“Consider it charity,” Mama snapped.
“I was taught that a person should always give charity at the end of a journey. It’s a good custom,” Papa said. He was walking behind them, holding on to Libby.
Gittel glanced back at him suspiciously. He was whistling something from Angel of the Ghetto. Everyone knew the song. Her teacher even had the girls sing it in school. It was about Jewish mothers. There were too many songs about Jewish mothers. Papa ought to whistle something from The Witch, featuring an orphan and a wicked stepmother who had a grip just like Mama’s.
“I’m telling you before God,” Mama said, “that if you ever do something like this again, I will make you sorry you were born.”
“I’m already sorry,” Gittel muttered. It was all for nothing. The guy lost, the sickness in her stomach, the punishment sure to be waiting for her. “Good money, I made. It wasn’t yours to throw away.”
“And you think you could just walk out of the pub, your pockets full of coins, and no one would bother you?”
Mama was looking at her like she was an idiot. But she wasn’t. And she didn’t care who knew it. “You don’t understand,” she said, the words bursting out of her. “You don’t understand, Mama. I can’t sing in the school concert. Miss Halpern kicked me out of the choir. She called me a liar. It’s because of my mother, isn’t it? She lives in Dorset Street and I must be just like her. But I made up for it. I was going to bring home money so that Papa didn’t have to work at night and get coshed.”
“Oh God.” Mama covered her mouth with her hand.
“But nothing’s come of it now.” Firecrackers split the sky with light, and in the street, the king in the crown of tin struck a match to light another string of them. “I couldn’t sing in school but I sang there. I did it for Papa and you made nothing of it. So you can give me any punishment. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Gittel. My Gittel. I have to tell you something. Listen to me.” Her mother’s voice pierced the sound of firecrackers, the drums, the calls for jellied eels. “I knew a girl once that even stole something from her sisters because she wanted to run away from home. Her own sisters. I know you won’t repeat a word I’m telling you,” Mama said.
There was something different in her tone; it made Gittel pay as much attention as if she were overhearing Mama and Aunt Minnie whispering when they thought she was asleep. “All right,” she said. “Go on.”
“Well, I was the girl, the one that ran away from home with her sisters’ things. You think someone should be punished? I got into terrible trouble.”
It was hard to imagine, but it must have been true. Mama looked so shamefaced. And Gittel knew that this was her chance to find out things she’d only half heard in whispers, so she asked, “Why?”
“Why doesn’t matter, only that I could have died. If it wasn’t for Aunt Minnie, I wouldn’t be here. I’m telling you, Gittel, I prayed that you wouldn’t take after me. You deserve better. It’s all I want in life.”
Mama’s voice was breaking and yet Gittel had to keep asking. Someone had to tell her at last, no matter what came after. “But what about her?”
Mama stopped in front of the wooden sign advertising Yiddish letters written home for a penny. She looked at the sign as if the answer were there. But still she was holding Gittel’s hand. “You mean Mrs. Levy. Is it so important?” Mama paused, biting her lip. Then she nodded. “All right. I don’t know where she is, exactly, except that she went to the West End. One thing I can promise you, not Dorset Street.”
“Are you sure?” Gittel asked. So it wasn’t there she belonged, it really wasn’t at all, but then she could belong anywhere, and London was so very big, though just a few feet away Tatteh was waiting for them, the double row of buttons on his jacket catching the light as four big men rolled barrels of fire toward the school yard.
“Of course I’m sure,” Mama said. “If she lived five blocks over, do you think she could keep herself from coming to have a look at you?”
Next to the wooden sign, a woman was selling treacle cakes. She wore a black hat and plush jacket, and though her boots were down-at-heel, her golden earrings flickered in the torchlight. And maybe she was someone’s mother, too. “Not for me,” Gittel said. “I cried so dreadful much, and I was ugly.”
“What are you talking?” Mama asked as if it was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. “You think I wouldn’t come to find you, my Gittel-Sarah? If someone tried to hurt you, I would kill him. I would lie down in the gutter and let anyone walk on my back to keep you safe, my daughter. Even from the next world, you can’t lose me. I promise you.”
Mama’s hand was tight in hers as if she really would never let go, and Gittel knew that she would have to be the one to pull herself away someday, but not yet, and so she glanced at her scuffed boots and then at Mama, and she asked, though Mama was sad, because she couldn’t help herself, “Did she look like me, Mama?” It was a terrible question, but wasn’t this a night of such questions?
“No, she was fair,” Mama said as if they were talking about anything at all. “Maybe you take after him, Mr. Levy, or someone else in the family. This is just between us. Your tatteh shouldn’t hear you and feel bad.”
So there were two fathers—of course, though she’d never thought of it—and two mothers and at least six aunts and many grandmothers that she’d never meet, but the air smelled of fried fish, it was the smell of home. “I sang, Mama. I sang in front of everyone.” She searched her mother’s eyes for a hint of pride.
