Burning Twilight (2 page)

The cock squawked and kicked up a minor dust storm, metamorphosing into a swirl of red and black feathers, but Kassy placed a burlap sack over its head, and it quieted down. Then she dipped a wooden stirrer into the pot simmering over the fire, fished out a tasty morsel of chicken, blew on it, and held it out with her long, delicate fingers. The cat’s whiskers twitched, her muzzle a shiny black mask ringed with a mane of a bright orange fur. She was a genuine calico, a real mixture of everything. She padded toward Kassy’s outstretched fingers, keeping low and wary. Kassy kept still as the cat crept closer. Its whiskers twitched, then twitched again, then it lunged, teeth flashing, and the bit of meat vanished from Kassy’s fingers.

Kassy could hear the cat purring.

“Looks like I’ve made a new friend,” she said to the pine needles and the stars above.

Suddenly, the cat’s ears pricked up, and she sprang off into the underbrush.

Leaves rustled as someone came running through the forest from the direction of the village. Kassy steeled herself for the worst, then recognized the sturdy young woman who pushed through the branches and stumbled into the clearing. It was Paulina, who had been drafted to be the midwife’s new assistant. She stopped, breathing hard, her round face flushed and glistening, reflecting the glow from the fire.

“Miss Castava!” she said, using the Czech form of Kassy’s name. “Thank God you’re here. Mrs. Svoboda’s baby doesn’t want to come out and we need your help.”

Kassy leapt to her feet, took the simmering pot off the fire and hung it from a branch. Then she gathered the ingredients for a groaning cake: dried woodruff, caraway seeds, and some flowering buds from the broad-leafed hemp plant.

The sky was still glowing with the faint purple of twilight, but the darkness was stealing up on them fast and rain clouds were gathering on the horizon.

No stargazing tonight, she thought as they hurried through the village square. A number of idlers watched her every move as she squeezed through the crowd gathered around a wagon watching a traveling company’s Whitsunday pageant—though the holiday was still several weeks off—until Kassy stepped through the low doorway of the Svobodas’ cottage with her bundle of herbs.

Irina Svoboda lay on a birthing stool in the middle of the bare dirt floor, sweating and straining and squeezing her husband’s hand, while Mrs. Lenka, the midwife, wiped her forehead with a damp rag. The husband didn’t even look up when Kassy came in.

The midwife gave her a quick summary: Irina was in her seventh hour of labor, with minimal widening of the birth canal, and was suffering from terrible cramps and a low-grade fever.

Kassy sent Paulina out for a couple of fresh eggs, then kneeled by the hearth to prepare the cake. She mixed the flour with the woodruff and caraway from the bundle of herbs, mashed the butter and a sprinkle of sugar together with the hemp in a separate bowl, then greased the pan with more butter. The butter was essential: it didn’t work without the butter. Then she waited for Paulina to come back with the eggs.

Outside in the square, the grim drama reached its climax as the Antichrist was unmasked as a Jew, who admitted under pain of death that for fifteen hundred years his people had kidnapped and murdered Christian children, poisoned Christian patients, and robbed Christian customers, all because of a perverse, soul-consuming hatred for the good people whose only offense was their heartfelt belief in the Son of God.

Paulina returned and stoked the fire, and by the time Kassy put the cake in the pan the performance had reached its satyric conclusion, as the tragic death-of-winter scenario was transformed into a bawdy springtime celebration of fertility in all its forms. Purged of sinful feelings by collectively witnessing the downfall of a common enemy, the townsfolk were free to vent their long-suppressed desires by joining the actors and prancing around the stage to the beat of drums and tambourines, singing, “The lawyer with his screed, the Jew with his greed, and what lies under a woman’s dress; these three things make the world a mess!”

The lewd songs swelled with voices high and low, bumping and pressing against the somber mood inside the cottage, until Kassy could barely hear Irina calling her husband’s name: “Ludye, Ludye . . . ”

“Yes, my dear,” said Ludyek. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine now that the lady apothecary’s here.” He gave Kassy a dark look that warned her not to make a liar out of him.

