Enemy of the Tzar Read online

  Hanna squatted down beside him. “Can I help you?”

  He shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m all right.” He wiped the animal’s mouth with the wet cloth. “Why can’t you turn up the lantern?”

  “It is our Sabbath. There are all numbers of things we are prohibited from doing. Like lighting fires, or putting them out.” She grinned. “Even fishing.”

  He smiled at her. “That’s interesting. Can you name some others?”

  Hanna shrugged. “I don’t know most of them.” She turned towards the Hasid. “Do you know them, Jakob?”

  “There are thirty-nine categories and one hundred and seven derivative varieties which could lead to breaking the Sabbath laws. Do you want them all?”

  Hershel chuckled with sheer joy. “Just the thirty-nine, Jakob. Stephen will understand what you mean before you start splitting hairs.”

  “All right. Actually, there aren’t thirty-nine.” His eyes sparkled. “There are forty, less one. They are sowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, cleansing, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, shearing wool and washing or beating or dying it, spinning, weaving, making two loops…”

  Hershel began to chuckle again, and the rest of them smiled.

  “…weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying a knot or loosening one, sewing two stitches, tearing in order to sew two stitches…”

  Everyone was now laughing, even the children.

  “…hunting a deer and slaughtering it or flaying it or salting it or curing its skin or scraping it or cutting it up, writing two letters, erasing in order to write two letters…” This remark broke up the audience, and tears came to their eyes. “…building, demolishing, extinguishing, kindling, striking with a hammer, and carrying from one domain into another.” Jakob took a long breath, then smiled at those assembled.

  When Stephen was able to stop laughing, he shook his head in wonder. “How do you get them done?”

  Motlie said, “We have a Shabbas goy do them for us. Or rather, we did.” She did not go on to explain that since Israel’s accident, there was barely enough money for the basic necessities, let alone paid help.

  When all was again under control, Stephen said, “I can stay out with the cow if you want to finish your supper.”

  “We’re finished,” said Israel. “But I will wait in the house.”

  One by one they left until Hanna, Hershel, and Zelek remained. Hershel squatted by the side of Stephen. “How do you decide when to start pulling out the calf?”

  “I hope I won’t have to, because it can be very seriously injured. You know it’s time when the calf shifts completely to the rear. It’s almost there now. I’m hoping that since the feet are in their proper position, the cow can do the rest herself. If she doesn’t manage after another try or two, I’ll go back in.”

  “What if it doesn’t come out?”

  Stephen shrugged. “It will have to come out, dead or alive. When you pull out a calf, it’s to save the cow.”

  Zelek was watching Stephen intently from the corner of his eye, his face set hard. Hanna did not have to wonder what was going through his mind. She had felt the same way. That Stephen was Russian; Cossacks were Russian; ergo, Stephen was a Cossack–an enemy of his people. She shook her head sadly. Only five years old and already feeling the bile of hate. It must start in the womb, she concluded with rising anger, and all it could bring is misery. She knew she was somewhat to blame also, joking about assigning the rooster, Nicholas Aleksandrovich Romanov, to the pot one day, and Israel calling him the Cossack.

  Inside, she heard Jakob break into song again, his feet pounding on the floor boards, and soon the rest were joining him. Zelek wavered a few seconds, torn between eyeing his enemy or joining his new found friend, then he left for the kitchen. It took Hershel only a few more seconds to realize that Hanna and Stephen might want to be alone, and with a, “I’ll be inside in the event you need me,” he also left.

  The moment he was out of sight, Hanna leaned forward and kissed Stephen. “When did you get back?” she asked happily.

  “About an hour ago.”

  “Have you eaten?” she asked, her practical nature overcoming her desire to clasp him in her arms.

  “Yes. My mother said she never saw me finish supper so quickly.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I missed you terribly.”

  “And I missed you, my darling.” She settled herself cross-legged on some straw. “The funeral, it was sad, eh?”

  “Not really. Mother carried on, of course, but it’s mostly because Russians always carry on, even if it’s for a stranger.” He reached into a shirt pocket and brought out a small box. “I bought this for you.”

  Hanna’s eyes grew wide. “Can I open it now?” she asked excitedly.

  Stephen grinned. “You’d better, or you’ll be flying like a bird in a minute.”

