Threads and Flames (35 page)

“She shouldn't have come here, then,” Raisa said harshly. She felt as if a great weight was crushing her chest. Mrs. Harrison Taylor! Such a name came from another universe, far removed from the shtetl, even beyond the world of a German Jewish family, no matter how wealthy.
I'm a fool,
Raisa thought.
A fool.
She lashed out to relieve her anger and bitter frustration. “Don't you have something better to do than stare at
this
?” Her gesture embraced the nightmare of the pier.

The older woman's eyes filled with sympathy. “You mistake our purpose, miss. We've come to see if there is any way we might be able to help provide—”

“Raisa!” Mrs. Kamensky strode up the aisle between the coffins and took her hand. “We're going. I've looked and looked. He's not here. He's
not
here!” Her voice was a tangle of fear, triumph, joy, and uncertainty. Raisa had to scramble in order to match her pace as they fled from Misery Lane into the blessedly fresh air outside.

They walked home like dreamers trapped in a city of smoke. Mrs. Kamensky linked her arm through Raisa's, but it was impossible to know whether she did it more to give support or take it. When they were within a few blocks of the Kamenskys' apartment, Raisa dared to break the silence. “I'll go to the hospitals tomorrow. I'm sure I'll find him.”

“Yes. You are a good girl, Raisa. I will come with you. We'll look for him together, the way we looked for him today, in that place, in that dreadful place. ...”

There was a fragile, distant sound to Mrs. Kamensky's voice that made Raisa uneasy. “Mrs. Kamensky, he wasn't
there.
He wasn't at the pier. We're going to find him
alive.
”

“Yes, of course, alive. Did I say otherwise?” Her words were like glass shattering on a stone. Her face was set in a stiff smile, but tears poured from her eyes, a flood so blinding that she missed her footing and stumbled over a curb.

Raisa grabbed her arm with both hands and saved her from a bad fall, then pulled a clean handkerchief from the cuff of her blouse and forced it into the older woman's hand. “Mrs. Kamensky, do you want to stop? Do you want me to find you someplace to sit down?”

“I want to go home, Raisa. I want to go home. I want to close my eyes and not think about what I saw today, about what I might see.” She paused and touched Raisa's cheek. “You don't cry. You're strong. Good. You can take me home.”

Mrs. Kamensky's words took Raisa by surprise.
She's right,
she thought.
I'm not crying, but it's not because I'm strong, it's because I
can't.
Why can't I? Zusa is dead. Oh, God, my friend is dead and I can't weep for her? Selig's anguish, the thought of how her mother will have to hear the news, the anguish I saw everywhere I turned in that dreadful place—it's all too much! It's as if all the horrors I've seen in these past two days have scraped me hollow inside. And worse than knowing Zusa is dead is
not
knowing what's become of Luciana, or Gussie, or Jennie. And Gavrel. My Gavrel. If I lose you the way I've lost Henda, I'm scared to death I won't be able to laugh or cry or ever feel human again.

It wasn't until they reached home that Raisa realized she had lost her mother's brooch.
It must have happened when that policeman hauled me halfway down the pier,
she thought. She touched the empty place where it had been. It was such a trifling loss compared to the chasm that had opened in the heart of the city, but for Raisa, it was like touching a fresh wound.

She sank to her knees and, to her heartfelt relief, she wept.

T
he next morning, as Mrs. Kamensky was getting ready to begin the visits to the city hospitals in search of Gavrel, she caught sight of the mirror that hung above the mantelpiece in the front room and pointed at it with a shaking hand.

“Who did this?” she cried in an unearthly voice. “Who covered the mirror? May God strike you dead for such cruelty! I tell you, I swear to you on my own life, my Gavrel was not among the dead!”

Mr. Kamensky, Fruma, Raisa, and Brina all exchanged confused looks. The mirror hung as it had always hung, catching the weak spring daylight, reflecting the front room. By tradition it would be covered, along with every other mirror in the home, if the family was in mourning.

