Shelly Sanders - Rachel's Secret

Rachel nodded and stared at the river. The setting sun cast a glowing red haze on the water. “I guess I’d better go now, before my mother gets worried,” she said. “She’s convinced another riot is about to occur.”

“First…” Sergei reached into his leather pouch. “I want you to have this.” He held out the money he had taken from the coffer.

“Where did you get that?”

“It doesn’t matter. Just take it. You can use it for your passage to America.”

She pressed her lips together and pushed his hand back, touched that he would make such a generous offer. Though she was determined to keep a wall between them that would guard her emotions, he was making it difficult. In spite of her best efforts, Rachel found herself caring for him. “No. I can’t. My mother would ask questions, and it’s not right. Your family needs it.”

“But I want you to have it.”

She shook her head firmly and stood up.

Sergei sighed again and returned the money to his pouch. “I’ll walk with you.” He stood and they followed the path to the street together.

“I promised Leah I’d meet her in the courtyard,” Rachel told her mother and sister. It was late afternoon and the three of them had finished sewing for the day. She left without waiting for them to respond, hurried outside where the air was cool, and sat down wearily on the top step. It had rained most of the morning, and the air felt heavy.

Rachel was stretching her arms above her head to loosen her cramped muscles when a tall stranger entered the hospital’s courtyard. He had a thick beard, black as coal, and hair that stood straight up from his head.

“Mr. Korolenko…welcome,” said Dr. Slutskii, the senior doctor who took care of Chaia and many other injured people in the hospital. He walked past Rachel and greeted the stranger. They shook hands and then the man called Korolenko opened a bag hanging over his shoulder, reached in, and pulled out a small notebook. He listened intently to Dr. Slutskii and wrote quickly. Rachel tried to listen, but they spoke in quiet voices.

Dr. Slutskii appeared to be talking about the hospital. He waved his arms around, pointed at the building, and was very animated. Rachel slid down to the bottom step and craned her neck to hear, but still couldn’t make out one word. After a few moments, the two men walked by, nodding politely at Rachel as they passed, and entered the hospital.

As soon as they had disappeared through the door, Rachel raced back inside and found Rena in her office. “Who was that man?” she asked.

Rena looked up wearily from the stack of papers in front of her. “You mean the one who just came in with Dr. Slutskii?”

“Yes…”

“I believe that’s Vladimir Korolenko, a journalist. He’s come here to write about the massacre.”

“A writer? You mean for newspapers?”

“I suppose so. Does it matter?”

Rachel’s heart was pounding. “Didn’t you read the newspapers? All those horrible lies about us?” Her voice rose as she spoke. “That we eat blood, that we want to take over Kishinev, that our corpses should be bound to the wheels of carts?”

Rena dropped the stack of papers she was holding onto her desk. “But Mr. Korolenko didn’t write those things. You can’t blame one writer for the poisonous pen of others.”

Rachel’s eyes blazed. “But how can you be so sure he’ll write the truth?”

Rena sighed and reached out to hold Rachel’s trembling hands. “Mr. Korolenko came here to find out what happened. To discover the facts, not to distort the truth. Dr. Slutskii says he has a very good reputation.”

Rachel pulled away. “But,” her eyes teared up, “he might change Dr. Slutskii’s words for his story. How can you trust that he’ll write about what really happened?”

Rena stood up, walked around her desk, and embraced Rachel. “I know you’re scared,” she said softly. “And I know it’s hard for you to trust anyone… but you can’t go through life in fear.”

Rachel nodded and brushed the tears from her eyes as Leah walked into the office. Her hair was starting to grow back, but the scar on her face was now an ugly purple line, a constant reminder of the riots. “There you are. I thought we were going to meet in the courtyard,” she began. “Oh, what’s wrong, Rachel?”

“She’s fine, nothing to worry about,” answered Rena quickly. “I have an idea. Rachel, would you like to read to a group of children? I was going to, but I have so much work. I have a few books somewhere.” Rena rummaged through a wooden box and pulled out a couple of books covered in dust. “Here we are. And since Leah still gets headaches when she reads, she can listen too.”

Before she could protest, Rachel found herself sitting on the courtyard steps surrounded by at least one hundred children of all ages. She cleared her throat, looked at Leah sitting off to the side, and held out the book so the children could see the cover. “Russian Fairy Tales by Verra Xenophontovna,” she began in a feeble voice.

“Louder,” said Leah.

Rachel nodded and opened the book. The crisp pages were like long-lost friends. She cherished their smoothness, the smart way they sounded when she turned them, and the delightful smell of words made of ink.

“Baba Yaga.” Rachel showed the children the picture, then started to read from the first page. Suddenly she remembered that the story was about two children whose mother had died.

“Ei! Maybe this is not such a good choice,” she said, leafing through the pages. “Here’s another—Woe Bogotir.”

Rachel began to read. “ In a small village—do not ask me where; in Russia, anyway—there lived two brothers; one of them was rich, the other poor. The rich brother had good luck in everything he undertook, was always successful, and had a profit out of every venture. The poor brother, in spite of all his trouble and all his work, had none whatever.”

Rachel looked up and saw the children’s eyes fastened on her. She continued reading, pausing once in a while to clear her throat. Just as she was about to start the last page, she sensed someone watching her from behind. Turning around, she saw the journalist, Korolenko, regarding her with serious, dark brown eyes. Rachel felt awkward under his gaze, and tried, unsuccessfully, to ignore him as she finished the story. She stuttered, tripping on words, gratefully closing the book when the story was finished.

“So you see, the lesson in this story is if you treat people kindly, you can expect good luck to follow,” she told the children.

“Rachel, the rich brother treated people badly and ended up with bad luck. Isn’t that right?” asked a young girl. She was about ten or eleven years old and had sat with her hands clasped together the entire time Rachel had been reading.

“Yes.”

“Well,” the girl continued, “will the people who hurt us end up with bad luck?”

“Yes.” A tall, thin boy with freckles spoke up. “My father says they’re going to jail.”

Rachel glanced over at Korolenko and saw him writing furiously on his notepad, while Dr. Slutskii stood nearby with his arms crossed. “That’s right. They will be punished.”

“But most of us didn’t do anything bad,” said another boy, who looked older than the rest of the children, “so how come we’ve had such bad luck?”

A little girl nodded and added, “My mother told me it doesn’t pay to be good.”

Rachel shuddered, recalling her conversation with Sergei when she had said the exact same words.

The children started arguing amongst themselves, their voices getting louder and louder.

“If my father was here, he’d remind me about one of Sholem Aleichem’s stories,” said Rachel loudly enough to be heard over the children. “When the character Tevye discovers his daughter loves a gentile, he thinks about the differences between Jews and gentiles. He wonders why there are Jews and non-Jews. Why should one be so cut off from the other? And why should they be unable to look at one another, when they are from the same place?”