“What is going on?” Hodel cried.
He made no answer, but from the floor he produced a handgun and shoved it into his jacket. Then he handed Hodel papers. A map. Money. A long scrap of fabric. A box of sulfur matches. A key.
“Grisha, tell me what is happening!”
Grigory stood. He gripped her hands. “Hodel, listen to me.” His black eyes fixed upon her. “Perchik is alive.”
Alive! Her mind swirled. Even amid the horror of this place, he was alive, and that was all that mattered.
“Anatoly and the others have gone to break him out of lockup. The rest of us are ready to keep the officers at bay so that you and Perchik may escape. Do you hear me, Hodel? Perchik’s escape is of vital import to many, many people.”
She nodded fiercely. “Tell me what I must do.”
“Take these things,” he said, shoving all into a satchel and placing it around her neck. “The identity papers are false, the map and money for beyond the barriers, and the key is to the hut.”
“The hut?”
“Yes. Our meeting point. From this office, you run east. Far—to the very edge of the camp. There lies a small storage hut; food, medicine, weapons, and alcohol, all used by the officers. It is locked, but it will open with this key.”
“Where on earth did you get it?”
“Courtesy of Yevgeny—turns out he actually was a very good thief.” They shared a momentary smile.
Hodel was suddenly seized with fear. Had she received this second chance by error? Might it be taken from her if she missed a single step?
“When you arrive safely at the hut,” Grisha continued, “signal to me by igniting the long scrap of fabric with one of the sulfur matches. And then from there you run. You run like hell. The hut is mere meters from the fence. Anatoly and I will then enact the final part of the plan.”
“And what is that?”
“Hodel, no, there isn’t time.”
She gripped him hard. “What is that?” she cried again.
“We are running into the mines,” he said almost reverentially. “Led by Irina. There is a secret escape burrow prisoners have been working on for years. Dozens of us can escape through it in minutes, perhaps a hundred within an hour. With Irina inside, the officers will follow, and we shall blow it up as they do, trapping them within—like your Moses trapping Pharoah as he crossed the Red Sea!”
“No!”
“Hodel, please, there is no time to argue!” His voice shook her, telling her there was no more to say. “We must move.”
As they approached the door to the office, Hodel could already hear the prisoners swarming like bees and gathering in droves beyond the hill.
“The train passes only one and a half kilometers from the fence,” Grigory said as he removed the gun from his jacket and held it at his side. “It should arrive before morning. Board that train while it is moving and take it toward Ekaterinburg. Perchik will tell you the rest.”
Grigory and Hodel bolted through the door, down the steps, and out into the night. In the face of almost certain defeat, there was a glorious validation in their solidarity—as though they took upon themselves the leadership that she supposed her Lord God might have.
“But, Grisha, what of you? And Dmitri Petrov, what will become of him?”
He looked at her hard, shook his head, and smiled.
“What is to become of us all, Hodel?”
The noise was growing from beyond. Hodel turned toward it, trying to comprehend that this was, indeed, happening.
“Grisha!” she cried out, looking back toward him with uncertainty. But he was gone.
There was nothing left to do but run.
fifty-one
AND SO SHE RAN. SHE PELTED HARD THROUGH THE WOODS, HID behind barracks and outhouses, darted past the officers’ headquarters, crawled behind the women’s lodgings. Her lungs blazed within her, her mind faster than her feet. But before long, she could see the hut in the far distance.
She stalled and turned about as she heard shouts, pounding feet, gunshots. She stood in the middle of the field, halfway between the chaos in the mines and her future freedom. Men ran from every direction toward the mouths of the mines, as if it were swallowing them up. Atop the hill stood Irina, glowing in the resplendence of her purpose; Hodel thought she saw, for a flicker of a moment, Irina’s gaze meet her own, before she too was consumed into its blackness.
At then, at last, emerging through the mist from the edges of the camp: she saw him. His body was weakened, but not his majesty. She saw him as she had seen him at first sight across the hills of Anatevka, as miraculously as she had the first day they ran toward each other in this wretched place.
Perchik. Her only one.
“Stop, criminal!” the voices called. Hodel looked about her. The guards pursued from far behind.
She pelted down a hill, and as she ran, the guards were tackled by the prisoners, leaving her free to race toward the hut—toward him and all he stood for. Time slowed itself, playing out as through a sheet of water. She wept, her heart exultant—this purest of moments, this most absolute wholeness of life.
“Hodel!” Perchik cried, grasping at her hand. “Hodel, follow me!”
They sprinted together on the frozen ground, the hut mere feet away. When they reached it, she clamored in the satchel for the key and placed it roughly in the great iron lock upon the door—escape too near to be believed! And then: a call.
“Hello,” someone said.
But this was not just any voice; it was the calm and steady iciness of the Voice himself—calling out from just behind them. He had been waiting in the shadows.
“Reb Perchik!” the Voice called out, smug, calm, and uncannily certain.
Perchik turned.
Hodel saw his face ignite with the expression of recognition. He smiled and opened his arms in greeting.
And then: a gunshot. It occurred in an eternity, pierced the silence of the air.
