The River Midnight (22 page)

“Yes, yes. A dream, exactly,” he said.

“But for you, Adam, it’s not a dream. You have a home. You have a wife now.” But for him, the lines of every dispute were blurred. She had found it endearing that he wiped his spectacles compulsively as if he could never quite clear his vision. Now it irritated her.

“She’s a sick woman. Half the time she doesn’t even know me,” Adam said, wiping his glasses. “In a big city like Warsaw, who’s to know if I have a little pleasure?”

“Warsaw doesn’t seem as big as it used to. I know it too well,” she said. “I’m in this place or that place, it’s all the same. Can I pretend that I’m someone else?” She shook her head.

“It was a mistake,” Adam said. “At my age to marry a girl of twenty. I should have known something was wrong when the
shadkhen
was so eager for the match. Now I have my punishment.” A tear welled up in the corner of his eye, a fat spider of a tear that climbed down his cheek and settled on his beard.

“There’s no magic that can put the first Adam and our mother Eve back in
Gan Aeden
,” she said, avoiding his eyes, giving him time to regain his dignity. “God gives a person his part and he has to play it.”

“What does it matter if we’re together?” He gripped her hand as if the pressure of his fingers could convince her.

The light flickered as the Director passed between the lamp and the table. “More tea?” he asked. “Another slice of babka? Or perhaps some news? I hear so much of interest from my patrons.”

Alta-Fruma withdrew her hand from Adam’s. “I don’t hold with gossip. A human being is entitled to his secrets.”

“Just between us, the three of us,” the Director said, leaning toward her.

“Then let me tell you. Three people can keep a secret easily only if two of them are corpses.”

The Director laughed, his mouth wide with gleaming white teeth in front and dark hollows behind. “Dear lady,” he began, but his voice cracked. “Pardon the frog in my throat,” he said, laughing again. “But you are right, of course. Silence is, shall we say, made of gold. And perhaps speech is nothing more than paper money. Wouldn’t you agree?” He turned to Hoffmann.

“Maybe. But on the other hand … it’s possible …” Adam murmured.

That was Adam. No opinion. “I don’t agree with you at all,” Alta-Fruma said. “Everyone knows that gold speaks louder than paper. If someone’s in trouble, you need at least a few silver rubles in a pot. Or gold imperials even better.”

N
OT LIKE
her parents who didn’t have a kopeck to get her brother out of the draft. He was snatched by a
khapper
, kidnapped, a boy of thirteen
sent into the army for thirty years, lost to them. Rakhel had begged Alta-Fruma to use her gift to find out where Ephraim was to be stationed. So when the
khapper
got drunk, he probably didn’t notice the little frog under the table. And was that Alta-Fruma? Not on your life. Alta-Fruma just asked the barmaid to tell what she heard in exchange for some good cheese.

By morning, the family knew that the boy was going to the Crimea and they all mourned. Alta-Fruma’s brother probably died in the Crimean War, but who could know for sure? Her husband ran away to avoid the draft, and whether he lived or died no one would ever know, either.

Alta-Fruma decided that since no one could do anything for her, she’d better manage on her own. When the Tsar began to print paper rubles to finance the Crimean War, Alta-Fruma said, “No one’s going to trust Russian money if it’s made from paper.” Whatever she could save she took to Warsaw and bought gold. Then the Tsar took it into his head to build railways. Rakhel read in
The Israelite
that soon cotton would go from Turkistan to Łodz, and a regular person could buy a railway bond. “Good. At last the Tsar is getting a little smart,” Alta-Fruma said. “He’s learning from the English instead of sending Jewish boys to stand in front of their cannons.” So she bought a few bonds. But a railway doesn’t come from the angels. You need steel to build it. So she bought a little piece of South Russian Dnieper Metallurgical Company. This was how it went. A little of this and a little of that. “You think it’s magic?” she’d asked Rakhel. “No. Just plain sense.”

“B
UT EVEN
gold won’t buy off a Cossack,” the Director said, tapping his forehead. “You see this scar? It came from the tip of a Cossack’s saber. He wanted to show that he could kill me if he chose.”

“Why didn’t he?” Adam asked.

“The Cossack let me go because I laughed. That’s the only way to contend with Cossacks in this life. A good laugh. If you’re too serious, they’ll bury you.”

