Loving Liberty Levine Read online

  PRAISE FOR COLIN FALCONER

  “Once you read Colin Falconer, you’ll want to read everything he has ever written.”

  —Crystal Book Reviews

  “Falconer’s grasp of period and places is almost flawless . . . He’s my kind of writer.”

  —Peter Corris, The Australian

  “If you haven’t read one of Colin Falconer’s novels, then I promise you are in for a real roller-coaster ride of never ending intrigue.”

  —History and Women

  “Each chapter ends with a gripping cliff-hanger that makes the book irresistible and unputdownable.”

  —Mirella Patzer, Historical Novel Review

  “I enjoyed his storytelling voice so much that, had this book been say, set in modern times, the intriguing main characters would still have been able to pull it off.”

  —Bookbag

  “Falconer demonstrates exceptional characterization.”

  —Bookgeeks

  “Provides action, romance, and beautifully descriptive writing by the cartload.”

  —Des Greene, Novel Suggestions

  “Living history at its best, fictionalized yet immensely believable.”

  —Alan Gold, Good Reading

  “Beautifully written in typical Falconer style with plenty of snap and sharpness, and wonderfully researched, I enjoyed every page of this book.”

  —History and Women

  “Falconer’s descriptive narrative is exquisite at times. Each short chapter opens with a flowing brush of words that paint precisely, yet mellifluously, in a manner that is almost poetic.”

  —Historical Writers Association

  “It is the richness of the prose itself that truly made this historical era come alive.”

  —Historical Novel Review

  “A page-turner.”

  —Booklist

  “Plausible and engrossing.”

  —Woman’s Day

  “Moves along at a cracking pace, the narrative fraught with action and tension at every turn.”

  —Historical Novel Society

  “Colin Falconer is one of those historical fiction authors that takes a subject and not only researches it thoroughly but also has the talent to take you to the heart of the matter whilst making you feel that you’re seeing history being made at the time of the events . . . Add to this top notch prose a wonderfully almost cinematic feel to the story and of course a lead character that you can really get behind and all in it’s a wonderful read. Great stuff.”

  —Dros Delnoch, Falcata Times

  ALSO BY COLIN FALCONER

  Classic Historical Fiction

  Isabella, Braveheart of France

  Silk Road

  Cleopatra

  Harem

  Aztec

  Stigmata

  East India

  A Great Love of Small Proportion

  A Vain and Indecent Woman

  Colossus

  Twentieth-Century Fiction

  The Unkillable Kitty O’Kane

  Anastasia

  My Beautiful Spy

  Opium

  Triad

  Disappeared

  Sleeping with the Enemy

  Warbaby

  Venom

  Live for Me

  The Black Witch of Mexico

  Crime

  Rough Justice

  The Certainty of Doing Evil

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Colin Falconer

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503904002

  ISBN-10: 1503904008

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  This book is dedicated to my two beautiful daughters, Lauren and Jess.

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PART 1

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  PART 2

  13

  14

  15

  16

  PART 3

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  PART 4

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  PART 5

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  PART 6

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  PART 7

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Any errors in the representation of historical facts are mine and mine alone. And yes, the term skid row was not used until 1931. I claim poetic license on that one.

  PART 1

  1

  Tallinn, Russia, Winter 1912

  Sura wanted to love her husband more than she did. I should be wailing too, she thought, as she watched Micha peel his mother’s arms from about his neck. There was a part of her that was terrified she would never see him again; another part of her wished him gone forever so that she could one day become a mother.

  You are so lucky, her sisters told her. Soon you will be millionaire rich! They shovel the gold off the streets over there in Golden Medina. But she didn’t want to leave Tallinn, didn’t want to follow him to America and a better life. What was wrong with this one?

  Gelt, what of it? Can Micha buy me a baby with it? Can money buy me my very own family, like they have?

  The sailors scurried about the deck of the iron ship, getting ready to cast off for the first leg of the journey to New York. Will it be warmer over there, she wondered. This winter’s day was so bitter, the wind had frozen the sea spray into icicles through the sedge at the waterline. Her nose was stinging with cold above her scarf, her feet numb.

  Just go, Husband, so we can all get out of this wind.

  What a terrible person to think such shameless-wife thoughts! Poor Micha, trying only to make a life for himself, for her, trying to become a proper mensch.

  “Sura,” he said, and wrapped her in his big bear arms. There was ice on his wool coat, and it melted against her cheek. “Stay well, bubeleh.”

  “Zol zion mit mazel,” she said.

