Beyond the Pale: A Novel (17 page)

Then I felt a stomach ache higher up than the first pain. I grabbed my belly and sighed. Who would want to marry a tall, serious girl with a bad stomach, anyway?

Sharp, but Not
Sharp Enough

I
N BETWEEN THE MORNING
and evening Shabbes services, we walked home to eat the tsholnt Mama made on Fridays. Tsholnt was one of my favorite meals, even if we did eat it every Saturday afternoon. Barley agreed with me and I liked to look at it on my spoon, the little crease in the middle of the grain like the skin folding around my knuckle.

The men returned to the shul for the afternoon service and the rest of us stayed home. Mama would sit between me and Sarah with a book on her lap. She was supposed to read us Bible stories, which she did from time to time. Sarah liked the Bible stories for the pictures: Moses striking the rock in the desert, the Jews dancing around the golden calf, Miriam with her tambourine. I liked it better when she read us Pushkin or Gogol; I liked listening to the Russian, though I didn’t catch every word. Even these books had pictures, fewer, but more dramatic: a man clutching his overcoat in an alley, with every shadow a menacing face etched in a thousand lines. Sarah would run her small fingers over the page delicately, closing her eyes. “I can feel the winter in my hands,” she said once. Mama and I smiled at each other. She was small for nine and good natured. Sitting with her eyes closed, her hand moving over the engraving, she had the aspect of a delicate angel, not because she was especially well behaved, but because all the worry of our lives, all the arguments, were still removed from her. Although she was aware that her wandering eye made people uneasy, she never seemed to take it to heart.

Esther was restless now that she was engaged to Nathan. And she was cranky because she couldn’t sew on Shabbes or walk down to the river with him until after sundown since he was in shul. I never understood the big attraction. Nathan was a clumsy, red-headed mama’s boy who never talked about anything besides the weather and beer. But at least Esther got to choose him, which was more than most girls were allowed to do. Papa would have preferred a scholar, but Mama convinced him that a steady income from a tavern was nothing to sneeze at. That was exactly how she put it, and it amused me to think of Papa making a sneeze big enough to blow the tavern away.

“Why are the things I like to do forbidden?” Esther complained.

“And what would you like to do?” Mama asked.

“I want to go to the concert in the park.”

“You know your father would never allow that on the sabbath.”

“I know, Mama, but there’s going to be another one tomorrow, in the afternoon.” Esther looked pleadingly at Mama. She was standing in front of the window and the shaft of light made her hair look almost red. Wine-dark, I’d heard somewhere. Now that she was almost a bride, I sometimes saw her differently, as if she’d crossed a line I hadn’t known was there. But it wasn’t changing her personality much—she was even more convinced she was the center of civilization.

“We all have so much to do to get ready for Pesach,” Mama said doubtfully, which meant she was going to give in.

Sarah opened her eyes. “Mama, could we please go to the concert tomorrow?” And that, of course, decided it.

Papa sounded betrayed. “Going to the concert? Parading the girls through the streets when there’s so much unrest in town? A week before Pesach? Do you really think this is a good idea?”

“Doesn’t it say, ‘Make a joyful noise unto the Lord?’ The girls need a little exercise and I could use getting out of the house for more than my dutiful rebitsin visits. Don’t worry so.”

“A joyful noise is not interpreted to mean concerts in the Royal Gardens, mixing with the goyim.”

“Isaac, this is not a court case. The girls are restless and so am I. All week we work and on Shabbes we keep the Commandments. After Esther is married, I won’t have this opportunity to be with all three of my girls so often.”

Papa scratched his ear. “But how do you think this will look?”

“It will look like the learned and progressive rabbi is tending to his studies, while the rebitsin and daughters open their spirits with a little music. What looks so bad? Not even a patch on the girls’ coats, thank God. Come, Isaac, you know there’s no harm.”

“But the unrest—.” Papa had an odd expression, as if, for a second, he was looking at us and not at God.

Mama pursed her lips. “It’s better for us to show ourselves as dignified human beings, not afraid. As long as we all mingle respectfully in town, maybe the worst will be averted.”

