The Singing Fire (24 page)

Mrs. Zalkind counted many gentiles among her acquaintances. In fact she could count on her fingers the number of her Jewish friends, and all of them were of German origin. Jacob’s father was a dear, but if he had been a German Jew, Mrs. Zalkind was certain that she would be president, and not just secretary, of the Society for the Protection of Hebrew Girls.

The German Jews were more aloof than the gentiles, if you asked her. They’d completely forgotten that, a hundred years ago, it was the Jews of Spanish origin who were terribly English, looking down on the German Jews as vulgar newcomers. Now they were neighbors in the West End and sat together on the boards of important charities and looked down their noses at the Russian Jews. They really ought to see that there were some Russian Jews who were just as English as the archbishop of Canterbury.

They were all British now. Loyal to the queen and worried about the East End. Such depravity. Nobody knew it better than she, who had lived there herself. Her sons were born in the East End, but you would see no sign of it in their demeanor now. They were British through and through, as she often told them. If one were not careful, civilization would soon be swamped by the moral plague bred in the East End. Soho was nearly as bad, and the Jews who lived there gave them all a bad name. Even her own father insisted on walking to that crude, noisy
shul
in Soho. He had not once attended the Central Synagogue despite the Roman pavement in front of the Holy Ark, as inspiring as anything you might find in a cathedral. Miss Rosenberg would surely agree if she saw it. More tea?

“Yes, if you please,” Emilia said.

“I do wish my German were better,” Mrs. Zalkind said as she poured tea from the silver pot. “I believe that I should find it easier if I did not speak the Jargon at all, for it only confuses me. It is most unfortunate that my father so loved the Yiddish theater. It was a corrupting influence and did him no good, I’m sure.”

“Quite so,” Emilia murmured, but Mrs. Zalkind had turned her head toward her father.

He was sitting in a corner of the parlor, reading a Yiddish newspaper. He wore slippers and an old wool cap, and on the wall above his head there was a large painting of Sir Lancelot and Guinevere. Every so often he would lower the newspaper just enough so that he could peer over the top and stare shyly at Emilia.

“If he would just take off that old cap,” Mrs. Zalkind whispered. “Englishmen don’t wear hats in the house.” But that was how it was. An old man clung to his customs to keep him afloat in a sea of strangeness. His daughter strove to excise any difference from herself as she rose from the sea like Venus, taking her place in the English middle class.

Jacob’s grandfather noisily turned the page of his newspaper. “Do you need something,
Tatteh
?” Mrs. Zalkind asked in Yiddish. “Are you warm enough? The damp gets into your bones. You coughed last night, I’m sure of it. At your age, you have no business walking from that
shul
of yours in the rain. Refusing to set foot in our synagogue when it would be so easy for you to go with us. I think you just want to spite me,
Tatteh.”

“But I don’t like it,” he said, looking over the edge of the newspaper. “The rabbi makes a sermon in English. Did you hear such a thing? He wears a white robe like a priest. I hope my grandson isn’t getting married in a church, God forbid. Then I’d have to sit
shivah
for him as if he was dead, and I might as well bury myself, then. Ask her, daughter.”

“
Tatteh
, I told you before. Leave everything to me and stop worrying.”

“Mrs. Zalkind?” Emilia said, keeping her face blank as if she didn’t understand, glancing vaguely at the Yiddish newspaper, which surrounded the grandfather like the wall of the first wife’s garden.

“My poor dear, you must think of me as your mother since you have none. There are so many things to talk about,” Mrs. Zalkind said. “Baptism, for example.”

“I beg your pardon,” Emilia said.

“Such a thing could never occur in our family. Never. Do you understand me?” Mrs. Zalkind’s eyes glittered with animosity as if her son had decided to marry a side of bacon, and though she’d like to indulge him, she might not be able to keep herself from frying it up instead.

Emilia carefully put down her teacup. She would have to keep a kosher household. “I hadn’t thought—”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Mrs. Zalkind interrupted. “I do. And there shall be no church. It would be the end of my father, and I will not allow that.”

“We were planning a quiet ceremony—” Emilia began to explain.

