The River Midnight (32 page)

H
AYIM WAS
seventeen when the cholera swept through Plotsk in ’67. It came along the river to the edge of Blaszka, taking first the women weak from childbirth, then the children. It was spring and the river rose high with the melting snows of a hard winter. On market day, the village square was frenetic, men and women running before the Angel of Death, who didn’t care whether someone was Jewish or Christian or even human. Our pigs are dying, the peasants said, they have the cholera, too. The village men were working with grim concentration, caps screening their eyes from rain, black caftans tucked into their belts. The farmers’ wives, gripping grey hens by the feet, talked in loud voices with the village women, who slapped their merchandise onto stalls more vigorously and noisier than usual, as if to defy the evil eye. The farmers crossed themselves. The villagers whispered Hebrew blessings. In the wet gray air, their faces were white, the cholera epidemic swallowing all color, their sweat smelling of fear. Only now and again a sudden silence would fall. A woman’s voice would be heard crying, “Not my Shayndel. Dear God, have pity!” as she ran across the square to pray in front of the Holy Ark in the synagogue. Then the hubbub resumed. The sound of the blacksmith’s hammer, the carpenter’s saw, the thump of clay on the potter’s table, the clatter of a cart, the curses, the shouts.

The women made candles, placed in the sand box beside the Holy Ark and lit while the villagers recited psalms, men and boys below,
elderly women in the balcony above. Peasants came to the Old Rabbi, asking him to bless their holy relics. So what if he was a Jew? It was said among them that he had once fought the Angel of Death for the life of a child, and the child had lived.

The
feldsher
was busy letting blood, using glass cups heated to create a vacuum and then applying them to cuts made in the skin of his patient’s back. When cupping didn’t work, he tried leeches. When leeches failed, he used enemas. Meanwhile the midwife, Misha’s mother, Blema, was walking in the woods looking for larch trees. Five drops of larch resin mixed with honey would dry up a blood-spotted diarrhea, but larch trees were uncommon around Blaszka. Hayim, who had taken over carrying water when Asher the Hasid became blind, ran back and forth across the bridge from the well to the sickhouses. More water, the villagers called, the children are thirsty, they’re drying up. So Hayim ran, his buckets swinging, and his only rest was to roll a cigarette for Asher, who couldn’t eat a thing, but smiled at Hayim through the smoke of his cigarette.

The men of the village met in the studyhouse. The back wall was lined with shelves of biblical commentaries from Hananiah, the martyr of Galilee, to Dov Baer the
Maggid
of Mezhirech, filling the air with the ancient smell of musty leather. Over each of the study tables, a brass candelabra lit with tallow candles cast gaunt shadows of the men onto the walls of the studyhouse. The Old Rabbi sat at the head of the first table, the
shayner
near him, the
proster
at the back, kneading their beards with stained fingers. Why did the Holy One above send us a plague? they asked. What did we do? If we set it right, then maybe the Holy One will forgive us and our children will get better. Didn’t you hear? It’s a punishment for the way the Hasidim treated the rabbi in Plotsk. He doesn’t like Hasidim, so they drove him out of town and then the cholera came. Now they’re begging him to come back. But what about us? We only have one Hasid, Asher the watercarrier, and they buried him this morning. I’ll tell you whose fault it is. Yekhiel the baker. Everyone knows he’s an unbeliever. It’s his sin. No, no, it’s Blema the midwife. Don’t you remember her grandmother was burned for a witch?

“Friends, friends, listen to me,” the Old Rabbi said, rapping the floor with his oak staff. Someone had thrown a rock through the
baker’s window. It had to be stopped. “The sin is all of ours and we can rectify it together. It is written that arranging the marriage of orphans and conducting the ceremony in the cemetery at midnight will stop a plague, even the cholera. This should tell you what a great mitzvah it is. Right here among us we have a boy of marriageable age without father or mother to arrange his destiny. No family, no money—who would marry him? But we’ll find a bride for Hayim, everyone will witness his happiness, and the Holy One in His infinite mercy will withdraw the punishment that we brought upon ourselves, even if we don’t know how. As for the Hasidim, it’s too bad they’re misguided, but each of them is a mother’s child, just like each of you. They even have a few scholars among them. As it is written, ‘There is no limit to the practice of benevolence and the study of Torah.’ ”

In the women’s gallery there was much excitement when a match was found for Hayim. God has compassion, we are saved, they said. She’s a pearl. How lucky our Hayim is. She’s not so good-looking, but you can only see the scar on one side. And if she’s not so young, well, he needs to learn a thing or two. And if they found her in the brothel near the docks in Plotsk, what then? Did anybody see her do anything wrong? It’s God’s will that the match will rescue her from a life of sin. And who is Hayim, anyway, a Talmud genius? He should just be thankful that he has a warm place to put his body on a Friday night.

