The Third Daughter

by Talia Carner

  “Yes, superb,” Batya replied. She rose to her feet. To Señor Rosenberg she whispered, “We must pretend to make love—unless you wish not to pretend, of course.”

  “We’ll pretend.” He sat on the bed and bounced a bit. “Come lie down,” he said, and placed his head on the pillow.

  She stretched out next to him, their faces close. He pressed his foot against the bedpost and kicked it in a repetitive rhythm. “You need the Baron’s office to help get your father’s papers and all the documents for your family—and bring them here?”

  She blushed. “That’s asking a lot. I know. Why would you bother with me?”

  His whisper was even lower as he enunciated every word. “To put it simply: we are trying to bring down Zwi Migdal.”

  She felt a twitch in her eyelid. “Not possible. No one can fight them.”

  “We could—with help from the inside.”

  She sat up, fear gripping her stomach so hard that she felt nauseated. “Why me?” she finally asked.

  “You’re the only prostitute courageous enough to try to see Señor Farbstein. More than once or twice, right? We believe that you have more of that valor hidden inside of you.”

  We. This man and Señor Farbstein and God knows who else. Batya looked down at her fingers, clasped together so hard her knuckles were white, then remembered to bounce on the bed, making the springs creak.

  “Were you lured away from your family with lies?” Señor Rosenberg asked.

  She nodded.

  “How old were you then?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Sixty.” When he showed no reaction to her joke, she said, “Nineteen.”

  “What was your name before Esperanza?”

  “Batya.”

  “Daughter of God.” He paused. “Why are you still alive?”

  She glanced at him. “You mean why haven’t I died from the beatings? Or from disease?”

  “That, too. Or why have you not committed suicide?”

  It astonished her that he understood. None of the men in this bedroom had ever hinted at grasping the truth that glared in their faces. Each should have suspected that a Jewish girl wouldn’t stoop to prostitution unless destitute or coerced.

  Tears filled Batya’s eyes. “Because of my family. I promised to get them out. So far, I’ve done nothing. My mother died disappointed in me.”

  “Well, here’s your chance.” His finger wiped away a tear rolling down Batya’s cheek.

  She sniffled. “What would I need to do?”

  He grabbed the headboard and shook it. “Testify. There’s an uncorrupted prosecutor who works with us. He needs someone like you to come forward.”

  “Testify?” She thought of Rochel’s description of a scene in a play—a trial in front of lawyers, a judge, and a roomful of spectators.

  “Tell the judge what happened to you. What you’ve seen happening to others.”

  Shame curdled Batya’s stomach. How could she reveal her degradations to the whole world? “Everyone must know what’s going on. Ask any ten-year-old boy.”

  “Knowing something is not the same as first-person testimony. You telling the judge your story carries legal ramifications that are different from mere rumors.”

  “Just a judge, no one else?”

  “Our prosecutor will first talk to you.”

  Batya’s head buzzed with confusion. “What is this to you and Señor Farbstein?”

  Señor Rosenberg put his arms behind his head, crossed his ankles, and stared at the ceiling. “The reputation of the entire Jewish community. The Baron de Hirsch wants to build more agricultural villages here. He plans to bring hundreds of thousands of Jews from Eastern Europe. It’s the largest charitable project in human history carried out by one man. It’s his vision and his passion. But how can he save Jews from anti-Semitism in Russia if some Jews in Argentina bring the same hatred upon us all?”

  She took a long moment to compose herself, bouncing the bed as she did so. “How will the Baron’s plans change life for us, the tme’ot? If he’s bringing over more men than women, more girls must be captured to serve them.”

  “We aim to bring down the entire Zwi Migdal operation. To abolish prostitution run by Jews. The Baron holds that the white slave trade debases not only the Jewish community but all of Argentine morality.”

  White slave. The words hit Batya with the force of a gale. “Slave” was a word reserved for Negroes, not for a fair-skinned, green-eyed, blond Jewish girl. Batya sat up and hugged her knees. “Tell me who cares if I get killed before I even utter a single word to that prosecutor of yours.”

