A Bend in the Stars

by Rachel Barenbaum

“Later, much later, all but three of the Russians stumbled out into the courtyard, then down the street. If they hadn’t been so drunk, they would have seen me or noticed the tarp. The men who remained went upstairs.” Yuri stopped to blow his nose. “I slipped inside, went up to the second floor. It was strange, on the top landing the house looked untouched. The rug was pristine. Snoring came from behind closed doors. I banged into the table at the top of the stairs where my aunt kept a pitcher of water. I caught it before it fell. Not that it would have mattered. The Russians were too drunk to hear me.

  “I slit their throats. Vanya, brother, I laughed as I did it. I used an antique knife my uncle had hanging on the wall. I think it was used in a war, a battle to defend the czar. Ironic, no? I laughed. While I killed them in their sleep. And I watched them bleed out on my aunt’s white sheets.

  “I’d always imagined revenge made the victor feel a spectacular triumph, but I didn’t feel anything. That made the madness worse. I stripped the men. I tossed them into the courtyard where they’d left my family. I took an ax to the piano and destroyed it. A splinter caught me, here on my lip. It ripped the skin.” He paused. “I was the one who set fire to the house, and I was sure someone would have seen me do it, but they were all drunk. Reveling in spoils. I knew it was risky, but I couldn’t just leave my aunt and uncle there under a tarp. I lay them in a wagon and took them to the Jewish cemetery. I buried them before dawn and was on the first train. That’s the truth. The real truth I could never tell Miri.” Yuri started pacing. Vanya wished his head wasn’t still so muddled. Never had he imagined anything so brutal, so awful. Had he heard correctly?

  “At the train station, I wasn’t angry. I was racked with guilt. Not guilt that I’d killed, or guilt that I hadn’t been there.” He took a deep breath. “Guilt that I couldn’t tell anyone. The youth groups, the stand they took, everyone talks about it. It makes the fight real. But my fight, if I told, I’d be caught and killed. If I didn’t tell, if there was no one to celebrate that I’d extracted some small piece of Russian flesh—did it matter that I did it? There. That’s the truth of who I am. Why I’m guilty, so guilty.” He fell into the chair at the window. “I’m guilty because I want to brag about it and I can’t. So many times when I try to sleep, when I close my eyes, I see them, my aunt and uncle.

  “I boarded the train thinking I’d slip out of Russia somehow, head to Paris to find an orchestra. It was the only plan I could conceive. I was supposed to transfer in Kovno when a child, a boy, fell onto the tracks. Another man pulled him up to safety. My train was due in ten minutes, but I could see even from across the platform that his femur had snapped. If he didn’t get help quickly, he’d lose the whole leg. The child was a Jew. No one came forward to help. There had to be another surgeon in the midst, but not one stepped forward, Vanya.

  “By now you know, I’m not sentimental. I’m not soft, brother. But a child shouldn’t lose a leg for no reason. The world’s hard enough with two strong feet under you. I set his leg. I accompanied him to the hospital. And I stayed.”

  Yuri leaned against the bed. “I’ve never told a soul what happened that night, until now.” He stopped. Fingered the scar over his lip. “Your sister’s more kind than I deserve. I can’t say I’m perfect, but with Miri, I’m better.” He reached for the bowl of soup. “It’s cold now. Maybe it won’t burn and you’ll eat some. Please eat, brother,” Yuri said. “Eat so we can find Miri.”

  XII

  Early in the morning, as Miri walked downstairs, she tried to think of a way to earn money to pay the barkeep. He knew something. She was sure. And time was passing quickly. She needed to act—to do something before she missed her brother. But what? Without this job, she and Sasha had nothing. No food. No safety. Perhaps she could trade medical care? Either way, she wasn’t ready to see Sasha because she knew Anya would want her to say he was recovered enough to leave his cot. To join her upstairs.

  By the time she made it to the women’s ward, the line of patients waiting was twice as long as it had been the day before. Already, it seemed, word had spread that a lady surgeon had taken up residence. Miri heard them whispering as she walked past. “It’s true,” one murmured. “Some things only a woman understands,” another said, nodding. Miri had seen the same surprise and wonder in Kovno. People who needed help were coming now when before they wouldn’t. And she was proud of that, of herself.

