by Peter Martin
Lilli always seemed to have a cold and to eat with difficulty, the shine of her small eyes and her lack of neck reminding me of a shaved eagle — a fat slow clumsy girl, totally on guard. Leta, the elder, had a flat narrow torso planted on her hips like a pole on a barrel. Her head stood heavy on her spoolish neck, her square chin pulling like a weight at the tired bulging eyes of one unable to cope. But her small sharp-fluted nose was good by itself though lost between the squirrel's cheeks inherited from her father. Only her brownish hair separated itself from her, a paradox, the shiny thickness crying vigor and a desire to collide.
Occasionally at supper Madame intrigued the Squire into words, and laughter sometimes visited the large dim dining room. But the overbearing mood, however punctured, maintained itself. We would rise from the table, Madame producing her sprayer to make her stt-stts! over the girls’ heads and out we’d go, each to his place.
Once or twice we were allowed to look into the Gallery, filled with many versions of the same picture, gypsy girls in barrels or floating among the stars or outside of tents, holding flowers or with their fingers to their chins, and always it was summer and always parts of their busts showed. The remarkable thing was the big painting of Tatiana Arki- povna’s father, Arkip Apollonovitch Rezin, showing him at a table, holding a quill pen in one hand and a riding whip in the other, the Squire explained, signing the document making him a member of some corporation. Long boots brought out Arkip Apollonovitch’s tallness and his narrow-bearded face through shadow-trickeries had been given the set of one ratifying something historic.
After supper the hardest part of the day; for more than three months. All through the day the routine carried me, I had much to learn and remember, easier to forget what couldn’t be entirely forgotten — the other side, my brother, the landsmen, Laib-Shmul nearby — and at night these came closer than the world of notes and scales. Glueck forbade me to play my songs in the old finger positions and at night I did not wish somehow to play as he wanted me to, like a dentist with calisthenic picks.
Out of despair I began bothering Glueck after supper, going into his room with a “Don’t stop your work, please. I’ll just sit.” He would have his nose in a letter or his composition and I would be in the chair near the stove.
Another time — “Glueck, where’s your father and mother?”
“In Petersburg.”
“What do they do?”
“Keep a shop.”
“A bake shop?”
“My father fixes instruments.”
“Have you brothers or anything?”
“I have brothers and sisters. They went back to Germany. I shall remain in Petersburg. I have my place in the Maryinsky pit, I am not disliked, and . . . so.”
“But you left it.”
“Only for a while.”
“To come out here?”
“For a little change.”
“But why do you want a change when you like Petersburg?”
He laughed. “Shall I tell you a secret, Lev?” (Using a Russian version of my name.) “Very well, it’s because of a certain person.”
It came out little by little. Anya was the daughter of one of the ’cellists at the Maryinsky Theatre. It had been her ambition to play the harp but doubting her talent the father hoped she would capitalize upon her attractive figure and simply marry well, discarding her harping ideas. Glueck allowed himself to compare her to a tulip passing
from budding to opening fullness. He had for her birthday taken her to the Summer Gardens where they had danced and listened to a fortuneteller, and coming back on the ferry he had revealed he was composing a sonata for harp and violin. She promised to play it with him the day it was finished; but when he came to her house with the manuscript she was not there and her harp was not there. But she had left a note.
“Where was she?”
“She went to Novgorod.”
“Why?”
“Because she bought a ticket to Novgorod.” He touched his spectacles with one hand, adjusting them.
“What is a sonata, Glueck?”
Immediately he launched into the explanation; and so it went.
Coming to the middle of December (if I stop to throw stones at every day I’ll arrive nowhere), military sleds from Pukop began making their way up the ice-rutted hill. Officers would stay with the Squire in his study until twilight and once even the Colonel Commander came and had supper. There was nothing military to him except his abrupt style of drinking. Tired and bald, he suggested a shelf-climbing librarian with a wide seat. At the table he and the Squire discussed the sending of some members of the regiment’s band to play for the Squire’s usual Christmas ball. The details were agreed upon and the Colonel Commander went off, but this was not the last of the military sleds. Preparations had been under way now for days. Tatiana Arkipovna and Madame walked about with eyes red from sewing dresses; the servants never walked but hopped, Lubenka and Natalya cooking and baking into the night, and even sour Rodion adopted a restrained look in order not to endanger his Christmas tip.
