Beyond the Pale: A Novel (15 page)

He wrote in 1901. Mama read his first letter out loud: “Finally I am at Rishon le-Zion. The Baron Rothschild by his great generosity has set up these vineyards. It is not yet truly self-sustaining, and we depend too much on his contributions to meet our expenses. I am in contact with other groups of settlers and may strike out towards Galilee. You cannot know the joy I have in writing these words ‘Galilee’ and ‘tending vineyards in Zion.’ Do not despair of me, I keep you in my thoughts and prayers. With all respect, I am proud to say that I am a son of Zion reborn. I will write again soon. Your loving son and brother.”

Papa looked out the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Esther cried. Mama shook her head. “Every prophecy comes to pass,” she said.

Daniel was pacing in front of the stove. Mama was rolling out dough for kreplekh, trying to ignore him. Finally she looked up.

“All right, Daniel, talk to me. Tell me what’s eating away at you.”

“Papa concerns himself with the souls of a handful of Jews, while I’m talking about the greater good of millions of workers.”

“A handful of Jews! Do you know there are 50,000 Jews in Kishinev—almost half the whole city now? And even if we were ten, you should be ashamed to turn your back on your people.” She wiped a smudge of flour off her face.

“I’m not turning my back on anyone. The synagogues do nothing for the people. It’s the Bund that will lift Jews up. I’m opening the doors of unity instead of perpetuating oppression and ignorance.”

“Daniel, God forbid your father should hear you talk like this.”

“He’s as bad as anyone, Mama. Papa has the power to make men see, but he throws God in their eyes like dust.” Daniel called God dust. I was afraid a lightning bolt might come through the ceiling and strike him dead. But nothing happened and Mama seemed more concerned about Papa than God.

“I won’t have you talk about your father like that in this house, do you hear me? You think you’re a big maskil—”

“I’m not a maskil, Mama.” Daniel was exasperated. “The so-called enlightenment was just a way for the bourgeoisie to consolidate their power. I’m an agitator, a revolutionary.”

“All right, so a revolutionary. Chava, what do you think? Does your brother look like a revolutionary?”

Now I was even more surprised. Was she asking me to take sides? Daniel was exciting, his enthusiasm and ideas were wonderful to me. But I didn’t want to get on Mama’s bad side. “I don’t know what a revolutionary looks like,” I said, taking the safest course.

“No, why would you? Here, you take the rolling pin.” She handed it to me, cleaned her hands on her apron and turned to Daniel. “When I was a girl, the maskilim were Jewish revolutionaries—your father still thinks so. Now you’re a new kind of revolutionary. You think we haven’t seen that before? Revolutionaries killed Tsar Alexander—you were born just after the pogroms that caused. A nice present from the revolutionaries, pogroms and the May Laws. We’re not stupid, your father or me. I read your pamphlets. There are many good ideas but—”

“But what?” Daniel cocked his head, as if he were engaging her in argument for fun.

“But you are always talking to the wrong people. The Moldavian peasants hardly read, and the Russians here, half have government jobs. You won’t convince them with your down-with-the-Tsar slogans. And you don’t talk to Jews as if you ever lived with any. You tell us to give up our faith—”

“Faith keeps people from changing.”

“Our faith gives us courage to keep going on.” She got a bowl from the cupboard to make the filling. I knew Mama’s store was doing well because she had bought fresh chopped meat from the butcher that morning. “You don’t understand; you’re too young. It’s not simply faith in God, each of us making a little personal bargain—if it were just that, Jews would have been Russified generations ago.”

“So?”

I could see Mama and Daniel, tiny and distorted, in the Shabbes candlesticks I left on the table after shining them. I didn’t like how he was talking to Mama, impatient and snarling. And I didn’t know that Mama had thought anything about the revolution all the men talked about. Why didn’t she ever talk about it with me and Esther?

“So it’s each of our faiths in keeping faith with each other. That is a wonderful thing. Even in these times, you can count on Jews all over the Pale keeping the sabbath—”

“Right, keeping the sabbath keeps us out of the big factories because we won’t work on Saturdays.”

“You have a lot to learn about who your friends are.” I could hear how angry Mama was getting. She was squeezing the filling so hard it oozed in little rivers between her red fingers.

