The Singing Fire

by Lilian Nattel

  “Tatteh, I told you before. Leave everything to me and stop worrying.”

  “Mrs. Zalkind?” Emilia said, keeping her face blank as if she didn’t understand, glancing vaguely at the Yiddish newspaper, which surrounded the grandfather like the wall of the first wife’s garden.

  “My poor dear, you must think of me as your mother since you have none. There are so many things to talk about,” Mrs. Zalkind said. “Baptism, for example.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Emilia said.

  “Such a thing could never occur in our family. Never. Do you understand me?” Mrs. Zalkind’s eyes glittered with animosity as if her son had decided to marry a side of bacon, and though she’d like to indulge him, she might not be able to keep herself from frying it up instead.

  Emilia carefully put down her teacup. She would have to keep a kosher household. “I hadn’t thought—”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Mrs. Zalkind interrupted. “I do. And there shall be no church. It would be the end of my father, and I will not allow that.”

  “We were planning a quiet ceremony—” Emilia began to explain.

  Mrs. Zalkind interrupted again, her voice quiet, clipped, and fierce. “There will be a rabbi. I have an acquaintance who was married to a gentile in the reform synagogue twenty years ago. I shall send the rabbi a letter of introduction.”

  “We were planning a civil ceremony at the registrar’s office, but naturally I will follow Jacob’s wishes,” Emilia said. He would have nothing to do with rabbis and such. He often said so; and the more his mother would insist, the stronger his opinion would be. She was sure of it. There was no reason for her neck to itch so. She wouldn’t scratch it, not if she had to dig her nails through the table.

  The last time she’d seen a rabbi she’d been wearing this very dress. Before it was remade, the overskirt split at the knees, and she had looked past her folded hands at the gold brocade while explaining that she’d come on behalf of a friend. The question being so delicate, the friend was too embarrassed to see the rabbi herself. She was sitting in his study, the door open a crack because he wouldn’t talk with a woman behind a closed door. It was in Minsk, the summer sun filtered by heavy curtains. She was warm in her dress, and the old rabbi’s forehead was wet.

  She lifted her eyes to see him scratching the corner of his chin. No shaaleh is too delicate for me, he said with a little smile. Women bring me their stained cloths to examine when they need to know if it’s time to go to the ritual bath. What is it, my girl?

  My friend is pregnant, she said.

  And her husband could not come to me with the question? the rabbi asked. When she said there was no husband, he nodded as if everything was clear to him from this world to the next, though the light was dim in his study.

  She’s afraid to press the father of the baby, Emilia said, unable to meet the rabbi’s eyes. She thinks—well, she thinks he can’t marry her because she might be a mamzer. There. The terrible word was out.

  It was a Sunday afternoon like this one, church bells ringing. Emilia expected the rabbi to look shocked, but he just pulled down a tall book from his shelves of many such volumes, dark on the outside, yellowed on the inside, as if nothing was new in life. He opened it, pointing a finger here and then there. A complex matter, he said. On the one hand, if a mamzer is a scholar, he ought to take precedence over a high priest that is ignorant. And yet there’s no question that it is a defective status. A mamzer can marry only another person born of a prohibited union. And their children will also be forbidden for all time to legitimate Jews.

  It’s unfair, Emilia protested. The rabbi looked at her with great sadness. Cataracts were beginning to obscure the blue of his eyes, and he had to bend close to the book to read it.

  It’s the law, he said. One cannot change God’s word, but maybe I can ease your friend’s mind. What she did is shameful. She lost her virtue like a whore. But still, she’s a mother’s child—if she marries… Many things can be forgotten over a lifetime.

  But not if she’s a mamzer. Her father has often declared that she may not be his, Emilia said. Her manner was calm, hands quiet in her lap, as if she were not the one the rabbi had called a whore.

  Ah, he said. Then your friend’s father was living elsewhere in the year before she was born—not with her mother.

  They lived together, Emilia said. And to show off her knowledge, she quoted her father, But as the Talmud says, one can always be sure of the infant’s mother, however the father can be anyone at all.

