Broken Song (2 page)

“So, still fiddling? Still trying to make music rather than listen to the holy music of the Talmud?”

Whenever Reuven saw or had to speak to Reb Mendel, he had an instinctive reaction to cover his ears. Twisting young scholars’ ears had been the rebbe’s favorite form of punishment. He would twist and pinch
boys’ ears so hard that they would turn white in some places from having the blood circulation cut off. Reuven could still hear the terrible black buzzy sound that would roar first in his ears and then spread into his skull when Reb Mendel did this.

“So, I understand your friend Muttle is making great progress.” Reb Mendel paused and plucked at the folds of waxy skin that drooped from his neck like the wattle of an old rooster.

There was another squawk from the mean little house. It was the teacher’s wife yelling, and then some dirty children scampered out ahead of her.

“Oh Reuven, Reuven play music for us!” they called. Reuven looked down at the children.
They need something beautiful
, he thought,
living in this place with their dreary parents
.

He opened his violin case. Reb Mendel groaned, but the children squealed with delight. Reuven drew his bow across the strings. The first notes came soft as the birds on the warm spring drafts. The children stilled. Then quick silvery music laced the air. Reuven looked down at the smudged little faces. One child’s eye was red and nearly swollen shut. But they grew quiet and looked up, their small mouths parted as if to receive the music.
How grim to be a child of Reb Mendel
, thought Reuven.
How completely grim
!

When he had finished playing, the teacher’s wife came over to him.

“So you’re really growing up, Reuven Bloom. A nice handsome lad. But why can’t you be like your good friend Muttle? What woman is going to want a man
who never studies? Look at my husband here. When he is not teaching little fools like you who grow up to fiddle, he studies all day. Was there anyone ever more fit for the afterlife than my husband?”

Fit for the afterlife? Yes
, Reuven wanted to say,
if heaven is a chicken coop
.

“Ahh,” sighed Reb Mendel. “Who’s to know, my dear? Why would a fellow like Muttle ever want to be with this piece of trouble?” It was unbelievable. They were insulting him to his face after he had played music for their children. Well, let them insult his back, at least. He began to walk away.

“Why? Tell me this!” Reb Mendel lifted his hands dramatically toward the sky, as if asking God for an answer. Reuven heard one of the children giggle. He turned around. Several of the little ones were trailing after him.

“Why, Reb Mendel?” Reuven shouted. “I’ll tell you why Muttle likes me; because I make music!” And he ran down the muddy road toward the village. If he hurried, he might catch Muttle.

TWO

“MUTTLE!” REUVEN called as he caught sight of the long tails of a coat billowing in the breeze. Reuven ran down Krochner Street and saw Muttle disappear through the door of the herring shop. He ran in after him, clapping his friend on the back.

“I looked for you at the study house,” Reuven said. “Where were you?”

“I left early because I had to pick up this herring for my mother.”

“Keep your hands out of there!” Fruma the herring woman yelled at a small boy. “No nose pickers in my herring barrels.” She reached in and swished her hands through the briny water.

“Here, Muttle, your mother likes these.” She held up a long fillet of herring. The silver and dark strips of the skin glistened. “Fitfor a scholar.” She sighed and winked.

Reuven saw that Muttle was blushing. It was impossible, with his fair skin, to hide it, and now his whole face was the color of his pale red hair. Reuven wondered what kind of herring was fit for a violinist.

“And here’s a little extra for you to have now,” Fruma said. She wrapped the fillets in two pieces of paper.

“Come on,” said Muttle. “Let’s go eat this in peace before we have to be home. I’m starved.”

There was a great bustle in all the streets of Berischeva as people raced the setting sun to prepare for the first seder dinner of Passover. There were wonderful smells coming through all the windows and doors of the hunched little buildings and squat cottages—chickens roasting and vegetables and fruits stewing with sprinklings of cinnamon. Reuven wondered why cinnamon was not used as much at other times of the year. He and Muttle passed a doorway where a girl their age and her younger sister wept horseradish tears as they grated the strong white root into a bowl for the seder table.

Finally they came to a path that led to the river, and on the banks they settled down with their herring.

“So is it true what Reb Mendel and others say, that you have memorized most of the commentaries in the Talmud?” Reuven asked.

Muttle made a short harsh sound halfway between a snort and a laugh. “More like half,” he answered, and took another bite.

Reuven blew a long low whistle. “Still, incredible! How do you do it? You’ll be like a living book. You’ll have the memory, the tradition for everyone right up here.” Reuven tapped his head.

Muttle laughed again. “Even for you!”

