steps.
"Wish me luck."
"Break a leg."
It was almost nine when Jake Massey drove
down to the lake and lit a cigarette as he stared out at the choppy water in
the drizzling rain. He wondered about the signal from Washington and why they
wanted him home.
As he switched off the engine he heard
the faint blast of a fog-horn out on the water, glanced up and saw the distant
lights of a boat moving in the cold darkness near the far shore.
That sound always reminded him, and for a
moment he sat there and closed his eyes.
It was a long ago winter's evening like
this when he had first seen the lights of America as a child.
He was only seven years of age but Jakob
Masensky still remembered the body smells and the babble of strange voices on
Ellis Island.
Ukrainians, Russians, mixed with Irish
and Italians and Spanish and Germans. All hoping to start a new life in the
promise of the New World.
He had arrived with his parents from
Russia in 1919, two years after the Bolshevik Revolution.
In St. Petersburg, where his father's family
had emigrated from Poland two generations before, Stanistas Masensky had been
employed by the royal household. Jakob Masensky still had a sharp memory of
being taken for winter walks in the grounds of the magnificent gilded palaces
of Catherine the Great. Stanislas Masensky was an intelligent man, a reader and
chess player who, were it not for the accident of being born into an
impoverished family, might have become a lawyer or a doctor and not the humble
master carpenter that he was.
And Stanislas Masensky also had a secret
which, were it known to his employers, would have caused his instant dismissal.
He was an ardent Menshevik supporter who
in his heart despised the nobility and everything it stood for. He believed
that Russia's future lay in democracy and freedom and that change was coming
whether the Tsar wanted it or not, so when the Reds took St. Petersburg he was
not a pleased man.
"Believe me, Jakob," his father
was fond of saying. "We will pay the price of this Red folly. We need a
new Russia, but not that kind of new Russia."
And no one had been more surprised by the
Reds' revolution than Stanislas Masensky. It had come like a whirlwind almost
out of nowhere, for the Mensheviks had long been the dominant force for change
in Russia. And Lenin's Bolsheviks knew this, and that any threat to their
promised revolution would have to be crushed mercilessly.
The Reds had come one day; three men with
rifles.
They had marched Stanislas away at the
point of their bayonets. His pregnant wife and child didn't see him until his
release three days later. He had been beaten almost to a pulp and his arms had
been broken. He had been lucky not to get a bullet in the neck but that might
come soon, and Stanislas knew it.
So he and his wife had packed their
belongings and with a horse and cart donated by a relative had set off with
their son for Estonia. What little money Jakob's parents had begged and
borrowed went on tickets on a Swedish schooner bound from Tallinn to New York.
It was a difficult winter crossing, made
all the harsher because of savage easterly winds. The schooner was buffeted and
tossed in twenty-foot swells and in the holds the immigrants suffered the
worst. On the fifth day Nadia Masensky went into premature labor.
Stanislas Masensky lost not only a child
but a young wife, and when the bodies were buried at sea young Jakob remembered
the desolate look on his father's face. The man had loved his young wife
deeply, and after her loss he was never the same. A friend of his father's had
once told Jakob that the loss of a beautiful young wife was something a man
never really got over, and he believed it, watching his father retreat into
himself year after year.
Until the Depression came, life had been
reasonably good in America for Stanislas and his young son. He had settled in
the area of Brooklyn called Brighton Beach, known as Little Russia because of
its wave of Russian immigrants
"Wish me luck."
"Break a leg."
It was almost nine when Jake Massey drove
down to the lake and lit a cigarette as he stared out at the choppy water in
the drizzling rain. He wondered about the signal from Washington and why they
wanted him home.
As he switched off the engine he heard
the faint blast of a fog-horn out on the water, glanced up and saw the distant
lights of a boat moving in the cold darkness near the far shore.
That sound always reminded him, and for a
moment he sat there and closed his eyes.
It was a long ago winter's evening like
this when he had first seen the lights of America as a child.
He was only seven years of age but Jakob
Masensky still remembered the body smells and the babble of strange voices on
Ellis Island.
Ukrainians, Russians, mixed with Irish
and Italians and Spanish and Germans. All hoping to start a new life in the
promise of the New World.
He had arrived with his parents from
Russia in 1919, two years after the Bolshevik Revolution.
In St. Petersburg, where his father's family
had emigrated from Poland two generations before, Stanistas Masensky had been
employed by the royal household. Jakob Masensky still had a sharp memory of
being taken for winter walks in the grounds of the magnificent gilded palaces
of Catherine the Great. Stanislas Masensky was an intelligent man, a reader and
chess player who, were it not for the accident of being born into an
impoverished family, might have become a lawyer or a doctor and not the humble
master carpenter that he was.
And Stanislas Masensky also had a secret
which, were it known to his employers, would have caused his instant dismissal.
He was an ardent Menshevik supporter who
in his heart despised the nobility and everything it stood for. He believed
that Russia's future lay in democracy and freedom and that change was coming
whether the Tsar wanted it or not, so when the Reds took St. Petersburg he was
not a pleased man.
"Believe me, Jakob," his father
was fond of saying. "We will pay the price of this Red folly. We need a
new Russia, but not that kind of new Russia."
And no one had been more surprised by the
Reds' revolution than Stanislas Masensky. It had come like a whirlwind almost
out of nowhere, for the Mensheviks had long been the dominant force for change
in Russia. And Lenin's Bolsheviks knew this, and that any threat to their
promised revolution would have to be crushed mercilessly.
The Reds had come one day; three men with
rifles.
They had marched Stanislas away at the
point of their bayonets. His pregnant wife and child didn't see him until his
release three days later. He had been beaten almost to a pulp and his arms had
been broken. He had been lucky not to get a bullet in the neck but that might
come soon, and Stanislas knew it.
So he and his wife had packed their
belongings and with a horse and cart donated by a relative had set off with
their son for Estonia. What little money Jakob's parents had begged and
borrowed went on tickets on a Swedish schooner bound from Tallinn to New York.
It was a difficult winter crossing, made
all the harsher because of savage easterly winds. The schooner was buffeted and
tossed in twenty-foot swells and in the holds the immigrants suffered the
worst. On the fifth day Nadia Masensky went into premature labor.
Stanislas Masensky lost not only a child
but a young wife, and when the bodies were buried at sea young Jakob remembered
the desolate look on his father's face. The man had loved his young wife
deeply, and after her loss he was never the same. A friend of his father's had
once told Jakob that the loss of a beautiful young wife was something a man
never really got over, and he believed it, watching his father retreat into
himself year after year.
Until the Depression came, life had been
reasonably good in America for Stanislas and his young son. He had settled in
the area of Brooklyn called Brighton Beach, known as Little Russia because of
its wave of Russian immigrants
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