Mrs. Zalkind interrupted again, her voice quiet, clipped, and fierce. “There will be a rabbi. I have an acquaintance who was married to a gentile in the reform synagogue twenty years ago. I shall send the rabbi a letter of introduction.”

“We were planning a civil ceremony at the registrar’s office, but naturally I will follow Jacob’s wishes,” Emilia said. He would have nothing to do with rabbis and such. He often said so; and the more his mother would insist, the stronger his opinion would be. She was sure of it. There was no reason for her neck to itch so. She wouldn’t scratch it, not if she had to dig her nails through the table.

The last time she’d seen a rabbi she’d been wearing this very dress. Before it was remade, the overskirt split at the knees, and she had looked past her folded hands at the gold brocade while explaining that she’d come on behalf of a friend. The question being so delicate, the friend was too embarrassed to see the rabbi herself. She was sitting in his study, the door open a crack because he wouldn’t talk with a woman behind a closed door. It was in Minsk, the summer sun filtered by heavy curtains. She was warm in her dress, and the old rabbi’s forehead was wet.

She lifted her eyes to see him scratching the corner of his chin. No
shaaleh
is too delicate for me, he said with a little smile. Women bring me their stained cloths to examine when they need to know if it’s time to go to the ritual bath. What is it, my girl?

My friend is pregnant, she said.

And her husband could not come to me with the question? the rabbi asked. When she said there was no husband, he nodded as if everything was clear to him from this world to the next, though the light was dim in his study.

She’s afraid to press the father of the baby, Emilia said, unable to meet the rabbi’s eyes. She thinks—well, she thinks he can’t marry her because she might be a
mamzer
. There. The terrible word was out.

It was a Sunday afternoon like this one, church bells ringing. Emilia expected the rabbi to look shocked, but he just pulled down a tall book from his shelves of many such volumes, dark on the outside, yellowed on the inside, as if nothing was new in life. He opened it, pointing a finger here and then there. A complex matter, he said. On the one hand, if a
mamzer
is a scholar, he ought to take precedence over a high priest that is ignorant. And yet there’s no question that it is a defective status. A
mamzer
can marry only another person born of a prohibited union. And their children will also be forbidden for all time to legitimate Jews.

It’s unfair, Emilia protested. The rabbi looked at her with great sadness. Cataracts were beginning to obscure the blue of his eyes, and he had to bend close to the book to read it.

It’s the law, he said. One cannot change God’s word, but maybe I can ease your friend’s mind. What she did is shameful. She lost her virtue like a whore. But still, she’s a mother’s child—if she marries… Many things can be forgotten over a lifetime.

But not if she’s a
mamzer
. Her father has often declared that she may not be his, Emilia said. Her manner was calm, hands quiet in her lap, as if she were not the one the rabbi had called a whore.

Ah, he said. Then your friend’s father was living elsewhere in the year before she was born—not with her mother.

They lived together, Emilia said. And to show off her knowledge, she quoted her father, But as the Talmud says, one can always be sure of the infant’s mother, however the father can be anyone at all.

The rabbi spoke angrily. That is meant in another context. Now you should understand why a girl is not to study the Talmud. It only confuses her and leads to immodesty. Listen to what I’m saying. Jewish law presumes that the husband is the father if he lives with the mother in the same house. And even if he was not living with her, if at any time he has called the child my daughter, or indicated his paternity in any way, such as paying for her education, he has no right to say she isn’t his.

No right? Emilia asked, surprised at the anger in the rabbi’s voice when she herself felt nothing but hope.

I’m telling you plain, such an action is despicable. Your friend is not a
mamzer
, and it’s a great sin on the part of the father to lead her to
think so. The rabbi then went on to explain more particulars of the law. So there is no reason for your friend to hesitate, he said. She should marry at once.

The rabbi stood up. His shoulders had shrunk in the last year, his caftan hung loosely, the silk sash tied several times around his waist to separate the purer upper half from the base lower regions of the body during prayer. This is how it is, my child, he said. It’s been a long time since I visited your father’s house. Do you think that maybe I should invite myself?

I’ll be the one to send you an invitation, Emilia said, as soon as there is an occasion.

