The River Midnight (47 page)

I
N THE
Golem Cafe, Berekh returns the letters to their folder. It is getting dark and difficult to read, and in any case he has finished all the letters. He has discharged his duty to his friend Moyshe-Mendel. It is time to return home. It is the 26th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev, 5655, or December 24th, 1894, according to the Christian calendar. Monday. Tonight Berekh will light candles for the third day of Hanukkah. It is both the dark of the moon and the dark of the sun, three months since the Day of Judgment. And how was he judged?

T
HE SAGES
call Yom Kippur the long day. There is no night, time hangs on a thread spun by the haunted melody of Kol Nidrei. It is said that there are some whose singing makes the demons weep and the souls of hell fly up to heaven. But as the sun lowers on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Rabbi’s throat is dry. Though he opens his mouth to begin Kol Nidrei, nothing emerges but silence. His throat is closed. Why? he wonders, attempting again to sing, without success. It can only be because he has not atoned for the sin of his cowardice. Pinye. Meyer. Now Misha. She most of all. At this very moment she suffers alone and if she lives through the labor, still he cannot undo one moment of her pain. Across the square she lies alone. How many are alone? Women and men, each naked before God. His eyes blur. The walls of the synagogue melt like tallow, and he sees in the distance sparks flying toward Blaszka. Is it the Holy Fire or the Angel of Death?

“Where?” asks Pyotr Mirga, sitting beside Izzie.

Hershel thinks he means the Rabbi. “Right there,” he says.

The Rabbi thinks he means the fire. “Coming,” he whispers.

But Izzie is sure that he must mean the Eternal One, Blessed Be, the Holy Flame out of which leap the sparks of life. “Here,” he says, touching Pyotr’s hands, not knowing what makes him say this, “here,” holding out his own hands, and “there,” pointing to the women’s gallery where his sister, Emma, stands beside Alta-Fruma.

“Can I find my wife somewhere,” asks Pyotr, “after so long?”

“Here,” says the Rabbi, holding up his hands. “Dear God, I am Yours.”

“Do you hear?” asks Hanna-Leah in the women’s gallery as the moon slides across the village square. “How long must she suffer without anyone to give her a drink of water even?”

The men point. They whisper, “Misha, it’s her time.”

Ignoring their calls, Berekh pushes his way between them, even though it is too late to erase his betrayal nine months past, when a gust of snow blew across the village square.

The sea of women parts. Berekh enters Misha’s house.

I
N THE
coming year, the proprietor of the Golem Cafe will retrieve the Paris edition of
Fleurs de Lis
from Berekh’s table. Tucking the newspaper under his arm, he will say to Berekh, “Just think of that poor fellow Dreyfus in his confinement on a barren isle. While all those who allowed this tragedy—”

“Yes,” Berekh interrupts him excitedly, “how can a person call himself a man when he hides behind his own inaction? Such a man can never escape his guilt. Never. No matter how hard he tries.”

“And yet,” says the Director, “he is not the criminal.”

“No, he is worse. The criminal is pitiable. He is ignorant, or mad. But the man who stands by has no excuse.” Berekh pounds the table. “None. None at all.”

The young Traveler at the next table turns in his chair, crossing one leg over the other, calmly clasping his hands over his knee. “Every man can atone,” he says quietly.

“How can he? The past cannot be changed. Such a man, though he atones all his life, cannot erase one minute of pain and suffering.”

“How true,” the Director admits. “How wise, how perspicacious are the monsieur’s words. A deed once enacted cannot be recalled.”

The Traveler sees Berekh tense, his shoulders drawn inward, a muscle in his cheek twitch. “God in Heaven,” the Traveler snaps, “a person atones all of his life, and you’re telling me it’s useless?”

“Yes,” Berekh says. He rubs his forehead as if it aches.

“Even if such a man devotes his life to attention and action?”

“He can’t erase the past,” Berekh insists.

“Right,” the Traveler agrees. Berekh nods with grim satisfaction. “But,” the Traveler continues, “such a man hears the call of the ram’s horn not only on the Day of Atonement, but every day. Awake, always ready to make amends by acting on behalf of others. Always alert lest he fall asleep again.”

