The River Midnight (57 page)

Misha laughs, her gold tooth gleaming. “You’re a fool, Berekh,” she gasps.

“What else?” he shouts as she squeezes his hand with all her strength. “Wisdom and wisecrack, the same root.”

The stool rocks, blood breaks, and the baby slips into Ruthie’s arms.

A girl, squalling mightily, hair as red as fire. Another push. A boy, hair as dark as earth, holding onto her heel.

“One isn’t good enough for the midwife of Blaszka, of course not,” Hanna-Leah says, smiling as Misha demands her babies, both of them, though she can hardly keep her eyes open.

Standing beside Misha, Berekh says the blessing for new things.

W
ITH THE
door to Misha’s house open to the last glimmer of light in the sky, Berekh faces the congregation. They stand on the stairs and around Misha’s garden and along the embankment of the river, flowing into the night, the women in their white dresses and shawls, the men in their
kittels
, worn under the wedding canopy, and worn to the grave.

“It’s time,” Berekh says loudly from the top of the stairs. “There’s just a minute of daylight left. Listen to me.” They look up to see him in his blood-spattered
kittel
, framed in Misha’s doorway, his beard a glinting fire in the falling mane of night. The wind dies down. The sun hovers in the sky, waiting for them. The women stand with the men close by. There is no
mekhitzah
, no wall between them here. Their rabbi stands in the doorway of the little house on stilts above the river. And as Berekh’s voice lifts in the ancient melody, the river is the silver crown and the sky the velvet robe of the Torah. The night is the Holy Ark. And they are the Host of Heaven. The souls in hell are rising to the place of hope, right here in Blaszka, while the willow trees weep for joy as Berekh sings Kol Nidrei:
“All vows, oaths and promises which we make to God from this Yom Kippur to the Yom Kippur coming and are not able to fulfill—may all such vows between ourselves and God be annulled. May they be void and of no effect. May we be absolved from
them. May these vows not be considered vows, these oaths not be considered oaths, and these promises not be considered promises.”

Inside the house, Misha rests, her babies asleep in the cradle, her grandmother’s embroidered cloth hanging above them protectively, while the women stand with their arms linked, listening to the song of peaceful breathing.

I
N A
hundred years, five thousand miles from Blaszka, Misha’s great-granddaughter will stand in the synagogue among the men and the women, listening to Kol Nidrei, her prayer shawl draped over the child in her arms, its father standing next to her, his shoulder touching hers. And she will know that her great-grandmother at that very moment, in the house above the River Północna, is listening to her lover sing the prayer that opens the door beyond time, her babies resting after their long swim.

In the women’s gallery, Faygela holds Ruthie’s hand. Hanna-Leah sits on her left side, Emma and Alta-Fruma behind them. Beside Hanna-Leah, Misha holds her babies close. Around her are the women of Blaszka, leaning shoulder to shoulder in these last moments of their fast. Malka. Gittel. Little Haia-Etel. Naomi. Old Mirrel. Shayna-Henya. Shayna-Perl. Ettie. Rivka. Tzipporah. Old Liba, though she can’t see and she doesn’t hear. Together they pray:

“Gotteniu, the precious day of Yom Kippur is almost gone. The sun that was too bright for our eyes is falling, its light dimming. Yet I have a few sweet moments to plead for Your pity. Remember that we are Your children, and You our Father, our King. Have mercy on us. I have no more strength. My tears are tears of hunger and weariness. I cry out to You. Every part of my being begs You. Open Your holy eyes and look at Your children, see the river of tears flowing from our eyes. Our father, our King, seal us in the Book of Life for a good life, all of us who are Your children …”

Down below, the men stand as Hershel lifts the ram’s horn, Hayim between the dungsweeper and the picklemaker at the back and Berekh at the front, facing the scribe and the blacksmith and the ritual slaughterer and the wheelwright and the carpenter, whose sons and grandsons
will leave Blaszka for Warsaw, Jerusalem, Paris, London, New York, Montreal, Shanghai, the fathers kissing their sons on both cheeks, wishing that they would stay and some will, indeed, stay and wish that they had gone.

I
N THE
coming year, Misha’s son will be called Ari the Lion, after Hayim’s father, and the girl will be called Blema, after Misha’s mother. Blema means bloom, and when she grows up, she will marry and bear a son called Zev the Wolf, after Berekh’s father.

In 1940, Misha’s son Ari, a partisan, will bring food to a woman from Plotsk and her ten-year-old daughter, hiding in the Północna woods, sheltered by the hut that once held the printing press.

After the liberation this girl, then sixteen, and Misha’s grandson, Zev, will find each other and fall in love. Aidel-Mariam will teach Zev to dance and not to swear and they will emigrate to the new world, via London, where Emma Blau will assist them with their papers.

In the new world, they will give their middle child a flower name to remind her of Zev’s mother, Blema, the daughter of Misha, and this child will grow up to dance as her mother danced, as her father’s mother danced, as her great-grandmother might have danced in the woods beside the Północna River.

