The River Midnight (28 page)

On the second Sabbath in May, Misha began to show. In the synagogue, her head held high, she stood among the women, with them repeating after the
zogerin
Tzipporah,
“Holy God, I am a blemished woman, a torn stalk, a broken pot, my heart full and my tears burning. For the sake of our foremothers’ merits, give me the strength to turn away from the sinful people that walk in hidden ways, pulled by their lusts.”

Below, the men shifted prayer shawls around their shoulders as they sat back on their benches. The most important (such as there were in Blaszka) sat closest to the ark. In the third row, the cooper and the blacksmith were arguing with the wedding jester. “Everyone knows it can only be Yarush from Plotsk,” the
badkhan
said, pointing a finger at the women’s gallery and moving his fist up and down in a rude gesture.

“Everyone? Who’s everyone?” the blacksmith retorted, nodding at the corner in the last row where Hayim sat. “I’m telling you, a used pot makes better soup.”

“What are you talking? One: Yarush comes to Blaszka the short Friday in December. Two: the inn is flowing with schnapps. Three: there’s talk of a
shiddukh
, a match. A big man for a big woman. Four: Misha is showing and that’s how many months since Yarush was here. Do you have fingers? Can you add?”

“Hayim,” the cooper said. “He looks at women. And they look back, let me tell you. Each one says, ‘Come first to me, I have to get ready for
Shabbas.
’ We should dig a new well in the village square so the women can carry their own water.”

“Not Hayim,” Shmuel the baker said softly. “No, I don’t believe it.”

Hershel, in the second row, turned around. “Not Hayim,” he
agreed. “When a man eats a meal does he sit down to eat again? He divorced her fifteen years ago.”

“You think it’s Yarush? Maybe someone should approach him on her behalf.”

Hershel didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. So he’d tried to make a match. Did that make him responsible for Misha? “Listen,” he said. “Yarush is a man like any other who steals a drink from the cow and doesn’t care to buy her. There’s nothing more to it.”

A
WEEK
and a half later, as evening fell on market day, Hanna-Leah was at home preparing for the
mikva.
Hershel had taken Boryna’s old milk cow to Reb Pinkus to slaughter and was back at the shop when a young man with a crooked nose and hair like soaked rooster feathers slid through the door of the butcher shop. Carrying a canvas bag with rope handles, the young man said in a friendly tone,
“Sholom aleikhem.”

Hershel answered in kind,
“Aleikhem sholom. Vos makht a Yid?”

“Not too bad,” the young man said, “considering my head is in a different place every night.”

A peddler? Not much of one with a small bag like that. A student maybe. Or someone who wasn’t on good terms with the authorities. “Traveling?” Hershel asked.

The young man nodded. “You have it exactly,” he said. Fastened to his jacket with a rusty pin, a silk rose drooped over the tattered collar, droplets of rainwater dripping onto the counter as he put down his bag. The rope handles slapped the counter.

“Is there something I can get you? I’m closing up,” Hershel said.

The Traveler opened his bag. “Maybe I have something you could use.” He pulled out a few small objects, laying them out on the counter in front of Hershel. A miniature cow and a tiny rocking chair carved out of wood. A packet of needles. A square of shiny cloth. “It’s a torrent out there. I could stand to dry off,” the Traveler said. Through the open door, Hershel could see the wooden planks laid over the mud in the village square shifting and quaking like flat tombstones.

“Look, I have to go,” Hershel said. “And I don’t need anything. But if you want to stay here until the rain stops, there’s a bench in back where you can sleep.”

“What’s the rush?” the Traveler asked.

“The head of the community council went to Łodz to look for work. We’re meeting to decide on a replacement.”

“Oh, who do you think it will be?”

“Maybe Azriel the scribe, or the
shokhet
, Reb Pinkus.”

“What about you?”

“Me? No. It should be someone educated.”

“Sure, of course, I understand. Someone who can read Russian because he’ll have to deal with the authorities, right? Like the scribe?”

“Well, no, Azriel doesn’t read Russian. But if you put a pin through the Torah scroll, he could tell you without looking what verse it touched.”

“I see.” There was a long silence while Hershel tried to imagine what the scribe would do with an edict printed in Russian.

“But you see, we need someone with a head, not someone who works with his hands,” Hershel explained.

“Like the Rabbi, maybe?”

