She came home that afternoon and said, “Someone called me by my name.”
Brian sighed. They had to go, no matter how innocent it might have been. They could not go east, and they could not wait for the thaw of the sea to take them to safe harbor. They had to go west, into the terrible steppes of the Rus. They went south as well, where it was slightly warmer, but not enough. They went from village to village. Nadezhda’s horse died, so they sold the meat and rode together on his. They both had a bad cough, and many times were tempted to stop and seek shelter in some village for the winter.
“We cannot go farther,” he announced. They stopped at the next set of wooden buildings ahead on the road, now disappearing into the snow. With half of Count Vladimir’s treasury in Russian rubles, strapped to a sack beneath his clothing, he took his wife’s hand, and they walked into town. He tried his Russian, but their accents were too heavy. The men were wearing beaver fur hats and long black coats, and as far as he could tell, they were speaking some unknown dialect when they talked amongst each other. They all had beards; that was hardly unusual, but the way they talked—they did not speak directly to Nadezhda; however, they understood what she said and talked amongst themselves for some time.
“Here,” he said in Russian, holding up some coins. They would probably not take paper money here. “Please. Help.”
“We can’t stay,” Nadezhda whispered to him in Romanian.
“Surely if we give them enough—”
“We can’t stay. It’s dangerous.”
“You are sure?”
“Brian, they’re Jews.”
He blinked. “So? I’ve met Jews before.”
“You have?”
“People are people, Nady,” he said, “people with warm houses. They could have horns for all I care.” He smiled as one of them looked at him. “Hello.”
The men were still talking when another one came out of one of the houses with a long beard, carrying his hat as he was clearly unprepared to be walking about outside, and began yelling at them. It was vaguely Russian, vaguely not. “Yiddish,” Brian said at last.
“What?”
“A Yid. A Jew. They speak it in Germany.”
Whatever they were saying, every man hushed when the old man approached them and started sermonizing. Eventually, they all scattered, and a woman emerged from behind him and waved Brian and Nadezhda in. “Thank you,” Nadezhda said in Russian.
The old couple spoke fluent Russian, they soon discovered, and Brian understood more than he spoke, so he was able to follow the conversation fairly well. He offered money, but the man waved it away.
“We need shelter,” Nadezhda said nervously. Aside from his black skullcap, the man did not have horns. “Please.”
“You come from where?”
“St. Petersburg,” Brian said.
Their host said no more about the obvious lie as his wife disappeared, reappearing with a steel tub of soup, which she portioned off for the four of them.
“I am Rabbi Shneur Zalman,” the man said. “My wife, Sterna Zalman.”
“Brian Maddox,” he replied. “My wife, Nadezhda Maddox.”
“You are English?” the rabbi said in perfect German.
Brian and Nadezhda exchanged nervous glances. “I am,” Brian said in German. “My wife is not.”
“She is Polish?”
“No,” he knew he couldn’t say she was German—her accent was too Baltic. “To the south.”
The rabbi didn’t inquire further, said something in Yiddish to himself, and began his soup. That was their signal. So they dug into their food, drinking down every last hot, salty drop, and washed it down with vodka. Feeling warm again was delightful; Brian only gave a dreamy glance as his wife was removed with the rabbi’s wife, leaving him alone with Zalman. “So, you are from here? Where is here?” He fell into a natural Romanian without thinking, only realizing it after it came out of his mouth.
The rabbi answered in Romanian, “I was born in Liozna. It is Lithuania now, I believe, then Vilna, and then St. Petersburg. But we are in Liadi, Baruch Hashem.”
“You are—I don’t know—noble here?”
“No,” the rabbi said very modestly. His home did not look like a noble’s. It looked temporary. The walls were bare, the furniture comfortable but plain. “The voivod was who invited me to come here, Prince Stanislaw Lubomirski. Now his son rules. He stays away, thank God. The czar, he always makes trouble.” But he waved it off. Brian noticed that beneath his black coat, he had scars on his wrists. “You will stay for the winter, Herr Maddox?”
“Please. We will pay anything.”
“Did you do something bad?”
He was put off by the question, perhaps because of the strength of the vodka and his general exhaustion. “I—yes, we are in trouble. But we didn’t do anything wrong. Please, you understand?”
“I was in prison in St. Petersburg, for three months,” said the rabbi, “for giving charity.”
Brian smiled despite himself. “What kind of charity?”
“I gave money to my homeland. The Turks were very upset.” He must have read Brian’s look of confusion. “My homeland is the land around Jerusalem, in their empire. It is now Palestine. The goyim, they change all the names.”
“Jerusalem? As in, the Bible Jerusalem?”
“Ja, the Bible Jerusalem,” said the rabbi in German. “Every year I ask God to go. Every year He says no. Someday, I find out why.”
Brian laughed.
***
Brian and Nadezhda quickly learned much about their hosts. Rabbi Zalman—“der Alter Rebbe”—was the leader of the community and had been a big man in Vilna before his arrest. He married into wealth, so he could devote all of his time to study. Their house was plain, but it had a considerable library. This was no Englishman’s collection of gothic novels. The texts were gigantic and smelled ancient. Some were still scrolls or hand-bound—all were in languages neither of them could read. “I feel like I’m at home,” Brian said to the rabbi when he first entered.
