The Light of the Midnight Stars

by Rena Rossner

  “There are songs that every living thing sings,” he tells me. “The wild trees, pomegranates and figs, the rain, the dew, the stars, the night. When we attune ourselves to them in the right way, we can hear their song, and if we focus, and sing their songs with the right intentions—when we have the right mindset, we can enter into a state of being that enables us to take on that thing’s properties. But it requires full and complete concentration, along with a very focused goal or reason why you want to become that thing.”

  To me, his voice is the song I’ve been waiting to hear. I let everything he says soak into my skin. If there was an animal or a form I could choose, it would take the shape of Guvriel Ben Amram, because then I could be the son my father could teach.

  Something begins to shift inside me. I am not fighting myself anymore. I have made room inside myself for something else. For someone else. Because it is clear to me that Guvriel has found a way into my heart. In the clearing by the outcropping of rocks where we practice and pray and study together, he has helped me to finally feel free.

  “How will I know what animal I should become?” I ask.

  “You’ll know. For some it is a tree; for others, a star in the sky; for most, it starts with an animal. You will hear it in your heart like an echo.”

  We go through the songs of the birds first: the rooster, the hen, the crane, the laughing dove, the raven, the wild goose. Then the insects: the spider, the grasshopper, the fly. Then the fish, the leviathan, the sea monsters. The sheep, the cow, the pig, the horse, the wolf, the ox, the gazelle, the elephant, the bear, the mouse; we stop at the fox.

  I read, “The fox says, ‘Woe is the man who builds a house without justice, and its rooms without lawfulness; who uses his friend’s services for free and does not pay his employees.’ I don’t understand. How is that the fox’s song? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Guvriel grins. “Clearly you’re not meant to be a fox.”

  I smack his arm.

  “Hey. No touching,” he teases me.

  Somehow one of us always manages to “accidentally” touch the other each time we meet, but we’ve never gone further than that. When everything we’re doing is forbidden, it’s hard to know where the rules begin and end.

  “Why did you choose a fox?”

  “The fox chose me.”

  “That makes even less sense.”

  “You’ll know, Sarah. When it’s time, you’ll feel it. For now… let’s keep on reading.”

  We go through the creeping creatures, the scorpion, the snail, the ant… the snake… A fiery golden snake that tamed back the darkness. But who wants to be a snake? I don’t share my thoughts with Guvriel. Why would a fox ever want to spend time with a snake?

  “What if I’m a creature that hasn’t been discovered yet?” I ask instead.

  “Everything has been discovered in God’s eyes, for He created every living thing.”

  “But Perek Shirah doesn’t list every song. Maybe I’m a song that no one has heard yet.”

  Guvriel looks at me like he’s really listening. “Maybe you are.”

  The silence between us feels like a song of its own.

  “But you still have to start with something galuy—something that is already revealed to us,” he says.

  “I want to be a fox like you,” I say.

  He laughs. “Then you need to meditate on the fox’s song until you understand it deep in your bones.”

  “Help me.” It comes out as a whisper, but it contains all the longing I feel in my heart. It hurts to say it, I’ve wanted this for so long. “I want to know what you know.” My eyes search his in the darkness, as if, if I looked hard enough, I’d find the secrets of the universe there.

  “You must feel it in your heart—you must internalize the words and understand why they are the fox’s words. Think on it until we meet again. The watch is changing and I must go.”

  He reaches for my hand and I take it.

  I can’t help the way I feel out here with him—a little bit daring, and a little bit scared, but excited in a way I’ve never felt before.

  It takes control not to tell Abba everything I know now, not to share with him everything I can do. It takes control not to scream from every rooftop that I think I’m falling in love with this fox-boy who listens to me and sees into the very heart of me, who is not afraid of me. Someone who is kind and patient and who thinks I’m special. That I’m worthy of his time.

  I hear Eema and Abba whispering to each other at night.

