The River Midnight (25 page)

Finally, on the eve of Tishah-b’Av, Alta-Fruma asked Ruthie to send for Misha, even though the midwife was in her eighth month and could lose her baby if she got sick, too.

Misha came and sat, uncomplaining, despite the discomfort of the hard wooden chair, looking over her basket of remedies while Alta-Fruma twisted her hands. “You’re upset and tired,” Misha said. “Here, all you can do is watch. But your sister was a
zogerin.
It must mean something. Go to the shul and pray. Maybe the Holy One above is listening and waiting for you.”

Hayim was standing watch outside when Alta-Fruma left the house, watching as if the Angel of Death wouldn’t dare to show himself while Hayim was looking.

“Misha says it’s going to be soon,” Alta-Fruma said to him. “I’m going to the shul to pray, although the Holy One knows that I have no merit.” She leaned against him, her legs no longer able to hold her up. “Is heaven going to listen to an old
aguna
with no learning and no virtue?” she whispered.

Hayim held her tight. “Everything has merit to the Master of the Universe,” he said. “Even a leaf. Even a frog. It’s all from
Ein Sof.
So you, Fruma, have nothing to hide from the Holy One above. Not a thing.”

She wanted to stay in the circle of his arms, breathing into the crook of his neck, listening to the murmur of his voice. Another minute, she said to herself, another minute. But Emma was waiting—and for how much longer? “I have to go,” she whispered, pulling away. First walking, then running, she came to the courtyard of the synagogue. The moon was hidden behind a cloud, the night heavy and humid.

Opening the double doors of oak, Alta-Fruma climbed down the stairs to the sanctuary in a darkness made deeper by its depth in the earth. The eternal flame cast a faint light on the snuffed candles in their box of sand below. With shaking hands, Alta-Fruma kindled their wicks, and the Holy Ark, draped in black cloth for Tishah-b’Av, emerged from the shadows. Alta-Fruma pushed aside the cloth and opened the doors of the Ark, carved by Misha’s father, Aba the carpenter, during the Polish insurrection of 1863. The doors were inscribed above, “And the Eternal heard our voice,” and below, “From slavery to freedom, from anguish to joy,” quoting the story of the Exodus. The crowned Polish eagle flew above lions, deer, and dolphins cavorting among the letters that rose to form waves and orchards, all green and gold, glinting in the eternal flame.

Alta-Fruma bowed to the curtain that shielded the Torah scrolls. “Dear God, I’m a simple woman. I have no merit. I only know one Hebrew prayer, the
Sh’ma.
Please accept this one prayer as if it were all of the blessings and prayers in the men’s prayer book.” Pulling her shawl over her head, as a man does with his tallis when deep in prayer, Alta-Fruma murmured,
“Sh’ma Israel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ekhad.”
Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
“You shall love the
Lord Your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength,”
she prayed.

Alta-Fruma swayed in front of the Holy Ark. “Master of the Universe, Dear God in heaven, what has this child done? Is this a child that has sinned? She has not done one thing for You to be angry with her. If You want someone to punish, I’m here. Don’t hurt the child, Dear God, not my Rakhel’s little Emma.

“Rakhel, do you hear me? Talk to Sarah, the Mother of our people. She was a great prophet, greater even than Avraham. Surely, she can plead with the Holy One. Let her talk to Him. Let her tell Him how it was to see her only child climb to the top of a mountain to be sacrificed. Tell Him not to let this girl suffer.”

A gust of air blew out the candles. Alta-Fruma stood alone in the darkness of the synagogue. There were shapes in the darkness pressing toward her, teasing her, pulling at her skirt, leaping back into emptiness when she turned to look. Peering into the blackness, Alta-Fruma cried, “Is this Your answer? To send demons to laugh at me? Very good. Let them laugh. I’m a silly old woman, why not? What is my life worth? A round of cheese, a few rubles. But the child is an orphan. Aren’t You then mother and father to her? For the sake of Your name, Dear God, let the child live.” The wind rose, the walls squealing as if all the demons in hell laughed.

