Moments later, Pyavka, flanked by the two servants, was marched into the office. His face was ashen with terror. He clearly believed himself to be in some sort of government building. After all, who else but the police would be working this late at night?
Vasya came around the desk and offered his hand. Pyavka remained frightened and mistrustful. He glanced for a moment in my direction but didn’t really see me. He finally blustered, “Where is the man who wrote this note? What have you done to my friend?”
I felt touched and remorseful. Here he was in a state of mortal fear, and yet his first thought was for me!
“Fool, don’t you recognize me?” I said in Yiddish. At the sound of my familiar voice, he lurched toward me, clutching my arm as though to make sure I was real.
Still out of breath, the messengers told Vasya what a time they had had locating my friend. And even more, persuading him that my extravagant message was neither a police trap, nor something I had written in a fit of madness.
Drawing me aside, Pyavka nodded toward my old comrade and asked, “Who is this Vanya?”
Before I could explain, the ‘Vanya’ tugged me in the opposite direction and wanted know to how I came to be friends with this peculiar creature. I suppose he had forgotten, or not taken seriously, my disclosure of my partner’s criminal past. So, without lowering my voice, I told our host that Pyavka stemmed from a distinguished family, and that in certain quarters of Warsaw he was looked upon as a virtual “King.” Until, owing to the malice of Czarist officialdom, he had ended up a prisoner like me. All this I said while looking sternly at my comrade in silent warning not to make me regret my words.
Chapter 31: Lingering in the Lap of Luxury
From the awestruck manner in which Pyavka looked around Vasya’s home, I saw that, for all his fancy airs, he, too, had never set foot in a place of such grandeur – except maybe in total darkness, when it was probably hard to appreciate the full splendor of his surroundings.
Madame Divanovsky made her entrance in what could have been a gown made for an empress. Majestic purple velvet draped her delicate body as if the fabric had been created for her, alone, with a neckline of lace that revealed the swell of her fair-skinned bosom, upon which rested a necklace with shiny stones that could only have been diamonds. Her waist was so narrow that it seemed to invite my hands to encircle it; I quickly clasped them behind my back. If Czarina Alexandra had walked in at that moment, wearing all of her jewels, I would not have noticed her.
Madame Divanovsky extended her fingertips to Pyavka, choosing to take no note of his disgraceful appearance or intolerable odor, to both of which I had suddenly become most sensitive.
She was the soul of grace. Which made me want to gag at the practiced ease with which my thievish comrade instantly turned on the full blaze of his charm. Especially when I noted the professional way he had already begun to appraise the rings on her feather-light, white fingers and the silver carelessly on display in cabinets a child could have motivated open.
After the meal, to which we did full justice, Madame escorted us to our room. Among the wonders it contained, she pointed with special pride to a white porcelain knob in the wall, as though no one living in Warsaw had ever seen such a miraculous thing as electricity. She also referred to a braided silk rope by which we may ring for a servant at any time of the day or night, although at that moment I could not see any circumstance under which I might dare to make use of such an insolent device.
A small quarrel broke out between Madame and Divanovsky, who had pushed in behind us. Our room, he reminded her, had only recently been furnished with electric power and some of the wiring may not yet be properly “shielded.” In fact, he claimed to have heard of people who touched a naked wire and went up in smoke in an instant.
Madame scoffed at his backwardness. I could see that she was determined, after all the money it cost to install these devices, that their guests enjoy every modern convenience.
When they finally departed, Pyavka scouted the room, awestruck as a small boy in a candy store. I made a point of showing him how completely at home I felt under my old comrade’s roof. Not only did I calmly turn off the electric light but, laughing at his plea to stop playing with fire, I switched it on and off again.
Then I emptied my bulging pockets. Pyavka gaped at the mass of rubles I scattered onto the dresser. “Where did you get all this money?” he whispered as one professional to another.
“Divanovsky,” I said in my most casual tone.
Pyavka was both awed and fearful. “What if you’d been caught?”
“He gave it to me.”
My partner complimented me with a grin of disbelief. “It seems I’ve been a better teacher than I realized.”
“You think I stole it?”
“It’s not for me to judge.”
“He stuffed it into my pockets. To him, this is small change. Besides,” I added with a nonchalant shrug, “he owed me some money.”
“I’m not saying a word. But I warn you – I don’t intend to go back to prison just because an amateur like you couldn’t control himself.”
This gave me the opportunity to remind him, again, not to dare abuse my friend’s hospitality.
Pyavka sunk into his feather bed like an angel floating on cotton-wool clouds, and smiled at my stern warning. “After all we’ve been through,” he said with a pained shake of his head, “how little you know me.”
I chose, for the moment, to take this as reassurance. But then I caught a glimpse of his face and, even in the darkness, I could swear he was winking.
