It was some time after David had left with his horse and wagon but still early in the morning when Eve set out on foot to call on the Countess Makowski. It was at least an hour’s walk, and the road leading to the Squire’s manor was still half-frozen and muddy. As she walked along, Eve passed the Squire’s fields, which stood apparently forsaken, desolate and dormant in the cold morning light. Here and there, she could see a peasant stumbling along, a lone black figure swathed in rags from head to foot. It seemed impossible to believe that in only two to three weeks the land would be dotted with peasants—bustling about, planting, even singing as they sowed. Russians loved to sing.
Eve had never seen the Count or his Countess but she had heard that he was elderly and liked to dress in the uniform of his former regiment, and that she was much younger than her husband, pretty and forever making pilgrimages to St. Petersburg. In St. Petersburg, life itself was a party—teas, socials, dinners and grand balls. But this was of no consequence to Eve; she only cared that the lady would be currently in residence at her manor house and would grant Eve an audience, and then give her an order for at least two dresses.
Actually, Eve wasn’t completely without a sense of trepidation. Any Jew would be stupid to suffer no apprehensions at all over seeking out a member of the nobility.
As she plodded along, trying to avoid both the deeper ruts and the remaining drifts of icy snow, at the same time struggling to keep her skirts out of the mud, Eve passed that juncture in the road which led to the towering hillside where at its pinnacle stood the old fort overlooking the territory it guarded. She glanced up at the gloomy structure, then quickly looked away and hurried by. It was hard for her not to equate the more oppressive aspects of Russian life with the huge, bleak edifice. Each time she viewed the fort, even from a distance, she was filled with a dark, vague fear.
When she was a couple of hundred feet past the juncture she heard an enormous clatter and clanking and the hoofbeats of horses. Turning to look, she saw a large wagon pulled by four horses, careening wildly as it made a sharp turn to the right, then beginning its steep ascent up the hill. The horses seemed to be having difficulty making the climb, while the wagon, piled high with sacks, crates and boxes, appeared as if it might fall apart at any moment. She realized that this must be the wagon that made the monthly delivery of supplies to the Cossacks manning the fort.
She continued on her way, not really interested in whether the horses would successfully complete their climb, or if the wagon would even stay in one piece. She still had quite a way to go and she was trying to figure out what she could charge the Countess if all went well and she did get an order.
Off the main road to her left was a secondary road barely wide enough to accommodate a wagon, which led to the manor house, still some distance away. Eve passed barns and stables, carriage houses and chicken coops, storage sheds of different sizes and ice cellars, arbors and bowers, and a fenced-in riding circle. It was almost a village of its own. Here, peasants appeared to be working although what precisely they were doing in all the snow and mud, Eve couldn’t determine.
Finally she reached the stone mansion and taking a deep breath to give herself courage, wielded the huge knocker. After several minutes, a woman dressed in black with a white apron and a ring of keys hanging from a cord around her waist opened the door. She looked Eve up and down and decided that she was a lady. Then she looked around Eve to see what kind of carriage she had come in. Seeing none, she determined that Eve had come on foot and was no lady after all. Her manner immediately grew brusque. She demanded to know what it was Eve wanted.
Eve explained and the woman, disgusted, waved her away. “Go . . . We already have girls that sew . . .”
“I just don’t sew or mend. I’m a dressmaker.”
“We don’t need dressmakers. The Countess has dressmakers in St. Petersburg, in Paris. Go!” And she began to close the door on Eve.
“No! Wait! Please . . . Tell the Countess that I make special dresses. Maternity dresses.”
The woman considered whether or not to bother the Countess, twisting her face disagreeably at the same time. “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll tell her. You wait here—” Then as if suddenly realizing that Eve was at the front door instead of the back, she scolded: “What idiot comes to the Squire’s front door? Only ladies and gentlemen come to the front door!” She shook her head in anger at this infraction. “Even a peasant knows enough to go around to the back.”
