The River Midnight (27 page)

“I pleaded with her, ‘Misha, please. The doctor knows.’ But he was shaking already, and she pushed him out the door. My boy is three years old, strong as a bull, and my Faygela still enjoys a Friday night, if you take my meaning. I heard that same doctor cut open a woman in Plotsk and made a mess of her.” Shmuel hit the table with the flat of his hand. “She died and the baby, too.”

“You know that doctor from Plotsk? I heard that Misha cursed him, the next day it turned black at the tip, and it just fell off,” Hershel said.

“What, the whole thing?”

“No, just the tip, you idiot.”

They sat in silence for a moment. “Misha’s not a good influence on the women,” Hershel said. “She’s divorced. Her mother refused to remarry. Her great-grandmother …”

“It’s true,
yes
,” Shmuel said, “but …”

“When the women talk to her, they get excited. Who knows what kind of ideas she puts in their heads? A woman needs a husband. Doesn’t it say so right in the Torah? Alone, she’s like an animal, a wild wolf that doesn’t know right from wrong. Like our Mother Eve in the Garden. She needs a man to take charge of her. I’m telling you, a husband would teach Misha what’s what, and she wouldn’t be so ready to mix into the women’s business.” From behind the stove slunk a ginger cat with one ear. Half purring, half growling, it twined itself around Hershel’s ankles, rubbing the side of its head against his leg. Clicking his tongue, Hershel pulled some hen giblets from his pocket, placing them on the floor at the foot of his chair. The cat gobbled them up, pausing long enough to let Hershel scratch quickly beside her ear, then bolted.

“Look what’s going on there,” Shmuel said, pointing to the village square. Through the window they saw a crowd and in the midst of the crowd, like twin towers, Misha and Yarush, the peddler from Plotsk. He looked like a bear in the fur coat he wore summer and winter. Yarush was always hungry, they said, and was known to have bitten off the nose of a beggar who tried to sneak a salami from his cart. Yarush was as big as Misha, no, bigger. A good match for her. And why not make it a match? Didn’t someone say that his grandfather was from Blaszka? Yes, it was an inspiration. It was destined. What better mitzvah than to bring together a man and a woman. Grabbing the bottle, Hershel ran outside.

“Leave the poor nag alone,” Misha was saying.

Yarush was kicking his horse, which lay still on the packed earth just beyond the crowd. “What do you mean, ordering me around? Can you say what I should do with my own animal?”

“I told you once, and I’m telling you again. Leave the poor nag alone.” Misha moved toward Yarush.

“I’ll show you who’s the master, here,” he said.

The crowd pushed closer, excitedly urging Misha, no Yarush, no Misha, someone should teach her, what do you mean, her? what about him? a stranger, did you see? I don’t believe …

Then Hershel could hear and see nothing, the crowd blocking his view as he pushed his way in. When he saw them again, Yarush’s fist was halfway to Misha’s mouth. “Try it,” Misha was saying. “Just try it.”

Hershel waved the bottle in front of Yarush. “Friend, friend, join me in a drink,” Hershel said.

Slowly, Yarush turned, like a bear pulled on a chain.

“Schnapps?” he said in a gravelly voice.
“Mph.”

“Ah. A man of few words. The best,” Hershel said, leading him across the square to Perlmutter’s tavern, where Shmuel sat at their table, tapping his glass nervously.

“She likes you,” Hershel said.

Yarush flung his head back, his forked beard pointing to heaven while he swallowed a glassful of schnapps with one gulp. “She spit at me,” he said as he slapped the glass onto the table.

Hershel refilled it. “A good match for you, no? Misha, the woman in the square. She just needs a little, what should I say? Encouragement. A woman appreciates a strong hand, especially a big woman. Just today, Reb Pinkus, the
shokhet
, said to me that a woman needs direction. Firm direction. Isn’t that true, Shmuel?”

“I don’t know,” Shmuel said, dividing his beard into sections with cinnamon-stained fingers. “Women have moods like the river. When it’s spring, it floods. What can you do but wait it out?”

“What does he know?” Hershel said. “He’s as innocent as Adam in Eden. You listen to me, friend. I know what I’m saying. A woman is like a Sabbath brisket roasting with onions and potatoes. If you have no teeth, can you enjoy it? A big woman like Misha, she’s a whole wedding feast, my friend, and you have the teeth to enjoy it.”

