“This is what my husband explained to me the night we were betrothed,” Tsirel confided.
“You’re married?” I asked. This made no sense. Why the urgency to see the Rebbe then, if a husband for her had already been found?
“I was married,” Tsirel corrected me.
She was nineteen when the match was arranged. The prospective bridegroom had been forewarned about the strange movements of her eyelids, but he was not deterred. “We’ll become acquainted without seeing each other,” he declared, and so they had, conversing with each other from behind a sheet that was extended between them. By the time he actually saw her he had come to love the softness of the voice that spoke from behind the sheet, the kindness and goodness that he perceived within her.
The wedding took place the week before Chanukah. The weather was dismal, but still hundreds came; the bridegroom was the son of the famous Rav Frisch.
“On that day I knew the full measure of happiness this world can offer,” Tsirel told me. “And then, the full measure of its sadness.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“He died,” Tsirel said. “But not from disease or any kind of violence. He was taken from me by sweetness and succulence.”
A demon, I thought. Lilith.
“He choked on a piece of chicken,” Tsirel said.
“Chicken?”
“At our wedding meal.”
I shifted uncomfortably on my bench. I had heard of the tragedy, of course. It was so legendary that I hadn’t realized it had happened in my lifetime. The young man who died was considered a saint: good in every way and brilliant as a scholar. For such a life to meet such an end. And on such an occasion. Suspicion fell as suspicions do. On the bride.
“I’m cursed,” Tsirel said. “No man will ever have me for his bride again. I was obviously previously promised to someone else who didn’t release me.”
“But to whom?” I asked.
“If I only knew that …” Tsirel sighed deeply. “That’s why I’m here.”
“To find out who you belong to?”
“To remove any claims on me. To remove the curse.”
She was silent then. I listened to the unfamiliar sounds of the house around me, the breathing of an entire family of strangers in the next room.
“I’ve been cursed all my life as well,” I told Tsirel after a while.
“You have?” she asked. There was no joy in her voice, no satisfaction in another sharing her misfortune. Her bridegroom had been right about her; she was a good and gentle soul. She said nothing more for a while, then I felt her warm breath on my face as she crouched beside me in the dark, the light pressure of her hand on my shoulder.
“You’ll come with me to see the Rebbe,” she said.
“Your rebbe can’t help me,” I told her. Mine was not a simple case of haunting or a claim from beyond. There were the circumstances of my birth, first of all, which no one in my town would ever forget. There was the fact that I was a mamzer, a bastard, a legal status from which no rabbi could release me. “My situation’s not the same as yours,” I said, and as I said it, I felt a lightness I was unaccustomed to when thinking about my origins. It was a sensation not unlike what I had felt on the train when, drifting into sleep, I had felt myself freed from the clutches of my luck.
“He can help you,” Tsirel said again. “He’s been known to work miracles.”
I didn’t answer.
Tsirel remained crouched by my side a while longer, then with a slight squeeze of my shoulder released me.
I didn’t rest that night for the disorientation that I felt. It wasn’t the strangeness of the bench on which I lay, or the sounds so different from those that I was used to. It was my own body that felt new and strange to me, a sudden lightness I hadn’t felt before. I would drift into sleep only to feel a sensation of buoyancy, as if the air in the room was too thin to hold me down. Uncluttered air, that’s what it was, air that lacked the whispers and rumors and unnamed presences that had always weighed so heavily upon me. It wasn’t uninhabited, of course; no air is. But it was inhabited by strangers, utter strangers whose presence I couldn’t feel, whose weight fell elsewhere, on shoulders not my own.
