The River Midnight (41 page)

Just behind them, on the road from Plotsk, Yarush drove up in his loaded cart.

T
HE BOY
splashed and flailed his arms, crying out as his head hit a rock. Gypsies have silver, Yarush thought as he jumped out of the cart. The boy’s hat bobbed on the river, three-cornered with a peacock feather for good luck. Beside it floated the photograph of a young girl with golden imperials woven into her braids. Yarush reached under the water to pull out the boy. The Gypsy’s face was greenish brown with cold, a trickle of blood beginning to ooze from a cut on his brow. As Yarush knocked on his back, water spouted from his lips and his eyes fluttered. On his chin there was a tattoo of triangles, one inside the other. Yarush pulled off the boy’s water-logged jacket, the photograph of the girl with gold in her hair sailing downstream.

“W
HAT TREASURE
did you fish out of the water, Master Peddler?” called one of the women twisting and wringing their linen like hens’ necks.

“He’s got himself a drowned Gypsy,” answered the peasant.

“That little fish will steal you blind,” the woman said, “better throw him back.”

“Shush, woman, don’t give the Jew such good advice. Let the boy take from him what he squeezes from us.”

Yarush dropped the boy at the foot of an alder, where he lay moaning in Russian, “Saint Sara, help me,” while Yarush examined his jacket. There were four rows of silver coins for buttons. As he snipped them off with his knife, the bear huddled behind a clump of birch trees.

The boy was shivering. “Here,” Yarush said in Polish, tossing
down the buttonless jacket. “Drink.” He forced the tip of a bottle between the boy’s chittering teeth. “Cigarette?” the boy asked. Yarush rolled a cigarette for him. With trembling fingers, the boy raised it to his mouth and took a deep drag, tilting his head back against the tree trunk as he slowly exhaled. Yarush walked along the riverbank. The boy might have something else. But there was nothing except a bow and an instrument shaped like a flat violin. “My
gudulka
,” the boy called as Yarush picked it up.

“Then play something to drink to,” Yarush ordered.

Eyes closed, the boy held the
gudulka
upright between his knees, drawing the bow slowly across the strings. At the sound of the music, the bear poked his head through the trees, loping forward until the end of his chain fell into the boy’s lap. Winking at Yarush, the boy took up the chain, hooking it around his wrist as he plucked a few wild notes. The bear shuffled from foot to foot without any sense of rhythm, a whining sound deep in his throat as if he was remembering the hot steel sheet on which he was trained to hop around as a cub. The boy crossed his eyes and threw down the
gudulka
in disgust, the bear flopping onto his bottom with relief.

“Mirga,” the boy said, tapping his chest. His face had lost its greenish tinge. “Pyotr Mirga.” The boy looked at the pouch, filled with his silver coins, hanging from a string around Yarush’s neck.

The boy wasn’t stupid, Yarush thought. “Yarush,” he said, pointing to himself. The bear was standing at the edge of the river, catching fish with a sweep of his paw. I could bring them back to the tavern on Whorehouse Row, Yarush thought. Make a few kopecks. Split it with Andrei.

“You find picture?” Pyotr asked.

“The one of the girl?” Yarush asked. Pytor nodded. “Sank in the river.”

“Everything gone,” the boy said, reaching for Yarush’s bottle. He took a long drink and stood up, though he was still unsteady. “I go look girl. I find her. My Pasha. Mine.”

“Tell you what, Pytor. You come back with me to Plotsk.”

“I look Plotsk. Nothing. Now, I look Warsaw. You go Warsaw?”

There was something hungry in the boy’s look. What’s it to you? he asked himself. But he wasn’t in any rush to go peddling. And he
might make something from the boy. “What’re you doing here?” he asked. “Gypsies don’t come this way much.”

“Ah.” Pyotr sat down and sighed. In his sigh, all the great tragedies of the world seemed to find their home. “Speak Russian?” he asked.

Yarush shook his head. “Polish. Yiddish. No Russian.”

“Only Polish. All right.” The boy knocked on his chest as if he was reciting the confessional on the Day of Atonement. “I from Moscow,” he said. “In Moscow Gypsies sing, speak Russian. Papa sing Rachmaninov
Aleko.
You know?” Yarush shook his head. “Uncle have horses. Beautiful horses.” The boy looked at Yarush’s nag, curling his lip. “I had horse. Horse gone. Now I walk. To find my Pasha. Pasha is wife. Wife, you know?” Yarush nodded. The boy’s face twisted. He spit. “
Guliaka
steal wife. You know
guliaka?
”

“No,” Yarush said, taking a swig from his bottle.

