The River Midnight (33 page)

“Yes, yes,” Hayim would say, drawing the scar and the earrings and the shawl draped over one shoulder, and Riva laughed to see how beautiful she still was. Neither of them had any thought that many years later, in the prison in Plotsk, a pair of young, orange-haired prostitutes from Avraham’s Brothel would defend a daughter of Blaszka for the sake of Riva’s memory.

After a week with Hayim, Riva said she had to go back to Plotsk, briefly, just to pawn her earrings. She would hire a photographer, she said, and would then return to Blaszka to take the pictures for her mother. “Don’t sell your, your earrings,” Hayim said. “I can draw a picture. A proper picture. With you cooking. You can send it to your mother.” The gold earrings were all that Riva owned and she was proud of them.

“No, I want her to have a photograph, so she’ll believe that I’m really married. I don’t need these.” She fingered the earrings. “I’ll be back soon, Hayim. You’ll hardly notice I’m gone. It’s just a two-hour walk to Plotsk. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Three days later she was still gone. And the day after that, too. In the village square people said, What do you expect? Can you make a pig kosher by putting a wedding veil on it? The Old Rabbi offered to take Hayim back to Plotsk so that he could find Riva and bring her to the rabbinical court for a divorce, but Hayim shook his head. “No. Riva didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t, don’t, don’t believe it,” he said. But he kept tripping, spilling all the water in his buckets and had to go back to the well, again and again.

It was Lipsha, the oldest prostitute, who sent word to Hayim that Riva was dead. When she came to the brothel with presents for the girls, the pimp asked her for the rest of the money she got for the earrings. They fought and she came out the worse. They buried Riva in the Jewish cemetery in Plotsk. Hayim mourned, sitting shivah on a stool in his hut, barefoot and unkempt for the full week. The cholera moved away from Blaszka after taking a few more villagers with it, including Aba the carpenter, Blema’s husband, who had carved the doors of the Holy Ark. You see, they said in the village square, Heaven had mercy on us, just as the Old Rabbi said.

When Hayim got up from the shivah, he went to a small clearing in the woods outside the hut where the printing press was rusting. He often went there to think, but now, sitting on a stump, he put a board on his lap and a notebook on the board. In the notebook were sketches of Riva in her wedding veil, himself with his yoke and buckets, the river and the bridge, Riva standing beside his hut, Riva cooking over the trivet. When the notebook was full, it would go to Riva’s mother.

While he was drawing, a peasant carrying a bundle of wood on his back and an ax over his shoulder, stopped in the clearing to watch Hayim. The pencil moved in slow steady strokes until, from seemingly disconnected lines and shadings, the farmer saw the village square appear all at once, like magic. “That’s the blacksmith’s,” he said excitedly pointing. “And there, the cartwright. He makes a strong axle. Good wood. You have it exactly right.” Then the farmer began to speak so quickly and in such a thick Polish that Hayim couldn’t follow. Dropping his bundle of wood, the farmer pulled Hayim urgently, shouting, not as if he were angry, but as if Hayim might understand if only he spoke loudly enough. Hayim stared at the man, who was
clearly not one of the poor tenant farmers that lived near the abandoned church, but someone who owned his own land, a man who didn’t have to share his boots. His face looked familiar, the fist-flattened nose, the ears sticking out under the cap with the fur band. “Yanek?” he asked, remembering a man bringing grain to the mill when his father was alive. The man nodded excitedly and continued in his rapid Polish. Hayim smiled and nodded, following him. The only word he could make out was “Maria.”

Maria was the man’s little girl, who had fallen and died. She lay with her hands crossed over a picture of Saint Mary, blue ribbons tying up her yellow braids, candles at her head and feet. Yanek’s wife was afraid they would forget what she looked like. In his clumsy Polish, Hayim asked for charcoal and a board. He soon had it and when the portrait was done, Yanek and his wife gazed at it with wonder and tears, thanking him over and over again,
“Dziekuje, dziekuje.”
Hayim wouldn’t take their money, though they pressed it on him.

Over the years, there were many more drawings of sons and daughters, mothers and husbands in cottages along the Północna River. In Blaszka the charcoal portrait of Faygela’s father, Yekhiel the baker, hung above his books, and the Old Rabbi’s portrait hung in the studyhouse. Although Hayim refused any payment, he was the best-fed watercarrier in the district of Plotsk. Baskets of potatoes, cabbages, apples, pears, the odd hen, flour, onions, carrots, and lately a goat were left outside his hut. Sometimes a woman came inside. But no one had ever offered him a pig. A Jew with a pig—it was unthinkable. Except, of course, for the Director.