And it wasn’t just the air of that particular house. All day long I had breathed the air of strangers. A thin, light air—the air of indifference—I had moved freely through it. No one knew me in Kiev, no one cared who I was, where I came from. It could be dangerous, I supposed, to be so alone, but I felt no danger, only joy.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BY THE END OF MY FIFTH DAY IN KIEV I STILL HAD not found Bayla. I had spent my time in the city inquiring after her at every pharmacy I could find, certain each time I saw the symbol of an apothecary that this would be the one where she was working. As the shrugs of the shoulders and shakes of the heads mounted, however, doubts began to nag at me. Who said Bayla was even working at a pharmacy, I wondered now as I made my way back to the Kaminsky apartment. And if she was, who said I would be able to find her? Kiev was a big city, was it not? It could be weeks before I had tracked down every pharmacy. Maybe months. And meanwhile I had already overstayed my welcome at the Kaminskys.
It was late in the afternoon when I turned onto the Krestchatik, crowded with shoppers and browsers. The weather had shifted during the day, the sky darkening so that now it loomed low and black over the boulevard, the golden domes of the city unnaturally bright against it. The wind had stiffened, sweeping sand and bits of garbage down the sidewalk. The streetlights had not come on yet, but the store windows were brightly lit, garish almost, in the eerie light of the approaching storm. I noticed a pharmacy up ahead that I had not yet stopped at, but paused first in front of a confectioner’s window to admire the pyramids of sugared plums, cherries, and pears. Someone jostled me from behind, an old woman with a basket of rolls. I wasn’t hungry, but farther up the sidewalk I saw a policeman sauntering toward us. With no permit for an extended stay in the city, I didn’t want to attract his notice, so I negotiated with the old woman until he had passed.
“Barin,” a cigarette vendor called out to the well-dressed man just ahead of me. “Buy a pack of Doves. Ten for five kopecks.” The vendor was tall and well built, with a tray of cigarettes hanging off his neck and a tattered cap on his thick black curls.
“Leib,” I said, for it was him.
He looked at me in confusion. We had never met, after all. I had seen him once in the swamp when he had walked past with Golda, and another time at the demonstration by the bridge when Sara had told me who he was.
“I’m Miriam,” I told him. “Bayla’s niece.”
“Ah, yes, Miriam,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. He smiled and took my hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world that he should encounter me in the Krestchatik in this way. “And what brings you to Kiev? Come, shall we walk?”
Did I wonder why Leib, a teacher by training, was working now as a street peddler in Kiev? No, I did not. The sight of him in that role was no stranger to me at the time than anything else I had encountered those first few days in Kiev. I fell into step beside him and told him that I had come to Kiev to find Bayla.
“Has something happened in her family?” Leib asked, his handsome face a study of concern. Tsila was wrong about him, I decided at that moment. He obviously loved Bayla and had probably married her as promised.
“No, no, everything’s all right. It’s just …” I could hardly tell him Tsila’s worries that he’d abandoned Bayla. “We’re moving to Argentina, and Tsila wanted Bayla to know.”
“Argentina.” Leib exhaled a low whistle. “That’s a long way.” He stopped walking and tipped his hat at a newspaper vendor a few feet away. The newspaper vendor nodded and we turned back in the direction in which we had come. “What happened to St. Petersburg?”
“St. Petersburg?” I asked.
“Yes. Bayla tells me that her sister always dreamed of being a dressmaker in the capital.”
“I don’t
think so,” I said, though I remembered the fashion magazines from St. Petersburg that Tsila used to receive twice a year when I first went to live with her, magazines that she later declared wasted in a town such as ours. “I don’t think my stepmother was ever one to waste her dreams on a city where Jews are prohibited to reside.”
“Or to dare to dream of changing that wrong,” Leib said. He smiled warmly, his dark eyes meeting mine.
“I wouldn’t know,” I mumbled, suddenly flustered. I felt a flush fill my cheeks as he looked at me that way. There was such intensity to his gaze that I felt, for that moment, that there must be something within myself—an attractiveness of feature, perhaps, or a charming mannerism—that justified such attention.
“So you haven’t yet told me what brings you to Kiev all alone. You are alone?”
