Rachel's Hope (13 page)

The Tiumen forwarding prison, a three-story, white stucco building with a red roof, stood behind a gate. The women's prison faced it on the opposite side of the road. The whitewashed brick wall surrounding the men's prison rose about fifteen feet, and had a sentry box with an armed guard at every corner. In front of the gate, peasants sold rye bread, boiled eggs, milk, and fish pies to the exiles. Sergei reached into the coarse, gray bag he'd been issued for some money provided by the government for exiles, and bought a boiled egg. It slid down his throat as easily as water; he could have eaten a dozen but he had to conserve his meager funds.

A sentry in a green double-breasted tunic appeared, wielding a saber and a revolver. He opened the gate and ordered the prisoners to have their identification papers ready. Another guard directed the men into four lines once they were in the yard. Sergei and Cyril ended up in separate lines beside one another.

“Papers,” said the sentry when Sergei reached the front of his line. The sentry held out his hand.

Sergei gave him the documents that stated his false name, age, residence, what he'd been arrested for, and the term of his sentence. The sentry reviewed the information, his lips moving as he scanned the documents, and told Sergei to report to the main barracks.

“There?” Sergei pointed at a large, stuccoed building. The sentry nodded and gestured for him to move on.

A dank corridor greeted Sergei when he opened the door. On each side, heavy wood doors opened to kameras, cells that were already filling up with prisoners. Down the center of each cell ran the sleeping bench, a wood platform wide enough for two rows of men, about two feet off the floor. All benches were full, leaving the remaining prisoners, including Sergei, with just the cold, damp mud floor to sleep on. The only other item in the room was a wooden tub for excrement. Small, filthy windows were covered with iron grates. Spying an unclaimed corner, Sergei sank down on the ground and curled into a ball. He pressed his eyes shut and attempted to imagine himself back in his warm, soft bed in Kishinev. But the ground was hard, and the moisture seeped through his clothes to his skin. He shivered the entire night, drifting in and out of an unpleasant sleep.

14

R
ain pelted down sideways as Sergei marched with five hundred other exiles to the steamer landing. His head and feet grew heavy as he trudged through the slimy mud. They were going on the convict barge to Tomsk, where they would be kept in another forwarding prison before the long exile march to eastern Siberia.

The barge had a black hull and was more than two hundred feet long. Two yellow compartments covered a large portion of the upper deck. Between these lay a cage with a roof for the exiles. Divided into two sections, the smaller one was for women and children and the larger for men.

Just like the Tiumen forwarding prison, the barge had obviously been designed to hold about half of the people it would actually carry. Exiles were surrounded by soldiers in heavy overcoats and woollen winter caps made of lamb's fleece. Once the last exile had boarded, gates slid shut, separating the people on the barge from the people on the bridge. A priest stepped forward and began to chant a prayer. Most of the exiles crossed themselves, kneeled, and pressed their foreheads to the deck.

A steamer began to pull the barge as the sun rose. Sergei clutched the gate with both hands and watched Tiumen get smaller and smaller as the barge began its long voyage down the Irtish River.

With hardly any standing room on the deck, the prisoners quickly moved into sleeping cabins, one for women and children and three for men. These were much like the kameras at the prison, with sleeping platforms down the middle, but on the barge they would lie in four rows, not two.

Sergei sniffed and detected the faint scent of disinfectant. This freshness soon disappeared as the cabins became overloaded with exiles. Sergei and Cyril returned to the cage on the deck for air, but they could hardly find a few inches of empty space.

“The farther we go, the worse it gets,” Sergei said. “I can't wait to see what's next.”

Cyril gave him a half-smile. “We'll be going to Semipalatinsk, which many exiles call the devil's sandbox.”

“That sounds promising.”

“Believe it or not, things will actually improve once we arrive in Chita.”

Sergei looked at him skeptically.

“No, really. Once we are there, we're not confined. We don't have to wear these damn leg fetters and we can do as we please, as long as we check in with the police regularly.”

“Why don't more people escape, if there are so few restrictions?” asked Sergei.

“Because they're in the middle of nowhere, without enough money or food to make it through the harsh conditions. Think of Siberia as a vast prison.”

A bunch of field sparrows flew overhead, their wings flapping in the breeze. Sergei tilted his head back and envied their freedom to roam the sky, to stop when they wanted to rest, and to forage for food when they were hungry.

I think I'd rather be free and hungry
, he thought,
than a prisoner with a half-f stomach.

⚓ ⚓ ⚓

Tomsk, the second-largest city in Siberia, sat partially on a bluff and partially on low land that bordered the Tom River. The convoy of exiles walked along the unpaved streets through the market square, passing churches, schools, a library, a synagogue, and a mosque.

Log walls enclosed the prison. The place felt much more primitive than Tiumen, and more vulnerable, set on open land with nothing else in sight. Within the walls, stood eight one-story log buildings with board roofs. Armed sentries guarded every door. Each of these buildings had been divided into two kameras with two double rows of sleeping benches on mud-covered floors. Half of the exiles in each cell found themselves sleeping on the mucky ground.

Sergei ended up beside Cyril, under the benches with his nose on the floor. Though exhausted from the walk, Sergei couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned all night, his shoulder blades scraping the ground whenever he changed positions. His teeth chattered from the cold.

From the nearby family kamera, came the heart-wrenching sound of babies crying and mothers' despondent voices trying to calm them.

“Where are you going?” yelled a guard.

Sergei propped himself up on his elbows listening to the shouting outside.

“To the bathhouse,” came a woman's feeble reply. “My baby is freezing. It is warmer in there.”

“Just one night,” said the guard. “Tomorrow you will sleep in your kamera.”

“Thank you, thank you,” said the mother.

If I had a wife and child, I would forbid them from coming with me into exile,
vowed Sergei.
This is no way for them to live.
He thought of Rachel and was relieved that she would never know how far he'd fallen. He remembered their moonlit walks, when the stars overhead seemed to shine just for them. He drifted off to sleep, dreaming that he held her hand.

Tormented wails woke Sergei abruptly. For a second, he thought he was back in Kishinev with Rachel. Then he smelled the filth. The cries came from outside.

“My baby! My baby!”

It was the voice of the woman who had asked the guard if she could sleep in the bathhouse.

With the leg fetters still around his feet, Sergei scrambled over Cyril and the other exiles sprawled on the ground. When he opened the door of his cell, a pitiful sight met him. A stick of a woman held a lifeless baby girl in her arms. The infant, an awful shade of bluish-gray, looked as stiff as a board.

“I'm sorry,
matushka
, little mother,” said the prison warden in an effort to console the distraught woman. “The bathhouse was too hot and damp for a baby.”

The baby's father, tall with a blond beard, arrived, and fell to the ground when he recognized his child.

Sergei glared at the warden. “This death is on you. I heard this baby and her mother crying because of the cold. But instead of offering warm blankets, the guard allowed them to sleep in the bathhouse.”

Powerful arms gripped Sergei and yanked him away.

“You can't speak to the warden like that,” said the guard holding Sergei.

“Maybe after a little time in solitary you'll think twice before criticizing him again,” snarled his partner.

They opened the door of a small log building in the farthest corner of the yard, and threw Sergei in. They bolted the door shut and Sergei found himself alone in the dark. No light, no ventilation, and no benches.

I can't do this
, thought Sergei. He pressed his hands against the walls, feeling for a weak spot, a place where he could break through. Nothing.
How could anyone last a day or two in here? They've locked me in here to die.

He paced back and forth, ten steps from side to side.
I could bang my head against the wall. I could end my life right now.
Images of his sister and mother passed before his eyes. He remembered how he'd vowed to take care of them and rammed his shoulders against the wall. “Good job,” he said out loud to himself. “You're really looking out for your family.” He rubbed his aching shoulder and remembered how Rachel had survived the Kishinev massacre. She, her mother, and sister, had spent the night in a foul-smelling outhouse, hearing the unbearable sounds of people they knew and loved, being tortured and killed.

Sergei straightened his shoulders.
If Rachel could survive that night, I can survive this. And I don't want my mother to carry the burden of my death. Besides, I want the guards to see that they can't break me, that I'm stronger than they are.

⚓ ⚓ ⚓

Two days later, the door creaked open. Sergei, who had slipped in and out of consciousness since being locked in, held his hands over his eyes to block the light.

“Are you ready to come out and keep your mouth shut?” said a gruff voice.

Sergei opened his mouth to respond, but couldn't make a sound. He hadn't had food or water for two days.

“Did you hear me?”

Sergei nodded and tried to speak again. Still no sound.

“Idiot,” grumbled the voice. The door began to shut.

“No, please,” whispered Sergei.

But the door closed tight.

One thousand and eight, one thousand and nine…
. Sergei counted in his head to stay awake and alert, and to keep gloomy thoughts from taking over his mind. He'd also told himself stories, favorites from his childhood, to keep from giving up. But he quickly tired of counting and couldn't remember any more stories.

He sucked out the saliva from his tongue to moisten his throat and practiced speaking. “Yes,” he said faintly, rehearsing his answer for the day when the door would open again.

One thousand and eleven, one thousand and…Sergei toppled over to one side. Just a little sleep, he told himself. I will be much stronger after I get some rest.

The door opened slowly, but no light appeared.

“Sergei.”

A familiar voice entered Sergei's consciousness.

“Sergei!”

The voice sounded louder and more persistent.

Sergei opened his eyes. “Cyril?” he croaked.

“I'm here with the guard to let you out.”

Slumped over with his back against the wall, Sergei tried to lift his head but failed. He tried to stand but could not.

Cyril grabbed him under the arms and dragged him outside. The guard spat on the ground and walked away.

“I can't believe they kept you in here for three days,” said Cyril.

Sergei's mouth hung open and his lips were cracked and dry.

“Drink this.” Cyril supported his friend's head and poured water down his throat.

Sergei gagged. The cold air created goose bumps on his skin.

“How did you get me out?” he asked Cyril.

“I gave the guard some cigarettes.”

“But you don't smoke.”

“I traded with another prisoner.”

“What did you give him?”

“Vodka. I stole it from the guards.”

Sergei began to laugh, which hurt his gut. He clutched his stomach.

“I couldn't let them kill you.”

“I'm just grateful the guard considers me as worthless as a few cigarettes,” said Sergei.

PART THREE

Spring 1906

EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE: SAN FRANCISCO IN RUINS

Death and destruction have been the fate of San Francisco. Shaken by a tremor at 5:13 o'clock yesterday morning, lasting 48 seconds, and scourged by flames that raged diametrically in all directions, the city is a mass of smouldering ruins.

—
The Call,
Thursday, April 19, 1906

15

T
he shaking of the bed awakened Rachel. After plummeting to the floor, she tried to stand, but the ground shook her to her knees. Beside her, Marty cried out, a sharp, ear-splitting scream that knotted Rachel's insides. She crawled toward him. Several books fell from the chest of drawers between their cots, one hitting her on the head. Shouts and babies' squeals were quickly overtaken by banging and crashing sounds.

“We have to get out of here,” yelled Jacob. He and Nucia had also been thrown to the floor and were crawling to the door of their flat.

“What's happening?” Rachel shouted. On her hands and knees, she reached Marty and wrapped her arm around his waist. A bump had already sprouted on his forehead from his fall. The walls trembled like birch trees caught in a gale.

“The house is going to fall down,” cried Marty. Though he shouted, his voice sounded like a whisper amid the commotion.

Rachel and Marty scrambled into the hallway after Jacob and Nucia. It was jammed with tenants attempting to get down the narrow staircase. Most, like Rachel and Marty, were on their hands and knees.

“What is happening?” asked a woman.

“It's an earthquake,” someone yelled.

“We're doomed,” cried another woman directly in front of Rachel.

Nucia and Jacob were nowhere in sight. Rachel called out to them but there was no response. She inhaled deeply, struggling for air in the cramped space. The floor seemed to slide from under her. She and Marty tumbled forward, onto their faces. Rachel reached for the railing above the stairs and pulled herself and Marty to their feet so that they could descend. When they were about halfway down, the shaking stopped and a murmur of relief rippled through the stairwell.

Then the lights went out. New panic ensued, with vicious pushing and shoving to reach the main level.

“Nucia, Jacob!” Rachel called again.

“I'm scared, Rachel,” cried Marty.

Rachel pulled him forward in the darkness. The shaking started again, tossing them down the stairs onto a buxom woman. Then it stopped as abruptly as it began.

Stumbling outside into the darkness, Rachel scoured the area for Jacob and Nucia. Bricks and mortar fell as buildings toppled around them.

“Nucia, Jacob!” screamed Rachel.

“Over here.”

Rachel pivoted around in the direction of Jacob's voice. He and Nucia stood near a family with three small children who sobbed as they clung to their parents' legs. Rachel and Nucia ran to one another and embraced. Marty leapt into Jacob's arms and held on tightly.

The thunderous rumbling seemed to be coming from all directions. Down the street, the Wells Fargo Bank crumbled as easily as a biscuit, crushing people who were standing below. A big boom. A nearby dry goods store came crashing down, its falling bricks injuring some and killing others. Across the street, two men emerged from a boarding house carrying a mattress with a woman and her newborn baby on top. New life triumphed over catastrophe.

Rachel heard a loud crash and wheeled around. Their building had caved in. Their flat was now a pile of rubble. Standing beside Rachel, Nucia wept at the sight.

Rachel could not turn away from the remains of the building where they'd just begun to establish roots in this new world. She waited for tears to fall but none came. She waited for her heart to break. Instead, she felt nothing.

A deafening thud. A large cornice fell and crushed a man as if he were an insect. Her legs buckling, Rachel stumbled down the street to get away from the sight of her ruined home and the broken bodies scattered on the ground. Nucia and Jacob, still holding Marty, trailed after Rachel. The street had sunk in places to depths of three or four feet. Heaps of wreckage appeared, some as high as five feet. The streetcar tracks were bent and twisted out of shape, and electric wires were strewn in all directions like giant spools of thread, uncoiled and dropped at random.

One storefront had fallen into the street, creating a mound of bricks and mortar. The three remaining walls resembled the set of a stage play, an unrehearsed tragedy. Farther along, wagons had fallen over. The horses, still in harness, lay dead on their sides. Black smoke clouded the air like heavy fog.

Beneath fractured street pavement, gas lines had been smashed. Fires ignited, one after the other, as these gas lines exploded. Firemen watched, helpless. The water main lines had also been destroyed, leaving firefighters with no water to impede the inferno. Flames rose higher, spreading from one building to another. At the Windsor Hotel at Fifth and Market Streets, a fire had started, trapping three men on the roof.

“They'll be burned alive!” a woman cried out.

Somebody do something!” shouted another.

A man carried a ladder to the side of the building where the fire had not yet reached. He scrambled up the rungs, but the heat and flames were too intense for him to get to the roof.

The crowd swelled, and the air was clotted with smoke and terror. A military officer came upon the scene, observed for a moment, and conferred with his soldiers. The soldiers nodded somberly, formed a line in front of the building, pointed their rifles directly at the men, and fired. The men fell and vanished through the roof, into the blaze that now raged higher than the building.

People cried out in horror as the men were shot. Feeling sick, Rachel pressed through the mass of people until she had gone past a few more burning buildings. A brown-and-white dog ran in front of her, barking hysterically.

In the next block, another man lay pinned down beneath the burning ruins, begging for a merciful end. Rachel looked away as a police officer took out his gun.

Reminded of the massacre in Kishinev, where policemen had hurt and even killed Jews, Rachel retreated, afraid to look, afraid to make a sound, afraid to be noticed.

Flames swept across Market Street, igniting building after building. The pavement cracked. A drove of longhorn steers that had escaped from slaughterhouses near the waterfront, rushed down the street toward Rachel. They vanished, one by one, before they reached her. Rachel ran to the spot where they'd disappeared. A giant fissure, created by the earthquake, had swallowed the cattle whole.

Rachel fell to her knees.

All around her, people prayed and cried for help. Rachel crouched over until her hands touched the ground.

How can the earth cause such damage? All the innocent people, the homes and shops gone in minutes. Where do we go from here? How can we start over again? I feel as if we're cursed, as if we'll never find a safe place to live.

⚓ ⚓ ⚓

Rachel, Nucia, and Jacob, carrying Marty on his shoulders, stumbled west toward Alamo Square, away from the area south of Market Street that had been flattened by the earthquake. Marty coughed repeatedly as smoke particles filled his small lungs. Jacob took the boy off his shoulders and held him until his coughing eased.

Rachel recognized her own anxiety mirrored in other people's expressions. Even under a layer of ashes, the terror was unmistakable. She squinted to see if she knew anyone, but individual features were impossible to discern. Even Nucia looked unlike herself, her usually neat hair askew, her face covered with soot.

Another ear-splitting gas explosion. It was as if they were right in the middle of a fiery war. It had been six hours since the first violent tremors rocked the earth.

Finding a small spot on the sloping grass at Alamo Square, Rachel sat beside Marty. Tears had diluted the filth on his small face, forming squiggly lines down his cheeks. Rachel drew him to her and squeezed him tight.

“Rachel?” he asked, with solemn eyes. His breathing sounded raspy and he seemed to inhale with a great amount of difficulty.

“Yes.” With her thumb, Rachel tried to wipe off the dirt on his forehead, but smudged it more.

“Where will we go now?”

Rachel hesitated. She knew that Marty wanted to hear that they would be going back to Shanghai or even Russia. For a second, Rachel also wanted to run back to where at least the earth stood still.
What if there is another earthquake, and one after that? How can we set down roots in a place where the ground cracks and fires blaze for hours?

“I can't say,” she began, eyeing Nucia and Jacob for help.

Jacob cast an apologetic look at Marty, opened his mouth to speak, then clamped it shut.

“We're together, and we're safe,” said Nucia.

“That's right,” Rachel added.

“I don't want to stay here,” said Marty. “The shaking scares me and it's hard to breathe.”

Rachel ran her fingers through his hair and stared at the smoke and flames rising over the streets below. On the far right, the dome of the new city hall vanished in a swirl of smoke.

As the day wore on, people continued to arrive at the square, lugging their possessions in trunks. Some had brought their pets, birds in cages, cats and dogs.

In the late afternoon, cadets from the University of California, Berkeley, and Oakland arrived with wagons carrying buckets of water. A boyish-looking cadet offered water to Rachel. She took the cup and handed it to Marty who drank thirstily. The cadet refilled the cup and handed it back to Rachel. She poured it down her throat. It tasted gloriously cold. She tried to dip the cup in the water again but the soldier gently took it from her.

“Only one per person,” he told her. “Water mains are broken, so there's a limited supply.” He handed the cup to Nucia who eagerly dunked it in the water and gulped it down.

“If there's no water, how are you going to put out all the fires?” asked Jacob.

“We're detonating blocks of buildings to keep the fire from spreading,” the cadet explained.

“You're blowing up buildings?” asked Jacob.

The cadet glanced over his shoulder as if he were afraid of being heard. “That's right, with dynamite, but if you ask me, I think it's a mistake.”

“Why?” asked Rachel.

The cadet took the cup from Jacob. “I have to move on.” He tipped his hat at Rachel and continued to a new group of people nearby.

“That explains some of the blasts we've been hearing,” said Jacob.

“I don't understand how blowing up buildings will stop the fires,” said Rachel.

“By clearing buildings, they're hoping to get rid of wood and any other materials that would fuel the fire,” said Jacob. He paused. “But I agree with that soldier. Dynamite could end up making the flames grow bigger and stronger.”

⚓ ⚓ ⚓

Afternoon retreated to nightfall. Though the quaking had stopped a long time ago, the fires had not subsided. It was as bright as day. Rachel's stomach growled. No one had eaten since the previous evening. She wondered when they would have food again and tried to think about something else. But the crackling sound of flames and the constant booming made this impossible.

“How do we know the fires won't come here?” asked Marty, struggling for air.

“We don't know,” answered Rachel. She felt the rattling in his small chest as he pressed against her.

Around the square, people lay crushed together like rocks on a riverbed. Voices in prayer spoke faintly but steadily.

“I think they'll be using dynamite all night,” said Jacob.

The clip-clop of horses sounded nearby. A group of firefighters fell from the wagon that had carried them from the fires to the square. Soldiers handed buckets of water to the exhausted men.

“Water,” croaked Rachel. Her hand reached out toward the firefighters.

“They're not giving it to us,” said Nucia. “The men fighting fires need it more.”

“But Marty, his breathing,” said Rachel. “He needs water.”

Jacob's shoulders lowered. “There's nothing we can do now. It's not safe to leave the square. Try to get some sleep. We'll find water and food in the morning.”

Food. Rachel's stomach growled so loudly she looked around to see if anyone had heard. Marty snuggled in between her and Nucia. Blasts continued in the distance, and flames kept the sky from getting dark.

Rachel rested her head on the ground and listened to Marty struggle for air. Just when she thought he needed to be in the hospital, he fell asleep, his breathing evening out slightly. Rachel exhaled. An old man lying near her began to snore. His rhythmic, heavy breathing eventually lulled Rachel into a restless sleep.

She dreamt she was back on the ship, heading to Shanghai, then on the train, rolling through Russia toward Kishinev. She imagined herself traveling backwards, without stopping, without speaking, without hearing. But when she arrived in Kishinev, nothing remained of her former life. No houses, no roads, no shops, no schools. Even the River Byk, where she'd last seen Mikhail before he'd been brutally stabbed to death, had dried up as if it had never existed at all. She crouched down and picked up the soil where the river had run. It was red and had a metallic smell. Like blood.

Rachel's eyelids shot open. For a moment, she forgot what had happened. The smell of smoke and the sounds of dynamite blasting through the city brought back the unimaginable events of the previous day. She swallowed. Her throat ached with dryness and dust thickened the morning air like flakes of snow.

She glanced at Marty, still asleep, his face blemished with dirt, his breathing croaky and uneven.

Nucia rose and yawned, stretching her arms out. Rachel gazed past her sister. Jacob was missing.

“When I awoke, he was gone,” said Nucia, before Rachel could ask about Jacob.

Rachel hugged her knees to her chest. “I don't want to leave San Francisco. No matter how hard it is to rebuild our lives here, I want to stay. I'm tired of traveling.”

“But what if the earth shakes again?” asked Marty, his voice hoarse and rasping. He sat up and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.

“The fires are still blazing,” said Nucia. “The whole city could burn down.”

“Hopefully, that won't happen,” said Jacob as he appeared with a bucket of water in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other. “Firefighters have been battling the flames all night.”