Paulina
Chapter One

October, 1920
Gustav loved me more than I loved him when we became engaged. My family thought it was the right thing to do; after all, I was twenty with few suitors. My friend, Yula, a gifted violinist whom I met through our piano teacher, Madame Selinski, introduced me to him. Yula, a few years older than me, was engaged to a man of twenty-nine. Her fiancé, Solomon, from a privileged family like ours, had ten people sewing for him--fine silk, wool, gabardine suits, all in his own shop. He introduced me to Gustav, a friend of his, and we began to keep company. Gustav said he fell in love with me because of my pale eyes, the color of lilacs.
 
The engagement party held in our home made the society pages. In a gown of blueberry taffeta and sapphire earrings, a present from my father, Gustav and his family showered me with gifts--a silver evening bag for the opera, a ruby ring, Belgium lace. For the first six months Gustav came on Sundays with his family. We sat in the parlor, the women perched forward in the chairs, feet planted on the floor, balancing drinks. I was shy so I played the piano, mostly Chopin nocturnes. Once we played a duet together. With little to say to one another, Gustav looked down when I looked at him, the peach fuzz of his mustache sweet on his lip. At the same time he was being trained in his family’s haberdashery business, I was being trained to be a lady.
 
Yet, we had a conflict as his confidence grew in the second half of the year. The wedding date needed to be set and I was not anxious. I wasn’t ready. Used to freedom with parents who trusted me, something inside me didn’t like his domineering manner. Gustav became demanding, telling me what to do. “Order the invitations, book the staff, pick wines. After we’re married, no more music lessons. You’ll need to run a home.” One Saturday evening after the Shabbat meal Yula, Solomon, Gustav and I planned to attend a reading of Issac Peretz’s works, a Yiddish writer who blended Jewish folklore and Hasidic tradition. I was enthused about the prospect of hearing the gifted author and my father felt Yula was old enough to chaperone me. I wasn’t allowed to be with Gustav alone. I pulled my lamb’s wool coat closer, the mink collar and cuffs tickling me, as we walked down the cobblestone streets, my arm in Gustav’s, the light breath of a breeze in our hair.
  
Afterward we stopped for drinks at a popular café near the Volta River. In the darkness lit with table candles I noticed a few soldiers nearby after we were seated. An especially handsome one caught my eye and nodded. I turned back to our group without acknowledgement. We didn’t mix with Gentiles.
 
While we sipped sherry and laughed at one of Solomon’s stories about a fat man who insisted his pants be fitted in a smaller size, the soldier appeared at my side.
 
“Would the young lady like to dance?” he asked, his speech slurred from too many beers.
 
I had done nothing to encourage him. Horrified, I shook my head no. Gustav stood up.
 
“She’s engaged to me,” he said, his chest swelling.
 
The soldier, taller and impressive in his uniform, repeated in a louder voice, “I asked the lady to dance.”
 
“And I told you she can’t,” said Gustav.
 
“Aw, leave them alone,” yelled one of his cohorts. “They’re a bunch of Yids.”
 
Solomon‘s chair scraped the floor as he stood up to join Gustav. “I don’t think you should make trouble because the lady doesn’t want to dance,” he said. At least as tall as the soldier, he continued, “Nor should you call us derogatory names.”
 
I pulled on Gustav’s sleeve. “Let’s go. Don’t make trouble.”
  
He pushed my hand away. “I’m not going to let someone intimidate me into leaving,” he said. Snarling, he turned to the soldier. “What did your friend call us?”
 
Maybe I knew what ordinary Poles thought of us, but I rarely encountered it. My mother said they were jealous of our wealth.
 
I stood up. “It’s time to go anyway. My parents will be expecting me.”
 
When I saw the soldier’s arm pull back to hit Gustav in the face, I screamed. The squish of flesh pressing into bone made my stomach turn. I reached for Yula’s shoulder.
 