One summer evening, this great-granddaughter will look out on a river on the other side of the world from Blaszka, where yet the flat landscape and the smell of the lindens in bloom are a little like that old world. Before it sets, the sun bursts through her window, dazzling her eyes. So how can she be sure of the shape that she sees on the water, a wave of the hand as if her great-grandmother were greeting her? Yet she lifts her own hand in greeting, and while the sky darkens she thinks of Misha, who comes to her in dreams to tell her about the real Blaszka, the one that shines through the stones. Then the great-granddaughter picks up her pen to write it all as she promised she would:

In her bridal trunk Misha put …

I
N HER
bridal trunk Misha put a scorched wooden spoon, a sliver of almond soap, a blue book with a worn cover, and a piece of red amber with a fossilized feather in it. From time to time, she adds something
to the trunk, lifting the lid to show what’s inside to her family and her friends and to strangers when they are guests in her house.

But for now in the year 5655, the men stand below and the women above in the balcony of the synagogue. They have recited the public confessional, admitting to lies and slander and robbery and violence and stubbornness and immorality and tyranny, willingly and unwillingly, with disrespect and mockery, in gossip, in business, in swearing up and down that something was true when it wasn’t. And for all this they are forgiven.

The village of Blaszka has reached the final moment of Yom Kippur. The Rabbi calls
tekiah gedolah
, the great blast, the long call that closes the Gates of Eternity. Hershel raises the shofar. As he sounds the call, the ram’s horn curls in its spiral toward heaven. Awake, awake, the gates are closing, and we are left again in the world of time, alone with one another.

In the village of Blaszka, as in every other place, even in fairy tales, there was an oldest son and a youngest son, a rich sister and a poor sister, the clever, the wise, the wicked and naive, a constellation of people, seemingly motionless, a river of stars in the midnight sky. But go closer and the stars are exploding suns that come into being and die, and in between give life to all manner of things. Look and you’ll see the planets with their seas rising and falling under the pull of the circling moons. Even closer, you’ll see the trees of the forest and mushrooms sprouting in the dark places. Watch how the mushroom pickers, when they find one that’s wormy, cut it into pieces which they scatter on the ground to spread the spores, so new mushrooms will grow.

Mushrooms are the fruit of the fungus. Below ground are cell-wide threads that take sugars from the roots of trees, giving in exchange water and minerals. Because the roots are hard and thick, they would have trouble getting what they need without these threads, this network of life blood running through the ground connecting all the trees, making of the woods a single living thing. So make yourself a bowl of mushroom soup, and as you lift the spoon to your lips, remember that this, too, is the river midnight, and as you drink, know that Hanna-Leah made this exact same soup for Hershel, once upon a time.

B
LASZKA IS A
fictional village, mythical as shtetls must be, since they’re gone now. My parents and my grandparents on both sides came from cities in Poland. The generation beyond that, my great-grandparents, most likely came from a shtetl somewhere—but who they were and what that shtetl might have been is a mystery. As I was writing the first draft of the novel in a cottage on Prince Edward Island, it seemed natural to link these two myths, the shtetl and my lost family history, by tracing my lineage through Misha. And why not? After all, couldn’t she have been my great-grandmother as much as anyone?

Yet, once there were shtetls. Their people had existence. And out of respect for them, I wanted the novel to be as historically accurate as possible. So let me say that while Blaszka is fictional, as is the Północna River, all of the details of people’s lives, their songs and prayers, the geography of the cities and the landscapes described are factual, with the exception of Whorehouse Row, which is an imagined street in the city of Plotsk (though the whorehouses themselves are based on fact). Any dates given in connection with historical persons or events, including the cholera epidemic of 1867, are also factual. All of the characters in the village of Blaszka are fictional.

Doing the research for this novel began as a challenge, frustrating
because unearthing specifies of daily living was difficult, but it ended as a privilege: I stepped into another world and was honored to do so. For historical events, I used contemporary sources as well as looking for the most up-to-date historical research. To get the details and flavor of daily life, I used contemporary sources first of all, secondly sources prior to 1905 (when certain restrictions, such as censorship, were relieved), thirdly sources prior to the First World War. Between the wars, when Poland was independent, life changed in many ways for the Jews: access to secular education increased tremendously, but the economic situation and local anti-Semitism worsened, so material from that period doesn’t accurately reflect life for Jews as it was earlier. I used very little material written after the war; the Holocaust overwhelms memory at that point, the shtetl is cast in a nostalgic glow, the surrounding culture remembered in the bitterness of loss.

For those of you whose curiosity has been piqued, I’ve put together a selection of interesting sources. A number of these books are out of print, but are available in libraries. All of the sources below are written in, or translated into, English. They are organized by category, arranged alphabetically by title.

Researching and writing this novel has been a journey of discovery sweeter and more demanding than I could have imagined. May your journeys bring you much
nakhes
, that untranslatable joy of a full heart.

A good place to start for short, informative articles is
The Encyclopedia Judaica.

For more in-depth reading, The Institute of Polish-Jewish Studies in Oxford, England, has published a number of very good books through Basil Blackwell Ltd., Oxford. I would especially recommend:

I would also recommend:

Non-Fiction