The Accidental Anarchist (35 page)

The dormitory was a large, bleak but clean-smelling room with twenty beds lined up in two rows. Its caretaker had arms like the blacksmith who had welded my leg irons but keen, compassionate eyes. Far from making a to-do about identification, he smiled and said I was the first person with a legitimate ticket he had seen all week.

I asked, “How often do the police raid this place?”

He smiled mournfully. “About half our budget goes into paying them off. It doesn’t leave much for food, but it’s easier on everybody’s nerves.”

I located an empty cot and stretched out luxuriously, for once without fear of being robbed or assaulted. Not only was I among Jews, but I had nothing left worth stealing, other than the meal tickets that I had carefully marked with my name. Ignoring the noise made by the other guests who were playing cards, and the sting of bedbugs feasting on what was left of my blood, I slept like a stone until someone shook me and told me there was dinner on the table.

Deep into my soup, the only thing to cloud my pleasure was the thought of Pyavka abandoned at the railroad station, weak, helpless, starved and wondering, no doubt, whether Yakov Marateck had proved to be only a fair-weather friend, after all.

That is, if the police had not already bagged him.

I resolved to hurry back and look for him – right after dinner. But the street was still seething with rain, and the sky was as dark as the insides of Jonah’s whale.

Nevertheless, I asked the four card players the way to the depot. Without hesitation, each pointed in a different direction. None of this, I knew, was reason to forsake my comrade. Yet, on a night like this, a man hobbling on icy roads without proper boots was as useless to himself as a man without feet.

Even as I tried to salve my conscience for wanting only to go back to sleep, the door flew open. All of us froze, either from the wind or a healthy jolt of fear. The card players scrambled to hide their few kopeks. But our three ponderous intruders were not Cossacks; they were respectably dressed Jews. The three, one of whom was Mr. Top Hat, made up the Committee that managed the shelter, and their concern was not with who was playing cards, but with some badly overdue repairs to the leaky roof.

Top Hat’s eyes swept over me without a glimmer of recognition. A bit later, he took disapproving notice of my footgear, and was curious to know why I did not wear something better suited to the climate. I confessed that I did not have other footwear.

He cleared his throat in what sounded like a comment on my lack of resourcefulness, and briefly consulted with the other two. From the way they glanced in my direction as they conferred with one another, I gathered that they were far from sure whether a halfwit like me was capable of benefiting from their charity.

But ultimately Top Hat turned to me and ordered, “Come with us. You’ll get a pair of boots.” My fellow mendicants glared in envy at the way I, an utter novice, already knew the
schnorrer
business better than they did.

Chapter 30: "BROTHER, WE ARE SAVED!"

Outside awaited a carriage with rubber tires and a team of horses as proud and independent as eagles. I struggled up the rungs after my three benefactors, and tried not to let my soggy trousers rest too heavily on the soft leather bench. Within moments, we were soaring under a glistening moon through a broad, tree-lined street studded with such mansions as I had previously only seen in the finest quarters of Warsaw.

Since there was little I judged either safe or interesting to volunteer to my hosts, they must not have found me very stimulating company. Or else, having already judged me to be a little soft in the head, they saw no need to include me in their discussion about community matters, such as the need for a new guesthouse that would be a credit both to the city of Irkutsk and to its Jewish community. It would cost 25,000 rubles, of which 10,000 had already been pledged by a certain
macher
, Divanovsky.

I nearly exploded out of my seat. “Divanovsky!”

“Maybe you’ve heard of him?” one of the men said, almost kindly.

Had I heard of him? If his first name was Vassily, which I was too ashamed to ask, I not only knew him, but you might say he owed me his life. Or so he had sworn when his very survival was at risk under the tormenting thumb of Haman as his commanding officer.

Of even greater interest was the fact that Divanovsky also owed me the astronomical sum of 50 rubles that I had never expected to see again. (While I may have been blessed with a miraculous talent for encountering Jews in the most improbable places, I had best bear in mind that the Czar’s empire was not a village, and every man’s name was likely also to belong to thousands of others.)

So I bit my lip, preferring to let them to go on thinking me an imbecile, rather than bringing up the matter of such a trifling sum and being branded a swindler, an extortionist, or a clumsy charlatan unworthy of having a new pair of boots lavished upon him. And for the remainder of the ride, I merely stared at my feet.

The coach halted in front of a palace that could hold up its head beside
Baron Günzburg’s
mansion in Petersburg. It was surrounded by an iron fence that would have given pause even to someone as nimble as Pyavka. About whose existence I had until that moment, once again, totally forgotten.

A liveried servant ran to unlock the gates so that we might fly through them with a minimum of inconvenience. At the front door, a butler scurried out with an open umbrella. He bowed so deeply, it took him a moment to realize, possibly from a whiff of my disgraceful boots, before whom he was abasing himself.

Top Hat ordered the coachman to wait, so he could return me to where I had come from as quickly as possible.

I trotted humbly at the heels of the three men into a warm, well-lit foyer that could have been mistaken for a museum. I ignored the sardonic looks on the faces of the servants.

My benefactors filed into a study the size of a ballroom. Given no instructions to the contrary, I was about to straggle in after them when Top Hat said, “Wait here.” The door shut in my face, leaving me to gape at the gilt-framed mirrors within mirrors that cast reflections of everything but the insult of my face. Meanwhile, costumed servants kept a close watch on the decorated porcelain eggs in a fragile glass case.

Time passed. The doors of the study remained shut. My temper began to rise. Not that, other than finding Pyavka, I had pressing business elsewhere. And I needed a pair of boots more than I needed my pride. But rather than sit there on display for the amusement of the domestic staff, I was ready to flee the hall of mirrors, shoes or no shoes, and let them see that even a degraded creature like me placed some value on his time. While entertaining those high-minded thoughts, I remained seated where I was.

