The Singing Fire (42 page)

“What do you mean?” Gittel asked, knotting the end of the rope that pulled the guy in its cart. But how could she fool herself—didn’t she know the truth in her heart? She felt it in her bones. She heard it in the air, calling louder than the voices of the dead.

Libby didn’t look unkind as she started to say something, then just shook her head. “Aunt Nehama would never let you sing in a pub.”

Gittel stuck out her chin. “You watch me, Libby.” It was there, the answer was there, hidden in Dorset Street, creeping along the gutter at the heels of dangerous men.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Libby hurried to catch up with Gittel, turning a corner both darker and louder.

Frying Pan Alley

Minnie and Lazar’s room upstairs looked much the same as it had many years ago. It was two steps from bed to table, where you could lean over and open the door, and the table was still made of crates and boards, but Minnie’s pride and joy was a real wardrobe with a door and a mirror. All right, the mirror was cracked, but Minnie could see all of herself in it, not like the little piece of glass she’d been using before, stretching herself one way and then the other to see her hair, her collar, her waist. One day a cameo brooch fell out of the wardrobe, just like that, and Minnie always wore it to
shul
on the holy days; it made her the equal of any woman in a feathered hat.

“I got a letter today,” Nehama said.

“From one of your sisters?” Minnie opened the window and threw a pile of fish bones onto the roof of the backyard shack that housed a tinsmith, his family, and his workshop. Then she wiped the bowl with
a rag so it could be used for the potatoes. Her apron might be stained, but her hair was combed and curled and pinned in some ornate style she’d seen in an advertisement for Pears soap.

“It’s from Shayna-Pearl.” Nehama had letters from one or another of her sisters at the New Year and Passover and whenever there was a birth or a death.

“Remind me. Which one is she?”

“The teacher.” Usually letters came from Nehama’s oldest sister. Sometimes one of the others. Even Bronya had written her eventually, though every so often she made a reference to earrings that could never be replaced and who can imagine the things that one sister could do to another.

“You just had a letter from her.”

“No—you’re thinking of Bronya. I mean my middle sister with the bad temper.”

“I thought she didn’t speak to you.”

“That’s it exactly,” Nehama said. “This is the first I heard from her.”

“What does she say?”

“She saw a play, and it reminded her of me.”

“After twenty-five years?” Minnie asked, peeling an onion. When she was finished, she’d fry the fish and cook the potatoes and onions downstairs. They’d all eat together, her family and Nehama’s. “You’d think a teacher would have a better memory. What was the play about?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t say. Only that the play reminded her of me and when she came home she cried. I don’t remember Shayna-Pearl crying over anything. Yelling, yes. That she did plenty. Slamming doors, fine. But she says in the letter that she cried and she had to write to tell me a story.”

“It gets better and better,” Minnie said. “So she finally finds her tongue and she wants to tell you stories. What does she say?”

“It’s about my grandmother. My step-grandmother, I should say.”

“It must be something to make your sister write to you after all this time,” Minnie said.

“Let me tell you, and then you can be the judge.” Nehama picked up a potato and began to peel it. She needed something in her hands.

“So? I’m listening,” Minnie said.

“Grandma Nehama had a miscarriage.”

“A lot of women have miscarriages. I had one between Sammy and Libby.” Minnie sliced the onions like a juggler, fast fast fast, the knife invisible. The tireder she was, the faster her knife went, cutting her distress into paper-thin slices—she’d add a little salt, a little pepper, fry it in oil, and eat it as something good.

“That’s what I mean. Why did my sister have to write me about it now? Anyway, Grandma Nehama had a late miscarriage. It was her last child, and she was the same age as I am now. The midwife didn’t want her to see the baby, but she insisted on looking, and she saw that the baby was deformed. Afterward she told everyone it was better this way, because at her age taking care of such a child wouldn’t be easy and the child’s life would be a misery.”

“And you never heard this from your sisters?”

