Someone That I Can Live For

It was said the men of the Shvartsman family were well regarded for their intelligence. Perchik knew that was a damn lie.

Author’s Notes: So on April 8, 2023, I asked if any Starsky and Hutch (S&H) fans had written any crossover fic of these two fandoms where Perchik is Starsky’s ancestor. The entirety of S&H fandom I could reach told me they’d love me to do it.

Apparently, we do have to be the change in the world we want to see.

Title from the Fiddler on The Roof song, “Now I Have Everything.” Forgive me if anybody seems OOC. This is the first time I’ve written in either fandom, and these voices are hard. And PLEASE read the endnotes for additional historical information links/backgrounds for events that are referenced here. This story could’ve gone very dark had I gone into them, and while I purposefully chose not to do that for this fluffy piece, I 1000% believe people should have a greater knowledge of those events.

It was said the men of the Shvartsman family were well regarded for their intelligence.

Perchik knew that was a damn lie. His whole childhood in Kivshovata people had thought he was just a pretty face with navy eyes and curly hair that, if you gave it a book, would say some frankly strange things about it while the face’s owner milked the family cows. That may have been why it had felt good to write to his parents to share how, barely a week out of school, Perchik had gotten a job tutoring the children of a large family, receiving room and board in exchange for lessons in reading, writing, and knowing something of the Tanakh.

It was probably one of the nicer jobs anyone in the Pale of Settlement could expect to have these days, though Perchik didn’t have to tell his parents that.

He also didn’t tell his parents that the family was about as rich as they were, or how the fair eyes of their second eldest daughter, Hodel, had flashed when they’d danced on the riverbanks of Anatevka. Perchik especially didn’t tell his parents how he had realized, when they had stopped dancing, just how far down her waist Hodel’s hair was wrapped, or the ideas it had given him about what else could be wrapped around her.

But Perchik did tell his parents when he and Hodel had gotten engaged before he left for Kyiv to join his former classmates on a train to St. Petersburg. His parents had written back, the letter rushed into his hand as he’d boarded. It had not been polite—his mother had strong opinions about skipping matchmakers—but they’d promised to welcome Hodel to the family.

That letter turned out to be one of the most important he’d ever written. It was thanks to it that now, ten (incredibly long) months later, Perchik was leaving Akatui Katorga, the note kept folded in his breast coat pocket from Hodel telling him the Tsar had granted political amnesty.

And here he was again, in Kivshovata, gazing at his wife after having hobbled his way to the door of the same, small brown house he’d grown up in. His beautiful, witty, Hodel, whose face was a bit more worn than when he had left it, but alive, looking back as if seeing a dream.

“I—my ability to read and write spared me the silver mines,” Perchik blurted out. “That, and, I think, the warden’s wife thought me too fair to send underground.”

Hodel burst out laughing. “Ten months in Siberia, and you talk of other women and mines?”

“I’d rather do other things with my wife than talk, but she’d have to let me in first.”

Hodel smiled a moment before bursting into tears, running out the door to embrace him. “Perchik,” she gasped around her tears. “My Perchik’s back.”

“I’ll never leave again,” Perchik whispered into her shoulder. Distantly he heard his parents come to the door, but they were distant, and for the first time in ten months, Hodel was near.

***

“It has been a rough time,” Avi Shvartsman told his son.

He couldn’t help feeling emotional at the sight. His son, Perchik, sitting at their dinner table in his old brown jacket and brown trousers. True, the cloth was a little thin- Perchik was a little thin- but still. All those hours reading books had spared his son physical toil, though Avi suspected only Hodel would ever know just how much hurt the mines had left his heart.

Left them all, truthfully. None of them would be letting Perchik out of their reach for a while.

“Yes, it’s—it’s had us talking,” his wife Naomi said, her blue eyes misty. She had received Hodel with a fierceness and desperation Avi hadn’t seen since the years their children had all been growing up around them, the noise of three sons filling the kitchen almost nonstop. Their eldest two had moved to New York mere weeks before Perchik had graduated, and Perchik had—well, suffice to say having Hodel around had been a blessing in their old age, but watching as she wrote, worked, and fought to get Perchik back had been something else.