Alta-Fruma hurried back along the path, certain that she knew the cruel answer to her prayers, and yet she couldn’t weep. She had to hurry home. She had to see for herself. Her eyes blurred, her mind in disarray as her feet followed a flicker of movement in the starlight. There’s no hope, she thought, but hope wouldn’t die. Instead a prayer went out into the night, a prayer to her mother, her sister, her grandmother, and her aunts, to Blema and her Grandmother Manya, to all of the women with their dangerous gifts. The darkness trailed her on either side, like a mother’s skirts, and in between fireflies sparked here and here, always in the center of the path above the small frog leading Alta-Fruma home.

“Look,” Misha said. “The fever has gone. She’s asleep.”

It was only then that Alta-Fruma wept brokenly.

Before dawn, when the souls of the dead hovered in the graying sky, the women gathered in the synagogue courtyard. They carried candles, the white shawls they wore over head and shoulders floating in the misty dawn like the souls of their grandmothers. The young
zogerin
didn’t carry her double case watch or her silver prayer book, and no pearls swung against her flat chest. Unadorned, she led the women into the graveyard between the synagogue and the woods. They circled the cemetery seven times, soundlessly, stopping at Manya’s grave. Once a year the women prayed at Manya’s grave. During the days of awe, at the moment of judgment, all the women of Blaszka gathered at Manya’s grave and prayed that their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers would intercede for them with the Holy Court.

The rising sun was burning off the fog. Leaves drifted from the woods into the high grass and wildflowers that grew up and around the softly crumbling tombstones, the women’s boots solid on the earth between the yellow blooms of butter and eggs. At this time of year, as at other times of life and death, dread and relief, danger and birth, the women stood together, arms linked, a net that gathered up their compassion, and let their grudges fall through. Only Misha, being close to her time, was not there among the women at her great-grandmother’s grave. But Hanna-Leah was there. Faygela. Alta-Fruma. Even Emma, holding Ruthie’s hand.

Facing Manya’s tombstone, the
zogerin
made her confessional, praying slowly so that the women could repeat after her.

“I beg mercy for my soul that I have damaged. I was unkind to others and I showed great anger. It was as though I bowed down to idols.

“I spread gossip about good people. It is worse than if I shed their blood. For this my soul will return in the mud of the river.

“When charity was asked, my hands were closed. For this my soul will enter a sow that eats its young.

“
I have eaten
trayf.
I did not go to the
mikva.
I swore falsely. I thought of strange men when I had sex with my husband. I had sex with my husband in the light … for this my soul will be reborn in the leaves of a nettle.

“
Does it matter if I committed one or all of these? My sorrow alone is not enough to correct them. Only by Your will, Eternal One, can these transgressions be wiped out. Inscribe us for life. Grant each and every one of us a livelihood from Your gentle hand so that we may be able to give charity and never need to go to a stranger’s table or depend on our children. Then we shall be able to serve You, dear God, with a happy heart. Amen.
Sela.”

Afterward the
zogerin
prayed at Misha’s house and Alta-Fruma brought some feather pillows to Misha so that she would be able to sleep half-sitting, now that she was so big she found it hard to breathe when she lay down.

Alta-Fruma and Emma walk along the narrow lane toward the village square. Izzie walks ahead of them, hands clasped in front of his narrow chest, looking up at the sky to catch the moment that the gates of heaven open. Along the village lanes, the men and women of Blaszka greet one another with open arms, falling on one another’s necks with cries of forgiveness. “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life,” they say, weeping unashamedly.

“I want to talk to you,” Alta-Fruma says to Emma.

“What did I do?” she asks.

“I want to talk to you about your grandmother.”

“Oh.” Emma’s voice falls unenthusiastically. “I suppose you’re going to tell me again how I’m another Rakhel. ‘So stubborn, like a mule, but she repented of her ways and became a
zogerin.
When she prayed the angels listened, and so on, and so on.’ ”

“That’s all true, but I want to tell you something else. Even before your grandmother became the
zogerin
, she used to tell the women how to pray.”

“Oh, I’m sure. She was probably a saint.”

“She could have been. Maybe your kind of saint.”

“Mine?” Emma looks at her aunt as if she’s making fun of her, but Alta-Fruma’s face is serious.

“Yes. Let me tell you what she used to say. It made the hairs on my neck stand up.”

“What did she say?” Emma is interested now.