In the bright glare of morning, agitated hands interrupted my sleep. Pyavka’s face hovered over me, white with indignation. “They’ve stolen our clothes!”
I sat up, startled, and looked around. There was no sign of them, nor of the rags that we had left on the floor.
Still rubbing my lids, I climbed out of bed. The giant wardrobe was locked. Before Pyavka could find a bent nail with which to exercise his skills, I spotted the key on the dresser.
Not only were all my new acquisitions neatly arranged on hangers and shelves, but the very shreds and tatters in which my partner and I had arrived had been lovingly washed and folded. Even my dismembered shoes had been shined to a military gloss.
Pyavka tugged at my arm. He was so agitated that the only words he could spit out were, “The money!”
I opened a drawer. As far as I could tell, everything was there.
A servant knocked, and entered with our breakfast tray, leaving Pyavka barely time enough to slam the drawer with our money and disguise the shocked look on his face.
About to butter a chunk of, bread, I noticed an envelope addressed to me wedged between two crystal jars of marmalade. In careless penmanship on crisp white paper, my old comrade apologized for not being present to greet us when we awoke, but he had had an urgent call from the office. Madame, also, would not be home before evening. Until then, his servants were at our disposal. But he ordered us not to leave the house for reasons he did not need to explain.
To my great shame, it was not until my third or fourth day of wallowing in the Divanovksys’ hospitality that I thought to ask how to send a telegram to my parents to let them know I was alive.
Vasya’s cheeks flushed dangerously. “That is quite impossible. And I warn you not to try it behind my back.”
It took some minutes before my anger at being forbidden from doing something subsided, and I recognized that he was right. What better place than the telegraph office for the authorities to post a list of wanted men?
But the very next day, Vasya apologized for his outburst and assured me that my friend and I would shortly be furnished with forged documents. Then I would be allowed to send a cryptic wire to my married sister, Malkah, who was certain to recognize the childish nicknames I used for us both.
This brought up another matter weighing on Pyavka’s mind: Divanovsky’s “unaccountable” kindness and generosity. What normal human being, and a r
ich man in particular, behaved the way he did? Unless. . .” His eyes narrowed with foreboding.
“Unless what?”
“There is something he wants.”
I could barely keep from laughing in his face. “What could he possibly ask for that I wouldn’t gladly give him a hundred times over?”
A gloomy expression overcame Pyavka’s face, and he shook his large head. “I look at your trusting face, my friend, and I fear for you.”
His earnestness was so preposterous that I could only shrug. Yet, when I next looked at my hosts, so open-handed and yet so self-important, I could not help wondering, for an unkind fraction of a second, what they could possibly want.
Other than making stealthy forays to the toilet, our only dealings with the servants was receiving, as humbly as prisoners, the crowded silver tray that carried our lunch. It held more food than either of us had eaten in four weeks, and Pyavka consumed his share with such speed that he was shortly writhing with cramps. Which did not stop him from examining the tray and pronouncing to be it pure silver.
More days passed in idleness like this before I got a moment alone with Vasya and had a chance to ask about our promised passports and travel permits.
His face puffed up with annoyance. “What is your hurry? Everything is being arranged. It’s not as simple as you think.” Then, looking offended, he demanded, “Don’t you have everything here a man could possibly want?”
How could I explain to my old comrade that I simply didn’t feel I belonged there, that living on his generosity made me feel like a parasite? But all I ended up saying was, “When I see your happiness with your wife, I feel the urge to start a family of my own.”
Vasya burped his ironic, rich-man’s laugh. “Is that all? I didn’t want to excite you, but that, too, is being arranged.”
“What? A wife?” He made it sound no more burdensome than finding a hat to match my overcoat.
“For the man to whom I owe my life, I want only the best. Just be patient a little longer.”
I was not happy to have such matters arranged behind my back with no one troubling to ask about my likes or dislikes. This may be the Siberian style, but we were not talking about buying a horse or a goat. And yet the hot blood of youth made me eager to hear more. “Who is the girl? How old is she? Who are her parents?”
Vasya smiled, slapped me on the shoulder, and gestured that his lips were sealed. “Let it come as a pleasant surprise,” he said, and held out his arms for his valet to insert him into his fur coat, which I took as my signal that the subject was closed.
At supper that evening, Madame was in a “mood,” and barely responded to my attempts at conversation. I sensed something was going on. Though on the surface, Vasya was still as hearty as ever, even he acted too pre-occupied for me to bring up the matter of our passports and travel permits, again.
Adding to my anxiety, Pyavka was also behaving oddly. Was it possible that, despite my fierce threats, he had resumed his old criminal practices? And that my hosts, too well mannered to bring the matter to my attention, were simply gritting their teeth till our departure? For whatever reason, we had overstayed our welcome.
