Sasha studied her face. “You think you would have settled for this life?”
“No,” she admitted. But even if she’d fought, would she have made it out?
Somewhere a hen screeched. “How did your family move up?” Sasha asked.
“My zede’s cousin was lucky. He was allowed to go to school.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. They found money for the bribe.”
“Then it wasn’t luck. They fought.”
“Maybe. Zede’s cousin learned to read. He taught my grandfather. They figured out how to keep a ledger and earned enough for their children to go to school. My grandmother says there’s no physical difference between us and the gentiles—only the ability to read separates us.”
“She’s right,” Sasha said. “But the czar will never let us all rise up. The German Jews, they’re the lucky ones.”
“What about American Jews?”
“That I don’t know.”
Another woman came out onto her stoop. Miri and Sasha were becoming a spectacle. The greatcoat was drawing curiosity. Or fear. No one in that slum would feel any warmth toward the czar’s man. “We should keep moving,” Miri said. She took Sasha to a trail that started on a flat expanse of marsh swarming with insects. Their feet squelched in mud. The squalor gave way to packed trails and hills overcrowded with trees.
Near sunset they found a waterfall tumbling from spiked cliffs, and a stream. Miri’s heart caught on a memory of Babushka from those summer lessons in Birshtan. She had told Miri and Vanya to beware their instinct to seek cover near running water—it drowns your own noise but also makes it difficult to hear your enemy approach. Were there only hours between Miri and Babushka now?
“It will come in waves,” Sasha said.
“What?”
“The memories. The sadness. It’s what you’re feeling, no?”
“It hasn’t even been long. It doesn’t make sense to miss her already.”
“It makes perfect sense.” Sasha leaned down to drink.
Miri splashed water on her face. With her eyes closed, it was easier to feel at peace. Still, she couldn’t let her guard down. No officer wanted to risk the ridicule of letting a Jew escape, and surely the officer from the station had guessed they were Jews. Who else runs? She walked a wide perimeter to make sure the spot was as isolated as it seemed. All she saw were trees and sky. No footprints or remnants of fires. “Should be safe to camp here.”
“Good,” Sasha said. He pulled a thread and a hook from his pocket and reached for a stick. “A fishing pole,” he said. “This stream is teeming.”
“We’ll have to eat it raw. We can’t risk a fire.” She stood and wiped her hands on her skirts. “Why do you carry hooks?”
“We always need to be able to feed ourselves, don’t we? Make yourself a line. Here.” He held out another hook and more thread.
“I can’t fish,” Miri said.
“All your baba taught you about survival and you can’t fish?”
“You’ll fish for us both. That’s what she taught me.”
“From any other woman I would have anticipated that, but not from you.”
She grinned.
VII
Vanya was aware of Dima switching places with Stanislavovich, then Yuri, but he didn’t volunteer to take a turn. Nor did he bother watching the countryside because the view wasn’t important. All that mattered was his work. He sat with his legs bent and drawn close on top of a pile of crates, concentrating on his theory, on a way to incorporate acceleration and gravity into Einstein’s principles. He was closer than ever. But what was he missing? Vanya went back through his notebook.
He’d been concentrating on Ricci at the expense of Riemann. Riemann’s work started with the assumption of intrinsic curvature. Maybe that was a better approach. Vanya tried manipulating the tensor. But he still wasn’t getting anywhere. Could he ask Clay to help? Would half-drawn equations be enough to convince the American to fold Vanya into his expedition? One minute, Vanya convinced himself it was. The next he knew it wasn’t. And that wasn’t good enough. He couldn’t risk rejection—that would mean losing the only means he had of taking his family to America, and by now they had no choice but to go. He and Yuri were deserters. War was brewing. Vanya had to find a solution before he found Clay, or they’d all die.
By dinner, Yuri insisted Vanya eat. Dima had bartered for dried fish and black bread at the last coal depot. “It’s better with vodka,” Dima said, and handed Vanya a bottle. Stanislavovich was at his perch at the window. He didn’t speak much and when he did he yelled, Vanya learned, because he couldn’t hear. His ears had been damaged when a steam engine caught fire. It was why his skin was mottled and his smile hung crooked, and it meant Vanya, Yuri, and Dima were free to speak openly as long as they kept their voices low.
