Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [496]
And then came the letter. It was from her second brother, who normally disliked writing and from whom she had not heard since several months before he left. Yet now he wrote at length, giving a detailed account of the crossing and news of the family; and his letter also contained a long final section.
We came to Ellis Island. It was frightening for a moment. When I saw that great slab of a building and saw the rows of other immigrants waiting for inspection in the huge hall I thought – My God, it’s going to be like Russia only worse. It’s a prison. But it was soon over and then we were out.
And then … This is why I had to write to you, dear Rosa. Then we were free. Can you imagine the feel of it? It’s hard to describe. To know that you are free. There are no gendarmes watching you for the Ministry of the Interior, no police spies looking for enemies of the regime. You can go where you please. Everyone can vote. And a Jew has as many rights as anyone else.
The Americans are like the Russians. They are simple and straightforward, and speak from the heart – the Russians at their best, that is! But also they are unlike Russians, because they are free, and they know it.
And this is why I am writing to you now, dear Rosa. For being here, I can’t help thinking of you. Of course, you have converted and you live in Moscow. But are you sure, are you really sure that this truly makes you safe? And little Dimitri: apart from your conversion, which I know was done for expediency, in Jewish eyes the son of a Jewish mother is a Jew. It’s not that I’m personally religious: you know I’m not. But all I mean to say is, if things get bad in Russia, for God’s sake come to America. Legally or illegally, you can always arrange something. Come and join us, I beg you, here where all your family will be safe.
The letter had made a lasting impression upon Rosa. If in recent years, with her new life and her child, she had seldom thought about the past, the letter brought it all back to her with a strange force. With poignancy she found herself thinking of her poor father and all he had tried to do for her. She thought of her own music, which she had never gone back to since marriage. She remembered rather sadly, now, the pain she had caused her mother. And picturing her brothers she thought: I wish I could see them again.
The letter worried her too. Though her brother spoke of the Jews, she did not fail to notice his veiled reference to police spies and enemies of the regime. Peter, with his Socialist activities, could also find himself in danger. She had mulled over the letter for a month before showing it to Peter one morning and asking: ‘What do you think?’
But even she had not been prepared for his response.
‘How terrible,’ he said, ‘to want to leave Russia.’ And when she suggested that perhaps it might be better for them to move to America, he just looked at her with blank incomprehension and suggested she might want to lie down. She knew better than to raise the subject again. She had discovered that, though gentle and kind, Peter also possessed a strange obstinacy that made him blind to anything that did not fit his idea of the universe. They would never go to America: there was nothing more to say.
Had she resented this? She did not believe so at the time. She loved Peter, he was so good and simple; and though he had been almost a father-figure at the start, as the years passed she realized increasingly how much he relied upon her. He did so with such touching faith. ‘I can’t imagine how I would have lived without you,’ he would sometimes say. ‘It was surely the angels who sent you.’ And once he had even confessed: ‘That day you spoke of America – that was the worst day