“Some advice,” Alta-Fruma said. “At my age I have a little experience of life and I’ll tell you something about Cossacks. A pig is worse. A Cossack rides through the village how often? When there’s a war or
a rebellion. Maybe every twenty years. People write books and they talk about it for the next twenty years. But a person has to contend with pigs every day. This morning I got up before it was light to get the early train to Warsaw and I heard a terrible noise coming from the cellar. What do you suppose I saw? A pig ransacking my cellar. Worse than a Cossack. The watercarrier’s pig ate half my potatoes and turnips. It’s nothing to laugh about. But what can I do? When you live with people in a small village, you can’t afford to upset anyone. Otherwise before you know it, half the village isn’t speaking to you.”

“And that’s all?” the Director asked.

“Yes. God’s will is God’s will,” Alta-Fruma answered virtuously, perhaps even smugly, since, at least in Warsaw, there was no Emma to contradict her.

The Director shook his head in disbelief. “Why, if it were me,” he said, “I would not hesitate for an instant. I would proceed to this Hayim, that was what you called him, yes? I would inform him that he had best repay me for my trouble. A pig eating the fruit of your hard work. Potatoes and the turnips, too? The very least this Hayim could do is to plant your spring garden to replenish what his pig so rudely consumed. That’s what I would do,” he said, brandishing his pipe.

Alta-Fruma nodded. What kind of a Jew lives like a peasant in the woods with a pig for company? she thought. Everyone knows that the farmers’ women, while their miserable men are looking for work in Warsaw or Łodz or Berlin, come to Hayim in the night. Any lonely woman within ten kilometers knows the way to Hayim’s hut. Ten? No twenty. Fifty. Even the
zogerin.
But even so, it wasn’t her business. Let every person mind his own house and leave others’ alone. That’s how you keep peace. Better to ignore the pig.

As the Director moved away to pour tea at other tables, Adam wiped his glasses again. “Frumala?” he asked. There was a sore starting in the corner of his mouth and the hand that was trying to hold onto hers was clammy with nervous sweat.

“It’s no use,” she said. “You’re married and I have two children waiting for me in Blaszka. If I’m going to catch the afternoon train, we had better go back to the office and finish the business.”

*  *  *

W
HEN
A
LTA
-F
RUMA
came home, only Izzie was inside studying at the table. The sky darkened and still Emma was out somewhere. What could she be up to? Alta-Fruma began to think of children falling into rivers and drunken peasants waylaying girls alone on the road. Wasn’t there the story of Zelig the grain merchant’s daughter who disappeared? She was just a few years older than Alta-Fruma. A pretty girl. He wanted to marry her off to someone and she ran away. No one knew what became of her. Ten years later he said he’d found out that she’d died, never mind how. Then he cheated his partner, Faygela’s grandfather, of everything he had, and left the village. His daughter wasn’t even buried in Blaszka.

The door slammed as Emma came walking in, her cheeks red from the wind.

“Where were you?” Alta-Fruma asked. “It’s late.”

“I had things to do.”

“What kind of things?”

“That’s my business.”

“Your business is my business as long as you’re in this house. Where were you?”

“Go ahead. Smack me.” The girl lifted her chin. How Alta-Fruma wanted to slap her.

“God help me, what am I going to do with you?” Alta-Fruma’s hand fell. She shook her head. “Never mind.” What use was it? She would never be able to talk any sense into Emma, not any more than she’d been able to talk sense into Rakhel.

Passover. Chicken soup bubbled on the cooking grate, the brisket was in the oven, a plate of egg noodles and a bowl of sweet glazed carrots waited on the sideboard. The table was set with its oddly matched Passover dishes and gleaming crystal, Alta-Fruma sitting with Emma on one side of the table and on the other Izzie and the guest he’d brought home from the synagogue. Hayim, his beard a rectangle of black silk against his white robe, looked away from Alta-Fruma and back again, his cat’s eyes absorbing everything.

She knew all about Hayim, as everyone knows about everyone in
a place like Blaszka. Who he was, that is, who his parents were, and what his position was in the village. His father was the miller, a rich man, and Hayim had an easy life, with private tutors. Then the mill was destroyed, his father died of a broken heart, and his impoverished mother remarried a man who, it turned out after the wedding night was celebrated, had no desire for a stepson. She moved to her new husband’s home in a shtetl near Minsk, and Hayim was left to fend for himself in Blaszka, the mother sending him whatever she could, which wasn’t a lot, until he grew up. When he was seventeen, the community council made a match for him with an older woman from Plotsk. A cracked boot, they called her, because so many men had worn her. But she didn’t live long and then, when Hayim was twenty-eight, they married him off to Misha. She got a divorce from him before the year was out. No one knew why.