“You spend too much time on your numbers and not enough on real life,” Dima said. “We could use help.” Yuri elbowed Dima, as if they’d already discussed this, but said nothing.
“Numbers are real life,” Vanya replied.
“No. The Germans are real. Do you know about their U-boats?”
“Horrible.”
“And you, Doctor, what do you think of this war?”
“It means we should leave Russia as soon as possible.”
“Then why wait? Why go to Brovary instead of fleeing for the border? What’s the power of this eclipse?”
“My brother is in a race. He refuses to leave until he claims victory.”
“We can’t leave until I claim victory,” Vanya said, looking up.
“You’ll run in the dark, during this eclipse?” Dima asked.
Vanya shook his head. “It’s a scientific race. Einstein himself issued the challenge.”
“Who is Einstein?” Dima asked.
“A scientist. Philosopher. The most brilliant man ever. I think. He has an idea. He’s laid it all out in theory. Now the only way to prove it is through math and a photograph.”
“Which you’re working on?” Dima interrupted. “That’s what you do all day? Math?” Vanya nodded. “And this photograph will come from the American?”
“Exactly. I need it to show light bending around the sun. To check my equations. I’ll show you what I mean.” There was a cloth covering a few of the crates. Vanya grabbed it and asked Yuri and Dima to each hold the corners, in a tight square. He took a loaf of bread they were saving for breakfast and placed it in the middle of the cloth. A divot formed around the bread. “Gravity,” Vanya said, pointing to the depression. Then he pulled an apple from his haversack and held it up. “Imagine the bread is the sun. See how it has curved the fabric around it. Now this apple. It’s a planet. Without the bread, the apple would roll straight across the cloth. No?”
“Of course.” Dima nodded.
“With the bread there, in the middle, when I roll the apple across, it veers toward the bread. Why? The bread has bent the fabric just as the sun bends space. The apple follows the contours of the cloth just as light follows the contours of space.” He paused to make sure the sailor was following. “My math, what I’m trying to figure out, is by how much.”
Vanya could feel Dima thinking. His eyes were narrow. He stared at the divot from the bread. “Equations and a photograph?” Dima asked. “You’re after two things. Not one?”
“Yes.” Vanya smiled.
“And this American, you think if you find him, he’ll give you a photograph?”
Vanya looked at Yuri and said, “Yes. I think I’ll convince him to give it to me.”
“A race. For science.” Now Dima smiled so wide his gold tooth flickered. Wind ripped through the slats in the train. It stirred the smell of tobacco and discarded fish bones from dinner.
“Yes. Whoever publishes photos and an equation to predict the curvature first, wins. It could be Einstein. Or me. Or someone else.” Vanya smiled again. “I know Einstein wants to win, but above it all, he wants the world to embrace relativity.”
/> “You know this Einstein, then?”
“A little. We’ve corresponded.”
“You barely know the man you’re fighting?” Dima shook his head. “Vanya, you speak of new science and math, but what about the truth in the past? In nature itself?”
“What truth?” Vanya asked.
“You’ve heard of the Titanic?”
“The boat that sank two years ago.”
“Yes. It was doomed from the beginning. Titanic was a foolish name,” Dima said. “Titans were deities. They named the ship after gods because they thought it would protect them. But the White Star’s crown jewel couldn’t stand up to nature. To an ice field. The captain ignored every sign, every hint the ocean gave. One thousand five hundred twenty-two people swallowed by the sea.”
“What signs?” Vanya asked.
Dima fumbled in his pocket. There was the flick of a match, and then a flame lit his dark eyes. His face was lined with wrinkles different from any Vanya had noticed before. The smell of his tobacco was different, too. Thicker. “Sea serpents,” Dima said. “Sea serpents were the signs. Captain Rostron, from the Carpathia, said there were serpents everywhere that night.”
“Sea serpents aren’t real,” Yuri countered.
