Trail of Miracles

by Smadar Herzfeld

  And yet, a death even harder than the others still awaited me—the one I had vanquished as a young bride. Now I was a married woman, an angry woman, and I did not heed the signs that warned me of what was to come.

  Almost three years had passed since my father died, and things were tranquil in Mezeritch. Rabbi Nachum had sent a tutor for my sons. The man lived in our home, under the watchful eye of Rabbi Feilet, and on festivals, he would travel home to his young wife. Yose’leh was his name, and he was a strong, healthy young man who used to carry the children on his shoulders and play with them like a big brother. The Rebbe’s large library was their classroom, the open fields their playground.

  I looked after the family, cooked for them, and when important guests came, I looked after them. The Rebbe’s friends and students did not cease to come, and money also did not cease to flow, always through Rabbi Feilet’s pocket. From time to time, very infrequently, the children’s father would appear and their voices became hushed. Yose’leh would take a stick and bang it on the table, and the boys would be obedient and study harder, lowering their heads and keeping silent whenever their father entered a room.

  This father of theirs, like a great black angel, passed through the rooms and conversed with Rabbi Feilet, touching the Maggid’s books, and when I served him food, he would peck at the plate and not look at me. When he did look at me, I saw that he was angry I had not gone to live with him, but the anger was tight within him and had no outlet.

  Sometimes, he would knock on my door and come into my room, looking around long and hard, as if to stamp it on his memory, and then he would gaze out the window or say something that never amounted to a real conversation, then blush or go pale, as if he had glimpsed something painful. I might say something about the children and he would make clucking sounds with his tongue and pull at his earlocks, quoting from the Song of Songs—“My dove in the clefts of the rock,” or “How beautiful you are, my beloved”—then shuffle his shoes against the floor as I kept silent, waiting.

  But nothing, nothing ever took place between us that was like the Song of Songs, and he would slip away as he had come. It was not clear to me why he had come. And after he had gone, I would be filled with insult and anger.

  My birdlike husband, who looked as if he were lost, as if he were wandering the face of the earth. My husband, who took flight and had fled his father’s royal court, his children and me—my husband who had been sentenced to death, who on my account had been granted a stay of execution—was without protection for the first time in his life. I was told that, in Fastov, he shut himself away in his room, almost without food, and when he went out, he frightened his congregants with his silence and his pale, hollow face. Strange stories about his behavior reached my ears. They said he would hide his face in a scarf when speaking to people, and when he was praying in the synagogue, he would beat his head against the wall.

  But for us, in Mezeritch, summer was rampant, running wild. Yose’leh and my sons took their books out to the meadows, and I went back and forth between the house and the meadows. I drifted from the large shady kitchen to the wide-open windows, from the windows to the verdant trails that led to the river. And in the depths of thickets and the reeds that grew by the banks of the water, I threw off my clothes and dove into the clear water.

  The insects buzzed close around me that summer, and the chickens and the geese I kept in the yard clustered close around my ankles. The dishes I cooked were so rich and tasty that Froumeh said that an angel must be helping me. The children’s cheeks filled out, their voices grew deeper, and their skin was tanned in the sun and looked soft and smooth.

  Even Shalom, my sickly son, was healthy and elated that summer. In the evenings, he would tell me legends he had read in the Talmud, about kings and wise men who lived in the Land of Israel, and he painted the land in gentle, soft colors, which today I know are not its colors at all.

  At the end of summer, my husband came to us, appearing suddenly as was his wont, only thinner and even more silent than usual. He did not come into my room, did not approach the children, just shut himself away in the Rebbe’s old room and asked Rabbi Feilet to bring his meals there.

  And on the eve of the Sabbath, when my husband was still with us, the Maggid appeared in my dream and ordered me to let my husband know that he should exchange his room for mine, or at the very least, he should move his books to my room. In my dream, the Maggid stood upright, not crippled or limping as he had been in his lifetime, and his pale eyes were wide with undisguised anxiety. I immediately tried to tell my husband. I knocked on his door over and over, but he did not open it. I told Rabbi Feilet I had a message for my husband from his father, but he came back, saying Avraham was immersed in prayer and refused to hear a word, so the opportunity was lost for me to deliver the Maggid’s warning.