  The rabbi spoke angrily. That is meant in another context. Now you should understand why a girl is not to study the Talmud. It only confuses her and leads to immodesty. Listen to what I’m saying. Jewish law presumes that the husband is the father if he lives with the mother in the same house. And even if he was not living with her, if at any time he has called the child my daughter, or indicated his paternity in any way, such as paying for her education, he has no right to say she isn’t his.

  No right? Emilia asked, surprised at the anger in the rabbi’s voice when she herself felt nothing but hope.

  I’m telling you plain, such an action is despicable. Your friend is not a mamzer, and it’s a great sin on the part of the father to lead her to think so. The rabbi then went on to explain more particulars of the law. So there is no reason for your friend to hesitate, he said. She should marry at once.

  The rabbi stood up. His shoulders had shrunk in the last year, his caftan hung loosely, the silk sash tied several times around his waist to separate the purer upper half from the base lower regions of the body during prayer. This is how it is, my child, he said. It’s been a long time since I visited your father’s house. Do you think that maybe I should invite myself?

  I’ll be the one to send you an invitation, Emilia said, as soon as there is an occasion.

  Good. I hope to recite the wedding blessings for you very soon. It’s written that under the wedding canopy, every sin is erased just as if it was the Day of Atonement. You remember what I’m telling you.

  It wasn’t long afterward that Emilia found Mr. Levy. When she went to see him, she knew that in Jewish law the presumption of paternity, unlike in the case of a husband and wife, didn’t apply to him. The mere fact of sexual relations was not enough; an unmarried woman must prove the paternity of her child through the father’s admission that it was his. This she had learned from the rabbi, though at the time she’d been certain it was irrelevant until, to her astonishment, Mr. Levy admitted nothing. And so she discovered that all knowledge can be useful at some time or another, though it will not make you happy.

  Later, on the boat that brought her to London, she dreamed about the Furies flying about with their snake hair. Sometimes they pecked out her father’s eyes. Sometimes Mr. Levy’s. Sometimes even the rabbi’s. When she awoke, she saw only the ghost of the first Mrs. Rosenberg. But what business did the ghost have to cry as if Emilia were someone to pity? She had a first-class cabin and a trunkful of gowns in the latest fashion, which she knew how to wear.

  Now she was in Wigmore Street, a different person, a gown made over in the new style. The grandfather took off his spectacles and folded up his newspaper. “I’m going out a little bit,” he said in Yiddish as he stood up. He was a few inches shorter than Mrs. Zalkind.

  “You’re not going to Soho, Father?” He nodded, looking away. “If you must play cards, then let me send you in a cab. There’s no reason for you to walk. It isn’t Shobbos.”

  “I can walk.” Her father’s voice was stubborn though he was a man who wouldn’t swat a fly, for it has a soul and even an animal soul deserves consideration. His face was round, his nose arched, his beard as yellow as fog.

  “A mule.” His daughter shook her head.

  “So we’re alike. Who would have thought?” He turned to Emilia. “Such a daughter. Aye-aye-aye. She’ll make you a proper wife. In a kosher home. You understand?” In English he added, “Nice girl. Good girl,” patting Emilia’s cheek. How ridiculous that
this should make her eyes wet.

  Mrs. Zalkind put another scone on her plate, and cream slid down from a silver spoon.

  Berwick Street

  It was summer and the noise in the street was deafening, for who could stay inside those hot rooms? Two men and a woman had been thrown out of the Hound and Hare. The men were laughing as the woman beat at the window with her fists, the organ-grinder playing at double speed. Every day the street was louder, as if night would clutch its ears and go somewhere else. It was August, and newspaper vendors sold out their papers within an hour, calling “Murder most foul” and “Murderer identified.” In the market Jews were buying fish for Shobbos. Who needs to be afraid here? they asked. But they kept their daughters close by them and studied every man as if he might be their enemy.

  The ghost of the first wife was restless, looking at the package on the table, then the gowns laid out on the bed for packing, checking the inside of the wardrobe, inspecting the trunk.

  “Do you think it should all go in?” Emilia asked. The engagement had lasted a respectable six months. She’d be married in three weeks.

  The first wife turned toward her, lifting her hands as if to say, Why not?

