Daniel Yarosh

THE DEATH OF HERCULES

A DocuNovel

REUNION

The opposite of good is not evil. The opposite of good is chaos.

Evil is an organizing force that arranges before it the good scattered about the world. But in chaos even good turns on itself. The time of chaos is usually briefer and more brutal than when either good or evil is ascendant, and a coherent story is not often found in the confusion. But chaos almost always ends in change. Our story is about a just such a time: the winter of 1918, after World War I had ended. To many the formal world had collapsed, and to others all things were possible.

French Premier and Minister of War Georges Clemenceau had just been in Lille, on the road from Paris to Calais in the heartland of Flanders, in October 1918. At La Citadelle, the old pentagon-shaped army outpost hovering over the central city, he had enthusiastically congratulated the exhausted troops who had only recently recaptured the city. In this great fortress build by the Marquis Vauban, across from the Roman arch guarding the road to Paris, those who were neither gassed nor shot gathered to hear the man they called The Tiger. They limply stood about or sat on the ground, numb from a scale of killing and destruction for which they had not been prepared by stories from their fathers. Their dark gray woolen uniforms, with muddy ankle wraps, added little color to the damp stone walls. More than people and things were destroyed, but also expectations. Yet the job was not finished, The Tiger had told them. He exhorted them to push for a final victory for France. They roused themselves to roar a cheer as best they could and looked to the mess for a warm meal. Later, below in the vieille ville, in the central square of Place Rihour, Clemenceau greeted an ecstatic crowd of civilians recently liberated from four years of German occupation.

One month later still, on November 11, 1918, the Armistice ending the Great War was signed in the nearby forest of Compiègne. Lille was in revelry. The victory unleashed a nervous celebration which continued for weeks. The town drew soldiers from all the Allied armies to its beer halls and bistros that flanked the textile mills and lace finishing shops in the working district.

Max Shertok was the first of the brothers to rendezvous at the Roman Arch across from The Citadel, at 4 pm on the second Sunday after declaration of the Armistice, as the three Shertok brothers had agreed. He had completed repairing the last few motorcycles and personnel carriers for shipment back to the States before taking a two-day leave to meet his siblings. As a mechanic in the Big Red One of the US Army, the End of the War meant fixing at a much more leisurely pace the blown pistons and seized engines that found their way back to his shop. As long as he had the officers’ transports set for the week, they wouldn’t miss him for a few days.

He stuck his big hands deep into the pockets of his woolen overcoat, hunched his shoulders to bring the upturned collar against his ears, and leaned against the marble arch, watching the occasional cars and military trucks go by. Although not tall, he was wiry and strong, with a red-haired complexion and light blue piercing eyes. A mechanic during the Great War was not so far removed from a Civil War blacksmith. If a gear broke, he might be able to replace it from spare parts or from another machine. But if an axel broke, he reworked and welded the original parts with little more than shaped iron-bar tools, an anvil and a good fire. He already had the tough and cold-eyed logic of an engineer, having finished three years of apprenticeship and a year of World War by then.

Finally, a mud-caked American artillery transport slowed, then stopped along the road, and the canvas backdrop lifted enough for Saul Shertok to hop out. He waved to his comrades as they drove off and then turned his dour smile on his younger brother Max. He had closely cropped reddish-blond hair and the same light blue eyes and lean frame as Max. The boys embraced and patted each other on the back, part in joy of family reunion and part in wonderment that they had both survived unscathed. In truth Saul had been in much greater danger. He had been a student in the University of Minnesota agriculture department before he enlisted, and the closest the Army could make use of his talents was in the 102nd field artillery, herding an army mule that pulled a 75-mm gun along the front in the Meuse District. He would say later that it was hard to tell who the greater enemy was, the Germans that shelled Verdun or the damned mule that would not move.

“Where’s Jules?” Saul said to Max, as he reached into his coat for a cigarette. He offered one to Max, and they both inhaled the cold November air with their smoke.

“I wrote him the same as you. He’ll be here,” Max answered.

“They treat you like a mensch in that grease pit?” Saul asked Max, part kidding and mostly protective of his younger brother. He flicked an ash in disgust. The Big Red One had a reputation for treating Jews badly, and new immigrants even worse. They wouldn’t give Max any slack if he couldn’t keep up with their demands.

“I do OK,” Max nodded. “Mostly the stuff is too busted for fixing, so we take them for scrap and parts. You should see what drek they bring in! I tell them they should bury it.” Max looked up. “And you, you still shlepping that donkey around?” He immediately regretted saying it, since it came out too insulting when he only meant to tease. Saul was sensitive about wasting his talents, especially in the artillery, but he covered it with bravado.

“I’m tired of looking at both ends of that filthy beast – last week on the road from Albert I had to light a fire under his tail to get him out of a mudhole! God never made a stupider creature!” Saul never mentioned in conversation or his letters about the shelling, the unbearable shock and pounding that drove other men to hospital, the risk of being a sitting target for the enemy artillery. He only cursed the mule.

They stubbed out the butts in the damp earth and wrapped their coats tighter against the wind. Finally, around the corner came a roar, a sputter, and Julius Shertok zoomed up to the Roman arch riding an officer’s single-stroke motorcycle. “Max! Saul!” he cried and waved as he cut the engine and kicked down the stand.

The two young soldiers ran up to embrace their older brother. Jules had darker brown hair, handsome features and a muscular body that elicited major attention and minor fear. The brothers hugged and nearly cried now, because it wasn’t complete until they were all together. Max finally pulled away first and circled the bike. “Where did you get this?” he asked, wiping his right eye which teared, maybe from the wind.

“I got a captain some chocolates… and silk.” Julius said with a wink. “He was getting a car to Paris and didn’t need this… on his Frenchie holiday!” He leered at Max and slapped Saul on the shoulder. Julius was a supply sergeant with Blackjack Pershing’s main supply headquarters. He had some business training and a gift for numbers, and at the same time he knew human frailties. He managed to squeeze out every efficiency and turn it into a gift. Sometimes it was for his benefit and he never hesitated. But mostly he gave away what was free, scattering good will around the camp for just that case in which he needed a motorcycle and not many questions.

“Come on – get on!” he waved over his shoulder. “We’ll go down and see what the Krauts like about this town!” Max and Saul climbed on behind Julius. He started the engine and gunned it. The front wheel wobbled as it slowly turned, and the springs strained under the weight of three soldiers. But the bike finally began rolling forward and picked up speed as they headed downhill.

The beer halls, bistros and brothels of central Lille had been kept busy during the War years by carousing German officers who used the old textile town for leave because the Allies wouldn’t bomb it. Now that the French had regained the city, the vices were the same, but the sinners felt less guilty about it. The Shertok brothers careened down the narrow streets, recklessly rounded the corners while their noisy bike startled the Sunday afternoon strollers. On their way they turned down rue Princesse, and passed the modest house at number 9, owned by a patriotic and devoutly Catholic family. There, 28 years earlier almost to the day, Charles de Gaulle had been born. No house in Lille was happier that day when the Shertok brothers passed by, crowded onto the groaning motorcycle, because a cable had arrived from the French High Command of General Pètain reporting that Charles, who had been captured by the Germans during the carnage at the Battle of Verdun, was alive.

They finally reached the most crowded section, with soldiers and civilians lining the streets, and for no particular reason Julius pulled the bike up in front of Cafe Maroilles and killed the engine. Then with a shrug to his brothers he climbed down, and Max and Saul followed. As they entered, a few French infantrymen, leaning against the cafe wall with beers in their hands, muttered the usual insults tossed between rival squads even in victory. Neither Saul nor Julius showed any concern. Max, who already had a working vocabulary of French and German to go along with his Yiddish, Russian and English, shot back a look of proud defiance that fit only the face of a cocky 23-year-old in uniform, and looked silly anywhere else.

They took a table by the corner, intentionally away from the other patrons, and ordered the house cheese Maroilles and beer from the stout matron of the bar. The cafe was dark and musty in the late afternoon light, and the rays of sun created spotlights through the broken wooden shutter slats. Those light beams fell on many faces covered by white cotton face masks strapped over their mouths and noses, which they briefly lifted to sip beer and puff on cigarettes. A virulent epidemic of influenza had peaked in October and was rampant among those still weakened by war.

Between 1918 and 1919, influenza threatened the entire world population. The illness had a rapid onset, but most had only a brief illness. However, one-fifth fell into pneumonia. A mild wave of the disease struck in the US in the Spring of 1918, and this was followed by a second wave starting in Africa and Russia in the Fall. By the time the brothers met in Lille the epidemic in Europe was severe. Half a world away in India, influenza killed 5 million, 2% of the population. Now no one was safe from this scourge piled onto the slaughter in the trenches. Just among American soldiers in Europe, 70,000 became ill and one-third of those died. Around the world that winter of 1918, more than 20 million perished from the virus.

Before their beers could arrive, two young working girls in flimsy silk dresses sauntered to their table. They did not wear masks, but one wore a mask strapped over each breast. She smiled back as the brothers smirked at her display of resistance. “American soldiers?” the first one asked in accented English.

Julius was quick, “Yes, indeed, honey.” He winked.

Saul waved them away. “Not now. Maybe later.”

Max followed, “Yeah, maybe later.”

The matron arrived and gave the girls a disappointed stare as she put the beers and cheese on the old, deep grained and scratched wood table.

“So, when do you ship home?” Julius asked Max and Saul over the top of his beer stein.

Max shrugged. “They said some were going home right away but there was a chance that a few of us would be with the General Staff when they took Berlin. Boy, I’d like to see the day when Old Blackjack has those Prussian bastards kiss his horse’s…”

“You’re not going with Blackjack,” Julius pounded the table and shook his head. “You’re going home with us.” He turned to Saul. “And you?”

“They don’t tell us nothing. That damn mule knows more than me and he’ll probably go first.” Max and Julius smiled at Saul and they all drank from their beers.

**********

What Julius didn’t say was that he was anxious to get home and get on with their life plan. Beginning six years earlier, Julius, Saul and Max were each in turn packed up by their father Shneer-Solomon Shertok, and against the wishes of their mother Ethel, sent off to America.

Shneer-Solomon lived with his family in Kherson and ran a coal business along the Dnieper River. Kherson was on the Black Sea coast at the mouth of the river, just east of the bigger city Nikolayev and the much larger city of Odessa. The cities of Kherson and Nikolayev in Southern Ukraine were founded by Prince Grigory Potemkin in 1789, and for more than 100 years the region was a major Imperial Russian Navy headquarters. When the Nikolayev port was opened to commerce in the 1860s, it quickly became the third largest port in Russia, after St. Petersburg and Odessa, and commerce flourished. By decree of the Tsar, Jews were allowed to live only on the west side of the river, and they flocked to Kherson on the west bank to provide support for the shipping and trading that sprang up. Shneer-Solomon bought a barge built in the Nikolayev shipyards, and shipped coal mined from the nearby Donets Coal Basin and wheat from the Ukrainian prairie upstream to local merchants at stops all along the Dnieper River. He even speculated in wheat futures. He built his business to 12 boats, including 2 tugboats to maneuver the larger barges into his riverside dock and coal yard.

Shneer-Solomon was a firm, fair-minded father given to bouts of anxiety and agitation. He had bright red hair and beard and striking light blue eyes. He dressed formally but viewed himself as progressive and often argued with the rabbi on politics and morals. His wife Ethel was an attractive woman with honey brown hair kept tied up in a traditional Jewish tichel. She had a reputation as wise and good natured, which helped to keep Shneer-Solomon on an even keel. She was a traditional mother but treated each child according to his or her personality. Despite her husband’s business success, she kept a cow and sold the milk for discretionary money, which she distributed in jars for each child. She taught her two oldest daughters, Clara and Manya, how to set a beautiful table with candles for Friday night Shabbos. As young boys, Shneer-Solomon’s sons helped him secure the canvas covers to the barges, load the provisions, and push off the boats into the Dnieper River. They loved the brackish water, the smell of salt in the sea air, and the way their father ordered around the rough seamen and burly dock workers. Shneer-Solomon prospered along with the Jews of Kherson, who comprised about one-third of the population at the turn of the 20th century.

Shneer-Solomon conveyed confidence, even with a bit of a swagger, belying his inner worries. He contributed to the synagogue and especially to the establishment of a technical gymnasium, a training school which was a progressive concept not well received by many of the traditional Jewish leaders. After starting up, the school was funded by a meat tax that local Jews paid the Russian Empire to keep the schools open. His three sons, Julius, Saul and Max, each received a free and high-quality practical education in mechanics, accounting, geography, Russian and German.

But the climate in Russia for Jews was fast deteriorating with the reactionary Tsar Nicholas on the throne. In retribution for peasant revolts against taxes and military conscription, the Imperial Russian Army incited pogroms in Nikolayev and the surrounding towns in 1899, and many city Jews were murdered. When pogroms came again in October 1905, the Jews of Kherson were better organized and offered some resistance, but for many the rioting army soldiers destroyed everything they owned. After years of business with Russian and Ukrainian traders up and down the Dnieper River, Shneer-Solomon saw contracts lapse, former friends turn their backs on him, and dark winds of anti-Semitism from the north chill his prospects. Jews were lumped together with Anarchists and Bolsheviks, despite Shneer-Solomon’s clear business interests. At long last he lost hope that his sons could hold on to what he had built in Kherson. He felt exposed, because as a Jew he wasn’t even allowed to own the land for his coal yard. Between the unrelenting demand for rent increases and the falling demand for coal and wheat as Imperial Russia crumbled, he saw the future as bleak. Even then the Communist agitators made him fear that the change which might overthrow the Tsar and Jew-haters would be worse for the “bourgeois” like himself.

After he married away his two oldest daughters, Clara and Manya, when they each reached 16, Shneer-Solomon made a plan. He had three sons remaining and he was convinced that owning and working land was the only guarantee of security. He had Julius train in bookkeeping and Saul was directed to learn farming and animal husbandry at the gymnasium. Max studied engineering and tool making as an apprentice to a ship building friend. Together they would buy a farm in America. Saul would oversee the planting and the animals, Max would maintain the machinery needed in modern farming, and Julius, the oldest, would watch the money. Shneer-Solomon had no hope that the goyim, the non-Jewish world, would help his sons one bit. But he thought that if they all worked in the same place, together, their fates would be linked in owing the land, and they would have a much better chance in America than selling coal and wheat in Ukraine.

In this dream Shneer-Solomon was not like those who stayed or even the many more who did emigrate. Those who stayed could not overturn their lives and could not think of leaving their homes. Those who came to America had to tear out of themselves the pride of the hearth and the unconditional love of home. They had to say that although my love of my country has been rejected, another will love me still. Shneer-Solomon overturned his life, cut off his seed from his land, and stayed. He wanted for his sons what he could not give to himself. What his sons could not know was what he couldn’t give up. With an emotion he did not admit to anyone, and that he could not explain to himself, Shneer-Solomon would not leave Kherson. He said he was old, and he could not change. Was he more afraid to leave or lose his sons? Ethel cried and cried. “How can you send our sons away?” she wailed. “They’re not married. We’ll never stand under a chupah with them, and never see our grandchildren. How can you do this to our family?”

With a blind faith in his progressive ideals, he did. He made contact with a cousin of a friend, a landsman, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The day in January 1912 that Julius left they cried with their Mother, hugged her and kissed her while she trembled with tears. The brothers vowed to each other “When we’re settled in America, we’ll bring Mama and Pa out too.” This wistful promise made them all feel better, and they turned their sights West. Julius emigrated on a merchant marine ship leaving Odessa for Portsmouth, England. From there he took a line ship from Liverpool to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and arrived in Minneapolis. He took a room on Emerson Avenue on the North Side.

Saul followed in January 1914 and moved in with his brother in a new boarding house on 17th Avenue South, in the Elliot Park section. When the Grand Duke of Austria was assassinated in June 1914, Russia attacked to defend the Serbs. By August Imperial Russian Army forces were driving westward into Hungary. Shneer-Solomon realized the danger of global war and feared that his remaining son would be conscripted now that he had turned 18. By October 1914 Max left for Minnesota with a stack of currency in his coat that his father had saved for their farm.

Minneapolis was perfect for the plan. There was lots of work in the grain mills, apprenticeships in tool shops, an agricultural university, and especially a chance to buy good farmland on the Great Plains. For the brothers, leaving before a war was a blessing, and going to America that vowed neutrality looked like a great adventure.

The Twin Cities had been a destination for Jewish immigration for forty years. The first German immigrants came to St. Paul, the northern-most stop on the steamboat line, and settled in Lowertown in what was then a frontier village. They brought capital and set up successful stores and trading businesses. In the 1880s the railroad came to Minneapolis, and with it came Eastern European Jews, many refugees from the pogroms. They were much poorer than the resident German Jews, spoke Yiddish not German, and received the back-handed charity and condescension from the established community with resentment.

The three brothers moved in together in a larger room on 16th Avenue South. In the beginning of 1915 Julius and Saul enrolled in the University of Minnesota, while Max took an arranged apprenticeship in a tool and dye factory that contracted with the giant grain mills. The neighborhood was quickly filling up with Romanian Jews, a traditionalist clan with a particular and ancient dislike for their eastern neighbors in the Ukraine. The brothers attended the local Romanian synagogue, but without a father in their house they had no standing to meet the eligible girls of the congregation. They were viewed suspiciously by the neighbors as a brotherhood of agitators, maybe Zionists or Bolsheviks.

With little to distract them, they each concentrated on their missions, but the shock of a new culture and the isolation from the community wore on them. Julius, the oldest, was most acutely aware of what he had lost. He dreamed of the secure days of grammar school, helping his father on the docks and skipping down familiar streets. Now he studied accounting in a giant university with elbows out competition for grades. Saul was enthralled with the new technology in farming and the advanced understanding of crop management. Yields were growing, and less manpower was needed for a solvent enterprise. While this meant many farmers sons left the land, it also meant a small family could use modern techniques and survive. But he was realistic. There were almost no Jewish farmers in Minnesota. They faced discrimination from lending banks, the selling landowners, and the dairy cooperatives. But here was something he could do that was impossible in Kherson, and he was determined to try. Max, the youngest, was too young for nostalgia and was caught up in the excitement of the American dream. New mechanical inventions were revolutionizing communication, daily chores and weekly entertainment. He was the lowest rung at the factory, but he was learning how raw steel became industry and commerce.

Shneer-Solomon had been right about Kherson and the War, but things got worse much faster than anyone expected. The news in America of course was filtered through red-baiting hysterical newspaper publishers and posturing politicians, but it seemed bad. The Tsar had been challenged; weak leaders had taken over. They were stalking horses for the Bolsheviks. This was madness, a country as large and as powerful as Russia in the hands of radicals, of fools, of vicious opportunists. Jews converted to atheists were the worst anti-Semites. There had been no letters from Pa in over a year. It was just like that house in their neighborhood on 16th Avenue, where Max once stood outside and heard the screaming, the cursing and howling, the blows that broke bones, but no one went in or came out. The three brothers felt haunted by the helplessness.

They soon found a way to act. The country moved away from neutrality and America needed an Army. In April 1917 Congress authorized the expedited naturalization of foreign-born men who enlisted in the U.S. military. This now was a fit with The Plan: they would enlist and gain citizenship to help them buy the farm. By late 1917 they were all three inducted into service.

**********

The brothers all set down their beers, and deeply inhaled the relaxed grace of a Sunday afternoon in the Cafe Maroilles. Then Max looked up at Julius and Saul with a dead earnest that surprised them.

“How are we going to get Pa and Mama out?” he said.

Julius was shocked. “What?”

“Now?” Saul was sarcastic. He signaled for another round of beer from the barmaid to stall for time to get this gay reunion back on track.

“Listen, my little brother,” Julius said in that patronizing tone he inherited from Shneer-Solomon, which was meant to sound like reason but was well understood to be the final rule. “This is the worst time. Nobody knows what’s what at home, and we’re haven’t even got our papers yet.” This much was very true. To entice young immigrant men to join the Army, the US government had offered naturalization to all aliens who enlisted, served their time, and were honorably discharged. The boys intended to take up Uncle Sam on that offer. To consider any deviation from honorable discharge would jeopardize this fast-track to citizenship and derail all their plans.

“Anyway, we’re still Russian subjects,” he continued. “We’d be shot in a second as traitors.”

This was no idle threat. German soldiers had been reported wearing the uniform of the Red Army, and White Army mercenaries, fighting for the West, had landed at Archangel. All in all, Julius had a point. They drank in silence, the frustration and fear chilling the mood.

“When things calm down, we’ll send money for Mama and Pa, and they’ll come with us,” Julius said soothingly, but it did not soothe. They had all seen too much of the hate and upheaval to believe in calm.

“We’ve got to do it now,” Max said in a low voice, and looked over to Saul.

Saul scowled, and Max knew that he agreed. Saul was direct and stern. It was not like him to wait for things to get to be better, and he never believed in the perfect scene. He was a realist, even a pessimist, and he thought Europe was in freefall. Damn them all.

Julius read Saul’s face too. He raised his beer glass and his voice. “You want to go there? How? Behind the lines with your mule?” He laughed, and a small, embarrassed grin passed across Saul’s lips.

“Jules,” Saul’s eyes bore in on Julius. “We’ve got to do it now. Mama and Pa may not make it. It’s only getting worse. They’ll take the barges, and maybe even the coal yard. Maybe worse.” He paused to contemplate the worst. He continued, “And we agreed. You swore too. We said we would get them out. Do you want them with us?” A vein pulsed in Saul’s forehead, and his throat tightened.

A long silence passed over the table. They stared at their hands as if an answer might be written spontaneously, and then they looked at each other to gauge their courage. It was a moment that Julius knew would come someday, but he never thought it would be so soon. Was it today, or was this foolish bluffing? How could he tell?

“We can’t all go,” Julius finally said. “Someone has to get back to hold our rooms.” This still sounded like a no, but it was so weak all knew it meant yes.

“Oy…”

Julius hung his head, calculating all that had to be recalculated. “I’ll go. Saul, you have to start University right when you get back. And Max, that apprenticeship with Himmelfarb won’t wait with all the boys back in town. I’ll go, I’ll pay somebody, I’ll get them.” He waived his hand and slapped the table. The barmaid looked over, and Julius ordered a round of genièvre, the local juniper berry liqueur that he had discovered was the equal of schnapps.

“With all due respect, my dear and learned brother” Saul began in his derisive tone. “You’d be the first one to get shot. You’re going to give money to the Bolsheviks? You might as well send a telegram when your train arrives in Kherson.” Saul was suspicious of such a romantic notion as buying one’s way out of trouble. “I’ll go. The secret is to pretend you never left. I can get in and out and they’ll never notice a couple of Yiddish gone.”

“No, Saul, let me tell you…,” Julius again took the cloak of condescension, but Saul’s determination was mirrored in his eyes, and Julius stopped. He changed his tone. “Listen, I know a girl in the office of decommission. I could us discharged here in France, without going home.”

The barmaid brought the three drinks, each genièvre with a juniper twig in the glass to soak up the bitter tannins. Max grabbed the twigs. “We’ll do it this way.” He measured the three twigs and trimmed them to the same size with his thumbnail. Then he set two aside, grasped the third between his hands and snapped it cleanly in half. He pitched one half onto the floor, gathered up the two full-length twigs, and rubbed them between the palms of his hands.

“We’ll draw lots,” he said.

And with that he clenched the twigs in his fist and pushed out three tips.

“We all can’t go, and we all have to go back. No one can decide who should save Mama and Pa… but God.” He thrust his fist into the middle of the table. This notion of religious epiphany did not take in any of them, but there was some comfort in dressing up chance with the mantle of a deity before deciding their fates.

“Don’t be silly,” Julius swatted at Max’s hand, and accidentally knocked out a twig – a long one fell to the table center. Saul looked at Julius with an air of defiance, and quickly and cleanly plucked one of the two remaining twigs from Max’s fist. He had clearly intended to take the shorter one and show his older brother that things didn’t always go his way. He cast it down on the table, next to Julius’ twig, where they all could plainly see – they were the same size.

Their eyes slowly lifted from the table to meet Max. He reluctantly unwrapped his fist and the short twig dropped to the table. His lower lip quivered as the three brothers rose to their feet to embrace. For a moment they smelled each other tears, and then were embarrassed by the sight. Max reached down for his drink and lifted it above his head. “L’chaim!” he barked, and they downed the drinks.

FIRST SIGHT

Max took a few days to gather his meager civilian belongings and stuff them into a small light brown suitcase he found discarded near the officers’ quarters. Meanwhile Julius persuaded his friend, using perfume, eggs and several extra rations of meat, to expedite Max’s discharge while in France. It still would take some time for the formal paperwork to go through, so for the immediate future Max was technically AWOL. However, in the logistic scramble to return 750,000 soldiers to the U.S. no one was going to miss a mechanic from the motor pool. Finally, after making excuses to his work crew on Wednesday morning November 27, 1918 Max was ready to leave. He planned to travel just south of the ruined city of Berlin, then head straight through Poland to Krakow, find a way across the border in Western Ukraine, then on to Kherson. He might find an exit through Nikolayev or Odessa on a boat to New York. All the brothers agreed at the café that this was the best route, they pooled their cash, and Max set off on an early morning train. He was wearing a peasant cap with a short brim over his cropped red hair, a collarless white shirt under his grey wool coat, and heavy grey linen workman’s pants over his spit polished black Army boots. He carried in his suitcase a few clean clothes for a trip whose length was undetermined.

Of course, it was a glorious gesture befitting the times to send a 23-year-old across four decimated empires to rescue two elderly Jews. The only bravado that could launch this trip was the same one that started the war. A false pride in the nobility of effort. This was mixed with the legend of the pluck and resilience needed to be successful in America. Could it work in the old world too? Even their eldest brother, Julius, had no real idea of what lay between Lille and Kherson.

All during the war killing, a second murderer was alight in the land – the grippe in France, the Spanish flu everywhere but Spain, and the blitz catarrh in Germany. This disease was mysterious during a time just after Koch laid down the rules for proving that a disease was caused by an infectious agent. Influenza was widely accepted as contagious disease only after a particularly bad epidemic in 1889. There were no drugs to defend against this disease. By 1918 some thought that microbes, smaller than bacteria and which could pass through filters, caused influenza, but unfortunately these experiments used crude reagents and equipment, and were neither reproducible nor convincing. Dr. Robert Donaldson, of the St. George’s Hospital Medical School in London wrote at the time: “There is not the slightest shred of evidence that the disease is due to a so-called filter-passing virus”.[1] It was not until 1931 that Dr. Richard Shope of the Rockefeller University in New York showed that influenza was passed from humans to ferrets, and then back to humans, and finally isolated one strain of the virus.

It was typically gray, and the weight of the world pushed the clouds low. The eastbound train from Lille was not crowded; few dared to cross the new boarder and into the demolished Germany on that day. A mixture of raggedy merchants, unarmed men with tattered military uniforms, and old women with very young children stood on the platform. Max was one of the first on the train and he took a seat next to the window. Some boarded with heavy shoulders and baggy eyes. This was the trip they thought they would never have to take – back to Germany in defeat and lost opportunity. Some took the train with a different weary look: the drops of sweat on the forehead and upper lip, in the middle of a chilly winter. Max stared at them without embarrassment, to ensure that no one sat next to him. A few walked down the train aisle with handkerchiefs clutched to their noses, and heavy suitcases in their other hands.

Max’s cracked browning leather seat squeaked as the train rumbled, gathering speed slowly as it reached the edge of town. He heard a few dry and haggard coughs among the passengers as the train lurched through its gears. The aging engine passed over eastbound tracks untended during the war, finally reached a comfortable compromise between moving forward and coming apart, and the rhythm of the wheels took over Max’s soul. It was only then that a wave of helplessness fell down on him.

Doubts suffocated him like the low-hanging gas cloud that crawled over trenches and drove young soldiers to their knees wheezing. What was he doing? His sisters had been married off as soon as they turned 16. Now the brothers were gone from their family home for years. Maybe his mother had not survived the heartbreak, the loss, and the war. Max would be crippled with grief; maybe it was best not to know. He was on his own in America but was still too young to do without his Mamma. Shneer-Solomon was still a prime man and would no doubt have remarried. Would his father be forced to choose between his sons and his new wife? Max could not bear to have to choose between leaving and staying, between Kherson and America, again. He considered now that returning to Kherson may be like pissing on a campfire. He had to get out. Maybe now, before it got worse.

His countervailing vanity was his image of himself as the returning savior. He imagined surprising his Mamma and Pa in a glorious embrace. He would offer salvation. They would cast aside their life, their belongings, their lifelong friends, and flee with him to the train station. Would they? Could he get them home? Once his father was on the mission, no doubt he would take over. The fact that everything in Europe had changed would not stop him from assuming control in a world without rules. What would happen when Shneer-Solomon directed the escape?

How had Max come to ride this train? It was nothing the three brothers had said. They all understood that Mamma and Pa had to leave. Not to try would be a sin, a failing that they could never forgive themselves. Whether Shneer-Solomon and Ethel wanted it, their sons must offer them the new world, America. The brothers could not sleep without it. Now it was Max’s duty to transduce guilt, duty and obligation into the world of chaos, starvation and isolation. He never felt less able to do a job, not after a hundred piston-clogged, twisted-steel, bloody transports had been dragged into the motor pit.

Four rows up, across the aisle, he spotted someone who didn’t fit. Max could only see the fantastic flowing eruption of red hair that had come undone from her bun. A thin neck with pearl white complexion supported the light curls, and her skin was as translucent as shaved ice. He stared in a dream. After a moment, she suddenly turned around, with an anxious look and a dainty silk scarf held to her mouth and nose. Their eyes met for an instant, and Max lost a breath. Then she looked down the aisle, behind Max. The scarf fell from her face and a smile banished the concern from her brow. Her blue eyes glowed. Her face lit like a Chinese lamp, and dimples pinched her cheeks. Max had never before seen a young woman’s smile reveal her heart.

Before he could turn around, a tall, large man strode down the aisle with a commanding gate. He wore a long, fine black wool overcoat, and a black fedora hat. His bushy black beard with streaks of gray was perfectly matched to his winter wear. Shiny boots made authoritative footfalls as he approached the red-headed beauty. He slid onto the seat beside her, and she pecked him on the left cheek, shooting a short glance directly at Max, he was sure. The man wore a yarmulke, just barely visible under the hat.

Max was sickened. Why was everything so wrong? Despite the victory of the new Americans, these people still cling to the old order, the dominance of customs and ancient traditions in the face of modern changes. What had this man done to deserve her attention? He and his generation had destroyed everything they had and took the next generation down with them. This is what he and his brothers had fled to America to escape.

But after a pause Max knew that he wasn’t really angry at the man. No, he didn’t like him, but he could not stop looking at the woman. She had a rosy glow that seemed to be fueled by her flaming hair. She had soft, round eyes that could never lie. Max was used to thinking that such girls were easy, since red hair was considered a sign of a shikseh (un-Jewish) among Jews of Eastern Europe, and their fathers found them particularly hard to marry off. He was thinking that the older fellow was taking advantage of her, flattering her, but out to do her no good. He could see that she was sincere, and vulnerable, and he instantly wanted to take care of her.

After an hour of Max’s furtive glances, nervous fidgeting, and lack of concentration, the red-haired woman leaned over, turned her head full to Max, and whispered in her companion’s ear. A pit formed in Max’s stomach and his legs turned to lead. In a moment, the man turned to the woman with a pinched brow, and then turned to stare at Max. Now Max was in panic. Can thoughts bring us to ruin? Most probably. The man rose, turned into the aisle, and walk back. At Max’s row he stopped, turned to the calcified soldier, and said in French “I beg your pardon, may I sit here?”

With great composure, Max nodded yes, and turned his head to the window, as if he was resuming a serious observation. The man gave a short laugh at him.

“My name is Zalmund Hofitz,” he said in French. “I am from Koszuty, near Poznan in Poland.”

No response from Max. Zalmund took in his youth, freshly cleaned peasant shirt, that he didn’t respond in French, and that he boarded the train in the military stronghold of Lille.

“Have you been out of the service long?” he continued in English.

At this Max turned to look at Zalmund but did not yet reply. He could not understand why Zalmund switched from French to English, or how Zalmund knew he was from the military. His fundamental belief that he could pass through Europe and into the Ukraine, blending into the scenery, and quickly retrieving his parents, was shattered before the train reached the first stop on the first day.

“Just a few days,” he said. He tried to be casually secretive. But there was something about Zalmund’s flashing dark eyes over a mature beard that made Max feel that his whole soul was known at that moment. In a strange way it was comforting to Max to have someone to lift the loneliness. Then he remembered the red-headed girl.

“I am headed east myself, for a long way,” Zalmund said, leaving open the obvious question: Why is an American serviceman also headed east?

“Going back home?” Max asked, relieved that the discussion was not turning to some offense he may have committed by staring at his woman.

“Not quite, but nearby,” Zalmund said. It was a coy remark that put the conversation back on edge. There was a silence. “I had some business near here.”

“Doesn’t seem like a good time for business,” Max replied. It was his turn to interrogate.

Zalmund laughed. “It is possible at any time that you can have good business!” Another pause, and Zalmund realized that he would have to continue. “I brought something from home to sell. The times are very hard for my family now.” And quickly, “And your family? Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Just brothers,” Max lied. His sisters would lead to a discussion and then to Kherson. As if to keep the conversation away from them, he continued. “Julius and Saul.”

“When did you last see them?”

Max laughed at the thought, “Just three days ago.”

“They are in the service?”

“Yes, … yes,” Max nodded his head. He wanted to get out of this questioning, but he did not know how. Zalmund noted his discomfort. Why?

“So, I suppose you are all anxious to get home to America,” Zalmund added.

“Yes, … yes,” Max nodded.

“But you are not going there. You are headed East?” Zalmund asked quietly in Russian. He used the same tone of voice that a rabbi uses when guiding a student through a difficult Talmudic passage. They both knew there was some answer at the end.

“I too have some unfinished business,” Max said, replying in Russian.

“I thought this was not a good time for business?” Zalmund chuckled.

In fact, it was a good time for nefarious business in Western Europe. The German and Austro-Hungarian empires had been defeated. British and French troops were on their way to occupy them. Talk of collecting war reparations from the defeated nations had been circulating in the victorious capitals for months leading up to the Armistice. Those with portable assets in the conquered territories were well advised to smuggle them out before the Allies took them, and they had only a few weeks to do it.

Max and Zalmund eyed each other. “I am not a businessman. I am just a messenger,” Max said quietly. He thought this might better fit his circumstance and close down further questions. Zalmund thought this was another deception, but perhaps opened an opportunity.

Before he could continue, Max asked him “Where can you do business right after a War?”

“Oh, that is just it, my friend. Right after a War a victor is decided. The situation becomes clearer to many people. They are more willing to do what has to be done.” Zalmund narrowed his eyes to look at Max and detect whether he had struck a chord. “You are going to Krakow?”

Max tried to contain his astonishment. How could he know this? What had he said? Zalmund reasoned that a Cossack-like red head was not heading to the defeated Germany. Northern Poland, including Warsaw and Kyiv, was under attack by the Bolsheviks. But Krakow was a rich Polish city in love with the Germans. They had in fact sided with Germany against the Bolsheviks but was still out of the Russian Army’s reach. They would be charged for reparations by either the West or the Russians, so it was a city without a ruler and hemorrhaging wealth.

“I am just a poor messenger,” Max replied, and twisted his cap in his hands. Zalmund could see he had made Max uncomfortable but was still no closer to the truth. He sat back and stared forward in the train.

After a moment he said, “It is a beautiful city. Many Jews live in a very old district there.” He glanced sideways to see if this provoked any reaction. It was not unexpected that Zalmund with a yarmulke would remark on the Jews of Krakow, but Zalmund was looking to see if Max shared this knowledge. Max did not react.

“Is that where you are going?” Max asked him to change the direction of the conversation.

“We will change trains there,” Zalmund said indifferently, and stretched out his legs. Max sensed that asking more about his destination would not be fruitful. He was hiding something about his business interests. This Zalmund Hofitz represented all the anti-Semitic stereotypes of an old-fashioned Jew pursuing money and oblivious to the world events overtaking him. This was the Old World he was too familiar with in Kherson and was happy to leave for America.

They sat for a few minutes in silence, and then Zalmund turned to him, narrowed his twinkling eyes and said, “There is someone I’d like you to meet.” Max froze, but with a smooth motion Zalmund rose. Max had no choice. As Zalmund stepped into the aisle, Max followed.

Deena put down her needlepoint at the sound of Zalmund’s approaching shoes. She turned with her most charming smile to greet him and his new companion.

“Deena,” Zalmund said, “I’d like you to meet Saul and Julius’ brother…” A pause. Max had been intending to keep his name out of it, but now he was trapped. Her radiant skin and captivating smile melted his last defense.

“Max, Max Shertok”, he said.

“Pleased to meet you, Max Shertok,” she said as she raised her hand to him and covered her nose and mouth with her handkerchief. “I am Deena Wójcik . Please, Max”, she said, gesturing to the seat. “Sit down here with me and the Rabbi.” She could see the shock in his face. No, Zalmund had not told him at first. But he must have known Max was Jewish if he brought him back to their seats. Max was thin but somehow powerful. His red hair was closely cropped in the military style, and he held a worker’s cap. He was just losing the boyhood freckles to the tanned look of a man who spent some time outdoors. She searched his blue eyes. He was beautiful. She checked his forehead and lip for signs of fever. None. She put down the handkerchief.

“Max here says he is going to Krakow,” Zalmund said. Max began to interrupt with “Not so much…” but Zalmund continued, “I thought he could sit with us and we could pass the time together. It’s a long trip.”

“Have you been to Krakow before, Max?” Deena asked and their eyes met. He floated above his body. Now was not the time to argue.

“Not before, no.” Max said. He just wanted to keep talking to her. “I really do not know much about the place.” All truthful, but still a lie. Yet it kept the conversation going with Deena. He took in her face, her figure in the dark dress, and her handiwork on her lap.

“That a beautiful needlepoint,” he praised her.

“I do it to pass the time. Do you know about needlepoint?” she teased him.

Again, Max had to say “No, but I admire its beautiful quality.” He looked directly at her, not embarrassed by his lack of knowledge about any of the topics of the conversation.

Zalmund quickly interjected, “Max is visiting family in Krakow.” Now Max was in a bind. He could deny it, but that would require an alternative that he was not prepared to launch. So, he agreed.

“Family business,” he said. Hoping to end the inquiry he looked at Deena. “Did you enjoy France?”

“Yes, very much,” Zalmund said. “But we were there only for a short time. Family business.” Max could not tell if he was mocking him. Zalmund smiled a warm smile. They were agreeing to lie to each other.

KÖLN

The train stopped at the small French towns of Tournai, Ath, Mons, and Charleroi, all bustling with activity. After it passed through Namur the train slowed as it turned northeast to follow Meuse River valley. Farther south along the river had been the worst of the fighting for the American Expeditionary Forces, and where Saul had dragged his mule-drawn artillery through muck filled roads near the Forest of Argonne. They stopped at Huy, where the locomotive spewed steam and grunted with impatience at the delay. At Liege they stopped for an hour for formal examination of credentials as they prepared to cross the border. In Aix-le-Chapelle, the former capital of Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire, the local Germans pulled their window drapes closed to the French train. The engine purred and hummed while porters loaded and unloaded baggage and crates.

Germany in late November 1918 was in a catatonic state. Since the abdication of the Kaiser on November 8, the steel frame of the State continued to work while the patina of the Emperor blew away like a flag from its coffin. The State had last been challenged seventy years before in the Revolution of 1848 by an alliance of liberal shopkeepers and radical workers. The noblemen, military and industrialists had broken that uprising and built a commercial nation of great wealth draped in nationalism and demanding international respect. The cries of the impoverished were suffocated in discharges of factory steam. But now the country’s honor war had exhausted the populace, emptied their purses and antagonized their neighbors. The crushed revolutionaries breathed new life. Paralyzing fear of what was to come after the nation’s surrender followed the deadly influenza through the city streets.

Deena slept easily on the train in the late afternoon after they departed Namur, her head tucked beneath Zalmund’s shoulder, blowing long and low measured breaths. This was the most peace she had found in many weeks. Her conscience was exhausted from the moral complications of standing by Zalmund in the intense struggle for survival. When this all started early in the year, she thought she had her bearings, but that was many choices ago. Now she decided what to do at each turn without reaching back to values from her mother. What she had been taught about her worth, her place in the world, had been upended by Zalmund. She was more than a pre-wife and future mother, she thought. She could act and change the world. Then why, she wondered just before falling asleep, did she feel like she was running from something, and not toward something?

