Israel (7 page)

Abe finished his duties, skipped the evening meal and worked through the night on the officer's boots. The camp was in confusion due to tomorrow's departure. Nobody noticed one man hunched over a stub of candle in the corner of an empty storage shack. Abe still had a couple of tools—a hammer, some heavy needles and thread, a small container of polish—he had been reasonably sure would not be confiscated.

His practiced eye scrutinized the boots. The leather had worn away in several spots, and the layers of the soles, while still thick,
thank God
, had started to separate.

Leather patches to bridge the gaps between the uppers and the soles and to refurbish the linings of the boots could be cut with his bayonet from his calfskin knapsack, Abe decided, but where could he find glue to repair the spreading soles? There was no way he could force his needle through so many thicknesses. The thread wouldn't hold anyway.

Abe hurried back to his barracks. The other men, exhausted, were sound asleep. Their snores blanketed any noise Abe made as he slowly maneuvered his lightweight but cumbersome wood and canvas cot back to the storage shed.

He flipped the cot over. Closely spaced brads held the taut canvas to the frame. Working very carefully so as not to weaken the brads by bending them too much, Abe extracted every fourth one with the claw of his hammer and used them to repair the splitting soles. It was dawn by the time he finished.

Russian officers did not usually rise at dawn, so Abe waited outside the captain's tent. As soon as he heard morning sounds coming from within, he approached.

The captain closely inspected the job. Abe, his eyes red and swollen with fatigue, was aching to point out that he'd also seen to the linings, but he didn't dare push the captain too hard. He had done all that he could. The next move was up to the officer.

“These will do, I suppose.” He stared hard at Abe. “You don't imagine I will pay you, I hope.”

Abe humbly dropped his gaze to the ground. “Of course not, sir. I am a cobbler by training and a patriot by nature. It is my wish merely to serve as best I can.”

The quartermaster had the aristocrat's total lack of self-consciousness with people of lesser station. Abe might have been a barnyard animal the noble was thinking of buying. For one insane instant Abe thought the captain was going to force open his mouth in order to look at his teeth. All the while the cobbler could hear in his mind the constant tapping of his hammer as he struggled to repair those precious boots.

Think, Abe willed the officer. Consider how valuable I would be to a fellow vain about his appearance. Think of the money you could make charging your fellow officers for my services.

“Well,” the captain said at last, “off with you then. Back to your regiment. You'll be leaving for the front in a few hours.” Boots in hand, he turned and disappeared into his tent.

Abe, blinded with angry tears, stumbled back to his barracks. His scheme to remain far from the war had failed. He had no delusions about what would become of him in combat. It seemed as if he had two dismal futures from which to choose: desertion and most likely a life sentence at hard labor or the front and shooting by the Japanese.

Desertion was his best chance, slim as it was, Abe realized. He would make his try during the rail journey. It would have to be during the first days of travel. The longer he waited, the farther the train would carry him from the Austrian border.

He was on his way to the train when the quartermaster reappeared. Abe waited, agonizing, as words were exchanged between the young officer and Abe's sergeant. It was clear that the two were bickering over Abe. Helpless, he stood by, knowing that his life hung on the outcome of this argument. The captain held the superior rank, but the sergeant had personal responsibility for getting a certain number of men to the front.

The sergeant abruptly threw up his hands. He was scowling as he handed the increasingly giddy Abe over to the captain.

“Time's short,” the sergeant muttered. “The train's leaving and one Jew more or less won't matter—as long as I know where to put the blame for his absence,” he added meaningfully. He stalked off and Abe and the captain were alone.

“You are now my property,” the captain said. “You will be a cobbler for me and for anyone I choose to send to you. You will not be paid. At any time I choose I can have you sent to the front. Is that clear?”

“Yes, my lord,” Abe nodded, eyes on the ground. Meanwhile, he felt like cheering.

“Look at me, Jew.”

“My lord?” Abe cautiously raised his eyes to the captain's face. The noble's pretty features were as smooth as glass.