Gustav staggered backward, a chair falling, his eyes rolling in pain. He pulled himself upright and charged at the soldier, a bull with his head down. I grabbed for him as he moved past me, as though I could stop him. His jacket peeled off and landed on the floor.
  
When the soldier hit him again, blood spewed from his nose. Solomon punched another soldier, our glasses shattering as the table turned over. A candle knocked off its base set the tablecloth on fire. Yula hit the flames with the bottom of her shoe.
  
The rest of the soldiers got involved in the fray and I ran out the door, abandoning my silver evening purse. I looked over my shoulder and saw Gustav and Solomon punching with abandon, Yula screaming nearby.
 
I ran toward the street, a feeling of desperation sinking me. It faded when I heard the turn of wheels. Luck gave me an empty carriage. When we got to Bielanska Street I remembered the purse. It didn’t matter. I had no money in it anyway. I knew my family would be asleep, the door left unlocked for me. The driver was not pleased he would have to return tomorrow for his fare, but I promised him a big tip. I crept through the foyer and stole upstairs into my bed. Gustav was a fool. Was I ever going to marry him?
  
I was asleep when the carriage driver arrived for his fare. Later I explained to my father and mother that Gustav seemed ill-tempered.
  
Gustav came to call on me a few times during the next days, but I refused to see him. Yadwiga told me his eye was black-and-blue and scratches marred his smooth skin.
 
Yula stopped by. “He’s sorry for the brawl. He loves you,” she told me.
 
The next day I received a note on pastel paper, the handwriting in even strokes across the page.

My dearest Paulina,

Forgive me for my desire to protect you in such a gross manner. I will not cause a scene again. I am in love for the first time with a passion that rings in my ears. We must be together. Please do not let your beautiful face fade from my memory. I must see you.
Gustav

And so, I relented. We began to keep company again, but I didn’t venture outside with him. My father said the Russian civil war along with pogroms in Poland and the Ukraine left many Jews homeless. Hooligans ruled the streets, hungry, out of work mobs. My father always insulated us from politics. My pressure was internal, beginning when we sat in the parlor.
  
“Now that the war has been over more than a year Gustav’s sister is to be married soon and we have a trip abroad planned,” Gustav’s mother announced one Sunday in December. She stared at me without pleasure.
  
I knew I couldn’t delay much longer. I thought if I waited my desire would grow, but so far I felt the same, complacent and resigned. We set a date for six months in the future.
 
Thrilled with the happy news, our families buzzed with plans. The wedding would take place in the basement shul of our building on a Saturday night at sundown.
 
One Friday afternoon after the seamstress finished the final fitting of my wedding dress, I contemplated my fate as a soon-to-be married woman. Would I still be able to spend time with my friends? Play piano? Read books? I sat in the front balcony window that overlooked Bielanska Street with its cobblestone streets and concrete-poured sidewalks. Shoppers hurried by, brown- wrapped bundles under their arms, children played, their balls elusive in the shadows, men wandered into a tavern and my father’s barber, his white jacket pristine, stood outside greeting people.
 
My father approached in step with a tall man who looked mature, maybe thirty, with his hat brim pulled at a jaunty angle. He wore an expensive overcoat, his gait one of confidence. They looked up and I waved, even smiling, a rare flirtation for me. Later, he would say he could see the depth of my violet blue eyes two floors above him.
 
We often had guests for Shabbat, an elegant affair to celebrate the beginning of the Sabbath in our dining hall. My mother used a lace tablecloth, Rosenthal china and her best silver, white tulips gracing the table. Nathan, the gentleman with my father, sat across from me. As the evening light faded we lit candles and recited the prayers over wine and bread. Nathan wore his dark hair combed to the side. With a straight Roman nose and strong dented chin, his face reminded me of a Greek god. I could barely speak. He looked at me all through the familiar blessing, his hand grazing mine as we passed the challa. There were hairs on his knuckles. A grown man, not a boy.
 