“Yes, exactly. Berekh reads Russian. He’s also the ‘crown rabbi,’ you know.”
Crown rabbi
was the title of the local official responsible for registering births and deaths and reading the Tsar’s decrees to the villagers. “So he has to deal with the authorities anyway. He should be the head of the community council.”

“And he would be happy to do it, I’m sure.”

“Well, not exactly happy. We can barely get him to come to a meeting. He always forgets. He’s too busy reading, you see. And then he says we don’t need him to decide how many matzos should be baked for the poor for Passover. And really, he’s right. When he’s there, it’s hard to get anything done. He forgets what we’re talking about and he goes on about war in China and how we’re all clods of dirt under the Tsar’s boots. I’ll tell you the truth. If he weren’t the rabbi and everything, I would think he was a revolutionary.”

“Mmm,” the Traveler said, looking around. “Nice shop. You do a good business?”

“Not bad, thank God. My wife knows how to put two kopecks together, and no one can cheat her.”

“In a shop like this you probably hear everything about what goes on in the village.”

“Oh yes, the women. Their tongues don’t stop for a minute. And
if you have a pair of eyes, you can easily see for yourself how everyone is doing. This one buys a brisket, that one just a few bones for soup. Hanna-Leah never says a word, but she puts in a little extra, and I see that, too. A person has to know his neighbors, doesn’t he? It’s not an easy world.”

“You’re right,” the Traveler said. “It’s just too bad that in most places the people who run the town council don’t know what’s going on under their noses. But why should they? The rich have servants, and scholars have their minds on higher matters.”

“But you can’t eat higher matters, can you?” Hershel asked.

“You’re a wise man,” the Traveler said. “Moses our Teacher couldn’t have put it better. But I shouldn’t keep you from your meeting.” Sweeping the packet of needles, the square of cloth, the miniature cow, and the rocking chair back into his bag, the Traveler headed toward the bench in the back, unperturbed by the spots of blood in the straw or the buzzing flies. “Thanks for your hospitality,” he added.

“It’s nothing,” Hershel replied. “Didn’t Abraham our Father wash the angels’ feet when they visited him in his tent?” Hershel left the shop, whistling as he crossed the muddy square.

T
HE COMMUNITY
council met in the studyhouse, a large room at the far end of the synagogue. At the head of the table was Reb Pinkus the
shokhet
who had just lost a tooth and was feeling the hole with his tongue. To his right sat the Rabbi, Berekh, and to his left Azriel the scribe. Azriel, a youngish man with no prospects (after all, how many Torah scrolls are produced in a small village, maybe one in a hundred years), was scraping the dirt from under his nail using an obnoxious letter from his brother, a successful lawyer in Warsaw. Berekh’s chair was tilted back against the shelves of biblical commentary, his red hair glinting in the candlelight, lanky legs stretched out as he read the latest article by his journalist friend, Moyshe-Mendel, now Maurice LaFontaine from Paris. The old
shammus
Nathan, who called the men to prayer morning and night, sat opposite Reb Pinkus. Nathan was a square-bearded, sincere man whose whole life was keeping the synagogue in order. Beside him, Gittel’s Shloimeh, the scholar, was digging the wax out of his ear while trying to translate an obscure commentary from Aramaic. And to Shloimeh’s left was Hershel the butcher and
then Haykel the blacksmith, whose wife Ettie was a faithful devotee of Faygela’s court in the bakery.

Reb Pinkus was speaking at length about the need to choose as head of the community council someone of learning, a person of venerated age, someone with respect in the community, and so on and on, while the Rabbi yawned, old Nathan nodded, Haykel the blacksmith rolled his eyes, Shloimeh chanted under his breath, Azriel the scribe considered moving to Warsaw, and Hershel tried, unsuccessfully, to get a word in.

Into this illustrious company burst Shmuel. He was hatless, breathless, still in his baker’s apron, his face twisted in agony, his hand shaking so that the men were afraid he would drop the kerosene lamp he was holding and set them all on fire.

“What’s happened? What is it?” they asked, each one praying that it wasn’t his house, his wife, his child, not that it should be anyone else’s, God forbid, but please
Ribono shel olam
, not mine. Shloimeh, the scholar, blinked rapidly as his mind descended from the heights. Reb Pinkus chewed nervously on the end of his yellowing beard. The Rabbi’s chair slapped forward. Hershel rose to his feet, fists clenched.

“It’s Ruthie. Faygela will never forgive me,” Shmuel said. The lamp shivered in his hand, the light flickering wildly around the men.

“Someone get a brandy from the inn,” Hershel said, his eyes still on his cousin as Berekh jumped to his feet and ran out for the bottle. With that look on Shmuel’s face, it could only be one thing, Hershel thought, the worst. “Tell me who,” he said, his muscles tensing. Shmuel shook his head, unable to speak. Who would dare to touch my cousin’s daughter, Hershel thought. I’ll find him and cut it off myself, with my cleaver. No, he said to himself, no, no. Is that going to help Ruthie? But what else could he do? I’ll send her to Warsaw, he thought, to a nice house where no one knows her. And then I’ll find him. Oh, then he’ll have to answer to Hershel. He cracked his fingers.

Carefully, the old
shammus
took the lamp and set it on the table as Shmuel fell into a chair. “They’re holding her in Plotsk. She’s been arrested,” he said, covering his face with his hands.

“Ruthie arrested? What for?” Hershel asked. It was impossible to imagine such a thing. Arrested. Not ruined by some young man, but in the hands of the authorities. His fists dangled helplessly.

Shmuel looked at the men with empty eyes as if he didn’t care to know where he was. Now and then a tear rolled down his face, losing itself in his beard. The men watched him, eyeing each other, lifting an eyebrow, feebly pulling an ear. Berekh returned, his hat askew, a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other, clumps of mud plopping from his boots as he hurried to the back of the studyhouse and poured Shmuel a full glass.

After Shmuel drank, Hershel said, “Tell us what happened.”

“Faygela will never forgive me. She goes to Warsaw and leaves the children in my charge and look what happens,” Shmuel cried, covering his face again.

“Listen to me, Shmuel,” Hershel said, putting a hand on his cousin’s shoulder and shaking him. “Tell me exactly what happened. Slowly. Take another drink.”

Shmuel’s face took on a liquor glow as he drank. “Ruthie was gone in the afternoon,” he said. “I thought she went to help Misha. But when it got dark I began to worry. So I went to Misha and Ruthie wasn’t there. Then I thought she must be visiting Emma. But before I had a chance to go to her, there was a knock at the door. It’s a terrible sound that knock.” He paused, shaking his head. “So loud. ‘Jew, open up!’ The girls begged me not to go to the door. But what else could I do? There was just one man standing there. The soldier who caught Ruthie. She had some pamphlets in her basket. It’s true. I don’t know where she got them or why she was carrying them. Ruthie? But my girl is clever. She admitted nothing. She said she couldn’t read, that she just found them. Yes of course, she can’t read, I said. Does a girl need to read? But look here, take this bottle of vodka and thank you for telling me where she is, and don’t worry, your friends will have a share, too. I’ll bring a case to the prison tomorrow. I can’t afford it but it doesn’t matter. I’m telling you, Perlmutter will have to give it to me on credit, or I’ll just take it from him.” Shmuel spoke angrily, as if it was Perlmutter who had arrested Ruthie.

“Calm down,” Hershel said. “No one is denying you anything. Our Ruthie isn’t going to rot in prison.”

“But how did it happen? What was she up to?” asked Reb Pinkus. “Don’t forget what happened during the January insurrection. Maybe the authorities will take an interest in the whole village. Excuse me for
saying so, Shmuel, but a man doesn’t always know what his own child is up to.”

“The insurrection was a long time ago,” Berekh said. “There are no revolutionaries here. People are too busy working for their next meal. It’s obviously a mistake.”

“Do pamphlets grow on trees? Something’s going on.”

“As it is written,” Shloimeh added in a sleepy scholarly voice, “ ‘Who prolongs his stay in a privy lengthens his days and years.’ ”

“What’s he talking?” the blacksmith asked old Nathan.

“Who knows? But if you understood, you’d be wise.”

“Listen to me,” Hershel began, interrupted by the blacksmith and Reb Pinkus shouting over each other: “I think, no listen to me, how can you say that …” Someone had to take charge. The Rabbi. It was his duty. Hershel banged his fist on the table until there was silence. “Rabbi, what do you say?” he asked.

“I have to think about it. Maybe someone I know has some influence. I have an old friend in Paris who has good connections, but with the Polish gentry not the Russians …”

“Listen to him. Just because he went to a Russian school, he thinks he’s above everyone. What the Old Rabbi forgot, he should rest in peace, this one won’t find out in his whole life, Mister Crown Rabbi,” Reb Pinkus said.