The Singing Fire (13 page)

“Oh.” A gust of wind blew dirt into Emilia’s eyes. She blinked, trying still to imagine the villa.

“Too particular you shouldn’t be, but we can’t settle for a butcher or a tailor either, God forbid. People would be suspicious. Our family runs to big babies. That’s what we’ll say.”

“No one will believe it, anyway.” Emilia bit her lip. “Who’s going to marry me in such a rush?” A man that would like to throw it in her
face, that’s who. “Someone that wants a slave, Mama. You know what it’s like. There must be another way. Please …”

“There’s no other way. Do you think you’re the only one your father’s going to throw out of the house?”

Her eyes filled with tears. She turned away so her mother wouldn’t see.

Mama looked at the brick wall as if she would take it apart with her hands if she could. “Maybe we’ll think of something else.”

The ghost of the first wife was sitting on top of the wall, her back to them as if she were tired of the garden.

The plans were made at the dairy table in the kitchen while the maid shelled peas in a large bowl and Mother cut fantastic creatures out of gold paper. And when the table was littered with unicorns, sphinxes, and winged horses, the story was complete. They would travel as two widows, mother and daughter, whose husbands had been killed in a pogrom. The unborn child was to be named after its lost father. A pity on him. The maid was entrusted with Mother’s jewelry, which she would sell to pay for their passage. They had to go where two more Jewish refugees were nothing worth noting; Mother remembered the article that Emilia had been reading in the garden. London would be damp and Mother’s hands would cramp, but it couldn’t be helped. At least Emilia had some English, and while they packed, she taught her mother a few words.

Mother laughed and grew a year younger every day closer to their escape. Emilia was absentminded, remembering Mr. Levy sitting with her at the table, making her hold her tongue between her teeth, hissing like a lisping snake: “Thhh … This. That. This. That.” And she imagined that they were married, living in the villa. The child was born; it was a boy. He drank milk from the goats.

A week later, Emilia stood at the front gate, fiddling with the latch. Behind the house, the apples in the tree were turning red as the ghost of the first Mrs. Rosenberg rose up from the garden.

“We have to go,” Emilia said. The trunk had been taken to the ship earlier in the morning, and Freida was now fastening the brooch on Mother’s summer cloak. It was the last piece of her jewelry.

“Just another minute.” Mother clung to the maid.

“The carriage is waiting,” Emilia said. It was in the road, just outside the gate, the driver holding the horse’s head and having a smoke while he sweated in his wool cap.

“I just need a drink of water.” Mother wiped her eyes as she sat down on the front step. “I’m a bit dizzy. Would you get it for me, Freida?”

“Hurry,” Emilia said. She couldn’t stand the waiting. The thing in her belly was making her queasy again. “You have the tickets, Mama?”

She nodded. “We’ll be two widows, an old one and a young one,” her mother said with a peculiar smile, as if she were telling a tall tale that no one would believe.

“Let me have them.” Emilia held out her hand nervously. The blue tickets were for the train, the green for the first-class cabin. She slipped them into her gloves.

Mother fanned herself with her hand as she looked at the open gate. “Do you find it very hot?”

“Not so hot,” Emilia said. It was a cool day for August, and cloudy. Mother was squinting as if the light was too strong.

“Listen to me,” Mother said urgently, looking past her as if she were talking to someone else.

“We’ll talk later. Once we’re on board the train,” Emilia said, following her mother’s gaze. The ghost of the first Mrs. Rosenberg stood by the gate, but how could she be here, outside the garden, on the other side of the wall?

“Do you remember the story of Tamar in the Bible?” Mama asked as the ghost of the first wife came to the steps and sat down beside her. Emilia frowned and pointed back to the garden, but the first wife was looking only at Mother.

“She was a woman from among the Canaanites who married into the Hebrews,” Mother said. “As tall and beautiful as a queen. She faced the father of her child in the Jewish court and forced him to acknowledge it.”

“Mama …” Emilia kneeled in front of her, rubbing her hands to remind her that she was here among the living and they had first-class tickets.

“The great King David is descended from Tamar on his grandfather’s side,” Mama said to the first wife as if this were just the time for
conversations with the dead. “And on his grandmother’s side there was Ruth.”