Ossip came back from working in the village for a few days to help along. He had something to say. “And soldiers are out every day now, hunting your Jew-conspirators.”
“We don’t have any conspirators, that’s a lie.”
“Think they’re in the woods just to freeze?” he demanded. “They’re
looking for the Avengers . . . Jews going about slitting throats. Near to Christmas is when they like to.”
Laib-Shmul had mentioned these “Avengers” too but Vera Zasulich had been executed more than five years ago. “It can’t be, Ossip.”
“And if there’s proof?”
“That’s a lie!”
“Then where’s Laib-Shmul, eh? Gone to the Crimea for the winter?”
“What about him?”
“He’s gone a week. Persons without coats don’t stroll off in the winter without knowing where they’re going, clear ? Oh, he’ll be found with the rest of them!”
Laib-Shmul had gone out of desperation as he’d predicted to me. But I kept still; I couldn’t be absolutely sure Laib-Shmul didn’t know more than he’d let out; I wavered between being angry and proud for him. Out of touch with our Jewish calendar I wondered if the Feast of Lights had arrived, the yearly celebration of Judah Maccabee’s victory over the Syrians out of which the Jews won back their Jewishness and created a country for a time. The Feast of Lights fell often near to Christmas and perhaps . . . no. Russia wasn’t Syria and we weren’t Judah Maccabees and furthermore we would not go around just slitting throats.
Hearing the news from Ossip caused me to become steadily listless. Some Feast of Lights; the few left on the other side no doubt colder and hungrier than ever while I lay like a prince and my brother so trapped, old enough to be called an Avenger himself and slammed for it if it pleased them. There would be soldiers about for the Squire’s ball, drivers and hostlers as well as musicians, and these would need holiday sports and I knew where they might look for it.
Seeing I was depressed Glueck asked questions and I let him know. He said it was sad but “one must adopt the healthiest view.”
“Show me the health in it,”
“You are going to be a musician. Music always arouses the cleanest, healthiest feelings. Say this to yourself: ‘I shall arouse the finest feelings in others, my fingers doing it, on my fiddle.’ Believe in your music,
believe it won’t hang in the air. Believe it will draw out the best feelings of those who will hear it. This is the creed of artists — to ventilate the human heart. Believe this and you will feel better, Lev.”
I wanted to believe it so much that I fell into a rage. “Lies and crap, crap and lies! Murderers are murderers, music or no music! Don’t choke me, choke yourself!”
I ran to my room. All night a thought waited for me to wake up. Before dressing in the morning I went to Glueck. “I’m sorry I insulted you.
“Very well, then,” he said, “clear weather . . . an
d this morning we start on something new.”
“What?”
After breakfast, as usual with something new, he played it first. It spoke to me from beginning to end. “What is it?”
“The Ave Maria of Schubert’s.”
“Schubert?”
“Franz Schubert.”
That name, where before?
I remembered. Uncle Mottel, the time he was in the army, the soldiers giving it to him over the Jew Franz Schubert. “Wasn’t he a Jew, Glueck?”
“Schubert? Never! Do you know what Ave Maria is?”
“No.”
“It means ‘Hail Mary.’ ”
“What Mary?”
“You are an ignorant boy this morning,” he replied lightly, “to have forgotten what Father Semyon has been telling you.”
Then it was not so. The soldiers had said it to Uncle Mottel just for fun. I pointed to the music on the stand. “This is Schubert hailing Mary?”
“Do you like it?”
“Very much.”
“Come, the beginning.”
“I don’t feel well.”
“Lie down awhile.”
