Your Mouth Is Lovely

by Nancy Richler

  “She’s a pharmacist,” I said.

  “And I’m a sorcerer,” Mrs. Plotkin replied. She refilled my glass with tea and took another piece of sugar between her gums. She watched me read the slip of paper Bayla had left for me and when I had finished she said, “I could have turned her in.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Don’t insult me,” she said. “Do you think you’re smarter than I am? Do you think I’d still be alive if I couldn’t recognize who was standing on my own doorstep?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Enough with the apologies. You don’t fool me. None of you do. Now get out of here before word gets out that I’m harboring the likes of you.”

  Mrs. Plotkin remained seated as I rose to leave.

  “And good luck to you,” she said before the door shut behind me.

  Mrs. Plotkin had been wrong about Bayla’s carelessness. The address Bayla had left for me was not her own but that of a landlord who owned several buildings in the neighborhood. He asked for my papers, and I, fearing rearrest, quickly apologized for taking his time and started backing away. “Wait,” he said. “Perhaps I can help you.” I was afraid but remembered that it was Bayla who had directed me to him, an address written in Bayla’s recognizable hand. He asked my name, and I told him, fear heavy in my chest. He said that for four rubles he could direct me to a bed that he rented to new migrants who lacked their proper papers. I remembered the ten rubles that Tsila had sewn into the lining of my coat before I left home. “Go around the back,” he instructed me as he folded my money into his palm. “It’s down the stairs in the laneway.”

  I found the apartment—four stairs leading down to a low doorway. I knocked, and it was Bayla who answered. “At last,” she said, enfolding me in her embrace. She ushered me in, leading me through a darkness more tunnel than hallway. The entire apartment seemed more like a burrow than a human habitation, but the kitchen was warmly lit, and for the second time that afternoon I was seated at a worn wooden table with a steaming glass of tea before me. We drank our tea in silence, our eyes meeting often. She placed her hand lightly atop my own.

  “I’ve been so worried. From the moment I heard you were in Kiev. I don’t know what possessed Tsila to send you after me.”

  “Worry,” I said.

  Bayla smiled and shook her head. “And then to hear of your arrest …” She squeezed my hand.

  “Tsila and Aaron Lev have left already for Argentina,” I said.

  “Yes, I know. I was in touch with Tsila after your arrest.”

  So the purpose for my trip to Kiev had been accomplished: Bayla had finally gotten in touch with Tsila. And all I had to do was get myself arrested and held for several months.

  “I’ve been so proud of you,” Bayla said. “So very proud. To hear of your defiance during questioning …” She stroked my cheek.

  “How did you hear about that?”

  “They’re as infiltrated by us as we are by them,” she said with a slight smile.

  “And have you heard anything about Tonya?”

  “Only that she was released. And long before you were.”

  “Did you know that on the night of our arrest she invited me to join her for a night of theater, but never mentioned her plans for our part of the performance?”

  Bayla raised her eyebrows. “That I didn’t know.”

  I waited for her outrage about Tonya’s recklessness and deceit.

  “Well, you certainly received a crash course on the injustice of the regime,” Bayla said. “The arbitrariness of what passes for rule of law … and your own strength,” Bayla went on quickly. “Your own courage. I’m so very proud of you.” She cupped my chin in her hand and kissed my forehead. “But enough talk. You must be hungry.”

  I wasn’t, though I had consumed nothing but tea and sugar that day.

  “You should eat anyway,” she said, and as she rose to get me some food I remembered the letters.

  “Tsila’s letters,” I said, reaching into the pocket of my coat to pull them out. These were the first letters I had ever received and I opened them with clumsy, trembling fingers. “Should I read them aloud?”

  “Only if you wish.”

  “My dear Miriam,” I read aloud. “I came to bring you home, only to be told by your landlady that you’d been arrested. For what, I still don’t know, nor can anyone tell me how long you’ll be held. Everyone I speak to has a different opinion, a different experience to relate. The amount of time they’ll hold you seems to depend to some degree on the charge, but not entirely, and, of course, since you’ve not yet been charged with any crime—so far as anyone knows—there’s no telling when they’ll let you go. Your landlady says it’s better when there’s no charge, since her husband was charged right away and then sent to Siberia, where he died. A great comfort she is—I was up half the night. And meanwhile, our passage to Argentina has been booked for the end of the summer, and we can only pray, your father and I, that you will be free by then.”

  “To think she’s still praying, given all that she knows,” Bayla said, placing a plate of bread and cheese before me.

  “Be strong,” Tsila commanded me in parting. The letter was dated the twenty-fifth of Iyar, 5664, early in the summer, just weeks after my arrest.

  The second letter was dated the first of October, 1904. “A new calendar for a new life,” she began. “We postponed our passage once, then a second time, but we were afraid to push it off any further, for fear of running into the winter. It will be of no comfort to you, of course, that our hearts were heavy as we slipped away from the land, but no purpose was being served by our waiting. This way, at least, we will have made a start by the time you arrive.