Eve waited for more than two hours in a long, unheated hall until she was bidden by the woman in black to a wooden flight of backstairs not illuminated by lamp, candle or window. Then suddenly she was in an upstairs hallway so brilliantly splendid it easily put the house of Dr. Golov to shame. Eve didn’t know where to look first. The walls were painted a delicate silvery green and there was furniture that Eve instantly recognized as in the style of Louis XV although she had never seen anything resembling it outside of books. Oh, how these Russian aristocrats admired those things French, she thought, as her gaze focused on a bombé vernis Martin commode and then a gold and plum damask marquise. She would have loved to stop to examine everything in detail but the woman hustled her along the hallway until they came to a sitting room, small but exquisitely furnished, where a blond woman in a flowing boudoir gown sat at a writing table.
Both the servitor and Eve waited patiently until the Countess deigned to look up and take notice of them. “You may go, Truska.” The woman left and Eve said, “What a charming room, Madame! What a beautiful canapé à corbeille! And what a magnificent screen!” She ran over further to examine the panels which were decorated in a seascape. “Italian, isn’t it?”
The Countess smiled icily, suspiciously. “Perhaps. I always assumed it to be French. And how do you know about such things? Are you traveled?”
“No. I’ve just read about faraway places.”
“I see. What’s your name?”
“Forgive me for not having introduced myself. I’m Eve Markoff, my lady.”
“Then you’re Jewish?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“And yet you can speak French and differentiate between Italian and French art and you’re not even from a large city. How is that?”
“I have a knack for languages and I’ve always read and studied . . . whatever books I could lay my hands on. And I have a good memory, my lady. I always remember what I’ve read.”
The Countess frowned and Eve’s heart sank.
I’ve done it again! Showing off, trying to make myself stand out. While I might have aroused her interest, I’ve also made her dislike me. And probably distrust me. I know they don’t trust Jews who are too bright. Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut and let my dressmaking speak for itself?
“And you’re a seamstress?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Truska said you make maternity dresses. What exactly is a maternity dress?”
“I’m wearing one.”
“You’re pregnant?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“I couldn’t tell. You can’t be very much along. Well, come over here and let me take a look at your dress.”
The Countess’s eyes lit up when she examined the drawstring waist and the way the bodice fitted ingeniously over it with a peplum that hid the excessive fullness. Her manner changed immediately from distantly cold to friendly. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m not far along myself but I’ve been wearing nothing but peignoirs for weeks already. And still I look like a house.”
Eve demurred but the Countess’s laugh tinkled out. “No, don’t deny it. It’s true. To tell the truth, I don’t think the Count even likes to look at me in this condition. But now you’ll make me a dress . . . two, one for day and one for evening. And if they come out well, we’ll talk about additional ones. Come—”
The Countess took Eve into her boudoir where Eve took her measurements. Then she followed the Countess into a storage room, its walls lined with shelves that held more fabrics of more colors than Eve had ever seen in a market stall. Linens and silks and satins and fine wools . . . a yellow brocade, a spring green taffeta, a mauve sateen, a fawn gray velvet, a burnt-orange bombazine, serges and broadcloths . . . Then there were the boxes of decorative trimmings—beads and feathers and fringes, maribou, spangles and paillettes of all sizes and colors, seed pearls and flowers fashioned of silk. And the laces! Mignonette and Alençon and Chantilly, Venetian point and Valenciennes . . .
“I usually go to Paris once a year and order dresses and coats, even fur coats for which, of course, I bring the pelts with me. But in addition, I always buy bolts of cloth and boxes of trimmings since one never knows when one won’t be able to travel to Paris. The Count’s such a worrier. At the least sign of anything he won’t let me go. He says that one never knows when war will break out and I suppose that’s true enough. This year I didn’t go to France because of my pregnancy but last year I did. The year before I didn’t because I was pregnant then too. This is my third child. I have a little girl of two and a boy four. I wanted to go to Paris this year even with my pregnancy. To tell the truth I was desperate to go; it’s so dull here, one can go out of one’s mind. But the Count wouldn’t hear of it. We did go to St. Petersburg just before I became pregnant. We usually go to St. Petersburg twice a year. I’m related, you know, to His Imperial Highness on his mother’s side . . .” Then her voice trailed off as if she suddenly remembered to whom she was talking and realized that it wasn’t appropriate.
