River

by Shira Nayman

  One last glance revealed Yossele and his friend, shouting with fun and rolling on the ground in a tussle.

  I turned to the samovar. How lucky that Grandma had shown me how to use it—but also, how odd! Now, her words came back to me. After our failed experiment, which left us with the unpleasant taste of rust in our mouths, Grandma had said: If ever anyone asks you to make tea in a samovar, you’ll know how! How prescient her remark was! Could she have in some uncanny way known that I would find myself in that exact situation—where someone, her own mother, in fact, would issue that very request?

  I knelt to examine the dried pine cones in a wooden crate by the fireplace. I chose the smallest, driest ones and a few tiny, dry twigs for tinder, lighting one in the fireplace to get the fire burning. I spotted the little teapot on the shelf above the fireplace; beside this was an old, battered tin containing large, brittle tea leaves, very black and curled. I placed these in the teapot. When the water in the samovar was hot, I filled the teapot and set it to rest on top. I waited a good fifteen minutes to let it steep, and then prepared a cup of tea for each of us, using the concentrate from the teapot and topping it up with fresh hot water from the samovar, the way Grandma had shown me.

  Sarah fetched two thick cubes of brown sugar, handing me one and placing the other between her teeth. I did the same and raised the cup to my lips, sipping through the cube of sugar. I braced myself for a bad-tasting mouthful but instead found the tea was fragrant and very strong—with no hint of rust!

  After breakfast, we took our dishes outside and washed them in a wooden tub that we filled from the water pump.

  “Oy Gevalt!” Sarah groaned as Yossele came bounding toward us; his face was flushed, his hair slicked to his forehead. He yanked off his cap and tossed it to Sarah, who caught it expertly.

  “I’m late! But I was winning at catchkus—and I never win against Moishe! I didn’t realize the time!” he said, cranking the pump and vigorously washing his face and hands. “Brrr! Could Hashem make it any colder?”

  “And that was a clean shirt,” Sarah said with a mournful sigh. “The other one’s on your cot. Go on in and change it.”

  “You’ll wash this one for me, darling Sister?” Yossele turned gleaming eyes to Sarah, his face lit with warmth.

  “You’re impossible,” Sarah said with a smile. “I’ll be in to serve you some porridge.”

  “No time! I have to get to Shacharis!” Yossele said as he ran toward the door. Before entering, he stopped short, fumbled in his pocket, then turned and ran back to Sarah. “Here, Sis. Take these.” And he shoved something into Sarah’s hand. “I’ve never seen such smooth, round ones. Tonight will be a triumph!”

  Sarah slipped whatever Yossele gave her into the pocket of her apron as she watched her brother swivel around and disappear into the house.

  “What did he mean—he’d never seen such smooth, round ones?”

  Sarah laughed. “Oh, his little treasures,” she said, reaching into her apron pocket and withdrawing two large walnuts. They were indeed unusually smooth and round. “He must have spent an hour going through the nuts,” Sarah said. “It’s for palantes; you remember how much fun it was to play that on yontif when we were little? I have a mind to borrow one of these and play myself! Yossele devoted all of last evening to sanding down the plank. These nuts are going to roll down so fast they’ll leave all the others in the dust. Look—” Sarah stretched out her hand so I could better see them. “He’s marked them, so he’ll know they’re his.” Branded into the indent where the nut’s stem had once been was a dark burn mark.

  “Come on,” Sarah said, pocketing Yossele’s walnuts. “I want to make sure he eats something before he leaves.”

  In the short time we’d been outside, the filmy gray veil had lifted from the sky to reveal a cold, deep blue.

  Inside, I heard the sound of whistling coming from behind the door to Sarah’s parents’ room, where I assumed Yossele had gone to change. At the happy sound, I was overcome once more with the sadness that had overcome me earlier, as I stood by the window watching Yossele and their neighbor at play. Before I could hide what I was feeling, I realized that Sarah was eyeing me intently.

  “Hadassah,” she said, her voice gentle. “What’s wrong?”

