Beyond the Pale: A Novel (14 page)

“All day long you read books,” Daniel argued. I imagined his fists so tight they were white, hidden behind his back or punched in his pockets. “You honor and revere them. Someone has to print them—you should be happy it’s going to be me, someone who also loves books.”

“You are only one step removed from an idolater, Daniel. It’s not the books but the words within them. If they were written by hand on mud tablets, our love for them would not be lessened.” Papa pronounced each word slowly, separately, as if they were barbed and hurt him when they left his lips. Daniel jumped into Papa’s pauses.

“But think, Papa, how many more can study because books aren’t written on mud tablets. It’s an honorable trade—”

“A rabbi’s son should be studying, not apprenticing. You know what happens when you go to apprentice? You spend years cleaning, fetching, carrying, all the things no one else wants to do. You have too good a mind to throw away in some miserable shop.” Papa was pacing back and forth.

“You mean I have too good a pedigree to waste—what kind of wife can I get as a simple printer? Whereas if I went on to yeshive I could expect my wife’s family to support me for years.” The thought of Daniel marrying startled me and hot wax dripped on my finger.

“It’s not a question of living off of others, Daniel, the way you make it out. It is the duty of women to make the home, as it is our duty to study and praise God. All things work together to make a life. If you break with this, what kind of life can you have?”

“You mean to say the tradespeople in your congregation have no life—the tailors, the bristle-makers, the carpenters, the weavers—all of them, no life? Where is it written only scholars and the sons of scholars get this precious gift, this meaningful life?”

Even I knew that this was the wrong argument, though I was glad Daniel knew how easy the scholars had it, someone always making a fuss and taking care of them. Papa was furious.

“You mock me, Daniel, and that is a sin.” I could hear his voice trembling.

“Please forgive me, Papa. I mean no disrespect. I just don’t have the temperament to be a scholar.” Daniel must have wanted to be a printer very badly.

“You think you have the temperament to be a worker? What do you know about work? You have no idea how long the hours of a worker are.” From the sad, heavy way Papa was talking, I could tell he was going to give in. The anger had leaked out of his words. I was glad. I thought being a printer was more interesting than bending all day over the very same books your father and your grandfather had bent over. What new thing did they keep discovering to talk about, anyway?

“Then let me find out. If I’m wrong, I won’t be ashamed to say I’m wrong.”

“I should live so long to hear you admit you were wrong about anything, meshuginer.” Papa knew what he was talking about. All the men in our family—Esther too—always thought they were right about everything. Even when they did apologize, you could tell they still believed they were right. They were only apologizing because the other person needed the apology and they were generous enough to give it.

“You’ll let me go by Simeon?”

“If he agrees for you to sleep here and take at least Shabbes dinner with us. I’ll talk to him. But mark my words, this is a mistake for us both.”

“You won’t be sorry, Papa. You’ll see.” Daniel sprang out of the room, eyes glittering. I always liked Daniel’s eyes, a soft brown like a well-baked challah, just a little darker than Mama’s. He stopped when he saw me. “You heard?” I nodded. “Just like from the lions’ den, I am delivered,” he whispered. Papa was already praying.

“Mazel tov,” I said. So he’s going to work. What does he think I do all day long? Now maybe he’ll appreciate us more.

“Nice candles,” Daniel said as he ran out the door.

Men must have a factory where they make disagreements. Ordinary ones sold for a couple of kopecks, big ones for a ruble. My family kept this factory in business, the men especially. Women worked so men could argue. Argument seemed to be all that they lived for. I was ten and the Christian century was turning. We weren’t supposed to pay attention to this but of course we did. Everywhere people were gripped with the idea that they could take time apart and change it, like playing with the gears of an old pocket watch, and this made them argue about everything. Even Mama said that in the new century me and Esther and Sarah would have more choices in life than she’d had. I wasn’t sure what she meant unless we might be able to choose our own husbands, which didn’t seem like such a big improvement to me.

My brother Abe, on the other hand, thought he could choose to go to Palestine. He was obsessed with the idea. Settlements had been made in Palestine when he was barely a year old, he said, and he didn’t want to be late for history.