He had a gift for drawing a person’s likeness. Half the houses, not only in Blaszka but also the villages upriver, had a charcoal portrait drawn by Hayim. But still, what was he? A watercarrier. Nothing was lower. His work was among the women, who bossed him around: Hayim, I need water. A turtle moves quicker.
Shabbas
is coming, can I cook with air? Hurry, Hayim, hurry. Among the men, his seat in the synagogue was in the shadowy corner farthest from the Holy Ark, the cabinet where the Torah scrolls rested in their velvet robes and silver crowns. In the back corner, Hayim was little seen and less heard. This was considered to be a good thing because he stammered when he spoke, and only God the Eternal had the patience to wait for Hayim to finish. Lucky for Hayim that women didn’t want him to speak. Some said that the insatiable demon Lilith had come to Hayim in the night and had left, worn out and satisfied. Even though he was already forty-four, there wasn’t a single gray hair in his beard. There you had proof that the demons protected him from the Evil Eye.

But on Passover it was a mitzvah to have a guest. And was it so bad to have a man there to pour the wine and chant the story of the Exodus and to look at Alta-Fruma from time to time with his cat’s eyes as gold as honey? Izzie was listening with rapt attention, looking over Hayim’s shoulder at the Haggadah, translating into Yiddish for the women while his sister fidgeted.

“Plagues,” Emma said. “Is that the God you believe in? A magician turning water into blood.”

“An unbeliever,” Alta-Fruma apologized. “Don’t pay any attention, Hayim. Please. Continue.”

“N-no. It’s, it’s all right. A child should ask questions.”

“Well, how can you read all that superstitious stuff?” Emma asked. “Blood, frogs, lice, hail.”

“You made it hail, Emma,” Izzie said.

“Don’t be silly. It was just a coincidence. And what about the death of the firstborn? It was probably some kind of disease. That’s what Dov told me.”

Hayim was listening to the children, looking from one to the other, his eyes serious, until Emma and Izzie had said all they had to say and were quiet, waiting.

“You, you know what I wonder?” he asked. The children shook their heads. “Why did, did God harden Pharaoh’s heart?”

“There,” Emma said. “You see. Why do you want to believe in a God like that?”

“So I can ask questions,” Hayim answered.

“Let me ask you a question, Hayim.” Alta-Fruma smiled, the tip of her tongue touching her lips. She would ask him how he got his pig—a Jew with a pig! But see how he leaned forward, his hands clasped on the table, his shoulders straining the white robe, his whole body concentrating on what it was she might have to say. And suddenly she wanted to know something else, something entirely different, as if she were riding across a shiny pool, her eyes wide open. She had never seen a man naked. It had always been in the darkness. Always under a sheet. And she wanted to see. Before she died, she would like to see it all. Such thoughts. Not sensible at all. And Hayim was looking at her, waiting for the question that she couldn’t ask. She had to say something. Anything.

“Did you ever hear the story of the frog princess?” she asked. Why she asked this particular thing, she couldn’t say. But once she began she couldn’t stop. “My sister read the story to me. It’s Russian.”

Alta-Fruma leaned forward, her hands flat on the holiday tablecloth, her eyes looking into Hayim’s so that she could see the pupil of his eye dilating. “The Frog Princess was betrothed to the youngest son
of a human king,” she said, “and through her talents brought the boy a kingdom. And how did he treat her? When she appeared as a human bride, he found and burned her frog skin. Because of what he did, the Princess was captured by the old
Baba Yaga
who had turned her into a frog in the first place, and there were many trials until the Prince and Princess were reunited. What kind of a story is that? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Hayim nodded. “I see,” he said.

“You see what?”

“It’s the, the story of our Mother Sarah.”

“What are you talking?” Alta-Fruma asked.

“Yes, it’s true.” Hayim became excited, forgetting to stammer. “Wasn’t our Mother Sarah a prophet even wiser than Father Avraham? So it’s written in the Talmud and the Midrash. She had to pretend to be his sister in Egypt to save his life. Was she his wife then? No, a frog. And then weren’t there trials? Yes, many trials. And in the end, when Sarah was old, she was as beautiful as a young woman.” The children were staring at Hayim and Alta-Fruma.