The Little Russian by Susan Sherman

Author:Susan Sherman [Sherman, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Counterpoint Press
Published: 2011-11-30T13:00:00+00:00

SHE COULDN’T book passage until late October on a ship departing from Odessa, bound for Liverpool and then on to New York. She was not happy about the delay, but at least it gave her time to wrap up her affairs. Over the intervening months she let go of the staff, closed up the house, and said good-bye to her friends. On her last day in the city, she stood on the bluff overlooking the river, shrinking into her coat, shivering and stiffening against the wind. She had come down to the shops to pick up a few things for the trip and was grateful when she found that they still carried sewing kits, lambskin caps with earflaps, and yarn. As she stood there watching the barges pull into the docks she brought her muff up to cover her mouth and nose and smelled the perfume on the fur mixed with the clean, cold smell of the river. Below her on the little beach by the docks were lines of brightly colored rowboats that had been hauled out of the water and turned upside down, proof that winter had come. She remembered hiring the blue one on a bright, hot Sunday afternoon with Hershel and the children. There were a dozen boats for hire on the river that day, bobbing in the water, looking like pieces of colored licorice in a glass bowl.

Now that she was about to leave for Odessa, there was nothing to distract her from her worries. She still hadn’t received word from Hershel and didn’t know where he was or how to find him. She had his sister’s address and would start there, but she worried that his sister had moved or didn’t know where he was or, worse, that it was the unthinkable. The thought that something had happened to him rarely left her mind. It gnawed at her during the day, and at night it robbed her of sleep. Now, on the eve of her departure, she steeled herself against these thoughts. She had to keep going. She had to find him.

She walked in the park along the bluffs for the last time. She passed the merry-go-round that was shuttered and dark and the Merchant’s Club where the brass band used to play in the flower garden before they were sent off to the front. The park was deserted of course. The ice cream girls in their white aprons and blond hair were gone, as was the man with the monkey who begged for coins. The kvass sellers were gone and so was the old lady who sold hats and Russian flags: They were all gone. Soon she would be too.

She crossed the street, her feet creaking on the snow, and walked down to Svetlanskaya. There she passed the Niklolaev Iron Works factory, a brooding hulk with grimy windows and smokestacks jutting up into the sky. On the other side of the street were the neglected apartment buildings that housed the workers, cold water flats without heat or gas, surrounded by empty lots full of trash and horse manure.

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