Peace on Earth

‘B’shavia Haba a b’Yerushalaim,’ he spoke slowly, quietly, committing himself.

She was looking at him, knowing what he was saying, what he was telling her, knowing who he was, what he was, what he was trying to do, her finger repeating the pattern on the wall, the six lines, two triangles, one inverted upon the other. The star of David. ‘B’shavia Haba a b’Yerushalaim,’ she replied.

‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ confirmed Yakov Zubko.

In the corridor the husband was waiting for his wife to join him and the children. ‘We leave tomorrow,’ said the woman, ‘could you collect our cases at ten forty-five.’

Alexandra finished the matvah at six and placed it in the oven, then she laid the table and bathed the children. When they were dry she took their best clothes from the wardrobe they all shared and dressed them, then she went to the bathroom along the landing and washed herself. It was six thirty. From the same cupboard she took her one good dress, the dress she had worn when she had married Yakov Zubko eleven years before, and put it on. The night outside was dark, the cold penetrating the glass of the windows; she pulled the curtains tighter and wondered what she would say, how she would tell her husband. At nine his brother Stanislav, Stanislav’s wife Mishka and their two children would join them, would share the food for which she had sold the chair that afternoon; before that, Alexandra had asked, before that, they had insisted, she would have one hour alone with Yakov Zubko and their family.

It was almost time. From her handbag she took the forms she had been given that afternoon by the man in the office on Kolpachny Lane and placed them on the table, laying the food around them. The matvah, there had been no time on that dread night for the women to prepare anything other than unleavened bread; the single roast egg for new life; the salted water for the tears of the slaves and the horse-radish for their bitterness; the extra plate and wine glass for the stranger who might come alone. The last thing she placed on the table, in a position where Yakov Zubko must see them first, were the haroseth sweets, then she called her son and daughter to her and stood facing the door, a child on either side and an arm round each.

The children were frightened, unsure what was happening; Alexandra herself had no tears left to cry.

She had waited another ten minutes when she heard him on the stairs: the same pace, the same slight delay as he searched in his pocket, the same scratching noise as he turned the key in the lock. She leant forward and lit the candle. He was a good man, she thought, a good husband and father; she did not yet know how she would tell him.

Yakov Zubko pushed the door open, carrying the small plastic bag of food he had brought from the hotel, and entered the room. He felt tired and cold, glad Alexandra would be there to welcome him, hoping that the children would not be asleep so that he could kiss them goodnight.

He saw the shadow on the wall, the flame of the candle on the table, the dishes around it, his family waiting for him, his wife in her wedding dress and the children in their best clothes. He did not understand, did not know what to think, looked again at his wife, at the table. Saw the matvah, the roasted egg, the bowl of salted water beside it, the place for the stranger. Saw one thing above all, the haroseth sweets.

The beginning of the festival, he was thinking, the commemoration of the night the Angel of Death passed over the land of Egypt, the beginning of the Feast of the Passover, the celebration of the delivery of his people.

The haroseth sweets, he could not help think, the symbol of the sweetness of freedom.

Alexandra reached to the table and handed him the papers she had been given in the office on Kolpachny Lane. ‘B’shavia Huzu a b’Yerushalaim,’ she said the words, did not know she had said them.

The same words he had said to the American woman in the lift in the hotel, the words she had understood and said back to him.

Not quite the same words. One word of difference for which they had been prepared to sacrifice everything. Not ‘Next year in Jerusalem’, not the saying which kept Yakov Zubko and the likes of Yakov Zubko in hope through the long Russian winters, the other saying, the saying for which so many longed but which so few now heard.

‘B’shavia Huzu a b’Yerushalaim.’

‘This year in Jerusalem.’

‘We are going home, Yakov Zubko.’ Alexandra closed the door behind him and shut the family Zubko off from the rest of the world. ‘We are going home to Israel.’

* * *

Yakov Zubko had been born in the Ukraine in 1951; despite the poverty of his parents he had shone at school, both as an athlete and as a mathematician. His record, whether at the University of Kiev where he graduated as an engineer or during his compulsory military service, had been impeccable. He had twice been promoted in the precision tool factory where he had first worked. In 1973 he had married Alexandra, then a teacher, the following year they had moved to Moscow, where he had secured a job in the ZIL car works; within six months of his new appointment he had again been promoted.