“Lipke, darling, what are you saying?” Mr. Kamensky spoke soothingly to his wife. “Look, there's nothing hiding the mirror. Maybe your eyeglasses are smeared. Here, let me clean them for you.” He reached out to her, but she slapped his hand away.

“Liar! Liar! I know what I see! It's covered with a white cloth, white as an angel's wing, white as ice and snow!” She grabbed for the imaginary veil, her fingernails skidding down the naked glass. “Oh, God, why won't it move? Why can't I tear it away?
Why?
” One second she was standing in front of the mirror; the next she was unconscious on the floor.

They put her to bed, where she lay with her eyes open but unseeing. Raisa and Fruma took turns sitting with her for the first three days, while a distraught Mr. Kamensky continued to look after the store. There was no question of sparing anyone to go to the hospitals looking for Gavrel, and the situation turned Raisa's insides into a blazing knot of frustration.

“It's not necessary that we go,” Mr. Kamensky said. “Wouldn't he tell them himself to send word to us if, God willing, he's well enough to speak? And if not, God forbid, then we will know that soon enough.” He closed his eyes. “Soon enough.”

Raisa wanted to object, to forcibly turn his mind from such despairing thoughts. She wanted to fall to her knees and beg him to let her go to the hospitals alone, but then she looked into his exhausted eyes, and Fruma's, and knew what she had to do.
What will happen if I go now, and find him, but find that he's—? God forbid! God forbid! To bring such news into this house now, when all of us are stretched out thin as threads that a breath could snap? How could I destroy the people who have been so good to me and Brina? I will wait.

When Mrs. Kamensky's condition remained unchanged on the fourth day, her husband sent for a doctor to come. He seemed almost regretful that the doctor could find nothing wrong with her body.

“All that can help her is rest and time,” the doctor told them.

There were some small mercies. She would drink and eat, but only if one of the girls set the cup or the spoon to her lips. It was like feeding a wax doll. From time to time she would rise from the bed and walk to the toilet on her own, though she seemed baffled by the door. She would stand staring at the wooden panel until Fruma or Raisa held it open, and she would not come out of the toilet until one of them fetched her back to the apartment. Brina watched Mrs. Kamensky's mindless comings and goings with dumbstruck terror. From the day of the landlady's collapse, the little girl never spoke above a whisper in the apartment.

On the fifth day, Fruma went back to work. She had no other choice; the month of March was coming to an end, and the rent would be due. For the next three days, Raisa became the woman of the Kamensky household, busying her hands in order to distract her mind. But it was no use. Wherever her eyes roamed in the small apartment, she saw things that reminded her of Gavrel. When she looked out the window, all she could think was,
Somewhere in the city, he's waiting. He's alive; he has to be alive! Somewhere he's lying helpless in a hospital bed, nameless, unknown, with no one to claim him. Oh, Gavrel, I
will
come for you; I haven't abandoned you! But for now, I can't abandon your family, either. May God forgive me, I must stay here.

One by one the other women in the tenement came by with gifts of food and offers to sit with Mrs. Kamensky so that Raisa and Brina could go out to do the shopping. Raisa gratefully seized each and every chance to flee, though not for her own sake. She couldn't stand to see how small and scared Brina was while they remained in the apartment. As soon as she set foot on the sidewalk, she transformed into a normal, happy, high-spirited little girl, but once she crossed the threshold going the other way it was like seeing a leathery black wing cast an evil shadow over the child.

During one of those blessed escapes, Raisa and Brina ran into Zusa's cousin Selig at a butcher shop on Orchard Street. He looked haggard, his face haphazardly shaved, his clothing hanging on him like rags on a scarecrow. Raisa was a little nervous that his appearance would frighten Brina, but she needn't have worried; the butcher's little daughter was one of Brina's best friends. As soon as they laid eyes on one another, the two children skipped outside to play hopscotch on the sidewalk.

“Ah! Raisa, how are things going for you?” Selig asked, trying to smile. Without waiting for her reply, he added, “You'll have to forgive me. I should have sent you word. You were her dearest friend. You deserved to know.”

“To know what?”

