Worlds Seen in Passing

by Irene Gallo

  I knew better than to tell anybody that I was waiting, but I waited nonetheless.

  I think that I am waiting still.

  * * *

  My mother never quite recovered from Uncle Leyb’s news, and when the story of the Jew at Dornburg became commonplace, her soul suffered further. She had been so careful, so alive to the delicate balance that would placate the Christians so that we could live a good life; finding that her best efforts were so easily overcome, that the mayor and the judge of a town where my father had traded for years would hang him at the behest of a vagrant fiddler, and that the townspeople from who he had bought, to whom he had sold and loaned, with whom he had drunk and diced and sung, would gather and cheer, it was too much for her to bear, I think.

  She became a wan, quiet shadow of the mother I remember from early childhood. She stayed indoors as much as possible, and avoided contact with non-family. She ate little and slept for long hours. I missed her strictness. She had always been the stern and reliable pillar of my life. And of course, business suffered as the families of Hoechst enjoyed visiting less and less often, and my mother declined to seek out their company. Too, she suffered strange aches and illnesses with neither source nor surcease.

  We would have starved, I think, if not for Uncle Leyb and our next-door neighbors, whose eldest daughter came over to help my mother through her days. Tante Gittl, I learned to call her. There was some talk for a while, talk that I was supposed to be too young to notice or to understand, that she was angling to catch the eye of Uncle Leyb. If this was anything more than talk, she was doomed to disappointment, for no woman ever caught the eye of my uncle, who much preferred the company of other young men, though he was not to meet his business partner Elias until some years later.

  Uncle Leyb took over my father’s peddling, joined by my eldest brother, Hirsch, who, at sixteen, had hoped to make his way to Vienna, but willingly turned to peddling to keep food on the table. Tante Gittl helped my mother recover herself, and to slowly revive what remained of our business, and Heymann was able to continue at cheder. At thirteen, Josef was already demonstrating that he had the temperament of a sociable man, one who preferred the company of fellows to the rigors of scholarship. He now keeps a tavern in Mainz, having gone to live with our mother’s cousin and learn the trade.

  Heymann devoted himself to study, seeking in the teachings and commentaries of Rebbes both living and dead the father we had lost. But I knew he would never be found there, for my father was never a bookish man, proud though he had been of Heymann’s intelligence and aptitude for study.

  I was still young, old enough to help around the house, but not much else. I spent much of my time alone with my dolly, running my fingers over the scar where my father had repaired her, sometimes not even aware that my thumb had found its way into my mouth until Tante Gittl, barely two years older than my eldest brother, would remind me gently that I was too big a girl for such behavior, and set me some petty task as distraction.

  Eventually I began reading Josef’s cast-off books. Heymann, who had always had the soul of a scholar, stole time from his study breaks to play tutor, practicing on me for his future career.

  Time passed, and perhaps that is the worst betrayal of all, for life without my father to have become normal. It felt sometimes as if only I remembered him, though I knew that was not so, as if only I missed him, though surely Uncle Leyb felt keenly the absence of the elder brother who had taken care of him in boyhood and brought him from Frankfurt am Main to Hoechst in manhood, the two of them staying together even as so many of our families are blown apart like dandelion puffs, never to see one another again.

  Uncle Leyb must have been as lonely as I.

  And Mama never remarried.

  So perhaps it was foolish to feel that nobody was as bereft as I, but I am sure that my father and I treasured each other in a way peculiar to only the most fortunate of fathers and daughters.

  * * *

  I wonder, sometimes, if the fiddler, Herr Geiger, as he was called in Dornburg, felt that way about his daughter. He always seemed uncertain around her, as if he wished to love her but did not know how to begin. Once he told me he would love her better when she was older and had a true personality. But she has always seemed to have quite a strong character to me, right from the very beginning, even in her suckling.