“Aye, they are. Have you ever been to sea? Two nights after the Titanic went down there was an eclipse. Did you know that?”
“The papers never mentioned an eclipse,” Vanya said.
“Papers miss a lot, my friend. It’s the sailors who talk about it. Who know what’s real. And Captain Rostron. After he loaded the survivors on board and twisted back through the frozen sea, his ship fell in a band of night—smack in the middle of day. An eclipse. A final warning to men, an order not to believe that our power is equal to the Titans or to any other god.”
VIII
Miri woke when the sun cracked through the trees. Sasha must have sensed she was awake. He looked at her and smiled. His face dripped with water, and the edges of his hair were wet from washing in the stream. He looked younger out here, happier. Could Vanya and Yuri be feeling the same? Was it possible they’d already found Russell Clay and were arranging their camp? She hoped so because one alternative was terrifying—that Ilya, and Kir, had caught them.
“Are you hungry?” Sasha asked. He held out a chunk of cheese wrapped in one of Babushka’s kitchen towels. The smell of blueberry preserves floated off the fabric. Miri held it up to her nose and caught the undertones of nutmeg and handed it back to him. She couldn’t stomach any food. Not then. Instead she pulled on her boots. Already her legs were tired and she had a blister on her heel. It would bleed but there was nothing she could do for it. They had to keep going. It might be hard, but it was nothing compared to what Baba endured after the pogroms. She had to just keep pushing forward.
Miri handed Sasha Grekov’s coat and walked into the woods, came back with a branch in each hand, one with pine needles, the other with birch leaves. She bent down to scramble the soil where they’d slept. “How is it you know how to hide but not fish?” Sasha pressed again. When Miri didn’t respond, he said, “My grandfather used to say: ‘Better to overestimate your enemy than die from vanity.’”
“Are you calling me the enemy?” Miri asked.
“No. I’m saying you’re smart to cover our tracks.”
When Miri and Sasha finally hiked down from the hills and onto the flats leading to Karmėlava, they were surrounded by golden wheat and emerald trees. They avoided the houses that started to dot the fields. The roofs were thatched with a mixture of shingles and straw. Each had a brick chimney stuck on the side as if it were an afterthought. The town was small compared to Kovno, but its significance outstripped its size. It was a junction where the rails split, carving north or south, or staying west to east. “The Polyakovs built this junction. You’ve heard of them, the Jewish Polyakovs?” Sasha asked when they stopped to rest. They could just make out the gleam of the tracks they’d follow to the depot.
“No,” Miri said.
“They were brothers. They started as tax farmers, paying for merchants who couldn’t pay themselves. If the merchants couldn’t repay, well, the brothers extracted payment. They were brutal.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Miri wiped sweat from her face.
“Because you should know them. Beware of them.” He paused. “One of the brothers moved into construction.”
“It’s illegal for Jews to own construction companies.”
“True. Polyakov brought in a partner. A Russian named Tolstov. He signed where only Russians could sign. Got paid where only Russians could get paid while Polyakov did the dirty work. He paid laborers next to nothing while Tolstov sipped champagne. When the workers came to Polyakov and complained they didn’t earn enough to feed their families, he turned them away. His own people. Then came the railroad.
“Building tracks is a dirty business. The czar wanted train lines crossing Russia. To build them, Polyakov was given permission to march onto any farm and take the land for the railroad. If the farmer protested, he was shot. If he gave in, he was homeless. And the destitute farmers blamed Polyakov—not the czar, or Tolstov. They blamed the Jew.”
“Polyakov forced you from your home?” Miri asked.
“No. Not quite.” Sasha stopped midsentence and pointed to the edge of the trail. A dog stood ten paces away. Miri hadn’t heard him coming. He was black and bone thin with missing teeth. He growled and Miri’s skin bristled. “He’s sick,” she whispered, eyeing the foam on his mouth. “If we stay calm, he might go away.”