  Eema thinks it would be good for me to learn a trade—to channel my weaving into something more professional—something to help me earn a living. If I were a man, the only material I’d be studying would be the Talmud in my father’s yeshiva, and the ways of the Solomonars at night in the forest under the sky. But I don’t let her words hurt me anymore. If learning a trade gets me out of the house and out from under my parents’ watchful eyes, so be it.

  The next morning, I walk along the road that leads to town from the small quarter of the city where we live. I’m on my way to an apprenticeship at Mária Novak’s home and textile mill. I’m apprehensive. It’s not a long walk, but something definitely changes when I get to the place where the road I’m on meets another. I rub my arms and pull my cloak tighter around my shoulders. It’s colder here. Darker. It’s early in the morning, the sun barely visible above me in the gloom. I look right and left. A low black fog obscures the road in both directions—both ways lead away from everything I’ve ever known.

  I’ve walked this road many times with Hannah and Eema, past Miroslav Sklenár’s glassblowing workshop in one direction all the way to the Benedictine abbey and the river beyond it, past Štefan Kováč’s smithy and Tomáš and Helena Pekár’s bakery to the market in the town square. I know there will be people out and about, starting the ovens, the smell of bread wafting from shops and the sound of horses’ hooves against paving stones. But right now all is quiet and still and a dark mist coats the road. I’m used to walking these roads in my dreams—at night from the comfort of my bed—but only in my mind. Never like this, alone.

  We can’t help but hear the things they say about us in town. Everyone knows that Hannah healed the duchess from what ailed her, and now there are more rumors than ever about Abba and our community. Some blame the Black Mist on us. Eema wanted to walk with me—she was scared to send me out on my own—but I told her I was old enough, that I didn’t need her. Now I’m starting to worry that maybe I was wrong. I see a figure appear in the mist, hurrying along the road, and my heart picks up its pace. I look down at my feet, clench my fingers into fists, and walk with purpose in the direction of town.

  “Shalom, Sarah Bat Isaac, how are you on this fine morning?”

  I startle, then let out a breath. It’s Guvriel.

  “Good morning,” I say.

  “Where are you headed all alone so early in the morning?”

  “To town—to Mária Novak the weaver.”

  “Ah. More weaving? I am told it’s your favorite thing to do.”

  I glare at him, but can’t help the twist of my lips into a tiny smile. “Wherever did you hear that?”

  “Oh, you know. Here and there. People talk.”

  “I’m sure they do,” I say, wondering if he means that people are talking about me again.

  “I’m, um… headed that way, would you like me to accompany you?”

  I look at him sideways. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, thank you very much.”

  He makes a kind of funny face, like he’s trying to decide what he should say, and I can’t help but laugh. No matter how hard I try, I can’t stay angry at him. Nobody else makes me laugh like he does. I feel like we’ve been aware of each other all our lives. But up until I encountered him in the forest, he was just another one of Rabbi Amram’s boys—known for their flaming red sidelocks as much as for their mischievous ways. I knew so little then. He is so much more than that. One thing I have definitely lear
ned—you can’t judge someone by what they look like, or even how they act. We are all hiding infinite possibilities inside. Woman, man, fox, snake, dragon, and so much more.

  “I don’t bite,” he says, not really answering my question. “Well… maybe only sometimes, but don’t tell your father that.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

  “Oh good. That would be horribly embarrassing. After you.” He gestures at the road ahead.

  “You don’t need to walk me.” I wouldn’t dream of telling my father anything about Guvriel and the time we spend together. But his presence here makes me wonder what my father knows. “Where exactly were you coming from?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Actually, I think it is. Why would you, Guvriel Ben Amram, happen to be out for a stroll so early in the morning, before shacharit prayers, walking away from the yeshiva and beit knesset?”

  “I have a question for you,” he says, twisting one of his sidelocks between his fingers.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Why does it matter to you where I was or wasn’t coming from?”