The air smelled of winter, though there were catkins on the willows and poplars, and the birches were budding. Hazzer, the pig, ate his afternoon meal of turnips and was rooting behind Hayim’s hut for worms. He’d lost his baby coloring, his coat now a brick red with bands of brown, and when he got stuck under a fence in his curious wanderings, the village children would pull out his bristles while he squeaked in protest. As Hayim hurried over the bridge, Hazzer trotting behind and bumping Hayim’s knees with his snout, the buckets
swung on their yoke, spilling water and drenching his pants. “Hazzer, Hazzer,” Hayim said soberly, shaking his head, “what will become of you if you can’t learn to conduct yourself like a good Jew?” But the pig, like a wilful child, pushed between Hayim’s legs and rushed over the bridge pell-mell in search of adventure.

In the bathhouse, the men were getting ready for the feast of Purim. As the steam rose around them, and the subject turned to Hayim, they said, Did you hear that the Countess of Volhynia once came to him? No, not really. Yes, it’s true. And not only her but a camp of Gypsy women. My cousin’s brother-in-law heard it straight from the peasants, I swear it. Hayim isn’t like other men. Drawing pictures? Who does that? But you know what people say. If not for Hayim’s picture, who would remember the face of the Old Rabbi? That’s true, but still, he’s more like one of them than one of us. You can see for yourself, a Jew with a pig. Yesterday, it follows him into the synagogue, jumps onto his lap squealing like there’s a murder. Everyone starts to shout, and the pig runs under the benches. A pig in the synagogue? It was the Romans defiling the Holy Temple all over again. But the more they shouted, the faster the pig ran. Hayim turned red, then white. I thought he was going to faint from embarrassment. The Old Rabbi, of blessed memory, did his best to make Hayim like other men. He arranged a match for him, not one but two. A father couldn’t have done any better by Hayim. I’ll tell you all about it, but first pour another bucket of hot water on the stones.
Ahh
, when the steam rises like ghosts in a cemetery, then you have a good
shvitz.

E
VERYONE IN
Blaszka was invited to Hanna-Leah’s wedding. The feast was held in Perlmutter’s tavern, at two long tables that ran the length of the room, women at one, men at the other, crowded together in their finery, lifting the roof with their singing and dancing—the men with the men shoulder to shoulder and women with women, arms around one another’s waists. The most important women sat near the bride and her grandmother, the most important men near the groom and his new partner in the butcher business, his father-in-law, Meyer. Hayim the watercarrier sat at the farthest end of the men’s table, near the hallway where the hens were scratching. He
was no longer the boy who’d lain with Riva, but a man of twenty-eight with broad shoulders and a smooth, black beard. Still stiff and sore from emptying out the
mikva
bucket by bucket at the order of the community council, so that the water might be replenished for Hanna-Leah’s first immersion, he half-dozed in the warmth of the room. The Old Rabbi sat near the groom’s father, of course, and a few chairs down from him was Berekh, the “crown rabbi,” the younger cousin of poor Yekhiel the baker, who had died three years earlier.

The villagers called Berekh
der Yunger Rov
, the Young Rabbi, with a wink to indicate he was no rabbi at all, but just the local official who registered births and deaths and represented the community to the Tsar’s ministry, which had fooled itself into thinking that anyone would believe a “rabbi” appointed by the crown meant a thing. In a few years, when the Old Rabbi would die, the village would decide that a “crown rabbi” could be a real rabbi, after all. But at Hanna-Leah’s wedding, Berekh sat somewhere in the middle of the men’s table, watching the festivities with a cynical eye, his red beard already untameable. His little cousin, Faygela, sat at Hanna-Leah’s right side, her belly swollen to bursting with her second child.

The four
vilda hayas
sat together like a clump of violets in the woods. First came Hanna-Leah, who was nineteen, then Faygela, seventeen, Misha and Zisa-Sara who were both twenty years old. Zisa-Sara had eyes only for her new husband, Mikhal, sitting at the men’s table, engaged in scholarly debate. “In the Talmud,” he began.