“How rough?” his son asked carefully. “Are we—is everything—?”

“We’re safe,” Avi interrupted. “You are with us, and we are safe. For now.”

“There was a pogrom in Anatevka,” Hodel admitted quietly, looking at Perchik. Avi wondered if Hodel knew how she looked, wearing the same plain woolen dress and white linen shirt as his wife, all but curling into Perchik’s side like the ducks that would pair off around the village pond. They had just brought in some laundry when Hodel had heard the knock on the door, and no one had had time to change into something more fitting. “Not a demonstration.”

Now that Avi thought about it, there were probably still clothes hanging on the lines. “A pogrom!? Tevye—”

“Our family is alright,” Hodel told him. “The Constable told the whole village to leave before they were forcibly cleared out. They’ve gone to New York, where our uncle Avram lives.”

“Poor Motel and Tzietzal. All that hard work getting settled as a tailor.”

“They took the sewing machine with them.”

“He got it then?” Perchik asked, sounding amazed.

“Oh yes,” Hodel laughed. “He even had the rabbi bless it!”

“Of course he did. Wait, what of Chava?”

“She and her husband, Fyedka, have gone to Krakow,” Hodel said. “He’s a Christian, but they didn’t want to stay where they both wouldn’t be welcomed, and he has family there. At least she’s near Tzietzal in Warsaw, and hopefully they’ll figure out the rest from there.”

“Husband? Chava married? And Tzietzal’s in Warsaw?” Perchik sighed. “Listen to me. I sound so uninformed. I sat at a desk while an entire village I cared for was driven out.”

“Uninformed? For not knowing what happened while you were in prison? Please, not even you can know all,” Naomi said, not-so-subtly pushing the bread basket towards her son. “Now eat. I am not old enough for you to be talking like a village elder.”

“Still,” Perchik said, mumbling as he carefully chewed a slice of bread. “Chava married a Christian and Tzietzal’s in Warsaw. And they thought I was the radical.”

“Not really,” Hodel replied. “And listen to your mother. She’s taken great care of me, and-”

“…And?”

“And unless you want my grandchild born out of wedlock, we have a wedding under a canopy to plan, with rumors of more pogroms and trouble in the air,” Avi answered his son. “Which is why, for the past two weeks, we’ve been discussing whether it’d be a good idea for the four of us to move to New York. Your brothers say it’s a nice place, and it is closer to her family too.”

“I say have the wedding here and then travel,” Naomi said to her husband. “Jumping halfway across the world on a mere rumor is nonsensical.”

“I say better to travel first and then hold the wedding,” Avi continued as Perchik continued to stare at his parents. “And it’s not a rumor. Between the pogrom and the Duma to be formed, even a man like me can read the writing on the wall. Better to leave now while we can.”

“Hodel?” Perchik asked. “You’re more informed than I.”

“I…don’t know,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to leave you, but now you’re here. I thought we could decide it together. I would prefer to be married before we have children though.”

The room grew silent. “It will take some time to make the arrangements, and longer still to travel safely,” Perchik said at last. “The danger will only grow. It’s better if we go first and then marry, with all our family around us.”

“Are you sure?” Naomi asked her son. “Are you truly willing to wait?”

Perchik looked at his mother. “Mama, I have had to wait for worse than to marry my wife with our family around us, without fear.”

“Then if we must leave, we’d better start sooner rather than later,” Hodel concluded. “I always knew I’d travel far with you, Perchik, but I’d hoped it would be in years, not miles.”

“And I promise you Hodel, there will be decades,” Perchik said to his wife.

Unwatched by them, Avi and Naomi looked at each other, a soft smile playing on Naomi’s face as she looked at her husband. Once, long before, Avi had promised the same to her.

***

Elllis Island was crowded. Too crowded, Perchik thought as he pulled Hodel closer to him.

It had been two long months aboard the steamship the SS Frankfurt , and a long month before that to get their whole family onto the steamship in the first place. It had been harder for Hodel, who they learned was not fond of rocking ocean waves.

But nevertheless they had arrived, walking slowly through separate doors and separate hallways and a battery of doctors to, at last, stand before the desk of who Perchik assumed was an immigration officer. He was young- why, barely as old as me, Perchik realized- wearing a blue uniform with golden buttons that matched his own hair and eyes. “Name?”

“Perchik. Perchik Schvartsman. And this is my wife, Hodel—”

“Perchik, Hodel….say that last name again?”

“Schvartsman.”

“Startsman?”

“Schvartsman,” Perchik repeated, trying to speak clearly over the bustle of the neighboring officers and arrivals in the hall. It was a large room, and the voices echoed mightily around it.

“Yeah I—I can’t hear you,” the officer said apologetically. “All I get is Starts something…” he said, looking at their papers. “I gotta put something, and you’re from Russia, so…Starski it is.”

“But that’s—we’re not- that’s not my—our name,” Perchik stammered out, feeling Hodel staring at the officer from where she stood next to him.

“It is now,” the official drawled as he stamped the admittance papers. “And hey, for a new name, it ain’t so bad! You won’t believe what some folks get. Now, take these forms and go down that way, and welcome to the United States.”

Perchik grabbed the papers and began to walk. They just changed our family’s name. Just like that, he thought. Stupid bureaucrat.

“A new name for a new life is fitting,” Hodel whispered, holding her husband’s hand. “And who knows? Maybe they’ll call you Perch next.”

“They better not,” Perchik grumbled.

***

When David Starsky was little, Grandpa Perch had said to him, with the air of one telling a very old joke, that the men of the Starsky family were well regarded for their intelligence.

David knew that was right. He had a lot of proof for it too. Why, Grandpa Perch—who everyone said was who he’d gotten his curly hair and light eyes from—had studied at the University in Kyiv, helped foster the overthrow of the Tsar, and survived the silver mines using just his brain, hadn’t he? Hadn’t his father-in-law Avi, David’s great-grandfather, managed to bring the whole family and set them up in apartments above an Italian restaurant in New York, starting up a bakery right next to Great Uncle Motel’s haberdashery? Hadn’t David’s father kept that bakery going until David’s sophomore year, when he died and David’s mother sent him to live with his aunt and uncle until he was ready to go to the police academy?

[Well, maybe not that last bit. David hadn’t known he’d want to be a policeman when he moved, and he still didn’t know how he felt about Joe Durniak. He’d long wondered what kind of love-hate relationship Joe had had with his father, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know.]

But the point was, the Starsky men weren’t stupid. David himself may not have been book smart, but he had survived being a doorman where no one tipped, a cabbie on the streets of New York, a grunt in Vietnam, and a theater kid in California. He wasn’t stupid. Yet as he leaned against the wall, staring at its faded floral wallpaper, David Starsky began to wonder if “not stupid” was ever going to be good enough.

“Still can’t believe Hutch slept with her,” Starsky complained over the phone.

“And why should it bother you?” his grandmother replied, the gentle rumbling of a laundry machine in the background. “If you can’t even say the girl’s name, you probably shouldn’t be thinking this much about her, and Kenneth did leave with you.”

“Sorry Grandma. I’m just thrown. I mean, it shouldn’t have, but—”

“No amount of time in a police academy or working for a living ever prepares someone for encountering Fascists trying to blame Jews for a possible assassination. Trust me, I know.”

“Yeah. That’s why I wanted to call Grandpa Perch and you.”

“Naturally, but I find it interesting it’s your partner’s infidelity that you’re wanting to talk about.”

Starsky blinked. “Grandma,” he said carefully, leaning against the wall of his apartment, “exactly who is Hutch cheating on here?”

“Oh, Dovi,” Grandma Hodel chided. “I may be over eighty, but I’m not naive. I know what it means to call someone your partner.”

“I—”

“And such a good choice,” she continued, sounding proud. “College educated, rich, good farmer family. A lifeguard with strong taste in jazz and blues music. It’s unfortunate you inherited Chava’s taste in men, but if my father could handle having a goy for a son-in-law I suppose I can handle having one for a grandson-in-law. Plus, you know what they say about wrestlers, and he has so many years of experience!”

“Grandma!”

