12
Rachel Paskar
35 Sixth Street
San Francisco, California
January 8, 1906
Dear Rachel,
I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to be here, in the country of my ancestors. I have not yet recovered from my surprise that I am in Russia. It is somewhat terrifying to see a dream come true. All my life I had my face turned to the country of my birth, but it seemed unapproachable. I am filled with happiness.
I am traveling in a train that goes to St. Petersburg and I catch every Russian word spoken with excitement. The sound of the Russian language in Russia! Finally, I am able to hear it! When I look out the train window, I see the winter landscape and can’t take my eyes off the magnificent birch trees, white as snow, soaring into the big sky.
For me, this is the only place in the world right now! You can find everything here: melodrama and tragedy, heaven and hell, despair and hope. And you, Rachel, are hope. For all the people looking for better days ahead, a revolution will mark a new beginning. I carry your story with me like a good luck charm and am confident it will give others optimism and courage.
I will write again soon.
With fond wishes,
Anna
With the money she’d earned from several recent articles in the Jewish weekly, Emanu-El, and with Nucia’s blessing, Rachel scurried along Fillmore Street to Marks Brothers Ladies’ Wear. Anna’s support had given Rachel the confidence she needed to approach the editors of Emanu-El with more of her stories. Now, Rachel had just enough money for a new skirt, shirtwaist, and corset. I will finally dress like an American! Impatiently, she tapped her feet while a horse and carriage drove past. As soon as it ambled by, Rachel dashed across the street and into the store.
Her eyes swept the area, taking in the fashionable winter dresses and coats. She made her way to the skirt section and began shopping. She pulled out a biscuit-colored skirt. It was feather-soft, and she loved the light shade that was so different from the oppressive black and brown she usually wore.
“That color will go with everything.”
Rachel spun around. A ginger-haired saleslady in a frilly blouse and a navy skirt, eyed her with approval.
“Are you looking for a blouse to go with it?”
Rachel nodded. “And a corset.”
“Very good.” The woman stood back and brought her finger to her chin. She appraised Rachel from head to toe and rummaged through the skirt section. “This is more your size.” She held up an identical skirt to the one Rachel liked, in a smaller size.
From the side, Rachel saw that the woman’s skirt puffed out from her back. With her blouse, full at the front, and her bulging rear, she looked like a pigeon. This was the Gibson Girl look, named after a Life magazine illustrator who drew in a new, idealized style showing women with daringly tight corsets and hourglass figures. Anna had embodied the Gibson Girl look, and Rachel longed to emulate this popular, new fashion.
“Follow me,” said the saleslady. She wound her way around the racks of clothes, coming to fancy blouses, much like the one she wore.
“I was thinking of something more simple,” said Rachel. “Not quite as fussy.”
“A shirtwaist, then.” The woman led Rachel to the next aisle and chose a crisp white shirtwaist with a high collar and long sleeves. She handed it to Rachel and went to find a corset so that she could try everything on together.
“Warners is a good, basic corset to start with,” said the saleslady. “Here we are.” She brought out a skin-colored corset that wrapped around the torso with buttons on the front. “This will give you a lovely figure.” She ushered Rachel into a curtained fitting room.
Alone, Rachel took a deep breath before putting on the new clothes. She buttoned the corset from bottom to top. It squeezed her insides and lifted her bosom. Next, came the skirt that billowed around her ankles. Finally, the shirtwaist, which she buttoned up and tied at the waist. The sleeves were tight around her forearms and then became loose and airy to her shoulders. Rachel twirled around in front of the looking glass, grinning as the skirt fluttered gracefully.
I feel like a brand-new person!
Rachel emerged from the fitting room in her new clothes. “I’ll take everything,” she said to the saleslady. “And I’d like to wear it home.”
“Fine. That will be seven dollars. You can pay the cashier. This way, please.”
“Wait!” Rachel’s face grew red. “I thought it was three dollars and fifty cents for all of it. That’s the sale price.”
“I’m afraid the sale is over,” said the lady with an unblinking gaze at Rachel.
“But…the banner is still up, announcing the sale.”
“Mr. Marks forgot to take it down.”
Rachel’s eyes fell. “It’s not fair,” she said.
“You’re right. It’s not fair,” said the man who had helped Rachel choose Marty’s new clothes. He stood beside the saleslady. “Miss Lubin, charge this young lady no more than three dollars and fifty cents.” He bowed slightly toward Rachel and sauntered off.
“I can’t argue with the owner,” said Miss Lubin. “I guess you’ll be going home in your new clothes after all.”
⚓ ⚓ ⚓
Rachel handed her nickel to the man in the booth and stepped aside with Marty to let Jacob and Nucia pay. Tonight would be their first time attending the nickelodeon theater, located in an abandoned shop on McAllister Street. Rachel’s cheeks flushed with excitement as she waved to the Blooms and other families from the neighborhood. She wore her new skirt and shirtwaist and hoped everybody would notice how smart she looked. The corset was not very comfortable, but Rachel tried to ignore its stiffness. Marty drifted near his friend, Dan, who had come with his parents. It was as if everyone living south of Market Street had decided to spend their Saturday night at the Davis Theater.
The one-story theater was actually quite small, with about a hundred ordinary wood chairs and red walls. Signs with black writing read: NO SMOKING and HATS OFF. Rachel led the way to the only four empty seats she could find together in the ninth row. A piano was angled on the right-hand side of the stage. The seats filled and voices bubbled over with excitement. Rachel gazed at the blank square screen hanging over the stage, afraid to look away in case she missed anything.
A gentleman wearing a dark coat with tails sat at the piano and began playing a fast ragtime piece. As the theater darkened, a white light shone on the stage. A humming sound came from the projector on the upper level at the back of the theater. The title appeared, a bit shaky, white letters on black: “Johnny’s Run.” A flash of light and then Johnny, a boy about twelve years old with short hair appeared in a black-and-white moving image. There was no sound from the screen, only from the on-stage piano.
Standing in front of the window of a candy store, Johnny licked his lips and watched the plump shopkeeper arrange a display of Hershey milk chocolate bars. A hunched over old woman entered the candy store and motioned with her hand for the shopkeeper’s help. Johnny looked right into the camera and moved his eyebrows up and down. The audience laughed. He tiptoed into the store and grabbed a chocolate bar. He ran out of the door and stuffed the chocolate bar into his coat pocket. The shopkeeper pivoted around and saw the empty space where a chocolate bar should have been, as the door banged shut.
Johnny, sprinting down the street, looked over his shoulder and saw the shopkeeper racing after him. Johnny looked into the camera again, his mouth open. He ran into a lamppost and stumbled in circles, his hand on his head. The audience roared. As the chase began, the pianist played faster. This pursuit of Johnny continued for twenty-five minutes, with Johnny outrunning everybody, including a police officer, who couldn’t get his horse to move. Finally, when he’d outrun all his pursuers, he reached into his coat pocket to discover a hole. The chocolate bar was gone! The camera swit
ched to the policeman, climbing down from his carriage. His eyes found the chocolate bar on the ground. He looked left, then right. He picked it up, shrugged, removed the wrapper and ate it.
Rachel, along with the rest of the audience, laughed at this unexpected outcome. The lights came on, signaling the end of the picture.
“That was great! I want to come next week,” said Marty, before they were even out of the theater.
“It was better than I expected,” said Jacob, “but we can’t afford to come every week.”
“It will be more of a treat if we only come once in a while,” added Nucia.
Marty considered her words for a moment. “I don’t mind if it’s not a treat.”
Rachel chuckled. “Unfortunately, you don’t have a choice. I would like to see a picture every week also, but that would be expensive.”
“When I grow up, I’m going to make pictures so that I can see them whenever I want,” said Marty.
“Then I will live near you so that I can come over and see them,” said Rachel.
Concern darkened Marty’s eyes. “Won’t you live with me forever, Rachel?”
Rachel took his hand. “I will live with you as long as I can, but I have a feeling that one day you will want a home of your own.”
“Never,” said Marty. “I’ll never leave you.”
Rachel squeezed his hand. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t want to make a promise she couldn’t keep, and she couldn’t lie to him.
13
February 10, 1906
Rachel Paskar
35 Sixth Street
San Francisco, California
Dear Rachel,
I am writing this as I travel the bumpy, icy roads of Russia aboard a horse-driven sledge, so pardon the messy writing.
Though you prepared me well for what I might see in small villages, I have been taken aback by their hopeless poverty. In one village, I saw young girls in oversized coats, holding babies that didn’t have the strength to cry. There were men in patched sheepskin coats in front of houses where the roofs were made of hay. A policeman, in his white uniform, sat arrogantly on his horse, as if he didn’t see the suffering all around him.
After being here less than one week, I witnessed an atrocity I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. A police officer killed a student for refusing to sing “God Save the Tsar!” I will never forget the image of the student being shot on the spot. He was alive one moment and dead the next. This student was no criminal. He did nothing wrong. I feel as if I am in a land governed by savages.
We traveled next to the village of Tsarevschina, where the peasants had elected a leader and were establishing a local parliament. In the evening, a bell rang and everyone gathered to speak freely about their problems. As they assembled, Cossacks arrived and burned the village to the ground. Near Tambov, a special execution squad of Cossacks killed one of the peasant leaders along with six of his men. Like the executed student, the only crime committed by these men was that they lived in a country that is ruled by a beast.
We are on our way to Moscow now, and I will write you when I arrive. I wonder whether things are any better there. Whatever else I witness, I know I will be forever changed by this trip.
With fond wishes, Anna
P.S. Father discovered I’m in Russia and is fit to be tied! I know that if you visited him and Mother, it would help take their minds off me.
The bitter cold leached through his bones. Sergei had forgotten what it felt like to be warm. And alone. In the twenty by twenty foot kamera, which might have been built to hold fifteen people, one hundred men were imprisoned. Still, loneliness prevailed. The hard, stone floor of the cell had no pillows or blankets. One wooden tub, for excrement, stood against the back wall. A constant, foul stench hung heavily in the air.
