No One is Here Except All of Us (31 page)

The postman dropped the envelope with the folded handkerchief at the doorstep of the cabbage picker’s house, though there was no doorstep and neither was there a door, nor did those people inhabit bodies able to turn knobs and let the daylight in. The house was a wrecked ship. The walls were devoured. The package sat where it was placed and waited for the mud and the mold. It waited to be greened and browned. It waited for the ghosts to take it back into the earth.

The letter in Regina’s hands
trembled with her. “Lena’s alive!” she croaked. All at once, the memory of those last days swelled in her.

When the screaming had risen up, and doors were pounded upon, the two women had looked at each other and blown out their lanterns. They had crawled into the little bed, wound themselves together and pulled a blanket over. The air was wooly and hot. Regina understood that her family was not going to be there when or if she came out. She understood that her trade had finally been negotiated: she belonged to this oak-limbed woman now, this mustard queen, in life or in death. She understood too that there were parts of her that were her parents, Moishe, me. Not similar to, but of. All that matter, traded over a life, was stuck.

The widow had been afraid, and she had grabbed Regina’s hand. There they had stayed, through the sound of yelling, quiet, then a sudden thunder of footfalls, gunshots, and yelling, and finally: endless, petrifying silence. All night, and on after.

Venturing out of bed only to open another jar and slice another loaf, Regina and the widow had inhabited the bed as two castaways on a remote island. For days, they had lived on their stored-up creation, their tongues dimpled and puckered from the sour. They had begun to be sure they would live the rest of their lives like that, growing old imperceptibly, until one day when they died, their memories one unbroken day of waiting.

But one afternoon, a pair of giant Russians had kicked open their door and thrown light onto two women surrounded by empty, finger-scraped jars. The Russians had been thrilled, having come to liberate the village but believing until now that they were too late. Regina and the widow had had no way to know that this was not their end, but their salvation. They had cowered. The Russians had been tremendous, gargantuan, colossal—bigger than any dreamed-of men—and they were hungry. The very last jar of mustard had been eaten with their huge fingers and delighted mouths. “Beautiful mustard,” the Russians kept saying. “Gorgeous. We came to save you, but you saved us.”

“You need a bath,” one of the men had said. They had picked the women up in their arms as easily as a pair of babies. At the river’s edge, Regina and the widow had kept their underclothes on while, with an old enamel pitcher, the men had run water and their enormous fingers through the two women’s hair. The cool liquid had felt like a new life. Like they were being born.

“Pretty girls,” the Russians had said, clearly a little surprised at what the dirt had hidden. “Shall we go home?” they had asked.

“Home?” Regina had asked.

“If we are going to rescue you, you will have to come with us.”

Dried and in clean dresses, Regina and the widow had packed a bag of coins and surveyed the room for anything else they wanted. Spoons, blankets, rags of clothes? They had had no idea where they were going, what life was waiting to be lived there. They had left it all. The widow had had her one friend and her memorized recipe. She had cleared her throat, preparing to speak, which was not something she was sure she still knew how to do. “Please call me Zelda,” she had said to Regina and the two giants.

“Zelda?” Regina had croaked.

“My real name.”

Then, Regina had scratched down the note that would stitch her past and her future together. “Where are we going?” she had asked.

“Krasnograd,” one of the Russians had said. “It means ‘beautiful city,’ but that will only come true once you are there.”

In Krasnograd, my letter in hand, Regina went into her house, where her large husband sat at a large table eating a large plate of potatoes. She kissed him on the cheek. “My sister is alive,” she said, tears tracking her face. She could not wait to write back, to tell me that her life was enormous. Utterly overflowing.

On the island,
on the day that package arrived, Francesco carried it in his palm from the post office to the jail as if it were a sick bird. He knew what was inside was either an invitation home or word that there was no such place. He watched as Igor read my words with pooling eyes. “She exists,” Igor said.

“Do you want to go to her?” Francesco asked, unbreathing, waiting to be torn in two.

Igor paused, looked at his friend, at his bed, out his window. “Think of the years it took just to send and receive
one letter
. Do I have to remind you that I am far away in a foreign land? I am not in charge of my own fate.”

“Who knows if the distances are even passable? The walk between your bed and the sea is a long enough journey?”