I confirmed I was alone and felt the courage of that from his attentive gaze. I confessed the reason I had come and the change within myself I had felt my very first day there, reading from his expression how admirable and extraordinary he found me. “And now that I’ve found you perhaps I can stay in Kiev a few days longer before returning home. If you and Bayla wouldn’t mind, of course …”
Something in my words broke the spell. Leib didn’t frown or express any displeasure, but his gaze shifted, his attention wandered. Away from my extraordinariness to some other thought or concern. He told me he had to get back to work now, but that he would meet me in a while in a café a few doors down. He gave me some money and told me to buy myself something while I waited.
I had not, until then, ever entered an eating establishment that was not run by Jews, never eaten any food that was not strictly kosher. Even the roll I had bought earlier from the old woman had not passed my lips. This was how I lived, how I had always lived. By habit or by faith, I didn’t know. Was I aware of the chasm that was opening between my future and my past as I entered the café Leib had directed me to, a chasm that widened with every step I took? I think now that I must have been, for I remember so clearly the lurch in my gut as I stepped through the door of the café. But then I remember too the pleasure of that sensation, the promises it seemed to hold within it.
It was a splendid café, large and cavernous, with marble tables and gilded mirrors on the walls, and filled at that time of day with the hum of conversation and the clinking of spoons against saucers. A haze of tobacco thickened the air and mixed with the aromas of coffee and perfume rising from each table, the light scent of orange peel. Between the tables glided waiters dressed in black with starched white cloths hanging from their forearms. They held their silver trays high in the air, their upper bodies not moving as they glided around the room, except to bow slightly when they delivered their orders.
I seated myself at a three-legged marble table near the door. On one side of it sat a group of sailors, on the other, three ladies having tea. The ladies glanced at me, then bent their heads so close to each other that the feathers on their hats met and bobbed as one with each whispered tidbit of gossip.
A waiter approached and stood by my table without looking at me. Momentary panic rose within me. He had discovered who I was; his disdain was palpable. I feared that as soon as I opened my mouth all conversation in the room would cease, all the clinking spoons would fall silent, the haze would clear, and all eyes would turn to the table by the door where the waiter, white cloth hanging like a flag on his forearm, would extend that forearm …
“Coffee, please,” I said.
The waiter did not move, did not respond in any way, did not appear, in fact, to have heard me. I glanced wildly about. The feathers at the next table continued to bob. On the other side of me, laughter burst like gunshot. I spun around. The sailors were leaning back, relaxed, laughing, their half-eaten dishes of ice cream strewn about the table before them.
The waiter was still standing beside me. I looked at him, but his eyes were fixed at a point somewhere above my head. “And some ice cream,” I said. “Vanilla or pistachio?”
“Pistachio. Please.”
He nodded and glided away.
I glanced at the sailors again. Their black uniforms emblazoned with vivid gold insignias reminded me of the gold-edged dress for Lena Chayvitz that Tsila had been struggling with before I left. On the sailors’ caps were narrow ribbons with the name of their ship: Azimuth. One of the sailors met my glance and smiled broadly, revealing strong yellow teeth. I quickly looked away.
The coffee, when it arrived, was unlike anything I had ever tasted. Thick and dark, it was bitter on my tongue yet infused with an underlying sweetness. I drank it slowly, savoring its richness, a feeling of warmth and well-being spreading through me.
Customers entered and exited, some lingering by the door to wait for friends or to scan the room for the table they wanted. Though I was half turned from the door, I could sense the comings and goings, I could hear the rain when it started, pounding against the street outside. I tasted a spoonful of ice cream, but its creamy sweetness, while pleasant enough, didn’t entice me. I took another sip of coffee, enjoying the dark bitterness coating my tongue.
The downpour had ended by the time I finally left the café, but the city still dripped all around me. Leib had not kept his appointment with me. Probably he had never meant to. And I, in my weakness, had failed to obtain any information about Bayla’s whereabouts while I still had the chance. A flush filled my cheeks as it had earlier when I had stood talking to him on the street, but it was shame I felt now, shame that the pleasure I had taken in his gaze could have so distracted me from my purpose.
