For the first years of his life, Max was raised and nurtured by his sister Sarah, who was ten years old when he was born, and was given the entire responsibility of taking care of both Max and his older sister, Tabel, who was seven.
When Max was three, Tabel was sent to work at a button factory and so his father took Max on his rounds of begging through the alleyways of the city. Berl had taught Max how to walk up to rich people with a small box and ask for alms at the same time displaying his irresistible smile. Berl had been amazed by how much a handsome little boy like Max could entice from the purse of a manufacturer. Max suddenly seemed like a good-luck charm for the whole family.
Peshke heard the first screams coming from the street leading to the river, screams accompanied by the hoofbeats of the Cossacks’ horses and cries of alarm. The peddlers scooped up as much merchandise as they could carry and ran in utter pandemonium as six Cossacks entered Mullenplatz with their swords drawn and already bloody.
Berl watched the scene from a stone wall where he sat with Max. Seeing an extraordinary opportunity, he moved along the safety of the wall carrying his child and crept under one of the stalls recovering four oranges, five apples, and two ripe bananas. Seeing further that he was unobserved, he recovered a jar of honey, six fat sugar beets, and a whole cauliflower—all of which he deposited in the deep pockets of his tattered, unwashed gown.
He stayed hidden beneath one of the stalls until he heard the hoofbeats moving away from him. Gathering courage, he made a break for the street leading to his home, not knowing that two of the Cossacks were helping themselves to the produce just as he had done. He saw the largest of the Cossacks, a great blond statue of a man, leap for his stallion, and instantly horse and man moved as one animal toward him. Berl ran, but he had no chance, so he turned and lifted his young son up toward the Cossack in supplication, appealing to the love of all men for children. Max screamed as he saw the Cossack’s bloodthirsty charge. The Cossack’s sword went under Max’s bare feet, and with a sword thrust as expert as it was deadly, disemboweled Berl, the Schnorrer, without harming his young son.
Max fell down on top of his father who grabbed him and hugged him close with his arthritic fingers.
“Say kaddish for me” were his father’s last words on earth. Berl died with his son hysterical upon him and covered with his father’s blood.
The magnificent charge of a Cossack horseman with saber drawn would be the first thing that Max Rusoff would remember from his childhood. That murderous instant would mark his birth into the light of consciousness in this world.
The death of Berl began the long, slow unraveling of Max’s mother, Peshke. Poverty is its own dementia, but something loosened around the fringes of Peshke’s mind after the murder of her husband and his humiliating burial in a pauper’s grave. The tragedy of Berl’s death was diminished in the eyes of most of Kironittska’s Jews because of the stolen food found in his pockets. To be a beggar was one thing, but to steal from peddlers who had fled before an advance of pogromcyks was quite another. Though his mother never mentioned the word to him, Max learned that shame could do more damage to a human being than any pogrom.
When Max was eight, he was sent to be an apprentice to the blacksmith, Arel, the Muscle. For five years, Max helped Arel in his shop, tending the horses, carrying tools and heavy buckets of steel ingots, and working in the household for Arel’s demanding and unhappy wife, Iris. Arel was a gentle, long-suffering man who helped the boy in his study of Hebrew and the Torah.
When he was thirteen, he received his bar mitzvah in a ceremony involving other boys as poor as he was. The ceremony was brief, eloquent, and simple and the next day Max wore his father’s tefillin for the first time at morning prayers.
It was the same year that Arel, the Muscle, dropped dead in his blacksmith shop and his wife, Iris, told Max that to her he was just an extra mouth to feed and as a widow she had more troubles than a pomegranate had seeds. And so Mottele, the Blade, reluctantly took Max on as his apprentice. Mottele had a terrible temper, but a decent business. Some of the shayner Yid or honored Jews were his customers and he had as great a reputation for honesty as he did for his explosive rages. Though all knew about Max’s willingness to work hard for small recompense, few realized that after his days in the blacksmith shop and those in the butcher shop hauling carcasses and breaking the bones of cattle and sheep with the sharp blades of his new profession, Max was ripening into a strapping and powerful young man.
