Read Refiner's Fire for Free Online Page A

girl lay curled up under a cloud of silk and down, he would tell her stories. In summer she wanted fairy stories and tales of magic in the forests, but when the snow mounted its lethal attack she wanted to hear about those who had been before and survived. Her father knew little about his family, which had come on horses and mules from somewhere in Central Asia, perhaps from as far as Sinkiang.
    â€œWhere did we come from?” she would ask.
    â€œFrom the land of Israel,” he might answer, “but that was a long, long time ago. More recently, we came on a trek from the land of the Golden Horde.”
    â€œWhat did we do there? Did we grow trees?”
    â€œCertainly not. There are no trees in that place. I can’t imagine what we did. We must have been nomads or farmers of a sort, or maybe merchants. I do not even know what my grandfather was like, though of course there is that story. By the way, would you like to hear it, the story of Grandfather Shmuel the first (and last) Jewish Grand Master of the Sabre in Russia?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI thought so.” This was always a favorite. He had told it a score or more times. She loved it and, until much older, she believed it. A long shriek of wind, and then sparkling silence like a snowflake was his signal to begin.    '
    â€œWhen Grandfather Shmuel was just a little boy, his father was walking through a field one winter day as the snow swept across it, and the thought occurred to him that though he was a Jew, the land and the seasons upon it did not recoil, and crops planted by him grew as well as any other crops, and at night he could see the clear sky above. This, the delightful prospect of a normal life, made him extremely happy. He would use the lesson of the land so that in some generations (he thought) his descendants could breathe easy. He grew so excited that he danced homeward across the fields: his wife thought he was crazy.
    â€œLittle Shmuel was playing by the fire when his father rushed in the door and grabbed the child, holding him high in the air. ‘You!’ he said, ‘are going to boarding school! There, you will learn to speak Russian like a Russian, to ride like a Cossack, and to shoot like a red-robed Grenadier!’
    â€œShmuel did not know what to say. He was only eight, rather plump, and he didn’t know very much because he had spent most of his life arranging tin soldiers on the warm slate hearth. The mother was about to intervene to save her child from the high responsibilities of being the first Jew ever to attend boarding school, but she saw him cock his head, stare into space, and receive into his eyes the glint of gray light reaching off the steppes. The little fellow had believed what his father had told him and, since he had been a totally blank slate until that very moment, he was set completely upon this mission—a lucky accident, because the only boarding school that would take Shmuel was the dread and infamous Ikrtsk District Military Academy.
    â€œAs Shmuel was swallowed into the spike-encrusted gates of the academy, he looked back to see his parents, barred from entry, standing outside on the road. They seemed so lonely—his mother in her fur hat and black cloth coat, his father beside her. Then the gate slammed shut and he was in another world. Did you know, Katrina, that the Ikrtsk cadets did not wear shirts or shoes even in the coldest winters?”
    â€œNo,” she said, so gently and sweetly that it awed her father.
    â€œThat they slept on bare planks, and worked fourteen hours a day?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThat they never spoke but only shouted, that they were hard as steel, and that they took baths in ice water?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, they did, and for years Shmuel could not grow used to such a life.
    â€œThe primary subject at Ikrtsk was sabres, but Shmuel was not allowed even to touch one. Instead, his father bribed the teachers with