The Singing Fire (8 page)

“And why not? This is mine,” he said, bringing the stick down. “And this and this.” The stick followed her as she rolled from side to side, taking everything it could find. She gave it her back, she gave it her bottom and her legs, but the baby she hid under her cloak, under her arms, inside her skin.

“Please don’t kill me,” she begged. She was lying on her side, cheek in the mud. It was a thick mud, a gray clay mud. “Please.”

The Squire leaned on the cane, wiping his face of sweat. He wore a plaid waistcoat and a green scarf around his neck. Behind him a train blew steam as it left the station.

Her body was burning; she could feel every bruise, and the only place she didn’t hurt was her belly. “It was a mistake. I was just out walking,” she whimpered. “Lizzie saw me just walking.”

“Then you won’t walk so far again.” He tapped her arm with the stick. It was wet with mud and blood. “You’ll remember?” he asked, squatting beside her. “Give me your hand on it.” She reached out a hand, and he held it for a moment, looking at her closely as if she were naked and he was noticing the oddness of her private parts.

“I’ll remember,” she whispered, kissing his hand as if she loved it.

Then he took out his knife. Gravel bit her cheek. The clock tower chimed as he lifted her dress. “I’ll make sure of it,” he said, and the knife was dull in the dull light.

He was getting rid of the baby, that was it, and then she would bleed to death. Her eyes were blurred with mud. She wanted to see the clock tower so she’d know the time that her life ended. Never mind. What did it matter? She’d follow her child into the other world so it wouldn’t be there alone.

But it was only her thigh that he stroked, saying, “Here’s the mark
to remind you of what you owe. You forget and you’re dead.” Only now, when the Squire cut into the flesh of her thigh, could she run from her body, hiding up there with the unseen moon, and there she stayed, listening to her grandmother sing: “The wind, the wind, the raging wind…”

Dorset Street

The ceiling slanted down toward Nehama as she slept and woke, unsure of the time. Fingers of light and dark came in through the cracks with the whistling wind as she listened to the sounds of the lodging house. Mice in the walls. Feet on the stairs. The squeaking of beds on old floors. Shouting. A thump. A song. Coughing. That was Sally, sitting on the floor, resting her head and arms on the bed. Nehama was naked. Even her thin nightgown had been taken away so she wouldn’t leave the room. She thought it was Sally who’d covered her with the blanket. In the stupor of her waking and sleeping, it felt like a soft blanket. Soft and thick. The beating hadn’t got rid of the baby. Anything was believable.

“Are you awake?” Sally asked. “There’s something for you to eat.”

Nehama shook her head. She only wanted to talk about the seaside. The promenades. The donkey rides. The colored sand and shells and pebbles to arrange in a box with seaweed. The theater at the end of the pier. “When my horse places, we’ll go to Brighton,” she said.

“Then I’ll want a chair for the beach,” Sally said. Her short hair stood around her head in thin puffs.

“We’ll hire two. And have a bag of cherries.” Nehama touched a wisp of her dark hair. The baby’s would be fair. There would be a cap trimmed with lace to protect it from the sun.

“A drop of white satin for me.” Sally didn’t care how thin a gown she wore. It could be as transparent as glass. But as long as there was the feel of cloth against her skin, she believed that her body wasn’t visible, and she was sure that the priest would give her absolution before her death because no man had seen her naked.

“Not me. I’ll drink chocolate made with cream and whipped egg.”

“We’ll swim in a bathing machine.”

“For hours,” Nehama said. But the blanket was starting to scratch
her. It was made of rough, cheap wool, and her eyes watered, the tears mixed with mud.

The air was mild, the sun shining palely, and Nehama could hear bells—maybe a school bell or a church bell. She sat hunched in the doorway of the Horn and Plenty, watching the sign swing on one bolt as if about to fall but never falling. No one paid her any mind. A dead wife could lie on a table for a week for want of money to bury her, and there were plenty of men and women smoking a fag or nursing a wound, crouched in the doorways of doss-houses.

The baby was coming out of Nehama like a foggy drizzle. What luck, the other girls would say. The rags she’d stuffed into her underthings were soaked. It must be four o’clock. The muffin man was ringing his bell, a tray of muffins on his head. The sad-looking costermonger with his barrow of old vegetables bought a muffin for tea. So did the knife grinder, and also the little tailor that mended whores’ dresses, stepping high as if he might avoid the muck of sewage and blown-about rubbish.