Sergei had been in Taganka Prison, Moscow’s forwarding prison for political criminals, for a week. The man lying at Sergei’s feet groaned. Blood oozed from his nose, and his skin was mottled red and purple. Sergei cringed, pressed his back against the wall, and drew up his knees. The chains around his feet, rattled as he moved. All the prisoners wore coarse gray trousers, shirts, and foot wrappers of homespun linen, visorless caps, and kati, low-fitting felt boots that didn’t fit properly. Sewn between the shoulders on the backs of their overcoats, were yellow diamond-shaped patches identifying them as exiles.
“You’ll want to keep your distance,” said a bespectacled man in his thirties, sitting beside Sergei. He gestured to the groaning man on the floor. “He has scurvy.”
Sergei looked askance at the man. “How can you tell?”
“It’s been jumping around like lice. I’ve been here six months and have seen a dozen men—good men—drop dead from scurvy.”
“Six months? You’ve been here that long?”
“Since October. I expect I’ll be here until March, when they start sending exiles to Siberia.”
“What are you in for?”
The prisoner grunted. “Speaking. Against the government.” He clenched and unclenched his fists. “They say I’m a threat, but all I am is a husband from Kiev with a wife and three children to feed.”
“Didn’t you defend yourself at your trial?”
“What trial? The interior minister exiled me without one.”
“I didn’t commit a crime either,” said a boy who looked no older than fifteen. His voice hadn’t even deepened yet, and his face was as smooth as a child’s. “They mixed up my name, Andrei Gusev, with someone named Andrei Gurov. I’m being exiled for another man’s crime.”
“They can’t do that,” said Sergei.
“They can do whatever they want,” said the other prisoner. “And don’t cause trouble or you’ll be sent to the mines to do hard labor.”
“What did you do?” Andrei asked Sergei.
Sergei hesitated before answering. Nobody knew his actual identity, or that he had been involved in von Pleheve’s murder. If the authorities found out about his role in the murder of the Minister, he’d be hanged rather than exiled.
“I was one of the revolutionaries in the Moscow uprising,” said Sergei.
“You’ll be here until March, too,” said his fellow prisoner.
“But that’s three months from now! I can’t live in this cold and filth for three more months.”
“You think this is bad?” snorted an elderly, bald man leaning on the wall opposite Sergei. “I’ve been exiled twice before. Just wait until we begin our journey. You’ll look back at this place and call it a palace.”
⚓ ⚓ ⚓
“Stroisa! Form ranks,” ordered the officer as the prisoners marched to the convict train that would take them on the first stage of their exile journey—to Perm, seven hundred and eighteen miles east of Moscow. At an average speed of forty miles an hour, it meant about eighteen hours on this train with other political exiles and hardened criminals, distinguished by their half-shaven heads, who were sentenced to labor in the Kara mines.
Sergei had been sentenced to five years in exile in Siberia, without a trial. The exact destination was Chita at the far eastern side of Siberia, about thirty-eight hundred miles from Moscow. He lifted one leg, with difficulty, and then the other. After weeks of sitting in a damp, cold cell, his limbs were weak and moved awkwardly, especially with ten-pound leg fetters attached. The clanging sound of hundreds of iron chains, the sound of doom, sent a tremor of dread down Sergei’s spine.
The fresh outside air stung his skin as he walked. He inhaled deeply and tried to rid himself of the stench of urine and excrement that had assaulted his nostrils since the day he’d been arrested. As they arrived at Kurskii Station, Sergei caught a glimpse of the Okhrana headquarters that Viktor had bombed. Viktor. The memory of him hanging limp in Sergei’s arms made his heart ache.
Sergei hoisted himself up and into the train,
and understood immediately why the old man in his cell had warned him of worsening conditions. There were no seats or windows. Brutish-looking criminals were packed alongside frail political prisoners. Men were crammed into the car, filling every inch of space.
Sergei stood, jammed beside a political prisoner whose skin sagged from his bones. Sergei pressed his arms against his body to avoid crushing this man, who looked as if he’d break if touched. By the time the train departed Moscow, the air had become so thick with dirt and body odor, Sergei had trouble getting his breath.
The train rumbled and jolted as it moved east, taking Sergei farther from home and civilized society. He scratched his itchy, lice-infested head until it started to bleed. Men began to drop like flies. The train stopped in a village on the Volga River to refuel. Trees were cut and logs fed to the engine.
Sergei and the prisoners still able to stand were led out in a line. Officers flogged them with clubs if they moved too slowly. Seeing so many identical gray prison uniforms, Sergei realized they were all as common and replaceable as dirt.
A child’s high-pitched voice startled Sergei. He saw women and children getting off two cars down.
“Are these children and wives being exiled as well?” he asked.
“Some women are exiled, but more come voluntarily to be with their husbands,” answered a sharp-featured exile in his early thirties with a red birthmark on his left cheek. He spoke with an air of authority, as if nothing would surprise him. “This is my second time as an exile on the way to Siberia and there are always more women and children than men.”
Sergei couldn’t stop himself from gazing at the women’s mournful faces. Why would they give up their lives to be with their husbands in such desperate conditions? All exiles had to forfeit their property, and their wives were allowed to remarry as if their husbands were dead.
Rachel's Hope Page 11