“We stay up all night learning because we fell asleep at Sinai, so now we want to show God our eagerness to receive the Torah,” I said.
Bayla nodded and smiled. Her face was white except for the two red spots burning through her cheeks. “Only, we never really woke up, did we?” she asked. “I mean, any people that stretches its neck out to be slaughtered over and over again is obviously still asleep, no?”
Bayla’s words had a startling effect. No sooner were they out of her mouth than a strange stillness overtook the assembled women. They seemed to have frozen in their places, even their tongues momentarily stilled, as if Bayla’s words were like a powder she’d concocted at the pharmacy that in falling upon women’s ears had the power to induce paralysis.
Rivka was the first to find her voice. “Do you think such talk is fit for the ears of children?” she asked.
The children present had all heard such talk before, of course. News of the Kishenev pogrom had reached our town just after Pesach, and although we had not seen trouble like that in many years and relations with our gentile neighbors were friendly enough, there was fear in the town and talk of starting a defense group.
“Since when have any of you ever hesitated to speak the truth to children?” Bayla asked. No one present would admit to such a failing, but Freyde thought to answer that the only truth she spoke to her children was Torah.
Bayla nodded and turned a serious face to Freyde. “And is there anywhere in the Torah that speaks against defending one’s own life and the lives of one’s children?”
It was an unfair question. The assembled women, though pious, were not well versed in the specifics of Torah. They lived Torah, of course, but they didn’t learn it. So common sense had to prevail, and what Bayla said did make sense. Wasn’t the saving of life the highest value? Were there not tales recounted in the Torah of our people having to defend themselves against invaders and attackers? Were there not imprecations against the dreaded Amalek and calls to battle against the likes of Haman? The women began to nod and talk amongst themselves. What Bayla had said was not so outrageous, they agreed, though God willing, it should not come to pass that such a defense group would be needed in our town.
By the time we had finished gathering our reeds, a peaceful holiday feeling prevailed again. “Good Yonteff,” they wished us as we prepared to leave. “And to Tsila too,” they added as we began to climb back up the hill.
A cold drizzle had begun to fall. Bayla looked at me worriedly, then removed her coat and placed it on my shoulders.
“You’ll get wet,” I protested.
“Hush now.”
I didn’t argue further. She looked so tall and straight that it seemed nothing, let alone rain, could harm her, and I, on the other hand, was already feeling chilled. I pulled the coat closer around me but only felt colder and colder.
“I’m leaving,” she told me. “That’s why I came over today. To tell Tsila.”
“Leaving?” I asked.
“With Leib.”
“For Bialystok?”
“Bialystok? Why would we be going to Bialystok?”
“Leib’s from there.”
“Where a person is from is less important than where he’s going,” she told me.
“Where’s Leib going?” I asked.
Bayla smiled. “I’m not speaking in a literal sense. I mean that the future is more important than the past. As a people we’ve tended to dwell on the past and ignore the future. For centuries we’ve done that, and where has it gotten us?” Bayla swept her hand dramatically to encompass the scene around us. It was a particularly bleak day. “Leib and I are moving forward,” she said firmly.
“When?” I asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“On Shavuos? You’re going to travel on Shavuos?”
Bayla smiled. “On the evening train.”
We walked in silence while I digested her news.
“I’ve never been on a train,” I said after a while.
“I’ve only been once.”
“What’s it like?”
“Fast,” she said. “So fast you can hardly see what flies by your window. Entire villages sweep into view, then fall away before you have time to blink an eye.”
I thought, in contrast, of the huge, slow oxen that lumbered along our muddy rows and lanes, our horse-drawn carts, and I felt a restless curiosity quicken within me. “If you wait until after the holiday, I’ll come to the station to see you off,” I told her.
Bayla tousled my hair affectionately. “I’m afraid my sister is not so fond of the course I’ve chosen that she’d come to the station to bid me farewell.”
“Then I’ll go with my father.”
“Your father?” Her laughter stung me. Why not my father? He was working for Noam the teamster again, departing every morning for the Kalinkovich station in a wagon made of oak, with thick iron wheels. “You think an exploiter like Noam would allow your father to carry you back and forth to Kalinkovich?” Bayla asked.
That I couldn’t answer. I was a little afraid of Noam for reasons I couldn’t explain. He was not an overly large man, but our house always seemed uncomfortably crowded when he stepped inside it. One time he’d stood in the doorway looking me over. It was mud season—there were splatters of it up and down his high boots and leather leggings. Even his whip was splattered. He hadn’t come in or gone out; he had just stood there for the longest time looking at me. “Not much like her mother, is she?” he’d commented finally. My father hadn’t answered but had instinctively shifted his posture in such a way that his body blocked me from Noam’s sight.
“Your father’s not one to stand up to the likes of Noam,” Bayla said.
“LEAVING?” TSILA ASKED. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, LEAVING?”
Bayla colored slightly.
“Oh, I see now. Where’s he dragging you to?”
“He’s not dragging me.”
“Where’s he going?”
“That I can’t tell you.”
“Of course not. You can’t tell me anything anymore. Not what you think, not what you do, not what you feel about this great fiancé of yours who continues to humiliate you. But maybe you can tell me this: does he even want you to follow?”
“Of course he does.”
Tsila snorted. “I’ll believe that when I’ve danced at your wedding.”
“Then I’ll have to make do without your belief, since I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Tsila, for once, was stunned to silence. “Tomorrow?” she finally managed to utter. “Unmarried?”
Bayla didn’t answer.
“You’re leaving with him, unmarried?”
“It’s just for a short while,” Bayla said gently, but Tsila’s tongue had already recovered its sharpness.
“You prefer to be abandoned in a strange city where no one cares whether you live or starve?”
“He won’t abandon me,” Bayla answered.
Tsila nodded without seeming to agree.
“Try not to worry so much,” said Bayla in a tone suddenly soft with affection. She reached over to stroke her sister’s cheek. Tsila waved her away.
“Will you want your wedding dress?” I asked. It still lay in a pile of fabrics by Tsila’s chair. Bayla turned to me. “I don’t think I’ll need it,” she said softly. “Maybe Tsila can save it for you.”
I looked at Tsila but her expression was blank. Sorrow, I know now. I’ve seen enough faces mirroring an emptiness inside to recognize that vacant expression on Tsila’s face, but I hadn’t then. Tsila’s gaze floated without focus and her hands, usually so busy, did something I had never seen them do: they pressed idly at the tabletop. Ten fingers, swollen as sausages, pressed uselessly against the wood grain of the table.
MOST WOMEN WOULD HAVE DISCARDED THE BROCADE after Bayla left. There was no longer any question as to the luck it carried. At shul the next Shabbes Freyde said it should be burned and its ashes buried outside of town. Rivka reminded her that rare was the dressmaker
who could afford to burn such a fine material. It was true, Rivka conceded, that maybe it shouldn’t be kept as a dress, particularly for a bride, but there were other purposes to which it could be put. An armchair, perhaps, window shades. Freyde said she wouldn’t have such bad luck hanging as shades in any home of hers.
“I’ll wear it to my wedding,” I said.
“You’ll wear something luckier,” Lipsa said to me, and gave my arm a reassuring pat. “Where’s your stepmother?” she asked. She had come by to see Tsila a few days earlier but Tsila hadn’t let her in.
“She’s not feeling well,” I explained. “She’s at her mother’s.”
“And your friend Sara?”
“Also not well,” I said, reluctant to divulge Sara’s decision, since Kishenev, that she was an atheist.
“So you’ll sit with me,” Lipsa said as she shifted a little to make a tiny space next to her on the bench. I wedged myself in.
“My father is worried about Tsila,” I confided to Lipsa in a whisper. “The swelling.”
The swelling in Tsila’s fingers had spread to her legs, her neck … everywhere, it seemed, except her belly. The local midwife, Dvoire, had come and gone, having done nothing but purse her lips and dispense a few herbs that had not helped.
Our Dvoire was a kind enough woman but neither intuitive nor skilled at the business of bringing babies into the world, which was why Lipsa’s Rohel and other young women went to other towns for their midwife apprenticeships. No one said anything aloud, but there were murmurings about how many births went wrong in our town, and more than one woman in childbirth had seen the Angel of Death peering out through Dvoire’s eyes as she ministered to them. It was for this reason that my father took me aside as I was drawing water from our storage barrel to ask if maybe Lipsa shouldn’t be called again to look in on Tsila. His tone, confiding and worried, was no longer one of an adult addressing a child.
I didn’t answer right away. We both knew how Tsila had reacted to Lipsa’s first visit and neither of us cared to face her anger. Rosa too seemed to resent Lipsa’s presence, as if it implied that her own ministrations were insufficient. But there was no question that something was going wrong with Tsila’s pregnancy, and Lipsa, though untrained, was the one person we knew who could coax life from the embrace of death. “I’ll speak to her in shul,” I promised my father.
“YOU’RE EATING?” LIPSA ASKED TSILA WHEN SHE ARrived the next morning. Tsila had been surprised to see Lipsa at her door again, but not angry. Her fingers were so swollen that she could not hold a needle. This worried her enough that she entreated Lipsa to come in.
“Of course I’m eating,” Tsila said. “Do you think I would try to starve him?”
Lipsa pulled on Tsila’s eyelids until she could see the red underneath. “Eggs and milk are important. You’re eating eggs and milk?”
Tsila assured her that she was.
“And sleeping?”
“Sleeping is more difficult,” Tsila said. “He presses on me so.”
Lipsa felt the hard flatness of Tsila’s abdomen and pursed her lips as Dvoire had done. “Do you dream?” she asked.
“How can I dream when I hardly sleep?”
“What do you see in your dreams?” Lipsa asked.
“Fish,” Tsila said.
“Fish?” Lipsa pursed her lips again. “What sort of fish?”
“All sorts. Carp, herring, whitefish …”
A sharp intake of breath from Lipsa. “On a platter?” she asked.
“No, swimming.”
“Ah … swimming,” Lipsa exhaled, her face relaxing for the first time since she’d begun her examination. “Good,” she said. “Very good.”
Lipsa pressed her fingers behind Tsila’s ears and along the glands in her neck, then she took Tsila’s hand in hers and pressed on the swollen knuckles and fingers. “This is why you’re dreaming of fish. All this water … he probably thinks he’s in a river. You’re drinking dandelion tea for the swelling?”
“A little,” Tsila said.
“Forget a little. You have to drink a lot. Whenever you can manage a swallow, you should be drinking. And aside from that you need to rest more.” Lipsa began rummaging in her bag for the herbs she had brought with her.
“Rest more? How can I rest more? Who will put food on our table?”
“Does Noam no longer pay Aaron Lev a wage?”
“Not enough of one,” Tsila snapped.
Lipsa looked up from her herbs. “And you must try to turn your thoughts from unpleasantness. Otherwise the river your baby swims in will become a sea of bitterness.”
But as Lipsa said that her eyes shifted—as if they were pulled without her accord—to an unpleasantness that could not be avoided or pushed from one’s mind: the cobalt brocade that lay in an unfinished heap in the pile by Tsila’s chair. She forced her eyes back to Tsila without asking if we’d had any word from Bayla. We had not, and the entire town knew it.
“Miriam should be helping out now,” Lipsa said.
“She helps,” Tsila answered, and then: “Despite what others might think about me, I’m not about to sacrifice my stepdaughter’s education for the sake of my own baby.”
“Who’s talking about sacrifice?” Lipsa asked. “She can read, can she not?”
The widow Ida had received a letter two days ago, Lipsa said, an official letter that might well reveal the whereabouts of her son, Moishe.
“No child I’ve raised is taking money from a poor widow,” Tsila said.
“Better the poor widow should sit alone day after day with a letter she can’t read?”
“Miriam will read it for her. She’ll go over right now and read it to Ida, but for no payment.”
“And deny Ida her pride?”
Tsila didn’t answer.
“Deny an old woman the one thing she has left in the world, a bit of pride?”
A few kopecks, then, Tsila agreed, but just a very few, and only to save Ida’s pride.
And Mrs. Entelman was said to be rising less and less often from her bed, Lipsa said, so crushed was she by Shendel’s departure to Montreal. Wouldn’t she benefit from some company a few hours a week?
Tsila stared at Lipsa open-mouthed, her cheeks coloring with anger. “No child of mine is taking money to sit with the lonely.”
“Who said she’ll sit?” Lipsa asked. “Do you think a woman of that standing would accept the company of a poor girl like Miriam without pretending there are chores that need doing?”
“I didn’t raise her to be a maid,” Tsila responded, and that might have been the end of it were it not for what came of my assistance to Ida.
The widow Ida’s was the last hut in town before the rise up to our home. Hers was a particularly poor dwelling, with cardboard in the windows instead of glass, an earthen floor, and a thatched roof that was black with rot. Inside it was dark, even on a summer afternoon, so it took a few moments for me to make out the lay of the room. Ida was seated by the stove, in the one chair in the room. Other than her chair and stove there was a table and a curtain, behind which, I knew, was the bed. There was no place for me to sit, so I stood, only a weak lamp to read by, so I held the letter in the open doorway.
Moishe, Ida’s beloved son, had been arrested ten years earlier. His crime centered on the silver candlesticks that had always occupied a place of honor in his mother’s home. A gift from Ida’s own mother, they were the one possession of value that Ida had managed to retain through the hard years of raising her children following her husband’s death. They sat in the center of her table, their brightness comforting the eye in that dark room. She polished them every Thursday in honor of the Sabbath’s approach, and it was a point of pride for her that even in her reduced circumstances she could usher in the Sabbath with the style and beauty befitting the visit of a bride. It was therefore a point of particular humiliation for Moishe when he heard that the tax collector, seeking his arrears, had forced his way into his mother’s home, scanned the room f
or something of value, then swept the candlesticks into his bag.
Moishe was not known as a hothead. He was a steady youth who had worked at one of Entelman’s lumbering operations since he was old enough to handle an axe. But when he heard what had just happened at his mother’s, he threw his axe down and strode purposefully into town.
Ida tried to calm him, she later told the women at the market. She feared the look in his eye. “What are a pair of candlesticks?” she asked. Material objects. What was the material in life compared to the spiritual? Was it not the feeling in one’s heart that mattered most when welcoming the Sabbath bride? Still, as she spoke, she was surprised how broken her heart felt by the loss of those candlesticks, a gift from her mother when she was a bride herself and full of hope for her future. And when Moishe saw the pain in his mother’s eyes, he marched out of her home toward Markowitz’s tavern, where the tax collector was enjoying a meal before departing our town for the next. The candlesticks were in the man’s satchel—easy to remove—and for this crime against the government, Moishe received a sentence of ten years hard labor, ten years that were now coming to an end.
Moishe would be twenty-nine now, no longer a youth but not too old to start his life again, a family. The letter that Ida thrust into my hands the moment I appeared at her door contained the possibility of good news she had waited ten long years to hear. I opened it with a flourish, warm with the importance of the moment and my own role in escorting in the happiness of another. It was obvious from my first glance at the letter, however, that the news it contained was not good, and that rather than performing an act of kindness by reading its contents, I was about to remove the last shred of hope from a woman’s life. The sentence was served. That much the letter acknowledged. But to read those words aloud, fleetingly raising hopes, when the very next line informed the reader of the death of the prisoner—a number, followed by the name, Moishe’s name—this I couldn’t do. I stood silently for a moment, and in that silence the content of the letter revealed itself to Ida without my reading a word.
“Tell me,” she said. “I want to know how and when.”
But that too was denied her. The letter didn’t say.
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