The River Midnight (29 page)

Soon they were all arguing again, and Shmuel was moaning, “She’ll never forgive me. Never.”

Dear God, Hershel thought to himself, it’s worse than market day. Everyone shouts and no one hears anything. In the meantime the merchandise can rot. Someone should make them listen. Someone who can see what’s under his nose. And who if not me? Hershel banged his fist on the table. “Is Ruthie a
shmata
that someone’s buying?” he roared in his bass voice. “While you’re arguing about who’s the smartest, she’s sitting alone in prison.” The men looked at one another, sheepishly nodding and murmuring, yes, yes.

“We’ll find out what’s going on,” Hershel said, rocking on the balls of his feet as he shook his finger at Reb Pinkus. “Of course, it’s our village. We have to know what the children are up to. But one of them was stolen from us and we have to get her back. Plain and simple.”

“What do you say, Hershel?” Shmuel asked, for the first time looking more like a man than a corpse, hope in his voice.

“You think the authorities want anything from her? What for?” Hershel asked, waving his hand dismissively. “No, they just want to beat out a little livelihood from the situation. I’m telling you, they just need a bribe, and we’re going to give them one. That’s what we have to do.”

The men began to mutter, it’s impossible, who has anything to spare, what does he think, you can milk a stone?

“I’m not going to argue while Ruthie sits in jail,” Hershel said obstinately. “Whatever we can find, we’ll take. If there isn’t enough money to get Ruthie out, we’ll collect at least enough to get Faygela in so she’s not alone all the time, so she has something to eat and a pillow to put her head on. Just to start,” he added as Shmuel’s face fell. “Ruthie isn’t an orphan without a home. No one is going to rest until she comes back to Blaszka. Do you hear me? You’re all going to scrub the village for every spare kopeck.”

The men looked at one another, silenced at last. Hershel leaned back in his chair, his two fists on the table, though he realized it wasn’t his fists that convinced the others. It was only that he knew what was what. As simple as that.

“Hershel has the right idea,” Berekh said. “But I propose one condition. He has to be the head of the community council. Are we agreed?” Yes, the others said, Hershel, yes.

“All right,” Hershel said. “Then we start now. Who has something to give for Ruthie?”

“Here,” Reb Pinkus said, “take my watch. You can sell it in Plotsk. Do I have to know the time? Nathan here tells us when it’s time to pray. What else does a man need to know?”

H
UMMING AS
he opened the door, Hershel came home with a bag of coins and trinkets clinking satisfyingly. And what greeted him? Fragrant smells came from the oven, there was tea on the table, his mother was silently reading the
Tzena-U-Rena
, her lips moving softly, and Hanna-Leah’s head was bent over her sewing. Something wasn’t right. There was no pungency in the air, no sense of imminent strife.

“You weren’t here when I closed up the shop. Where did you go?” he asked.

“To the
mikva
,” she said.

Ah, at the
mikva.
So she was clean, and he could touch her. Couldn’t he? Her skin was ruddy, and she seemed at once excited and content. Look there, on the table, in the pickle jar—flowers, purple and white flowers. Since when did Hanna-Leah pick wildflowers for the table? “They made me head of the council,” he said.

“Good.” She was looking at him, her hands still for a minute. What was she making out of that shining green cloth? Why was she smiling? What did she have to smile about?

Hershel threw himself down in a chair and stared at his wife. A damp cold crawled up his leg, shrinking him into himself. There was a clump of mud on the fringes of her shawl. A leaf clinging to the damp hem of her dress. Twigs in her hair. Where did she go? And worse, with whom? There was a wooden figure on the sidetable beside her chair. She was measuring the cloth against it. He could see the resemblance between the doll and his Hanna-Leah. Who gave it to her? Who?

“Did you hear that Ruthie was arrested?” he asked.

It can’t be, the women said, Ruthie, no, what for, when?

“Shmuel told us. She was caught with pamphlets,” he said.

His mother put a hand to her mouth, pulling out her teeth, as she always did when she wanted to concentrate on something. “You must mean the younger girl, Freydel,” she said.

“No, it was Ruthie.”

“You see, you never know in this world,” she began in her toothless mumble, going on about daughters and mothers and Eve who brought misery into the world by making friends with a serpent, while Hershel ached for Hanna-Leah to throw in a sharp word, something, anything to let him know that she was in the room with them.