  He touched her arm lightly, then withdrew it. “The word has gotten out, and many people have begun to care about women in your situation. A new benevolent group, Ezrat Nashim, now works to save girls before they are lured and trapped. You may have seen their representatives—usually mature women—trying to intercept girls at the port here before some pimp gets to them. These charitable women also work the train stations and ports in Europe and speak with the girls before they embark on trains or ships.”

  Batya let out an acerbic laugh. “Some pimps are mature women. How would a naïve girl know the difference? Both must be telling her the same story. ‘Don’t trust anyone but me,’” she imitated in a mocking voice. She recalled the matronly woman in a carriage at the port, luring a young woman. Her intentions were revealed with the first question, “Do you need a job?”

  Señor Rosenberg let out a loud series of groans, then with a last gasp rose from the bed. He bent toward Batya. “We’ll get your family out and place you under our protection. In hiding. Think about it. I’ll be back in a few days.” He smiled. “Have your dance shoes ready.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Batya waited for Moskowitz to finish counting his money. She heard the familiar click of his vault opening, then the sound of it closing and locking. As he left his office, Moskowitz brushed against her at the door, but made no sign of acknowledgment. He knew she was coming to collect the old newspaper for the lavatory, and for him she was no more than a piece of useful furniture. Even an obedient dog occasionally received an affectionate stroke. A slave.

  Since Señor Rosenberg had uttered the word, she’d been searching the newspapers for mentions of slavery. She hadn’t encountered slaves in Argentina but now learned that the Negroes she’d seen were Africans who had, for centuries, been captured in droves and shipped to North America and other places whose names she didn’t recognize. There, each person was bought and legally owned by someone. Like she had been.

  Slave. That night, at last alone in her bed and after the new streetlamp wired for gas went off, the word burst again in her head. A slave. It shocked her to the core. She wasn’t God’s daughter but a slave. Her mind resisted accepting it, yet as she mulled over the word, her limbs numb with fatigue, her private parts chafed, she had to face the truth. Her philosophizing father would have quoted the Passover Haggadah, that the opposite of slavery was freedom. Indeed, while she was granted permission to walk outside—she had no chains on her legs like the Hebrew slaves in Egypt—she was bound to Freda and Moskowitz body and soul.

  In Batya’s first year, Freda had taken her to the municipal magistrate to record Batya as belonging to her. Rochel had explained that the law allowed only women to operate brothels that employed underage prostitutes. Now nineteen, Batya was still a minor for two more years, and still belonged to Freda. Nor would she be freed or gain legal rights as a free adult once she reached her majority. The only difference would be that Moskowitz could replace Freda as her lawful owner.

  She was owned forever. Like an African slave registered to her owner she could be exploited—or tortured if she rebelled. Then again, if the slaves in North America had become free, maybe so could she.

  Now in Moskowitz’s office, she glanced at the newspaper on his chair. Still neatly folded, it hadn’t yet been read. Since she was supposed to pick up only the news
papers thrown on the floor, she must wait a day or two until she could follow up on another story that had caught her interest.

  She touched the bold letters of the headline, “Alfred Dreyfus Is Facing Trial,” then examined the grainy photo of the Frenchman in his military uniform, wearing a hard-edged hat. The accused man’s face looked gentle, his gaze straightforward. There was none of the hardness about him that she had learned to expect from officer clients. Nor was his expression menacing or devious as a spy’s must be.

  Of course, he was Jewish, and a Jew could be as unscrupulous as any goy. Yet this man’s eyes seemed innocent. How could a powerful man, an officer, be trapped in a net of lies, as his attorney claimed? The answer came as soon as she asked it. France was in Europe, and Europe was bad for the Jews.

