The River Midnight (54 page)

“Well, there was someone who liked his daughter very much. She’s a beauty, this Katherina, and the second son of the Count of something or other took a fancy to her. He had business in Minsk and there he met her.”

“And this is the Governor’s friend from Minsk?”

“Yes. And he’s a friend like the Tsar is your brother. He caused all of Alexi Tretyakov’s problems.”

“Why, if the Count’s son was so taken with his daughter?”

“Yes, he liked her, and she liked him. Too much. He wore a captain’s uniform. He had a sword with rubies on the handle. This is what she told me. She couldn’t forget the way the rubies shone in the light from the chandelier.”

“Then why didn’t they get married?” Berekh asked.

“Oh, listen to the worldly man talking. The Count’s son, even the second son, marry the daughter of a minor official? It would be like the rabbi marrying the midwife.”

“So is that so terrible? I think it’s a very good match.” He stroked her thigh.

She slapped his hand lightly. “Do you want to hear the story or not?” He nodded. “In the meantime,” she said, “Tretyakov was talking marriage to someone else. And not just anybody. The Deputy Minister of Railroads met Katherina when her father was in St. Petersburg, and he couldn’t live without her. Who knows why? He was possessed. She flirted with him and forgot him. He was old, maybe even forty, she said to me. What was he compared to a count’s son, even a second son? She was sitting right at my table, shivering under her cloak, even though it was lined with a good fur. Silver. A few wolves died for that cloak. She came here in the middle of the night with only her old nurse and one servant to drive them.

“What happened to her you can guess. The Count’s son had his way, and she enjoyed herself until she discovered that she was pregnant, and he was gone. She wrote to him. He didn’t answer. She was beside herself. Frantic. She confessed to her father in tears. The usual story. By then they were in Plotsk already. Someone, who knows, maybe it was the Count himself, put in a bad word for the girl’s father. Instead of going up, he went down. We have a new governor. He blames the daughter. His only hope was to marry her off to the Deputy Minister. A girl can be a virgin twenty times if she wants to, but if she’s out to here, it gives the whole story away. So he sent her to me, and I got rid of what wasn’t wanted. Are you shocked?”

“Maybe one day I’ll tell you a story that might surprise you,” Berekh said. “I’m not so easily shocked. Go on.”

Misha raised her eyebrows, but continued. “Now she’s engaged to the Deputy Minister and the wedding is planned for the summer. She told me that her father is spending a fortune. Afterward, if everything goes well, then her new husband will find something better for her father. But if the whole story should get out, and people are laughing up their sleeves at the Deputy Minister, it won’t go too well with our Governor.”

“Ah,” Berekh said, “Now I know.” He leaned back, his hands folded over his belly as if he’d eaten an enormous meal, smacking his lips until Misha laughed at the immensity of his satisfaction. Leaning forward to thank him for the wine, she kissed him on the cheek, but he turned so that his mouth was on hers, tasting of wine, his tongue lightly tracing the outline of her lips. She pulled away. “It’s impossible,” she said.

“Is it?” Berekh asked, kissing her neck. As the moon found her way into the purpling sky, they embraced, and Misha’s belly found itself no encumbrance at all for the inventiveness of a rabbi.

The barley was high, the potatoes flowering white, and small green apples were thick in the summer trees. Hershel had given the money he got from Yarush to the Rabbi, who had given it to Faygela, who brought Misha what a woman needs and rarely gets when she’s going to have a baby—eggs, milk, soft rolls, a hen now and then for roasting, and lotion for her swollen feet.

Evening brought the men from their workbenches and stalls and carts to the synagogue courtyard, where they waited for Getzel the Beauty, whose limp made him slow to walk. Did you hear the latest? Our beloved midwife has a new assistant, they said. Who? The Rabbi. No, you’re joking. What’s the matter with you, are you half-blind and completely deaf? Everyone knows. So he walks with her. Is that a sin? Well, I say that he must be the father of her baby. There’s no other reason for him to have business with her. What are you talking? Anyone can see that the father is Hayim. He’s been cutting wood for her since the ice storm. Well, what about Pinye, you know, the young carpenter from Plotsk, he fixed her door. Pinye? One of the boys who are studying with the Rabbi. So, what about you? Me? Fingers pointed. Yes, you, who else fixed her roof on market day? You think no one saw you sitting like a rooster on the hen house? Of course I fixed the roof. It’s only right. She fixed my foot. And you, didn’t you bring her a salami, and not a small one, either, but one as long as my arm? All right, all right. Look, here’s Getzel. Let’s go in and pray already. While you’re talking, God is falling asleep.