I was tempted to walk out the door, leaving behind every ruble and every article of clothing my old comrade had lavished upon me. If nothing else, that would repair my pride. But the sad truth was that weeks of indolence and luxury had sapped my initiative and fattened my soul. Besides, where would I go? Back to the asylum for the homeless? Or, worse yet, to the railroad station, scratching and snarling among my fellow derelicts for every crust of bread, fearful day and night of being robbed, assaulted, or clapped in irons?
Rather than make a decisive move, I sat in our room day after day, playing listless games of cards with Pyavka, waiting for some unknown doom to descend upon me.
Finally one afternoon, I decided to take matters into my own hands. While my partner slept during the day, like a rich man, I told the servants that I was going for a walk around the garden. Which was what I did when I first set foot outside the house. After examining the leaves of various plants and bending over to smell the few flowers that still were in bloom, I was so thoroughly bored that I judged no servant assigned to observing me could have watched me any longer.
I was out on the street before I knew where I was going, but Vasya’s reference to finding me a wife put me in mind of the last time I passed through this city. Last time it was as a soldier on his way home from the war. Not a war in which we had been victorious, but at least I was returning with my body intact. This time, I was an escaped convict, a revolutionary, a wanted man. Back then, I had been ready to offer my heart to the Siberian “Queen Esther.” Now I would be ashamed to do so.
Although the city had felt unfamiliar when I debarked from the train, a few days of being treated like a human being made the landmarks recognizable, again. Even if I would no longer offer my heart to the Siberian Queen, I could, at least, visit her and let her know how much her generosity to Jewish soldiers had meant to us. And though I wouldn’t make any decisions about it now, if I felt some familiar stirrings when I finally got to meet her. . .
It wasn’t long before I found the Queen’s mansion. It appeared more run-down than I had remembered it, but it was winter in Siberia, and I had previously only seen it at night. When I tapped against the door, the same ‘general’ answered. To my amazement, he claimed to remember me. But as I looked more closely, I was struck by the sag in his shoulders, the shriveled pallor of his face, and the barely-hidden shabbiness of his uniform.
With lurching heart, I stood there, like a fool, waiting for him to tell me what I already suspected: “Queen Esther” was dead. Death had, in fact, been slowly devouring her for years. Only the joy she derived from her deeds of hospitality had kept her alive. And when the war ended, and this solace was no longer available to her, she promptly resumed dying.
I was ashamed at not having considered a logical explanation for her mysterious absence. But I had been too weak, too hungry, and too in love with the picture of her that I had formed in my mind to wonder why neither I, nor the thousands of other Jewish soldiers whom she had fed throughout the years, had ever set eye on this modest and merciful creature.
Chapter 32:An Angel in Siberia
A late-afternoon knock, too early for dinner, caused my pulse to leap with foreboding. The small silver tray in the servant’s hand carried a message from Vasya. I was still so unaccustomed to the dizzying swing in our fortunes, and discomfited by Pyavka’s interpretation of our situation, that I half expected my friend, having had his little joke, to give us five minutes to change back into our rags and clear out.
With trembling fingers, I clawed at the flap. In bewilderingly cordial tones, the letter begged my forgiveness if lately, under the pressure of business, he appeared to have been neglecting me. My heart quickened. What I had mistaken for coolness existed only in my overheated fantasy!
Without further explanation, he directed Pyavka and me to shave and dress at once, because a coach would arrive to fetch us in half an hour for a reception that evening at his in-laws, the Charlops, who were celebrating their 25th anniversary. In his casual scrawl, my friend had also added a post-script, more or less hinting that I might get to meet a certain “suitable” young woman who happened to be the Charlop’s head bookkeeper.
Snob that I was, I confessed that the last part of his message left me with a thumping sense of letdown. Was this what Vasya meant when he vowed that, for me he would settle for “only the best?” Was a lowly head-bookkeeper to be my consolation prize?
Shortly, a valet knocked discreetly and presented me and Pyavka with the kind of black suit you might see at a better-class gentile funeral, but worn by the corpse.
There were eighteen guests at the table, all of them, as Pyavka handsomely acknowledged into my ear, of “a refined caliber.” We were introduced as “old friends from Warsaw.” But the guests’ good-natured banter made clear they knew quite well what species of bird we
were and under what circumstances we had landed there.
I had just settled into a delicate gilt chair when I felt a hush fall over the guests. All eyes were on the large double doors, which framed a most remarkable couple. The man was tall, arrow-straight, with a well-trimmed beard and the effortless assurance of a born nobleman. On his arm was a young woman whose very presence chilled my breath. And the bold, penetrating manner in which her eyes swept the room made plain that, far from being anything as listless as a wife, she was triumphantly unattached. As to her other specifications, I will note only that the spun-sugar glow of her moonlit hair was the very shade I had, as a child, associated with angels.
The Accidental Anarchist Page 29