“Are you a refugee?” Zyama asked Klim. “Just arrived from Nizhny Novgorod? We know your fair very well here. They made Jews pay extra tax there, and then your governor ordered all the Jewish stores to be shut down except the ones belonging to the richest merchants.”
The old man dreamed of the day when the Jews could move to Palestine and set up a Jewish state in which there would be no anti-Semitism or pogroms.
“The Whites really hate us, and with the way I look, I can’t pass for a Russian. You’ve no idea what’s been going on in Ukraine and here in the south this last winter. There haven’t been such brutal pogroms since the sixteenth century. The Whites think that because I’m engaged in trade, I’m a rich man. They tell me, ‘You profit from the blood and tears of the Russian people.’ If only I knew how to sell blood and tears, it seems I would get along just fine.”
“What does General Denikin say about the pogroms?” Klim asked.
Zyama waved his thin hand. “There’s no point appealing to the authorities. Even the more kind-hearted officers you will not find standing up for a Jew. They’re afraid. They think people will say, ‘He’s being paid off by the yids.’ My son Jacob, a wonderful boy, used to own a newspaper here in Novorossiysk. But the paper was requisitioned, and now, my son is reduced to working in the small ads section—and with his brains! Still, you will not find another man in town who understands advertisements better than my Jacob. The Whites don’t dare get rid of him because none of them have the subtlety required for the job, if you’ll pardon my opinion.”
“I’m a journalist myself,” Klim said. “Do you think I can get a job at your Jacob’s newspaper?”
Zyama shook his head. “You must understand, sir, what times we live in.”
“Couldn’t we ask your son?” Klim ventured. “You say he’s a wonderful boy. If he’s so smart, perhaps he can give me good advice.”
Zyama’s house had been requisitioned by the American Red Cross, and the owners had moved into the basement where Zyama’s wife Rivka still managed to maintain a semblance of order and comfort. Their grandchildren, shy adolescents with the same large ears as Zyama, were sitting at a long joiner’s bench doing their homework. They were utterly absorbed in their work and paid no attention to their grandfather, Klim, or the complaints of their grandmother.
“You plague!” Rivka lamented. “What have you done, bringing him back here? Don’t tell me this is a guest! Not since 1914 have I had guests in my house. I would be happier to see a tax inspector.”
“Hush, woman!” Zyama shouted at his wife. “Who is the head of the household here? We shall wait for Jacob to come back from work.”
Anxious to keep out of Rivka’s sight, Klim went out to the backyard. It was full of trucks, nurses were dashing to and fro, and a long line of people was standing at the porch.
He spoke to one of the US Marines on guard and found that almost all of the foreigners in the city had already moved to the other side of the bay where British mission was stationed on the site of the former cement factories.
“Are they going to give up Novorossiysk?” Klim asked.
The Marine looked up at the mountains, covering his eyes with his hand. “I think we could defend the town if we had the will. It’s a natural fortress. But everybody here gave up long ago before the Reds started to advance.”
When Klim returned to the basement, Zyama ran up and grasped him by the sleeve. “You speak English! I saw you talking to the American. My Jacob will be so happy! You two can discuss business later today.”
“What kind of business?” Klim asked.
“My son will tell you everything. It is a very delicate question. Stay here with us tonight. You can sleep on the joiner’s bench.”
Klim’s accommodation problem was solved. Not only that, but he now seemed to be in Rivka’s good books. She made him up a cup of powdered milk.
“Sorry,” she said, “but we have no other food besides this powdered milk that we get from the Red Cross. What a blessing that you know how to speak foreign languages! For us, this is like a miracle. There, you dumbheads!” she shouted at her grandchildren. “You must study! Let this educated man be an example to you.”
It was night, but Jacob had still not come home. The Froimans said their prayers and went to bed.
“They have taken him away to counterintelligence,” Rivka sobbed in the darkness. “Don’t try to comfort me—I know it’s true.”
“Don’t scare the children!” Zyama said angrily. “Jacob has just stayed late at the office. They can’t do without him there.”
The general mood of anxiety affected Klim too. The joiner’s bench was uncomfortable, and he couldn’t get to sleep.
I feel like a corpse laid out for burial, Klim thought.
The Zyama’s oldest grandson, fourteen-year-old Syoma, was tossing and turning on the chest that served him as a bed.
“Can’t you sleep?” Klim whispered. “Tell me about Novorossiysk. What’s going on here?”
Syoma took a deep breath. “When our men were driven out of town—the Reds, I mean… anyway, the White officers took all the sailors who hadn’t run away and forced them to dig a pit. Then they shot all of them, about fifteen hundred—they were all flapping around like fish out of water until the Whites filled the pit with dirt. Then the bodies started to stink—you could smell it all over town. So, the women went to the commandant and asked permission to rebury the dead. ‘You can do what you like with them,’ he said. ‘Make a stew out of them if you want.’ Later, they found that commandant dead in a lavatory. He was missing his head.”
“Hush!” Rivka hissed. “Don’t listen to him, sir. He’s just a child. He doesn’t understand anything.”
Klim knew that Syoma understood everything very well. Those who had been victims of the Whites were waiting to be saved by the Bolsheviks. They looked on them as miraculous deliverers just as the citizens of Nizhny Novgorod had looked on the White Army.
They’re all hoping for their people to come and punish their oppressors, Klim thought. But they have no idea what they’re wishing for.
“I don’t know who he is,” Klim heard Rivka’s distant voice break into his sleep. “Your father brought him from the market.”
Klim sat up.
In candlelight, a short, bald, narrow-shouldered man pulled off his boots. Rivka thrust a mug into his hands. “Jacob, sweetheart, drink some milk.”
Zyama sat next to his son, holding him by the shoulder as though he was afraid Jacob would disappear again.
Klim walked over to them. “Good evening.”
“Same to you,” Jacob grinned wryly, and Klim noticed that his forehead was covered by a large graze.
“They took all his money again,” Rivka wailed.
“Listen to me, Jacob Froiman,” Zyama whispered excitedly and pointed to Klim. “This young man can speak English. He has been sent to us by God.”
The Froimans knew that they couldn’t count on being evacuated—they had no money for tickets on civilian ships and couldn’t dream of getting a place on a naval ship. They had no idea what to do. Should they throw themselves on the mercy of the Bolsheviks? Their children—who seemed to have picked up socialist ideas from somewhere—thought they should wait for the Reds.
“I don’t want to scare them,” Jacob said, “but when everything here blows up—which could happen any day—there’ll be panic in Novorossiysk, and the only safe place for Jews will be the graveyard. Anyway, I’m not sure the Bolsheviks will overlook my ‘bourgeois past’ because I’ve been working on a White newspaper. We have relatives in New York—wealthy people. I’m sure that my cousin will help us get to America. We just need to contact him.”