HERSHEL STOPPED at the linen closet on his way to the bedroom to get a fresh towel. Berta was always complaining that he used so many that Olive couldn’t keep up. Usually the closet was filled with them and bedsheets too, except when Olive got behind with the laundry. Today there were only three left, so that when Hershel took one out he could see all the items stored in the back. There was his old Homburg that he knew he would never wear again. There was Berta’s yarn bag filled with needles and skeins and the beginnings of a chenille throw that had been started with enthusiasm but quickly abandoned. There was a photo album belonging to his sister, Rachel, and beneath that was the box.
The box had come shortly after they had arrived from Poland. Lhaye had sent it through Pavel, because it was difficult to get things out of the country. It was a simple pine box with green curlycues around the perimeter of the lid. It wasn’t large or heavy. When Hershel lifted it out of the closet, he could hear several items rattling around inside. He didn’t like to look at it. He wished that Berta had found some other place for it, possibly among her things in the armoire. It would have been nice if she had stored it away in a place where he never had to lay eyes on it. Of course, he never mentioned this to her. She wouldn’t have understood.
Hershel had no idea why he reached for it. Usually he went out of his way to avoid it. Maybe it was the dangerous storm that unsettled him and the fact that Samuil had been there with him. Berta was right. He shouldn’t have taken Samuil. It was no place for the boy.
He took the box to the bedroom, sat down on the bed, and opened the lid. Inside was a toy horse, beautifully rendered, tenderly cared for, with a long flowing mane that was still in good shape despite the fact that it had journeyed from the Berezina to Dulgaya Street and then all the way to America. There was a pair of gloves with violets on the cuffs. They hadn’t fared so well. They were dirty with holes in the fingers. There was a bell and a hair clip etched with violets, pink ribbons, and a silk bow. Hershel examined the contents, picking up the bell and ringing it and then quickly silencing it so that Berta wouldn’t hear. All these items were nothing but a little girl’s treasures and yet they had such an effect on him. Shame, grief, and, above all, a hectic restlessness to get away.
HE HAD TWO schnapps before dinner and another one with the chicken. He could tell that Berta noticed by the way she looked at him, surprise at first, then with feigned disinterest so as to not embarrass him. Usually he was careful with his liquor. It was already a year into Prohibition and good liquor was not so easy to come by in Rice Lake. When he came up to bed, he saw that the linen closet door was ajar. He opened it and found that the towels had been rearranged to hide the box. For an instant, he felt an immense rush of tenderness for his wife. The ferocity of it caught him by surprise. She was already asleep when he crawled into bed beside her. She lay on her side, away from him. He wrapped himself around her and drew her close. She murmured something unintelligible in her half-waking state. He fell asleep with his face buried in her hair, smelling the rose petal soap she favored.
HE AWOKE around four in the morning, got dressed, and left the house. The night was clear and clean after the storm. Tangles of downed branches littered the street and a torrent of water still ran in the gutter. Water droplets rained down on him whenever the wind rattled the branches. The air was surprisingly warm.
He walked down North Wilson to South Main toward the outskirts of town. He passed Dick Hamilton’s brother-in-law, the one who came back from the Marne whole in body but not in mind. The two men glanced at each other as they passed on the wooden sidewalk. The young man was wearing his bedroom slippers and singing “America the Beautiful” in a loud voice as he shuffled along. When he stopped singing, Hershel glanced back to see why and caught him peeing in Mrs. Bronfstead’s camellias.
Hershel took a dirt road that led into the hayfields and cut across a pasture. He sloshed across the sodden meadow, coming within touching distance of the grazing cows. They stopped when he approached and watched him suspiciously. Once he had gone a fair distance he turned back to them: unmoving hulks, cardboard cutouts against an inky sky.
When Hershel reached the edge of the pasture, he saw his destination: a grove of aspens crowning the hill. He welcomed the climb out of the muddy field. The mud and water had come in over his shoes and now his socks were soaked. He started up the trail just as it was getting light enough to see the buttercups growing at the base of the rocky outcroppings. When he reached the top he found a suitable boulder among the many strewn about and sat down. There were tiny pools of water caught in the depressions of the rock that soaked through his pants.
After a while he took out several pieces of paper and a pencil and sat there thinking about what he wanted to say. By then the sky had turned to a delicate blue. Red and pink ribbons banded the horizon. He didn’t want to write a prayer; he didn’t believe in God. Instead he wrote only short notes. He talked about how much he missed her, about her childhood, memories of Masha the cat, the park, riding on her pony. He wrote about coming to America, his regrets, his remorse in leaving her, stupid and unforgivable. He kept on writing, slowly draining the reservoir of shame, until he ran out of things to say. Then he hung the strips on the low-hanging branches, along with the bell.
When he was done, he sat back and watched them tremble in the morning breeze in concert with the new leaves. They reminded him of a quilt of butterflies, newly emerged from the cocoon, fanning their wings to dry them. The bell rang softly, and he listened as it mingled with the sound of the brook at the base of the hill.
Copyright © 2012 Susan Sherman All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sherman, Susan.
The little Russian / Susan Sherman.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-619-02029-0
1. Jewish women—Fiction. 2. Soviet Union—History—
1917–1936—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.H4676L58
2012 813’.6—dc23 2011037731
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