The River Midnight (24 page)

On the third Thursday in June, Hayim waited for his usual invitation for Friday dinner, but Alta-Fruma said nothing, no matter how he looked at her. It was hard to avoid his gaze, but she had a little business to take care of here and there, and tried to keep away from him. After the Klembas sisters went home and Hayim had left, she had a talk with herself while she swept out the dairyhouse. You have to say something to him, she thought. Tell him not to come to the dairyhouse anymore. She could smell Hayim’s presence everywhere she turned, a shadow of pine needles and charcoal and sweet cream that clung to her. This isn’t a business for an old
aguna
, not here, where anyone can see. No. There isn’t any magic that can make a dog into a hen.

Satisfied, she left the dairyhouse, only to see Hayim waiting for her, his eyebrows lifted in a question. “Good. I want to talk to you,” she said. He waited. But nothing more came out. She couldn’t say a word. She could only stand with him under the willow trees outside the dairyhouse, watching the river, noticing the light and the smell of water and Hayim’s deep, slow breathing. Leaves and twigs spun around in a whirlpool, frogs croaked from under the bank, Hayim chewed on a blade of grass while they stood side by side, each of them furtively glancing at the other.

“I can tell you why,” she said at last.

“Why what?”

“The Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.”

“Yes?”

“The water turned into blood. So what? The frogs fell from the sky. What is that? Magic. A trick. It doesn’t convince anyone. No, Hayim. You can trick someone into changing for a little while, but before you know it, everything will turn back to the way it was.” As she spoke, she looked at him. There was nothing surreptitious about
her gaze. She looked him in the eye, right into his golden eyes, taking in the movement of his hands as he thought over what she said, drawing his thoughts in the air, blue from the settling night. “A worm is a worm and it doesn’t fly like a bird,” she said.

“No? A caterpillar changes into a butterfly, Fruma. A tadpole becomes a frog. The Holy One made it a perfect, changing thing. People only think a creature that’s first a tadpole and then a frog is two separate things because it has different names.”

“No, Hayim. A name means everything.” She turned from him, looking now at the river flowing indifferently between the old Blaszka and the new Blaszka. “When a woman marries, she takes her husband’s name and covers her head so that everyone knows she belongs to him even if he disappears from the face of the earth.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Hayim shake his head. “That name is for the census takers. It’s not her Hebrew name. You are your mother’s daughter when a blessing is said for you in the synagogue. Fruma, the daughter of Gittel, they say. And your father’s daughter when you’re buried. Never your husband’s. N-n-n-no. You belong only to the ones who made you. Mama. Papa. The Holy One above. You,” and he touched her forehead, the first time he had ever touched her, with his fingers that smelled of sweet cream, that could capture anything with a pencil and a sheet of paper, “are Fruma. Just Fruma. Everything Fruma.”

“When you live among people you have to watch yourself. You can’t do anything you want. Not like my sister who didn’t care what trouble fell on anyone.”

“Your sister was beautiful,” he said, “but, but, but …” Alta-Fruma waited. “You’re not like anyone else.”

“Me? How could you say that? I’m just like everyone else,” but she spoke softly so as not to stop him from going on.

“No,” he said firmly. “There’s no one like you in Blaszka. I know. I see you.”

“Are you sure you see everything?” she asked, smiling, her hand on his shoulder. “How do you know? Maybe I have a frog skin hidden in my bridal trunk.”

“I’d like to see that. It would be very interesting,” he said, his eyes closing to a narrow line of gold as he smiled back at her. She turned to
face the river. They stood so close, she could feel the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed in and out. As they stood under the willows, night turned them into shadows, the wind carrying the smell of the river and the sound of nocturnal creatures calling to one another. “Tomorrow, after you go to synagogue, come to my house for dinner. You shouldn’t expect an invitation anymore. Are you a stranger?”

W
HILE THEY
spoke, Shmuel the baker was on his way to Plotsk. He brought a pouch of gold coins and a note to the Governor, who ordered Ruthie’s immediate release. Faygela was writing in her notebook. Hershel was serving Hanna-Leah soup, insisting that she sit in the big chair. Misha, coming into her seventh month, was walking along the river and so was the Rabbi, Berekh.