After supper he and my father made business plans in the library. With mutual interests in exports, my father’s knowledge of languages and Nathan’s burning desire for success, they forged an alliance. Later, I heard my father whisper to my mother, “Even my sons don’t have such a head for business.”
  
When Nathan wasn’t traveling he became a regular at our table. I can’t deny my attraction to him, his manliness and his interest in me. My self-consciousness rendered me speechless at times because of the way he looked at me. Desire was not something I had experienced before, the flush, the pounding heart, my damp palms.
  
One night after supper, only a month before my wedding, Nathan prepared to leave the dim foyer, his coat over his arm. I pretended to straighten the flowers on the center table.
  
“Who is this Gustav you’re engaged to? Why is he never around?”
 
I found myself defending his absence, swirling to face him. “Gustav and I keep company on Sundays. We’re to be married soon.”
  
“Your father says he’s a haberdasher. You’re in love with this fellow? This is what you want? To be the wife of a man who makes hats?”
 
I backed away. I wasn’t used to confrontations.
 
“My father says it is a good match.”
 
Nathan made a sucking noise with his lips. “Your father would say I’m a better match.” He stepped closer in the darkness. “Would you like to cast your fate with an adventurer?”
 
My heart almost choked my throat. No longer intimidated I gave him a sly look. “And what does an adventurer do?”
 
“Fills your life with passion and excitement.”
 
“I’m happy where I am, here in my poppa’s house.” My palms reached back to touch the wall.
 
He tilted my chin toward him with one finger. “Break your engagement. Marry me. You can live here while I build a fortune. I can make you happy.”
 
I turned and ran to my room, delighted with the knowledge that two men wanted me. What a child I was.
 
The next week my resolve not to marry Gustav strengthened. I moped knowing it would be difficult to break it off, but I was bored already. Nathan arrived for Sabbath after traveling to Russia with a shipment of eyeglasses. He brought a bouquet of flowers for my mother. We ate in silence, stealing looks at each other.
 
And then, my father announced to everyone that Nathan would be my fiancé. Just like that.
 
“Maybe he will be a better match,” my father told me later, knowing my unhappiness. Not quite as feckless as Gustav is what he meant. I adored my father who knew what was best.
 
I broke the engagement with a hand-delivered letter that took me hours to write. Gustav and his family were furious and demanded their gifts back. I returned them with a note except for the lost purse. I felt guilty not so much at the breaking of my agreement but with my delight at being free of Gustav and his oppressive family.
 
Did I have any say? Any choice? I suppose if I had objected my father might have listened, but what was the difference? Gustav or Nathan? I didn’t know either of them. All I cared about was my life of music lessons and shopping and concerts and friends. I didn’t want it to change. Nathan said I could stay in my parents’ house.
 
After the engagement announcement Nathan joined my father in the import business: spices from Africa, linens from Belgium, delicacies from Germany, caviar from Russia.
 
Nathan spoke to me in Russian, a language I had studied, with words that were so expressive, so mellifluous that I dreamed about his stories. I didn’t know every word but our attempts at translation charmed me.
 
“In the beginning I started small,” he told me. “The Russians have nothing and there’s little manufacturing. My first shipment was a few bushels of pencils and paper from Warsaw in a cart. I sold them for triple what I paid for them. Next I found a bargain load of men’s pants. They sold immediately. The past few years I traveled all over Poland to buy goods. I rent entire trains filling cars with eyeglasses, fruit, underwear, brooms, towels, liquor. I buy with Polish zlotys. When I sell the goods I collect in rubles. Now with your father’s backing I’ll expand even more.”
 
Nathan, twelve years my senior, was a man for my girlish dreams, a businessman who spoke in elegant Russian, the language of poets. Gustav faded with my girlhood.
 
The wedding with my family in attendance was held in the basement synagogue of our apartment house. No one from Nathan’s side came. I wore my grandmother’s veil, a beautiful piece of ivory lace that trailed to the floor, covering my face. The day of the wedding I cried as I looked at myself in my mother’s long oval mirror in my parents’ grand bedroom, emerald silk swags at the windows.
 