With Deena’s head on his shoulder, Zalmund felt most alive; he was a perfect balance of action and comfort. Deena of course felt his power. She saw how he mastered each situation, understood its dangers, and safely escorted her to greater dreams. He felt this justification for his conduct, this need to protect and project into the future. For others, the collapse of all that was natural was confusing, and discomforting. For Zalmund, this was the moment of creation. Each person was reduced to what he was and what he could do. Zalmund understood this better than most and was adept at finding something that each wanted. On first glance this might seem like manipulation, and he concerned himself with this accusation. In the end, however, he satisfied himself that each person he met was satisfied that Zalmund had done them well. He never intended to do wrong, but to follow his commitment to heal the world. He was convinced that God paid little attention to the larger scope of the relations between societies and nations. The proof was all around him.

After leaving Aix-le-Chappelle they reached Duren. French soldiers boarded the train, tromping heavily down the isles in the dark, waking sleeping riders who eyed them motionlessly with some suspicion. It was not clear whether they rode the train or policed it. With relief neither Max nor Zalmund saw them detain anyone.

The soldiers woke Deena. She sighed at Zalmund, with a smile and sad eyes, as she lifted her head from his chest. She rose by bracing her arms on the rest and paused as she gained her balance. Her movements were slow and constrained, as if she were in a cocoon. She trod carefully as if she were in a cage of glass. The composed woman was a delight; red hair slightly tossed, a radiant smile and half-closed eyes. Her neck and collar bones set off by her pale skin, dress slightly askew. Zalmund wanted to follow her, hold her, clutch her through the aisle. Instead, he smiled and turned away. When she returned, she covered herself in his coat, snuggling against his ribs. He felt her warmth and was again alive.

Deena tried to rest but her mind brooded. What was next? Was she really free to decide for herself what to do with her life? She believed it and tried to act that way. Zalmund certainly talked that way and helped her with her choices. But she had the nagging doubt that she was really doing it. She didn’t feel liberated from oppression when all her belonging were in a suitcase and her goal was to get to the end of her train ticket. Just as she was settling into a place, they left. She understood that the times were extraordinary, but when would it end? She glanced over at Max. He seemed to her to have a purpose, a mission, that she envied, even if she didn’t know what it was. He seemed such a force that she could not look away.

Zalmund also noticed that Max slept soundly, his head leaning against his collar pinned to the frozen window. Suddenly he awoke and adjusted himself with straining eyes and outstretched arms. He settled back, studying Zalmund and Deena. The green in his eyes was unmistakable, Zalmund thought.

“You seem comfortable on this short ride”, Zalmund joked with him.

“I have been on many rides that lasted longer and went shorter”, Max replied with a friendly smirk. He was uncomfortable and unsure, Zalmund surmised. His quick wit was his defense.

“Will you sleep so well in the East?” Zalmund asked.

“I usually sleep well. Nothing bothers me.”

“You are a lucky man.”

“An honest man,” Max said. Zalmund saw Max glanced intentionally on Deena’s right hand, which was covering his own left wrist. No ring decorated its graceful length.

“Honest men have fallen on many fields. You surely have another secret to you,” Zalmund said.

Max turned his head to the window. He was nearly beyond his depth, Zalmund sensed. Then Max turned to him. “Rabbi, where is your congregation?”

Zalmund was surprised, but he took the question in stride. “I am from Koszuty, near Poznan, in the north.” He smiled.

“But you don’t have a pulpit? You have s’micha (ordination)?” Max asked?

“Yes, yes. I went to a small yeshiva in Pinsk. But now, you know, the war has changed everything. There are not so many Yiddish shtetls, they have been destroyed. I do what I can to ‘help heal the world’ as our forefathers said. I try to be useful.”

“So, you do business?” Max asked directly.

Zalmund was put off-balance. “My father has business that I help him with. My family.” He paused for a moment, and then whispered in a low and compassionate voice, “What did you do at the front?”

“I am a machinist. I fixed motor trucks.”

“Not so terrible.” Zalmund was disappointed with the revelation, since he had hoped there was something special or interesting here. But he had not meant to demean his service. Max narrowed his eyes, with an accusing stare. He again turned away.

“I mean, you helped and didn’t kill anyone,” Zalmund said to comfort him.

“They don’t like to give guns to Jews,” Max spoke to the window. He had let slip more information and he winced.

Zalmund stopped. This was both a surprise and a loud echo from home. It was a surprise because in the towns Zalmund knew, America was the answer to everything. So many, and the families of many, had left. Each wrote back that America was beautiful. Each had their chance, each could be rich, each was free. It was a dream that Zalmund wondered, why cannot we have that here? Because the country is poisoned from centuries of a burden that is now spoiled with mildew. A new, fresh start is needed, and this must be in America. He had suspected that the descriptions were a fantasy, but no one wanted to think this. America was proof that a better life was possible, maybe with the abdication of the Kaiser, the overthrow of the Tsar, the destruction of all that was laden with the blanket of the past. The first breath of freedom might bring an America to our home. Now he heard what he didn’t want to hear, that the poison traveled with the soiled blankets in the steerage to the new land. It did not harden his heart. Zalmund felt more certain that he understood the world.

Max turned from the window and said to him, “I am not afraid.” Zalmund nodded. “And I am not a fool,” Max continued. “My parents are in the East. My brothers and I decided, we have to get them out. I am going to bring my folks to America.”

He spoke with such sincerity that Zalmund was taken by emotion. But his lips pursed in control. How could he know of what he spoke? He was too young to know the possibilities, the situations that changed every day. Zalmund paused.

“Let me tell you my friend Max, everything is not all right in the East now that Germany is finished.” Zalmund narrowed his eyes. “You thought winning the War in the West was hard work? Many died? At least you knew who the enemy was. They were right in front of you in the trench. In the East? They are standing right next to you. They are across the table at dinner. They are in uniform and peasant clothes. You don’t know.”

“Zalmund,” Deena whispered. She didn’t like this lecturing tone. But Zalmund plowed on.

“So in the East, you have the dead Tsar, but he still has his White Army. Even without him you have the Polish noblemen and their Cossacks, and Ukrainian Nationalists and their Cossacks. They all have the help of your victorious western countries. Against them you have the Bolsheviks and their Red Army? Not just them, but the Socialists, who want a gentler revolution. They both oppose the Republicans, who want everyone to vote. And against anyone are the Anarchists, who want only local people without a government. Everyone has an army. And in the middle of all of this you have the Jews.”

“I understand,” Max said softly. “I am not interested in politics. I am going to get my parents. That’s all.”

Zalmund sighed and pursed his lips. “God bless you, Max. Ha-shem says in his fifth commandment that we should honor our parents. I pray that he protects you while you complete your mitzvah.”

Finally, the train pulled into the station at Köln. It was evening and dark, but the platform was filled with workmen and stacked wooden shipping boxes. The city was anticipating with dejection and humiliation the arrival of British occupation forces in less than a week. Lord Mayor Konrad Adenauer took some comfort that order might be maintained by a professional military force, and not left to the warring factions.

Zalmund and Deena rose and collected their suitcases from the rack above their heads. “Why don’t you join us for dinner tonight, dear Max?” Zalmund said. “We will take a room near the station. Tomorrow is another long day.”

Max was tired and accepted the invitation. He did not want to leave Deena’s sight.

MOSCOW

On March 14, 1918 the unthinkable happened; the Russian Bolsheviks made peace with the Germans in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. It was no peace. These mortal enemies merely rearranged the destruction of the Continent. Within a month, Germany transferred one half-million men from Russia to the Western Front. It was cynicism mixed with clairvoyance. The Germans knew that in a short time the Bolsheviks would do more damage to Russia than the Germans could ever do. And they did.

Zalmund was a part of it. On a brisk Sunday in late April 1918, when the wind blew and more than leaves were in the air, when the Spring began to melt the snow from the streets of Lublin, Zalmund hurried past the shuttered shop windows down a narrow street of the old city. At the corner seven men jumped from the hay wagon onto the cobbled streets. The farmer tipped his hat to those he had taken from the train station and continued on. With their backs to the neo-Gothic castle that held the prison of Lublin, Zalmund and the raggedy group joined with hundreds more to form a crowd spilling out of the medieval square. They had come to the People’s Rally for Jobs, organized by Josef Kikulsky. Kikulsy was born in Vilnius, Lithuania and came to Poland in 1905 to organize the Revolution, but instead had spent 12 years in Polish prisons, most recently in the one behind them. Now, with the retreat of the Germans, the prisons had been opened and Kikulsky was free.

Josef Kikulsky strode to the top of a simple wooden platform, and the crowd crushed closer. He was stern and gaunt, with a receding hairline, forelock and a drooping goatee. His dark and narrow eyes were ablaze. As he began to speak, Zalmund forgot the cold wind that made his nose numb. Kikulsky began with the hardships of the people, and each in the crowd nodded. They knew hunger and cold, and were drawn in. He gave voice to their hopelessness and anxiety, and those crushed in the square shifted from side-to-side, and the heat rose among them. He spoke of the oppression, the unfairness, and Zalmund agreed. He, too, felt closed in, and condemned with no appeal, with nowhere to turn, his future a black pit of despair.

Kikulsky said “We have given our best men, our strength to Mother Poland, and we have no jobs, no bread to feed our babies!” Here and there, a tear formed, and a heart rose in the throat. Then he pointed his finger – the State, the authority, the police and the army. Now the enemy had a face. The venom of most Bolshevik speakers was exceptional, but that of Josef Kikulsky was in the extreme. Spittle flew from his lips onto the front row, that which didn’t dribble onto his goatee. He smote the air with his fist, condemning those who oppressed workers and imprisoned its champions. The tails of his woolen coat flapped with the wind, giving him a Biblical presence.

Zalmund was entranced. The gathering grew uneasy, and nervous electricity traveled from person to person. Kikulsky praised the courage of the Bolsheviks in taking Russia, and in their forethought in establishing the rule of the proletariat. He saw the same future for Poland. Restlessness rippled through the crowd. Zalmund smelled in the wind the musk of sweat in wool and horse dung. He was pushed from behind.

Prison had not taken the strength from Kikulsky. The veins bulged from his neck, and his raspy voice was heard throughout the square. Death to the oppressors, he roared, death to the imprisoned Tsar and all his vassals in Poland.

That was it. Police on horseback charged the square with drawn swords. The crowd collapsed in front of hooves, and Zalmund was knocked to the ground. He flung aside the gangly student who had fallen on his legs and pushed his way to the stage. The horses waded into the people, who were encircled and could not disperse. The police were frightened, and several struck with their swords. Blood spattered the face of a young woman, who only now realized that she was not made for revolution. In the next moment she was trampled. By then Zalmund reached the stage, and with perhaps twenty other husky men, they surrounded Kikulsky. In a turtle-shaped formation, they shuffled together toward the perimeter, pushing aside or kicking the remnants of the crowd. A mounted officer broke through at the point where Zalmund stood linked arm in arm with comrades. As the policeman drew up his sword, Zalmund wrapped his long coat around his forearm, just in time to take the brunt of the saber as it came down. Another flung his coat over the attacker’s head, an in a moment they had him off the horse. They stomped him until he no longer moved. When Zalmund looked up, Kikulsky was gone.

Later that afternoon, Zalmund crouched in an abandoned room off a side street from the square. Several others from the melee examined his forearm, which was bruised but not cut. In hushed tones they praised him, slapping his back. Their tones showed more relief than bravery. Zalmund himself took a deep breath. A few candles lighted the room, and men sat or squatted against the plaster walls. The straw on the floor was dank, and the smell was mixed with the smoke of rough Russian cigarettes inhaled by a few. Two men stood watch, peering through a crack in the single window covered by planks. Suddenly they stiffened, and with great silent animation signaled the two men standing by the single door barred with a thick timber. The two grasped the ends and lifted the timber from the iron clasps and opened the door.

The light at the door was blinding, and in from the void strode Josef Kikulsky, still wearing the blue woolen coat from his platform speech. He said a few words in Russian to the sentries at the window, and then squinted to see exactly who was there. As his eyes adjusted, he found the twenty or so who had guided him from the square when the police charged. This Josef was reserved, even charming. He went from man to man, asking each his name in Polish, using a hushed tone and looking directly into his eyes. He called them all Comrades. He didn’t ask where they came from or why there were there. But he shook the hand of each of them or patted his back or squeezed his arm. Soon they were his.

After he chatted with the lookouts, he turned to address them.

“Children of the Revolution, you have come here for a reason. You know that as well as me. We are going forward. This was one more stop on the road to freedom.” He turned to take in the room, to make sure everyone was listening. “I have received a message from Comrade Dzerzhinsky,” he bellowed, seemingly without fear. Felix Dzerzhinsky was the head of Cheka, the Bolshevik Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Sabotage and Criminal Offenses by Officials. The Russian initials for “extraordinary commission” formed Cheka. It was the most feared committee of the Revolution, a law unto itself. The silence deepened, and their ears perked. “Just this afternoon, a messenger found me here. A letter,” and he held it aloft. “An appointment. A summons. Comrade Dzerzhinsky has asked me to join his defense of the Revolution.”

The lookouts were delighted, and the men by the door congratulated each other. “Back to Moscow!”

“Shhh”, Kikulsky said, with his finger against his lips. “I will need more help. The Director has asked me to bring loyal Comrades. No one was more loyal than those of you today.” He looked around the room. The men, including Zalmund, were sheepish but not modest. “We need men such as you in the Revolution. Come with me to Moscow and join in making our future with Comrade Lenin. Be with me in our Cheka.”

A stone silence gripped the room. Each man considered the precipice on which he stood. Then a cheer broke out. “To Lenin! To the Revolution!” They crowded around Kikulsky to pat him, and touch history. Zalmund felt the warm charm of Kikulsky, and the cold terror of Cheka. To be invited into the belly of the beast. Each felt that he had been called to this place and time. No thought or calculation was necessary.

It was not at all unusual to recruit members of Cheka from outside Russia, especially among the Poles, who despised Russians. The job of Cheka was to ferret out counter-revolutionaries, identify traitors and annihilate them. Russian men would weasel, bribe and connive to deny their guilt; Russian women would wail and beg that their sons be spared. Then Cheka must do its duty.

Their departure was planned for the next day. A calm fell over Zalmund. A purpose had taken up the reigns of his uneasiness and had bridled his anxiety. A mania gripped his thoughts. What he could do in Moscow, to witness, and maybe to do himself, to change history.

He looked different when he returned late at night to the room he and Deena had taken in the home of a tailor, above the shop. His aching arm was held in a makeshift sling. At first, Deena was afraid.

“What happened to you! Are you hurt?” she whispered as she rushed to the door.

“No, no, nothing like that. You should have seen it! They rushed us with horses!” he spoke in a gallop.

“The Police?”

“Of course, and their goons!”

She unwrapped his sleeve and examined the torn shirt and the bruise growing on his forearm. She looked up at him, and he pulled his arm away. His eyes had depth, and a glow. “What happened to you?” she repeated.

“I am going to Moscow. I want you to come with me.”

“Moscow?” She paused. Her mind raced. Moscow. The Capital City. What excitement that idea held. She imagined her little apartment, off the trendy street with coffee houses and artists. She caught herself. She was naturally cautious of happiness. “Moscow, why?”

“The Revolution is in Moscow” he said to her softly.

“Yes, of course.”

“Don’t you want to see it?”

“Moscow?”

“The Revolution!”

“What in the Revolution?”

“The history. The change in history,” he said.

“What will change for me?”

He paused. He looked away.

She stroked the back of his head. “When do we leave?” she said.

He embraced her. He looked over her shoulder at this hovel of a room, with an uneven floor and spaces between the wall slats where the wind blew in. Their clothes spilled from two suitcases laying opened next to the straw mattress on the bare wood floor. Lublin was not a destiny, but a stop on the way.

**********

In May of 1918 Lenin turned his full attention to putting into action the words of his revolution: the establishment of a Proletarian State. The problem was that there were precious few capitalists in Russia to attack, following the steep decline of the Russian nobility and their industries. But there was pain from the War, anger against the German Tsarina, and Lenin found a target. He directed Sovnarkom, the governing committee of the Revolution and the animation of his craze, to launch an assault on the “peasant bourgeoisie”. This meant Russians who owned the land they worked. Farmers, who fed the nation, became the enemies of the state. Zalmund and Deena came to Moscow to provide security for this unleashed fury.

Russia was intoxicated with self-excoriation. Food supplies withered following the army’s retreat from the Ukraine, and in May Lenin announced that no tactic was too terrible to punish the wealthy and take bread for the masses. Peasants and villagers stalked the manors and shops, slaughtering the “bourgeoisie” and confiscating bread, grain and farm animals. The War crippled food production and the Revolution executed the producers. Famine spread. Lenin demanded that workers redouble their efforts, but in the midst of crushing deprivation there was little to give. He threatened to escalate the violence, the retribution of the Masses. Zalmund was witnessing in Moscow the precipice on which the Bolsheviks stood.

Zalmund and Deena were given a little apartment on the west side of Moscow. Or rather, they had a room and shared the rest of the apartment with Polish comrades. Sharing was very important in the Revolution. Tad and Nadja, Miro and Myrna, Lenish and Petra, all were enthralled with the revolution and its possibilities, and with each other. They lived that Spring sprawled across each other’s lives, according to the ideals of the Revolution: no possessions in property or in love.

Tad, Miro and Lenish had been at Lublin with Zalmund; they had the idea to bring their girlfriends to Moscow for a summer of love and defiance of authority; or rather, conformity to the rejection of the status quo. By day the men were assigned by Sovnarkom to security details. They drove Bolshevik officials around Moscow to factories, rallies, appointments and rendezvouses with mistresses. By night they celebrated the revolution by drinking great quantities of vodka.

On a mild May night, they gathered in the great dressing hall of the Imperial stables outside the Kremlin and held a Revolutionary poetry reading. The early verse reading was led by Miroslav Grodnoviek, the Red Army political organizer. He was tall, and his uniform was new and well-tailored. It was a modern style, with a freshly pressed khaki shirt and bars on the collar stays. From the very start of the Revolution, shoulder straps were associated with the old regime, the Tsar, and the oppression of the people. The Red Army always wore its insignia of rank on the collars of their uniforms.

He leaped from his sprawl on the pillows scattered on the floor, seized a gilded statuette of a coachman set on an inlayed shelf in the wall, and dashed it at his feet. This was greeted with raised glasses and a round of bourgeois vodka seized from the stock of the Chief Stableman, who had only recently been stood up against the privacy wall outside the window of their Hall and executed by a five-member firing squad. Near the end of the reading, Miro and Myrna were lost to the Revolution, locked in a sloppy, drunken kiss while others at the back urged them on. Zalmund watched with droopy eyes, his arm draped deep over Deena’s shoulder. He squeezed her, maybe with a little hint of possession. Was he jealous that others might be looking at her? He kissed her ear, and she leaned into his chest.

In June, a British expeditionary force landed at the northern Russian port of Archangel. They formed the nucleus of the White Russian Army around which crystallized the remnants of the Imperial army officers, survivors of the Revolutionary rampages, and opportunists. Their arrival animated the prediction of Lenin, that Capitalism was not yet crushed.

**********

While Zalmund went to the Cheka headquarters at Lubyanka, Deena lived her fantasy at the coffee houses at Pushkinskaya Plaza. She sipped and listened to heated discussions, shouting and threats to kill the rich pigs of the Imperial Tsar. After a while, the empty talk and idle posing bored her. Then one day, as she dazed at her reflection in the tarnished samovar, an energetic woman in a plain white blouse, long black skirt with high boots and laces marched in, followed by a retinue of younger girls, hairs askew and shuffling to keep up. She sat down at a table and ordered a Turkish coffee like a man.

Her boldness disrupted the radical chic of the coffee house, but the denizens did not readily admit to being phased by the modern. She began giving directions to the girls sitting and standing around the table. She was planning something for the neighborhood, and she spoke in a commanding voice that grabbed the room. Deena was entranced.

“We’ll need you and two others,” she said to the plump woman with the frizzed hair in a bun sitting on her right. “You’ll start in this street and work these six blocks to the West.”

“Who can I take?” the frazzled assistant questioned.

She paused and looked around the room. Her flashing black eyes settled on Deena. “You there! Do you have time tomorrow for the Revolution?” And so, Deena joined the staff of Alexandra Kollontai, who had founded the Office of Women’s Welfare. She had been The People’s Commissar for Social Welfare, the only woman to hold Cabinet rank among the Bolsheviks. But she resigned in disgust at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and had continued outside the government to agitate for women’s rights.

Early the next day Deena met the other women at a makeshift soup kitchen, which was really a huge oil drum suspended over an open fire in a brick-lined pit that was dug in the dirt floor of a basement tenement. They cooked zhandre, a corn-meal porridge made without salt or sugar. “They like it much better when we have a little sugar,” one cook told Deena. But sugar was expensive and hard to find, and salt was three times more expensive. The Women’s Welfare brigade cooked all day, occasionally decanting to a smaller drum, which was then taken out to the street. The drum was refilled with water and cornmeal, and the simmering continued.

On her rounds through the district, Deena saw a thin boy in a tattered grey overshirt kneeling by a stoop and watching her closely. An even younger and dirtier girl, no more than five, stood behind his bent leg, one arm on his elbow and peering over his shoulder. She motioned them to her in the street, but they hesitated. She spooned a ladle into a wooden bowl, and they cautiously came to her. They sat down in the middle of the street, and with two spoons devoured the zhandre from the same bowl.

Deena asked their names and about their families; they were separated from their parents recently and lived with family who seemed not to want them. The parents’ whereabouts was unknown. Were they enemies of the State? Deena thought. Without them, their children could not claim ration cards and were a burden on the others in the family. Ration cards issued by the Bolsheviks were for about one-half pound of bread a day. The bread could be bartered for other staples, such as corn meal and vodka. Without ration cards, food had to be purchased at exorbitant prices on the black market. In this issuance of ration cards, the Bolsheviks routinely decided who would live and who would die.

Deena came home that night exhausted and elated with self-satisfaction. “You should have seen them; they were so grateful for that bowl we made for them.” She sat leaning forward before Zalmund with her hands clasped between her knees. “I felt for the first time on the front line of the Revolution!”

Zalmund was certainly surprised by this turn, and excited for Deena that she had left the self-indulgent prattle of the coffee houses for action on the streets. And, yes, a certain envy that she brought joy into hard lives. He escorted Cheka commanders, who by and large made tough lives harder.

He pulled on her hands and she sat in his lap. He stroked her hair and kissed her cheek. “My Deena,” he cooed in her ear. “You will heal the world.”

Alexandra Kollontai, however, had a political motive for feeding the poor. She was a committed Marxist and had spent time in the Tsar’s jails for her Revolutionary writing. She was not, however, sentimentally attached to the bucolic family notion, having abandoned her husband and two children to purse the revolutionary life. As a radical feminist, she saw the nuclear family as a bourgeoisie relic designed to enslave women in endless labor without compensation. Marriage, she held, was the legal enforcement of that domestic bondage. At the Women’s Welfare Office, she taught the values of free love, divorce and collective childcare.

“And who do you think you must serve?” Alexandra turned her head sharply to Deena, her black bangs flapping on her pale white forehead.

Deena was startled by the question but flattered by the attention. “I live with Zalmund. He also serves the Revolution, with the Cheka.” That silenced the room. The Cheka was feared even by Party members.

“You don’t wear a ring, I see. You did not marry him?” Alexandra continued.

“He did not ask.” Deena looked down.

“Would you say yes?” Alexandra asked.

“It wasn’t like that,” Deena’s voice trailed off. “We just ran away.” Again, the room was silent.

“Goooood for you!” Alexandra cooed, having just taught a lesson. “You live free and love as you wish. I like that. I hope all our sisters have that choice one day. We work, and we are paid our worth. We may choose to raise our children, or work in a factory. We find a man…” she looked around the room “…or someone we love… and that is enough.”

Deena was inspired that she was a model for Alexandra’s rant. She looked at her life a little differently now. Nothing had changed, but she seemed to be more in control. More modern. She came home to Zalmund in a glow. But somehow it was not something she could tell him, just yet.

“Alexandra asked if we were married,” Deena said to Zalmund after their spare dinner of bread and thin cabbage soup.

“She did? What did you say?” Zalmund was well aware that Alexandra had connections to the ruling Politburo, although he suspected that she had little influence outside the Women’s Welfare Office. Still, he saw every day that one word at the wrong time could put a man in a difficult spot.

“I told her I loved free,” and Deena giggled.

“You did?” Zalmund was astonished that Deena would speak so naughtily.

“She was pleased with me. She thinks you are a thoroughly modern man.” Deena lowered her head and smiled down at her lap. This did not sit altogether easily with him. On the one hand, it is always good to have the approval of a Revolutionary Council member. On the other hand, it sounded emasculating, as if the women had tamed and domesticated him.

“This wasn’t what your mother taught you,” he said. He meant it to be joking, but it came out as an accusation.

“I’m not much of what my mother wanted, you know,” she said softly but directly to him.

He rose and went to her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. “I know, I know, my putshka.” He gave her a hug and a soft kiss on the cheek. “There wasn’t much there for you, my love. You know they would not let you be happy, and not with me.”

She looked up at him, searching his eyes. Was she to be happy now? her eyes asked. She admired him, adored him, and had left her family, her people, her village to be with him. Now, the things she had learned had changed her. She could not go back, even if they would take her. “No,” she sighed. She leaned her head on his forearm and kissed his wrist. “We’ve done it, now.”

**********

In the summer of 1918 civil war swept the countryside. Peasants, who had toiled in the fields in the spring to plant wheat, now hid their harvested crop. The Bolshevik bureaucrats, with horn-rimmed glasses, goatees and clean fingernails, searched and seized their grain on behalf of the People and paid them in promissory notes that were worthless.

On a balmy day in late June, Zalmund drove such a political officer named Boris Zubadin on a long drive to Balashov, a major farming village in the Saratov region southeast of Moscow. Two cars followed with workers from the Prokhorov Cotton Mill and a Polish security detail, with Tad and Lenish at the wheels. The three of them, Tad, Lenish and Zalmund, had joked the night before in front of the women about their trip to the country. Miro was a bit jealous he was not assigned. While they drank, they talked of the trees near the Volga River that flowed in the countryside, and how it now all belonged to the people. The words were easy, the thoughts abstract, and the night disintegrated into friendship and lovemaking.

But now on the ride the cars were silent. Zalmund focused on the road and did not look at the trees or the rivers. He tried to engage Zubadin in conversation. What was his position in the party?, who did he see?, how did he rise to his position? Zubadin was aloof; he offered nothing and spoke very little.

After driving all night to just outside of the city, the delegation pulled up early in the morning to the town church, a copper domed hulk before a large courtyard. The Bolsheviks entered the Balashov central Orthodox church and soon marched the town priest down the front steps at gunpoint and into the yard. He was young, with a worn but freshly pressed black cloak, upon which he wore a wooden cross held by a wooden chain, all painted in a gold-tinged yellow. His long but thin beard blew over his shoulder in the cool morning breeze. Zalmund waited in the car while a small crowd who had seen their entrance now stood at the edge of the church, conspicuously eavesdropping. In neat rows behind them were forty new graves of children and young adults who had died in the Spring from influenza.

At first Zalmund was proud of driving a car into a village where horses were more common and bringing the Revolution to the heartland of Russia. But he knew his group was not expected or welcome, and that he was a doctor delivering the medicine they did not want to taste. He felt detached from the townspeople. There were no Jews in Balashov, and they were not allowed to own land in this part of Russia. In all likelihood the locals did not like Jews very much. He had a sense of justice tugging at his heart. Was this how the Cossacks felt when they looked down on a Jewish shtetl?

Zubadin demanded on the authority of Lenin and Aleksandr Tsiurupa of the Dictatorship of Food Supply the names of the kulaks with the three largest properties in the Balashov district, and where their properties lay. The priest, who assumed that Zubadin already had this information, complied. He spoke in conciliatory tones. His manner said that his Christianity would outlive the Revolution. He placated the Bolsheviks acting as the representative of the souls of the village. While Zubadin remained behind, Zalmund drove a crew of Poles to one of the kulaks, while the others covered the remaining Kulak homes.

The Dubetsky farmhouse was aging, with stress cracks flaring from the wood frames of the windows through the yellowed plaster walls. The thatched roof was frayed. Zalmund stopped the car in a cloud of dust before the front door, and the two men from his detail bolted from the back seat. The family was peeking from behind the curtains of the bedroom window. One of the Poles demanded that Ivan Dubetsky immediately accompany him to town to meet with the priest. After some commotion behind the curtains, Dubetsky sheepishly emerged from the house, trying to carry a bravado in his step.

“Stay inside”, he called back over his shoulder, “I’ll be right back”. He got in the car with only Zalmund; the other two unloaded a suitcase from the truck and stayed behind.

Dubetsky was agitated. “What are they doing back there?”

Zalmund replied, “They are acting as security for your home, comrade, until you return”, as he had been instructed, and he returned to town.

Back at the square, they all waited: the priest, Zubadin, Dubetsky, and Zalmund, until the others returned. Zubadin stood aside the priest and before the three kulaks, and the security detail behind them. Zalmund had an odd sense of anticipation and he wanted to stop time. He wished he was elsewhere, but he couldn’t look away. Was he responsible in some way? No, he was a witness to history; he just drove the car.

“Moscow needs grain. By the order of the Revolutionary Commissariat for Food Supply, you must give it to us. The Revolution will pay the price set by the Soviet authority. You must supply us with the grain reserves you have hidden,” Zubadin bellowed.

The kulaks were nervous, and they glanced at each other in fear, although Zubadin saw conspiracy. “We have no hidden grain. We have sold it all to the Commissariat,” one kulak replied.

In one firm motion Zubadin drew his pistol from his side, along the back of the priest and pointed the barrel up at the base of his skull. With a sharp crack, the priest’s scalp lifted from the top of his head and red bits flew out from beneath his curly black hair. His body crumpled beside Zubadin.

The small crowd that had gathered in groups on the edge of the yard gasped as one. The security detail raised their rifles with a warning motion. The faces of the kulaks turned stone white. Zalmund shifted from one foot to the other but was otherwise unengaged.

“I ask again in the name of the Russian people. Release your grain.”

Dubetsky stammered, “My dear comrade, is it? We are only poor farmers; we sell what we have to clothe our families. If I…”

He had no chance to finish. Zubadin raised the pistol and fired into his face. At that signal the security detail unleashed a volley and the three kulaks fell in the church courtyard, draining blood into the dry summer dirt.

Zubadin raised his eyes from the corpses to the townspeople around the square. “Trucks will be at this spot tomorrow. You will load them with one thousand kilos of wheat for the workers and your comrades who are fighting for you and the Revolution while you sleep warm in your beds. If there is no grain, the penalty then will be ten times what you see here today.”

Zubadin marched directly to the lead car without a word; the security detail walked backward with rifles drawn. Zalmund drove with a shaky hand and a steadfast gaze on the road ahead. His stomach heaved, but he could do no less than his comrades in will and determination.

The procession returned to each of the kulak’s homes in turn. As they approached Dubetsky’s farmhouse, the smoke rising to the sky was visible from half a kilometer away. They did not reach the front door. The security detail met the cars near the wagons on the road leading to the house. Zalmund could see flames rising from the roof and smoldering timbers through the smoke, but no other living souls. As he drove away, he heard a shriek of grief from behind; or was that the blood pounding in his ears?

Zubadin was silent the entire ride back to Moscow. The two Poles smoked cigarettes and joked about the pleas from the daughters of the kulaks as they put the torch to their house.

When Zalmund returned to Moscow, he told Deena of the events in Balashov in a cool, quiet voice. He reported the facts, the look on the faces of the kulaks and their wives, the coldness of Zubadin as he executed the priest.

“My God, Zalmund, that could have been my family!” Deena shrieked.

He paused and looked down. Through his eyebrows he looked up at her. “Do they deserve it?”

“Nobody deserves to die like that”, she hissed at him.

“Nobody deserves to die” he said.

“This has gone too far, Zalmund” Deena said, taking his hands.

“This is not something that can be stopped, my love,” he said, stroking the hair on the side of his face. “We are not doing this but watching it. I saw the force in Zubadin’s eyes. It is their time, the Bolsheviks. Right or wrong has nothing to do with it.”

Was this true? He was looking over a cliff, enthralled by a morbid admiration for the raging river below, when suddenly he fell in, or did he jump? He struggled to get to shore, but the current was strong, and the water was cold and silent. He fought against the white water, he went under and came up gasping, his lungs heaved. And then he stopped. He laid his head back with his arms outstretched and the river carried him down. How can a river be wrong?

**********

On one of their outreach missions at twilight of a humid June day, Alexandra asked Deena to take the tram to the Boulevard Ring. The center of Moscow is semi-encircled by a ring of grassy boulevards lined with benches. On many street corners were narrow bodegas selling newspapers, Zodiak cigarettes, and sometimes vodka and tea. As they walked along, Deena could feel Alexandra’s hot breath in her ear as she told her the rumors of the people in the Party.

The pedestrian traffic increased near the Moscow theaters that were just off the Ring. Here some sat on the benches, smoking and talking. At the public toilets in this district, homosexuals gathered to make their connections. Nearby at Trubnaia Square Deena saw women dressed in gaudy, low cut dresses lounging on the low stone walls. Some wore their corsets exposed with high-heeled black mid-calf boots. She was taken aback at the sight, but Alexandra squeezed her hand harder.

“These are the last people our Revolution can help,” Alexandra whispered to Deena. “They are trapped by their bodies, the men too. In this exploitation.” The words were too fast, Alexandra’s breath too short. She moved deliberately toward a corner.

“No,” Deena gasped reflexively. She let go of Alexandra’s hand. Alexandra kept walking and turned back to look at Deena, with half-closed eyes, and a sly smile. As Alexandra approached one young girl in the group, she looked up and locked her stare. She had dark brown hair drawn back in a bun, with a few coyly placed wisps of hair pulled down along her right temple and left ear. Her smirk was twisted onto her bright red lips but was belied by her dark eyes that glanced quickly about the square with what Deena saw as fear. A black corset over her patterned red dress was drawn tight at the waist but left invitingly open at the top. From a distance Deena saw that Alexandra spoke to the girl, and the girl responded with short answers at first, then with longer sentences. She looked over Alexandra’s shoulder, pretending to search for clients, but Alexandra was determined, and soon she had her attention. Another joined and then another. Their voices were never raised, but the conversation was animated. Then they stopped, and Alexandra turned to walk back to Deena. She had a certain saunter now, a swing to her hips.

“Can we go?” Deena asked.

“Not now.”

They stood and walked along the Square, as men passed through without notice, or slowed, and carefully eyed the girls. Some would talk but then move on. Soon, one spoke to a girl, then offered his arm. She took it and they walked to Tsvetnoi Boulevard. Alexandra and Deena followed at a discreet distance. At the corner the couple turned down the street of wood-framed apartment buildings. At a narrow entrance of one, the door opened as the girl approached, and an older woman blocked the door. She spoke to the man, who reached in his pocket for something for the older woman. She stood aside and the couple stepped in.

From a distance, Deena felt a twist in her stomach. Her pulse raced. What would happen? Alexandra leaned to her ear, her hot breath close by.

“She will tease him, and wash him, to make him finish quick.” Deena closed her eyes, her ears pounded. She opened them and looked at Alexandra but couldn’t and looked away.

“If he looks rich and she doesn’t know him, she will take him to a certain house,” Alexandra hissed in her ear as she squeezed her hand. “The madam waits until he is undressed, and excited and ready.” Deena bit her lip. “The she sends in her hammer, who beats him, and takes the money from his clothes.” Deena gasped. “The girl only gets a quarter of it.”

On the tram ride home Alexandra talked admiringly about the power of the women. They earned their living from the bourgeoisie oppressors and gave nothing in return. Deena barely listened. Alexandra was famous for her comment that in the Revolution making love was no more than taking a glass of tea. That scandalized Lenin, who retained middle class sexual mores, but the remark no doubt was frequently repeated to the mistresses of the Commissars. Alexandra continued, the women met a social need occasioned by the weakness of men, brought on by the exploitative nature of the Imperialist culture. When the Revolution succeeded, the need would be gone, and this profession would also disappear.

Deena could not get out of her mind the apprehension in the look of the girl as she took his arm. She remembered the false strut to the narrow house, the slack stance at the doorway as her virtue was negotiated. They clasped hands in Deena’s lap, Alexandra for the intensity of the polemic, Deena for another reason.

At home Deena said nothing to Zalmund of the tram trip. But he noticed small changes: more teasing before bed, some small deliberate cruelties in foreplay. One time she hid his clothes after he had fallen asleep. He was surprised and exhilarated. He did not always like it. But it was new and against all that came before. It was nothing that he could have imagined before.

**********

The focus of the Office of Women’s Welfare in the summer was the Women’s Congress planned for November. Here Kollontai hoped to impress the ruling circle with the power of women in the Revolution, and their demands for independent, productive, paid employment. She had made plenty of enemies among the apparatchik, who spread rumors that her real intentions were to collectivize families and conscript twelve-year-old girls to become mothers. Someone had even burned down the small apartment building she had found to set up the first center for care of new mothers.

Yelena worked in the office with Deena. She was enthusiastic in starting tasks but finished few without calling for help from Deena. What she really wanted was to tell Deena about her relationship with Fredov Rosen, a young, inexperienced diplomat in the Bolshevik Foreign Service. He was arrogant and dashing, with the Lenin goatee and pince-nez glasses. He told her of the goings on at his front-room desk at the Service, which she took for State secrets that she gladly shared with Deena. But Fredov convinced her he had knowledge of Western culture, which he instilled in Yelena at every opportunity. One day Yelena reported to Deena on their wild night. They had finished a simple meal and too much vodka, again, with the Foreign Service friends. Yelena and Fredov had gone for a walk along the river, which was smooth like glass under a full moon. Just below a bridge, Fredov had forced her against the wall with a dramatic kiss. He pinned her arms against the curved wall of the narrow passage, and then without separating their lips he gently lifter her skirt. Yelena was transfixed with curiosity and shame. He unfastened himself there beneath the bridge, and they coupled with the excitement and fear of imminent disclosure. Later, Fredov assured her that this was how the young were in this new age. He assured her that his fellows at the Foreign Service were even experimenting with bondage and asked if she would join. Yelena did not report it for prurient interest, particularly, but to apprise Deena of what really went on in Paris and London.

**********

Deena was startled to see on one of her soup kitchen missions a neighbor in rags sweeping the Gypsy street with a work detail under guard by a political policeman. Chaim Finkelstein owned the huge “Loffers” warehouse in Dubossar, and was a modest and learned man, a Zionist and a philanthropist. Deena told the guard who Finkelstein was. His answer, “He is a bourgeois, a bloodsucker”.

“Mr. Finkelstein, how are you?” Deena asked.

“You don’t want to talk to me,” he replied.

“Why not?”

“I have been denounced.”

“Denounced?”

“They took my ration card. I have the warehouse, but without a card I cannot buy food.”

“You have family, a daughter,” Deena begged.

“She has three children, she has nothing to spare and she couldn’t risk losing her card too.”

“Who denounced you?”

“A customer. I didn’t know he was an apparatchik.” The guard began to walk over, and Finkelstein put down his head.

Deena told Zalmund about Finkelstein, and she begged him to do something. Zalmund spoke to an assistant Commissar, who deplored the treatment of Finkelstein, but he did not want to mix in. In truth, Zalmund hated this petty vengeance, but he believed it was all temporary and that soon the situation would improve. “We have to be patient”, he told Deena, “until these changes are over.”

**********

By the third week, Yelena confided to Deena that she knew that Fredov had taken up with another woman. She was devastated, not only because she had lost Fredov, whom she really loved, but that she could no longer appear at the Social Welfare office as a free woman who loved free and drank the tea as she wished. Yes, she told Deena, she had behaved badly, screaming at Fredov and throwing things. She hung his shirts out the window on Droystev street for all the neighbors to see. Now Yelena was locked out from their apartment. But she would get even. Right there in front of Deena and the rest of the office she called Fredov on the phone and loudly denounced him. She described the public affair at the bridge and his various fetishes and threatened to tell more to his friends. She slammed down the phone, and with tears streaming from her eyes, she looked about the room for support.

Later that day a police crew appeared at the Social Welfare Office and arrested Yelena. She was taken to a large cellar of the parish house of an Orthodox church, which was used as a temporary place of detention. The prisoners, men, women and children, peasants and bourgeoisie, were crammed in a mildewed basement. Women with children at their skirts alternately prayed and cried. Mensheviks in the corner plotted their revenge on the Bolsheviks. The stench from the filthy room was stifling.

On the third day of detention, Yelena was taken to a room for interrogation. Was it true she had taken money from Fredov? Was it true she had really wanted to be an actress, and was only working at the Social Welfare Office as a cover? Had she traded her love for Fredov for a chance to be introduced to his friend the director? Was Fredov her first? Had she taken money from others, ever? In the end, after a day of no food or water, Yelena confessed. She named her former lovers and confesses that some did give her money. Just recently she was invited to the apartment of an actor, who told her he planned to introduce her to a director and promised that there would be lots of money. What else could she do? she whined.

That was all that was needed. The next day Yelena was convicted as a parasite of the State by a Troika and sent away to prison in Siberia for seven years.

**********

Yakov Grigorevich Bliumkin rose early on the morning of July 6 in the Pokrovskii barracks of the Red Army, in the center of Moscow. He was a young man with round, black glasses, who had grown his goatee in the style of Lenin. Today he stood before the small mirror in the massive white-tiled lavatory, and with a straight edge razor he shaved off the goatee. Bliumkin was a political officer attached to the Cheka division in the barracks. His allegiance, however, and those of most of the other officers in the Pokrovskii Barracks, was to the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the LSR, who were finding it increasingly difficult to operate under the Bolshevik umbrella.

Without the goatee, Bliumkin looked like a mild fellow, and indeed he was. As the fourth son of a minor factory foreman from Odessa, he was always looking up to a brother who did this in school, or a brother who did that on the soccer field. No one really noticed him in at the factory, where his father got him a job, or even when he joined the radical socialists at sixteen, mostly to impress his friends and infuriate his parents. But to the LSR, he was invaluable. He was the one to find the tardy Committee member in an Odessa saloon when a meeting was called. He found the extra paper for printing the pamphlets, or the shopkeeper where the contraband could be stored. He also had an encyclopedic memory of the proceedings of the Odessa soviet committee, so that when one commissar insisted the resolution had been passed and another said that it had not, they turned to Yakov Bliumkin to remember what had gone on in those endless meetings.

After the Revolution, he was the natural representative to send to Moscow, when none of the local Commissars really wanted to leave the warm and comfortable life near the Caspian Sea. After one look at this puny youth from the south, The Moscow LSR assigned him to the Pokrovskii Barracks for his own protection.

Bliumkin washed the last of the soap from his face and examined his clean-shaven chin. Yes, today he was different. He dressed in his conservative black suit and white shirt with button-on collar that he saved for official party functions and waited at the barracks entrance. The suit was too big for his small frame, a hand-me down from a bulkier brother, but that was fine today. Soon Nikolai Andreev arrived on foot. He wore a flashier grey suit, with cravat and stickpin, but he kept his goatee. Andreev was quite proud of the aura of danger he projected, although his function in the Moscow central soviet of the LSR was not much more than Bliumkin’s in Odessa. He was easily recruited to show Bliumkin around the Moscow bureaucracy, which he did with an arrogance that infuriated Bliumkin. The two hardly spoke.

“This way”, Andreev said, pointing with his finger from under a black cape, another one of his pompous affectations.

“Really,” Bliumkin replied curtly.

They walked past coffee houses and bakeries whose smells would have tempted Andreev on most other days. But Bliumkin walked with a deliberate pace. In fact, his stomach was a little queasy this morning, and he was not interested in eating.

They rounded the corner and faced Bolshaia Lubyanka, the ancient castle which was now the feared headquarters of Cheka. As they approached, Andreev waived to the Red Guards lounging about the entrance, who nodded back. Did Bliumkin notice a snicker of contempt? No matter, they were on official business. Andreev spoke briefly with the only military-looking men who seemed to be working, and they entered the very old brick building. Down a hall and to the left, Andreev led with the swagger of a man who had been here before. They entered a small office crammed with two desks and a wall of cubby holed cabinets.

“Is Riuvsky here?” Andreev demanded. Of course he wasn’t, and Andreev knew that.

“No, he’s not yet been in today” the clerk replied. He himself had just arrived and was once again overwhelmed by the paper bureaucracy handing down Cheka punishments and plea notes from the outside seeking news of its victims.

“But he must be. He told me to meet him here,” Andreev replied.

“Well, he hasn’t come in. Perhaps he’s down with the Commandant.”

“The Commandant?”

“Yes, the Commandant. That old fart is always having Ivan do his dirty work.” The clerk turned back to his papers.

“Where is the Commandant’s office?” Andreev said more politely, now.

“Down the hall, at the end, the big office on the right.”

“Which hall? The one with the green line?”

“Come on,” the clerk said with impatience. “I’ll take you there. Yes, yes, we’ll find out if Ivan Ileyanovich has come in today!” he said with disgust.

“I’ll wait here” the youthful Bliumkin chirped, but neither the clerk nor Andreev seemed to notice.

As soon as the two left the room, Bliumkin rushed to the unoccupied desk of Riuvsky and began to frantically sift through the papers scattered about. Riuvsky had reluctantly said it would be here. Yes, here it was! The official notepad of the Cheka secret service. Bliumkin sat down and carefully printed his message, struggling mightily to control the shaking of his hand.

“My messenger has a matter of great importance that I must communicate with you only in person. Please receive my courier to hear what I must say concerning the relations between our two countries.” He signed it with the name of General Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, who reported only to Vladimir Lenin. He neatly folded the note and put it in his pocket. With a little more sifting, he found a requisition pad. Here he wrote a requisition for a car and driver. He scribbled the signature.

In a moment he heard voices down the hall. “I can’t be responsible for Riuvsky. You’ll just have to come back.”

“It’s a matter of importance”

“It will have to wait.”

“Very well,” Andreev said as he came to the office. “Come now”, he summoned Bliumkin, as if he were a pet dog. Bliumkin rushed out of the office without even a thank you or good day.

At the front door, Bliumkin showed the requisition to the motor pool captain, while Andreev stood with his arms folded across his chest, looking impatient. With only a brief glance at a form he had seen so often, the captain called on the phone. In a few minutes a black car with a gaunt and elderly driver pulled up to the front. Andreev and Bliumkin got in.

“The German Embassy at Denezhny Pereulok”, Andreev commanded. Since the spring peace treaty, the Germans had renovated the massive and beautiful Berg Mansion in the heart of Moscow, and it had just recently opened as the official diplomatic office. It was virtually the only new construction in all of Moscow.

Bliumkin and Andreev left the car standing at the front gate, and approached the guard standing between the two enormous stone pillars of the portico entrance. Bliumkin took the folded note from his pocket and conspicuously handed it to Andreev, who handed it to the guard. Since the guard could not read Russian, he called into the Embassy. In a moment, a white-haired man in a dark suit strode from the door. He snatched the note from the hand of the guard and read the note, twice.

“What sort of matter is this?”, he asked Andreev.

“I am here with a message from the General. It is only for the Ambassador.”

“Is it now…” He looked again at the note on official Cheka stationary. Of course he knew who Dzerzhinsky was. But why would Cheka communicate directly with the Ambassador? This had never happened. But it was a personal note and was too sensitive to be written down. He could telephone to confirm, but this would destroy the clandestine approach and Dzerzhinsky might deny it. Maybe it was something that Dzerzhinsky needed the ambassador to know, but that Lenin wouldn’t tell him. A defection? A coup d’état? He couldn’t take the chance of turning away such a rare opportunity for the German government to look behind the scenes of the Revolution.

“Come with me.” He led them into the embassy hall, lit by a massive crystal and brass chandelier suspended by three brass chains from a painted and carved plaster ceiling. Bliumkin snickered to himself in contempt. This was precisely the wrong thing to bring into Russia at this time. Didn’t they understand?

“Wait here,” the German representative said, and pointed to two burgundy leather chairs on either side of a gold-gilded stand with inlaid enamel top. He left the room, and Andreev and Bliumkin sat. They did not look at each other. Andreev looked about the room, at the portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the wooden archway carved into a coat of arms, the leather-topped desk with polished gold-plated telephone. Bliumkin stared at his shoes.

In a few minutes the representative appeared again at the door. “The ambassador will see you, but please come directly to the point. He is very busy today.”

Andreev nodded and the two rose and followed the representative through the door and down the hall past a marble staircase. He opened double doors and seated behind a massive mahogany desk was Count Wilhelm von Mirbach, the German ambassador to Russia. His hair was grey and cut short. Below his nose was a bristly mustache that framed his mouth all the way down to his chin. His bushy eyebrows were drawn together in a glare. The representative stood at the door as the Russians entered. He remained. Andreev slowly turned and stared at him by the door and then looked at Mirbach, who nodded, and the aide withdrew, closing the doors behind him.

Not a word was spoken. Bliumkin immediately drew a pistol from his back belt, took a step forward and fired. Mirbach was struck in the right shoulder and fell back in the chair, but he drew his left hand to the wound, and was clearly not dead.

“Idiot!”, Andreev yelled, and immediately turned to bar the door. Bliumkin sprinted to get around the desk, and Mirbach scrambled to get out of his chair. Bliumkin slipped on the carpet and went down to one knee as Mirbach staggered around the other side of the desk, bracing himself with his wounded arm. He put out his left arm in a stiff-arm gesture and bore down on Andreev. Just before he reached the frozen Russian, Bliumkin aimed his pistol again and fired. The bullet entered Count Mirbach’s skull in the back and exited between his eyes, narrowly missing Andreev.

“My God!” cried Andreev.

They heard pounding on the heavy doors. Andreev and Bliumkin flattened themselves on either side of the entry. Bliumkin drew a grenade from his coat pocket, pulled the pin and pitched it under Mirbach’s desk as the doors flew open. The guards had just enough time to focus on Count Mirbach’s skull bleeding into the Persian rug before the explosion blew them back through the open doorway. The crouching Andreev and Bliumkin were partially protected by the open doors, but the blast flung a shattered lamp stand into Bliumkin’s shin, breaking his tibia just below the knee.

The two assassins stumbled from the ambassador’s office into the chaos that had become the German embassy. Office clerks and military officers fled through the front doors to the street and Andreev followed at full pace to the waiting car. Bliumkin hobbled in biting pain, and at one point was helped by a young guard to clear the entryway.

“Come on!” Andreev shouted. He was about to tell the driver to drive on when Bliumkin emerged from the panic on the walkway. Andreev threw open the door and Bliumkin dove in. “Drive!” Andreev yelled as he banged the driver’s shoulder, and the car sped from the scene of smoke and mayhem. “To Bolshoi Trekhsvaititel’skii Pereulok!”

“The Pokrovskii barracks?”

“Da.”

**********

While news of the assassination of Ambassador Mirbach spread through Moscow, Maria Spiridonova climbed to the stage of the Bolshoi Theater. She had straight black hair cropped short with bangs, and a long face with pitch-black eyes. Her complexion was sallow today from too little sleep and she wore no make-up. Her coarse wool suit hung loosely on her thin frame. She strode to the podium with the sound of thunderous applause of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Congress of Soviets. Spiridonova was a close companion of Lenin, who admired her for her blunt honesty and steely determination. She had spent most of the past six years in Tsarist prisons, suffering deprivation and humiliations especially reserved for women revolutionaries. But she was a tireless organizer even within prison. When the Revolution came Spiridonova already had a strong base of support with the Left Socialist Revolutionary wing of the Bolsheviks.

She began her speech with the perfunctory congratulations on the overthrow of the ruling class, and praise for the leaders who now led the worker’s state. “We have accomplished much, maybe all we could ask for,” and she paused for the lengthy applause.

“But now, dear Comrades, we have gone astray. What we saw in our corrupt nobility we cannot see across our borders. The oppression of workers did not begin with Mother Russia, so why do we think it stops here? We could not change the monarchists here in Moscow, and we could not make peace with those that exploited the proletariat of our farms.” She paused, and the silence in the Theater was deafening.

“So how can we now make peace with a Kaiser!” The crowd erupted. “How can Comrade Lenin lie down with the butcher of the masses” she shouted over their roar. She paused again, and the cheers subsided, but the electricity singed the air. “The Bolsheviks have made Lenin their king, and the worship of Vladimir Illeyivich above loyalty to our class. Our brave and glorious Army of Red is not pointed outward at enemies of the state! It points inward at those who carried the Revolution on our backs! Our bullets don’t kill German invaders! They kill our Russian farmers! We don’t seize the tools of foreign capitalism, we steal food from our own people!” The crowd exploded again. Now the delegates looked at each other – how dangerous was this talk?

“Today marks a new day of the Revolution”, Spiridonova continued. “Today we put aside the Bolsheviks, and the cult of Lenin. Today we stop the killing of our Russian people by our own hand. Today we drive German pigs from our land! We don’t make peace with the enemy, we annihilate them!”

“Just this day, we have eliminated the German presence in our capital. The German representative Mirbach is dead, and a clear message has been sent to Berlin. Get out! And by tomorrow we will replace Comrade Lenin with leaders who fight for the masses, not slaughter them. The people will know that we will guide them to a new dawn of truth.”

But when the delegates peered out the windows from the mezzanine of the Theater, they saw through a heavy fog several Red Army trucks circling the building, and Cheka soldiers in battle grey flannels and boots, with weapons drawn and pointed at the exits.

**********

It didn’t take long for news of Mirbach’s death to reach the ears of Lenin. The German representative who told him was quick to report that it was on the instructions of General Dzerzhinsky that the assassins were admitted into the embassy. Lenin was horrified that the peace between Germany and Russia would crumble just when he faced a revolt from the LSR. After a few inquiries Bliumkin and Andreev were traced back to the Pokrovskii barracks. Lenin dispatched General Felix Dzerzhinsky himself to apprehend the two and reverse the humiliation.

Dzerzhinsky went quickly and took two carloads of armed Chekas to make the arrest, but he miscalculated. A torrential rain beat down on Moscow, and ominous thunderclaps were heard off the horizon. He was met at the barracks by at least fifty armed soldiers barring the main door, taking shelter in the overhangs by the side doors and ogling from the open windows despite the stormy July night.

“I have come for the traitors, Bliumkin and Andreev,” Dzerzhinsky called out, as rained dripped down his cap over his face. He stood with his legs apart and his hands clasped before him. Some of his Cheka guards stood uncomfortably soaked by his side, while others remained protected in the cars.

“And who are you?” someone called from inside the building, behind the soldiers at the door.

“I am General Dzerzhinsky, of Cheka.”

“We already have a General,” and Combat Detachment Commander Nicholai Popov stepped from between the men at the door. Commander Popov was the military strategists for the Left-Socialist Revolutionaries.

“I have come for the traitors on orders of our Supreme Leader, Comrade Lenin.”

“I heard it was General Dzerzhinsky who sent them,” Commander Popov said with a sneer. A few men nervously shifted their feet.

“I did not.”

“Then you must not be General Dzerzhinsky”. The soldiers in the windows erupted with laughter.

“I did not come here to play word games, Commander,” Dzerzhinsky said.

“Then I don’t know why you came.”

Dzerzhinsky signaled with his arm and his Cheka guards raised their rifles at the Commander. At that fifty rifles from the upper windows of the barracks pointed at the two carloads of drenched men at the barracks entrance. A thunderclap split the silence.

“I am arresting you for impersonating General Dzerzhinsky!” cried the Commander. And with that the head of the Soviet Secret Police was disarmed and imprisoned. By nightfall the LSR had taken the Moscow central telegraph office and much of Moscow had fallen into the hands of the rebels.

**********

Zalmund and Deena, Tad and Nadja, Miro and Myrna, Lenish and Petra were all awakened late that night by banging on the apartment door. The Captain was calling all security units to report immediately to the Kremlin. They were instructed to bring as much food as they could carry, and rain gear, which few had. Zalmund struggled into his long, grey flannel trousers and collarless white blouse, put on his only woolen coat and stuffed the bread he had into his pockets. Finally, he laced up the leather boots that didn’t fit particularly well and were worn through in a small spot on the tops and in the sole.

At the Kremlin Zalmund was assigned as a driver to Josef Kikulsky, the same man from Lublin, who was now a feared Cheka captain, and who was entrusted with only the most serious cases. Tad, Miro and Lenish were issued the favored Cheka Mauser automatic pistol and they took a black sedan with an oil leak from the motor pool. The rain had stopped, and a dense fog hung in the cool air, with a smothering humidity. They drove through deserted streets of Moscow that were eerily quiet at dawn.

Commander Popov was a Russian officer in the Cheka, and since he served as a commander at the Pokrovskii barracks he had the privilege of bringing his family to Moscow. They stayed in a run-down section of Moscow, living on the few rubles the Commander occasionally received and the neighborhood charity for a soldier of the Revolution. Zalmund parked the car in front of a narrow, wooden two-story apartment building and the men walked the stairs to the second floor flat. There Captain Kikulsky waved his Mauser, and in ungrammatical Russian ordered Popov’s wife and two young children, an older boy and a younger daughter, down the stairs and into the street. A Cheka car in this neighborhood was not a usual or welcome site, and many of the neighbors cautiously peered out between the curtains.

Popov’s wife was still wearing her nightgown and clutched her young daughter in her arms. Her son stood before her, rubbing his eyes and cowering before Captain Kikulsky. Zalmund, Tad, Miro and Lenish stood in a circle around them with their pistols drawn. Kikulsky loudly interrogated her in his Polish-accented Russian about the whereabouts of her husband and his associates, although he knew she had no idea. He told her she lied when she denied that they harbored counter-revolutionaries in her apartment. She sobbed uncontrollably.

“Please, please,” she begged, but she hardly could be understood.

Kikulsky turned to the son, who was quiet with tears streaming down his cheek. “On your knees,” he commanded.

Popov’s son knelt in the middle of the street, with his hands over the back of his head. He was shaking. “The punishment for treason to the Revolution is death! You can tell that to Nickolai Popov!” Kikulsky screamed. He put the gun to the back of the young boy, with the barrel between the boy’s clutched fingers, and pulled the trigger. There was a lout retort, a soft flat sound and the boy pitched forward onto the already red-stained pavement.

The five men returned to the car. They rode in an angry silence back to the Kremlin. Zalmund was agitated.

Of course, he thought, it was cruel. But in fact, the whole family could have been eliminated. It was a merciful solution, to offer Popov a chance for rehabilitation. He still had a wife and one child. But upon his return Zalmund said nothing to Deena. He was ashamed.

**********

Lenin summoned the Latvian rifles from barracks outside Moscow. They were battle-hardened troops and not Russian, so they had no scruples about shooting large numbers of people in Moscow. They took up positions in support of the Red Army around the Bolshoi Theater, bringing with them heavy artillery which they pointed at the draped windows and marble balconies. Zalmund was sent there as security for the Cheka commanders who restrained the Latvians. The LSR were poorly armed. The only movement was an emissary in a plain wool overcoat who occasionally entered and returned from the building.

After seven hours, word reached the Cheka commanders that General Dzerzhinsky had been released from the Pokrovskii barracks. The LSR guarding the Bolshoi Theater withdrew, and the Red Army retook the hall. Zalmund entered the building with the Cheka commanders, his gun drawn, hungry and a stubble of beard on his chin.

Exhausted LSR delegates struggled down the halls to the front door like those leaving an over-extended party at dawn. Except that they were herded by Latvians with drawn rifles shouting in foreign tongues.

“Search the boxes!” one commander screamed, pointing to the five tiers of the auditorium.

Zalmund looked through the luxury seating on the mezzanine level. He found a couple, sound asleep, the man slumped on the cushioned seat and the woman curled up on the floor. He awakened them with a not-so-gentle kick, and without a word he motioned to the door with the barrel of his automatic. They slowly rose, and grabbing their coats, they too joined the evacuation.

The LSR delegates were not immediately released, but they milled about the plaza at the entrance to the Bolshoi, across from the Neglinka River, under the gaze of the Red Army. Zalmund followed his Cheka commander, with fifty Latvian riflemen behind him. They goose-stepped in an infantry line, cutting through the LSR crown and separating about two hundred delegates against the stone wall of the Theater. When the Latvians drew their rifles, their intent was all too clear. Zalmund held his revolver at shoulder height, pointing into the crowd. His hand barely trembled.

“The fury of the people is thrown against the vermin, the rebels and the traitors to the revolution of the workers and peasants!” the Commander screamed, the veins bulging from his neck. Zalmund spotted before him, just to the left, the man and woman he had rousted from the mezzanine box. If only he had let them sleep.

The Latvians didn’t wait. A shot was fired into the crowd from Zalmund’s right, and then a frantic fuselage poured into the huddled delegates. One after the other fell, exposing a new line to the Latvian rifles. As the rising sun burned the through the fog to warm a new day, two hundred LSR members lay executed on the Bolshoi portico.

**********

In the middle of August, the influenza outbreak spread quickly in Moscow, taking many of the young in a matter of a few days. It may have been that the older residents had survived the milder epidemic of 1889, and now carried some immunity. But for those now under 35, the sudden fever and wet cough was a well-known prelude to a cruel and quick death. The month before the same epidemic of “Spanish flu” in England killed 200,000.

Zalmund and Lenish spent many more evenings in the outdoor cafes, nursing a beer or vodka. The common wisdom was that the flu came from cramped indoor living conditions and bad air, so this seemed the best protection.

“I was at Lubyanka yesterday,” Lenish remarked. “It stinks like an open wound.” Zalmund nodded. “They have a special section, there, I found out. More like a hotel, with a cell to yourself. They call it solitary, but most of the others would take that punishment, I’ll tell you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, and guess who is there. Those bastards Bliumkin and Andreev.”

“Really,” Zalmund nodded.

“Does it surprise you? That they are still alive?” Lenish asked.

“I suppose once you are an assassin for the Revolution, you can make a mistake. Point your pistol at the wrong man. You can be forgiven,” Zalmund said.

“And Spiridonova?”

“Yes?” Zalmund let Lenish go on.

“She’s in a two-room apartment in the back hall of the Kremlin. Probably knitting, writing letters and taking tea.”

“You think… maybe?” Zalmund answered.

“It was the crazy LSR that followed her, they paid the price for Spiridonova’s talk. She was always full of the worst lying trash.” Lenish glanced around quickly to see if anyone might have heard this potential indiscretion.

“I heard a crazy thing today,” Zalmund said to change the subject.

“Yes?” Lenish took the bait. Zalmund took a long drink from his beer for dramatic effect.

“These guys were driving our Leader, Comrade Lenin back from a rally at some steel plant. You know he is so paranoid, they have to take a different route every time. Well, these guys told me that Lenin has been all over town recently, and they were running out of routes to get him back. So, this time they took a road out by the black-market shops on the West side. You know.”

“No-oooo,” Lenish looked incredulously at Zalmund.

“Yes! As they turn a corner, out from behind a stack of chicken coops jump these bandits with Kalashnikov rifles and fixed bayonets. Bayonets on the end of their rifles!”

“I would have shit my pants.”

“They probably did. You know what they wanted?” Zalmund asked.

“No.”

“Jewelry, gold. Rings.”

“Rings?”

“Yes, rings. They robbed Comrade Lenin. He had only a few rubles. Among them they could barely come up with meal money,” Zalmund snickered.

“And that was it?”

“That was it. They were satisfied they got what they could and let them go.”

“They had no idea who it was?”

“Not at all. Don’t you think they would have taken our leader hostage if they knew?”

**********

The lawlessness of Moscow, combined with the success of the White Russians near Archangel, further fueled the paranoia of the Bolshevik leadership. Those who were enemies only a few weeks before were now allies. Many of the LSR were rehabilitated, and the door to Bliumkin’s cell in Lubyanka was left open. A car waiting at the gate took him to a safe house, from which he disappeared the next day. Spiridonova easily engineered an escape from her Kremlin jailers, and she continued her radical terrorism on the frontier. Commander Nickolai Popov, who had been removed from command of the Pokrovskii barracks, was now put in charge of a special Cheka unit for anti-crime enforcement in Moscow.

The unquenchable fury of the Revolution now focused like a laser upon the last common enemy. On a mid-July day, the order went out from Moscow to Ekaterinburg, where nearby the former Tsar Nicholas II and his family were held under arrest in a modest townhouse by the Bolshevik Regional Soviet of the Urals. The stone building, which was a former merchant’s house, now had all the windows whitewashed on both sides and a rough fence hammered together on the perimeter. The soldiers had decorated the single toilet with obscene drawing of the Tsarina in various couplings with Rasputin. The counter-revolutionary Czech Legion and the White Russian Army had taken several towns nearby. The Bolshevik defense had collapsed and retreated behind Ekaterinburg. Late on July 16, Soviet Commander Iakov Iurovsky, a Jew converted to Lutheranism and a dedicated Bolshevik, received instructions from Yakov Sverdlov, chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Iurovsky in turn ordered Pavel Medvedev, the Cheka chief guard on duty, to immediately bring all the Nagant revolvers, and whatever other pistols were hidden away in the barracks, to his office. He thought the pistols might make less noise than rifles and not alarm the locals. In the middle of the night, the now well-armed guards herded the Royal Romanov family into the basement of the wooden Dachau, and Iurovsky personally fired the first bullet into the forehead of Nicholas. He then turned on his young son, the hemophiliac heir Alexander, and the guards finished off the Tsarina and her daughters, Anastasia included. They collected the bodies and took them five miles outside of Ekaterinburg to the Four Brothers mine, where they burned them with gasoline and dumped fifty gallons of sulfuric acid onto the remains. Back at the Dachau, soldiers scrubbed down the basement in a futile attempt to hide the regicide from history.

The news could not be kept quiet. Although the Tsar and his family were despised at the time of the Revolution, the wholesale murder of a family was met with revulsion both inside Russia and abroad. In a spineless act of political expediency, the Bolshevik central committee ordered the arrest of Iurovsky and Medvedev and their extradition to Moscow, where they were executed for disobeying the Central Soviet Committee. Nevertheless, the elimination of the Tsar and his family showed the Russian people and the world that there was no turning back.

What was ahead was fear. On August 30, Moisei Uritsky, the head of the Petrograd Cheka was assassinated by Leonid Kannegisser, a military cadet. Uritsky’s well-known aversion for the terror of the Bolsheviks was no protection. His death was a signal that the resistance inside Russia had access to the highest leaders, including the head of security in the second largest city. Lenin immediately dispatched General Dzerzhinsky to Petrograd to torture the assassin into disclosing if he was part of a larger plot against the Bolsheviks. Upon Dzerzhinsky’s arrival at the Petrograd train station, a small contingent of loyal Cheka met him with more news. In Moscow, Lenin had been shot.

A few days after the convention hall was retaken from the LSR, Lenin spoke at a rally at the Mikhelson factory to mobilize workers to save the Revolution with more hours and less food and little pay. Fanya Kaplan, a dedicated Anarchist, waited by the podium with a Browning pistol tucked in her straw bag. She was meek and mousy and nearly completely blind. She had already been imprisoned by the Tsar as a bomb thrower, and in prison she had been stripped and beaten with a cane, which cost her much of her eyesight. Now, because of the peace with Germany, she considered Lenin a traitor to the revolution. As Lenin made his way to his car, she pulled out her gun and managed to fire three shots. The first missed, the second wounded Lenin in the arm, but the third bullet passed through his neck and lodged near his spine. Bleeding profusely, he was hurried into a car driven by his chauffer Stepan Gil. Rather than go to a hospital, where further assassins may lay in wait, Lenin was driven to the Kremlin. Maria Ilinicha, his sister, sent a messenger to a pharmacist for medicine but doctors were not summoned for a day. Lenin barely survived the week. The third bullet remained lodged in his neck until it was removed in 1922, whereupon he suffered a massive stroke.

Kaplan was easily apprehended but she refused to disclose her confederates. On Sept 3, 1918 she was shot, and her body incinerated on the order of Yakov Sverdlov, the same man who had organized the murder of the Tsar’s family.

The attempt on Lenin’s life and the assassination of Uritsky in Petrograd marked the beginning of the Bolshevik’s Reign of Terror. Within weeks 800 socialists were arrested and executed without trial. It took just a word from an official, a bad impression on a comrade, to seal one’s fate. During the next year, political suspects were arrested and summarily executed at a rate of twenty per day.

In the first days of September, Zalmund and Deena went about the routine of their lives as if they carried soap bubbles that might pop in an instant. Zalmund attended to the senior Cheka staff, who scurried about the Kremlin to meetings to uncover seditious plots. The dirty work of arresting traitors in their sleep and dragging them in their bedclothes to Lubyanka was left to the lower ranks of Polish Cheka. Word spread that a wall at Lubyanka was painted red from the executions that started at dawn and continued throughout the day.

Deena’s work with Alexandra at the Women’s Welfare Office continued with subdued determination. The planning for the Women’s Congress was subordinated to the fear that any disagreement with the Party might be an invitation to prison. Some of the women even suggested that it was dangerous to be seen with Alexandra Kollontai, who might say and do anything without regard to her safety, or those who depended on her. As the planning days slipped by, some even wondered if the Congress could take place at all.

When police in Moscow in September 1918 came upon a dead body it was not always clear whether it was a crime scene or a court of justice. Especially when the victims were in the Party’s service. So late on the Wednesday afternoon of September 4 Zalmund found himself driving a Cheka Inspector to a location called in by the Moscow police who found two bodies bearing Cheka identification. The call directed them to an intersection in a modest section of wooden apartment buildings where a black sedan was parked at the southwest corner. Two men in collarless white shirts lay back against the front seat with their heads dangling toward the back and blood dried down the front of their faces from exit wounds. As Zalmund approached the police with the Inspector, he listened to the police account of their discovery. When he turned to focus on the men in the car, he realized that they were Tad and Miro.

Now he began to notice things. The sedan was a Cheka car, requisitioned from the motor pool. Tad and Miro were executed without a struggle, likely by men they knew and whom they were driving to the setup. The single shot to the back of the head was the Cheka signature. The fact that they had not been taken to Lubyanka for interrogation concerned Zalmund. If they were suspected of disloyalty, why were they not tortured to reveal other traitors? The simple answer was that they were not wanted for their information. Zalmund’s stomach dropped and he gasped. “These are…” He almost said “my friends” but that would not be a healthy thing to say.

“Yes?” the Inspector turned to him.

“They are from the motor pool. I have seen them there. I think they are called Tadeusz and Miroslav. I’m not sure.”

“Yes, that’s what their identification papers say.” He turned to the policeman. “Excuse us.” The policeman turned and left, grateful to be released from this inter-Cheka bloodbath.

“Who were they driving today?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we will have to make inquiries, won’t we. Discretely.” the Inspector said. He smacked his lips as if he had tasted a bitter fruit. Nothing good could come of these questions, they both knew. The Inspector made arrangements for the bodies to be taken to the morgue – no autopsy was necessary. He then directed Zalmund to drive the black sedan parked at the corner back to the Cheka motor pool. Zalmund draped a blanket from the trunk over the caked blood and slid into the seat where his friend had sat only a few hours before.

But he didn’t go to the motor pool. He knew Tad and Miro as the two most apolitical fellow-travelers in the service. What could they possibly have done to warrant summary execution? There was only one answer and he had to know immediately. Zalmund raced the sedan through the streets back to his home street. He slammed on the brakes and bounded out of the car, climbing the stairs two at a time to enter his apartment. Not much was amiss. But in the air hung the smoky smell of gunfire. The silence was sickening. He turned to where a mattress was tucked into the corner of the main room. It was torn with a dozen bullet holes, and Lenish and Petra lay tangled in the sheets. They didn’t move. They were dead.

Zalmund quickly closed the front door and sat down. These were executions by the State, that was clear. But not political, since they were not arrested and imprisoned. This was by men who knew the streets, the criminals, and had the methods of the Cheka. The chief of that group was Nicholai Popov, the former commander of the Pokrovskii barracks. What all the victims had in common was that they were all part of the task force that executed Commander Popov’s son on the night of the LSR revolt. Now the only one left was Zalmund.

Zalmund leapt to his feet and ran to the door. He opened it a crack and looked outside. Then he dashed down the stairs, into the black sedan, and drove directly to the Cheka headquarters.

He walked down his normal hallway at headquarters, head down, as inconspicuously as possible. He noticed the cracks in the marble molding, the dirt in the grout of the tile floor, the sound of his own steps echoing about him. Everyone must notice him, still alive, he thought. People passed him with not even a greeting, but with that self-importance of most petty bureaucrats, for which he was relieved. Zalmund gently turned the knob of the motor pool office room door with the slatted glass window, opened the door but a small sliver, and slipped into the room.

He walked quickly by the cubby desks toward the requisition desk. Not quick enough. Someone called his name, “Hofitz! You there!”

Zalmund turned and saw a young man he had never seen before waiving an assignment slip in the air. “You took my slip, this morning,” he said in an annoyed tone. “This one’s for you.” He waived the paper in Zalmund’s face.

“So, you couldn’t take it,”

“This one’s for you,” he insisted.

“You could do it,” Zalmund tested his determination.

“You took mine, and this one they asked for you.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Zalmund paused and looked around the room. Most were working diligently, but it seemed to him that they had all been staring at him just a moment before. Zalmund snatched the slip from his hand. “I’ll be there.”

“They’re waiting.”

“I know, I know.” Zalmund made a fuss about tucking his shirt into his trousers, pulling on his shirt sleeves to straighten his collar. He leaned his right hand on the assignment desk while he loosened the laces on his right shoe with his left hand. As he straightened up, he snatched a stack of Cheka pass forms that had been left on the desk and slipped them in his right coat pocket. With his left hand he brought up the assignment slip and made a show of reading it. “I’m going, I’m going,” he said to the young man, and headed out the office door.

But he didn’t turn left to pick up the official he was meant to drive. That turn was death. He turned right and walked swiftly to the black sedan he had left parked near the front entrance to headquarters. He gunned the engine and sped off, checking the rear-view mirror for signs that someone had noticed and might be following. But there were none.

He drove directly to the Women’s Welfare Office. He parked and sprinted up the steps of the aging brownstone. Without knocking, he opened the main office door off the shared hallway and stepped inside, closing the door behind. He was breathing hard, and beads of sweat dotted his hairline. The women closest to the door looked up from their work and stared at him. The silence spread through the office, until Deena stopped her review of accounts, and looked up at him.

Their eyes met for a moment in recognition. The next instant the bubbles they carried all burst. She saw the fear in his eyes, and her heart sank. Her eyes widened and she felt unconnected to the ground.

“Deena. Come,” he said, forcing calm into his voice.

“Now?” she said. But she knew the answer. She needed him to say that it was over.

“Yes. Now.”

Deena put down her papers and walked slowly to the front of the room. All eyes were on her, but no one moved. Zalmund held out her hand, she took it as they turned to the door.

“Deena?” they heard from the back of the room. It was a helpless sound from Alexandra Kollontai. “Good luck.” No explanation was sought or required.

They drove to the south and then the west and left the city behind in two hours. Along the road they were able to use the appearance of the black sedan and his official pass card of the day to requisition gasoline, bread and tea. At night they slept in the car, with the windows rolled down and the cool Ukraine breeze blowing through the late summer sky.

KYIV

Deena and Zalmund arrived in Kyiv, a magical city on the Dnieper River, in early September 1918. The central city had a long history of cosmopolitan sophistication, and culturally dominated Moscow for most of the millennium. The Bolsheviks had failed to significantly infiltrate its politics or extend the Red Army to its city gates. So, although it was technically a Russian city, it was under the control of Imperialists officials and organized criminals who exiled themselves to the city in opposition to the Bolsheviks. On January 22, 1918, the Rada, the parliamentary ruling body, declared the independence of The Western Ukrainian Republic, with a capital in Lwów west of Kyiv. Local chieftains set up city-states in Kharkiv, Poltava and Chernobyl, just north of Kyiv. Vladimir Dragomirov was in charge of Kyiv as head of the White Russians there, and served on General Anton Denikin’s military council for the Armed Forces of South Russia. They in turn had sought and received protection from the nearby German military authorities, who were technically at peace with Russia, but who were positioning themselves to seize this prize at what they saw was the inevitable resumption of hostilities. The irony of bitter enemies living in a Bolshevik-inspired peace was lost on no one.

As an outlaw city in an outlaw state, Kyiv was a feast in the middle of a famine. Onion-topped Orthodox churches overlooked the broad blue expanse of the slow-moving Dnieper river. Cafes hosted outdoor seating under the arborio of the central Moskavya avenue. At night, the gaudy nightclubs along Klovs’kyi Uzviz sported rag-time jazz in the front room and high-stakes gambling in the back. Red-lipsticked working girls crowded the corners of Khreschatyk street in the old Lypky district, brazenly approaching the men who strolled in alone from the Mariins’kyi Park, looking for attention.

Zalmund and Deena cruised the street next to the park, drawing interested stares to the oversized Cheka sedan. Finally, Zalmund stopped at a corner, got out and leaned against the front fender with his legs crossed over the curb. He was a bit disheveled, with a two-day growth of beard, a collarless white shirt opened a few buttons at the neck, and wrinkled flannel trousers over his now shoddy boots. Deena sat demurely in the front seat, nervously twisting the handle of her handbag. A few men stopped by, some in soiled working clothes of baggy shirt and woolen britches. Zalmund spoke Polish with them. After a final group left, Zalmund got back in the car.

“I know where to go,” he said. He drove a short distance through the narrow streets, past the Golden Gate dating from the 11th century, and turned west of the old town. He stopped just before a narrow alley. “Wait here,” he said to Deena. In a few minutes he came out with a short, stubby man in tow. “Out,” Zalmund said to Deena in a gruff voice, which seemed a put-on for the stranger. Deena obeyed and stood by the brick wall at the corner. Zalmund and the man circled the car twice, and then the man got behind the wheel and turned over the starter. He gunned the engine while Zalmund nodded. He turned off the car, and pulled a wad of currency from his pocket, which he carefully counted into Zalmund’s hand. Deena notices that they were German marks. The car disappeared into the alley, and Deena and Zalmund stood on the corner looking at each other, with the wad of marks and the clothes on their backs.

Nearby, Zalmund found an apartment in the run-down old Podol neighborhood west of the river with a hand-written sign in the window announcing a vacancy. The view out the single window was of the plaster wall of the tenement next door, but if Deena walked down the narrow street and turned right, she had a wonderful view of the Ukrainian Baroque church of St. Andrew.

The tension was gone from their lives in Kyiv, but so was their determination. In the first few days they did not talk about what had happened in Moscow. Zalmund finally told Deena about finding their friends dead in the car and at the apartment, and Deena nodded in terrified silence. Yes, she agreed, they had to leave, and quickly, the way they did.

Zalmund felt a painful betrayal. He had developed camaraderie with the men at the Lubyanka and he had attached his loyalty, maybe beyond reason, to the commanders. He had made his way to the center of the world, and now he was cast out. For what? But Zalmund also realized his shameful naiveté. What he saw now was his unwilling complicity in things about which he knew very little. It was not possible to bear witness; his observation embroiled him in the act. The pain and the shame of this Moscow summer kept Zalmund from talking about it.

Deena also spoke very little about Moscow. She got what she wanted in her time there, but it wasn’t real, and it wasn’t satisfying. Everyone spoke of ideals and the good of the People; there was excitement, and it was new. But somehow everything was twisted into a Revolutionary moment. She was self-conscious of all her desires, and examined each for motive, asking herself if it was for the People or just for herself. In the end she had to flee for her life, and this motive needed no Revolutionary explanation. She never quite got it; maybe she didn’t give enough. The Revolution made it clear that it didn’t really need her. She didn’t want to talk about it. Now she would see if she really needed the Revolution.

There was one more matter that they did not speak about. They mourned their friends alone, but they shared the guilt of surviving.

After the focused fear of Moscow, Kyiv was a hedonist oasis. With no jobs and flush with money, Zalmund and Deena strolled Bibikov Lane and enjoy the cafes of the old town. They bought fashionable clothes and shoes. They slept late and listened to jazz and politics at the coffee houses long into the night. Their favorite spot was a small brasserie on Kreschatik Street near the Hotel Bellevue. It became the gathering place for disaffected Bolsheviks who, like them, had fled the Revolution. Every night one or another unemployed singer or piano player entertained until dawn, occasionally passing around the hat, while the crowd smoked their Zodiak cigarettes and exchanged gossip about Russia with the newest émigrés. No one asked Zalmund or Deena about their past. Everyone in Kyiv had a past they would rather not discuss or were doing something now they certainly wouldn’t want to talk about.

One night Zalmund and Deena were sharing watered down vodkas with an old widow who was living in the Bellevue. She had a hard edge which softened with each taste. Finally, she cried about her lost husband, who left her some bank notes.

“I know he had more!” she whispered to them, glancing around the room.

“You do?” Deena leaned forward.

