Mimi and Estie Yazierska shuffled along with the other third-class passengers, carrying their worldly belongings in carpet bags. Mimi took in what she could of the New York skyline in the morning light: there wasn’t much to see. Beyond the harbour was a lovely park, she’d been told. But all she could see from her vantage point were hulking cranes standing guard like giant sentinels, blocking the rest of Manhattan from Battery Bay. But she knew that beyond them would be buildings that reached to the clouds and a giant clock that marked in the New Year and where she would find Anatoly waiting for her – every day at twelve noon – for as long as it took her to come to him.
This was the promise they had made to each other the day he left to join the army fighting against the Bolsheviks. He had told her to wait for him in Yalta for as long as she could, but if the war turned against the White Russians, and it looked as if her life might be in danger, she should buy a ticket to New York and meet him there. He had left her enough money to pay for a second-class ticket each for her and her sister.
She’d waited two long years. By the time the Red Russians took over Yalta in 1919, the money was worthless. The wealthy homes all around her were looted – if not by the Bolshevik soldiers then by the people of the town or the staff of the villas themselves. Most of them – like her – had not been paid for months. Mimi brought Estie from her home in the town after the people she was staying with packed up their belongings and left on the first boat they could get. Mimi found Estie eating what was left of the kitchen scraps.
Back at the villa, with the few servants who had not yet fled, they had enough food for a few weeks – but it wouldn’t go far. Half the city was already under Bolshevik control and – if the sound of shellfire and mortars was anything to go by – it wouldn’t be long until they too were overrun. But Mimi did not want to leave without Anatoly. Each day she woke thinking, Today he will come, but each night, spent huddled in the cellar with the door to the rest of the house barred, she fell asleep fearing he never would.
Some of the homes in the Black Sea resort were occupied by aristocrats in exile. Mimi had heard that only a few miles away from the Pushtov estate Empress Maria Federovna, Mother of Tsar Nicholas II, was holding up. Mimi knew a maid at the royal villa who told her the British were going to rescue them. They were going to send a warship to the harbour and they would all be saved.
But Anatoly still had not come. That night, as Estie slept beside her, she prayed to God: What must I do? Do I wait for him and perhaps die for him? Or do I save Estie and leave on the warship? She waited for an answer, but, like the time she prayed when her parents died – that the God of her ancestors would bring them back to her – there was no reply. Why, God, do you not speak? She resisted the urge to spit. Instead she wrapped her right hand around her left ring finger and felt the pearl press into her palm. She had waited long enough. Even if Anatoly was trying to get to her, he would not be able to get through the Bolshevik lines. In fact, she was risking his life by waiting here. Better she make her way to New York like they had agreed. And the first step was to go on the British warship.
The next day she woke early, packed as many of the valuable household goods as she could carry, and, with a still-drowsy Estie in tow, headed for the harbour. True enough, there was the British warship – the Marlborough – along with some smaller vessels flying the flags of other nations. Mimi recognized the French and Greek among them.
She joined the throng of people crammed onto the pier clutching the hands of children and the leads of pets. The royals, it seemed, were already on board, and Mimi spotted some of them strolling on the decks and watching their subjects below. A regal old lady in a fur coat and a large hat – possibly the empress – was speaking earnestly with the British captain, who was gesticulating to the crowd. Mimi could not hear what was said above the hullaballoo of the refugees but she could guess: “We cannot fit them on board, madam.”
“But you must, Captain; they will die here if we leave them.”
Or perhaps it was the other way round: “Let us leave immediately, sir. Before the Bolsheviks arrive.”
“But what about all these people, madam – what will become of them?”
Did the royals care about them at all as they, safe on the ark of rescue, looked down on them from their haven?
Mimi wasn’t sure, but more people were being crammed onto the boat and she, and the now fully awake but confused Estie, continued pushing forward.
“I’m hungry, Mimi. I want to go to the kitchen for breakfast.”
“There will be food on the boat,” said Mimi, hoping she was right.
Estie’s eyes widened in excitement. “Are we going on the boat? On the water?”
“We are,” said Mimi. “We are going to see Anatoly.”
“Toley!” shouted Estie, pushing forward with all her strength – to the aggravation of the other refugees waiting their turn.
Mimi tried to calm her, but it was too late. The girl pushed and shoved and, before Mimi knew it, was at the front of the crowd, launching herself at the British sailors, who tried to push her back.
The men, holding rifles across their chests, muscled her back. Estie tried to get around them, shouting “Toley, Toley!” but she could not get past. And then one of the officers on board shouted to the guards. They held up their weapons and pointed at the crowd. “We’re full!” they said, or that’s what Mimi thought they said with her newly acquired English. Mimi reached Estie and pulled her back.
“Toley’s not there, Estie.”
The younger girl, her hair pulled back under a blue scarf, looked at her sister wide-eyed. “No Toley?”
“No Toley,” said Mimi and took her sister’s hand. The sailors started pulling up the gangplank. The crowd surged forward. Some warning shots were fired into the air.
Mimi and the rest of the crowd scattered and then regrouped and tried their luck with the other vessels in the harbour.
By the time Mimi and Estie reached the front of the queue, the French ship too was full. But the Greek ship still had room. People were not so keen to go on the Greek ship. As it was only going to Athens, it would not take them that far. No one wanted to claim asylum in Greece, with the country decimated through war with Turkey. No, they all wanted to reach Western Europe – or even America – where it was truly safe. But Athens was better than Yalta, and, as far as Mimi could remember from the map in the Pushtov library, a little closer to New York.
Two years later, after making their way from port to port, bartering and selling, begging and pleading, Mimi and her sister were finally on the border of the Promised Land.
And so they walked across the gangplank onto the ferry that would take them to the third-class immigration station on Ellis Island. As happened with each new boat they boarded, Mimi had to assure Estie that “Toley” was not on board, but they were getting closer to him. Mimi found a seat for them on a wooden bench, beside a family of six who had started their journey in Sicily. The mother, holding a sleeping baby to her breast with one hand and trying to stop twin toddlers bickering with the other, looked exhausted. Mimi smiled at the woman. The woman nodded back, then, taking in Estie who was singing a song to herself, her eyebrows furrowed. She said something which Mimi did not understand. Then she pointed and twirled her finger at her temple in the universal gesture indicating madness.
Mimi bristled. Estie was not mad; she just had a young mind. The man at the port in England had said that as long as she paid extra money – a fine, he called it, for the feebleminded – they would be allowed into the United States. So Mimi had handed over the last of her money. She had seen the man on board the ship, so she knew he was here in New York. She had taken note of his name, so if there were any queries at the immigration station she would tell them that he had told her they could come.
Mimi looked over the rail of the ferry and saw the rich ladies and gentlemen climbing into motorcars and horse-drawn traps. She noticed the young blonde woman who had tried to help Estie on the first day. She had kind eyes, Mimi remembered. And there she was with her friends: the young dark-haired woman with the boyish haircut, the short man, the old lady in the wheelchair, and her silent companion. They were laughing and chattering as they watched their trunks being lashed to the back of a small cortege of yellow motorcars. A pang of jealousy shot through Mimi’s chest. Their journey was over; hers was not. She clutched her right hand around her left ring finger and felt the pearl press into her palm. Then, as the ferry pulled away from Battery Bay towards Ellis Island, she closed her eyes and conjured up an image of a smiling Anatoly, lying on the beach at Yalta, his clothes piled beside hers. I’m coming, my love, she whispered. Please wait for me.