It was early and the house still smelled of late-night bliny, smoked sturgeon, and cigars from the party the night before. There was a wineglass in the corner behind a chair and one up on a window ledge; a few stray ostrich feathers littered the floor. Under a mass of orchids on the amber table was a cream-colored envelope containing four first-class tickets, a note wishing her a safe journey, and two hundred rubles. The note was from Rosa Davidovna, the matriarch of the Malkiel brood and a second mother to Berta. Berta hadn’t expected the crisp fifty-ruble notes.
The coachman in his bottle green caftan opened the front door and announced that the luggage had been loaded and the carriage was waiting. She thanked him and put the envelope in her traveling case. When he was gone she checked her hat in the mirror that hung over the table. She had been right to wear this outfit. The color suited her and the skirt fit her like wax. She checked the back to make sure her belt was straight and fluffed up the flounces on her skirt. She made it a rule never to wear wire in her collars, only whalebone, only lace-trimmed satin petticoats that wouldn’t rustle, and only straight in front corsets. She always gave herself nearly a quarter of an hour to put on her gloves, because they fit her that well.
Berta met the coachman at the bottom of the steps, where he had the carriage door open. He took her traveling case and placed it on the seat inside and then took her arm just under the elbow and helped her into the carriage. It smelled of Mendel Afanasrevich’s lime shaving soap and the boot wax that his valet favored. There were fur rugs and a leather lap blanket neatly folded on one side of the seat and a newspaper that had been carelessly dropped on the floor. She folded it back along the seams, smoothed out the corners, and laid it in her lap. It would pass the time on the train.
The coachman climbed up on the box, clicked his tongue, flicked the whip, and the coach lurched forward. Soon they were crossing the Bely Gorod, heading down Nikolskaia Street and on through the Garden Ring to the Arbat. Here were many multistoried limestone buildings decorated with black signs in gilt lettering announcing the names of the stores in Russian and sometimes in French. Bells rang out from the numerous churches, proclaiming the hour each in their own way while horse-drawn trolleys clanged up and down the street depositing passengers on nearly every corner and picking up more. They continued on across the Borodinski Bridge, to Berezhki Street and then on to the Bryanski Station, where Berta was to catch the train west to the Ukraine, or Little Russia, as it was called.
Berta, like so many Great Russians, thought of Kiev and the surrounding provinces as a Russian outpost: provincial, backward, but Russified to some extent. She had a respect for both the Polish and the German influences there, but agreed with the authorities that the Ukrainian culture and language had little to offer. It was banned in the schools and in the government institutions and was thought to be the purlieu of reprobates, lazy slum dwellers, and rustics. Berta was born in Little Russia, a small fact that she never bothered to share with anyone of consequence. She was a Great Russian, as anyone could see by her fierce accomplishments, tasteful dress, and overall refinement.
Throughout the two-day journey from Moscow to Smolensk and Gorbatchovo to Bakhmatch, Tchernigov, and Kiev, Berta spent her days alone in the comfort of her compartment, reading, sleeping, and watching the dark pine forests of the northeast gradually give way to the undulating farmlands in the west. She luxuriated in the solitude and savored the feeling of disconnection, of being suspended between two worlds, a stranger to all, without ties and the expectations that went with them. Then, about 130 versts south of Kiev at a wheat center called Cherkast, an intruder appeared at the door of her compartment. She was a red-faced woman in light-colored muslin, looking hot in an embroidered bolero jacket and high-collared shirtwaist and wearing a hat so enormous, so generously laden with feathers, artificial flowers, and tropical foliage, it was a wonder she got it through the door.
“Sorry, this is a private compartment,” Berta said, with a note of alarm when it became apparent that the woman meant to move in with her traveling case, parasol, and numerous packages.
The woman stopped fanning herself with her ticket. “It is?” She shifted her packages to examine her ticket and checked the number on the door. “But this is number five. I’m in number five.”
“That is impossible. I booked the whole compartment.”
“You did?”
“Of course.”