  “The new hat goes in and the gowns that have been made over. Maybe I ought to leave the others. No, you’re right. The material is all first rate. I’ll have the others made over, too.” She unpinned the brooch from one of the gowns, putting it in the wardrobe before she packed the gown carefully between layers of muslin.

  There was a small scroll painting from the Curios department on the wall beside the wardrobe. Emilia took it down and wrapped it in newspaper.

  “Mrs. Zalkind has a very good dressmaker,” she said. On the table was this month’s issue of La Nouvelle Mode. “I want one just like Miss Cohen’s, only with not so many ruffles and a little lower here and something in back.” Emilia looked at herself in the cracked mirror.

  On the table the package from Minsk was unwrapped, beside it a card from her mother, again cautiously signed as if it came from an old family servant. The front of the card was illustrated with two girls in frilly dresses, the bigger one holding the smaller one on her lap, a basket of flowers at their feet, and a sentimental verse in Russian. On the back her mother had written a note: Oh, the sorrows of mother and daughter separated by heaven’s will, et cetera, followed by a few words about tears shed and hopes for the future and so on, finishing with “Each of your letters is more precious to me than gold even though they are so very short.”

  Emilia had replied with a quick thank-you for the present and good wishes, explaining that as she had much on her mind and much to do, there was no time to write more, and her mother should remember that Emilia was supposed to be an orphan. She had nothing else to say. It was the first Mrs. Rosenberg who’d come here from the other world.

  Emilia shut the lid of the trunk. The present from Minsk was inside it: a box of scissors, paper, a small knife, inks, paint suitable for paper, stencils. Well, why not? All her friends did something, and Mrs. Abraham wanted a paper-cut. The cameo brooch she left in the wardrobe.

  The ghost of the first wife climbed outside to sit on the roof, reaching up as if to draw smoke from chimneys that were cold.

  Charlotte Street

  At night Emilia slept in her room in Berwick Street; during the day she cleaned and painted the flat in Charlotte Street. Jacob had leased the first two floors of a house in Bloomsbury, his brother Albert already having the third. On either side were houses subdivided for rent to students and artists, who knocked on the door at all hours to borrow sugar, ink, scissors, pots, tea, cigarette papers, a shaving brush, and Albert’s cat, said to be the best rat catcher in Bloomsbury. Mr. Zalkind, who was a wholesaler of building supplies, sent in men to fix up the house so it wouldn’t fall down around them. And while Emilia painted the walls and ceilings with designs she’d seen in Liberty’s wallpaper books, the terrible murders in Whitechapel were making headlines all around the world.

  She was painting the upstairs bedroom when the first body was discovered; then the second was found not far from where Jacob was born. August ended with terse headlines in The Times: “East End Murders.” A letter to the editor of The Pall Mall Gazette deduced that the killer must be a broad-shouldered man with muscular hands and stunted thumbs, dark-complexioned, of foreign accent, middle height, wearing a flannel shirt, a silk handkerchief, dark gloves, and thin side-spring boots. Another letter, this one from a clairvoyant, said there was no doubt that the murderer was a blond American who sold organs to publishers of medical textbooks in New York. The editor of The Times wrote that the murderer was surely a tormented Russian Jew, perhaps a butcher, for an Englishman would never do anything so heinous.

  Mrs. Zalkind had brought her maid and was cleaning the house from top to bottom, stocking it with sufficient pots and pans, silverware and dishes to separately serve meat and dairy, everyday meals and meals for Passover, so that everything would be kosher enough for even the grandfather. She came down from the upstairs bedroom, swathed in an apron, with an armful of dustcloths to shake out and a tattered game found in a closet, the Palace of Happiness. If a player landed on idleness, she was sent to the workhouse for the duration of the game. Behind Mrs. Zalkind, the maid was carrying a bucket of dirty water.

  “You must remember. No shellfish,” Mrs. Zalkind said as she entered the parlor, where Emilia was painting the ceiling. “Wait six hours after eating meat before you serve dairy. We are not lax like the Dutch. I hope you remembered to rinse the brisket before and after the salt.”

  Emilia dipped her small brush in the gold paint. From her perch on the ladder she could see into the dining room, where Albert was studying anatomy and Jacob writing his column. “I remembered,” she said. “The brisket is in the oven.”

