Rachel's Secret Read online

  She wiped her eyes and tried to quiet her breathing, as if she could will away the horror. But the sound of Mikhail’s screams and the sight of his uncle looming over him with a knife were seared into her brain.

  Rachel fervently regretted her anger toward Mikhail when they had parted. If only Mikhail hadn’t kissed her, then she wouldn’t have been mad and he might still be alive. Now he was dead, and she couldn’t even go to the police to seek justice…because the murderer was a policeman! A sense of doom and profound despair settled in her chest.

  Rachel tried to tidy her hair and skirt and opened the door of the outhouse. It was a cold, still night, a perfect night for sitting by the fire and playing chess with her father; a perfect night for wrapping herself in a warm blanket and listening to her father play his violin. But the peacefulness was deceiving, thought Rachel as she traipsed to the door. Beneath the silence was a nightmare so real, it chilled her to the core. She didn’t think she would ever feel warm again, or safe, or content.

  “Look at you!” cried her mother, dropping the spoon she was holding when Rachel entered. She wiped her pale hands on her apron and bent down to pick up the spoon. “I thought you were going to fetch your shawl, yes?”

  Rachel glanced down at her empty hands and realized she must have dropped the shawl when she was running away from the river. She began twirling her braid nervously and looked away from her mother to the steaming samovar on the stove.

  “And your skirt? Do you know how much work it is to wash your clothes?”

  “I’m sorry, Mother, I…fell,” said Rachel, casting her gaze at the floor. The smell of cabbage soup was making her nauseous.

  “Why can’t you take care of your things, like your sister?”

  Nucia, who was getting bowls out of the cupboard, smirked at Rachel. Ordinarily, Rachel would have glared at her sister, but now she ignored her, giving her mother a vague shrug.

  “Let her catch her breath.” Her father stood by their only window, overlooking the courtyard, holding a glass of tea. “Are you all right, Rachel?”

  “Yes…I just…well…I never made it to the river.” Her swollen eyes darted from her father to her mother.

  “Where were you then?” asked her mother.

  “I was…running…so I could get my shawl and come home, but I…I tripped over a tree root and fell down a hill, which is why I’m so dirty.” She paused to think up the next part of her lie. “The sky was getting dark and the…the trees started to look like skeletons, and the wind was howling so loudly, making sounds I’d never heard before and…I think a brown bear was nearby…I was frightened and ran home before I could find my shawl.”

  “Ech,” said her mother, shaking her head and mumbling to herself. “This girl…she doesn’t appreciate what I do for her. After long days of cooking and cleaning, I knit her a beautiful red shawl. And what does she do? She loses it.”

  “Ita, stop. Leave the girl alone,” said Rachel’s father. He turned toward Rachel, his face dark with concern. “I’ve told you many times that bears only come out in the middle of the night, when we’re sleeping, Rachel. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them. Now go and change your clothes and come for supper.”

  She nodded at her father and slipped behind the muslin curtain in the corner of the room where she and Nucia slept on a wooden bench. Away from the questioning looks of her family, she let the tears she’d been fighting flow down her face. She fell onto her stomach and cried silently into her feather pillow until she was limp, a dry rag, with every tear wrung out of her.

  “Rachel skated with that boy again today,” said Nucia, when they sat down to dinner. “Mikhail.”

  Rachel’s heart fluttered, as if it were broken into a hundred little pieces. She moved her spoon listlessly around in her soup.

  “What people must have thought when they saw you,” cried Rachel’s mother. She brought her hands to her bony cheeks. “We are respectable Jews, menshe yiden, and cannot behave in such a manner.”

  “Ita, calm yourself,” said Rachel’s father, buttering a piece of bread. “Rachel, it might not be a wise idea to spend so much time with a gentile.” He put his knife down. “Why can’t you be friends with a nice Jewish boy?”

  Rachel looked at her father. “I’m not hungry.”