  I could have told him how to love her. I could have told him that to love a baby is to wake up every time she cries, even if you have not had a full night’s sleep in days, to clean and change her cloths even when she has made herself quite disgusting, to sit up fretting and watching her sleep when she has a cold, to dance with her around and around the room without stopping, because her delight is well worth your aching legs and feet, to tell her stories and trust that she understands more than she can say. I could have told him this, but I did not.

  He was not a bad father. But he was not a good one. And I did not help him.

  * * *

  My mother died when I was seventeen. She seemed to have just been worn out by the treachery of our gentile neighbors. I do believe that the people of Dornburg killed her as surely as they did my father. She kissed me on her deathbed, and prayed to God to guide me to a safe home. And she died, with God having given her no answer, no peace of mind, the worry still apparent on her lifeless face.

  * * *

  I became Tante Gittl’s main help after my mother’s death, as Josef had left for Mainz two years earlier, and Heymann had no interest in the family business. Too, Heymann was—is—studious and intelligent, but not canny. His is the kind of intelligence that can quote Torah word-perfect at length and analyze the finest points of disputation, but he never could add up a column of figures and get the same answer twice. Not if his life depended on it.

  And I hope it never does.

  I became Tante Gittl’s help, but she did not need me. She and my eldest brother, Hirsch, had married the year before, and it made good sense for her to take over the business. She was very good with people, very charming, and she and Hirsch lived in harmony, companions and business partners. Nor did she need me when she became pregnant, for she had her own sisters, even her own mother next door.

  I think it was her wish for me to wed her brother Nathaniel, and he was not unkind. The match would have been well made, but I knew that motherhood would destroy any plan of mine to see my father’s grave and take vengeance on the man who had ended his life, because of what we owe to our children. To put myself at great risk—that was my choice, my prerogative. But if I’d had children—it is not right for parents to abandon their children, never. I knew too well what it meant to lose one’s greatest protector and caretaker, the one in whose face the sun rises and sets, while still young. And I could never have done that to my child. We owe our children our lives.

  * * *

  With my mother in the ground and the youngest of her children grown, my Uncle Leyb grew restless. He had met Elias while visiting Worms, and with Hirsch and Tante Gittl well set and Josef in Mainz, he deeply desired to make his life in Worms as well. Heymann and I were left to choose our paths.

  There was never really any question about Heymann’s future: he lived and breathed the dream of continuing his studies at the Yeshiva in Cracow. I told Hirsch and Gittl, and Heymann as well, that I was going to Worms with Uncle Leyb, and there, perhaps among so many of our people, I would find a husband. They believed me, I think, though Heymann, who of all my brothers knew me best, wrinkled his brow in perplexity. Uncle Leyb accepted my decision without comment, and we made plans to depart.

  The last night we all spent together was much as our nights had been for some time, with a pregnant Gittl and Hirsch conferring about the future while Heymann talked to me of his plans for study and Uncle Leyb sat by himself writing a letter, this time to Josef, detailing our plans.

  Worms, my uncle said, is perhaps four days’ travel from Hoechst, provided the weather was good and nothing hindered our progress. But we would be carrying
our lives with us on horse and cart, he noted, and would, of necessity, go more slowly than he did while peddling. The three of us—Uncle Leyb, Heymann, and I—travelled together to the regional shul, where the men prayed for good fortune on our journeys, and then we parted ways, the brother closest to me in both age and affection kissing my cheek, swinging his pack off the cart and onto his shoulder, and turning to the northeast and his scholarly future. His face was flushed with excitement, but the journey was six hundred miles, and he would be alone for the first time. For months after, I would picture him alone on the road, set upon by ruffians, or ill among strangers, without any one of us to hold his hand or bring him water.

  My uncle and I walked in silence for a while. After perhaps half an hour had passed, he kept his gaze on the road ahead but spoke carefully.