In July when the raspberries were ripe, Hayim brought a bucketful of fresh berries to the dairy. Blaszka was quiet, market day past, the village square empty except for the wheelmaker, who was repairing the axle on a cart. Alta-Fruma was alone in the dairyhouse. The Klembas sisters were tending their sick father and Emma was in the bakery making raspberry tarts with Ruthie.

“Raspberries,” Hayim said, presenting Alta-Fruma with the bucket.

“And I have fresh cream to go with it. Let me get bowls from the house. You sit right here.” She pointed to the bench.

When she came back from the house, Hayim was sitting on the bench, his hands busy with charcoal and paper—a sketch of the dairyhouse, Alta-Fruma stirring the curd, Hayim’s pig peeking through the window. The pig seemed to be smiling. While Alta-Fruma poured cream over the raspberries, Hayim pinned the sketch to the wall.

They sat side by side on the bench, eating, suddenly shy. The bench was made of soft pine, sloping where generations of Alta-Fruma’s family had sat on it. She had to keep her feet square on the floor to hold herself in place so that she didn’t slide into Hayim. Her feet were bare. Too warm for boots. If she were alone, she’d have tied her dress around her waist.

“Is Emma happy in the bakery?” Hayim asked.

“Why not? She talks as much as she works. The girls look up to her like to a queen. Emma says she’s explaining the secrets of capitalism.”

“People run after secrets.” Hayim’s lips were stained with juice.

“Secrets should be left alone,” she said.

He shook his head. “A jewel that’s hidden is nothing.” He was breathing unevenly, his voice suddenly hoarse. Alta-Fruma looked at him intently.

A piece of straw was stuck in his beard. He swept with so much vigor that afterward there was always a bit of straw here and there about him. Alta-Fruma picked it out. “No,” she said, her fingers lingering a moment longer than necessary in the softness of his beard. “An old jewel is better left in the box. Then no one can make trouble over it.”

“But when it’s hidden, it could just be a lump of coal.” He put down his bowl, leaning toward her.

The light was dim in the dairyhouse, the stone floor cold under Alta-Fruma’s feet. Outside a goose was honking over its nest. Hayim wore an apron over his caftan. A hair from his beard had fallen onto the bib, a black thread. She picked it off the apron, twisting it around her finger. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I won’t say no.” She lifted her feet onto the bench, rubbing them. “The floor is cold.”

Hayim gently pushed her hands away. “Let me.” He took one of her feet onto his lap. What if someone came in? What if someone should see them, her heel resting on the soft inside of his thigh? She looked at the door, a thin band of light around it, creaking with every small thrust of wind. But as he warmed her foot between his hands, rubbing each toe, the top of her foot, the sole, she forgot the door, she forgot the dairyhouse. There was only the bench, her foot, his hands lightly stroking, painting her foot with the tips of his fingers. “Other foot,” he said. So she gave him her other foot and he took it between his hands, his square-tipped fingers, the nails gray just at the edge where he’d smudged the charcoal in the sketch of the dairyhouse.

When he bent his head, she saw the skin on his neck, smooth between his beard and his long hair, smooth and dark from the sun. She reached out. She touched him. It was the first time she had ever touched his naked skin, her fingers on the hot, smooth skin of his neck, tracing the shell of his ear as he looked at her, his hands stilled. His lips were as smooth as a shining pool, his apron stained with a single
drop of raspberry juice. And under the apron? And under the caftan? And under his shirt? I should check the curd, she thought. He was sliding his hands along her leg. She should, she should … but how could she think? She was riding a leaf over a pool of water, his fingers sliding toward her thigh.

“Come with me,” Alta-Fruma said, pulling him toward the door that opened into the cow shed.

Inside the cow shed, Hayim wrapped his arms around her. She wrapped herself in the smell of him, the cotton apron rough against her cheek as if it could peel away the lines and underneath would be new skin. But what did it matter? Hayim’s lips on her neck were soft enough to remind the fragile skin of everything it knew.

“I want to see,” she said, pushing him at arm’s length. “Everything.”

He nodded, his face serious, his eyes flashing.