“He never told me everything. He left me something to live on, but he must have had more than that.” She looked over her shoulder.

“Maybe you know who he did business with. They might know more,” Zalmund offered.

“Who he did business with is nobody’s business,” she slurred, and took another sip of her drink. “The old days don’t count for much, now.”

Zalmund nodded, and Deena leaned back.

“It was a few weeks ago, maybe July,” the widow continued, “a dandy not from here” she nodded with exaggeration, meaning that he was from the Russian side of the border, “was carrying on all night. He was talking loud and spending money on drinks for everyone, mostly on the free girls,” and she nodded her head toward two colorfully dressed prostitutes sitting hopefully at a table, without drinks and scanning the incoming clientele. “He was saying what he could get in Moscow, what he could get here, that he could take care of anybody.” She took another sip. “The next day they found him dead in a wagon on Vasilkov’skaja. The police said it was robbery, but I heard that he still had his money, and the police took it. He had one shot to the back of the head.” She pointed to the base of her skull. Zalmund and Deena looked at each other. A signature of the Cheka. “Somebody on the other side worried about him talking,” she nodded. “They sent people to stop it.”

“They knew he was here? Here?” Deena asked.

“The Bolsheviks don’t know what goes on in Kyiv?” she looked at them, side to side. “Don’t be foolish. They let the caviar in here. They have people in this town. They can shut a mouth anywhere in this city.”

Under the table, Deena sought Zalmund’s hand. They squeezed, while their eyes met. It was the first time in weeks they thought that maybe they were not yet safe.

The widow grumbled a Polish toast and downed the rest of her drink. Deena and Zalmund followed.

In the succeeding days, Zalmund let his beard grow. They discarded their flashy clothing and began to dress in the bohemian style of the Kyiv sophisticates.

**********

This Kyiv was almost everything they dreamed about when they lived in Koszuty. The Koszuty Mansion had been bought by Napoleon Rekowski, a szlachta zasciankowa, or noble with a small landholding, in 1850. His daughter Maria married the Polish patriot Witold Kosiński in 1875, and the couple took over running the estate, leaving the elder Rekowski’s to live as idle nobility.

Zalmund’s father, Isaak, was an overseer of the Koszuty estate. Isaak started as the bookkeeper for the elder Rekowski. Kosiński kept him on because of his familiarity with the operations, and certainly not because he liked Jews. Isaak was successful in organizing the house accounts, and since the Kosiński couple produced no heirs, Isaak continued on inconspicuously managing the business of the estate while the Kosiński’s maintained their social and political circles. At the turn of the century, Isaak guided the addition of a small shoe making operation and then a leather goods shop to the estate. When Maria Kosiński died in 1911 Witold held a wake and funeral the size of which Koszuty had never seen.

Isaak’s reward for his work was to be assigned the task of collecting rents and taxes from the tenant farmers and shopkeepers of the estate. As was tradition, Witold gave Isaak a commission on whatever he collected. Over the years, Isaak grew rich, at the cost of the resentment of the Catholic townspeople. Isaak moved his family from an apartment above a bread shop in the nearby Jewish village to a stand-alone wooden house on the grounds of the Mansion. He had dreams of a dynasty and purchased a seat in the synagogue on the front row on the east side, a place of honor. His wife, Miriam, was a meek and unpretentious woman. She kept a traditional house for her husband and son Zalmund and enjoyed a pious life. Her health was never good after a miscarriage when Zalmund was four. She was uncomfortable with the move from the apartment right before Zalmund’s bar mitzvah. Isaak insisted on hiring an older Catholic widow from the town to serve as a maid to relieve Miriam of the household tasks. Although his intentions were benevolent, he took from Miriam her identity that she had learned from her mother. She took to her bed, and Zalmund did not remember her often leaving that room of their house.

When Zalmund was 14, Isaak sent him to the Novorodok yeshiva in Pinsk. He hoped to instill in him a traditional education, which would bring him a significant bride, while relieving Miriam of the obligation to keep a home for her son. Isaak was sure that he could teach him how to run the Koszuty Estate. By the time he was twenty, Zalmund received his degree of s’micha, or ordination in the rabbinate. It was a purposeless career of study that ill-suited a brooding and edgy boy, but it made his father proud.

Zalmund returned home to Koszuty in 1906, but it was a difficult time for Russia. Unrest had forced the Tsar to accept a Constitution in 1905. By the next year he regretted his decision. The war he instigated with Japan served in some way to unify the country behind him. He found another outlet for discontent in sponsoring pogroms against Jews. His supporters formed the Black Hundreds, a secret fraternity organized to murder, pillage and rape in the shtetls. Jews were libeled as enemy conspirators in the War. Of course, it was undeniable that many Jews formed the backbone of the socialist revolutionaries and anarchist opponents of the Tsar.

The Black Hundreds brought the savagery to Koszuty in the Spring of 1906. On a bright Sunday afternoon, the drinking started early after a rousing sermon in the parish church by a visiting monsignor from Kyiv. By mid-afternoon a team of two dozen Black Hundreds horsemen galloped into the main square, shouting patriotic slogans and urging action against the plague within their town. They brought torches and single-shot game rifles and marched to the Jewish village outside of town, murdering everything in their path. They burned the synagogue, market stalls and the flimsy wooden homes, and the Black Hundreds captain made a show of trampling the Rabbi under the hooves of his horse. After they left, the grieving survivors lined up eighteen corpses of children in the street for a picture. The photograph became a postcard that was circulated around the world as an icon of a pogrom.

Isaak, Miriam and Zalmund remained protected on the estate grounds, but they were not shielded from the resentment of the surviving Jews. Why had Isaak not interceded with Kosiński to protect them? Why had he turned his back on his fellow Jews? Isaak was sick with guilt. The shtetl grossly overestimated his influence with Witold Kosiński. Isaak took orders like all the mansion servants. Could he have protected anyone? Could Kosiński have stopped it if he wanted to? Not likely at all. But the inescapable truth was that Isaak did not try.

Zalmund was acutely aware of the family’s isolation. He was no longer welcome in the makeshift synagogue. He had no vocation and his marriage prospects evaporated. His mother was an invalid in the upstairs room who did little more than inquire about his health. Then she rolled over and stared at the wall with vacant eyes. Isaak was a practical man and sent Zalmund back to Pinsk for studies and work as a bookkeeper in a sugar mill of a business acquaintance.

Zalmund did not return to Koszuty for seven years. He took successive jobs in business and spent time in Warsaw. He had two serious marriage prospects which fell through after his father’s objections. When his mother developed early signs of dementia, Zalmund returned to prepare to accept the management of the Estate. War in 1914 then quickly engulfed the Polish territory, which was partitioned between Germany, Austria and Russia. Poznan and Koszuty lay west of the front in German land.

By that time, Zalmund was 25 and the widowed maid had died. Isaak hired a young girl named Deena Wójik from the town to take care of Miriam and his household. Deena’s father was a tenant farmer who walked each day from his small home to work his parcel. He paid his rent in crops and needed the hard currency that Deena brought home for his wife and son. But he hated Jews in general and especially resented Isaak as his overlord. He swallowed his pride with a mighty gulp each Sunday morning when he walked to the Hofitz home to escort Deena to church.

Deena was a pretty girl as a child, with a translucent complexion and flaming red hair, and attracted much attention from the boys in the few years she attended school. She took great interest in her studies and outperformed the boys but was squelched at every turn. “You’ll be a fine farmer’s wife,” she was told. “Don’t make your face wrinkled with studies. You will nurse many babies!” When she went to work in the Hofitz’s house at 14, the attitude of the town changed. She was now the Jew’s whore, and she was shunned at stores and church. For her part, she turned her heart cold to them. She felt inside her a great curiosity about the world, but inside school she was told not to learn and outside she was told not to work. Her father loved her but could not help regarding her as a foul necessity. Her mother, pretending or not, was oblivious to all the stigma, neither comforting her daughter nor condemning the crowd. Deena developed an aloof demeanor of protection and simmered with teenage rebellion.

Isaak was a secretive and controlling sort and did not leave many serious tasks for Zalmund. He lounged around the house with a book in his hand, eyeing Deena’s maturing beauty as she carried out her chores. He teased her on occasion, and she relished the attention in her lonely routines.

One day Deena saw Zalmund reading. “What do you have there?”

After a pause, he said “the Bible.”

“Your Torah?” Deena, asked, showing off her knowledge of Jews, which exceeded most of Catholic Koszuty.

“No, your New Testament,” he replied. He raised the book to show her it was a copy of her Church approved version in German. “It’s a very nice story. A poor boy is born a bastard in a small town. No one likes him because of it. He apprentices as a carpenter, but he doesn’t like that. He studies to be a rabbi, but no one will give him a pulpit. He finds a small town, Capernaum in Galilee, in which to preach. Soon he gathers around him very young students that no one else wants. He preaches against the authorities, and advocates love. These teenage boys eat it up and adore him. Well, you know the rest. It doesn’t end well for him. Sad.”

Deena was struck silent, eyes opened and jaw slack. She was astounded that he would speak so cavalierly about Our Lord and Savior. She knew that was blasphemy. But she was also shocked that he, a rabbi, read the Christian bible, and was fluent with its message. She spun on her heels and left the room.

The rest of the week Deena avoided Zalmund but could not get his story out of her head. A poor child was shunned by the world and then he changed it forever. Zalmund’s brief recitation was more powerful to her than any sermon she had heard in all the Sundays at church. Did he really believe it?

After a few weeks, she gathered her courage to confront him. On a sunny summer Saturday afternoon, when Isaac was still in synagogue and Zalmund was relaxing on the porch, she stood close by him and whispered, “Now that you have read our Bible, do you accept Jesus as your Savior?” She bit her lip, not knowing what to expect.

“Yes, I do,” he replied quietly, and then paused for dramatic effect. “As well as Rabbi Zevi, our Messiah.”

“What?” Deena cried in surprise.

“Yes, Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi. He was born 300 years ago in Turkey on the holy day of Tisha B’Av, under the sign of Saturn, the highest planet. He was proclaimed the Messiah, the coming of God to the Earth. They said he could fly.”

“No! How could you believe that?” Deena raised her eyebrows.

“Why not? He led a holy life, read sacred texts, and interpreted the Kabbalah. The Zohar predicted his arrival.”

Deena was struck dumb.

“Yes, yes. Sarah was a Jewish orphan who fell into prostitution in Livorno. She had a vision that she was destined to marry the Messiah. The great Rabbi had her carried to him on the wings of angels, and he married her, just as the great Prophet Hosea married a wife of whoredom. Its true! You can look it up in your Bible.”

Deena narrowed her eyes, now not certain if he was teasing her. “Then what happened?”

“Well, as with the other Messiah,” and Zalmund winked at her, “he fell into trouble with the authorities, this time the Ottomans. Again, he was betrayed by one of his own followers. But this time the Sultan offered him a choice. He could be put to death or convert to Islam.”

“What did he do?” Deena asked, now completely enthralled.

“Oh, he converted to Islam and lived another ten years.”

“No!” Deena exclaimed.

“Yes, and his children moved to Thessalonica,” Zalmund said with a smile. “His descendants may still be there today. I would like to meet them.”

Amused, exasperated, and maybe a little in love, Deena returned to her chores in the house.

Saturday afternoons became their time together. With the elderly Witold Kosiński and infirm Miriam Hofitz confined to their rooms and the Jews reliably in synagogue, they strolled the grounds without the town’s prying eyes. They would discuss the household affairs, the needs of the estate, and the vagaries of the various suppliers and workmen now that the war was in its second year. Supplies of meat and cloth were harder to find, now that the German Army was requisitioning all that it could for the war. Their talks often turned to politics, which Deena enjoyed immensely. No one treated her as an adult nor did they value her opinion, except Zalmund. They discussed the fraying of the aging German empire, the decrepit Tsarist state, and the yearning of the Polish people for a country of their own.

One Saturday afternoon they strolled bundled against the late November wind. Zalmund described his latest reading from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

“God is dead,” Zalmund said matter-of-factly.

“No, Zalmund. Don’t talk that way,” Deena chided him.

“Yes, God is Dead. All that is left is Nihilism. Nothing matters,” he continued. “That is why we destroy ourselves. Germany against Russia, Austria against France. It is more than a government fighting. It is each nation’s culture at war with the other. All to the death. It doesn’t matter.”

“That is a very sad state of affairs,” Deena replied seriously. “And love doesn’t matter? The love of a man for a woman, a mother for her child? We should just throw that away? I cannot accept that.”

“You are right, Deena my… friend,” Zalmund caught himself. “There is someone who can give us meaning. Nietzsche calls him the Übermensch, the Overman. This great man is not held back by the petty morality of a dead world. He is not bound by culture that enslaves men to a doomed country. He rises above simple notions of good and evil. He takes control of the nation and leads to a better world with freedom and justice.”

“Oh, we need an Übermensch now!” Deena exclaimed, and wrapped herself tighter in her shawl.

“Yes, I think we do,” Zalmund said wistfully. They strolled for a while in contemplation, each enjoying the syncopation of their steps and their hearts.

“So, what happened to Herr Nietzsche?” Deena finally asked.

“Oh, he went crazy and died from a stroke in his mothers house!” Zalmund replied deadpan. After a moment, they both burst into laughter and for the first time clutched each other in joy.

By March 1916, although the battle front was far to the east, the demands of the German war effort began to pinch Poznan and Koszuty. Rationing was instituted even in verdant farmland, and produce was commandeered at minimal prices by the ruling government. Then army conscription was instituted to replace the slaughtered soldiers at the front. The local farmers, who had been sympathetic to the more sophisticated Germans against the primitive Russians, grew resentful. In response, the German government promised greater Polish autonomy after the war. It did little to stem the unease. Isaac Hofitz, in the guise of the now decrepit Witold Kosiński, grandson of a famous Polish patriot, petitioned the government to exempt the young men of Koszuty so they could attend to the estate farmland. Others he helped avoid service by forging documents and misplacing deeds. The reports of German savagery in Polish territory at the front gradually shifted local sympathy to the Russians.

As the war dragged on, Deena turned 17 and her marriage prospects all but dried up. Eligible men were conscripted or in hiding. Farmers were poor and without a dowry for their sons. Deena was an outcast and her father stopped trying. Zalmund, too, had no marriage on his horizon. He withdrew from the Jewish community, attending only the minimal prayers in synagogue and leaving afterward. He fought with his father about marrying. He turned down a reasonable shidduch (marriage proposal) from a tailor’s family in town and refused to meet with the local shadchanit (matchmaker). His father worried about leaving him at home for so long and began to assign him more tasks about the estate.

Zalmund followed the war closely by newspaper accounts. He would walk around the house following Deena and read to her from the dispatches. Deena cherished his attention and drank up every fact from the outside world. The German press was particularly fixated on the decomposing Tsarist family. The corruption of the ruling circle was monumental, they reported. The Russian Imperial Army, commanded by Tsar Nicholas in person, ate caviar while sending their troops to the field armed with sticks and pitchforks. Back at the capital in Petrograd, the German-born Tsarina Alexandra was reported to be under the control of a crazy monk Rasputin. She made decisions based on his bizarre mystical visions and hosted sex orgies for him. Then on December 30, 1916 Russian noblemen, led by the Tsar’s nephew Prince Yussupoff, assassinated Rasputin. Newspapers reported that at first they poisoned him, shot him twice, then had to beat him senseless and throw him from the Petrovsky Bridge into the freezing Neva River to finish the job.

The war continued to go badly for the Russians, which only increased the demands on the Poznan provincials to supply the advancing German Army. Finally, the starving peasants and workers of Petrograd turned on the Tsar’s government, and the Russian Army followed. Nicholas Romanov abdicated the throne on March 15, 1917. Zalmund and Deena speculated on the outcome. Deena hoped the moderate politicians, supported by the Church, would come to their senses and stop the war. She emphasized her points by swatting the pillows extra hard as she made the bed. Zalmund followed behind her, stroking his beard and nodding. But the Socialists, he reminded her, are the ones who want to make peace.

“And the Bolsheviks,” he said slowly, “are led by an Übermensch. Lenin.”

“A real live Übermensch?” she asked.

“Yes. I see it clearly. He will do anything, stop at nothing, to take over Russia. He is not bound by the same rules as the Republicans. He is building a new morality, a new Russian culture. They cannot defeat him. They are fighting with only one arm.”

“A real Übermensch,” Deena said softly to herself, mulling it over as she smoothed the sheets. “If he stops the war, I am with him!” she finally said, defiantly.

Germany’s joy at the collapse of the Russian Empire was reversed with the entry of the United States into the War in April 1917. The demands of the German Imperial War Department now shifted to the extreme. Isaac Hofitz could no longer protect the town or the estate, and nearly all young men were conscripted. Summer crops were harvested unripen to conceal them from the authorities. The remaining townspeople were on meager rations. The grim news became foreboding of a black future. People were anxious and snapped at each other. They trudged around the streets with heads held low, stomachs churning with doubt and worry. Even the church bells tolled a little softer and sharper, as if God himself held his breath and waited.

One Saturday afternoon in the fall of 1917, after Deena prepared the end-of-Shabbos dinner, she walked the perimeter of the grounds with Zalmund in the fading light. Without looking up, she said “Tell me more about Rabbi Zevi.”

Zalmund looked up, surprised and amused. “My Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi?”

“Yes, that one.”

“Well, he was a mystic. He believed that not everything in the world could be observed, and that not everything we saw was true. He thought that some truths of God were hidden and must be discovered. He was a master of Kabbalah and Zohar, a very difficult book to understand. I tried.”

“Even you, Zalmund?” Deena teased.

“Even me, my sweet.” Zalmund gave her a wide smile and took her hand. “Kabbalah teaches that we should work on perfecting our character, and that is what can touch God and live forever. No amount of worship or ritual matters unless it enriches your character.”

“A character that lives forever,” Deena repeated in a low voice. “So many in town have lost sons and husbands. They long to hear them and touch them. Mrs. Najwicz has invited Franek Kluski to hold a séance tomorrow at her home to reach out to dead soldiers and comfort them. He is a famous medium, maybe you have heard of him? He can summon the dead, and he even makes wax impressions of their hands. Father Dziwisz has cautioned against these pagan rituals, but they go on anyway in secret. People want to believe that the dead still live.”

They came upon the ruins of an old stone church on the edge of the baren field. Three half-walls remained, overhung by a tree that had dropped most of its leaves to the ground inside the ruin. Zalmund turned and led Deena through the gap of the former door and into the vestige of the chapel. He took both her hands and looked down into her eyes.

“We long to connect our immortal souls. It is more than a church, bigger than a country. It is a force we cannot resist. A river flowing to eternity.” He bent down and kissed her deeply. Soon he spread his coat on the bed of leaves. As the sun set and the first stars twinkled overhead, Zalmund and Deena made love.

When they finished, Deena smoothed her shift, smiled at Zalmund and took his hand as they started back in the dark. She smiled for most of the way, but as they approached familiar trees and paths, her glorious isolation gave way to fear of the shared mundane. The enormity of her choice overcame her. She clutched Zalmund’s hand with her right and then grasped his elbow with her left. She knew then that nothing would ever be the same.

In a few weeks the papers were filled with the news of the Second Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks had seized power from the Liberals with hardly a shot fired. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were now in control of whatever was left of the Russian Army. The lethargy of the people of Koszuty gave way to a nervous agitation. Rumors flew about who was a Socialist, who supported the Germans, and who remained loyal to the Tsar. With this level of scrutiny, attention turned to Deena, and then to Zalmund, who did little to hide his feelings from his father. After the Christmas celebrations, Isaac dismissed Deena from their service.

On a routine visit to the dry goods store, Zalmund was confronted by Deena’s brother. He accused him of ruining his sister’s life. “Oh, you liked it better when she worked under Jews?” Zalmund snapped. Deena’s brother charged him, and the fight was broken up by other shoppers. The store owner asked Zalmund not to return.

In March 1918, the Germans and Russians announced their peace. The border to the east was now open. Zalmund found a supplier headed to Poznan, and late one afternoon he and Deena slipped under the wagon’s canvas cover, among the cabbages and onions, and left Koszuty. From Poznan they boarded a train for the short ride to Lublin, which eventually led them to Moscow, and then Kyiv.

**********

By mid-October 1918 in Kyiv, Zalmund and Deena were nearing the end of the money from the sale of the black sedan. Zalmund sold his first Cheka pass to a well-known fixer on Foundoukleevskaja. The Cheka passes were in great demand because of the extensive smuggling from decadent Kyiv into proletarian Moscow, where luxury items were nearly impossible to obtain. For the smuggler, authentic passes were even better than bribing border guards, because the price was fixed and the service more dependable. The illicit transport of large volumes of contraband rewarded the apparatchiks for their zealous pursuit of the worker’s paradise. For his part, Zalmund, like all the rest in the smugglers’ chain, took his payment in the hard currency of Kyiv: German marks.

His goods were unusual, precious, and word quickly spread among the Kyiv underground traders. Zalmund made several hurried deals and then realized his commanding position. He paid a café owner a few marks each week to take messages for him from his clients. He stopped by occasionally to collect the notes and set up times for meetings at the café. The Firebird was not much of a café, and wasn’t even on the main Foundoukleevskaja, but rather on a side alley called Grodsznoskaja. When Deena came with him on a crisp October afternoon, she had to step carefully down the narrow brick stairs to the basement and the wood door with a small peephole. The word “Firebird” painted in flaking yellow paint was scarcely visible from the street. Zalmund knocked twice and held up two fingers sideways in a signal to the peephole. The door opened and they entered a dank and dark basement, with a cement floor and wood pillars spaced about. The room was lit by candles on the tables and from wall sconces, which gave the room a smoky flavor. The walls were otherwise covered by dark colored sheets nailed to the ceiling beam, draping over cracked plaster walls. A few shaggy men were slouched on sagging couches against the back and side walls, partially obscured by the pillars.

“Get Kardvarnya,” Zalmund whispered to the boy who answered the door. He disappeared behind a curtain to the right of the doorway, while Zalmund and Deena stood to adjust their eyes to the dim light. The sweet and pungent aroma of smoked hashish drifted to the front. Zalmund wasn’t the only one who found the Firebird a convenient place to do business, and Kardvarnya proved a cooperative partner. Hashish, opium and cocaine poured into Kyiv, which continued its long tradition even during the war years as a gateway to the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. The cocaine in particular was not the seven percent laudanum that gentlemen sipped in the tea rooms of Vienna and London. This was the white powder that each week put down one or two of the all-night partygoers and juiced henchmen in the fast lane of Kyiv. Hashish was favored by the homeless desperados who filled up the cracks of the city, ready to do anything, legal or otherwise, for a day’s pay.

Kardvarnya appeared from behind the curtain, wearing a sportsman cap, grey flannel undershirt and wool military jodhpurs, tied at the waist with a stained white silk sash. His beard was salt and pepper, but his eyes were bright under dark bushy eyebrows. He spoke quickly and quietly into Zalmund’s ear, and Zalmund occasionally nodded. He pulled a sheaf of bills from his pocket and handed it to a surprised Zalmund.

“One in the back is asking for Starfish,” Kardvarnya said to Zalmund so that Deena could hear. Starfish was Zalmund’s street name among the underground.

“Who’s he with?”

“He won’t say.”

“Take a note. I want a name.”

“Fine.”

Kardvarnya slapped him on the back, and Zalmund and Deena left. They squinted as they walked back to Foundoukleevskaja.

“What was that money, Zalmund?” Deena asked.

“Someone wants to meet me very soon. It was a down payment.”

“Who?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. Someone who can afford to let this out of his hand.” He clutched the bills in his pocket. “So now, let’s go crazy!”

Zalmund hailed a cab to the shops on Andrievsky Uzviz, in the shadow of St. Sophia’s church. With money in their pocket, and more stashed under the floorboards in their apartment, they were energized. Deena bought a red satin drop-waist dress from a Paris designer right out of a boutique window, together with a matching skullcap hat and a pearl string, in the new flapper style. She found a grey and black striped cravat and pearl stickpin for Zalmund to wear under his new white silk shirt. They sipped cappuccino and looked out on the boulevard from a bistro filled with scions of the noble families.

At the end of the day, Deena insisted on visiting the Cathedral of St. Sophia, where for centuries the princes of Kyiv were crowned. It was modeled on Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and contained mosaics, frescoes, and icons dating back to the 11th century. In truth, Deena hoped in there to make sense of her day. She knew she should feel guilt, but she didn’t, that she should feel apprehension, but her heart only showed exhilaration. She needed to pray at the Cathedral as she was taught as a little girl. This she thought would reconnect her with moral certainties that were missing in her life. Was it wrong to survive? She had not hurt anyone, she thought, but had been chased away from helping people. Now in her own way she was fighting against that great wrong. She could receive forgiveness in the Holy Mother Church and begin again with a clean soul.

“Absolutely not!” Zalmund spat out at her.

“You only need to stand at the back.”

“I won’t cross the door. These are the people who want to destroy us. The same as in Moscow.”

“Oh, stop it!”

“And where was your God when we had nothing?” Zalmund asked her.

After a long pause, she asked him “Is it because you are a Jew?”

“Is that why,” he replied, “you must go, for forgiveness because I am a Jew?”

Deena’s face turned red to match her hair. She turned and entered the Cathedral. Zalmund left and returned to the apartment, to wait for her.

In that same Fall season, the influenza arrived in Kyiv. In the early spring a few recruits in US army camps were consumed in days with dark fluid in their lungs, but not before boatloads of their fellow soldiers landed in Europe to help in the War. By April both soldiers and civilians were sick in France, and then Spain. When the flu came to England in June, they called it the Spanish Influenza, and it killed 200,000 souls in a six weeks. After a dormant summer, the second wave of influenza began in September. The Germans call it “blitz catarrh” and it lasted about six weeks in each city as it spread its death. King Alfonso XIII of Spain took sick in September, and the court physician Dr. Gomez Casas was ordered to deny the existence of an epidemic. When he refused, he was dismissed. One-third of all Spaniards were struck down before it was over. But in Kyiv, the people thought this problem, like all the others of the world, belonged to someone else.

That was until the influenza struck the city like a warm, putrid seepage from the West. It called on people like a lottery, and they coughed for two days, gasped for a third, before their lungs filled with sticky goo and they suffocated. Soon news spread of the suddenly dead. By the end of September, the Bessarabka produce market was nearly deserted. But that was where Zalmund had arranged a rendezvous with his patron who had paid just to meet him. He was met by a mismatched team of thugs, one a big brawny intimidator and the other a scrawny, nervous type.

They took him to an aging hotel, near the edge of the Podol district, which had passed its prime at the turn of the century. They walked up the front stairs, past the bellman in a worn topcoat with faded gold epaulets and to the creaky elevator up to the mezzanine floor with suites. At the end of the hall, they knocked on the door, and after a peak from the door keeper, they were admitted to the rooms of Vladimir Dragomirov, the chief Kyiv politico and a General in the former Polish army. The outer reception room had a couch in front of a fireplace with an ornate stone mantle, and two circular tables with white tablecloths on either side of the couch. Gold-gilded sconces with light bulbs only recently replacing candles hung on the walls.

Dragomirov nodded and stood from the couch to greet Zalmund. He shook his hand but did not introduce his cronies seated at the circular tables. They wore dark coats and leaned their heads together in the table center to discuss the intruder.

“Hello, young man,” Dragomirov bellowed. “I’m glad you could come. Sit, sit.” He motioned to the couch. “Olga!” he cried.

In a moment from a side room emerged an aging blond in a short red maid’s dress with a low-cut front and puffy sleeves. She carried a tarnished silver tray with a crystal decanter of vodka and several small crystal shot glasses. She made a show of pouring the frozen vodka into each glass and carrying the tray to each man in the room.

“Nostrovya!” and Dragomirov knocked back the drink. The others followed. Olga repoured each glass. “Dobre!” and they all drank again.

Dragomirov and Zalmund sat and the cronies returned to their conspiracies. “You’ve made a name for yourself, Starfish,” Dragomirov began, his grey eyes fixed on Zalmund. His grey hair, thinning in front, hung down his forehead, and his mustache was a mix of dark and grey over thick lips.

“I try to stay low,” Zalmund replied. He leaned forward on his knees and tossed his cap nervously between his hands.

“To most, maybe. But not to me.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Not to me.” Zalmund looked up at him directly. “You have been in Moscow,” Dragomirov continued.

“Yes, for a little,” Zalmund replied.

“In the belly of fear, eh?” Dragomirov said. Zalmund paused. Maybe Dragomirov wanted some stories from the Cheka, but Zalmund wasn’t interested. “Dosyt! You have something of interest for me?” he continued.

“I might. Do you need to get across the border?”

“I might,” Dragomirov nodded. “We have business” as he leaned into Zalmund with an alcoholic breath.

“We do?” Zalmund said coldly.

“Listen, Zalmund Hofitz. You have been successful. I have let you. Now we need your help. You can only do better. You understand?” Dragomirov raised his eyebrows in a supplicant gesture. Zalmund knew this was the last he would see of this expression.

“Yes. I can help.”

“We travel many places, me and my friends. Your passes would be very helpful to our business.” Dragomirov paused, and after an uncomfortable slack, Zalmund nodded. “It is best you help us.”

“I can help,” Zalmund said, and then turned his attention from Dragomirov’s intense stare, and surveyed the room. “Is there a party tonight?” He looked back with hooded eyes.

“Of course. Olga! Katarina!” Dragomirov barked.

This gave Zalmund some time to think. He had to deal with Dragomirov, naturally. But what? If he gave whatever was requested, who would become his enemies? What could he hold back? How much could he ask? He offered three toasts while contemplating. The assembled soldiers of the Kyiv underground gratefully saluted his recognition.

“Nostrovya!” They downed the shot glasses of biting Vodka that warmed them.

“Nostrovya!”

“Da Nostrovya!”

A young girl, with bright red lipstick and a small pimple below her lip on the left, smiled and sat on his lap. She wore a lace bodice over a black bra and a short black velvet skirt with silk fishnet stockings, and a long seam running from her heel and delectably disappearing under the skirt hem. Dragomirov smiled and patted his knee. “You can join us, you know. We need someone like you.”

Zalmund checked his breathing with a start. In a nervous gesture he patted the young girl on the hip. She put her hand over his hand on his hip, and Zalmund knew he was in deeper than he expected. She raised his hand to cover her breast.

Dragomirov was persistent. “Where do the passes come from?”

“They are real.” Zalmund said coolly. The girl on his lap looked back at him over her shoulder, annoyed. “I was Cheka.”

Dragomirov sat back in his seat, to show he was impressed. “Yes.” He grabbed another young girl that circulated among the men of the mezzanine. She smiled in recognition, sat on his lap, and put her arm around his neck. He looked at her and gave a small peck on the neck.

“You have more?” The girl began to answer, but she saw the question was directed at Zalmund. She pouted her red lips.

“General Dragomirov…” Zalmund said sarcastically, shook his head and leaned it against the back of the young girl.

“Hofitz. I treat you with respect,” he paused. “For now,” he paused again, and laughed out loud. “You are a smart man. I see that. Not like these…” He wiped his hand across the room. “Anyway, I lost three of them, this week. To the Spanish flu. Nasty.”

Zalmund looked up and nodded. He appreciated this display of vulnerability.

“Look, Hofitz. We have the same enemies, we might as well be friends. You came to Kyiv from Moscow. I don’t need to know why. We go back to Moscow, now and again. I could use your help.

Zalmund looked him in the eye with a serious face. “For a price.”

“Don’t be stupid, Zalmund. For a percentage.” Dragomirov paused. “We can do very good business and sink the Bolsheviks. You’d like that?”

“I don’t know what you have in mind,” Zalmund demurred. Yes, of course. A percentage sounded like so much more and was so much less. Expenses, losses, mistakes by his friends, betrayals by his enemies. Dragomirov would give him what he felt he was worth, which might be very little.

“My friend,” Dragomirov continued. “You make this hard. I need you in my group. I will pay you fairly for your passes, plus a percentage of what we can take across. Of course, I need your advice on the border crossings, the security, and such.”

“I could do this.”

“Will you do this?” There was a pause. “Of course, the girl has got to go.”

The girl on his lap stood up. Zalmund was taken up short.

“What girl?”

“The girl has to go. You know. We see you with her. She is of no use to you now.” He squeezed the breast of the girl on his lap. “A different one every night. Think of it.”

Zalmund lost his balance. For some stupid reason he had thought of his life in two compartments: one with Deena and one to survive. Now, in a cymbal crash, they merged.

“Why?” was all he could say.

“Why not?” Dragomirov laughed. “What do you need her for? She is a Polish kalamsavya, a dirt digger. You can do better. We do not need extra eyes, extra mouths. You will work at night, maybe not come home so often.” He smirked, then Dragomirov narrowed his eyes, and the drunken look was suddenly gone from his face. “We don’t work with our women.”

“Yes, … No?” Zalmund was desperate. “Nostrovya!” he cried, and all the glasses were filled with chilled Vodka. They drank, and his head spun.

“So?” Dragomirov raised his eyebrows to close the deal.

Zalmund smiled. What was behind his eyes? He grabbed the young girl by the shoulder, spun her back, and kissed her deeply. The place erupted in cheer.

He felt her soft skin, the lace of her bodice against his chin. He shivered. She danced for them, and for him, with her hips swinging side-to-side suspended like a hinge from her narrow waist. She sat on his lap and leaned back into him, and he inhaled. The smell of her shoulder, the dressing powder on her skin made him dizzy. She turned and leaned forward, her forehead against his. She arched her back. He felt the heat from between her breasts against his nose. He closed his eyes and the sensation imprinted on his memory. She kissed him sweetly on the top of the head, arose and danced again.

Another took her place, and more as the night went into dawn. Each squeezed Zalmund at his core, and he couldn’t think of Deena at the same time. He was off into possibilities, where endless scenes flowed. He was a warlord, an impresario, an intelligentsia. He was independent. All respected him, the Jews and the goyim.

A blond in a black lace corset filled his glass with vodka. She looked deep into his eyes. She looked like she wanted to know something, …was he true? Of course not, who was here? But her eyes asked. He shifted his gaze away nervously. He grabbed her roughly about the waist and twisted her onto his lap. In punishment he kissed her on the lips, then her neck, and then firmly on her left breast that was squeezed into a supple mound above the corset.

Dragomirov leaned around the dark-haired beauty in his lap to watch Zalmund. He saw the kisses, the caresses, the bawdy talk. He knew he had his man. Zalmund may put on a front of idealism, of dedication, of purpose. But it was a mask. Just underneath was a man who needed stroking, respect, acknowledgement from his betters, a purpose for what he wanted to do. Dragomirov understood. He gave him this, as he did for so many in his band. One more recruited to the crew.

Sometime early in the morning, Zalmund crept down a narrow, humid alley with smells from the dank gutter. His clothes and his breath stunk from the night before. The vodka, the girls, the songs, the toasts. His head was bursting. At the end of the alley leading out of the Podol he came up to a police barricade. Now he was exhausted.

“Stop! No one passes” a tall blonde solider in a rumpled uniform and wearing a mask commanded with his rifle.

“Yes!” Zalmund raised his arms. “I hear!”

“Go back. This district is quarantined for the Spanish flu by decree of the Mayor. No one leaves the Podol.” The guard raised his rifle directly to Zalmund’s face.

“I understand,” Zalmund nodded, holding his hands high.

“Go back. Now.” He lowered the rifle to his waist and raised the barrel to Zalmund’s chest.

“Yes,” Zalmund said. And he returned to Dragomirov’s whores.

After the first night, Deena made some calls. No one had seen Zalmund, no one knew where he was. They asked questions, “When did you see him last? Did he leave?”

She didn’t want to answer. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be home soon, I better get back, and make dinner for him.” Her ears burned and her cheeks blushed when she uttered this cliché from her mother’s vocabulary.

She walked the districts, peering into the cafes, the restaurants, looking for him. Is he with another? He found his contacts in the rotted cafes. Has the Cheka got him? Each night she returned to her cold bed, in a drafty apartment, with a suspicious cloud on her head and a lead stone in her heart.

After the third night, the barricades came down, and fearful traffic returned to Kyiv. No one from Dragomirov’s crew had left the hotel, and everyone was cranky.

Zalmund struggled through the suddenly bright streets back to his apartment building, determined in his stride. A gentle dust rose from the steps of the narrow alley entrances and diffused the light. He knew his way through this old Kyiv. But when he reached the street, he slowed his pace. His head hurt. Did he really have a choice? He had to go home, if only to rest.

He stood in front of the door. He wanted to go in, but he paused. Could he go through with all this? He didn’t care. He turned the handle, but the door was locked. He struggled with it.

“Hello?”

He didn’t answer.

“Zalmund?” she creaked.

No answer.

“Zalmund?” Her voice cracked.

“Yes, yes. It is me. The police…” His voice trailed off and she did not hear.

Deena flung the door open. Their eyes met for a moment, and Zalmund had to look away. He feigned tiredness, and she sensed his distance.

“You are back.”

“Yes.”

“I was worried.”

“The flu. They closed the streets. Here. I couldn’t get through.”

She angled her head to the right and looked at him carefully. “Are you all right?” Her face softened.

“I had to stay out.”

“Yes?” Her voice held a hint of sarcasm.

“Yes, Deena, I had no choice. I need to lay down.” He strode past her into the apartment. As he passed, she touched his forearm. He turned, she looked up, and their eyes met. She hugged his waist and he covered her in his arms. She wanted so much to believe that she could put this out of her mind. She couldn’t just now. They held each other in warmth for a time, but the physical heat only briefly clouded her suspicion. She smelled him carefully, and thought she detected a perfume through the damp wool and cigar stench.

“Dormirovich called,” she said finally.

“Who?”

“Down the hall. You know. He was worried about me.” She looked up at him with her hands about his waist. Her look was a warning to him.

“He was?”

“Zalmund, people knew you were gone. Three days, you were gone.”

“The flu.”

“I know.” Her voice said she knew what he said and what he didn’t say.

He hugged her, rocking back and forth. What could he do? Had he lost this?

In the few days that followed Zalmund took Deena to the fashion district. He used too many of the notes stashed beneath the floorboards to buy her dresses and silk scarves, so difficult to get in the middle of war. They sipped coffee under the café awnings and laughed. For the first time in many days, Deena relaxed. She put away from her mind where he had been, as well as what was next. Her feelings were not so much different than that of most of Kyiv, which floated on the balloon of currency, confidence, and blind ambition, in the face of ruthless neighbors close by and closing.

Zalmund knew that any moment Dragomirov might call for his first assignment. It could be a phone call, a messenger, or a bullet to Deena’s head.

Suddenly there was a commotion to the right of them in the sidewalk cafe. A man in a black shirt and grey pants had struck an old and tattered Jew from the sidewalk into the street. Into the gutter, actually. He cursed at him and walked away. Now, as if orchestrated, some young thugs in wool caps, knee-high britches and steel-toed work shoes with holes in the soles, came to the curb. One spat on the prostrate figure. “Juden!” he sneered. The others smirk. “You brought this plague. Now take it away! Leave us in peace! Go, give the plague to your Bolsheviks.” Another stepped from the sidewalk and kicked the old man in the thigh. “Bolshevik pig! Eat this!” He scraped dirt from the street into the old man’s face. The young men laughed in a guttural growl and walked away.

In mid-October the spirit of Kyiv had changed, almost like a cool front blowing in over balmy skies. The faces of the people on the street were pinched between the eyebrows, and their thoughts were self-absorbed. The waiters were a little haughtier, the shop keepers a little crisper. Less time was spent in casual banter at the cafes. Newspaper sales went up, and the news was not good. Dragomirov called once, and Zalmund sold him a pass. He seemed to Zalmund to be distracted and intense. They did not speak of larger plans, but Dragomirov asked Zalmund about safe houses in Moscow.

“For you?”

“Don’t be stupid. I have a customer.”

“I don’t know…”

“Think!”

“I’ll get back to you.”

“Forget it, it will be too late.”

October 9, 1918 was the first attack on the Brodsky synagogue, a 300-year-old red brick building with magnificent windows facing the East. A bundle of wood and newspapers was set on fire at the steps on Friday night, while the congregation prayed inside. This was one act that the Germans and the Ukrainians could agree. A week later bricks were thrown through the stained-glass windows, and Jews were beaten as they left Saturday morning services.

Deena and Zalmund react differently to the news. Deena was horrified because she saw it as one more step on the slide down to world madness, but Zalmund sensed the personal danger. It was possible that the conflict could be resolved by blaming the Jews and heaping the two years of war and disease on them.

“My family didn’t hate all Jews,” she said. “They just didn’t like you.”

