The River Midnight (13 page)

“What is that?” the Governor asked, his mouth full of honey and poppy-seed pastry.

“A gift on behalf of a young Jewess, requesting your clemency, sir.”

“Ah. Well, I’m in a kindly spirit, today. Let someone from her family, her mother perhaps, have visiting privileges. Instruct the warden.”

“And her release?”

The Governor laughed. “That’s what I like about you, Josef. Your sense of humor.”

“I
WON
’
T
write another page,” Faygela said to Shmuel. “My grandmother was right, after all. It’s from this selfishness,” she waved her notebook, “that a woman forgets who she really is. I had my head in another world and that’s why I didn’t see Misha for what she is. How could I depend on her? She’s just as helpless as any woman. But I promise you, Shmuel, things are going to be different. I’m getting rid of these. Into the fire.” She began to take the notebooks out of the trunk, piling them up.

“Faygela, please. It’s too warm for a fire.” Shmuel took the notebooks from her. “Put them back in your trunk. It won’t help Ruthie to make yourself miserable.”

“You’re right. It would be a waste. Better to burn them in the winter. In the meantime I’m going to speak with Emma’s great-aunt. Imagine, letting the girl run wild, getting children into trouble. I’ll give Alta-Fruma a piece of my mind. You can be sure of it.”

“And Misha? Will you at least talk to her?”

Faygela slammed the lid of the trunk. “Never.”

Shmuel winced. “You’re nervous. You should write something. A nice poem. And I could make you a glass of tea. With lemon?”

“I told you from now on there’s no more writing. Leave me alone.” She grabbed her shawl and left for the dairyhouse, rehearsing what she would say to set the old woman straight.

R
UTHIE SHARED
her cell with four other women. The one with the streak of gray in her hair had murdered her husband in his sleep after he’d beaten her. The woman whose front teeth were broken was deaf and mute, so that no one knew who she was or how long she’d been there. The other two were whores from Avraham’s Brothel in Plotsk, orange-haired, freckle-faced cousins, about fifteen years old. They had stolen the wallet from a Russian soldier, unaware that he was an officer.

“So you’re from Blaszka,” one of the cousins said to Ruthie. “A girl from the brothel got married in Blaszka. Years ago. She’s dead now, but we always talk about it. Riva and the miller’s son. We’re neighbors,
you might say. Sisters.” Sisters, they both repeated, giggling as they leaned their orange heads against Ruthie’s dark one. When she came back from the interrogation, they held her head as she vomited in the corner. Making soft hen noises over her, they sat her on the bench between them, linking arms behind her back, until the shuddering stopped. Then they painted her face with soot, blackened her teeth with a kohl pencil, packed straw under the left shoulder of her dress to create a hump, and, in a soft country Yiddish, advised her to drool when the jailers passed by. In contrast, the girls themselves laughed and flirted, twisting their thin shoulders and shaking their hips, sharp little tongues waving at the guards, so that when the deputy warden wanted some entertainment, no one gave Ruthie a second glance. In turn, Ruthie shared with them everything her mother brought to make her more comfortable. They piled their straw together under her sheet, slept under her blanket, ate her food, and peed in her chamber pot. Among the dangers they shared was the threat of typhus from the lice, which also passed between them.

F
AYGELA
’
S HANDS
were clenched on her lap as she sat on the edge of a bench in Ruthie’s cell, breathing lightly so as not to inhale too much of the cell’s odor. Ruthie, not meeting her mother’s glance, also sat with her hands folded. They’d been this way for an hour. Every so often Faygela would ask a question, Ruthie would answer yes or no or perhaps, and silence would fall between them again while Ruthie picked at the scabs of dirt on her dress. What Faygela wanted to know was how the quiet daughter had joined with revolutionaries, and all she could think of was that she had shouted at Ruthie for coming home late on Purim. There were other times she’d been short-tempered with Ruthie. And don’t forget that she had slapped Ruthie, too. Faygela had been pregnant with Devorah or maybe it was Dina and she couldn’t find Leibela anywhere. Ruthie was supposed to be watching her but instead she had gone to the woods. Before Ruthie was able to say that it had been to find some herbs for Faygela’s nausea, she had slapped her daughter and good. Was Ruthie paying her back now?

“How your father suffers,” Faygela said. “He thinks of you every minute.”

