The River Midnight (10 page)

“Faygela, your father could think of sending you to school in Warsaw,” Zisa-Sara continued. “But now with the quotas and the extra fees, what Jewish child can go to a higher school? You always said that you wish your girls were educated. Why don’t you come with us? Then we won’t be alone.”

“Shmuel would never go.” Faygela leaned forward on her elbows.
“Just tell me, why America? You could go to Vienna or Berlin and then we might see each other again. America is for rough people who wrestle with cows, not scholars like your husband.”

“Leave my home? I wouldn’t think of it,” Hanna-Leah said. “If you go somewhere else you’re always a stranger. Even the air isn’t the same. Nothing smells right and you’ll forget who you are. You listen to me, Zisa-Sara, and don’t let your husband fill your head with nonsense.”

“It’s not for my Mikhal’s sake that we’re going. No one’s begging for scholars in America. But if I have a son he could be taken into the army. They’ll murder him there.”

“Then wait at least until the child is born,” Misha said. “You don’t have an easy time with labor. The baby could come early if you travel so far by boat and another midwife won’t know you like I do. It’s safer for you here. I brought your little girl into the world, let me bring this child, too.”

“I want him to be born there. Let him be an American. Then no one can make him leave his home. You understand, Misha?” Zisa-Sara held out her hands.

Misha stood up and turned her back to them as she walked to the stove. She put the kettle on the cooking grate. “You can have more children, but if something happens to you, I can’t have another Zisa-Sara for my best friend.”

“I
SENT
Ruthie to help with the trunk,” Faygela said. “I wish we could take the children home, don’t you? But we don’t have room for them.”

“I heard that their great-auntie isn’t too happy.”

“Why should she be? Alta-Fruma’s a woman of sixty, alone, never had a child of her own. It won’t be easy with a pair of orphans. But she wouldn’t let anyone else take them.”

“The children can help her in the dairyhouse. It would be good for them. I hear that in America you can’t find a breath of good air.”

“Air is air,” Faygela said. “The problem is coal dust. Oh, I see how it is.” Misha was suddenly engrossed in polishing her brass candlesticks. “You’re trying to keep me busy talking. No, Misha, we have work to do.” Misha screwed up her mouth as Faygela brought out
Familiar Pictures.
“I have a new book. Let’s see how many words you can pick out, and then I’ll read you the news from
The Israelite.
”

“Now, so close to
Shabbas?
I don’t have time. Just read me the news.”

“No, no. I’ve heard that story before. You always had something better to do when we were girls than go to Old Mirrel to learn your Yiddish letters with the rest of us. It’s not like in our grandmothers’ time when half the women couldn’t read a word.”

“Girls still have to look after their mothers’ babies and women still have to work. Not everyone has time for Old Mirrel’s kitchen, even now. Not everyone reads.”

“And I’m tired of my friend Misha being one of them. It reflects badly on me. Now take a look. What do you see here?” Faygela pointed her finger to
der kleiner boim
, the little tree.

“I’m surprised that such things are written in a book,” Misha said. “My mother told me about it. But that any girl could read it, right here?”

“What are you talking?” Faygela asked, sure that Misha was making something up with that innocent expression and her eyes gleaming.

“Well, that’s
der kleiner
, of course.” The little thing. “Don’t you remember how we used to wonder what
der kleiner
looked like? But you don’t need to read a story about it. Not a married woman. After all,
Shabbas
is coming, and you’ll have
der kleiner
all to yourself, and it’s a good one, too, six children’s worth. I should know since I brought every one of them into the world, and you weren’t too quiet about it, either. Yes, one day I’ll write a story, too. About all the ‘little things’ of Blaszka. Not such wonders, but they work hard. That’s the way it is after the Garden of Eden. Let me tell you, you’re not the only one. When a woman’s giving birth, she has plenty to say about her husband’s ‘little thing.’ And they don’t get too many prizes. What do you think, Faygela, should I make a list?” But Faygela couldn’t answer. She was laughing too hard, her father’s ghost forgotten, tears running down her cheeks.

