Thus, early one morning, without a hint of fair warning, the city was flooded with Cossacks, militia and other such riffraff that the law had empowered with its uniform. These good servants of the Czar began combing through each neighborhood, arresting people right and left. Those who had neither documents nor a fixed residence were given a good thrashing and put in chains, to be shipped to some camp whose inmates had been dying faster than the Mother Country could replace them. A dozen of our fellow castaways at the excellent Cafe Łódź had also been shot or severely clubbed. This made for a rather sour atmosphere and left Pyavka and me eager to move on. But how, and with what?
Venturing deeper into the forest in search of shelter, we came upon a decaying lakeside cabin belonging to an elderly fisherman. We didn’t have time to consider the wisdom of counting on the goodwill of the owner, but fortunately Osip was a staunch Christian whose grandfather had been banished to Siberia for some unnamable political crime. He needed only to be assured that, despite my villainous appearance, I was not a professional thief. About Pyavka he had no doubt, recognizing him instantly as a born aristocrat.
The old man trapped fish by sitting up all night in his boat, and watching over his nets. It was his ill fortune that, every year, there were not only fewer fish (each of which, he assured us, he knew by name), but fewer people able to afford his merchandise. If not for the few Sabbath-observing Jewish householders in Chelyabinsk (of whose existence we had been ignorant), he would have no customers at all. Because the Russians – “a curse upon them!” – would only buy his fish when it had begun to stink and he was forced to sell it for next to nothing.
My partner and I had just begun to feel secure when, on a treacherously starlit night while Osip was out on the lake, we were roused by the sound of scattered shots and avid hooves heading in our direction. Moments later, stray bullets punched through Osip’s hut, obliging us to dive through an unglazed window. Outside, I stuffed Pyavka’s ungainly head under a thick patch of sweetbriar and kept a firm hand on his neck to let him know that, should he move or even breathe aloud, I would smother him. Meanwhile, other fugitives raced past, wide-eyed with terror, hunted like rabbits by a column of mounted Cossacks. The horsemen easily caught up with those who had been running, but moved too quickly to spot our shallow concealment. We remained facedown, trying to block out the pitiless cries of the pursuers and pursued.
At the first light of dawn, I risked looking around. In the moisture-heavy stillness of night, I found no trace of Cossacks. Chelyabinsk, itself, seemed to have sunk into a sea of fog up to its glistening domes. But we didn’t trust that it was safe to return to town. Thus, much as it pained me to continue burdening his hospitality, we returned to Osip’s hut.
Seeing us return, the old man turned white with shock. When he had arrived back from the lake and found that we weren’t there, he took for granted that we had been slaughtered. He had even gone to look for us and found several bodies that, he assured us, had not included ours.
Pyavka politely let on that he was not only alive, but hungry. At which Osip, with a shrug of regret, showed us his breadbox. It contained not so much as a crumb. And because of heavy winds, he had been unable to haul in his nets last night. As a result, he had no money with which to buy bread.
I gave Osip one of our remaining rubles and asked if he would buy bread and herring for the three of us. He returned some hours later, loaded down not only with several fat herrings but a five-pound loaf of bread. We fell upon the food and tore it apart with our hands. Osip, gentle soul that he was, looked surprised that we expected him to share “our” meal.
But he spoiled our enjoyment by reporting on last night’s toll. Of the convicts who had fled into the forest, eight had been shot, sabered or clubbed to death, and an unknown number had been wounded or captured. The fugitives, though, had fought back with knives and iron bars, leaving one of their pursuers dead of stab wounds and several others with broken bones. This so infuriated the Cossacks that they were rampaging all over town. Finding few criminals left on whom to let out their indignation, they had begun to mistreat the very householders who had most urgently called for their help. These same good citizens now prayed for Chelyabinsk to return to the peaceful state of being robbed by professional thieves, men who at least knew when to stop.
We knew it was not safe to remain so close to the city, but Osip said it would not be possible to board a train to Irkutsk. The city was still so thick with uniforms that we would never get near the station. However, if we were willing to hold out one more day, someone called “Baba” would arrive and guide us to safety.
That night, while we tried to formulate another avenue of escape, a storm whipped the lake into waves that leapt as high as the windows of Osip’s hut. The wind threatened to tear off the roof, and I felt as though a hungry wave could fall upon the frail cabin and drag us all into the black depths of the lake.
During a brief lull in the storm, whose purpose I suspected was only to gather more strength, we heard a chilling sound – the whinny of a horse. Osip peered through a gap in the wall and in a choked whisper reported a Cossack patrol, soaked, and in foul temper, cradling their rifles for instant use.
“Do you know how to row?” Osip asked me.