A year after his sister Sarah and brother-in-law Chaim moved to a new life in Warsaw, Max was called to the Mullenplatz and told his mother had gone mad when a gang of Christian ruffians had rushed her stall and crushed every egg she had for sale.
When Max reached the marketplace, he could hear his mother’s wailing high above the other noises of the market. He led her home, but he could not quiet or reconcile her. Like one of the eggs she spent her whole life selling, something in Peshke was broken beyond repair in this trivial incident.
Peshke never went back to the Mullenplatz to sell eggs; all light had gone out of her and Max became her sole caretaker. For a year he did everything for her, fed her, cleaned up after her, took her for long walks along the river whenever he had a free moment.
But one night in the deep of winter, he woke up when he felt cold air hit his face. He rose quickly, lit a candle, and saw that his mother was not in her bed. He also noticed that her clothes were all in their usual places. At the doorway, he cried out when he saw the bare footprints in deep snow and that a blizzard had come in over the mountains that night. Hurriedly, he dressed himself and mumbled prayers to the Master of the Universe to have mercy on his mother. He ran out calling for his mother, but he had entered a silent frozen world that was both all white and all black. He followed her footprints until they disappeared in the snow. He walked through the city in despair, cursing God’s name and cursing him especially for making people hopeless before he graciously allowed them to die.
In the Mullenplatz he found his dead and naked mother sitting in the same spot where she had sold eggs her whole life. He covered Peshke’s face with kisses, then lifted her and carried her through the silent city. Max could sling a side of beef up to a wagon now and his mother seemed light in the carrying. His sorrow was devastating and complete. While he sat shiva, the butcher, Mottele, the Blade, and his family took care of Max and Mottele’s customers brought Max food during the seven days he mourned for his unlucky mother. His siblings had all drifted to the west, all lost to Poland.
For the first time in his short life, Max saw every sunrise and every sunset as he said the beautiful kaddish prayer.
The war years from 1914 to 1918 were difficult and terrifying for the Jews of Kironittska. Even as the armistice was signed, civil war began to rage in Russia after the assassination of the Tsar and his family. As Mottele said during one of the early sieges, “Good times are bad for the Jews. Bad times are simply unspeakable for the Jews.”
When the Whites held the city the Jews suffered a great deal more than with the Bolsheviks. Pogroms were frequent and many Jews were murdered by mobs of roving undisciplined soldiers. No one slept easily in the Jewish Quarter and the Angel of Death held the city in its palm like a fly.
But Mottele warned Max about the Bolsheviks. “Nu, Max. The ones who smile and call you ‘Comrade,’ those are the real murderers, the real swineherds. Nu, listen to me, Max, I have thought about these things. Communism is a way for the government to steal from everybody. Capitalism? Communism? All rubbish and one is no different than the other. No matter who is in power, it’s always bad for the Jews.”
Mottele had just finished this harangue when Rachel Singer and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Anna, came into the shop to get their roast beef for a Sabbath meal. Abraham Singer owned a tile factory that employed seven hundred workers and he was, by far, the richest Jew in Kironittska. Mottele noticed that his assistant, Max, rushed to the counter to serve the Singers, even though Max knew that th
e proper protocol was to allow Mottele, the Blade, the privilege of serving his most distinguished customers.
“Keep hacking away at that bull,” Mottele said, elbowing Max aside, and it was then that he saw Max staring in open-faced wonderment at the unadorned beauty of Anna Singer. Anna was known to be the most beautiful girl to come out of the Jewish Quarter of Kironittska since Rabbi Kushman’s daughter of a century before. Even the goyim admitted that she was the loveliest young woman in the city. Her face was like a magnet for the eyes of men and women alike. Her figure was lovely and her disposition gentle.
When Rachel and Anna Singer left the store, Max ran to the entryway and watched Anna walk through the admiring crowds with her mother. Mottele laughed when he saw how smitten Max was and how innocent the boy was about the impossibly strict social lines that bound all Jewish life in Kironittska.
“Nu, Max,” he said. “The world is set up by the Great One in such a way that the Anna Singers of the world never look at the poor schlemiels like Max Rusoff. There are things meant to be opposites in the world. There are apples and oranges, Russians and Jews, Poles and Russians, kosher and unclean, pigs and cattle, rabbis and apostates, and so on. Anna has walked on oriental rugs her whole life while you wallowed in the mud. She had a private tutor who taught her French and Russian and math besides Hebrew. She plays the piano like an angel. She is the pride of all Jews in Kironittska.”
“She is like a flower,” Max said, sighing, and returning to his work among the bones and blood of slain animals.
“But one for someone else to smell,” Mottele said, but softly because every man has felt the way young Max was feeling.
“Is Anna betrothed yet?” Max asked.
“All the shayner Yid have come to seek the hand of Anna Singer. Now get to work. Get your mind back to the loins of cows, not women. Do not repeat to anyone else this foolishness about Anna Singer. You would be the laughingstock of the Mullenplatz. Tell only Mottele. Mottele you can trust.”
On May 4, 1919, the city awoke to an eerie, unnatural silence and the citizens of Kironittska realized that the Bolsheviks had withdrawn their forces for the third time during the course of the civil war. For two days, no Jew stirred from his home as all hid and waited for the Whites or the Cossacks or one of the other killer bands to attack. After a while people began to emerge and a certain cheer and optimism was felt in all the war-beleaguered quarters of the city.
A week later, the marketplace was full and bustling with commerce again and the hagglers were reunited with the sellers and roosters crowed and geese honked in sadness and young girls bought pretty combs for their hair and the peasants staggered through the streets, vodka-sotted and with pockets full of kopecks after the sale of poultry and livestock. The smell of yeast and bread bloomed out from Bakers’ Row, a tank of live carp was for sale at the fishmonger’s, and the man selling umbrellas prayed for rain.
Then suddenly, everyone was silent as a hundred Cossacks crossed the Kironittska bridge, their sabers drawn and their horses moving at a quick gait. Their mission was terror and terrorizing. They were an attachment of a Cossack regiment in pursuit of the Red Army, which had pulled out a week earlier. Kironittska was to be punished for the crime of having been occupied by the enemy troops.
The Cossacks tore through the Mullenplatz like a whirlwind. An eighty-year-old Jewish woman who sold raisins and grapes was trampled to death by two Cossack horsemen riding in tandem. Eight Jews and five Christians lay dead before the Cossacks began chasing the fleeing townsmen down side streets. Ten more Jews died trying to make it to the Grand Synagogue where they were sure God would protect them from the wrath of the enemies. But God was silent as they were struck down and silent as the Cossacks set the Grand Synagogue on fire. Then the Cossacks began to gallop out of the city to rejoin their regiment. They left seven fires burning behind them, twenty-six dead, hundreds wounded, and the city agonized in its every stone. Screaming was heard in distant streets as straggling Cossacks made last slashing runs against the people.
Max had closed the shutters of the shop as soon as he heard the disarray and the screaming. This is what Mottele taught him to do in case of danger. Outside, he heard the panic of his neighbors and although he wanted to run out and help his fellow Jews, he remembered the massive Cossack who had killed his own father and the thought of those unsmiling horsemen filled him with terror.
Then he heard Mottele beating against the shutters of the butcher shop and when Max opened them Mottele fell through the doorway, a glancing saber slash torn across his back. Max pulled him through the door and lifted Mottele up on top of the counter where meat was sold to the customers.
Tordes, the Bean, the barber from across the street, had watched Max pull Mottele into the butcher shop and had come to help. Though cutting hair was his trade, Tordes also pulled teeth, applied leeches, and was well known for his expertise with pharmaceuticals and medicines.
“The bastards. The bastards,” Mottele screamed over and over.
Tordes, the Bean, had brought a jar of alcohol with him. “This will hurt, Mottele, but it will disinfect the wound. He could have been slicing his bacon with that sword last night, the cutthroat.”
Max had never heard anyone scream so loud as Mottele did when the alcohol hit the open wound. “That hurt worse than the sword,” Mottele screamed.
“The Grand Synagogue,” Tordes said to Max as he cleansed Mottele’s wounds. “It is on fire, may their names be written on the buttocks of Satan.”
Suddenly, there was a softer, though more urgent beating against the tin shutters and when Max opened them a bleeding, devastated Rachel Singer came through the door, blood dripping down her face from a head wound.
“My husband,” she said. “My daughter, Anna. Please someone help.”
And Max Rusoff—the one afraid of Cossacks, the one whose mother died insane and naked in the snow, Berl, the Schnorrer’s son, Max who was insignificant and unknown in the life of the Jews of Kironittska, Max who was secretly in love with the beautiful and unobtainable Anna Singer—that same, poverty-stricken but God-fearing Max bowed to this bleeding, distinguished woman, reached for his cleaver, and ran toward the house of Anna Singer.
The house was ten blocks through a twisting narrow alleyway and Max did not pass a soul during his madcap sprint toward the Singer home. The Jews of Kironittska had withdrawn as Cossacks were firing their rifles down near the river. With every step he took, Max went further into the privileged world of the shayner Yid, those prosperous Jews who lived in fine homes and whose achievements gave pride to the whole Jewish community. As he ran, he did not think of being frightened, only that harm might come to Anna Singer. At the open gate to the Singer house, Max paused and summoned his courage and got his breathing under control. He prayed to the God who had made Samson to grant him the strength to do battle with the Philistines as he heard the screams of Anna Singer. In a paroxysm of cowardice and doubt he rushed into the courtyard.
Abraham Singer lay on the cobblestones shot through the heart. Two servants lay dead beside him. There was a Cossack rider atop his mount watching another Cossack raping a screaming Anna Singer just inside the open door of the house. The Cossack on the horse was laughing and did not see the approach of the apprentice butcher until Max was beneath him. The Cossack looked down and said one word, “Yid.” Yes, Jew he was and a butcher he was. Max had never killed a human being and everything about his life and sensibility as a Jew shouted out against the possibility, but as a butcher he brought an awesome knowledge of arteries and soft places and killing points to the task at hand. The Cossacks were an old story among Jews but they had made one egregious error when they had ridden in to Kironittska: they had chosen to rape the young girl that Max Rusoff secretly loved.
The Cossack looked down from his great horse and saw a squarely built and short Jew, but he could not know that Max could lift a full-grown steer to the meat hooks in the back of the butcher shop with a single, graceful movement. The Cossack
laughed out loud, surprised to find a pious Jew who would fight back, but the laughing Cossack had no way of knowing that Max was famous among the other butchers for keeping his blades sharp. The Cossack’s saber was half out of its scabbard when Max struck the first blow and removed the Cossack’s arm cleanly at the elbow and ended his laughter forever. So swift and so shocking was the attack, that the young Cossack simply lifted the bleeding stump into the night air, puzzled and disbelieving, and missed the terrible second stroke as the butcher, holding on to the pommel, leapt into the air and buried the cleaver in the Cossack’s throat, severing a scream in mid-cry.
The witnesses to this scene, and there were two cowering servants hiding in the garden, both agreed later that it was the savagery of the butcher’s attack that had so alarmed them. After they watched the sandy-haired head of the Cossack fall onto the cobblestones in this most amazing redress of grievance between Jew and Cossack, they were overcome with a profound terror.
Anna Singer screamed again from the house and her cry broke Max’s heart. He charged through the open door, his face spattered with Russian blood and his fury risen to a perfect, murderous pitch as he found the second Cossack with his pants down to his ankles driving himself hard into the prone body of Anna, who lay screaming and fighting beneath him.
Max Rusoff grabbed the Cossack by the hair and yanked backward so viciously that he almost tore the man’s scalp off. The Russian screamed and lunged in rage but he did not lunge quickly enough as the cleaver slashed through the Ukrainian darkness one more time. The cleaver whistled through the air again and the Cossack’s penis landed beneath a chair in the dining room. Then with two hands and murderous aim, Max drove the cleaver into the brain of the black-haired Cossack with a single, perfectly placed stroke and the war of Max and the Cossacks was over.
Anna Singer was weeping and had turned toward the staircase to hide her nakedness. Picking the remains of her dress off the floor, Max covered her as best he could. Then he removed a cloth from the table and placed it over her body. He tried to speak to her, to console the beautiful but violated young girl whose father lay murdered outside the door. But he could not coax a single word out of his mouth.