Hershel watched Yarush greedily swallow another glassful, his eyes glazing. All right, not a refined man. But did Misha have so much to bring to a match? A woman of her age, her background, Hershel thought as he continued to impress her virtues on Yarush. The house. A dowry from the community council.

The door to the tavern flew open. “Good Sabbath,” Hanna-Leah said, flapping her shawl and stamping her feet to shake off the snow. She had a few more words to say as she approached their table,
Shmuel looking away in embarrassment, murmuring Good Sabbath as he slipped away. “Deaf to the world,” she said. “Didn’t you hear the
shammus
knocking on the shutters? It’s almost dark. The synagogue is empty, the men have gone home already. You think
Shabbas
is waiting for you?”

“We were busy,” Hershel said, “with important matters. Village business.”

“Of course, a glass of schnapps is important business. And a bottle, very important. With two bottles, you could call it the Tsar’s business. Very good. Why should a Friday night be different than any other? But if I get home before you, don’t expect to sleep in the house tonight.”

“Hankela, don’t get aggravated,” Hershel said. “All right. I’m coming.” Shrugging his shoulders, he followed her out.

H
ERSHEL WAS
lying in bed beside a rigid Hanna-Leah, making snoring noises loud enough to annoy the dead when Yarush left the tavern. So how could Hershel see him lurch across the square in a gust of snow, a bear with a rock in his hand, moving toward Misha’s house? No, Hershel was thinking of his own problems, drifting toward sleep half in dream, half in memory of Hanna-Leah with her hair like a cape of sunlight around her breasts, her wedding veil falling from the moon. He was walking toward her from the river. All around him were the trees of the woods. He knew every one of them, just as he knew every stone in the village and every person’s face, everything arranged in the right way.

His half-dream was broken by a shifting in the bed. Hanna-Leah getting up and crossing over to the cot where he slept when she had her period. The sound of her skin whispering. Her thighs touched, parted, touched. What right did she have to take herself away from him, to leave the cold, teasing ghost of her shape in the hollow of the feather bed? But he knew, he knew. If she chose, she could leave him, and how would he live without her?

Hanna-Leah slapped a piece of brisket on the counter. “A beautiful piece of meat, an inch of fat on it,” she said.

Old Mirrel, the girls’ teacher, shook her head. “All gristle. It isn’t worth anything.” Beside her, Gittel the raisin-wine maker, a narrow-nosed woman, nodded approvingly. From the back room, the women heard the sound of whistling punctuated by the cleaver.

“All right, I’ll give it to you for half.”

“Half of what?” asked Old Mirrel. “Highway robbery?”

“Look, there’s the
zogerin
, Tzipporah. You don’t want it, I’m sure she’ll take it for twice the price.”

“Her? Strolling like a princess? The brisket will rot before she gets here.”

Hanna-Leah leaned over the counter. “Did you hear about the pig?”

“What pig?” asked Gittel, pushing her bag of raisins to one side so she could lean forward on her patched elbows.

“What pig, she asks. As if there’s another pig in Blaszka. Hayim the watercarrier’s pig. Hayim with the cat’s eyes. Hayim that looks at women. The
artiste.
Is there another Hayim or another pig in Blaszka? The one he found three months ago that he refuses to sell to the farmers. Offered good money but he won’t part with it.”

“The same pig that tripped Tzipporah on the bridge when she was coming back from the
mikva?
”

“The one. Yesterday it upset Tzipporah’s stall. She screamed like she was attacked by Cossacks. The poor frightened pig went tearing off blind because it had got tangled up in one of her fancy tablecloths. Now she’s telling everybody the pig is a nuisance and it’s improper for a Jew to own a pig, and somebody should make Hayim sell it to Ambrose the beekeeper. But if you ask me,” Hanna-Leah winked at Old Mirrel, “that pig is a particular friend to Tzipporah, the high and mighty
zogerin.
What I say is, if there is shmaltz on the face, someone’s been eating
trayf.”

“What would the pig want from Tzipporah?”

“Maybe it fancies her wig. After all, if she can make herself a fine lady just by waving her gold watch at us,” Hanna-Leah said, “maybe the pig thinks he’ll become a beauty by putting on her wig.”

“I heard that the pig made a mess of Alta-Fruma’s cellar this morning, before she went to Warsaw. If that pig mixes itself up with her again, it’ll get the wrong end of her broom. You can be sure,” Old Mirrel said.

“Don’t worry, the community council is going to deal with it. Isn’t that right, Hershel?” Hanna-Leah called through the open door behind her.