  “The journey over was unpleasant but by no means unbearable. The weather was fine, except for one stormy patch, so we were fortunate in that—and upon landing at the island of Cuba, along the way, our ship was thronged by boats of peddlers selling varieties of fruit so sweet and flowing in juices that they seemed of a different species altogether from what our Reizel has been selling to us all these years. While I wished you were there eating them with us, I trusted at that moment the correctness of our decision. All our lives we tried to squeeze what little sweetness we could out of our situations, but there’s no sweetness in Russia, and if there were, it would never flow to us.”

  “We will make it flow to us,” Bayla said. “A sweetness the likes of which she doesn’t dare imagine.”

  “Our arrival in Argentina was uneventful—officials here bear no resemblance to those we suffered in Russia.”

  “For now,” Bayla said. “Capitalism is still new there, don’t forget.”

  “Are they all capitalists there?”

  “They’re certainly not socialists.”

  “We had no time to form an impression of Buenos Aires,” the letter continued, “as we were quickly whisked away to the colony that will be our home. The name of the colony is Clara, named after the Baroness herself, and it is the largest of the Jewish colonies in the Entre Rios province. Within it are nineteen villages. Ours is called Ida. On first impression, it is not what I expected, I won’t pretend that it is—a scattering of villages across an empty plain—but we have a good roof over our heads, and the earth beneath our feet is solid and firm, unlike that in the swamp, which never could support the weight of the lives we tried to build upon it.”

  “She’s always had a way with words,” Bayla said, a touch of wistfulness in her voice.

  “The spring planting was under way when we arrived. The seasons are reversed here, don’t forget, and much warmer. Wheat is the major crop, though we’ll grow flax, hay, barley, and rye as well. Aaron Lev is used to hard physical labor, of course, but many of the other men of the colony seem never to have bent their bodies over anything other than a tractate of Talmud. Yields, we have already heard, are not what they should be. It’s the water, they say. The lack of it. We are to be as cursed here by its scarcity as we were in the swamp by its
excess. It hides so deep in the ground that our well had to be dug to a depth of thirty meters, and it has barely rained since our arrival. A drought—very unusual for here, apparently. And yet—how can I say this to you?—in that very curse lies the beauty of this place. There is a density of color to a sky undiluted by moisture, a clarity to the landscape such as I’ve never seen before. It’s as if the waterlogged air in the swamp obstructed my vision as surely as tears in my eyes that never dried—though I would never say that aloud, of course, not with all the worry about the drought.”

  “I should hope not,” Bayla muttered. “Talk about decadent.”

  “There is little I say aloud,” the letter continued. “Not because our fellow colonists are any worse company than the neighbors we bid farewell to back in Russia. They are not. But neither are they better. The men sigh a lot but seem, as a whole, more happily disposed to this new life than the women, who waste a good part of each day weeping for that great glory of an existence we left behind. It’s a difficult life here, I won’t deny it, but I sense an excellence to this new country, to an earth un-drenched with blood, to the Argentinians who have been so welcoming and seem—even though they are Christians—to be free of the hatred that plagued us in Russia.”

  “Give them time,” Bayla said, which surprised me.

  “Why should they come to hate us there?” I asked.

  “Capitalism creates hatred. That’s its nature. It divides people from each other by creating conditions whereby one group survives at the expense of the other. It takes the human heart—which is wholly innocent, despite what the priests and rabbis might have us believe—and perverts it into an instrument of hatred.”

  The letter continued with a brief description of the house Tsila and Aaron Lev occupied—made entirely of brick—the garden she had planted. “Be strong,” she concluded. “We await your arrival.”

  “Will you go?” Bayla asked.

  How can I convey the fear that overtook me then, the dread of embarking alone on such a voyage when I was so tired, so cold, so unable to imagine what might await me at the other end.

  “In the spring,” I said, reluctant to tell Bayla of my sudden fear when, just moments earlier, she had been so proud of my courage.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, looking at me closely.

  “Of course I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be sure?” I was so tired at that moment, I could think of nothing I wanted except sleep.

  “I’m relieved to hear you say that, I must confess,” Bayla said. Her face was flushed, and I was moved and reassured that my decision to stay the winter meant so much to her. “Tsila left the money for your passage with me …”

  “Tsila left me money?” I felt a lift inside me. A warmth. They hadn’t simply disappeared, leaving nothing but regretful thoughts behind. They’d left me money so I could join them.

  “But I’m afraid I’ve spent it.”

  “You’ve what?”

  “I didn’t expect you to be released quite so soon.”

  “You spent the money Tsila left for my passage?”

  “I’ll make it back for you long before spring. I promise. I absolutely promise.”

  “You spent the money Tsila left for me?” I asked again in disbelief.

  “I’m sorry,” Bayla said, without any obvious regret.

  Would I have left that fall? I’ve often wondered. If I’d had the money Tsila had left me—a promise of something waiting for me on the other side—would I have suddenly been less afraid of the journey across the ocean?

  “I’m truly sorry,” Bayla said again some time later. I had not touched the food she had put before me, and we had not exchanged a word since her confession.

  “I’m tired,” I said.

  “Would you like me to show you to your bed?”

  I followed Bayla to a cot in a small room off the kitchen and fell immediately into a long, dreamless sleep.

