The River Midnight (4 page)

“Are you all right?” a voice asked.

Hanna-Leah jumped, catching her sleeve on the thornbush, branches dropped and scattered. She saw a bundle of rags unfold into a scarecrow and then rise like a hungry man in pain.

“Who are you? What business do you have here?”

“Did I startle you,
mamala?
” Little mother, he called her, as if he were someone close to her, a brother or a cousin. “I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said. He wasn’t from around here. Not by that accent. And not by his voice. It was missing the hoarse edge that came from shouting above the din of market day. “I fell asleep and woke up when I heard you.” The wind blew his shirt behind him like the wings of a ship. He held a ragged black jacket over his shoulder, a cloth rose hanging down from the collar. A traveling bag with rope handles lay at his feet. His hair stood up around his face like the copper pinfeathers of a rooster. He was young. But not a boy.

“Criminals hide in the woods. Do you think you scare me? Hah.” She shook the twiggy end of a broken branch in his face.

He spoke slowly. “You’re right, I am a criminal. Or next to one.”

“I knew it. Those black eyes of yours, too small, too close together. You came here to rob good people in their beds. I can deal with your like, don’t you fear.” She showed him the point of her knife, the sharp little knife for trimming twigs. He didn’t flinch.

“I ran away when it was time to register for the draft,” he said calmly. “I came here from the East. No identification papers, so I can’t stay too long anywhere. If an officer stops me, then I’ll be sent back and you know where I’ll end up.”

It was true that he had an accent like her Grandmother Rivka’s. It could be. She put the knife in her pocket, lowered the branch.

“A Jew in the army is lost,” she said. “Beaten for saying a word of the
mama-loshen.
Made to eat
trayf.
Put in front of cannons like a dead crow for practice. It’s not so stupid to run away.”

“You are too kind, little mother.”

“But what are you doing now? A person has to do something to
eat.” In Blaszka all the men were bearded, but he was clean-shaven. She was fascinated by the sight of his jaw, the sharp angle below his ear, the unobstructed line of his lips like Sabbath wine above the stubbly cream of his chin.

“I’m a traveler. There’s plenty like me. Going here, going there, always looking for a little bit of work or some cheap goods to peddle.”

“What do you have in that bag of yours? Maybe I need something.”

“Not much, I’m afraid. I sold everything I had for less than I bought it. To tell you the truth, I could lose money selling vodka to soldiers.”

“Never mind. We have too many peddlers, anyway. People always think somewhere else it’s going to be better. Every market day we get peddlers from villages all the way from Plotsk to Warsaw. And in the meantime, our own men put their bags on their backs and walk to Warsaw, even farther, to make a few kopecks.” He was standing close to her, so close she could see the curl of gold and red hairs inside his open collar. He smelled of spring mud, of nights in the woods, of sweat and sweet grass. Hanna-Leah stepped back too quickly, stumbling again. He held out his hand and she unthinkingly took it. In Blaszka, a man didn’t touch a woman in public, not even his wife. But they weren’t in the village. They were alone in the woods.

A woman shouldn’t touch a man. Not a strange man. Not even if his hand is gripping hers warmly. Especially not. For something else to do, her hand retreated into her pocket and pulled out a chunk of dark bread. “Here,” she said, thrusting it into the open palm of his hand. “I have to get ready for Purim, but even a criminal has to eat.”

“Thank you, little mother,” he said, slowly folding once more into a bundle of rags.

As she regathered the fallen branches, she had a plain talk with herself. What kind of a fool are you? A strange man in the woods, he says he ran from the draft, but who knows what he is? Maybe even a murderer. If you had any sense you would report him to the authorities. But her hand felt smooth from his touch. As if it were something apart from the rest of her.

I
N THE
evening Hanna-Leah walked to synagogue. Hershel went with the men and Hanna-Leah with the women. The synagogue was dug
deep into the earth so that the roof wouldn’t rise higher than the abandoned and dilapidated church on the opposite side of the square. Stairs climbed up to the women’s gallery and down to the men around the Holy Ark. It being the eve of Purim, everyone was dressed up to be someone else, swinging rattles, coats worn backward. The watercarrier was in satin like a rich man, the Rabbi in riding boots like a Russian cavalier, Hershel the butcher wearing a shawl over his caftan, stuffed with pillows so he stuck out like a pregnant woman. The children ran frantically upstairs and down, the boys in girls’ clothing, the girls dressed as scholars.

