Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (46 page)

“A what?” I heard him, but it made as little sense as his talk of possessed souls. “Do you even know how to swim?”

He pushed himself back from the table and put a ribbon into the volume he had been reading to mark the page. “I do, though I haven’t done it in many years. I don’t expect it will be difficult to pick up again.”

I considered everything that might go wrong. Though the creek was a short walk from our home, even a short walk was an ordeal for Julius. He would be exhausted by the time he got there.

“Shall I accompany you?” I asked, assuming his answer to be yes.

He surprised me. “I prefer to go on my own.”

“What if you’re pulled too far downstream? You condemn me to worry.”

“I understand your concern,” he said, in a tone that said that he both understood it and chose to reject it. So unlike Julius. He usually went to great pains not to burden me.

I blocked the doorway with my body, my arms crossed over my chest, so that Julius knew he could not move me. I did not enjoy shaming him. Any other man could have displaced me with ease. We stood opposed for several long moments, and then his shoulders sagged.

“Very well,” he said.

The woods that bordered our community were not deep. I had taken Izsak to gather berries along the edges, but had never ventured in before. Julius and I followed a narrow deer path between the trees and down to the creek. I had only ever seen the more civilized portions, closer to the town center. It was wider here, rougher. I found a stone to sit on, just off the path but in view of the water.

“Are you sure this is safe?” I asked.

Julius didn’t answer. He was not self-conscious in front of me, for I was the one to bathe him whenever he took ill. He stripped naked and climbed down the bank. The creek lapped at his ankles as he waded in, then his knees, then his waist. His movement seemed less awkward in the water, and when he dove in, it was with surprising grace.

I spent an anxious afternoon watching as he expended himself. When we finally staggered back to the house he was too weak to even climb the front steps without my help. He was smiling, though. “I think I’m going to swim every day.”

Julius put aside his books for the first time in his life, if only for a few hours. He started swimming in the creek every afternoon. I grew to trust that he was not going to drown himself, and no longer insisted on following him.

One day he took Papa’s Hungarian saber off the wall. Nobody had ever taught him to wield it, and he looked terribly awkward even to my untrained eye.

“What are you doing?” I watched him shuffle back and forth on his uneven legs, struggling to hold the sword in a usable position.

“We need to be prepared if the rebels should appear in our town. Who would protect you?”

“Give me the sword and teach me to use it. Then I can protect myself.”

He lowered the sword, then handed it to me. “I suppose you’d do just as good a job as I would.”

I hated myself for having told the truth. I didn’t see him pick up the sword again, though he continued swimming in the river daily. His arms and chest grew visibly stronger from the effort of dragging his weak legs through the current. In the mornings, when I brought his breakfast to him, I often caught him gritting his teeth at the pains he was trying to ignore. He stopped as soon as he noticed me watching.

“Have you encountered any other souls in your excursions?” I asked him.

He shook his head, refusing to be baited. “I can say only that I have found a sense of calm and strength in the water that is equaled only by a perfect thought. Both happen rarely, but I strive to achieve them with more regularity.”

His answer was so earnest I could say nothing in response. I watched him as he continued to exhaust himself, body and mind, day after day, and week after week. If Papa had been home, I’m sure he would have talked to Julius about the dangers of his new hobby. If Levi had been home, he would have mocked Julius so comprehensively that Julius would have redoubled his efforts and dropped dead of the exertion. But all I could do was watch.

Summer turned into autumn. Letters from Papa said that he was forced to work on the New Year and the Day of Atonement, on the latter treating bloodied limbs with no food in his stomach, until he nearly collapsed. I tried to imagine being in a place with no Jews at all, where the rituals of the holy days were transformed into improvisations and compromises. I ached for him.

A heavy rain brought down all of the leaves on one October night, and then the temperature dropped, so that everywhere we walked we felt the crackle of frozen leaves beneath our feet. Julius gave up his swims only when a thin layer of ice formed over the creek.

