The Singing Fire (12 page)

“Oh—it’s always blue with you. But never mind. It suits you—let it be blue.”

“A hat with a blue ostrich feather. Very nice,” Nehama said, her voice faint. But not because Nathan had got the loan for his sewing machine and was talking about having his own workshop with a wife who would be his, too. No, she was sweating only because her new skirt was warm for the fall weather and the synagogue was packed, the women of Frying Pan Alley standing at the back, far from the railing, where physicians’ wives could look down on the Holy Torah and their husbands in silk hats bowing to it.

“Nehama—you’re not listening,” Minnie said, fanning Nehama with her hand. “I said you need some air. Let’s go already. I confessed enough for both of us.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear.” Nehama put her arm through Minnie’s as they pushed through the praying crowd of women. “But I hope you shouted. I hear the Holy One is very deaf on one side.”

Nehama and Minnie walked home, holding on to each other in the fierce wind. Stalls turned over, tiles were knocked from roofs, and when Nehama saw a man in a scarf, she looked for someplace to run, but it was all right. The Squire would never be out in such a wind. It shook out all her pins until her hair lay around her back and shoulders like a dark shawl.

At home her married sisters had been shorn on their wedding days. But Nehama wouldn’t cut her hair to get married. If Nathan wanted her, he’d have to get her hairpins for a wedding present. And she would stand under the wedding canopy without a sister to lift her veil when it was time to take a sip of wine. The wind would lift her veil, the raging wind, a grandmother’s voice, her friend’s freckled hand.

MINSK, 1886

Moskovskaya Street

Emilia sat in the garden as she had so many times while the ghost of the first Mrs. Rosenberg scattered apple blossoms and brought the fruit into a perfect roundness. It was just before her twentieth birthday, and she was reading with her tutor, Mr. Levy, in the last light before darkness fell. There was a foot of space between them. She could measure every inch by the quickness of her breathing as she listened to him turn the pages of his book. She couldn’t help but give him a quick sidelong glance.

He looked back at her and smiled. He’d taken to wearing high boots and a loose white shirt like a Russian. “I’d make you a good husband,” he said.

“You have a high opinion of yourself,” she answered. He’d been her tutor off and on for four years, teaching her to read English and French while she taught him German. Sometimes he went away for months and returned with no explanation. She suspected that he was an anarchist, but it didn’t matter. All he could offer her was well-worn books, and she would have a husband that could take her to Italy. Mr. Levy was a friend, and as a friend all that one could want. “A man as clever as you doesn’t need a pretty wife,” she said.

“Then you’ll do, won’t you?”

“Oh, get back to your book.” Emilia pouted as if she were insulted, knowing that she must be even prettier in the soft dusk. There was great pleasure in being pretty for a friend.

She shifted a little closer to him. Mr. Levy smelled of ink.

“Yes?” he asked.

“If I were to think of being your wife, I’d have to know where you’re always going off to. Otherwise one could only imagine what kind of man I might be getting.” She tapped his arm with the edge of her book.

He put his hand on hers. “One that would take care of you,” he said.

She didn’t pull away. They’d held hands before. Twice. He knew her as her husband never would. “You couldn’t take care of a mouse, Mr. Levy.”

“I don’t wish to marry a mouse, Miss Rosenberg.”

The second time they’d held hands was on the day that Mother was leaving to visit her sisters. On the threshold of the house, she touched her chest, gasped, and fell down the stairs. Mr. Levy held Emilia’s hand while she waited for the doctor’s pronouncement. As it turned out, Mother didn’t have a bad heart. The doctor said it was hysteria, and the train ticket was returned.

“How can I trust you?” Emilia asked.

“That is what a wife does,” he answered.

The first time Mr. Levy had held Emilia’s hands was the evening they all went to the opera. Father had rented a box for his guests, who came with their wives dressed in their nicest gowns. But Mother was the most beautiful, even if she was thin.