  At home it had always been the maid who kashered the meat, draining it of blood. Emilia liked doing it herself. There was something satisfying in flopping the brisket over on one side, then the other, covering it with chunks of salt, later rinsing it away and feeling the flesh smooth and polite, all sign of violence poured away.

  Mrs. Zalkind glanced down at the newspapers spread on the floor to protect it from dripping paint, each headline more lurid than the one before. “Are you writing about Whitechapel, Jacob?” she called into the dining room. “You ought to say the Jews would never do such a thing.”

  He looked up, wiping his pen on a rag. The light in the dining room was green, filtered through a thin cloth hanging over the window until the curtains would be ready. “I’m writing about a lady’s shop, Mother. My readers want entertaining, and they’ll have it.”

  “Don’t imagine that this has nothing to do with you, my son,” Mrs. Zalkind said. “Soon those hoodlums will be marching through the West End again, smashing glass, turning over carriages, throwing bricks, plundering and ravishing. Mark my words. Ravishing, I say.”

  “My future wife is ravishing,” Jacob said, smiling at Emilia on her ladder while his mother huffed at the ignorance of children, taking the dustcloths outside to shake them furiously.

  Emilia was painting lilies on the ceiling because they couldn’t afford very good wallpaper. Using the smallest brush for the dots in the petals as she leaned back on the ladder, she didn’t give dinner a thought until the maid called in a small voice, “Miss! Miss! There’s a bit of smoke coming from the stove.”

  The kitchen was as dark with oily smoke as if it were the Queen’s Pipes furiously burning contraband. Emilia covered her face with an apron, opening doors and windows and pouring water on the pan, which made the smoke billow up, thick with failed gravy, and she coughed till tears streamed down her face, making a path in the streaks of soot on her cheeks.

  Mrs. Zalkind found her sitting at the table in the kitchen, her head in her arms. Emilia didn’t reply to her greeting. She couldn’t bear to look up but stayed at the table, listening to the sound of a mop and water sloshing, a pan scraped, orders for the butcher and greengrocer. It wa
s too humiliating. How did her mother stand it day after day?

  “I’ll never be able to do it,” Emilia said without lifting her head.

  “It isn’t your fault that you can’t cook,” Mrs. Zalkind said briskly. “A girl should be taught from childhood so it comes as naturally as breathing. Gentile women have cooks and are completely dependent on them. How could you know anything? My poor son will just have to wait for you to learn, and if God above is good, then Jacob will not suffer greatly with his sensitive stomach. Wash your hands. Paint is not a wholesome spice. I brought you my cookbook, and I shall expect dinner from you today even if I eat it at midnight.” Mrs. Zalkind seated herself at the table with the patience of Job’s mother. “Do you have any carrots? Give me the knife, I’ll chop. You go to the door. I see the butcher’s boy is here with another brisket. Always buy from Greenberg’s. His is the best kosher meat.”

  Frying Pan Alley

  It was the first of September, a cool Shobbos; men who were so inclined went to the synagogue, and women sat on steps or stood in the alley, nursing and watching their children. It was the last Sabbath before the Jewish New Year, but Nehama wouldn’t sit in the women’s gallery of the synagogue. If she was there, she wouldn’t understand what was being read from the Bible since there were no women’s prayer leaders in the modern day to translate the haftorah into a language she knew.

  Nehama and Minnie were sitting side by side on a bench pulled into the alley. The sky above was gray, and there was a warm, wet wind that lifted the fringe of their shawls. Minnie was darning socks, Nehama reading the East London Gazette, and Pious Pearl, who made them push over so she’d have room to sit down, was watching her boys. The women all wore red shawls, and the only difference among them was that Pious Pearl also had a wig and a kerchief over it, as if the double protection against sinfully inflaming a man’s desire would counteract the effects of her drinking. Across from them and toward the school yard, there were other benches and other women standing and sitting, for on the Sabbath the alley could make room for everyone. They spoke in hushed voices, afraid of being overheard while the bigger girls jumped rope and the boys played hide-and-seek in their tattered suits from last year’s donation by the school. The jump rope slapped the cobblestones as the girls sang: