The River Midnight (8 page)

“Well, that was then. And this is now. Another story.”

“Will you sit with me in synagogue on Kol Nidrei?” Faygela asked.

“I shouldn’t. My sisters-in-law might be offended.”

“Then you can ask for their forgiveness next year,” Faygela said. And she stood on her toes to whisper in Hanna-Leah’s ear the way she always used to when she had a secret to tell.

I
N THE
butcher shop the women asked, Have you seen so many strangers in Blaszka? There isn’t enough to feed them all. What are you talking? It’s the same as always. A few Jews from the peasant villages upriver who come for the High Holy Days. A beggar or two trying his fortune some place new. A peddler making his way home. A student. A couple of wanderers. What about the Gypsy boy? I’m telling you, it’s the same as always. So he hit his head in our river? It’s the current and the rocks. Someone’s always falling there. You can say what you like. I don’t trust them. Strangers. Who knows what they want? Am I right, Hanna-Leah?

She was sweeping the earthen floor and sprinkling yellow sand over it. “Maybe. I’m not saying that you’re wrong. But you remember what Hershel said? We were strangers in a strange land ourselves. It’s hard to believe, but it happened. So should we let them sit by themselves? Listen to me, it’s a mitzvah to feed a hungry person.”

The eve of Yom Kippur. Fathers and mothers cup their children’s heads and bless them. The stones tremble. At this very moment, their life is under scrutiny, their fate written. Who among them can be sure to live another day? The Holy One sits on His throne in judgment over all the worlds. The stars hold their breath.

Over their
kittels
, their white burial robes, the men drape their prayer shawls as if it were morning. On Yom Kippur there is no night,
though the sun is falling. The men and women of Blaszka walk to the synagogue, the women carrying the candles they made during the days of awe. Birds sit on the roof silently waiting. The Holy One lifts the seal of the Heavenly Court.

Inside the synagogue, the women’s candles flash on the white garments of the congregation above and below. Outside the wind rises, blowing leaves through the cemetery, pulling at the walls of the synagogue, tearing at the loose shingles on the roof, crying through the window frames.

I
N THE
coming year, Hershel will go to Plotsk to find good towels. He will bring back five of them, the thickest, softest, biggest towels in the world for his Hanna-Leah.

In time she will sew the wedding dresses that Faygela’s girls will wear under the bridal canopy. And for the one that’s left sitting with no children of her own, Hanna-Leah will leave her Grandmother Rivka’s silver candlesticks.

In a hundred years those candlesticks will grace the table of a house in London, where strangers will always find an open door.

“Make it nice, Faygela. Please, don’t upset him. It’s not good to upset a new groom,” the young woman said, looking for approval from the knot of married women who had come into the bakery to get warm. Faygela was writing a letter to the girl’s husband in Germany, where he was looking for work. The married women stamped their feet, shaking the snow from their shawls. No one writes a letter like Faygela, they said. Pearls fall from her pen. When a man reads a letter like that, he wants to come home right away. Even the Tsar would have mercy on the Jews if he read one of Faygela’s letters. The girl, hands folded over her slightly bulging belly, smiled tentatively.

Faygela’s oldest daughter, Ruthie, was braiding round loaves of Sabbath hallahs while her sisters mixed the white flour, soft as silk, with eggs, sugar, oil, and water. Behind them the row of stone ovens glowed. The yeasty smell of baking bread hung in tendrils of steam around the doorway. From the finished batch of dough, Ruthie took a lump and threw it into the fire. As it blackened into a rock, she murmured
in Hebrew,
“Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has made us holy in Your mitzvos, commanding us to separate a piece of dough for an offering.”

The door swung open as the blacksmith’s wife entered with a gust of snow. “Did you see the strangers?” she asked. “The carriage that stopped in front of Perlmutter’s tavern.”

“The actors?” Faygela asked.

“Yes, did you know that they were arrested in Minsk for performing in Yiddish?”

“They’re not the first ones. The Tsar made it illegal to put on plays in Yiddish but Jews are too stubborn to close their mouths just like that. Instead they learn to change their costumes faster and run for the train.”

It’s just craziness, the women said. Does it cost the Tsar so much to let us have a little pleasure?