“Poor Papa,” Ruthie said, her eyes welling.

“Devorah has nightmares. She can’t sleep without you in the bed.”

“And you, Mama? Did cousin Berekh bring you any more books?”

“Do you want books, Ruthie? I could bring them to you.”

“It would be too dangerous if the guards saw me reading,” Ruthie said in a low voice. “But the worst thing is that there’s nothing to do here.”

One of the orange-haired girls was squatting over the chamber pot. Faygela heard a thick splash followed by the rat-a-tat-plop of diarrhea, a new smell rising hot around them. Faygela turned her head, wrapping her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “You were saying?” she asked Ruthie.

“Nothing. Nothing important.”

“For a girl to go from her parents’ house to this. You would tell me if somebody interfered with you, Ruthie?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You know what I mean? A girl, here.”

“Yes.”

“Of course she wouldn’t know what I mean,” Faygela murmured. “Not Ruthie.” And then louder. “Is there anything you want,
mamala?
A message you want to send with me?”

“No, Mama.” Ruthie gazed past her mother and silence fell between them again.

A
T LEAST
eat something, the women in the bakery said to Faygela. How can you walk to Plotsk if you’re starving yourself?

She was sitting at the square table, the women around her. “If you saw what I did, you wouldn’t think of food.”

Don’t speak of it. You’ll just get more upset. Tell us about Warsaw. It’ll take your mind off your troubles.

“Never mind Warsaw. It was just a dream. All I can see in front of my eyes is Ruthie’s cell. The stone walls, the dirty straw stained with the blood from women. And the women, so ugly I nearly choke when I look at them. It’s my fault that she’s there. I should have taken her with me to Warsaw. No, I shouldn’t have gone at all.” Faygela put her head in her hands.

The door opened, but she didn’t look up. One of the girls could
take care of the customer. Or one of the women. Anyone. It didn’t matter.

“Sholom aleikhem.”
Hanna-Leah’s voice. Faygela lifted her head. Hanna-Leah was staring at her, lips pursed, eyebrows drawn together. Faygela knew that look. It was the same look that Hanna-Leah gave her when she said she would run away to Warsaw. When she refused to eat after her first son died. When she said that if she had another child, she would go mad.

Can’t you see that she’s upset? the women asked Hanna-Leah. You need something, go talk to Shmuel.

“This isn’t your business,” Hanna-Leah answered. “I have something to say to Faygela. Do you want to hear or not?”

“I’m listening,” Faygela replied. She stood up, walked around the table to Hanna-Leah.

“My grandmother came to me in a dream,” Hanna-Leah said. “Your Ruthie will be safe.”

Was this what Hanna-Leah came to say? No scolding? No advice? But when Faygela touched her hand in thanks, Hanna-Leah added in a low whisper that no one else could hear, “Listen to me. You always enjoyed a little too much drama when there was trouble. Think of someone else.” Then she quickly left while the other women regrouped around Faygela.

Me? she wondered. But I think only of Ruthie. How it’s my fault that she’s in prison. Hanna-Leah’s voice seemed to follow her as it did in Warsaw, asking her, And does your confession get rid of one louse on Ruthie’s head?

T
HE NEXT DAY
Faygela was in the prison at her normal time, the guards inspecting what she brought. She didn’t walk this time. She had too much to carry. Fine white raisin bread and almond tortes for the guards, plain black bread and cheese for the women, boiled potatoes with dill and sour milk, also for the women, as well as buckets, rags, brushes, and lye. And for Ruthie she brought a roll of cloth, needles and thread, the brightest colors she could find in Plotsk.

While Faygela scrubbed the cell, she said, “Let me tell you a story to pass the time. It’s a true story of course, about four wild girls who lived in the woods and never grew old because they drank from the
secret river. One of them was clever, one was beautiful, the third was good, and the last had a gold tooth, and she was the queen of them all.” When Faygela got to the part of the story where the girl with the gold tooth saved the King of Poland from drowning, the woman who was supposedly deaf and mute had picked up the pig-bristle brush and was working alongside her. And when the villainous Captain Ivan Ivanovich was bitten in the behind by the wild pig, she startled them all by falling into the bucket as she laughed. “That’s a good one,” she said.

