The River Midnight (55 page)

W
HEN
E
MMA
woke up from her sleep, she complained that she was cold. Within a few days everyone knew that the doctor from Plotsk had come and gone, and there was nothing he could do. Izzie was sent to stay with Hanna-Leah. On Saturday evening, August 11th, the synagogue was draped in black for Tishah-b’Av.

T
HE CHILD
’
S
face was mottled red, her lips cracked, her fingers plucking at the blanket while she shivered helplessly. “Emma,” Misha said, “can you hear me?” But the girl only continued her incomprehensible murmuring.

“She’s been like that for hours,” Alta-Fruma said.

“Has she drunk anything?” Misha asked.

“Nothing. You see the oranges the children brought for her? I can’t squeeze even a drop into her.”

Misha uncovered her basket, considering the jars and powders. Alta-Fruma looked at her hopefully. “There’s nothing new in here,” Misha said. “Everything for a fever, for chills, for confusion, I sent with Ruthie.” At the sight of Alta-Fruma’s stricken expression, she added, “But I’m not going. Let me show you what else I brought. See how restless she is. It’s stealing her strength. We have to calm her.” Misha’s voice lowered shyly as she took a silk-wrapped bundle from the basket. “My father made this. You remember him?”

Alta-Fruma nodded, intent on the musical angel Misha was now winding up. “If you just looked at him, you felt that
Shabbas
was here, he was so calm,” Alta-Fruma said. “But I never saw anything like this.”

“He made it during the cholera epidemic. In Plotsk they said it was their rabbi who stopped the epidemic. In Blaszka they said it was the wedding of the orphans in the cemetery. But my mother said it was my father’s music box. I had it all these years in my bridal trunk. Now, I’ll put it here, right near Emma. Listen.”

The two women stood side by side, Alta-Fruma, gray-haired and green-eyed, her hands twisting, and Misha in her red shawl, the knotted ends rising and falling with the breath of her pregnancy.
“Ani maamin,”
the notes called, “I believe,” turning Emma’s head toward the music, her hands lulled into stillness. Her eyes fluttered open and closed. But how her cheeks still burned.

“The fever has to break soon,” Misha said. “If you just touch her you feel how fast her heart is going. If the fever doesn’t break …”

Alta-Fruma groaned. “What can I do?” she asked. “There must be something. I can’t just sit and watch her go from me. Please, Misha, tell me. Anything.”

“You’re upset and tired. Here, all you can do is watch. But your sister was a
zogerin.
It must mean something. Go to the shul and pray. Maybe the Holy One above is listening and waiting for you.”

Alta-Fruma kissed Emma on the forehead. “Watch over her,” she said, covering her head with a shawl. As Alta-Fruma left, the door swung wide in a gust of wind.

“Never mind,” Misha said, “I’ll latch it shut. Go on.”

The wind smelled of dust and dryness. There were no stars in the sky hanging low like the belly of a pregnant horse, a black horse with angry nostrils and hooves like rusty iron. Misha closed the door firmly, dropping the wooden bar into the latch. Turning around, she didn’t blink at the figure seated on the stool beside Emma’s bed.

“Good evening, madam,” he said, tipping his hat.

She didn’t answer, but rewound the music box before she set about forcing Emma’s jaw apart so that she could put a tincture of willow under her tongue. Then she took two jars, poured a liquid from one into a bowl and from the other added a powder, using a wooden spoon to stir it.

“
Tsk, tsk.
Won’t you even wish me a good evening?”

“When a woman is pregnant, she sees many interesting things. Does that mean she wants to talk to them?” Misha said without looking up. Bending over Emma, she hummed,
“Ani maamin.”

“In that case, I’ll take my charge and be off.” The figure snapped his gloved fingers, and the music stopped midnote. Misha straightened quickly, facing him as he stretched out impossibly long arms. Were those hands reaching toward her? Inside the white gloves anything
could be hidden. She could still be at home, dreaming, she thought. But it wouldn’t do to treat this, this person lightly, even in a dream.

“You don’t look to me like someone from the Holy One,” she said. “Maybe you’re from the other side. Then you can’t be here for Emma. She’s a good girl.”

