The River Midnight (40 page)

“The matchmaker told me you have someone suitable,” the Rabbi was saying.

“It’d break my heart,” Avraham said, clutching his chest, his fingers heavy with rings, the fingernails long and dirty. “Lipsha was my first girl. I started out with just her and now look, I have a fine house of girls and my own man to bring in the customers and give a little something to the police. How could I let her go? No, no. Lipsha’s worth a fortune to me.”

Behind him, his wife was preparing a tray of tea and cake, her face pinched below the blonde wig, stiff as a helmet. “A fortune,” she repeated. As she nodded, tiny flakes of rouge fell from her cheeks onto the tray.

Yarush, kneeling on the floor, stared at them. A fortune? His favorite? His best? But Avraham was always telling Lipsha that she wasn’t any more use than a toothless dog. It’s just the goodness of my heart that I keep you, he’d say to her. Your brat eats up all my profits.

“And what about her boy?” Avraham was saying. “He’s like my own son. Come here, Yarush.” Warily, the boy approached the table. Avraham pinched his cheek between his knuckles, giving it a little twist in warning.

The Rabbi didn’t seem to notice the red mark, but called Yarush to come closer to him. “Do you
daven
every morning,
yingeleh?
” he asked. No one had ever called Yarush “little boy,” but it didn’t sound like an insult. The Rabbi was looking at him kindly. He had big soft pouches of skin under his blue eyes.

“I don’t pray,” Yarush answered. He didn’t add that he couldn’t read the prayers even if he wanted to.

“Oh,” the Rabbi said. “On
Shabbas
, you go to synagogue?”

“No.”

“But you don’t eat any
trayf?
”

The boy shrugged. Food is food, he thought.

The Rabbi was sitting on the edge of the chair, like maybe if he leaned back he’d catch some lice. He tapped the stick impatiently on the floor between his feet, while Avraham wiped his eyes and blew his nose on his sleeve, saying, “No, I can’t give up my dear Lipsha.”

Leaning on the staff, the Rabbi rose to his feet. “All right,” he said, “so there’s no match.”

Avraham stopped wiping his eyes, a slightly panicked expression on his face. “Don’t be so hasty,” he said. “I have a big heart. For a little commission I might be willing to let her go to Blaszka. Devorah,” he commanded his wife, “call her up. We’ll talk.”

When Lipsha appeared, Yarush placed himself at her side, as he always did, ready to protect her even against the Rabbi. But at the sight of Lipsha, the old man said, “This is the orphan? This, this … no. Not even for the cholera. I’m not going to match up a boy with this worked-over, crippled hen.”

Lipsha made a small choking noise.

Yarush grabbed the Rabbi’s caftan, twisting it at the neck. “You take it back!” he shouted. “My mother is good enough to marry anybody. Her father was a rich man.”

“Sha, Yarush. Don’t say anything,” his mother pleaded.

“Zelig the grain merchant. And he came from your stinking little
shtetl
, too.”

The Old Rabbi looked at her. “You’re Zelig’s girl, Lipsha?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“I don’t believe it. He didn’t know what happened to you. He mourned like you died.”

“He knew,” she said. “He found me.”

The Old Rabbi shook his head. “How could you do it to him?”

“You want to blame me?” Lipsha asked. “Be my guest.”

“Listen to me. What’s past is past,” the brothel owner said. “Let’s talk business. The match.”

Lipsha laughed. “Do you think I want to get married? No. Never. And to a boy of how old?”

“Seventeen,” the Old Rabbi said.

“Only four years older than my son, Yarush. Ridiculous. But I have an idea,” Lipsha said. “You should take little Dina. A girl from the country. Hardly worked.”

Avraham was aghast. The youngest? The newest? She had years of usefulness ahead of her, not to mention that she could be passed off as a virgin for a premium price at least another few times. “I won’t hear of it,” he said.

Finally they settled on Riva. The Rabbi would have to cough up a good price for her. She didn’t come cheap. The Rabbi said he’d see what he could do. He went away and when he came back a week later, he wasn’t alone but brought the prospective groom. The Rabbi went upstairs to deal with Avraham while the groom and his driver went to meet the bride-to-be.

Yarush came home to see a couple of strangers talking to Riva and his mother. The younger one was a boy with golden eyes, the other looked to be ten years older. Yarush crossed the room to stand beside his mother. “That’s Hayim, the groom. The other one drove him to Plotsk. Yekhiel’s his name. A baker,” his mother whispered.

