To the casual observer her bundles looked like a jumble of old rags. In reality they were sacks of potatoes and beets hidden under lengths of fabric. In one were hidden three bottles of homemade vodka, the favorite currency in Cherkast. In another was a roast chicken wrapped up in newspaper; and in the third, a bag of kasha and a bag of dried white beans. She had spent most of yesterday trudging the muddy roads around Bogitslav, trading yard goods, soap, and tobacco for the contents of the bundles. It had been a long day, spent mostly with her skirt hiked up to her knees, trying to stay out of the sucking mud or else pulling her shoe out when she misjudged a step. Now that she had her vodka and food, she wasn’t about to lose them to thieves.
She was only twenty versts outside of Cherkast, and yet it would take her three days to come out and go back again. The station had started to fill up sometime during the night and now most of the benches were taken. There were muzhiki playing cards and smoking makhorka, peddlers with their bundles of contraband, and a few soldiers on the bench in the corner playing cards or dozing. Among the waiting passengers were three women in long skirts and heavy plaid shawls who had become friendly during the night and had staked out a bench in the middle of the room by the stove. Now they were sitting in a row like crows on a wire, their bundles at their feet, drinking tea and discussing the merits of magic against pogroms. One of the women, younger than the rest, with a dark complexion, long nose, and large black eyes, was passing around an amulet.
“I’m telling you, it saved my life,” she was saying to the others as she watched it pass from hand to hand. She tossed a glance in the soldiers’ direction and lowered her voice. “I was caught with a dead rabbit in my bundle. He was a Red and he said he was going to shoot me. You should’ve seen all the people they shot that day. I was doomed. I knew it. So I prayed and held on to the amulet. And I got down on my knees and begged for my life, but he wouldn’t hear any of it. He pointed his rifle at my head and pulled the trigger.” The amulet came back to her and she turned and handed it to Berta, to include her in their circle.
“He pulled the trigger?” said another woman with a look of incredulity.
“The rifle jammed.”
“Jammed?”
“A miracle. Just like Rabbi Rollenstein said. “A miracle from God.”
“He didn’t try it again?”
“Oh, he was about to, but then someone called him out. Apparently he was late for a meeting with his unit. He told me not to move. He would deal with me later.”
“Did you stay?”
“Are you joking? Of course I didn’t stay. How much can you expect from one amulet. No, I was gone in a minute and I’ve never been back.”
For their midday meal the women decided to pool their food. Everyone put out a dish and they shared evenly. Someone put out kasha, someone else bread, someone had a bowl of pickled beets, and another boiled potatoes. Berta only had the chicken. She thought about it for a while before she put it out. But she figured by the time she got home it wouldn’t be fit to eat anyway and besides she always had the vodka to trade for another one closer to home. The women were overjoyed when they saw the chicken. Everyone agreed that she should have a larger share, but she said she would be satisfied with the same as everyone else.
During lunch there was talk of relatives in America searching for loved ones. The shy one who smiled too much said she’d heard that a son was looking for his mother, who lived in Spasova. “Her name is Silverstein. She’s old. He lives in a big American city and wants to bring her over. Anyone heard of a Silverstein in Spasova?” she asked. She looked at her companions, but no one had. She thought for a moment. “Could be Selensky. Maybe it was Selensky.”
The sharp-nosed woman spoke up next. “I heard they found that other woman. What’s her name?” Her mouth was full of beets and she had to swallow hard before continuing. “You know. The one from Frampol.”
“Hannah Bokser.”
“That’s her. I heard they found her in Bar.”
“Bar?” said the woman with the raggedy scarf. “I was just in Bar. I was asking for Hannah Bokser and nobody heard of her.”
“Apparently somebody did. A man named Helleck found her the other day. Big reward.”
“Isn’t that just my luck,” she said, stabbing a boiled potato with the fork. “By rights I should’ve found her. I was there first. She should’ve been mine.”
The young woman with the amulet now safely nestled between her breasts said, “I heard they’re looking for a woman in Cherkast.” At this, Berta looked up from her bowl and glanced over in her direction.
“There are lots of women in Cherkast, my friend,” said the one with the raggedy scarf.
“Yes, but this one is Jewish and lives in the Berezina,” said the young woman.
“Then she shouldn’t be too hard to find,” offered the shy one.
“That’s just what I was thinking.”
After that the talk meandered on to their families and to their hopes for the future. Two of them had relatives in America and were hoping for passage if they could find a way to slip across the border. The third had a brother in the party. She had been trying to reach him, but so far he hadn’t answered her letters.
When the train finally came thundering into the station in a cloud of fire and smoke, the four travelers rushed outside like everyone else, squeezing through the door and fighting for a good place on the platform. It was a short train made up of third-class carriages without seat cushions and stuffed to suffocation with peasants, soldiers, refugees, and Jews and all their belongings. Boarding the train meant pushing and shoving, elbowing and kicking, anything to get a place, even if it meant a place on the floor or on the roof or on the steps outside. Berta was lucky. She was able to fight her way to the top of the steps. From there she could see the three women from the bench below her, jostling one another, their friendship all but forgotten as they fought for a seat on the train.
ONE MORNING, not too long after Bogitslav, when she still had a bottle of vodka left to trade, she took it up the hill to the neighborhood just below Davidkovo Street. Most of the shops were closed for good, but there was still a brisk business going on in the alleyways and behind the buildings. People were trading all sorts of things for food. On any given stretch one could find embroidered towels, fine crystal, brass samovars: once the precious belongings of the well-to-do, now worthless, except if they could be traded for potatoes or cabbages or the rare piece of real meat, not dog or cat.
It was hard finding the building on Sofiyevskaya. Many of the numbers were missing from the doors and she had to ask her way. When she found the building she walked up the wide stone steps only to find the door was locked, so she went around to the back, where she found one open. This had been a respectable place once with large, airy apartments and a doorman in a red caftan. Now the apartments had been divided up among three or four families and the foyer had been left to molder. The carpet was spongy and smelled of rot. She heard voices on the upper floors. A door slammed. A woman called to a child. There was an apartment to her left with a strong smell of Sterno coming from the open doorway. An old woman sat on the floor in front of a camp stove perched on an apple crate. She sat back on her heels, stirring a small pot of fish-head soup with a wooden ladle, while she watched Berta with tiny, suspicious eyes.
“Do you know if Madame Gorbunova lives here?” Berta asked. The woman studied her for a moment and then nodded to the back of the apartment. “May I come through?” She shrugged and went back to her pot. So Berta walked through the old woman’s section that housed her few belongings. There was a sheet at the back that was draped over a rope and acted as a divider. Before parting it Berta called out, “Madame Gorbunova?”