“I heard,” Mama said, kissing the top of her head, and that was almost enough. She could imagine herself singing onstage, her parents in the front row with Aunt Minnie and Uncle Lazar and Libby and Sammy, the audience clapping like thunder. Above in the box seat, the velvet curtain was drawn and someone was sitting there. Maybe more than one person, listening behind the curtain.
Tatteh was still whistling the song from Angel of the Ghetto:
A thousand years I floated
Between here and there
And she comes with me everywhere,
When the wind tears the roof from my house
I hear my mother’s speech.
Gittel held on to Mama’s hand, her cheeks wet from night and fog. Such moments between mothers and daughters are over quickly. Aunt Minnie was running down the street, calling them. And that was how it would always be in eternity, for those in the next world remember everything for us.
Frying Pan Alley
As the crowd threw the eight-foot guy with the glittering chains down from the float, the pillar of fire opened to meet it, the heat driving back autumn. All along the alley it was a summer night, women pushing shawls down to their shoulders, men taking off caps to wipe their faces. The tailor’s guy in his seven-league boots was lowered with ropes. His spear of a needle made from wood and painted silver was flung on top. On the sea wind, sparks rose up to heaven, where for a moment, at the touch of His creation, God might not be lonely.
The girls watched, leaning against the school fence, Minnie between them, her red hair hanging loose on her red shawl, everything made of fire tonight. Nehama was standing between the barrels of smoked salmon, her back to the slippery brick wall as she talked with Nathan, the streetlamp beating feebly at the fog.
Her husband had seen her singing in the Horn and Plenty as if it were the most natural place for her to be. Does such a person know from Shobbos? Does such a person know from making love in the afternoon? No, she’s a nightwalker. A person who buys coffee, someone whose children run away from her womb.
“Gittel went to Dorset Street because she thought Mrs. Levy was there,” she said.
“What—did she want to find her there?” Nathan stood close to her, speaking into her ear so she could hear him above the roaring fire.
“I don’t know. She had the idea that Mrs. Levy was no good and somehow Gittel would make up for it.” She rubbed her hands as if she were cold, though the fire made the street like summer.
>
“Gotteniu. We have to talk to her. Explain to her that she can be anything she wants. Isn’t she your daughter?”
“Let her be better than me.” Nehama shivered. Was her shawl made of such a thin wool? “I’m not what I want.”
“You think I am? ‘One-Hand Nathan’—it doesn’t have a good ring.” He took her hand in his as if he wasn’t afraid to touch her. But he didn’t know, he couldn’t know, and she was unable to stand the pressure of his hand.
“How can I let you go there another night, Nathan? It’s killing me. A shop isn’t worth it. Believe me, I know. I was in Dorset Street before.”
“I could tell.” He didn’t let go of her hand, though she tried to pull away.
“It’s where I got the scar. It always reminds me.”
“Then it’s going to remind me, too. How lucky we are that you knew what to do.”
“Luck isn’t exactly what I’d call it.”
“Mmm. Not for you, I’m saying, only for me and Gittel.”
“That’s what you think?”
“It’s exactly what I think. Who knows what counts? Only God in heaven. Maybe that’s why I sell coffee in Dorset Street. To go with my wife one night.”
“Listen to me, Nathan. I’m trying to tell you, but it isn’t easy. You don’t know …”
The crowd was cheering as the tailor’s guy broke apart in the bonfire. The brightness of the fire made the darkness even darker. There were teachers and students and neighbors standing around the bonfire, some wearing masks and others the night. No one could tell who they really were.
“What’s to know? I see you, Nehameleh, and I’m here with you. God in heaven should only have my luck.” But she pulled her hand out of his.
“I want too much. From that comes every mistake I made.” The yetzer-hara, the evil inclination, had given her desires stronger than a fire. When she was young, she’d wished for a house as big as the moon, and a child for every room where she lay with her husband, for every sigh of pleasure a book bound in fine leather, and on the wall a plaque commemorating her great deeds.
“And every good thing, too,” Nathan said. He rubbed the back of her neck where it always knotted. He’d learned to do it just as well with his left hand. She couldn’t help but sigh with pleasure.
So let the good inclination use her desire to get a shop with used books and cheap blouses, a room above, where she would lie with Nathan on the Sabbath, and there would be no great deeds, only necessary ones. Sparks flew over the fence and hissed on the damp cobblestones. She lifted her gaze to him, his eyes darker than darkness.
“We were married on Guy Fawkes Day,” he said. “You remember the firecrackers?”
“God forbid I should forget,” she said.
They stood together, both of them bearing scars, and they saw what they saw while the night clothed them in dignity. For the time being, the children were safe, and in the darkness the fire was blooming as the tears of the grandmothers fell on the souls of those who could hear their weeping.
On the other side of the fence, Emilia stood with Jacob, watching the effigies burn. They’d come outside with the rest of the audience to join the many people masked and cloaked, defying darkness with flashes of fire. The air was hot and smelled of smoked fish as Emilia held on to Jacob’s arm, her bracelet glinting in the firelight.
“Do you remember my cameo, Jacob? I was wearing it when you introduced me to your parents.”
“Yes, of course. I was looking for the gold cross you always wore.” He patted his pockets for matches and tobacco. “Whatever happened to it?”
“Your freckles stood out against your cheeks, you were so pale.” Someone walked by carrying a torch. In the fire the tailor’s guy was melting into remnants of straw and cloth.
“I was rather nervous. I’d have been much more nervous if I’d thought that someday I might look under my wife’s bed to find a slipper and instead see a train schedule.” Jacob fumbled with his pipe, dropping his tobacco first and then his match. He shrugged and put the pipe back in his pocket. “Are you leaving me?”
His face was just a shape in the darkness. His hands, if he would take hers in them, would have the familiar warmth of a favorite pair of gloves. “Sometimes you act like you might prefer it,” she said, pulling away.
“Because you’re offended by Jews? You and a few million other Londoners. I was naïve to think any different, but just the same I don’t see how I can do without you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t see.” She looked at him with such dangerous sincerity that he went after his pipe, ready to give it another go so that he could do something he was sure of. “I want to tell you about the cameo,” she said.
“You’re thinking about leaving me and you want to talk about some old piece of jewelry?” he asked. “There’s only one explanation. You murdered someone for it. Ah, you should have told me before. I’d have made notes and written a play about it instead of the ghetto story and not upset you.” He held his pipe as steadily as he could, cupping the match in the wind.
“I’m serious. Then you’ll see what I mean. It’s about the woman that gave me the cameo.” Emilia looked over the fence. If her daughter was there among the East End Jews, she wouldn’t know her name or her face, and if she met her, she’d be dismayed by the unsavory odor, the bad teeth, the Cockney accent overlaid by the school’s grammar teachers. “This woman I’m telling you about. She came from a Jewish village in Poland. A shtetl.”
“Is that right?” Jacob asked, looking at her sharply. Newspapers blew over the fence and into the dying fire, feeding the last few sparks. He would be angry, and whether he’d ever stop being angry and how long it would take she couldn’t guess, but if she threw herself again into the sea of streets, she might lose another child. Someone was calling “Fried fish!” The smell mingled with the smell of Jacob’s pipe tobacco, and she didn’t faint because the memory of her daughter demanded something else. So instead she would tell a story.
“This woman used to say to me, It’s better to open a door yourself than have it smashed open. What use is a broken door afterward? She knew what she was talking about. At one time she was strong enough and clever enough to play the piano for the Russian officers who had blown up her husband’s mill …”
Her hands were bare. She hadn’t thought to put on gloves and her hands were cold though at home she had a dozen pairs.
“That was my mother,” Emilia continued. She wasn’t going to sell off her life as if she had nothing.
On this side of the fence, the ghost of the first wife nodded.
In the alley among the women with red shawls, and in the school yard among the last few revelers who watched the crackling fire kiss the night, the grandmothers walked back and forth. It was for this that they had risen up from their graveyards in Minsk or Pinsk or London, to be with their children in the night, in the wind that rages, in the fog swept in from the sea, and in the singing fire. If you listen to them speak, then you hear the voice of Her, the presence of God, who is with us in our exile.
In the darkness of the alley they stood, the two mothers, facing each other in the smoke of night, their prayers rising through the sliver of sky between rooftops. As it is written: The sins of the parents last unto the third or fourth generation, but the merit of those who love will go on to the thousandth.
Amen. Selah.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank Alexis Gargagliano, my editor at Scribner, for her perspicacity, her adroit and delicate suggestions, her enthusiasm. I would also like to thank Susan Moldow, the publisher of Scribner, for her ongoing interest in my work, and Louise Dennys, the publisher of Knopf Canada, for her confidence in me. I am grateful to my wonderful agent, Helen Heller, for her feedback while the manuscript was in its early drafts; her honesty and insight were invaluable. My thanks also go to my two amazing daughters, who came along during the writing of this book, thus irrevocably changing both me and the story I wrote. Many other people have gen
erously supported my work, and I want all of them to know how much I appreciate it. Finally, and most of all, I want to thank my husband, Allan, who cheered me on through every draft.
Lilian Nattel was born in Montreal and lives in Toronto with her husband and two daughters. Her previous novel, The River Midnight, was published to international acclaim and won the Martin and Beatrice Fischer Prize for Fiction.
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2004
Copyright © 2004 by Moonlily Manuscripts Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2004. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
NATTEL, LILIAN, 1956–
THE SINGING FIRE / LILIAN NATTEL.
eISBN: 978-0-307-37068-6
I. TITLE.
PS8577.A757S55 2004a C813′.54 C2004-902645-3
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