The car couplers clattered. The train crawled through hissing smoke and stopped under a dark vault.
Two girls in long skirts greeted Mila and Atara on the platform. In the taxi, the seminary girls talked excitedly about this year’s entering class, the largest ever, forty-five, bless the Lord, almost a hundred in the entire seminary, the principal was very happy, bless the Lord, this year’s T1 girls were all so special.
“T1 girls?” Atara asked.
“Teachers 1—for Teacher’s Training College, but the teacher’s degree is granted only if one stays the entire three years.” The girl’s voice held a note of regret.
“Marguit is engaged!” the second girl chimed in.
Mila and Atara shook Marguit’s hand. “Mazel tov!”
“Esti, too, is engaged!” Marguit teased.
“Mazel tov!”
The taxi stopped mid-block in front of a three-story house. The older students explained that the seminary comprised four adjoining houses with interconnected corridors. No, Mila and Atara would not share the same room; all T1 girls were encouraged to make new friends.
SIX BEDS in two facing rows under a bare bulb. Cloth of faded green-and-wine corduroy screened six shelves. A loud bell, the bulb went out. The orange coil of the wall-mounted heater glowered and went dark. In the middle bed of the row facing the window, Atara pulled the coarse blanket to her nose. She would try; she must. She would learn to fall asleep without reading—where would she have hidden a book and a flashlight in a room shared with five girls? Lulling herself, she fell into the sensation that a train was rocking her to some farther destination, tournent roues, tournent roues … tournent … tournent.…
In the adjoining house, in a room with two facing rows of beds, Mila also lulled herself. Comforted by the fervor she sensed in the other girls whispering their bedtime prayers, she joined in: “Michael is to my right, Gabriel to my left, Uriel is in front.…”
Mila woke full of anticipation. She was thrilled to belong to the first generation of Hasidic women who would be studying Scripture. She looked forward to meeting girls from different walks of orthodox life: from Hasidic communities and Misnaged communities; from Litvak, Yekke, and Polish families; from every corner of Europe, from the two Americas, from Australia and South Africa—all in long skirts and long-sleeved blouses, girls among whom she would be, at last, normal.
The class schedule was: Pentateuch, Prophets, Midrash, Jewish Thought, Conduct. During Pentateuch class, Mila wondered: Had her father come across this very interpretation? Had gematriah enchanted him as it enchanted her? To Mila, gematriah felt occult yet cerebral, mystical yet rational, drawing the Hebrew words of Scripture into the more universal language of numbers.
During afternoon study hours, Mila whispered to Atara, “Did you notice? The letters in the word (messiah) sum to 358, which equals the sum of (snake).” Mila recounted the commentary: This equation corroborated that redemption and sin were not exclusive of each other. Fear not to go down to Egypt, the Lord tells Jacob; Jacob must go down before he can raise a great nation. Descent for the sake of ascent. Redemption through sin was a sign of messianic times.
Most of all, Mila cherished the third Sabbath meal at the seminary, when all the girls sang and danced and circled Queen Sabbath to detain her a bit longer. In the last glimmer of sundown, the girls intoned longingly, Prophet Elijah, come to us with the messiah, and Mila daydreamed: Who among them would give birth to the messiah, son of David, who among the girls would deliver the world from suffering?
AFTER all the years during which Atara’s secular reading had pulled them apart, Mila loved to prepare for classes with Atara, she loved how Atara studied every page of the Mikraoth Gedoloth, the Expanded Rabbinic Bible, not just the assigned commentaries. Teachers began to call on Atara to explain obscure passages, and classmates consulted her during study hours.
Yet, however earnestly Atara tried to embrace the seminary, Mila feared that it might not last. She could tell from the rigidity with which Atara listened to the rabbis’ lectures that they did not satisfy her.
One morning, a teacher called on Atara to sum up a rabbinic argument and Atara wondered aloud about the merit of the argument. The teacher rubbed his eyelids. Mila bit her lip. The class fell still. “Next verse,” the teacher called.
Another day, Atara raised her hand and asked how Rashi had arrived at an interpretation. “Such a shame you’re not a boy!” the rabbi exclaimed. The class understood it was a shame because boys, not girls, needed good heads to study Torah. Then the rabbi quoted another Rashi passage that gave the same reading and he moved on to the next commentator.
“He repeated the interpretation but didn’t explain it,” Atara whispered in Mila’s ear.
The rabbi noticed Atara’s frown and whisper. “Is it possible you have something to add to Rashi?” the rabbi asked.
The class laughed.
But then Sabbath came again, the singing, the dancing. Girls at the seminary who knew of Zalman’s voice asked Atara to sing. After hearing her once, the girls asked Atara to sing every Friday night. The first measures trembled but soon the notes freed themselves. Some girls closed their eyes. When Atara finished singing, girls lined up to shake her hand. “May your strength be firm!” Mila, who recognized Zalman’s modulations in Atara’s song, felt certain that Atara would find her place as the daughter of Zalman and all the generations past.
*
MILA and Atara were studying in the little library under the eave when the door crept open. A gray triangular goatee floated between door and jamb. The goatee retreated. The girls stifled a laugh. “I wonder why he does that,” Atara whispered, returning to the Expanded Rabbinic Bible, but Mila could no longer focus, she was aware of the deep silence around them, that once again Atara and she were the last ones in the Lecture House after study hours, when all the other girls were in their rooms preparing themselves for lights-out.
“ATARA? …” The rabbi’s voice no longer held warm expectation when he called on her in class.
The words she was finding to formulate her question frightened Atara. The question might begin: When the Bible commands to kill babies and animals, in warfare—or, When God commands that a child suffer for his parents’ sin.… To Atara, these seemed good questions, with implications in real life, questions that might matter to Mila, too, but Atara’s pulse quickened when the rabbi’s dark eyes came to rest on her raised hand, her throat contracted; her voice would quake and strangle as it did every time she tried to ask this kind of question.
“Nothing—I’m sorry.”
One hand came down as the other scribbled Nuremberg. Reading about the Nuremberg defense, Atara had understood without translation, the words were the same in Yiddish: Befehl ist Befehl, an order is an order; they were following orders, the Nazis had said. To Atara, it seemed a good question, whether one should ever obey orders blindly, but Rabbi Braunsdorfer might rail: “Are you, God forbid, equating the Lord’s command to a Hitler command?”
Atara’s pen hatched diagonal lines over Nuremberg, hatched, crosshatched, stippled—short lines of equal weight, dots of equal circumference, her pen stamped another pattern of closure, to honor the Lord. The dots filled the margin, the margin bled onto the page—
“Miss Star, would you translate sternly.…” Rabbi Braunsdorfer liked to pun on all the girls’ names and Atara Stern, which combined crown and star, stimulated the inclination.
Atara read the Hebrew text and translated: “Measure for measure the Lord punishes, the Lord is just.…”
“Thank you. The holy Chazon Isch, peace be upon his soul, explains: Before the war, Jewish parents sent their children to secular schools; they kept their children’s bodies alive while sacrificing their souls. Measure for measure the Lord struck these parents; He destroyed their children’s bodies.” Rabbi Braunsdorfer’s voice rose to a high nasal pitch. “And it was an act of grace! In an act of grace, HaShem relieved these Polish communities of free will before they dete
riorated entirely.
“Some murdered children belonged to God-fearing parents? Then suffering must be attributed to Bitul Torah: not enough Torah. And when there was enough Torah, the suffering of innocents must be attributed to yesurim shel ahava, the torments of love; God torments the few who do not sin to permit them to reach a higher station in the next world.”
Atara had stopped taking notes. She did not wait for Rabbi Braunsdorfer to call on her.
“Does the Lord stay to watch, when children are burning?”
Heads turned.
Rabbi Braunsdorfer pulled back his chair.
The bell rang.
Rabbi Braunsdorfer closed his Expanded Rabbinic Bible and descended from the platform. There was a pause, and the usual roar of the girls’ pent-up voices exploded in the classroom. Atara’s pulse quieted down.
Nothing had happened. She had asked a real question and nothing had happened.
She was leaving the little library under the eave when she came nose-to-nose with the principal regaining his balance as if his ear had been glued to the door. They stood on the landing; she in her plaid dress, her lace collar; he in his gray suit and gray goatee—he was short for a man. He did not look straight into her eyes but to a point behind her right shoulder. His goatee lifted as he swallowed.
“Dirty hands take hold of sacred texts vizout approfed mediashun.”
“Pardon?”
He enunciated slowly. “Dirty hands take hold of sacred texts vizout approofed mediation.”
Dirty hands? She had been studying holy books, not forbidden books.
“Should I not use the library?”
His right hand moved in circles as his spoke. “Some zink: I do not have to study zis but out of choice I vill. Neverzeless, it is not petter. To study vat you are not commanded to study is mental exercise—like crossvord puzzle or chess, but here, in zis school, ve do not seek to stimulate ze mind.”
“No?”
“In zis school, ve seek to stimulate ze soul—ze soul, not ze mind. If a girl vants to uplift her soul and be near ze Creator, she studies vat she is commanded to study. Do you know ze rules of tennis doubles? In doubles, you stick to your side of ze court. Only a busybody rushes onto her partner’s side. Poaching never pays: you leaf your side of ze court open and you spoil ze game. Ven you open a holy pook, ask: Am I entering someone else’s territory? Zink about it. Good night.”
The principal started down the stairs. Atara saw him in tennis whites, running after the ball on his side of the court.…
Despite the principal’s warning, Atara returned to the low-ceilinged library. Now, when she opened a book, the letters scolded: “Tsk tsk … dirty hands! Moses received the Law at Sinai and passed it on to Joshua, who passed it on to the Elders, who passed it on to the Prophets, who passed it on to the Men of the Great Assembly; they did not pass it on to Atara, daughter of Hannah.”
*
THE PRINCIPAL called Mila into his office before Passover break.
“Zo, you are returning to Paris.… Are you curious about ze vorld, outside?”
Mila protested. Everyone was curious, sometimes, but her deepest desire was to marry a son of Torah and raise a Jewish family.
“Good, good. Zen you must not befriend evildoers.”
Mila nodded.
“You vant to help Atara, yes?”
Mila’s heart beat faster.
“Vat does Atara vant? Vat are her zoughts, her plans?”
The words Atara might have used almost left Mila’s mouth, Atara wants to make her own choices, but instead Mila offered: “Atara studies more intensely than any girl here.”
The principal cleared his throat. “Is Atara interested in boys?”
“Of course not!”
“Zen vy, vy does she not accept answers zat are clear? You and all her friends must show Atara you disapprove.” His finger wagged. “It is an obligation to hate ze vicked. Show her zat she vill lose you.” He paused. “You, too, are in danger. Reputation iz a fragile vase, one false move ze vase breaks … vat, vat else do you have, poor orphan?” His thick lenses muddled the color of his eyes. “Zink about it.” He rose. “Have a safe trip and kosher Passover.”
Mila stumbled out. Atara’s questions were getting them both in trouble. One girl had even asked whether Atara came from a freier (free-thinking) home and why had she been admitted to the seminary? The habitually agreeable Mila had snapped: “Atara’s father is the great Torah scholar Zalman Stern who follows the Rebbe’s every edict.”
*
MILA and Atara kissed Zalman’s hand, they kissed and hugged Hannah as the younger children tugged at their sleeves and skirts; they kissed and hugged their siblings. Atara noticed Schlomo, just thirteen and returned the day before from his yeshiva abroad. Schlomo stood at a distance, biting his lower lip—a bar mitzvah boy does not kiss a sister even after a lengthy separation. Atara waved to him, awkwardly; the boy flushed and stormed away.
Hannah pressed a hand against her lower back and let out a short moan. Atara rushed with a chair. “Sit, Mama, sit!”
Mila rushed with a low stool. “Here, Auntie Hannah, here!”
Hannah sat and sighed with relief. “My daughters are home.”
Atara lifted Hannah’s swollen foot, placed it on the stool; Mila lifted the other swollen foot, placed it on the stool. Hannah smiled, extended her legs. The light bounced off the tight mesh of her compression stockings as off a metal plate.
The backs of Hannah’s knees were knotted plums, her feet were purple deltas. The doctor had warned and threatened, but what were high blood pressure, varicose veins, and exhaustion when one considered Hannah’s siblings who never returned? Hannah’s belly had swelled again.
Leaning back in the chair, Hannah said, “Now tell me, my Torah scholar girls, what have you learned? Tell me everything.”
Mila turned to Atara. “Now, when we open a T’nach, we read not only Rashi but also Sforno and Ibn Ezra and—”
Hannah leapt up to grab the coin a toddler was pushing up his nose.
Atara had leapt faster. “Sit, Mama, sit!”
Every day, Mila and Atara schemed and strategized so Hannah would rest her rounding belly. They took over Passover cleaning. From early morning until late at night, they hunted crumbs of unleavened bread. They sang as they scoured the seams of the parquet and behind bookshelves and armoires; they sang the French songs that made Atara melancholy for the lycée and the new seminary songs that Mila liked best. At times, Mila scampered up to Atara and kissed her cheek—best friends, sisters for life. Atara kissed her back, for life.
A couple of times, Mila fell out of harmony. Atara held the note, waiting for Mila to find her voice again, but Mila ran out of the room.
Vat, vat else do you have, poor orphan?
At the seminary, where no other girl had parents nearby, Mila had felt less of an orphan, but the principal had chosen to remind her.
Mila leaned over the baby’s crib, pressed her cheek against the soft baby skin. Everything was limpid when she looked into his wide eyes, when she tickled him under the chin and he gurgled with rapture.
“Milenka, the baby needs sleep,” Hannah called.
Mila stepped away from the crib.
If the Lord asked for the baby? Mila tiptoed back to the crib. The baby cooed, wiggled arms and legs. Mila hugged her elbows and rocked from side to side; she leaned into the crib, kissed the baby’s cheeks, wildly, kissed his tiny toes. The Lord would not ask for this baby.
During the middle days of Passover, the girls coaxed Hannah into accompanying the children to the Luxembourg Gardens. When Hannah sat on a park bench and turned her wan face to the sun, when Hannah inhaled deeply, as magnolia petals settled pink and white on the spring lawn, the girls were euphoric—Hannah was tasting life, this life. But the lull soon faded. Someone somewhere needed Mama’s attention, prodding, protruding duties, more urgent than an ache for rest. The girls crashed from paradise, to Hannah’s abrupt hurry. Hannah gripped
a toddler’s hand and heaved her heavy belly far from magnolia alley, while other mothers sat on the park benches.
THE RETURN to the seminary neared and Mila grew unsure of herself, of what things meant; she changed her mind and changed it again. What did the principal want her to do? Was Atara in danger?
First Schlomo left for his yeshiva abroad, then the girls prepared to leave.
Hannah called them into the living room; she opened the dark walnut chest and showed them the fine eiderdowns and white nightgowns, prettier than any nightgown Mila or Atara had ever worn. “The Lord willing, the chest will soon be full.” Hannah kissed her girls, enjoined them to heed their reputations. The entire family stood on the balcony as the taxi turned the corner. May the Lord bless you. May He guard your steps.…
*
THE HOUSING assignments had been changed. Mila now shared a room with the most popular girls at the seminary, including two cousins from a wealthy family who had spent the war years in Switzerland.
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