“With God’s will.” He slapped the table as if he was keeping the score on their arguments, looked away, looked back, sighed, raised his eyes to the ceiling, where God lives. “What can you do with a woman like this, I ask you? Go.”

Mama was already buttoning Sarah’s coat up to her chin.

Since Abraham was in Jaffa and Daniel who knows where, Papa was more critical of what we did, but he had less energy for argument. He was often like a ghost walking around in our house. If we asked him something, he stroked his beard and said “the Talmud this” or “the Talmud that”—for any question—even could we have a piece of candy, could we go and watch the glassblowers work, would he give us a few extra kopecks for the beggars?

Esther and I, we liked walking down Alexander Street with Mama. We imagined the street was as grand as any in Paris or Berlin. Mama showed us a book with engravings of society ladies walking in the latest fashions down the Champs Elysees. I knew Esther wanted to be a
grande dame
. Since the engagement was announced, she worked her wedding dress into every conversation, the one she ordered special from the spinster Golde Zelkin’s shop. She walked with her nose in the air and said all four words she knew in French, which probably meant “my umbrella wants an outhouse,” and then she giggled and skipped ahead. I ran after her, past her, turned around and stuck my tongue out. Sarah tried to catch us but her legs were too short. I still liked to run. Mama said it wasn’t ladylike and I said, who wants to be a lady? Esther frowned but I could tell Mama was pleased by me, though she couldn’t say, in case of the evil eye.

I could run so fast the evil eye couldn’t catch me. I was running and skipping backwards, making faces at my sisters, when I bumped into a man on the sidewalk, a Rumanian.

“Damn zhids,” he cursed, shaking his newspaper at me. “The day is coming when you’ll get yours.” The newspaper was in my face, and I saw the headline: Crusade Against the Hated Race!

“Thank you very much.” I was cold as ice. “I’ll be looking forward to that.” Mama grabbed my arm.

“She’s sorry if she caused you any trouble, sir. Just a high-spirited girl.”

“Damn zhids,” he said again and turned away from us to spit.

When he was out of earshot, I complained. “Mama, he was cursing us—why were you so nice to him?”

“It’s a difficult time, you know that. Every one of us must do what she can to make peace with our neighbors. You have to behave like model citizens, each of you. That means you too, Chava. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, but I don’t think curtseying to every moujik is going to change their hearts. You think they’re going to wake up and say, ‘By God, you know we were wrong about those Jews, let’s invite them over for dinner’?”

“You are too much of a smartmouth for your own good. Now just do what I say and walk like young ladies or we’re going home.”

Esther gave me her “you’re in trouble ha-ha” face. I pretended not to notice and took Sarah’s hand. I looked up at the acacia trees, which were just beginning to bloom. It was a beautiful Sunday, one of the first really warm afternoons, and the air came into my chest like clear-cut crystal, bright and tinkling. I didn’t really want to go to the concert and hoped that Mama would let me wander off to the botanical gardens. I liked to read the names of all the plants and feel the undersides of the fuzzy leaves. The winter had been hard, everyone said, but not as hard as in the nineties. That was what everybody always said, “Oy, it was hard, but not as hard as such-and-such a time, you should know how lucky you are to be living now.” Sometimes I thought there must be a secret school where you went to learn how to be a grown-up and forget what it was like to be a child. I knew Esther snuck out to this school at night. She’d say she was going for a walk with Nathan but she couldn’t fool me. She went someplace where they taught her it was no fun to jump across stones in the river, and whenever you were asked a question, you must reply, “You’ll understand when you’re as old as I am.” Even Mama was more fun than Esther. But then, she didn’t have to prove to anyone what a grown-up she was.

At the concert I looked at the faces of the people, trying to decide which of them went to the secret school for forgetting how to be a child and which of them went to the school for anti-Semites. It took time to learn things, I knew. It couldn’t only be that someone’s mother said, “You should hate the Jews,” and then that person smacked her forehead and said, “What a good idea.”

Three rows over sat a girl about my age, staring at me. I smiled and she scowled. So. They had her in their school too. They had actual books. Uncle Elihu showed me one once, when I promised not to tell Mama and Papa. Russian books with long essays and diagrams of Jewish heads and noses. It made me want to throw up. And then I spent all day looking at my nose in the mirror. I knew it wasn’t only my nose that made me a Jew, but I used to lie in bed holding it, trying to reshape it, so not everyone could tell just by looking at me. I was only eleven then.

