Once, An Entire Sheaf of Wheat

by J. L. Rifkin

Illustrated by Kerry Mairie

The artificers had their shops in Ring Street.

It hadn’t always been that way. In the days of the Tsars, the artificers’ shops filled a splendid block of Garden Street, and their work was the envy of the world. At Perkhin’s and Rappoport’s, fresh flowers and resin casts and wooden carvings transformed into gold and silver and platinum through the mysterious workings of clever fingers. Even the legendary Khlamushka, the Imperial Artificer himself, kept a shop on Garden Street, right on what was now Revolution Square. It was said that no one could match the brilliant colors of his alloys.

That was in the past, of course. No artificers worked in precious metal now. Most everyone who knew the magic to make cheap greenery and wood into anything that valuable left early, even before the tide began to turn against the Tsar’s army. The rest, those too hopeful or unlucky to flee, had been rounded up into places called Workshops and Factories. Rumor had it they turned woodchips into gold, day in and day out, until they withered and died from the strain.

So now, the artificers worked in iron and tin, copper and nickel, and they had their shops on a shabby but almost respectable block of Ring Street.

And at nightfall on a chilly midweek day, Rivka the stomatologist’s assistant went into number 55.

Gremets kept a neat little shop, with new glass windows and a dark wood counter. Behind, the proprietor himself perched on a stool, peering at something through a jeweler’s lens. He looked up at the door chime’s merry ring.

“If it isn’t Rivkele Akhiezer back already. Are the quarter’s teeth really that bad?”

She was a pretty woman, with a red mouth and dark, thoughtful eyes.

“The doctor needs two crowns made today, Reb Isaac. And can you come in person for a filling next week?”

Gremets grumbled, but his eyes were warm.

“There are other artificers on Ring Street, you know. Times are hard. You and Doctor Afanasyev might give them some of your business.”

“But your work is better,” she said, handing over the molds. Each was in its own white envelope, labeled with the patient’s name.

“Hmph. Flattery will get you everywhere, young lady. That’s what they used to say. I suppose now …” He stopped himself, tipping the first crown onto the counter.

Rivka finished the saying. “Connections will get you everywhere, especially labor camps.”

The molded resin tooth glinted in the dancing lamplight. The electricity had been working for three days straight, but you didn’t need to be old-fashioned to prefer the reliability of oil.

“Young people weren’t so cynical in my day.”

“It was different in your day.”

Then, Rivka’s grandmother had owned a set of silver candlesticks transformed from the paper-thin calices of saffron crocus, and been married in a wedding crown of real gilded myrtle. Rivka had seen the candlesticks herself, when she was small. Yet they seemed impossible to believe. Even if they hadn’t been sold, no one ever lit the candles now.

The artificer rolled the crown between his fingers, feeling the jagged contour where the resin had flowed around the broken molar. Clean work. Doctor Afanasyev knew his business.

“Did you boil it and strain the resin? You know any impurity can cause a defect.”

Rivka smiled. They went through this every time.

“The purest resin from two-needled pines. Boiled, strained, cooled fully, boiled and strained again, then mixed with linseed oil. No paraffin, no beeswax, only plants.”

“Good. Well then. Let’s see what can be done.”

The artificer closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. Rivka focused on his fingers, though there was never any sign that she could see. She always expected sparks, or at least a glow, but there was nothing. His pale, wrinkled skin remained the same. The resin changed, though. The surface went first, turning slowly from pale translucent yellow to shining silver opacity. He kept holding it for several moments after it looked metallic all over, lips pursed in concentration, arms starting to shake. Finally, he handed it back, warm and heavy.

“There you are. I’ll need a moment before the other one, I think. Some tea?”

“Please. But I’ll get it. You rest.”

She knew her way around the shop by now. There was always tea in the etched copper samovar at this time of day, and today, a jar of jam beside it.

She slipped the transmogrified crown into its envelope and fetched two cups of tea.

“I had another question.”

“Oh?”

She sipped her tea and made a face.

“What is this?”

“Is that your question?” He smiled wryly. “The grocer assures me it’s tea, and at any rate I don’t think it’s poisonous.” No one had real tea or coffee these days.

She sucked another bitter mouthful through her teeth and smiled.

“The jam is real, though.”

This smile was warmer.

“Strawberry. I opened my last jar for my prettiest customer.”

“Now who’s a flatterer? But you had a question.”

Her smile slipped and she tapped the envelope with the new crown.

“This is nickel-chrome, you said?”

“Indeed. Durable, and well tolerated by most patients.”

“Hm.” Rivka looked at the counter. “It’s very heavy for nickel.”

Gremets raised an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

“And you know, it’s the strangest thing, but we had a patient with a nickel allergy. He’d tried three stomatologists for the same bad molar. Would you believe your fillings were the first that didn’t cause him any trouble?”

The artificer put his cup down.

“Allergies can be very unpredictable, Rivka. And low-quality material will irritate anyone.”

“That’s true.” She tapped the little white envelope on the table. “That’s why I tried measuring the conductivity as well as the density.”

Gremets’s lips pursed. His thick brows drew together.

“My brother trained in chemistry, you see. I used to help him study. I learned quite a lot. Even the formula for aqua regia.”

She sipped her tea, trying to focus on the sweetness of the jam rather than the harsh, odd taste, and smoothed her white uniform apron.

“Aqua regia.”

“The alchemists discovered it. Quite a simple formula. It dissolves gold, you see. But not base metals.”

Gremets leaned forward across the counter. The oil lamp flickered cheerily at his side.

“It dissolves nickel too. Your brother should know that.”

“Yes. But chromium would leave powder.” She flicked at the envelope’s closure, feeling the weight of the false tooth within. “This is gold, I think, and platinum for hardness.”

He folded his arms across his chest.

“And if it is? These are weighty allegations, Rivka. Perhaps your brother should check your results.”

“He’s dead.”

The old man murmured the blessing. Then he fixed his eyes on Rivka again.

“And you want to follow him?”

Rivka set her jaw.

“I want to get out. And I think you can help.”

Gremets leaned back from the counter. The wall behind him was full of drawers, like tea shops once had, each one rattling with casts and carvings of standardized teeth and spare parts and all manner of useful implements, ready and waiting to be changed. It was comfortable enough, this shop. One could make do.

“Even if I could—and I’m not saying I can—what do you think would happen to a stomatologist’s assistant found with enough gold to get out? Where would you go? Is this how your brother got himself killed?”

Rivka upended her cup and finished the dregs, swallowing the bitterness for the sake of the jam.

“No. He made it all the way to Lutèce.” She looked into the cup. “He died of cholera there.” There were no tears in her dark eyes. These days, who had time for tears? “But he has friends there. Yankl and I—my fiancé—we could join them. Make a start. I’ve already figured out how to hide the gold.”

Gremets raised an eyebrow.

“Go on, then. I’ve heard it all before. You’ll sew it into the lining of your coat. Melt nuggets of it into candles. You know a man who makes suitcases with false bottoms.”

“Straw.” The stomatologist’s assistant clenched her teeth against the shaking. “In a mattress. No one will spot a few gold stalks mixed in with real straw. Like needles in a haystack.”

“Straw.” The old artificer shook his head. “I used to make flower crowns for weddings, you know. Rattles for christenings. Even, once, an entire sheaf of wheat, for a roy—a splendid banquet. And now you want me to turn straw into gold—not that I’m saying I can, mind—at considerable risk to us both. Why should I do this for you, pretty girl? What will you give me?”

The young woman frowned. Images flashed through her mind, but she pushed them away. Surely not.

“What do you want?” she said, wishing her voice didn’t quaver.

Gremets gave her a slow, appraising look from under his thick brows. He didn’t speak for a long moment.

“They killed my sons, you know,” he said at last. “And my wife.” His face darkened. “The soldiers didn’t even give them a chance to surrender when they took our workshop.”

The words of the blessing came easily, though of course that sort of thing wasn’t allowed. It was hard not to mention the dead, when there were so many.

“You could come with us. It’s only fair.”

Gremets laughed, with no humor.

“Come with you? To Lutèce, or Gedimin, or wherever you’re going?” He shook his head. “Rivkele, this is my home. My country. That means something. My father and mother, my in-laws, my wife, my sons, all of them are buried here. If I leave, who will sweep their graves?”

“So, you won’t help me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What, then?”

Isaac Gremets the artificer met her eyes. His face was worn and wrinkled, stained here and there from sun and chemicals. His shoulders, in his mended tweed coat, hunched forward like a hawk’s.

“You and this Yankl of yours want children, yes?”

Rivka’s chest clenched.

“Yes …”

“It will take time to turn that much straw into gold. I have other duties.”

“Of course.”

“So. You will marry. I will make your straw. And when you abandon your homeland, you will leave your firstborn with me.”

Rivka jerked back from the counter.

“What?”

Gremets leaned further forward.

“I have no sons, now. Give me an heir to love and spoil. A new son or daughter, to sweep my grave when I’m gone.”

Rivka fiddled with the envelopes in her pocket.

“And if I refuse?”

Gremets looked around the neat little shop. Every year, the walls were a little draftier, the lamp oil a little dearer, the electricity on for a few days less. He pinned Rivka with his gaze.

“You could always stay here.”

#

The next month, Rivka and Yankl signed their papers at the Civil Registry. Rivka’s grandmother had married in a wedding crown of golden myrtle, but hers was common saxifrage, made into the lacquered black iron jewelry that had become fashionable after citizens gave up their gold for the War of Liberation. Still, they received a ration of enough sugar and eggs for a small cake. She brought a piece to Gremets the artificer. She went home with a piece of gilded straw.

Time passed. And as happens with young brides, Rivka became pregnant. Now, when Doctor Afanasyev needed a crown made, old Isaac Gremets the artificer watched with sad, hungry eyes as Rivka’s face turned queasy and her belly grew round. And every time, he pressed his fingers against a pale tan stalk and gave it back yellow and shining.

By early summer, the couple had fourteen soft, heavy pieces of golden straw. Sometimes, when everyone else in the apartment was asleep, they’d pick them out of the mattress one by one and whisper their way through the steps of the journey ahead.

They stopped when the baby started to kick.

In the long, hot days when there would once have been peaches and early apples in the market, the Ministry for Culture opened a new wing. Thanks to the tireless work of the Ministry for Security, several rooms’ worth of decadent art from the former royal collection had been recovered from defectors and restored to the people. It would even be on display.

“We should go,” Yankl offered. He’d seen his pretty wife’s face grow gaunt, her wrists and ankles start to protrude from her thinning limbs. He missed the bright, smiling girl he’d courted, before all this. Like most people in the city, he was well versed in carrying on with less than he’d known before. But he was a loving groom and hoped to bring the sparkle back to her dark eyes.

“If you want,” she said, slumped over the tiny sweater she never seemed to finish knitting.

So, they went. Crowds flowed through room after room of the People’s Palace, marveling at the splendidly carved panels, the mirrors, the crystal chandeliers. Rivka and Yankl murmured half-forgotten childhood stories about the grand balls, the sumptuous feasts, the vanished princesses. They squinted to see if they could spot the bullet holes in the walls.

The tide of people bore them through galleries with azure walls and jacquard draperies of threadbare silk until Rivka’s ankles ached. She was about to suggest they go home when they passed through a doorway labeled “Rose Reception Room.” She stopped at the first case, transfixed.

Gleaming objects crowded the display, each with its own typeset label.

“White gold birchbark cup of Grand Duchess Anna Nikolaevna.”

“Pocket watch of Count Vasily Milanovich. Gold with aluminum alloy lilacs.”

“Platinum forget-me-not christening rattle of Princess Yuliya Alexandrovna.”

The subtle colors imbuing the metal came from impurities, she knew, or oxidation states. Despite the muted hues, they somehow seemed more alive even than living blooms.

Each work bore the same attribution: Imperial Artifice Workshop of Khlamushka and Sons.

She worked her way from case to case, admiring hothouse orchids and filigreed leaves and decades-old buds that would never open. In the center of the room, on a pedestal surrounded by a low fence, sat the most magnificent work of all: a massive horn of plenty. It seemed to be woven from wheat stalks, with fat heads of plump, perfect grains arrayed around the rim. Just seeing them made her hungry. The flat wheat leaves had been twined between the stalks with faint green in the metal, and the whole structure was wreathed all about with dark ivy and luminous grapes, rich purple against the ripe wheat stems’ sunny gold. Every part of it glowed, from the curled base to each perfect, unbent awn.

With effort, Rivka pulled her eyes from a serrated grape leaf to the label.

“Gold wheat cornucopia, made for the coronation banquet of the late Tsar Peter VII. Imperial Artifice Workshop of Khlamushka and Sons.”

Finally, it fell into place.

“An entire sheaf of wheat …” she murmured.

She grabbed her husband’s sleeve.

“Yankl. Dearest. Let’s go home now.”

He folded a concerned arm around her.

They left.

#

She went to the shop in Ring Street the next day, as soon as she left work. Gremets raked greedy eyes over her belly.

“Ah, Rivkele. More bad teeth today?”

She wrapped her arms around her stomach.

“I went to the new exhibits at the People’s Palace yesterday.”

“Hm.”

He perched on his stool, knobbed fingers interlaced, dark eyes watching her.

“They had a whole room from the Imperial Artifice Workshop.”

There. The slightest flicker, deep in his eyes.

“I thought you were an ordinary artificer. Just trying to get by and not get caught.”

His thin lips pursed.

“What else would I be?” He stood and turned to the samovar. “Tea?”

“Not an ordinary artificer. An extraordinary one. The kind who could turn an entire sheaf of wheat to gold for a coronation banquet.”

“Flatterer.”

He poured out two cups of tea, still with his back to her.

“There’s no more strawberry jam, I’m afraid. Or honey, or sugar. I’m told this is molasses.”

A spoon clinked, rhythmically, then stopped.

She said it quietly.

“You’re Khlamushka. The Imperial Artificer himself. The best.”

He turned around at last, leaving the tea abandoned on the tray.

“You’re almost right.” Suddenly, he was so small, and so old. “I was the best. Until I trained my son. My younger boy, Nikita … I named him for the Tsar, you know. My wife wanted to call him Avram. He was better than me by twenty. That cornucopia was his design, not mine. What he might have been …

“They came for our workshop when they first took the palace. I happened to be away that week. When I came back … I paid a soldier to get their bodies back for me from the pit.” His eyebrows quirked minutely together. “Then I shot him.”

A sound got out of Rivka. She knew they’d rounded up everyone tied to the royal household. She knew what people had done to survive, to escape. And yet.

“Does that shock you? You can’t have been more than ten. Younger than little Princess Yuliya, if she’d lived. I made her such pretty things. A rattle for her christening. A clover spoon. Snowdrop bangles, and silver daisy buttons for her little frocks. Pretty things for a pretty girl.” He shook his head. “I buried them under my new name. By the time I got them back – what they’d done – I only knew my Nikita by his hair. Soft, like his mother’s.” He focused sharply on Rivka. “And every Friday, I visit to sweep their graves.”

She held his gaze. The baby kicked. Something older and sadder stirred inside her.

“I won’t tell anyone. But I’m leaving. With my child.”

“And if someone told the Ministry of Security what was inside your mattress?”

She knew what she was supposed to say, somehow, as though they were just bantering about the proper way to boil pine resin.

“Then I would tell them where to find the Imperial Artificer. And then, I would still leave.”

They exchanged a few more words.

And then she left.

But in the years to come, raising children of another homeland, her mind would sometimes conjure the sight of a neat little shop on Ring Street. When she drank coffee with cream, and never tea with jam, she’d remember an etched copper samovar. And sometimes, tucking Avram and his brothers and sisters into bed, she’d again hear that voice.

“You’re a cruel woman, Rivkele. Now who will be left behind to sweep my grave?”