As it turned out, the woman’s ticket was marked for Berta’s compartment. By rights the railroad should have corrected the mistake and accommodated the lady elsewhere, but the train was full and there was no place else for her to go.
“I am so sorry to intrude,” she said as she came back in, taking the seat across from Berta and spreading out her things on the surrounding seats. “I won’t get in the way. You’re so kind to offer me a place.”
Berta gave her a cold, quick smile and tried to ignore the vulgar rustling of the woman’s taffeta petticoats. At that point she could’ve made a fuss, but she was young and the woman was old, at least over forty, and she had learned from experience that waiters, cabmen, and guards on trains always placed age above beauty. She could’ve chanced it, but in all likelihood she would’ve lost and then she’d have to spend the rest of the journey with a sullen fat woman not three feet away. So reluctantly Berta accepted her fate with something approaching equanimity.
For the first few hours the two women sat in amicable silence, reading their books and glancing out the window at the passing landscape. There were wheat fields of tawny stubble, haymaking stations, women in garish head scarves raking the tall shafts of grass into carts, farmhouses made of logs covered in plaster, thatched mansard roofs, and horses harnessed under great bowed yokes called dugas. Everywhere there was color: lion-colored hayricks, black earth, silver bark, red-belted tunics, embroidered shirts the color of Easter eggs, all set against a hard blue sky.
After a while the woman excused herself, got up with some difficulty, and made her way to the door. There was plenty of room in the compartment, but she was so large and her journey so precarious that she obviously thought it prudent to apologize in advance. When she was gone, Berta took the opportunity to examine the woman’s hat, left lying on the seat next to her gloves and a leather-bound book suitable for traveling. Berta knew there was much to learn from a hat. This one looked like it came from the salon of the Allschwang Brothers on the Petrovka, but on closer examination, it was easy to see that it was a well-made imitation, expensive, but not of Moscow quality. Berta didn’t have anything against imitations. They weren’t for her of course, but they were serviceable for those of a certain class. She wasn’t a snob. Quite the contrary, she was modern, forward thinking, and liberal, clearly more suited to the new century than to the last. And besides, she was in Little Russia now and had to expect that kind of thing.
By the time the woman returned, Berta had replaced the hat exactly where she had found it and was sitting back on the horsehair cushions, her feet tucked under the flounces of her skirt, pretending to read her book.
“The porters are going from compartment to compartment,” the woman said, taking her seat. “It’s never a good sign when they make an announcement in the middle of a journey.” She was a nervous sort with a motherly face and an ample bosom that rested comfortably on her midriff whenever she sat down. She kept smoothing her skirt over her prominent belly as if that would make it go away.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. It can’t be too serious. We’re still moving. If it had to do with the train or the tracks, we’d be at a standstill.”
A few minutes later there was a perfunctory knock at the door and the porter opened it without waiting for a reply. “I regret to inform you,” he said with an officious twitch of his moustache, “that there will be no fish on the menu today.”
“No fish?” the woman replied, dabbing at her moist cheeks and upper lip with a handkerchief. It was a hot day and the window was stuck.
“I’m sorry, Madame
. The fish in Cherkast did not meet our standards. But we did manage to pick up a fine joint of roast beef.”
“Roast beef for lunch? No, I don’t think so. That’s all right, I’ll find something. Please don’t worry about me.”
The porter withdrew and the woman gazed forlornly out at the Dnieper River flowing patiently beside the tracks. “Can you imagine that? A whole river out there and no fish for the train. And all this time I thought this was the good line.”
Fortunately Aleksandra Dmitrievna Tretiakova was a strong woman with a healthy attitude toward life. She prided herself on eating right, getting plenty of sleep, and walking on those rare occasions when the weather permitted, so it didn’t take her long to rise above her difficulties.
“So where are you from, my dear?” she asked, plumping her pillow and putting her troubles behind her.
“Moscow.”
“I love Moscow. I’d love to live there, but my husband says the wheat is in Cherkast. You have a family? Children?”