We sat in a row of all Jews. Mama said hello to everyone. Some of the women elbowed their husbands and looked uncomfortable. Rabbis’ wives always seemed to make a little stir when they showed up somewhere unexpected. My mother simply smiled and adjusted her wig. All around us there were Moldavians, Greeks, Armenians, a few moujiks. Did they have books about each other’s noses or only about the Jews? I wondered if the girl who was frowning at me was trying to measure my face. I had a beautiful chin, everyone said so. It wasn’t too pretty though. It was strong.

There was so much talk about pure Russian and the great Russian spirit it made sense that the local orchestra performed Mussorgsky. I liked
Pictures at an Exhibition
, though. I’d heard it once before and the idea of music that showed how to walk through an art gallery in sound made the hair on my arms prickle. Sarah kept her eyes closed for most of the concert while her mouth stayed open in a little “o” and she sucked in every breath. When the concert was over, people were walking around making ordinary comments: “Wonderful violin, wasn’t it,” and “Nice weather. Good to see you, dear.” Sarah and I went up by the concert platform, skipping, looking around. She found a Russian handbill on the ground and handed it to me.

Citizens! Once again your mortal enemies, the Zhids, have perpetrated their heinous crime of murder for blood! In Dubossary, last month, Rubalenko, a twelve-year-old boy, was found stabbed thirty-seven times, with ritual marks on his neck and palms. All over Bessarabia the Zhids are baking their passover matzoh, and their bakers use the pure blood of our beloved Christian youth!

The foreign scum takes our money and drinks our blood! Everyone is crushed by the filthy parasitic Zhids! Enough! Don’t let them kill your children! Avenge the death of Rubalenko! Our father, the great Tsar Nicholas II, urges us to inflict a just and bloody punishment on the Zhids. Take up your cudgels, now is the time brothers! Death to the Zhids!

“What does it say?” Sarah asked.

It took me a long time to understand. I was glad that I could read some Russian, but it was hard to read this, standing in the Royal Gardens on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. I kept looking up from the page towards Mama.

“It says—lies about the Jews,” I said to Sarah.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. We should show it to Mama.”

Mama read the handbill in a second. I was always proud when Mama read in front of other people, even if they didn’t notice how good she was. She held the paper away from her face since she didn’t have her glasses and moved only her eyes quickly down the page. Then she sat down hard on a bench and covered her mouth.

“What’s wrong Mama?” Esther asked.

“There’s going to be trouble.”

“Just from a piece of paper?” I asked.

Mama almost laughed. “Trouble, Chavele, almost always starts with a piece of paper. I think there’s going to be a pogrom.”

“What’s a pogrom, Mama?” Sarah asked.

I sucked in my stomach and got taller. I remembered vaguely Mama and Papa talking about the pogrom in Kantakuzen a long time ago, when I was ten.

“A pogrom is something I hope you never see. It’s like—a street full of men like the one Chava bumped into this afternoon, yelling and beating up the Jews.”

Sarah looked down at her shoes. “Does the paper say they’re going to have one?”

“The paper says that Jews have killed a Christian boy to use his blood for Passover matzohs.”

“Ich. That’s stupid!”

“Yes. Well. Stupidity is the most dangerous thing on earth. And we live in very stupid times. So. Now we’re going to go home and talk about this with your father.”

We passed the statue of Pushkin at the entrance to the park. I remembered when it was put up, with bouquets of flowers arranged at the base. I wondered if Pushkin would have told people how silly it is to think Jews drink Christian blood. Who thought these things up? If someone could made up a lie like this, maybe they drank blood themselves.

When Papa read the handbill, his skin turned the color of wax. I didn’t think he could look any more pale.

“We’ll talk about it after dinner.”

Dinner was quiet and quick. Mama sent us to clean up, and she and Papa went into their room. Since the boys left, I didn’t have to sleep behind the stove anymore, though sometimes I missed the private feeling I’d had behind my little blanket. Of course we could hear them anywhere in the house. When they whispered I listened harder or walked silently to the wall of their room.