The River Midnight (17 page)

“How’s she going to find out? She’s in Warsaw,” Emma said as Avram came in, throwing down his apron, stained with ink and marked M.P. for Mosaic Press. “Tell me. When did that blood-sucking exploiter let you go last night?” Emma asked.

“Eight,” Avram yawned. “He let us off early for
Shabbas.
I walked from Plotsk first thing this morning. It was still dark when I left.”

“He let you off early? Fourteen hours isn’t enough?”

“Usually it’s sixteen.”

“In America they’re fighting for eight hours.”

“You always forget, Emma,” Ruthie said quietly, “that this isn’t America.”

Avram stretched and cracked his knuckles. He was a sturdy boy about Ruthie’s age, blunt-fingered and deep-voiced, with a few blond hairs trying to weave themselves into a beard over his Adam’s apple. “I’d be happy with twelve hours,” he said. “The bristleworkers struck for a shorter day, but they have a
kassa
with funds to help them out during the strike.”

“What’s a
kassa?
”

“Kind of a union.”

“Good. Then form a
kassa.
”

“The printers don’t want to leave the journeymen’s guild. They say that real artisans don’t belong in a
kassa
with common people who just want a few more kopecks to get drunk on. When the printers go on strike they swear on the Torah to stick together and that means something.”

“Wake up,” Emma said. “Religion’s just superstition. Another way of bossing you around.”

“But Emma, you have to be something. The peasants are Christians and you’re a Jew,” Ruthie said.

“Why does everyone keep saying, You’re a Jew, Emma. Watch what you say, Emma. When the workers in a factory cough up blood, it doesn’t matter what religion they are. In America, people know that it only matters if you’re a boss or a worker.”

“You think it’s easy to be the boss?” Avram asked. “You should see the master. He’s skinny as my finger and he works after we go to sleep.
We’re not so different. Yankel the journeyman is leaving for Warsaw to open his own shop next year. One day I will, too.”

“And that purple mark under your eye? You’re going to give that to some poor apprentice, too, one day?”

“This? You should see what we gave the master. Yankel said, ‘Boys, we stop working at seven.’ And that’s what we did. I didn’t lift a letter of type. Yankel let the ink run dry. The others sat, too, until the master gave us our wages.”

“How long since you got paid?”

“Let’s see, he owed us for five weeks. That’s why he gave me a smack. I wanted to give Mother my wages. She’s upset that she had to borrow money from Great-aunt Alta-Fruma.”

“You let yourself be knocked around because of Auntie? She’s a witch.”

“Did she turn you into a frog?” Emma swatted him.

“Alta-Fruma means well,” Ruthie said. “She’s just old-fashioned.”

“I’m telling you she hates me. Do you know, my auntie sends me into the woods to get branches for the
pripichek
, practically every day. Just so she can boil a kettle for her tea, when I could be eaten by a bear!”

“Oh yes,” Ruthie said. “Listen to your cousin, Avram. On our way here, today, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Emma was screaming, ‘Bear! Bear!’ I turned. I looked. I was scared, even though no one has ever seen a bear from here to Warsaw, and I was wondering if Emma would be able to climb a tree. And what was Emma’s fine bear? The shadow of a cow. I had to take her by the hand, didn’t I?”

“Well, I never went to cow school,” Emma muttered. “Who can figure this place out?”

Ruthie put an arm around her shoulders. “Everything is still strange to you, isn’t it?” she asked. “But what would we do for excitement without our Emma? Isn’t it so, Avram?”

“You should have been there yesterday,” Emma said. “Izzie was at the table studying some religious book. He wants to go to the yeshiva. Don’t you think that’s sick? And Auntie was going on about how her garden’s dry. So I said, ‘Well, if heaven really heard people’s prayers, it would rain wouldn’t it?’ Then I yelled, ‘Make it rain.’ Just then the sky opened up and let down buckets. Izzie jumped up from the table, shouting, ‘It’s a miracle, a miracle.’ Auntie went all pale, like I had
anything to do with it, and she spit ‘thpoo, thpoo, thpoo’ to keep away the Evil Eye!”