Riva was saying she wouldn’t do it. “Is it fair to keep a boy stuck with someone like me? Does he deserve it, an orphan?”

His mother winced as she rose from her bed. Her shoulder must be hurting her. She had that look on her face, the one she used to get when Dovidel the pimp started to unbuckle his belt. “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.” Yarush nodded. No one could mimic Avraham and his fat wife like Riva. “If the world was on fire, you could still make a person laugh till he cried,” his mother said. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you. But you have to take your chance.”

The baker, Yekhiel, frowned and shook his head, while the young groom was watching Riva and blinking, his eyes moist.

They argued some more, but it was all settled the way it began. Riva was going to marry Hayim in Blaszka. After the visitors left, his mother told Riva, “Your new husband will be good to you. He’s a fine person, this Hayim, refined. A
shayner.
”

The younger girls laughed. What’s his fortune, a couple of buckets? they asked.

“Pay no attention,” Lipsha said. “He’ll treat you right, Rivala, and won’t mind whatever happened before.”

Avraham appeared in the doorway. “Yarush. The Rabbi wants to see you. Go. They’re waiting outside for you.”

Hayim and Yekhiel were in the cart, the Rabbi leaning on his staff in the shadow of the brothel. “It’s a shame that a Jewish boy doesn’t know kosher from
trayf
,” the old man said to Yarush. “Aren’t you a mother’s son? Don’t you deserve something in life? Look, I’ll take you with me to Blaszka. I can use a sturdy boy to help in the synagogue. I’ll teach you the letters. You can have as many potatoes as you can eat. Fresh bread every day, a whole loaf if you want, two even. All right,
yingela?
”

“B
UT
I wouldn’t go,” Yarush said to Hayim.

“Why not?” Hayim asked. He was leaning against a beech tree, Yarush seated on an oak stump, his legs stretched out like thick roots, a half-smile on his face as he recalled the Old Rabbi.

“I couldn’t leave my mother, could I? The
Alter Rov
, he said I was a good boy. He patted my cheek. Afterward I found two rubles in my pocket. Well, I wouldn’t leave her, not even if she slapped me a hundred times to make me go. I was getting big enough so the pimp wouldn’t dare lift a hand to her if I was around. My mother wasn’t just anyone, you know. She came from a good family. It’s true. Her father was a rich man in Blaszka. A grain merchant.”

“Who?” Hayim asked.

“Zelig. Did you know him?”

“He was in business with Eber?” The two of them used to sit in the front row of the synagogue. Zelig and Eber, Faygela’s grandfather, who was cheated out of his share of the business by his partner.

“All I know is that he wanted to marry my mother off to a rich old widower that promised to get him out of debt. Mama didn’t want it, and he beat her with a poker. Left her with a scar, but not on her face, not so it showed. So she ran away.”

As if seeing the other man for the first time, Hayim said excitedly, “I do remember you. You were standing beside your mother in the brothel. And then when Riva died, you came to Blaszka. You were maybe thirteen, right?”

Yarush nodded. “It broke Mama’s heart when Riva died. She
jumped on Dovidel the pimp and tried to rip out his mustache with both hands. He threw her against the wall. Hurt her back where it was broken before. She kept crying, ‘Riva, Riva, why did you come back? You should have forgotten us.’ She was shaking when she told me to go to Blaszka. She didn’t want you to think that Riva went back to work in the brothel. You shouldn’t think anything bad about her, she said. She told me to tell you everything. You see this fur coat? I took it off Dovidel so he’d remember me. I didn’t want to leave my mother alone. But I had to, didn’t I? I promised.”

Hayim nodded, looking away from Yarush’s twisted face. “It’s because I’m so stupid. Who hits a Russian officer for nothing?” Yarush said, smacking the trunk of the beech tree with his fist, hitting it hard again and again. “I was walking home from Blaszka and this Russian officer said something to me. Asked me for my papers maybe. I wasn’t even mad at him, but I hit him, and they sent me to Warsaw. Why did they take me to Warsaw? Why?” Yarush shook Hayim by the shoulders. “Everyone knows me in Plotsk. They would have told my mother where I was. But in Warsaw? I disappeared. Invisible. A ghost. She waited and waited for me and I never came back to her.” Then he dropped his hands and said, “So she never knew I went to Blaszka like she told me. Andrei couldn’t find me. Maybe she thought I ran away. When I got out of jail she was dead. My mama never knew I just did what I promised.”