“Russian gentry.” The boy rolled the word on his tongue as if it was something
mahrime
, polluted, he was trying not to swallow. “Young man. He like Gypsy cafe. Like singing. Like drinking. Like Pasha. Now Pasha gone. I find Pasha. Walk up mountains. Find Gypsies, speak Romany. Train bears. Very poor. They say, Pyotr, don’t go Romania. Romania Gypsies slaves before. Now no slaves. So burn Gypsies. They say, no Poland. Gentlemans hunt Gypsies for money. Stay here. Stick with Gypsies. Stay away from
gadje.
”

“
Gadje?
What’s that?” Yarush asked. He liked this story. It was the kind of story a man might tell in the tavern while he ordered drinks for everyone.

“
Gadje
is not-Gypsy. But Pasha with
gadje.
I look Pasha.”

“For a woman? Waste of time,” Yarush said.

“Papa say take new wife. I say no. Wife mine. Pyotr and Pasha …” He crossed his wrists and clapped them together. “You know?”

“My woman ran off. Took my girls. Two of them. I said good riddance. If you run after a woman, everyone can see you’re not worth nothing.” Until now he’d forgotten the look of the empty room. The clothes hooks without clothes and the mirror without any faces and the dolly’s hat left beside the bed. A hat he made out of straw. Suddenly he was hungry. He pulled a salami out of his pocket and took a big bite, chewing fast and swallowing a hunk that nearly choked him. “You’re better off alone. A man doesn’t need to be dragged down by a pack of whining women. You have what you get for yourself.”

The boy shook his head. His dark eyes flicked from Yarush to the horse. “You go Warsaw?”

“Plotsk,” Yarush said. He passed his bottle to the boy. Pyotr drank through his fist, curled around the top of the bottle. Grinning, he mouthed “Warsaw.”

“You don’t give up. You’re all right,” Yarush said as he cuffed the boy, though not with all his strength. Flicking his knife open, Yarush picked a piece of salami out of his teeth, then pointed the knife at Pyotr. “You come to Plotsk with me and you can keep half what you make from the bear. Say no and,” he tossed the knife and caught it in his left hand, “you come to Plotsk and you don’t get nothing.”

“You say Plotsk? You want bear? You have bear.” Pyotr hooked the bear’s chain onto the back of the cart. Then he climbed in, his buttonless jacket flung over his shoulder, the
gudulka
under his arm. Satisfied, Yarush followed, sitting beside the boy.

The old horse stirred restlessly, the smell of bear vaguely downwind. But as Yarush began to turn the cart around, and the full strength of bear odor hit the nag, she reared on her hind legs like charging cavalry. Screaming, she tore off, not in the direction of Plotsk, nor Warsaw, but up the familiar Północna road toward Blaszka.

“You’ll pay,” Yarush said, “I’ll sell you for a ship’s boy for this.” The cart rocked, axles screeching, wheels scraping the rutted road. Clods of dirt flew up in their faces, farmers’ fields rushed by in a blur of gold, a low branch broke off against the cart, sticking up from the side like a giant
shmeckel.
A wheel flew off and still they raced, three-legged, careening from side to side, the wind pummeling them. The boy bounced and fell, rising into the air and dropping onto the seat with a loud smash, his face turning green again. Like souls in hell, the horse and the bear and the green-faced boy hooked together. Yarush began to laugh. They crashed through a flock of geese, honking and parting with a great flutter of wings and falling feathers, the goose girl in her red petticoat swearing at them. One gosling, shaggy with shedding down, neck stretched long, lay still on the road behind them, and the girl hoisted it onto her shoulder. Peasants in the field raised their scythes. The cart tilted, threatened to fall. And still they raced, the rank smell of bear chasing the horse, her eyes bulging, flecks of blood around her nostrils. In front of them a cow and her calf blocked the road. The horse ran mindlessly toward her, ribs and hips almost
piercing her hide. “Done for,” Yarush shouted. “The horse is finished! Kaput.” Tears of laughter ran down his face, a rivulet gathering in the scar below his ear.

Cursing, Pyotr leaned back and unhooked the bear. The cow stood immobile between the onrushing cart and her calf, excavating hot dung. Pyotr stood, bracing his feet against the front of the cart as he grabbed the reins and leaned back, pulling on the horse. She veered off the road, turning out of the wind, the bear smell at last leaving her. She stopped. Her mouth was white with foam. Her legs trembled. Pyotr fell off the cart, the wound in his forehead reopening as he fainted among the crushed stalks of barley. The bear raised his head and howled as he headed for the trees outside of Blaszka.

