Sergei thought about this, then added: “Why did she die, Grandpa?”
“Why does anyone die? It is not for us to know.” Heshchel stopped again for a moment, reached down slowly, and plucked a blood-red flower from the snow. “Your mother was fragile, yet strong, like this winter blossom. It is pure and innocent, yet I’ve just plucked it from the snow. God picked Natalia. It was her time. I only wish…”
Once again Sergei’s grandfather withdrew from this world, and his face took on a more peaceful visage. “Yes, Esther,” he said to a ghost Sergei could not see. “I know…it will be all right.”
Heschel put his hand on the boy’s shoulders as they walked on in silence, side by side, and Sergei thought more about what his grandfather had told him—how his mother had held him before she died. For a little while, he didn’t feel so cold anymore.
Now he knew the story of his birth, and of the deaths surrounding it. He sensed too, as much as any eight-year-old can, that his grandfather would carry his own sorrows, like a weight in his knapsack, to his own death, when all burdens would be lifted. But for now the boy saw that his grandfather’s brow had relaxed, and he was glad for it.
Then Heschel emerged from his memories and spoke again: “So that is how things are, little Socrates—I lost my daughter and my wife; you lost your mother and father. Each of us is alone now, but we have each other. This is the truth, and it may hurt. But the truth sets us free…
.3.
A COLD SUN, barely visible through the blanket of clouds, disappeared behind the trees. Somewhere in the darkening woods ahead, as a wolf’s howl marked the coming dusk, a clearing came into view, then a cabin. A soft light poured from its windows, offering the promise of comfort and warmth. The falling snowflakes, gray in the twilight, sparkled white as they drifted down in a final moment of glory before settling to the earth.
The cabin appeared well built with a plank-and-shingle roof and smoke rising from a stone chimney. Heschel stepped up onto the porch, removed his cap, and shook the snow from his boots. Sergei did the same as Heschel knocked firmly on the large oak door.
After a warm welcome and much-needed washing, Sergei and Heschel sat at the table with the first real family in Sergei’s memory. The mother, Sara, a small-boned woman with brown hair almost cove red by a white babushka tied beneath her chin, brought food to the table. Visitors were rare here, and friendly faces all the more so. Sergei stole glances at the children. Avrom, a tall, slender boy of twelve, appeared formal but friendly; Leya, a pretty little five-year-old with a mop of copper-colored hair, glanced shyly back at him.
Sergei’s eyes drank in all he could of their orderly home. He felt shabby in his plain clothing next to Avrom in his coat and smooth trousers and Leya in her dark dress and white babushka like her mother’s.
The father, Benyomin Abramovich, explained to Sergei, “During our Sabbath we set aside all of our weekday concerns and devote ourselves to literature, poetry, and music. This day reminds us that we are not slaves to work. On Shabbat we are free of the world.”
Sara lit two candles and said a blessing. After Benyomin recited a prayer over wine, he invited Heschel to say a prayer over two loaves of a bread braided like a rope, which they called challah. Sergei gazed at the array of food set out before them as Sara pointed out each dish: a thick barley soup, chopped eggs, a spicy beet salad, crackers, chopped vegetables from the garden, potato knishes, rice with apples, and a honey cake with stuffed apples for dessert.
As everyone ate their fill, Sara apologized with a shrug of her shoulders. “In this weather I would have included chicken broth, but the chicken declined…”
So this is what a mother is like, Sergei thought, gazing at her. He envied these children for getting to see her every day, and wondered whether his own mother had looked like Sara Abramovich.
It was the best meal in his memory. There was laughter, and easy conversation. The evening glowed with a special light, provided by a fire on the hearth and candles everywhere, and he was embraced as a member of their family. It was a night he would never forget.
THE NEXT DAY passed quickly. Avrom taught Sergei to play checkers. As they played, Sergei noticed a scar on Avrom’s forehead over his right eye. Avrom saw him staring and said, “I was climbing a tree and fell—I think a branch did this,” he said, pointing to the red line. “Mother said I almost put my eye out. Now she won’t let me climb so high anymore.”