Hershel stood in the doorway, his hat angled back over his head, a bald gnome with a bushy brown beard, his apron blood-spattered. “Don’t mix in council business,” he said. “That’s not for women.”

“Can’t a woman have an opinion?” asked Old Mirrel.

“If a woman is busy with her business, she has no time,” Hershel said.

“Or if she’s blessed with a scholar for a husband,” said Gittel. “Someone has to earn a few kopecks. Thank God there are poor people who need a little wine for the Sabbath and never mind that I made it last week. Raisin wine is good enough for them. Still, it’s not enough of a living to feed five hungry boys. Do I have time for opinions? When my feet are sore from walking up the river with my pack of needles and threads to sell to the peasants, I say to myself, Gittel, your Shloimeh is earning your merit in heaven. He studies the Talmud from morning to night and he should not be distracted by any complaints.”

“Oh yes, a scholar’s wife certainly shouldn’t interrupt such holy work,” said Hanna-Leah. “But a butcher’s wife can have an opinion or two without disturbing heaven.”

So he wasn’t a scholar, was he? “Well, even a butcher knows that tonight is Purim,” Hershel said. “And even a barren woman whose tongue is so long she’ll come back as a frog in the next life must have something to do to get ready. Isn’t that so, Hanna-Leah?”

She wrapped the brisket with shaking fingers. “Take it,” she said to Old Mirrel. “We’ll settle later. You heard the boss. The woman has to fetch firewood for the stove while the man gets ready for his labors in the bathhouse.”

W
HILE
H
ANNA
-L
EAH
was in the woods, dropping an armload of branches at the sight of the Traveler, Hershel was standing in the back room, his arms raised, the cleaver sharp and silver. Around his feet the sawdust was sprinkled with blood. In the corner the ginger cat with one ear chewed on a mouse. A shaft of light piercing the grimy window hit the ribs of the cow, fragile, separable, dotted with drops of blood like rubies. The cleaver struck precisely and cleanly with the
solid, unfailing strength of Hershel’s arms. Here he knew what he was doing. There was no worry about Hanna-Leah. No embarrassment at his failure to read even a line of Talmud. His concentration was sure, his blade accurate. He heard the thud of the cleaver striking the wooden block. There was the smell of blood, the green-black shimmer of flies. His skin was tight, his lungs swelling as he breathed large drafts of air, his hands firm around the shaft of the knife. Was he stupid? Not here. As the meat parted, a vision of the big, beautiful soul came into Hershel’s mind, a soul lying open before him, vulnerable, penetrable. Why did he have to wait for Friday night, he thought as his body filled with its passions. Isn’t Purim a time for festivity? The ginger cat stood on her hind legs, head high, staring at something in the air. “Here, puss puss,” Hershel said, holding out a piece of liver. She came to him with her wary, graceful trot. She would allow no one else in the village to touch her. As Hershel scratched at the base of her tail, she purred, pushing her back end toward his hand.

H
ERSHEL OFTEN
listed to himself Hanna-Leah’s fine qualities. A woman like his Hanna-Leah deserved the best, and the best he couldn’t offer. Not that he ever asked for her opinion on this subject, but he was certain that she longed for a husband like Gittel’s Shloimeh. Why wouldn’t she? She could support a dozen scholars, she was so clever with business. And she could feed a hundred on one pierogi and they would be as content as if they ate a feast, it was so good. And she was as beautiful as, as, well, as beautiful as a man could want. He often imagined how a scholar would approach her, his head full of holy thoughts, making love to her with a fragile, pale, and otherworldly air, while Hershel was overtaken with such violent passions that he was ashamed. This is a man? he would ask himself. No, a beast.

As he lay beside Hanna-Leah, dizzy with Purim merry-making and heavy with sweet wine, he tried to control himself. But what could he do? It was the same way each time. He wanted to grab her, to kiss her hard, to plunge into her hard and reach the root of her, his hands gripping the softness of her bottom. But was that right? To do that to his wife, his Hanna-Leah, beautiful and smart and good? His muscles ached with tension. If he touched her, they would explode uncontrollably, tearing into her like the worshippers of Baal who
ripped living animals limb from limb and ate them raw. The smell of his sweat was the smell of the hungry wolf, and there is only one thing to do with a big, wild wolf that comes into your house. Shoot it. His “little thing” retreated backward into its nest, and nothing more he said to himself would coax it out.