“Well, if you’re going be a socialist and make miracles, you have to watch what you say,” Avram observed.

“I’m an anarchist, not a socialist,” Emma said, affronted.

“Yes, of course. Just think, it’ll be my fortune. Mine and Ruthie’s. We’ll be partners. ‘Come see the socialist miracle worker. Only a dollar a peek!’ What do you say, Ruthie?”

Ruthie paused in her polishing. “Yes,” she said consideringly. “I think that would be a good idea.”

“Oh you,” Emma said, throwing herself at Ruthie. The girls tussled, hair springing from their braids, heels dug into the earth, their little breasts rising and falling with laughter as Emma pushed against Ruthie. Trying to pull Emma away, Avram found himself rolled between the two girls, who joined forces against him, until all three were breathless, red-faced, and suddenly awkward.

“Show me what you have there. I see it sticking out of your jacket,” Emma said to Avram, breaking the silence. “What is it?”

“Oh, this. It’s nothing much, but I thought you might be interested. A student from Vilna came through the shop. He wanted the master to print this up and for free, too. What a dreamer. No one’s going to print it, not even for good money. He was on his way to Warsaw. I shared my lunch with him and he left this with me. Told me to pass it around.”

Emma unrolled the handwritten sheet. “This is fabulous. And you waited until now to tell me?” She hit Avram in the shoulder. “Listen. ‘Seven to seven is our requirement. A twelve-hour day—it is indeed legal from Catherine II’s proclamation. Workers join together, we make it true …’ He must be from the Russian schools, the Yiddish isn’t very good. But we can fix that. Avram, you’re a genius.” She kissed him on the lips and, grabbing his hands, danced him around the hut until they fell in a dizzy pile.

“We’ll print one for every worker in Plotsk,” Emma shouted. “You’ll get the letters from your shop, won’t you, Avrameleh?” she asked. “Your boss won’t miss a few extra pieces of type.”

“And what about me?” Ruthie asked. “What will I do?”

“Everything,” Emma said, pulling Ruthie down beside her.

*  *  *

A
LEAFLET
appeared on Emma’s square table, beside the pieces of cut fabric. It was roughly printed, the letters uneven. “Seven to Seven” the title read.

“Dov would like this,” Emma said. “Yes, he should see it.” She leaned back, waving her fedora, the daisies on the brim flip-flopping. “Dov, look at this,” she called upward to the ghostly printshop on Delancey Street. “Do you see this? Why don’t you answer? Oh. It’s the garment. He’s waiting for me to finish.” A needle and thread appeared in her hands. As she began to sew, the stitches were perfect, her hands as quick as a machine, the fabric smooth and white. But the garment grew larger as she held it, the hem seeming endless. “I’m never going to finish this. Dov,” she called, “take it away. Get someone else to finish it.”

“He’s not going to answer,” a voice said. “He’s got his job and you have yours.”

A stranger was sitting at the table across from Emma, a young man with his chin resting on his fists. His face was thin, his hair cut ragged like copper pinfeathers. He wore a shabby jacket, the lining hanging below the hem, the cuffs frayed. A red rose was pinned to the collar. Pulling a notebook out of his breast pocket, he opened it to a page marked “Emma Blau” and nodded. His hands were calloused as if he knew what it meant to work. Putting the notebook back in his pocket, he took out a small piece of wood and a knife and began to carve. “I like to keep my hands busy,” he said. “Think this would make a good whistle?”

“Who are you?” Emma asked.

“Mostly a traveler. Sometimes a peddler. I try to keep away from the authorities.”

“In trouble?” Emma asked. The Traveler nodded. “I know what that’s like,” she said.

“You and me, we’re in the same position. It isn’t easy. Stuck in the middle between up there,” he pointed, “and down below.”

