Marching to Zion (5 page)

Mags listened, perplexed. Finally, he clapped his free hand over the one that held hers as if shaking it.

Once, he said, I have a wife whom I love.

Miss Minnie’s mother?

He pushed out his lower lip and shrugged.

My little girl is the child of storm and fire. If she has a mother, Sonya is it. But before that, Sonya is my wife. We married under a
chuppah when I am twenty and she is sixteen. I met her the month before we were to marry. Until the wedding, we are not together for even a few minutes alone. From the first, I adore her. She is a miracle of intelligence, of delicacy in form and spirit. It is another miracle that I am matched with her. I am a nothing, an apprentice jeweler to my father, dependent entirely upon his fortunes and with none of my own. Her father is a goldsmith, so our match makes sense somewhere in the universe but hardly to mine own mind. I spend the month of our engagement in astonishment that I, a boy who prays only when he must, who lives in a world without challenge to his soul, protected from every evil either through his ignorance or by the walls of our neighborhood, have somehow won such favor from the Divine that this marvel is given to me. To me! I have such respect for her that when our wedding night comes, I can do no more than kiss her hands. Rather than spoil her and win only her disgust, I cut my hand to stain the sheets so the old women who comes later to inspect them find virgin blood. In the end, it is she who guides me through the gates of pleasure where we stay locked together, a holy treasure nestled in a strongbox, far away from all the world.

He paused, resting in the most pleasant place of his history. The wind had changed direction. The clouds of smoke were thinner now, though an odor that stung the eyes lingered within them. It was the odor of burning flesh. The sound of gunshot was less frequent, and the screams as well. With that smell in the air, the relative quiet eased neither’s anxiety. Mags pressed Fishbein’s hand to tell him to continue. To lie there waiting for whatever might come next was excruciating. The distraction of his voice was her sole relief. The sensibilities he described and the words he chose to describe them were exotic, nearly incomprehensible to her except for the love in them. The love she understood. He continued.

If only we could have stayed in that moment, in that box. If only the world does not visit us on an afternoon when I am not at home. That day, my father sends me to the central post office to inquire about the delivery of an order for display cards. He prefers a certain type of card, collapsible, designed of wood and velvet, which can only be obtained from the capital. It is the only card he would use. He goes to travel the next week to trade in Riga and is anxious about their delivery, and
nu,
I must go. When I say good-bye to Sonya that day, it is with the usual reluctance. Even though I do not expect to be apart from her for more than a handful of hours, I hate to leave her on any day and at that time. She is like you, with child. We had three years of bliss together before the child is coming. In that time, my mother often complains that there are no grandchildren from us. Once, thank Gott not in Sonya’s presence, she dares to remind me that if together we cannot fulfill the obligation to be fruitful and multiply, our law permits and even encourages divorce. I am enraged by her suggestion. I berate her without mercy. I am ashame to say it is the only time in my life I almost strike a woman, and my own mother! You know the Ten Commandments, Mags McCallum? Of course you do. Honor thy father and mother is the fifth of these. The first four commandments deal with what we must do for Gott, the fifth is the first that tells us what we must do for each other. This is how important it is to honor thy father and mother. But on the day my mother proposes to me I abandon Sonya, I discover I can hate her who bore me. We continues, all of us, to live together although I nurse a hot seed of resentment towards my mother from that day on and often wish her ill. When finally Sonya is with child, my mother dotes on her, but for me it is too little, too late. In the time since, I often thought perhaps the hardness of my heart is why the Holy One, blessed be He, punishes me. But this is selfish, isn’t it? To think that a world of suffering rains down on a multitude because of my sin. Yes, pure selfishness.

Fishbein fell silent. The rat-a-tat-tat of gunshot replaced his voice as the only sound in the room. It sounded even farther away than before. Mags forced herself to believe it came from a direction that was not the rail station where George had gone on Fishbein’s errand. She imagined her husband holed-up, safe, waiting for things to die down or the police to arrive before he came to her. This image began to fade as soon as she achieved it. She knew what kind of man her George was and knew he was trying with everything he had to get home that very minute. She saw him face mortal danger at every turn, desperate with fear for her, for the baby. A shivering sweat went through her. Fishbein took off his jacket and covered her as best he could. Though her teeth chattered, Mags managed to ask Fishbein to continue his story. Listening to him speak was better than lying there terrorized by images of George hurt or worse.