Good. I hope to recite the wedding blessings for you very soon. It’s written that under the wedding canopy, every sin is erased just as if it was the Day of Atonement. You remember what I’m telling you.

It wasn’t long afterward that Emilia found Mr. Levy. When she went to see him, she knew that in Jewish law the presumption of paternity, unlike in the case of a husband and wife, didn’t apply to him. The mere fact of sexual relations was not enough; an unmarried woman must prove the paternity of her child through the father’s admission that it was his. This she had learned from the rabbi, though at the time she’d been certain it was irrelevant until, to her astonishment, Mr. Levy admitted nothing. And so she discovered that all knowledge can be useful at some time or another, though it will not make you happy.

Later, on the boat that brought her to London, she dreamed about the Furies flying about with their snake hair. Sometimes they pecked out her father’s eyes. Sometimes Mr. Levy’s. Sometimes even the rabbi’s. When she awoke, she saw only the ghost of the first Mrs. Rosenberg. But what business did the ghost have to cry as if Emilia were someone to pity? She had a first-class cabin and a trunkful of gowns in the latest fashion, which she knew how to wear.

Now she was in Wigmore Street, a different person, a gown made over in the new style. The grandfather took off his spectacles and folded up his newspaper. “I’m going out a little bit,” he said in Yiddish as he stood up. He was a few inches shorter than Mrs. Zalkind.

“You’re not going to Soho, Father?” He nodded, looking away. “If you must play cards, then let me send you in a cab. There’s no reason for you to walk. It isn’t
Shobbos.”

“I can walk.” Her father’s voice was stubborn though he was a man who wouldn’t swat a fly, for it has a soul and even an animal soul deserves consideration. His face was round, his nose arched, his beard as yellow as fog.

“A mule.” His daughter shook her head.

“So we’re alike. Who would have thought?” He turned to Emilia. “Such a daughter. Aye-aye-aye. She’ll make you a proper wife. In a kosher home. You understand?” In English he added, “Nice girl. Good girl,” patting Emilia’s cheek. How ridiculous that this should make her eyes wet.

Mrs. Zalkind put another scone on her plate, and cream slid down from a silver spoon.

Berwick Street

It was summer and the noise in the street was deafening, for who could stay inside those hot rooms? Two men and a woman had been thrown out of the Hound and Hare. The men were laughing as the woman beat at the window with her fists, the organ-grinder playing at double speed. Every day the street was louder, as if night would clutch its ears and go somewhere else. It was August, and newspaper vendors sold out their papers within an hour, calling “Murder most foul” and “Murderer identified.” In the market Jews were buying fish for
Shobbos
. Who needs to be afraid here? they asked. But they kept their daughters close by them and studied every man as if he might be their enemy.

The ghost of the first wife was restless, looking at the package on the table, then the gowns laid out on the bed for packing, checking the inside of the wardrobe, inspecting the trunk.

“Do you think it should all go in?” Emilia asked. The engagement had lasted a respectable six months. She’d be married in three weeks.

The first wife turned toward her, lifting her hands as if to say, Why not?

“The new hat goes in and the gowns that have been made over. Maybe I ought to leave the others. No, you’re right. The material is all first rate. I’ll have the others made over, too.” She unpinned the brooch from one of the gowns, putting it in the wardrobe before she packed the gown carefully between layers of muslin.

There was a small scroll painting from the Curios department on
the wall beside the wardrobe. Emilia took it down and wrapped it in newspaper.

“Mrs. Zalkind has a very good dressmaker,” she said. On the table was this month’s issue of
La Nouvelle Mode
. “I want one just like Miss Cohen’s, only with not so many ruffles and a little lower here and something in back.” Emilia looked at herself in the cracked mirror.

On the table the package from Minsk was unwrapped, beside it a card from her mother, again cautiously signed as if it came from an old family servant. The front of the card was illustrated with two girls in frilly dresses, the bigger one holding the smaller one on her lap, a basket of flowers at their feet, and a sentimental verse in Russian. On the back her mother had written a note: Oh, the sorrows of mother and daughter separated by heaven’s will, et cetera, followed by a few words about tears shed and hopes for the future and so on, finishing with “Each of your letters is more precious to me than gold even though they are so very short.”