The Singing Fire

by Lilian Nattel

  “It gets better and better,” Minnie said. “So she finally finds her tongue and she wants to tell you stories. What does she say?”

  “It’s about my grandmother. My step-grandmother, I should say.”

  “It must be something to make your sister write to you after all this time,” Minnie said.

  “Let me tell you, and then you can be the judge.” Nehama picked up a potato and began to peel it. She needed something in her hands.

  “So? I’m listening,” Minnie said.

  “Grandma Nehama had a miscarriage.”

  “A lot of women have miscarriages. I had one between Sammy and Libby.” Minnie sliced the onions like a juggler, fast fast fast, the knife invisible. The tireder she was, the faster her knife went, cutting her distress into paper-thin slices—she’d add a little salt, a little pepper, fry it in oil, and eat it as something good.

  “That’s what I mean. Why did my sister have to write me about it now? Anyway, Grandma Nehama had a late miscarriage. It was her last child, and she was the same age as I am now. The midwife didn’t want her to see the baby, but she insisted on looking, and she saw that the baby was deformed. Afterward she told everyone it was better this way, because at her age taking care of such a child wouldn’t be easy and the child’s life would be a misery.”

  “And you never heard this from your sisters?”

  “Never. Shayna-Pearl said in her letter that she overheard our grandmother talking about it to her closest friend. It was a Thursday after the women finished singing and were eating cake. Everyone was eating cake. Only Grandma Nehama was in the other room with her friend, putting on the dough to rise for making challah for Shobbos. No one noticed my middle sister, who’d found the raisins and was hiding behind a barrel eating them all. Shayna-Pearl never told anyone because she thought she’d get it for eating the raisins.”

  “So that was all? Just about the miscarriage,” Minnie said.

  “Wait, I’m not finished. Grandma Nehama told her friend that after the miscarriage a neighbor came into the house in a panic because her son was khapped, taken for the draft. Grandma Nehama was holding the babies, my two oldest sisters, but it didn’t ease the pain she felt over the one she’d lost. The thought of another child being taken cut her like a sword. It made her crazy. So she picked up the hatchet to defend herself and her family and her neighbor’s family from any more misery. After she came home she was horrified at what she’d done. Cutting off a couple of toes from a child’s foot isn’t cooking dumplings. But in the end it turned out all right. The boy wasn’t drafted; he lived and everyone was thankful.”

  “That’s it?” Minnie asked.

  “Now that’s it,” Nehama said. “My sister sends her best wishes, we should all be healthy, and to tell Gittel that she should become a teacher like her auntie.”

  “Very nice,” Minnie said.

  “Maybe. My grandmother used to say that as long as you can preserve life, there’s hope. But I’m telling you, Minnie, that hope doesn’t cure the cholera.”

  “I’d like a new blouse myself,” Minnie said. “You can’t wear hope to the synagogue. When you work like a pig all week, then at least if you have a nice blouse for Shobbos, you feel like a human being.”

  “Listen to me. I’m trying to tell you something. It’s a sign, Nathan going to Dorset Street.” Nehama looked at Minnie, and her friend looked at her. She knew what Nehama was talking about. A person can’t get through the busy season year after year without telling somebody her secrets. “I’m thinking one thing. Like mother, like daughter.”

  Minnie looked at her hesitantly. “I don’t know if I should say this, but you can’t change a nature. Wait a minute, Nehama. Think on it. That Mrs. Levy, well, she was an educated person. Why wouldn’t Gittel take after her?”

  “If only,” Nehama said. “From your lips to God’s ear. But I’m telling you, Minnie, and only you, that there is nothing more bitter than praying that your child isn’t truly yours.”

  “Come on. I’m ready. Let’s go downstairs and I’ll cook supper,” Minnie said, giving the plate of fish to Nehama and carrying the bowl of potatoes and onions herself.

  There was one thing that Nehama didn’t tell Minnie. Who could say why? She meant to, and then she was walking down the narrow staircase, holding a plate in one hand, a candle in the other, watching her step that she shouldn’t fall on the broken riser, for dusk had given way to night and the sound of firecrackers could startle someone.