“You have not deceived me, Jew. I know this is exactly what you hoped for. I don't mind that, not at all. I will continue to keep you alive only so long as it benefits me. Do you understand?”

Abe nodded so hard he almost snapped his neck. The captain smiled. “Yes, I thought you would.”

Abe was surprised to find that he was not the first to use this particular ruse. The barracks to which he was assigned was devoted to the other household people combed out of the general military population by canny officers. In the barracks with Abe were tailors, cooks, winemakers, musicians and so on, men who plied their old trades for their patrons or for others, the fees for their work going to the officers. In exchange they were kept out of harm's way in the capital city.

The months stretched into years, but at least Abe was safe and sound. The war went badly for Russia, and strikes and pogroms ravaged the country. News of the Japanese annihilation of the navy in the Straits of Tsushima off the coast of Korea sparked a new wave of domestic disturbances as well as mutiny on the battleship
Potemkin
.

The war ended in defeat for the Russians. Czar Nicholas, anxious to placate the population, announced political reforms. Once again radicals and reactionaries—the former wanting more concessions, the latter far fewer—turned the streets into a battleground. Strikes and riots raged and thousands of manors were looted. Troops returning from Manchuria were directed to turn their
rifles on their own people. Many soldiers refused. Battles over politics raged within regiments.

During this period Abe continually dreamed of running away. America was calling to him more irresistibly than ever. Fortunate Haim had been in Palestine for almost two years already, and Abe had yet to escape the confines of Russia.

Now that the war was ending there was no telling what might happen. The only certainty was that he still faced a decade of active service.

He would have deserted long ago except for the fact that he still had no money. Besides, the captain could issue a detailed descriptive warrant of arrest the moment he found his cobbler missing. Abe had no idea just how much the impoverished noble had made by renting out Abe's skills to his fellow officers, but the cobbler was quite certain that the young captain would be both angry and vindictive if he found his source of income absent.

In the latter part of 1907 a new wave of unrest swept through Petrograd, disrupting telephone and telegraph service and shutting down banks and hospitals. The riots got worse as the days progressed until finally Abe's captain appeared in the doorway of the barracks, saber in hand.

“All of you,” the young officer shouted, “you are needed to patrol the streets.”

This can't be happening, Abe thought as he found himself marching into the fracas behind the captain, flanked by bakers and musicians holding rifles no one had ever taught them how to load, much less shoot.

The streets were a madhouse. Shouts and the brittle music of breaking glass reverberated off the stone walls of the buildings. The pavement was littered with smoldering rubbish, and drifting black curtains of acrid smoke hid the rioters, who darted and skulked around the soldiers like wolves menacing a forest camp.

Abe ducked and crouched to avoid the rocks and bottles that came hurtling out of nowhere. Far away he heard a volley of gunshots and demonic shouts and cries of pain, but as far as he could tell, the captain and his make-believe soldiers were the only military presence in the vicinity.

The captain was shouting orders that no one could hear above the commotion. And then, faster than Abe could have believed was possible, the captain stopped shouting and waving his saber and instead staggered, caught in a shower of stones. The rioters, sensing a kill, pelted him with another volley. A large rock struck the young officer's head. The saber clattered to the cobblestones as the captain went down.

At once the soldiers broke ranks, scattering to go their separate ways. Abe threw down his rifle and began to run.

Then he paused. He looked back at the beautiful young officer, sprawled in the gutter's filth, blood pulsing from his broken head.

Abe stared at the still form. Was he actually even contemplating dragging the officer to a place of safety? Are you mad? he railed at himself. For two years this man has called you nothing but “Jew,” and while for you it's the truth, for him it was a dirty word. He has made a fortune from your labor and has not seen fit to offer you a smile, let alone a ruble.

Scowling, Abe once more turned to run, but his feet refused to budge. Stones were clattering to the pavement all around him, but none were actually being aimed his way. An unarmed spindly timid little soldier of base rank was not about to stir the wrath of the mob. Many soldiers had even joined in the smashing and looting.