“And when they read in the paper about the Brodsky synagogue, will they shake their heads, or nod their head?” he said

“They didn’t like you because you were with me. Your family didn’t like me any better.”

“My family didn’t know you,” he said.

“They didn’t want to know me,” she said.

“I do,” and he embraced her. He hugged her and rubbed her back. He was afraid to say how much he needed her. He smelled her hair and grew weak. She was his connection to hope. He felt a knot in his chest, and he squeezed her to release the doom from his heart.

Kyiv, like almost every major city in eastern Europe, had two stories to tell. The grand boulevards and the baroque public buildings with gilded woodwork spoke of a majestic Imperial period, which grew more romanticized as the mechanical age crept in. But just a few blocks from the façade, like their Podol district apartment beyond the St. Andrews Church, another Kyiv moaned. There the bricks in the buildings were uneven, the plumbing leaked, and the filth in the street moved only with the storm rain. A grey film hugged the building stones that matched the overcast skies of Autumn. The people worked hard, when they had it, and they knew how close to the edge they lived.

Zalmund noticed immediately, before he put the old iron key in the rusted keyhole, that fresh wood was showing through the tired brown stain where their apartment door fit into the jamb. He pushed the door open without the key, and the bracket in the door jamb clattered to the floor. He looked back at Deena with a panic that he quickly controlled. He held up his hand and then turned back to the door.

“Hello?” He paused. No answer. Now he thought that was a stupid thing to say. But it was too late. If they were inside, they knew he was home.

“We aren’t coming in until you say you are there.” No answer.

Zalmund turned and shooed Deena down the stairs. As they passed the apartment on the floor below theirs, the door was ajar, and a nose poked through the open space. Zalmund started to open his mouth to speak to the old woman, but the door quickly closed. Whatever she had seen or heard had scared her, he thought.

Zalmund and Deena left the building. After a walk around the block, they came back and sat down on the steps of a building across the street and a few doors down. Their apartment window faced the tenement to the left, so they could not see in. They waited and watched. Deena calmed her nerves, and then her anger, but she never asked why this might happen. By dusk Zalmund felt foolish. When it was dark, and no light appeared from the window, they went back inside.

The apartment had been ransacked. Their few possessions scattered on the floor. Deena’s wardrobe of impractical dresses lay in an isolated heap. Each one had been deliberately slashed. She knelt and cried.

“Why?” she finally spoke, looking up to Zalmund, who continued to search the small bedroom.

“To send a message. Since they found nothing.”

“Who?”

“I know who,” was all Zalmund said. He glanced to the false panel on the back of the front door. His Cheka passes were untouched.

By late October 1918 the German defeat appeared inevitable. The Ukrainian Republic had no defense against a uniting Poland to the north and hardened Polish army troops swept into the Kyiv capital in early November. Like cockroaches in sudden light, the Kyiv underground scattered. Dragomirov was rumored to have gone over to the Bolsheviks or escaped to Archangel. Around Kyiv, Ukrainians unleashed major pogroms against Jews in their shtetls, murdering thousands. Homes were looted and burned, men massacred, mothers ravaged, and children gutted, all with impunity. Later they would say it was the Germans and the Poles. But in fact, it was the local ironworker and the neighbor tradesman peeled to the core by fear of war and uncertain of victory. The Jews of the Ukraine were the victims of neither armaments nor pestilence, but the release of demons into the chaos.

The fury of the Ukrainians could not save themselves. They decimated the Jews, who were not their real enemy. The Polish army commandeered the Town hall, barracked in the stadium, and arrested what members of the Rada government they could find. Many were summarily shot. Kyiv was the capital of the Ukraine for one thousand years, but in the three years following 1918 European powers exchanged its ownership sixteen times.

LEIPZIG

Max, Deena and Zalmund took rooms near the Köln train station on the night of Thursday, November 28, 1918. Max bought pickled herring on a black bread roll from a street vendor and went back to his room to sleep. Deena and Zalmund strolled the old town, gazing at the glorious Cathedral brightly lit against the dark sky, and took a light meal at a café before returning to their room.

The next morning, they met in front of the boarding house, walked to the station and boarded the train to Leipzig, 500 kilometers to the east.

Deena didn’t know at first what it was she saw in Max on the train that made her look at him out of the corner of her eye, even before Zalmund brought him over to talk. It certainly wasn’t the grey wool coat, worn at the collar and frayed at the sleeve, which hung loosely on his thin frame. He lacked an aura of confidence, and he seemed in some way to be concealing something. Maybe it was his piercing blue eyes, with an edge of determination, contrasting with the endearing tasseled red forelocks protruding from under his black peasant cap. She could tell that he was lost, didn’t know it, and maybe she could help him find his way back.

Of course, she noticed his attention, the way he unselfconsciously stared at her, even after he returned to his seat. Each time she shifter her weight, or rose from the seat, he was startled. Each time she looked at him she smiled, and her smile grew progressively broader, finishing with a nod of her head. Zalmund hadn’t noticed, she thought.

After a stroll, ‘to stretch my legs’ she told herself, Deena boldly sat down next to Max as he stared out the window. He turned with a start, lifting his left arm and almost smacking himself in the face. Deena giggled and as he focused on her face, he smiled sheepishly.

“You sleep well last night?” she asked.

“Off and on,” he answered. “Will we arrive before dark?”

He almost caught her admitting she was watching him. “Well, I don’t know,” she looked into his eyes and raised her eyebrows. “It’s gets dark so early now.”

“I’ve lost track.”

“We have some time.”

There was a long pause while they each looked ahead. She felt fastened to the seat and could not leave. He turned to look at her. He didn’t say anything, just stared at her while he formed a sentence, then discarded it and started again. She smiled, turned to him, and they both began to speak at the same time.

“You first,” she said.

“No, you, madam.”

“Do you miss your home?” she asked.

“Yes, I do. But I can’t go back until I do this. So, there is no point in thinking of it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she lowered her eyes.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” he stammered. “It’s just that I must find my Mama and Pa, and that’s all I think about; how to find them and how to get them home. Nothing else matters to me now.”

“It’s good to have a purpose,” she said, and raised her eyes to meet his. He smiled and a frieze jolted her spine.

“Do you want to know about my hometown?” he asked.

“I think that is what I really meant,” she said.

“I thought so.” And so, he described to her Minneapolis, with the alphabet ordered streets, the porches for the spring, the shovels for the deep snow in winter, and the neighbors who all knew, and gossiped about, each other. He described the street cars running down Hennepin Avenue, the three-story Dayton’s department store downtown, right next to the gilded Canton Cafe Chinese restaurant. He left out that his Jewish neighborhood was culturally isolated from rest of the Scandinavian city, and tensions regularly broke out into fistfights among the young men. Deena imagined a bustling town, full of rich people in cars with no cares, free from worry about the government or fear of the Church, able to say and do anything. The story he told came close to the fantasies told by her townspeople about life in America. Was it really true? Could she ever live there? She looked closely at Max, in a different way. His poor appearance was really a cover for his mission. His bright eyes and lean frame revealed his inner energy and determination. He was part of the New World that would overtake her exhausted country. She yearned to leap to that world, but she did not know how.

“I must sound silly, talking to you about my hometown that is so new, when you come from such old cities,” he stammered, and stopped.

“Not all the cities,” she smiled. “Just one.” He laughed, for the first time, and she giggled that she had made him laugh. They laughed again and nodded at each other.

“So, tell me about one,” he said.

She told him about Koszuty, the old mansion and its history with the patriot Kosiński. She described the stone and plaster homes, the rows of wooden shops, and the dirt streets with deep carriage ruts and horses. She also mentioned the neighbors and their gossip. She left out that Zalmund’s father was a rent and tax collector, and the pogroms by the Black Hundred. Max nodded at each story, and he imagined the idyllic country life that his parents traded in for a coal yard in Kherson. And now they were missing.

**********

“Nikolayev!” harrumphed Zalmund, when Deena returned to her seat and told him of Max’s plan. “Why Nikolayev? Where in God’s majesty is Nikolayev?”

“It’s the biggest city near Kherson, his town” Deena said.

“Near Odessa?”

“I suppose.”

“Why?”

“His parents were last heard from there. That is where the last letter was sent,” Deena told him.

“How long ago?”

“A long time. I didn’t ask.”

“They may be gone.”

“Maybe,” she said.

“He is going?’ Zalmund asked.

“Without a doubt.” There was a note of pride in Deena’s voice. She was taking Max’s side. Was there a side? When did there get to be a side?

Zalmund caught the tone in her voice. “It’s foolish.”

“I suppose,” she said admiringly, clearly not discouraged.

After a pause of consideration, Zalmund asked “Did you tell him that?

A pause. “No.”

“What?”

“No!” Deena said firmly.

Zalmund struggled to control himself. Why? Who was this American to him? “It’s a dangerous place now. At the edge of the Red Army, with the counter-revolutionaries scattered about and the Americans in Odessa. There’s fighting all over.”

“He’ll need help, then,” Deena said quietly.

“Help? From whom?”

“Us. You, mostly,” she replied.

“Me? Why me?”

“Why not?” she said.

Now that was the question. Why not indeed. Zalmund felt a pinch in his throat, and his ears burned. His mind was clouded for a moment. He could not speak his answer. No need. They would be done with him soon enough.

“Then,” he said, mustering a commanding voice and a dismissive tone, “maybe we will.”

**********

Finally, in early evening the train pulled into the Leipzig station. On Zalmund’s suggestion, Max left the train with them to rest overnight. Max understood his invitation, but Zalmund’s eyes said something else. Max was too tired to think more about it.

On the other hand, Deena was much more encouraging. She practically skipped down the station platform, reciting what little she knew about Leipzig. But when her eyes met Max’s, she held his gaze and then shyly looked away. She giggled and spoke to Zalmund. She turned her head over her shoulder so Max could hear, her golden red hair flying away, and the glint of fading light passed through the station windows onto her cheek.

A dozen platforms stretched out on the left for trains from Saxony and another dozen on the right for trains from Prussia. Their train reached back into the horizon and disappeared from view in the flood of exiting passengers and porters scurrying with carts laden with luggage. This was the largest train station in all of Europe, located in its center and crossroads for all the bustle and business that continued even in the collapse of the Empire. They approached the main hall of the Leipzig train station through a hallway tunnel of arched steel beams that opened onto a majestic expanse stretching out before the entryway and lit by rows of matching crystal chandeliers. Gothic wood carvings decorated the pillars, and above the walls were intricate stained-glass windows, symbolizing the limitless possibilities of Germany following the unification a generation before. The cavernous space now had a heavy air of tattered travelers, seeking sanctuary somewhere else, everyone on the move. Finely painted porcelain tiles and bright mosaics looked down on a mother, her young child perched on her hip, her other arm struggling with suitcases bound with rope.

Zalmund, Deena and Max collected their luggage, made their way to the entrance and stepped out onto the boulevard in front of the broad sandstone façade of the station. Zalmund picked out one, then another, porter, and inquired about hotels they might afford and where money was changed. While Berlin was in ruins, Leipzig was still an operational business center in the heart of Europe and desperately needed tradeable currency. Zalmund quickly changed his silver Dutch guilders he brought from Amsterdam into German marks at an beneficial, actually outrageous, premium. Finally satisfied, he directed Deena and Max south, across Brühl street and down the gas lit Nikolaistrasse.

Nikolaistrasse was at the heart of the Leipzig commercial center. The narrow canyon street was walled-in by imposing four-story stone businesses and homes, with peaked roofs, limestone facades and elaborate entry arches. The few people who were on the street walked with purpose, clutching their coats close against the cold. Max, Deena and Zalmund passed the Seltershaus, home of the Imperial Japan Consul, then the fur trade houses, highlighted by the Blue Pike house with a carved stone pike painted blue and flanked by cherubs, and then the mansion Zeppelin House built for the tobacco merchant Felix Reimann.

They paused at the Speckshof, an inn, brewery and wine cellar. Laid out neatly at the curb was a corpse, properly wrapped in a white sheet, awaiting pickup. The Spanish flu no doubt, each thought. They had seen too many dead in the last year, and they were not shocked but saddened.

They turned to face St. Nicholas, an enormous Romanesque church 750 years old. Zalmund stopped and looked up, dropping the suitcases and crossing his arms across his chest. Deena stopped behind him. Max, walking with his head down, passed a few strides ahead before stopping. He looked back at them with an exhausted smile.

“Why don’t you go ahead to the rooms?” Zalmund offered, reaching out his hand with a few marks. Max looked at him and then to Deena. But he was tired and had no interest in the church. He nodded a sign of thanks, took the bills, said “I’ll pay you back.” He then trudged on down Nikolaistrasse, carrying all their suitcases.

Zalmund and Deena entered the Nikolaikirche, where Johan Sebastian Bach had been cantor and for years composed a new piece on the organ for each Sunday service. His duties included teaching Latin, and when one day he sent a substitute to teach his classes so he could have more time to compose, the city council reprimanded him and slashed his salary. This afternoon was cold and gloomy, and the inside of the church was dim, damp and nearly empty. Deena strolled down the left isle, gaze fixed on the gothic arches, elaborate pillars and tiered baroque balconies. Zalmund followed, feigning an appreciation with a jutting jaw and narrowed eyes. At the naïve where Bach’s organ once sat, he grabbed Deena by the shoulders, turned her to face him, and slowly guided her to the dark wall near the benches, where they could not be seen.

Deena looked into Zalmund’s eyes, first one then the other, with a quizzical expression. “Have you been inside such a church, before?” she asked. Zalmund returned her gaze with an unsettling intensity, and briefly shook his head. His arms slid from her shoulders down her back, and he took a small step closer.

“I came here for you,” he said.

“Does this make you afraid?” she cooed in a low voice, narrowing her eyes and holding him at the waist. Her mouth turned up at the corners in a wry smile, which angered him.

“This is your God, not mine,” he whispered.

“We are all children of God,” she said.

“Then we are orphans.” For the first time Deena saw a look in his face of desperation and need. He bent forward and kissed her. She returned his passion, but when the embrace became uncomfortably long, she gently withdrew.

“We are in a holy place,” she breathed in his ear.

“All the more reason, for love,” he said, putting his arms on her hips and pulling her even closer.

“For love?” The words stuck in Deena’s throat and barely left. She felt confused, and her shoulders trembled. She had been playing at a game all these months. He had never said it was real love. It was escape for both of them, wasn’t it? Now she saw what she had run to, and it came at a terrible junction. At one time she saw she had no options, but now out in the world she glimpsed the possibilities.

Zalmund took her shiver for lust because he needed to believe it. He again leaned into her ear. “Let me make love to you,” he said.

**********

The next morning Zalmund left the rooming house early to gather food for the train. Max stumbled down the stairs mid-morning. As he was asking the hotel clerk about bread, Deena arrived in the anteroom, dressed and ready to leave. They moved closer to a small fire in the single fireplace, outside of the dining room that was quickly filling up. They heard one, then another, deep raspy cough come from inside the room. They looked at each other and decided not to go in.

“Did you see Zalmund?” Deena asked.

Max caught her eye then looked away. “No I didn’t.” He shifted on his feet.

“He’ll be back soon. With food for the trip.” Deena said.

Max looked back at her, staring directly. “You were late coming back from the church.”

“Were we?” Deena asked, and looked toward the dining room. She shook her head to flounce her hair. She did not like being interrogated.

“It seemed like it,” Max said, changing his tone. “I was tired, but many things ran through my brain. I could not sleep. Then, poof” he snapped his fingers. “I was out.” He cocked his head to see if his change in tone could restore her. “I dreamed of you,” Max said, and Deena looked back to him.

“You did not,” Deena smiled, and held his gaze.

“I could not help myself. With all that waiting, I was worried.”

“Worried for my safety?” Deena said, smiling again and tipped the top of her head.

“Worried for your virtue.” Max said.

“In a church?”

“Especially. That is where you are judged.”

“Max,” she murmured, smiled and cupped his cheek with her hand.

Just at that moment, the door flew open and Zalmund strode in with a package in his arm. His face was flushed and his breathing a little fast. He immediately saw them at the side of the room. Without a change in step, he announced to them, “We have what we need, now let’s get to the station. Max, you get the bags.”

Later on the train, Max sat behind Deena and Zalmund, staring at the back of her neck. The delicate red tufts of hair stuck out from her hat, and the gentle ginger down followed the contours to her collar. The pale, translucent skin and the soft lobes of her ears. With nothing to think about, he thought of the worst. His parents, lost and starving, no help and no hope. The chaos of soldiers and guns that stood in his way. Maybe Deena wanted him to rescue her from this, and how could he miss the chance? His stomach was knotted, and he only took small bites of the bread and butter Zalmund passed him.

During one of Deena’s walk through the train aisle, Zalmund jumped back to sit next to him. They sat looking forward for a moment, and before Zalmund could start, Max started conversationally.

“You were late, last night,” he said.

Zalmund knew he had him then. “Yes, yes, such a beautiful church. Very romantic. Deena was so taken with such beautiful things.”

“Was she?”

“Yes, yes. She is a creature of passion. I love her like that.” He waited for the pain to set in. Max shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “It’s like riding a tiger!” Zalmund turned to watch Max wince.

“In a church?” Max said with a touch of distain.

“Not my church. And believe me, Deena has not been close to the gospel recently,” Zalmund coughed, and then cruelly winked at Max.

“She said no,” Max said softly.

“Did she? Oh, I guess it’s not something she wants to talk about,” Zalmund said victoriously.

They sat in quiet until Deena returned. The conversation restarted, and Deena began to tell Max about their complicity in the Red Terror, in a certain sanitized style. Zalmund contributed commentary and sarcastic humor. She covered their recruitment in Poland and pilgrimage to Moscow, and their witness to the throes of the revolution, leaving aside their most vivid memories and intimate participation. Mostly they discussed the ardent personalities and captivating philosophy that made every act a supporting pillar of a larger, inspirational justice. Max disregarded the ideology and was discomforted by the chaos and violence he heard and imagined. He listened to Deena with slack jaw astonishment. This was no way to live, he thought, careening around Russia at the service of zealots who stood ready to throw your life away. He saw this too much in the war. Max felt a tugging in his heart to save her from this illusion, and from this seducer.

Zalmund listened to Deena’s narrative, only occasionally corrected her. His anxiety grew, and he had trouble concentrating. He knew these lofty pronouncements from both sides of the revolution were excuses to take what was left unguarded. The hypocrisy made him restless and sweat beaded on his forehead. He yearned for a settled way but gloried in his rebellion against it. However, the other rebels offended him, because their motives were clear and selfish. Zalmund’s guilt wrapped in beneficence and arrogance was a noble motivation to steal and yes, murder. His chest felt tightened and his comments became more cutting and crueler. When the story came to their escape to Kyiv, he cut the conversation off.

“And then we needed money, so we headed off to Amsterdam to collect on some old family debts,” he summarized. He rubbed his forehead and put his hands in his lap as if this was all that was needed on that topic.

AMSTERDAM

After discovering their apartment burglarized in Kyiv, Zalmund and Deena packed what they could in suitcases and in late October 1918 headed west to Lublin, ahead of the advancing Polish troops. There they reunited with their local revolutionary comrades, and the tailor who allowed them to sleep on the second floor above the shop while they made their plans. The imminent victory of the allies, and the collapse of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, promised to open up communication with Western Europe that had been closed to them for four years. As soon as the Armistice was declared on November 11, 1918, Zalmund and Deena began their trip to Amsterdam.

Train travel was slow and difficult. The direct route was impossible because of the damage to transportation and the scars of trenches from the War. They had to thread themselves through southern Germany and Northern France, and approach from Lille and then Antwerp. The trains were filled with soldiers demobilizing and returning home. Some of them were joyously celebrating, but many were grim and stone faced, shellshocked and contemplating what awaited them on return. On a few trains it was faster and cheaper for Zalmund and Deena to gain passage by bribing the conductors, who had not been paid for weeks, than try to secure seats from the overwhelmed station agents.

Their destination upon arrival was Amstelstraat in the downtown financial district. It was located across the Amstel canal from Jodenbuurt, the Jewish quarter, where they found a boarding house room. Dutch banking had been in decline since the middle of the last century, as Berlin, Paris and London surged in business opportunity and offered more attractive lifestyles. Many original firms had been founded by German Jews immigrating since the 1600’s, and Isaac Hofitz had chosen one firm he remembered that had been mentioned by his German grandfather.

Wertheim & Gompertz was housed in a massive dark red brick mansion on the narrow street. The entrance was a large light-stone archway flanked on each side by two smaller arched windows of the same light-colored stone. The second floor had another arched window above the entryway with a stone false balcony, and two square windows on each side. The third story had four small square windows under a roof with a pitched arch at the center and a circular window in the facing. Zalmund and Deena dodged horse-drawn carriages and fashionably dressed pedestrians as they made their way inside.

After a brief wait, they were collected from the entry room by Mr. Morris Eltzbacher, a partner in the firm. Zalmund had first visited the building with his father Isaac in his bar mitzvah year of 1901. With the boy in tow, Isaac had met with Eli Wertheim, a descendent of the founder, and opened an investment account with a substantial sum of German marks he had skimmed unreported from the rent and tax receipts of the Koszuty estate. Isaac Hofitz had chosen the bank he remembered from his childhood as sufficiently far away to avoid the detection of theft and managed by Jews he assumed would be loyal and discreet. He continued to make deposits for thirteen years until the outbreak of the War made it impossible. The bank invested the money in the various European government projects it helped finance, such as the upgrade of the Moscow to St. Petersburg railroad. Returns were significant and steady, and the account balance grew over the years.

After entering his office and seating Zalmund and Deena in a large leather sofa across from his heavy wood desk, Eltzbacher offered them tea, which they declined.

“What can I do for you, today, Mr. Hofitz,” Eltzbacher began. He glanced at Deena but Zalmund offered no introduction.

“I am here to redeem our family account, in the name of Hofitz, H-O-F-I-T-Z,” Zalmund replied, pulling papers from his coat pocket.

“By that you mean to close the account?” Eltzbacher asked surprised. “May I ask why the bank can no longer offer you service?”

“I am sure you and your firm have done very well by our family, Mr. Eltzbacher. It is just that with the conclusion of the recent hostilities, we require the capital for our ventures.”

“I see. Just a moment, please,” and Eltzbacher rang a bell. A secretary soon knocked and entered the office.

“Mrs. Simon, could you please retrieve the account of Mr. Hofitz, H-O-F-I-T-Z.”

“Yes, Mr. Eltzbacher,” and the young woman scurried off to the file room.

They waited in a tense silence while Eltzbacher drummed his fingers on the desktop. “Do you plan to stay long here in Amsterdam, Mr. Hofitz?”

“No, we do not. This is an urgent matter, and we must attend to our affairs back home, now that circumstances have changed so dramatically,” Zalmund replied with cold formality.

“I see.” A long silence passed while they waited for the return of Mrs. Simon. Finally, she returned clutching a leather-bound folder filled with papers. She placed it in front of Eltzbacher and left. Eltzbacher then carefully scanned the papers, beginning with the top page and turning each one and placing it carefully on the last. After finishing, he paused and gently rapped his knuckles on the desk.

“Mr. Hofitz, can you confirm the name on the account and account number for me?”

Zalmund unfolded the papers and read off the account number, which Eltzbacher confirmed with a nod. He then recited the name of the owner, Isaac Hofitz. Eltzbacher frowned.

“Mr. Hofitz. This account was opened by a Mr. Isaac Hofitz almost twenty years ago. You do not look like a man who was an adult twenty years ago, if you do not mind my saying. Are you telling me you are Isaac Hofitz?”

“No, Mr. Eltzbacher, Isaac is my father, and this is a family account,” Zalmund said with gravity. He unfolded his passport and pushed it across the desk. Then with great fanfare he unfolded a letter Isaac had written to him during his yeshiva days, addressed to ‘My Dearest Son Zalmund’, and signed ‘Your loving father, Isaac Hofitz.’ Eltzbacher carefully reviewed the documents, checked the signature against the account records, then squinted at them again and raised his fist to his lips.

“Generally, Mr. Hofitz, we require more direct instructions to close an account and release such sums.”

“I understand, Mr. Eltzbacher,” Zalmund replied. “But my father is quite incapacitated now, in part due to the strains of the war. He is really not capable of conducting business as he used to.”

“I see,” Eltzbacher mumbled. “Please excuse me,” and he got up and left the room.

Zalmund and Deena looked at each other nervously. This was their play and there was no turning back. Zalmund rationalized to himself that he had not really lied or broken any law, yet. He felt in his heart that this was money stolen from the ruling class, and he was entitled to it as much as his father. In fact, this was part of his yerusha (inheritance) that he was collecting a little early. They sat fidgeting for some time. Finally, Eltzbacher returned.

“Mr. Hofitz, my staff informs me that under the present conditions, it is not possible to communicate by cable with our Poznan affiliate to confirm this transaction with your father.”

“Nevertheless, we are here,” Zalmund replied unemotionally.

Eltzbacher stared at Zalmund for quite a while, weighing his response. “Mr. Hofitz. I am not in a position to liquidate the account today, as you can imagine. We must also guard against a run on the bank in the immediate aftermath of the Armistice. But I am not unsympathetic to your situation, and the situation of our brethren in Germany.” He lowered his eyes and focused on Zalmund, ignoring Deena. “I could accommodate a reasonable withdrawal from the account.”

Although Zalmund had not expected this offer, it was a workable compromise. “In that case, Mr. Eltzbacher, could you prepare a draft for 50,000 guilders?”

Eltzbacher laughed with a snort. “I think that is a bit of an over-reach, Mr. Hofitz. I’ll tell you what. I will have a draw on your father’s account prepared for 7,500 guilders, which you can cash here or at the bank of your choice in Amsterdam. Of course, the debit will be applied immediately to the principal. Will that be sufficient for today?” He looked up with raised eyebrows.

Zalmund stared back at him, taking a measure of his resolve. “Thank you, Mr. Eltzbacher,” Zalmund finally replied. “I appreciate your consideration. That will be sufficient for today. We will take the cash here.”

“Very well. Please excuse me for a moment while I give the instructions and have the documents prepared.” Eltzbacher stood up and left the room.

Zalmund sighed and smiled at Deena. It was not as much as he had hoped but it was substantial and much better than nothing, which had been a real possibility. Deena smiled back with a guilty smirk, knowing that she was taking money from her townspeople that had been intended for Kosiński and the Koszuty estate. The financing of a Revolution was as uncomfortable as its execution.

When he returned, Eltzbacher plopped down in his chair with a jovial bounce. “Will you be staying here in Amsterdam or returning home to Poznan, Mr. Hofitz?”

“We must return for family affairs,” Zalmund replied.

“I understand the travel must be difficult. Many stops and many cities. Many currencies to navigate.”

“Yes, yes. It can test one’s patience,” Zalmund replied, annoyed with the banter.

“Let me make a suggestion, then, Mr. Hofitz. You will be traveling east, from countries with strong currency to countries with very weak currency. It will be like walking down a stairs of money value. At each step, you should consider changing money with local… uh… people. At each transaction you can collect a commission for the trade, and also trade at a premium value for bringing the more valued currency. By the time you get home you will have at least doubled your money. Do you understand?”

Zalmund pretended that he had already thought of this, and slowly nodded his head.

Eltzbacher then unfolded a paper and passed it to Zalmund. “I have had prepared here a list of common currencies, and their trading value in guilders as of today. This should be helpful for at least a week. After that, even we professionals have no certainty,” and he gave a chuckle.

They sat in uncomfortable silence until a clerk entered with a stack of papers. Zalmund signed for the withdraw and accepted an envelope stuffed with Dutch guilders. Then with a handshake and bow, Zalmund and Deena departed. Their first stop were the grand clothing shops of the central district to replenish their wardrobes abandoned in Kyiv. Then they packed their suitcases in the boarding house and headed south by train for Lille on Tuesday, November 26, 1918.

KATOWICE

Max, Zalmund and Deena arrived in Katowice, Silesia, near the border with Poland, on a Friday afternoon, November 29, 1918. The area had been part of Germany and technically remained so. Katowice politicians and much of the residents were sympathetic to the Germans and considered themselves superior to the Poles. This certainly included the entrenched Jewish community, who were horrified by the swarm of Jewish refugees fleeing westward from the chaos of the Russian Revolution. But the sentiment in Poland and among world leaders was that in a few months Germany would cede this land to a new Polish nation as war reparations.

They stopped here rather than the bigger city of Krakow because lodging would be more convenient and less expensive. They found beds near the central train station, eight men to a room and women in a separate room and planned to leave in the morning. They all were tired from a day of traveling, and Zalmund looked especially slow and flushed. Max heard him sleep restlessly, and he sometimes stifled a cough, or turned his head into his bed, or suddenly sat up. But the next morning Zalmund was away early.

He walked quickly through the open square across from the train station, his cloudy breath puffed ahead in the cold winter air, but he perspired. A block away between Adama Mickiewicza and Skargi streets was the Great Synagogue of Katowice, built in 1900, with red brick façade, giant circular stained-glass windows and an immense dome in contrasting blue tile capping its profile. Inside the entrance he put on his tallis prayer shawl and shuffled quietly into the main sanctuary, lit by colored light flowing through the colossal windows. Only two dozen men were scattered near the front, rocking forward and back, mumbling their prayers. A gloomy mood hung over the congregation. He spotted the rabbi, Rabbi Ezekiel Lewin, near the front of the worshipers and he moved to stand next to him. He introduced himself as Rabbi Zalmund Hofitz, as a professional courtesy. Rabbi Lewin barely looked up, nodded and returned to his prayers.

“From Koszuty, near Poznan,” Zalmund added.

Rabbi Lewin looked up and fixed his gaze. “Poznan?”

“Yes,” Zalmund nodded.

“Who did you study with?” And the interview went on. The Rabbi asked about Zalmund’s professional connections, which were few, but Lewin was hopeful that he traveled in different rabbinical circles. “Do you speak Polish?” the Rabbi asked.

“Of course,” Zalmund answered, wiping perspiration from his upper lip, despite the cold inside. “And how is your congregation?” he asked, again as a professional courtesy.

“Oy, this is the worst of times.” A long pause and Lewin pursed his lips. “I have someone you must meet,” the Rabbi said.

“Me? I am just here during Shabbos,” Zalmund said surprised.

But the Rabbi took Zalmund by the elbow and led him toward a man in his 40s, dark hair and clean shaven, fervently praying in the center of the sanctuary. He wore his tallis covering his head, a heavy blue wool coat and leather shoes.

“Bruno,” the Rabbi said, “this is Rabbi Zalmund Hofitz from Poznan. Rabbi, this is Bruno Altmann, a man of our community, a macher. He has a sheet metal factory in town. You two should talk.” Bruno and Zalmund looked at each other, then back at Lewin, who nodded with a knowing frown.

Altmann took Zalmund to the rear of the sanctuary and began the story. “It is a terrible time here. With Germany defeated and the Bolsheviks in Russia, we will soon be given over to the Poles, who hate us.” He stopped, looked down and took a deep breath.

“I wish I could help,” Zalmund said with a distant and slightly bored voice.

“It is worse. We have a family here, Jacob Vogelman, who are machatonim (family relations) of Samuel Reichmann of Beled (Hungary).” With this, Zalmund’s ears perked up. Reichmann was already known as a wealthy Jewish merchant and philanthropist. “The family made a fortune selling eggs. Now they have a near monopoly on eggs from the Ukrainian kulaks who did not want the Bolsheviks to expropriate their harvest, so they smuggle them out to Reichmann.”

“So good business,” Zalmund said, urging him on.

“Yes, yes,” Altmann continued, looking up directly to Zalmund. “We have another family here of Hamor Hivitsky, Poles who are real devotees of Denikin.”

“Oy,” Zalmund said. He recognized the name of General Anton Denikin, a leader of the Polish Cossacks and the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army. They were known as virulent anti-Semites.

“Yes, well, Hivitsky’s son Szechem and a few of his friends got drunk one night and kidnapped Dinah Vogelman, Jacob’s oldest daughter. We fear the worst for her. They’re holding her at Hivitsky’s estate.”

“For ransom?” Zalmund asked in a weary voice.

“I wish,” Altmann replied. “They don’t want just a payment. They want the egg business in Silesia.” A long pause. “They are now saying Szechem will marry Dinah, tomorrow, and that will be her dowry.”

Zalmund dropped his shoulders. “This can happen, here?” he asked, and coughed. His head and chest hurt, and he sat down in a pew in the last row.

“There is no authority to help us,” Altmann explained. “The Germans have left, and the Poles can’t wait to take over. It is clear if we resist, they will start a pogrom and we all will be eliminated.”

“When is the wedding?” Zalmund sighed.

“Tomorrow.

“Really? Tomorrow? What do you want me to do?” Zalmund asked.

“Talk with them. In their language. Maybe someone from outside can show them there is a better way for them. Find a price. We will pay.”

“Have you talked about money before?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then what has changed?” Zalmund asked.

“We must keep trying,” Altmann pleaded.

Zalmund looked at his shoes and sighed. His head hurt. This had nothing to do with him. He closed his eyes and leaned back into the flowing river; he was not swimming but carried by the current. He bobbed and released his mind. He was now not a person, but a part of a story, a history, a movement, an instrument, a wave much larger than himself. Suddenly, he looked up directly at Altmann.

“Send a trusted messenger to Mr. Hamor Hivitsky. Tell him an important rabbi from Poznan has come to consecrate the marriage.”

“What!” Altmann barked in astonishment.

“Do as I say. Tell them you will receive them at your home tonight to meet the rabbi. All their sons and their friends. Tell them there will be food and lots of vodka. Tell them.”

“Are you crazy!” Altmann nearly screamed.

“Listen to me, Altmann. I know these people,” Zalmund said. “They will come for the vodka. When they have had their second toast and are feeling well, I will talk to them about a payment. They will be in a kinder mood. It will, God willing, end well for all.”

“I don’t know,” Altmann demurred.

“No matter what, Herr Altmann, it is better that you know who they are and start with a smile, than you see them next at the end of a sword. Agreed?”

“I see,” Altmann hesitated.

“One more thing, Herr Altmann. I will bring the wine and vodka. It is my gift. Don’t let anyone else bring anything else to drink, and if they do throw it away. Understood? I know what they like. Promise me. And tell all your people, they should leave the vodka for the other family so there will be enough. Its treif (not kosher). The Jews should only drink the wine. Just the wine. We have to be clear-headed. You understand?”

Altmann nodded and Zalmund left the sanctuary. When he drew his first breath of the outside cold air, he coughed in a fit. He headed into town to find a pharmacy that might have something for him.

After sundown, Zalmund left the rooming house with Max and Deena in tow. He had explained to them that he needed the day to rest before leaving again, and that he had met a prominent Jew of town who had invited them to his home to end Shabbos. They did not believe him, but he looked tired and spent. Deena went to look after him, and Max went to help Deena. They were both just a little curious what this might all be about, since Zalmund had made an acquaintance in this small town so quickly. So they walked a few blocks past the Great Synagogue to a red brick house in a row of fine homes. As they strode up the stairs, the door opened and Altmann greeted them.

“Good Shabbos,” he smiled grimly. They returned the greeting.

“I sent the drinks over. Did they arrive?” Zalmund immediately asked Altmann.

“Yes, just a moment ago,” he replied.

They entered the first room on the floor, arranged now as a reception room. It was decorated in the German style, with light colored wood paneling, an elaborate cloth couch with side tables and lace doilies. On one side, a table had been brought in loaded with simple treats. Baked potato, shredded cabbage, herring, black bread, kasha varnishkes, and the very expensive delicacies of eggs (of course), cheese and butter. Across the room was another table laden with large clear bottles of vodka, and short, round flasks of dark red wine. Perhaps a dozen well-dressed young men stood at the back of the room, nervously shifting from one foot to the other. A few smoked Zodiak cigarettes and blew the smoke from the side of their mouths while they eyed Zalmund and his companions.

An older man, clean shaven and wearing an expensive suit, rushed into the room. He approached Zalmund with his hand outstretched. “I am Jacob Vogelman, Rabbi Hofitz. My daughter is Dinah. Her brothers are here,” and he gestured to the young men smoking.

“Shalom, Herr Vogelman. I am sorry to meet under such conditions,” Zalmund said.

“It is so strange. My wife is sick with anxiety and I am at wits’ end. We can’t bring sense to these people. We are so grateful that you will intervene for us. We have nowhere else to go. Thank you.”

“Hold your thanks until the end of the evening,” cautioned Zalmund. “I’ll do my best.” Turning to all the men, he said “you understand, no matter what I say, you agree. You drink your wine to whatever I toast, anything. No vodka, it is treif. After a few introductory toasts, I will take the father…”

“Hamor” Jacob filled in.

“Hamor,” Zalmund continued “into the back room to talk. We will find a solution.”

One of the young men began to object, but Jacob hushed him with a cutting glare, and he relented.

“Forgive my son, he is worried for his sister,” Jacob said.

“I understand,” Zalmund replied.

They heard a group of men approaching the door, and a loud knock. The Altmann maid opened the door, and in marched a group of men, young and old, in military costumes from before the Great War. Among them were bright red tunics, khaki riding pants, polished boots nearly to the knee, and several wore daggers in scabbards tucked into their black leather belts. Their leader at the front had a wide, white mustache turned to a point at each end, a pointed white goatee and a peaked military hat with a visor which he removed and clutched under his arm.

“I am Major General Hamor Hivitsky,” he said, although he was not in any country’s army at that moment.

Altmann stepped forward and introduced himself. “Our honor to receive you. So good of you to come.” The words choked him. The two groups of young men stood across the room from each other, glaring.

“Come, come, gentlemen. I am Rabbi Zalmund Hofitz from Poznan” and Zalmund waived them into the room where they could see the food and drinks laid out before them.

“I am glad to see you receive us in this way,” Hivitsky said as he scanned the tables. “It is a good way to begin. But before we start with the celebration, we should discuss the arrangements…”

Before he could finish, Zalmund interrupted. “Good, good. Let us go into the next room, General Hivitsky, and discuss the arrangement.”

But the General looked at him quizzically. “We are all family now. We should discuss the plans with the whole family. We can talk with my people here.” He spread his arms to emphasize his inclusion, and to display his sword tucked in his belt.

“Yes, General, if we must,” Zalmund began slowly. “Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding.”

“Really?” Hivitsky said. “The young people love each other. It’s a modern world and we should adjust our thinking.”

“It takes more than that,” Zalmund said in a slow, low voice, trying to keep the conversation with just the General. “Perhaps we can make an offering and go back to the way it was. Some money.”

Hivitsky became agitated. He pointed his finger at Zalmund’s face. “You Jews, always the money first.” He turned to point at Vogelman. “You want to buy and sell your daughter, like a cow?”

Zalmund closed his eyes and felt himself enter the flow. He brought back Hivitsky’s attention with a low and calm voice. “That is just it. We want peace. No bad feelings, no broken promises. If money will help, let Herr Vogelman know what it is you want.”

Hivitsky met Zalmund’s gaze. “It’s too late for that.” Turning his head over his shoulder to his men he said loudly “They are practically married already!” His men smirked and snickered. One of Vogelman’s sons started forward, then was restrained by his father. Hivitsky’s men stood square with hands on their weapons.

The General turned back to Zalmund and Vogelman. “We can discuss the marriage dowry. We will manage the Reichmann egg business here and to the East. My son Szechem will be in charge and Herr Altmann will find work for my nephews. We will be a happy family in business together.”

Zalmund clenched his teeth, then relaxed and blinked. He said in a quiet voice, “You want the egg business?” He nodded slowly. “Why don’t you just take it? Why do you need this man’s daughter?”

Hivitsky relaxed and nodded. At last, they were talking business. “We could take it, yes, if we wanted. If we took it, as you say Rabbi, we would just be another small competitor to Reichmann. With his family, this man’s daughter and her children, we are partners. What’s good for us is good for Reichmann. This is the way it has been done here for generations, before you came, Rabbi.”

“Not in this way,” Zalmund began but Hivitsky interrupted.

“Are you sure? Anyway, that is the way it is now. You know our terms, and we are agreed, are we not?” He turned to Vogelman. “The priest will start the Mass at noon. The wedding sacrament will start shortly after.” Turning to Zalmund he said, “You will be the Rabbi for them?”

Vogelman burst in from out of a daze. “What? No! No rabbi will marry a Jew to a Catholic. It cannot be!” The situation was out of control and Zalmund was doing nothing to stop it.

Hivitsky spoke calmly to them both but with teeth clenched and a determined brow. “It must be so, in order that you Jews recognize the new family. Hofitz,” he said in a derisive command, “you will be the rabbi. Then we are all agreed.”