“Or he might attack.” Sasha reached for a rock the size of his fist, and the dog’s growl grew deeper. “Run when I throw—”
Sasha didn’t get to finish. The dog leapt at them. Jaws wide. White foam spraying. As quickly as the dog sprang into the air, Sasha brought his arm back and shot it forward with enough force that his shirt thrummed. He hit the dog square between the eyes. The mutt landed hard on his side and scrambled back up. Sasha bent down and grabbed another rock. And another, pummeling the dog even as he yelped and ran away.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Miri said.
Sasha wiped sweat from his chin but said nothing.
IX
Stanislavovich stopped the train for the night in the center of a wide-open field because they couldn’t travel at night when they couldn’t see the tracks. As the engine cooled, the pound of pistons was replaced by the hum of cicadas. The smell of coal was overcome by the scent of soil. Vanya couldn’t sleep, but he closed his eyes. He’d written and rewritten the Riemann tensor. The Ricci tensor. Manipulated them in dozens of ways. All of his results were convoluted, forced, and awkward. Vanya couldn’t help but feel America, and safety, slipping away. “God damn it,” he muttered. Without equations, how would he introduce himself to Russell Clay? How would he prove he was worthy? He was wearing rags. The letter from Eliot was stained now, too, and crinkled. By the look of it, it could have been a fake and there wasn’t time for Clay to write to Eliot, to check his references as he should. “Think,” he whispered to himself. “Think.”
That was when he heard it. A footfall outside the train. Leaves cracked differently under a man’s two feet than they did under four paws. Dima had warned that the train might be a target. That villagers were hungry now that the able-bodied men were being shipped to war. They must have thought the train had food. Vanya’s hands clenched to fists. Another footfall. Another man. How many?
Vanya wanted to run. Miri had always been the fighter when they were kids, not him. But the train was his only way to Brovary. He couldn’t give it up. He shook Yuri awake. Yuri jumped up and grabbed his knife in one smooth motion. Vanya held a finger to his lips to signal for quiet and pointed outside. Yuri’s eyes went wide, and he nodded to show he understood.
By the time Vanya turned to rouse the others, Dima was already awake. Then Stanislavovich. Vanya tried to use two fingers to signal there were two men near the train, but his hands were shaking. His ears buz
zed and he couldn’t hear whatever Dima was whispering. Stanislavovich grabbed one of the swords and hoisted it to his shoulder.
The Talmud teaches that if someone comes to kill you, you must rise up and kill them first. That was one lesson Vanya remembered well from the rabbi in Kovno. Kill. Could he? Vanya reached for a crate and pried one of the boards loose to use as a weapon. At the same time, Dima grabbed an empty vodka bottle by the neck. Yuri huddled in the corner with the second sword in one hand, his knife in the other, but otherwise didn’t move. Was he even more terrified than Vanya?
“Get a hold of yourself,” Vanya whispered to him. Before he could say more, a hand bigger than any Vanya had ever seen reached in through the window and seized Stanislavovich by the throat. The hand stank of fetid flesh as if from a corpse. The skin was smeared dark. Blood or dirt. It slammed the engineer’s head against the side slats. The wood cracked. In the same instant, Dima broke the glass bottle and sank the jagged teeth into the wrist with so much force Vanya was sure he hit bone. The howl that ensued was desperate. Stanislavovich fell and while Vanya expected the engineer to slump to the ground, instead he bounded out of the train brandishing the sword over his head. Growling and hissing.
“Light it,” a voice outside called, its accent thick and different from any Vanya had heard before. “Light it. Light it.”
A flame. A flash. A torch was tossed into the train and with it Vanya saw Yuri still cowering. His body appeared shrunken as if he’d inhaled himself into a ball. Dima stamped out the flames. He had the fire extinguished in seconds, but in the interval, Vanya realized the blaze was never the point. The torch had been soaked in something horrid that made Vanya’s eyes feel as if they were being pricked by a thousand needles and his throat raked with an ax. They had no choice but to run outside and that was the point.
He and Dima hurried down the steps, clutching their weapons. Someone grabbed Vanya, dragged him over sticks and rocks that sliced his shirt and skin. Vanya grabbed the wrist, expecting muscular flesh but instead discovered thin bones. Nothing but a boy. Vanya wrenched free.
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