W
HILE
Faygela laughed, Hanna-Leah was bathing her mother-in-law. Ruthie was holding one end of a trunk and Zisa-Sara’s daughter Emma was holding the other as they dragged it inside.

Faygela sat at her bridal trunk, writing in her notebook. In the corner was her father’s cabinet with all his books to inspire her, and above it a charcoal portrait of him with his hands in the pockets of his apron, one foot raised as if he were walking somewhere in a hurry. The woods were sketched in the background, the river, high and wild, running through it.

Faygela frowned as she scratched out another line. The poem was titled, “Poland’s Sons, The January Insurrection of 1863: An Elegy In Verse.” Faygela wrote sometimes in German. Everything seemed to have more substance in German. At other times she wrote in Polish, but never in Yiddish. Yiddish? No, give the language its rightful name, the Jargon, she often said. It was the dialect of garlic, of villages sinking into mud, of half-starved peddlers, of women with their shabby romantic novels, of bawdy songs in taverns. She could barely forgive Peretz, her favorite author, for abandoning Polish in favor of Yiddish. “Can he lift the Jargon from the mud? I don’t know,” she would say to Shmuel. “But he has to try. How many educated Jews are there? A handful. Maybe two handfuls. There are millions who will never learn about the world unless they can read about it in Yiddish. Still, it’s a pity. Peretz used to write Polish so beautifully.”

Leaning her elbow on the bridal trunk, Faygela reread the first two lines of her elegy in its aristocratic Polish,

She tapped her pencil against the trunk, then quickly as if she might regret it, wrote another two lines.

Faygela groaned as she crossed out the last two lines and tried to block out the sound of her daughters arguing. There was always too much noise. She would never write anything tolerable. Kneading her forehead, she closed her eyes and tried to picture her father in the woods, printing the pamphlets calling for revolt against the Russian oppressors, clouds passing over the hut where the press was hidden. But into the vision strode her grandmother wagging a finger. You’re wasting your life away, her grandmother said. And Faygela couldn’t argue. After her father died there had been no more talk of school in Warsaw. Instead at the age of fifteen she had been married off to Shmuel, and Hanna-Leah had held her hand as her hair was cut off.

If she had gone to the girls’ school in Warsaw, as her father had intended, she would have enrolled in the university and now she would be a teacher, attending concerts with her class, and reading works of literature to them. And what wouldn’t she give for that privilege? Her own little finger, certainly, but her girls? Not one hair. Faygela looked around the crowded front room where her daughters jostled like shifting pieces of herself.

And yet it seems like just yesterday there were four of us dancing in the woods, she thought, and then Zisa-Sara left and we all argued and now I have only Misha. Whenever I walk past Hanna-Leah’s house, I see her moving in the front room, but I don’t dare say a thing. How did it happen that I became afraid to speak to her? But there was no more time to think. Faygela’s daughters were yelling at one another like they were having a contest to see who could wake up the dead, and little Berel was wailing. A woman should have a minute to herself? God forbid.

“Girls, girls, what’s the matter with you?” Faygela snapped. Rising from her stool, she grabbed the nearest daughter and gave her a little shake.

The youngest, holding out her hand, red and swollen where a week-old cut was healing, said, “Look, Mama. Devorah pulled my arm and my hand is hurting again.”

Faygela took the hand and carefully kissed the sore spot, though it was common knowledge that you shouldn’t kiss your children past five years old or they’d be spoiled. The girls began to shout again, each one trying to outdo the others. “Girls! Not another word. I don’t want to know who started it. The table isn’t even set and we have company
after the
Megillah
reading. Freydel, don’t stand there dreaming. Take down the dishes. God save me from a pack of useless girls. At least Berel will say the kaddish for me when I die, even if he turns out to be as lazy as the rest of you. Where is Ruthie? Just wait until she comes in, I’ll give her what for. We have to leave for the synagogue, and nothing is done.” As Faygela turned around, Ruthie came in, her face flushed from the cold spring air. “Where were you?”

“What is it, Mama?” Ruthie asked.