“And you don’t understand your enemies,” Daniel stuck his hands in his pockets as if to keep from pounding on something.

“All right Daniel. This is getting nowhere. Now you get those pamphlets out of the house. If you want to stay for dinner, you promise me you won’t start this with your father again.”

“He starts it with me.”

“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

“Oh Mama, you wouldn’t kick me out.”

“Don’t try me. I love you but maybe it’s time your ‘comrades’ knocked some sense into you. I can’t tell you what life has to teach you.”

“What do you mean by that?” Daniel looked at her for a minute as if she might know something. Then he returned to his regular superior look.

“Just what I said. Only living teaches you who you can trust. Tonight I’m trusting you to let us have our meal in peace.”

“All right, I promise I won’t start any fights. But I don’t promise I won’t defend what I believe.”

Mama should have known better. Papa asked why Daniel wasn’t coming to shul on Shabbes. Daniel looked at Mama, then he looked at me, Esther and Sarah. Slowly he looked back at Papa and wiped his mouth.

“I don’t go to shul because I hold workers’ circle educational meetings on Saturday mornings.”

That was the end of it. Papa threw his napkin on the table, stood up and pointed to the door. Daniel didn’t look at us again.

“None of you girls are allowed to see him,” Papa said after the door slammed. “Not unless I authorize it. Do you understand?” Then he picked up his books and walked to shul.

None of us, not even Sarah, said anything for the rest of dinner. When we were cleaning up, I noticed Mama wipe her eyes as if she’d been crying. Was she crying because Papa frightened her or because Daniel wasn’t going to come back? Parents were always saying “everything changes” but when change actually happened, they didn’t seem to like it very much. I could go see Daniel if I wanted to—I knew where Simeon’s shop was. I knew almost every place in the Jewish parts of Kishinev. How would Papa find out? Daniel wouldn’t tell him. But I was mad at Daniel for how he’d talked to Mama. So I obeyed Papa, even though I didn’t want Daniel to think I was scared. Someday he might realize the revolutionaries needed someone like me, a girl no one noticed, who knew all the back streets.

We had three little baskets to distribute food. Usually we went around on Thursdays so the families who had no work would have something for Shabbes.

“If we give away our food, does that mean we’re rich?” Now Sarah had the same questions I’d had. If questions didn’t get answered, did they just get passed on, like handed-down clothes?

“We should live so long. Your father doesn’t have a kopeck to his name, believe me, besides this house his great-uncle left him.” Mama was making up a small basket, even though it was only Tuesday.

Sarah thought this over. Her bad eye ticked a little when she concentrated but it wasn’t actually ugly. She would have been pretty, otherwise, if you gazed at her nose and chin, her light olive skin and sweet, heart-shaped face. “How can we give things away if we don’t have enough ourselves?”

“Did you ever go hungry, hmm?” Mama patted Sarah’s head without taking her eyes off the basket.

“It’s commanded for the rich and poor alike, to give as much as we can—right, Mama?” I said.

“See, your sister knows. Now, weren’t you going to bring me some water from the pump, Sarah?”

It would take Sarah a long time to come back with the bucket. Mama lifted a little cake out of the oven and wrapped it up when she thought I wasn’t looking. She pressed her lips together until they were pale pink. “I don’t like to ask you to do this,” she said quietly.

I finally realized what she was doing. I was surprised, a little frightened and pleased. Maybe Mama was secretly a revolutionary too.

“I would go myself but a married woman can’t—”

“Don’t worry Mama. I’ll do it.”

“I’m sorry to ask you to disobey your father.” She sighed. “Did you ever hear anyone say that Jews are a stiff-necked people? No? Sometimes it’s important we know how to bend. At least for our own, just a little. You’re sure you feel all right doing this?” Mama looked at me so intently I could see the little amber flecks shine against the brown of her eyes.

“I want to see Daniel too.”

“I know you do. Go, don’t take too long and don’t let anyone see you.”

What a racket! All of Daniel’s shop was a clank and clatter, with a chaos of pounding, repeating sounds underneath. There were fumes, rags, pieces of paper scattered on the ground. It was so dark I didn’t recognize Daniel at first and could barely hear his voice.

“I said, what are you doing here?”