Yakov Zubko was a model of the Soviet system. He was also a Jew.

In 1977, after considerable soul-searching, he and Alexandra had applied to leave Russia for Israel. The request was rejected, partly on grounds of state security, Yakov Zubko having served in the Red Army, partly on grounds which were not specified, and they had joined what would shortly become the swelling ranks of the refusniks. Within three months Yakov Zubko had first been demoted then lost his job totally; since then they had survived on Alexandra’s salary during the period she worked as a teacher, and whatever he himself could earn whenever he found casual work. Each month since then they had sold a possession in order to eat, each month since then they had also tried to place a few more roubles in the tin they kept under the mattress for the day they would be called to Kolpachny Lane and told they could leave. Increasingly, not through design, simply to help his family survive, and to save the money for their journey home, Yakov Zubko had been drawn into the fringes of the black market.

The following year Alexandra had borne him their first child, a son whom they called Nicholas. The boy was delivered late at night in the maternity wing of the local hospital; partly as a joke, partly as an act of defiance, they referred to the place where he had been born by the name of the place they thought they would never see, the town called Bethlehem. In the winter of 1978, as they carried their son home, in the later years when they told him, there was no way they could know the awesome inheritance of that family secret.

Their second child, a daughter, had been born in the same hospital three years later.

In 1979 his brother Stanislav Zubko had applied to leave Russia with his wife Mishka and their son Anatol; like Yakov and Alexandra they were refused. Later that year Mishka bore Stanislav’s second child, a girl whom they named Natasha after her great-grandmother. Like her great-grandmother, who only saw her once, Natasha was small and pretty, with large eyes, and like her great-grandmother, to whom she was the most precious creature in the world, she was cursed with asthma. Even on the hot summer days when the two families walked in Gorky Park or went in the car which Stanislav was sometimes able to borrow to the fields outside Moscow they could hear her suffering.

Just as there was no way of knowing the consequence of the secret of the birthplace of the boy called Nicholas Zubko, so there was no way of knowing the devastating legacy of the illness of the girl called Natasha.

In 1980 Yakov and Alexandra Zubko applied again to leave Russia and were again refused. The next year the distant uncle who had met the formal requirement of inviting them to Israel had passed away and they had spent the next two years finding another relative to meet the requirement. In 1984 Alexandra had been officially invited by a third cousin to join him: when she left the office in Kolpachny Lane that afternoon she and Yakov Zubko had waited three months, two weeks and six days over seven years.

* * *

The night was darker, colder,

Yakov Zubko kissed the children goodnight and returned to the kitchen; Alexandra had made coffee, they sat together at the table and read again the authorisation from the OVIR office on Kolpachny Lane.

‘They can’t change their minds,’ she asked, ‘they can’t stop us now?’

‘No,’ he lied, ‘they can’t stop us now.’

‘How much do we need?’ They had already worked it out, worked it out every week as they counted the roubles they had saved in the tin beneath the mattress: the rail fare to Vienna – it was quicker and safer by air, but cheaper by train – the cost of the exit visas, the money they would have to pay to renounce their Soviet citizenship.

Yakov Zubko took a single sheet of paper and began writing down the figures, carefully and neatly, not looking up, not able to look at his wife, both knowing they did not have enough, both knowing they would never have enough, even with the money in the tin under the mattress. He glanced round the room, aware of what Alexandra was thinking.

‘Twenty for the chairs,’ he began, ‘twenty-five for the table. Forty, perhaps forty-five, for my watch.’

‘Don’t forget my ring,’ said Alexandra, sipping her coffee.

‘Your ring,’ he said, writing it down, ‘we should get thirty for your wedding ring.’

In the hotel overlooking Marx Prospekt the American family finished their dinner and went to bed, the wife lying awake and thinking of what her husband had said, knowing that he was right, yet remembering that she had known from the first day who the man in the lift was, what he was. Thinking of her loyalty to her husband but thinking of the man with whom they shared a faith.