  Finally, I thought, my name—the name I was to carry here. I knew instantly that the name meant myrtle and tried to recall how a myrtle tree looked.

  “It’s just that—well, Yossele reminds me of someone.” The words slipped out before I had time to think about what I was saying.

  “Oh? Who?”

  I was about to hedge, but the truth popped out against my will. “My own brother. Billy.”

  “Bee-lee?” Sarah repeated—the shape of the syllables awkward through her heavy Yiddish accent. And then, there it was: the furrowed brow, the gauzy look of confusion, the same kind of expression I’d seen first on Talia’s face, and then on Darlene’s.

  “He’s full of joy. For the longest time, we thought he had thin lips, because he’s always smiling!” I tried to clamp down on the flood of words, but they rushed along heedlessly, as if I no longer had control of my tongue. “He’s the sweetest boy in the world. And clever as can be! We’re very close—like you and Yossele.” My eyes welled with tears. There was nothing I could do to stop them; they spilled out in a rush. “Mama calls him joyous boyous.”

  Now, the whole picture burst forth in my mind—all of us, the family, my family. Gathered around the breakfast table on a Saturday morning, Mama’s face filled with expectation as we tucked into whatever breakfast she’d made—pancakes or French toast, or scrambled eggs.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I feel like I can see my brother in your brother. Something about the eyes—”

  Sarah’s face relaxed into a tentative smile—gone that troubled, mysterious questioning. “That’s my Yossele. Little rascal, I’m going to have to wash his shirt and pants—and they were clean this morning!”

  Yossele emerged from the bedroom, tugging on his jacket, which I could see was shabby around the lapels and cuffs, though scrupulously clean and brushed. Sarah disappeared into the pantry and returned with a piece of black bread slathered in congealed chicken fat.

  “Now you be a good young man, Josef Anshel—so that you’ll be worthy when it comes time for you to complete the minyan.”

  He took the bread and bit into it hungrily.

  “Eat carefully,” Sarah said, eyeing the clean jacket.

  Josef Anshel. The name rang ominously in my ears.

  Josef Anshel. I knew that name—but from where? Yossele, then, must be his nickname. I rifled through my memory and a sickening nausea crept over me. My head reeled. Josef Anshel. Josef … my great-grandmother’s brother. Which is to say Sarah’s brother, of course. Grandma’s uncle. Her Uncle Josef, whose story had haunted her whole life but whom she’d never met.

  The memory snagged me: and there she was, my mother, in my mind’s eye, her face unspeakably grave. Her voice rippled back to me; I clung to the sound—clung to the faint and yet steely connection with her.

  “My grandmother was the only one who left,” she said. “If they hadn’t gone to South Africa … ” Her voice trailed off.

  “And Josef? Your grandmother’s younger brother? You told me they were very close—like me and Billy.”

  “Yes,” Mama said, looking at me from some other place. “Like you and Billy.”

  For a moment, she seemed to forget I was even there; it was if in traveling back with her recollection into the past, I had ceased to exist.

  “Mama,” I said. “You were telling me about Josef.”

  “The Nazis dragged them into the street. The whole family. Josef, his wife, his three children.” Her eyes were inward; I don’t know who Mama was talking to, but it didn’t seem like she was talking to me.

  “They herded the whole village into the woods and made them dig an enormous pit. Then they shot them, one by one, right at the edge of the pit … so efficient
…”

  “How old were the children?” I asked.

  “Seven, five, three,” Mama recited, staring into unfathomable blackness.

  Josef—Yossele. This sparkling, bright, mischievous boy who was the star of the cheder. That is what the future holds for him, I thought. And now I remembered something else: the letter Darlene—Grandma—pulled from beneath her mattress, written to her mother. Hadn’t that been signed Your brother Josef? The family for whom Darlene had prayed, night after night, for who knows how many years. Maybe Grandma is praying for them still, for their souls—for the soul of this boy before me who could not have been more vivid and alive.

  In my agitation, I found myself scratching hard through the coarse fabric of the gray dress.