They discussed at length which of the fabrics should be used for the day dress and which for the evening. Finally it was decided that Eve would begin with the day dress and would use a rose-colored watered silk. The Countess called the color “terra rosa.” Then, when Eve returned for the fitting, they’d decide on the fabric for the evening dress. Perhaps white, the Countess thought, although white did make one look larger, didn’t Eve think? And since one was already large enough with child, one didn’t need to look larger still. Didn’t Eve agree? Perhaps the evening dress should be blue? Pale blue satin . . . Or did Eve think taffeta?
The Countess asked if Eve’s child would be her first. “It must be—you’re so young. So young and so clever to have thought of this expandable waistline. But my husband says that all of you Jews are clever. He says that the Germans don’t even mind the Jews because they’re so clever. Especially with money. The Rothschilds, you know. In Germany the Jews are even allowed to put a von before their names. I met the Rothschilds in Paris. The French branch of the family. Such style! You’d hardly know they’re Jewish . . .”
“I understand they’re true adherents,” Eve murmured, not wanting to say too much. The Countess looked surprised. “Is that true? Well, that’s all to the good, isn’t it? Better than being heathens, I would think . . .”
The fabric for the dress was wrapped into a neat parcel and Eve set off for home. When she again approached the site of the fort, a thought occurred to her. If the ascent of the wagon up the hillside was so difficult—she herself had seen the contents of the wagon being tossed from side to side—it stood to reason that sometimes things must fall off the wagon, unnoticed by the driver . . .
She considered whether it was worth crossing the road and taking a look. It was getting late. She had to start dinner for David and she wanted to clean the mud stains from her coat and dress before they set and became almost impossible to remove. Well, she decided, it was worth a quick look.
She crossed the road, walked in the course the wagon had taken, her eyes searching the ground. Yes, she was right! There were some potatoes that had rolled into the deep ditch at the side of the road. A sack must have broken. Much as she disliked picking up the now filthy vegetables and putting them in her clean marketing bag, it would be foolish not to. Pride and poverty didn’t mix and the former had to make way for the latter.
She started up the fires—one in the hearth, one in the stove. Then she removed her coat and dress and using a small stiff brush and a bowl of cleaning solution she mixed, she stood in her chemise and petticoat and worked away at the stains. Suddenly her door flew open. She heard it rather than saw it since her back was to the door.
David, home sooner than she expected!
“Darling, I have wonderful news! I saw the —” She turned. It wasn’t David but Chaim! He was grinning at her wickedly, his bulk seemingly filling the room! He was grinning at her with big white teeth but his eyes weren’t smiling at all . . .
She couldn’t find her voice. She was terrified even though it hurt her to admit that to herself. Finally she managed to say, “How dare you enter my house without knocking?” Even as she spoke she was painfully aware of how inadequate her words sounded. “What do you want?”
He advanced a step or two closer.
“You’re not welcome here! Get out!”
At that he laughed raucously. “So you thought you’d make trouble for me! You and my milksop of a son!”
“Don’t you dare speak of David like that!”
He spat. “Phooey. A mama’s boy and you’re the mama . . .” he growled contemptuously. “You’re the troublemaker. You’re the one who’s trying to set my sons against me! You’re the bitch! A whore! A stinking bitch of a whore!”
He advanced another step, menacingly closer.
“I want you out of my house!” She tried to speak calmly, coldly, the better to sound strong. It was important with an animal like Chaim not to let him smell the stench of her fear.
“I made a mistake letting David marry you in the first place. I should have seen what a bitch of a whore you were with all your fucking airs, your dresses, your hair!”
She sneered. “Oh, but it was you who made sure I kept my hair, wasn’t it? And why? Because you’ve had your disgusting eye on me—”
Oh, dear God, a mistake! She knew it as the words left her mouth. The smile left his face and he took another step toward her. Dropping her dress and the brush she was cleaning it with, she backed away, into a corner. A tactical error. Oh, God, another mistake!