“It’s not so simple,” Faygela said. “The actors bring news that you can’t get anywhere else. Not with the censors.”

And you don’t forget their songs, the women said. You feel them right here. They tapped their chests.

“The Russian authorities don’t want us to know what’s going on. That’s why they shut down the Yiddish newspaper. And don’t think we’re the only ones to be denied our own language. It’s illegal to teach Polish, too. But a Jew is always in the middle.” Faygela sighed. “The Russians say that we’re in bed with Polish rebels and the Poles accuse us of supporting the Russian oppressors. If you can read Russian …”

“I can write a plain letter in Yiddish like most people. But you won’t catch me learning to read Russian or Polish. What for? Do the peasants read? Not a word,” the blacksmith’s wife said. “God forbid that we should have some dealings with the authorities, then it’s the Rabbi’s job to take care of it. Am I right?” The women nodded.

“You don’t know what you’re missing. There are wonderful books in Polish and in Russian, too. Listen to this.” Faygela picked up a book protected by a covering of brown paper on which she had written,
Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish Prophet.
“ ‘In the beginning, there was belief in one God, and there was Freedom in the world. And there were no laws, only the will of God, and there were no lords and slaves.’ Doesn’t it make you think?” The women looked at her blankly. Stubbornly,
Faygela went on. “If you ask me, I would say that there was always one law, that people should look for the truth.”

Oh, yes, the women said. It’s too easy to believe a liar. And when it comes to lying, the authorities are experts. You can’t trust one of them. Hanna-Leah says that as long as there’s a single Jew, someone will be aggravated. With the tax on kosher meat, it’s hard to buy even a piece of flank for
Shabbas.
How will it end, Faygela?

“According to the Tsar’s minister, one-third of us will leave the country, one-third will convert, and one third will starve to death. It’s written right here.” Faygela lifted
The Israelite
, a Jewish newspaper written in Polish and permitted by the authorities because it encouraged assimilation. “When my Shmuel goes to Plotsk, he sees hungry faces everywhere, and it’s better here in Poland than around Minsk. The farther east you go, the worse it gets. That’s why you see so many strangers these days. People have nothing, and they’re looking for somewhere they can have a life.”

It’s true. Who ever saw so many strangers coming through Blaszka? Nobody knows where they’re from and where they’re going, the women said. You need eyes in the back of your head when there are strangers around. Beggars, peddlers, students, Gypsies. I say the worst are the Russian Jews. They’re poor and they’re dirty. And we’re not poor? At least we have a home.

“Listen to me, women,” Faygela said. “I’ll tell you a story about strangers.” She rested her chin on her two fists, looking off into the distance as if she were watching the story unfold in front of her. “It happened in the time of King Krak. A girl was going to give birth. It was her first baby and she was terrified. She was all alone. Her husband was away peddling. Her mother-in-law was visiting her relatives, because the baby was early. No one expected it. And, poor girl, she had no sisters. So she was alone, groaning. You know how it is.”

The women nodded. She thought she’d die alone, they said.

“Yes, exactly. It was a winter day just like this, with the snow blowing and the wind tearing your skin off your bones. So what happens? There was a knock at the door. And who should come in, but the demon Lilith. It’s true. Well, of course the girl fainted on the spot. She knew that Lilith must have come to steal her baby, and there was no one to protect her. Not even an amulet on the wall.”

“How did Lilith look?” asked the young girl whose husband had gone away.

“Not like you’d expect. No horns. Not even a cloven foot. No, she had the prettiest, dainty feet, like a princess. Her hair was long and blonde, but she had strong hands. When the girl woke up from her faint, she thought that Lilith would strangle her with those hands. But instead she delivered the baby. And she blessed it, too. The baby grew up to be a scholar. In fact, he was an adviser to kings. So, who can tell about a stranger?”

That’s as good as one of Shomer’s stories, the women said. Write it down, Faygela. You’ll be famous. When the book peddler comes, instead of calling out, “New romances by the Yiddish author Shomer, famous from Warsaw to Minsk,” he’ll say, “Faygela’s stories, come and look, women, but don’t damage the merchandise.”