Sally opened the door. “The Squire’s placing his bets. I’m to stay with you till he’s done.” She took a drink from her bottle of laudanum. Soon her eyes would glaze. “You’re looking awful white.”

“So what?” Nehama was losing the baby and with it every desire. Eating was too much effort. Sleeping impossible. Her friends would have to watch out for themselves. Sally held out the bottle of laudanum, but Nehama shook her head. She needed nothing.

Sally pulled her bonnet forward. “The sun’s in my eyes. And I’m getting awfully sleepy.” She sat down on the step. “Someone might beg a copper off a cove and go to the infirmary and I wouldn’t know nothing.” Her voice was very soft and tired.

“Someone might.” Nehama didn’t move. The Horn and Plenty stood at the corner of Dorset Street and Bell Lane. Within a block there were Jewish shops. It was as close as that, her old life. But she was someone else now, a bit of cabbage leaf left on the ground at midnight when the Saturday night market packed up and the lamps went dark.

“There’s not much left in this bottle. I’ll have another drop, I think.” Sally leaned back against the door and closed her eyes.

“I’m too tired to move.”

“You’re sick.” Sally opened her eyes, momentarily wakeful. “Get on or I’ll call the Squire.”

“All right, already.” Nehama pulled herself to her feet. If she died in a Jewish street, maybe someone would say the prayer for the dead. Sally didn’t say good-bye as she slumped in the doorway, holding tight the nearly empty bottle of laudanum.

Frying Pan Alley

Buyers and sellers pressed close together, with wares spread on the ground in front and stalls behind, one leaning up against the next. The market stretched along Petticoat Lane to the surrounding streets, Goulston and Wentworth, and the smallest passageways like Frying Pan Alley. People thronged among bright awnings and painted tables, admiring the jugglers and fingering nearly new coats, looking at masks and pastries, for it was the eve of Purim and there was a queue at the green coffee stall. It had four tin cans mounted with brass plates, separate compartments for bread, sandwiches, and cake, and only a penny for a warm cup of coffee mixed with chicory.

“FRIED FISH! ’TATERS HOT! BUY MY PRETTY MEAT!”

“ALL THE NEW SONGS ONLY A PENNY!”

“Excuse me.” A fat woman wearing a kerchief and a dark red shawl looked at Nehama nervously, her hand over her pocket, and Nehama, with her face burning, bumped the old cow as she walked by to push her into the gutter the way a girl from Dorset Street should, though the pain in her belly made her dizzy.

“TONIGHT IS PURIM, BROTHERS. GET YOUR MASKS!”

“HAMMENTASHEN FRESH!”

She had to sit down. In the shadows of a narrow alley, no one would notice her. Past the school. Past the stall that sold toffee and monkey-nuts to children. Past the girls dancing around the organ-grinder. To sit on a stoop and enter a dream where nothing mattered as blood seeped through her dress.

Her sisters used to tell her what Grandma Nehama said about the good inclination and the evil inclination. Everyone has both
the yetzer-hara
and the
yetzer-hatov
. The rabbis explain that the
yetzer-hara
, the evil inclination, is necessary for a man to build a house or make a family. But Grandma Nehama said that when a woman has a child, she
puts her good inclination into it and that their mother had given them everything, you could see it in their golden hair. But you, her sisters would say to Nehama, are dark. Your hair is dark and your skin is dark; Mama gave away everything good to us. There wasn’t anything left for you. Thank God our grandmother isn’t here to see you filled with the evil inclination.

They said this on the day the two middle sisters found her standing on the doorstep of a tavern and they smacked her so she’d remember. The song she heard that day was a Polish drinking song, and it was the same melody as the last hymn sung in the synagogue on Sabbath mornings. Hymns and drinking songs often share the same tunes. But a woman’s voice was not to be heard in the synagogue as the sound of it might inflame the evil inclination of men, which when harnessed properly begat children in houses but when allowed to run free—well, the results were all around.