There was a long pause, as Vogelman, Altmann and Zalmund looked at each other. Did someone have a plan to save Dinah? What more could be said? Please, God, something. Max and Deena approach Zalmund, but he slowly closed his eyes, and cleared his throat in a way that sounded like a prayer. He turned to Hivitsky and opened them.

“Agreed,” he said.

Vogelman collapsed on the sofa, his head in his hands. His sons rushed to him and glared at the Polish men in uniforms.

“Excellent!” the General declared. “Now we must toast the new couple!”

“Yes, but first,” Zalmund said in a loud voice, “according to the traditions of our people, we must say our blessing over the wine.” Glasses were filled with wine and passed to all.

“Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu Melech ha’ olam, borei pri hagafen,” Zalmund intoned with eyes closed. He raised his glass high and drank the wine. The Poles drank in relief that this near violence had passed. The Jews swallowed their bile. The wine was sickly sweet and left a tart and cloying aftertaste. Several of the Polish men gagged and spit the wine back in their glasses. The Jews sipped and cringed, the sweet wine bitter in their mouths.

Ignoring these reactions, Zalmund refilled his glass with wine and hoisted it again, with an enthusiasm that shocked the Jewish men. “To the victorious army! Our Volunteer Army! Long may they protect us!” he shouted.

“Yes, yes but wait a minute!” Hivitsky raised his hand. The Poles scrambled behind him to empty their wine and refill from the carafes of vodka. They all then turned to the Jews and said together “To the Army! Na Zdrowie!” They all drank, and the Poles immediately refilled their glasses with vodka. The Jews took more wine.

“To our Motherland and our Mother Church,” one young Pole sneered, and looked to see if the Jews would drink. Under a scowling glare from Zalmund, the Jews drank more wine, and the Poles followed by finishing their glasses. More vodka was poured and drank, and they descended on the table of food without waiting for the Jewish blessings. The eggs went first.

Altmann stood in the back with Zalmund, who was visibly perspiring and flushed. “You must talk to him again. Give him an amount, any amount, that he cannot refuse” Altman pleaded. From a few steps away, Vogelman rocked in the seat with his head in his hands.

“In a bit,” Zalmund said calmly, and rolled his eyes upward, flitted and then closed his lids.

The first Pole collapsed, dropping his plate of food on the carpet. Two others who had been talking with him laughed, then looked to the ceiling, buckled their knees and fell beside him. Three Poles drew their daggers but could not fix on the Jews. They wobbled and rushed forward. The Jews easily evaded the wild stabs, and they also fell. Hivitsky looked with astonishment at his men on the floor, then at Altmann, but his thoughts turned to his own stomach, and the vice that crushed his chest and the flames that burned his veins. He vomited and keeled over. The remaining Poles stumbled to come to his aid, but each succumbed, briefly squirming on the ground before expiring.

The Jewish men stood like stones, shocked in disbelief as the troop of uniformed Polish men lay dead at their feet. Mrs. Altmann and the maid rushed into the room, hands to their cheeks, in silent screams. “No, no, no…” one man said.

Zalmund opens his eyes and bent down to take the sword from Hivitsky’s belt. He then took Vogelman by each elbow, stood him up and stared straight into his eyes. “Go now and get your daughter. Take this to show them you have him. Leave everything you have behind. Go to your family in Beled. Tonight.”

He turned and waved to Deena and Max to join him in fleeing out the front door. They walk quickly across the open space next to the Great Synagogue, which now loomed over them in a mocking moral tone.

“We must be on the 10 pm train,” Zalmund told them.

Max stopped in astonishment at the magnitude of the massacre, and to consider what his role might be. They had each seen soldiers die before, crumpled on the ground, life cut short, for some small purpose. What had happened here?

“What have you done? They will come back and murder them all!” Max screamed out.

“How else should we deal with those who treat our sister as a whore?” Zalmund quoted calmly.

It wasn’t the Poles but the Germans who came to Katowice in 1939, and by 1941 there was no more Great Synagogue and no more Jews in the town.

KRAKOW

Their escape from Katowice included a frantic dash to the boarding house to gather their bags, and a rush across the street to find the train headed east. Max barely had time to decide what he would say to Zalmund on their ride until they stood on the platform watching the Krakow bound train pull in. As his righteous anger swelled, Zalmund suddenly turned to Deena and explained, “when you get to Krakow, go to the Kazimierz district, to the Alte Shul and ask for Rabbi Jacob Slutsky. He will have a room for you for the night.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Deena implored.

“I’ll be there later, probably tomorrow,” Zalmund said. He did not even look at Max, then turned and shuffled across the station, clutching his coat and suitcase, to the military tracks at the far end of the terminal.

Max looked at Deena, astonished. “He’s going to the army side of the station. He will turn himself in? Will we see him again?”

“Yes, oh yes. He must have something in mind. He always does,” Deena replied.

Shortly after Deena and Max departed on the passenger train toward Krakow, Zalmund boarded a short military supply train headed to Oswiecim, an Austrian Army base about one-hour ride away. The base was an important army rail center, part of Austria since 1772 but soon to become part of Poland. It served as a military camp, until Germany overran Poland in 1939 and the base was renamed Auschwitz. It was at first repurposed as a detention camp for Polish workers but opened for extermination of Jews in the spring of 1940.

Zalmund swung up his suitcase, and then plopped down on a sack of grain inside the open door of a dark freight car, next to his new friend, Piotr Schlosser, an Austrian army sergeant, whom he met earlier in the day at the dry goods store in Katowice. Schlosser was securing supplies for the final week at the Oswiecim barracks, and in fact soldiers were beginning to muster out on Sunday. For many, it was one final meal, last payday and then onto the train back to a defeated homeland. After he requisitioned the staples, Schlosser headed to the Rathskeller for a little dinner and social drinking before taking the train back to the base.

While Schlosser was buying flour and sugar, Zalmund was ordering large amounts of wine and vodka, something that got the attention of everyone in the store. “Where’s the party?” they all joked, and Zalmund just nodded, laughed and coughed a fit. Schlosser noticed that he carried under his arm several wood boxes wrapped in canvas. Even with a view of just the end of the boxes peeking out from the wrapping, Schlosser recognized them as Salvarsan kits. In the days before antibiotics, this was the gold standard treatment for syphilis – a toxic mix of hydrochloric acid and arsphenamine, a derivative of arsenic. The liquid acid was sealed in one vial and the powdered arsenic compound in another, which were mixed just before injection. Proper preparation and injection were critical to avoiding a lethal overdose.

Zalmund held enough to treat a large amorous army troop. Schlosser assumed these were for a brothel, where booze and venereal disease were familiar partners. But it didn’t fit with Zalmund’s Hebraic appearance. Intrigued, he quietly introduced himself as a supply master at the army base and joked that many men who were mustering out would need a shot or two.

Zalmund perked up. “Disbanding the army?’

“One last payday,” Schlosser responded.

“How will they pay you?” Zalmund asked quietly.

“That’s just it. We’ll get it in krone, which nobody wants,” Schlosser grumbled. Rumors had already arrived in Katowice about the collapse of the Austrian krone after the surrender. As bad as the German mark looked, the Austrian krone was worse. The troops would be glad to trade at a significant premium their krone for the marks Zalmund acquired in Leipzig. Zalmund saw an opportunity to follow Eltzbacher’s advice and trade the krone for devalued Russian rubles on his return, at another premium. Zalmund offered that he could help with this problem, and Schlosser agreed to meet him later that night for a quick visit to the barracks and some business.

After a few minutes of silently rocking with the train car, Schlosser leaned to Zalmund and said, “you don’t look like a guy who works in a brothel.”

Zalmund looked at him stunned. Schlosser continued, “I saw you this afternoon with the Salvarsan kits, buying wine and vodka.”

Zalmund stared at him dumbfounded, and then coughed into his sleeve to gather his wits. “Me, no. I am an owner. I got my piece when the previous pimp couldn’t pay his loan. Sometimes the girls need a little help on Saturday when business is good.”

“Ah,” Schlosser nodded. “Ever sample the merchandise?”

“No, no. Otherwise, I’d need a shot!” They both laughed in a derisive, snobbish chuckle, knowing that if the opportunity arose, it might be different.

They chatted on quietly with patches of silence. Zalmund did learn something from Schlosser that he had not known. Schlosser snickered with schadenfreude about the trial of the British diplomat Bruce Lockhart, which had just concluded. He was convicted and sentenced to death in abstentia for providing Lenin’s assassin Fanya Kaplan with a fake Cheka pass, allowing her to cross the border from Latvia. Two other employees of the British embassy were convicted and executed. Schlosser seemed to have all the details, no doubt each morsel shared and chewed over among the Austrian troops, who held no love for the Bolsheviks.

Zalmund asked about Schlosser’s life. Yes, he was a farmer with a small plot of land, a wife and two small boys. Should he have deserted and gone home earlier, when the war was clearly lost, as many had done? Maybe, he said. But with this last paycheck he probably made enough to get through the winter, and certainly more than if he tried to sell crops in this chaotic market. “And you,” he asked Zalmund.

“Ah, there’s a girl with me,” he said. “No, not married. She has beautiful red hair and a smile to melt your heart. A will of steel and she is tough,” he said. “She can shit in the woods, if you know what I mean.”

“What does she think of your business?” Schlosser asked with a wry smile.

“I don’t talk about my business with her,” Zalmund said angrily. “She knows I do what I have to do to get along in these times.”

“And her family?” Schlosser asked.

“Oh, yeah. They hate me. Starting with her brother. Her father won’t talk to me, her mother spits at my name. I can’t go around there. When I went to get her for the last time, her brother threw a pitchfork at me. Yeah. Stuck right straight up in the road behind us as we were leaving.”

“So no wedding date?”

“No,” Zalmund chuckled, relaxed and sat back. He coughed. “No, we don’t talk about that.”

“Is she young?” Schlosser asked.

“Yeah,” Zalmund smiled. “Nineteen. She has all these ideas about how the world could be. How we could love each other and help each other. But she is hard on me. Very hard. She is a modern girl. Freedom, free love,” Zalmund sighed. “With everyone but me.” Schlosser chuckled, and Zalmund went on. “I think about her all the time. I want to show her the world, how things could be, not just the way they have always been. But we don’t always follow the rules. I wish I had rules for her love. But we seem to go from here to there, thinking only about today, not tomorrow. That is what I have with her.”

“Ah, it’s the same when you are married,” Schlosser sighed. “All the romantic walks, the secret whispers, are gone. It’s the baby’s milk today, what will we do for bread tomorrow? That’s what we have.”

“Are you sure about her, when you are off with your unit?” Zalmund asked.

“Oh, yeah. My parents are in the same village. She is not messing around with my mother checking in,” Schlosser laughed softly.

Zalmund laughed with him, which turned into a coughing fit. When he subsided, he wiped his lips on his sleeve. “I didn’t worry about it for a long time. We were always into something, a little on the edge. I didn’t think anyone was on our planet. But now there’s this new guy, snooping around, showing up all the time. He is polite and proper, I can’t fault him. But I can’t help thinking she might be interested. I should put an end to it.” Zalmund glanced over to Schlosser to gauge his reaction, but his head was back, and his eyes were closed.

“You should see our medic about that cough when we get to camp,” Schlosser said quietly.

The train slowly pulled into the station at Oswiecim, which was part of the Austrian Imperial-Royal Landwehr Command of Krakow that defended the homeland. They arrived on a platform next to a half-dozen parallel tracks, and red brick storehouses lined the station. Past the storehouses were three stone barracks, or Kasernes, with rooms for 50 or so men each, where later 700 Jews would fill each building. Schlosser led him to the middle barrack, where the lights were still on despite the late hour. They ducked inside.

Most of the soldiers stood talking around the central cast iron stove, wearing some part of their grey uniforms. Wood, double-decked bunks surrounded the center and a few men tried to sleep on the straw mattresses. Several men nodded to Schlosser as he entered, and then stared at Zalmund with suspicion. Schlosser explained softly to a few that he was there to change their krone to marks. They gathered to hear the terms, and then others joined the circle.

A private in the Austrian army earned the equivalent of about $5 per month, compared to an American soldier who was paid about $30 month. But these soldiers were being paid in Austrian krone, by a government that has lost a world war and was disintegrating. The value of the currency would fall in half by the time they made it back home. The German mark was also in decline, but much stronger than the krone, and so soldiers were anxious to guarantee their earnings. Zalmund patiently worked his way through the three barracks, trading all the marks he brought for Austrian krone at a bountiful exchange rate. When he handed over the last money bill, he was offered an empty straw bed. He slipped his suitcase under the bed. His chest hurt, his lungs bubbled, his muscles ached, and he finally slept.

The next morning, he was on a military train to Krakow, filled with joyous retired soldiers on their way home. They did not notice a wheezing and feverish Zalmund Hofitz in a back-corner seat, clutching his black coat, his fedora pulled down over his face and with his suitcase on his lap.

**********

The Saturday night before, Deena and Max had sat next to each other on the train from Katowice to Krakow, in shocked and exhausted silence. Once, they each began to speak, waited for the other, then sat back again in quiet.

Max was filled with a cacophony of emotions. Of course, he was disturbed by the mass deaths at Altmann’s house but stupefied by Zalmund’s premeditated and highly efficient one-man reckoning. This was not the work of any rational man he knew. He certainly felt no culpability but was equally sure the police would not see it that way. Thus he was more than elated to be on a train out of town. And here he was, alone in a crowded train with Deena. He felt the exhilaration of the opportunity from the clenching in his belly to the tightness in his throat, which choked the words before they could leave his mouth. Now was his chance to talk with her alone, look into her fierce eyes and show her that another world awaited her. She did not need to live in this deathtrap of irrational politics, rival nationalities, conflicting religions and ethnicities that had torn the lives of this whole world apart and left them all in flakes and ashes. She held within her the spark of wonder that he saw wasted on these old-world troubles, never to be resolved and soon to extinguish her spirit. He could not look at her but want to touch her, hold her, stroke her hair and point to a new world, in America. But he tripped over the first word.

“Zalmund did not look well. How sick is he?” he said. Max immediately regretted his clumsiness. Here was his chance to win her, and all he could do was bring up another man. Idiot!

“I don’t know,” Deena replied. “He was tired and worried about money. He didn’t want this business with Altmann.” Now she sat rigid, hands in her lap over her belly, facing forward. She was much more worried about this than Max. Deena knew from talking with mid-wives in Moscow that influenza was especially dangerous for pregnant women. During the winter of 1918, more than a quarter of pregnant women with flu aborted, and pneumonia doubled the problem. But her mind went back with pride to Zalmund’s decisive action in Katowice. He had taken on a huge injustice, to a woman, tried to diffuse it, but in the end acted boldly. The New Man of the Revolution, the Übermensch, had not waited for justice from the ruling class, but had struck down criminals where they stood. She was overwhelmed with pride. It was a feeling she had in Koszuty, and again in Moscow, and she knew it would soon pass. He had saved her then, but at what cost? He had saved Reichmann, whom they did not even know, but at the cost of a dozen men they did not know, some young and who themselves did not know what they had done. It started to feel not like justice but arrogance. It frightened her. She did not think that Zalmund belonged to her, but that he thought he belonged to history. Love for her could be kind, compassionate and forgiving. But love for history was cold, unyielding, cruel and deadly. He did not really love her, she thought, but loved her witness to his grand actions. She dreaded their next confrontation with fate.

Max said “maybe his actions were because he is…” his pause hung in the air “…sick. He wasn’t thinking clearly?” He turned to look her in the eye. She turned and his earnestness engaged her. Sick, how? she thought. But looking at him, she knew he meant more than the flu. She didn’t answer.

“Have you ever seen him like this, before?” Max continued.

“I have known Zalmund for a few years,” she sighed. She began to talk so that Max would stop asking questions. She said she had known him as the son of Isaac Hofitz, the Koszuty estate manager. “My father worked the land owned by General Kosiński, but he was old and rarely came around. Isaac managed his property, collecting the rents and such.”

“Did your family know Mr. Hofitz?” Max asked. He was asking to keep the conversation going smoothly, but he really did not want to know more about Zalmund’s old life. He had a knot in his stomach, and a pressure on his heart. He really wanted to know more about her and how she really felt. He could not take his eyes away from hers.

“Oh, they knew him but did not like him. He was the boss, after all, but he wasn’t the lord. He was looked at with scorn. Nothing he did was right. My mother would spit when she said his name. I was told” she went on “that when Zalmund was young he lived at home, about the time when I was born, but I don’t remember. Then he was sent away to school right after he turned 13.”

“What school?” Max asked.

“A school for Jews,” she said.

“A yeshiva?”

“I don’t know. I suppose. He didn’t like it very much. Lots of prayers and discipline. He missed his mother.” She went on to say that she remembers him coming home when she was about 7 years old. He was a handsome 18-year-old, exotic looking with long dark hair, a short beard and fierce eyes. He drank in the taverns in town and dressed like the Bohemian radicals, not like the other Jews of Poznan. She especially remembered that he was rebellious, and disrespectful to his father Isaac. He espoused leftist views and revolution against the landowners. This was a terrible time for politics. The Black Hundreds, a movement of right-wing extremists, retired military and landowners, were terrorizing towns, assassinating reformers and leading pogroms against Jews. One night over 80 Jews were murdered in Bialystok. Even in Poznan Jews were publicly humiliated and beaten in the streets by gangs of young toughs under the umbrella of the Black Hundreds. Zalmund was outraged and wanted the community to defend itself. But Isaac, who owed everything to a landowner sympathetic to the Black Hundreds, was silent. He did not want any scrutiny that might uncover his redirection of rent and tax receipts from Kosiński to his own account in Amsterdam.

“Oh, Zalmund, he was gallant. We heard stories of his defiance. He challenged some of them when they were alone and got in fights. I didn’t know much, and my family hardly opposed the Black Hundreds, but Zalmund was a glorious rebel and spoke against his father. Everyone enjoyed that!” It didn’t last long, though, Deena said. Zalmund was sent away by his father to rabbinical school. He was not invited back home for seven years.

“When I was 14, I was brought into the house of Mr. Hofitz as a maid.” She explained that Maria Kosiński, the daughter of Napoleon Rekowski who first owned Koszuty Mansion, died without children a few years before. Witold Kosiński was elderly and gave more responsibility for managing Koszuty Estate to Isaac, who “did not know his place” as her mother said. When the first widow maid died, Mrs. Hofitz needed a new maid. Deena’s family needed the money and reluctantly agreed. Isaac Hofitz was kind to Deena’s family, but he was still a Jew, and it grated on them that she worked as a servant for Jews. Deena was obedient and careful as a maid and tried hard not to become too attached to the family.

Then Zalmund came home in 1913 at age 25. He was a rabbi in name only.

His schooling away did nothing to make him conform. He took a special interest in her, Deena said, teaching her about politics and telling her about his conversations in town. He was her portal to the upheavals around the world. She was flattered by his attention and hungry for his words.

One day he looked at her differently, she told him. She knew then that he saw her in a romantic way. She was carried away by the attention, the whiff of danger, the modern gallantry and dedication to a cause. Soon they were together more, usually on Saturday afternoon when his father was away, sometimes just to talk under the stars behind the barn, sometimes to kiss. Their parents learned, too, and did not approve.

“They each made it more and more difficult for us to be together,” Deena said. “After Christmas, Mr. Hofitz sent me home to my parents. He said it was safer for me, but I knew he wanted me out of the sight of Zalmund.”

Deena folded her hands in her lap, her a nervous habit, looked at them and continued in a low voice. “Finally, this last March, Zalmund cornered me in town and told me he was going away to join the revolution. There was such a spark in his eye, and he made it sound like a big adventure. He had it all planned, he had people waiting for him. He asked me to go away with him.”

Max leaned forward and turned to her to catch her eye. “Why would you even think of such a thing?” Max pleaded. He hurt for her having to make a choice, to put herself at risk. He wanted to protect her from the danger.

Deena read his eyes. “That is how I got here, to sit next to you,” she said, with a smirking grin. “Anyway, my parents were searching for a husband for me, anyone, to get me out of that house. They wanted to marry me off to an old fart widower, who would make me a proper peasant wife, with lots of children instantly and no life, no freedom, no wonder. I would have run away into the sea to avoid that.”

“So you left?”

“In a vegetable wagon. Without saying good-bye to my family. Not even a note. They probably looked for me for a few days, until they learned Zalmund was gone too and realized what I had done.”

“Are you ready to spend the rest of your life with him?” Max blurted out.

“The rest of my life, or his?” she answered.

************

They arrived in Krakow near midnight, and made their way to the Kazimierz district, the Jewish quarter. At the Alte Schul synagogue, they woke the rabbi, who had received a message from Zalmund and showed them to a large catering room with a divider. He put Deena on one side and Zalmund on the other, then returned to his home. They waited as long as they could for Zalmund to arrive, but eventually fell into an exhausted sleep.

The next morning was Sunday, December 1. The Jewish quarter was workday busy despite the flu, but the rest of Catholic Krakow was just returning from church. Zalmund had not yet arrived, and they each shared a lingering doubt that he would. They nervously dressed and Max led Deena down Starowislna street to Rynek Glowny, the romantic Krakow central square. Soon their mood turned as they put aside the horrors of the day before and strolled the enormous medieval plaza. The facades of the ancient Grey House at number 6, the burgher’s townhouse with an ornate Baroque doorway, and the Gothic Boner house at number 9 with Renaissance figurines adorning the archway, transported them to a fantasy time of lords and ladies.

They stopped in front of St. Mary’s Basilica as the traditional trumpeter abruptly finished the Trumpet Call. The last stragglers of the mass were leaving, and Deena turned to Max with a quizzical smile. Of course she wanted to go in, Max thought, but can I? He searched his heart. She was so immediate and beautiful, and wanted this so much. His family and traditions seemed so remote, abstract ideas that bound him to his future. After what he had survived, what could it matter that he went into a church? He smiled back, took her hand, and they entered. The soaring nave was covered with a cross-ribbed vault and dressed in flanking stained glass windows. He felt that he was suddenly dropped behind enemy lines. He sensed guilt for enjoying the beauty and intimidated by the ornately carved statues and the enormous crucifix in the center. At once he felt all eyes were on him, although no one noticed the pair. Deena kneeled near the back pews, crossed herself and prayed for forgiveness for what she had done. She stood and they left.

Deena seemed infused with a new and fresh spirit. She took Max’s elbow and told him she wanted to see a szopka, a traditional nativity scene set against a Central Square townhouse. They steered toward a small crowd that had gathered to watch a puppet show played out before the manger scene. Max and Deena craned their necks to catch a view, and when a couple in front turned to leave, Max put his hand gently on Deena’s hip to pull her out of their way. Perhaps his touch was a little too firm and tender. She turned to look at him and found him staring at her face. At that moment a charged shiver leapt between them. They held each other’s gaze too long, and Deena glanced down for a moment. But she peeked back up and found him still staring at her.

Max felt a stabbing turmoil. His heart clenched and released with joy. He had forgotten his connection to who he was and what he was doing there. Why had he come all this way if not to meet her and take her away? He yearned to be released from his task, his burden, his responsibility to his older brothers and his parents. He did not want to miss this chance. He felt young, alive and full of possibility, while the road ahead was dark and uncertain. This beautiful woman could be his savior, his diversion from tragedy. It felt like love. He did not take his hand from her hip.

Deena surprised herself at the ease with which she let him into her heart. His sentiment for her was not well disguised, and she felt great relief to give in to it. Her life had become as a soldier, an escaped convict, a refugee, always in the immediate and always in danger. This place, this time with him made her as calm as she had been in many weeks. The prayer in the church, the puppet show, and his touch connected her to memories of peace and tranquility that she had almost forgot. Could this be love? She leaned into his shoulder and laid down her head.

On the way back to the Jewish Quarter, they strolled slowly, as if to hold on to the moment that they might not be able to recreate. Neither spoke but held hands, consumed with their own thoughts that were a dialog between them. They turned to each other, supposing that the other was thinking the same. They each imagined a future of idyllic peace in an illusory homeland, which lasted a few blocks of the Starowislna.

As they approached the dingy Jewish Quarter, the drapery of fantasy sloughed from their shoulders and the weight of their circumstances descended upon them. No more needed to be said.

“Do you think Zalmund will be there?” Max asked, breaking the silence.

“He said he would meet us there,” she said, for the first time without the confidence of destiny.

After a few steps Max stopped and held back Deena’s hand. “Why were you on that train?” It was a simple question but coming when it did it seemed like a terminal stop on a long chain of thought that reconnected him to now. She stopped and turned with a tilt to her head. She looked him up and down again, now that the magic was broken. Was this now an American soldier interrogating her?

“We were returning from Amsterdam. We went south to Lille to avoid the Front when you boarded.”

“Yes, but why?” he persisted.

She began to walk again, with her head down. Max had to keep up to hear her quiet words. “Zalmund’s father had sent goods to a family friend to sell in Amsterdam. When the war started, they could not retrieve the proceeds. As soon as the war in the west appeared over, we set out to retrieve the money.”

“Did his father know he went to get the money?” Max asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. It happened so fast. Maybe not,” she huffed, annoyed at this inquisition. What would it matter and how could he understand? Living comfortably in America was not at all like living in a Polish town in Prussia with Russia breathing fire and Austria stirring the cauldron. What did Max know about doing what had to be done?

“Was it a lot of money?” Max asked, but Deena did not answer. She put her head down and one foot in front of the other. “Of course it was,” he said. “Why else go?”

**********

When they reached the catering hall of the Alte Schul in late afternoon, Zalmund was nowhere to be found. They searched out the Rabbi in the main sanctuary preparing for the minchah prayer service.

“I couldn’t let him stay here,” he said. “He looked terrible and coughed like a skeleton. I sent him to the hospital, but he said he was going to get a room.” Max asked where that might be, and the Rabbi suggested two boarding houses nearby. Max and Deena gathered their suitcases and set off.

They found him at the first house. The house matron immediately recognized the description and shook her head. “He is upstairs. I put him in the room at the top, down the hall. No one should be near him.” They arranged to stay themselves then went upstairs and knocked at the door.

“Zollie” she said.

They heard a weak voice say, “come in” and coughed. They gently pushed the door open and peered into the dark room. It was a December evening in a poorly heated chamber but Zalmund lay on top of the bed, head on a pillow wearing all his clothes, sweating profusely. Rivulets of moisture left tracks on his temples. But his eyes were as sharp as ever.

“I see you have been out. Enjoying the town,” he whispered. He rearranged himself to sit up in the bed and composed his posture. He took only a moment to surveille their stances, how they leaned into one another and shot looks of concern between them, to conclude his greatest fear was true. He had lost Deena to Max. “Are you surprised to see me?” he said.

“Of course not,” Deena murmured. She pulled the single chair near the bed, and she wet a thin towel in the bowl of water on the stand and mopped his forehead. It was a gesture of care, but more like a nurse than a lover. “How do you feel?”

“I’ve been better. I need a little rest,” and he closed his eyes. After a terrifying brief moment, he opened them again, and stared straight at Max.

“When do you leave?” It came out as a direct challenge.

Max was taken aback by the hostility. “You rest, we’ll talk in the morning.”

“Yes, yes… I understand,” he murmured, and Zalmund closed his eyes again.

Deena motioned for them to step outside the door. “We can’t stay here with him. He is too sick. And no one else will go in there. We have to stay in the other room. We can keep a watch outside.”

They set their suitcases down outside the door, sat on them, leaned back with heads on the wall, and looked at each other. Max could not help himself but smile. Deena gave him a look of annoyance, but then smiled back. She gave up a sigh.

“Come with me, Deena,” Max blurted out.

“Go where?”

“East,” he replied.

“And leave Zalmund?”

“Yes. He is very sick. He needs to be in a hospital. Anyway, you can’t go near him.” He held out his hand, and to his surprise she took it.

“I’m so tired.”

“Deena. It’s not safe around him.”

“Yes, I know. It has been that way.”

“Come with me,” he pleaded.

“So it’s about you?” she said, to change the subject.

“Yes. It is. I can show you real freedom. In America. Not running but living. Come with me.”

Deena closed her eyes for a long time, and Max waited. Then he continued. “You can’t go on like this. He may die.” Deena opened her eyes with the shocking realization that others saw it too, and squeezed his hand. “Or the police may come. Or what will he do next? This is no way to live. This isn’t freedom. The Revolution does not ask this of you.”

“Max…” she murmured.

“You know I am right. Come with me. We will live where you can be yourself, not a slave to a cause that doesn’t care about you. You don’t have to do these things to be free. Not with me.”

She took his hand in both of hers. She never had someone care about what she wanted, or what was dangerous for her. She was always living a role, as a daughter, a maid, a refugee, a lover, a revolutionary. For the first time she stepped aside from her characters and asked herself what she required. Her mind raced, searching for a craving, a desire, a plan. But it landed on nothing. What she wanted was peace and comfort. A family. She would never have that with Zalmund, she knew. With Max? Maybe there was a way.

She gave a great sigh. “I will talk with him.” She squeezed his hand, leaned over and kissed him for the first time. He was stunned right before he melted. Stars circled above his head. He moaned.

“Shhh!” she scolded.

**********

Zalmund lay on his back, trying to sleep and regain his strength. But the sound of the fluid gurgling in his own lungs kept him awake. He tried shallow breathing, which helped quiet the sound but the effort to control his diaphragm was exhausting. He rolled over to face down, which helped. His mind drifted to his childhood, and his father. He regretted his pointless rebelliousness and his stubbornness. He loved his father deeply, but they never spoke about it. He felt the calmness and the warmth of his mother in his boyhood home, and his breathing became softer, until he stopped. After a moment he startled himself awake. He focused again on a pattern of breathing, and his mind drifted again, now to Deena. How wonderfully innocent of this mean and bitter world she had been. Was she still? She grew into a beauty that made his heart skip. Now she was aware of the forces around her, the chains of history and the possibility of revolution. He felt he had discovered her and nurtured her to an exalted splendor. Oh, he loved her. The thought of her warmed his heart and he smiled, then coughed.

He rolled onto his back and propped up his head to help his lungs. That was better. How could he give up and let her go? With this American child Max, who knew nothing. Would he undo everything, and turn her into a piece of household furniture to decorate his life? The bile rose in his stomach and he clenched his fists. Only by thinking of Deena, her pale, soft skin, her flaming eyes and mischievous smile, could he relax again. She had become a part of everything he hoped to do for the revolution, and for himself. He tried but could not imagine his life without her. When he thought of being alone, and Deena with Max, his heart clenched, and his face flushed.

He turned again face down, which relieved his congestion. His arms relaxed and his breathing slowed. Yes, he must regain his mission, and have a purpose. He drifted into semi-consciousness. He must rip out this disease and take up his strength. This is what he was meant for, and all the things he had done had brought him the strength to heal and do once again what needed to be done. He slept.

THE BORDER

The next morning, Monday December 2, Deena quietly climbed the stairs to the top floor, gently turned the handle on the door to Zalmund’s room and slipped inside. He was already awake, lying in bed on his back propped up with a pillow, and staring out the small window above the blue basin of water on the shaky pine wood dresser.

“Zalmund! How are you feeling?” she whispered.

He waved his hand to dismiss the question. “Deena, we have to talk.” His eyes were clear, but he coughed into his hand, and wiped it on the bedsheet. “I have to go back to Moscow.” She looked at him with slacked jaw.

“Moscow?” she stammered.

“Yes. I heard this on my train ride here. That dog Admiral Kolchak has arrested our comrades in Omsk and proclaimed himself Supreme Ruler of all Russia. The Bolsheviks could not hold him at Perm, and he is marching on Moscow. They say it is chaos. I must go there.”

“Are you crazy? You should be in a hospital,” Deena said.

“I love when you worry about me,” he chortled, then coughed horrendously. “I can’t stay here, worrying about Cossacks coming for revenge. After what happened in Katowice, killing those Tsarist pigs, they will make me a hero in Moscow. You should go South, where they are not distracted with the reactionary invasion.”

“Without you?” Deena was stunned by this turn. Her sincerity was not lost on Zalmund, which made this all the more painful.

“You go with Max. I see the way he looks at you. He will get you to safety. I will let you know when it is safe to come to Moscow.” His lie was obvious.

“No!” Deena blurted. She was confused. What part was she playing now? What did she want? How could it go this way?

“Deena, Deena, my dear, my love.” He took her hands. “You know this is the right thing for you.” He looked down, and she could see how hard it was for him to say these things. “I have something to help you both.” He reached onto the table next to the bed with his suitcase and pulled from it an envelope with official documents and a wad of Austrian krone notes. “These are border passes that I have from Cheka.” Deena shook her head. “Yes, I still have them. They will get you to the South, where it is safe. From Odessa you can come to Moscow when this is over. This is the best way. I am sure.” She shook her head again. He put the envelope in her hands and pressed them together to hold them tight. “This will help you and Max. Think of it.”

She looked into his eyes, watery now and drooping. He gazed back at hers, alight and afraid. They had been through so much together, and always with the truth. Deena remembered when Zalmund expressed his frustrations and dreams of escape at Koszuty, and she found someone else saying what she felt. Zalmund remembered their shared baptism of violence in Lublin and their exchange of excitement and glory in following the Revolution. They shared purpose and fear together in Moscow. They lived their carefree and decadent ways together in Kyiv. If not truthful to the rest of the world, they were always truthful to each other. But now each knew the other was lying. A pain pierced his heart and then hers. She nodded. In their agreement was the end.

Deena turned to hide her tears and clutching the papers she took a step to the door. But she could not control her own body. She spun again and through her own crying she saw Zalmund’s moist eyes. She bent over him, but rather than kiss his face, she knelt and put her forehead on his outstretched hand. They sobbed, maybe for the same reason and maybe for opposite ones. Then with a sniffle and a smile, Deena rose and left the room.

**********

Downstairs in the common room she shared with Max and a few other guests, Deena wiped her eyes with her sleeves, and with her head down, she began to put her few things into her suitcase.

“We must go, now” she barked at Max.

Max was sitting on his bed, reading the newspaper. All he really heard was ‘we’. “Now?” he said with confusion.

“Yes, now. We don’t know when those crazy Cossacks will find us here.”

Max saw the urgency of Deena’s movement, and he began moving more quickly to match her pace. He too began packing his bag.

“Zalmund is coming?” he asked.

“Quiet! Just get ready.” She paused and lowered her voice. “He has other plans, now. We will meet him later.”

“You’re leaving him, the way he is?”

“For now. He will be fine, soon. We must go, and we will see him later” she said. She snapped her suitcase closed, stood up straight, face flushed. “Are you ready?” It took all her will power to keep her lower lip from visibly quivering. Her nervous hands clenched and unclenched the suitcase handle.

This was all going just as Max had hoped, but somehow, he didn’t feel satisfied. It was not right to abandon Zalmund. But what was the alternative? He reminded himself that his brothers were counting on him to find his parents. That was his mission, he thought, but at that moment he didn’t feel it. Better get it straight, he said to himself.

“All right, let’s go!” and he marched out of the room with Deena close behind.

They headed back to the Krakow train station in silence. Deena walked in a fog, not believing she was leaving him. She tried to tell herself that this was what Zalmund wanted. But he was so sick, how could he know his own mind? And now, after putting them in such peril, he was unable to help her or himself. She had to trust that he knew what he was doing, and that he would live. But he didn’t know everything. He didn’t know she carried his child.

Max, too, walked in a haze. He carried the burden of his family to rescue his father and mother. Now he added to that to his obligation to save his new… what? Lover? Friend? Their friendship was more than real now that their survival depended on his decisions. The minutia stormed in his mind. Where would they go? How would they sleep? What would he tell those who asked? Can he call her his sister? Was he just another authority figure stepping into Zalmund’s shoes?

When they reached the station, the anteroom was in tumult. The sense of urgency, and almost panic, was in the air. Many wore face masks as they scurried to their platform. Vendors hawked bread, dried fruit and spicy sausages for the long train rides out of town. The anxiety reflected the chaos to the east, in the Ukraine. The country had declared independence from Russia earlier in the year, but the government failed to function in any useful way, and the countryside descended into the counter-revolutionary convulsions. At the moment, the right wing aristocrat Pavlo Skoropadsky, who had the support of defeated Germany, was displaced in Kyiv by the left wing social democrat Simon Petliura as the German forces withdrew. But the Directorate leader Volodymyr Vynnychenko would not seize power until December 14, so on December 2, 1918, as Deena and Max headed East, no lawful government was in charge of the Ukraine. Krakow had lost its protection from the collapsed Austrian empire, and the city lay exposed to anyone who could take it.

Max stepped up first to the ticket counter and ordered two second class tickets to Lviv, just over the Polish border with Ukraine.

The ticket agent handed him the tickets as he pointed to the platforms to Max’s left. “Go now. Be ready. They may be leaving soon.” His brow furled and he looked concerned. “Good luck and go with God.”

Max turned to the platforms and looked over his shoulder. He was surprised to see Deena step up to the ticket counter.

“One second class to Poznan,” she said, as she put down a few krone notes.

“What!” Max cried, as the agent pushed the ticket across to Deena. As she stepped away from the ticket window, Max grabbed her arm that held her suitcase. “What are you doing?”

“I am doing what I need to do. I am going home,” she said.

“You can’t,” Max pleaded. “There is nothing there for you. That will be the end of your life, if the Bolsheviks don’t kill you first! Come with me, darling.”

“Max,” she said calmly, “I am done listening to you. I am done being told what is good for me, what to believe, what to do. I want to go home.”

“Deena, please. Come with me to America. You can start a new life. You can become what you want. The place you remember is gone. Who knows what will be there when you get back?”

“But you are not going to America. You are going to the Bolsheviks. You don’t even know if your parents are alive.”

“Deena, please, together…”

“Enough!” Deena screamed and put down her case. “You have a dream. Zalmund has a dream.” Her arms flailed in the air. “You have dreams, and I am just a player you want to love. Well, I have a dream, too. It is not murdering, hiding, running in fear. I may love you Max, but I have to go home.” A tear ran down her cheek. She clutched herself, and Max stepped to embrace and console her. But she reached down to grasp her suitcase, spun on her heels and disappeared into the crowd.

Max stood in stunned silence. His heart sank and his mind was in confusion. How could he let Deena walk away? He must go after her. But his brothers… they trusted him with a mission. His parents depended on him. Maybe they were holed up in a tattered room, dreaming of him rescuing them. He could not turn his back on his family. But most of all, he felt abandoned and alone. No one to trust, no one to help him, stranded in a strange and foreign country, danger all about. He looked around him at the tumult. Now he was scared, more frightened than he had been during the war.

He shuffled, dejected and head down, toward the platform as the conductor called for the train to Lviv. Last hugs and embraces, tearful good-byes lined the walkways to the car doors. Apprehension was writ in the face of each passenger taking the long step up to the carriage. Lviv was in violent turmoil. Just a few weeks before, Ukrainian forces abandoned the city and retreated at the same time as the Germans, while Polish troops took over the city. A riot followed, as bitter scores from the war were settled, and private homes and stores were looted. A pogrom against Jews killed at least 100 between November 21 and 23. The only link between the occupying Polish forces and central Poland was this rail line from Krakow.

Max found a window seat in the second-class compartment and settled in. He immediately saw the problem. There were old women and a few old men with shabby suitcases held together with frayed rope, sitting scattered throughout the car. There were a few uniformed Polish soldiers seated together, chatting and joking with the tone of gallows humor. He was the only young man out of uniform. He wore peasant clothes and a two days growth of beard, looking at best like a deserter. His Polish was barely passable, and his Russian fluency would do him no good until he reached Ukraine controlled territory. The train jolted forward, and Max slumped in his seat, making eye contact with no one. The conductor came by, punched his ticket, looked him up and down for a long moment, but moved on.

After a few stops and some hours of quiet rolling, the train pulled in to Przemyśl. The locomotive let out a long blast of steam to release steam pressure, signaling a delay. Most of the civilians stepped down to the platform with their luggage. They understood that this railway line from Przemyśl was the only link to Lviv and was under constant attack from Ukrainian troops trying to cut off the city and regain their stronghold. More armed Polish troops boarded the train. They immediately spotted the other soldiers in the car and brought them good news. That Monday, December 2, another local two-day ceasefire agreement had been declared, and they all relaxed. The Polish forces were using the ceasefire to further fortify their positions in Lviv, and the delay was to load munitions and supplies on the train.

Max slumped further in his seat, head down, and tried to sleep. He thought he heard one or another soldier call out to him in Polish, but he pretended not to hear. As the delay went on Max’s anxiety increased and it was hard to keep up his ruse of resting. Finally, in late afternoon with the last of the provisions strapped and secured, the train pulled out of the station.