‘There’s an American family at the hotel,’ Yakov Zubko was unsure whether he should tell his wife, sensing she had known for a long time what he did, ‘they are due to leave tomorrow morning, they said for me to collect their bags.’ He realised that she had known from the beginning. ‘The children always wear denims, the wife has perfume, nice perfume, the husband always carries a camera.’ Alexandra waited, afraid to hear. ‘I think,’ he said cautiously, ‘that they are Jews, I think they will give me something.’

He turned the paper over and began another list, guessing what the American family might give, calculating what he might get from Pasha Simenov, and adding it to the money in the tin under the mattress. ‘We might do it,’ he said at last, not looking at his wife, wondering how much he was lying for her, how much he was lying for himself. ‘We might just do it.’

He looked at Alexandra, seeing the way she was smiling at him, recognising, not for the first time, how strong she was. ‘We will do it, Yakov Zubko,’ she said, ‘we will go home.’

In the hotel the American woman thought again about her husband, thought about the Russian Jew who wanted only to take his family to Israel.

In his apartment on the other side of the city Iamskoy switched off the television and telephoned militia headquarters. The afternoon shift had been back an hour, he was told; they had logged one firm suspect, one possible. He thanked the desk man and went to bed. Definitely tomorrow morning, he thought.

* * *

Yakov Zubko rose at four thirty, not needing to be quiet, he and Alexandra having lain awake all night. She pulled a coat over her shoulders and sat with him at the table. At five o’clock he kissed her goodbye, left the flat, and made his way to the metro station at Sviblovo; at a quarter to six Alexandra dressed the children and prepared them for their last days in Russia; at six precisely Major Valerov Iamskoy left the militia building on Petrovka. The morning was cold, even colder than the day before. At six thirty Yakov Zubko began work, at eight thirty the American family took breakfast. He made sure he was in the foyer as they went to the restaurant, made sure the woman saw him as they left, hoping for a sign, any sign, of confirmation, seeing none. At twelve minutes past ten the militiaman accompanying Iamskoy noted that the suspect Pasha Simenov had appeared at his door.

At fifteen minutes to eleven, as the woman had told him the previous afternoon, Yakov Zubko made his way to the rooms of the American family; there were four large suitcases, he took two, remembering that the entire possessions which he and Alexandra would take with them when they left Russia would fit into one. Please may he have understood the woman correctly the previous afternoon, he prayed, please may Pasha Simenov be at home.

The husband was at the reception desk, the wife talking to the guide. Yakov Zubko waited for her to turn and say something to him, the first doubts creeping up on him. He went back to the bedroom and collected the remaining cases. The family was almost ready to leave; he loaded the cases onto the coach and saw that the woman was still talking to the guide, knew then that she had not been able to disobey her husband, that he and Alexandra would not go home.

‘There’s one more bag by the children’s beds in 607,’ the woman turned to him briefly, not smiling. Watching him turn away from her, feeling the sense of betrayal. Seeing him for the last time, knowing that one day she would see him again. He cursed her under his breath and returned to the sixth floor. A maid was already cleaning the parents’ room; he went past, hearing the sound of the vacuum, into 607. The room was empty. He knew why the woman had told him to go back, knew it was because she could not face him, but began to check the wardrobes anyway, looking between the beds. Beneath one was a Beryozka bag; inside were three pairs of denims, new, unused, the manufacturer’s label still on them, two bottles of French perfume, and a Konica camera. ‘We are going home, Alexandra Zubko,’ he said, the relief coming upon him, ‘we are going home to Israel.’

When he returned to the foyer the American woman had gone.

It was almost eleven o’clock.

On the corner overlooking the street called Dmitrov the militiaman logged the first visitor to the house of Pasha Simenov. ‘We’ll pick up the next one,’ Iamskoy told him.

It was less than three hours till the end of their shift. ‘What happens if there isn’t one while we’re on?’ asked his subordinate.

For someone from the building on Petrovka, Iamskoy thought, the militiaman was remarkably naive at times. ‘There will be another one,’ he said simply.

Stick close to Iamskoy, the militiaman remembered they had told him at Petrovka, and you’ll learn a lot. ‘The next one,’ he agreed.