  WHEN I AWOKE IT WAS EVENING AND THE ROOM WAS dim, save for the far corner where one weak lamp was lit. Bayla was sitting on the foot of my bed.

  “I was supposed to leave Kiev for a few months,” she said when she saw my open eyes. “But now I won’t.”

  I was heavy with sleep and the room seemed to be moving under the flickering light of the lamp.

  “Where were you supposed to be going?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “You can go,” I said, more angry now than exhausted.

  “No. I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  “Go,” I said. It was disgust that I felt. She hardly even seemed like Bayla anymore. This woman I once knew so well made stiff pronouncements about decadence and the human heart but didn’t care that Tonya had misled and endangered me. This new Bayla no longer knew enough not to rob her own niece. And yet, even in my anger I couldn’t deny my own relief that she was not going to leave me there for the winter. I started to cough and sat up to clear my lungs.

  “You were coughing in your sleep,” Bayla said.

  “I’m always cold.”

  She reached over to feel my forehead, first with her hand, then her lips. “I don’t think you have a fever,” she murmured, then, “you can’t stay here after tonight, I’m afraid …”

  “I can’t?”

  “But I know of a vacancy. It’s not safe for you to stay with me right now. I can’t tell you why, so please don’t ask me.”

  “Is it Leib?”

  “Leib? What does Leib have to do …?”

  “Did he abandon you here? Is that what you’re ashamed for me to see …?”

  “I’m not ashamed.”

  “… that you’re living alone here, abandoned …”

  “Miriam, Miriam,” she said softly, shaking her head. “Just when I think that maybe you’ve grown up, maybe you’ve grown beyond the petty, narrow concerns of the shtetl …”

  “What, then?” I asked.

  She was still shaking her head, but she was smiling too, a little sadly, a little fondly. “I’m going to tell you something now. I’m going to tell you because I owe you this truth. If you’re going to continue to associate with me, I want you to know exactly who you’re associating with.”

  So perhaps she did have some misgivings about Tonya’s prank, after all.

  “I want you to know that I no longer confine myself to making speeches. I believe that the evil we’re fighting in Russia requires weaponry more powerful than speech now.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Don’t pretend to be more naive than you are. It wasn’t an easy decision, believe me, but they make a mockery of peaceful protest, riding into crowds the way they do, beating and trampling anyone in their path. They throw sixteen-year-old girls into prison for months on end, and for what? For daring to distribute pamphlets. They murder their own young because they can’t control …”

  Something nudged at me then, a feeling of dread unattached to any thought.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “I see it in your face. You’re thinking, ‘What could be more powerful than speech,’ right? ‘What could be more powerful than words? It was with the letters of the alphabet, after all, that the Almighty created heaven and earth.’ Do you think I don’t know what Tsila taught you? Do you think I didn’t learn the same things from my own mother?”

  I hadn’t been thinking any of that at all. I had been trying to identify what it was that was filling me with dread.

  “But the great Almighty is nowhere in evidence,” Bayla continued, “And, meanwhile, innocents are being murdered as speeches are being made.”

  My mind filled then with a body swinging from a scaffold, a woman’s body in a dress of cobalt brocade.

  “It’s not that I no longer believe in agitation and education. They’re still central components of our work. But they’re not enough, Miriam, and never will be.”

  I could see the body swinging slowly, as if rocked by a gentle breeze.

  “I didn’t want to have to shock you like this today, you
r first day out.”

  Bayla placed her hand over mine to comfort me, but it was Bayla who was the innocent here, I thought, thinking she could shock me with her allusions to violence, after all I’d experienced in prison.

  “I hope you can understand now why I may have seemed a bit distant today, why I don’t want you taking the risk of staying with me, or even associating closely with me until you’ve had the chance to think about what I’ve told you and can make an informed decision. Your own decision.

  “I don’t like to criticize a comrade,” she added. “But what Tonya did was unconscionable.”

  I nodded, mollified by that acknowledgment. “Where’s the apartment you were telling me about?”

  “It’s not far. Just a few streets over.”

  “And who lives there?”

  “Three girls not much older than you. Zelda is a feldsher who devotes herself to caring for the poorest and sickest in the city. She was a medical student at Kiev University but dropped out because of her ideals. She goes into the poorest neighborhoods every day, at great risk to her own health and safety. Esther and Nina both work in textiles and are active in the movement. They’re all nice girls. You’ll be all right there, I promise.”

  She reached across me to the bureau by the bed and opened a drawer.

  “What about Leib?” I asked.

  “What about him?”

  The drawer was full of passports, scores of blue, internal passports. She pulled one out.

  “Has he been living here with you?”

  “He has. But he’s left Kiev already.”

  “And you were supposed to join him?”

  “I was. Do you have a pen?”

  I gave her the quill that Tsila had brought me during my imprisonment.

  “Won’t he be mad?”

  “It’s not like that between us. Complications arise. It’s the nature of our work. We both understand this.”

  “I ran into him my first week here, you know.”

  “He told me.” She dipped the quill in the ink. “What would you like your new name to be?”

  “You can make me a passport just like that?”