Upstairs in the women’s gallery, their mothers held pots and pans ready to clang when the evil Haman’s name was read out, shouting, “May the earth cover him, may his bones fester, may his mother forget his name.” Young women dressed like they were old and the old like they were young. Even the dairywoman, getting onto sixty, lost twenty years in her costume of shimmering veils. In the back row sat the midwife, Misha, resplendent in an old-fashioned dress, its bodice embroidered with gold thread, her red shawl waving as she vigorously swung a noisemaker.

Hanna-Leah sat in front with her sisters-in-law. Across the aisle Faygela, the baker’s wife, held her youngest, a boy, on her lap, her five daughters in a row beside her. Dark-eyed and delicate, her head wrapped in a turban, Faygela glanced at Hanna-Leah but said nothing. Would anyone think that they had been the best of friends?

H
ANNA
-L
EAH
lived across the lane from Faygela, and in good weather their doors used to be open so they could call to each other. Hanna-Leah would see Faygela among her children, braiding hair, knotting a broken shoelace, in one hand always a book. When good smells wafted across the lane from Hanna-Leah’s house, the children would run to get a taste from her pot. In the winter, Faygela would warm herself in front of Hanna-Leah’s oven and talk while Hanna-Leah did her mending. If a troupe of actors came through Blaszka, Faygela and Hanna-Leah would sit side by side, Hanna-Leah laughing at the funny songs and Faygela crying at the sad ones.

When Faygela was twenty-two and pregnant for the fifth time, it was to Hanna-Leah that she went to complain. “My Shmuel is going to Warsaw for business. And what about my business? I was supposed
to go to school in Warsaw. But that’s all forgotten now. Shmuel has to sell my grandmother’s jewelery. She can’t leave her bed anymore and she says we have to have something from her. Do I want her money, Hanna-Leah? She forgets what she’s suffering when I read to her, but I’m alone with her and the girls. Who’s going to help me in the bakery? I don’t sleep because the middle one has nightmares. She wakes up screaming and then the other two start to cry. The little one still wants to nurse and she’s already two, so how will I have enough milk for the new baby, Hanna-Leah? Yesterday I gave my Ruthie a smack and she just looked at me. What am I supposed to do? I have a cold and look what I have for my nose.” Faygela held out a crusty old washrag.

“Here, you take this,” Hanna-Leah said. She handed Faygela a clean, cotton rag. “It’s from the nightdress I wore on my wedding night. Touch it, Faygela, you see how soft? And I’ll take this other piece and sew under the edges and make you a real handkerchief.”

Hanna-Leah took out her needles and thread while Faygela wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “I hate Blaszka,” Faygela said, sitting down in the rocking chair. “The same faces. The same words. Even the same smells. The tanner’s wife is making cabbage soup and Misha is cooking one of her potions and I’m nauseous. I want to go to Warsaw.”

“And what’s in Warsaw? Strangers.”

“In Warsaw people can see a play any time they want in a real theater, not on a platform in the tavern. In the university there’s a library with more books than you can count. And people who know what’s going on in the world. They talk. They have ideas.”

“Your father should never have taken you to see that school in Warsaw. It gave you too many ideas.”

“Just try to imagine it, Hanna-Leah. A city like a marble palace with a thousand rooms and look at Blaszka, a hut with a mud floor.”

“Don’t be silly. Everything you need is here,” Hanna-Leah said. “You should put away your books. Your head is always in another world and your girls look like orphans with holes in their shirts. If they were mine, I’d be ashamed.”

Faygela’s face reddened. “But they’re not yours and you have nothing to do at home except to cook a little. If you had a couple of your own you’d have some sympathy.”

But Hanna-Leah had none of her own. Not then and not later. So she closed her door and didn’t call across the lane anymore.

I
N THE
women’s gallery, the
zogerin
began to speak. “Listen to me, women,” she said. “Remember the story of Esther the Queen. She saved our people from the wicked Haman, who ordered the killing of all the Jews of Persia. The King didn’t know that Esther was Jewish. She could have hidden. Nothing would have happened to her. But instead she arranged a banquet for the King and his Minister, Haman. And then she revealed herself …”

Maybe I should have invited the stranger for dinner, Hanna-Leah thought. It’s a religious duty, after all. The festival of Purim. A person should eat and drink. As the
zogerin
’s voice mingled with the sound of the noisemakers, Hanna-Leah again felt the stranger’s touch.