  “What?” Rachel’s mother cried. “First she loses her shawl and now she refuses to eat perfectly good food.”

  Rachel caught her father’s eye. He pressed his lips together and nodded at her, giving permission for her to leave the table. She backed away without looking at her mother who was still muttering under her breath.

  Rachel stood in front of her bed, too distraught for sleep, her eyes blinking back tears. She saw her wooden doll, the one her mother had given her years ago, standing on the shelf above her bench, and wished she could go back in time to when she was little and life was simple. With a trembling hand, Rachel picked up her doll—named Snegurochka after the snow maiden in her favorite fairy tale—and stared at the hand-painted face with its scarlet lips and turquoise eyes. Snegurochka loved Ivan, a human, and he loved her. Ivan gave up everything to live with Snegurochka in a castle made of snow because she would melt if she tried to enter his world.

  Seeing Mikhail killed made Rachel wonder if their friendship was to blame, because he’d ventured outside his world and into hers, because he’d cared about her more than he should have. Without even removing her skirt, Rachel, still clutching her doll, climbed onto her bench, pulled her feather quilt over her head and rolled into a tight ball, knees to her chest. When she closed her eyes, all she saw was Mikhail on the ice, in a pool of blood as red as the shawl she’d lost.

  Three

  The morning passed slowly, with Sergei constantly peering at Mikhail’s empty desk. In rapid French, the teacher conjugated verbs, his monotonous voice drifting incoherently into the background. Sergei began doodling on his paper.

  With swift, bold strokes he drew the rectangular outline of a building he’d pictured in his head. The roof was a flat, wide triangle, and the windows were large with arches on top. As the drawing took shape, he added texture with bolder lines and shading.

  “Conjugez le verbe envoyer au passé composé, Sergei. Est-ce que vous écoutez?”

  Sergei looked up to see his teacher, Mr. Pollkin, scowling at him from the front of the room. Sergei’s face was deep red as he stood up before his classmates.

  “Je ne sais pas,” he replied.

  Mr. Pollkin’s large, bulging eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of his oversized head. Sergei knew his teacher demanded the full attention of his students at all times, and that he was in trouble. As he stood waiting to hear his punishment, a knock sounded at the classroom door.

  “Entrez,” ordered Mr. Pollkin, without taking his eyes off Sergei.

  The students gasped as a police officer strode into the room, dressed in the familiar gray uniform, buttoned right up to the collar.

  “It has come to our attention that a boy from this class is missing,” announced the officer. “Mikhail Rybachenko went ice-skating on the River Byk yesterday and never returned home. Blood was discovered on the ice. Naturally, his grandparents are quite concerned.”

  Sergei froze. The officer scanned the class, which had become so quiet that Sergei could hear the wind growling outside.

  Clearing his throat, the policeman asked, “Did any of you see him skating yesterday?”

  Realizing that every boy’s eyes were now on him—Mikhail’s closest friend—Sergei stepped forward slowly.

  “Come with me,” the officer barked.

  Sergei dragged his feet through the doorway and then followed the officer down the hall. On the way he heard a Latin class reciting verses and wished he were there, or anywhere else, and that Mikhail was with him.

  They entered an empty classroom. The
officer settled into a chair behind the desk. Sergei stood facing him.

  “Your name,” he began, holding a pen over his notebook.

  “Sergei. Sergei Khanzhenkov.”

  The officer’s eyebrows rose and he removed his spectacles. “Are you related to Chief Khanzhenkov?”

  Sergei nodded. “He’s my father.”

  The policeman pursed his lips as he mulled over this information. He put his glasses back on. “Very well. Continue.”

  “I saw Mikhail and this girl, Rachel, yesterday, skating on the river.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About four o’clock, I think. I didn’t look at my watch.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “I told you…they were skating.”

  The officer scowled. “Don’t be rude. Now, how does Mikhail know her?”

  Sergei pulled at his collar, which was suddenly choking him. “We met her one day when we were skating last winter.”

  “Were they fighting when you left them?”

  “No.” Sergei clenched his teeth. He knew he should tell the officers he’d seen Mikhail kiss Rachel, but he didn’t want to make trouble for Mikhail.

  “Do you know where this Rachel lives? Her last name?”

  “I think it’s Paskar, and she lives in lower Kishinev.”

  The officer removed his spectacles again, stood up, and leaned over the table so that Sergei could smell his sour breath. “So she’s Jewish, a Yid.”

  “What difference does that make?” asked Sergei.

  The officer stared at him. “Do you have anything more to say?”

  Sergei shook his head.

  “Go back to your class then. We’re through, for now.”

  Sergei backed out of the doorway slowly, breaking into a sweat as soon as the door closed behind him.

  A loud tapping persisted in Sergei’s head as he slept. He tossed and turned from side to side, but the tapping was relentless, shattering his sleep. He sat up groggily and rubbed his eyes. It was still dark outside, the middle of the night.

  Shivering, he left his bed and trudged out of his room to the sitting room, where the stove burned all night. His father stood in the open doorway to their flat, his back to Sergei.

  “When was this?” his father was asking, his voice raspy with sleep.

  A man answered his father. Sergei yawned and sat down by the stove, which gave off a comfortable warmth.

  “And there was nothing on his feet, hmm?” his father continued. “I’ll be there at first light.”

  Sergei feared the resignation in his father’s voice.

  His father shut the door and sighed.

  “What is it, Papa?” asked Sergei.

  His father jumped and turned at the sound of Sergei’s voice. “Why are you up, hmm?”

  “The person at the door woke me.”

  “Ah.” His father pulled up a chair and sat beside Sergei. “I have some bad news.” He paused, as if he wasn’t sure of how to proceed. “A peasant has come across a body, in a garden in Dubossary.”

  Sergei was unable to move or speak. He knew what was coming, but didn’t want to hear it.

  “I think it is Mikhail.”

  The bile in Sergei’s stomach rose to his throat. “No…no…I don’t believe it!” He wanted his father to tell him it was all a mistake—that Mikhail was safe at home with his grandparents. But his father looked grim and began pouring water into the samovar to make tea.

  Sergei’s face turned white with shock. “No. It’s not possible…it’s not…Mikhail. Why would Mikhail be in Dubossary, so far from here?”

  His father scratched his head. “Perhaps he was taken there by the person who killed him. We won’t know until after the autopsy, but my officer says there are a number of stab wounds on the body.”

  Sergei’s head began spinning. He felt dizzy and sick and faint. “The body; how can you refer to him as ‘the body’? He’s a person, my friend—” He jumped up and kicked his chair. “And he’s not dead. Nobody would ever hurt Mikhail. Nobody.”

  His father looked at Sergei with a grave face. “A stranger may be responsible, someone who knows nothing about Mikhail…”

  Sergei’s eyes burned with rage. “That doesn’t make any sense, it has to be a mistake; Mikhail isn’t dead, he’s at home with his grandparents. I know it.” Before his father could respond, he ran back to his room and slammed the door.

  Standing near the edge of the River Byk, Sergei showed his father where he’d left Mikhail on Sunday, two days earlier. His hand shook as he pointed to the spot. Mikhail’s death had now been confirmed. Sergei’s emotions conflicted between a thirst for revenge, and remorse for the argument he’d had with Mikhail the last time they’d been together.

  “There, where the river’s the widest. That’s…where he was standing the last time…” His voice was tense, “…the last time I saw him, with Rachel. There were some other people skating not far from them as well.”

  “How many people, hmm?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe seven or eight.”

  “Did you know any of them?”

  “No.”

  “Were they all Jewish?”

  “Why are you and the rest of the police so obsessed with the Jews?”

  “I’m asking the questions. Not you.”

  Sergei scowled at his father and then pasted his eyes onto the river. “If only Mikhail had come with me instead of staying with Rachel.”

  “Don’t go near that girl. Do you hear me?”

  “She didn’t have anything to do with his death,” said Sergei, shouting out the words with a fierceness that surprised even him.

  “How can you be so certain? Were you there?”

  “They were friends, and she’s half his size.”

  “Just do as I say and stay away from her. She’s bad luck.” His father reached into his waist pouch for a cigarette, lit it with a birch splinter, and inhaled. He wrote some notes on his paper, his cigarette dangling from his lips. Then he beckoned one of his officers to look at the bloody trail from the ice in front of the bench to the snow-covered ground.

  Sergei turned away from his father, disappointed that he would even consider Rachel a murderer, and waded through the heavy snow on the riverbank far past the bench. The sky was gray and the birch trees sagged as if they were bent in grief. As he walked by the dormant trees that obscured his view of the river, something red on the frozen ground caught his eye. Perhaps it was a clue to Mikhail’s murder, he thought as he strode toward it purposefully.

  It was Rachel’s shawl, the one she had been wearing when she was skating with Mikhail. Looking around to make sure nobody was watching, Sergei picked it up and stuffed it inside his bulky sheepskin coat.

  Rachel could hear the wind’s menacing howl moaning through the cracks of the house, like heavy, deep breaths, taunting her as she tossed and turned. Mikhail stood before her with a knife plunged into his chest. Begging her for help. But she stood silently, unmoving.. Listening as his cries grew louder and louder and louder…watching as he fell to his death. Footsteps chasing her, getting closer and closer, louder and louder…

  Rachel sat up, her chest heaving rapidly up and down. She threw her quilt to the floor. At the other end of the bench, Nucia slept peacefully, breathing in a steady, comfortable rhythm.

  She wanted to show respect for Mikhail, just as she had honored her mother’s parents when they died a year ago. Her family had sat Shiva for seven days. They hadn’t looked in the mirror, bathed, or washed their hair for a week, and her mother even tore a piece of her skirt…Rachel sat up quickly and reached down to the bottom of her nightdress. Grabbing the cotton between her thumb and forefinger, she pulled as hard as she could, but it wouldn’t tear. Feeling around for the seam
, she pulled until the fabric ripped apart. Now Rachel felt like she had truly honored the separation between her and Mikhail. Now she could try to sleep.

  “You’re awake!”

  Her mother’s voice startled Rachel as she poured herself a glass of tea, spilling it all over the samovar.

  “How can you be so messy?” said her mother. “You must be more careful.”

  Fetching a rag from the water bucket, Rachel wiped the samovar clean.

  “You look better. You’ll go back to school tomorrow,” said Rachel’s mother before emptying her birch-bark basket of the tea and cabbage she had just purchased. “Idleness is the mother of all vices.”

  “But Mother, I still don’t feel well.”

  “What if I didn’t cook your meals or wash your clothes when I was ill? You’d starve, yes?”

  Rachel frowned and headed back into her sleeping area. She needed to write about what she’d seen, to ease the burden within her heart that was becoming heavier by the minute. The pages of her journal were her friends, better than real friends, for they would not talk or reveal her secrets.

  “Where are you going?” asked her mother as she lit the oil lamp sitting on the table.

  “To write in my journal.”

  Her mother pulled out a white piece of cloth from a basket near the stove. “If you’re well enough to write, you’re well enough to help me. Come,” she motioned with her finger. “You will embroider this challah cover.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue with me. Now, here’s some red and blue thread. The scroll work should be in red and the flowers in blue.”

  For hours, it seemed to Rachel, she sat and stitched, doing her best to keep the threads even and smooth, which was almost impossible with her clumsy hands. She poked her fingers with the needle more times than she could count. Knots appeared out of nowhere, causing her to stop and cut the thread. Her head throbbed and her eyes were strained and heavy.