  Batya sighed and crouched to collect the older papers from the floor, refolding each page slowly in order to steal glances at the headlines. In Australia—was that the country near Germany?—women demanded the right to vote for something called parliament. The bubonic plague broke out in Hong Kong, wherever that was. Such a plague had once killed most of Argentina’s Negroes, she’d heard, which was why there were so few of them now. If such a plague were to arrive here, it would seek new victims and might find them in the Jews of Buenos Aires.

  Batya rose and listened for sounds from the corridor. Hearing none, she scanned the neat stacks of papers on Moskowitz’s desk. Most were tucked between cardboard covers held together by thin leather strips. On top of the right-hand pile rested a letter, like many others she’d seen, from one of Moskowitz’s colleagues in Europe regarding a new shipment of girls. The folder next to it had to do with Zwi Migdal. She leafed through pages: boring reports from meetings, with phrases such as “allocation of mutual credit fund,” which she didn’t comprehend. But she understood the parts about money that financed members’ travels back to Europe to recruit more girls. She’d seen these reports since last year, when Moskowitz had become even more prominent in the organization.

  The folder to the far left contained something new. The document inside listed two rows of names. By the fourth line Batya understood: the names were of the dead pimps and prostitutes buried in the Barracas Al Sur cemetery, the one Zwi Migdal had recently purchased. She thought of Nettie, an outcast buried outside the fence before this acquisition of the special cemetery for the tme’yim. The column next to the names noted how much Zwi Migdal paid for headstones for its members, the pimps. The dead girls had none, of course. The one time Batya had visited Nettie’s grave, on the thirtieth day of her passing, the name on the wooden sign had already been washed off by rain.

  Batya forced herself to close the file before she risked being caught. She checked the corridor and, seeing no one there, returned to root in the wastebasket for a discarded pencil under the sheets of carbon paper Moskowitz had crumpled and some letters he had torn in half. Finding no pencil, Batya was about to return the garbage back to the wastebasket when she changed her mind and tucked a handful inside the newspapers she was taking away.

  In the privacy of her room she checked her loot. It wasn’t hard to put together the few torn letters and to smooth out two pale used carbon papers showing Moskowitz’s handwriting. Batya couldn’t see anything of interest in these documents, but they might help her curry favor with Señor Rosenberg. She rolled the pages and wrapped them in a handkerchief, then crawled under her bed and squeezed the roll of letters into the tight space in the wall.

  A week later, Batya paused at the top of the stairs to examine the goings-on in the pavilion. She felt a smile taking over her face at the sight of Señor Rosenberg sitting alone at the same table he’d occupied the first time.

  He was back!

  Batya touched her forehead as if she’d forgotten something and rushed back to her room. She must retrieve the roll of papers while he wasn’t there to learn of her hiding place. Praying that no one would search her room in the coming thirty minutes when she would be dancing, Batya tucked the papers in a slit in the mattress where she sometimes placed gifts of money until she was alone and could hide it.

  “Have you given some thought to my proposal?” he asked her later, when they were shaking her bed—he fully dressed, she in her lace bustier, with her Spanish shawl still tied around her hips.

  “How can you get to my father? Their shtetl is very remote.” In fact, she had no idea where the family’s new shtetl was. They had been forced to move yet again, and the name of the village on her father’s second envelope that had arrived through Rafael meant nothing.

  “Our Odessa office will take care of it.”

  “A letter to them takes months.”

  He rocked the bed so hard it banged the wall. “You let me know that you are willing to cooperate with us, and I will contact our office by telegraph.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A new invention. A person sends a message in one country, and another office in another country receives it without a piece of paper ever being mailed.”

  She turned her back to him in anger. “You think that I’m just a stupid polaca that you can tell me such ridiculous tales?”

  “You don’t have to believe me. Go see with your own eyes in the central post office. They send signals instead of words.” He made some clicking sounds. “Once they reach across the Atlantic, the signals get translated back into words.”

  “So what will I see in the post office, an empty air into which people click their tongues?”

  He shrugged. “Actually, there are lots of wires.”

  “Wires going over the ocean from here to Odessa? I don’t believe it.”

  “Look, I don’t exactly know how it works, but it does.”