The last rattle was shaken, the last pot banged as the story ended. Benches pushed aside, the men danced in jubilation, a bottle passing from hand to hand as they clomped and stamped into the courtyard. Above, the women sang and swayed, Hanna-Leah standing aside, clapping her hands until the women made their way down the stairs and outside, their men following to go home and drink and sing until they didn’t know the difference between Haman the wicked and Mordecai the righteous.

Behind the village square, the river gulped its banks, trees rustling as if to pull up their roots and take a stroll under the full moon. Hanna-Leah hurried to get home before her guests arrived. The wind was blowing storm clouds. Rain began to fall, and as if spring had forgotten itself, the rain turned into pellets of ice.

The next morning, her mother-in-law was cranky and Hershel hung over. Rocking in her chair beside the warm tile oven, Hanna-Leah listened to the wind, picturing the stranger cold and shivering. You’re a fool, she told herself. A fool is more useless than a barren woman. He’ll murder you in your bed and you’ll deserve it. And while she cursed herself for her foolishness, she bundled herself into her quilted jacket and, covering her head with a shawl, headed into the woods with a pot and a blanket.

The Traveler, wrapped in Hanna-Leah’s blanket, crouched against a linden tree, drinking the last drop of soup. He wiped the bowl with
the last morsel of bread, and only then his hands, which had always been steady, began to shake. Yet when Hanna-Leah took the bowl from him, her fingers touching his, she felt as if he were the giver and not she.

“Don’t expect any more from me,” she said. “I don’t hold with feeding layabouts. A man should work. He works, he eats.”

“Yes, little mother,” he said. “I expect no more from you.”

He picked up a branch of linden by his feet and, whistling, began to trim the branch.

“I don’t have time to throw away on a wastrel. I have a shop to run and a husband to feed.” He nodded, but she stayed, watching him hold the branch with his knees as he carved with his left hand, curls of wood flying like maple seeds.

“It will be beautiful,” he said. “A woman made from the tree. For her it’s always Purim. You can dress her in anything. Who knows what’s underneath? Only you and I.”

She watched the wood, hot from the knife, taking shape. What are you thinking? she asked herself. But she wasn’t thinking of anything, it was her body that blazed even though icicles hung from the trees. Sweat trickled along her neck. “I’m going,” she said, not moving. Then she added, “I don’t have time to waste standing here. But later I’m baking. The old bread, whatever’s left over, I give to the birds. If I can trust Hershel to take care of the shop for a few minutes, I’ll bring you some fresh bread. I always make too much.”

B
Y AFTERNOON
the sun was baking the path to the woods. Hanna-Leah carried a basket with the bread for the birds, a new loaf that was still warm, and some herring wrapped in paper. In the dark heart of the woods she faltered. No bundle of rags, no scarecrow. Only broken branches. As Hanna-Leah bent to pick them up for firewood, a dank and lonely coldness rose from the ground.

“Beggars,” she muttered. “Drifters.” She cut the twigs viciously. “Feathers, not men. A man knows where his head lies at night. A man works. His neighbors know him. He has a family.”

Light steps behind her. A ragged shadow. Hanna-Leah jumped to her feet.

“You. I thought you left.”

“I was over there, in that patch of light near the birches.”

“Here, take this.” She held out the loaf of bread and the herring.

He shook his head. “It’s not necessary.”

“It will go to waste. Take it.” She put the bread in his hand, the left hand, calloused and square-fingered.

As he ate, he held a carving to the light, turning it this way and that. It was the figure of a woman, large, curvaceous, hawk-nosed. The wood shone like smooth skin in the sun. He caressed the doll, lightly touching the face, fingers brushing the neck, stroking the breasts, sliding across the tiny hard nipples, skimming the smoothness under the breasts, hovering on the round belly, gripping the legs, his thumb between the thighs.

“It’s nearly finished, but here, you see there is a rough spot. I’ll just smooth it, so. Now it’s done. A small thing to remember me.”

“You’re leaving?” Good, she thought. Who needs a plague of beggars and strangers?