A
VRAHAM
’
S
B
ROTHEL
stood at the edge of Plotsk where it dipped below the waterline, soaking the houses with mud in the spring. Here lived the poorest and meanest Jews, the carter with her skinny horse stabled in back, the tailor working at the table while his children slept head to foot on the floor, cooking over an open fire on a trivet, smoke blackening their lungs. Sewage ran in the street and flies died in the thatched roofs of one-room houses.

The brothel had three rooms and two floors. On the upper floor lived the owner Avraham and his wife, Devorah. She no longer worked in the trade, but wore a fancy wig and pleaded with her daughter to stay upstairs and read to her the weekly lesson of scripture from the
Tzena-U-Rena.
The prostitutes stayed in the basement. Two of them had come to the brothel because they had no other way to keep themselves alive. The other two had been married in false ceremonies to the
freelance pimp employed by the brothel. After the wedding night, they were told that the rabbi was no rabbi and the marriage contract invalid. Ruined, there was no option but to work in the brothel.

From the baker’s cart, Hayim watched the barges and riverboats on the Vistula. He had a boy’s narrow shoulders, thin wrists hanging out of his caftan, and three hairs attempting to sprout from his chin. Beside Hayim sat the Old Rabbi. “You have to understand how things are with you, now” he was saying to Hayim. “You’re not the miller’s son anymore. But still, I don’t want you to worry. I made all the arrangements when I went to Plotsk last week. Riva is a good match for you. She’s a grown woman, but still young enough. She can work hard. And since you insist on meeting her …”

“Of course, he insists,” said Yekhiel the baker with a worried frown. He had left his little daughter, Faygela, with his mother-in-law, who could be too stern sometimes. They were riding in the baker’s cart to save money. It took everything the community council had to pay off the brothel keeper. “Don’t think you have to do this,” he added. “When you see her, you can decide if you want to marry her. We’re not living in the dark ages. No one can force you to act against your principles if you know your own mind.”

Hayim wished that they would both keep quiet. He only wanted to look at the sky and think of nothing. Though it had been more than a week since old Asher the watercarrier had died, for some reason tears kept coming to his eyes as he gazed at the hill above Plotsk where the cathedral, with its spires and dome and the tombs of kings, overlooked its domain, peacefully unmoved by the small speck of the cart, with its smaller speck of Hayim, rolling forward.

When they arrived, the Old Rabbi, who of course wouldn’t set foot into the brothel below, went upstairs to settle with Avraham, while Hayim and Yekhiel walked down to the basement. The room was divided into cubicles, but all the curtains were pulled open so that the girls could enjoy the little bit of sun coming through the cracked window. They sat in their underthings, mending stockings and writing letters, looking up curiously when Yekhiel knocked on the open door. “Come in, don’t be shy,” the oldest said, a woman in her forties who looked sixty, one shoulder higher than the other. “We’ve been expecting you,” she said. “You’re from Blaszka, right?”

Yekhiel nodded. “This is the groom, Hayim, and I’m Yekhiel, usually a baker, but today the driver. And you are …?”

“Lipsha. And these girls are like my own.” She pointed to the youngest, sitting on her narrow bed and staring at a stain on the wall, then to the next-youngest, a plump, round-faced girl with a friendly smile, and last to a woman she introduced as Riva, Hayim’s intended. Riva, a woman of great, golden earrings and red cheeks, marked on one side by a scar, wore a shawl of many colors, draped low on her arms to reveal her shoulders and breasts. The scent of her perfume overlaid the sweat steaming off unwashed bedding and the fishy, sewage odor of the street. Against the wall of her cubicle, Riva had tacked the postcards her younger brothers had sent her from Berlin. “So Riva, tell me. What do you think of your groom?” Lipsha asked.