A nice how-do-you-do . . . because Schubert was not a Jew my uncle had been whipped in the army. But it sounded as Jewish as it was beautiful. Hearing it only once brimmed me back to my deepest oldest sureties. Lying in this mix I kept muttering, “No, it’s ours, it’s ours.”
I heard Glueck entering and pretended I was asleep. He shook me. “Lev, the Squire wants us.”
I sat up, saw Rodion outside in the hall.
“We mustn’t keep him waiting.”
Rodion took us down one flight to his bedroom. It took fifteen steps in the room to reach his bed. I noticed the softness of the carpet and his clothes on the floor in a line as though he’d undressed while walking to the bed. The stove was a gay white, a smell of pomade about. A lamp burned next to him on a small round table, the blinds as yet not opened. The Squire lay comfortably on his back in the manufactured dusk. He wore a nightgown with a round collar, his knees up, hands clasped behind his head against the mound of pillows. He seemed older and more tired than when he was up and about, but with an aura to him of being somehow a boy actor made up magnificently well to play a certain Squire. Many times in that house I experienced similar confusions, out of my inability to piece up what was really going on there. Out of the corner of my eye I had a glimpse of Vassily Buzarov seated on the pot in the toilet-closet with his arms folded; just sitting, quietly, like waiting for the show to start.
“Good morning, good morning.” The Squire stretched himself as Glueck clicked his heels and bowed, a paper of some kind in one of his fists. “See, a letter. . . .”
“Ah,” beamed Glueck.
Folding his letter carefully the Squire announced that his father-in- law would be visiting for a week in April. This was said with deep thoughtfulness, as if a speech in explanation must follow. After some deliberation however the Squire contented himself with asking, abruptly, “You are fond of your Glueck?” I nodded. “As you should be. You will continue to follow him in everything and it shall be worth
the expense. Arkip Apollonovitch will see for himself how we have not been sleeping through the winter.” His voice rose to command. “We’ll show him how one needn’t travel to Paris to be entertained, he’ll see I don’t belong banished in the provinces, I’ll give him a welcome of the finest music. . . .”
The Squire smiled and Glueck added a fawning grimace to the joke, saying, “Lev is quite intent, without fault,” but the past few days were too much. I began to cry that I wanted my brother. The words tumbled out and I cried simply to cry.
Vassily rose from his eminent seat and came to lead me out. “Wait, who’s the brother?” the Squire asked.
Vassily told him, mentioning how we’d been made orphans the year before. Glueck threw in, “He has been disturbed,” and the Squire waved his hand, using a generous tone. “He’ll have his brother, then. Go bring him for a visit, Vassily.”
Back in my room Glueck washed my face, soothing me with congratulations. “See, Lev? The Squire isn’t stone, your brother is safe!”
“Glueck,” I asked, too dazed to probe any new turns, “what was Vassily doing there?”
“Warming the pot-seat for the Squire.”
Waiting for Shim I wondered what made the behinds of the mighty so cold. It lay beyond me that there was a whole philosophy of potwarming and that the Squire himself was warming a pot for the colder and mightier behind of Arkip Apollonovitch.
The day passed; no Shim. At supper Vassily went about all in sighs, making small clatters. Controlling his drunken condition he said that the hill had been very bad, the horses falling twenty times on the ice, and that my brother was sick anyway. From the look on my face the Squire saw I thought Vassily was lying. “Well,” he said with an assuring shrug, “when a brother is sick he should be visited. Take him tomorrow if the hill allows. And Vassily, put a few things in a sack. Bread, potatoes. Don’t leave him out of sight, however.”
Vassily, Rodion, and Kuizma Oblanski rode me to our side about noon the next day, my feet on the lanes for the first time in over two
months. On the way to Dvoora’s where Shim stayed I noticed how many huts were empty.
The first thing I asked Dvoora was, “Where’s everybody?” It was hardly warmer inside than out. “Shh,” she said, pointing to Shim bundled in ragged covers on the cold ground; nothing there but a table, a chair, and a miserable little stick-fire in the center of the room.
Dvoora did not seem surprised to see me. “If we’re here, let’s get wood,” Vassily said to Rodion as an order. He went out and I dropped the sack in my hand. “A few things, Dvoora. But where’s everybody?”
“Where everybody is, you’ll have to ask a better-informed person,” she replied, her quickly aged eyes narrowing. “But those few who are still here you’ll find in one place, praying. They warm one another.”
The wind blew through the chinks. In my warm sheepskin I had to look away from Dvoora. She was not so much dressed as bandaged, wrapped in rags on the arms and feet, her wool petticoat open with holes, the thinnest of shawls over her ripped leather vest. Feeling her eyes on me I went at last to Shim. He seemed asleep, or at least not awake. I took my coat off and put it over him.
I heard her spit. “Who needs you here with your dishonest worries, Laib?”
“What’s the matter with Shim?”
“I’m not a doctor but I can tell you.”
“Don’t be angry.”
“Anger is good, we fill up on it.”
“I brought bread and potatoes.”
“A good thank-you.”
“Dvoora,” I began, but she hobbled out clumsily, hate-bitten more than frost-bitten, saying as she left, “Ay, I just cleaned the house.”
I bent down before Shim and kissed his forehead. His face seemed smaller the way death makes them. “Shim, it’s me.”
Rodion just then entered with the wood, threw it with a noise to the floor, kicked some of it into the fire. The commotion flicked him more awake. “Who are they?”
“Buzarov, Oblanski, Rodion Kluzanov.”
His hand touched my coat over him. “Fine goods,” he murmured, his tailor’s fingers judging it automatically.
I said nothing. In the silence I heard his confirmation of me as an outcast just like Uncle Mottel. “I brought bread and potatoes,” I said after a while, still kneeling over him. “Are you warmer?”
“Rochel is away,” he whispered.
“Laib-Shmul told me. Did she go alone?”
“The priest sent him to Minsk to sell goats. I saw him, Arkady, he’d made himself into a friend. He said he’d take Rochel too.” He breathed longer now between words. “Minsk, there they have societies. Minsk
. . that’s the whole trick.”
“Any news from her?”
“No.”
“Get well. After the winter you’ll go to Minsk, I’ll help you. Jus
t get well.”
He turned his head away. “Eat your dirty, I’ll eat my clean.”
I looked with a visitor’s eye at the pest-eaten walls, free of remorse, satisfied to be cast out of this. The recipe of my life yielded its first hard crystal; something in the world was polluting everybody when it was not cleaning them, never letting them stay the same, dizzying them into spontaneous turns and then making them get used to it.
When Dvoora came back Vassily ordered me to take my coat. I said good-by to Shim. He made believe he did not hear me. I told Dvoora I would come again. She said, “Burn in your deepest throat.”
Vassily picked up my sheepskin. Bending and kissing Shim, I put it back. “Get well,” I whispered, “you know why.”
Waiting to hear something out of him I heard Schubert in my head, the Ave Maria. But I belonged not here and not there, and my brother said nothing.
I felt better on the way back and every evening Vassily said something about Shim feeling better. I dived into the job of mastering the Ave Maria with results so pleasing that Glueck gave full reports at the supper table. For the first time my tutor allowed himself to be the bird who tested his wings, and was so pleased he didn’t stop whizzing
around. His new suppertime personality caused Leta to listen without eating, a steady look of pleasure on her face, her eyes never off of him. Madame noted this quickly. The next night the same; and Madame vied with Tatiana Arkipovna in recalling memories of Moscow concerts and balls, involving him in comparisons with the Petersburg variety and generally managing to lead him from the subject of me and the Ave Maria into more sociable fields. It was here that Glueck became classed as an eligible as it was that Leta first showed something of an ability to have a “crush.”
One night Vassily said Shim had gotten up on his feet. I told the Squire I wanted to see for myself. He replied, “You cannot cross the road any more, Lev. Kuizma Oblanski has it that they’ve made you their main enemy over there. They’re waiting for you with clubs and stones and I won’t have your fingers hurt.”