Free The Accidental Anarchist by Bryna Kranzler

festive meal tomorrow night.
     
     
    We had left camp at half past six, and it must have already been close to midnight. The forest seemed endless, and I felt tempted to lay down under a tree and go to sleep. But we had to be closer to Harbin than we were to camp, so we continued in the pitch darkness.
     
    Almost immediately, Glasnik walked straight into a swamp. Trying to help him out, I promptly sank in up to my hips. And then, as if to tantalize us in the midst of our struggles, the lights of a city appeared to be glowing just beyond the forest.
     
    Caked with mud and soaking wet, we stumbled into the silent city. By the light of a dim street lamp, Glasnik and I regarded each other’s inhuman appearance, and decided to look for a pump where we could wash our hands and faces. After blundering through half a dozen streets or alleys, we spied a light burning in a little hut, and decided to knock on the shutters.
     
    A Chinese man opened the door and gaped. Behind him, a squirming mass of seven or eight children started to cry at the sight of us. The man whispered something to his wife, who shot out the back door, screaming.
     
    We tried with gestures to explain that we only wanted some water to wash off the mud. Other Chinese now came running out of nearby shacks. I realized, indignantly, that far from being terrified, they were laughing at us.
     
    I waved a ruble at them, and within moments, two pails brimming with water appeared. A Chinese man who seemed to know about a dozen words of Russian offered, for another ruble, to act as our guide. He looked at least a hundred years old. But the way I was feeling at that moment, money was no object if he could lead us to the synagogue, which we tried to represent, with the aid of Hasidic gestures and contortions, as a place of prayer.
     
    His face lit up with sudden understanding, and he motioned for us to follow him. After some twenty minutes of walking, we came upon an old frame building. Candles were burning inside. With great skepticism, Glasnik asked me, “You know how to pray in Chinese?” I, too, was somewhat unconvinced. Meanwhile, our guide had gone into a corner to argue, negotiate, or plot with the caretaker he had aroused. It was ominously clear to me that they were discussing us. And I couldn’t say I much liked the way they looked in our direction.
     
    I interrupted our guide in the middle of his earnest conversation and asked him whether there was some kind of inn or hotel anywhere in the vicinity.
     
    Our interpreter suddenly seemed to have forgotten even his modest repertoire of Russian words. He smiled and nodded reassuringly while echoing my question in his own singsong. His repetitions were so musical that Glasnik wondered if he were the cantor of the synagogue.
     
    We continued wandering through lanes ankle-deep in mud, looking for the Russian quarter. Before long, Glasnik began to complain to me as passionately as the children of Israel had once protested against Moses for having taken them away from Pharaoh’s fleshpots, and made them blunder through the endless desert. The difference was Moses, at least, could talk to God whereas I couldn’t even talk to a Chinaman.
     
    Passing a drab wooden building without windows, we suddenly heard ghostly, disembodied voices that sounded like reverberations from the bottom of a well. We drew closer to the entrance, which consisted of a large, flapping rag, and our noses were assailed by a strange odor. I told Glasnik this must be a Chinese restaurant. Glasnik sniffed once again and refused to believe that the odors could have anything to do with food for human beings.
     
    I shared his distaste, but I reasoned that even a primitive restaurant might offer accommodations for the night. Just as poverty could break iron, so, I supposed, that exhaustion could tolerate the smell of Chinese food. We entered cautiously, our hands on our revolvers.
     
    Inside, rows of Chinamen were sitting on the bare floor with