“Yes of course, in the Talmud,” said Berekh. “Do you see there something pertinent to the war between the Tsar and the Sultan of Turkey? Was it the express wish of the Holy One that Bosnia and Herzegovina should be transferred to Austrian administration? Tell me, friend Mikhal, was it the Eternal One’s aim to establish the Principality of Bulgaria? Yes, yes, it must be written. God on High desires that Pinye the foot soldier should die in Herzegovina this very year, 1878 as calculated by the Christian calendar. Not any Pinye, you understand, but Pinye the brother of Berekh the ‘crown rabbi,’ authorized by the Tsar’s ministry to register births, deaths, and marriages. Show me, dear Mikhal, where is it written?”

“Who am I to answer you?” asked Mikhal, who had no idea, then, that he would have a daughter named Emma and a son born in America.
“Do I know anything about either the Tsar or the Sultan? I don’t read a word of Russian.” Mikhal paused, looking at the women’s table with a besotted smile, and then continued. “But in the Talmud it says that the sword comes into the world because of the delay and perversion of justice, and on account of those who misrepresent the Holy Word.” Mikhal looked again at his beloved Zisa-Sara, with her dimpled chin and the beauty spot like the touch of an angel’s finger above her lip. His face alight, he missed the reply of the “crown rabbi,” who rolled his eyes at heaven.

“Enough Talmud,” Hanna-Leah’s grandmother said in a loud voice. “Let’s have another dance.”

Berekh rose from his chair and bowed. To the musicians he said, “Give us something for the Angel of Death dance.”

The women clapped their hands, hooting. Berekh looked the part, they said, so tall and gaunt. He chose Hayim to play the dying victim. Hayim shook his head unwillingly, but Berekh pulled him into the center of the room, and what could he do? Obligingly, he pretended to die, but he was so large and vital that the women couldn’t help but laugh until they hiccupped. Such a fragile Angel of Death, they said, such a lively corpse. It should only be this way. The klezmer played their instruments accordingly, the violin as the weak and weeping Angel of Death, the clarinet as the lively, uncooperative corpse. The men banged the table with their cups, some shouting, “Take him to heaven,” and others, “Don’t let Death get you,” while the women’s hands stung from clapping and their throats grew hoarse from screams of laughter. Only Misha, who was in mourning for her mother, watched the dancers with a serious expression. Finally Hanna-Leah’s grandmother pleaded, “Enough, no more, we’re choking,” and Berekh subsided. Hayim, however, completely surprising himself, held out a handkerchief to Misha for the kosher dance.

She was in no mood for dancing until Faygela’s grandmother grimaced and said, “Is she the bride? It’s not right for her to dance with the men. Has she no shame?” At that, Misha sprang from behind the women’s table. Taking hold of the handkerchief, she looked Hayim full in the face, challenging him to take her on while everyone watched. He was embarrassed, but she stamped from side to side, pulling on the handkerchief like an impatient horse, strong, unruly
and reckless, flinging back her head, her dark hair rolling across her shoulders like the night.

“Are you waiting for the Messiah?” she asked him. She was as tall as Hayim, but not yet as big as she would become. Mourning had thinned her cheeks and purpled shadows under her eyes.

He shook his head sheepishly. “Come on. Let’s make a show for the old woman,” she said, winking. She laughed, her gold tooth flashing as she jutted her chin at Faygela’s sour-faced grandmother. “You musicians,” she shouted. “Did you die while my back was turned? It’s a wedding. How fast can you play?”

The klezmer stopped. There was silence. The guests paused, forkfuls of chicken and kasha stalled in midair. There was a long blast from the horn, like the final, breath draining summons on the Day of Atonement. Then the violin joined it, wild and searing, and the clarinet rattled the roof with staccato bursts. Hayim twisted the handkerchief around his wrist, swinging Misha with a surge of energy, and when her feet hit the floor, she pulled back full force. As they careened around the room, Hayim hung on dizzily, his feet pounding the floor, the music pounding in his chest, the room spinning out of sight, the guests small and far away.

When he came around opposite the hallway where the chickens pecked, he caught sight of someone he didn’t recognize. A youngish woman stood with her hands on her hips. She was tall and broad, dressed like the women in his grandmother’s time, with a
kupka
instead of a kerchief on her head, the cap embroidered with moons and stars that caught the light, gold ribbons dangling from the cap over her long, loose hair, as white as candles. Over her dress she wore a
vestel
, a black bodice with red and gold threads like flames between the braided borders. She nodded at Hayim. When he spun around again, she was gone.