  With nervous fingers she opened the box and took out a light brown cameo with a dove delicately carved above the figure. It was hooked to a fine, gold chain. “Oh, Stephen,” she whispered. “It is so beautiful. I cannot take it.”

  “You’ll have to,” he said. “It’s for only one person in the world. You. If you don’t take it, I promise to throw it in the river.”

  Hanna smiled. “You would not do that.”

  “I swear I will,” he said seriously. She knew he would, so she pressed her lips against his.

  Suddenly, his attention turned back to the cow. His hand washing her down had felt a movement that signaled she was trying once again. He moved to her rear, slid a hand into her uterus, then began exerting pressure inside.

  “Wash her face,” said Stephen. “Work back to her shoulders.”

  Hanna took up the cloth and began to do as she was instructed. She started talking to the cow, telling her how nice she was, how good her milk tasted, and what a brave mother she was.

  “Keep talking to her,” said Stephen. “You’re doing great. She’s trying.”

  The minutes went by, Stephen pulling only with minimal strength.

  Suddenly the cow began squeezing and straining. Stephen drew back firmly on the legs of the calf. It barely moved.

  “Slap her face!” he said to Hanna. She looked at him questioningly. “Slap her! Hard!” he said again, urgently.

  Hanna slapped the muzzle with an open hand.

  “Harder!” he cried. “Use your fist.”

  She punched the cow in the face. Her fist began stinging. “Again,” said Stephen, pulling more strongly. She punched the cow twice. The cow shook her head, shocked by the attack. Stephen felt the calf move ever so slightly. “It’s coming,” he said. “Keep hitting her, hard.”

  Finally understanding what was at stake, Hanna began pounding on the animal. As it twisted its head to escape the pummeling, its muscles convulsed and Stephen felt the calf finally move free. Placing a knee against the cow’s rump, he drew back forcefully.

  The calf’s front feet emerged, then its head, and once the shoulders broke through, its entire body gushed out.

  Hanna turned towards him, and her eyes fastened on the calf.

  Stephen smiled. “It’s alive, Hanna, and well.” He leaned over the wet, sticky animal and his smile became broader. “Or rather, I should say, she’s alive.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The stab of pain struck Motlie just at dawn. She came awake with a gasp of fear, then horror flooded through her. It is the cancer, her mind shrieked! Cancer! Cancer! It is in the pit of my stomach and it is eating me, tearing me apart. Oh God, dear glorious God, please make it stop.

  The pain struck again. From her clenched lips came a low, tortured groan. She turned to one side and tried to stifle the next cry in the pillow, but Israel woke.

  “Motlie,” he said, peering at her dim form. “What is the matter?”

  She shook her head, her face still buried in the pillow. He took her by the arm and tried to turn her. She let out a strangled cry. Before he could roll out of bed for help, Hanna was by the
ir side.

  “It’s Mama,” he said desperately.

  Hanna sped to the kitchen, quickly lit the lamp, then took out a bottle of clear liquid that Doctor Lepke of Slabodka had given her. Back in the bedroom, she poured out a spoonful.

  “Here, Mama, take this. It will help.”

  After sucking it in, Motlie lay back, gasping for breath, unable to find a second of ease. Hanna thought how the cool water had comforted the cow, so back to the kitchen she went for a bowl of water and a cloth. When she returned, Israel was sitting on the edge of the bed holding Motlie’s hand, his eyes flooded by tears. He looked up at Hanna beseechingly, as if his daughter had a magical power to relieve her mother.

  “Here, Papa,” she said, handing over the bowl. “Wipe Mama’s face. Maybe it will help.”

  It was coming, she knew deep inside, what Doctor Lepke had predicted would happen. She was overwhelmed by a terrible hopelessness and frustration. She loved her mother so, yet could not intervene to stop this horrible malady. Now she had to face the fact that her mother would not be with them much longer. Mama was the center of her world, and she could not conceive of a life without her.

  But Hanna realized that she had to be prepared to take over the management of the house and the family. Although she had been the only wage earner for years, there was always Mama to suggest what should be done, to set the values and actions of the family, and to inspire all of them when conditions were at their worst. However, she would not give up Mama without a fight. Doctor Lepke was a good physician, but he was still just a family practitioner who knew only about the usual illnesses of his country patients. What Mama needed was a specialist, someone who knew everything about her specific ailment. Her Uncle Samuel, Israel’s brother from Slabodka, had mentioned a Doctor Skiptonas in Kaunas, a cancer specialist. There was no longer time to hope. Now she must act.