“You read?”
“Not like my brother. He is a doctor. He reads—all the time. I was going to send him something before I left Austria, but I didn’t get the chance.” He sighed. “He probably already has a copy. It’s an old German poem or something.”
The rabbi spoke maybe a dozen languages. “A doctor is a great profession.”
“I know. I’m very proud of him.”
Brian had some trouble finding use for himself. Nadezhda could at least cook and did not mind doing such a mundane chore. There were no servants to be had, only dozens of students following the rabbi, who seemed to walk to and from the synagogue. Brian offered to find them food when he noticed they ate little game.
“No hunting,” said the Rebbetzin, the rabbi’s wife. “It is cruel to the animals.”
“Then how are we eating meat?”
He got a demonstration from the rabbi himself the very next day, when they slaughtered a calf for dinner. The rabbi calmly herded the calf away from the other animals, took a large butcher’s knife, and slit its throat. It died almost instantaneously as the blood poured into the snow. “You slit the throat just so,” said the rabbi. “It is very hard not to hurt it.”
“What if you hurt it?”
“Then we chop it up for the wild dogs to eat. We don’t eat it.”
“Why would you feed wild dogs? You don’t eat them.”
“When the Jews were sneaking out of Egypt in the middle of the night, not a single dog barked to alert the authorities. So we feed the dogs, if we can.”
Brian did not question it. He had never taken Bible passages so literally.
Eventually they found industry for him—and were grateful for it, so “others can learn.” He cut wood, essential for the freezing Russian nights, and he carted around goods. Fortu
nately these obviously religious people did not have a rule about sleeping in a different room from one’s wife, and he could collapse guilt-free beside Nadezhda; he found his own way of keeping warm in the long nights. There was far more darkness than light. He was happy to an extent, because he had his wife and he had shelter. As the winter passed, he began to dream of England—its rolling hills, the small hills he had once considered mighty mountains, even the awful smell of the Town square on a hot day. Surely their trail had gone cold? (Everything else had.) Once they were in his homeland, they would be untouchable, even if the count wanted to pursue. Nadezhda seemed to silently accept never going home again, why couldn’t he?
Brian watched the snow melt with an unspoken anticipation. He wanted to go—somewhere—that would bring him home. East? Maybe he could go south, to Mongolia, and then to the Turks?
“You can bribe your way through the Turkish Empire,” said the rabbi, “if you can get there.”
“We can’t go back to St. Petersburg,” he said. “What should I do, Rabbi?”
“If you must go east, go east,” said the rabbi. “We wandered forty years in the desert, and we came out all right.”
“The Bible didn’t happen yesterday, you know.”
“Every Jew who would ever live stood at Mount Sinai. We are all old souls.” He always said things with complete confidence, at least on spiritual matters. That was why, Brian supposed, the people listened to him like he was the next prophet, even though he made no prophecies. He sat and read, and occasionally wrote on some religious thing he was working on—something about the soul and how to elevate it. It was beyond a vicar’s sermon that was for sure. He even wrote in ancient script. Brian watched him write a letter to his friend in Poland in what he explained was Hebrew. “It is to congratulate him on the birth of his son, Nacham Franzblau.”
They could not stay in this place forever, however removed from their reality it seemed to be. At night, Nadezhda and Brian sat in conference.
“We go east?”
“We go east.”
They consummated the deal the best way a husband and wife could.
***
It seemed silly to be going off in the wrong direction. Brian’s horse didn’t survive the winter, so they purchased a wagon and two mules, which was the best they could do. The Rebbetzin gave them more preserves than they thought they could ever eat, which was a pleasing prospect. The rabbi gave them the only book he owned in a European language—a copy of some French travelogue, so old it had writing in different hands in the margins and inside the cover. Brian took it gratefully.
“So they didn’t have horns after all,” he said to his wife as they watched the little town of Liadi disappear behind them. “Or drink our blood.”
“So I was ignorant! Like you’re so wise,” she said.
It was not very warm, but it was warm enough to see the roads again, and that was enough. They had come full circle, living outside and traveling until they would both collapse. Brian didn’t try to keep track of the date, or ask it of the villagers they passed. All he knew was that it was warmer, so it was spring. There was a port to the east, the villagers said. By the time they got there, it would be thawed and ships would come again. They could go to America; it was so close. America? At least they spoke English there. One could get to England from America—that much, he knew. He wondered how far across it was.
It was late spring, almost summer when Brian and Nadezhda Maddox arrived in Magadan. They shuddered to think about how long they had been on the road. Brian had written letters again; he posted them from the first place he saw suitable enough to possibly guarantee a delivery. In this tiny town, there was at least a kind of civilization, where he could get a shave from a barber and speak to someone in German or French. He saw the ships coming in and began to inquire. There was one bound for this place called Alaska, near America. They booked passage.
A day before they were to leave, he decided to write to his brother again to give yet another assurance that he was safe, his wife was safe, and that they would someday come home when it was safe for them and for the rest of the family. He slipped his message in the box and turned around to see the face of his Transylvanian manservant, Andrei.
