The River Midnight (14 page)

“Japan?” Ruthie asked, laughing.

“Well, I don’t think I could bear to have my daughter so far away, but in Warsaw you could learn a lot. You wouldn’t be alone. I know people there who could introduce you to students at the university, girls who are studying. What do you think of it?”

“I don’t know,” Ruthie said. “I’m more interested in people who know things because they do something than people who just sit inside and read about the world.”

“Like Emma and her pamphlets?”

“Well, when she talks you really think something matters, even though she’s hardly more than a child. She’s been telling me everything that’s going on in Blaszka when she comes to visit. It’s almost like I’m home again. Oh, Mama, Emma meant no harm.” Ruthie paused, looking down then up again, quickly, as if to catch her mother frowning, but Faygela only nodded. “Misha said that it’s important to spend time with other girls, even if Emma is two years younger than me.”

“You think Misha knows what’s what?”

“Mama, I’ll tell you,” Ruthie said excitedly. Faygela leaned toward her, listening. Ruthie was usually so calm. “Misha knows a lot about plants, but she’s always learning more. She tells me all the time that no one knows everything. You always have to watch and learn. You have to change your mind, she told me. One time using this herb could work, but with another person it might not. Oh, she’s told me a lot, Mama. But I still have so much to find out.”

Faygela saw that her eyes were clear, her face bright, and she was smiling like Shmuel did when
Shabbas
was coming. So this is how it is, like my Aunt Esther, Faygela thought. Sometimes a person chases after destiny, and sometimes destiny chases after a person. Now that she was just beginning to know her eldest child, now that she could make up for leaning on Ruthie too much, now that she wanted Ruthie close to her so that she could watch over her, she would have to send her daughter away. There would be no one like her in Blaszka. At home Ruthie’s life would be one of hiding and making herself small and unnoticeable. But in Warsaw she might find friendship and happiness. “Just now you think that everything you need to know is in Blaszka,” Faygela said. “But even Mother Eve got too big for the Garden of Eden and she had to go out into the world. You just think about it, and we’ll see how it is when you come home.”

And if she doesn’t come home? Faygela asked herself. It’s not to be considered. I can’t bear it. But never mind. At least I’ll be sleeping in my own bed tonight, let me give them a little pleasure now. “So ladies,” she said. “Let’s not forget where we were. Let me see. Yes. Remember that the King was looking everywhere for the beautiful girl he glimpsed in the woods. Meanwhile the queen of the wild girls fell into the hands of the villainous Captain Ivan Ivanovich. At this very moment he was tickling her throat with the point of his saber.”

A
T HOME
, Faygela began writing in Yiddish. Instead of sitting at her bridal trunk, she sat at the table, the kerosene lamp on the sideboard, the shutters open to take in the evening light, the girls vying for the privilege of sitting near her and reading from
Zayda
’s books. “There are some things that can only be said in the
mama-loshen
,” she told them. “An educated person should be able to read in German and Russian, of course. But don’t give up the language of your childhood, girls. Nothing else has the same sound of truth as the
mama-loshen.
”

On the evening of the summer solstice, Shmuel sat at the table, mending his apron, while Faygela wrote in her notebook, “June 21. Strawberries ripe. Cloudy in the morning, sunny afternoon. Saw Misha in the village square grabbing her belly. Baby must have given her a good kick. The queen of the wild girls brought low. She asked me to write a letter for her today. A letter to the Governor. As if it
would help Ruthie. Does the Governor care about words? I wasn’t talking to her, but when she came to me with this business about the letter, I couldn’t help myself but tell her a thing or two. When a woman ruins her life and forgets that her friends depend on her, she should expect to hear something about it. There was only one woman in Blaszka, one who was free. And look what she had to go and do to herself. Shmuel says that it’s better not to keep things inside.” She smiled at him as she turned to a fresh page. At the top she wrote,
The True Tale of the Demon Lilith.

