The River Midnight (18 page)

“Not in this storm you’re not. You couldn’t see an inch in front of you. It’s a flood.”

“Rain, rain. That’s all anyone talks about. Too much rain. Not enough rain. The world could explode and no one would notice. I wish it would stop raining till the earth turned to dust.”

As Emma spoke, the shutters stopped their rattling, the pounding on the walls and roof sputtered and fell away. Alta-Fruma peered at Emma. “It’s her monthly flow,” she muttered. “When a girl begins, these things happen.” Emma ran out before her great-aunt could start spitting into the wind or give her a smack. The wind slammed the door.

As she passed the synagogue she saw Izzie studying near the window. She knocked on the glass, once, twice. He looked up. She beckoned. The window lifted.

“What is it? I’m studying,” he said.

“I’m a woman now.”

“A woman? What?”

“You know. A woman.”

“Oh. Yes.” He nodded. “I know about that. I studied it.”

“You know?”

“Yes. Move your hand away. You’re not supposed to touch me now.” He stroked his little-boy chin as if it bore a long beard. “This is something you need to know. Even a girl has to learn about separation. Man and woman. Milk and meat. Separate.”

“God is a cabbage,” Emma shouted, slamming down the window. Izzie pulled back his fingers just in time.

In the hut in the woods she first oiled the printing press, then counted the remaining pamphlets. “How can we go on now?” she asked herself.

“I
T
’
S TOUGH
to be a miracle-maker,” the Traveler said in the haze of delirium between Blaszka and the Lower East Side. “Lucky for me all I can do is carve a little.” He held up the whistle, now more than half done. “I’m not even a very good peddler. Making it rain, or stop, that’s something special.”

“So what good is it? Does a little rain teach the workers to stick
together? To fight the real enemy? Not just once, but over and over? Oh, what’s the use. My mother was a pieceworker and so am I.”

“Rain is a sign of divine power. You know what it says in the Bible.”

“Yeah, sure.” Papa used to read aloud from the Yiddish Bible. On a hot day last summer he’d read them the story of Noah’s flood—to cool them off, he said. Mama was heating coal for the iron. She’d taken in laundry, on top of the piecework, to pay for Izzie’s schoolbooks. You see, it was a miracle that Noah was saved, Papa said. You call it a miracle when the whole world was drowned? Mama asked. I call that a tragedy. Mama burned her hand on the iron and she cried because even with the laundry there wouldn’t be enough money in the slow season and Izzie would have to leave school. Emma said, Don’t worry, Mama. I can finish the piecework and you can go to the factory with Papa. Mama said, I wanted something better for you, Emma. But she agreed just the same.

“You can tell my brother about divine power,” Emma said to the Traveler. “All his favorite rabbis made miracles. But not one understood economics.” She paused. “My brother belongs in Blaszka. Not me.”

“A place for miracles, but not revolutions. Is that what you think?” the Traveler asked.

“No point in staying,” she said.

R
UTHIE WAS
arrested on a Tuesday, her mother came home on Wednesday, and on Thursday Emma ran away. Wearing several layers of clothing, Emma carried a bundle of food and
The Origin of Species
on her back, a knife in her sash, and on a string around her neck, the penny with the hole punched in it that Dov had given her. The sky was a blue net between the trees in the woods as she sat on an oak stump, eating a piece of coarse bread and herring.

At the sound of cracking twigs, she turned to see Hayim the watercarrier walking with his hands in his pockets, gazing up at an owl in its roost. He looked a little like her father, broad-shouldered, the beard so dark it was a square of night. If only it was her father and if only she were back home. Fingering Dov’s penny, Emma shook her head to clear it of sleepiness and dreams as Hayim took a small sketchbook
from his pocket, a pencil from behind his ear and in the half-light began to draw the owl as it went to sleep. Gathering up her bundle, she moved quietly along the path, hoping that Hayim wouldn’t notice her. If he caught her, he’d be sure to make her go back. From the corner of her eye, she saw him replace the sketchbook in his pocket. Now he was coming up beside her. Now he was matching her pace, whistling. What was the use? She couldn’t run all the way to Warsaw.

“I’m going to Warsaw,” Emma said.

Hayim nodded. She waited for him to say something. To scold her or reason with her. He was silent.

“I can’t do anything here,” she exploded. “Great-aunt Alta-Fruma is breathing down my neck every minute. The revolution will be over by the time I’ve satisfied her.”