  “I will send you a ticket as soon as I have the money.” He hefted his cardboard suitcase, all tied round with string, and put his other arm around his mother. “It’s a
ll right, Mama,” he said to her. “I will see you soon, in America.”

  “You go over there, you will lose all your Jewishness.”

  “I won’t lose my Jewishness, Mama.”

  “Look at you. I can see the Jewishness coming out of you already.”

  The captain of the ferry gave a blast on the horn; the sailors threw the heavy ropes off the bollards. It was time to go. Micha ran up the gangway, and Sura helped his mother back to the wagon. She was afraid the old woman might faint—and such a weight she was. If it wasn’t for Sura and Ruth, Micha’s sister, she would have sunk to her knees right there in the snow.

  “You’ll see him soon in America,” Sura said to her. “You heard him, he promised you.”

  “No, I won’t ever see my son again,” the old woman moaned. “What do I want from going to America?”

  “But you told him a hundred times you would go. I heard you say it!”

  “Got as much use for telling as I got use for America. Never going to see my boy again. What am I going to do now?”

  The ferry pulled away from the dock. In minutes it was plowing through the gray sea. The first stop was Stockholm, he had told her, in a country called Sweden. “From there, I will get a boat to New York, then I will start shoveling up the gold. I hope I have not left too late, and there is some left for me!”

  She saw him holding on to the stern rail with one hand, waving the other high above his head. The frost in his beard will be frozen like glass by now, she thought. My poor husband. Everyone says he is so good; he deserves a better wife, one who is not always wishing other women’s babies belonged to her.

  When he gets to America, he should forget all about me.

  2

  “How do you know it is because of Micha you can’t have babies?” Etta said.

  “He told me, that same night we are married. Right then, I cannot make any sense of it. It is the wedding night, what do I know from these things? How do I know what a man is supposed to look like down there?”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know. Like normal, I guess. Like a horse.”

  “Like a horse?”

  “Well, same like a horse, only smaller.”

  “Thank God.”

  The sled bumped on the rutted ice. Sura saw elk tracks in the deep snow beside the trail. The jangle of the reins was the only sound in the darkening forest. Shadows were deepening between the crooked bog pines. Etta had kept them late at the market trying to sell the rest of the potatoes, and they would be lucky to get back before dark now.

  “Micha was married before, and his wife didn’t have a baby.”

  “You shouldn’t say bad about the dead,” Etta said.

  “I’m not speaking bad of her. I am just saying. Five years they were married and nothing to show.”

  “You’ve only been married two years, Sura. Not even two years.”

  The sled bounced on another deep rut, and Etta gasped and clutched at her belly. Easy for her to say, Sura thought. Barely married a year and already her first on the way. No such problems for her.

  No problems for any of my sisters, only me.

  “Don’t be having it now,” Sura said.

  “Not having my baby in the forest.”

  “That’s good, because you start pushing now, I’m leaving you here.”

  Sura flicked the reins to hurry Ivor, their old horse.

  “You miss Micha?” Etta asked her.

  Sura felt a guilty flush in her cold cheeks. “Sure, I miss him. He’s my husband.”

  “You never talk about him.”

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t miss him.”

  “He’s a handsome man, your Micha.”

  Very handsome man, she wanted to say. But what good is a handsome man when he can’t give you handsome babies?

  “Soon you will be going to America too.”

  Sura didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t you want to go?”

  “When I go to America, when will I see you and Zlota and Gutta again?”

  “It’s got to be better than here. Who ever gets to be a proper human being in Russia?”

  Another flick of the reins. Old Ivor was getting cranky and slow these days. A wolf was baying somewhere in the forest. Sura didn’t like how dark it was getting.

  “Sura, you and Micha, did you, you know, do it a lot?”

  “Sure, we did it a lot. What do you think?”

  “To have a baby, Yaakov says you have to do it a lot.”

  “Well, sure, Yaakov’s going to say that. He’s a man, what else is he going to say?” Sura glanced at her sister. There was something wrong with her. She looked red in the face, and she kept blowing out her cheeks, like she couldn’t get her breath. Please not now, she thought. Miles to go before we get home. Please don’t let it be now. “Etta, you okay?”

  But Etta ignored her. “Why did Micha think he couldn’t, you know?” she said.

  “He had an accident.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “He fell off a horse when he was a boychick. Onto a pine stump. They had to take him to the hospital, in Tallinn. He said one of his you-know-whats, it was the size of a potato. Etta, I don’t like the look of you. What’s wrong?”

