Beyond the Pale: A Novel (22 page)

I rarely told the mothers. They got too excited. Either it was “My baby will never leave the land of her mothers,” or ‘“My baby is going to the goldene medine to make us all proud and rich.” It doesn’t pay to tell the mothers anything too specific. And it had taken me a long time to believe what I saw. How could it be that the rivers of Bessarabia would empty into the Atlantic? It hardly made sense but I had to admit, there it was: the children were going.

T
HE SIX HOURS
to Odessa seemed too short to me, even with stopping at every little town. I looked out the window at the peasants tending their fields, the houses of nobles set off in the distance, orchards full of ripening plums and cherries, flocks of sheep growing back their coats. At the beginning of the ride, the light flickering through the forests fascinated me. I held my hand up to double the blinking red patterns. Then we came out into the open steppe and the trees vanished. The noise of the train repeated and repeated, like people at prayer. Only once in awhile I saw my father being dragged by horses, or my mother—. Somehow, each time I did, Gutke took my hand. Since she’d seen my birth, I figured it was all right to let her comfort me. Then I could see again a small grape cluster under leaves or catch a glimpse of a bird.

Gutke put the portfolio away and rummaged in her large cloth bag. She pulled out a round bundle not much bigger than a cherry and handed it to me.

“I want you to have this,” she said. “Don’t protest. I’m sure you were taught to respect your elders’ wishes.”

I unwrapped it quickly. Inside was a silver ring with a dark red stone, smaller than a cherry pit. “What is it?” I asked, holding it up to see the way the light played through.

“Only a common garnet. I want you to have it so you’ll remember Russia in the New World.”

I wasn’t sure I’d want to remember Russia. On the other hand, this gift gave me a warm sensation in my stomach, like the sweet wine we drank at Pesach. “It’s very generous. Thank you.” For some reason I didn’t feel that I should wear the ring, just that I should have it. I wrapped it back up and put it in my own bag.

“You’re welcome,” Gutke said, waving her hand in the air, dismissing the subject.

When I turned back to the window, it seemed as if we were going through a small village for a long time, without stopping. I looked at Gutke, confused.

“This is just the beginning of Odessa. You could fit Kishinev in it more than five times.”

So big! How would my cousins find me? Now there were buildings three and four stories high. The train went between them and under bridges. I saw every stone, every column, every statue, poor women hanging out laundry in little backyards full of garbage, tradespeople, shopkeepers, pushcarts, wagons, soldiers on horseback. Maybe my brother Abe had come back to Odessa—did he know what had happened yet? Before I could wonder very long, Gutke was poking at me to get ready, and we were shoving with all the other shoving people, leaving the crowded car.

The station was fantastical. Track after track of trains, crowds of people, women hawking bagels from pushcarts and boys wanting to sell us newspapers competed for space under a great arched roof. “Hold on to your bag and keep your hands in your pockets if you have anything in them,” Gutke warned me. Then she saw her friend, waved. I realized she was going to go on without me, and I felt like I was saying goodbye at the Kishinev station all over again. How would I find my cousins?

“Here, Dovida, over here!” I expected to see a woman but instead it was a short chubby man, dressed like a German merchant, clean shaven except for a mustache, his tie tight around his neck even though it was a very hot afternoon. They embraced each other like long-lost friends. Something about this embarrassed me.

“Who’s this?” he asked.

“The daughter of an old friend of mine, going to America no less, with her cousins Petrovsky. I want to see she finds them before we go, all right?”

“Of course, Gutke. If the world had a heart like you, we would be in paradise. Here, let me take your bag. Look—over there I think could be your Petrovskys.” The man gestured into the crowd and suddenly I saw my Uncle Isadore and a girl who must have been Rose, except she didn’t look so much like she did when we were nine. It was hard to keep people’s faces clear in your memory and for a minute I panicked about remembering Esther, Sarah, Daniel. I went over their faces quickly to make sure I had them in my mind. I put my hand on the photograph in my bag. I would never forget Mama’s and Papa’s faces. Then everyone was talking.

“Here she is! Give your cousin a kiss, Rosele!” I had forgotten she had blue eyes. Rose kissed me and I blushed. There was too much emotion in all this coming and going.