Perchik clutched his shoulder and fell upon the ground.
The moment filled Hodel, like the inaudible memory of an explosion. She could not hear her own screaming. For an instant, she was wild with derangement before flying down upon him. The sight of blood surging through his shoulder: pure and bitter on her corroded eyelids. She knelt there dumb, soaked in and reeking of despair.
“Hello, Hodel . . .” the Voice said, emerging at last from the shadows.
She turned to see him. He removed his hat to reveal the face. . . .
Perhaps within every man there lies a seed that can rot the fruit if we’re not careful. Perhaps such a seed makes us stronger—better, somehow, for overcoming it. But perhaps in some, the seed incubates too long; it shoots up, polluting the vestiges of all our goodness, so much so that wickedness becomes a need.
Hodel could not, in any way, believe her eyes: it was none other than Anatoly.
He stood there, above them and beyond, gun smoking in his hand. A thousand words could never leave so deep an impression as the vacant chill within his eyes. At last he spoke.
“Well, how touching,” he said. “Sometimes, you have to wait things out and take care of them yourself.”
The words emitted from him in the perfectly clear voice of an aristocrat—no trace of common accent in any corner of his speech. He moved toward her. “It really is disgusting how you let that conceited insurrectionist order you about, Hodel—haven’t you any pride at all?” His question was thick with held grudges. “My grandfather was murdered by Decembrists; I shall never let our motherland be blemished by mutiny again.”
He lifted his arm and clicked the gun into position, intent on shooting her too.
“Anatoly,” she pleaded, searching his face for the man she swore she knew. “No. . . .” Her mind went numb. She braced herself. Her body stiffened as vibrations pounded through the frigid air.
The shot rang out.
But to her shock, her body was unmarred. She felt no pain or infirmity. Her eyes lifted.
A hole within his head leaked only the slightest hint of blood; it oozed like a tear down his brow and around his eye. His eyes went blank as the great hulk slumped to the ground, and behind him, gun still smoking, stood Grisha.
Grigory Boleslav locked his blackened eyes with Hodel’s, and it was clear that he knew. He knew more than any words could ever say.
He ran at her and buried his hands in the satchel, removed the sulfur matches and then the scrap of fabric and ignited it to signal the mines. Shoving the matches back in her bag, he pushed Hodel, who was motionless with shock.
“Go!” he whispered before disappearing back up the hill into the brawl.
Below her, Perchik groaned. And so Hodel faced the door, turned the key in the lock, and kicked the door wide open, then lifted Perchik’s body and dragged it into the cabin.
fifty-two
Dearest Hodel,
I hope these letters reach you somehow.
We have a daughter now; her name is Luba, and I love to watch her grow. It all goes so fast. The time we have together is so precious. Times are turbulent; we are torn apart from loved ones long before we think it may be time to ask forgiveness. To say goodbye. That makes every day a gift.
Each day I tell the children about our family. I so wish you could know them. And they you. The other night as I prepared her for bed, Luba asked if she would ever meet you, and I realized, Hodel, that I did not know the answer.
The children pulled their sheets down, Jacob helped little Luba lift her tiny self into the bed, then Jacob said he did not understand: If he had never met you, if he had never touched you or seen the place where you lived, how could he know that you loved him, and how could you feel his love in return?
Every day, I am blessed. My own children showed me that, in our separation, our love is just like God's. I cannot point to His house upon a map, just as I cannot point to yours. But still, I feel your love from far across the Urals, as I trust you feel mine in return. So it is with God. So it is, I hope, when we leave this earthly realm and return to our ultimate home.
“But is this not home, mama?” Luba asked. And I relayed, Hodel, that one day we shall all go home.
Home, Hodelleh. That place beyond the place where we rest our heads every night. Where our centerpieces, our sewing, our carefully prepared meals, simply do not matter. Where our petty little differences and competitions with one another do not matter anymore.
And I thought of you.
It is odd, Hodelleh. Because I do not know if you shall ever read this, I feel compelled to tell you more than ever. Home—where love shall reign supreme. The kind of home you always held within your heart, my dear sister, the kind no meaningless skill of mine could ever fully capture. How I love you, Hodel. It aches within me that I failed to show you in so many ways. That I provided you with every comfort but the comfort of my heart.
Yet I know that we shall both, as we always did, return to each other. For the love beneath our struggle is so strong. Perhaps in time, the Lord shall reveal to us why it is so difficult.
As the prophet Isaiah spoke, "Fear not, I have redeemed you; I have called you by name and you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”
I am convinced that what joins all humanity together is our capacity to endure. Endurance is the condition under which we may feel both the glory of our distinctiveness and the depths of our sameness. Endurance, which is distinct from suffering. I have not seen the world as you have, dear sister, but I can see that endurance unites us. Endurance that is, thus, holy.
I trust that, somewhere, we shall be together again. Until that day, I send my love out to you and shall continue to do so, Hodelleh. Until, one day, we can finally go home.
Tzeitel
fifty-three
HODEL SECURED THEM BOTH INSIDE THE CABIN. SHE BOLTED the door, locked it fast, then pushed heavy shelves in front of the doorway. She laid Perchik out upon the floor and ripped apart his shirt to reveal the wound in his shoulder. The shot was clean, through and through. But his body had been ravaged. He lay there, white and wheezing as he convulsed with shock. Hodel surrounded him in blankets, her mind roaring. Life had been an endless test of transforming misfortune into faith. Surely this was no different.
Perchik reached for her hands and smiled.
“Hodel,” he said, struggling hard against the torment within. “This is for you now.” From within his mouth, Perchik pulled a tiny key. He wiped it off and placed it tight within her hand. “You must take it. In your satchel, there is an address—in Kiev. It is a bank. This key opens the safe that contains all of Gershom’s fortune.”
“No.” Hodel shook her head. She pushed the key back toward him as if refusing to take it might prevent him from leaving her.
“Hodel.” Perchik’s voice was firm. “Please, listen to me. From there you must go straight to Petersburg and find a man known as ‘the Pen.’ He is a high-ranking member of the movement and my comrade. The map—the map Grigory gave you? Contained within it is a coded speech, my darling. You must give that and half the fortune to the people you meet there. It is the summation of my life’s work. Promise me.”
“I cannot.”
“My darling, please.” Perchik’s eyes were pleading as he lifted a trembling hand to the softness of her cheek. “Please, promise me.”
Her heart lurched, her brain flooding with agony, for she knew the moment that she gave her word, she would begin to lose him.
“I promise,” she vowed, and placed her hand upon his own.
Perchik nodded in gratitude, then smiled wearily as he sighed, drinking in long, lasting looks of his wife. “Somehow . . . somehow, I always knew the journey here held no return.” His lips were cracked, his speech labored. His body quaked.
“No!” she wailed. “No, my love. You cannot leave me. Not like this. Please, my beloved, you cannot!”
“I must,” Perchik whispered. His hand was cold. “It is time.” He shook as he pulled her closer to him. “Oh, my love, believe me—this is easier for me. It is so much harder,” he said, fighting for breath, “to be left behind.”
The home they would never have. The children that would never be.
“Do you recall what I told you when we first parted at the train so long ago?”
The entire life she would live without him.
“Oh, Hodel.” He smiled. “We cannot be stopped.”
“Your revolution?”
“No,” he answered, his voice a shadow now. “You and I.”
Hodel could not reconcile with such realities as these. Not here, in the frigidity of all that surrounded them.
“Take part . . . take part in the world, my love. Do not shirk from it.”
The once achingly soft skin around his eyes cracked as he smiled; the cavernous depths of the lines that had formed across his face were appalling and unfamiliar—slits into the abyss draining the very life force from the eyes they surrounded.
“But there will be such an emptiness where you once were.”
“The world will not take note, my dear.”
“I do not mean for the world. The emptiness will be beside me.” She could not bear it.
“Oh, my beloved,” he said, choking. “But you are alive, and I shall live within you.”
He gasped for breath, clutching her hand with unwavering strength— as if this steady grip upon her were his last hold on the earth.
“Hodel, my wife, my dearest love. Do not withdraw from the world; take part in it. Do away with misery, with fear, and, above all, with regret. Demand more. Of yourself. Of man. Of this finite, beautiful time. It is too brief and too special to be squandered on despair.”
She nodded bravely, desperate to keep both of them together just a moment longer, to burn his presence into her eternal memory.
Her face was soaked in sorrow. Perchik: her husband, her o
nly one. He was a tiny flame now, feebly clutching at the wick. How grave the darkness when so bright a light begins to dim.
“I love you, Perchik,” she uttered. “I love you. I cannot say goodbye. I cannot—”
“Hodel, we have never left anything unsaid, therefore we needn’t say goodbye.” Perchik gripped her hand tighter and tried to stroke away her tears. “We have the clearest union I have ever known—and who knows what is possible?” He winced, kissing her hand with dry lips. “Anything, I think. Anything is possible, with a love like ours. And that love continues, Hodel. We shall find it together; we shall throw a bridge over that mysterious divide, and we shall find it, one of us on each side.”
From far beyond the hut there came a rumble, and the explosion of the mines filled the sky with thunder. Perchik winced again, trembling; his eyes locked into hers.
“Oh . . . my love . . .” he whispered. Then, like a candle whispering to smoke, his eyes went out, and he was gone.
fifty-four
THEY WERE COMING!
Hodel heard the cries of soldiers from just beyond the hill. She sprang from the floor to look about, grabbed Grisha’s satchel, flung the key inside it, and threw it around her shoulder. She returned to Perchik’s side and took the clothing from his body—shirt first, then trousers, jacket, blood-soaked undershirt, scarf, and heavy boots. She ran to a supply closet and stuffed the boots with surgical scissors and medical bandages as the guards came pounding hard upon the heaving seams of the cabin. Finally, as if without thought, she grabbed two bottles of rubbing alcohol and reached into the satchel for the box of sulfur matches.
The tumult intensified outside. She removed his hat, arranged his matted hair, and kissed his broken lips, stealing a few fleeting moments.
After Anatevka Page 26