“What should I think? Every month my mother writes to me,” Riva said. “She thinks I’m a fishmonger. When are you getting married? she asks. You’re not getting any younger, she says. My mother’s a sick woman. Who knows how long she’ll last?”

“I thought you were an orphan,” Yekhiel said.

“They wanted an orphan, so they have an orphan. I’ll be one soon enough.” She laughed and snapped her fingers, but Hayim saw that she grimaced as she laughed, her eyes slanted down, her lips drawn back as if in anger. “Let my mother’s last days be happy. I’ll send her a letter about my husband. Even a photograph. My mother will be very happy.”

“Hayim’s just a boy,” Yekhiel snapped. “He’s too young for a wife he doesn’t even know. Why not take the photograph and forget the wedding?”

“What? Lie to my mother on her deathbed? A pig doesn’t deserve such a fate.” Her fingers twisted the fringes of her shawl. Her fingers were long, the nails split, the tips of her fingers raw from scrubbing as if she couldn’t get her hands clean enough. “So have you ever been with a woman?” Hayim shook his head. “How old are you anyway?” she asked.

“Seventeen,” Hayim said.

“Not much older than Yarush there.” Riva pointed to the oldest prostitute’s son, standing in the doorway, eyeing the newcomers suspiciously, hefting a knife from hand to hand as he crossed over to his mother’s side.

“You see yourself,” Yekhiel said, “this isn’t right.”

Riva touched Hayim’s head lightly. “So young.” She sighed. “Is it fair to keep a boy stuck with someone like me? Does he deserve it, an orphan?”

Lipsha, the oldest prostitute, wincing as she stood up, shook her head. “Look at me, a crooked back, I can hardly stand. Do you want to end up like me? No, Riva. You’re still a young woman. You’re beautiful. You’re smart. So he’s a boy? He should consider himself lucky. No one can be sad with you. If the world was on fire, you could still make a person laugh till he cried. I don’t know what I’ll do without you. But you have to take your chance.”

Yekhiel sputtered, but Riva held up her hand and he kept silent. “No,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not interested in getting stuck in some tiny
shtetl
in the armpit of nowhere.”

“Blaszka’s not such a bad place,” Lipsha said. “And what about your mother?”

“She has two sons. She can forget her daughter. What difference does it make anyway?” Riva asked. Hayim noticed the vein in her neck pulsating as she looked around the dirty room, her eyes dimming. He’d never seen anything sadder.

“The
Alter Rov
made the match. Let, let it be,” Hayim said. “It’s a sin to break a betrothal.” He looked at Riva boldly, not like a religious man at all, and she laughed. This time there was no grimace in her laughter.

T
HEY WERE
married at midnight in the cemetery, standing among the tombstones of scholars and holy men. In the darkness the men of Blaszka led Hayim to the wedding canopy. The women led Riva, whose veil was made by the Old Rabbi’s wife and trailed five feet behind her like moonlight on the river. The peasants, a row of dark stones, stood at the edge of the cemetery, watching the bride circle the groom seven times.

Afterward Riva and Hayim were escorted to the inn with horns and the clash of ladles against tin pots. When the guests sat down to their feast, Riva and Hayim retired to the back room. She undressed by the light of a candle, sitting naked on the bed while Hayim looked. She leaned back on the pillows, one foot tucked against the opposite thigh, the other leg falling wide so that nothing was blocked from his
view. She wasn’t wearing any perfume, and a musky smell rose between them while Hayim looked. He studied her face, half light, half dark, the triangular shadow under her chin, the skin of her angular breasts shining like white stones, the puckered aureoles, the nipples like blackberries, the quick rise and fall of her belly as she watched him looking at her, the thin arrow of dark fuzz from her belly button to her mound, where the hair curled against the heel tucked into her thigh, the long second toe, the high arch, which he brushed with his finger. Only then did she remove his wedding garb, speaking softly as she touched his body, guiding him to hers.

F
OR A WEEK
, there was little water to be had in Blaszka unless the villagers went to the well to fetch it themselves. Riva showed Hayim everything she knew and he was happy to learn it all. At night they lay naked in the hut, looking up through the loose thatching to the stars in the sky. Riva told Hayim about her younger brothers and how they would be educated and make something of themselves. Hayim said little, but he drew pictures of Riva while she talked. “That’s not me,” she would protest. “Look, she’s beautiful. Don’t you see this?” She would point to the scar on her cheek.