Snow came. Hava and I redoubled our efforts for the soldiers and the poorer families, switching from socks to blankets. Every letter from Papa gave mention of the bone-chilling cold. He had moved from the steamboat to a field hospital.

“I am relieved to be among Jews again, though none are Hungarian, so I still do not feel entirely among my own. For the Jewish soldiers, I serve as both surgeon and chaplain, so that they are not confused in what may be their final hours,” he wrote. “I am not sure which duty wears on me more, or where one ends and the other begins. Julius, I wish you were here to administer the chaplain duties, for your counsel on such matters is far more valuable than mine.” Julius read that letter out loud to me, the despair in his voice uncontained.

We had still not received correspondence from Levi, though the Goldstein letters assured us he was fine. “He regales the troops with jokes and songs,” wrote the sergeant, leaving me to wonder if, in fact, he was referring to my brother after all. Or perhaps war really did change a person. Hava continued to write to him, despite his failure to reciprocate. She told him that he would have to teach her some of his jokes, and that the children were growing by leaps and bounds, Izsak in particular.

Izsak was indeed growing quickly. He was his father’s child, mercurial and stubborn. As far as he was concerned, he could not age fast enough. He fashioned himself a blue cap and took to sneaking around with a knife he had stolen from his mother’s kitchen. He watched me when I practiced with Papa’s sword. I made him swear not to tell anyone.

“I’ll teach you how to use it as soon as you have the strength to hold it,” I told him.

He frowned. “But I want to be a soldier now. My father will be back by then, and I will have missed the war.”

I hoped so. In the meantime, I hoped my promise would steady him and hold his desire to fight at bay.

Instead, he ran away. Hava roused him one morning in December, but he did not come down to breakfast. When she went upstairs for the second time, she discovered his bed empty. She ran to our house wailing; her crying roused me from my own sleep. She had left the babies alone to come find us, so Mama went back to mind the children. I walked to the rabbi’s house to ask for assistance from the congregation, or those who were still home.

The reinforcements I collected were a mixed lot: the rabbi and the mail carrier, and after that the women (most of us more robust than the rabbi, but less so than the mailman), the older men, and the infirm. For once, Julius was among the fittest in the group, and it was agreed that he and I would search the woods while the others searched the streets.

Oh, my brother. His sharp mind, his withered leg. We walked slowly, and though we did not need pretext, he would pause on occasion to catch his breath and examine something. A footprint in mud, a broken twig. His path meandered. He could not be far ahead of us, but a young boy would always be faster than Julius. The clues, real or not, at last brought us within earshot.

The cries were faint, but we followed them. We reached the creek, and had no doubt what had happened. Izsak had ventured out across the creek, and the ice had not been thick enough to support him. He clung to the side of the hole he had fallen through, cracks radiating from his position. His sobs had already begun to weaken.

“We’re here, Izsak,” I called to the boy. He looked up at us and seemed to summon new strength to struggle. “Stay calm,” I added. “Be still, and we’ll come get you.” He was at least thirty feet out from the edge of the creek.

Julius shook his head. “You can’t go out there. The ice won’t hold you. Your skirts will drown you if you fall in.”

“What do you suggest?” I asked. “We have no rope, no branch stout enough.”

“You walk faster than I do. Go get help. I’ll stay here and keep him calm. Go, quickly.”

I ran until I was out of breath and my muddy skirts weighed me down. Then I walked, nearly as fast as I ran. I emerged from the woods screaming and heaving for breath, alerting several members of the searching group. We fetched rope from the nearest barn, and some blankets to wrap the child in when he was safely out of the water. I led the group back to the creek.

We were too late. Not for Izsak, but for Julius. I should have known that he would try to save the boy. The small hole that Izsak had created was gone. Most of the ice from our side of the creek was gone, broken away by Julius when he fell through. The water rushed past, clear and cold. They both lay soaked on the muddy, snowy bank.

We tried to save them. We stripped their wet clothing from them and wrapped them in blankets, and I lifted Izsak into my arms. The mail carrier and the rabbi together helped Julius to his feet. He was not a large man.