Yakov Zubko turned into Dmitrov, planning the conversation he would have with Pasha Simenov, working out how he would make sure that the man paid him enough. Be careful, Alexandra had told him as he left the flat that morning. In front of him he saw Pasha Simenov leave the house and begin walking up the road towards him. Suppose Simenov didn’t recognise him, he thought, suppose he had just done a deal, had no money left, suppose Simenov didn’t want to talk to him in the street.

At the top of the road Iamskoy cursed his luck and instructed the militia to log the fact that the suspect Simenov had left his house and turned east.

‘Good morning.’

Yakov Zubko knew Simenov was not going to speak to him, was going to walk straight past him. They still needed five hundred roubles, he thought; he saw the look in the other man’s eyes, saw Simenov was not looking at him, nor at the bag he was carrying.

Iamskoy saw the Beryozka bag, knew what was in it and reached for the ignition.

‘Across the road and left at the corner,’ Simenov ignored the greeting and pointed with his arm as if he was giving directions, as if that was what he had been asked. Yakov Zubko saw the car, realised why Simenov was afraid, turned to follow his instructions.

For one moment Iamskoy thought he was wrong, then knew he was not.

Yakov Zubko was reacting instinctively, following Simenov’s arm, as if he was in no hurry, as if he was clarifying the street directions he had been given. ‘Up the road fifty metres, through the block of flats.’ Simenov was talking quietly, quickly. ‘Car park on the other side, steps in the far corner to a tram stop. Good luck.’ It was almost, Yakov Zubko would think in the months and years he would have to remember the moment, as if Simenov knew what he was doing, as if he was sacrificing himself so that the Jew and his family could go home. ‘Thank you.’ He made himself pause, made himself move slowly, crossing the road in the direction Simenov had indicated. In the Zhiguli, Iamskoy hesitated for the second time. ‘Screw him anyway,’ he thought aloud, half to himself, half to the militiaman, ‘we can always plant something on him.’

Yakov Zubko was half way across the road when he saw the car begin to move. ‘No tricks,’ he remembered how he had lied to Alexandra the night before, ‘no way they can stop us now.’ Every trick, every way they could stop him. He turned the corner, out of sight of the car, and began to run. Up the road fifty metres, Simenov had told him, through the block of flats. Which block, he suddenly thought, panicking, there were two blocks of flats, one on either side of the road. He reached them and turned left into the alleyway beneath the building, side-stepping to avoid the children and crashing into the dustbins stacked against the wall. In the Zhiguli Iamskoy saw Simenov walking up the road, the man with the Beryozka bag turning almost casually round the corner. ‘We go for Simenov,’ he decided. They were almost at the junction; in the street in front of them Simenov disappeared down a side turning, in the passageway beneath the flats Yakov Zubko regained his balance, feared he had chosen the wrong block. ‘The other man and his suppliers.’ Iamskoy changed his mind.

Yakov Zubko broke into the sunlight and saw the car park; wondered for the first time if Simenov knew who he was, what he was, felt his legs seizing up, felt himself slowing down. ‘Run,’ he heard the voice, ‘run for Alexandra, run for the children.’ His lungs were hot, the bag was heavy, impeding him. ‘Run,’ he heard the voice again, shouting at him, screaming at him, ‘run so that you can all go home.’ In the far corner he saw the exit and the step to the tram stop.

Iamskoy turned the corner and accelerated up the road. Nobody with a Beryozka bag, nobody running as if his life depended on it. In the car park behind the flats Yakov Zubko was half way to the corner. ‘You take the right block,’ Iamskoy slammed on the hand-brake, ‘I’ll cover the left.’ He was out of the car, running, the door swinging open. He saw the dustbins rolling on the ground, the children staring. ‘This one,’ he shouted, ‘he’s gone through this one.’ He sprinted into the dark, seeing the car park ahead. ‘Run,’ the voice screamed at the Jew for the last time, ‘run as you’ve never run before.’ Yakov Zubko reached the corner, saw the tram in the street below, saw it beginning to move. ‘Wait for me,’ he prayed. He cleared the steps two at a time and hauled himself on as the rear doors clanged shut and the tram pulled away.