  “So if I want to speak with God, I click into this apparatus?”

  He laughed. “Only if God has the matching apparatus to catch your transmission.”

  “He’s God. He’s invented your apparatus. Of course He’d have one.”

  Her cooperation with Señor Rosenberg would bring about the use of this miraculous apparatus. Her resistance melting, Batya turned toward Señor Rosenberg again, then traced his sideburn, admiring its neat edges. She trailed her hand down to his chest.

  He removed her hand gently.

  “Don’t you like me? Don’t I look pretty to you?” she asked.

  “You are beautiful, and I like you very much. But I will not take advantage of you.”

  Batya hadn’t heard of a healthy man who didn’t possess a robust appetite. No sister would have believed it.

  “I have something to show you,” she said, and immediately regretted it. She would reward Señor Rosenberg’s kindness by handing him garbage. Blushing, she reached into the mattress and pulled out the roll of papers. “Sorry. It’s really nothing. Don’t be insulted that I thought you might be interested—”

  He sat up, took the papers, and unrolled them. His eyes opened wide. “Where did you get these?”

  Her blush deepened. “I’m sorry, it’s only junk.”

  “No, it’s not.” He flipped through the pages. The carbon paper rustled as he held it up against the light from the window. “How did you get them?”

  “From Moskowitz’s wastebasket.”

  “Do you know what these are?” His dark eyes sparkled. “If you could read, you’d understand that these papers are very important.”

  She bit her lip.

  “I knew you were different,” he said. “Señor Farbstein thought your courage was remarkable. Now I see that you’re also smart.” He grabbed her hands. “We will need all of this ‘garbage’ in the coming months.”

  “Months? How long until you take me out of here?”

  He waved the papers. “This information is critical. It will establish our case. Can you get more?”

  “Every day. Except maybe on Shabbat.”

  He flipped through the letters and pointed to the one with Zwi Migdal’s emblem. “You see this? These are the ones we need the most.”

  “When will you get
my family out?” Batya countered.

  “We’ll telegraph the Baron’s office in Paris tomorrow. That office can telegraph Odessa. Do you have your father’s address?”

  She banged the headboard against the wall for good measure, then walked to her dresser. She slid out the top envelope from under the red ribbon that contained all her father’s letters. Then she thought about her uncle’s lost envelope so long ago. She rooted in her drawer, found a pencil stub, and handed it to Señor Rosenberg. “Copy the address.”

  He copied it at the edge of one of the documents, then said, “You continue to get us these papers, and your wish will come true. But be careful.”

  After he left, Batya retrieved her father’s letter and pressed it against her lips. “Very soon, Papa. Very soon.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I’m not going to eat this dreck!” Glikel shouted.

  “You eat what’s there to eat,” Freda shouted back.

  Batya emerged from the kitchen yard, where she’d hung her underthings to dry. The shouting also drew Moskowitz out of his office, so she stepped back.

  “Who do you think you are?” Moskowitz said to Glikel, not raising his voice.

  “Look! I’m losing weight because I can’t eat this shit!”

  “Did your kurve mother eat better?”

  “My mother was an honest woman,” Glikel screamed. “You’re the son of a kurve yourself!”

  Moskowitz slapped her face.

  “Calm down,” Freda ordered her. “Get back to your office,” she told her brother, as several sisters gathered to watch the scene. “I’ll handle her.”

  “You taste the dreck they’re sending us from the food halls,” Glikel screamed at her. “We used to have good food. Jewish cooking, Argentine meat—”

  “You tell me how we can cook here for so many girls,” Freda replied. “Most brothels have the midday meals delivered.”

  “Delivered with cockroaches floating in grease,” Glikel spat. “Right, sisters?” When no one dared agree, she went on. “You can’t tell a potato from a chicken’s pulke. They won’t feed it to the pigs. Soon, we’ll all be so skinny that the clients will go to houses where the girls are plump and pretty. We’ll get poisoned from this dreck and die—”