Grandma Nehama cooked and cleaned, hauled the water, hung the laundry, and kept the accounts, which she taught the oldest sister. When any of the men on the street began a business venture, their wives came to Grandma Nehama so she could calculate what interest would be on a loan of capital to buy a barrow and a stock of lemons, or a machine and some leather, or a counter and shelves with goods to put on them. You have to sell this much, she would say, just to pay the interest, and don’t forget on top of that you need to make enough money to buy food for the children. She did her figuring on brown wrapping paper, standing next to the tile oven, where it was warm. Then she would say whether it was a good idea or not. Mr. Pollack, who lent money when no one else would, didn’t like Grandma Nehama. She was depressing his business. A handsome man with brains enough not to threaten her, he came to see her about it, offering her a percentage. She considered it for a week. The evil inclination and the good inclination fought hard, and she got a chill because the instinct for self-preservation, the
yetzer-hara
, was weakened. But when she rose up from her sickbed, she started the Women’s Singing Society. On Thursday evenings there was no sewing in the workshop. Women came to sing and drink tea, and if each of them put a few
groschen
in a jar like the men did in their friendly societies that doled out sick benefits and gave out loans, then it was no one else’s affair.

Of course those were in the days when she was living. A grandmother’s spirit can’t lift a feather in this world. But she can see what’s going on. And if you could hear her, she’d be whispering prayers in a graveyard:

Holy souls, I greet you. May our sins not be judged harshly, for we are all dust and ashes and we have no strength to contend with the fiery angel, the evil inclination. So I bow before the King of kings, the Holy One, and ask for mercy for this child. Let it be a time of compassion. The wind from the east is blowing so hard that the river will overflow with the
mama-loshen
. For the sake of our mothers, turn the wind and bring them safely into the channel
.

The full moon was climbing secretly into the sky. Later it would look down on the small Jewish corner of London, where people would wear masks and eat pastries and watch skits that made them laugh. And they’d drink until they couldn’t tell the difference between the good uncle of the Jewish queen and her enemy, the minister who’d issued the king’s decree to kill all the Jews on Purim. But you never know how things will turn out. On that day, he’d met his downfall. And a hundred generations later, Nehama was born on Purim. She’d made her first appearance just as the moon came into a black sky. And if a grandmother’s spirit had watched her then, why shouldn’t it watch now? The sky stretches from Plotsk to London, after all. And the moon is just as full.

CHAPTER 2

At the Threshold

LONDON, 1876

Frying Pan Alley

Nehama saw it all dimly, the children dancing around the organ-grinder, the stall of holiday pastries and the stall of feathered masks, the jacket seller reaching up with his pole to unhook a used jacket and hand it down to the prospective customer. It was all she could do not to faint.

“You bleeding,” a voice said in a heavy accent.
“Gotteniu
. Just look.”

“A genius you are,” Nehama said in a similar accent as she turned her head slightly. A young woman stood just outside the door to the house.

“You’re from the
heim
!” She looked at Nehama’s ruffled dress, stippled with blood. “Where do you live?” She spoke in a crude Yiddish, the cadence of water carriers and cart drivers.

“Don’t worry. It’s not your business.” Nehama answered in the
mama-loshen
without thinking, as if the pain of the miscarriage had made her forget that the mother tongue didn’t belong to her anymore.

“Maybe you have someone I could fetch for you?”

“Oh yes. My grandma,
alleva sholom
. And while you’re at the grave, be so kind as to ask my grandpa what he does with his balls while he studies Torah with the saints in heaven.”

“Oh, you’re so funny. I’m killing myself laughing. Too bad you’re bleeding your death.”

“Forget it.” Nehama tried to get up so she could walk out of the alley and away from the school that was ringing its bell. She stumbled, crumpling half on the stoop and half off it.

“Dear God in heaven, thank you very much,” the young woman said, pulling Nehama up. “Why did I have to come outside just this minute? God forbid she should die here on the step. Not to mention that I always had too much of the good inclination, God help me. Up you get, Miss Comedienne.”

Nehama had no strength left to resist the hand on her elbow, leading her inside and up a flight of stairs to a room with flaking walls and a window stained with yellow fog. She bit her lip to keep herself from fainting as she sat on the pot the young woman gave her, leaning her head against the other girl’s knees until the rest of the baby came out. The young woman helped her to the bed, then emptied the pot out the window onto the roof of the shack in the backyard, its contents joining fish bones and a broken bowl and boots too old to pawn.