Still, I was not entirely discouraged. If anything, I felt a strengthening of my resolve. If Leib could break his promise to meet me at a café, mere moments after making it, who knew what promises he had made to Bayla and then broken? Tsila had been right to worry about her sister, right to send me to find Bayla, and find her I would. Of that I felt certain.
The air of the city was cool and fresh after the rain, and my step felt quick, my body light. I began composing a letter to Tsila and Aaron Lev as I walked, the second letter since my arrival in Kiev. In the first I had assured them of my safe arrival, and of my intention to return home immediately after contacting Bayla. Now I informed them of my failure to find Bayla at the address we’d been given, my search of the pharmacies around town, my odd encounter with Leib. I’ll stay until I find her, I composed, though how I would manage this I hadn’t quite figured out yet. I had no permit to remain in the city, no prospect for employment, no place to live. I’ll find a job, I thought, a proper place to live. Had I not managed to stay here for five days already without problems or mishaps? It won’t be for long, I promised Tsila and Aaron Lev. I have every confidence I’ll find Bayla.
But here I hesitated. How to explain the confidence I felt when, actually, I was no closer to finding Bayla than I’d been at any point since my arrival in Kiev, when my encounter with Leib had left me, in fact, with the impression—vague but undeniable—that Bayla might not wish to be found. Every confidence, I repeated, but when I searched for words to explain that confidence, my mind filled only with the feeling of the air against my skin, the buoyancy of my body as I walked, the shine of Leib’s curls beneath his tattered cap.
“YOU CAN’T STAY HERE,” THE YOUNGER MRS. KAMINSKY greeted me when I arrived back at her apartment that evening. Tsirel and her mother had already departed the city. They had met with Rav Shpira, not once but three times, and were returning to their home now with his full assurance that all claims to Tsirel had been removed and she could proceed with a new match. I had expected my hostess to cool toward me after their departure—had felt her cooling already the evening before as Tsirel and her mother packed their belongings—and I was fully prepared now to find lodgings on my own, but the idea of having to do it so soon unnerved me more than a little.
“What do you need, money for your train fare home?” Mrs. Kaminsky asked me, misinterpreting my look of dismay. She grabbed her purse and began to rummage through it.
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“I don’t need money,” I said. The ruble notes that Tsila had given me were still in the lining of my coat, where she had hidden them. “If I could just stay with you a few more nights …”
My hostess jutted out her lower lip and exhaled sharply, blowing away from her eyes a clump of hair that had escaped her kerchief.
“Just until I find my aunt.” My newfound confidence seemed to be evaporating into the very air of the city that had given it rise.
“This isn’t a hostel for runaways.”
“I’m not a runaway,” I said.
“Then go home to your parents, where you properly belong.”
“My parents have already left for Argentina,” I said. The lie was automatic and unplanned, as if my tongue alone retained the necessary will to stay in Kiev. “Just one more night,” I pleaded.
Mrs. Kaminsky sighed deeply. “Mrs. Plotkin at number seven rents beds. Four rubles a month if she hasn’t raised it. Have you found a job yet?”
I shook my head.
“A residence permit?”
I didn’t answer. Mrs. Kaminsky sighed again. “I hear Shamsky’s is looking for girls.”
“SHE CALLS HERSELF MRS. PLOTKIN, BUT THERE’S never been a Mr., as far as anyone knows,” said Hinda, the smaller of two girls about my age who came over to meet me as I drew water in the courtyard of Mrs. Plotkin’s a few mornings later. “Not that she let that get in the way of her having a family. I’ve heard that each of her four brats has a different father.”
“Oh, hush, Hinda,” said the other, a tall skinny girl with too much hair and too little face and small round glasses that kept sliding off her nose. “I’m Masha,” she introduced herself. “And this is my sister, Hinda. We live at number nine. In the cellar.”
“So how much is she charging you?” Hinda asked. She was the younger of the two and could have been pretty, with her smooth black hair and eyes bright as onyx, but her temperament was bad; I could see that straight off. It had narrowed her eyes to glittering slits and twisted her smile to a smirk.
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