  Quickly she dressed, climbed the stairs to Hershel’s room, and tapped on his door. He opened it, hair mussed, eyes still foggy.

  “Hershel,” she said. “Mama is sick. I must go to Kaunas. I hate to ask, but may I use your horse?”

  There was a small sound, and she turned to see Jakob standing at his doorway. The whispers must have attracted him. He had on his head and arm phylacteries to say his morning prayers, for as Torah had commanded, “And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord’s law may be in thy mouth.”

  “Mama’s sick,” she said to him. “I am going to Kaunas for a doctor.”

  “Would you like me to sit with her?”

  For a moment Hanna was surprised at his offer, and then suddenly she understood that in spite of the long, skinny frame, the jaw-length curls, his dancing and singing, Jakob was first and last a man of God.

  “Thank you. Please help,” she said simply.

  Jakob immediately went back into his room to begin the ritual for removing his tefillin.

  “Hanna,” said Hershel. She turned back to him. “Of course, take the horse. Would you rather I go?”

  She shook her head. “No, thank you. I must speak to him.”

  In minutes, she had the animal saddled and was trotting down the dirt road towards Slabodka. For a while it seemed that the village would never come into view. She considered for a moment stopping to see Doctor Lepke first, then accepted the fact that he had done all he could, so she started over the bridge to the capital of Russian Lithuania. She became lost a number of times before locating Doctor Skiptonas’ office in a large, Victorian style house. She tied the horse to a hitching rail, went up the stone steps, and pulled the door-bell. A white garbed nurse with a large, heavily starched hat, answered after a number of rings, and, seeing the peasant attire that Hanna was wearing, curtly asked what she wanted.

  “My mother is dying of cancer. I would like Doctor Skiptonas to see her. We live in Gremai, about ten versts from Slabodka.”

  The nurse stood more stiffly. “You are a Jew?”

  “Yes.”

  The nurse was only moderately concerned about the faith of the young woman standing so desperately in front of her, for many of the Jews in the city were rich and, therefore, clients, in a left-handed fashion, but the combination of being Jewish and poor was another matter.

  “The doctor’s fee is forty rubles a visit,” she said.

  She was accustomed to some form of reaction at the mention of his fee, but the sight of Hanna’s face going white with shock startled her.

  Hanna leaned against the doorpost until she could get her breath. Her mind whirled with the thought of how she could raise the money.

  “Very well,” she managed to say in a small voice. “I will get it for you.”

  “It must be paid in advance,” said the nurse, a bit more gently.

  “All right.” Hanna descended the steps in a daze, untied the horse, and stiffly mounted it. Once over the bridge, she kicked the animal into a trot. Forty rubles! It kept pounding in her head. It was more than three months of work. Not that she cared how long it took to earn the money, but forty rubles were her earnings, not her savings. If she found someone to lend her the money, the most she could pay back was one ruble a month, and that only at the sacrifice of food or clothing.

  Mrs. Merkys was her first stop. Before leaving for Kaunas, she had told Gitel to inform her employer that she would be late. She knew that Mrs. Merkys would be upset, for a wedding dress that Hanna had been working on was just on schedule, and any delay could cause complications.

  Face still white, even from the exertion of having ridden over twenty versts in just the morning hours, Hanna explained to the dressmaker how desperately she needed the money. Mrs. Merkys was under no illusions as to what the specialist from Kaunas could do for Motlie. He certainly would not operate, since the family could not afford it, and the only thing left was the usual comments that a doctor mumbles when he knows he is wasting his time. The sole hope was the God of the Jews. Only He could help now. Better that Hanna and her family, and everyone else in the village who loved Motlie, and that would include all who knew her, should pray for her. But who could refuse Hanna’s urgent request.

  “I have only twenty rubles,” she said sadly. She had more, but she was convinced that whatever she gave Hanna would never be seen again. Had either of her other two girls asked for a loan, except perhaps for a ruble or so, she would have been discharged on the spot.

  Holding tight to the money in a pocket, Hanna led the horse back to the stable and tied it in a stall. She went inside to find Israel still sitting by the side of the bed. He motioned her to silence, then signaled that Motlie had fallen asleep. Painfully, he rose and followed her into the kitchen.