Yes. Of course. I am saying good-bye to Sonya, no? Yes. She is beautiful as ever, her eyes sparkle. She teases me, I recall. She said, You are so afraid to leave me even for half a day? Such a clever man my husband is! You finds me out! Yes, I shall run away with the butcher’s boy as soon as you turn a corner. Her time is close, very close, but it’s not our way to mention fears about such things or the angels and demons who listen to every human word might bring our fears to life. So I smile and kiss her and goes my way.

I don’t get so far. Not ten blocks from our neighborhood, I am beset upon by thugs. They tear my pockets and pull the hair from my head. They hit me with clubs, and I am unconscious in the street. When I awake, night is fallen. At first, I don’t know where it is I am or what happens to me. I stumble about. There are sounds in the night, a clamor of chaos and cruelty, but I am drunk with confusion. I cannot determine what it is going on. Suddenly, I realize. It is a pogrom. A pogrom. The one no one thinks will come to our city, because the
goyim
they are so friendly, we think they love us. From the capital of our province, newspapers incite hatred against the Jews for a long time, but that is the capital. In our quiet town, a place people come to vacation, to take the waters and listen to concerts, people are genteel, we think, or too content, too lazy to read, to act. But a pogrom it is. And I know what means a pogrom. I must gets home.

What can I tell you? Without the grace of Gott, nothing is easy. It takes me until the dawn’s light to get home. Or what is left of home. I find there a shambles. First the murderers and then the looters have come. Like here, everything is smashed, destroyed, or if it is of value, it is taken away. My father is hung from a rafter, with his pants pulled off, and my mother is in the corner of the kitchen with her skirts up, her body stained with the refuse of her pots, which are strewn all over. She bleeds from every orifice and from her chest. You know, a son—especially a guilty, angry son—should never see such things, but it is not the worst sight for me. The worst is my Sonya, with her skirts also up and her breasts exposed, and her belly, her belly rent in two, as if she is a fish they have gutted, and my child, a boy, a little boy, lying next to her, strangled by the cord that keeps him attached to her forever, in life and in death. Count them. There are four. These are my dead. For whose sake I shall protect you, Mags McCallum, with my life.

He stopped, finished with speaking for now. Immediately, he wondered whether he should have spoken at all. His own heart was queerly relieved yet innervated, unexpectedly so. Mags wiped tears from her eyes with one hand, pressed his with her other, and her chest and belly heaved. Fishbein was appalled by his own insensitivity. In setting down his burden, he had handed her one to carry. He struck his breast three times with his free hand while petitioning her clemency.

Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, he said. As I tell you, I am a stupid, selfish man. I see my unhappy tale gives you fresh heartache. Believe me, I will let no one harm you as my Sonya was. The mystics teach us that under the eye of Gott, all opposites achieve balance. I am sure, I am confident this very room is the place where today the Holy One, blessed be He, will create perfect harmony out of turmoil. On one side of the scale is the murder of my loved ones.
Nu?
On the other is your safety. My suffering assures your future joy. Why not? Is there a reason on Gott’s green earth why this should not be so?

In spite of herself, Mags’s heart swelled with hope. Yes, she said, why not?

Quiet can be as strong a bond between two people as a thousand heartfelt words. After several silent minutes, she felt comfortable enough to ask a question that on any other day would not cross her lips for its assumption of intimacy, but this question nagged at her.

And Miss Minnie? If she’s not your wife’s child, where did she come from?