*  *  *

M
ISHA
half sat in bed, her nightgown pulled up so she could watch her baby swivel from one side of her belly to the other in the twilight. Through the open window, she heard the man calling, “Getzel, move your feet, or we’ll be saying morning prayers soon.” Before they left the synagogue, she was asleep, voices fading into the night, the river gently slapping the banks below her house.

Misha opened her eyes. It was dark. The moon had set. The contraction came again. It’s just your womb practicing, she told herself. It’s normal. She was a woman of years, a woman of experience, not some girl who needed her mother. But she was afraid. Staring into the darkness, she could only think of everything that might go wrong. “This is no good, Misha,” she whispered. “You have to take your mind off yourself. So what am I going to do in the middle of the night? Well, first you can light a candle.” The shadows that sprang from the small light were not reassuring. “All right. So find something to make yourself busy with.” Taking the candle, she walked across the room, glancing at the table, the stove, the shelves of jars, the trunk in the corner. Her bridal trunk. Her mother had given her the key when she got her first period. Touching the half that was carved and the half that was as smooth as water, she lifted the lid. Inside the trunk lay her memories, wrapped in silk.

S
HE WAS
sixteen, kneeling in front of the trunk while Blema took out the embroidered cloth made by her mother, whom Misha was named after.

“Is there anything else in the trunk?” Misha asked.

“There’s this,” Blema answered, lifting out a hair wreath, plaited like the braids of a round Sabbath bread, fair and dark and russet-colored, and in the center a lock of moon white hair. “All the women in the family, when their hair is cut after the wedding, braid a lock of their hair into this, so their daughters won’t forget them.”

“And this one?” Misha asked, touching the lock in the center.

“Manya’s. Her poor mother cut off a piece of her hair before she went into the ground.”

Misha saw with great interest how the white hair in the center set off the other braids, like the moon rising above a newly ploughed
field, the browns and blacks of the earth rich in its glow. How soft the white hair looked, but just as she reached out a finger to touch it, her mother returned the wreath to the trunk.

“Is there anything of yours, Mama?”

“Of course,” she said lightly, picking up a silk-wrapped bundle, “my dowry.”

“That was your dowry?” Misha asked in astonishment as she looked at what her mother held.

“Well, the silver candlesticks I brought with me were ugly. My papa was proud. The candlesticks were heavy. Everything he owned was in them. But so ugly. I begged your father to sell them. I wanted him to make something for me. Something beautiful.” Tenderly, she put the wooden carving with its large round base into Misha’s hands. “Feel how smooth.” Misha ran her fingers across the carving. A winged figure was blowing the ram’s horn, its head tilted back, the shofar pointing upward, and out of the horn tiny leaves and flowers curled upward and around the rim, climbing the point of a wing. “You see?” Her mother put a key into the back of the base and turned. Music cascaded from the horn. Misha recognized the song.
“Ani maamin,”
she sang softly as she stood up,
“I believe in the coming of the Messiah, even though he may tarry, I believe.”

“Wait, daughter,” her mother said. “There’s one more thing.” She took out a silver box with ivory inlay. “This belonged to her, Manya’s mother. I was named for her, my Great-grandmother Blema. She was a pious woman. When she was the
zogerin
, she copied out prayers for women and kept them in this box.” She lifted the lid and inside was a parchment-thin pamphlet. “We only have one left, the prayer for the New Moon,
Rosh Hodesh.
Now that you’re a woman, you can’t run around the same anymore. On
Rosh Hodesh
, you’ll pray with the women. I know you won’t bring shame to your mother the way Manya did to hers,” and Misha, who was kneeling beside her mother, bent low so that Blema could kiss and bless her head. Her mother died three years later, and the bridal trunk remained empty except for her mother’s gifts under their layer of darkness.

T
HE CANDLE
cast Misha’s pregnant shadow across the room as she wound up the music box. Taking out her grandmother’s fine cloth, she
draped it over her head and across her shoulders, its threads gleaming with a silvery sheen over its many colors. As the notes tumbled from the ram’s horn, she whispered the prayer for the New Moon.