Hayim raised an eyebrow.

“Well, she hates me anyway. She won’t miss me.”

“And, and Izzie?” Hayim asked.

“Oh, he has his nose in his religious books all the time. He won’t even know I’m gone.” Emma’s pace slowed. “Ruthie’s mother came home yesterday. She’s going to kill me and no one’s ever going to speak to me again.”

“No,” Hayim said, looking at Emma with such certainty that she stopped walking. “No,” he said, “no, no, no.”

“No?” she asked.

He cupped her chin in his hand. “Just a, a, a little yelling, it could be. You, you’re afraid of, of a little yelling? I don’t believe it. No. Not a, a child of Blaszka.”

She was close to tears. Why should she want to cry? It was ridiculous. She was on her way to Warsaw. To carry on the work of the revolution. But she suddenly felt very tired and wished she could go home. If only she knew where that was.

O
N
S
ATURDAY
, Emma met her friends in the clearing near the hut in the woods. The ground was matted with old wet leaves and the gray sky pressed heavily on the tops of branches. A group of young men and women stood in a rough semicircle, most of them apprentices in Plotsk because there wasn’t work for them in Blaszka. The girls wore
their hair in braids looped below their ears and tied with bright ribbons, beaded pins breaking up the drabness of their plain, dark dresses. Slouched against the trees, hands in their pockets, the boys wore their caps low in the front, hiding their eyes like men with perilous secrets. When Emma arrived, they all stopped speaking, looking at one another furtively, then staring at their feet. The song of thrushes was violent in the stillness. Emma’s belly ached.

“Well, say something,” Emma said.

“I heard they’ve got Ruthie locked up in a cell with ten madwomen. She’s never getting out unless they send her to Siberia,” one of the girls murmured.

If that’s all, she’s lucky, the others added. Haven’t you heard that the guards, each of them, have a turn at breaking in a new girl, and then they flog her by order of the Governor? After that she’s good for pig food. Let the boys be revolutionaries.

So you want to leave it to us? All week I’m dragging lumber to the train station in Plotsk. On
Shabbas
, do I need to print pamphlets so that someone can get arrested and rot in jail? Who needs more trouble? A drunken peasant knocks you on the head, you’re finished. An officer doesn’t like the shape of your nose, you’re finished. You have an accident in the factory, you’re finished. You can’t pay the Jews’ tax, you’re finished.

“In Plotsk kids sleep in the street. Where are they supposed to go? That’s how it is,” Avram said. “In America, it’s another story. How would Emma know?”

“Is that what you think after everything I told you?” Emma asked, looking first at her cousin then at each of her friends in turn. “I held babies that died,” she said, so quietly they leaned forward to hear her. “Their mothers so sick from work they had no milk. I saw kids that died, younger than me. Their heads bashed in by cops during a strike. Who knew their names?” she asked, her voice louder. “We’re brothers and sisters. We watch out for one another. Have you forgotten how we all pitched in when our friend Henya was on strike? You didn’t have to go begging to the community council for a
Shabbas
basket. Before you could ask we gave you.” Her friends were looking at one another, nodding. “You said you wanted to dance, Rivka. Did anyone laugh at you? Did anyone say you don’t deserve it? No, we danced together, right
here. And soon we’ll dance in Plotsk, even in Warsaw. Did you forget?” Rivka smiled shyly, remembering one of the boys fiddling like a wild Gypsy, girls and boys tumbling in each other’s arms, arms and legs flying with no sense of propriety.

“Put out your hands,” Emma said. “Do it.” The girls and boys stretched out their arms, opening their hands palms up. “Look at us. Don’t we have the same hands? Red and hard from working by the clock? That’s why we share what we have. Not one of us is alone, here.” Emma reached out for Henya’s hand on her right and Avram’s on her left.
“May my right hand wither if I abandon thee, fellow workers shall know why, we swear our oath of blood and tears, together to live or die.”
The girls and boys took each other’s hands. Joining Emma, they sang their oath.

“Fine words,” said Lev, chewing on a birch twig. He was the oldest, a man of nineteen. “But fine words won’t stop a peasant from beating you up or keep you warm in Siberia. I’m getting married soon and I’ve got a good job starting in Plotsk at the new saw mill.” He stood up, breaking the circle, and sauntered back between the fir and birch trees. Emma looked up uneasily as if she could see herself above in the misty in-between.