“She knows,” Hayim said. “I’m sure of it.”

“Really. You think so?”

“Would a brother lie? Look, we’ll split the cheese.”

“Here. I have some salami in the cart.” Yarush put his arm around Hayim’s shoulder. “And how about a drink?”

“Just, just the cheese. That’s enough,” Hayim said.

But Yarush pressed the salami on him, and Hayim took it. Yarush got into his cart and let the old nag walk at her own pace while he drank and dreamed.

H
AYIM
walked back to the dairyhouse where he stood outside under the willow trees, waiting for Alta-Fruma. Farther up the road, Shmuel the baker harnessed his horse. He was on his way to Plotsk with the gold that would release Yekhiel’s granddaughter, Ruthie, from prison.

On the day that Hayim and Alta-Fruma gazed at each other in the cow shed, the Traveler and the Director were holding a meeting in the woods near the Północna River. The younger man was sitting on a log, whittling a small branch, while the Director paced. A pigeon flying overhead considered aiming his industrial waste at the Director’s top hat, a marvelous circle of black, a smooth and silky target, but one glare from the Director sent him spinning politely over the river.

“I interceded on your behalf,” the Director was saying. “I told them that you’re new to the position and it’s not an easy assignment. But the best I could get you was an extension. You have to fix the mess you made of the job with Yarush. Are you listening?”

“My instructions said to give Yarush the rock. So I did,” the Traveler said.

“And you had a talk with him.”

“Well, yes.”

“About?”

“You can’t expect me to remember.”

“But I do, indeed,” the Director said.

The Traveler shrugged. “What can you talk about with a man like that? Some dreck.”

“I see. Can you be more specific about the particular dreck that you discussed with him?”

“Something about women. He doesn’t like women. A man like that doesn’t like much. But that’s all right because not much likes him either.” The Traveler dug into the branch of pine, splinters flying.

“Did you take a good look at the rock?”

“It was a rock. What was I supposed to look at?”

“Of everyone in the universe I had to get you assigned as my partner—someone upstairs must have taken a dislike to me. My dear young friend, it wasn’t
just
a rock. No, it was a crust of blue earth with red amber embedded in it. The Egyptians imported Baltic amber from Poland five thousand years ago. You can still see it in Egyptian tombs. And had you cared to look, you would have known what you had in
your hand. You could have nudged Yarush in a particular direction; he might have given the amber away. Do you understand? A gift freely given. A gift received with kindness. Might have made all the difference.” He poked the Traveler in the shoulder.

“Does a man like that give anything away?” the Traveler asked, his eyes on the carving as it became an angry face with a forked beard. “He just wants to take what he can get. So I made it a magic rock, and he took it. I followed orders.”

“My righteous young partner, have you forgotten that your ‘magic’ rock broke down a door?”

The Traveler looked up from his carving, face crestfallen, his knife unmoving.

“This is magic,” the Director said, snapping his fingers. There was a flash of fire, then a hint of sulphur in the air. “It doesn’t cook an egg, my friend.” The Director took the carving from the younger man’s loose grip and threw it onto a pile of driftwood in the river. “Couldn’t you spare a little thought to do the job right? Have a talk—like one person to another?”

“There are plenty of human beings for him to talk with if he wants to.”

“Brilliant. Brilliant boy, you figured it out. Maybe they don’t need us. So you want the Boss to realize it? You want to be sent into oblivion, or worse, rebirth? Fine. But let me tell you, my fine young friend. You have until the end of the year to finish the job with Yarush. Otherwise …” he snapped his fingers. This time the small flame grew into a ball of fire that fell into the center of an eddy in the river, hissing as it burned through a mass of branches and leaves. The eddy swirled, and the network of green and wood re-formed as if it had never burned. “Magic.” The Director blew on the tip of his finger. “It only works on angels,” he said. And smiled. The smell of cooking raspberries drifted across the water from the village. A flock of crows chased a hawk above the woods.

The Traveler sat on the log where the Vistula and the Północna met, looking at the yellow fields, the snail-shaped clouds streaming
overhead, the peasant standing thigh deep in the water, fishing and teasing the girls in red petticoats who were running along the bank. Their thick-armed mothers, scrubbing linen, called after the girls to come back if they knew what was good for them. The Traveler could hear the distant honk of ships coming up from Warsaw, and nearby the sad tune of a brown-skinned boy, whistling as he led a bear on a chain. The Traveler stood up, walked toward the boy, and pushed him into the river.