The River Midnight (3 page)

When Hanna-Leah was a girl, there were four friends who played together, picked mushrooms and berries, told secrets, and walked arm-in-arm through the woods. The villagers called them the
vilda hayas
, the wild creatures. One of them was Hanna-Leah. She became the butcher’s wife and had no children, though she was the best cook of all of them. The second was her best friend, Faygela, who was hungry for
books and married the baker and had so many children that she had no time left for Hanna-Leah. The third friend was Zisa-Sara. She taught them to dance and never had a bad word to say about anyone. Zisa-Sara married a scholar and left them all to go with him to America, for which they could not forgive her. Zisa-Sara’s best friend was Misha, the fourth of the
vilda hayas.
Misha swore that she would never marry, but just the same she did. Hanna-Leah had thought that marriage would straighten Misha out. A wife has to cover her head and know what it means to work. But Misha’s husband had divorced her, and instead of moving away, she had grown her hair long again. It blew about in the wind like a living thing and Misha was a
vilda haya
still.

Now Misha stood behind a table laden with bottles and powders, creams and herbs, her head uncovered, black hair floating under a veil of snowflakes while she laughed with the women crowded around her stall. “And what about you?” she was saying to a young woman, the baker’s oldest daughter. “When are you going to marry yourself off and have a proper
Shabbas
like the rest of the women?” The girl blushed. “And look who’s here. Hanna-Leah. Listen to me, women, you’d better go to her shop before
Shabbas.
Get a nice piece of meat for your man to give him strength.”

And you, Misha, when are you going under the wedding canopy again? the women asked.

“Never. There isn’t a man who could tempt me. Not even the Evil One himself.” Her large hands were busy, picking a pinch of this and a leaf of that, wrapping it all in a square of brown paper. “You know what I say? Have a little pleasure and don’t worry about tomorrow. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Hanna-Leah frowned as Misha bantered with the women. Every month Misha made up a remedy for her. Every month it failed, and she had to come back for another. “You have something different?” Hanna-Leah asked.

“What I gave you before didn’t help?” Misha spoke in a low voice, but Hanna-Leah looked around anyway, to see if anyone was listening.

Someone was laughing. Why was she laughing? Maybe Misha had said something. No, she wouldn’t. Everyone knew that Misha could keep a secret. If she wanted to. But who could tell what a woman like
Misha wanted? Was she like anyone else? “Just give it to me,” Hanna-Leah said. “I don’t have time to stand here all day.”

“Put it in the soup,” Misha said.

“Fine. Good.” Grabbing the package, Hanna-Leah thrust it into her pocket, slapping a few kopecks onto the table. As she returned to the butcher shop, she saw a cart crossing the square. Behind the driver, a boy and a girl held onto each other, pale from their journey. Strangers. Did they look at all like anyone Hanna-Leah had known?

I
N THE
afternoon, Hanna-Leah closed up the butcher shop and went home. The sun was setting, the
shammus
knocking on the shutters of the houses to let the women know that the candles should be lit and the men should be on their way to the synagogue. “Do you need more hot water?” Hanna-Leah asked her mother-in-law, who was sitting in the tin tub in the alcove off the kitchen.

“Don’t you hear?
Shabbas
is coming,” her mother-in-law said. “Hurry, get me out.”

“There’s no rush. The Holy One will wait for me to wash your back.” Pulling up her sleeves, Hanna-Leah rubbed a bit of brown soap between her hands. As she knelt to massage her mother-in-law’s brittle back, silk underthings nuzzled her hips beneath her
Shabbas
dress. She had ordered the fabric from Plotsk, a creamy silk embroidered with tiny blue stars.

“Not too hard?” Hanna-Leah asked.

“No, it’s good, it’s good,” the old woman purred at the firm strokes on her back. “But it’s enough, already.” She pulled away. “Help me up. Hershel shouldn’t come home to an unprepared table.” Gripping Hanna-Leah’s shoulders and leaning forward from her waist as she stood on her withered legs, the old woman said, “I asked the
zogerin
to say a prayer on your grandmother’s grave that you should have a son.”

“What business did you have to go to the
zogerin?
”

“She knows how to pray. When she opens her mouth, the angels above listen.”

“I don’t need her prayers.”

