The woman led the way to a low house with peeling whitewashed walls under a sagging tin roof. It was fronted by a picket fence that had lost a few posts and was listing badly. From the street they crossed on several boards that led up to a stone step and a front door that had been reinforced like the others. There were six small windows on either side of the door, all shuttered and secured with pieces of scrap lumber that had been hammered into place with big square nails. When the woman reached the door, she shifted her packages to one arm and stuck a key into the lock. Then, after looking up and down the street, she opened the door. “Hurry up. Get in,” she hissed, holding the door open.
The interior was dim, the only light coming from the slats of the shutters. Once a lamp was lit Berta could see that they were in one big room that served as both kitchen and parlor. There was a stove and a faded sofa covered in a silk shawl, and displayed on the walls and side tables were framed photographs, posters, and memorabilia from the Yiddish stage. White suede gloves lay next to a vase full of palm fronds that had been painted gold. Sequined slippers sat under a bell jar, and hanging on a hook was an opera cloak decorated with jet beads and ostrich feathers. The photographs showed actors in dramatic poses, heavily made up against painted scenery. The posters announced the productions of various Goldfadn plays: A Little Letter to a Bride, The Daughter of Jerusalem, Koldunye, and others.
The woman watched as Berta and Samuil examined her treasures. “You like my mementos?” she asked, smiling for the first time.
“Is this you?” Berta asked indicating a photograph of a woman, dramatically lit, dressed in a shroud and heavy black eye makeup, rising up from a coffin.
“Yes, I was Leah’le in The Dybbuk. An electrifying performance, that’s what they said. Breathtaking was the word they used. And here I am as Sappho and that’s Lev Polgar, very famous in his time. I’m Pessel Landau, you’ve heard of me?”
They looked blank.
“No?” she sighed. “And here I’m Dina in Bar Kokhba. It was before we were allowed to speak Yiddish. Before your time I imagine.” She looked at the photograph and smiled. “I remember we were in Zem-khov or maybe it was Kitai-Gorod and the gendarmes came and we all had to speak gibberish so they’d think we were speaking German.”
Pessel Landau was small with jet-black hair and large, heavily made-up eyes. In the gloom she could almost pass for a girl with her little steps and the coy tilt of her head. On closer examination it was easy to see that her hair was dyed and that she wore too much face powder and rouge. Even in the subdued light one could see the sag of her jawline and the hardness around her mouth. She went over to the sideboard to light the samovar and Berta asked, “So why are all the windows boarded up? What’s everybody afraid of?”
Pessel blew out the match with her red, red lips. “You don’t know?”
A FEW HOURS later as the sky clouded over and heavy drops began to fall, a squadron of the Petliura Brigade of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Third Haidamak Regiment, rode into Lipovec at a gallop, eager for the battle that lay ahead. There was no resistance, no battle. The inhabitants were in hiding, but this didn’t keep the corporal from proclaiming a victory over the revolutionary scum and ordering a “celebration” to follow.
There was a proclamation that was nailed to the door of the main synagogue. It demanded that all the Jewish men come to the town square by sunset. The residents of Lipovec had not avoided two pogroms by following such an order. Instead the men stayed in their homes and Rabbi Dimanshtein of the Stambulski Synagogue, carrying a Torah and wearing a satin caftan, a prayer shawl, shtreimel, and phylacteries, led fourteen of his most pious congregants into the town square. There they presented the corporal with a Torah scroll, a souvenir plaque written in Hebrew commemorating the acquittal of Mendel Beilis, and three thousand rubles. The plaque looked like gold but it was only brass. “What’s this for?” the corporal wanted to know. He hadn’t even bothered to get off his horse. He just slung one leg over the saddle and leaned down to accept the gifts.
“For the hard life of a soldier,” said the Rabbi in Russian. “Please take them with our gratitude and our prayers for your good health and prosperous future.”
The corporal opened the bag of money and began to count. There had to be at least a few thousand rubles, which was not a great sum, but more than he had ever seen in his life. He liked the idea of having a few thousand rubles all to himself; he had already decided not to share the money with any of his men. He was the corporal after all, and could make these kinds of decisions.
The problem was his commander, Otaman Semesenko, a twenty-year-old farm boy laid up in Proskuriv with what he thought was influenza but was really the tertiary stage of syphilis, had given him precise orders not more than two days before. They were not to take bribes, not to loot, not to rape or anything else that would bring dishonor to the regiment. They were only to kill Jews. The corporal wanted to do what was right, but a few thousand rubles was a lot of money. It was a dilemma. How could he take the money and the gold plaque and still be true to his orders? The answer didn’t come to him until well after they had left the town and were nearly halfway to their next destination. What law said he couldn’t keep the rubles and still kill the Jews? He was the corporal after all. He could make these kinds of decisions.
It was late by the time the Cossacks rode back into Lipovec and most of the town was sleeping. The rain had stopped and the clouds were beginning to move off. Before going into “battle” they took the usual precautions, which included smearing black grease paint on their faces. In the cold light of the moon their glistening skin looked decidedly blue.
Their first stop was the Howling Dog Tavern on the outskirts of town. It was so far out that no one heard the screams of the tavern keeper’s wife when they threw her out of the second-story window. The tavern keeper tried to comply with their orders, but his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t insert the key into the lock of his storeroom. So they hung the little man from a spindly oak at the side of the tavern. Even though he was barely five feet tall and as thin as a whip, the branch broke under his weight and he and the rope tumbled to the ground. The Cossacks took this as a sign from God that the little zhyd should be spared from hanging, so they shot him in the head and turned on his four daughters and young son, whom they had found hiding under the beds.
WHEN PESSEL heard the first screams of the pogrom, she grabbed several pots of water, the bread, and a bowl of boiled potatoes. She told Berta to bring the kerosene lamp and an empty bucket and follow her down to the cellar. There she led them to a pile of moldering fruit crates that lay among the rubbish on the dirt floor.
“Help me,” she said, putting down her things. She and Berta flung the crates aside until Berta could see by the light of the lantern that there was a trap door half buried in the dirt. Together she and Samuil pulled on a heavy iron ring at the top of the door until it rose up on its hinge revealing a hole in the floor.
“My uncle had it built after the ’05 pogroms. He liked to be prepared.”
Pessel threw down a rope ladder and went down first. Then they handed her the supplies and came down after her. Berta pulled the crates back over the door and covered it with more rubbish as she lowered it into place.
The hole was no more than six feet square. The walls were slick with water and the floor was damp and cold. Even so, they sat down on the bare dirt and shivered as the cold crept under their clothes, numbed their legs and buttocks, and seeped into their bones. As soon as they were settled Pessel blew out the light and they sat in the dark, shivering, wishing they had brought their coats, and listening to the screams of the pogrom that came in through the cellar window.