Kassy ignored him. She had worked closely with midwives like Mrs. Lenka before, so she did her part without having to be told what to do, massaging the travailing woman’s neck and shoulders and laying warm towels around her belly while the midwife handled the delivery. Ludyek sat there holding his wife’s hand, whispering soft words and snatches of prayers, as the midwife enlarged the opening around the shiny whorl of hair on the baby’s head, and encouraged Irina to be strong and push some more. The skin beneath the baby’s hair was slowly changing from red to purple.

Kassy brushed some loose hair out of her eyes, and was tucking the tiny gold cross on a silver chain back inside her blouse when Irina took her hand and said that she liked looking at the way the cross sparkled in the candlelight. Then Kassy left it dangling for the pregnant woman to fix her eyes on.

Soon, she was feeding Irina bits of the cake along with soothing sips of cold water, while repeating a Latin prayer asking for God’s protection. Kassy didn’t believe in the healing power of the strange old words themselves, but many of her charges felt better because
they
believed in such powers. The mind’s influence over the bodily humors had always fascinated her, and the effect was certainly worthy of further study.

The cake eventually brought Irina some relief, but by then Kassy was sweating under her clothes as she and the midwife worked against the dying light of the fire. Without being asked, Paulina wiped the perspiration from Kassy’s forehead and with her free hand began rubbing the knot that had formed at the base of her neck. Kassy felt her shoulders relax a little, and she thanked Paulina with her eyes.

Then the midwife finally got a grip on the baby’s head and neck and pulled down and out.

A stream of new voices had joined the whirlpool of passions rushing by the front window. But even as the chaos of the pageant outside swirled around them on all sides, a cool stillness fell like a shroud over the Svobodas’ rooms.

Irina clutched Kassy’s arm while Paulina wrapped the lifeless blue mass of flesh in sackcloth.

“At least use a clean towel,” the midwife said softly.

Irina’s face was as pale as wax. Her husband stared blankly ahead. Then he remembered where he was and tried to give Kassy a stone-cold stare, but all the hardness drained out of his face when his wife said, “Bless you all for trying to help,” in a faint dry croak.

His eyes dropped to his hands, which were smeared with blood.

“I’ll prepare you something—” Kassy could barely get the words out. “Something to help build your strength back up.”

She stayed to wash the mixing bowls and the pan she had used to make the cake, while Paulina wiped off the birthing stool and swept the floor, and the midwife burned twice-blessed herbs in the four corners of the house.

Kassy carefully taught Paulina the psalm for these occasions in plain Czech, so that the simple folk would understand and take comfort from the words.

If I say that the darkness shall cover me, and the light be night about me, I must remember that the darkness and the light are alike to Thee, for Thou hast formed my innards; Thou hast knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise
T
hee, for I am wondrously made. Thine eyes did see my unformed flesh, and all my days are written in Thy book.

The girl wanted to learn more, but Kassy told her to think about it long and hard, because there was precious little room in this world for women like herself.

Eventually, Kassy had to trudge back toward her campfire through the drizzling rain, ignoring the eyes of men and the filthy barefoot boys fondling bits of wood and stone to hurl at the effigy of a Jew that was being raised in the town square. The villagers listened open-mouthed as the local priest condemned the straw man of
okrucienstwo Zydowskie—
Jewish bestiality—then set the hateful thing on fire.

Kassy was fighting off the oppressive feeling that nothing would ever make the pain of this failure go away. But something else weighed heavily on her mind as well, the creeping sensation that the ways of the wise women were slowly disappearing. She couldn’t help wondering if she had been born in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe even the wrong century altogether.

She found a little gift from her feline friend waiting for her on the ground beside the dying embers. A small gray mouse lay on the dirt, its legs stiff and lifeless. She was grateful that the cat had made a clean kill of it, because even mouse blood would have bothered her just then.