“You’re in good hands now, Chava. Take care of yourself.” Gutke made me look her in the eyes. “You hear me? You have a good head and a strong heart. Use them well and be good to your cousin here.” I wanted her to go away then and she knew it. “I’m off now, don’t you worry about me. Good luck in America! Come, Dovid.”

I was sure she had said “Dovida” the first time. I looked at the man again. As they turned away I realized he was a woman dressed up to look like a man. Was that possible? I never imagined such a thing. Gutke turned her head and winked at me before they were lost in the crowd. I turned to see if the others had noticed, but Uncle Isadore was trying to shepherd us through the mass of bodies. He put his arm around Rose’s shoulder and Rose took my hand.

“Every time I come to this station it gets worse!” my uncle said. “Good thing you don’t have much luggage. I don’t mean—oh, you know what I mean. Who was that old woman? Did you enjoy your trip? Your first on the great Russian railway, eh?”

My uncle asked his questions and didn’t care if I answered them. Just as well, I didn’t feel like talking. He turned for a second to smile at me.

“Speech is good but silence is better, is that it? Worn out from the ride? Need the conveniences?”

I looked confused. “The toilet, he means,” Rose said.

“No, I’m all right, I went in one of the towns on the way.”

“Good. You’re tired, I know. We’ll get a carriage to the house.” A whole line of carriages was waiting in front of the station: beautiful ones with bells on the horses and broken-down carts like the kind farmers drove to Kishinev’s market. By the entrance was a long row of beggars too. My uncle pretended not to see them.

“We go to Saint Catherine Street, past Nikolai Boulevard,” he told the driver of a good-looking carriage, and we all got in. I sat across from them. My relatives looked more prosperous than they had in Kishinev. Uncle Isadore’s beard was trimmed in fashion and he wore a hat just like the goyim. He and Rose pointed out the sights as we rode past, the Richelieu monument in the central square, the beautiful opera house.

“Do you like opera?” Rose asked.

I frowned. There was an opera house in Kishinev but we were not allowed to attend. “Opera? All I’ve ever heard is the chazan sing
Kol Nidre
. Is opera like that?”

“Your small-town cousin, eh, Rose?” Isadore laughed at me but he was soft, not mean. I realized he was being so jovial because he didn’t want me to be embarrassed by my “plight,” as the relief boards called it. “Tomorrow you can show her around if you want, give her the tour. You’ll be a city woman before you know it, Chava.”

“You’re going to make me a city woman?” I tried to joke with Rose but she became shy all of a sudden. I felt foolish. I had no business trying to joke.

“We’re just girls still, Papa,” Rose protested.

“Yes, indeed, good girls, aren’t you?”

And then we were in front of a large, whitewashed house with a fence running all around the yard. In Kishinev you would have to be a factory foreman to live in a house like this. It was on a long street, with many houses almost the same. A cherry tree grew in the middle of the yard and flower bushes were planted in rows along the walk. Uncle Isadore gave the driver a whole ruble. My shining hoard of thirteen rubles tarnished under my patches.

Before I could feel too sorry for myself, Aunt Bina was in the doorway, drying her hands on a lace-trimmed apron, waving at us. When she called out, I heard my mother’s voice. My throat closed up and my stomach tightened. Bina was six years younger than my mother and much more fair. She wore her own hair, light brown and reddish, in a modest bun, and her face and arms were freckled. I looked at Rose to see if Bina was in her the way my mother was in Bina. But Rose was plump and dark—except for her eyes—and it was impossible to trace Bina in her with everyone so noisy, moving, wanting to know all about my trip, clucking, sighing.

I knew they meant well, that Bina had lost her half-sister when I lost my mother, but their flutterings made me feel like I was wearing wool underwear.

“Tchish, the child is tired,” Bina said. “She needs to wash a little, maybe, and rest before dinner. Rosele, you take her to your room, show her the house. You need anything dear?”

“Don’t worry,” Rose whispered, “they’ll get used to you soon—and if you’re lucky, you’ll get used to them.”

I nodded, trying to be serious. I didn’t want to act like a child when childhood was already behind me. When I looked at Rose, I remembered her saying “We’re just girls still,” and I felt for a minute that I was still just a girl, on an adventure. I had a strong sensation of anger at her for making me feel this, and then I was ashamed. Why was I mad at my cousin, who hadn’t done anything?

Rose had a room all to herself. “Well, it wouldn’t be right for me to sleep with the boys, and anyway they’re just my stepbrothers,” she said. “Aaron and Ephraim are at school—they go to public school, you know, not just kheder. Saul’s at work.”

“Wasn’t there another one?”

“Jacob. He was killed two years ago trying to desert the army. Don’t mention him in front of Papa, right?”

“No, of course not. Do you miss him?”

“Jacob? Hardly. I never liked him much. I suppose I shouldn’t admit it. Do you think it’s wrong?”

I shook my head. I didn’t feel like giving reassurances. “I don’t think not liking your stepbrother is a crime. I couldn’t stand my sister’s fiancé, Nathan. He always smelled rotten to me. Even at their wedding.”

Rose giggled. “Here, Mama had me clear a space in my chest for you.” She had dresses nicer than any girl I knew in Kishinev. “You can put your things in it, they won’t begin to take up any room. Oh—I don’t want to offend you.”

“No, that’s all right. I used to have more, you know. It’s just they destroyed everything.” Then we weren’t girls anymore.

Rose looked at me deeply. “It was terrible?”

“Terrible. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“We’re family now,” Rose said after a long moment. “It’s good to have another girl in the house. I’m glad you’re here.”

She was being too nice to me. I didn’t like this “poor relation” business. What did she know about what I went through? I wanted to say something mean. Instead I bit my tongue, stared at my shoes. “Thank you. Now I do need to use a convenience.” I meant to be very formal but Rose laughed.

“Come, I’ll show you. It’s behind the kitchen, right in the house. If you don’t want to wash up in the kitchen, I keep a basin in the bedroom.”

After dinner, we went back to Rose’s room. I couldn’t remember when I had felt so tired, not even after I spent all day digging feathers out of the dirt. Rose gave me a flowered nightgown. It was a little short but loose and comfortable. We turned our backs when we changed.

“Do you snore?” she asked.

What a question. At home you could always hear someone snoring. “I have no idea. Do you?”

“I don’t think so. But sometimes Aaron snores so loud you can hear him all over the house. Don’t worry. I won’t make you sleep in the kitchen if you do.”

“Thank you, missus. What side do you want me on?”

“Left is okay?”

“Left is fine.”

Rose turned down the lamps. I suspected she was disappointed. I wasn’t grateful enough to be pitied properly and I was too serious to be a playmate. What was she expecting, anyway? A sister? I wasn’t her sister—she hadn’t seen what I’d seen. My face felt too full, as if there was a thin layer of hot tar under my cheeks. I realized I had to sleep with this girl, in the same bed, for a long time. I moved over a little closer to the edge.

Rose sighed. What did she have to worry about? The shadows did little somersaults on her white ceiling as the lamps died out. Life was easy in Odessa. Everything was so clean and big here. Except of course the bed, which seemed very small, the two of us lying like rolled-up newspapers, our own stories curled so tight within us no one could read them.

There was a bright sword with a long curved blade. Someone was beating it on a pump. There was no water. Many people were running, trying to get away—

“Wake up, wake up!”

“What is it, what’s the matter?” I sat bolt upright, reaching under my pillow. Nothing there. Where was the knife? What bed was this?

“You were shouting in your sleep,” Rose said. She put her hand on my shoulder. I turned away. Morning light was coming through the curtains. There were little red roosters running along the curtain hem. After a couple days I was already bored with the roosters. I wondered how Rose could stand them month after month. Plain was better, I decided.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pushing Rose’s hand off my shoulder. I got out of bed and went to the window. People were going to work and carts full of grain were thumping down the street. I dropped my chin to my chest and took a deep breath. This was too hard, to be seen like this, to have my insides fall out in front of a stranger, the way the letters fell out of the smashed Linotype. I was startled to hear Rose crying.

“What have you got to cry about?”

Rose swallowed and didn’t say anything.

“I’m too mean?” I asked.

“I thought you would be different.”

“Different! You thought I would be grateful my rich cousins were saving me from being an orphan, taking me to the great America? I’ll tell you something—I’m still an orphan. And I didn’t know how it would feel to take charity. You wouldn’t like it either.”