  “The drug helped,” he explained. “She dozed off half an hour ago.” He eyed her hopefully. “When will the doctor come?”

  She decided not to tell him what the visit would cost, for this doctor represented their last chance to save Motlie’s life. Israel had a great respect for doctors. He had mentioned more than once that the physician in Prussia who had worked on his crushed body after his boat accident there had saved his life, and had he been in Lithuania at another hospital, his fate might have been different.

  “He will come as soon as he can.”

  Israel nodded. “Jakob was very helpful. He sat by Mama for over an hour, praying. It seemed to help her as much as the drug.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He went to shul.”

  Hanna called in Gitel and Reba from working in the garden, pulling weeds and watering the plants, and the three of them prepared a lunch of boiled potatoes and slices of pickled herring with slabs of pumpernickel bread. Hershel and Jakob came in as the food was placed on the table, Hershel carrying an easel and frame, on which he was sketching a scene of the river, and Jakob holding his prayer book. He said a brief prayer when they assembled at the table, and then they fell to.

  Hanna ate quickly and left the cleaning to the girls so she could get to work. She had lost half a day already
, but did not expect that Mrs. Merkys would deduct it from her salary, since there were many occasions when she had worked overtime. At the shop, she forced herself to concentrate only on the dress and not on the money she needed for the doctor. She accomplished a lot by quitting time, straightened up her work area, then left. On her ride back from Kaunas, she had gone over in her mind the people she dared approach for a loan. Her Uncle Samuel was out of the question, since he was little better off than themselves. But then, Mrs. Merkys had contributed more than she expected, and that was a relief. There were two other prospects, and quickly she walked to Mr. Feldman’s store. She had dealt with him for years, and they had struck up a form of friendship. He was a small, thin, wizened man, married to a mouse of a woman, who had given him two children with almost every ailment that youngsters could have.

  Like everyone in the village, Feldman knew that Motlie was very ill, and suspected, like everyone else, that she had cancer. He also was aware that the family was impoverished, but he remembered that Israel always paid his debts to the kopek. There was more. He was a pious man, and he believed as surely as there is a living God that an act of charity would be returned threefold to his unfortunate children.

  “Hanna,” he said, as soon as the request, delivered with a discomfort that only desperation could overcome, was made. “I have ten rubles for you. It is not a loan. It is a gift. I only ask that you pass on this gift someday when you are able to.”

  Tears came to her eyes. How little she had actually known this man. He was not rich by any means, and the ten rubles represented a good part of his savings. She did not insist that she would accept the money only as a loan, for it was his mitzvah, his thanks to the Lord, and this must never be taken from a person. The Lord smiles at mitzvahs. She thanked him with a lump in her throat, and then she was back on the street, with ten rubles still to go.

  The next one to see was George Wilson, a most unusual person to be living in the district. An American from a town called Morrisville in Pennsylvania, he had been a sailor on a freighter which had made port at Riga in Latvia over seventy years before, when wind and sails were the main form of sea locomotion. Wanderlust had brought him to Lithuania, and a Jewish girl from a neighboring village had captured his heart. For over sixty years, he had transported goods up and down the Nemunas, like her father. He had converted to Judaism directly before his marriage, and had become as orthodox as the Gaon of Vilnius, the head of the Jewish community throughout Eastern Europe. Never having been blessed with children, he and Ida, his wife, had adopted the world at large, and Jews in particular. Being a bright sort of person, before his marriage, while still legally a gentile, he had obtained permission to buy a large farm of unusually fertile land, and this had posed a problem after conversion, since Jews were prohibited from owning land. They could buy buildings, but not the ground upon which they sat. Actually, the Russians had also excluded Catholics from owning land, which took in almost all of the Lithuanians. After a few years of filling out forms and holding hearings, the Russian authorities decided to do nothing, so Wilson plied the river while Ida hired Jewish neighbors to till the farm, and in time they had become financially secure. Ida had fallen victim to a palsy eight years ago, and up to her death two or three years later, Motlie had frequently walked the four versts out of Gremai to their trim, sawn lumber home to bring dishes that Ida loved, especially her kugel, noodles baked with cheese. She had continued doing the same for Wilson himself up to the time of Israel’s accident, when food for just the family became a problem.