We stumbled back through the woods. Izsak stirred slightly in my arms, his face and lips blue with cold. His body began an uncontrolled shivering. At some point, perhaps when I reached the street or perhaps before, someone took the boy from my arms. I had my eyes on the backs of the two men struggling with Julius. Julius stumbled as he walked, his lameness more pronounced than ever. He did not talk, and he did not shiver.

I don’t know why Izsak survived and Julius did not. Maybe because he was younger, maybe because his body was stronger. Julius lived just a few days more, speaking occasionally. Mostly he was incoherent. I stayed by his bedside and tried to warm his hands with my own, and listened as he spoke of nefesh and neshamah and ibbur, spirit and soul and that strange concept of benign possession that he had raised once before. His hands were so cold.

Only days after we buried Julius, we were informed that Levi had been killed in a battle at Stones River. Three letters arrived from Levi behind the news. There was one for Mama, one for Hava, and one for me. I thought at first it was a mistake, but my name was printed on the envelope. There was a second reason I thought it a mistake. Though the name signed to the letter was Levi’s, the handwriting was unmistakably that of Julius. I knew his penmanship as well as I knew my own.

“Dearest Frieda,” he wrote. “We are writing to tell you of the miracle that has happened. Ibbur. I (Jul.) had it backwards. I was so concerned with inviting a soul to comingle with my own, with making my own soul and body fit for such a task. I could not have realized that in doing so I purified myself, for even the realization of such a thing would have made me unfit for the burden of it.

“I found myself cohabitating with Levi. I cannot put another word on it, for we have no recollection of my arrival here, only that such a strange thing had occurred. We were on a battlefield. Even as we fell back, we stopped to help the injured, or at least those who could be helped. We amputated a foot while loud reports sounded around us. We walked with that soldier leaning on us – and oh! I will admit to the joy of having two strong legs that he might lean – until we reached a medical station. Then we turned around again to help others find their way. We found a soldier whose boots were gone, and we gave him our boots. We walked barefoot through the battlefield, helping men to safety.

“I felt so many things, Frieda. I was frightened, so frightened that I recited the shma yisroel beneath my breath, for at any moment it felt we might leave this world (I, for the second time). But I also felt the assurance of a surgeon, and deep anger that we should find ourselves retreating. A different kind of righteousness, the kind that comes from fighting for a cause I believe is just. I have apologized to my brother, in our way, for though he is a boor, his motivations are pure. He is a good person, despite his failings as a brother and a husband and a correspondent. I don’t know if he would have given away his boots without my presence, or returned so many times at such risk to his own safety. But I feel a great completeness at having done these things. We are both here now, and both safe, for the time being. I love you, and I will perhaps see you again at the end of this war.”

The letter was signed by Julius and Levi both.

Hava and Mama’s letters were from Levi and in Levi’s hand, apologizing for his silence. I suppose we cannot know how much Julius had to do with that. Levi had never listened to him before, but neither had he put pen to paper for his wife and mother at any point in his long absence. Whatever the motivation, the sentiments he expressed seemed sincere, and they were a small comfort to my family.

We had mourned Julius, then Levi, and then Levi afresh when the letters arrived. I retreated to Julius’s study to grieve for him alone. The room looked much as he had left it the day before Izsak ran away. It still smelled of leather and ink, the scents I most associated with Julius. One of his journals lay open on his table. In it he had written, “We live in the present, fleeting. We speak of past and future, and both weigh heavily upon us. My frailties began when I was a child (past), and will continue into the future. But if we find oneness of soul, will we also find oneness of time? Past, present, and future, existing in an eternal now.”

I have begun to read my brother’s books when nobody is looking. I believe in the oneness he spoke of, and the wholeness and the eternal now. If I find my own way to righteousness, maybe I will see him again. My brother, who is perhaps gone but not gone, who may yet reveal himself to me if his soul still has unmet tasks. My brother, who might even now guide my hand, his heart my heart, and his soul commingled with mine.

Art by Esme Baran