“Perhaps,” Berekh agrees tentatively.

“How fortunate,” the Traveler says, “are the friends of such a man. How lucky are those who know him. They’ll always have someone to turn to in time of need, a man who won’t look down on them for their sins, knowing his own.”

The Director claps his hand on the young Traveler’s shoulder. The Director smiles, the Traveler smiles back. Berekh thinks that they look like brothers. And if he were telling his students a story, he would say, For an instant I saw
Netzakh
and
Hod.
The light brightened around them and I saw the twin aspects of the Holy, one crashing through all barriers to the outflow of God’s benevolence, the other holding back lest it be dissipated uselessly. The light was like a fire that does not burn.

“But you, monsieur, have a train to catch, I believe,” the Director says, and the light is ordinary again.

“Yes, I’m expected in Blaszka, this evening. My children are waiting for me. But take this.” Berekh turns to the Director. “To make up for the sugar tax.” He hands him a box of matches. “I have another.”

“Au revoir, Rabbi,” the Director calls after him.

I
N A FEW
days, Berekh will light a memorial candle for Meyer, who died on the third day of the Hebrew month of
Tevet
, which this year will begin on the eve of the 29th of December, exactly one year since the day that Misha conceived.

In fifty years, one of Berekh’s grandchildren will survive the war, though just a boy at the time. He will eventually settle in the new
world. One weekend in the early 1960’s he will stand with his friends in front of the tents at a Jewish Boys’ Camp, brandishing baseball bats at the neo-Nazis who have threatened to attack it.

In a hundred years, this grandson of Berekh’s will say to his own children and grandchildren that he survived the war because he didn’t fight. Time after time, he let chance take him from a situation that seemed better to one that seemed worse, only in the end to save him from death. He was lucky.

Or perhaps, the Traveler might have said, restraint is as much a sign of the Holy as is courage.

 

In the village square, a crowd of women jostled like geese around Misha’s stall. From the array of jars on her table, she picked a mixture of fennel seed, nettles, raspberry leaf, motherwort, and wild oats. “Listen,” she said, tying up the herbs in the handkerchief of a woman with red eyes and a scar along her chin. “Boil a spoonful of this in a small pot and drink it morning and night. Between us, it would work better if you …” Misha whispered the rest in her ear.

A tired tear trickled along the woman’s broad nose as she nodded, slipping a few
groschen
into Misha’s hand. Again, Misha whispered into her ear. She smiled crookedly and Misha laughed, her gold tooth gleaming, holding onto the woman’s arm with her large hand, laughing and winking until the red-eyed woman laughed creakily. They looked so foolish, rocking from side to side, huge Misha and Agata the stick, laughing at nothing, “at cheese,” the women said, that soon they too were laughing and pointing until their sides hurt, arms lifting and falling like beating wings. “Give him to me,” Misha said to Agata, pointing to the baby riding in her shawl. “You go to Rivka’s table. She
has new fabrics from Warsaw. Like no one else’s. Just go and look,” Misha said, humming as she took the colicky baby and Agata headed across the square.

I
NSIDE THE
bakery, Faygela, surrounded by her daughters, was saying, “But in walked Misha, like a queen. She threw out the doctor, turned the baby around inside me with her own hands.”

I
NSIDE THE
butcher’s shop, Hanna-Leah was saying, “Did you hear that someone saw a pair of man’s pants sticking out from under Misha’s bed?”

Who do you think they belonged to? the women asked.

“Anyone she wants.” Hanna-Leah’s eyes narrowed. “She wouldn’t hesitate.”

B
REAKING
the ice in the well with his ax, Hayim thought, A woman you can look at, but never see.

In the tavern, Hershel said, “A wild wolf.”

In her cottage, Alta-Fruma said, “Who knows things.”

With defiance Emma answered, “From the dark ages.”

Looking out of his study window, Berekh thought, Who’s more alive than the earth itself.

Driving toward Blaszka, Yarush spit over the side of his cart. “Women? There’s not a good one among them.”