That afternoon, when the sky cleared, the family went for a walk in the woods, where Benyomin pointed out the trees whose wood he harvested for Heschel’s violins and clocks.
When they returned, Heschel took a spontaneous nap that began midsentence. Later, he woke up grumpy, not quite sure where he was. Sara brought him a cup of steaming tea, then left him to come around on his own.
That evening, when the first three stars appeared, the Sabbath ended with more blessings recited over wine and candles. As Benyomin lit a new fire on the hearth, Heschel reached into his sack and took out gifts—spices and candles for the adults and sweets for the children. Then Benyomin handed Heschel a violin that Heschel himself had crafted, and the old man began to play.
Sergei stared openmouthed. It was as if his grandfather had come alive in a new way. No longer a mere mortal, he was now a Maker of Music. The instrument sang of private sorrows in one moment and lifted their spirits in the next. Leya danced and twirled as Avrom and Sergei clapped for her.
When his grandfather finished, the cottage was full of light. Sergei lay down in front of the hearth and slept in the fold of a family, and he dreamed of music.
ON SUNDAY, soon after dawn, they said their farewells. Sergei took in every impression he could, so he might draw upon these memories back at the school. He memorized Sara’s face and voice…Benyomin’s laughter…Avrom, his face buried in a book…Leya sitting by the fire…
He wondered if he might someday be like Benyomin Abramovich, with a wife like Sara and with children of his own.
Before they parted, Sara Abramovich knelt and embraced Sergei; little Leya gave him a hug too. Avrom and Benyomin shook his hand. “You are welcome here anytime,” said the father.
“I hope to see you again,” said the son.
Grandpa Heschel pulled on his winter coat and lifted his sack over his shoulder. Sergei looked up at Heschel and realized that this kind old man, after eating all his meals alone in an empty apartment, had also found comfort in this home. With a last wave, they turned and headed down the path into the forest.
The body can forget physical sensations. After feeling cold for hours or days, one can sit for a few minutes by a fire, and it’s as if the cold never existed. How diff e rent are the emotions, which leave traces in memory that come alive with each recollection. In the difficult days and years of his life that followed, Sergei’s memories of that family—of a fire on the hearth, the smell of fresh-baked bread in the stone oven, and Avrom and Leya, not cadets but regular children his age—would help sustain him.
Sergei had attended many masses in the school chapel when Father Georgiy spoke of a heavenly realm. But Sergei had never understood heaven—not until those two days with a family in that cabin in the woods.
Except for the crack and shush of a snow-laden branch breaking, and the rhythmic crunch of their feet in the snow, Sergei and Heschel descended in silence. Words would only intrude in the thoughts and feelings they each savored. Besides, they had to concentrate on each step; the path was more hazardous on the downward journey. When Sergei slipped once, and reached out to grasp his grandfather’s hand, Heschel said, “You’re a good boy, Socrates.”
“And you’re a good grandpa,” Sergei responded.
TOO SOON, IT SEEMED, the school came into sight. Sergei looked up at his grandfather’s face, now drawn and weary. A long journey awaited the old man, back to an empty apartment, inhabited only by memories. Sergei felt a sudden impulse to go with Grandpa Heschel to St. Petersburg, but he couldn’t find the courage to speak. It had been his f
ather’s will that he be raised at the military school. Besides, Sergei would not be permitted to leave.
They reached the edge of the school grounds, then drew near to the main gate.
They stood for a long time as the autumn sun passed overhead. Finally, Heschel spoke: “My little Socrates, no matter what the coming years may bring, even in the most difficult times, remember that you are not alone. The spirits of your parents—and your grandma Esther, and your grandpa Heschel—will always be by your side…”
Staring down at his feet, Sergei felt his shoulders sink with the full weight of their parting. He knew that he might not see his grandfather again.
Heschel bent down and straightened his grandson’s shirt and coat, then pulled him close. Sergei feared his grandfather was about to leave him then, but instead Heschel smiled and said, “I have something for you—a gift from your mother and father.” He reached inside his coat and held out a silver chain, from which dangled an oval locket. The boy blinked as its silvered surface caught a ray of light.