“I must be crazy to think my oldest daughter should be looking after her sisters and her brother. Were you paying attention when the little one cut her hand? No, you were talking to your friend. You and Emma whispering, your heads together like you’re planning to overthrow the community council! So why should I expect you to remember that it’s Purim tonight?”

Ruthie flinched, but she said nothing, her hands gripping the book she held against her chest.

“Should you remember that we have guests? Rabbi Berekh, who might expect some intelligent conversation, and his two children who are looking forward to an evening with their cousins? Not to mention that your father is sure to bring home another guest or two, and you’re who knows where, running around like a
vilda haya.
”

“Mama,” Freydel said, “you sound just like
Alta-Bubbie.
” Faygela’s grandmother. Freydel was fourteen, and could still remember her. Leaning toward her two youngest sisters, Freydel grimaced and shook her hands. “Mama’s possessed by a dybbuk,” she hissed. The little girls’ eyes widened.

“Freydel, stop if. Don’t encourage the little ones to be superstitious,” Faygela said. But she, too, had heard her grandmother’s voice emerge from her mouth. It was not a pleasant feeling.

“Don’t you remember?” Ruthie asked. “I was just showing Misha the plants in the book Papa brought me. You said I could go, Mama.”

Faygela looked at Ruthie, who so much resembled her that it was like looking into a mirror of her childhood. “Yes, of course, I remember.” Faygela linked her arm through Ruthie’s. “Just go and change your clothes. You can take anything of mine you like, even your father’s. How do you think Ruthie would look in Papa’s fur hat, girls? Remember that tonight is Purim, and you can be anyone you want.”

The letter came when they were getting ready for Passover. The river flooded the bridge, throwing itself under the stilts of Misha’s house with armfuls of purple-brown mud. Mattresses were airing in all the yards of Blaszka. Hayim the watercarrier ran from house to house with buckets of water so the women could wash every crevice where a crumb might hide. The villagers put in their orders for matzah, the community council making its purchase on behalf of the poor.

In the darkness before dawn to the darkness after dusk, Shmuel baked matzos, draping the flat dough over a pole, pushing it into the oven and out again quickly: from kneading to baking could not be more than eighteen minutes. The girls worked hard in the bakery and when
Shabbas
came, no one could hold them back, the younger ones shouting and running along the river, the older ones going off with their friends, arm-in-arm to walk in the woods. Ruthie was often seen with her friend Emma and Emma’s cousin, Avram. People were starting to talk about a matchmaker, though Faygela told anyone who would listen that Ruthie was far too young yet.

O
N
P
ASSOVER
, the Rabbi and his children were once again guests at the same mahogany table where Faygela had studied with her father. But now Shmuel sat at the head, and her cousin Berekh beside him, tall and thin, his red beard curling wild as a mountain fern speckled with gray spores.

“I brought you some books,” he said to Faygela. “My old friend from yeshiva sent them to me from Paris. You remember Moyshe-Mendel. We were in yeshiva together and then in the rabbinical seminary.”

“Moyshe-Mendel. Of course.” She turned to Shmuel. “You know—at Berekh’s wedding ten years ago—the one who’s taken a French name. He calls himself Maurice LaFontaine now.”

Nodding, Shmuel said, “A nice man. Polite. He kissed Berekh’s bride on both cheeks and she blushed. Poor Hava, may she rest in peace.” They were all silent for a moment, remembering Berekh’s young wife. “Tell me, Berekh, how is your friend?”

“Not too well, I’m afraid. But let’s not speak of it now. Here Faygela, take the books.”

Her two oldest daughters leaned close on each side of her, Ruthie stroking the leather binding, Freydel pulling and saying, Give it to me, Ruthie, let me see.

“Sit down both of you and I’ll show you what Cousin Berekh brought us. Look, girls. Pushkin. Part four of Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra.
And a German translation of
The Debacle
by Émile Zola.” Faygela opened the novel to the last page, reading silently for a moment, and silent still as she looked around the table at her cousin, his two small children, her husband, and their six. “Hope rising out of the ashes of war. How beautifully Zola writes of it. It’s true that hope never dies. Even after the pogroms. Don’t you agree, Berekh?”

“Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we go on. A person must do what is right. The question is only, How does one know?”