Emma looked down. It was raining in Blaszka, a muddy May rain. Ruthie’s father was running toward the synagogue. She herself was in her great-aunt’s house, sitting on her bed.

“Do you know what all the excitement’s about?” the Traveler asked.

“It’s Ruthie,” Emma muttered. “She’s been arrested.”

“Poor child,” the Traveler said and Emma wondered why he was looking at her as if she’d been the one to go to prison.

“H
OW DID
it happen?” Alta-Fruma asked. “I want the truth.”

“I wasn’t there.” Emma wrapped her arms around her knees. “I didn’t see what happened.”

“Emma Blau, if Ruthie was arrested then I know you’re mixed up in it. I want to know what’s going on with you children. What about Avram? Does he have anything to do with this?”

Emma shrugged. Alta-Fruma sat on the bed beside her. “Emma, Ruthie could sit in that prison in Plotsk for a long time.”

“What about—” Emma tried to think of the Yiddish word for bail. “Can’t we give the lawyer some money to get her out until the trial? They can’t prove anything.”

“There’s no lawyer and no trial, Emma. There’s only the Governor’s orders. And the Russian guards. They say a Jewish girl is like a chicken. The legs wiggle even if the head is gone. Do you understand now?”

Emma buried her face in her pillow.

Alta-Fruma put her hand on Emma’s shoulder. “When you decide you have something to tell me, I’ll be in the other room.”

Don’t tell, don’t tell. Dov wouldn’t tell, Emma said to herself, crying until she fell asleep.

T
HE NEXT
morning Emma awoke to another May storm, rain pounding on the tin roof. Sitting up in the bed she shared with Alta-Fruma, she felt a wetness around her and wondered vaguely if the window was open. She yawned, pushed the quilt aside. A red blotch was spreading across her nightgown and drenching the bed. “Auntie, come quickly. I’m dying,” Emma called.

Who would take care of Izzie after she was gone? She would never see him grow up. And Mama had told her that she had to watch out for Izzie. How often had she yelled at him to get his head out of the clouds? Would she have time to say good-bye to him? If only she could tell him that she was sorry for saying that God was a cabbage. Her
chest constricted. The shutters rattled. It’s the Angel of Death, Emma thought.

Alta-Fruma looked from Emma’s eyes, wide and staring, to the bed. She slapped Emma on the left cheek. “Congratulations,” she said, “you’re a woman now.”

“A woman? You mean I’m not dying? A woman?” So she would see Izzie grown up after all. She’d have time to make it up to Ruthie.

“Didn’t your mother tell you? A woman bleeds monthly so she can have children.” As Alta-Fruma spoke, she briskly tore strips from an old nightgown, rolled them, and handed them to Emma. “Pin this to your underthings.”

“Of course she told me. I just, just wasn’t expecting it. That’s all. You didn’t have to hit me.” Emma’s cheek stung.

“It’s the custom. To keep away the evil eye when a girl becomes grown.”

“And for that you hit me, old woman?”

“Watch your mouth or I’ll give you a real smack.”

“You see? It’s not the evil eye that oppresses people.”

“Emma, listen to me. You can’t just yell out anything that’s in your head. One word to the wrong person and your life is not your own. Look what happened to Ruthie. Do you want to be next? Never mind the bedding or your nightdress. Leave it to me.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Emma said stiffly.

“I have something better for you to do. In fact, I have a very good idea. You won’t get into trouble if you don’t have the time. And you can help Ruthie, too.”

“How?”

“You’re going to help out in the bakery. Yes. And besides that, you’re going to take in some piecework so you can give something to the community council. They’re collecting money to give to the warden. To make Ruthie’s life a little easier.”

“I’ve got things to do,” Emma protested.

“Do you think you’re Hayim the watercarrier to be wandering in the woods? A girl should be too busy.”

“I am busy.”

“I have plenty for you to do here. When it stops raining, go tell Hayim to bring us water.”

“I have to go out now. I’ll let him know on my way.”