A
T MIDAFTERNOON
, Misha was thinking that it was time to dismantle her stall and go home to prepare for the Sabbath. But look, Hanna-Leah was coming across the square from the butcher shop. It had been a month since she’d last gotten a remedy from Misha and apparently it was time for another.

“You have something different?” Hanna-Leah asked.

“What I gave you before didn’t help?” Misha could see that it hadn’t. Was this a happy woman, tapping her foot, looking over her shoulder to see if anyone was listening?

“Just give it to me. I don’t have time to stand here all day.”

Once Hanna-Leah had been the most beautiful of the
vilda hayas.
Now her golden eyebrows were drawn together, a deep line between
them, her mouth pulled down into a tight crescent. “Put it in the soup,” Misha said gently, reaching toward Hanna-Leah’s shoulder, but Hanna-Leah pulled away, grabbing the package and slapping a few kopecks onto the table.

A
FTER
M
ISHA
took down her stall, she stopped to check the stores in her cellar on her way home. Because her house was on stilts, the cellar was dug into the earth beyond the floodline of the river, on the edge of the woods. Bending low to enter the half door, Misha climbed down the steps with the agility of someone who was coming home.

The deep, dark cellar was filled with everything good. The straw insulation, with its faint hay smell, the hanging bunches of dried leaves and roots, the baskets of flowers and bark, the shelves of bottles and jars. Here she used to stand beside her mother, storing what they had gathered in the woods. “So Misha,” Blema would say, “do you remember what I told you about tansy?” Or it might be belladonna or ergot or something more ordinary like raspberry leaves. Misha would answer—where it grew, the shape of the leaves, color of flowers, how to prepare it, when to use it, any dangers. If she made a mistake, her mother would make a clicking sound in the back of her throat, and Misha would ask, “What is it, Mama?” Blema wouldn’t tell her. She would only say, “Watch more carefully, Misha. I won’t always be here.” But in the dark cellar, with its fragrance of spring even in the middle of winter, Misha could still feel her mother near.

As Blema did when she was alive, Misha conducted an inspection every week. Were the raspberry leaves still white and green? Was the clover a good purple-pink? In the winter, when all she had was the light from the kerosene lamp, she relied more on the smell and the taste of the herbs. “Look at this,” she now murmured. The willow bark was crumbly and musty-smelling. A shame, especially in the winter, when there were so many fevers. And half of the plantain leaves were soft and sweet-tasting because Ruthie had picked them still wet with dew. “What can I do, Mama? She has to learn,” Misha said, speaking to her mother casually, as she often did.

“At least I have plenty of comfrey if I need something for a cough. But look at this getting spoiled.” Misha picked up a jar of plantain oil, clumps of mold along the glass rim. “Never mind, I’ll make an ointment
out of it. I need more anyway, and right before
Shabbas
is the best time to make it.” Misha continued along the rows of shelves, inspecting the glass jars of infusions and decoctions, the brown bottles of tinctures and syrups, the tins of ointments.

There were times when Misha thought her mother could hear her, and other times when she thought she was talking to herself. What does it matter, she often said to Berekh, a person has to talk, even to air. “Mama, I know what you’d think,” Misha said as she climbed out of the cellar, swinging her basket. “But look, I’m not a child anymore. I can’t be alone all of the time. So get married again, you’d say. Be like everyone else.” Misha sighed.

Her mother used to say, Don’t be like Manya. You know what happened to your great-grandmother. She got pregnant not once, but twice. Two beautiful girls. But a father for the children? None. And when she was accused of all kinds of nonsense, she was taken away from them. Her hair turned white and she died. All because she wasn’t like anyone else.

Once in the house, Misha placed the jar of moldy oil on the stove beside the pot with her soaking laundry. Then she turned to the clutter on her table. Pushing away half a loaf of dried bread, a cracked jar, a shiny stone, three pots of flower bulbs, and a fishnet, she tore
The Israelite
, which Faygela had left on the table last week, into narrow strips. Half the strips she set aside for the outhouse, and the other half she divided between the stove and the cracks around the window.