“As you say,” Igor told Francesco. Francesco went to the sink and splashed his face with cool water to cover any evidence of his relief. Igor’s wife had been saved, and so had Francesco.

“You could write letters with her,” Francesco said.

“Yes, a wife-in-letters might be possible. A paper wife.”

Francesco did not ask what Igor thought about the idea that he had a new daughter, despite what he knew about the time between conception and birth and what he knew about how long Igor had been with him. He wanted Igor to find the silvery threads of joy wherever he could. And maybe in this dream, this daylight waking dream, children could wander in and out and as they pleased and someone would always be there to love them. Maybe Francesco would even be allowed to love this daughter, too. The way he loved the man who was and was not her father.

They fell asleep in the sun, which cut through the one wonderful window. Bars interrupted the light and left stripes of shade across their faces, but their blood was warm and coursing. Telling the story of the warm day was a riot of songbirds. Igor’s dream included an enormous fish carrying him through the weedy deep, where the hands of many children were fat and healthy. He would tell Francesco of this later when they swam and Francesco would swish his own fingertips over Igor’s legs. But for now, life was patient and let Igor and Francesco sleep, peaceful and warm all afternoon with the Solomon star unlit between them.

And the sheep outside scratched their backs against the rough trees. The real stars were hidden behind the sun’s greedy light. No one came to the door, no one disturbed the men from their dreams.

The war was a long way away.

The people did not call out.

The sea did not crawl up the shore and demand to be swum in.

The day warmed and cooled and poured light out onto the water, which turned orange and glorious even though no one was looking.

In the room
on the other side of the world, we lit every single one of the mourning candles. We whispered names to ourselves, whispered whole villages, whole mountain ranges, whole rivers and lakes. We watched you, the new baby among us, this life awake for the first time. Our hands found other hands and held on, our eyes met other eyes, our legs touched as we sat on the hardwood of this floor and prayed.

“Welcome to the world,” we said to the baby.

“Welcome to the brand-new world,” we said to each other.

We pray that the fathers sell the vegetables for more than they paid. We pray the crack in the door does not let in the cold. We pray that the snow melts into water. We pray that our feet do not turn to rooted trees. We pray the feathers keep their soft. We pray that the lost are caught by safe hands. We pray that the morning is full of birds. We pray for whatever You have in store, but better, if You can. We pray for the life of this baby, this girl, to be good and long and better as it goes. We pray that we never have to give her away.

Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.

Let every ending be two beginnings.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am hugely grateful to my editor, Sarah McGrath, for the tremendous care she has taken in helping this book come into the world. And to the whole team at Riverhead, especially Geoff Kloske, Stephanie Sorensen, Kate Stark and Sarah Stein. Thanks also to Sarah Bowlin, who believed from the very first instant. This book has had the benefit of so many pairs of not just capable but brilliant hands.

Tremendous thanks to PJ Mark, my agent, for the kind of careful attention, enthusiasm and friendship every writer dreams about. And thanks to Stephanie Koven and Becky Sweren.

To my amazing teachers, especially those who read the first shaky pages of this story. They were kind and encouraging even though I’m sure that that draft made little sense. Truly, I do not know if this novel would exist without them.

My colleagues in the UC Irvine workshop taught me ten thousand good things. Special thanks to Margaux Sanchez, who read many drafts of this book, each time helping me to see the way forward when I thought I might have come to a dead end.

To the magazines and their editors who have believed in my work, in particular
One Story
for publishing my very first story, which changed everything for me.

Thank you to the International Center for Writing and Translation at UC Irvine and Glenn Schaeffer for support at a crucial time, support that brought this from being almost-something to being a book. Thanks also to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, and the Ragdale Foundation.

A Treasury of Jewish Folklore
by Nathan Ausubel (probably a distant relative) was full of inspiration. Some stories within it are so fantastic that I hardly wanted to change them at all.

Long ago, members of my family lived in a place called Zalischik, nestled beside the crook of a river in the Carpathian Mountains. That place and the village in this book are not exactly the same, just as some history and parts of the Jewish religion have been reimagined to suit the purposes of this novel.

My parents have never, not once, faltered in their support of my writing. Their faith is overwhelming. And it doesn’t stop there—my sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, stepmother, plus my husband’s family and my terrific, terrific friends—I can’t believe my luck.

Finally, to my husband, Teo, who is everything. Just everything.