“This is where history is and it’s being made now,” Daniel taunted Abe. “You want to till the soil? Till the soil of change. That’s what’s exciting.” He had learned about socialism at the print shop and had become like a rabbi himself, making speeches when he was home and we had time to listen, which wasn’t often. I actually liked Daniel’s speeches. They were more interesting than when Abe talked about Zion. It was as if Abe had fallen in love with a Bible story.

Which one would Papa yell at first? “This is the age of false messiahs, no?” Papa would say. “Everywhere there’s a champion rising up to say we will remake the world. You boys should know better. You think you can remake the world? In your own image? It’s an age of false messiahs. What do you know, what have you seen? You, Abraham, you think you can teach me now that you’ve been to the university? We sacrificed everything for you. It’s time you were married and raising your own family. Here. Here in Kishinev!”

“Sha, Isaac,” Mama interrupted, “you’ll upset the girls.” Sarah was outside feeding the chickens, I was carrying water in from the well and Esther was sewing. I think Mama used us an excuse because she was tired of listening to the same arguments.

“The girls. At least the girls behave themselves. But I’m not going to walk around a hostage in my own home. Everywhere in Kishinev Jews respect me. They want my opinion, my judgments are called equal to Solomon’s. In my own home I shouldn’t be able to speak my mind?”

“Speak, speak, then. Just a little quieter, not everyone on the street has to know our business. Chava, will you make some tea in the samovar and bring me a cup?” Mama was working on her business accounts. She could do sums on paper, without a counting frame.

Being busy with the tea let me sneak looks at Papa and my brothers. Abe looked like a smaller version of Papa, who was so tall he had to stoop in most doorways. The last couple of years Papa had gained weight and now was a very imposing, dark man.

“Nu, Abraham?” Papa said. “You’re a smart boy. Five in a hundred boys get to go to the university—and you want to throw away everything and go farm in Palestine? What do they teach you there? You I thought I could trust. Your brother Daniel—our little tradesman—he wants immediate results, never satisfied. You can be anything you want.”

Abe paced to the window, looked out, turned back to face Papa.

“Pa, it’s not 1865 anymore. You can’t see what’s going on in Russia?” He gestured to the street outside. “They won’t even let a Jew be a dogcatcher. What am I going to do with my degree? I want the chance to farm like an honest man.”

Papa stroked his beard and snorted, which was as close as he ever got to a laugh. When I heard Mama sigh, I realized she’d been holding her breath. Esther didn’t know enough to be worried or maybe she just didn’t care. She was always more concerned with what the local boys thought of her than with our brothers and their big ideas. Abe was waiting for Papa’s reply like a boy eager for Chanukah gelt.

Papa peered over his glasses at his eldest son. “What makes a scholar dishonest, tell me that?”

“Oh Papa, you know I don’t think that. I’ve studied until my veins are full of words. But there are hundreds of young men ready to commit themselves to Zion like bridegrooms. I want to be in the heart of where it happens.”

“Revolution is happening in Russia!” Daniel said, biting into a plum and spilling juice all over his little beard.

“Stay out of this, nudnik.” Papa shot Daniel a hard look but Daniel just shrugged, leaning against the wall, watching. “Abraham, you can stay in school. You can be a lawyer if you don’t want to be a rabbi. Or a university professor.” Papa had decided on the gentle approach. I brought him a cup of tea after I brought Mama hers. He nodded but I don’t think he really saw me.

Abe rolled his eyes. He stared at the ceiling. “You don’t know there’s a quota on Jewish lawyers? Even you don’t have the connections to get me past the quota.”

“I got you into school. We’ll worry about the quota when the time comes.”

“Papa, if only you would read Herzl—”

“Herzl Shmerzl. He thinks he discovered anti-Semitism. You don’t think Jews have been talking about this for the last 1,800 years? I listen to you. You think I don’t, but I do. I’ve gone back to Jeremiah.”

“I know what it says in Jeremiah—‘I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.’” Abe was pleased with himself.

“Mama, I’m going outside to weed the vegetables,” Esther said. When Papa and Abe got to trading quotes from the prophets, they could go on for hours. Mama looked up and smiled as she flounced out.