“Never. Shayna-Pearl said in her letter that she overheard our grandmother talking about it to her closest friend. It was a Thursday after the women finished singing and were eating cake. Everyone was eating cake. Only Grandma Nehama was in the other room with her friend, putting on the dough to rise for making
challah
for
Shobbos
. No one noticed my middle sister, who’d found the raisins and was hiding behind a barrel eating them all. Shayna-Pearl never told anyone because she thought she’d get it for eating the raisins.”

“So that was all? Just about the miscarriage,” Minnie said.

“Wait, I’m not finished. Grandma Nehama told her friend that after the miscarriage a neighbor came into the house in a panic because her son was
khapped
, taken for the draft. Grandma Nehama was holding the babies, my two oldest sisters, but it didn’t ease the pain she felt over the one she’d lost. The thought of another child being taken cut her like a sword. It made her crazy. So she picked up the hatchet to defend herself and her family and her neighbor’s family from any more misery. After she came home she was horrified at what she’d done. Cutting off a couple of toes from a child’s foot isn’t cooking dumplings. But in the end it turned out all right. The boy wasn’t drafted; he lived and everyone was thankful.”

“That’s it?” Minnie asked.

“Now that’s it,” Nehama said. “My sister sends her best wishes, we
should all be healthy, and to tell Gittel that she should become a teacher like her auntie.”

“Very nice,” Minnie said.

“Maybe. My grandmother used to say that as long as you can preserve life, there’s hope. But I’m telling you, Minnie, that hope doesn’t cure the cholera.”

“I’d like a new blouse myself,” Minnie said. “You can’t wear hope to the synagogue. When you work like a pig all week, then at least if you have a nice blouse for
Shobbos
, you feel like a human being.”

“Listen to me. I’m trying to tell you something. It’s a sign, Nathan going to Dorset Street.” Nehama looked at Minnie, and her friend looked at her. She knew what Nehama was talking about. A person can’t get through the busy season year after year without telling somebody her secrets. “I’m thinking one thing. Like mother, like daughter.”

Minnie looked at her hesitantly. “I don’t know if I should say this, but you can’t change a nature. Wait a minute, Nehama. Think on it. That Mrs. Levy, well, she was an educated person. Why wouldn’t Gittel take after her?”

“If only,” Nehama said. “From your lips to God’s ear. But I’m telling you, Minnie, and only you, that there is nothing more bitter than praying that your child isn’t truly yours.”

“Come on. I’m ready. Let’s go downstairs and I’ll cook supper,” Minnie said, giving the plate of fish to Nehama and carrying the bowl of potatoes and onions herself.

There was one thing that Nehama didn’t tell Minnie. Who could say why? She meant to, and then she was walking down the narrow staircase, holding a plate in one hand, a candle in the other, watching her step that she shouldn’t fall on the broken riser, for dusk had given way to night and the sound of firecrackers could startle someone.

Her sister had said that she’d remembered the end of the story only when she was writing the letter. After Grandma Nehama covered the
challah
dough with a cloth, she’d wiped her hands. Then she turned to her friend and said, Every pain in life makes a scar. The scar thickens and it becomes a snake around your neck. It’s up to you if the snake chokes you or if it looks into the night and tells you what it sees. Then you can know what’s there in the darkness.

Charlotte Street

Emilia wandered through the house in her dressing gown, remembering the first time she invited her mother-in-law for tea, wearing a made-over gown that had seemed so elegant at the time and was now the maid’s Sunday best. She was restless and needed to walk about. Here was the parlor with its Liberty’s paper of lilies and thistles, and the ceiling she’d painted in the days before they could afford wallpaper from Liberty’s. And here the dining room where Jacob used to play chess with his brother, and the same old walnut table, scratched by the cat who was locked out once and snuck in to pee in protest on the blue Persian rug. The painted willow boughs still shook in an imaginary wind, and only the door was new, filled with stained glass. But in the kitchen no smoke billowed, no brisket burned, there was only the maid cleaning ashes from the stove as Emilia climbed up the narrow back stairs to the attic.