Finally, when his mother ran out of breath and put her teeth back in her mouth, Hanna-Leah said, “Poor Faygela.”

“Poor Faygela?” his mother asked. “How can you feel sorry for her. She called it on herself, she did. Letting her daughters read and go around with anyone they want like
vilda hayas.
”

“Yes,
vilda hayas.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?” But there was no bite to her voice, only a wistful pause before she went back to her sewing. The hairs stood up on the back of Hershel’s neck.

“Read out loud, Mama,” he said. “I’m not feeling so well.” He avoided Hanna-Leah’s eye.

“No? What’s wrong?” his mother asked, peering at him with alarm.

“Nothing to worry about. Just a little ache.”

“A toothache?”

“Yes, a kind of one.”

“Maybe you need a poultice. Hanna-Leah, pay attention to your husband.” She was still sewing, oblivious to the conversation. “Hershel needs something from you,” her mother-in-law pestered.

“Don’t disturb yourself, Hankela,” he said, though it was quite obvious that she wasn’t moving. “Just read, Mama, it’ll take my mind off it.”

“All right, then. If that’s what you want.”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently.

“King Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin,”
she read,
“but was too shy to take a woman. One notable girl came and took him to dance, to indicate that she wanted him as her husband. He took this girl for a wife and she bore him a son, Jonathan, who was a devoted friend of David’s. When Saul wanted to kill David it was Jonathan who argued with his father on David’s behalf. Saul grew angry with him and said: ‘You are the son of an impudent woman; you are like your mother, who showed her impudence by taking me to dance.’ ”

He remembered how Hanna-Leah danced with him at their wedding, circling him, lightly holding onto her end of the handkerchief, her other hand lifting the folds of her dress, the flash of her calf. Then she sat in a chair. The men raised it above their shoulders and she was hanging onto the sides of the tilting chair, breathless with fright and laughter while Hershel’s chair was hoisted high. Recklessly he held out both hands to Hanna-Leah. “Be careful, you’ll fall,” she cried, and he answered, “Then take hold of me quickly, Hankela.”

Hershel felt an uncoiling against his thigh. “It’s getting late,” he said. “Maybe I’ll go to bed.”

“Go,” said Hanna-Leah. “I’ll finish my sewing.”

He moved to stand behind her chair, looking over her shoulder, hoping that she would stop and look up at him. Her needle flashed. She took no notice of him. “What are you making?” he asked at last.

“Nothing,” she said.

“It must be something.”

“A little rag,” she said. He saw it was her grandmother’s satin shawl, and she was hemming a small, doll-size dress. Uneasily, he wondered again where Hanna-Leah had gotten the wooden figure and why she attended to it so carefully.

“Do you want to hear about the council meeting?” he asked tentatively.

“Me? Nooo, is it women’s business?” she asked sarcastically.

That’s my Hanna-Leah, Hershel thought, pulling a chair close beside her, seating himself, leaning toward her. “I decided that we’re going to collect money for a bribe to help Ruthie. You see?” He showed her the bag. “
Nu
, what do you think of that?”

“In a good hour,” she said. “I hope you’re going to do something about Hayim’s pig, too.”

“The pig? Who cares about a pig? We have bigger problems.”

“Oh yes, men always have such big problems,” she said.

“And ever since
Gan Aeden
, where do men’s problems come from?” he asked, wanting to take her two hands in his. He didn’t quite know how to do it. He should know how, after all, she was his wife, wasn’t she? But still, he didn’t. Her hands, occupied with satin and a needle seemed very far from his, fiddling awkwardly with his beard. A man’s beard is a good thing for hands when they don’t know what to do with themselves. What do clean-shaven men do? Hershel wondered.

Later when he lay beside Hanna-Leah, his hand found a place on her belly as he put his arm around her. She didn’t pull away, and when his tail began to pay attention, he said to it, Look you, in a minute you’re going to make me want to grab her and then you’re going to tell me no, it’s not right, and you’ll hide where I can’t find you. So never mind. I’m lying with my Hanna-Leah. You know what we say on Passover.
Dayeinu.
It’s enough. And Hershel went to sleep, Hanna-Leah pressed close to him.