  A nurse brought her a list of patients compiled by Sasha. Anya already had them both hard at work. Miri settled in, tending to women with care, comforted by a confidence that Yuri would be making the same diagnosis in each case. She delivered baby after baby, set a broken arm, stitched a half dozen children, and more. At supper, still avoiding Sasha, she made her way to the kitchen to fetch soup. The laundry was next to the kitchen. The cook and the laundress used the same hearth for their boiling cauldrons. The space was humid. It smelled of soap and the floor was slick. “You the new surgeon?” a woman asked. Cook. “Nurse Anya says she’s brought on a lady surgeon. That you?”

  “Yes,” Miri said. She slipped, reached for the corner of a table for balance.

  “I met your husband already. He got you dinner.” She snorted. “Never seen a husband fetch food for his wife unless he’s in trouble. What’d he do?”

  “What did he do?” Miri repeated. Why was he even out of bed, fetching dinner?

  “You don’t need to act innocent with me,” she laughed. Her face was round, a perfect circle, and her cheeks were bloated. “You a real doctor?”

  “Miriam,” Sasha said. He appeared at the door. His shoulders took the width of the frame. His cheeks were flushed. He held two steaming bowls. “I thought we’d eat upstairs.”

  “Why are you up?” Miri asked.

  “Anya doesn’t want me taking a cot I don’t need. Not when I have one…” He cleared his throat. “With you.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” Cook said. She winked. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Make that a thorough apology,” she called, and shooed them out of the kitchen.

  “Apology for what?” Sasha asked.

  “Nothing.” Miri kept climbing the stairs. She heard Sasha bobble, turned to see he’d tripped, spilled some of the stew. “I told you I’ll sleep on the floor,” he said, recovering. Miri looked around, made sure no one heard. They were stopped on the landing between the first and second floors. With Miri standing on a riser above, they were eye to eye. Sasha continued, “Anya told me you went to a pub, alone, last night. Looking for the man’s family. Miriam, you know how dangerous that was?” She did now. “And people report to Anya. You can’t be reckless.”

  “I had to. The trail could have gone cold. Time is rushing by too fast.”

  “Were you hurt? Is that why you’ve been avoiding me all day?”

  “I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve been busy. And of course I wasn’t hurt.”

  “I’ll go with you. Next time, if you go. Promise me, please, that you’ll take me?”

  “I shouldn’t need your permission.”

  “It has nothing to do with permission.” He stopped as a nurse scurried past. When she was out of earshot, he continued. “Just please, don’t go alone.”

  “I didn’t find anything,” she said. “The barkeep wouldn’t say a word unless I paid. Where could I get the money?”

  “We’ll find a way. But I wouldn’t trust him. Barkeeps are known for saying what you want to hear, for a price. Better to make our own inquiries elsewhere.” They heard a noise on the stairs below. “Let’s talk more in private.”

  They walked single file in the hallway on the third floor, bent under the slanted roof. She heard the fabric of his pants swish, the sling around his arm crinkle. Miri fumbled in her skirt for the key while Sasha leaned against the gray wall. Under the scent of barley soup, she smelled him, the faint wisps of pine and sweat. She dropped the key and picked it up. Once they stood inside the room, the space felt smaller than Miri remembered. Sasha’s height, his shoulders, all of him seemed to occupy m
ore space than he should. She couldn’t move without touching him.

  “Let’s have our soup on the floor,” she said. A flare bellowed out of the sugar yard’s chimney. In the sudden bright light, she saw Sasha was as nervous as she was. She squeezed down into the tiny space in front of the bed. Sasha angled himself in next to her. He seemed to be folded over twice just to fit. “Better than sleeping in the woods,” she said. “Or in a barn.”

  “I liked that barn.” He grinned. Miri spooned her soup but didn’t eat. Nor did Sasha.

  “How’s your shoulder?”

  “Much better. Look.” He meant to raise his arm over his head, to show he’d been healing, but instead he knocked his soup into her lap. He fumbled to get a towel from the bedside table. He tried to mop her skirts, but he must have realized he was too close. His hand stopped and he pulled back. They sat in silence until he surprised her by smiling. “Tell me, wife. Tell me more about you. Shouldn’t I know you better than anyone?” She looked down at the spoon in her hand. What was there to say? Hadn’t he already seen so much of her? When she didn’t reply, he went on. “Fine. Then I’ll tell you something about me. I love tomatoes. And honey.”