C
ARRYING
the boy over his shoulder, Yarush stomped into the studyhouse. The load was heavy and he was getting hungry again. From the village square came cries of, “Buy, buy fresh red apples, apples freshly picked, as if painted, apples like raspberries, so juicy that they’re worth a kiss.” His stomach grumbled. “You there,” Yarush said. But just as the Rabbi looked up, Yarush noticed the portrait of the
Alter Rov.
He stopped, fixed by the gaze of the Old Rabbi with his prominent nose, the long beard hanging over a good-size belly, yes, just as he remembered, the broad fur hat, the plain walking stick. A holy man, not like the new Rabbi, a skinny person with his mop of red hair speckled gray, his beard curling in all directions like the fronds of ferns around a mountain spring. Out of respect for the
Alter Rov
, Yarush just asked, “Where should I put him?” and spit into the corner.

“You?” the Rabbi said, “What do you want?”

“The boy is hurt,” Yarush said. “Where do you want him?”

The Rabbi stood up, waving his hands at Yarush as if to push him away. That was Blaszka. Take your money and your goods on market day and throw you out like you’re nobody’s son. Pyotr groaned. The cut on his temple was dripping slow fat drops of blood down Yarush’s back. He started to lower the boy onto the rabbi’s chair.

“Not here,” the Rabbi said sharply. “Come with me.”

Yarush followed him into the house next to the synagogue, where the rabbi pointed to the couch in the front room. The boy groaned as Yarush dropped him, not ungently, onto the couch. “Take off his wet clothes and cover him with my nightshirt,” the rabbi was saying to his
housekeeper, “and wrap him in my feather bed. I’ll see what Misha can give me for the cut.” Before Yarush could finish casing the room for valuables, he was being ushered out the door.

“And for my trouble?” Yarush asked.

But the Rabbi ignored him, hurrying across the square to the house on stilts. The house, yes. With the woman. The one that had spit at him. The one he thought would be different when he lay with her, but wasn’t. Yet the image that came to his mind wasn’t the fight in the village square but his fantasy in the tavern—a table heaped with food for
Shabbas.
A woman calling him to come in. What would Misha’s table look like tonight? It was Friday,
Shabbas
was coming. Would she light the candles? Would she spread a white cloth on the table? In the village square he heard she was as big as two women now. It wasn’t anything to do with him. Of course not. But why shouldn’t he have a look at her? Looking didn’t cost nothing, and she’d been promised him once.

Ignoring the Rabbi’s mutterings and feeble wavings, Yarush climbed the steps behind him. The Rabbi knocked on the door, then opened it a crack, just wide enough for his narrow frame to slip through. Yarush peered over his shoulder. On the bed beside the wall lay Misha. Bigger than anything he had ever seen. As big as a host of women. Could he have had anything to do with that? He wanted to touch it, that big belly with maybe something of his inside it. He wanted to see how her breasts swelled, the nipples riding on the top of the mound, the way his wife’s did, once. He imagined again the white cloth covering the table, the two braided loaves of Sabbath bread, the cup of sweet red wine, the white candles flickering. But the picture wavered, broke apart, and instead he saw Misha as she had lain beneath him, her face white as a silver coin, a round red spot on each cheek. What did she see, then, as she looked up at him? He’d never asked such a question. He’d never thought to ask it. The question stretched, it filled his mind, and stretched some more as he remembered her hands pushing at him uselessly, her eyes shutting tight, head to one side, his hand over her mouth. Look, he told himself, she’s had it plenty before. She’d been promised him, right? And any question he had about himself snapped into a small, hard knot, like an indigestible stone that had to be expelled.

The Rabbi slammed the door behind him, shutting him away.
Yarush flushed, the scar under his ear standing out whitely. “It’s not mine,” he said aloud. “These witch women screw a dozen and don’t know the difference.” He shrugged and left, thinking of the silver coins in his pouch, and how he’d buy drinks for everyone and they’d call out, To Yarush, to Yarush.

O
N THE
Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, called the Sabbath of Repentance, Russian soldiers found Pyotr’s bear. They broke his arms and crushed his chest, as was the practice with dancing bears, to force them upright and to prevent them from squeezing their captors in a fatal hug. They found great amusement in the dancing bear.