“Is that Dovi on the phone?” a baritone voice called. “Yes dear!”

“Excellent,” the voice replied, getting louder. “I just heard about those stupid Fascists, and he’s going to get a piece of my mind about going in without backup.”

“I’m a police detective!” Starsky grumbled at the phone. “Obviously I had backup.”

“The backup was apparently shnooking the ballerina,” Granda Hodel told her husband.

“Oh, you mean it was one of those theater shows?” Grandpa Perch said.

“…what kinda life you think I live?” Starsky said, scandalized. “Also, how do you know about—”

“You do know you, your brother Nick, and your sister Miriam are our grandchildren the natural way, yes?” Grandpa Perch teased over the phone.

“See, I try not to think about that in detail.”

“This is why I disliked moving away from Brooklyn,” Hodel told her husband. “He’d have no shame thinking about it if he still had to visit us in our old place over the Italian restaurant.”

“Yes, but then he couldn’t have visited us with his husband.”

“I’m not married to Hutch!” Starsky shouted. “I mean, we’re work partners. Work partners,” he repeated more quietly. His apartment in Bay City was very much the same as all the rest in the city, including thin walls, no matter how much the landlord had promised otherwise when he’d been telling him how he could keep the furniture the last tenant had left.

“Sure, sure,” Grandpa Perch was saying. “Not at all. Whatever you say. Just make sure you have a canopy when the ceremony happens, or your great-grandpa Tevye will haunt us all.”

“You know, I still could move to Israel,” Starsky told his grandfather. “Maybe a Kibbutz. They probably don’t have conversations like this in the Kibbutz.”

“Oh they do, I promise you,” Grandma Hodel said dryly. Her voice sounded further away, a fact he realized meant she was getting the laundry out when the dryer sound stopped. “Though they may have fewer fascists.”

“Yeah.”

“To think any are still left,” Grandpa Perch grumbled. “Where are the revolutionaries now?”

“The Jewish Organization for Action?” Starsky said. “They weren’t exactly happy with me coming by to question them, though I think they appreciated me trusting their answers.”

“Let me guess, you flashed your badge and demanded answers.”

“Was I supposed to do something different?”

“We’re question-asking people, Dovi.”

“Didn’t have the time to interrogate.”

There was a pause. “You know, sometimes, I’m reminded you’ve never been in a Siberian prison,” Granda Perch said at last. “This is one of those times.”

“…Am I supposed to be sad about that?”

“No, I bet you’d be better at knowing when to ask a question if you kept your schooling up.”

“Okay, sure, next time I’ll send Hutch to ask.”

“Oh don’t do that dear,” Grandma Hodel interrupted. “He’s liable to get matchmaked away.”

Starsky quietly banged his head against the wall. “I’m not sure he’d mind that, given he’s divorced two times over,” he pointed out.

“He will if it gets him a third because they’re a Jewish girl instead of—”

“What my dear wife means is that you can’t seduce information out,” Grandpa Perch interrupted.

“That is not what I meant, and you most certainly can,” Hodel told her husband. “I believe the youths are calling it honeypotting these days.”

“Name one person who—”

“Joshua.”

“It was his spies who visited Rahab,” Perchik began, “at her inn, not her bed—”

“Hosea.”

“That was allegorical!”

“Tamar.”

“She wasn’t information seeking, and you know it.”

“Ah, Grand—”

“David.”

“Married to one informant, brother-in-law to another, and favorite of the court,” Perchik scoffed. “He wouldn’t have needed to—”

“Please tell me the two of you aren’t Talmudically flirting right now about potential honeypotters,” Starsky interrupted, staring horrified at the phone.

“No dear,” Grandma Hodel reassured her grandson. “Your grandfather is far more handsy when it comes to that. And fine,” she said to Perchik, “Mata Hari? She’s recent and not Talmudic.”

“You know I question how much of that woman’s story could possibly be true,” Perchik grumbled, “but I’ll accept it. Grudgingly.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Starsky said aloud.

“You’d better,” Grandpa Perch told his grandson. “I know how well you banter, and I’m sure Ken knows it even better.”

“What.”