“The train leaves in an hour.” Emilia pulled on her mother’s arm.

Mama was looking intently at the ghost of the first wife. “Ruth left her mother’s house for a strange country with strange customs and took them on as her own. She had golden eyes just like my son. For her merit, I’m asking you, stay with my girl. Promise me. You have to promise.”

When the first Mrs. Rosenberg nodded, Mother closed her eyes, rolled down the steps, and lay in a heap at the bottom, her brooch fallen onto the stones.

The maid stood in the doorway, holding the glass of water.

“We have to fetch the doctor,” Emilia said, patting her mother’s cheeks. The skin was cool and slick as wet stones, her mother’s breathing shallow.

“Wait here,” the maid said. “I’ll run next door.”

Emilia picked up her mother’s brooch, holding it in her hand as she looked at Mother’s face, so lovely without any pain, like the cameo. “I thought you’d go this time, Mama. Because you were going with me,” she said. “I was that foolish.”

When the doctor came, he’d bring his assistant to carry her mother inside. He’d give instructions about powders and compresses, and then her father would arrive and he would break things in his suspicious rage, ordering Emilia to get rid of the pieces. It would be the same tomorrow and the next day and forever.

The driver had finished his cigarette. “If you’re not going, I’ll get another fare,” he called through the front gate.

Emilia hesitated, the cameo brooch still in her hand. The train wouldn’t wait. The ship would sail across the sea with an empty cabin. She couldn’t let her mother do this to her, no matter how helplessly Mama lay on the ground, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, one arm flung back. Emilia stood up, made sure that the tickets were tucked safely into her gloves, and forced herself to walk to the gate. When she was seated inside the carriage, she leaned out the window as the driver took up the reins, waving frantically good-bye as if her mother might wake up and bless her going.

The driver flicked the whip at his horse’s rump, but before it could
take a step, the ghost of the first Mrs. Rosenberg slipped into the seat beside Emilia. The dead can still make promises to the living. They can keep them if the living will allow it.

LONDON, 1886

Prince’s Street

It was Saturday night and the Sabbath was over, naphtha lamps flared, shutters snapped open, barrows were hauled over cobblestones, stalls set up, awnings unfurled, sacks thrown onto curbstones. It was the people’s night, wage packets in hand despite the summer drizzle, music coming from every corner, “Hi! Hi!” shouted from doorways with wet banners proclaiming the escape artist, the strongman, the contortionist just on the other side of a threshold, only a penny.

It was Nehama’s favorite time of the week, and her favorite place was here in the queue outside the theater, where Jews ate fried fish and chocolate, their children hopping from one foot to the other. All around them was tobacco smoke and the talk of the street, of work and no work, the horse that won, the husband that ran away, a jacket nearly new and such a bargain, the brawl upstairs, a broken nose, a war somewhere and whether it could come here, the editorial about keeping Jews out of England. Everyone was excited, and she heard Yiddish words that she’d never learned at home. The words turned blue in the rain and red with the flare of a match; they would carry her inside and upstairs and continue all through the play while the audience ate and drank and children gasped at marvels.

Nathan was telling a joke. It wasn’t such a good joke, but though her hands were cold and her cheeks stung, she laughed till her sides ached. So did Minnie and Lazar and the neighbor from upstairs who liked a drink, and the rough-stuff cutter who made up poems about boot factories. Minnie’s oldest was playing tag with the little boys while ticket holders for the good seats went inside, folding umbrellas made by the people in line. Someone spat, someone hissed. Inside the box office, the ticket seller finished his supper and smoked a cigarette. Then he opened the window and shouted, “Balcony seats! Have your money ready. No deals.”

The Yiddish theater was in Prince’s Street, a real theater, not just a shaky platform in a coffee house. It was built by Mr. Smith, the butcher, with an orchestra pit, a parterre and a gallery, a curtain that went up and down on pulleys, and plaster grapes above the chandeliers. It played every night but Friday, and could have played then, too, if the religious court hadn’t threatened to pull Mr. Smith’s certification of kashrut. He was a
landsmann
of Nehama’s, but as she said, there was a whole congregation of Plotskers up in the balcony and not one of them got a penny off their ticket.

