“IT WAS HIM, WASN’T IT?” TSILA HAD ASKED ME ON THE night that I had announced I was quitting the Entelmans. I had gone to bed soon after my announcement, too exhausted by the day’s events to eat any supper, too tired, even, for a cup of tea. I was exhausted but not able to sleep. I lay in my bed listening to the rain against the roof, the crackling of the fire, Tsila’s sighs as she struggled with a dress that should have been finished and delivered already, Aaron Lev’s suggestion that she put it away for the night and see if it didn’t look better in the morning. I heard Aaron Lev leave for the evening meeting he attended. Then, as soon as the door shut behind him, Tsila was by my bed. “It was him, wasn’t it? Mr. Entelman. What did he do to you?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Don’t tell me nothing, when you come home in such a state.”
I sat up in bed and looked at her. She wasn’t my mother, had never tried to be, but she loved me, I realized.
“He did nothing,” I repeated. “I ran into him in the hall. I met his eyes. That’s all that happened. Nothing.”
Tsila pulled a chair over and sat down beside me, as she did whenever I was ill.
“What was said between you?”
“Nothing,” I said. “A man such as that feels no need to speak to his own daughter who is working as a maid in his house.”
Tsila raised her eyebrows, but only slightly. “You are not his daughter,” she said calmly, as if unsurprised that I should assert that I was. And in her lack of surprise, I found confirmation of what I already knew.
“I’m not Aaron Lev’s,” I said.
“Oh, but you are.”
“No. I know the truth. I saw it today.” And when Tsila didn’t contradict me right away, I continued. “That’s why Aaron Lev didn’t send for me. That’s why I spent six years at Lipsa’s.”
“You spent those years at Lipsa’s because the circumstances weren’t right for him to keep you. He was away often for his work—how could he care for you? A young child needs a woman’s hand.”
“I’m not his,” I said, a feeling of despondency washing over me now. All afternoon and evening I had felt a calmness, the calmness that comes from finally seeing what has always been visible. Now, though, I began to feel the loss that knowledge entailed.
“He was married to your mother when you were conceived, married to her when you were born. You’re a child of that marriage. The only living child. He sent for you the moment the circumstances were right.”
“I’m not his,” I said again, remembering how once, after hearing me read a passage aloud, he had looked at me in wonder for a moment, then said to Tsila that each generation stands on the shoulders of its parents. “In that way every generation can stand a little taller and see a little further than the one before,” he had explained with pride, yes, pride in his voice. It was his shoulders I stood on, I understood, his and Tsila’s shoulders that were imprinted on my feet. I knew the fine edge of Tsila’s, the gentle slope of Aaron Lev’s. I had found my balance—precarious, yes, but not so much that I couldn’t spring a little. So on what would I stand now, I wondered. On the sucking mud of the swamp? “I know the truth,” I said.
“No,” Tsila countered. “You think you know the truth, but you don’t. You saw something in that man’s face, a certain similarity of features, perhaps, and from this you draw your great truth. ‘I’m not his,’ you keep saying about your father who raised you, as if saying such a thing, out loud in his home, doesn’t constitute disrespect enough for an entire lifetime.”
“I don’t intend disrespect,” I said feebly.
“Then what do you intend?” There was anger in her now. “To ruin our lives as well as your own? To humiliate your father in his own home? To declare yourself a bastard so that you can be damned unto the tenth generation. Is this what you intend?”
“Of course not,” I said, angry myself now. “I’m just trying to speak the truth for once.”
“Well, I’m not his is not the truth.”
“Then what is?”
Tsila hesitated, but just for an instant. “You were not his, but now you are.”
I WAS ALONE, HIDDEN IN A THICK STAND OF PINES, AS I watched Aaron Lev and waited for Malka. Malka had wanted a quiet place for our meeting, a place where we could converse without any danger of being overheard. I had suggested a spot in the swamp, a knoll that I knew by the broken-down shack where Tsila had first taken me, but Malka preferred the forest on the south end of town.
The air was mild, milder than the clear coldness of previous evenings, but with the falling snow had come a dampness that chilled me as I waited. Malka was late, and we had made no plan about how long I should wait for her. Everything about our arrangements had been vague, even the purpose of the meeting itself. She had called me aside as I left the study circle a few nights before and said she had something to discuss with me. Could I meet her at the appointed place and time and not tell another living soul? There had been tension in her face, fear or excitement, I couldn’t tell.
At first her lateness did not diminish the sense of anticipation I felt as I waited. I was not a longtime member of the study circle, so to be singled out by Malka for a private meeting was an unexpected honor. She must have seen something special in me, I reasoned. A trustworthiness, perhaps. A sense of loyalty. Vanity of vanities, I know now, but at the time I only wanted to be noticed for some quality uniquely my own. Sara had singled me out for her affections because of qualities I did not even know I possessed until she saw them in me. Serious, she called me, intelligent. And such is the power of friendship that once she saw them I did too, and I strove to develop them further. I could remember the sweetness of feeling remarkable, and I longed for the person I had been in her presence as much as I longed for a glimpse of her face, her sidelong glance, the flare of her nostrils and rise in her voice as she warmed to her outrage about some injustice or other. To think, then, that Malka might have seen something special in me filled me with a sense of possibility that I hadn’t felt in long months. If it was trustworthiness she had seen, then I would prove myself trustworthy; if loyalty, then I’d be as loyal as Ruth.
Time passed, though, and there was still no sign of Malka. It wasn’t like her to be careless about time, not like her to be vague about anything. As evening came on and I continued to wait, I felt the first prickles of fear.
I remembered the first meeting of the study circle I’d attended after the memorial for Sara. We had met on a Shabbes afternoon, in the forest, since it was becoming too difficult to find a place in town where our secrecy could be assured. There were fourteen girls at that meeting, more than Sara had described, and Malka had welcomed the newcomers and suggested that we start by going around the circle and introducing ourselves. Not just by name, she added, but by the circumstances and conditions of our lives. In this way, Malka explained, we would enter into the development of our class consciousness.
I had been afraid to start, since some of the girls there were the very ones whose stares and whispers had made my life such a torment. But as they took their turns and spoke in quiet voices about the hardships in their own lives, I began to feel the lifting of a curtain that had always hung between us. I had not understood until then that Mirel too felt shame at the treatment she received when delivering laundry to the wealthier households in town, or that beneath Breina’s aloofness was fear that a marriage might be forced upon her, revulsion at the prospects chosen so far by her parents.
When it was my turn to speak I wasn’t sure how I’d begin. I felt my heart beat fast and I feared my voice would tremble and the others would smirk and then turn to each other with knowing nods and glances.
“My mother walked into the river on the day of my birth,” I heard myself say, and then my voice gave way.
There was a silence that seemed interminable as the group waited for me to continue, but no one whispered or snickered.
“Do you have anything else you want to add?” Malka asked finally, her tone as ma
tter-of-fact as if I had revealed nothing more than that my father’s employer often cheated him on his wages.
I had planned to describe how I had come to live with Tsila and Aaron Lev, and the current circumstances of our lives, but I shook my head, not trusting my voice.
“Your mother did not take her own life,” Malka said firmly.
But she had, and I knew it, and so did everyone else sitting there.
“Your mother’s life was taken from her. She was murdered. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I shook my head, too shocked by her words—by the violence of the word murder—to answer.
“It was the humiliations your mother had to bear that made her life unendurable, the injustices of our current social and economic system.”
And yet, hadn’t others borne injustice and survived? Surely Malka knew that. Didn’t others bear injustice and still rise to meet each day? Wasn’t the taking of a life—one’s own life, another’s—the ultimate sin against God, who created us, the ultimate sin against creation itself?
“We will honor your mother’s memory,” Malka said.
A memory enshrouded in whispers, rumors, and shame. There was nothing to honor, I found myself thinking, but then, wasn’t that also a sin? Wasn’t the honoring of one’s parents a commandment as essential as the injunction against the taking of a life?
“We’ll expose the conditions that caused your mother’s death,” Malka said. “And free our world forever from such injustice.”
NIGHT HAD FALLEN AS I WAITED FOR MALKA, BUT I DARED not light my lantern. I began stamping my feet and clapping my hands to ward off the chill that was settling on me. I didn’t know how long I had been waiting. What seemed like hours could have been only minutes, but it was possible that it was, in fact, hours that had elapsed since I had seen Aaron Lev trudging home. I decided to recite the Psalms in order to calm myself and mark the passing time.
Happy is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked, I began. Nor stood in the way of sinners, / Nor sat in the seat of the scornful. I recited slowly, my voice a whisper. Why are the nations in an uproar? And why do the peoples mutter in vain?
The first five Psalms were short, no more than a few verses each. Ten minutes could not possibly have passed. I decided to continue. Five more. Maybe ten. And then, if Malka had still not arrived, I would have to assume a complication had arisen and I would return to town.
O Lord, do not punish me in anger, do not chastise me in fury. Have mercy on me, Lord, for I languish; heal me, for my bones shake with terror.
A stranger had come through town that day, Freyde had told me when I stopped by there after leaving Mrs. Gold’s. A Jew, Freyde said, but one who spoke a language she had never heard before. Strange sounds, though not unpleasant—he said it was Spanish. It seemed to roll mostly from the forward half of his tongue, as if the throat, too busy with breathing, had no part to play in speech. “It would suit you well,” Freyde added, a reference to my scarred throat, which she had never actually seen, hidden as it was by my clothing, but which she and some of the other women in town seemed unable to let fade from their imaginations.
In the Lord I take refuge; / How can you say to me, / Take to the hills like a bird!
Freyde’s references to my scar disturbed me. She had been referring to it more often, as she anticipated the problems it would cause when the time came to find me a match. “With everything else you have going against you, to be marked as well for an early death …”
Her comment was a cruelty, nothing else, and recognizing it as such, I told her I wasn’t interested in her nonsense.
She raised her eyebrows, as surprised by my boldness as I was.
“I suppose you’ve become too high-minded for the likes of me,” she responded.
When before had I ever spoken to Freyde in such a way? Never. And I knew the reason I had now was my attendance at Malka’s study group.
“You can imagine yourself as too high-minded for the ground you are forced to walk,” Freyde continued. “But none of your fancy notions can change the fact that a husband must be found for you, and it won’t be easy with the handprint of death at your throat.”
Fret not thyself because of evildoers, I whispered intently, trying to push such morbid thoughts from my mind. It was all nonsense, I knew. The mischief of a mind still enslaved by superstition. Nothing more. Neither be thou envious against them that work unrighteousness, I whispered. I was at the Thirty-seventh Psalm already, and still no Malka. Then I heard an answering: For they shall soon wither like the grass. And fade as the green herb.
I recognized the voice. How could I not? It was the boy I had met in the swamp, the young man whose voice at the memorial meeting for Sara had touched me no less deeply than it had the first time I encountered him and thought he was my own dead brother. Could it have been my thoughts of my own death just a few moments before that had summoned him now? The thought chilled me. And though I knew such a thought was backward and superstitious, my hand moved instinctively to my throat.
Trust in the Lord, and do good, he continued. Dwell in the land and trust faithfulness.
He lit his lantern, its light glowing softly between us. I had not seen him since the meeting following Sara’s death. Now he stood before me, his belongings tied in a cloth bundle at the end of the stick he held over his shoulder.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Wolf,” he answered.
“I’m Miriam.”
“I know.”
“You know? How do you know?”
To that he simply shrugged his shoulders.
“And where is Malka?” I asked.
“That I don’t know.”
“She was supposed to meet me here at least an hour ago. I’ve been waiting, as you can see, but …”
“Your arrangements with Malka should remain strictly between you and her,” he said, and though his voice remained gentle, there was a harshness to his reprimand. “You don’t know who I am. Perhaps I’m an informer for the Okhrana.”
“So what if you are?” I asked quickly, ashamed at my indiscretion. “Are friends no longer allowed to meet for a walk in the forest on a winter night? Are girlish secrets now a matter of interest to the Okhrana?”
I looked at him closely, a young man of slight build, his cap pulled low on his head, his features soft in the light of his lantern.
“And where are you heading on such a night?” I asked him.
“For a walk. Just like you.”
“An evening stroll?” I asked. “With all your worldly possessions hanging from your shoulder? Or am I being too nosy now? After all, for all you know I could be an informer for the Okhrana.”
“That’s no joking matter,” he said then, his voice low and grave. “Malka’s been arrested.”
“Impossible,” I said, fear rising in my chest.
Wolf tied his lantern and his bundle to separate limbs of a tree and felt around his pockets for a cigarette.
“Why would you say such a thing?” I asked.
Wolf lit his cigarette, inhaled deeply, then handed it to me. I handed it back to him unsmoked.
“I need your help,” he said. I waited. He smoked his cigarette with rapid, sharp intakes, then extinguished it, grinding it into the snow with his foot. He untied his bundle from the tree, pulled out of it a package wrapped in cotton cloth, and handed it to me. It was a small package but heavy for its size. “I need you to hide this,” he said. “I’m not sure for how long.”
“What is it?” I asked. I started to unwrap the cloth right before his eyes.
“Please don’t,” he implored me. “The less you know about this, the safer you’ll be.”
“It’s ignorance that endangers, not knowledge,” I responded.
“As a rule, yes,” Wolf agreed. “But …”
“Either you trust me or you don’t,” I said, and held his package out to him to take it back. He didn’t take it from me.
“It’s dyn
amite,” he said.
“Dynamite?” I had expected words: pamphlets, propaganda. “Only seven pounds, but powerful.”
“And you want me to take this … this agent of destruction, into my home, where we have only recently mourned a death …”
“It’s an agent of creation,” he said.
“Dynamite?” I asked, incredulous now.
“Destruction births creation,” he said softly.
I admit I felt a certain thrill when he said that, a thrill too that I should be chosen for such a task, entrusted with such a secret. Had he heard about me from Malka, I wondered. Had I been mentioned as someone particularly trustworthy and able?
“Are you with the Bund?” I asked him.
“I was,” he said. “But not anymore.”
There was frustration with the Bund that winter following the pogroms in Kishenev and Gomel. What was the good of building a Jewish proletariat, some were asking, when our fellow non-Jewish proletarians saw us as more evil than the tsarist oppressor? And where was the wisdom in building a workers’ movement slowly and methodically through study circles, strikes, and demonstrations when Cossacks and other agents of the Tsar were galloping into crowds of such strikers and demonstrators, beating and trampling everyone in their path? “How can we wait for the proletariat to develop its strength when all around us men, women, and children are being felled like trees?” Breina had asked angrily at our last meeting. “Not even like trees, for what tree is tortured before feeling the blade of the axe?”
I waited for Wolf to make his argument now, to convince me of the merits of his dynamite.
“I’ve had word I’m to be arrested,” he said. “There have been other arrests, rumors of more coming. I’m leaving the country immediately, temporarily, until …”
“But why me?” I asked him, feeling the weight of the dynamite in my arms. “Surely there are others you know better than me, others you can trust?”
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