“Shomer’s merchandise,” Faygela sniffed, her delicate nostrils pinched as if she smelled rotten eggs. “With his silly stories of Jewish heiresses and knights in armor.” Holding up a small, sharp-angled hand with an ink stain on the second finger, and flour under the nails, she said, “I swear before God—” The women shifted uncomfortably. It’s a sin to make a vow, they said. Don’t swear, please Faygela, no one meant anything, you might call down the evil eye on yourself. “I swear,” she said insistently, “they should put Shomer on trial for writing lies. A real writer tells the truth, and that’s how he changes the world. But what’s the use of talking? Nothing ever changes in Blaszka.”

The women looked at one another, eyebrows raised, hands busying themselves with arranging shawls and digging into bags as if suddenly reminded it was market day and there was work to be done. But the blacksmith’s wife, undaunted, retorted, “What do you mean, nothing? I heard in the butcher shop that someone saw a pair of men’s trousers under Misha’s bed. Who do you think they belonged to?”

You can be sure it wasn’t her former husband. The watercarrier only has one pair, the women laughed.

“You want to talk about Misha, I’ll tell you about Misha,” Faygela said. “Take a look at Berel.” The little boy, hearing his name, poked his head out of the wooden crate he was playing in. He was a fat little bull, already nearly as strong as his next oldest sister, confident in the goodness of a world made of cinnamon and raisins. “After thirty hours
of labor with him, I was so weak I could hardly breathe. I thought I was finished. When the doctor came from Plotsk, he said there was only one thing to do. He was going to cut me open to save the baby. I knew what that meant. He considered me dead already, because once they cut you open like that, every disease finds a home in the wound. But in walked Misha, like a queen. She threw out the doctor, turned the baby around inside me with her own hands. And you know what happened then?”

“Out came Berel, pop!” shouted Dina, who was six years old.

“Out I came, pop!” echoed Berel. He and Dina were playing Train to Warsaw on the floor of the bakery. Berel was the passenger in his wooden crate, Dina the driver who pulled him between the legs of her older sisters.

“But the
zogerin
always says it was her praying in the cemetery that did it,” Leibela, the middle daughter protested.

Freydel, the second oldest, folded her hands over her chest and rolled her eyes at heaven. “May the
zogerin
pray for a good-looking boy to become Papa’s apprentice,” she said.

“Let me assure both of you that dead people aren’t sitting in the cemetery waiting to talk to the
zogerin.
And they don’t stand around in heaven arguing with God, either. A person lives, then he dies, and that’s all. My father told me and I’m telling you. A grave is just for remembrance.” Faygela shook her pen at the four older girls who were now loading the mounds of dough onto the long-handled shovels and sliding them into the ovens. “When a baby is coming out the wrong way, it’s not a time to play patchie-patchie in the cemetery. No, you need a person who knows what’s what. It was Misha who kept me in this world and only her.”

Ruthie, the oldest, a slight girl of sixteen, dark-eyed like her mother, said nothing. At the mention of Misha’s name, she blushed.

The sound of a horse and cart clattering up to the bakery distracted Faygela, and the girls rushed outside, Berel toddling behind them.

“What did you bring me, Papa?” and “Me, what about me,” the younger children called out. “Candy? Did you bring us candy?”

“First the horse has to go into his stall, children.
Shabbas
is coming for him, too,” Shmuel said. His cart was loaded with supplies from
Plotsk, rye flour, wheat flour, sugar, almonds, cinnamon, raisins, a pastry crimper, poppy seeds, and kerosene. Unhitching the horse, he carried the supplies out back, the younger children running after him, putting their hands in his pockets, shouting, “Good Papa,” when they pulled out sticks of candy. The middle girls, waiting for Shmuel to give them their brightly colored ribbons, poked and elbowed one another until Faygela pushed them apart with an exasperated grunt, then held them close, her arms linked with theirs, while they snuggled against her. How patient Shmuel was with the children, she thought. And as she watched the feathery motion of his fingers touching their cheeks, she imagined the same light touch on her own body, later, when the children slept. And he would be just as patient when she braided his silvery beard after they made love, listening to everything she said, though he wouldn’t understand half of it.

“I’m sorry, Ruthie,” he was saying. “I couldn’t get the herbal book you wanted. It was too expensive. But look at this. The bookseller gave it to me cheap because it’s in English. And you see, Ruthie, there are drawings of plants.” He patted her shoulder.