“The midwife gave it to me on the same day she gave you into our care,” Heschel told him. “This locket belonged to your mother. It was a gift to her from your father. The midwife told me that your mother wanted you to have it when you were old enough. You are old enough now.”
Heschel placed the locket and chain in Sergei’s open palm. It had touched his mother’s skin…and now it was his to keep.
“Open it.”
Sergei looked at his grandfather, uncomprehending.
“Here, I’ll show you—” Heschel opened the clasp, and inside Sergei saw a small photograph—the face of a woman with dark curly hair and skin like milk, and a man with high cheekbones, an intense gaze, and a dark beard.
“My…parents?”
His grandfather nodded. “I think it was her most precious possession, and now it is yours. I know you will keep it safe.”
“I will, Grandpa,” Sergei murmured, still in awe, unable to take his eyes from his parents’ faces.
“Quickly now, Socrates, listen carefully! There is something else—I couldn’t bring it with me—another gift, hidden in a meadow near St. Petersburg.” He reached again into his coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper and spread it out on his chest so that the boy could see it: a map that marked a spot by a tree in a meadow, bordered on three sides by forest, near the banks of a river. The map also had other markings.
“You remember the story I told you on the way to the cabin—the one about my favorite spot in the forest, the meadow on the banks of the Neva River where I learned to swim? Here it is, just north of St. Petersburg,” he said, tracing a line with his finger. “And here’s the city…and boat docks…and the Winter Palace. If you follow the river ten kilometers north of the palace, out of the city and into the forest, you will come to a clearing…”
He turned over the paper to reveal a more detailed drawing of the shoreline, a tree, and a small x. “This is where the box is buried, on the side of a tree opposite the river…the only large cedar tree standing alone near the center of the meadow. The tree was planted by my own grandfather when he was a boy. And there, in the box I buried between the two roots, you will find it.”
Grandpa folded the map and placed it in his hands. “Maps can be lost, or stolen, Socrates. “I want you to study it carefully, in private. Commit every line and every marking to memory. Then destroy the map. Will you do that?”
“I will, Grandpa.”
They walked to the gate. “Remember this gift. It has…great value, and will be waiting for you. When you find it, remember how much we love you—how much we all loved you…”
Sergei nodded, unable to speak. Heschel looked up into the sky and took a slow, deep breath—the kind he took when he had completed a new violin or clock and was pleased by what he saw. “That is good,” he said. “That is good.” He then lowered his gaze. “I want you to know, Socrates…to share this Shabbat with you—it has been one of the great joys of my life.”
With that, Heschel Rabinowitz turned and set out toward the hills, murmuring to himself, “Yes, Esther…yes, it will be all right now…” Sergei watched him grow smaller, until he faded from sight, out of Sergei’s life and into his memory.
.4.
WITH THE MAP TUCKED SAFELY AWAY, Sergei entered the gate.
Late for chapel, he ran through empty halls to his barrack and dropped his knapsack into his footlocker. As he turned to leave, Sergei noticed a traveling bag on the bunk next to him, vacated several weeks before. This bag might indicate a new arrival.
He quickly slipped the locket and map into a hole in his mattress—the safest hiding place he could find. Then he hurried down the hall toward the chapel. His half run slowed to a walk as he thought of his grandfather, stooped over now, hiking slowly up toward the main road.
Sergei made the sign of the cross and asked God to keep his grandfather safe and give him strength for his journey. It was the first time he remembered praying with all his heart, the way Father Georgiy had instructed. He’d never had a reason to do so before.
He hoped his prayer might be answered, even if Grandpa Heschel was a Jew.
As he opened the chapel door, a fleeting thought came to him: Who am I? A Jew? A Christian? A Cossack?
Sergei walked quickly down the aisle. Several boys stole glances at him, smiling either in friendly greeting or gloating that he would be punished for his lateness. He looked up at Father Georgiy, standing in his black robe before the raised altar and icons of Christ, Mary with child, and St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and St. George, the guardian of their school and patron saint of Russia. The sun cast rainbows of light through the stained-glass window.