The only light in the shed came from a small window, but it was enough. Standing in the shaft of sunlight, Hayim took off the apron, the black caftan, his cotton shirt, carefully, without any hurry, laying it all on a pile of hay, while Alta-Fruma watched him emerge from the layers of clothing. First the flatness of his belly as he pulled up his shirt, the ridge of muscle, the rows of dark hair, his chest, his nipples, red, pointed, not very different from her own, the thickness of his forearms, the narrowness of his wrists, hair like a line of fur on his square shoulders, his collarbones, a wing on each side of his throat, the hollow of his throat, exactly at the height of her lips. Smiling, he unbuttoned his trousers and let them fall. His thighs, the nest of hair, and there, there it was, thick and square-tipped like his fingers, darker than the skin on his neck, unfolding, rising as she looked and looked, her tongue darting out to lick her lips as if she were tasting something very, very good. And he was naked, shivering slightly. All naked. The whole of him. She looked and she saw while Hayim sat down on an upturned pail, his legs stretched out, smiling as she looked, holding his arms out to her. “You now,” he said.

She took off her apron, untied the strings of her dress, reached back for the buttons, but it was too far, her fingers kept slipping on the buttons, the slight stiffness in her shoulders stopping her.

“Come here, Fruma,” Hayim said. He stood behind her, his hands
teasing into her dress as he unbuttoned her, sliding under her cotton pants as he untied the string. When she was naked, he held her against the length of him, holding her bones as if he held gold. They kissed, her hand behind his head, fingers entwined in his hair. His mouth tasted of raspberries, his tongue of cream. The odor of cow dung mingled with the husky sweet smell of entwined arms and legs as they lay on an old blanket thrown across a pile of straw. His hand traced the inside of her thigh reaching higher and higher and higher, his fingers teasing the edge, his lips on her nipples, tongue curving the underside of her breast. The mingling of moisture and sweat. No need to pull back. Not for a moment. Can a woman get pregnant after the change? No, she can touch here and here and here, her lips tasting everything. He pulled her on top and she sat where she liked to sit, her eyes open, his eyes widening, her eyes narrowing as they slid on the straw.

It seemed that an old witch and a man in his forties could, between them, produce a great heat.

Afterward, Alta-Fruma thought of a tune from
Hibbat Zion
, The Lovers of Zion:

In the first week of August, Alta-Fruma began to show Emma how to make cheese. “You see? There’s no magic in it. It’s just a matter of knowing how long to let the milk ripen. You have to know when to separate the curd from the whey and when to add salt. And how do you know? Other cheesemakers put a bowl to float on top of the milk. They say the milk is set when the bowl lifts on one side. But I never liked that method. Imprecise. Unreliable.”

Emma nodded. “Unscientific.”

“That’s right. Now my secret is the iron rod. I tried different things until I discovered this way of testing the curd. You take an iron rod. You stick it in the fire until it’s black, not red, that’s too hot. When the iron rod is just the right heat, you grip the curd tightly in your hand to squeeze out the whey, and then you hold it to the iron
rod. If the milk is ripe enough, it will draw fine silky threads, a centimeter long. Then it’s time to take out the curd. After the curd is cooled and cut and turned, again you make the iron black hot and hold the curd against it. If it draws velvety threads six centimeters long, soft and fat as butter, it’s time to add salt.”

Emma reached out to take the iron rod, then stopped. “It’s red, Auntie. It must be too hot.”

“That’s right. We’ll use the tongs to take it out, let it cool and I’ll try again. In the meantime you can go get Ruthie from the bakery. You should be outside, you look a little pale. The blueberry bushes are full. Here, take a bucket.”

Something wasn’t right with Emma. She was walking, not running out the door. Maybe she just needs a little air, Alta-Fruma said to herself. But a few hours later, when Emma came home, leaning on Ruthie, her head aching, her face red, Alta-Fruma cursed herself for letting the child run around instead of putting her right to bed.

The doctor from Plotsk said it was typhus. He heard there was typhus in Plotsk near the docks. Alta-Fruma put her hand to her throat. “The piecework. She said that there was lice in the workshop and some of the girls had gotten sick. Why did I let her go there?”

Emma lay in the bed, her head propped up on pillows so she could breathe easier, her great-aunt in a chair beside her, keeping watch, bathing her hot face with water. Ruthie came every day with something from Misha, an herb or a tea, since Misha herself was so big it was hard for her to walk. Hanna-Leah took Izzie home with her to keep him from catching the typhus. Faygela brought soup, though no one could eat it. Emma’s friends sent oranges. Emma asked for her mother. “I’m here,” Alta-Fruma said, biting her lip.