“Bitch! You flaunted yourself, didn’t you? Like any bitch in heat! The trouble with you is that David’s not man enough to keep you in your place. What you need is a real man to teach you, to fuck you, to show you what a woman like you is meant for! Just to be fucked like the cow you are. To give birth to sons to suck those bulging tits! That’s what you’re good for—”
His eyes ran over her, taking in the swell of her breasts emerging from the ruffled camisole, her white shoulders. He reeked of alcohol; he wasn’t only full of rage but vodka too!
He reached out a red paw and grabbed her camisole tearing it to the waist, exposing her breasts. She tried to cover herself without even thinking, crisscrossing her arms over her chest. She had never felt such terror but at the same time she was outraged! “You’ll pay for this!” She didn’t even know what she was saying.
She tried to move out of the corner, to get something to cover her nakedness, but he quickly blocked her. She realized that he wouldn’t leave until he had released some of the violence within him. Perhaps if he struck her, beat her, it would satisfy some of that rage so that he would spare her body a more lascivious attack. Perhaps she could even make that choice for him. “You wouldn’t dare touch me, you disgusting drunk! You wouldn’t dare strike me!” she taunted.
“You still don’t have the sense to keep that bitch’s mouth of yours shut!” With that, he hit her across the cheek with the flat of his hand and her head rocked with the blow. Would that satisfy him? she wondered. No, it wasn’t enough. She forced herself to grin at him with derision and he hit her again, this time with the back of his hand. For a moment, she was more giddy than pained, then strangely numb and light-headed, as if she were going to lose consciousness.
“Who were you expecting, slut? Standing around in your underwear . . . A Cossack from the fort?”
Then she thought, David! She had to get Chaim out of the house before David came home! If David came home and found the two of them like this . . . her face bruised and welted, her breasts spilling from her torn chemise, there’d be the most brutal kind of fight and who knew how it would end? Who would end up dead?
She wondered how many blows it would take before Chaim left or killed her.
“Answer me, you piece of shit, you piece of a whore’s miscarriage! Who were you waiting for in your slut’s underwear?”
Maybe she’d try not answering him. Not looking at him. Maybe he’d get tired of calling her names and leave?
Dear God! He was unbuttoning his trousers. Oh God! How stupid of her to think that hitting her would be enough for him, would satisfy him. Ravishing her was what was on his depraved mind; nothing else would suffice.
Tears of anger at her own impotence rolled down her cheeks. She was boxed into the corner; she couldn’t even get to the knives. There was nothing she could do to stop him! She could struggle and she would. She could scream, but what of it? Neither her screaming nor her struggling would help. She was powerless against him . . .
His phallus was out of his trousers now, red and turgid. She would faint, she thought. She would retch! “David will be home at any minute,” she cried out. “He’ll come home and kill you!”
Chaim laughed in her face. “That weakling! That mewling, gutless, marrowless, gelded son-of-a-bitch! Don’t make me puke! With one finger I’ll lay him out!”
For those words alone she wanted to kill him! “David’s a thousand times the man you are!” She spat in his face.
Taken by surprise, Chaim fell back and she dashed out of the corner, across the room to the table where a paring knife lay. But as her hand found it, he was on her again, twisting her wrist until the knife fell, and he was laughing once more. “When I’m through with you, fancy lady, you’ll be begging for more. You’ll see what a real man is.”
What she saw was that it was all over for her. He’d take her and she’d never be able to tell anyone about it. Especially David. David would set out to kill his father and it was more than likely Chaim would kill him instead—not because David was weak or gutless but because Chaim was a savage animal with more hate and viciousness in him.
Chaim had her bent back on the table, taking his time, increasing his pleasure by toying with her, bruising her breast with meaty, harsh fingers.
What was more terrible, she realized, was that she would be, bound by her enforced silence, completely at Chaim’s mercy . . . forever. He would be back again and again, to take her whenever he wished, enjoying her ineffectual thrashing, her meaningless protests, relishing his mastery over her. Unless she killed him before the next time.
He was all over her now, his weight crushing her hard against the table. And she was so weak! Oh God damn her, she was so weak! His hand was under her petticoat and she kicked out at him but the harder she fought the more pleasure she saw in his face.