  “Hadassah, what’s wrong?” Sarah said. “Is there something wrong with your arms?”

  I felt Sarah at my side; her hands were on mine, holding them still.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It was just—something I could see.”

  I knew the instant the words were out that they sounded strange—that I sounded strange. A wild gulp rose in my throat. Mama! I wanted to cry. I want my mama! And Papa! And Billy!

  “Sssshh.” Sarah didn’t query my odd words, just held my hands with hers.

  I opened my mouth, the words on my tongue—I want to go home! But I choked them to silence. I had no home to go to—not here, not now.

  Yossele was standing still as a statue, looking at me with intensity—as if he were trying to uncover my thoughts, as if he could sense my dreadful knowledge about him in the horrified depths of my eyes. Frantically, I tried to break up the images in my mind’s eye so I might hide them from him—as if I were cracking them into shards with an icepick.

  Sarah noticed Yossele’s strange look, and with a last, concerned glance at me, turned back to her brother.

  “Remember, there’s no other if you dirty this one,” Sarah said, tugging Yossele’s starched white collar into place. “Go on, you can finish eating that on your way.”

  “Gut yontif,” Yossele said, averting his eyes, suddenly shy.

  “Gut yontif,” I replied. He glanced back up, and for the briefest moment, again held my gaze. This time, there was puzzlement in his face—and perhaps, I thought, just a shade of fear.

  “Run along, for heaven’s sake!” Sarah said, and Yossele spun around on his heels and was gone.

  “We still have so much work to do,” Sarah said. “We need to stay busy.”

  Sarah’s words echoed hollowly in my mind. We need to stay busy. Another thought glistened its way through my agitated mind. Mama—always busy. Always doing something, in motion—Grandma, too. Everyone in a frenzy of action, never stopping, never stopping to—

  “Come along,” Sarah said. “We need to bring everything up from the cellar.”

  Sarah lit a candle that was in the kind of old-fashioned holder I’d seen in movies. I followed her through a small door and down steps made of hard-packed mud. The damp smell of the earth felt reassuring. The candle flame shot up thin and tall—no breeze, here, to make it shorten and flicker. It cast long shadows, making everything look mysterious. Deep shelves were dug into the mud walls and large sacks and wooden tubs lay neatly arranged on the floor. She pointed to a hessian sack.

  “You grab that one,” she said, all business, now.

  The bag was too heavy to lift, so I dragged it across to the bottom of the stairs, then pushed and pulled it all the way up.

  We made several trips down and back. Sarah was right—it was good to be busy. My melancholy thoughts receded; I found myself pleasantly absorbed in the physical labor.

  I don’t know how long we hauled things—I lost all track of time. Dragging a huge wooden tub of root vegetables across the kitchen floor, I paused, aware of the fatigue in my arms. I looked about at everything we’d brought up: carrots, turnips, onions, a dark leafy green that looked like kale, only more delicate. There was also a large earthenware dish filled with congealed chicken fat, the surface studded with little skin rinds.

  “Don’t forget to pick out the bits of skin for gribenes,” Sarah said. The word was familiar; Grandma had made it for me on several occasions—a delicious, salty mixture of crispy fat rinds, onions, and carrot ends.

  On our next run down to the cellar, I brought up a freshly slaughtered chicken; Sarah carried a thin, wide slab of beef. Back down, this time for a half-dozen scrawny dried fish that gave off a sharp odor, their eyes shriveled like raisins that nonetheless seemed to track my face with their dead gaze as I climbed back up the stairs.

  We peeled and chopped and carted heavy pans back and forth to the fireplace cauldron or outside to the oven that was housed in a wooden hut behind the house. We kneaded the sweet challah dough until my hands ached and then set the dough under a cloth to rise in a little alcove in the wall beside the fireplace. Later, we would braid the dough and shape these lengths into two large rounds. I remembered this characteristic Rosh Hashanah shape from the bakery in Williamsburg that my mother took me to once around this time of year; she’d explained that the round challahs symbolize the wish for a year in which life and blessings continue without end.

