That night they shared a room at a little inn in a townlet that the potato merchant jokingly referred to as Ganaiden, Garden of Eden, because of the open sewer running down a trench in the back. There was a wedding in town and every room at the inn was booked. Even so the innkeeper didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to make a little more coin, so she offered them her room, saying she could sleep at her sister’s over the bakery.
The innkeeper’s bed was a lumpy straw mattress that was only big enough for one. Fichmann insisted that Berta take it, saying that he and Samuil could spread blankets on the floor. At first it was hard to sleep because of the wedding party downstairs, but they were so tired that not even the music and drunken laughter could keep them up.
Later Berta woke up in the middle of the night to find a hand moving up her thigh. “What are you doing?” she asked, pushing his hand away.
“I thought you might be lonely,” Fichmann whispered. He had squeezed into the bed beside her and was lying on his side, holding on to the headboard to keep from falling off. His other hand came back, gently brushing the inside of her thigh and moving up with purpose. “I’m good with widows, very gentle and kind, just what the doctor ordered.”
Berta couldn’t be angry with him. He saw himself as a champion of the ladies, devoting himself to their service, doing his best to make them happy in a bitterly unhappy world. “But I’m not a widow,” she whispered. “I have a husband in America.”
“I didn’t know,” he said, making no attempt to remove his hand.
“That’s all right,” she said, turning away from him and leaving his hand behind, naked and lonely under the coverlet.
“And you’re going to him?”
“Yes.”
He took his time thinking about this. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Eight years ago.”
“That’s a long time. Do you miss him?”
She pulled the quilt up over her shoulder. “Yes,” she said, vaguely.
She lay there facing the wall, listening to the sound of Samuil’s breathing. He was snoring softly in the corner. Then she turned back and lay on her side to give Fichmann more room. They were lying face-to-face, close, but not touching. His breath smelled of the beer he had with dinner. “I heard it from the peddlers,” she whispered anxiously.
“What?”
“That he is looking for us.”
“So?”
“So, it didn’t come in a letter. It wasn’t official. It came from them.”
“And this worries you?”
“I think I made a hasty decision. I should have thought about it longer. I think I made a terrible mistake.”
“What do you mean?”
“What if they got it wrong? What if he’s not looking for us and we’re in Poland and there’s no way of getting back? What will happen to my son?”
The potato merchant thought it over and then said, “The peddlers are often right, not always, but often enough. I’ve heard plenty of stories of wives reunited with their husbands because of them.”
“You have?’
“Many times.”
“And they’re true?”
“I’ve always believed them to be.”
They lay there together while she thought it over. Then he rolled on his back and extended his arm out as an invitation to her. She moved over to him and curled into the warm crook of his shoulder, letting the atavistic comfort of his presence seep over her, quieting her fears, softening the raw edges.
After a while, he got up without her having to tell him, kissed her on the cheek, and returned to his blanket on the floor.
BERTA HAD no idea what a border stealer was supposed to look like. He could’ve been a Polish count or the heir to a Polish estate. His clothes were clean and there was a ring on his little finger that glinted in the lamplight. He was a wiry man with thick ropy arms and thinning blond hair. He wasn’t big, but his chest was muscular and his neck was thick. It was as if the top half of his body had been meant for someone else.
They met at an inn in Zhvanets, a town located on the north bank of the Dniester River. It was bordered on the west by the Zbruch River, which separated it from Galicia, now under Polish rule. There was an attempt at respectability at the inn: curtains on the windows, a little vase of roadside flowers on wooden tables that had been freshly scrubbed with salt. Fichmann handled the bargaining: so much for a river crossing, so much now, and so much when the woman and boy got across. The fact that the Pole never looked at her, not once, made her uneasy. She wanted him to think of her as a human being, not as a load of household goods to be picked clean and dumped into the river. She remembered Pavel’s stories of bodies stripped naked, battered by rocks and currents, washing up on slices of river sand. But Fichmann swore he knew this border stealer. It was said that he had the best boat in town and knew every inch of the river.
She watched him eat his bread and salt and down his vodka. His cheeks were flushed with the heat of the stove. His hair was plastered to his forehead and he kept twisting the ring on his little finger with his thumb, while his eyes slowly traveled around the room, finally coming to rest on her. He eyed her with a speculative look, authoritative and appraising.
When it came time to pay the first installment, Berta stepped outside and went around to the back. There was a man relieving himself in the clearing behind the inn who seemed unconcerned by her presence. When he was finished he buttoned up his pants and as he passed her he said some pleasantry that was lost in the clamor of the inn.
When she thought she was alone, she picked up her skirt and tore the thread away with her teeth and let down the hem. She took out the money and was counting out the sum when she happened to look up and see the border stealer, standing in the shadows not too far off. His back was to her and he was relieving himself, seemingly more concerned with the arc of his stream than what she was doing. Still, after that, she found a new hiding place for her money. She hid it in the heel of her shoe despite the discomfort it caused her and the feeling that one hip was higher than the other.
Two nights later, they met the border stealer down by the river near the place where the women bathe and wash their clothes. It was a dark night with no moon, only a scrim of stars winking overhead in the mist. He was standing by a heap of boulders in a little clearing; behind him the river was a disembodied roar through the trees. She expected him to have an electric torch or a lantern, but he had nothing to light the way.
“How will you see?” she asked him, as he led her and Samuil down to the shore. He walked down the darkened path as if it were broad daylight, while they stumbled after him, tripping over tree roots, their clothes snagging on the bushes and low-lying branches.
“I don’t need to see. I was born on the river. I only need to feel.”
The border stealer led them down to where the boat was tied to an aspen standing on a small spit of land that jutted out into the river. He untied the painter and held the boat steady while they climbed in. He joined them, picked up the oars, and let the current take them out into the middle. The river was swollen with melted snow and stunningly cold. Occasionally a wave broke over the bow, soaking Berta’s clothes, numbing her legs and hands, and forming a pool in the bottom of the boat.
She watched the border stealer using one oar then the other, sometimes rowing backward, sometimes forward, cursing the river and searching the water for signs that only he could read. At one point he got up and her heart stopped. But it was only to find a small bucket, which he handed to her so she could start bailing. Even so she watched every move he made, especially when they got farther out into the river. There he maneuvered the boat along the current, around boulders and half-submerged logs that came up so fast she didn’t see them until they were nearly past. Soon they were in a wider part and the river slowed down. It grew quiet and she could hear the water slapping against the boat and against the boulders that lined the shore. She was aware that he was watching her in the dark. Once when he shifted position, she tensed and gripped the sides of the boat.