“I live with relatives.”
“Oh,” Aleksandra Dmitrievna’s voice slid down an octave in disappointment.
Berta replaced the tooled leather bookmark and closed her book. “The Malkiels, perhaps you’ve heard of them?” She dropped this little gem as if it were of no consequence.
“The sugar Malkiels?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re a relative you say?”
“A cousin.”
“Oh my, a cousin.” Aleksandra Dmitrievna’s doughy cheeks flushed with pleasure. “What must that be like? Living in all that splendor.” Her eyes were shining.
“It’s pleasant,” Berta said fanning herself with a cardboard fan decorated with a train, provided to all the first-class passengers by the Southwestern Line.
“Oh, I’m sure it is. Most pleasant. Heaven, I would imagine. You will tell me all about it? You’re not one of those absurdly private people are you?”
Berta smiled modestly and sat back in her seat. Maybe she had been too quick to judge this woman. And there was the long train ride ahead of them; and she was nearly finished with her novel; and to be honest, she couldn’t think of a more agreeable subject of conversation than herself. So it wasn’t long before she was telling Aleksandra Dmitrievna all about her life at Number 12 Leontievsky Street.
She told her about their horses in Petrovka Park, their box at the Bolshoi, and their salon on Tuesdays. She described her former classmates at the girls’ gymnasium, Arseniev; their prominent families; and the sensational gossip that no unmarried girl of twenty-three should know much less repeat. It wasn’t that Berta was unduly influenced by the awe, excitement, and envy so plainly displayed on Aleksandra Dmitrievna’s face—she was simply relating her life as she had been asked to do. True, she omitted a few facts pertaining to her position in that world as a distant cousin of the Malkiels’. And to be fair she might have exaggerated her relationship with the more important members of society, but weren’t these little transgressions forgivable, especially in light of the fact that she was giving Aleksandra Dmitrievna Tretiakova something to talk about for the rest of her life?
“. . .And all the women were wearing décolleté that evening to show off their diamonds.” Berta had moved on to the coronation ball at the Hunter’s Club in May of 1896. “Luidmila Borisovna wore a branch of them in her hair and Grafina Sergeevna had a rope of them tied around her waist. And you should’ve seen the roses, a hundred thousand of them. Then at midnight they brought in a huge replica of the Kremlin cathedral made out of red sugar. It was gigantic and took six men to carry it in. It had real doors that opened and everyone who went to the coronation said it was true down to the last detail.”
Although Berta included plenty of colorful details in her description of that famous evening, she did leave out certain inconvenient facts. For example, there was that tragedy on Khodynka Field that happened in the early morning hours of the eighteenth, when two thousand people were trampled to death by a panicked crowd of six hundred thousand who mistakenly believed the free beer was running out. When she described watching the fireworks from the club’s terrace, she also failed to mention the line of carts rumbling by in the street below and how, in the spectacular flashes of color from overhead, it was easy to see the blue-black bodies, the bloodstained tatters, the smashed noses, the eyes askew, and the many pairs of bare feet bouncing over the cobblestones. She also omitted the fact that the Malkiels were Jews and only invited to the ball because they owned the majority of sugar refineries in Russia and contributed more than three hundred Russian pounds of dyed red sugar.
Soon after that, Aleksandra Dmitrievna opened up her packages and they made a picnic out of biscuits, caviar, and wine. She slathered a biscuit with caviar, and presented it to Berta on a porcelain plate. Berta accepted it graciously, took a bite, and nodded her appreciation.
“And your parents?” Dmitrievna asked, helping herself to another biscuit.
Berta’s face clouded. She took a sip of her wine and gazed out the window at a passing farmstead where an old man and his wife were wrapping their house in dried corn stalks as insulation against the coming winter. “They’re dead.”
“Oh, how awful. Cholera?”
“Typhus.”
“We had an epidemic a few summers back. Everyone was boiling water and drinking glasses and glasses of beet juice. Fortunately we were all fine. And so that’s why you went to live with your relatives?”
“Yes, they’re my family now.”
“Of course they are, my dear. And a fine family they are.”
Berta’s eyes followed a flock of crows rising up in a cloud above a corn field, their shadows making ominous splotches on the corn below. She drained her wine, sat back, and closed her eyes. In a few minutes her lips felt numb and her limbs relaxed. It wasn’t a bad feeling, considering.
Late that afternoon the train pulled into a station of no consequence and Berta rose and gathered up her things. Her traveling companion was asleep and snoring into a pillow embroidered with the crest of the Southwestern Line. Berta moved about the compartment as quietly as possible, hoping not to wake Aleksandra Dmitrievna. She wanted to avoid the usual hugging and kissing, exchanging of cards and empty promise making that went on even between strangers when a journey had been shared. She wanted to disappear without a trace, perhaps leaving only a faint whiff of perfume behind. But the train came to such a sudden halt that it woke Aleksandra Dmitrievna with a jerk.
After a blank moment she sat up, wiped away a small puddle of drool from her chin, and looked out the window. “Where are we?”
“Mosny.”
She stared out at the dreary station and then noticed that Berta was pulling on her gloves. “You’re getting off here?”
Berta nodded.
Aleksandra Dmitrievna took another look at the station, at the barefoot children selling pastries, at the peasants waiting to board, at the muzhik arguing with the stationmaster over a crate of ducks he was refusing to stow in the luggage compartment, and said nothing. There was also a Jewish couple walking down the length of the train searching in every window for someone they had come to meet. She was a small, birdlike woman wearing a dirty head scarf, a plain blouse, and a dark skirt. He wore a visor cap over his tousled gray hair and black trousers with a bulging waistband where his tallis was tied. When they came to Berta’s window, the woman’s hands flew to her mouth. She elbowed her husband and began to wave excitedly.
“Do you know them?” Aleksandra Dmitrievna asked, looking relieved to be separated from the zhydy by a sturdy pane of glass.
Berta glanced up briefly, shook her head, and returned to her gloves.
“But look, she’s calling your name.”
Berta took another look and this time there was a flicker of recognition. Halfheartedly she waved back. “Oh, that’s Rivke. She keeps our poultry. And that’s her husband. I guess they’ve been sent to meet me.”
“Why does she keep waving like that?�
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Berta shrugged. “They’re like children.” She leaned over to kiss Aleksandra Dmitrievna on both cheeks. “Now promise you’ll come to see me. I’ll be back in Moscow by the end of the month. Here’s my card.”
Aleksandra Dmitrievna tucked it into her pocket and eagerly went in search of her own. “Will I meet the Malkiels, do you think?”
“Of course. We’ll have you for tea.”
“You really think so?” she asked, taking out a card from an engraved silver case and handing it to Berta.
“I’m looking forward to it.”
Berta put the card in her just-in-case bag, where she was bound to lose it. Then she gathered up her things and, after one last good-bye, left the compartment. She could’ve gotten off right there, but instead she chose to walk through the train and exit at the other end.
The minute she stepped off she felt the full force of the Little Russian summer. She had forgotten how hot they could be, how they weighted her limbs and made her clothes stick to her body. She had to find a way to cut this visit short. She wouldn’t last a week in this intolerable hell. Looking past the train station to the dusty road, she thought the heat and flies alone would do her in.
There were several porters leaning up against the little station in the shade and several more sitting on a stone ledge that ran around it. They wore scruffy beards, homespun jackets, dirty aprons, and heavy ropes wrapped around their waists. Berta opened her parasol and motioned one over. They had all been eyeing her, hoping for a little business.
“See that Jewish couple standing over there by the first-class carriages ?” she asked, putting a few kopecks in the porter’s palm. “Tell them Berta is here waiting for them at the other end of the train.” He nodded and strode off to do as he was told. She watched while the couple listened to him then turned to search the crowd. When they spotted her the woman came running over, while her husband followed behind at a more measured pace.
The Little Russian Page 2