  I sat for a moment to rest. Over by the fireplace, Sarah wiped away a sweaty strand of hair, then dipped a wooden spoon into the chicken soup pot and brought the steaming liquid to her lips.

  “Perfect,” she said, a satisfied smile spreading across her face. She glanced at me then, the smile fading from her lips.

  “Are you thinking about it all, too?” she asked.

  I didn’t know what she was talking about, although Sarah clearly assumed that I did.

  I nodded.

  “Are your parents also talking about leaving?” She set down the wooden spoon, her face alert with concern.

  “Yes,” I said, feeling what was becoming a familiar wave of sad confusion. Who were my parents here, in Lithuania, in the early part of the twentieth century? Where were they? And why was I here with Sarah—and at such an important time for this community, the Jewish New Year—rather than with them? I knew from the experience I’d already accrued on this strange journey that there was no point wondering such things. The stark truth bit into me: I was an orphan traveler, lost in time.

  “Nothing’s been the same, since the death of Yitzhak Baron,” Sarah said, crossing to the table and sitting down beside me. “I was eight years old when he was murdered; I remember it all so clearly, though, like it was yesterday. He used to come with the other yeshivah students to take his Shabbos meals with us—the only time all week they ate anything besides potatoes and gruel.”

  Sarah’s eyes shone with sadness. “I think about him all the time. He was a hero: the way he barricaded himself with the others in that house and threw stones at the czar’s men.”

  Her expression darkened. “My father didn’t want to crawl down into the cellar that night to hide. Lots of people did; they were the smart ones. But we ran. Ran and ran, through the streets. I’ll never forget it—the Cossacks on their horses, holding flaming torches.”

  “How absolutely terrible,” I said.

  Sarah sniffed, then brushed her hand across her nose.

  “You’re right, of course you’re right. It was terrible—the worst thing that had ever happened to me. It was also horribly confusing. We were in a panic. I’d never seen Mother like that, Father, too. They’ve always been—I don’t know, calm, strong. Taking care of everything in our lives.”

  Sarah leaned toward me. “Did you know Father was once an important scholar? I used to watch him pack his cobbling tools away at the end of the day—just to see the happy look in his face, knowing he had all evening to devote to his books. Mother would serve us dinner, and then Father would go behind the curtain.”

  Sarah gestured to the thick cloth on the far side of the cabin. I imagined that perhaps there was a little alcove there, set aside for private study.

  “His candle would burn for hours. Sometimes, I lay awake and watched the f
lickering shadows.”

  Now, finally, Sarah smiled. “I used to pretend that the shadows were the secrets of the Talmud, coming to life.”

  She looked a little embarrassed. “I sound like a fool!” she said, her eyes shining, but no longer with joy. “When Father gave it all away, it was a terrible thing—for all of us. For me! After that, I stopped running to his workshop at the end of the work day. I couldn’t bear it!”

  “What couldn’t you bear?”

  “The deadness in his face. As if the light of his soul had gone out.”

  “And that happened after the death of—Yitzhak Baron?”

  “I never told you this …” Her voice trailed off, but then Sarah continued with resolve. “I saw Yitzhak’s body. In the street. They’d done terrible things to him—too terrible even to say. He wasn’t recognizable. I only knew it was him because my father told me so. Everything around us was burning. Burning. The butcher’s shop, the cheder, our synagogue. It was summer—the vegetation was so dry. Do you remember that enormous yew tree outside the schoolhouse? It was on fire—like something from the Torah. Holding the flames in its branches, waving its arms around, making a horrible crackling noise, like it was a burning person.”

  Sarah jerkily shook her head, as if trying to dislodge the image of the burning tree from her mind.

  “Even that didn’t prepare me for the sight of the burning books. They dragged them from everywhere and stacked them up outside the schoolhouse. But you know all of that. Everybody does.”

  I nodded, trying to fix my features into a believable expression of horrified recall.

  “Who could have known what books look like when they burn? Father said something to me then. Right as we were passing the huge bonfire of books.”