The sky was still alight, the evening sticky and warm. The children were playing outside, except for nine-year-old Devorah, who wasn’t feeling well. She was lying on the bed she shared with Ruthie and Leibela, calling out every few minutes, “Papa, I’m thirsty,” and “Mama, my head hurts,” then Papa again, then Mama again. “She’s going to spend the night in the outhouse,” Faygela said after the third glass of water. Shmuel shrugged unhappily. “She misses Ruthie,” he said. From the bedroom another complaint floated on the string of a thin, high voice. “I’ll go.” he said. “I’ll sit with her for a few minutes. Maybe she’ll feel better.” It was while he was in the other room that Misha knocked on the door, like a stranger. She was fanning herself with a swollen hand, dripping in the heat as she opened the door.

Faygela put down her mending. “In a good hour,” she said politely. Misha was breathing heavily. The baby must be pressing on her diaphragm, Faygela thought. As she pulled out a chair for Misha, she said, “You look warm. Let me get you a glass of water.”

“Thank you. That would be nice,” Misha said.

Returning from the water barrel in the hallway with two glasses and a plate of honey cake with cherry preserves, Faygela said, “Do you want a cup of tea? I could boil the kettle.”

“No thank you. Just some water is good.”

“Maybe a little fruit then?”

“Sit down, Faygela. All your jumping around is making the baby nervous.”

She sat. “So Misha?”

“So I brought you something.”

“What is it?”

“Promise first that you won’t ask any questions.”

“Fine. I give my word.”

Misha put a felt pouch on the table. Faygela looked at it. Misha pushed it toward her. “For Ruthie,” she said.

Faygela opened the pouch, then upended it over her hand. A heap of gold imperials dropped into her cupped palm. One coin fell from her hand, glittering as it slid across the table. Misha pushed it back. “A gift for the Governor. Send the gold with the letter. It’ll be enough to get Ruthie out of prison.”

“But who? What? You didn’t steal it?” Faygela asked.

“How could you suggest such a thing?” Shaking her head, Misha picked up her fork and dug into the cake.

“Well, it didn’t come from one of our beggars or the beekeeper, surely.”

“Faygela, you promised.”

“I know, you got it from Alta-Fruma, didn’t you? Her cow is
cacking
gold
dreck.
” She watched as Misha wordlessly spooned the cherry preserves over the cake. Faygela put her hand over Misha’s. “It’s a miracle.”

L
ATER
,
IN
her notebook, Faygela wrote, “Everyone says if you want to keep a secret, give it to Misha. I have no idea how she did it. She didn’t give a sign, the gold coins could have grown in her garden. Right this minute Shmuel is going to the Governor’s palace with the money. Misha said he should take the letter with him, and he did. The girls are dancing on pins and I can barely hold myself together. They wanted to go of course, but I said no. This is for Shmuel to do. Let him come back with his daughter.

“It seems that even a woman trapped in the ordinary way, worn out from her pregnancy, with her feet swollen, isn’t completely helpless. Is there anything more beautiful than Misha laughing at my surprise?”

In the first week of August, when the blueberry bushes were full, Faygela made herself ready for the
mikva.
It had been three weeks since Shmuel had touched her, and she was restive. Her girls were all
safe inside, Ruthie reading aloud to them, Berel sleeping on Shmuel’s shoulder. “I’m going,” she said to Shmuel. “Good, good,” he answered. As he looked at her, her body became warm, and she hurried out.

Across the narrow lane, Hanna-Leah was leaving her house, too, following Faygela like a huge moon shadow as they made their way through the village square and across the bridge in a twilight blackening into night.

The bathhouse was on a small rise beside the foundation of the new synagogue, begun before the Russians blew up the mill, and never finished. From the steps Faygela could see the dark ruins of the mill on the upper bank where the river narrowed, silver rocks glinting in the last hint of daylight.

The bathhouse attendant for the women, old Liba, deaf, half-blind, and toothless, nodded dimly at Faygela and Hanna-Leah as they hung their clothes on a hook. Hanna-Leah walked down the slippery steps into the warm greenish water that smelled of mildew. Faygela stood at the edge, arms across her chest, waiting for her turn.