“Well, you need someone’s,” her mother-in-law said. “You know what it says in the
Tzena-U-Rena.
” She pointed to a book on the sideboard. The biblical commentary for women, written in Yiddish. Every Jewish home had one, and Hanna-Leah’s mother-in-law read it aloud
every
Shabbas.
“The Matriarch Sarah died when she was a hundred and twenty-seven years old, but she only truly lived for thirty-seven years. And why? Because the years before her son’s birth weren’t any kind of life, ‘for a person who is childless is compared to the dead.’ You hear what I’m saying?”

Hanna-Leah’s jaw tightened as she pulled a woolen dress over her mother-in-law’s head, muffling her speech. Hanna-Leah considered leaving her to stand this way, with her head stuck between the shoulders of the dress, arms flailing. But instead she eased her mother-in-law’s arms into the dress, tugging it maybe a little roughly over her head. As she popped through the neck opening, the old woman lifted her nose and sniffed. “What’s that I smell? Mushrooms? You know mushrooms give me diarrhea. And I love mushroom soup. I can’t resist it. Why did you make it? To torture me?”

Hershel also has a fondness for mushrooms, Hanna-Leah thought. But all she said was, “If the
zogerin
starts praying at Grandmother Rivka’s grave, her spirit will thank the Holy One that she has a grave to protect her from the noise.”

H
ANNA
-L
EAH
’
S
grandmother used to say that you have to see everything to pick mushrooms. Braiding Hanna-Leah’s hair, thick and pale as ripe barley, Grandmother Rivka would say, “Behind a rotting log, child, you can find a prize, a king bolete. You must be like the Morning Star who lives deep in the woods. She picks mushrooms and she feeds the hungry wolf in the sky. It pulls at its leash to get to her basket. It could bite off your whole head. It wants to eat everything. But the Morning Star is big and wild, too. She just hits the wolf on the nose and says, ‘Wait, doggie. Be good, you will get the mushrooms. But you have to wait for me to cook them.’ ” Then Grandmother Rivka would tug one of Hanna-Leah’s braids and say, “So Hankela, you just watch me and you’ll learn how to make a good mushroom soup.” And there would be the flash of the knife chopping faster than Hanna-Leah could see.

“A
RE YOU
dreaming, Hanna-Leah? Button my dress. All right, now help me into my chair. Hershel will be here any minute,” her mother-in-law said.

They waited, the table set with its white cloth, its braided hallahs
and silver candlesticks. Wax dripped. The scent of mushroom soup wafted from the tiled oven. Hanna-Leah listened to her mother-in-law wheeze. More wax dripped, the flames reflected in the darkening window. The room was silent except for the gurgling of her mother-in-law’s stomach. Hanna-Leah thought she would go mad. When she could wait no more, she threw a shawl over her head and pulled on her quilted coat, stamping through the snow across the village square.

In Perlmutter’s tavern, her Hershel sat near the fire, legs sprawled, hat askew, raising a glass of schnapps to his new friend with the yellow hair and the forked beard flecked with crumbs. A middle-aged man, twice as big around as Hershel and half again as tall, his hairy belly bursting through the buttons of his shirt under the fur coat hanging open and trailing the floor on either side of his boots.

“Good Sabbath,” Hanna-Leah said. “So you found another fool to entertain.”

“He’s a visitor.” Hershel straightened his hat. He was a short balding man with a round face and graying beard. But under his caftan, his chest was massive and hard, his arms like iron pistons. Hershel hiccupped. “A visitor from Plotsk. His grandfather was a rich man in Blaszka once.”

She looked from Hershel to the enormous man beside him, all hair and bristles and stomach, smelling of old onions. A pig standing on his hind legs, snout in the air, sniffing for something rotten. A
shayner?
One of the fine people with money that had left the village when the mill was blown up by the Russians? “Yes, sure. Everyone has a rich grandfather somewhere,” she said. “And your friend is a very busy man, I hear. Yesterday a thief, today a peddler. I heard that all of Blaszka had the honor of watching this guest kill his horse in the village square this afternoon, and then he had a fight with our midwife. But I didn’t have time to wait around and congratulate him because I was rushing home to make the house ready for
Shabbas.
Now I stand corrected. My husband, may the Holy One preserve him, is treating our esteemed guest right.”