“In Paradise dwell our Mothers. There is Batia, the Pharaoh’s daughter, and our dear Yokheved, the mother of Moses our teacher. They sing the Song of the Sea with great joy and many holy angels with them, Miriam the prophetess beating her timbrel, Deborah the prophetess and a hundred thousand women who praise the Name and sing. In the time-to-come, the Holy Presence, the
Shekhina,
will return from Her exile in the world and we will stand on the holy mountain and see with our own eyes as the Lord returns to Zion and She, the
Shekhina,
will become great.

“Holy One, spread Your wings over us. Do not turn away. I entreat You like a motherless child …”

M
ISHA
covered her face with her hands and her tears fell between her fingers. “Dear God, don’t punish this child for my sins,” she prayed.

D
AWN ROSE
in a musky haze. Misha lay on her bed, asleep, her grandmother’s cloth spread over her belly. On the riverbank below her house, the women stood knee-deep in the water, washing clothes on the flat rocks. Linens bunched and unfurled between their knuckles as curls of mist rose over the bridge. Did you hear the latest? Our dear midwife has a new assistant. Emma. Yes, it’s true. It turns out that working in the bakery wasn’t enough of a punishment for her. No? What do you think? Faygela’s girls hang onto her every word, and believe me she has plenty. I heard Dina, the smallest, telling my Devorela the story of Little Red Riding Hood. She goes on strike, and the big, bad boss has no choice, he has to give her grandmother her pay. You think it’s a good idea to send a young girl to the midwife? For Emma, yes. Who else is a better example to her of what happens when a person follows her own way? Maybe you’re right, but I don’t know if it’s such a punishment. Ruthie helps, too, and I hear that the girls chatter from morning till night. They spend half their time in the woods and I’m telling you it’s not going to lead to anything good. In my day a girl their age was married with babies and she didn’t dare say a word or her mother-in-law would give her a
zetz
that would send her flying. In your day, what are you talking? Your mother-in-law went deaf just to save herself from listening to you.

*  *  *

O
N THE
road to Blaszka the raspberries ripened. Yarush moved a fallen tree with Hayim’s help. Hayim and Alta-Fruma ate raspberries with cream in the dairyhouse. On the riverbank, goslings shed their down and began to fly. Heavy clusters of blueberries darkened from green to purplish blue. The children of Blaszka filled buckets of blueberries, cramming handfuls into their mouths, sticking tongues out to see whose was the purplest.

There was a clatter on Misha’s stairs, the door flying open as Ruthie burst into the room. In one hand she held a bucket of blueberries. The other hand pulled a reluctant Emma. Misha could see that Emma had been crying. Her face was blotchy, her eyes swollen, and there was a tight catch to her voice as she said to Ruthie, “Let me go.”

“She hit her head,” Ruthie announced.

“Oh, make it sound like I did it all by myself, when it was the oppressor that threw me to the ground.”

“She means Hershel,” Ruthie said. “He pushed Emma away when she tried to stop him.”

“Stop what?” Misha asked.

“He had no business breaking up the printing press,” Emma shouted. “It doesn’t belong to him.”

“Yes, of course,” Misha said soothingly. “Come over here and let me look at you.”

“We fixed it up. It’s ours. Nobody else has any right to it.” Emma began to cry again. It was her crying that worried Misha more than the cut on the side of her head.

“This doesn’t look too bad,” Misha said.

“Nothing looks bad when the head of the community council does it,” Emma cried. “It’s the same everywhere.”

Misha stirred a powder of valerian root into a glass of water. “Drink this down, Emma. You’ll feel better.”

“What is it?”

“It’s good for you. Believe me.”

“It’s probably poison,” the girl muttered, but she swallowed it anyway.

“You should go to bed and have a rest,” Misha said.

“I’m not going home. I’m going to picket the community council.” Rubbing her forehead, Emma sniffled.

“What’s the matter?” Misha asked.

“It hurts,” Emma answered in a small voice.

“Take her home, Ruthie, and I don’t want to hear a word from you, Emma. You have to have a sleep and that’s it.”

With a worried frown, Misha watched them leave. It wasn’t like Emma to be so obedient.