The council, under Hershel’s instruction, recruited the villagers not once but many times, until the last kopeck was found in the last corset, and people began to run away when they saw one of the councillors approaching. A bribe was assembled—a bag of silver coins sent
to the warden, who took a commission for himself before sending the rest on to the Governor.

As the nights became shorter than the days, the weather was warm and dry, less cloud and more sky than anyone could remember. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be. The good girl had gone to prison. The bad girl was working in her place. The baker’s wife refused to write letters. The butcher’s wife wandered in the woods.

Look, people said, it happens to a childless woman sometimes. She goes a little crazy. Can you blame her? The world is upside down. Her arms are empty while the midwife is getting bigger by the minute.

In the strange evening light when the men went to pray, one would begin, Misha’s baby could have any man for a father, don’t you think? Or another would say, she’s walking slowly these days. Maybe six months along, isn’t she? And soon, someone would sigh and add, she’s one of ours, after all.

Their wives had begun to worry. Who would come to Batia when she was near her time if Misha was too big? What if something happened to Misha? Pregnancy was a dangerous business, and giving birth worse than the draft. Some women were never the same afterward. Some died. Who’s going to bring our babies safely into the world? the women asked. Where will I go when my mother coughs up blood?

They would run to her house for every little thing, Misha I need this and Misha I need that, just to make sure that she was still there making up her remedies and filling her shelves with rows of potent bottles. On market day, Misha was the first to fold up her stall these days, the empty corner of the village square like the hole after a tooth is pulled. Something has to be done, the women said. Misha’s alone, how much money can she have? Is she able to get what she needs for herself? It’s too hard for her.

Hershel, the villagers said, what are you going to do about Misha? Well, a woman alone isn’t a good thing, he answered. So? they asked. So
nu
, Hershel, you’re the head of the community council. You have to do something.

H
ERSHEL
hired Shayna-Perl, the cart driver, to take him to Plotsk. The road followed the Północna River down to its mouth at the Vistula, then turned along the larger river toward the docks in Plotsk. As
the cart approached Plotsk, small figures on the decks of ships turned into men loading hundred-pound sacks of salt onto the bowed backs of porters who staggered down onto the docks. Horses were backing up to the boats, the wagons opened to let loose a load of sugar beets, tumbling and rumbling into the hold.

Everyone around the docks knew of Yarush the thief and occasional peddler. “You’re looking for the Bear? You’re in luck. He must have had a good haul. He’s drinking up the tavern on Whorehouse Row.”

Where thirty years before the only brothel had been Avraham’s house of pleasure, a virtual monopoly, now cheap brothels had multiplied like flies in the market place. Despite hard times there was one area of business, at least, that was expanding. The whorehouses were stacked one on top of the other, the street so narrow that two girls could lean out of opposite windows and shake hands—or at least pass over their customers’ valuables. One could buy sex in Polish, Russian, Yiddish, Lithuanian, and Byelorussian. Only in Warsaw and America was the choice bigger. Of course you get what you pay for, and it was said that more
shmeckels
fell off after a visit to the docks in Plotsk than in a graveyard. It was a popular misconception that Jewish whores were cleaner, and there were always agents scouting for young Jewish girls newly arrived in the city. The Plotsker pimps complained that Warsaw got all the best workers. But that’s how it is these days, they said. You just can’t operate on a big enough scale in a small town.

The tavern occupied the main floor of one of the largest houses in the row. It was a safe place to drink as the owner had seven sons to keep order when they were done thieving for the night.

Shayna-Perl left her cart and horse tied up outside, got a bottle of something fumigatory, and joined her brother carters on the far side of the tavern. At the front of the room, eyes open for business, were the pimps, their favorite girls with them, and a few young sailors, newly tattooed. The older sailors sat at the back where no one could creep up on them. In the center were the thieves. Those who’d just finished a job were joking and roughhousing under watch of the seven sons. Those in preparation huddled together, speaking in low voices. On either side of the tavern sat the lowest of the low. Where their patches ended and their skin began was a mystery. Here drank the porters,
permanently hunched from carrying hundredweights, the carters, and the beggars. All manner of crutches, eye patches, and lumps floated in the shifting smoke of bitter cigarettes.