favorite.
Eliza clapped to the music and called out to me across the aisle, high color in her cheeks. “I have no idea what it means, but I feel so Russian.”
The Arak soothed my sore throat and we all sang. How it raised my spirits to hear everyone sing as one.
All at once the tram slowed.
In the glow of the headlights we could see a group of ten or so roughly dressed men blocking the way.
“Bandits,” I said, trying to keep the tremor from my voice.
The driver rang his jangly little bell, operated by a pedal at his foot, to warn the men, but they stood fast.
“God help us,” the driver said under his breath as he braked.
Eliza sat up straighter. “Button your coat, Sofya.”
Of course. Mother’s necklace. With trembling fingers, I pulled my coat up.
The music ended abruptly as we ground to a stop and the men surrounded the tram, peering in the wide windows.
A stout fellow wearing a wool fisherman’s cap pounded on the driver’s glass door. “Open up!” he called in Russian.
The driver brandished his radio. “I’ve called the police.”
The stout fellow laughed. All at once the glass door fell to pieces and he scrambled onto the tram, hammer in one hand, a jagged-edged knife in the other. He slipped the hammer into his jacket pocket and removed his cap to reveal a smooth, bald pate that shone in the electric lights overhead, a ring of tangled, mouse-brown hair around it like a furry halo.
He walked down the tram shoving his hat at the riders. “Contributions to my university fund. Don’t be shy.” Passengers eyed his knife as they removed earrings and bracelets and pocket watches and placed them with a muffled clink into the hat.
The bandit kicked Count von Orloff’s pointy-toed boot and the count retracted into his thick coat like a snail in its shell. People of good breeding, we awaited our fate in silence.
He moved on to the conductor and with the tip of his knife raised the flap of the leather bag. “Open that up, good fellow.”
“I have nothing yet. This is the first run.”
“I know you have change. It’s not your money. Just give it up and we’ll part friends.”
The conductor handed the bandit a stack of bills.
“And the sterling.”
The conductor reached into his bag and handed him the coins. “There was a time when people acted properly.”
The bandit added the money to his hat. “I’ll act as I want.”
He walked back to the front of the tram, stopped and considered me, his stance wide, head tipped to one side. Up close, it was hard not to notice one side of his face had been burned somehow, as if a pointed iron seared the flesh there and it healed ham-pink and shiny. I tried not to look at the dirty fish knife in his hand.
“Well, well,” he said. He opened the collar of my coat with the tip of the knife, so close to my face I could smell the metal of it.
My whole body shook. Could he see?
“I do like emeralds,” he said with a smile.
One look at his teeth, black with decay, caused me to avert my gaze.
He ran the tip of his knife under the heavy platinum, the blade cool against my skin.
“I dug them when I was in prison. So, I guess these belong to me, don’t you agree?”
He dumped his stolen goods into his jacket pocket, replaced his cap, and took my hand in his, surprisingly warm and smooth. “Let’s go, madame. This is your stop.”
I tried to pull free, but he yanked me from my seat.
Behind him, Eliza stood and grabbed his arm. “Let her go.”
The bandit turned, lashed out with his knife and the whole car cried out with terror at what he did to my dear friend.
CHAPTER
3
Varinka
1914
“Boil, damn you!” I shouted at the samovar, stuffing more pinecones down its tin chimney. Right away I was sorry for yelling at the poor water boiler, the last thing we had of Papa’s. It stood on the table next to the giant white oven Papa had forged and I ran one hand down the warm, copper side of the cauldron, our one precious thing. Yelling at it was like ranting at poor, dead Papa. Would I wake Mamka?
Mamka. She slept upon the bench, which ran the length of our one room izba, on her back, mouth agape, still and gray-faced as a cadaver. I stepped to her in the darkness, smoothed her dark hair back off her forehead.