Between Act I and Act II, there was talk of the pogroms and sending their grown children away from Russia. Between Act II and Act III, the sons’ prospects and the daughters’ dowries were considered. In the meantime, the young sons were outside smoking cigars as if they’d been smoking all their lives, and the young daughters discussed what they simply would not accept in a proposed husband. No one bald. No one whose work involved bad-smelling chemicals. No one with a first wife. That was Emilia’s contribution. She didn’t expect Father to overhear her. He was engrossed in conversation at the other end of the box. Mother didn’t turn around. She was leaning against the railing, looking down at the stage.

“I have a hypothetical question,” Father said in the tone that generally made his guests consider the lateness of the hour. But the box seats were very good, with royal velvet upholstery and royal velvet curtains, so no one moved. He examined the end of his cigar. “What do you do, for instance—let’s just say as a hypothetical example—if a girl is a
mamzer
? A bastard.” He didn’t mean an illegitimate child. In Jewish law there was no such concept. A
mamzer
was a child born of an adulterous union. “Maybe no one else suspects,” Father continued. “But if you do? Well, according to religious law, she can only marry another
mamzer
. So tell me. Do you say nothing? After all, no one else knows. But if someone finds out later … It’s wrong. Very wrong. I’m just saying. For example.”

There was a time that her mother would have turned and faced
him, but when a person lives with a battering ram, she loses some agility. Mother threw up into the velvet curtains. Everyone rushed to help her, and later Father paid for the damage. No one gave Emilia a glance as she ran outside to the carriage. Mr. Levy found her there, sitting as still as if she were already dead. Only when he held her hands did she start to shake. And after that evening Mother never left the house, though she tried when her sisters begged her to visit them.

But now everything was normal again. Father was at the theater, Mother in bed with a headache, the maid gone to see her cousin. Mr. Levy and Emilia were alone in the shade of the high brick wall. The apples were budding; the wall was rich with ivy. She could feel the wind on her cheeks, and she knew that her spring gown brought out the fine color of her skin. Underneath the dress, her corset was laced tight against her waist and breasts, ending just under her nipples at the top and at the bottom pointing down from her belly.

She could tell that Mr. Levy was going to kiss her. The change in his posture, in his breathing. A good girl would stand up and walk away. Or at least a girl that was chaperoned. But the ghost of Mrs. Rosenberg withdrew from the garden, and there was only the warm spring wind touching Emilia here and there. She would never be like her mother. When she was married, she would always be on guard, charming her husband. It was her vocation, the work of a wife, but until she was a wife her dreams, the nighttime dreams of a young woman, didn’t have to involve husbands.

They were just like this. A garden, the smell of ink, a friend who could be charmed or not since nothing depended on it. Who would think that such a small thing could be so inviting? As they kissed, his hand found its way down from the nape of her neck, over a bare shoulder, along the line of her bodice. Low-cut gowns were the fashion this spring, but Mother had made her put a little insert of silk there. Under his fingers the silk pressed against the mound of her breasts; her nipples touched the hard edge of the corset. Her tongue touched the edge of her lip.

Any other day, she would have jumped up from the bench. She would have walked around the garden and chattered about anything, concentrating on the new earrings she was promised for her birthday. But Father had rented the box at the opera again. How could Mother
go when she fainted at the thought of leaving the house? There would have to be a hostess, and it could only be Emilia. When Father accused her of being a
mamzer
, there would be no one to distract the company with a sudden, violent illness.

She wouldn’t think of it. No, there was only the garden, Mr. Levy, his lips and his fingers, her breathing so fast it made her dizzy, her body as liquid as in a dream. The sun fell below ground. The sky was pink, it was blue, it was black. He found button after button on her new spring gown and the strings of her new corset and admired her new silk underwear embroidered with lilies, which were yet not so wonderful as her naked skin under his lips.

Two months later the summer sun warmed branches heavy with apples. Emilia thought she was dying. She’d been sick for weeks; she was getting weaker. So tired she had to have naps like a child. And there was no one to tell, no one to hold her as she passed from this world to the next. Father was angrier than ever, Mother sleepier.

Emilia sat under the tree, pretending to read the newspaper as Mother came into the garden. It was warm; Mother wore a blue silk dress with elbow sleeves. Emilia could see the white scar on her wrist flicker as she crossed her arms. For someone that walked around in a daze most of the time, she seemed wonderfully alert.