Looking out the window at dusk, Max could see damaged trucks, bomb craters and burnt fields left over from the internecine combat. After a few more hours of uneventful rocking, the train pulled into Lviv. The soldiers gathered their duffels and left the car. Max waited until they were well clear of the platform, so there would be no chance for a confrontation. He stepped out and walked into the train station.

In contrast to the Krakow station, the Lviv station was quiet and nearly deserted. A few crates of army supplies were guarded by soldiers, but otherwise few civilians were about. An aura of siege and fear hung in the air. Max headed to the ticket booth and bought a second-class ticket to Odessa. It was an overnight ride, so after Max glanced over his shoulder to see the train being unloaded of its supplies, he found bread, beer and some cheese for dinner and sat against the wall watching the crew work.

He brooded over his loss of Deena. She was magical, a bright spirit with a worldly sense he never thought he would see in a woman. How could he let her go? Too late for that. How could he get her back? That was for another time. But her shimmering hair, her radiant skin, her shining eyes stopped him from thinking of anything else.

Finally, the conductor called for passengers for Odessa. Max walked slowly to the train, avoiding looking directly at the other passengers. There were fewer, elderly civilians with larger cases, and some struggled to get them up the steps. There were no Polish soldiers, as this train was headed into Ukrainian territory. Max relaxed a little and was soon asleep.

**********

Max was startled awake by the train wheels screeching, sparks leaping from the tracks, and the sudden deceleration of the train. He looked out the window into blackness, but toward the front of the train he could make out small swinging lights, which he surmised were lanterns. Blinking his eyes awake, he turned to the nearest older man, who seemed concerned, and asked, “Where are we?”

“Almost to Proskuriv,” he said. He looked down nervously, away from Max. “Who are they?” Max asked. The man shrugged and kept his dead down. This did not bode well. They sat in silence, Max pondering his options. Leaping from the train in the middle of the night into a place he did not know seemed like a very desperate move. He still had options, so he sat quietly and fidgeted with his hat.

His mind raced, to his brothers – what would they do? He thought back just a little over a week ago, to their meeting at the café in Lille. It seemed other worldly. He was now overwhelmed with a tide of history and so little a paddle. How could they send him here, alone and with no protection? Yes, he had volunteered, and agreed with them to decide by lots. He was so confident, confusing the war victory with a personal victory. But in this part of the world, there was no victory, nothing normal, and no end of war. Now that he was in the middle of this, he realized that thinking that they could send in one small soldier, snatch up their parents, and spirit them home, was pure cocky fantasy. Bravery has a small friend we call a fool.

He thought of his parents, waiting for him, and this only caused more panic and constricted his breathing. He could picture his mother’s face, warm and smiling. She always knew what he needed, and now he needed a friend. He thought of his father, a confident, serious man of the town. He could not imagine either of them intimidated or commanded. But Max knew from all he saw that events were bigger than his parents, and they had little to protect themselves. In fact, as kulaks, business peasants, they were the target of the Bolsheviks. Too much arrayed against his mother and father for them to withstand. They had no choice but to flee, and they were depending on him. He gave a huge sigh to release the tension in his chest.

He tried to think of Deena but that all seemed irrelevant now. It would be so much better if she were here with him now. She would provide him with a story – lovers escaping away to be married, or a married couple returning to his parent’s house. Anything domestic was better than a single young man on a train, looking for all the world like an army deserter. Is that why he wanted Deena to be with him, to cover him? No, he thought of her smile and the warmth she brought to him. He did dream of their life together. But that was another foolish thought, a mere speck of happiness in this sea of despair. He thought of her returning to her home, and agreed that it was best for her, and that his wishes were selfish. He felt abandoned by unattainable love.

Then his thoughts turned to Zalmund. Zalmund, who he admired and despised at the same time. He admired what he could do and hated what he did. He had no loyalty to anyone, or anything, except his own ideals. Was that wrong? He showed no restraint in his actions or fear in his thoughts. But in this world was that unusual? Men were gassed for a few yards of land, women kidnapped for ransom, children shot in the streets for political leverage. All for a purpose that someone proclaimed louder than others. He also knew that he hated Zalmund because he was jealous of his love with Deena – it made his stomach turn to think of it. But now he had to be like Zalmund, think like him, act like him and feel like him. No remorse, all resolve, and no restraint. He clenched and unclenched his fists to convince himself.

Perspiration formed on his forehead, which he wiped with the sleeve of his coat. He went over and over again his alibi. The waiting in silence nearly broke his nerves. They could hear the shouting from the forward cars, and occasionally the sounds of an outward door opening and someone climbing down the steel steps to the ground.

After thirty minutes of tension, the forward door to the compartment opened and a group of six soldiers, in tattered dirty brown wool overcoats, entered the car carrying long rifles. They wore budenovka spiked army hats with short brim and earlaps. Their leader at the rear wore a komissarka hat with oversized cap and a leather headband with a shiny brim. He had small dagger tattoo under his left eye (which Max recognized as a mark of the Odessa underground) and a pistol stuck into his coat belt. They spoke Russian as they interrogated each passenger down the aisle. From what he overheard, Max surmised they were an Anarchist unit searching for White Russians, Ukrainian People’s Republic soldiers and deserting Red Army soldiers. Desertion was rampant on all sides of the conflict, reflecting the hardships of war, the unyielding dogma of the ideologies, and the poverty of the soldiers.

They spent only a moment with most passengers, until they came to Max.

Their commander looked him up and down, obviously taking in his military age and civilian clothes. “Wh-wh-who are you?” he stuttered.

“I am Max Shertok,” Max replied respectfully in his native Russian.

“Wh-wh-where are you g-going?”

“I am returning to my command in Odessa.”

“Where are you c-c-coming from?”

Max launched into his prepared story, and his authentic Southern Ukrainian Russian accent obviously impressed the leader and troops. Max told them he had joined the Red Army in Odessa and had been assigned to a unit at the front as a driver for an officer. Of course, the officer was an idiot and had no idea where he was supposed to go. He directed them on a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of the Austrian army. “The durak!” (fool) he spat. The officer was killed, and he was taken prisoner. He was able to escape easily just a week ago as their army collapsed and retreated. He had stolen some cloths and money from an Austrian sympathizer in the nearby town. Now he was headed back to his enlistment base. His mention of money raised eyebrows.

“Yes, yes,” Max exclaimed, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a small wad of Austrian krone. “See?” and he began to hand over bills to the soldiers, as if they validated his story.

“Enough,” barked the commander, and he slapped the bankroll to the ground. “Ta-take him outside!” Two soldiers reluctantly lifted him from his seat, glancing a few times at the money on the floor. They gingerly led him to the front of the cabin while the leader and the four remaining soldiers continued down the aisle.

Outside, they stood waiting for the leader to return, in a casual triangle hunched against the cold. One of his guards did not have a rifle but rather a pistol tucked in his belt, while his left arm dangled uselessly at his side. He had dark eyebrows, deep set eyes and a broad black mustache. Max glanced to the front of the train, where he could barely make out by lantern light a man kneeling on the ground two cars down and soldiers standing over him. Suddenly, a pistol shot rang out and the prisoner keeled over. His guards paid little attention, shifting from foot to foot and blowing onto their frozen hands. Another day of duty to the Motherland.

At last, the leader emerged from the train door and walked toward the group. The last soldier held Max’s weather-beaten suitcase and a lantern.

“Sholom,” the leader said to the soldier with the bad arm, “ta-take him to camp”. He gestured at the suitcase to indicate that it should go too.

“Wait, wait!” Max cried out. He turned to the leader, “Comrade, a word alone, if you please?” The captain put on a pained look, then waived the other soldiers away and took the lantern. As he did, Max unbuttoned his rear pocket and reached in, withdrawing the Cheka pass Deena had given him.

“I am on a secret mission for the Commissariat,” Max whispered in the leader’s ear. “I cannot tell you anything more, but I must be allowed to pass.” He handed him the paper.

The leader took the paper, set down the lantern and unfolded it. He glanced at Max before reading. Passes were a sensitive matter among Anarchists and Bolsheviks after September 1918. In the Bruce Lockhart affair, the British agent was accused of giving fake Cheka passes to two Latvian agents who used them to smuggle Fanya Kaplan into Moscow, where she shot Vladimir Lenin on August 30. In the ensuing Red Terror, Lenin’s entire security team was executed. The captain pulled the paper close to his eyes, held it back over the lantern and rubbed the signature with his thumb. He then quickly withdrew his pistol from his belt, put it against Max’s temple, and ordered him to the ground.

Max kneeled. “No, no, I can help you!” he shrieked.

The captain ordered Max’s suitcase searched, and they spilled the contents on the frozen tundra. Nothing of interest, except, a shirt, trousers and a handkerchief. A small pocketknife fell out.

“I am a mekhanik (mechanic)” Max pleaded. “I can help!”

Then one soldier picked up the pocketknife, flipped open the blade, and began to cut the lining of the suitcase. He turned the case upside down, shook it, and a small piece of paper fluttered to the ground.

Max’s US army identification card. His last hope to return home.

The commander picked it up and examined it by the lantern light. No doubt it was not a Red Army issued ID. The top lines, in large English capital letters read

“AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES.”

He drew his pistol and raised it to Max’s skull.

Sholom grabbed the ID card from the commander’s hand and held it to the light. “Max Shertok,” he read. The next line was rank. “Ryadovoy”, he translated, nodding to the word “Private.” The next line was “Duty”.

“Mekhanik”, Sholom read.

Max knelt shaking and shivering for an eternal instant. Sholom lowered his head close to the leader’s ear and murmured while the pistol remained leveled at Max. The Anarchist unit was in desperate need of mechanics. The soldiers had in fact marched five miles from their camp in the freezing night air, and then cut down trees and put them the tracks to stop the train, because most of their fleet trucks were broken down. Many heavy machine factories in Russia were on strike and in open revolt against the Bolsheviks because of their harsh treatment of the workers. Parts and repairs were impossible to obtain. This Anarchist ally of the Bolshevik Southern Defense Force was reduced to a peasant militia.

“Sholom, ta-ta-take him to ca-camp,” the commander barked.

PROSKURIV

After the Anarchist unit completed their action, executing a few White Russian and Ukrainian army deserters and conscripting the Red Army deserters, they trudged the five miles back to their encampment outside of Proskuriv. Max staggered along the way, weak from fever, cold and coughing. His spirit was crushed beneath the boots of his armed guards. He was less than dead, he thought, now a captive. No one knew where he was. He coughed and spat into the thin snow pushed to the side of the road. The one-armed soldier Sholom poked him with his elbow, smiled at him and shook his head. It was a reprimand, but a friendly gesture, Max thought.

By daybreak the raiding party turned off the main road and followed a trail into the forest to a clearing, where the army camp was set. Without a word, the exhausted soldiers headed to their tents, while the captives were herded to a circle cleared of snow and ordered to sit down around the remnants of a fire. Max began to follow, but Sholom prodded him with his pistol.

“Not there,” he said in Russian. “You are too sick. Not near nobody. Over here.” Sholom pushed him toward another clearing closer to the road. Several trucks with canvas-covered flat beds dusted in snow sat slack jawed, their hoods splayed open and parts scattered on the ground. They looked like they hadn’t moved in months. “Here,” he said and pointed to the dry ground under the larger truck. “I’ll get you a blanket.”

Max sat up against the front tire, clutching himself and shivering. The feverish sweat from his forehead rode down his nose and froze at the tip. He could not think and could not sleep. His legs hurt and his thighs cramped. He hallucinated that he was floating above the world, flying over battlegrounds and oceans, swerving so low so fast that he made himself dizzy. He gasped for breath and startled himself with a vicious cough that racked his ribs. He sighed, and wished he were dead.

Sholom at last came back with two wool blankets. “Get under the truck and get some sleep,” he said as he threw the blankets on him. “We get to work in the morning.”

The next morning Sholom woke Max with a kick to his boots. “Get up!” he exhorted. But Max opened his bloodshot eyes, rolled them to the back of his head, and closed them. “Here’s some soup,” Sholom said, and left a steaming cup of gruel next to his head tucked under the truck. Max tried to say thanks, but all he did was cough, heave and spit out phlegm. Sholom walked away.

Max lay in a fever, cycling between sleep, hallucinations and depression. When he was awake, he tried to make sense of his situation. He understood he was in some type of military camp, probably Anarchists. He thought back to his capture. It was that damn Cheka pass that blew up in his face. How did he get that? From Deena, sweet Deena. Would she do that to him? Could she betray him like that? Her radiant smile and tousled red hair floated before him. No, Deena must have gotten the Cheka pass from Zalmund. She thought it was real and that it could help him.

Zalmund, yes, of course. Zalmund probably had them from his time in Moscow. Maybe he wasn’t lying about working for Cheka. Now he was dying, and resented Max taking Deena away. He tried to stop her, Max thought, but she told him she was going with Max. Yes! So, in ruthless retribution from his deathbed, Zalmund passed along one thing that he knew could punish Max – an outdated, counterfeit Cheka pass. It almost convinced the commander, but then nearly became a death sentence.

Later in the day Sholom brought him two more blankets, another cup of gruel and some bread. He did not explain that this came from his own rations. Most everyone else thought he should die quickly and be buried deep, to save them all. But the commander, Grigory Kotovsky, said nyet because he wanted his trucks back in operation.

**********

By the third day, Max was sitting up to spoon in the thin soup. He had lost weight, but his cough subsided, and his joints did not ache as much.

On the morning of the fourth day, while he was eating, Sholom strode up with two other soldiers and Comrade Kotovsky, who without a hat displayed his trademark shaved head.

“Y-you are better. Good,” said Kotovsky. “Now fa-fix this tra-truck.” The two soldiers raised their rifles to point at Max. He scrambled to his knees. He had barely noticed where he was and had not actually recognized that he was sleeping under a truck that needed repairs. He stood, turned and peered into the engine compartment. He mumbled “ooh”, and “ahh” and touched a few places on the motor block while his mind cleared.

“Do you have any tools?” Max asked Sholom.

“What tools do you need?” Sholom replied.

“I am not sure, yet,” Max answered with a blank stare.

“Then we have them!” Sholom bantered, and the crew broke into laughter. Kotovsky did not laugh, and the squad fell to silence.

Kotovsky said “Fa-fix this by su-sunset,” spun on his heels and stalked away.

Max spent most of the first two hours cleaning the snow and debris off the engine and identifying the parts. Eventually only Sholom was left to guard him as he sat perched against a tree.

“Sholom is a Yiddish name,” Max ventured as he twisted and tightened the parts he saw.

“Yes, I’m Sholom Schwartzbard, from Balta,” he said, and they fell into an easy conversation. With no secrets left to hide, Max explained how he came to rescue his parents from Kherson. Schwartzbard knew the town from its reputation as a wealthy bastion of Jewish merchants. Balta was only 130 miles north and west of Odessa. “I was apprenticed as a watchmaker, there in Balta” he said. “That’s why I respect mechanical skills. Then I fell in with the Socialists.”

Max felt the need to change the subject. “What about that truck over there. Can I look at that too?” Sholom got to his feet and motioned Max over to the smaller truck at the edge of the clearing. Max dusted off the snow and bent over the fender to take a close look. Sholom too leaned over.

“I was arrested,” Sholom said. He seemed to be trying to strike an empathetic note.

“No! At home?” Max said with astonishment. He did not like where this was going, but Sholom was so matter of fact that it was hard not to hear the end of the story.

“Yes. In my mother’s house. I was taken to Proskuriv prison, in the town nearby. Nasty place. If it wasn’t for my Socialist comrades with me, I never would have survived.” He then explained that he received a pardon from the Tsar during a period of leniency after the collapse of the 1905 revolution, and emigrated with his brother to France to follow its liberal political climate. He left out the part where he first went to Vienna with a circle of Anarchists and was arrested for theft from restaurants, which he thought of as Anarchist expropriation.

“Yes, yes,” Max exclaimed. “I need this. Come here, help me.” He pointed to a long steel rod attached to a gear in the second truck. Together, with Sholom’s good arm, they rotated the rod until the ends were exposed and Max could extract it with a screwdriver and wrench. “Yes!” he exalted.

They went back to the first truck, and Max leaned in. Now was the question he really wanted to ask. “What happened to your arm?”

“Which one?” Sholom feigned quizzically. “Oh, this one? Yes. Well, at the start of the war my brother and I enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. We hated the Germans more than we loved ourselves.”

Max busied himself with extracting the broken rod and replacing it with the one from the second truck. Sholom continued, intent on following Max’s every mechanical move. “We were sent into the Vosges Forest in the Alsace. By the time we got there, it was not a war but a slaughterhouse. The lines were fixed. The French had a strategy of coup de mains, or surprise attacks. We were the ones surprised! I was shot through the shoulder and nearly died. They sent a priest to me, but I turned him away. I recovered, but my arm remained on the field.”

Max was quiet. “I’m sorry.” But he wasn’t. So many had died, so many wounded, so many whose lives were changed forever. It was a matter of curiosity, like a landmark on a trail, but not something to brood over. Too bad.

At last, he finished with fixing the rod. “Give it a try!” he exclaimed. Sholom jumped behind the wheel, and Max turned the crank starter. Nothing.

“Shit!” Max cried. Sholom shook his head. But after a few more patches and oiling the crank shaft, the engine finally turned over to exuberant shouts from the two mechanics.

“Petrol in the tank?” Max shouted.

“We’ll expropriate from town!” Sholom replied.

At the sound of the engine roaring, a group of soldiers, including Comrade Kotovsky, gathered around, nodding with approval.

“Wha-what about th-that one?” Kotovsky screamed over the claptrap, pointing at the second truck.

**********

Within a week, Max had organized the mobile repair truck and identified the most important parts he needed. One morning Sholom escorted into the motor pool with great deference a young woman he introduced as Maria Grigorevna Nikiforova, whom he said everyone called Marusya. Max was startled to see her since he had seen no other women in the brigade. She was in her early 30s, had short black hair in a bowl cut, plain but well-proportioned features and a cigarette dangling from her lips. Her eyes looked at him with an unusual intensity. He tried to look back but could not help himself from peaking at her full bosom that filled out her military tunic.

“Marusya and I first met in Paris, before the war,” Sholom began. “We attended the same Anarchist rallies,” he smiled, with a sideways glance at her. “She is the first and only atamansha (female military commander) in the Ukraine!” he said with pride. Rather than blush or show modesty, Marusya raised her eyebrows at Max, which unnerved him. “She was in the United States before,” he continued, “and she wanted to see the American we have caught!”

“Where in America did you live?” she asked Max.

“I LIVE in Minneapolis, in Minnesota,” he replied with emphasis on the present tense.

“I have not been there. I was in New York. A wonderful place. Such an illusion of freedom. I want to have that here,” she continued.

“It’s not an illusion, its real,” Max countered.

“Don’t be silly,” Marusya said, stomping out her cigarette butt. “Can your women vote? Pfuff…” A long pause followed.

“Why did you come to New York?” Max asked, trying to steer the conversation away from politics.

“I was escaping a death sentence in St. Petersburg, then exile to Siberia,” she said matter-of-factly. Another long pause. “Your accent is from Odessa,” she said.

“Kherson,” Max replied.

“Why did you come back?”

“To rescue my mother and my father.”

Another long pause followed, while Marusya eyed him. “So sweet… They don’t need your rescue. They need you to stay here and fight for them.”

Max sensed the danger in bantering with her. He hung his head down.

“I will check in on the progress with the trucks,” she said, and walked away.

**********

Max soon had repaired two more trucks and three Fiat-Omsky light armored cars captured from the White Army. This steel plated car looked like a large stove on wheels, with a turret on top and two forward facing small-bore machine guns. Together with the trucks, these provided Kotovsky with superior maneuverability and fighting punch. With the train route cut off from the Poles in the west, Kotovsky used the cars for reconnaissance of the southern route and the trucks to deploy troops which outflanked the slowly marching Ukrainian Directorate force. They harassed and ambushed the Ukrainians until they began to desert en masse, some even coming over to Kotovsky’s unit. The Anarchists hardly celebrated Christmas but they did celebrate their military victories. By New Year’s 1919 Proskuriv was abandoned by the Directorate and by February 4, 1919 the Bolsheviks had taken Kyiv to the north.

The mastermind behind this progress was Grigory Kotovsky, but he was hardly the model military leader. He was born in nearby Bessarabia, orphaned at a young age, and studied at the local agricultural college. Like many in his generation, he joined the home-grown Socialist Revolutionaries in 1898. After graduation he took a job as an assistant estate manager, and also took every opportunity to steal from the owners. When he failed to enlist for his required military service he was arrested and conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army. It was not long before he deserted. He was a confidant and commanding figure despite his stutter and organized his own criminal gang. They specialized in violent raids, extortion and robbery, which terrorized the countryside. He served several prison terms, always returning to his gang, until he was granted amnesty by the Tsar on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty in 1913. At the last minute his release was denied, but nevertheless on February 27 he escaped the Katorga penal colony. Once again, he returned to his gang, and organized a spectacular robbery of the State Treasury in Bender, Moldova, just west of Odessa.

Kotovsky then organized one raid too far. He was captured in 1916, imprisoned and sentenced to death by hanging. He composed his finals letters from death row. But then chaos intervened – Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in February 1917. A riot ensued in his Odessa prison and soon the prisoners were running the facility. The Provisional Government granted a broad amnesty, and Grigory Kotovsky walked out a free man. A World War was on, and the best opportunity for violence and thievery now lay within the Anarchist movement. He organized a fighting gang decorated in Anarchist ideology, which liberated them to do and take what they wanted.

The Bolsheviks were uneasy allies of the Anarchists. They both fought for the downfall of the Tsar. They both were not particularly moralistic about their soldiers, and many of the “crimes” for which Kotovsky was convicted looked like revolutionary acts to the Party. Stealing from landowners? Extorting money from the bourgeoise? Dodging service in the Imperial Russian Army? Robbing capitalist institutions? Shooting Tsarist police? No problem. Good training. His unit of Anarchists struck an alliance with the Bolsheviks in late 1918.

Kotovsky seized his new opportunity to squeeze Proskuriv. He created a Revolutionary Council with a few token townspeople, and taxed their meat and bread, of which he personally kept half the take. He exacted revenge on the loyal officials who sided with the Ukrainian nationalist army and harassed his positions, either by ransoming them back to their families or executing them. With his eye on larger prizes, he sent Sholom and Max to examine the train station and any rail stock remaining in town. They went to visit on Saturday, Feb 1, 1919.

For men used to sleeping in tents around campfires, Proskuriv was a metropolis. They walked on a dirt road which became the broad cobblestone Proskurivska Street as they entered town. A light snow covered the buildings like frosting on a cake. The snow on the street had been expertly plowed to the side forming white curbs. On the left side was a sidewalk separated from the street by posts for tying up horse-drawn carriages, which occasionally passed them on their stroll. Men in jackets and women (women!) moved briskly from shop to shop. The center of town was marked by a large two-story red brick building that held the theater under an awning, and a dry goods store. Next to it was a low brown wood store for grain and feedstock, and next to that a two-story hotel of painted white wood with a white balustrade around the second level balcony. More wood storefronts stretched from the theater in the opposite direction. Across from these were two-story brick homes of the wealthy townspeople. In the past year Proskuriv had been ruled by the Tsar, Germans, Ukrainians and now Anarchists. Yet life went on.

Although Max was technically a prisoner and Sholom his guard, the two men walked and talked easily through town. Sholom took up his story after he was demobilized from the French Foreign Legion in late 1917. He and his wife returned to his home in Bender, Ukraine for his recuperation, but he couldn’t keep a domestic life, and working a steady job was not for him. In February 1918 he joined with Anarchist volunteers in Odessa to form the Otriad Rashal brigade, named after a charismatic commander who died too young in a Romanian firefight the previous autumn. Their mission was to defend Tiraspol, west of Odessa, from the Ukrainian nationalists. By May 1918 they fell under attack from the eastward-advancing German and Austrian army, and the overmatched unit fled further east beyond Odessa into the steppes. After their comrade commander died from his wounds, and now without provisions, the group disbanded – every man for himself. Sholom explained that he too smuggled himself onto a train back into Odessa, which was then under German occupation. After careful inquiries among the thieves and murders on the shadowy side of town, Sholom found the Kotovsky brigade and enlisted. By November the Germans had withdrawn and Kotovsky began operating in the open.

“What about your wife?” Max asked after this long narrative.

“Her? I think she is just as happy I am away. After a few months, she understood I could never be her domashniy muzh (house husband). She is probably ashamed of me that I am not a whole man,” he said, shrugging his dead arm. “I send her money when I have enough saved.”

“When is that?” Max asked.

“Never!” and Sholom slapped Max on the back with his good arm.

They walked along Proskurivska Street in good spirits until, a few blocks east of the main building of the town, they reached the train station on their right. The station was empty and in disrepair, reflecting the reduced and dangerous train travel. They looked out through the departure doors. Of the two locomotives that sat on parallel tracks, one was covered in snow, pointed south and clearly out of service. They stepped down from the platform and made their way to the tracks. They almost stumbled over an old man curled up under blankets between the rails. He sat up and blinked his eyes. His white hair was cut short in military style, and covered by a black wool cap. His grizzled white stubby beard suggested he had not shaved recently. Before he could move any further, Sholom drew his pistol with his good right arm and pointed it at the old man’s head.

“Don’t move. We are not here to hurt you. We are from the Anarchist Army,” Sholom said, puffing out his chest. “We control this town and this station. Just stay here.”

“There is nothing here to take,” the old man said. “We have no rolling stock, and this locomotive doesn’t run.”

“Why?” Max asked him.

“She’s a fussy lady,” the old man sighed. “She came in one day last month, gave a shudder, blew out her steam, and seized. The mechanic said she’s a mess.”

“Where is he?”

“He left with the rest of the army before you came into town.”

Max turned to Sholom and said, “I’ll take a look.” Max climbed into the cabin and immediately noticed that the coal bin was more than half full. No one thought to unload it before they fled. He then reviewed the operating panel at the front. The fire tubes were clear at both ends and the fire-bars were free from clinkers; the regulator was closed and locked, and the tender-break screwed down tight. The reversing-lever was in the middle position. The cocks of the oil-vessels and feed pipes were turn off. All as it should be.

He climbed down and went under the locomotive, laying on the steel pan below the giant engine. After his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Max saw the problem: the connecting-rod was missing. He looked at the ends where it would ordinarily attach and saw that the brass cotters were cleaved, and the set screws were missing. But he also notices that where the brass cotters were attached there were multiple welds, one on top of another. This attachment point seemed to be a recurring problem, and repeated patchwork repairs had been done to keep the connecting-rod in place and engine working. But if the cotters were attached improperly they might put too much tension on the connecting-rod, and something was bound to give.

Max decided to continue his review and inspected the brasses of the inner framing, the inside bearings of the cranked axel and the wheel attachment with its pins, bolts and slide-spindles. All fine. Then he noticed the tip of a bar out of place. He reached for it and yanked. It was the missing connecting-rod, which appeared to have been thrown across the engine casing and lodged behind the wheel spanner. This alone would cause the engine to seize. He carefully placed the connecting-rod behind the flange of the steel plate separating the engine from the boiler. He took a last look at the brass cotters, which he recognized as about the same size as the cotters he used in the Fiat-Omsky light armored cars.

Max climbed out from under the engine and found Sholom waiting for him. He wiped his hands together, then onto his pants, and shook his head. “This is not going anywhere. It’s a mess. Must have gotten overheated and seized. I can’t help. Its only good for parts, now.”

On the walk to their new barracks in a commandeered house on the west side of town, Max recounted to Sholom his family’s plan to reunite. Although Sholom was good-natured and had been kind to Max the past few weeks, Max never forgot that he was a prisoner one slip from execution as a foreign spy. While he lay ill and near death, he descended to a desperate point. He was all alone, he thought over and over, and was haunted by the black mood that no one would ever know what happened to him. He would just disappear. His fever spiked when he considered that he had been betrayed by a rabbi – a monstrous deceit made worse by his rivalry for a woman he thought he loved. That too was a betrayal. He had offered love, help and hope for a new life to a woman who turned her back on him, left him to the devil, to return to her old ways. But those old ways were gone. The mileposts of his Ukraine youth were no more – his country had descended into a hellish zone of factions, lawlessness, piracy and death. He was sick in his soul as well as his body. His only respite was the memory of his brothers and parents. At his greatest despair, he thought of his family and his mission – get his parents out and to America. From that point on, everything he did was designed to get him closer to escape.

Max spoke easily to Sholom about his life in Kherson and his training in the gymnasium. He had been a good student, proficient in language and mathematics. He told Sholom he dreamed of a life in his father’s business, a life on the river meeting people in towns. He fashioned a story that he was happy and content in Kherson, but that suddenly his father had ordered him and his brothers to America. He lied that he did not want to go.

“Your father was right,” Sholom interjected. “In America you can get rich doing good things. Here, you can only get rich doing bad things.”

Max continued on about going to Minneapolis for work and finding an apprentice job in the machine shop of the biggest grain mill, General Mills. But without citizenship he was nothing, not American and not Ukrainian, and he couldn’t join the union. So, he and his brothers joined the Army to receive American papers upon their discharge. At this point, Sholom leaned in and asked for details. Max obliged with stories of what he saw on the American lines, dressing up the gore and death, knowing that Sholom was badly wounded in battle and enjoyed hearing that others suffered as much or more.

Max finally got to the meeting with his brothers after the Armistice, and the decision to send one brother back to retrieve their parents. He lied when he said he volunteered.

“How foolish!” Sholom said. “Where did you get the pass?”

Max had said nothing about Zalmund and Deena. “I met a guy, a soldier, at a house in Krakow. He sold it to me.”

“A house or a brothel?” Sholom smirked.

“Maybe it wasn’t a real house,” Max feigned embarrassment.

“Foolish, again,” Sholom sang out. “How much did it cost?”

“A few marks. It seemed like an insurance policy.”

“Didn’t that seem cheap? You didn’t know Lenin was shot?” Sholom asked.

“Yes, we heard about it, but wasn’t that just another Bolshevik killing each other?”

“No, no, no. Well, yes,” Sholom replied. “The British helped them do it. Kotovsky got a message in Odessa describing the fake Cheka passes and warning us about the British. So, when you, an American, show up with a pass, well… I saved you.”

“Yes you did,” Max said with sincerity

“Well, you fixed our trucks. We’re even?”

“Even,” Max said.

“No, not really. But OK.” Sholom put his head down and marched on.

**********

Late the next afternoon when Max was cleaning up at the motor pool, Marusya sauntered in with two cups of strong tea. She handed him one and sat on an empty ammo cannister near the forge fire used for repairing bent metal shafts. With great show she slowly unbuttoned her overcoat and arranged herself in a comfortable position. She pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Max pulled up another ammo cannister and sat across from here. She offered him a cigarette and he took it. He sipped from the tea and nodded his appreciation.

“How was your visit to the train station?” she asked. It was an unnerving question, but Max reassured himself there was no way she could know what he saw.

“You know, I made a full report. The main locomotive facing south is missing a tie rod that is much bigger than anything in our trucks,” he said calmly.

“Bigger than a tachanka?” she asked. This was an open wagon with a large cannon, drawn by four horses, and her use of the term further cemented her major military credentials.

“Yes!” Max blurted. “That is where I started in the Expeditionary Force.” The memories of his army life only a few months ago now seemed a lifetime away. He hung his head.

After a long gap, she asked “Do you have a woman?” Max looked confused. “You know, a girlfriend waiting for you?”

“No,” he said, but immediately regretted it since it sounded so immature. “I did,” he corrected himself.

“Another war casualty,” she sighed. “But you tell me you’re free. You can find another, and still find her. I did.” Max looked up in surprise. “Yes, yes, in Paris we were free. Every night a new man found my fancy. Sometimes a woman, if she was special,” she bragged. Max could not take his eyes off hers. She was powerful, direct and without shame.

Then she saw the look in his face. “Sholom? Never. Even with two good arms.” She chuckled at her own joke. Max smiled from embarrassment. “Don’t look at me like that. I am a married woman.”

“Married?” Max asked in astonishment.

“Yes, my husband is Witold Brzostek.” She waited for a sign of recognition, but Max offered none. “He was an Anarchist with me in Paris but was arrested. He was going to be deported because he had no dependents. So I married him and played the babushaka. I even borrowed a baby.”

“Where is he now?” Max asked.

“I don’t know. I left him. For another woman. That didn’t last.” She looked down.

“No,” Max murmured, not knowing what to say.

“But it was Batko who broke my heart,” she said, looking up at Max. He showed no recognition. “You know. Otaman Nestor Makhno. No?” Max shook his head. “Oh, he is so handsome and dashing. We had wild times, yes, the vodka. Sometimes he had other women join us. Yes, it was exciting. The peasants loved him, especially the girls. He had his own army, the Makhnovshchina. He wanted freedom, too, even from the Bolsheviks. But when they arrested me last year, he valued their love more than mine.” She gave him a wink. “They took my command and exiled me. If it wasn’t for Schwartzbard and Kotovsky, I’d be back in Siberia.”

“Arrested you? Why?”

“Insubordination. Can you imagine?” she said, stubbing out her cigarette butt. She rose and stood in front of him. “Don’t worry, Mr. Max. You will see her again. But in the meantime, live!” She bent down and planted a long, open mouth kiss on his lips.

**********

The following day, Wednesday, February 5, a Cossack Brigade, led by a young unknown commander Ivan Semesenko, stormed into Proskuriv from the south on horseback and truck. The Kotovsky unit, lax on their perimeter surveillance and stuffed with booty seized from the town, were surprised, unprepared, and forced to flee west to the surrounding forest and north across the river. The source of Semesenko’s urgency was reflected by the first stop he made after entering town: he went to the local physician who diagnosed him with a nasty case of gonorrhea.

Equally surprised was the Directorate leader Simon Petliura in Kyiv, who was gathering his government to flee in the face of a Bolshevik expeditionary force ready to take the city. He made his escape to Vinnytsia, only a short distance to Proskuriv.

From his command center in the forest, Kotovsky sent out reconnaissance, who reported back that Semesenko’s forces were an easy match for a prepared counterattack. But the scout party was clumsy and was spotted by the Cossack sentries, who reported back to headquarters that a rag-tag band was sneaking around town, peering through binoculars. Although Semesenko was the same young age of 24 as Max, he was a seasoned battlefield commander, and he understood the meaning of the report. He declared martial law in Proskuriv on Friday, February 7, banned gatherings and strikes, and set a 7 pm curfew.

Nevertheless, Kotovsky went forward with his plan to take back the city, setting the date for the revolt for Saturday, February 15. At secret meetings with the town Bolshevik party members in the intervening week, the locals complained there were too few workers among the 50,000 people to support the uprising. But Kotovsky, with support from the revered Marusya, insisted the revolt would spread throughout the region.

That Saturday, February 8, Sholom came to the motor pool and interrogated Max. How many trucks were operational? Were the cannons checked? Was the petrol loaded in drums and into the fuel transports. Sholom seemed nervous. Finally, after a long checklist was completed, Sholom sat down while Max wiped his grease-stained hands.

“I am worried, Max,” Sholom began. He did not often confide in Max, so he sat down next to Sholom. “I trust Kotovsky, but Marusya knows no control. She even scares the Anarchists – she would like to burn it all down, always.” He paused and blew on his hands. “I know she had great success leading the Black Guards and then the Free Combat Druzhina. For God sakes, she conquered half of Ukraine. She beat the White Guards, the Ukrainian Nationalists and the Germans last year. No doubt. But I just don’t like this.”

“She is a great commander,” Max offered.

“Oh, yes. But I knew her before. She is crazy. She would spout off at meetings about ‘motiveless terrorism’. She has bombed, kidnapped, robbed banks.”

“Just like Kotovsky,” Max interjected.

“Yes, just like him. That’s why together they are frightening. She doesn’t think she needs allies. She doesn’t even want them. I hope that Kotovsky is better and can get the workers on our side.”

The climactic meeting was held after dark on Thursday, February 13, at a farmhouse north of town that the Bolsheviks had commandeered from an intimidated kulak family. About two dozen men attended, half of them Bolsheviks and half of them Jewish, and many both. With his penchant for theatrics on full display, Kotovsky delivered a stutter-filled and impassioned plea for obedience to the Cause and the Revolution.

Someone from the back shouted back “We don’t have the key people with us. Krinsky and Dolechuk won’t come anywhere near here. Malamud and Drobek say they won’t help. They are tired.”

“W-were they t-tired of the Tsar? Did that st-stop the Re-Revolution?” thundered Kotovsky. “We have two White regiments ready to join us!”

“No!” several yelled. “Which ones?”

“The 15th B-B-B-Belgorod and the 8th P-Podolosk will s-start our return on Sa-Saturday,” Kotovsky bellowed, with his chest pumped out and his finger in the air.

The pitch of the commotion intensified, until a local Bolshevik stood. “Comrade Kotovsky, we support you. We are encouraged that the regiments support you. But this is not the time. We need to make better preparations and be sure that the right people are behind us. We need more men who can fight.”

“You Je-Jews will never learn this,” Kotovsky pointed and growled with narrowed eyes. “You do not l-lead by l-looking behind. You l-lead from the f-f-front of the people. We will d-destroy the Cossacks, take back Proskuriv, and the p-people will rise up to carry us!”

That ended the discussion, with Kotovsky showing that he was a strong leader but a poor listener.

**********

On Friday night, February 14, Marusya visited Max in the motor pool, waving a bottle of vodka. “I was once a bottle washer at a vodka factory,” she told him. He sat down near the dying embers of the forge fire, and she sat down uncomfortably close. She pulled two glasses from her coat pocket and poured them each two fingers. She shot hers down immediately while Max drank in sips.

“Oh, Max, you should have seen us in the Free Combat Druzhina,” she said wistfully. We had our own train, covered with a banner ‘Long Live Anarchy”. But it wasn’t just talk. Behind it was an armored flat car, and two 100-mm cannons.”

Max looked wide eyed at her and shot down the remaining drink. Marusya filled their glasses again.

“We had more flat cars for the armored trucks, tachankas, and box cars for the horses. Our soldiers grew their hair long and wore sheepskin caps. We had red breeches with ammunition belts slung over them. We were a terror. We would arrive by train, unload, and outflank those Cossack fools. We would appear like a fairy tale pirate band, black flags flying. Those poor conscripts turned and ran. It was all we could do to catch them!” She gulped her drink and Max followed.

“What happened?” Max asked.

“What happened? What happened? I was awarded the Red Star of the State by Comrade Commander Antonov-Ovseenko! My men were better fed and had more equipment than most of the Red Army.”

“Yes, Marusya,” Max said a little tipsy. “Yes, but what happened to your army?”

Marusya made a great show of pouring two more shots, and they clinked glasses as they drank them down.

“Let me tell you something. The Bolsheviks are babies. They are hypocrites. They talk about commune ownership, and the end of property. But just watch a Bolshevik commander take an estate from the bourgeoise. They take everything in sight. And does it go back to the State? No. It never leaves their pockets.”

“It’s like that everywhere,” Max moaned.

“It is… But not with me! Everything I took we divided among ourselves. We liberated the wealth for the people. I kept only my share.” She poured and they drank again.

“Yes,” Max mumbled. He looked at Marusya in the dwindling firelight, and she reflected a glow, her eyes twinkling and her arms gesturing.

“That is why they accused me of pillaging! To cover up their own sins! A trial!” she cried.

“Is that when you were insubordinate?” Max asked, wobbling side to side with a goofy grin.

“Yes, it was,” she said, and spreading her coat, she fell onto him. Her hot breath, soft body and wet lips transported him. This did not pretend to be love, but just pure lust. This felt like his visits to the brothels outside the Army camp base in France, except no guilt and no money. For both Max and Marusya, the imminent combat the next day sharpened the excitement and release.

**********

Just after midnight on the morning of Saturday, February 15, two dozen men from the Belgorod and Podolsk divisions crept out of their barracks and headed to the railway station. They easily overwhelmed the sleeping guards, and took up positions around the yard, overlooking the two locomotives. Then they sat and waited.

At dawn Kotovsky’s militia were arrayed along the north bank of the Pivdennyi Bug River, carefully watching. Some watched for signs from the church steeple in the center of the city that the local Bolsheviks had started battle, while others watched the north roads for the Bolshevik reinforcements from Kharkiv promised by the Central Command.