“When we buried her. But I—I couldn't do that to her poor mother, having her see you standing there, alive, while our Zusa is—was ...” He lifted his eyes to heaven. “Raisa, don't misunderstand. We don't begrudge you your life. Never, never once in all her grief has my cousin Dvorah said one word to wish that you had died instead of Zusa when the Triangle shop burned, or even that you had died at all!”

“I wish—I wish I could say the same thing,” Raisa murmured.

Behind the counter, the butcher slammed down his cleaver and made the sign against the evil eye. “Do I hear right?” he bellowed. “You lived through that Gehenna and now you say something like that?”

“Yes, I was there,” Raisa said, meeting the butcher's scowl without flinching. “I was there, in the fire. I saw the people I'd worked with fall and burn and die, but I was left alive and unharmed; I could walk away. Why
me
? I'm nobody. If I'd died, the only family I'd leave behind is Brina, and we're not even kin. I'm nothing—just a girl, a silly greenhorn like hundreds,
thousands
of others. And so many of them are prettier, smarter, more talented than I can ever hope to be! Why did I survive when they didn't? For what? For
what
?”

Selig shook his head. “How should I know? How should anyone?”

The butcher made an impatient noise. “And what does that matter, in the end, all this
knowing
? What will it change? Maybe there
is
no reason you are still among the living, or maybe it's right in front of you. Just because you can't understand it doesn't mean it's not there. And maybe it's still waiting for you to find! Who knows? What I
do
know, what I see, is that you are here, alive and strong. You hold a priceless gift. Share it or keep it, but
open
it, girl. Open it.” He picked up his cleaver again and added, “Now, did you come in here to aggravate me or to buy some meat? Because if it's for the aggravation, I'm already married.”

His words struck Raisa to the heart. She could feel the tears rising. She turned on her heel and ran out of the butcher's shop with Selig behind her. She grabbed Brina away from her game with the butcher's daughter, in spite of the child's surprised protests, and didn't slow down until the middle of the next block. She didn't want Selig to see her crying. His life was already more than half drowned in tears.

By the time Selig caught up to her, she was in control of herself once more. He patted her back. “The butcher's a simple man, Raisa. That's why he's so . . . plainspoken.”

“I know,” she said. “He meant well.”
But it still hurts. Blunt words cut.

“Listen, come home with me,” Selig said. “Talk to Dvorah. Now that we've buried our girl, I think it would do her some good to talk to someone who really knew Zusa, someone who could share good memories.”

“But I have to go home,” Raisa said. “The neighbor's been sitting with Mrs. Kamensky for a long time already, and I still need to buy meat, and—”

“
Please,
Raisa.” Selig's entreaty was piteous. “Tell me what you need to buy and I'll bring it to your apartment myself. I'll sit with Mrs. Kamensky until you come home. You don't have to stay long. Dvorah might even send you away at once, but I beg you,
try
to talk to her about Zusa.”

“All right.” Raisa gave him the money she'd brought to pay the butcher. “I'll try.”

 

 

On a Tuesday morning, eight days after she had seen the phantom veil across the mantel mirror, Mrs. Kamensky woke up, got out of her bed, and began to cook breakfast. Raisa, Brina, and Fruma came out of their room to see the miracle. They stared so long and hard that at last Mrs. Kamensky snapped, “What, did I grow another head? Sit down at the table. Try to behave like people.”

An uneasy stillness hung over the breakfast table. Mr. Kamensky sat with his copy of the
Forward
in his lap, unread. He ate with one hand and with the other kept folding the paper into a series of tiny pleats, like a lady's fan. Brina refused to look at her tante Lipke at all. She stirred her bowl of oatmeal into elaborate landscapes but never raised a single spoonful to her mouth. Fruma and Raisa ate their breakfast as quickly as they could. Only when Fruma was done and timidly announced that she was going to work was the silence broken.

“You go nowhere until someone tells me what's going on.” Mrs. Kamensky stood up at her place between Raisa and her daughter and pointed a steady finger at her family. “You're all acting strange, like there's something you don't want to tell me. Did someone come here with news last night while I slept?”