  The evening after that Sabbath, a fire broke out in Avraham’s room and consumed all the books. There was a huge commotion in the house. Rabbi Feilet dragged my husband from the burning room, and all of us carried buckets and ran to put out the fire. Yose’leh, the boys’ teacher, was the hero of the evening. In his white nightshirt, his eyes shining and his muscles visible in the firelight, he threw blankets on the flames and gave instructions on where to spray the water. Rabbi Feilet, the boys, Froumeh, and I ran back and forth with blankets and buckets, but my husband just sat at the kitchen table, his shoulders drooping and his skin blackened with soot, as rigid and solitary as a statue in the desert.

  Even when the fire had been put out, he did not bestir himself from his numbness. He merely wrapped himself in the dressing gown Froumeh had brought him, his body shaking with the cold. And when it was dawn, he slipped away, back to Fastov.

  The High Holy Days approached. The dignitaries of the Maggid’s court, who had urged me to move to Fastov, returned to scold me for not going and even blamed me for the fire.

  “You are a rebellious woman,” they said, and one of them, whose name I do not wish to utter, made a gesture of contemptuous revulsion and almost raised his hand against me.

  I was weary of words, weary of everything that had happened, and I threw all my energy into cooking for the festival. A day before Rosh Hashanah, the last messenger from my husband came, requesting that I come for the holidays. Again, my soul’s dear friend came to me in a dream, his hand floating upon my head like a tiny ship, and in a gentle voice—the voice in which he had spoken to me at the very first, when I emerged from the linen closet—he said that if I didn’t want to, I should not travel to Fastov. So I did not join my husband.

  Yose’leh’s wife came for Rosh Hashanah, and Rivke’leh and her family were also with us. The skies were full of clouds and fresh autumnal winds shook the windows. Large flocks of birds passed on their way south. Throughout these festive days, I gazed at my two sons, and it was as if I were discovering them anew and I became aware of how much I truly loved them.

  Yisroel-Chaim sang the festival songs in a strong, pleasant voice; he ate and sang and his pale eyes shone. Next to him sat his younger brother, his black curls falling over his eyes and his soft mouth as round as a red ribbon. He was wearing the velvet coat and silk pants I had sewn him for the occasion. When he caught my gaze, my younger son fluttered his eyelashes and pulled down his mouth like an old rabbi, blowing air through his lips while still fully concentrating on the prayers.

  My princely son, I thought, there’s greatness in your face, but only I see it, only I see it so clearly!

  That day, I felt the immense happiness of discovery within me. I saw the biblical Hannah and her son Samuel beside her, dressed in a cotton robe. Then my imaginings blended with the smells, the colors, the dishes, the songs, and the blessings of the New Year.

  For a moment, I remembered my husband, and then forgot him all over again. Far from my sight, he was far from my heart. A dozen years had gone by since I had fought the heavenly court on his behalf. Now I did not want to fight and I did not want to remember. And letting him slip from my memo
ry was the true beginning of his death.

  Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, also came and went. Rabbi Nachum arrived two days after the festival, and as was his custom, he took the boys to synagogue all day. But unusually for him, he avoided my gaze and kept away from the dining table. He admitted that an important matter was troubling him, but did not explain, looking fixedly at his fingernails so as not to look at me.

  On returning from afternoon prayers, he closed himself in a room with Rabbi Feilet, and immediately after that, he set out again.

  The following morning, the children rose before dawn and rushed to the synagogue. I was especially surprised by Shalom, who normally found it difficult to get up and always sought a pretext to stay in bed.

  On the third day, I followed them to the synagogue, and from the window, I heard them recite the mourner’s Kaddish.

  I took my younger son aside and shook him fiercely. He burst out crying and said, “Mama, we’re orphans!” And he said that Rabbi Nachum had warned them not to tell me.

