The River Midnight (7 page)

Is that a question? Hanna-Leah stopped in midstep. She looked around the village square. The tavern, the synagogue, Misha’s house, the bridge, the beaten earth under her feet, the woods and the river. Everything familiar. It seemed to shiver for a minute, as if, without the butcher’s wife to tell the women what was going on in Blaszka, it might disappear.

T
HREE WEEKS
later, the wild strawberries were ripe. In the clearing near the birches, squatting on her heels, Hanna-Leah worked methodically, clearing a square of berries, then moving on. Her hands were red with juice, the basket slowly filling with the tiny berries. When she began, the sky was overcast. But now the sun beat down on her bent back. She stood, hands in the small of her back as she stretched. It was here that she had last seen the stranger. She stood where he had stood, picking up her basket of strawberries, turning her face to the sun, hot as the stranger’s hand.

Grandmother Rivka used to say that in heaven they ate strawberries. Hanna-Leah was hungry. It wasn’t easy picking strawberries. She should at least taste her work. She put a strawberry in her mouth. Was one enough? It was nothing. Just a morsel of sweetness. So she took another. And another. Why not? Didn’t she pick them herself? Then a handful. So sweet. So juicy. More. And more. Until her basket was empty. All her work eaten. But how sweet it was. And how thirsty she’d become in the hot sun.

I’ll go to the river, she thought, walking through the woods to the place where the river narrowed. The water was cold there, flowing quickly between the silver rocks. Hanna-Leah knelt, drinking greedily. Water ran between her cupped hands, down her throat, her chest. She
drank again and again, until her thirst was quenched. Then she watched the river whirl around the silver rocks in white bubbles. She sat so still that a fox brushed his tail against her back and she saw the speckled scales of trout. Before she got up, she held a blade of grass between her thumbs, blowing into the opening, like a ram’s horn blasting the silence. Enough hot sun. Off came her shoes and stockings. Up went her skirts, bunched around her waist. She waded into the river, cold water swirling between her thighs as she tore off her kerchief, shaking her hair loose.

W
HEN SHE
came home, Hershel was waiting. He sat in the rocking chair, but he wasn’t rocking. He was holding the wooden doll in his hands.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You’re different,” he said. “I don’t know you anymore.”

“Well, you don’t have to call the matchmaker. We’re married already.” She took the doll from him and put it on the shelf. Hershel’s hands hung on his knees as if without the doll they didn’t know what to hold onto.

“Did you eat?” she asked.

“You weren’t here. How should I eat?”

She stood in front of the cold fireplace. “Where’s your mother?”

“Asleep. I put her to bed,” he said.

“Good. So we’ll eat. There’s soup on the stove.” Hershel leaned back in his chair, fingers entwined over his chest. “But I’m going to sit, and you can serve it,” she added.

“Me?” Hershel asked, sitting up.

She walked to the back of his chair, her hands on his shoulders, leaning over so that her hair fell over him, tickling his face. “Sure, you. Are your fingers broken?”

“All right, so I’ll do it.” He stood, taking her hands, pulling her. “You sit, Hankela. No, no. Not at the table. Here in the big chair.” His fingers held onto hers so tightly she could feel the quick pulse of his blood. “You sit and I’ll bring everything to you. Everything. Why not?”

Before they went to bed, Hanna-Leah threw out the rest of Misha’s medicine. She undressed and lay down beside Hershel, but she didn’t
wait to see if he would roll toward her. She just went right to sleep, lying on her back, her hand in his. A woman has no appetite for potions when she can wade in the river and uncover her head and eat soup served by her husband.

The raspberries were ripe and Hanna-Leah made preserves. On market day she crossed the village square to Misha’s stall. There was the usual crowd of women, Misha’s head high even though she was out to here. “I made too much,” Hanna-Leah said, giving Misha a basket filled with jars of raspberry preserves. “Do me a favor. Take it.”

Misha shaded her eyes against the sun, looking at Hanna-Leah. “You feel all right? You need something, Hanna-Leah?”

“What should I need?”

“Maybe a tonic.”

“My grandmother used to say that what a person wants you can’t buy in the market. When we went to pick mushrooms. Do you remember? She gave us each a basket. Me and Faygela. You and Zisa-Sara.”