The third floor looked just like Pompeii, preserved in the midst of activity when the inhabitants were overcome by flowing lava. Jacob’s desk was strewn with papers, the title page of his new play on top: “Shmuel in America, or The Melting Pot.” Emilia could smell his tobacco, she could see him turn his head with an abstracted air, awareness coming into his eyes as he looked at her, leaning forward to ask what she would imagine when she heard the title. She’d immediately said
cholent
, the slow-cooking Sabbath stew cooked with whatever came to hand—beans, meat, bones, fat, potatoes—the house redolent from a mixture more delectable than any humble part of it. Exactly, Jacob had said, coming around his desk to kiss her with more enthusiasm than finesse because his mind was still on the play.

There was time. She could run down and dress, send for a carriage, and be at the school before it was Jacob’s turn to speak. She’d wear the amber-colored gown from Liberty’s and the bracelet Jacob had given her for her birthday. He would look at her with the same admiring glance she’d seen in his eyes when she was a shopgirl reading Emile Zola, sitting on a tall stool in a basement, electric lights shimmering on Chinese porcelain. Why should anything in the Lane disturb her—did it have a thing to do with her? She wouldn’t remember the sound of
street vendors calling, “Hot chestnuts!” “Rabbit ’air skins!” She wouldn’t take notice of the smell of fried fish that was the smell of childbirth.

A wave of nausea came over her. That was what Jacob would see, his face drawn with suspicion as he read the worst motives into her distress. She’d better sit at her worktable and consider the garden in darkness, doused in a dismal autumn rain. Pinned to her cutting board was the sketch for a paper-cut commissioned by the salon in Regent Street. She leaned her chin on her cupped hands. The smell of paint. The smell of ink. Think for a minute, calm herself. That was what she must do.

She’d been over and over this for days. There had been too many mistakes. The rabbi would surely realize, if not from the last meeting then from the next, that she was Jewish. Yet if she didn’t go back to see him, Jacob would continue to think she was an anti-Semite and he would hate her. She’d end in telling him the truth. And then he would hate her just the same, since he’d never liked Jewish girls and she’d made him think she was something else. Oh, she’d rather he hated her for the lie than the truth, though she couldn’t stand the look on his face when he’d left the house and her tears were falling on the paper-cut, ruining it.

He could leave her and take her child. The law gave him custody. That she couldn’t allow. Instead she must pack her trunk, for she was now a woman in her thirties, not a girl dependent on her mother. Everything would be different this time.

Downstairs in the dressing room, Emilia inspected her jewelry box. It was made of exotic wood, decorated with a geometric mosaic, the contrasting hue and grain of the wood creating something marvelous even out of disease, for the best pieces were green oak, colored and shaped by an attack of fungus. It was a gift from Mrs. Zalkind, her own favorite box, with two removable trays lined in velvet.

The ghost of the first wife sat on the dressing table, her face livelier than Emilia’s as she looked at the necklace in the top tray, a gold necklace with rubies and pearl drops that had come with the box from Mrs. Zalkind. How much would it fetch? Probably more than the bracelet from Jacob, set with a sapphire and four rose-cut diamonds. The bracelet was thicker, but the gold in the necklace was higher quality.
Pearls didn’t go for so very much, but she had a string of dark green, almost black pearls, and that would fetch more than white. She’d have to sell it all, and even so it wouldn’t do for long. The jewelry of an author’s wife is not anywhere near so large in quantity and value as the jewelry that may be provided by a man who owns a brick factory. How long could she support her child?

The ghost of the first wife shook her head as she put the postcard from Minsk on the dressing table, tapping it with her finger. Maybe there was a message in it, something known only to the next world, a note of consolation or, better yet, the winner of a horse race, a long shot that would set her up with her baby in a villa on a warm hillside where she’d never miss the damp of London or the people who lived in it.

The postcard was the usual sort of thing, a warning to watch her step, a sigh over the distance between them, a prayer for her health. It helped as much in her present situation as giving medicine to a corpse. No offense to the first wife, who was impatiently turning over the postcard.

It was illustrated with a picture of Hannah in the temple, her lips moving as she prayed for God to give her a child. Standing over her was the angry high priest, accusing her of mumbling in a drunken stupor. How easy it was, even for a high priest, to misconstrue what the eyes perceive when he’d never watched anyone pray privately before but knew plenty of drunkards.

Outside in the street, revelers shouted and set off firecrackers. Someone was singing: