The Russian Jerusalem by Elaine Feinstein

daughters alike kept the enterprise going, and no one else was given the time to brood over books as Mendl was.

    Rechytsa still sits on the steep right bank of the Dnepr, but Hatskell’s direct descendants have long ago dispersed to the United States, Argentina, Canada, Uruguay, South Africa. Uncles, cousins, in-laws and their numerous progeny who remained in Belarus were less fortunate. Many in Rechytsa welcomed the Revolution, which emancipated them from Tsarist discrimination, at least on paper. But in the Civil War the Red armies turned out to be almost as brutal as the White. Jews who owned stores or factories found themselves in particular trouble; even those who set out their goods in baskets on market days, or hung a string of salt fish, a cluster of bagels or a wreath of Turkish peppers over their doors were designated class enemies. Plunder was commonplace. So were murder and rape.
    When Stalin made his pact with Hitler, all Jews were afraid but, mysteriously, other pressures began to ease. Who knew why? The Ukraine was fertile, seeds sown in 1940 meant there was bread. There was even fruit and vegetables. Rechytsa lived in a dream of restored plenty.
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    And into that dream I wander, on my own, without Tsvetaeva to guide me.
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    There are horses in the fields of the collective farms. They swish their tails to keep off the flies. The air is sweet with the scents of early summer. The dusty road that leads to the stetl is quiet and I walk along it as if back into my own past
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    It is 1941. On the narrow streets of the town the stall-keepers are drinking tea together, and I listen to them complain about a consignment of vegetables from the Ukraine, and the scraggy hens. Some fall into Yiddish, but most speak Russian, with a nasal burr. These are poor people, gentle people.
    In the streets, many children are chasing one another, their shrieks regarded tolerantly. A toddler falls in a puddle and a man lifts him up. His clothes are filthy but the man soothes him without reproach until he stops crying. A woman comes out and shouts angrily at him.
    What are they doing? What is their work? These Jews of Rechytsa are strange to me. It is a foreign landscape. Suddenly, rounding a twist in a lane, I make out a wood shop, open to the street. And the smells are familiar. Creosote, wood shavings and boiling glue. I remember sitting as a school child in my father’s factory, smelling those same pungent odours. I can even hear the whine of a circular saw. Inside, behind an open door, a large-boned woman with flashing eyes, red cheeks and brawny upper arms looks up as I look in. We stare at one another.
    She could be my Aunt Clara, who ran her own wood shop in Manchester. A handsome woman, rather larger than her husband. Behind both of them sits an old man – white haired, much the age Zaida would have been in 1941. He looks less benevolent, however. Less bookish. More formidable even though he is close to sleep, his mouth sunken over his few teeth. He comes to wakefulness abruptly. His eyes are bright in his narrow face. Everyone looks at me, and for the first time in my travels I know I am not invisible.
    My presence puzzles them. I remember that bewilderment from the time I was driven north to meet my aunts in Manchester long ago. It is as if I have become a child of six again, with olive skin and black eyes, unmistakeably part of the gene pool but yet a stranger.
    They speak in a warm, hasty Yiddish.
    â€˜Who does she look like?’
    â€˜One of the Bobroff family. A cousin from Kovno.’
    They all have their suggestions.
    â€˜She looks hungry,’ the young man says.
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    As he turns, I recognise a fleeting resemblance to my own father. Something in the skew of the smile, something in the straight black hair combed back from his forehead, something in the ease with which he handles machinery. He is as deft and practical as Menachem Mendl had been unworldly.
    â€˜Do you want some soup?’