“It’s your birthday, Daniel. Mama sent you supper. Here—.” I handed him the basket. He motioned for me to wait and went over to a tall, thin man wearing an apron of black splotches. Once my eyes got used to the dark, I could see the machines. Almost one whole wall was taken up by a huge contraption unlike anything I could have imagined. A man sat playing it as if it were an organ. Every few minutes something gray whizzed past him, a huge wheel groaned, a claw moved down from above and then there was a tinkling while a piece of metal fell down a chute onto a tray. All those dark dancing parts! I wanted to get closer but Daniel was back.

“The boss says I can take a break and have supper with you. Lucky we’re not too busy today.”

“What’s that?” I motioned to the big machine.

“That? That’s the lever that will help us move the world. It’s the first big change in printing since Gutenberg.”

“But what’s it called?” To Daniel, everything was a political cause, even machines.

“It’s a Linotype. It makes whole sentences in lead, zip-zip-zip, so we don’t have to put every letter in every word together by hand. It was invented in America but this one comes from Germany. It’s only the second one in Kishinev—the other’s over at the Bessarabetz printing shop.”

“Can you show me how it works?”

“I suppose it will be all right.” We walked over to the man sitting in front of the Linotype.

“Zalman, this is my sister Chava. She wants to see what our Linotype can do.”

Zalman grinned at me. He rested his fingers on little buttons with Yiddish letters. He pressed the aleph and something clinked down into the small container in front of him. “See,” he pointed to the top of the machine, “all the letters are in their own rows up there, and when I press here, the one I type comes down.” He pulled the piece of metal out and showed it to me. It looked like a small key, made of brass, with a mold of the aleph indented into its thin side. I’d never seen anything like it. While I was holding the beautiful aleph, Zalman’s fingers flew over the alphabet buttons. Brass keys glided down into a straight row until the tray was full. Then he pushed a lever, pulled a handle and the wheel pressed against the tray.

“That’s where the hot lead fills the letters on the sides of the brass molds and makes the line of type,” he said. As the wheel moved back, the claw I had seen from across the room came down and picked up the letter keys. They dangled in the air over the gears and then moved up to the top of the machine. Soon I heard them plopping back into place.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?” Zalman said. He grabbed the new metal bar and swiveled around to face me.

“Does it burn?” He was throwing the bar back and forth between his hands.

“Lead cools fast. Here.” I caught it. The bar was warm but not hot. Little letters stood up from the background, hard to read, because they were backwards. Slowly I spoke the words, “
Ven ale mentshn zoln tsien oyf eyn zayt, volt zikh di velt ibergekert.
”

“That’s right: ‘If everyone pulled in one direction, the world would topple over.’ I made it for your brother, our organization man.”

“Hush, Zalman.” Daniel frowned, took the line from me and threw it in a pot of liquid metal behind the machine. I could see the words melting. “So, Chava, what do you think?”

“I’d like to do this,” I said.

“We’ll talk to the boss. Maybe he’ll hire you when we get a new contract.”

I walked right into that. They thought I couldn’t do it, but why not? I could press buttons as well as they could. “Very funny.”

“We’re just teasing, Chava. Come, we better get going before the boss thinks I’m organizing another strike.”

I still had the aleph in my hand as we started towards the door. I tried to give it to Zalman but he waved me away. “There are a hundred of those; the boss won’t miss one,” he whispered as he turned back to his work.

By the entrance was a big case full of drawers. Daniel pulled one open. Inside were many compartments filled with small letters made of dull gray metal, each letter on a square stem.

“Before the Linotype, we had to make up every page letter by letter,” my brother said. “Well, we still do that mostly—we only have one Linotype. But Zalman can make up a page in fifteen minutes that takes me an hour and a half to do by hand when I’m quick, and his pages are easier to print. Now almost everyone will be able to have books.”

Outside the sun startled my eyes. I saw a little green patch behind the shop and led the way towards it. Daniel took gulps of fresh air. I put the bright brass aleph in my skirt pocket.

“You sound like a capitalist, all excited about machinery,” I said. “Aren’t you afraid that machine will put printers out of work?”

“I was, but now I understand that the more books and pamphlets there are, the more men will read.” He dropped his voice. “And with this machine, we can make up our own pamphlets when the boss is out and melt the evidence before he comes back.” He leaned back in the sunlight, very pleased with himself.