MIKHAILslid from the upper bunk, avoiding the steps, bounding instead in one jump to the floor of the compartment. He was hungry, the kind of gnawing, stomach-talking hunger he had felt only during the happiest moments of his life, the years at the University when he and Kishkin would stay up the entire night studying for exams, continually eating sausages and hard-boiled eggs. He had been locked in a deep sleep, and when he opened his eyes to the gray dawn, he had imagined he was in the University dormitory and had just closed his eyes for a moment between studies.
As he felt the cold seep into his bare feet, his sense of time and place slowly came back to him. He ate some sausage and black bread that he had bought from an old woman at the Sverdlovsk station. Turning, he looked at the outstretched form of his wife. She had hardly stirred since they had moved into the compartment, sitting up only once to drink somekvas . It did not strike him as odd that she continued to sleep. The trials of the last few months had simply exhausted her.
He was surprised to see her eyes open.
“You’re up, darling! Look.” He held out the sausages and bread. “I bought some delicious treats for us.”
Vera blinked and smiled. He sat down on the edge of the bunk and kissed her forehead. The heat of her skin startled him. He took her cheeks in his hands.
“You feel feverish,” he said.
“It is nothing.”
“Nothing? You’re burning up.”
“I’m so tired, Mikhail,” she said, her voice weak.
My God, he thought, she is sick. He hadn’t banked on that. Pulling a couple of blankets from his own bunk, he covered her and pulled them up to her chin. She smiled thinly.
“Where are we, Mikhail?”
“Somewhere on the way to Omsk. We stopped at Sverdlovsk near midnight last night.”
“How much longer?”
“To Omsk?”
“To Birobidjan.”
“Not long.”
“Really, Mikhail?”
“Only a few short days.” He looked at her thin, childlike face in the whitening light.
“How many exactly?” she said, a note of pleading in her voice.
“Four days,” he said. “Four days and then we are free.”
“So long!” She sighed.
“Not long at all. Look, you’ve already slept through two days.”
“I haven’t been sleeping, Mikhail.”
“You haven’t?”
“I’ve been lying here thinking. Just thinking.”
“You think too much,” he said. “Let me do the thinking for us.”
“I’m sorry, Mikhail.”
“What are you sorry for?”
“For everything.”
He wondered what she meant, felt her head again. It was burning. He was becoming frightened now. Opening the door, he looked into the corridor. The old attendant was busy polishing the brass window protector and a little woman with white hair was just leaving the toilet.
“Is there a doctor on the train?” he asked the attendant, who turned a mute bovine face toward him. The gray-haired woman stopped.
“A doctor,” she repeated. The word in Russian was the same as in English.
“My wife is sick,” he said in Russian. The little woman poked her head into their compartment and, seeing Vera’s flushed face, apparently understood. She felt the girl’s head and smiled down at her serenely.
“Poor dear,” she said in English, as Mikhail brushed past her with a cold compress and put it on Vera’s forehead.
“She needs a doctor,” Miss Peterson said in English. Mikhail looked at her blankly. “A doctor,” she repeated, going back to her compartment and returning quickly with a Russian English phrase book.
“Yes,” Mikhail agreed. He had understood the word. The little woman held up her finger and left the compartment.
“I’m sorry, Mikhail,” Vera said.
“Again? About what?”
“I want to go back to Moscow.”
“You can’t, Vera,” he said quickly. “Things were awful in Moscow. They hounded us, persecuted us. Made us feel like lice.”
“I can’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“I don’t want to go to Birobidjan.” She paused and lifted a hand to his face. “I love you, dearest, but I can’t do it. I’m not made for such suffering. I haven’t got your constitution.”
“Nonsense. You’re just feeling unwell.”
“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go,” she said gently. “Only that I can’t. I simply can’t do it.”
“You want me to go alone?”
“You mean you want to leave me. Forever.”
“Yes.” Tears slid from under her eyelids and ran down her face.
“I had no idea,” he said. Surely she was hallucinating.
“I’m not Jewish, Mikhail,” she said. “I know that they do terrible things to Jewish people. I understand all that. But I am not Jewish. I can’t bear the suffering of being Jewish. I was not made for it. I haven’t got your ability to cope with it.”
He got up slowly, went to the washroom and resoaked the cloth in cold water. When he returned, she had managed to bring herself to a sitting position. She waved away the compress.
“You must understand this, Mikhail. I am not going with you.”
“We’ll talk about it later.” He was becoming genuinely panicked by her ravings.
“I will get off at the next station and take the train back to Moscow.”
“You’re not fit to travel alone.”
“I’ll be better. You’ll see.” But even the effort of sitting had tired her and she slipped back into a reclining position.
Mikhail could understand her words, but could not believe she meant them. Why now? All of a sudden, after months and months of bearing with him.
A knock on the compartment door startled him, and he jumped up and opened it.
“The doctor,” Miss Peterson said in Russian, pointing to a tall man, his hair uncombed, his eyes still puffy with sleep. He wore slacks and a pajama top.
Without a word, he withdrew a stethoscope from his bag and warmed it in his hand. After a few moments, he thrust a thermometer into her mouth and felt her pulse.
“She seemed all right in Moscow,” Mikhail whispered defensively, although inside himself he had already acknowledged that he was to blame. I should have paid more attention to her, he told himself. I was too busy with my own self-pity. Surely, though, now it was her illness talking. They had been through too much together to quit now.
“How long has she been like this?” Dr. Cousins asked.
“I don’t know,” Mikhail answered. “She has been quietly sleeping.”
“Can I see you outside for a moment?” Without waiting for an answer, the doctor opened the compartment door and moved into the passageway. Mikhail followed.
“Is it serious?”
“She has pneumonia,” Dr. Cousins said. “I can’t tell what kind, specifically. Her temperature is 103. Frankly, I’d recommend hospitalization at the first available opportunity.” He reached into his bag and pulled out two vials of pills. “Give her these. This one is an antibiotic. It will not cure her, only help ward off further infection. And be sure that she takes these. They’re aspirin to control fever.” He looked at his watch. “What’s the next station?”
“Omsk. We should arrive there in a few hours.”
“Good. See that you make hospitalization arrangements.”
“You don’t think she can make the trip if she stays in bed?”
“I didn’t say that,” Dr. Cousins snapped. “Only that I recommend hospitalization. She is rundown, obviously, and apparently not very strong. Why look for trouble?”
“There can be no mistake?”
“In my business there are always mistakes,” Dr. Cousins replied. “I can’t confirm a diagnosis of pneumonia without an X ray. But believe me, it’s a pretty good bet.”
The doctor seemed frank and businesslike and Mikhail, although he tried, could find no reason to doubt his words. Mikhail swallowed deeply and looked into Dr. Cousins’ eyes, measuring them for understanding. The doctor stood watching him, with the beginnings of impatience.
“Doctor—” Mikhail began. He sighed. There was a long pause.
“Yes?”
“She has been saying things,” Mikhail stammered. “Strange, hysterical things. She wants to leave me.” A sob gargled in his throat. He controlled himself. “What I want to know, Doctor”—he hesitated—“is it possible that the illness is making her mind play tricks?”
He watched the doctor search his mind for a proper answer, then interrupted, feeling that more argument was necessary.
“I am a Jew, you see,” Mikhail said, feeling the floodgates open. But he could see that the explanation was not enough for the doctor, who seemed confused. “You are an American. I’m sorry. I know it must be strange. But you see we are having a Jewish problem at the moment in Russia. Because of it, I have lost my job. Then I applied for a visa to Israel and Vera lost her job, although she is not Jewish. Are you following me?”
“Somewhat,” the doctor said. “But I really don’t see, Mr.—?”
“Ginzburg.”
“Mr. Ginzburg. Yes, I can understand your dilemma. If you are asking for medical advice, I’d say that you should get her to a hospital as soon as possible. As for the other, I’m not qualified to make much of a judgment, except that it’s quite a stupid idea of the Russian Government to persecute anybody.” Dr. Cousins turned and started down the passageway.
“And is her illness making her say things that she cannot mean?”
Dr. Cousins stopped, and turned to face Mikhail. “I cannot say for sure.”
“But it is possible?” Mikhail persisted.
“In a fevered, weakened condition anything is possible. But there is no proof. I am not a doctor of the mind, Mr. Ginzburg.”
Mikhail felt a sinking in his heart, a sudden dizziness.
“You must get some rest yourself,” Dr. Cousins said gently, squeezing Mikhail’s arm. “I’ll stop in later,” he said. “And if you need any help in terms of the hospitalization—”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
Mikhail watched as the doctor let himself into his own compartment, leaving him alone in the passageway, then he went back inside.
The gray-haired lady had tidied Vera’s bed and gone back to her own compartment. Mikhail poured a glassful of water and lifted Vera so she could drink. He put the pills between her lips and urged her to swallow the water. She gagged momentarily, then gulped and looked up at him, her eyes shining. Her lids were heavy, like little hoods.
“You must let me go back to Moscow, Mikhail,” she said.
“Whatever you wish, my darling.”
“I wish I was stronger, Mikhail.”
“I understand.”
“You must forgive me.”
“Of course, my darling.”
He lifted her frail figure from the bunk and held her to him, feeling the tears start, trying with every effort of his will to keep his shoulders steady so that she would not know he was crying.