I
N MID
-J
UNE
the days were long, and in the bakery the girls laughed as Emma, wrapped around in an apron, flour on her nose, her braids sweeping the table, struggled with a mound of sticky rye dough. Like this, they said, like this, patting and rolling the dough that in Emma’s hands had been worked to a gray, gooey mass. The youngest was hugging her around the knees. “Tell me the story again, Emma.”

“Which one?”

“The girl that was Dov’s friend.”

“You mean Emma Goldman?”

“No, no. The girl that had the red coat.”

“Little Red Riding Hood?”

“Yes.” Dina nodded, pulling on Emma’s apron. “The one who tricked the Big Bad Boss and got her granny’s pay.”

“I’ll tell you next time. Now I’ve got to go.” Emma took off her apron. “I told Auntie that I’d bring these to Plotsk today.” Emma waved at a bag on the bench. “I’ve got to pick up more piecework.”

“It’s a long walk,” Ruthie’s mother said. “If you go tomorrow Shmuel can take you.”

“It’s only two hours.”

“Even with that big bag over your shoulder?”

“It isn’t heavy.”

“Buttonholes?” Faygela asked.

“No. Fake daisies for ladies’ hats.”

“How was the shop?”

“Hot and crowded,” Emma said. “Plenty of lice. One of the girls fainted and when I told the boss she needed some air, he pushed me out the door.” Slinging the bag over her shoulder, Emma asked, “Can I take some buns to Ruthie?”

T
HE TWO
girls sat side by side on a bench in Ruthie’s cell, chewing on the buns. “Don’t have such a long face,” Ruthie said. “I’ll be home before you know it.”

“Sure,” Emma said with an effort. “You’ll be dancing at Lev’s wedding. After that, according to your sister Freydel, you’re next. She’s already making plans for her new dress.”

“Oh, that Freydel. She shouldn’t spend every
Shabbas
afternoon reading Shomer. Those romances fill her head with nonsense. Listen to me, Emma, I don’t ever want to get married.”

“You?”

“Don’t look so surprised. I’ve got nothing to do here but think, and I’ve decided. I only have one life, only one Ruthie, and if I get out of here, I’m not going to waste it.”

“You’re right. Why should you get married? Back home, my friends just live with someone they love, and when their love finishes they part and no one is upset. Red Emma, she lived with two men and loved them both. Then Sasha went to prison and …”

“Enough already. It’s always a man, even with you,” Ruthie said. “One, two, what difference does it make? I don’t want any of them.”

The two young prostitutes sitting with their arms entwined on the other side of the cell giggled. “Of course, always it’s a man,” they said.

“I’m not selling my soul,” Ruthie whispered to Emma, “not for a wedding canopy and not for free. One baby after another making me nervous and upset? No. I’m going to be independent like Misha was
before she got herself into trouble. And who brought her down?” Ruthie asked agitatedly. “Nobody knows for sure, but it wasn’t an angel, I can tell you. It was some man.”

The cell was hot and the others had stripped down to their underthings. The murderess was darning her stockings, the lumpy woman who had been pretending to be deaf and mute was rocking herself back and forth, humming tunelessly. The two young prostitutes were tearing advertisements out of an old newspaper and laying them on the floor, creating paper dolls and a paper house, which they furnished amicably, arguing only over whether it was by the sea or in the Lazienki Gardens in Warsaw. The girls had grown pale. Their freckles stood out in dismay, their hair limp and colorless. They had welts on their arms and neck, marks of the guards’ attentions. How could they ignore everything and play with their paper dolls, Emma wondered.

“You have to come home soon,” she said to Ruthie. “We can’t get organized without you. Avram loses pieces of type. Henya dropped half the new pamphlets in the river. We just keep falling over, like a cart with three wheels.”

“So I’m a wheel, am I?” Ruthie asked, pretending to be offended, tossing her head and glancing at Emma out of the corner of her eye.

“Don’t be mad, Ruthie. We miss you, that’s all. Look here, look what I brought you.” Emma thrust a tall, narrow book in Ruthie’s face. It was the English herbal, and as Ruthie turned to look at it, she saw that someone had written between the lines in a painstakingly neat Yiddish. “You see, I started to translate it, but I don’t know a lot of the plant words. You’ll have to help me. I made Freydel sneak it out of the house and then I worked at it every spare minute.”