The captain, however, was a prime target. He was lying unconscious, unable to defend himself. How long before some passing rioter smashed another stone down on his head?

Abe started as a wild-eyed man dressed in work clothes noticed the wounded officer. The rioting striker raced toward the captain, screaming obscenities.

The captain deserves to die, Abe decided even as he began to run to rescue him. But two years ago he saved you from the front. Today you will save him and then you will pray to God that he doesn't have you arrested for desertion.

Abe reached the fallen captain an instant before the rioter. “Get away! Get away!” he shouted. The rioter was twice his size and mean drunk on vodka; Abe could tell from the way he was lurching about and the red glint in his little pig eyes. Did Abe think he could shoo the man off as if he were a housefly?

A nasty smile suddenly crossed the rioting laborer's flushed face. “Jew,” he snarled. His big callused hands came up like grappling hooks.

Abe had a momentary flash of panic as he imagined his head crushed between those two hands like a walnut. Out of desperation he snatched up the captain's saber and began to swing it like a carpet beater. The heavy weapon's momentum almost spun him off his feet with each wild slash.

To Abe's relief his swordplay failed to come anywhere close to his adversary, who veered away from the attack and wandered off in search of easier targets.

The saber still in his grasp in case it was needed, Abe managed to lift the officer's shoulders and bloody, lolling head. The boots Abe worked on so hard dragged limply across the cobblestones as he hauled the captain into a nearby alleyway.

Abe set down the sword and started to run, but once again he hesitated. The captain was very still.

I should find out whether he's alive or not, Abe thought, returning to crouch beside the body and check for
a pulse. There was none. The only man who might want to track him down was dead.

He turned his attention to the sword. It was a beautiful thing, the long steel blade polished to a mirror finish and engraved in Russian all along its face. Abe realized that the saber was an heirloom.

And what had Abe from his father? A shoemaker's hammer. Still, Abe had to admit that his cobbler's tools had done more to keep him alive than the fancy sword had done for the captain.

Just the same, Abe vowed, never again will I practice the cobbler's trade. Mending shoes belongs to the past. Soon I will be in America. I will find new work as a free man.

The hilt of the saber in his palm felt heavy. He glanced at it and his eyes widened and his pulse began to pound with excitement. He stared at the yellow metal handle. He squeezed it, stroked it; he even brought it to his trembling lips in order to taste it.

It was gold from guard to pommel, including the wide, delicately curved half-sphere of the basket.

It did not surprise or perturb Abe in the least how a man like the captain, with a mended uniform and worn-out boots, might come to own such a valuable object. The captain was poor, it was true, but surely his aristocratic family had once been very wealthy. The saber was the captain's birthright. Understandably, he would do without essentials to preserve his ancestral treasure, perhaps the lone reminder of happier times.

Now it belongs to Abe Herodetzky, he gleefully thought, leaping to his feet, clicking his heels and doing a jig in place, the saber clasped to his breast in a lover's embrace.

The thought that he was stealing from the dead gave him a moment's pause until Abe decided that God must want him to have the sword. Besides, the captain owed
him something for his years of servitude and for his efforts to save the officer's life. Things hadn't worked out so well for the captain, it was true, but the noble could take that up with God.

The morality of the situation dispensed with, Abe settled down to mull over more pragmatic concerns. The saber was of absolutely no interest to him as a weapon or antique. The gold hilt represented his ticket to America. He had no use for the blade, which also made his precious find hard to conceal.

Finding a chink in the alleyway's wall, he wedged the blade into it. He sweated and groaned and pushed and pulled. At last the steel and gold came apart with a peal.

Abe shoved the hilt into his trousers and hurried away. He stripped off his dark green soldier's tunic as he ran, feeling utter joy as the uniform fluttered away behind him. Around the corner he came across a broken bundle of rags littering the riot-torn street. A threadbare coat was lying in a puddle of water. Never had a garment seemed so exquisite to him as he snatched up the civilian coat.