He lowered his face to hers, his beard covering her face, his red lips seeking hers. She screwed her face away in an attempt to evade them but they went instead to her neck, her throat, her heaving breasts. Yes, she fought back, and she would curse him as he penetrated her and she’d fight him with all her available but inadequate strength even as he pumped and poked and violated, taking sadistic joy in her curses, her squirmings, her strugglings and grapplings. But in the end she’d still be his—marked, dirty, soiled—indelibly despoiled. And he would be back. She would have to be ready the next time, waiting, ready to kill him!
But he was removing his body from hers, pulling her up from her bent-back position on the table. “This way is too easy for you. I want you on your knees, you stinking slut!”
He grabbed her by the hair, forced her down to her knees until her face was at a level with his swollen male organ. Oh God, she wouldn’t!
She wrenched her head back. She cried, “The townspeople! The Rabbi! When I tell them what you’ve done you’ll be stoned, driven from town!”
He laughed like a deranged creature. “They won’t believe you! They’d sooner believe you’re a whore! They won’t dare believe you because they know I’ll kill the man who believes you!”
With that he threw her kneeling body to the floor where she flopped like a limp doll. He pulled her petticoat up and her underdrawers down and threw himself on top of her. Physically unable to move any more, she searched for other words that would stop him. “The Squire will believe me!”
“Squire? What makes you think the Squire will care about what happens to a Jewish whore?”
“He’ll care! I was there today. They like me—the Count and the Countess . . . They’ll be delighted to believe me and they’re not afraid of you, are they? They have the Cossacks to take care of you! The gentiles aren’t afraid of you. They’ll love nothing better than having a Jewish rapist to serve up to their people as an example of the Jew’s immorality. You’ll be the official scapegoat to offer up for Easter—a Jewish father who rapes his son’s wife, a Jewish devil capable of anything, even raping, fornicating with their own wives and daughters. They’ll torture you and send you to Siberia.”
As she started to run down, to run out of words there was noise in the street—a kind of noise she didn’t recognize, had never heard. But Chaim did! Suddenly, in front of her eyes she saw fear in his face. She saw his penis grow as flabby and as limp as if he’d been thrown into the icy river. She managed to wriggle out from under him now that he was immobile. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the window. She saw a mob of peasants running through the street, armed with rocks and sticks and clubs and pitchforks, rakes and whips—old men and young men, even little boys, even a few old crones—twenty of them or maybe thirty. My God! What was happening? Then she knew! She had never seen this kind of demonstration before but she had heard of them, mostly in whispers because it was nothing one wanted to talk about too loud. Talking about it made it too real, too vivid, almost as if it were happening all over again. It was not exactly a pogrom with Cossacks or soldiers. Rather, it was a minor pogrom. Not organized, not official, but instigated by the authorities—a lesson, a warning. It was a party for the peasant who too needed an outlet for his pent-up rage, his need for violence, not unlike Chaim himself.
She saw a little boy struck down with a club, old Nahum Pinsky struck repeatedly with a stick until he fell. An old woman, lying in the road, was kicked in the head. They were running past her house now and the rocks came flying. One broke the window and hit her in the chest before it fell to the floor.
“Get down!” Chaim cried. “Away from the window! In a few minutes they’ll pass. They attack only what’s in their path!” Chaim shouted at her. But she ignored him. She didn’t even look at him. She’d never fear him again. The oppressor had been vanquished by an oppressor stronger than he, even more terrible.
She saw that she was bleeding where the rock had hit her. She wiped at the blood with her hand. Still not looking at Chaim, she went to her bedroom to wait for the mob to pass. She sat on the floor just praying. Praying that no one would die, that no house would be put to the torch. When it was quiet she redressed herself and went back into the kitchen. Chaim was gone. She knew he wouldn’t be back. He’d never be back.
She opened the door to the street. She saw two men trying to extinguish the flames from a barn; Nahum Pinsky’s wife sitting in the mud with her husband’s head in her lap, crying; the small boy who had been attacked with the club being carried away. Now there were other bodies lying in the road, some quiet, some wailing, some just bleeding. The demonstration that had not been quite a pogrom was over and she went into the street to see what had to be done.