The Singing Fire (48 page)

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Authors: Lilian Nattel

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BOOK: The Singing Fire

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“It’s where I got the scar. It always reminds me.”

“Then it’s going to remind me, too. How lucky we are that you knew what to do.”

“Luck isn’t exactly what I’d call it.”

“Mmm. Not for you, I’m saying, only for me and Gittel.”

“That’s what you think?”

“It’s exactly what I think. Who knows what counts? Only God in
heaven. Maybe that’s why I sell coffee in Dorset Street. To go with my wife one night.”

“Listen to me, Nathan. I’m trying to tell you, but it isn’t easy. You don’t know …”

The crowd was cheering as the tailor’s guy broke apart in the bonfire. The brightness of the fire made the darkness even darker. There were teachers and students and neighbors standing around the bonfire, some wearing masks and others the night. No one could tell who they really were.

“What’s to know? I see you, Nehameleh, and I’m here with you. God in heaven should only have my luck.” But she pulled her hand out of his.

“I want too much. From that comes every mistake I made.” The
yetzer-hara
, the evil inclination, had given her desires stronger than a fire. When she was young, she’d wished for a house as big as the moon, and a child for every room where she lay with her husband, for every sigh of pleasure a book bound in fine leather, and on the wall a plaque commemorating her great deeds.

“And every good thing, too,” Nathan said. He rubbed the back of her neck where it always knotted. He’d learned to do it just as well with his left hand. She couldn’t help but sigh with pleasure.

So let the good inclination use her desire to get a shop with used books and cheap blouses, a room above, where she would lie with Nathan on the Sabbath, and there would be no great deeds, only necessary ones. Sparks flew over the fence and hissed on the damp cobblestones. She lifted her gaze to him, his eyes darker than darkness.

“We were married on Guy Fawkes Day,” he said. “You remember the firecrackers?”

“God forbid I should forget,” she said.

They stood together, both of them bearing scars, and they saw what they saw while the night clothed them in dignity. For the time being, the children were safe, and in the darkness the fire was blooming as the tears of the grandmothers fell on the souls of those who could hear their weeping.

On the other side of the fence, Emilia stood with Jacob, watching the effigies burn. They’d come outside with the rest of the audience to join
the many people masked and cloaked, defying darkness with flashes of fire. The air was hot and smelled of smoked fish as Emilia held on to Jacob’s arm, her bracelet glinting in the firelight.

“Do you remember my cameo, Jacob? I was wearing it when you introduced me to your parents.”

“Yes, of course. I was looking for the gold cross you always wore.” He patted his pockets for matches and tobacco. “Whatever happened to it?”

“Your freckles stood out against your cheeks, you were so pale.” Someone walked by carrying a torch. In the fire the tailor’s guy was melting into remnants of straw and cloth.

“I was rather nervous. I’d have been much more nervous if I’d thought that someday I might look under my wife’s bed to find a slipper and instead see a train schedule.” Jacob fumbled with his pipe, dropping his tobacco first and then his match. He shrugged and put the pipe back in his pocket. “Are you leaving me?”

His face was just a shape in the darkness. His hands, if he would take hers in them, would have the familiar warmth of a favorite pair of gloves. “Sometimes you act like you might prefer it,” she said, pulling away.

“Because you’re offended by Jews? You and a few million other Londoners. I was naïve to think any different, but just the same I don’t see how I can do without you.”

“There’s a lot you don’t see.” She looked at him with such dangerous sincerity that he went after his pipe, ready to give it another go so that he could do something he was sure of. “I want to tell you about the cameo,” she said.

“You’re thinking about leaving me and you want to talk about some old piece of jewelry?” he asked. “There’s only one explanation. You murdered someone for it. Ah, you should have told me before. I’d have made notes and written a play about it instead of the ghetto story and not upset you.” He held his pipe as steadily as he could, cupping the match in the wind.

“I’m serious. Then you’ll see what I mean. It’s about the woman that gave me the cameo.” Emilia looked over the fence. If her daughter was there among the East End Jews, she wouldn’t know her name or her face, and if she met her, she’d be dismayed by the unsavory odor,
the bad teeth, the Cockney accent overlaid by the school’s grammar teachers. “This woman I’m telling you about. She came from a Jewish village in Poland. A
shtetl.”

“Is that right?” Jacob asked, looking at her sharply. Newspapers blew over the fence and into the dying fire, feeding the last few sparks. He would be angry, and whether he’d ever stop being angry and how long it would take she couldn’t guess, but if she threw herself again into the sea of streets, she might lose another child. Someone was calling “Fried fish!” The smell mingled with the smell of Jacob’s pipe tobacco, and she didn’t faint because the memory of her daughter demanded something else. So instead she would tell a story.

“This woman used to say to me, It’s better to open a door yourself than have it smashed open. What use is a broken door afterward? She knew what she was talking about. At one time she was strong enough and clever enough to play the piano for the Russian officers who had blown up her husband’s mill …”

Her hands were bare. She hadn’t thought to put on gloves and her hands were cold though at home she had a dozen pairs.

“That was my mother,” Emilia continued. She wasn’t going to sell off her life as if she had nothing.

On this side of the fence, the ghost of the first wife nodded.

In the alley among the women with red shawls, and in the school yard among the last few revelers who watched the crackling fire kiss the night, the grandmothers walked back and forth. It was for this that they had risen up from their graveyards in Minsk or Pinsk or London, to be with their children in the night, in the wind that rages, in the fog swept in from the sea, and in the singing fire. If you listen to them speak, then you hear the voice of Her, the presence of God, who is with us in our exile.

In the darkness of the alley they stood, the two mothers, facing each other in the smoke of night, their prayers rising through the sliver of sky between rooftops. As it is written: The sins of the parents last unto the third or fourth generation, but the merit of those who love will go on to the thousandth.

Amen. Selah.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank Alexis Gargagliano, my editor at Scribner, for her perspicacity, her adroit and delicate suggestions, her enthusiasm. I would also like to thank Susan Moldow, the publisher of Scribner, for her ongoing interest in my work, and Louise Dennys, the publisher of Knopf Canada, for her confidence in me. I am grateful to my wonderful agent, Helen Heller, for her feedback while the manuscript was in its early drafts; her honesty and insight were invaluable. My thanks also go to my two amazing daughters, who came along during the writing of this book, thus irrevocably changing both me and the story I wrote. Many other people have generously supported my work, and I want all of them to know how much I appreciate it. Finally, and most of all, I want to thank my husband, Allan, who cheered me on through every draft.

Lilian Nattel was born in Montreal and lives in Toronto with her husband and two daughters. Her previous novel,
The River Midnight
, was published to international acclaim and won the Martin and Beatrice Fischer Prize for Fiction.

VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2004

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2004. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

NATTEL, LILIAN, 1956–
THE SINGING FIRE / LILIAN NATTEL.

eISBN: 978-0-307-37068-6

I. TITLE.

PS8577.A757S55 2004a C813′.54 C2004-902645-3

www.randomhouse.ca

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Prologue: Longing

Act I