The Third Daughter

by Talia Carner

  There was no one to consult, to help her untangle all the speculations crowding her head. What would Rochel do if, by a miracle, she had the chance to find and rescue her two young brothers? Would she forsake them and selfishly choose a new, comfortable life for herself? Batya couldn’t ask her friend. As close as the two of them were, their hearts were isolated islands, each floating in its own ocean of grief. And a betrayal of Moskowitz was too frightening to reveal to anyone.

  She raised her head to heaven. “Mama, you’ve seen how hard I’ve tried to save money for them. You’ve seen what hell my life has been. Haven’t I done enough? Isn’t it time I free at least myself?”

  The pigeons in the gutter cooed an incomprehensible response.

  A couple of days later, just after breakfast, Moskowitz ordered Batya to put on her organza dress. Getting ready in her chamber, Batya wondered what kind of party was being held this early in the day, but when she descended from the carriage twenty minutes later, she learned that Moskowitz was taking her to a photographer to have an image taken of her holding a tango position.

  The next day, proud of his rising star, Moskowitz hung grainy copies of her picture at the entrance to the house and pinned them to fences around the neighborhood—and probably far beyond. In the following days and evenings, while Batya serviced a string of new men who came in response to Moskowitz’s hype, Ulmann’s offer became unbearably tempting. It was hers to grab—now, and not sometime in the vague future like Sergio’s plan. A long time ago, Batya recalled, she had been lured by death. Now she was being lured by life. Then, she had chosen to live only so she could get her family out of Russia. Now she must decide whether to live for her own sake.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Another month had passed when her family in Russia celebrated Passover, while in Argentina summer refused to leave and its humid heat pressed on Batya like the lead cape of her dilemma. In his weekly visits, Ulmann had repeated the sweetest words Batya had ever heard, “I want you to be my lifelong companion,” to which she mumbled that this was what she wanted most in her life. “You know it takes time to get the papers in order,” she said.

  He never asked the obvious question, whether she had saved enough to pay for the ocean crossings for her family. She wouldn’t have had a positive answer: her bank account hadn’t grown since Freda had begun deducting Dora’s cost. Nor did he ask what would happen when her family arrived. She alone existed for him, detached from her relatives, and Batya guessed that, wrapped as he was in his need, he assumed that they’d fend for themselves as all immigrant families did.

  Her only escape from her predicament and the men visiting her chamber was her dance practice sessions in the upstairs hall above the milonga, where the bandoneón player pumped his instrument and the music swept Batya into forgetting, at least for a little while, the pros and cons that kept churning in her head. How she loved the daring new combinations Sergio taught her! He had given names to the steps she already knew. Palanca was levering her during a jump. Tijeras were the foot or legs scissoring. Quebrada, the sudden body twist. At dawn, before falling asleep, Batya forced her mind off her burning quandary by envisioning their choreographed dances.

  Twice more the prosecutor showed up at her rehearsals to interrogate Batya, going over endless details. He showed Batya photographs of pimps, asking her to identify those she knew. When and where she’d seen each, why she remembered the occasion, and what she had heard in café conversations.

  “What about Restaurant Calle Florida? Have you ever been there?”

  She let out a derisive chuckle. “Oh, yes.”

  “Who were the caftans you met there?”

  “One was in jail at the time but got permission to get out to see his dentist. Instead, he came to Calle Florida for a gourmet feast.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I don’t know. But I heard him tell the others that his judge had stored his own late mother’s furniture in the jail. Then, when his palm was greased—”

  “Explain please what you mean by ‘greased’?”

  “Bribed. The judge ordered the warden to furnish the pimp’s cell with his mother’s beautiful furniture.”

  Señor Ramos took a moment to look at his notes. “The procurers. Whom do you know?”

  “Procurers?”

  “Alfonsos. Those who work in Europe for the pimps but don’t run the brothels.”

  She shrugged. “They are young and make a very good impression.” She thought of Moskowitz’s first appearance in her life. He no longer traveled to Eastern Europe. In his mid-thirties and tending to fat, he might be suspected of being a widower with children; younger men had better luck with teenage maidens. “They look for agunot, too,” she added, “and—”

  Señor Ramos raised his hand to stop her. “Agu—what?”

  “Married women abandoned by their husbands,” Sergio interjected. “They can’t remarry without a Jewish divorce, called a get. In their extremely poor society, without financial support, they have no means of survival.”

  Batya added, “Some matchmakers give the alfonsos lists of agunot in their villages, so they can offer these women jobs here. If an aguna has a daughter, it’s a double coup. They call the girl ‘lightweight.’”

  “Thank you.” Señor Ramos leaned forward on his elbows and looked into Batya’s eyes. “Do you know of any other woman in your situation who might talk to me?”

  Batya pretended to consider the question, knowing the answer. She wouldn’t approach Rochel. Since Nettie’s death, Rochel, too, had changed, as if some light had dimmed in her and had been replaced by sadness. Or perhaps it was just fatigue. Batya also was exhausted from this life, but at least she had hope to sustain her. “There’s no way for me to know,” Batya finally said.

  “What about someone who seems brazen, who talks back to Moskowitz?”

  Glikel could never be trusted. Batya shook her head.

  “Please say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ so my clerk can write down your responses.”

  “No.”

  “How about someone from another house who fights with her pimp?”

  “No.”

  “Let me get it straight: You do not know of any girl—in your house or elsewhere—who fights with her pimp?”

  Batya shrugged. “Many fight with their pimps. They are family. Fighting doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Explain that, please?”

  “They make up. The women give in. What’s their other option?” Annoyance crept up Batya’s spine at having to spell out the obvious. “We are told many times not to go to the authorities, because prostitution is legal. We are legally registered, so you know who we are. The police regard our pimps as our husbands and don’t get involved in ‘domestic disputes.’”

  Señor Ramos scribbled something in his notepad. “You’ve heard conversations about the Jewish community ostracizing Zwi Migdal?”

  “Sure. They lump the caftans and the kurves together. As if we—I—have a choice.”

  “What about antislavery organizations. Any talk about those?”

  Batya thought of the matrons Sergio had mentioned. She let out a puff of air in dismissal. “Those do-gooders are only interested in saving girls before they are trapped. They wouldn’t help someone like me. Anyway, Zwi Migdal has spies everywhere.”

  “Spies. Any names you suspect?”

  Lying on her back was easier than these endless probing questions. Esperanza could tolerate a lot more than Batya could. She should accept Ulmann’s offer and be done with all of this.

  “No.” Batya yawned, not bothering to cover her mouth as Moskowitz had insisted women should do. “I’m missing my siesta.”

  “Let’s take a break,” Señor Ramos said.

  Sergio ordered a cool ginger drink and a plate of media lunas, flaky, crunchy cookies shaped like half-moons and sprinkled with white confectioner’s sugar. While Batya ate the pastry and drank the spicy drink, she half listened to the honorable prosecutor and his clerk chat wi
th Sergio.

  “The Italian community and the French don’t have a problem living with pimps and prostitutes,” the young man said to Sergio. “Why the difference?”

  “We have a strong moral zeal. One of our decrees is that ‘all Israel is responsible for one another.’ We are one people.” Sergio paused. “Also, because the Jews are a majority in this business, we are facing a new wave of anti-Semitism. Argentina should be a safe haven for us, not another source of hatred.”

  “We’ll take them down one at a time,” the older man said. “All these criminals, not just the Jews, are staining our country’s reputation, just when we are moving forward and developing at such a fast pace.”

  The future of Argentina and its Jewish community had nothing to do with her, Batya thought. She was tired. If she were with clients, she would have faked interest in their talk. No need to expend such effort now. She pushed her plate away. “How much longer?”