Ah! My little girl. She is a foundling, of course. When I goes home that day to find, well, you know what, I spend the first nights alone with my dead. I take my father down from where he is hung, and I wash and wrap him in a sheet. My mother and my wife and child, I also wash and bind. I find candles and lights them and mourn by them without cease. The world around me does not exist. The czar’s army can storm into our house and I would not hear them approach. Yet on the fourth day, I am staring at my child, my boy, whose tiny body has grown stiff, whose tiny face peeking out of his shroud I watch turn blue, then black while I weep over him. For four days, I am imagining for him the life he will never know, and suddenly, I hear him cry. Can you know what a shock that is? I jump up. The cry sounds again only now I hear it comes from behind me. I turn and there, in the doorway, is another child, a red-headed girl child of maybe three or four years, and she is naked, covered in blood. She is crying in my doorway, first in little bleats like a lamb led to slaughter and then when she sees she gets my attention, louder and louder in the wails of a woman. I take her in. In the weeks that follow, I cannot find who she is or from where she comes. I decide she is sent from Gott to be mine. For me, she is a reason to live. For her, I am life itself.

Time went by, he told her, and he realized he could not continue to live in his town, amid the destruction there and his memories. As it happened, the looters had not got everything after all. His father took a certain jacket on his trips. In its hems his mother stitched the jewels he would carry to trade that they might be safe on the road and in the common houses where he slept. For the trip he was to make to Riga days after his murder, his father wanted only his best stock. The hems of his jacket were full of precious stones. The looters did not think to steal that worn jacket, which gave Fishbein a fortune to stake out a new life. He left the Black Sea behind him. After a time, he and his little girl found themselves in America. He looked things over and disliked the similarities between Saint Petersburg and New York. He traveled up and down the Great River looking for a home, and settled in East St. Louis.

But why here?

We are here when Minerva grows tired and announces she wishes to go no farther.

And why this business?

Fishbein smiled an odd smile, a smile with anguish in it.

I prefer the company of the dead to that of the living, he said. It is where my heart lays.

The second night of the riots, they tried to sleep lying side by side. Each woke a dozen times, half a breath after sleep claimed them, either from the bloody chaos outside or from the nightmares that rim exhaustion. It was hard to tell which was which. Just after first light, there was a commotion at the front door, one neither distant nor imaginary. Mags gasped. Mr. Fishbein leapt up to stand in front of her, a human shield, holding a weapon in each raised hand. From out of nowhere Mags could determine, he’d produced a ten-inch butcher’s knife and a chair leg with a great nail sticking out of its carved haunch.

Under the bed, he whispered to her, under the bed. Please.

She moved to roll off the bed to hide beneath it when Magnus Bailey appeared at the doorway.

The man’s face was slick with sweat, his fine clothes torn and foul. River mud covered his boots to his ankles.

Before Fishbein could ask, he said, Miss Minnie is safe. I put her in a good place ’crost river. I need water. Have you got water? They gave it to him, and he told them what was what in the world outside.

It started when some white men drove through the colored town and shot some boys just standin’ in the street, talkin’ ’bout their own business, he said, who knows why. The police came in an unmarked car, all of ’em totin’ rifles pointin’ out the windows the way they do. There’s colored folk had armed themselves by then. Not knowin’ who was in the car, they opened fire afore they’d get shot themselves. It was the police wound up dead. Next thing you know, thousands of white men are in the streets, screamin’ for vengeance, raidin’ the colored homes, burnin’ and killin’ any poor black man, woman, or child they find.

Bailey buried his head in his hands for a moment, remembering. Mags noticed that his hands trembled against his face. When he took them away, he wrung them together. He kept wringing them throughout his report, except when he balled a fist and smacked his palm, either for emphasis or to achieve control, she could not tell which.

The things I saw last night, the things I saw. Them little houses and stores south of city hall? Burnt down to the ground. And while they’re burnin’, whole families runnin’ out of ’em. Oh, those poor babies! Gettin’ shot by white men loungin’ around with their backs against walls, calm as you please, just waitin’ for targets to come out of a house afire. They’d shoot a body down, then pick ’em up and toss ’em back in to burn alive. Cut the fire hoses, too. The soldiers got called in, but they don’t do nothin’ but march around in their tight columns more concerned with protectin’ themselves than restorin’ the peace. I don’t expect they know what to do. It is the Apocalypse.