“You are a hard man to find,” Andrei said, holding up a pistol from within his heavy coat.
Brian followed his signal and left the public place, to a more secluded area, but he had already decided on his actions. “What do you want?” he said, facing him.
“Do you know how much His Grace would pay to have his daughter returned to him, much less with your head beside her?”
“Even if you care nothing for me,” Brian pleaded, “you’re leading her into death. You know she can’t conceive. Everyone seems to know it but the count. Have some loyalty to your princess.”
“My princess?” Andrei said. “You assume a lot about my loyalties, Prince Brian.”
“Then you can be bought,” Brian said. “How much?”
“I know you have half the treasury.”
“I spent it in St. Petersburg. If you are so good at following me, Andrei, then you would know that.” It was a lie, but he needed time.
“I’m not your servant,” he said. “How little you know of me. Do you even know my last name? It is Trommler.”
“Name your price, Trommler.”
“I’ve already said it. You have most of it, I know. You lived like a pauper in St. Petersburg.”
“St. Petersburg was a long time ago.”
“So you say. I also know you carry the money on your person, beneath your clothing.”
“You have bested me,” he said. “Please—let me—” But he reached with one hand for the satchel and the other for the gun. Yes, he would risk his life for Nady—without question. He hadn’t spent a winter chopping up wood for nothing. The gun went off, and he didn’t care; he grabbed it and beat Trommler on the head with the wooden handle. Trommler dropped like a sack. He was still breathing. If he would stay that way, Brian knew not. He took the gun, still hot, and ran to the flat where they were staying. “Nadezhda!”
She was standing over a pot and the last of their preserves. “Brian! You’re bleeding!”
He hadn’t even noticed. He was honestly too concerned for her. “We have to go. We can’t wait. Andrei is here.”
“Your servant?” she said, grabbing a towel and placing it against his skull. Now that he thought about it, he did feel like something had hit him, though he knew Trommler had not. “You were grazed. You need to sit down.”
“We need to go. Board the next ship. I don’t care where it goes.”
“What happened?”
He could barely breathe. He did have to sit, as much as he didn’t want to, as she pressed the cloth against his head. “He had a gun—he wanted all of our money. I hit him and he fell. T-that’s all I stayed for. Oh, and I took the gun.” He pulled it out. “We have to go before he wakes up.”
“Brian, you’re going into shock.”
“I’d rather do it on a ship.”
She listened to him, quickly gathering their things. They abandoned the cart, which had little in it anyway, and took only what they could fit on their backs. Brian could barely walk, Nadezhda had to hold him up, and he shoved a mildly insane amount of money into the hands of the captain of a ship bound for a port in the south. The crew was male with no passengers. “Just keep it quiet,” Brian mumbled. They showed him to a spare room and brought him a mattress, which he hit rather soundly.
When he woke, they were already at sea. He felt the rocking of the boat and found it comforting. We’re moving.
The days passed quietly. He recovered quickly and checked the ship—no Andrei. They were safe. Nadezhda didn’t venture far outside the cabin, not with a male crew. They mainly stayed to themselves until their food ran out; they then shared meals with the crew, again, at extra cos
t.
It doesn’t matter, he told himself. It’s like farthings.
It wasn’t worth that, when they all started getting sick. At first, he thought he was seasick, even though he normally had a strong stomach. He could hardly blame Nadezhda, who had never seen the sea, much less been on it before in her life. But then there were sores, fevers, and the boat began to veer off course because so many crew members were ill…
“Typhus,” he said as he rejoined Nadezhda in their cabin. “Bloody fucking typhus!”
Nadezhda managed a weak smile.
“I may sound as if I’ve gone truly insane,” he said, “and this would not be the first time I would have said something that made people think that, but there’s land ahead. We could take the boat and row.”
“But—the captain—”
“If we stole it—went at night—” He slumped down against the wall. “I know it’s wrong, crazy, and stupid. But if we stay here, we’re going to die.”
She nodded weakly. She always agreed with him. She was never afraid. She was so perfect, so wonderful—she didn’t deserve to die. He would do anything to make sure that didn’t happen—not on his watch.
***
That night, in a feverish haze so bad he could hardly tell left from right, the two of them took the boat off the side and lowered themselves into the water. Everything proceeded smoothly—most of the crew was below deck, dying. Two had already been thrown overboard.
The waves were heavier than he expected. He tried to row alone. Several times, his strength failed him, and Nadezhda took his place. He lay down on the floor of the small wooden boat, listening to the waves, falling into the comforting silence beyond Nadezhda’s desperate breathing. That was, until the boat crashed into a rocky coast; he heard the wood splintering and noises from afar—his cue.
Nadezhda was unconscious. He rose somehow, his pack still on his back, and lifted her into his arms, stepping out of the ruined boat and into the water that went up to his knees. Slowly he waded to shore, his night vision failing him against the torchlight. It was all a haze, and then there was shouting. He set Nadezhda down when she murmured something.
Mr. Darcy's Great Escape Page 25