“Dip, dip,” Liba yelled, motioning at Hanna-Leah to dunk under the water. Once, twice, three times she submerged, repeating the blessing for immersion. “Kosher,” Liba pronounced.

Hanna-Leah pinched her nose between thumb and forefinger, blowing out water. “
Phew.
It would be better to go to the river.”

“Outside where anyone could see? What happened to your modesty?” Faygela asked.

Hanna-Leah laughed. “And why not, here in the wild country? We’re
proster
people, plain, not like the
shayner
in Warsaw. I hear that in Warsaw the bathhouse has tiles of gold. You must have seen plenty there, but you hardly said a thing to me about it. I never thought that you, Faygela, would be stingy.”

Faygela’s eyes narrowed. “You mean to tell me that you’re criticizing me for not saying enough to you? Since when are we such good friends?”

“We used to be.”

“That was before you stopped talking to me.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Do you think I mean the Queen of Sheba? I’m talking about you, Hanna-Leah, who stopped talking to me after Devorah
was born. I had four little ones and I wasn’t even twenty-four years old. No mother, no sister to talk to. And who was left? If it wasn’t for Misha, who would I turn to, tell me? Zisa-Sara went to America. And my best friend Hanna-Leah wouldn’t look at me.” She stamped her foot on the slimy edge. “So don’t you dare call me stingy.” She stamped her foot again, losing her balance. Yelping as her tailbone banged the wooden ledge, she tumbled into the water, sputtering and choking while Hanna-Leah steadied her.

“You were so busy with the children,” Hanna-Leah said.

“They needed me every second and I was so lonely. How could you forget me when I had no mother, no father, no one?” Faygela asked.

“I didn’t forget. Did I have a sister? A mother? A father? Or even one child?”

The women were silent, looking away from each other. Then Faygela tapped Hanna-Leah on the shoulder. “Do you remember how clumsy I was when we were picking mushrooms? I was always stepping on something you wanted.”

“I remember how you used to spin around in a circle until you fell. You would sing that song of your father’s. How did it go?”

“By the chimneys birds are sleeping,”
Faygela began.

“Yes, yes.
Not awake and not asleep, the night is long, the river deep.
The river, like our river here in Blaszka.” Hanna-Leah hummed, shaking her head so that her hair flew back and forth, sprinkling Faygela. Holding out her hands, Hanna-Leah beckoned as if there were a bride in the
mikva
and they were dancing around her. Faygela raised her arms. Humming, they swayed, circling the invisible bride. Above, the old bathhouse attendant nodded, smiling as if she could see them.

A
FEW DAYS
later, on the eve of Tishah-b’Av, while the village mourned for the destruction of the Temple, Hanna-Leah told Hershel the story of the orphan that drank up the river. At the far end of Blaszka in a small house under the willow trees, Zisa-Sara’s daughter, Emma, floated between life and death. Her great-aunt cried while Faygela put an arm around her. “I know what it is to nearly lose a child,” she said to Alta-Fruma.

The world was golden, the sun cast in the mold of sunflowers, barley, rye, and oats. In the woods, nightshade bloomed purple and mushrooms sprouted in the shadows. Birds flocked, preparing for migration. Squirrels gathered nuts, chittering protectively over their hollows.

From the peasant villages upriver, where there were no synagogues, the Jews who farmed or ran the local taverns came down to Blaszka. The ram’s horn called in the New Year and in the synagogue, hot with the press of people crowded together, the villagers sang,
“O Lord, Judge of Compassion, You record and seal, count and measure; You remember even what we have forgotten.”

Neighbor sought forgiveness of neighbor and every stranger had somewhere to eat, even the Gypsy boy, who hit his head in the river, finding shelter in the rabbi’s house. Hanna-Leah was seen to embrace Faygela in the bakery and together they made up a basket for Misha.

After the Sabbath, Faygela took up a pen and wrote on a white sheet of fine paper,