to start living again. Gathering her strength, she crawled out of bed and stood on the cold, damp floor.
When Berta had finished dressing, Froy Wohlgemuth helped her down the stairs and together they went out into the bright sunshine to see the peddler with the flapping shoes. They found him leaning up against the building watching two housewives argue in the street. He straightened when he saw them coming and studied Berta for a moment. Maybe he was trying to picture her as the grand lady from the Berezina.
“You lived in the Berezina?”
“Yes, but my name isn’t Debishonki.”
“It’s Alshonsky, close enough. The names always change from one mouth to the next.” He studied her a moment longer. “You could be her. Fixed up a little, you could definitely be her.”
Froy Wohlgemuth clapped her hands. “See? What did I tell you? This is very good news.”
“He’s just guessing, Froy Wohlgemuth. He doesn’t know. They’re probably looking for someone else.”
The peddler said, “I don’t think so. I’ve been looking for a long time and you’re the closest I’ve come.” He examined a callus on his thumb. “You know, there is one way to find out for sure.”
“And how is that?”
“Go to Poland.”
She laughed without mirth. “I could just as easily go to the moon.”
The peddler shrugged. “It’s not impossible. It can be done. If you go, then you go to Warsaw. To the American embassy. You give them your name and you give them this.” He handed her a grimy piece of paper. “It’s got my name on it and an address. It’s important, otherwise I don’t get paid.”
Berta had stopped listening because she had spotted a young girl standing across the street with a baby in her arms. She was waiting for her mother to finish buying potatoes. The girl was only a child, all arms and legs, looking bored and impatient with her baby brother on her hip. Her mother ignored her and continued to take her time picking through the sack. When Berta became aware that the peddler was still going on about the best way to cross the border, she interrupted him and told him that she wasn’t the woman he was looking for, that she wasn’t going to Poland and, in fact, she wasn’t going anywhere. She thanked Froy Wohlgemuth, turned back to the stairs, and went back up to her room, where she lay down on the pallet and stayed there for the whole day and a few more weeks after that.
BERTA OPENED her eyes and for a moment she had no idea where she was. Then it came to her that Sura was dead and she had spent the night on a bench in the Bogitslav train station. It had been a few months since Sura died and still she woke every morning to the shock of her daughter’s death. It always took her a while to steel herself against the coming day. But this morning was different. This time she bolted upright because she remembered her bundles and wanted to make sure that none of them had been stolen while she slept. They were all there, tucked under her arms and legs for safety, except for the one that she had been using for a pillow.