The Little Russian by Susan Sherman Read Free Book Online Page B

dirt. She watched her reflection ripple in the shop windows and caught the women at the town pump giving her hard, envious looks. She closed her eyes and it felt like Moscow again, the same heady sense of entitlement, of being special and apart, of being up high where she couldn’t be reached.
    They drove out on the Cherkast road that led north to the wheat center of the same name. It was a wide ribbon of gravel bisecting the rolling fields of half-reaped wheat, the tawny shafts standing straight and tall in the sunlight, casting straight-edged shadows over the
stubble left behind by the scythe. Here and there were one-story houses built of logs and plaster, covered with thatched mansard roofs and surrounded by a variety of defeated outbuildings. The yards were typically littered with years of farm trash: broken-down carts, rusted-out tubs, bits and pieces of old scythes and sledge runners and stacks of moldy crates. There was always a dog or two in the yard that barked as they rode past.
    They turned in on one of the back roads, the droshky bouncing along the dusty track, the bells jingling on the harness, the springs squeaking like startled mice. It was one of those hypnotic days, warm and drowsy. There was a hectic surge of excitement inside Berta, an urge to let it all in: the sun, the smell of the black earth, the caress of muslin against her back. Her senses were alive and for the first time in a long while she felt the thrill of freedom—from the store, from the town, from the life she had fallen into since leaving Leontievsky Street.
    Hershel pulled into a rutted drive that led down to a farmstead just off the main road. “This shouldn’t take long,” he said, bringing the droshky to a stop in front of a threshing shed whose roof nearly sagged to the ground. He jumped down. “Want to come along?”
    She nodded and held out her arms so that he could help her down. Together they went up to the house, skirting rusting barrel hoops, a dung heap, beehives, and barking dogs the color of parched earth. At the door he stopped and waited. “Why don’t you just call out?” she asked.
    “It’s considered bad luck. We just have to wait for someone to come. But it won’t be long with this racket.”
    A moment later a woman with a baby on her hip appeared at the door and looked at them with suspicion. She wore a faded skirt and a gaudy head scarf and shooed the dogs away with a wave of her hand. Hershel tipped his hat and asked in Surzhyk for the whereabouts of the bol’shak . The baby began to fuss so she stuck a finger in its mouth while she nodded over to one of the larger outbuildings.
    They found the bol’shak and his sons repairing harnesses in the barn, a rambling structure with stalls on one side, battered work benches on the other, and a hayloft in the back. The boys had the same light hair, flat wide face, rounded nose, and suspicious mouth of their father.

    At first Hershel and Berta stood at the barn door, aware that they hadn’t been invited in. Hershel wished them a good day and said he’d come to buy their wheat. He was speaking Surzhyk like a muzhik and this seemed to lessen the tension. They knew he was a Jew, but a Jew who had taken the time to learn their language. Berta may have been reading into it, but it seemed to her that he had gained some respect for his efforts, especially with the bol’shak , who motioned them in.
    Berta could barely speak the language, a mishmash of Russian and Ukrainian, but she had picked up enough working in the store to get the gist of what was being discussed. Hershel was saying something about a cow and their neighbor, possibly calling into question their neighbor’s skill at husbandry, and this they found uproariously funny. They talked about beehives. Hershel complimented the bol’shak on the hives they had seen on the drive. The old man took it in stride. After that she lost the thread of the conversation until the bol’shak invited them into his home for