Susan Sherman - The Little Russian

Samuil helped her off the train. It was hard getting down the steps. She had to lean heavily on the railing and put most of her weight on the other leg. Once they were out on the platform, she limped over to a post and leaned against it, waiting to catch her breath.

“Warszawa?” she asked a porter who happened to be passing by.

He hardly gave her a glance. He was bored by her ill-fitting secondhand clothes, her dirty bundles, and the shoes the rabbi’s wife had given her that were so big she had to shuffle along to keep them on her feet. Without a word he nodded to a nearby platform and walked on, stooping to pick up a coin dropped by some passenger hurrying to catch a train.

Since the train wasn’t due for another hour she decided to find the pol’za , the facility, where she could clean the wound and change the bandage. She found it in a little alcove off the main thoroughfare. It was for ladies of a certain class, expensive women who traveled with maids and nannies and were married to men in industry or in respectable positions in the government. It was late and so it was nearly empty. An older woman, expensively dressed with a cigarette between her fingers, looked up when Berta came in and watched her with curiosity through a haze of smoke. A seamstress was at the woman’s feet pinning up the hem of her dress that had most likely gotten caught on her heel.

An attendant in a starched black cap and jumper and white shirtwaist stepped over to Berta and pulled her aside. She put her lips to Berta’s ear and whispered sharply in Polish so as not to make a scene. Instead of leaving, as she knew the woman wanted her to do, Berta reached into her pocket and brought out a handful of coins and dropped them into the attendant’s hand. The attendant looked at them and then up at Berta. She was confused. Berta nodded to the porcelain sinks and to the stack of clean Turkish towels that sat on a little table by the door, motioning to them and then to herself. The attendant asked her a question in Polish and Berta nodded without knowing what she said, but guessing she was clarifying Berta’s request to use the facility. After that the attendant poked at the coins in her hand, probably thinking that she could get fired for something like this. But in the end she pocketed them, waved Berta in, and led the way through the room, grumbling the whole way in Polish.

She stopped in front of a door marked by a sign that Berta couldn’t read. The woman reached into her pocket, took out a key, and inserted it into a lock. She motioned Berta inside. It was a little room for the employees. It had a stove with a rusty tea kettle, a table, and a few chairs, and in the corner was a stained sink, a castoff from the other room.

By now the attendant knew Berta didn’t speak Polish and motioned with her hands, palms down, to indicate that she should wait there. Then she left and came back shortly after that with a towel and soap. She threw them down on the counter and stood there waiting for Berta to use them. Berta tried to explain that she wanted privacy and when the attendant finally understood, she left, complaining loudly in Polish but closing the door behind her.

Berta went to work. She propped up her leg on the sink, carefully removed the bandage, and examined the wound. It was torn and inflamed. There was pus oozing from beneath a flap of skin that was beginning to smell suspicious. The surrounding tissue was red and painful, but it had stopped bleeding. She filled the basin with hot water and soaked the towel in it. Then she wrung it out and put it over the wound gasping at the first touch of heat. It was painful, but it felt good. It felt clean. She wanted to keep it there as long as she could and brought over a chair so she could sit and be moderately comfortable.

The attendant came back after only a few minutes and walked in without knocking. When she saw Berta with her leg propped up on the sink she ordered her to get dressed and get out. Berta ignored her and reached into her bag for a bottle of antiseptic that the rabbi’s wife had given her and poured it over the wound. She winced and her eyes watered. The attendant took a good look at the gash, sucked in her breath, and grimaced. She watched Berta wind the fresh bandages around her calf and when she was done, the woman took away the soiled bandages without a word and waited while Berta got ready to leave. This time the attendant helped Berta shuffle out past the woman who was standing in her corset, watching the seamstress sew up her hem. On the way out the attendant turned and slipped something into Berta’s hand. It was a bar of soap.

SAMUIL HELPED her off the train at the Warsaw station. She was too weak to walk without his help. He held her arm as she limped past the darkened ticket counters, out through the brass doors to the curbside and the waiting cabs. She knew they should walk to the back of the line, where the cabs were cheaper, but her leg was throbbing and she felt hot all over, so she took the first one they came to. After she and Samuil climbed in she instructed the driver to take them to the American Embassy in almost perfect Polish with only a hint of an accent.

Although it was hours before dawn, they climbed the steps of the embassy and lay down against the doors, gathering their bundles in around them and huddling together to keep warm. It began to rain and across Ujazdowskie Avenue she could see dark sheets of water falling on the locust trees. Fortunately the portico was deep enough to keep them dry so there was no chance they’d freeze to death. The rebbetzin had told them that once they were on the steps of the embassy they were never to leave no matter what. “You’re in America as long as you’re on those steps. You wait there for the doors to open. Nobody can hurt you there. Nobody can say a thing.”

Berta couldn’t sleep, so she lay there listening to the sounds of the sleeping city, the rain on the pavement, the occasional automobile splashing through the puddle at the intersection and the rhythmic drip , drip , drip from the rain spouts, which seemed to underscore the rhythmic throbbing of her leg and head. She eventually fell asleep and dreamed about Fichmann and about the river, not the one they had to cross to get to Poland, but the gentle tributary by the widow’s house. In her dream he was trying to coax her out of the water, but she didn’t want to leave. The water was cool and she was hot and thirsty, and it felt good against her skin. She woke to find a soldier shaking her shoulder and speaking to her in a language she didn’t understand.

“It’s open, Mameh,” Samuil was telling her. He was on his feet and trying to help her up, but she didn’t want to get up. She wanted to stay in the river.

The soldier pulled her to her feet and held on to her until she was steady enough to stand on her own. He kept motioning to the street and speaking in a raised voice as if she were hard of hearing. She told him she had business in the embassy and couldn’t understand why he didn’t step aside. It took her a moment to realize she was speaking Russian and he was an American. Samuil gestured that they had business inside and finally the soldier understood and let them go in.

“You have to look healthy, Mameh,” Samuil whispered anxiously, as he helped her through the heavy glass door and into the marble foyer. “They won’t let you in otherwise. They won’t let sick people into their country.”

She knew that well enough. She knew that she had to appear in good health, so she smoothed out her clothes and brushed her hair with her fingers. She straightened her back and looked straight ahead, even though she still had to shuffle to keep her shoes on and couldn’t put much weight on her bad leg. Because of this it took them a long time to cross the great expanse of marble to the reception desk.