  “Tell me something important.”

  “Food’s not important?”

  “Have you been in love?” Miri asked.

  “I’ve kissed women.”

  “How many?”

  “More than I should.”

  “And?”

  “There’s nothing else to say.”

  “Do you drink too much?”

  “You know I don’t. But I wanted to ask you the questions.”

  “You know everything that’s important. Tell me more.”

  “I’m a thief. I stole from a baker. We hadn’t eaten in two days.”

  “That’s not stealing.”

  “It is. And as a soldier I’ve killed men.”

  “That’s not killing.”

  “Why do you insist on changing the truth? I’m not ashamed. I’d do those things again. For my family. To survive.”

  “I’m not trying to change anything. It’s just…” Miri looked at him. “The labels, ‘thief’ and ‘killer,’ they don’t apply. It’s the words you use that I object to, not the actions.”

  “But where do you draw a line and why? It kept me alive. I survived.”

  “That’s what you want in life, to survive?”

  “No. I want more. I want to close my eyes and not be scared of what I might find when I open them. And I want a wife to share it with. If there’s a chance I could find that in America, then I’d go. Does Yuri want to go to America now?”

  “I haven’t asked.”

  “Why not?”

  “I told him that was where I was going, and he said he’d come.”

  “I see.” Sasha’s voice was deep the way it had been the night they’d kissed. And Miri thought that maybe he was thinking the same, remembering their time on the train. “We should get some rest,” he said.

  “Yes,” Miri agreed. “We need to look elsewhere tomorrow for my brother.”

  Sasha made his pallet on the floor just as he promised he would. She slid under the sheets, alone, and didn’t close her eyes.

  XIII

  The first frost hit Brovary like an unexpected bullet—hard and too soon. Vanya knew it was a bad sign. The winter to come would be brutal. “Yuri, we can’t stay here,” Vanya said. He pulled back the sheets and edged himself to the side of the bed, prepared to stand on his own for the first time since the eclipse. “We can’t wait out the winter. We don’t have enough food. Or wood. And the villagers, they’ll see me soon enough. And they’ll come for me.”

  “Where will we go? You’re not well enough to travel.”

  “I have to be. We’ll start the journey to Saint Petersburg.”

  “In your condition, we can’t.”

  Vanya slipped off the side of the mattress, eased his feet onto the worn floorboards. Now standing, for the first time, he took a closer look at the room around him. Bare walls. A dresser. A hearth and a single chair facing the only window. Webs of ice on the glass were melting in the sun, pooling on the sill. Vanya walked toward the chair. It was only five paces, but to Vanya it felt farther. He slid into the cushions, winded. “Was it algae that killed the cows?”

  “Yes. Purple algae. A deadly strain,” Yuri said. “I have to tell you something.”

  Vanya tried to wave him off. “I know. I heard you. Clay’s gone. He took my notebook and the plates.”

  Yuri shook his head. “Dima, he betrayed us, too. He’s gone. Ach. Why does it still have to come down to that—to being Jewish?” He pushed his hair back, his nails scraping his scalp. “I’ll kill them both if I ever find them.”

  “No,” Vanya said. “Not again.”

  “You remember what I told you?” Vanya nodded and Yuri looked surprised, but he nodded back. “They’re both louts. Clay and Dima.”

  “No. Not Dima. He’s different.” He’d become a friend, hadn’t he?

  “You’re wrong. He sold your notebooks to Ilya. He’s been in contact with him this whole time. Working for Kir.”

  “What?” Vanya said. He leaned to the edge of the chair. The sudden movement caused pain that sent him back into the beaten cushions, left him breathless again.

  “Yes, Ilya.” Yuri waited while the news sank in. “I wouldn’t have believed it, either, if I hadn’t seen it myself. Dima sold your notebook. When I confronted him he said it was a fake, that the one Clay stole was a fake, too, but that’s impossible. Isn’t it? I don’t know. All I know for certain is that Dima sold your notebook to Ilya.”