  “Ittele, you know, of course, that Elias and I will always welcome you. But you have always been my favorite, and I flatter myself that I know you as well as anybody could. Surely my brave, bright-eyed niece is brewing plans more complex than husband-catching?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “I am.” But I did not elaborate.

  When we stopped for dinner, he broached the topic again. As he finished up the bread and sausage we had packed, he poured himself a measure of kirschwasser. He leaned back against the cart and looked me in the eye.

  “So, liebe, what are these plans of yours? Indulge your old uncle by taking him into your confidence.”

  I smiled at him. “I do mean to see you settled, Uncle. And when you are happily ensconced in Worms and have joined your business to Elias’s, and are well occupied, I believe it will be time for me to set out once more.”

  Uncle Leyb raised his eyebrows and gestured for me to continue.

  “To Dornburg, Uncle. I will go to Dornburg, and I will watch the fiddler’s last breaths.”

  My uncle poured himself another measure of kirsch and sipped it slowly. “How do you intend to do this, child?”

  My voice seemed to come from far away as I spoke, though I had long thought on this very question. “I do not yet know, Uncle. It depends on how I find him. But I must do this. I have known ever since I was a child. The knowledge has lodged like … like…” I fumbled for words.

  “Like a thorn in your heart, my child?” finished my uncle.

  I nodded.

  My uncle finished his kirsch. “Yes,” he said.

  “You are bravest of us all, I think,” he said, and then he stopped. “I should go—I should have been with him—I will go—”

  I put my hand on his arm to stop him. “No. You should go to Elias. I am my father’s daughter, and I will go to Dornburg.”

  My uncle relaxed and let go of the tin cup he had been gripping. Its sides were bowed inward. Color slowly returned to his face. “I believe I understand,” he said. “And after I am settled, I will see you to Dornburg. Yakov would never forgive me if something should happen to you on the road.” He began packing up our belongings in preparation for continuing on to the next inn.

  “So be it,” he added, just as he had when I was a child on his lap.

  * * *

  I did wonder how I would take my revenge, but I did not wonder how I would escape afterwards. I did not expect to escape Dornburg. I expected to take my revenge, and then to meet the same end as my father. But I did not say this to my uncle. He would not have been so sanguine, I know, had he heard me say that.

  * * *

  That night, the Matronit visited me in a dream. I did not know who or what she was, only that she was nothing human. She was the moon, she was the forest, she was my childhood dolly. But she was terrible, and I was frightened.

  She smiled at me, and through moonlight and the rustle of the trees and my dolly’s cracked face, she told me to turn away from Dornburg.

  “Never,” I said. And the moon clouded over, and the trees cracked open, and my dolly’s head shattered.

  And then she was gone, only a whisper in the air left to mark her passage.

  I had this dream a second time the following evening, and again the following night. But the third time, it ended differently. Instead of shattering and leaving me, the Matronit’s face grew stern and she coalesced before me into the form of a woman who was a beautiful monster, my beloved mother with a brow free from fear, claws like scimitars ready to tear and kill. Her hair streamed out from her head like the tails of comets, and blood ran down her face. Her feet reached down to death and her head to the heavens. Her face was both pale and dark and she beamed at me with pride.

  I am coming, my daughter.

  * * *

  Worms was much larger than Hoechst, but my uncle had no trouble settling in. I suppose a peddler who goes from town to town must be used to a whirl of people and places. I liked Elias well enough. He had an elegant brown mustache and was very fond of my uncle. I determined to set out for Dornburg on my own, so as not interrupt their idyll, but my uncle would not hear of it, and neither would Elias.

  “Terrible things can happen to a maiden alone on the road,” said Elias. “Leyb and I have both seen this. But with him escorting you, you will be safe. As safe as anyone can be.”

  I nodded my head in assent, secretly pleased to have my uncle’s company and moral support along the way.

  “But Itte,” he continued. “What of when you are in Dornburg? You … look so much like your father. I see Yakov every time I look at you, and your father … your father carried Israel in his face.”

