The people at the table-a family it seemed, the men dressed in long severe jackets, the children in well-worn hand-me-downs, the women in grey and black-looked at him with dark eyes, and smiled as if uncertain of his intentions. This is Fyodor, Oksana said. Probably the only man alive who doesn't know what a pogrom is."
"Have you heard of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? the man with a long beard and a kindly scattering of wrinkles around his eyes asked him.
"I heard something about them, he said. Weren't they a fake?"
The man sighed. Has it ever stopped anyone? he said.
They used to live in the Pale of Settlement-the Pale for short, in the town of Vitebsk. Hershel's family lived in that shtetl for generations, ever since the Pale was established. They were merchants and butchers, clerks and occasionally soldiers. They had large families, and were pious when the circumstances allowed-as a young man, Hershel studied Torah, and eventually got admitted to the University in Kiev. He came back to Vitebsk as soon as he graduated, a trained doctor, able to do good work for his community. He married Rosa soon after. It was 1876; his first son was born in 1877.
In 1881, things had changed. Hershel found it rather pointless to speculate as to hows and whys, but Alexander the Third, the successor of Alexander the Second the liberator and all-around good czar, just had it in for the Jews. Moreover, for reasons unknown, everyone seemed to blame the Jews for Alexander the Second's assassination. It did not surprise Hershel-he had lived long enough to know that if there was trouble, sooner or later the culprit would be found, and the culprit would usually be of Semitic origin.
The secret police, Okhranka, was never openly involved; but when the Jewish stores were ransacked all over Vitebsk, Hershel did not wait for the Black Hundreds to work their way to the private homes and bodily violence. He decided to move to Moscow, hoping that there, among millions, they would be hidden from misfortune. They could've converted or emigrated to the promised shores of America, but, much like Sovin, Hershel did not believe in emigration-can't run from yourself, he told his wife when she brought up the possibility, and can't run from your fate.
"Isn't moving to Moscow running? she asked skeptically, and stroked the hair of the youngest of their daughters, who clung to her mother's long skirt.
"No, Hershel said. Russia is our home-we're moving to a different room, but not leaving the house."
Rosa muttered something derogatory about the quality of the home, and suggested that when a house collapsed it was only wise to step outside. Hershel pretended not to hear. America was too far, and he was not convinced that the distant land would be really worth months on the boat. He looked around his clean, small dining room, its freshly whitewashed walls, and hated saying goodbye to it. He hated leaving behind the talkative neighbors who had grown quiet and subdued lately, and he felt guilty for his privilege-as a doctor, he was allowed to leave the Pale. The world to the east was unknown and terrifying, but so were the steep hills of Vitebsk and its narrow, twisty streets.
Moscow greeted them with cold and severe frozen stone. They settled by the river, in a dank and small house. They missed their clean and dry house in Vitebsk, where despite the overall poverty Hershel had achieved respect; here, they had to build it all anew. There were few Jews in their new neighborhood, and Hershel ministered to them and-on occasion-their cows and horses.
The youngest of his six children was born in the fall of 1890. The cleansing of Moscow Jews started in 1891.
Their neighbor's house was burned, and Stars of David were painted up and down the street in ash. They complained to the gendarmes, but the disinterest of the authorities was palpable. They were advised to convert.
"Perhaps we should, Hershel told Rosa.
She heaved a sigh and adjusted the baby in her arms, patting her back. And what good will that do?"
"We'll have new papers, Hershel said.
"Oh, my dear nave husband, Rosa replied. Don't you know that they don't ask a Jew for his papers before they cave his face in? And you need to look in the mirror if you think you look like anything but a Jew."
America was starting to look much more attractive, especially when half of the Jewish population of Moscow were evicted, most of them in chains.
There was nothing special about Hershel's family, he supposed, and thus it did not seem fair that they were the ones who were saved. He remembered that day clearly-Passover, cold spring, snow still thick on the ground, but the smell of wet earth grew stronger with every day, telling that the spring, the true warmth and flowers and sticky first leaves, the pollen in the air and the fluff of shedding from tall poplars, the smell of sweet linden blooms, were not far off. It was the time when one dreamt of crocuses blooming under the snow, of seeds swelling in the dark earth, ready to burst forth with the fresh energy of new life, of renewal; it was also traditionally the time when the word Christ-killer was heard more frequently than Hershel liked.
"I am a useful Jew, he told Rosa. Nothing bad will happen to us."
She sighed and said nothing, which was in itself an unusual event-Rosa rarely wanted for words. Hershel supposed that the sight of so many of their people in chains, the rumors of so many deaths ignored by the police took even her voice away; or perhaps it was the shame of remaining untouched by the misery, of being useful'. She never called Hershel a traitor, but he suspected that she thought it, and perhaps more often than she would admit.
"What would you have me do? he pleaded. And what of the children?"
She shook her head, still silent and inconsolable, and left him alone in the dank dining room that still held the smells of the previous day's Seder, its low ceiling oppressive and dark. Light from the lone tallow candle flickered and exhaled thin streams of soot, adding to the deposits darkening the already hopeless dwelling.
That night, as Hershel learned later, the inhabitants of the underground grew restless, stirred up by the clouds of despair on the surface and their slow seeping underground. Hershel explained that this was how it usually went-the prevailing mood of one place reached the other, but the emanations and their effects were usually weak enough to be masked by the native emotion and mood. It was only at the times of great tragedy that they grew disturbing enough to spur the underground dwellers into action.
"I don't get it, Fyodor interrupted Hershel. I mean, no offense, but what was so special about that time? There were plenty of other tragedies."
"I don't know, Hershel said. We all have our reasons and guesses, but do they matter? Sure, there were other times. But I guess that time everyone had enough."
Hershel's house stood close enough to the river for him to be concerned about the spring floods, and in the spring the ice-bound river was clearly visible between the naked trees; he always worried about the children-especially his fearless and headstrong firstborn Daniil-playing on green and uncertain spring ice, where black freezing water could show itself through a crack like a slow smile at any moment. Hershel always kept an eye on the river, especially at night, fearful of the children's disobedience and of the incomprehensible ways of the world.
They came through cracks opening in the ice, they sprang among the trees. Hershel watched, terrified and yet not surprised, convinced that the grotesque creatures coming from every surface cranny, from every fresh snow patch, from every fork in the tree branches, had something to do with the exodus of his people. He was not wrong-he realized it when a large vaguely human head protruded through the only glass pane of the dining room window, without breaking it but instead seemingly originating within it, and demanded to know where the Jews were.