“Papa, I don’t know him. I’m afraid.”
 
My mother held me to her bosom. Gustav, close to my age, seemed more appealing. We would both be innocents.
 
My father tried to allay my fears. “Don’t worry, Paulina. You’re living upstairs in a sunny apartment. Nathan’s traveling with me on business so your momma will be here. And your brothers. Trust me, it’s a good match. Someday your mother and I won’t be here and he will take care of you.”
 
“But I don’t like the way he eats.”
 
“It’s not important. Yes, I admit, he’s a bit rough. Most Russians are. He carries terrible sadness of pogroms, Cossacks, hunger. One month his city of Slonim was in Russia, the next, Poland. Do you know what that means? New rulers, different money, persecution. You have to be smart to figure it out. His mother sent him to Warsaw with nothing, a child living on the streets at twelve years of age. Did you know he moved all ten of his brothers and sisters and his parents under cover of darkness? Any man that takes care of his family that way will make a good provider. No more talk.” I moved away from my mother to sit down on her brocade lounge, her French perfume trailing away. My father leaned closer. “They were starving. He dug in a farmer’s field for potatoes to feed everyone. As the oldest son he accepted responsibility because his father studies the Talmud all day. Nathan’s ambitious, smart and tough. It will be fine.” He patted my knee.
 
“Oh, Poppa.” I hugged him as I always did as a child. We were a close family and more affectionate than most.
 
My mother clucked as she checked the buttons on the back of my dress, then whispered in my ear, “We’ll show him more refined ways.”
 
“Are the potato-eating relatives coming?” I panicked. Coarse people at my wedding?
 
“No. They can’t make it. Nathan left Russia for good when they conscripted him for the Army. Terrible what they do to Jewish boys who can’t buy their way out, forcing them to eat trefe. He walked across the steppes to Poland.”
 
“He’s told me little of his background. Yet, I see he has belief in himself.”
 
My father tapped the side of his head with two fingers. “He’s got sechel.”
 
I was so naïve. I thought to myself, he’s good looking and he carries himself well. We’ll have beautiful children. Then it occurred to me, what did I have to do to get the children?
 
I turned to my mother. “What about tonight?”
 
She took my hand and kissed it. “It will be all right. Don’t worry, Paulina.”
 
And with that she led me downstairs to the waiting guests who included Yula, Solomon and all my relatives. Carlo, my favorite brother, winked at me. My oldest brother, Mendel and his wife who had a suite of rooms on the fourth floor, sat in front with their two children. My niece and nephew were like a younger brother and sister to me, adorable in their dress-up clothes kicking their little legs. I was teaching Natasha the piano.
 
Only my middle brother, Itzak, was missing. With the sleeping sickness he dozed most days away in a stupor, a lounge chair placed in front of the window. I wasn’t as close to him because of his illness. Boris, my father’s valet and assistant, bathed and dressed him, sometimes taking him for a haircut. My mother fussed over Itzak, adjusting his clothes and combing his hair as though he was going to get up and go outside. I thought it a waste of time.
 
My mother handed me white roses imported from Holland. Nathan in a dark suit, a black kipah on the back of his head, waited under the chuppa, the canopy draped with a tallis prayer shawl to represent the home. The rabbi, his teeth yellowed like old piano keys, stood in front of us. His long black coat and beard swayed with the sing-song words that lulled my emotions. Nathan lifted the veil from my face and kissed me.
 
I was married.
 
That first night we slept together in the same bed in our new apartment upstairs. It had been decorated especially for us, a wedding gift from my parents. We also received a smaller, fully occupied building my father owned a few blocks away. Nathan was to collect the rents. After unpleasant heaving and breathing with his weight on top of me, I felt a little pain. Surprised it was over so quickly, I felt disappointment. He rolled off me, asleep in moments.
  
In the morning he checked the sheets for blood. It was there. My father and Nathan left for work together. I cried to my mother about my unhappy experience. I’m not sure what I expected, but it seemed so cold.
 
“Wait, it will get better,” she told me.
 
“And if it doesn’t?”
 
“Then you’ll have to bear with it. It’s a wife’s duty.”
 
Nathan liked it every day. I tried, but it was all for his pleasure. He never stroked or kissed or held me, always in a rush. I don’t know why. He’d only fall asleep afterward.
 
Of course I was pregnant in a few months. At first I didn’t know what was wrong with me, tired all the time and nauseous when I looked at food. My mother knew right away.
 
“You’re pregnant so fast? You couldn’t wait a while? It doesn’t look nice to be pregnant in such a short time.”
 
“How could I have stopped him?” I asked, my eyes large with questions.
 
“Don’t do it in the middle of the month. That’s when you’re the most fertile. Say you have a headache. Otherwise, you’ll be pregnant every year.” She sighed at me. “It’s too late now.”
 
The thought of feeling like this every year scared me. I turned away ashamed of myself.
 
The maids helped me. Otherwise, I don’t know how I would have managed. I slept late. Yadwiga brought a breakfast of tea and toast. I vomited anyway, spoiling the Belgian bedspread.
 
Nathan traveled often with my father, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Brussels. When he was gone, I lived the life I had before I was married. As a woman with child I didn’t go out much. I read, played piano, practiced French with my cousin Malka. If I wrapped myself in one of my mother’s larger overcoats, Carlo and I could go for long walks, arm-in-arm through the beautiful parks that lined the Volta River. When the weather warmed, flowers bloomed in profusion and we attended outdoor concerts.
 
Our seamstress moved in for a few weeks to expand the waistlines on my skirts, make me dressing gowns and work on the family’s wardrobe. I loved watching her sew in the attic aerie, head bent, her foot pumping the machine, the wild colors of thread in a basket next to her. Her son brought bolts of material that leaned in the corners of the tiny room, herringbones, velvet, wools, silks, tulle for petticoats, lace for collars, everything made-to-order.
 
Later in the winter the baby came, a boy we named Isaac after my mother’s father. The bris, God’s oldest covenant with the Jewish people, was on the eighth day to prove the baby could survive one Sabbath. When I couldn’t bring forth any milk, Magda from the kitchen nursed him for me. It was her fifth child and my first.
 
The following year I was pregnant again. My mother let me know her disgust. “The servants have babies every year, not a lady. I told you what to do.” I dropped my eyes and shook my head. He liked it.
 
Me? It didn’t matter. I became used to it. The ordeal didn’t take long. His body would slide on top of me then roll off to his side of the bed. He slept, tired from business and travel. With his ambition he wanted an empire by forty.
 
The rest of the time my life remained a placid pastoral scene. I had a wet nurse for baby Isaac after Magda said it was too much. I checked on him throughout the day. She bathed him, took care of the messy part and I went for walks pushing his carriage, a linen cap on his head under the wool one that matched a sweater Momma knitted.
 
The second pregnancy was easier but the little girl died after a few days. I don’t know why. Many women lost babies. I’m glad I didn’t die because it was a long labor. Nathan and my father left the house after twelve hours. The midwife and the doctor tried to help, but she was fussy and small. When Magda went to her crib on the third day, she was lifeless.
 
The aftermath of the World War caused hardships for poor people but not us. We lived the same. I told Nathan the doctor did not want me to be pregnant so fast. I don’t think he heard me. I woke up one morning with an acrid taste in my mouth, barely making it to the washbowl in time. I knew. Pregnant again. Not happy or sad, it became part of the routine.
 
By that time my father had turned over many of the operations to Nathan for the import/export business. My father and my brother, Mendel, focused on the construction of apartments and office buildings. Nathan approached my father with an idea while we sat in the library after dinner one evening. The women sat reading or knitting, the men sipping sherry.
 
Nathan cleared his throat and placed his glass on the table next to him. He leaned forward in his chair. “I want to bring the business to America, a land of many opportunities. It’s a safer place for my family. Europe is not a good place for Jews. Let’s expand.”
 
My father was startled, skeptical. He thought Nathan reckless. “Go to America with cowboys and Indians? A primitive, dirty place without culture, filled with the uneducated. Why are you paranoid?” My father sat back, his hands forming a pyramid. “Our families have lived in Poland since the fifteenth century. No one is going to harm us.”
 
“Whenever there’s a problem they always blame the Jews. We’re always looking over our shoulder,” said Nathan.
 
My father didn’t agree right away, but Nathan persisted. He was a stubborn, determined man who continued to pursue my father at every opportunity for financing to go to the United States. I whispered to my mother that my bed would be empty for a while.
 
Finally, my father relented. Early in the Spring of the following year Nathan left for an exploratory trip to the United States. It took two weeks to get there, he stayed for a month and then returned. He decided after his first trip that Jews needed yarmulkes, prayer books, tallis, tefillin, everything necessary for worship in the new country. He shipped trunks filled with religious articles.
 
After he left I delivered a little girl named Sarah in 1924. Nathan, who had traveled back and forth a few more times, was settled in New York City. We sent him a telegram at his hotel. He didn’t show much interest in the new baby in the letters he wrote to me. He was more excited about America and its possibilities. It didn’t matter. I had my family around me.
 
Nathan returned with big plans and grand ideas. After long discussions in the library with closed doors, he convinced my father to back him with more inventory and money. Religious articles weren’t enough. He spent months preparing for his new venture, haggling with local vendors over an inventory of nuts, spices, linens, flax, rope, shawls, caps and enameled Russian boxes. He traveled to surrounding countries, shipping boxes to store, creating a whirlwind of activity.
 
I kissed Nathan good-bye with Isaac and Sarah at my side in the spring of 1925. Once again he took a train to London, then sailed to America. Nathan wrote to me on blue tissue-thin paper about the wonders of New York, the people and commerce. He stayed in a rooming house near Orchard Street. When he returned to Poland months later he brought gifts for me and the children and a signed contract to show my father. They were to import leather for shoes.
 
Nathan lacked patience when he returned. Isaac feared his occasional outbursts. He hid when he heard his father’s loud footsteps preferring the company of Carlo instead. I did my best to please Nathan, but he remained distracted. He added numbers in his head, wrote notes that he stuffed into his pockets, talked to my father endlessly about business as though his heart burned with fire.
 
Nathan decided it was time for me to meet his family. We left the children with their grandparents and took a train to Bialystok. On our ride he shared his dreams and big ideas. He wanted to conquer the world. I listened with little understanding of his urgency. Life was comfortable. Why change anything?
 
Nathan wanted to move his family away from the Russian-Polish border. With skirmishes about land ownership, the money changed from rubles to zlotys every week. His parents, sweet unsophisticated people, couldn’t deal with the worthless money, lack of goods and the fear of another pogrom.
 
When I met them in their thatched-roof cottage they offered me a glass of tea and mandel bread, a hard cookie with almonds. The youngest girls, a set of twins named Goldie and Ruby stroked my fur collar and handed me wildflowers.
 
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Goldie told me.
 
Nathan opened a cupboard and saw how little they had so we took the twins for a walk to the market. They chased behind us through the labyrinth of cobblestone streets. The country market, a series of wooden stalls, had fresh vegetables, chickens available for slaughter, and trinkets. I bought carved boxes and amber beads for my family, embroidered hankies for Magda and Yadwiga, ribbons for Goldie and Ruby. Nathan purchased food for his parents’ table from the peasant women who gossiped among themselves, dressed in layers of clothes without coats. I was so uncomfortable. Later I saw him slip money to his mother when we returned to their small space of two rooms with a dirt floor.
 
While we talked one of Nathan’s younger brothers ran into the tiny kitchen breathless. “A Russian is looking for you.” He leaned against the wall in an effort to stop panting.
 
Panic spread across Nathan’s face. “Who is he? What does he want?”
 
“I don’t know. He said he has to talk to you. Tonight.” He smiled revealing a gap in his mouth where a tooth was missing. “He gave me this,” he said holding up a silver coin. “He wants to meet you at the inn.”
 
Nathan, agitated that his slip from the czar might catch up with him, stood up. He paced the room from corner to corner, his hands behind his back. The Russian Army looked hard for deserters, killing them in front of their regiment. “Come on. Let’s go,” he said to me. “Those bastards can’t do anything to me.”
 
“We can’t leave. There’s no train. How do you know what he wants?” I asked, examining my lips in a small mirror from my purse.
 
It was the first time Nathan listened to me. He sat down.
 
“You’re right. What can he do? I’m married to a Polish citizen,” he said, looking at me.
 
We ate a kosher lamb dinner at the inn brought in especially for us and waited. A Russian military man in a khaki uniform, medals across his chest and high brown boots, approached us. He stared at me under the brim of his hat. Nathan’s body tensed, the veins in his neck pulsing. The large man’s bushy mustache twitched when he spoke. When he joined us the general offered Nathan a cigar that he accepted. He coughed at the new experience.
 
“In America everyone smokes,” Nathan told the man.
 
The Russian leaned back in his chair. “I’ve heard about you, quite the businessman. You already know how to move products, deal with suppliers, watch for pilferers. I’ll get to the point,” he said putting his elbows on the table. He looked around and said in a low voice. “I want you to be the main distributor for vodka in Poland. I’ll give you the entire territory.” His fat fingers gripped the cigar he sucked.
 
“I can’t. My wife and I are going to move to America.”
 
I sat up straighter in my chair, readjusting my scarf. I am?
 
The man spit on the floor, then pulled a piece of tobacco from his lip. “America? Barbarians. I’m offering you two hundred thousand zlotys and jobs for all your relatives.”
 
“No, we’re leaving Europe,” Nathan said, his legs stretched out in front of his chair. He puffed and stopped to look at the cigar.
 
“Look, start the business for me. Stay a few years. Then take it to the United States. I understand they have a great thirst for our product. In the meantime, you’ll make a lot of money.”
 
“Double your offer and I’ll consider it.” Nathan’s eyes took in the room to see if anyone was listening.
 
The Russian began to sputter. “That’s robbery. What about my profit? And the bosses?”
 
“I’m sorry. It’s an excellent offer but I can’t accept.” Nathan stood, shook the man’s hand and turned to leave. “Call me when you’re serious. This is for amateurs.” Turning to me, he said, “Paulina, let’s go.”
 
I scrambled to grab my bag, coat and kidskin gloves.
 
“You’re making a big mistake,” the man called after us as Nathan guided me toward the door. “All right, I’ll offer you a third more.”
 
With our backs to him Nathan turned his head to the side, his scarf tucked into his coat. “Double or nothing. No one will be able to keep the hoodlums in line, but me.”
 
Silence. We waited in the wooden doorway.
 
The man sighed and I heard the slap of his hand on the table. “You win. You’ve got an honest reputation and you’re a businessman with a wolf’s ambition. Four hundred thousand.”
 
Nathan turned and returned to face him as the Russian stood. “I’ll let you know my final decision in a few weeks,” said Nathan.
 
Nathan looped his arm through mine, patting my hand as we strolled away from the inn toward his parents’ home. He toyed with his cigar. My breath blew small vapor mists as we walked the deserted street, the moon shining on our faces, Nathan’s profile potent in the dimness. I’d never heard a negotiation before but I knew my fate was forever tied to this man and his vision. I believed in his strength and decisiveness. Did this mean we would stay?