“Don’t be so provincial. There is only one side. And I have my requisition papers right here.” The figure took from its pocket a scroll with seals that flickered like blue flames. Misha was frightened then. Not because of the seals. Anyone could imagine a fiery scroll. But it, the figure sitting with its knees crossed, used words and terms she didn’t know, that she couldn’t have made up. So I’m not asleep, she thought. And maybe this one’s not here for Emma. It’s come for me, or for my baby. Yes, that’s it. She felt a sharp pain in her midsection, a pull as if wires were dragging out her insides. This is the punishment for my sins, she thought. It isn’t right, she wanted to shout. I don’t deserve this. But she had no breath for even a whisper. The figure was pointing a gloved finger at her. It’s a dream, she said to herself, closing her eyes. Nothing but a dream. Calm down. Don’t scare the baby out of you. What would your mother say? But she could only remember the wreath of braids. After she died, would someone cut off a lock of her black hair to intertwine with Manya’s? It seemed important, but she couldn’t think why.

The figure bent its finger and the pain intensified, driving through her back like a spike. She fell to her knees. Her heart raced.
“Sh’ma Israel, Adonai Elohainu, Adonai Ekhad,”
she prayed, lowering her head to her clasped hands. I’m finished, she thought and, once she made up her mind to it, she could calmly watch herself humbled with pain and fear. Her mother would be waiting for her. And with her would be her mother, and her mother before her, all the women whose lives were braided in the wreath in her bridal trunk. And surely her mother would forgive her.

But she couldn’t let go yet. There was one more thing to do. The gloved angel could have her, but first she would have to do something for Zisa-Sara’s child. “Dear God,” she said aloud, forcing the words between groans. “Before You take me, please let me help this girl. I only ask for a little time with her, until her fever breaks.”

The figure clapped its gloved hands. There was a dry rattling
sound. “I applaud your selflessness,” it said, “but that’s hardly necessary. I’ll tell you a secret. I was only having a little fun because you, let’s just say, you irritate me. Don’t misunderstand, I truly admire you. One always appreciates stimulating opponents. Isn’t that so?”

Misha nodded weakly.

“Well, I’m not here for you, but for the girl.”

Now that the pain was gone, and she was sitting up straight, she felt a little better. “You expect me to trust you?” she asked, the spark of the old Misha reviving.

“I’m offended,” it said, putting a gloved hand over its waistcoat, where a heart would be if such a being had one. “You’ve met me often enough to know me by now. Surely we’re old comrades. Is it so different meeting, as they say, face to face?”

“If,” she said, “you are who you say you are. But I’m not going to give Zisa-Sara’s child to just any person who comes in when my back is turned.”

“My card,” it said, presenting a card with a black border.

“I don’t read,” Misha said curtly.

It took a gold watch from its waistcoat pocket, and flipped the lip up. “I’m getting rather late,” it said. “It’s been quite amusing having this conversation, but I must leave and you’re in the way.” Misha didn’t move. “If you prefer I can take you,” it said threateningly. “My requisition states one female.”

“And you always follow your orders?” Misha asked.

“Oh, quite precisely. Without fail.”

“Then take me.” Misha ignored a tremor of fear. People said that the soul pleaded not to be sent down into a human body. Life was too hard. But once joined to a person, the soul clung to life because it was so painful to be torn from the body and flung back to where it came from. This is the reason that no one is condemned to hell for longer than twelve months. The death agony is cruel enough to make up for almost any sin.

The figure tilted its head to one side, putting one gloved finger to its, what one might call, mouth. There was a stony sound as it tapped its chin. “Well, well. I heard that Misha of Blaszka was brave, but now I see she is foolhardy, too. But who am I? Only a servant. Only a soldier. Just following orders. Take my hand.”

Misha reached out to the gloved thing and felt a profound tearing, an unbearable stripping of skin and bone and muscle, of color and texture and shape, sucked upward in a whirlwind to a blaze of light. For a moment, she thought she saw a replica of Blaszka in the light, a shimmering village square, a synagogue of shifting iridescence, a bridge of fragrant dew across water so clear she could see smooth stones of every color and fish like stars that flickered among the whistling reeds. Coming toward her streamed a river of light made of a hundred familiar faces, their arms outstretched in welcome. And wasn’t that Zisa-Sara? She felt a movement inside herself, though she had no inside, of something that meant to leap into the arms of light, and whether it was herself or her baby, she didn’t know, only that she didn’t want to be left behind, alone.