  Her sister had said that she’d remembered the end of the story only when she was writing the letter. After Grandma Nehama covered the challah dough with a cloth, she’d wiped her hands. Then she turned to her friend and said, Every pain in life makes a scar. The scar thickens and it becomes a snake around your neck. It’s up to you if the snake chokes you or if it looks into the night and tells you what it sees. Then you can know what’s there in the darkness.

  Charlotte Street

  Emilia wandered through the house in her dressing gown, remembering the first time she invited her mother-in-law for tea, wearing a made-over gown that had seemed so elegant at the time and was now the maid’s Sunday best. She was restless and needed to walk about. Here was the parlor with its Liberty’s paper of lilies and thistles, and the ceiling she’d painted in the days before they could afford wallpaper from Liberty’s. And here the dining room where Jacob used to play chess with his brother, and the same old walnut table, scratched by the cat who was locked out once and snuck in to pee in protest on the blue Persian rug. The painted willow boughs still shook in an imaginary wind, and only the door was new, filled with stained glass. But in the kitchen no smoke billowed, no brisket burned, there was only the maid cleaning ashes from the stove as Emilia climbed up the narrow back stairs to the attic.

  The third floor looked just like Pompeii, preserved in the midst of activity when the inhabitants were overcome by flowing lava. Jacob’s desk was strewn with papers, the title page of his new play on top: “Shmuel in America, or The Melting Pot.” Emilia could smell his tobacco, she could see him turn his head with an abstracted air, awareness coming into his eyes as he looked at her, leaning forward to ask what she would imagine when she heard the title. She’d immediately said cholent, the slow-cooking Sabbath stew cooked with whatever came to hand—beans, meat, bones, fat, potatoes—the house redolent from a mixture more delectable than any humble part of it. Exactly, Jacob had said, coming around his desk to kiss her with more enthusiasm than finesse because his mind was still on the play.

  There was time. She could run down and dress, send for a carriage, and be at the school before it was Jacob’s turn to speak. She’d wear the amber-colored gown from Liberty’s and the bracelet Jacob had given her for her birthday. He would look at her with the same admiring glance she’d seen in his eyes when she was a shopgirl reading Emile Zola, sitting on a tall stool in a basement, electric lights shimmering on Chinese porcelain. Why should anything in the Lane disturb her—did it have a thing to do with her? She wouldn’t remember the sound of street vendors calling, “Hot chestnuts!” “Rabbit ’air skins!” She wouldn’t take notice of the smell of fried fish that was the smell of childbirth.

  A wave of nausea came over her. That was what Jacob would see, his face drawn with suspicion as he read the worst motives into her distress. She’d better sit at her worktable and consider the garden in darkness, doused in a dismal autumn rain. Pinned to her cutting board was the sketch for a paper-cut commissioned by the salon in Regent Street. She leaned her chin on her cupped hands. The smell of paint. The smell of ink. Think for a minute, calm herself. That was what she must do.

  She’d been over and over this for days. There had been too many mistakes. The rabbi would surely realize, if not from the last meeting then from the next, that she was Jewish. Yet if she didn’t go back to see him, Jacob would continue to think she was an anti-Semite and he would hate her. She’d end in telling him the truth. And then he would hate her just the same, since he’d never
liked Jewish girls and she’d made him think she was something else. Oh, she’d rather he hated her for the lie than the truth, though she couldn’t stand the look on his face when he’d left the house and her tears were falling on the paper-cut, ruining it.

  He could leave her and take her child. The law gave him custody. That she couldn’t allow. Instead she must pack her trunk, for she was now a woman in her thirties, not a girl dependent on her mother. Everything would be different this time.

  Downstairs in the dressing room, Emilia inspected her jewelry box. It was made of exotic wood, decorated with a geometric mosaic, the contrasting hue and grain of the wood creating something marvelous even out of disease, for the best pieces were green oak, colored and shaped by an attack of fungus. It was a gift from Mrs. Zalkind, her own favorite box, with two removable trays lined in velvet.