“Oh, Miriam tells us about your love life all the time,” Grandma Hodel interjected, the sound of folding clothes carrying softly over the phone. “She finds it far more entertaining than her life.”

“Miriam married an architect and has 6 kids, she’s the Brady Bunch, and I’m more entertaining?”

“I think it’s because New York is less Californian.”

“That’s a cop out.”

“Two of them, yes.”

There was a knock at the door. “Open!’ Starsky shouted, before turning back to the phone.

“Thanks for that!” Came the shout of a male voice Starsky knew. And not just Starsky.

“Is that Kenneth, Dovi?” Hodel asked. “If it is, tell him I got out my mother’s cookbook and I have those recipes he asked for.

“Who’s on the phone?” Hutch asked, walking over after placing a few bags of what Starsky thought were groceries on the beige living room couch, just managing to avoid clipping the corner as he walked by it.

“It’s Grandma and Grandpa,” Starsky told him. “Grandma says she has those recipes from Great-grandma Golde you wanted.”

“Perfect,” Hutch said, leaning around Starsky to talk into the phone. “I just got groceries, maybe I’ll try one out. Hey, Starsky, you might even eat instead of trying to outdrink oatmeal.”

“What is my grandson doing?”

“Nothing! And hey, a little space please?” Starsky said to Hutch. “Claustrophobic, remember.”

“Sorry, no can do,” Hutch said, wrapping around Starsky to grab the phone. “Grandma Hodel?”

“Yes, I’m here!” Hodel said over the phone. “How are you doing?”

“Oh fine, fine. Got through the latest case without much of a problem,” Hutch began, only to cut off when he looked down to see Starsky gesturing to him.

“And about that—” Grandpa started.

“Oh hush dear,” Hodel said. “We already settled that.”

“Settled what?” Hutch asked.

“The bit where you were too busy cheating on our Dovi to give him backup,” Hodel said. “I told him not to worry so much about it, what with you leaving with him after all.”

“And what’s wrong with reminding him it’s wildly inappropriate?” Perchik muttered. “He has two ex-wives, he should probably know better.”

“There were extenuating circumstances there,” his wife scolded, “what with them being women.”

“Bisexuality is not an extenuating circumstance.”

“Perchik! Kenneth has never—you can’t just choose— ”

“There’s no shame in describing someone as bisexual if the label fits,” Perchik insisted. “And why not? You heard Brenda Howard and Donny the Punk.”

“I thought,” Hodel said, her voice sounding stern, “that we agreed you weren’t going to be following that.”

“No, we agreed that you didn’t want me to. I didn’t agree to stop.”

“You are too old to go to a protest.”

“Who’s protesting? I’m just saying that Kenneth having been married to two women does not excuse him sleeping on his man with a third when he should be guarding him.”

“That still doesn’t mean you get to label—”

“We all get to label. Was not Adam told to name—”

“Are you implying Kenneth is an animal?”

“Are humans not—”

“You—”

Hutch stared at Starsky while Starsky’s grandparents bickered, a mild look of horror on his face.

Starsky shrugged, and tried not to relax too much against the wall. Or against Hutch, though Hutch’s toned body, just barely hidden under a white t-shirt, resting under golden locks and sky-blue eyes was more appealing—which was only another sign that Starsky hadn’t gotten any in far too long, because normally he was better about resisting his handsome coworker.

“You know partner,” Hutch whispered after carefully muzzling the phone’s receiver against his chest. “I could be wrong, but it sounds like your family thinks we’re—”

“Oh, they are.”

“Did you…?”

“My sister,” Starsky interrupted. “I know my place in your life.”

“Ah,” Hutch said. For a moment he looked at Starsky, the look on his face one Starsky privately called his “dot connecting” face, before he lifted the phone again.

“—can’t tell me she just tripped into him,” Grandpa was saying. “She’s a prima ballerina!”

“I’m sorry to cut this off,” Hutch said smoothly, in a warm voice that left Starsky staring, “but I just wanted to say Starsky and I have an understanding about getting intimate with folks on the job.”

There was a pause. “What?” Hodel asked slowly.

“No, no, I’ve heard of this,” Perchik told her. “The kids call it an “open relationship.”

“Open…like that swinging thing?”

“I think it only counts as that if she also was married?”

“The point being,” Hutch continued, “that I didn’t, nor would I ever cheat on your grandson. He’s my buddy, my pal, my man.”

“Have you told him that lately?” Hodel asked.

“We’ve been a bit too busy to talk, what with the case.”

“You should fix that.”

Suddenly there was a loud buzzing on the line. “Oh, that must be Dove’s brother calling,” Hodel said. “Kenneth, dear, call me tomorrow when you get a chance and we’ll swap recipes.”

“And give our love to Dovi!”

“Love gotten!” Starsky said into the phone, saying his goodbyes as Hutch hung up the phone.

“So. Dovi,” Hutch said, leaning over him. He didn’t really move much, just looked at Starsky attentively in a way that made him want to fidget, like he was about to be arrested or something.

“… Kenneth?”

“What, exactly, are the odds of any of that being on the table?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your face is too ravishing for its own good,” Hutch said bluntly, before grabbing Starsky’s face.

Oh, Starsky thought dimly as they kissed. This—this—is how you get two ex-wives. Holy of Holies.

“Odds?”

“I—I’ll admit I haven’t it—I mean, I’m from California, you know—”

“Starsky,” Hutch teased, “you’re stammering.”

“Won’t your family want this off the table?” Starsky blurted out.

“What family?” Hutch said, tilting his head just enough that the apartment light lit his blonde hair. “Mom and I only see each other once in a while.”

“I still think that’s strange.”

“And my sister Tegan agrees with me that your body is irresistible,” Hutch finished. “Though I think we were thinking of different parts when it came to that bit of me describing you to her.”

“You described—you really asking if this is on the table?”

“Would you take it if it was?”

“Who in their right mind wouldn’t dummy?”

“Catholics?”

“I’m not Catholic and you know it, Kenneth Hutchinson,” Starsky growled. “Is that a yes?”

“Of course it’s a yes, you—”

“Dovi Starsky,” Hutch said, pulling Starsky against him, their jeans dragging against each other so that Starsky could feel their red (matching his brain reminded him) socks rub together. “That’s the smartest thing you’ve ever decided.”

“You don’t know half of it hotshot.”

“Any chance I can know the—”

Hutch never finished. David kissed him—which, they later agreed, was a very intelligent decision.

Chapter End Notes:

* Fiddler on the Roof,” as a musical, generally gets described as beginning in 1905. I… to be blunt, I think what they really mean is it ends in 1905, given the fact that Motel and Tzeitel are shown to be parents to a fairly large baby before Perchik’s arrest. That said, y’all the amount of time I spent trying to make this timeline work is a tale, just go with it?

* Kivshovata is a real town, though its Jewish population is gone now.

* An Anatevka was established in 2015. It provides refugee housing.

* Tzietel going to Warsaw is a detail from the stage musical of Fiddler. Hilariously, Warsaw was also a revolutionary hotbed at the time, so I’m thinking Tzietel didn’t stay long.

* The Pale of Settlement was a real thing, and was exactly as unfun as you’re imagining.

* So this story didn’t go into Bloody Sunday (because can you say trauma?) but yes, Bloody Sunday and the Revolution of 1905 was also a thing.

* While details on Siberian prisons before the USSR are surprisingly difficult to come by, Akatui prison did exist. You can learn more about it here and here as well.

* Kyiv did have a pogram, likely a month after our characters left the area.

* The SS Frankfurt comes courtesy of Ellis’ Island’s searchable database of passengers. While no Shvartsman families can be found, there are multiple Starskys.

* Brenda Howard (who was Jewish) and Stephen Donaldson (aka Donny the Punk) were major LGBTQ+ advocates in the 1970s, and helped popularize calling Pride, well, Pride. You can learn more about Brenda at this link and about Donny at this link (though please note that Donny’s is very explicit; trigger warnings include rape).

* Finally, you can watch Fiddler on the Roof at the Internet Archive, and check all the Starsky and Hutch details you like at A Starsky and Hutch Canon Compendium.