The kitchen was quiet, peaceful: Alexandra finished lunch, put the suitcase on the table and began to pack the children’s clothes; at her side her son and daughter watched her closely. ‘Tonight,’ she told them, ‘your father will be home early, tomorrow we will have a treat, tomorrow your father will take us all for a train ride. I will make sandwiches for us to eat.’

The passengers on the tram were looking at him, at the Beryozka bag he was carrying. Someone was bound to question why he had it, someone was bound to report him. He knew what he had always avoided in the past, what he had to do now, remembered what Alexandra had told him. One thing more important than Jerusalem, one thing more important than anything else. He left the tram and took the metro to the black market behind the station at Begovaya.

At the observation point overlooking Dmitrov Iamskoy watched as the militiaman checked the house of Pasha Simenov and confirmed the door was locked. ‘We say nothing,’ he ordered the man when he returned to the car, ‘we simply log the fact that Simenov left the house and turned east.’

‘What about the man with the Beryozka bag,’ asked the militiaman, ‘if he is selling is there any chance he’ll go to Begovaya?’

The possibility had already occurred to Iamskoy. ‘No chance. If he does have anything to sell he’ll lie low for a while.’ There was no way they could leave the observation point, he meant, no way they could concede that they had made a mistake. ‘Unless,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘he has a reason for off-loading the stuff today.’ No way that anyone would have that strong a reason, he was sure, no way anyone would risk the black market at Begovaya knowing the men from the building on Petrovka were waiting for him.

‘But if the others pick Simenov up this afternoon, they won’t know what to ask him.’

‘No,’ said Iamskoy, ‘but we will tomorrow.’

It was almost three, the sun already pale, when Yakov Zubko entered the maze of streets behind the metro station at Begovaya; he walked slowly and carefully, checking the buyers and sellers, eavesdropping on the conversations and negotiations, till he had worked out who was paying the best prices for what he had to sell. The man he approached was overweight, already wearing a winter coat, a cigarette in his mouth. Yakov Zubko struck up a conversation, after ten minutes he asked whether the man was interested in American denims.

‘Buying or selling?’

‘Selling,’ said Yakov Zubko.

‘What size?’

He realised he did not know. ‘New,’ he said, ‘the manufacturer’s labels still on them.’

‘How much?’

‘How much are you offering?’

The man gestured that he should follow him to a car parked on a side street. In the front passenger seat was a young woman, attractive, less than twenty years old. Money, thought Yakov Zubko, could buy anything, even in Russia. She saw them coming and moved to the back, allowing them to sit in the front.

‘How much did you say?’ the man asked again, fingering the flesh round his jaw.

‘Two hundred each,’ Yakov Zubko doubled the price he had calculated, ‘a hundred and eighty each if you take all three.’ He pulled them from the bag and showed them to the dealer.

The man snorted. ‘Eighty each.’

‘A hundred and sixty.’

‘Ninety, that’s as high as I can go.’

He knew he had made a mistake, that he should not have allowed the dealer to trick him into being the first to suggest a price, then began to see the way he could retrieve the advantage. ‘A hundred and fifty,’ he said, ‘that’s my lowest. After I’ve paid my man, that leaves me almost nothing.’

‘Your man?’

‘The man I get them from.’ He used the present tense, as if he had a regular supply.

‘You can get more?’ The dealer took the first bait. Yakov Zubko thought of Alexandra and the children standing behind the table when he had returned home the previous evening. ‘Not this week, probably next, definitely the week after.’

‘New like these?’

‘With the manufacturer’s labels. Any size you want.’

‘A hundred.’

‘A hundred and forty.’

‘A hundred and ten.’

We are going home, Yakov, Alexandra had said, giving him the papers from Kolpachny Lane, we are going home to Israel. ‘A hundred and thirty and they’re yours.’

‘How many others can you get?’ The dealer had always been greedy, now he showed it.

‘Three, four pairs a fortnight.’ He was watching the man’s eyes. ‘To start with,’ he added, ‘more if I can guarantee my man a good price.’ He could see the dealer trying to work out his source. An American, the man would be thinking, probably a businessman with regular trips to Moscow, the denims only the start of things. Yakov Zubko reinforced the image: ‘What about perfume?’