That was what was good about Muttle. He could joke about his friend’s lack of knowledge, and yet Reuven never felt as if he were being mocked.

“I should study harder, I know.” Reuven sighed.

“Why?” Muttle asked, genuinely shocked. His pale brow puckered. “You think we need two living books walking around Russia? Are you crazy?”

“But, Muttle, every year it gets worse for Jews. New laws, new pogroms. They run us off the land, they kill us. If anyone is left, who will know the tradition?”

“Who will be left to play music? You carry the music, Reuven. I carry the words,” Muttle said. Then he picked up a flat stone and skipped it across the water.

As they walked home, Reuven thought about the unlikeliness of their friendship. Maybe that was what made it so valuable. No one could ever say that Muttle and Reuven were as alike as two peas in a pod. Muttle was pale, painfully thin, short, and frail, like a red leaf ready to blow away. Reuven was husky and dark, with intense blue eyes that blazed out from under a thatch of unruly black hair.

They had been friends, best friends, since they first met in religious school when they were four years old. Muttle was so quick he learned the entire Hebrew alphabet in a few days. But Reuven could play music before he could read it. Then when Herschel Itchel came to town when Reuven was just six, he learned to read music as quickly as Muttle had learned to read Hebrew.

They walked partway to their homes together in silence. Good friends, really good friends, didn’t need to talk all the time. They each seemed to sense what the other was thinking. The bleakness now seemed to be hovering at the edge of both of their minds. How wrong
it seemed to be thinking of Prakova when they were about to begin to celebrate Passover—the Jews’ deliverance from slavery! Pharaohs, tsars—would they never just disappear and leave the Jews alone?

THREE

THE COTTAGE on Petrova Street where Reuven lived seemed to lurch to one side. One could imagine it to be lame, like an old man or woman who favored one leg because of an arthritic hip joint. The thatched roof sagged over the front doorway. It reminded Reuven of one long bushy eyebrow. There was a girl in the marketplace who sold candles—she had eyebrows like that. They grew together into one long brow. His mother and older sister, Shriprinka, had endless conversations about this girl and her eyebrow.
It’s such an easy thing to fix, and she’s in the candle business. All she needs to do is melt some candle wax and drip it between her eyes. Two seconds and that hair would be gone
—
just peel off the wax. How will she ever get a husband? All because of one lousy eyebrow
…

Reuven himself wondered if he could ever love a girl with one eyebrow. It seemed like such a silly thing to make a fuss about, but nonetheless he wondered.

“Ahk, ahk, ahk …” The fat little baby girl turned around and squealed with delight as Reuven came into
the house. She banged harder on a pot with a wooden spoon. Except for Rachel banging on the pot, everything was in quiet order. The seder table was set with a gleaming white cloth that fell like thick cream over the surface. The wineglasses were filled. Reuven’s father, Aaron Bloom, stood ready while his sister, Shriprinka, brought the bowls for hand washing to the table. Reuven’s mother, Bathshepa, was about to light the candles.

“Where’s Uncle Chizor?” Reuven asked, and scooped up his baby sister.

“Any minute,” his father said, looking at his watch. “He’s just back from Poland.”

“Aah, the baron.” Shriprinka sighed. Reuven knew what she was thinking. How she would have loved to see the estate near Bryznck where their uncle went three times a year to tailor clothes for the wealthy Baron Radzinsky. He stayed in the palatial manor house on the baron’s estate. The baron was not a Jew-hater like so many of the Russian and Polish nobility. He loved Chizor and showered him with presents. Chizor ordered the most luxurious fabrics for the baron. He made him everything from evening clothes and fur-trimmed capes to elegant brocaded smoking jackets. The fabrics were often French, sometimes Chinese, and other times Scottish wools. Reuven loved his uncle’s tales of the baron. They had all sat enthralled the first time Uncle Chizor described the long drive leading into the estate, which was lined with white oak trees. Two huge marble lions flanked either side of the entrance of the stone and timber mansion. And then there were the gardens. There was one where only
white flowers grew. Another was just for roses. There were vineyards and orchards and an outdoor and an indoor court for playing a game called tennis.

“Reuven,” said his mother. “Please go get another bottle of wine from the potato hole.” Reuven put down his baby sister and walked to a corner by the window. He pulled a square-cut plank from the floor and bent down to reach for the bottle of wine. Almost every cottage had a potato hole for root vegetables, but the Bloom family’s was unusually large. They kept bottles of wine, bags of sugar, and sacks of grain there. It was so big that Reuven’s mother constantly fussed about putting the plank back for fear that Rachel would fall in. Rachel was right by Reuven’s knees now as he bent down into the deep darkness of the hole.