“She used to tell the women to scream and cry until they knocked down the gates of heaven and the Holy Court begged for mercy. Listen to me, women, she used to say, it’s the angels above that should beg us for forgiveness. Who makes our children hungry and sick? Who takes away our sons into the army? Who makes us work until we drop? Cry out and ask the Holy One why they’re not punished. Tell the Eternal One that if He doesn’t see fit to bring justice to the world, we ourselves will take our brooms and our knives and we’ll find our own justice.”

“And they didn’t throw her out of Blaszka?”

“Who pays attention to what goes on in the women’s gallery?”

“Didn’t people talk?”

“Oy, how they talked. I was afraid for her, just like I’m afraid for you. But she convinced them. Who do you think brought food to the rebels who were hiding in the woods in ’63?”

“My grandmother?”

“All of the women. It wasn’t any joke. Faygela’s mother had her baby too early and she died from running around in the woods, and it was my sister who led her to it. Emma,” Alta-Fruma takes the girl’s hand in her own, “don’t be so quick to think you know what’s going on. Things aren’t always how they look.”

T
HE VILLAGERS
are gathering in the synagogue courtyard, a host of light in the dusk, an escort of white prayer shawls and
kittels
and kerchiefs, the white of pure snow, of angels and death.

T
HROUGH THE
window of the
mekhitzah
, the wall of the women’s gallery that divides them from the men below, Alta-Fruma watches Hayim in the back corner. He smiles broadly, as if he can see her. They have lain together in the cow shed, under the willows, in Hayim’s hut among the reeds, on the riverbank where moonlight glints on the silver rocks. Alta-Fruma stands with Emma, waiting for the Kol Nidrei prayer to clear the slate, for the door to open to her atonement. In front of them is Faygela, her daughters in a row on one side and Hanna-Leah beside her on the other.

A moan floats across the village square. There is a flutter in the
women’s gallery. Misha, it’s her time, the women say. The
zogerin
peers through the window of the
mekhitzah.
“The Rabbi is just standing there,” she says. “Why doesn’t he sing Kol Nidrei?” The candles quiver. Another moan from Misha’s house. The women look at one another uneasily. Their lives are in the balance. They have to pray for their children. But there, just across the square, is a woman in labor. Misha, who delivered all of their children. Alone.

Hanna-Leah leans toward Faygela. “How long must she suffer without anyone to give her a drink of water even?”

Alta-Fruma whispers to Emma, “Kol Nidrei or not, we can’t leave her by herself.”

“You’re not afraid of what people will say?” Emma asks.

“When you were sick, Misha came. That’s all I have to know. Let’s go.” She stands, Emma with her.

Hanna-Leah is covering her head with her shawl, Faygela following with her five daughters. Then Ettie the blacksmith’s wife, Gittel the scholar’s, Haia-Etel the ropemaker’s. As Emma looks around, she sees they’re all rising to go to Misha. The
mekhitzah
can’t contain them, they are like the river in spring flooding the banks with wild excitement, carrying its rich mud to Misha’s garden. The women flow from the gallery, all of them, so many women pouring down the stairs and across the square as if all the women that ever lived in Blaszka were flowing down to Misha.

And indeed as Emma follows Alta-Fruma, she sees a small green frog hop across the village square as if leading them. Who knows but that it isn’t Misha’s own great-grandmother Manya sent down from heaven to watch over the women?

I
N THE
coming year the villagers will become accustomed to seeing Hayim in the dairyhouse and Alta-Fruma crossing the bridge. They will shrug their shoulders and say, “If you have to ask, it’s
trayf.
Better you shouldn’t ask.” And no one, except perhaps Hayim, will see a tiny tree frog camouflaged on a leaf in the woods.

Alta-Fruma will die in the fullness of years. Izzie will donate his half of the estate to the yeshiva in Kovno, and Emma will divide hers between the labor movement and Ruthie’s orphanage in Berlin, where she has moved to be with Ruthie. In 1938 the two women will use the
last of Alta-Fruma’s savings to bring a group of Jewish children to London.

In 1945 Emma, stout and white-haired, will assist as a volunteer in processing refugees from Europe coming through London. She will ask everyone who comes through, “Did you see or hear of Rabbi Isidore Blau? Do you know what happened to him?”

“No,” they will say. “No. No.” Ruthie will beg her not to torture herself, but Emma can’t help it. She asks and asks, until at last a young couple, Zev and Aidl-Mariam, hardly more than children, will say yes they heard of him. “A slight man with a limp?” they ask.