“You idiot, the orders were for one female,” a voice said. Who was it? Misha wondered, turning. Away from the light, everything was a confusion of undarkness.

“So what’s your problem? Here you have one female.”

“Not one. She’s pregnant.”

“And that counts?”

“Do you want to take a chance with the Boss? You know what’s written. If you add even one dot to the Boss’s orders, it goes on your record in red. When your ledger is reviewed … let’s just say that I’m not going to the Boss with this.”

“Well, then, I’ll just put her back and take the other one.”

“Oh, no you don’t. You know the rules. Only one death agony per requisition. Back she goes, and you just go to the Boss and take what’s coming to you.”

The first voice, the dry raspy one that she remembered from the sickroom, seemed to turn to her. “It looks as though I have to take you back, Misha, but I’ll enjoy the memory of our time together until we meet again. Don’t forget that we have an engagement, and I’m looking forward to it.”

As the dizziness increased, Misha thought that the gloved angel must not realize that it couldn’t frighten her that way twice. She had seen the real Blaszka, even if just for a moment. It was enough. Nothing would be exactly the same again. She would always see the light inside the stones of the village.

Opening her eyes, Misha found herself sitting on Emma’s bed, supporting herself with one hand on the table where the music box still played. It was a dream, she thought, but in her other hand was the wooden spoon she’d used to stir the tonic for Emma, and there was a scorch mark on the spoon.

“Auntie?” came a voice. “I’m thirsty.” It was Emma, the flush fading, her forehead covered in a cool sweat.

Alta-Fruma, coming through the door, cried out, “Emma, dear Emma, I’m here.” She rushed to the bedside as Misha put a glass of water to Emma’s lips.

“Look, the fever has gone,” Misha said. Emma drank a little water, then lay back, her eyes closed, her hands still. “She’s asleep.”

Alta-Fruma sat down and cried.

“How can I thank you, Misha? How can I repay you?”

“I did nothing. It was you. You prayed, and she came back to be with you. Look, all I did was make up a tonic for her.”

But Alta-Fruma shook her head. Brushing Emma’s hair back from her forehead, she said, “I have a long memory, Misha. I won’t forget what you did for me.”

I
N THE
days afterward, Misha was very tired. It could have been because she was getting close to her time. Though she wasn’t able to go out, everything she needed found its way to her house. Faygela came, and Ruthie, and Alta-Fruma, and Berekh.

On a hot, sticky day, he bathed her with cool water and almond soap, his hands so careful and light that even her edgy nipples approved as he lifted her shift and caressed them ever so slightly. Dipping the cloth in the pan of water, he wiped under her breasts and over her belly, a strange smile on his face that widened into amazed delight.

“What is it?” Misha asked.

“I felt it. The baby.”

“So, didn’t you feel it before?”

“This was different. It tried to grab my fingers. It knows me.”

“Don’t be silly. How could that be?”

“No, no. The baby knows that it’s mine,” he said, “I’m sure of it.”

Misha pushed him away. “The baby is mine, and no one else’s.” She crossed her arms.

“Misha,” he said with a mother’s tenderness, his long arms reaching around her waistless abdomen. “Are you sure? Are you really sure?”

“Well,” she said, softening. “It’s possible. It could be a little bit yours.”

“A little bit is good enough.” Lifting her hair, he kissed the nape of her neck, then rubbed her shoulders, singing the old song,
“Last night I went to a wedding, I saw many women there But none with your black eyes, and none with your raven hair, da-da-dum.”

As he massaged her back, Misha relaxed, leaning against him, surprised by his sturdiness. After a while she turned to face him, sinking her fingers into his wild beard, with its flecks of moonlight, as she kissed him.

After the ram’s horn called in the New Year, Misha could no longer leave her house. She felt the baby’s head like an overturned bowl between her legs, and it was a good idea, she found, not to sit down too quickly. From time to time she felt a peculiar spark in the birth canal, like a tiny strike of lightning. There was not an inch of room left inside her, and all afternoon she slept, half-sitting on her bed, with three feather pillows behind her back, and two under her knees. Alta-Fruma had brought the pillows, saying that with two children in the house, she had no room to spare for old things.

Tzipporah came and prayed over Misha.