At long last, an elderly servant approached bearing a dainty pair of patent-leather boots. He held them out to me with the air of someone cleaning up after a dog.

Overwhelmed by the mere feel of such delicate foot-gear, I forgot my manners, stripped off what was left of my boots, unwound my toe-rags and shoved my feet into the cool, painfully clean, new shoes. I could have saved myself the trouble, needing only one glance to tell me each of those excellent boots had room for barely three of my toes. But I was determined to believe that, with just a bit of breaking in, they would stretch enough to fit me.

The old servant watched in total absorption as I teetered with bird-flapping arms. Clearly, he was not prepared to shuttle back and forth to the stockroom until his customer was satisfied. There was nothing left to do but thank him, pick up the twin corpses of my old boots, and dance toward the exit.

At which moment I heard a cultivated voice call out from somewhere in the maze of sparkling glass, “Young man!”

I stopped. Afraid of toppling over if I shifted my feet, I merely twisted my head in the direction of the voice. Confronting me was an enchanting woman whose grace and bearing suggested that she actually lived in that wondrous palace. Even her frown of anger was exquisite, although I didn’t know what, other than being in that room, I might have done to give offense.

She said, “Why didn’t my husband offer you something to eat?”

I heard myself stuttering, “Thank you, dear lady, but I have dined already.”

“Nonsense. You will sit down, at least, and take tea with me.”

How could I say no? In Siberia the habit of hospitality is so ingrained that if you refused the offer of a drink in a
kretchma
, your host would fling it in your face, be it vodka or boiling tea. And while this angelic lady did not look like the type to fling hot tea at a beggar, my evening’s schedule was not so crowded that I could not fit in one more engagement.

I nodded and mumbled something agreeable and, in my doll-sized footgear, tiptoed after her through a labyrinth of rooms large enough to stable a squadron of cavalry. Dementedly clutching my filthy boots, I strained not to crash into some priceless piece of furniture, while my hostess pretended not to notice the oafish way I deployed one foot in front of the other.

The house seemed to have a separate dining room for every meal. It even had a special area devoted solely to drinking tea. A samovar glowed and hissed on the sideboard, and a red-cheeked Russian maid brought me a steaming glass in a silver holder, along with the sort of sugary refreshments that required more tea to wash them down.

Madame Top Hat, if that was who she was, seemed not in the least bit offended by the speed with which I emptied the tray. Her bearing, in fact, put me so totally at ease that I began to behave like a real guest, rising to examine the paintings and photographs on the walls, and even leaning forward to study one of them more closely. It was a group photograph in front of a building, and it struck me as painfully familiar.

I finally recognized it as the Novocherkassky Barracks in Petersburg. As I looked more carefully at the large proportion of Jewish faces confronting the camera with mournful foreknowledge of their doom, I suddenly cried out, “Vasya!”

Turning to see my hostess’ alarmed expression, I said, “Forgive me, dear lady, but this looks like a boy I knew in the army.”

She followed my pointing finger with an indulgent smile. “That happens to be my brother-in-law," she said.

My heart raced. “Is his name ‘Vassily Divanovsky?’”

“You know him?” Before I could stop my mouth, I blurted out that not only did I know him, but he still owed me 50 rubles. I burned with shame, but she only nodded.

“I believe he once mentioned something of the sort. What is your name?”

“Yakov Marateck.”

“And you are sure he never paid you back?”

I was only able to nod as my throat was choked with foolish tears. How could I explain that, in my present circumstances, 50 rubles was a sum no more forgettable than $50 million would be to an American?

“I think I understand,” she said in consolation. “He inquired through military channels, which advised him that his friend was dead.”

“He could have written to my parents.” In fact, upon my return to Vishogrod the previous year, I had sent a postcard to Vasya at his parents’ address simply to let him know that I had survived. To this I got no response. Nor, some months later, to a printed card on which I wished him “
to be Inscribed and Sealed for a Good Year
.”  And so I assumed that either the “inflammation of the heart” with which he had been generously diagnosed had been genuine, and killed him, or he had married and moved elsewhere.

Or, as rich men are apt to do, had forgotten both my name and the petty sum he owed one of his former comrades.

She looked at me closely. “Is it really possible that you were the one who saved him from the ‘Convicts’ Company’ and loaned him the money to get home?” I felt like the frog that had turned into a prince.

But my hostess still couldn’t grasp how a wealthy and educated boy like Vassily could have allowed himself to get into such a state of abject dependence on a. . .whatever I was.

A frog, again. Telling her the full story would have taken all night, especially in my condition: lighthearted, leaden-eyed, and possibly a little feverish from the unaccustomed heat in the room.

But I could not leave her question totally unanswered, so I touched on some of the highlights: Our commanding officer, ‘Haman,’ who had, unaccountably, taken a particular dislike to Vasya. And that under his command, several men had been moved to take their own lives.

Having patiently heard me out, Madame Top Hat sighed, and rang for a maid to clear away the tea service. I assumed this meant that I was dismissed, but she waved me back into my chair.

“And now,” she said, “I suppose you want to see your old friend and ask him to pay back what he owes you.”

I confessed to her I would find it a great convenience to have 50 rubles in my pocket just then. I took the risk of further confessing that even a sum of that magnitude would only get my partner and me a fraction of the way back to Warsaw. Not to mention our dire need for passports and travel documents and other essential papers.

At this she shook her head. “I’m afraid you will not find it easy to get in to see him. Masses of people sit in his waiting room, day and night, in the hope of having just one word with him.”