After two hours of inaction on either front, Kotovsky could wait no longer. He sent a scout troop into the city, and what they saw was disheartening. The town square was littered with several bodies of men shot at close range, and a few more men in civilian clothes kneeled in a group with their hands behind their heads, guarded by Cossack soldiers. They then crept south to view the train station, where more bodies in military uniforms lay in the rail yard, and soldiers milled about. There did not appear to be any surviving rebels there. The troop hurried back to Kotovsky to report the uprising had failed miserably.

Ivan Semesenko slept poorly that Friday night, worried about the resistance. His testicles ached from his venereal disease and he had to go outside to urinate every two hours. The congratulations he received by wire from Directorate leader Simon Petliura had come with instructions: hold Proskuriv against the Jews and Bolsheviks at all costs, and help was on the way. He was grumpy and irritated when his adjunct woke him again to tell him of the beginning of the uprising. He dressed quickly and called in his senior commanders. When he asked who it was they captured in town, they responded with one word: “Jews!” He then gave his instructions and hurried out by truck transport with his security detail to inspect the railway station and bolster the morale of the shaken Belgorod and Podolosk regiments. He returned to his headquarters in the town hotel to wire reports to Petliura in Kyiv and orders to his regional commanders in and around Odessa.

By noon a large squadron of 200 uniformed and fully armed Cossack soldiers assembled in the main town square across from the hotel, complete with a military band. A scattering of townspeople gathered at the perimeter, apprehensive of the darkening mood. An adjutant placed down a wooden box and signaled to the band to stop playing. Semesenko emerged from his truck and climbed the short step onto the wood box, wincing when his adjutant helped him by his elbow.

Semesenko started out his speech with effusive praise for his troops, noting their quick action in quashing the Bolshevik rebellion. He singled out the loyalty of the Cossack regiments near the train station who caught their own traitors. This led him to the perfidy of treachery, and his voice rose, and his face flushed. Then his eyes narrowed, and his voice growled as he denounced the risk of Bolshevism to the Ukraine motherland. This was standard fare, and the soldier’s attention drifted. He then raised his voice to ask, “Who knew who was behind the Bolsheviks?” A pregnant pause. “The Jews!” and he launched into a tirade against Jewish control of the Bolsheviks who threatened the very life their families knew in the Ukraine. This was new territory even for Semesenko, the commanders thought.

He thrust his finger in the air and commanded “Kill the Jews and Save the Ukraine!” One overwrought captain repeated “Kill the Jews and Save the Ukraine!” Soon they were all chanting. At first this seemed to the gathered soldiers to be rhetorical bombast, but Semesenko raised and lowered his arms to calm them down. “I do not want you raiding their houses, their hovels. You are not to steal their goods. We are not doing this for our own benefit, but for the victory of our Motherland!” It then became clear to all that he really meant they should kill. “For our Motherland,” the captain cried. “For our Motherland,” the troops replied. A few civilians standing in the periphery repeated the cry. The band struck up a military march for a brief moment, and then Semesenko quieted them again. “Form up in your squadrons,” he said. Then, pointing to the townspeople gathered behind the troops he called out, “you there. We need you to defend our Motherland. We will take you with us.” Each soldier found his unit, and then looked in the eyes of the other. To them, the threat was real – rebels in this town had tried to kill them. Their commander was clear. Their unit was formed. Action was inevitable.

The squadrons spread over the town, accompanied by residents who led them to the Jewish sections that comprised half of Proskuriv. It was a Saturday Shabbos, and late in the day families were gathered at home, mothers preparing the evening meal and men preparing to return to the synagogue for sabbath ending services. A few Jewish men poked their heads out of their front doors to see about the commotion in the street. This only served to identify their homes as targets.

The military units broke down doors, dragged men to the streets and shot them. The Jewish women who came out to intervene were beaten with rifle butts and batons and left in heaps as they moved to the next home. After the first few houses, to conserve ammunition, the Jewish men were beaten to death, too. True to their commander’s orders, there was no looting. Some soldiers were reluctant at first, but with the flow of blood the pent-up anxieties and frustrations of occupying a hostile city were released in blows and cudgels. It was exhausting work, and after a few hours the units headed back to camp. They left 390 men, 309 women and 76 children dead in the streets. An additional 500 Jews were wounded and many crippled. They staggered to the small Jewish hospital, which was overwhelmed with broken bodies.

In the town of Bender, just outside of Odessa, Ukrainian Army privates Igor Lemevsky and Petr Dronov had gotten an early start on Saturday night drinking. At about sunset they were summoned from the saloon by their commander, and they assembled with 50 other men at their camp. They listened, a little tipsy, to the usual harangue about the Bolsheviks destroying the Ukraine, and now the Jews. “The Jews are the gravest threat,” he shrieked. Lemevsky and Dronov had no political convictions and were happy just to be paid almost every week. Then came surprising news – the worst of the Jews were in their very town of Bender! They were given instructions – search the town and kill the Jews. Property was not to be taken – just kill Jews.

Lemevsky and Dronov joined their squad which was led by a local to one section of town where, they were told, lived the notorious criminal family of Schwartzbard. Sholom Schwartzbard was a local folklore hero as an Anarchist, French Army soldier, and a Jew who would fight. The squad was met at the door of the first house by an old, white haired man, Sholom Schwartzbard’s Uncle Yakiv. He stood with his chest out, defiantly holding a butter churning handle, and glared out into the night at their torches. The squad commander immediately drew his pistol and shot him in the chest. He crumpled in the doorway. Three squad leaders stepped over the body and entered the house. While Lemevsky and Dronov remain outside at the door, they heard scuffling, and a woman’s voice screaming “my husband will kill you all!” Then slapping, a thump and more woman’s screaming. Cries and grunting for an uncomfortable time. Then silence. Suddenly, the woman was thrown through the door opening, over Uncle Yakiv and onto the street. She lay on the ground, bleeding from her mouth and her long skirt was torn to the waist.

Their leader stepped from the house, buckling his trousers. “Finish her,” he commanded Lemevsky and Dronov in a low, stern voice. They stood in stunned silence. The commander drew his pistol and pointed it at Lemevsky. Reluctantly, they shuffled to the woman on the ground. While Lemevsky sat on her chest, Dronov strangled her.

With their blood lust aroused and all restraints put aside, the squad moved to the neighboring homes. That night fifteen members of the Schwartzbard family were murdered.

THE TRAIN

“R-r-r-return to camp!” Kotovsky commanded, after receiving news of the collapse of the revolt from his reconnaissance scouts. Word spread among the Anarchist troops arrayed along the river edge north of town, and they packed up their provisions and began the trudge back west to camp. A few were itching for battle, but most of the soldiers were apprehensive of just this lack of resolve among the townspeople, and relieved that they would live another day.

Max learned of the failure to retake the town when the first troops returned to break camp. He was dressed in two shirts and two thin coats in the cold February wind, and was allotted a pair of lightweight shoes, more like slippers, to shuffle around the motor pool. No doubt his captors thought he was unlikely to escape in them. Now there was near chaos in the camp as soldiers gathered their kits, broke down their tents and scrambled to find their units for marching out. The complete failure of their military mission added to the nervous anxiety, short tempers and lack of discipline.

In the confusion, Max spotted a duffle bag with a pair of boots tied to the handle near a flattened tent next to the motor pool. No one was around. He had gone over and over in his mind the odds: he did not know where he was or the surrounding areas; the locals were either friends or very hostile, the town with the train was filled with enemy soldiers; he had no identification and no money; and poor clothing and footwear. All the duffle bag offered was a solution to the last problem. Nevertheless, in the mad scramble of the troops he ambled over to the bag, put it on his shoulder and started back, head down, to the vehicles.

“Max,” Marusya called to him, holding a pistol pointed at the ground.

Max looked up at her. He saw in her face a disapproving tensing of her eyebrows, and downturned smile. Max looked back at her with a sorrowful disappointment.

“I am just helping to load the truck,” Max said, and slung the duffle bag onto the back of the truck flatbed. She watched him return to the motor pool before she went on with her tasks.

Soon Max was directed to fill the trucks with petrol, stow the remaining drums in the flatbed, and check that all were running. The armored automobile units, comprised of eight armored cars, two staff cars, ten trucks and a petrol tanker, Max’s workshop truck and six motorcycles, were first out of camp. Max sat inside an Austin-Putilov armored truck in the position of loader/mechanic next to two gunners, with Sholom in the front seat next to the driver. Soldiers could walk and might be captured or shot, but they could not afford to lose any transports or their mechanic.

Kotovsky headed to the deeper hills and forests outside of Shepetivka, 100 kilometers to the north. The motor unit reached a campsite midway and sent ahead motorcycles on a scouting mission on the following day, Monday, February 17. In the meantime, they sent out raiding parties to expropriate provisions from the surrounding farms. The scouts returned to report that Shepetivka, too, had been the site of pogroms over the weekend, and that a few had been killed and wounded but also a few women had been raped by Petliura’s troops. When his lagging soldiers reached camp late in the day, Kotovsky learned from Bolsheviks fleeing town that Ivan Petliura himself was visiting Proskuriv. This convinced Kotovsky and his commanders, including Sholom Schwartzbard and Marusya, that retaking Proskuriv was impossible and that the pogroms had been planned and directed by Petliura. They decided that it would be too dangerous to try to take Shepetivka with so many Cossacks battle ready. Two days later they made their way into the dense forest to the north of town and set up several camps for the troops. Max was sent with the motor vehicles to the central operations camp.

The grim battle outlook and primitive forest living hammered Kotovsky’s troops into a hardened militia. They descended into banditry. Led by Marusya, they stole food and petrol from the local farmhouses that were identified as Ukrainian supporters, ambushed White Army patrols and raided Directorate storehouses. All sense of political mission was lost, and their only guide was anarchy and survival.

Max was desperate. He saw himself a prisoner of rouge pirates, outmaneuvered by a hostile army murderously disposed toward Jews, in unfamiliar territory miles from rescuing his parents and escaping home. He chewed his fingernails constantly and lost weight from not eating the meager soup and moldy bread. He tossed in his cot at night, with visions of his brothers, Pa and Mamma circling above. For a change he brooded on his betrayal by Zalmund and Deena. He woke up angry. Working on the trucks in the motor pool was some relief, but he hated himself for falling in Marusya’s trap, and helping these thugs terrorize the local farmhouses. Not many noticed him except for his constant guard. Marusya did not come around, no doubt disappointed in his foiled plan, and possibly consumed by command survival. Everyone had their own concerns.

In late February Kotovsky sent a messenger by motorcycle to Red Army headquarters in Kyiv to update his situation. Kotovsky’s encoded report included his general position and his assessment of the enemy’s strengths, but he did not report that he had captured an American machinist, in order to keep him for his unit and not turn him over to a central command.

The messenger returned two days later, with a torn leather jacket and bullet holes in the motorcycle frame. He was greeted with hero cheers as he made a victory lap and waved to his comrades. His first stop was Kotovsky’s command tent, where he delivered a note of news and orders to be decoded. He left the tent to more cheers and a welcome bath and a meal. Sometime later an assistant left to summon Schwartzbard to the command tent. When he entered, Kotovsky dismissed his attendants, and then delivered the terrible news that Schwartzbard’s family, including his wife, had been murdered. Sholom’s anguished scream and upstretched arm rent the heavens and touched every corner of the base.

In the following weeks Sholom’s demeanor turned dark and angry. He blamed Petliura for his loss and took every opportunity to exact revenge on the Cossacks. Fortunately for him, this coincided with instructions from the Red Army command to intensify their harassment of Semesenko’s troops.

The guerilla war efforts by Marusya, Kotovsky and their allied Bolshevik brigades in March and April 1919 inflicted heavy losses on Semesenko’s troops and resources. Semesenko further enraged locals by conscripting their sons into the Cossack army to replace his growing number of deserters.

Kotovsky’s group gradually moved south, but Max was never quite sure of its location and had no local knowledge of the terrain or the distances to nearby main towns. The patrols employed hit and run tactics of the Black Guard, who kept Max busy maintaining the armored trucks. With the constant movement, all the men were on high alert and he was without an opportunity to escape.

On Friday, April 25, Marusya led a raid on a local Cossack garrison that had occupied the baroque Sanguszko Palace estate in Antoniny. They returned to camp with petrol, provisions and two Cossack captives stuffed into the back of an armored truck as human shields. Marusya wanted to hold them for ransom, but Sholom insisted on leading their interrogation first. Rather than taking them to the administrative tent, they took the bound hostages through the motor pool, summoned Max, and continued to the edge of camp. There Sholom had the two men kneel, hands bound behind their backs. Max held his hands palms up, questioning why he should be there, but Marusya gestured with her pistol that he should stand ten feet in front of them while she and Sholom stood behind.

Sholom questioned the first hostage about the commanders of his garrison, and other local stations. The man, shaking with fear, answered between sobs. Sholom then asked him about the defenses in Proskuriv. He replied that he had only been there once and was back before dinner. From the back-and-forth Max made the calculation that he was only about 50 or 60 kilometers north of the town. That put their camp another 10 kilometers closer.

Sholom paused for a long while after one question, raised his pistol and shot the hostage in the back of the head, spraying his face on the ground at Max’s feet. The second hostage cried out. Marusya spoke in low whispers to Sholom, asking him to stop so that they could ransom the second man. Sholom answered in barking whispers that he had more questions. He then stood silently for several minutes, which intensified the terror for the second bound soldier.

Finally, Sholom asked him “What is your name?”

“Alexander Karetnik,” he replied.

“Where does your wife live?”

The man, shaking uncontrollably, replied quietly “I have no wife.”

“No wife? No wife? Neither do I.” He paused. “Where does your mother live?”

“My mother?”

“Yes, your mother. Where does she live?” Sholom asked.

Marusya whispered to Sholom, “I know, I know. But not now, Sholom.”

Sholom ignored her and barked “Where does she live?”

The man whimpered “My mother? Why my mother?”

“I want to visit her and tell her about her son.”

“Why?”

“Where does your mother live?” Sholom barked again.

The man sobbed “Teofipol.”

“Teofipol. Good,” Sholom said. He raised his pistol and shot Alexander Karetnik in the back of the head.

Sholom remained frozen in the firing position. Marusya hung her head, then looked up at Max. She said “This is how we handle enemies and deserters, Max. Make no mistakes.”

**********

By May 1919 Simon Petliura of the Ukrainian People’s Republic Directorate and their military commanders had lost patience with the lack of progress by the Cossacks and Ivan Semesenko, who still had not recovered from his bout with gonorrhea. The vicious pogroms had cost the Ukrainian State sympathy from outraged Europeans who were funding the resistance to the Anarchists and Bolsheviks. Petliura saw a political solution to his military problems. He blamed Semesenko and his Cossacks for instigating the Proskuriv pogroms and had him arrested and imprisoned in the Ukrainian Army garrison at Kamianets-Podilskyi, southwest of Proskuriv. The Army then took over control of Proskuriv and absorbed the Cossacks regiments into their ranks. This began a Spring offensive by the military and political propogandists to eliminate the leftist radical militias from southern Ukraine.

In the late afternoon of Wednesday, June 10, a reconnaissance patrol of two motorcycles and an armored car returned to Max’s camp motor pool. Rather than scatter back to their tents to prepare for dinner, the men retrieved a package from the car trunk and hovered around it. The box was made from thin wood, painted white, and tied with a ribbon decorated in traditional Ukrainian colors of red roses and black lined diamonds. The soldiers recognized it as a typical lunch box a wife would pack for her husband before a trip. Their leader pulled on the ribbon and opened the box.

Inside was not homemade morsels but a small stack of papers. On the top was a notice printed in large type announcing that the allies of the Ukraine were offering free food in Odessa for all Ukrainian soldiers and their families who would reunite with their Motherland. The food distribution was organized by none other than the United States, under the direction of the famous humanitarian Mr. Herbert Hoover.

The papers underneath it were not from the Ukrainian government but from the Bolshevik command in Kharkiv. It announced that the Red Army had consolidated in their Kharkiv Prison the bourgeoise hostages it had collected during the winter. These wealthy kulaks and peasants were available for release by a ransom payment at the prison. The pages following it contained several hundred names in small print. The soldiers poured over the list looking for people they knew, or just people they had heard about. They passed the pages about, shouting names in surprise and shock.

Then one soldier called out to Max, “Hey Max, are you Shertok?”

“Yes,” Max said, hesitantly.

“From Kherson?”

“Yes?” Max mumbled, rushing over to the soldier and his page. He pointed his finger to a line in the long list, and Max squinted. There clearly printed was “Shneer-Solomon Shertok and Ethel Shertok, Kherson. Five thousand rubles.” Max collapsed to the ground on his knees. He now knew exactly where his Mamma and Pa were, and they could not be in a more unreachable place – in a Bolshevik prison. He was overwhelmed with anger, frustration and then desperation at his desolate circumstances. For the first time since he left his brothers, he cried.

The reconnaissance patrol leader finally repacked the box and went off to report to the senior staff that they had returned and to show them the papers. Their propaganda intent was clear: tempt the militia, who might be hungry, with food, and display to them the ruthless cruelty of their Bolshevik allies to their own people. Kotovsky and Marusya were surprised by this new level of psychological warfare, but Marusya probed more. Where had they found the box? At what intersection? Who could see it from the road?

Marusya then pulled Kotovsky over to the side of the staff group. Not only was this a propaganda ploy, she told him, but a counterintelligence trick. The Ukrainian Army had no doubt planted many similar boxes around the territory, like lobster traps. All they had to do was return to each site to see which of the lures was taken. That would greatly narrow their search for Kotovsky’s camp. They must leave at once.

Max was in his tent, deeply brooding his helplessness, and mourning over his parents, who, if they were still alive, must be filled with fear, dread and a sense of abandonment. It took a few moments for the commotion of the camp to pull his consciousness to the present. But then he immediately knew what all the activity meant. They were breaking camp to move. Now they were going to take from him one more invaluable thing – the knowledge of where he was in the world. He scrambled to gather his few possessions and tie them in his bed cover. He poked his head out of the tent.

“Max,” Sholom yelled at him. “Get to the motor pool. We are leaving tomorrow.” It was a warm spring night, and although after dinner time, there were still a few hours of light. The camp was alive with soldiers scurrying about, carrying supplies, taking down tents and stowing gear. Max was directed to fill all the vehicles with petrol, seal off the petrol supply car, and prepare them for an early morning departure. He worked diligently, noting all the time the location of the trucks, motorcycles and armored cars. After the sun set, activities wound down, and for security there were no fires. Max rested on his bedding, but he only pretended to sleep.

Shortly after midnight, with the slow sound of snoring around him, Max got up from his bed and retrieved the supply bag he had hidden in a tree near the motor pool. It contained scraps of debris he cleaned from the vehicles that he thought might be useful one day. Inside were a compass, a bag of nails and screws, a few feet of rope and a few wood boards.

He quietly slipped into the motor pool. First, he let the air out of the tires of the motorcycles by slitting the inner tube near the fill stem with his pocketknife. Then, as silently as possible, he opened the hood of each of the cars and trucks and removed the air compressor starters and put them in his supply bag. Except for the staff car. Next, he gathered all the starting crank handles he could find and carefully placed them in the back of the staff car. Finally, he climbed under the Fiat-Omsk armored tank and pocketed the two large cotter pins that held the timing rod, and then gently slid the rod down on the ground.

Max then slipped behind the wheel of the staff car and took a deep breath. This was the point of no return. He started the long car’s engine, engaged the gear, and started to roll out of the motor pool without headlights. The noise would no doubt awaken some of the sleeping men, but it would take them time to realize what he had done. When they would rush to the chase, they would find their motorcycles disabled and no starters for their cars or trucks. This wouldn’t stop them, but it would give Max perhaps an hour head start. He rolled passed the perimeter guard. He looked to his left out of the cab and saw the sentry sitting by a small fire with Marusya, who held a bottle of vodka. She looked surprised and peered into the car, but in the darkness only her camp light reflected off the car window. She could not make out who was behind the wheel. He gave her a thin-lipped sarcastic smile. When he cleared the sentry, Max gunned the engine, turned on the headlights and drove down the road as fast as he dared.

Max took out the compass and placed it on the seat beside him. He was not sure where he was, but he knew where he had to go. At every choice of turn, he would take the larger road heading south. He could have taken a motorcycle which was faster, but without refilling the range was suspect and he did not know how far he had to travel, especially if he could not get to Proskuriv.

The night was warm and dark, and the quiet calm contrasted with Max’s pounding heart. He had leaped from the cliff with no safety net, but he knew that he had to escape the madness of the militia. The news of his parents’ imprisonment was only the last step out.

He saw no cars or trucks on the road, and it was eerily quiet. What Max did not understand was that he was driving directly into an offensive launched by the anti-Bolshevik White Volunteer Army. Supreme Commander Anton Denikin, formerly Lieutenant General in the Imperial Russian Army, ordered a breakout of his forces of nearly 75,000 men from Odessa on Thursday, June 11. Led by their fat and alcoholic, but remarkably successful, General Vladimir May-Mayevsky, they headed northeast toward Kharkiv to confront the Bolshevik Red Army and lay siege to their fortress. Every available train, car, horse-drawn cart and armored truck in Southern Ukraine was mobilized toward advancing the White Army. Max was driving directly into their left flank. But for the moment, the roads were clear and silent.

He was tired from lack of sleep, and the darkness, quiet and gentle bouncing of the heavy staff car along the road was hypnotic. He slowly moved from high anxiety to fighting to stay awake. After an hour of driving, he heard a gentle growl in the distance. He perked up. The growl changed to a roar and then back to a growl. He knew that sound. Motorcycles. They had sent somebody for him. At the top of a ridge, he looked back and saw two headlights following his road. He immediately shut his headlights, but this meant he had to drive slower to avoid a crash.

He drove through the deserted small farming town of Kul’chynky, and just to the south a road intersected from the east. He turned the staff car left and pulled over to the side. He took his supply bag and headed back to the intersection. Turning right he backtracked up the road 100 meters. There he pushed some logs and boulders onto the road to narrow its passage. He then took a rock and hammered several nails into and through two wood boards. These he placed nail side up on the narrow passage and covered it with some brush. He walked back to the staff car, started it up, and continued on the smaller road eastbound with the headlights out. If the motorcycles somehow avoided his trap, they would no doubt continue on the other road south.

He drove slowly for 20 minutes with no sign of pursuit. He switched on his headlights and picked up speed. Farm fields surrounded him on each side with no crossing driving roads in sight. Finally, he slowed as he drove through another small farming village and came upon a road intersecting from the south. He turned right and continued. The road became a rutted dirt path and descended. Farmland stopped and was replaced by marsh weeds. The road was pockmarked with water filled holes. Soon he was in wetlands and the road was an untended cow path. His wheels spun in the muck, and he downshifted to first gear, lowering his speed but improving his traction.

Max had come to the Sluch River. The road he had been chased on led to a bridge over the Sluch and onward south. The path he was on also led to the river, but because of repeated flooding this part was not cultivated and was abandoned to the slow, broad, flat stream. His inched forward, occasionally tossing up chunks of mud and stones when he gunned the engine for more traction. Then he hit a rut and the car tilted back and to the left. He got out to examine the problem, fear gripping his chest. Was this how his brave plan was to end, lost in a swamp?

The left rear wheel was suspended over a deep crevice in the road, while the other wheel was buried in a muddy hole. He retrieved the last wood board and wedged it under the left wheel. He then returned to driving and rocked the staff car back and forth until it sprung from the potholes. With his headlamps he saw the rickety bridge ahead, narrow but sufficient for his car. He gunned the engine, shifted through his gears to high speed, and raced to the bridge on hydroplane. He bounced high enough to hit his head on the cabin roof, but the car made it to the bridge. He downshifted and carefully crawled across the span. The road on the other side ascended the riverbank, and he was on his way.

He was fully awake now and making careful calculations. The pursuit was either disabled or about to turn around as they approached the Ukrainian Army stronghold of Proskuriv. He had been diverted east, and if he could regain his southern direction, he would approach the town from the best direction.

Two hours after he left the camp Max arrived at the north bank of the Bug river overlooking Proskuriv. He recognized the landscape and saw only a few lights in buildings scattered around town. He looked south to locate the train station. The staff car was too conspicuous, so he drove it into the brush and covered it with tree branches. He gathered his supply pack and headed toward the bridge. The train station was only a few blocks past that. The train tracks followed the Bug river valley down to Odessa. It was 3 am Thursday morning June 11, the streets were quiet, and no one noticed a shabbily dressed hobo with a pack slung over his shoulder walking determinedly toward the station.

As he approached the yard, he saw men attending to the north bound trains, loading them with coal and stowing boxes. The south facing train remained where he last saw it in February, immobile. As he walked past the station a trainman scowled at him with an unspoken warning to ‘stay away, you bum’. But he was concerned with the operational trains, and Max ducked behind the stationhouse and looked out at his prize.

Choosing his time carefully, Max dashed across the empty tracks to the southbound train and scampered inside. At the back of the locomotive cockpit, he peeked over the top of the coal bin and found it half full. Good! The only good fortune he needed. He lowered himself to the far side of the locomotive, shielded from the view of the yard workers. He swung himself under the engine and lit a match to see. He reached behind the flange of the steel plate near the boiler and touched the hidden connecting rod. Great. No one had done anything in all these months.

Feeling inside the engine, he located the attachment point and fitted in one end of the connecting rod. He then reached in his coat pocket and pulled out the cotter pin he had taken from the Fiat-Omsk armored truck. He slipped it in, maybe a little too small but it worked. He then fit the other end of the rod and clamped it with the second cotter pin. That would have to do.

Max climbed back into the locomotive cabin, closed all the valves and lit the boiler. Smoke flooded the cabin and diffused outside, but none went up the smokestack to give him away. Waving away the fumes from the gauges, he watched the steam pressure mount. When it just entered the active zone, Max disengaged the break, and the train began to slide south down the tracks. By the time he reached the end of the main yard the steam pressure had built up. Max engaged the engine and released the excess steam with a whistle that no doubt woke up every soldier in the Ukrainian Army.

Max was now engineering a powerful locomotive with just a coal bin car attached, but he was afraid to go too fast and toss the connecting rod. He knew that it would take some time to turn around one of the Proskuriv trains to follow him, so he had a head start. But he wasn’t sure how far it was to Odessa. 200 kilometers? 400 kilometers? It was actually 550 kilometers, or 330 miles.

As day broke over the Southern Ukraine farmland, the train ran smoothly down the rails, passing through trackside depots of Derazhnya and Zhmerynka without stopping. Max felt a weary satisfaction descend on him. He had overcome so much, and now he was free. He smiled as he surveyed the peaceful land just coming awake. Then as he passed through Vapnyarka he saw an army caravan pushing north on the road beside the train, and the harsh reality crept over him. He had stolen a train and was now trapped between two warring armies, with no allies, no food and no water.

He began to devise plans to slow the pursuit. At first, he threw loose metal pieces and wood boards over the coal bin and onto the tracks, but most of them bounded away down the grating. Then he tied the car cranks he had taken from camp with his rope, and then lowered them close to the tracks and then cut the rope. This placed them between the rails, but as he watched them recede in the distance, he was sure they were not enough to slow or stop a pursuing train.

He passed through a wide flat plain covered in wheat, and the bucolic scene contrasted with his growing anxiety. The land went on forever, and there was no sign of Odessa on the horizon. When he finally reached the end of the plain at Kryzhopil, he looked back and saw a puff of smoke on the northern horizon. A train in pursuit, and it must be catching up to him.

His mind raced and panic set in. He was tired and could not bring himself to run any more. Then he saw ahead, just past the town of Yavorivka, that the tracks took a sharp turn to the right, away from a heavy forest. When he finally approached the turn, he slowed, carried the curve and then slowed to a stop. He released the steam pressure, disengaged the engine, and climbed down with his pack. He jogged back to the curve in the tracks and stood at its apex, scanning up and down the tracks. He knelt down and pulled from his pack four of the compressed air starters he had taken from the motor pool, and a length of rope. These he tied to the inner rail at the point of the sharpest turn, securing it to a track nail in the ground that connected two bars. He could hear the chug of the pursuing train and when he stood he could see the puff of steam from its locomotive.

He ran back to his train, stoked the boiler to bring up the pressure, engaged the engine and began slowly to pick up speed. Now he could see around the bend the pursuit train pulling a coal car and a flat bed, with soldiers sitting on it, their rifles glinting in the morning sun. He turned back to the front and held the speed steady. Max knew he could not outrun them, and his best hope was to keep the train intact all the way to Odessa.

The pursuit train spotted Max ahead and the engineer picked up speed. He was experienced with this run and knew the curve south of Yavorivka. He had taken it often, sometimes needing to make up time, so that he knew he could maneuver it at a speed that was perhaps above that recommended by the rail commission. When he came around the turn, he did not see the four compressed air cannisters tied to the inner rail, and it would not have made any difference if he had. With the weight of the train on the outer rail, the inner wheel hit the first cannister which exploded with a pop and raised the wheel slightly off the rail. It then immediately hit the next three cannisters POP – POP – POP. The inner wheel lifted off the rail at the turn, and with the weight of the train on the outside, the outer wheel jumped the track. The train hurdled off the turn, down the side berm and into the forest. The startled engineer pulled on the brakes, but with little traction for the wheels the locomotive skidded and slammed into and then through a stand of trees. The soldiers were thrown from the flatbed as it bounded over the rails, down the berm, and came to an abrupt stop wedged against the fallen trees.

Max was focused ahead, slowing and steering through a left-hand turn in the tracks at the town of Rudnytsya, when he heard the four loud pops, the grinding of steel, and the crash of the locomotive into the woods. He smiled, and a sense of relief washed over him. Now the exhaustion bloomed, and his knees weakened. He slowed the train to a leisurely pace and sat down to gather himself. The high anxiety soon passed, but he realized that he was well into danger. He was driving a locomotive stolen from an army base straight into the army headquarters 300 kilometers away.

The next few hours over the midday were a welcome respite. With the army mobilization in full gear, Max passed a few trains heading north, pulling flatbeds loaded with army equipment and heavy guns. Their engineers, startled to see a locomotive with no cars in service heading south, whistled three short bursts of steam greeting. Max enjoyed replying with one long burst. He assumed that they would somehow communicate with the Odessa station that a rogue train was headed their way.

By late afternoon, as Max approached Odessa, he could see the church steeples, massive theater and apartment buildings of Rue Richelieu on the city skyline. Then ahead he saw a box car blocking his track flanked by a dozen fully armed troops. He slowed and saw a trackman motioning with both hands to his left. Max relaxed as his train was diverted from the main rail to side rails where a few other locomotives stood still. He braked to a stop and raised his hands in surrender.

He was roughly arrested, and the train searched before he was taken to the local commander. While the captain began his interrogation in Russian, Max replied in English, “I am Max Shertok, American. Take me to Mr. Herbert Hoover. American Relief Administration.” He repeated his claim in English to the astonished captain, and then again in fluent Russian with an Odessa accent.

Before he became President of the United States, Herbert Hoover was an accomplished humanitarian and had organized relief for starving Belgians and French during World War I. He was then named Program Director of the American Relief Administration, which had been formed in February 1919 and seeded with $100 million (equivalent to $1.5 billion in 2020 dollars) to provide emergency food for Eastern Europeans in the wake of World War I. Hoover had established a food relief center in Odessa, which the American government used as a cover to support the White Army against the Bolsheviks.

Max was taken up the chain of command, and each time he repeated his claim in English and Russian. He kept his story to “I was captured by the Bolsheviks while on a mission for the Americans and I escaped to return to Odessa.” He spent the night in a prison cell, where he was happy to sleep uninterrupted. The next day he was again interrogated by a White Army senior officer, who could not believe his story but also was unable to that deny he stood in front of him.

The next day, Friday the 13th of June 1919, was a luck day in Odessa. General Vladimir May-Mayevsky of the White Army took back Kyiv from the Bolshevik Red Army and triumphantly entered the city. In a spirit of magnanimity, the White Army commander turned Max over to Colonel William R. Grove of the United States Army and the American Relief Administration. Max spent several days as a guest of the Administration, sleeping in a side room of the spacious headquarters on Sofievskya across from the Archbishop’s Palace. Col. Gove’s assistants were eager to hear his accounts of the Anarchists military capabilities and their command structure. They also questioned Max as to when exactly he had been discharged from the Army and how did he get to Proskuriv. He explained that he traveled to Krakow by train (omitting any mention of Zalmund and Deena) and that he lost all his papers when he was captured by the Anarchists. Cable inquiries to the War office finally returned an answer. Their records showed that Max Shertok had received a special discharge while in France. Max silently sighed relief and thought, “My brother Jules is a master at covering for me. I wonder how he paid for that paperwork?”

When Max asked about Shneer-Solomon and Ethel in Kharkiv, the mood turned grim. Reports came back that the Bolsheviks murdered all their hostages when they fled on June 10 in advance of Generals Denikin and May-Mayevsky taking the city. Freshly dug graves were found at the Kharkiv Fortress but no one knew who was buried there.

Finally, on Monday June 23, 1919 Max was escorted by an US Army squad to the waterfront and placed on a US military transport ship returning from Odessa to New York.

POST-SCRIPT

Joseph Kikulsky rose to high command of the Cheka security forces in Moscow in early 1918. However, he allied himself in a power play with Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of Cheka, against Leon Trotsky, leader of the Red Army. Dzerzhinsky betrayed him to cover the rift, and Trotsky had Kikulsky executed by a single shot to the head in 1921.

Alexandra Kollontai continued as a prominent Bolshevik party official, but her strident feminist views led her to oppose the party on many social issues. She was gently exiled to the diplomatic corps and served the Soviet Union as a representative to several Scandinavian countries for twenty years. When she finally returned to Moscow she gave up her political agenda and retreated to obscurity. Her former husband, former lover, and several political comrades were murdered in Stalin’s purges. She died at 80 years old in 1952.

Cheka forces murdered between 500 and 1,000 hostages at their Kharkiv Fortress garrison before evacuating the city on June 10, 1919. However, many years later Max and Julius met a Kherson refugee in Minneapolis, who told them that Shneer-Solomon and Ethel Shertok survived their imprisonment by the Bolsheviks and returned home, only to die during the famine of 1921.

The three Shertok brothers were reunited in Minneapolis and embarked on fulfilling the dream of their father that they manage a farming empire. They borrowed money to buy a dairy farm in Cottonwood County, Minnesota. But a severe depression followed the Great War, and they could not make the payments on the farm. With the mortgage foreclosed, the brothers returned to the Twin Cities. Saul took a job in the post office, where he worked the remainder of his life. He married and had a son in 1923, whom he named Shneer-Solomon, or Sol. In 1926 he had a daughter he named Ethel. Julius started a mattress business which he managed to pass on to his son Samuel. Max became a machinist in the General Mills tool and dye shop in Minneapolis. He was a prominent unionist and friend to working men and politicians alike. He never talked about his time after the war, except to his brothers and sons Marvin and Marc.

Zalmund Hofitz recovered from the Spanish Flu in Krakow, returned to Pinsk and survived the pogroms of April 1919. But when the Bolsheviks threatened Warsaw, Zalmund chose the wrong side and was captured and executed by the Bolsheviks as a counter-revolutionary.

Deena Wójcik returned to her parent’s house sick with the flu and suffered a miscarriage. She recovered, accepted an arranged marriage to a widower with children who had lost his wife to the flu, and never spoke about her year of 1918 again.

Grigor Kotovsky eventually merged his Anarchist brigade with the Red Army and became a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union. He continued his criminal side business with the help of his assistant Meyer Zayder. However, in 1925 Kotovsky had an affair with Zayder’s prostitute wife, and Zayder murdered him.

General Ivan Semesenko was captured after the Bolsheviks regained the Odessa region in 1920 and was executed for his part in the Proskuriv pogroms.

Sholom Schwartzbard deserted the Anarchist army because of their banditry, which he considered compromising the Revolution for a few rubles. He moved back to Paris where he opened a clock-and-watch repair shop. In 1924 he learned that Simon Petliura had also relocated to Paris. He used a picture of Petliura published in an encyclopedia to hunt for him, and on May 25, 1926 he spotted him on Rue Racine in the Latin Quarter. He pulled out his pistol, fired seven shots and murdered him. Schwartzbard was arrested and tried for murder but was acquitted as a just killing because Petliura had committed crimes against humanity.

Marusya continued fighting with the Anarchists, but the military setbacks for both the Bolsheviks and Anarchists in June 1919 let to a rupture between the armies. Marusya abandoned the formal military and went underground. She reunited with her husband Witold Brzostek from Paris and completed several sabotage missions, before she and her husband were captured by the White Army and executed on September 16, 1919.

EPILOGUE

The Death of Hercules

Hercules, half-man and half-god, was newly married to Deianira. On their honeymoon travels they faced a difficult crossing over a flooded river. The centaur Nessus appeared and offered to help Deianira across. However, after carrying Deianira across, he tried to rape her. Seeing this from the other riverbank, the enraged Hercules shot a poison arrow which mortally wounded Nessus. As he lay dying, Nessus offered Deianira an apology and his cloak, stained with his tainted blood and semen. He told her that if she wanted Hercules to remain faithful to her, she only had to have him wear the smock. After reuniting, Deianira gave Hercules the tunic, which he put on. He immediately fell down in agony and tried to remove it, ripping his flesh from his bones. Rather than suffer, Hercules chose to be burnt on a funeral pyre, incinerating his mortal side and thereby joining the other gods on Mount Olympus.

Genesis 34: Dinah and the Shechemites

Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and raped her. His heart was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob; he loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to her. And Shechem said to his father Hamor, “Get me this girl as my wife.”

When Jacob heard that his daughter Dinah had been defiled, his sons were in the fields with his livestock; so he did nothing about it until they came home. Then Shechem’s father Hamor went out to talk with Jacob. Meanwhile, Jacob’s sons had come in from the fields as soon as they heard what had happened. They were shocked and furious, because Shechem had done an outrageous thing in Israel by sleeping with Jacob’s daughter—a thing that should not be done.

But Hamor said to them, “My son Shechem has his heart set on your daughter. Please give her to him as his wife. Intermarry with us; give us your daughters and take our daughters for yourselves. You can settle among us; the land is open to you. Live in it, trade in it, and acquire property in it.” Then Shechem said to Dinah’s father and brothers, “Let me find favor in your eyes, and I will give you whatever you ask. Make the price for the bride and the gift I am to bring as great as you like, and I’ll pay whatever you ask me. Only give me the young woman as my wife.”

Because their sister Dinah had been defiled, Jacob’s sons replied deceitfully as they spoke to Shechem and his father Hamor. They said to them, “We can’t do such a thing; we can’t give our sister to a man who is not circumcised. That would be a disgrace to us. We will enter into an agreement with you on one condition only: that you become like us by circumcising all your males. Then we will give you our daughters and take your daughters for ourselves. We’ll settle among you and become one people with you. But if you will not agree to be circumcised, we’ll take our sister and go.”

Their proposal seemed good to Hamor and his son Shechem. The young man, who was the most honored of all his father’s family, lost no time in doing what they said, because he was delighted with Jacob’s daughter. So Hamor and his son Shechem went to the gate of their city to speak to the men of their city. “These men are friendly toward us,” they said. “Let them live in our land and trade in it; the land has plenty of room for them. We can marry their daughters and they can marry ours. But the men will agree to live with us as one people only on the condition that our males be circumcised, as they themselves are. Won’t their livestock, their property and all their other animals become ours? So, let us agree to their terms, and they will settle among us.” All the men who went out of the city gate agreed with Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male in the city was circumcised.

Three days later, while all of them were still in pain, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and attacked the unsuspecting city, killing every male. They put Hamor and his son Shechem to the sword and took Dinah from Shechem’s house and left. The sons of Jacob came upon the dead bodies and looted the city where their sister had been defiled. They seized their flocks and herds and donkeys and everything else of theirs in the city and out in the fields. They carried off all their wealth and all their women and children, taking as plunder everything in the houses.

Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me obnoxious to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land. We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.”

But they replied, “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?”

Copyright

©2000 – 2020 Daniel B. Yarosh, all rights reserved

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-1-09835-147-2 (printed)

ISBN: 978-1-09835-148-9 (eBook)

This book is a novel of historical fiction. It uses people who lived at the time, actual places and historical events to tell a fictional story. It does not portray real people as they were.

To learn more about the front story, the back story and the author, visit www.danyarosh.com

Note

1

Influenza, ed F. G. Crookshank, London, William Heinemann, 1922

Content

Daniel Yarosh
THE DEATH OF HERCULES
A DocuNovel

REUNION

FIRST SIGHT

KÖLN

MOSCOW

KYIV

LEIPZIG

AMSTERDAM

KATOWICE

KRAKOW

THE BORDER

PROSKURIV

THE TRAIN

POST-SCRIPT

EPILOGUE

Copyright

Note