A hymn had begun; Sergei found his place and joined in, but his mind drifted. Both Father Georgiy and his grandfather Heschel had spoken of a God he couldn’t see. To Sergei, God was a cabin in the forest, and heaven was a mother’s embrace…
“Grandpa,” he had asked on their return to the school, “what do the Jews say is the path to heaven?”
Heschel had smiled upon hearing this and said, “I do not speak for all Jews, nor am I wise enough to know this, Socrates. But I believe that one day you will blaze your own path…and find your own way.”
AS THE SERVICE ENDED, Sergei snapped out of his reverie and joined the orderly lines out of the chapel. That’s when he first encountered the new cadet—tall and unsmiling, three or four years his senior. They happened to walk side by side up the narrow aisle as they filed out of mass. There was room for only one person at a time to pass through the door, and Sergei was about to step aside and let the new boy go first when the taller cadet shouldered him aside so roughly that Sergei nearly fell into the pews.
This first act of dominance would define their relationship.
It turned out that the bag on the bunk between Sergei’s and Andrei’s did belong to the newcomer. His name was Dmitri Zakolyev. From that day on, Sergei would think of him only as Zakolyev, a name he came to fear and despise.
Rumor had it that a man had brought Zakolyev to the entrance, handed an envelope to the cadet at the gate, and said, “Here is payment,” and without another word or even a backward glance, the man had turned and left.
Being twelve years old, Zakolyev should have been assigned to a sleeping room on the next floor among the eleven-to fourteen-year olds. But they had a temporary shortage of beds upstairs—something about airing the mattresses because of lice. So for his first week the new cadet had to sleep in the “little boys’ barrack,” as he called it. He took his embarrassment out on everyone around him—especially on Sergei and Andrei, since their bunks were the closest.
In the following weeks Zakolyev elbowed his way to a certain status in the student hierarchy and earned a grudging respect from his peers—the kind one might give to a passing snake or bear.
Everything about Zakolyev seemed larger than life. He had huge hands, with knuckles scarred and calloused from punching trees or stones, and big ears, mostly covere
d by straw-colored hair that he left as long as he could get away with. Zakolyev hated the mandatory haircuts; he hated anything mandatory. His other features were fair enough, but they didn’t quite fit together. And he had a pasty complexion, as if the skin on his face never got enough blood.
What stood out most were Zakolyev’s eyes—flint gray and cold, deep-set above a prominent nose—eyes that made you shiver. His eyes never changed when this strange boy smiled, a frightening, mirthless grin that appeared when others might frown or cry, revealing Z a k o l y e v ’s crooked teeth. Anyone who stared at those teeth might lose some of his own. Nor did anyone stare at his birthmark—a red-white blotch on his neck, just beneath his left ear—another reason he hated the haircuts.
In a school where power meant respect, Zakolyev quickly established dominance over the younger cadets as well as most of his peers. He possessed a self-assurance that drew the admiration of some cadets who competed for Zakolyev’s approval, which he doled out in small portions so that it seemed rare and valuable. Disgusted by this fawning display of servility, Sergei did his best to stay out of Zakolyev’s way—a fact that did not escape the bully’s notice.
Zakolyev came to be feared not only for his brutality but also for his unpredictable nature. Quiet one moment, cruel the next, he might lash out for the least cause or for no reason at all. Once he befriended a smaller boy, defending him against several bullies; the next day he gave the boy a worse beating than the hapless cadet would have suffered at the hands of his previous assailants.
Zakolyev seemed to view everyone at the school—cadets and instructors alike—as either potential followers or obstacles, and each was treated accordingly. An acute observer of human nature, he was wary of all those in authority who were older, stronger, or more powerful. Those people he would deceive or manipulate; the rest he could coerce.
Sergei was never certain how he got on Zakolyev’s bad side. Maybe it was because he saw through Zakolyev’s ruses and refused to be intimidated. Still, he avoided confrontation, knowing the extent of the bully’s wrath if provoked. There were other bullies in the school—probably a third of the upperclassmen—but none as dangerous as Zakolyev.