The guest swallowed his drink and refilled his glass, oblivious to everything but the bottle, while Hershel looked up at Hanna-Leah. “Maybe you want something?” he asked. “A cherry brandy?”

“You think money grows on trees?”

“Don’t get aggravated, Hanna-Leah.”

“Don’t get aggravated, he says. While my hands get rough and red washing for his mother, the man entertains every stranger,” she spat the word, “from here to Warsaw. An idiot. A know-nothing. Deaf to the world. 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?”

Hershel shrugged and shook his head, but when she finished what she had to say, he picked himself up and followed her out.

H
ANNA
-L
EAH
ladled steaming mushroom soup, with a generous dose of Misha’s medicine, into the good blue bowl for him. The chipped one she took for herself. “Now eat before it gets cold. What are you waiting for? Go on, eat.
Shvyger
, for you I have a bowl of borscht,” she said, but her mother-in-law had nodded off, again, in her chair.

Hershel sat without looking at Hanna-Leah. “Mushroom pierogies,” he said, blowing gently on the soup. “The best in Blaszka. Such juicy little dumplings.” He popped another into his mouth.

Hanna-Leah watched the tip of his tongue lick a speck off his lower lip. She thought of the wolf on its hind legs, crying at the mushrooms in the basket held just out of its reach.

H
ERSHEL
snored. A galumph, followed by a snort, a half sneeze, and a galumph. Hanna-Leah moved closer to him, but as he felt her warmth, he pushed farther over to the edge of the bed, grumbling, then settling again: galumph, snort, sneeze.

In the village they said that if something’s wrong, you should go to Misha. She’ll know how to fix you up. And did Hanna-Leah ask for much? Just a simple remedy to give Hershel a little interest in his own wife. But no. Misha had just made a fool of her again.

Hanna-Leah knew that demons came in the night to women who were awake and hungry. Demons with curved horns, a cleft foot, and a red bigness that ruined a woman for any ordinary man, filling her and driving her wild. That would be her fate if she didn’t take care, throat and belly kissed by demon lips. Massaging demon hands on her breasts, squeezing her backside. Insides stabbed with demon heat, again and again. A loose woman. Like Misha.

Sneeze.
Galumph.
Hershel snored. A curse on Misha’s head, Hanna-Leah thought. A virtuous woman is worth more than rubies. Picking up her
Yiddish Book of Women’s Prayers
, the
Tekhinas
, she crossed the room to the cot against the wall where Hershel slept when she had her period. She lay down, tucking her nightgown between her thighs, legs pressed together against the heat that rose up when there was nothing to distract her.

“Father Dear, Ribono shel olam,”
she murmured,
“the soul that You breathed into me goes now to Your Throne of Glory. Keep it with You and send it to me at dawn. Blessed are you, Creator of seasons and times, darkness, and rest. Your servant, Hanna-Leah.”
But as she slipped into sleep, she touched her hawk nose, wondering, Am I so ugly he can’t touch me? and the smallest groan escaped her.

In the woods behind the river, Hanna-Leah collected branches for firewood. A cold wind blew at her shawl, though it was March and the trees were budding. When she was a girl she liked to walk through the woods, especially when she picked mushrooms, looking behind rotting logs and in the dank places where delicious boletes lurked, treasures the size of her palm, caps smooth as the velvet crust of a perfectly baked honey cake, the underside like golden sponge.

But now it was different. She had to watch out. An unexpected branch could snag her, a stump trip her, a shadow startle her into spitting “thpoo thpoo thpoo” to avert the evil eye. Plants grew every which way, even on top of each other. It was never the same in the woods. Oh yes, the same trees, the same flowers, the same mushrooms and wind. But always different. The shapes never stayed the same for a moment. Where yesterday there was a tree, today there was a stump, yesterday a clump of grass, today violently trembling yellow flowers, tomorrow thistle down blowing. In the woods there was no order. But what could she do? The stove needed firewood. A horde of family and guests would be descending on her for Purim, not to mention the children of the village, who would be expecting something sweet from every house. So she had no choice but to walk with her head thrust forward, turning this way and that, peering into the afternoon shadows
as if wild beasts were hiding there, while she picked up fallen branches until her arms were loaded.

Turning toward home, Hanna-Leah cried out, her hand scratched by an unseen thorn.