  “But—but then who’s watching Miri and Baba?”

  “Did you hear me? Kir has your notebooks.”

  “There are no answers in there,” Vanya said, his voice quiet now. Of course it hurt to lose the work, but it wasn’t what mattered. “If Ilya left Baba and Miri…where are they now, my sister and grandmother? Did he say?”

  Yuri hesitated. Vanya could tell he was struggling to find words. “We need to focus. Make new plans,” Yuri said finally. “We’ll run out of food soon. And we can’t just sit here. Waiting. I have an idea. You remember the rabbi, the one I told you about, the one who invited me to join his orchestra?” Vanya nodded. “He lives in Podil, or he did. A day’s ride from here. If you’re well enough to go that far, he might take us in. In exchange I can work in his clinic while you recover, if he still has one. Did Miri tell you that’s how I met him? He wanted me to work as a doctor, but he took me for the music. If he’ll still have me, I can earn money so we can eat and travel.”

  “Can you go back to him? After what you told me? What would you say?”

  “I have no idea what I’ll say, but it’s time. Isn’t it?” Yuri balled a fist into his opposite palm. “Ever since I heard that manager in the hotel in Riga say Brovary, since I knew we were headed here, I’ve thought about the rabbi. When I left, after the concert, I told him I’d be back. He must think I was murdered.” Yuri looked out the window. “Every day we’ve spent at this dacha, I’ve thought about finding him.”

  “Yuri, you can’t just start where you left off.”

  “I know.” He turned back to Vanya. “But I can’t stop thinking we’re here in Brovary, where so many paths cross at once, for a reason. You can’t travel yet. I’ll go and look for him on my own. And while I’m there, I can check on the trains. See if I can find a way for us to Peter.” Vanya wasn’t convinced it was a good idea, but he understood what is was to feel compelled, to have a path you must follow. And he knew Yuri was right, he couldn’t travel that far—not yet. Yuri continued, “I’ll leave food for you. And kindling. If I can work, I will, so I can bring back more food. Give me four days. If I’m not back by then, you should run.”

  “What about Miri and my grandmother? Didn’t Ilya say anything?”

  “Nothing,” Yuri said but Vanya knew from the look on Yuri’s face it was a lie.

  XIV

  Miri
left the room before Sasha woke. She tiptoed around him and went downstairs to see patients. At noon, Miri went to the front desk to look for Sasha at his new post, but he wasn’t there. A nurse was filling in for him, explained that Sasha wasn’t feeling well. Had Miri missed an infection? She went to the men’s ward but he wasn’t there in a cot. Nor was he in the kitchen. “I haven’t seen him,” Cook said. She was bent over a pot. “Not a good apology, was it? Does he usually run when he’s mad?” Miri’s face dropped. It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d run. Cook laughed, “Not leave, I just mean walk around.” Miri thanked her and turned to go, but Cook called after her. “I like that you’re wearing your braid down today. It suits you.”

  All afternoon, as Miri listened to wheezing chests and examined swollen limbs, registered fevers and rashes, she wondered about Sasha. “Have you seen him?” she asked Anya near the end of the day.

  “He said he had a personal matter.” Anya smiled. “Child, don’t look so worried. Cook said you had a disagreement, but that man loves you as much as any man can love a woman. We can all see that.” Miri tried to protest, but Anya folded Miri’s stethoscope for her and tucked it into her pocket. “Go and rest. You can eat with your husband when he returns.”

  Miri made her way up the staircase. He loves you as much as any man can love a woman. When Miri opened the door to their room, he was there, untying his shoes. “You’re back,” she said. She put her hand on his forehead, his cheek, examining him as if he were ill, as if that would explain his absence. He was warm. He smelled different. Was that a growing bruise on his chin? “Where have you been?”

  He took her hand. “Did you think I’d left?”

  “No.”

  “I can see you did. I wouldn’t.” He held her hand tighter. “I went to look for Vanya. I went back to that public house you found. And I fought, earned some kopecks.”

  “Sasha, no! I don’t want you fighting. And what about your shoulder?”

  “It was nothing. All the good men are gone. Part of the bet was I fought with only one arm against another man with only one arm.”