“Good girl,” she said, kneeling to scratch behind the cat’s ears and running her fingers through her thick orange-black fur. Then she picked up the mouse by the tail and tossed it into the woods.

She rewarded the cat with another bite of meat. Then she fanned the coals until the fire came back to life, laid a piece of wood on the newly glowing embers, and sat in front of the fire for a good long while, waiting for the dull flames to warm her up.

She closed her eyes, but still saw the clotted clumps of scarlet and the shiny blue skin of the stillborn child like scenes from a magic lantern. The images made her shudder.

The wise women who helped coax difficult babies into the world labored under the constant suspicion that when no one was watching, they would slink off into the night with the blood-gorged remains of the afterbirth and umbilical cord to perform black magic with them. God help you if they accused you of offering the child up to the Devil by killing it at the moment of delivery. She had once watched helplessly as an old woman was stoned to death on the steps of the cathedral for just such a crime. She could still hear their voices.

What are the charges against me? the woman had demanded.

You should be able to figure them out for yourself, her accuser replied.

Kassy squeezed the cross around her neck. She could just picture herself trying to explain to an examining magistrate who didn’t know a birth canal from a carpenter’s bit that sometimes it just happens that way—a child is stillborn, and you are left with empty hands. There’s no evil involved, it’s just nature’s way.

The cat brushed against her leg, looking for attention.

“Now what?” she said. “Don’t tell me I need to think up a name for you.”

She scratched the cat under the chin.

“But you must have one already. What is it? Calixta? Pyewacket? Nibbles?”

Then she heard it. She looked to the west. At first it appeared to be a cluster of stars gliding toward her through the forest. But the flickering shadows were all too human.

Villagers with torches.

They came after her with ropes to tie her hands and chains to weigh her down, for the rivers were deep and swift in this part of the wilderness.

Kassy grabbed her bundle and ran to the northeast, leaving the gamecock and all else behind.

The shadows grew longer, and a thick darkness spread over the land.

II: BENYAMIN’S STORY

If the rich could hire others to die for them,

the poor would make a very nice living.

Yiddish proverb

W
e needed eight more Jews to make a
minyen
, so we said our
minkhe
prayers without the final prayer for the dead. But our little ceremony was cut short by the sound of robbers ambushing a wayward traveler a short way up the road.

The rugged passes near the frontier offer easy concealment for thieves and highwaymen, so we said a quick prayer for protection. But when a woman’s scream was suddenly cut off, I abandoned the safety of our tiny patch of neutral ground and ran ahead, rounding the bend in time to see a group of men hurling the uncooperative woman into the rushing waters, her cloak flapping behind her like a blackbird’s wing. I took three steps toward the robbers, but they turned on me like a pack of wolves and blocked my passage.

Rabbi Loew was still fifty yards behind, ambling along with his staff like an old gray shepherd. So I knelt and grabbed a handful of gravel and flung it through the air toward the gang of thieves, while cursing them with these words:

“Adam Havah Abton Absalom Sarfiel Nuriel Daniel!”

The words were completely harmless, but these mountain folk are a superstitious lot, and they scattered like mice.

I rushed to the river’s edge. The poor woman was pressed up against a rock about twenty yards downstream, kicking and fighting the current, but she couldn’t do much with her hands tied behind her back and a gag stuffed in her mouth.

I raced along the riverbank, pulling off my cloak, and splashed into the icy waters, razors of ice nipping at my ankles and knees as I waded deeper. I was almost halfway across when I slipped and was swallowed by the maelstrom. The current pummeled me, throwing me against the rocks. It felt like someone was smacking me in the face with an ice axe, but I regained my footing and finally reached the woman. I pried her away from the rock and gathered her in my arms, but her body was completely limp, her waterlogged clothes dragging us down. The other bank was closer at this point, so I fought the current and carried her to the river’s edge, and laid her on the grass.