  “Forty-five minutes?” Señor Ramos pulled out a file crammed with papers, opened it, and showed her some of the letters she had stolen. The Yiddish letters were marked with asterisks and numbers corresponding to a list of comments in Spanish on another sheet, which the prosecutor consulted. He pointed to names of associates in Europe, showed her photographs from another file, and questioned which of them she had met personally or had heard about from other prostitutes.

  At the repeated questions—asked from new angles but returning to the same points—Batya’s patience ran thin. “I don’t know him, or him, or him,” she said, poking each photograph in front of her. She regretted having provided the letters.

  She turned to Sergio and said in Yiddish, “You said you wanted to destroy Moskowitz. How many more pimps do you need to investigate before you take me away from here?”

  “Sorry, but it is all part of the same plan. Bring down Zwi Migdal.”

  Batya thought of Ulmann’s dwindling patience. If Sergio wanted to investigate every pimp in Buenos Aires, she’d be stuck slaving for Moskowitz for years.

  Señor Ramos waited through the exchange, then, responding to a nod from Sergio, handed a Yiddish letter to Sergio. “Please read it to her.”

  Pretending to be illiterate only took more of Batya’s time. She put out a hand to the prosecutor. “I can read it myself.”

  “You can?” Sergio blurted out, then, as if regretting his outburst, leaned back in his chair.

  “Before your arrival I’ve already prepared for you clothes made of silk.” Batya raised her head and looked at Señor Ramos’s bushy white eyebrows. “It’s from a husband who plans to bring his wife from the old country to work here for him.”

  “As a prostitute?”

  “What else?”

  “Why was the letter in Moskowitz’s possession if it was between a husband and his wife?”

  Batya pointed at the letter’s heading. “It has no woman’s name,” she said. “Zwi Migdal sets the husband up in business by loaning him money to buy a girl at an auction, then it helps the husband bring the wife over to work so she can help her husband pay his debt.”

  “Please let’s be clear: Zwi Migdal writes these letters for a husband to send to his wife? Does he know that she will have to prostitute herself here?”

  “Of course. That’s his new plan.”

  “Allow me to explain,” Sergio said to Señor Ramos. “A man leaves the old country with the intention of finding honest work, to earn money and send for his family. He discovers that he can’t pluck gold fruits off trees, and without Spanish or work skills he’s unable to earn a living. Zwi Migdal convinces him that in the New World pimping is a form of good business—and that he is already blessed with a potential income in the form of a wife waiting to be brought over.” He paused. “The divorce rate in such cases is high, and our community tries to help these wives when they arrive and learn the truth.”

  And then what do these divorced women do? How do they feed their children? Too exhausted, Batya kept her mouth shut. Cooperating in this investigation for months, she was helping neither her family nor herself, only assuming an enormous risk.

  Back in the house, Glikel interrogated Batya about her outing. “Such a handsome man must be cutting Moskowitz off from his earnings.” Laughing, she made crude remarks about Sergio’s anatomy.

  “You’re just jealous.” Batya turned her back to her. Just the week before, exiting the dance hall with Sergio, she thought she’d caught Glikel’s silhouette next to a vendor’s cart. It turned out to be a woman selling vegetables. But that night in Batya’s dream, men stuck pins under her nails and burned her with cigarettes. Then one man waved a sword and stuck it in her belly. Batya woke with a start and sat up, her heart pounding.

  She had slid out of bed and pulled out the trunk. She lit a candle instead of the kerosene lamp, so no light would be seen from her window while she examined the caricature of Dreyfus. Her finger stroked his face. The plight of this man across the ocean had touched her because, like her, he was trapped in a web of lies; like her, he’d lost his freedom. Like her, he didn’t know who his real friends were.

  The next morning, Moskowitz had asked her, “How is your dance practice coming along?”

  Batya’s heart skipped a beat. She shrugged. What if he came by to watch? The fact that she hadn’t yet been caught giving her testimony to Señor Joaquin Ramos was a miracle.

  But miracles never happened to her. Ulmann wouldn’t bring her family over, and if she were murdered by Zwi Migdal’s thugs, her family wouldn’t be rescued either. If she were to continue working with Sergio, something must change.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Winter 1895

  Winter arrived with barely the benefit of autumn, and the sunlight that washed the world dimmed. For days, rain came down with no reprieve, driving into the windowpanes, and chill burrowed into the porous walls and penetrated the bones.

  Ulmann hadn’t been to the house for two weeks. Maybe he was busy with the upcoming Rosh Hashanah orders, sitting by a table at the back of his store late into the night, fashioning fine jewelry for rich customers. Or perhaps he was ill; so many people suffered from severe coughs. Having sent three girls to the hospital, Freda refused clients who obviously posed a health risk.

  Batya stood in the corridor outside her chamber. Winter wind blew in from the patio and whistled an eerie music through the cracks around the ill-fitting window frames, and it echoed through the corridor, as if an evil eye were searching for a soul to capture. Batya buttoned up the green cardigan that Glikel had knit for her as what had at first seemed like an olive branch. Batya had purchased the wool according to Glikel’s instructions, but when she completed the cardigan, Glikel requested payment for her labor. Her opium consumption had increased and with it her need for money.

  Batya tucked her hands into the cardigan’s deep pockets, fearing Glikel’s mean spirit knitted into each stitch. She preferred the warmth of her magenta-colored velvet robe, which flowed luxuriously down to the floor, but the pretty robe had to be kept pristine, worn only when she worked. From the top of the stairs she confirmed that no client was waiting in the pavilion, so she descended and made her way through to stop by the coal-burning stove. Later in the afternoon, the musicians would station themselves in front of it in order to keep their fingers nimble.

  She was rubbing her hands together to maintain the warmth when she entered Moskowitz’s office to take out his old newspapers. He was still in, later than usual, dressed in his travel suit. He stood in front of his open vault, rummaging through its contents and depositing selected documents into a small trunk at his feet.

  Batya turned to leave just as Freda entered with a cup of coffee. “I’ll come back later,” Batya murmured. Outside the office, she halted and pressed her ear to the wall to eavesdrop. Right by her face, hanging along the side of a painting, she noticed a key. Probably to Moskowitz’s door. In a houseful of illiterate prostitutes, he rarely locked it.

  “How long will you be in Rio?” she heard Freda ask h
er brother.

  “A week.” Moskowitz took a noisy sip of coffee, something he forbade Batya to do in public. “Important members of Zwi Migdal will be coming from all over to vote.”

  “God will bless you, you should be elected president.”

  “Pedro won’t relinquish his throne so easily. If I don’t get all the pledged votes, next year is only a year away.” He chuckled at his own joke. “Pedro hates that I’m the treasurer; I have more say than he does as president. He must go through me for every expense, so who’s in charge?”

  “Even as a little boy our Yitzik was a math professor.” Freda laughed. “There’s no situation you can’t handle.”

  He chuckled again, and Batya walked away. She wouldn’t get the newspapers for a whole week; she’d miss reading about Alfred Dreyfus’s fate.

  An hour later, feeling gloomy, she looked down from her window at the rainwater flowing along the street. A covered carriage was parked in front of the house, the horses’ heads lowered under the heavy rain. From the commotion that reached Batya from inside the house, she figured that a horde of girls was gathering in the vestibule for a big sendoff.

  She descended the back stairs, intending to get herself a cup of hot coffee and then, after Moskowitz had left, join the sisters in the pavilion, since few customers would be around in this weather.

  As she passed the office, her glance caught Moskowitz’s leather briefcase still resting on the chair next to his gray felt hat, a walking stick with a silver handle leaning against it. His wool coat was draped on the second chair, but the trunk with the documents must have been carried out to the carriage; Moskowitz was probably making a last stop at the lavatory before collecting his personal belongings.

  Without thinking, Batya entered, unbuckled the briefcase, and looked inside, unsure what she hoped to find.

  There was the ledger.

  She pulled it out, slid it under her cardigan, and quickly rebuckled the briefcase. She hugged the book to her chest and, heart pounding, slipped through the back corridor up to her room.