Misha nodded, her hand on her belly. “I remember.”

“I’ll save a nice piece of brisket for you,” Hanna-Leah said. “Come before
Shabbas.
A pregnant woman needs to keep up her strength twice as much as any man.” The women at Misha’s stall laughed. “Am I right?”

“When you’re not wrong, you’re right,” Misha said.

W
HEN THE
blueberries were ripe and Misha was seven months along, the women asked Hanna-Leah in the butcher shop, Who do you think the father is?

“It could be anyone. But I’ll tell you.” She leaned forward over the counter. “The baby’s not a stranger. It’s Misha’s. Wasn’t Misha born right here in Blaszka? There’s nothing more to say about it.”

O
N A WARM
day in the first week of August, Hanna-Leah watched Hershel in the back of the butcher shop. His sleeves were rolled up, muscles standing out on his arms as he swung the cleaver. “How is Zisa-Sara’s daughter?” he asked.

“Not good. It’s better that Zisa-Sara died so far away than that she should see her daughter buried here.”

“Is Emma so bad, then?”

“It’s typhus. What more is there to say?”

“Maybe children from America are stronger than ours.”

“I haven’t seen Zisa-Sara for ten years, she should rest in peace. Her children are practically strangers. But now they’re here, at least we could take in the boy. God forbid that Izzie should fall sick, too.”

“Where will he sleep?” Hershel asked.

“In the front room. We have an extra cot. What do we need it for?”

So Izzie came to them, his face pale, his small hands clutching the same canvas bag he’d brought with him on the ship from America. In the evening, after he fell asleep, Hanna-Leah complained that it was too warm in the house. “I need a breath of air. A walk. Watch over the boy, Hershel.”

O
UTSIDE
there was a small breeze, but still she was warm. It’ll be cooler by the river, she thought as she walked into the woods, taking off her kerchief. Night swallowed the last of the sun. The wind fingered her hair, the fruity perfume of summer darkness filling her lungs. When she came to the river, she took off her dress and hung it on a branch with her shoes and stockings as if she were a girl going to swim. How pleasant it was in her silken shift and her bare feet. She leaned against a willow, listening to the hoot of an owl, the rush of its wings, the squeak of a mouse. Clouds skimmed over the moon. Hanna-Leah sang:

As she sang, she heard music. A silhouette showed against the reappearing moon. A man playing the violin. The Traveler.

She lifted her arms as if she were dancing around the bride’s chair, as if all the
vilda hayas
were dancing with her here in the woods where they’d once told secrets. She spun and her feet turned the earth. In the
sky she patted the hungry wolf. Between her legs was the heat that eats time.

The music slowed, melted into silence, and she was alone again.

And hot. How cool the river looked, foaming white over the silver rocks. A goose flew across the moon, calling its mate. Why did they bring water from the river to the
mikva
instead of just going to the river itself? Hanna-Leah wondered. As she walked farther down the bank, the water lapped at her feet. Hanna-Leah waded in, her silk shift clinging to her like another skin. The river eddied around her legs, the current pulled her forward, sand sifting between her toes. She dipped under the water, deeply, as if she were in the
mikva
and had to make sure her hair was covered by water. Once, twice, and the third time, she stayed under, crouching, legs apart, water lapping her, rocking her, her eyes open to watch the reeds wave in the reflection of the moon and silver fish flicker between the reeds, from a great distance hearing the whisper of her name. Hanna-Leah rose from the river, looking up at the moon. “Kosher,” she said.

She came into the house, her feet squelching in her shoes, her dress soaking, mud and water dripping onto the floor. “You’re wet,” Hershel said.

“Am I?”

“Where have you been?”

“The river. Near the silver rocks.”

“There? The current is fast. The water’s deep. You could have drowned.”

“I didn’t,” she said, yawning and stretching and smiling as if she’d been to the River of the Messiah and back.

“You didn’t,” he said. “Thank God, you didn’t. You’re soaking, Hankela. You’ll catch your death. Come into our room and let me help you take off the wet clothes.”

They stood next to the bed, Hershel gently pulling the cotton dress over her head, and then the silk shift. “You could have drowned.” He draped a towel around her back. A worn towel, rough, yellowed, frayed. “You should have a soft towel,” he said, rubbing her shoulders, her spine, the small of her back. Her smooth strong shoulders. Her delicate spine. Curving into the large round rise of her full-moon bottom. Hanna-Leah sat on the bed. Hershel sat beside her. Then he began to take off his clothes.