  The ghost of the first wife sat on the dressing table, her face livelier than Emilia’s as she looked at the necklace in the top tray, a gold necklace with rubies and pearl drops that had come with the box from Mrs. Zalkind. How much would it fetch? Probably more than the bracelet from Jacob, set with a sapphire and four rose-cut diamonds. The bracelet was thicker, but the gold in the necklace was higher quality. Pearls didn’t go for so very much, but she had a string of dark green, almost black pearls, and that would fetch more than white. She’d have to sell it all, and even so it wouldn’t do for long. The jewelry of an author’s wife is not anywhere near so large in quantity and value as the jewelry that may be provided by a man who owns a brick factory. How long could she support her child?

  The ghost of the first wife shook her head as she put the postcard from Minsk on the dressing table, tapping it with her finger. Maybe there was a message in it, something known only to the next world, a note of consolation or, better yet, the winner of a horse race, a long shot that would set her up with her baby in a villa on a warm hillside where she’d never miss the damp of London or the people who lived in it.

  The postcard was the usual sort of thing, a warning to watch her step, a sigh over the distance between them, a prayer for her health. It helped as much in her present situation as giving medicine to a corpse. No offense to the first wife, who was impatiently turning over the postcard.

  It was illustrated with a picture of Hannah in the temple, her lips moving as she prayed for God to give her a child. Standing over her was the angry high priest, accusing her of mumbling in a drunken stupor. How easy it was, even for a high priest, to misconstrue what the eyes perceive when he’d never watched anyone pray privately before but knew plenty of drunkards.

  Outside in the street, revelers shouted and set off firecrackers. Someone was singing:

  Of friendship I have heard much talk

  But you’ll find that in the end,

  If you’re distressed at any time,

  Then money is your friend.

  At the sound of the song, the ghost of the first wife looked up, startled, ran first to the window and then out the door of the dressing room and down the stairs. Her footsteps made no noise—who would expect them to? She was gone, and Emilia was alone. That was the message.

  Dorset Street

  It was one thing to be reckless where Yiddish signs were visible in the torchlight, quite another to turn off Bell Lane into the forbidden street, the sky smoky and scorched above Itchy Park, where vagrants slept. Fog made the end of the street a million miles away, a sea between continents, a wall between this world and the next. There were blind streetlamps, broken glass underfoot. Figures gaunt and grotesque loomed in the fog like guys with painted turnip heads, picking cigarette butts out of the gutter. Lady guys with eyes cut out of masks wore dark dresses that turned red in the window light of a pub. If only Libby would insist that they had to go home, Gittel would, but Libby was unnaturally quiet, her red braids shivering against her back.

  Humming under her breath, Gittel pulled the crate with her sacrificial guy in its three-colored dress. The wind was cold, but Gittel’s cheeks were warm, as warm as when people whispered in the dark evenings, starting a story but never finishing it, glancing at the children and leaving off in the middle of naphtha lamps exploding with paraffin vapor and the bright colors of gin palaces and hideous corners where the Ripper had lurked. And here she was, walking by the striped awning that sheltered a wax figure and the hawker advertising the wonders inside. “Wax figures! Only a penny a view. Each one figured exactly like one of them poor ladies mutilated most horribly. Move along, my dears, unless you have a penny. Don’t block the gentleman’s view.”

  The fortuneteller’s house was next. “Madam Fortune,” the sign said, in case someone could read, and if not there was a picture of a crystal ball. Maybe she ought to stop there and find out just where she ought to go. Her teachers at school warned children about spiritualists and mediums and other fakery. God used to talk to people in the Bible, and when He’d had enough of people, He sent angels, but that was only because there wasn’t any science. Now there was the telephone in the post office, but it wouldn’t do you much good if the other party had no telephone. You might as well communicate with the dead.

  Unless, of course, the other party was your first mother. Gittel would know her in an instant; it would be like looking at her own face in a mirror. Her other mother would be worn out, down at heel, all hope abandoned until she heard her lost daughter sing. How she would weep to hear the voice she never knew could be so sweet, but it was all too late. Much too late. Her eyes would grow large as she saw the coins that Gittel would pile into Mama’s lap, glittering gold and silver, saving one—all right, maybe two or three—for the mother that bore her. Gittel wasn’t scared, not really—wasn’t God answering her prayer right now, the real prayer to find things out once and for all? It was just that her legs felt terribly weak and Libby was holding her hand so tight it hurt.

  “Where are you going?” Libby whispered.

  “Right here,” Gittel said, pointing to the first open door she saw.

  One of the slumming gentlemen was talking to a pretty girl with hair cut short as if she’d just been released from the workhouse. She wore a dress almost as ruffled as the guy’s. Gittel wished for a dress like that. Very grown-up, it was. But the girl’s arms were bare, and even Gittel’s shawl was getting damp and clammy and cold against her back.

  Charlotte Street

  The wallpaper in Emilia’s bedroom was an old Morris paper, a trellis pattern handprinted with climbing roses that reminded her of the garden in Minsk. It was one of the things she disliked about this house. She was back in bed, making a list of the house’s flaws. So far she had fifteen items, including the shape of the roof (too pointed), the number of fireplaces (too few), and the back door (sticky). A quiet back door was indispensable. How else was a trunk to be removed without comment?

  “Excuse me, missus,” the maid said. “Mr. Zalkind’s grandfather is come to see you.”

  “Tell him that I’m still indisposed.” But she could hear his slow step on the stairs and the sound of his labored breath. “Zaydeh!” she said as he came in. “It’s a sin to be in a woman’s bedroom.”

  “Is this a bedroom? I don’t believe it. A bedroom is where a person sleeps at night, not where she sits around all day with magazines and trays. This is a sitting room, am I right? I know I’m very old. Too old maybe to see exactly right, but this is how it looks to me.” With a slight groan, he sat down in the chair beside the bed, though keeping his eyes away from Emilia. In honor of Jacob’s speech, he wore a new wool cap.

  “So what do you have to say?” Her face was defiant.

  “I’m going to tell you the truth. I was very angry.” He shook his finger. So what was that? It was nothing. Just an old, knobbly finger.

  “I don’t need anyone’s blessing.” In the street ragamuffins were calling, “Penny for a guy!” Emilia added another item to her list. This was no longer a good address. “I’ll take care of things myself.”

  “Ah, you’re smarter than me. I asked the H
oly One what I should do, but He didn’t answer. All right, I’m not Moses our teacher. Why should He talk to me? Still, an old man has to do something, even if he isn’t strong and for sure he isn’t wise. So this is what I say to myself. An old man mishears half of everything.” With his little finger, he scratched the inside of his ear. “But one thing I know. Everyone’s at the school. The whole family except you. And for a man, there’s only his wife.”

  Emilia put away her list. The page was full. Her trunk would soon be packed and she was ready. “My father hated my mother like no one else,” she said.

  Zaydeh didn’t look shocked. On the contrary, he was nodding as if he knew it all long. “Because she mattered the most, so you see what I mean. The wife is everything. Come with me in the carriage.”

  Emilia shook her head. “Jacob hates me now, too. This isn’t your problem, Zaydeh. Have some tea and cake, please. There’s jelly roll.” She pointed to the tea trolley, and he cut himself a slice as if they were sitting in the kitchen on any other day and he never knew or cared that she was living on false papers, so to speak.

  “This I like. You made it, mine gitteh?”

  “I’m not your good one anymore,” Emilia said.

  “What are you talking?”

  “Everyone likes to pretend something. Even you, Zaydeh. A man of the earth—what a lot of nonsense. No one I know is as clever as you.”

  “Absolutely, you’re wrong. It’s only the word I didn’t say that changed. Before, it was my good yokhelta.” Gentile girl. “Now it’s my good yiddina.” Jewish woman. “You see. Mine gitteh… what?” He showed her his empty hands. “It’s written that there’s one Torah in the letters of the Bible and another one in the space between the letters. So. A person can be very angry. But nu. What did I tell you? Until you finish the whole book you don’t know what you’re reading. Jacob’s child will be a Jew. In a good hour, I say.”

  It didn’t make her afraid. The tears in her eyes and the quickness of her breathing weren’t fear at all. She just didn’t know what her child would be. It would all depend on where she found herself. “Everyone knows Jacob’s your favorite,” she said with a little smile, certain that she had enough charm left to divert an old man for a few minutes.