I was touched by the old man’s offer. I had grown up on the banks of a river. But it is one thing to glide along our civilized Vistula and quite another to navigate a raging Siberian lake. If Osip’s boat sank or we failed to bring it back, he would be left to starve. And yet he offered it without a second thought.
Pyavka chose that moment to offer his opinion that being shot was a more merciful way to meet his end than drowning.
“Then stay here if you like,” I snapped,
“What’s on the other side?” Pyavka now asked, sounding like a man deciding where to take his family on holiday.
“Rocks, trees, swamps. But the Cossacks are not likely to follow you,” Osip said.
“What if they shoot at us while we’re rowing?”
“I thought you preferred a quick death,” I said.
“Not without a proper burial.”
“Do as you please.” With one knee on the windowsill, I prepared to jump. But first I promised Osip that we would bring back the boat as soon as the storm, and the Cossacks, let up. We arranged for a signal by which the old man could let us know when it was safe to return.
The little boat, tethered to a tree, danced at the water’s edge, skittish as an untamed colt. Pyavka took one look at it and announced, “I’d rather stay and be shot.”
I shouted above the wind that staying with Osip would not only endanger our generous protector, but that he, Pyavka, would sure be dead by morning and his wife would never know the location of his grave.
Mentioning his family was my most compelling argument with Pyavka. Although he wavered, I took him by the neck and threw him into the boat. He took a seat, plainly relieved at not having had to make the decision, himself.
Meanwhile, we heard the Cossack patrol heading our way.
Osip untied the rope and, with his bare feet braced against the slippery clay, gave us a hard shove into the water. Although dense curtains of raindrops hung between the Cossacks and us, we would make a target hard to miss until we were at least halfway across the lake.
Pyavka took the tiller while I tried to row. Mountains of water erupted under our feet, tossing the boat high as a ball, and slamming it back down while snatching playfully at my oars. There was no question of trying to navigate. All our strength and ingenuity went into shifting from side to side to keep from tipping over.
A faint thread of silver gave us a glimpse of the opposite shore on the horizon. Encouraged, Pyavka stood up for a better look and nearly lost his balance. Lurching to pull him back, I dropped one of the oars into the water. I lunged for it, but almost ended up head first in the water, myself. Pyavka seemed to find all this highly entertaining. “If only you could see yourself!”
I admitted that I probably wo
uld not want to be looked over by a prospective father-in-law just then. But Pyavka looked so woebegone that it gave me a pang to realize how close I had come to losing my only companion in the world.
By the pale glow of a freshly washed sky, I saw that we were not even halfway across the lake. But ahead of us lay the small, stony ledge of either an island or a peninsula. As I paddled there with a single oar, I was bathed in sweat. Hearing the echo of shots behind us, I shuddered at the thought that Osip might have paid for his hospitality to us. In twisting my head to look behind me, I lost sight of the landing, and heard a harsh scraping beneath my feet. I feared that, in my indecent lust to survive, I had wrecked Osip’s only source of livelihood. But I managed to beach the boat safely between two jutting rocks.
We clambered up a shallow cliff on our hands and knees, until we reached a level spot where we waited for the miserly sun to melt the ice in our bones.
The next time I opened my eyes, I judged that it was close to noon. The lake, which last night felt like a turbulent ocean, was less than half a mile across. I squinted, hoping to spot a signal from Osip, but there was neither a warning nor any indication that our friend was still alive.
Now that we were safe, Pyavka announced he was in mourning. And with no encouragement from me, proceeded to share his grief. He confessed that, despite his youthful appearance, he was more than fifty years old, which was not the best age to be a fugitive in Siberia. He also claimed remorse for having chosen a profession of which his parents had disapproved. In punishment for which, who knew if he would ever see them, again? In his melancholy, Pyavka vowed that the moment we reached the other side of the lake, he would give Osip the last of his money to buy us a revolver.
I pointed out we were in Siberia, not the Wild West.
Pyavka shook his head. “Not for self-defense. The revolver will be for us to kill each other, as a final act of brotherly friendship.”
“You mean, I kill you, and then you kill me?”
He agreed that this would be difficult to do, and almost smiled. “But you can kill me and then yourself.”
“And what if, after I’ve shot you, I don’t keep my end of the bargain?”
“I promise, once I’m dead, I will not hold it against you if you change your mind.”
Now that we were both able to laugh at the idea, I told Pyavka that he could do as he pleased but I would not give Czar Nicolai the satisfaction of seeing Yakov Marateck do away with himself.
Through the corner of my eye, I picked up a sudden glint of mirrored sunlight. I shouted to Pyavka, who had found a comfortable place for a nap, “We’re going back.”
“In broad daylight?”
I didn’t need him to tell me it would be safer to return after dark. But Osip needed his boat and I had given my word.
“What guarantee do you have that the Cossacks aren’t waiting to pick us off?”
“Osip signaled it was safe.”
“What if they forced him to signal? What if they held a gun to his head?”
“They’re not that smart,” I said without complete conviction. Pyavka’s professional experience might have given him a deeper insight into villainy than I could claim.
“How many flashes did you see?” he asked.
“Three.”
“He said he would flash five times.” At that, Pyavka rolled over to go back to sleep.
“I might have counted wrong. I’m tired, too.”
“The captain of a ship has no business being tired. Once, when I was on a cruise in the Baltic—”
“Are you coming or not?” I slid down the rock and freed the boat. It took only minutes to row back across last night’s tumultuous sea.
When we reached the opposite shore, Osip helped us beach the boat, and told us that, moments after we had left, five rain-soaked, mounted Cossacks entered the clearing, their rifles sniffing at every leaf. As they circled the hut, one recommended riddling it with bullets, and then setting it aflame. But their officer gallantly dismounted and kicked in the door.
The Cossacks hadn’t merely searched the cabin; they had torn it apart. Osip’s mattress, punctured and slashed by bayonets, had barely any straw left in it. And when they left, Osip heard the officer say, “They can’t have gone far. Spread out.”
Without a glimmer of reproach, Osip added, “In your place I would not stay here much longer.”
Of this we needed no convincing. Only yesterday, near the station, he saw honest travelers with documents and tickets randomly abused, beaten, robbed and arrested if they protested.
The question was how far we could get on the few rubles we had left. Osip agreed our position was difficult.
Hearing this, Pyavka accused me, again, of saving him against his will. “Who appointed you my keeper? The other night, if you had let them shoot me, I would now be out of my misery.”
“Who told you to become a thief?”
“Who told you to become a revolutionary?”
“After what I saw in the war, I could not be anything else.”
“The same goes for me.”
“You were in the war? Since when?”
“I am always at war against injustice and inequality. A thief is the only true revolutionary.”
His claim was so outrageous that it stopped my breath. “You are not really a criminal,” I said. “You’re an impostor, an actor, a charlatan.”
This got his attention. “How am I a charlatan?”
“A professional criminal is someone without conscience and without fear. He is not a person who would, the moment any little thing went wrong, rush to kill himself.” And once more I threatened to leave without him.
Osip had been carefully attending our circuitous argument. It must have already occurred to him that Jews were crazy, but only then did he fathom the full depth of our madness.
Not feeling safe in Osip’s cabin any longer, but having nowhere else to go, Pyavka and I crawled under shrubs at some distance from the hut. For the first time in two days, I allowed myself to lose consciousness.
A burst of sunlight seared my eyelids. Birdsong pierced the air, and treetops swayed, shedding flurries of black autumn leaves. I sat up and rubbed my arms. It felt like a glorious day to be alive. Then I remembered where we were.
We crept back to Osip’s hut where we met a small, squarely built woman about half his size and age whom he called “Baba.” This failed to make clear whether she was his wife, daughter, aunt or some other kind of female relation. Apparently, he had briefed her that my friend and I were Jews, because she assured us that the pot contained no meat.
What pot? I saw then that, aside from bread and herring, there was a steaming cauldron swaddled in a large rag. I ran to awaken Pyavka, who came in rumpled and surly but, faced with both food and a woman, was at once on his most courtly behavior.
Baba lifted the lid, handed us each a wooden spoon, and urged us to eat. I was so hungry I did not look too closely into the pot. I simply stabbed my spoon into it and filled my mouth repeatedly, moving faster and faster. There was an agreeable taste of kasha and beets and cabbage, and only a hint of machine oil. When we were finished, the pot was so empty that only the most rabid housewife would have felt it needed washing.
Baba told us she had once worked for Jews and learned not only their language but also their customs. Her hope, at one time, had been to marry a Jew. Not any particular Jew, merely someone who lived by the same admirable practices as had her employers.
I asked what had happened with her plans.
She scorched Osip with an accusing smile. “He had already made me pregnant.” Osip glowed with pride.
Switching to a slangy Yiddish, Baba went on to relate what a bitter thing it was to be married to a Russian although, she admitted, Osip only beat her when he was drunk.
I tried to console her by assuring her that a Russian husband differed from a Jewish husband only in one way: the more a Russian beat his wife, the more he showed he loved her, whereas a Jewish wife was fo
rced to do without such direct proof of her husband’s affection.
When we were ready to leave, Baba directed us to the edge of an open field from which we could glimpse the roof of the train station. She advised us to lie down and not move until she returned with our tickets. If it was safe to show ourselves, she would cough three times. If she returned in silence, it meant she was being followed.
“And what do we do then?” Pyavka asked.
The Accidental Anarchist Page 25