  “I think maybe the baby’s coming.”

  “You think what?”

  “I’ve been having these pains.”

  “Since when you been having pains?”

  “Since we left the market.”

  “Since the market? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought maybe I was imagining.”

  Sura stared at her little sister. She was trying to look brave, but Sura could tell by her eyes Etta was really scared. She gasped as the sled jolted, and gripped Sura’s arm. “Sura, I think it’s happening.”

  “No, it’s not happening. It can’t be happening. Take a deep breath.”

  “What good will it do, a deep breath? What do you know from stopping babies?”

  “You can’t have it out here!”

  She flicked the reins. Don’t panic, Sura, she thought. Not far from the village, if Ivor can keep up this trot. Just a little faster, old boy. Get us home.

  Etta gasped again. Sura felt her fingers tighten around her arm, squeeze all the blood out of it. Should have left her home this morning, but she said she had weeks yet. Should never listen to your little sister, Sura, you know that. Never had any brains this one, just like their vati said.

  Suddenly the sled lurched and skewed, and they nearly tipped all the way over. Etta screamed as Ivor crumpled to his knees in the snow. The old boy was keening down in the traces and slumping onto his side; only the trunk of a birch tree kept them from toppling all the way over.

  Sura was lying on top of Etta, who was moaning softly. Sura jumped out, and straightaway she could see what had happened. In his hurry Ivor had put his foreleg in a bog. He was struggling to get up, whimpering all the while.

  Sura pulled Etta clear of the sled.

  “I’m all right,” Etta said. “How is Ivor?”

  Poor Ivor, he had pulled their sled between the village and the city for as long as she could remember, but maybe today was the last time. A close look told her the worst: his left leg was snapped. She could see white bone and a streak of bright-red blood. She knelt down, stroked his old head, all the good it would do. Nothing to be done to help him now.

  One moment we are talking about having families, she thought, next we are lying in the snow with a crippled horse and Etta is having a baby. She looked around: deepening forest shadows, Etta moaning in a bundled heap on the ground. Sura could see the first evening star above the black tips of the pines.

  She crouched there, listening to her sister’s gulping moans. Etta’s breath froze on the still air, each puff a little condensation of pain coming faster and faster.

  What was that there, in the dark? Oh, okay, just a squirrel. It watched for a moment, then darted between the trees, leaving tiny tracks in the s
now. Her muscles felt frozen. She didn’t know what to do.

  Well, Sura Levine, you have to do something, cannot sit here feeling sorry for yourself. Your fault you are in this mess, now you have to mend it.

  She scrambled over to Etta, grabbed her hands, and sat her up.

  “How is Ivor?” Etta said.

  “He broke his leg.”

  “Poor Ivor. Oh, listen to him, Sura.”

  “Cannot listen to him before I listen to you. Is it coming?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know!”

  Sura fetched some of the empty burlap sacks out of the back of the sled and put them underneath Etta. She took off her gloves, blew on her fingers, then started to drag down her little sister’s drawers.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Got to see if the baby is coming. What, you too modest to show me? I’m your big sister, nothing you got I don’t got too.” She pushed Etta’s knees apart. There was a smear of blood and mucus on the sacks, a sticky black mop of a head right there. Took her two other sisters almost a whole day to have their first—here is Etta out in the snow, and she has almost pushed out this little schnorrer just with a few grunts, sitting on the sled. Not enough sense to feel any pain, Vati would say.

  “Have to leave me here,” Etta said. “Run and get someone.”

  “I am someone.”

  “I’m scared, Sura.”

  “Nothing to be scared of. I can see the head. You’re nearly done.”

  “You can see the head?”

  “You must have been laboring all the while we were at market. How could you be so quiet about it?”

  “I thought it was just normal. I’m not due till Purim.”

  “This little thing don’t have a Jewish calendar in there, Etta.”

  Oh, not here, little one, not here! Already Sura’s fingers were so numb, she couldn’t feel them. Her mother and her aunt had helped when her big sisters had their babies, made her run for hot water and towels. She had watched what they did over their shoulders, but she had never had to do it herself. And what did she have for the birth cord? Just the string from the potato sacks and a rusty old knife in her belt she used for cutting them open.

  “Run for help,” Etta said. “Run for help, it’s coming, oh my baby, my baby, everything’s fakakta!”

  Never even thought she knew that word, Sura thought. Etta screamed again, and Sura watched wide eyed as the crowning head swelled, then withdrew. “It’s almost there,” she said.