Susan Sherman - The Little Russian

There were other men there too, leaning up against the buildings in the dark, mingling with the crowd, talking to them about how the Jews had grown rich off the labor of the peasant, how they had cheated the peasant in ways he’d never even know about, how they bled him dry, and laughed at him behind his back. These men were not peasants. They were outsiders from the north, Great Russians, artel workers, who wore visor caps, belted gray tunics, black leather jackets, and swords at their sides. They were members of the Alliance of Russian People, the Black Hundreds, as they were known throughout the empire, and they had come to organize the pogrom.

Eventually the muzhiki grew bored with them and began talking among themselves, playing cards and passing around a bottle of vodka that was soon empty. They wanted more, but the Jews owned all the taverns and had locked them up. Someone cried out Chernyi Griaz! and there were shouts of agreement all around. The crowd rose up as one undulating mass of thirst, filled with excitement and anticipation, and set off down the main street toward the billiards club.

When the proprietor, Joseph Bokser, and his two sons saw the mob coming, they blocked the doorway to the storehouse and shouted at them to go away. But when the mob threatened them with clubs, pistols, and swords, Joseph Bokser ordered his sons to stand aside and opened the door himself.

Cradling bottles of vodka in their arms and stuffing still more into their empty sacks, the mob fanned out into the other streets. Ostap Shevchenko and his three sons tore the shutters off the mercantile store and smashed the windows with the handles of their rakes. When he hopped over the jagged glass and stepped into the store, he found racks of greatcoats, heavy boots, fur hats, and work gloves—everything he had always wanted but could never afford. He shouted to his sons to start stuffing the potato sacks with everything they could find.

Shloime Lazar, the proprietor of the hardware store, was cowering in the dark behind his shuttered windows. He had been expecting this for years. He had invested in new shutters reinforced with iron bars and gone all the way to L’vov to see Rabbi Levi Israel, a miracle rabbi, who had blessed his prayer shawl and told him that it would keep him safe from the Cossack sword. When he heard his shutters give way to the axes of the muzhiki, he went out to meet the pogromists with his own axe in hand. They surrounded him and cut off his right arm with one tremendous blow. His axe clattered to the floorboards along with most of his forearm and hand. As he lay bleeding to death, his last thought was for his wife and three daughters, who were upstairs hiding under their beds.

With the first screams of the pogrom, the men in the volunteer fire station clamored down the narrow staircase, pushing and shoving one another, frantic to get to their families. “Stay with me,” the boy’s father said to him as they ran out of the building. “Stay close.”

Outside, people were running in all directions, women screaming and clutching their children, shots fired, the sound of shattering glass. The boy saw a muzhik throw a screaming baby out of Judah Altman’s second-story window. At the corner, he saw several figures run out of the main shul and down the wide steps carrying half-empty sacks. One of them was Tadeusz Zawadski, a boy from his form at school, who held a Torah crown and a silver candelabrum. Their eyes met in the dim light of a street lamp. A ripple of shame crossed the other boy’s face before his eyes went dead and he moved on.

In front of the bakery they found the battered body of the baker and his wife. The old man’s skull had been caved in. His wife’s face had been laid open and one eye was missing, the socket black with blood. The sight made the boy’s legs wobble and his stomach turn. He gaped at the hole where the eye should have been and turned away to vomit. His father pulled him into the shadow of a doorway, put a protective arm around his shoulders, and said, “Listen to me. We will get your mother and head for the woods. I know a place. We will be all right. But I need you… do you understand? I need you tonight.”

The boy wiped the vomit away with the back of his hand and returned his father’s gaze. His face was a mask of endurance. “Yes, Tateh,” was all he said.

Before they had gone a dozen steps the boy heard more shots; this time they were closer, maybe even in the next lane. They ran on, taking shelter first in one doorway and then in another. They stuck to the shadows, relying on the night and their intimate knowledge of every alley, doorway, and basement to stay hidden. A goat ran by with blood streaming down her flank, her swollen udders swinging wildly as she plunged off down the street. A cardboard tiara lay crushed and filthy in the gutter. Up ahead, three or four peasants in the middle of the road came toward them. They were shouting and singing a tuneless song. A straggler followed behind, drinking vodka from a bottle, and shooting his pistol through apartment windows. When he ran out of bullets, he crouched in the street to reload.

To avoid them, the boy’s father forced open the widow Yehsohua’s window and climbed in. The boy tumbled in after him and landed on the floor. When the old woman saw the two figures in her front room she screamed and ran to the back of the house. They ran after her and found her standing in the kitchen, stabbing the air with a butcher’s knife, her wispy gray hair standing out in tufts about her head. She screamed in Yiddish, “Get away! Get away or I’ll kill you.”

“Chainke,” the boy’s father whispered furiously, trying to quiet her. “It’s me. For God’s sake, stop screaming! ”

The old woman stopped. She stared up at them and then burst into tears. “ Ah, es iz ek velt! ” It’s the end of the world, she sobbed and sank to her knees. “They’re coming. The Cossacks are coming!”

“Calm down, Chainke. It doesn’t help to make such a racket.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Then keep quiet, woman.”

He went to the window and looked out on the alley behind the house. It was dark and deserted. Satisfied, he forced the window open and stuck his head out to get a better look around.

“Where are you going?” she cried, struggling to her feet.

“We can’t stay here. We have to get home.”

“No!” she cried, grabbing hold of his sleeve. “You can’t leave me here all alone. You have to take me with you.”

“Stop it now!” he said as he disentangled her fingers. “You want to bring them down on our heads? Stay here and keep the lights off and don’t make a sound. They won’t come for you. You’re an old woman with nothing to steal.”

But she wouldn’t be comforted and kept pleading with him not to leave even after he swung one leg over the sill and lowered himself to the ground. The boy was about to follow when he heard footsteps coming down the alley.

“Stay inside, son. Get down and keep her quiet. No matter what happens, don’t move, farshtaist ?” The boy nodded to show he understood.

The footsteps grew louder, punctuated by the sound of a tambourine, and then, from out of the gloom, a husky voice thick with drink asked, “Hey, who’s this? A zhyd ? It is a zhyd . Hey, Yasha, I found a zhyd .” It was two drunken muzhiki—one of them carried a tambourine, the other a sack of pots and pans thrown over his shoulder.

The boy peeked out through the torn curtains and watched as they circled his father, giving him a little shove and a poke with the tambourine. “It is not a zhyd , you horse’s ass. It’s the starusta . Hey, want to join our party, Your Excellency?”

The boy’s father shook his head and declined the offer of vodka, but the man insisted. When he refused a second time, the big one with the tambourine grabbed his head and held it while the other one pried open his mouth and poured the vodka down his throat.