*  *  *

O
N THE
eve of Tishah-b’Av, the boy sat with Hershel in the first row of the synagogue. The Holy Ark was draped in black while the village mourned for the destruction of the Holy Temple. They mourned their old losses, and they grieved because there was typhus in the village. Remember the cholera epidemic in ’67, they said. So far only Zisa-Sara’s daughter Emma was ill, but everyone knew how easy it was for the entire village to be brought down by sickness. And although Emma’s brother was only ten, he prayed like a grown man, Hershel told Hanna-Leah when they came home.

How tired the boy looked, how small. “You see the doll on the shelf?” she asked as Izzie lay down on the cot.

“Over the fireplace?”

“Yes. That isn’t any doll. She tells stories. It’s true. And not any stories. Just my Grandmother Rivka’s. Do you want to hear one?” The boy nodded, his pale hands folded over his chest. “All right. Once there was an orphan child that was afraid of a hungry wolf. Her granny used to tell her that there’s never any reason to be afraid of a wolf. You only have to know what to do. You understand?”

“What happened to the orphan girl?” Izzie’s eyes blinked as he struggled to stay awake.

“One day she ran from the wolf until she was lost. She ran so far, that she ran right into a deep river.” The boy was asleep, curled on his side, his hands under his chin. Still Hanna-Leah continued the story, Hershel sitting in the rocking chair, looking at her and listening. “But the wolf followed her,” Hanna-Leah said. “What was she to do? In the river she could drown and on the shore the wolf would eat her. But the Morning Star who was bigger and wilder even than the wolf said to the orphan child, ‘Drink up the river.’ So the child drank and drank until she’d swallowed the whole river and stood on dry land. And what do you think she found growing on the bottom? Mushrooms. Imagine, mushrooms growing underneath a river. So she picked the mushrooms and fed them to the wolf. ‘Here, doggie,’ she said. ‘Eat.’ And the wolf ate until it was full. After that, whenever the wolf was hungry, it came to the girl for mushrooms.”

“She picked good mushrooms,” Hershel said. “And her pierogies were the best.”

Rosh Hashanah fell on the first of October, the ram’s horn proclaiming the New Year. The men sat below, the watercarrier in the back, more important men, like the butcher, closer to the Holy Ark.

In the balcony above the women prayed in Yiddish,
“Dear God, You know what weighs heavily on my heart, things I cannot tell. You know every hidden thing. You know my wounds.”

Below, the men chanted in Hebrew, the holy tongue,
“On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed. Who will live and who will die. Who will rest and who will wander.”

Above the women cried with the
zogerin, “Do not let my children or grandchildren die while I live. Do not let my good friends bring me sorrow. On Yom Kippur, when we stand before you in our bare feet, weak from thirst, hardly able to say a word, accept our fast as atonement for our sins …”

A
S THE
days of awe mounted toward Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgment, the Day of Atonement, neighbor sought forgiveness of neighbor, resentments were cleared, debts canceled, and there was little bargaining in the village square on market day. Misha’s time was near, her store of herbs replenished by the girls in the village. The Rabbi studied in the synagogue, preparing his sermon. In the bakery, Hanna-Leah was seen talking to Faygela.

“If I have done anything in the year to offend you, please forgive me,” Hanna-Leah said. It was the custom to ask forgiveness in this way before Yom Kippur. To forgive willingly, in return, was a religious duty.

“Of course,” said Faygela. “And I hope that you’ll pardon me for anything I did to offend you.” It seemed as if the words were having a little trouble finding their way out of her mouth. Hanna-Leah knew that Faygela didn’t always hold with customs.

“You know what I say? Between you and me. Can someone be offended by a
vilda haya?
It only does what its nature tells it. Like your girls. And the little one, too. Look, I made a jacket for him. For
Shabbas.
It’s nothing. I had the material from my grandmother’s shawl,” Hanna-Leah said.

“It’s beautiful.” Faygela held the green satin in her hands, turning it over and over. “I remember when your grandmother first wore the shawl. At your wedding.”