“I want you to tell me what’s going on,” Mother said.

Emilia didn’t think she meant the news, but even so she said, “There’s an article about the London Jews. They’re warning people to stay away. Too many refugees are going there.”

“Don’t change the subject, my daughter.”

“I didn’t know there was a subject,” Emilia said. “Can’t we talk later? I’d like to finish the article, please.” Her voice was too shrill. Even Mother would hear something in it. And all Emilia wanted was to enjoy the sun without intrusion.

“The maid told me. She found the shawl. How could you hide such a thing from me?” Mother was actually shaking a finger at her.

Emilia’s shoulders tensed. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t lie to me.” Sunbeams fell through the tree onto Mother’s face, staining it with light and dark. “You know I mean the shawl you hid in the cupboard with the Passover dishes.”

A couple of times Emilia had been surprised in the garden by a wave of nausea. She’d used an old shawl to wipe up the mess at the foot of the apple tree. “I’m sorry. I should have thrown it out.” If her mother knew how sick she was, she’d realize what a small matter this was. But these days Mother never noticed anything except how cold she was, how her head ached, how there must be something stronger than the powders from the chemist.

“You think I haven’t heard you throwing up in the mornings? I had two children myself. I know how it begins.” Mother’s face was hard. It had been a long time since they’d read together in the kitchen. “You’re pregnant, my daughter.”

“What?” Emilia asked. It couldn’t be. She wasn’t married. She was deathly ill and she deserved sympathy. Clear soup. Plumped pillows.

“How could you do it?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Emilia said. Was that it? Not a lingering illness, just in trouble like a simple shopgirl. A person can feel very hot and stupid when she’s ambushed by shame like an uncouth enemy.

“How long since you had your monthly? You don’t remember. Well, it’s not only a shame on you, my daughter. But the whole family.” Mother shook her head. “How long did you think you could keep this to yourself?”

“It’s my business,” Emilia said. It would be better to be dying.

“I don’t know what your father will say. What you’ve done to me …”

“Oh, it will be just the same as always.” It wasn’t her fault. They’d left her alone in the garden. Only an idiot would leave a girl alone with a young man. “You’ll take your powders and sleep, Mother. You wouldn’t notice a pogrom.”

“How dare you! I’ll—”

“What can you do to me? Really. I think you made up that story about the Russian officers. Charming them—how is it possible? More likely you took to your bed like you always do. Where were you when I was alone in the garden? Just think of that.” Her voice was as hard as her mother’s face.

Mother paled. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. I just meant—”

“I heard what you meant.” Her mother sat down heavily on the bench, looking at her as if she wasn’t even worth slapping.

They sat together, the weak mother and the strong daughter. The mother wondered how she’d become so weak, and the daughter how much longer she could bear to be strong. They sat for a long time, listening to the bees in the rosebushes. When Mother took her hands away from her face, her jaw was set. “Something has to be done. We’ll get you married.”

She sounded like any other mother. Like one that made arrangements and carried many keys. “But how?” Emilia asked, like any daughter hoping that her mother wouldn’t turn her back on her, counting on her to figure a way out. “Mr. Levy’s gone away again.”

“Then we’ll have to find him.”

“If we ask after him, Father will wonder.”

“We can’t have that. It would be the worst thing. All right.” Mother picked up the newspaper and tapped it against her palm. “Then someone else.”

“Who?”

“I’ll speak to the matchmaker. We won’t have just anyone.” Mother glanced at the newspaper as if she might find someone there.

“He should own a villa,” Emilia said dreamily.

“That would be nice.” Mother’s voice cracked, but she smiled a little. Grasshoppers sang in the sun. “I always thought I might live with you after you were married,” she added quietly, putting a hand on Emilia’s cheek.

Emilia let her head rest on her mother’s shoulder as if she were a little girl again, struggling with a page of hard words.

“I’ll send for the matchmaker this afternoon.” Mother stroked Emilia’s cheek. “It won’t be the first time that a baby was born less than nine months after a wedding.”