  I rushed back home and pounced on Rabbi Feilet.

  The man covered his head with his hands, but let me go on shouting. Eventually, he said that Avraham’s followers had decided not to tell me he had died because they found it difficult to deal with me, and more difficult still to admit they had failed to protect my husband.

  “Difficult?” I roared. “What about me, isn’t what’s happening difficult for me?”

  I never shouted like that, like I did at Rabbi Feilet that day. I shouted that they did not have enough respect for me, and asked how they could have drawn my children into the conspiracy—the orphans of the dead man—how they could forget that I was the widow, that I was the one who had tried to warn about everything that was about to happen. My husband had never listened to me, and they had never listened to me, and now they had conspired to cheat me out of my mourning.

  It was as if I spewed some disgusting reptile from my soul, and after my tirade, I was left weak and spent, but it was clear to me what I must do. I tore my dress as mourners do and then sat down on the floor till the seven days were over. The days that remained of the week of mourning were mine, completely mine.

  Women from across the region came to comfort me. Rivke’leh tended to me just as she had in the days when she was unmarried. My sons repented their sin toward me and the three of us curled up together on the floor, sharing warmth at this time of unraveling, the end of the old home, the end of the Rebbe’s court. It was the end of my marriage and the end of my sons’ lives under my wings.

  What can a mouth say apart from whispering love?

  Who will I love but You, my Lord? For You are Lord of the secret wind that bears my body aloft in the night, Who takes me far beyond the four rivers to a forbidden garden, wonderful and lost.

  A great, expansive quiet engulfs the garden. And solitude closes my mouth, so the words are forgotten, making me tumble down to Your feet. Take me, take . . .

  Everything that happened after the death of my husband happened slowly, without a plan, and step by step brought about the revolution in my life. I heard the word “revolution” from refugees who came from the land of Ashkenaz. They spoke of turmoil and war and destruction that had left their land broken and fragmented. And yet that devastation paved the way for something completely new to arise.

  “That’s revolution,” they said. “It’s the end of the old ways to make way for a new path.”

  When did the house begin to collapse beneath my feet, when were my sons lost to me, and when did I know that I had been left utterly naked? Time blurs in my head and there is no forward, no backward, only darkness and radiance.

  The darkness lasted many days.

  First, I closed up the Rebbe’s old home; I closed it up and sold it. I sold furniture, clothes, books; one item after another from my matrimonial home. I wore a market apron, as my mother had worn, and I took a stall in the marketplace in Rovno.

  Again I lived in this city of merchants that squats in a valley. My sons still had beds in my home, but the study of the Torah took them from me. They moved to Chernobyl, to the home of Rabbi Nachum, two days’ distance from Rovno, in a large house I had never seen. My son Shalom often talked about that house. He spoke about Rabbi Nachum’s many disciples and about his way of talking and joking around a simple wooden table, the rabbi dressed in old clothes, telling stories about the wise men of the Land of Israel who were carpenters, shoemakers, and farmers.

  “He’s a man of the earth,” said Shalom with an adoring expression. “He goes around in galoshes and the hem of his coat is always muddy.”

  My son Shalom, so different from his Rebbe, was delicate, his clothes always fine, like the son of a king. He would comb his curls around his face, keep a folded handkerchief in his shirt pocket, and take care that his clothes were always clean and pressed.

  He would often leave without permission and travel to see me. I would come home, smelling of the market, and he would be sitting at the table with a holy book. He would wrinkle his nose at the smell and say, “How Joseph missed his mother Rachel” or “How David suffered when he fled from the fury of Saul.” He saw himself as the righteous Joseph and as King David. He saw himself longing and suffering as they did.

  I would be exhausted from a day of standing at the market, and yet I still stood and cooked and we sat down to eat. My son sat facing me, as handsome as Joseph, as beloved as David, and the room was bathed in radiance as I gazed at my child’s dreamy eyes and slender fingers.

  Tears filled my eyes and fell onto the food, so even the food was radiant. And it was as if a splendid dome rose up over us, as if we were cut off from the world. And a kind of quiet descended and drove out all the weariness and grief.

  My son would stay awhile with me, and the radiance remained between us all those days, and when I went to the market, I would long for my son and would hasten home as early as I could. That was how it would be until a messenger arrived from Rabbi Nachum, and on a few occasions, he came in person.

  Then there were the looks, those meaningful glances that always passed between Rabbi Nachum and me. And when the rabbi came my son would go silent, mute as a fish. And I’d pack his laundered and pressed clothes, fold the handkerchiefs, and wrap up some pie in a cloth, and then the two of them would set off.

  My son would leave, holding Rabbi Nachum’s large hand, then the radiance left my house. The darkness would fall upon me. It loomed over me even when I was standing at the market stall, my lips moving without a sound, counting the money that, one day, when the hour of the revolution came, would allow me to travel to the Land of Israel.

  At night, the darkness also held sway. And from within it, there rose, sparkling, the faces of the dead. The face of the father-in-law who had been so kind to me, and the face of my father, and the face of my husband. The Maggid taught me how to treat people and how to earn money to support myself and my family. My father pushed me to remarry, and warned me about haughtiness and the evil spirit. My husband claimed that I was his, that I would always be his; he said that the thread that connected us would never be severed.

  The words of the dead confused me and I didn’t know what I should do. In the meantime, I saved up some money and sewed silk garments for my children, and in my heart of hearts, I yearned each day to come home and find my younger son waiting for me like Joseph for his mother, Rachel.

  And without noticing it, I began to think of myself as Rachel. I thought that perhaps I would also suddenly disappear from my sons. I would not die, but leave and not return to them.

  I was deathly afraid of these thoughts—what mother thinks of leaving her sons and not returning? Nevertheless, I was unable to banish the idea.

  So I buried myself in work. I was the first to open her market stall in the morning, and in the evening, I did laundry and sewed and sank into a deep sleep. But in the middle of the night, the dead would again begin speaking in my head, and again I would hear the voice of Rachel, which really was my voice,
saying to me, “Be on your way. Leave the boys, leave everything and take up the wanderer’s cloak.”

  And when I heard that voice, I grasped my head in my hands and I begged it to be silent.

  I think back to that time, in Chernobyl, that winter when the wife of Rabbi Nachum died. Before he started to court me. The snow had come and a great unbearable cold took hold of my life. I was in Mezeritch, the Maggid’s hometown, quite alone after the deaths of my father and father-in-law, and hardly saw my sons. To keep my soul alive, I read stories from the Bible.

  Again I saw them walking toward a distant land, fathers and mothers, and children small as stars, accompanied by sheep and camel. And it was as if I, too, walked in the hot, soft sand, as if I were part of that large family, from the same tribe of nomads.

  It was as if the land had been waiting for me, and I sank into it, slipped between the grains of wheat and sand, and it felt good to me, good. The silence at home was immense, the distant land was close, and again I was able to go toward it as in my childhood dream.

  So winter passed for me, in hard work and in a great dream.

  And when the snow melted, my young son appeared again, his face full of stories of Rabbi Nachum, about the goodness of his heart and his happiness. I listened to him and I saw the distant land slipping again out of my reach. I felt my solitude afresh, and I told him that I had no roots in this place, no home of my own. And when he heard this, his face fell and he said, “If we could only travel, just you and me, to a distant place!”

  So I spoke to him like a mother and I said that he had to look to his own life, and to thank God that Rabbi Nachum cared for him and guided him.

  And he said that Rabbi Nachum did not understand him, did not understand his feelings.

  And there was silence between us and I did not know what to say. And afterward, he remained at my home for a few days and there was an atmosphere of sadness over us. And when he had already packed his belongings to return to Chernobyl, he suddenly turned to me, his face reddening, and said, “Why don’t you marry again? Why not marry Rabbi Nachum?”