Day by day as Faygela continued the saga of the wild girls, she noticed that the women in the cell across from Ruthie’s had also begun to listen. Then the women began to use Faygela’s fine-tooth comb on each other’s heads, picking out the lice and untangling their hair, while she told them the story. If she paused for a moment, they would say eagerly, “And then what happened?” The next time she came, Faygela brought them ribbons to tie back their hair. The comb was passed from Ruthie’s cell to the other one, and even the old hag, her white hair neatly combed, stroked the green ribbon that Faygela gave her. Her withered lips were fallen in. There was a goiter on her neck. But she smiled with as much pleasure as if she were a girl, and Faygela realized that she could tolerate the goiter without either anger or disgust for the sake of the old woman’s pleasure. From one visit to the next, Faygela wouldn’t allow herself to think of how long Ruthie might be imprisoned, or what would happen to her when she was sentenced at some indeterminate future time. It would take more than all the money in the village to obtain Ruthie’s release. So Faygela cleaned, she brought food, she told stories, she combed Ruthie’s hair.

“I
T
’
S ALWAYS
hardest on the oldest girl,” Faygela said to Shmuel as she rolled out pastry dough. “With one child after another, you forget how much the first one has to do. Ruthie never complained the way Freydel does. But tell me, Shmuel, what does Ruthie think about, sitting day after day in that cell?” Eyes moist, he shook his head, refilling the flour bins as Faygela spread raisins and almond paste over the dough. “I tell the women my little stories and Ruthie sews,” Faygela said. “Her hands are always busy.” Except, she thought, when the story concerned the girl with the gold tooth who was as big as a man
and knew every flower in the woods. Then Ruthie’s hands were still. Her eyes would grow big and her skin flushed. I should know what it means, Faygela thought. Why don’t I know what it means?

W
HEN SHE
came into the prison now, Faygela first took Ruthie over to a bench next to the wall. The other women retreated to the opposite side of the cell to give them privacy, stifling a ragged phlegmy cough, apologizing for the sound of pee splashing in the chamberpot. As she unraveled a tangled ball of yarn, Faygela would wind it around Ruthie’s upheld hands, trying to draw her daughter out. Little by little, while Faygela waited, Ruthie began to speak to her. Every night, Faygela tangled up the ball of yarn for her next visit.

“Tell me, Ruthie, do you ever dream about anything?”

“Sometimes,” Ruthie said shyly.

“I often used to sit on the silver rocks and dream about going to Warsaw. Do you ever do that?”

Ruthie nodded. Faygela waited for her to speak. Half of the ball of yarn was untangled before Ruthie said, “In
Zayda
’s books I read about women who travel. I’d like to see those places.”

“You could,” Faygela said.

“No, no.” Ruthie shook her head. “I couldn’t leave Blaszka.”

“Why not?” Faygela asked.

“Everyone knows me in Blaszka. And besides …” Ruthie’s voice trailed off. Faygela wound the yarn around her fingers, praying that the ball of yarn would be long enough.

“Some people have been telling me that you’re old enough for the matchmaker. I said that sixteen is too young, but perhaps I’m wrong. When I was your age I had a baby already and there are some nice boys in the village. Emma’s cousin, Avram, maybe?”

“Oh, Mama. I’m not interested in boys. I just want to learn from Misha.”

“Don’t talk to me about Misha. She should have watched out for you when I was gone. But of course she was too busy doing who knows what with her belly growing out to here,” Faygela said. Ruthie fell silent, her eyes glazing as if shutters were closing over them. Faygela bit her tongue. “I shouldn’t say a thing, Ruthie. Enough happens in the world that’s nobody’s fault. Who could expect Misha to look after you, when you already have a mother and a father?”

“Oh, but she does, Mama. There’s so much I don’t know about plants and she knows so much and she’s seen everything about delivering babies and I just want …” Ruthie stopped speaking. Her face was hot and red. She looked confused. Her mother slipped the yarn off her hands and patted them.

“Never mind,” Faygela said. “You have time to learn, and maybe you’ll travel, too. Blaszka is such a small place. I feel more comfortable at home because I know every stone. But I think, Ruthie, there might be more for you somewhere else. Sha, don’t interrupt. I’m not saying today or tomorrow, but soon. You’ll see that there’s something more to life than what the hens in Blaszka say. I didn’t talk about it before because I was worried about you, but I saw some interesting things in Warsaw. When you come home I’ll tell you everything. Believe me,
mamala
, you can go anywhere you want.”