Nathan was whistling as they went upstairs. Here and there in the balcony were “patriots,” who had roses or maybe a bottle of wine for their favorite actors. Nehama held tight to the railing as she climbed the slippery steps. “I wouldn’t know it was summer except that the busy season is over. I’m that wet and cold. Your coat is soaked. Stop dripping on me,” she said, scanning the balcony. “There they are.” She slid into her seat next to Minnie and Lazar and their two children. They all lived in the same house in Frying Pan Alley, where Nathan had his workshop in the back room. Lazar was his presser and Minnie a general hand.

“You call this dripping? I call it a storm.” Nathan shook out his coat.

“Move a little,” Nehama said. “Your elbow’s sticking into me.”

“Where—should I jump up and hang from the chandelier?”

“Your coat is taking up half a seat.” She rolled it up and put it on the floor between them. “Did you fix my sewing machine? The treadle keeps sticking. I told you.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll oil it.”

“You think machine oil is the cure for death?” She shook her head. “I’m afraid we need a new sewing machine, Nathan.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll be lucky at cards.” He played cards once a week during the busy season. When he had no time for cards, he placed a bet on a horse. Never more than a shilling or two, but why throw it away? A lodger would be glad to pay a shilling a week for a place to sleep on their floor.

“Your luck is why we still have the old one,” she said.

He crossed his arms. Only two things he insisted on: running the
workshop as if he were boss of the world, and his two bob a week for cards. “You want me to give up betting?”

“When the Messiah comes. Give me an orange.” She was just starting to show and already she could feel the baby fluttering inside her. She was sure their child would look like Nathan. She hoped so.

“All right. Here you go, Nehameleh.” He took out his knife to cut it in sections the way she liked it, with the peel still attached. On Sabbath afternoons when they made love, he traced the scar on her thigh as if it didn’t ruin the smoothness of her leg. The scar was shaped like a crescent moon, but Nathan wasn’t afraid of the night.

She would have a new song to sing to her child and a new story to tell it.

In the pit, the orchestra put down its supper: bread smeared with garlic and chicken fat, ginger beer to wash it down. Near them sat the wealthier Jews of Whitechapel, just as in the synagogue they sat close to the platform where the Torah scroll was chanted. Mr. Smith gave his signal: torches were lit at the foot of the stage and the orchestra began to play. The patrons of expensive seats shushed loudly from within wreaths of cigar smoke that ascended to the balcony as a man walked onstage between the shadows. This was the great Jacob Adler, who enjoyed the swooning of every Jewish girl in the East End. He wore a gray wig and a long, threadbare shirt. Under it his legs were terribly skinny. Even bowed.

“But he isn’t handsome at all,” Minnie whispered.

“It’s the makeup,” Nehama said.

“Well, I wish he’d put on a little less,” Minnie huffed. She was holding her baby in one arm and flowers in the other. “For sixpence, I want a hero that doesn’t hurt the eyes.” She gave her flowers to Lazar.

Onstage the beggar was picking through rags. He was supposed to be in Odessa, but he could have been in Minsk or Pinsk or Plotsk or London, muttering to himself as he put his bits and pieces into a basket, then taking them out again. Is it yours? he asked, looking up at the audience with confused eyes as he scratched under his arm. If you’re telling me no—then it must be mine.

In the
heim
, beggars brought home for
Shobbos
were called guests. Some of them were just poor and some of them were crazy, but it was
an obligation to sit and eat with them and not cause any embarrassment. Here in London, they were all guests, poor and sometimes crazy.

Onstage the ragpicker found a child crying among the rags. He looked around. Is she yours? he asked. Yours? Or maybe yours. Poor little thing, the audience whispered. But who wants nobody’s child? Then you must be mine, the ragpicker said, lining his basket with a thousand pigeon feathers. And he put the baby in the basket.

Grandma Nehama used to bring home a different guest every
Shobbos
, each one stranger than the one before. There was the man who had a dog, though Jews never had dogs, and it did everything the beggar did, waved hello with a paw, barked all through the grace after meals, and peed on the floor. Then there was the man who spat when he talked. He’d traveled around the world and came with his wife, who said she was the queen of beggars.