“So now you’re an expert? It is understood, when the true messiah appears, the Jews will be gathered from everywhere we are in exile. Is that what you see happening? No. Dreamers like you float off to Palestine. People who want to get rich go to America. Nudniks like your brother think they can make an alliance with the Russian peasants.”

“I’m not a nudnik!” Daniel stopped smirking. “A Jew like Martov is the co-founder of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class—”

Abe frowned. “We’re not talking about the emancipation of the working class. There is no future for Jews in Russia, inside the working class or outside.” No future for Jews in Russia, he said. But if people go on living someplace, doesn’t living give them a future? I couldn’t picture all the Jews suddenly rushing out of Kishinev. Abe turned back to Papa and they traded more quotes from Jeremiah. I was heating up the iron on the stove and I didn’t catch everything they said.

Finally Papa cleared his throat. “My son, it’s written that the children’s teeth are set on edge because of their fathers. My teeth are set on edge from my father, and you, now, tell me from your heart—you don’t feel my iniquities on you? You don’t do this to rebel against me?” Could Papa really mean to say he had sinned somehow and we were rebelling against him? Probably he didn’t think about us girls, just the boys. Daniel looked stricken and was about to say something, but Papa continued to talk.

“Think, Abraham, think—this is not the time of the messiah. All my life I’ve longed to feel it was, and now you just go off to Palestine, bim-bam, that’s that? I know you believe you are right, but it’s written, ‘I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger . . .’
I
will gather them—there is no mention of Theodore Herzl.” He banged the table for emphasis. Mama looked up and grimaced but the men paid no attention. I filled her cup again and she patted my hand without a word.

“It’s always the same problem with Jews,” Abe said, softly at first. “We should sit around Russia for another thousand years waiting for the hand of God to point the way? Can’t you understand that it’s up to us to fulfill these prophecies?” His voice trembled. “We have to act.”

“Leaving Russia isn’t acting. It’s running away,” Daniel said. “There’s plenty of things a Jew can do here.”

“Didn’t I tell you to stay out of this? Your brother may have grown a block between his ears but he’s no coward.”

“Thank you, Pa,” Abe smiled and almost seemed to bow.

“I’m not agreeing. Not for a minute. I can understand and not agree. You’re young. You think you can redeem yourself through sweat, prove you’re not some money lender, a no-good who lives off others, by going to farm. I know what the Russians and Moldavians say about us, and it’s hard to bear. My grandfather dreamed the same thing—then the Tsar took his land, everything he had worked for his whole life, and sent him on his way with not one ruble in his pocket.”

“In Palestine there is no tsar.”

“No, you trade the tsar for a sultan. This is not the fulfillment of prophecy. This is just a romance, a longing you have. I’ll tell you what. You stay here, you pass your exams, maybe I’ll read your Herzl. Then we’ll talk about it again.” Papa got up and put on his old coat.

“Isaac,” Mama said, as if all the arguments were a game of chess. “That coat needs to be mended. Leave it here and wear your good one.”

“You can mend it when I come back from shul. I don’t want anyone to think I’m proud, wearing my good coat on a Tuesday. Boys, are you going to come with me for evening prayers?”

“I have to get back to the shop, Papa. We had a late job coming in,” Daniel said, pushing his cap down and running out the door before Papa could argue.

“And I’m going to study so I can pass my exams like you want,” Abe said.

“Prayer is also study, but all right. You’re a grown man. You see I respect your choices.” Papa almost whispered this and for the first time he seemed like any other Jewish man in a worn overcoat, shuffling off to the evening service through the April mud.

I lay awake long after the lamps had been turned down, a little moonlight making patterns on the blanket by my feet. What if I had wanted to go too? I’d never been farther than the railroad station. Abe wouldn’t take me with him. Besides, I didn’t care about Palestine like he did. Everyone said it was just a desert. It made more sense to stay and fight where you were—if I were a boy I’d be the best fighter you ever saw. And I wouldn’t spend all my time arguing about it either.

Abe went before the exams were given. Maybe he was afraid he wouldn’t pass. One day, while Papa was in shul and Mama and Esther were distributing charity baskets and I had taken Sarah down to the river, he packed a small suitcase and left a note on the table.