Along tracks that smelled of dust, metal, and urine, she hummed Hannah’s songs; on the worn benches of Europe’s market squares, she hummed old melodies to hush broken hearts and move them on, Es brent, briderlech es brent.… She hummed softly for souls that still haunt those riverbanks, disoriented souls that cannot find trace of their existence. The tunes floated in squares emptied of Jews as she boarded yet another train to more erased traces.
She reached Transylvania and disembarked at the Satu Mare station. Small letters below the sign for Satu Mare indicated that the locality had also been known as Szatmár. She took a taxi to the main square of Satu Mare / Szatmár, to the Piaţa Libertăţii. Leaning against sooty pillars, heavily made-up women in tiny skirts crossed and uncrossed their bare legs, high heels tap-tapping the cold stone. She asked whether a synagogue still stood in Satu Mare.
Yes, but there was no congregation.
She made her way to the border that had separated northern Transylvania from southern Transylvania during the war, she thought of Mila and her parents locked inside a synagogue, packing the same suitcase thirty-one days; she thought of the night the Jews of Deseu took leave of their river, how the farmers among them worried about the seeds that had not been planted, and the mothers told of daisy-dappled fields, and the children fell asleep while the river scored their breath, one last night.
She found Deseu and its Jewish cemetery. She looked for the grave of Mila’s father but the stones leaned sideways and some had fallen entirely and she could not tell whose grave was whose.
She heard Judith’s lament; she heard Josef’s lullaby consoling the lament:
Will I corrupt the seed of Zalman Stern?
Hie lee lu lee la.…
An old man stepped out of a birch grove. “Are you a Jewish? Evreu?”
The man decided this woman must be, standing there among the graves. He smiled an impish smile and in his threadbare, Soviet-era coat, with his mouth emptied of teeth, he sang, “Yadidadidam!”
He unfolded a grayish napkin on a stone and placed upon it a few plastic barrettes, a bookmark with a photograph of a synagogue, safety pins, portraits of saints.… “Cheap, very cheap!”
Atara gave him a bill and left the cemetery.
She found the linden tree by the gate, the yard with the cowshed, the chicken coop.
An ancient, stooped woman in black kerchief and black dress shuffled toward her, a watering can in her hands. “Hello, who are you?” the woman asked.
“I … I came— Josef … Josef Lichtenstein.…”
“Shh.…” The old woman placed a finger on her lips.
In the shadow of the linden tree where Zalman had stood half a century before, Atara started again: “Anghel, I came to speak of Anghel.”
The woman’s gnarled hand went to her pocket. She retrieved a wrinkled postcard and held it out.
Anghel had written to Florina that he would send for her when he had plowed the fields of America.
The woman wiped an eye, slid the cracked postcard between the folds of her black skirt, looked up. “Hello, who are you?”
Atara spoke of Anghel’s marriage to the beautiful Mila Heller whose parents had lived near Cluj, across the river. She spoke of Anghel’s love for his two mothers.
The woman raised the watering can. The water flowed from the spout, some inside the potted nettle.
Atara opened her purse and took out the brooch. “Anghel would have wanted Florina to have this.”
The old woman eyed the brooch uncertainly.
Atara asked whether Florina had married, after Anghel had left.
The woman raised her clouded eyes. “Hello, who are you?”
Atara entered the yard and pinned the brooch on the woman’s lapel. The woman hummed to herself. When she noticed Atara again, she said, “Hello?”
Atara started down the dirt road. Quacking ducks waddled after her as she pressed on, past doorways where mothers stood with tightened shawls around their shoulders and called through the lanes for children to come home.
2012
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
MILA wakes in her chair by the living-room window. She leans forward and looks out. Among the sidecurls and the black coat flaps waving on the overpass, she searches for the messiah’s white donkey, the sign that Josef and Judith live again. She hushes her great-grandchildren running circles around her armchair and listens for Elijah’s step. She buries her face in her prayer book. If my time comes before the messiah, may I be worthy of sojourning near my Josef, in the house of the pious.… She dozes off as her great-grandchildren laugh and spin their flyaway silken hair around her. One last time, Mila dreams of Josef placing a hand over his heart, a hand over her heart, and mouthing the word.
GLOSSARY
ammah: phallus
apikores (pl. apikorsim): nonbeliever
apikorsus: heresy
baraita: Jewish oral law not incorporated into the six orders of the Mishnah
baruch habah (fem.): Beruchach habooah, literally: blessed be he (she) who comes—meaning: welcome
ben Torah: literally, son of Torah, a boy who behaves according to Torah precepts
biber hat: beaver hat; a “flat,” wide-brimmed black felt hat worn by Satmar men
challilah: God forbid
Debout les damnés de la terre: Arise you wretched of the earth
Eibershter: the one above, God
El maleh rachamim: God full of compassion; prayer for the dead, for the soul of the departed
haphtorah: excerpts from Prophets; traditionally read as part of the bar mitzvah ceremony
HaShem: literally: The Name; God
ilui: Torah prodigy
kaleh meidel: girl in age of marriage
lilin: demons
mitzvah: commandment, refers to the 613 commandments in the Torah; has also come to refer to an act of kindness
muktza: set aside; objects that may not be touched or moved on the Sabbath
phylactery: see under
tefilin Rebbe: leader of a Hasidic sect
sheigets: a young man, pejorative; a lowlife; also, a non-Jewish youth
shemah: considered the most important prayer in Judaism: Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.
shtreimel: fur hat of seven or thirteen sable tails, worn by married Hasidic men
shul: house of prayer
Simchath Torah: festival that celebrates the Torah
tefilin, phylacteries: a set of small leather boxes containing Hebrew text on vellum, worn by men at morning prayer, and the leather straps for tying them
T’nach: Book of Scripture
treifenah medinah: unkosher country
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Scott Moyers and Andrew Wylie of the Wylie Agency responded to my over-the-transom manuscript and have my trust and admiration.
Lindsay Sagnette and Becky Hardie are extraordinary editors and supporters. I am grateful for the new literary community they are building at Hogarth, together with Maya Mavjee, Molly Stern, Clara Farmer, David Drake, Rachel Rokicki, Rachelle Mandik, Barbara Sturman, Christine Kopprasch, Rachel Meier, Julie Cepler, and Jay Sones.
Florence Berger, Toby Berger, Julie Hilden, Heather White, and David Coleman are the sort of readers every writer hopes for.
At different stages in the creation of this work, Adam Eaglin, John Casey, Maribelle Leavitt, Stephen Leavitt, Melanie Thernstrom, Sherry King, and Deborah Reck gave me important feedback and encouragement.
Larry Berger read every draft from the first short story in English to the galleys.
About the Author
ANOUK MARKOVITS was raised in France in a Satmar home, breaking from the fold when she was nineteen to avoid an arranged marriage. She went on to receive a bachelor of science from Columbia University, a master of architecture from Harvard, and a PhD in Romance studies from Cornell. Her first novel, Pur Coton, written in French, was published by Gallimard. I Am Forbidden is her English-language debut. She lives in New York
with her husband.
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