  I remembered the woman in my dream, the woman with claws like scimitars, with her feet in death and her head burning in the sky like the sun. And blood, blood running down her face. “I do not yet know, Uncle. But I trust a solution will come.”

  * * *

  She came to me that night, while I was sleeping. I opened my eyes, sat up in bed, and words began pouring from my mouth, words in languages I had never heard, let alone studied. I wrested back control of my tongue long enough to stutter, “Dear God, what is happening to me?”

  I am here, my daughter, echoed in my head. My mind flooded with pictures of moonlight, forests, and war.

  “Who are you? Where are you?”

  I am here, the presence said again.

  “I am possessed? Inhabited by a dybbuk?”

  I felt the presence bridle. I am no dybbuk, it said. I am your dearest friend and ally. I am the mother who protects and avenges her children. I am she who is called Matronit, and I speak now through your mouth. I am she who dries up the sea, who pierces Rahab, I am the chastising mother, I am the one who redeems the mystery of Yakov.

  “Mother?” I gasped.

  I am the goddess-mother of all children of Israel. And I am your maggid.

  “My mother is dead,” I told the empty air. “And I am pious—I have none but Adonai as God.”

  I have always been goddess of Israel, even now as my children turn away from my worship. And I was goddess in times of old, when I was loved and feared. For was not a statue of me set in the temple of Jerusalem? And did I not oversee the households of the Holy Land? Was incense not burned to me, libations not poured to me, cakes not made in my image in Pathros, when the children of Israel defied Jeremiah? And have I not intervened with Hashem on behalf of the children of Israel, not once or twice, but many times? And am I not your maggid, who will bring you victory if you but embrace me as of old?

  “These were great sins,” I breathed. “To depart from the ways of the Lord—”

  He is a jealous god, she continued. But he is not alone. Was not your own mother named for me?

  “My mother was named for her grandmother, who was—”

  Esther. Named for me, the goddess of Israel, and I have gone by many names, including Astarte, including Ishtar. You worshipped me every time you spoke her name.

  Do you not understand? I will bring your vengeance to pass.

  “What mother are you,” I said bitterly, “who did not protect a child of Israel ten years ago, when he was tortured and killed in Dornburg? And he is only
one among many.”

  There was a silence in my head, and I thought the presence—the Matronit—had departed, but then she spoke to my soul again. I have been greatly … diminished. Hashem is a jealous god, and his prophets have destroyed my worship, and so my power has dwindled. But still I can be your maggid, and guide you to righteous victory. And in turn, you will observe the rites of my worship, and help to restore some of my former strength, just as your brother will in Cracow, when he learns of me, the Matronit, the Shekhina, in his studies.

  “My brother will learn only the most pious teachings.”

  And he will learn of me, when he advances to the teachings of Kabbalah. And I will bring you vengeance as your maggid.

  “My maggid?”

  Your guide, your teacher. And something more. I will possess your body, reside in your soul, yet I will not wrest control from you. I will strengthen you for what lies ahead, yet I will leave you human. And when this work is done, I will depart.

  “And you will bring me success? You will enable me to bring vengeance to Dornburg?”

  Yes, my child. Through you, Dornburg shall become a wasteland.

  In but a minute, I made my choice. I abandoned what I had been taught, not out of impiety, but out of sheer rage, for I realized then that despite all my piety, all my father’s piety, all my brother’s devotions, Adonai had allowed my father to suffer, to be ripped by thorns and then hanged while townspeople had jeered. What, then, should He be to me? And if this Matronit would bring devastation to Dornburg—“Then possess me, Mother,” I said. “I consent to this ibbur. I welcome you, and I will observe your rites.”

  The Matronit paused before answering. Then you must know that I must first make your soul ready to receive me. And you must know that this cannot be painless. Your uncle and his partner will see you writhe in fever for seven days and nights. And you will be changed. You will be scorched with the knowledge I bring you.