  “Hmph.” I don’t answer him.

  “Can’t a boy happen upon a girl on his way to somewhere?” He scratches the red whiskers on his chin. “I mean, how else is one supposed to meet a girl? In the woods? God forbid!” He puts a hand over his heart in mock horror.

  I giggle.

  “Good fortune seems to have smiled upon me,” he continues. “I will have to tell my brothers and study partners—apparently the best way to meet a girl is to happen upon her on the road to town early in the morning.” He winks at me. “And to think that my mother thought I should go speak to Tzipporah Benhaim. Who needs a matchmaker when you have a road?”

  I roll my eyes at him.

  “It’s an age-old dilemma actually. Who was walking where first? There’s actually something about it in the Talmud.”

  “Is there?” I say skeptically.

  “Oh yes, lots of stories in the Talmud about maidens getting lost on their way to town and strapping young yeshiva students helping them find their way. It makes a great story to tell the grandchildren.”

  “I’m sure…”

  “Rabbi Yossi Haglili says…” he starts to chant in a sing-song voice, “if you should come across a lost maiden at a crossroads on her way to town, you should most certainly greet her and ask her if she knows the way to Lud.”

  “So which way is Lud?”

  He scratches his head, twirls one of his sidelocks, leans into me a bit, and whispers, “I think it’s the other way.”

  There’s a little bird in my chest, ruffling its feathers—something happy and free. Despite the gloom of morning and the mist swirling around our feet, he finds a way to brighten my day. I’m starting to find it hard to imagine what my life was like before I happened upon Guvriel in the forest—or he happened upon me. Depends on how you look at it.

  As we walk, his long red sidelocks sway in the wind. He’s a good head taller than I am. It’s strange to see him in the light: I’ve gotten so used to only seeing the shape of him at night. He reminds me so much of my father in some ways, but he is open and honest in a way Abba will never be—at least not to me, and of course, much more handsome. It takes everything in me not to tug on one of his sidelocks.

  “I really don’t need anyone to walk me,” I say finally.

  “Sometimes it’s okay to not walk alone.”

  That’s when I realize he’s talking about more than the road. My stomach does a flip—a long low swoop as if the ground slipped out from under me. He’s saying I can be with him. He’s walking with me so he can say he encountered me by chance. So he can tell his father and mine that he met me, that we spoke.

  “I know I don’t need to walk you,” he says, “but I want to be by your side.”

  I stop in the middle of the road and turn to him. I don’t say anything.

  “Is it okay if we walk the rest of the way together?” he asks. I know he’s asking something else. “I see so many thoughts racing through your mind,” he says softly. “Care to share what that sharp head of yours is thinking?” He looks nervous.

  I’m nervous too. “You can walk with me,” I say, and start moving again, forcing him to follow.

  “What will you be doing at the weaver’s house?” he asks, in step with me.

  “Weaving.” I raise one eyebrow.

  It’s his turn to laugh.

  “Actually, at first, probably not weaving. My mother says Mária’s training can help me learn everything I need to someday open my own shop, but that’s not really what I want to do. I don’t mind the weaving so much anymore, but I have no patience for the endless drudgery of carding and spinning wool.”

  “Sounds like something else I know… something that takes a lot of practice and preparation.”

  I snort.

  “It will come,” he says, “and when it does, you’ll be the finest weaver in Trnava…”

  My cheeks flush and the little bird in my chest flutters its wings again. “It’s nice to hear someone say it like that.”

  “What, Trnava? It does have a certain charm when it rolls off the tongue, don’t you think?”

  I bump my shoulder into his arm. “You know what I meant.”

  He rubs his arm as though I’ve hurt him. “Mmm, yes, weaver, it does have a certain flair to it.”

  “Shush,” I say, trying to figure out where he’s going with this.

  “Then I guess I won’t ask you what it is you most want to weave. Never mind. You didn’t hear that,” he teases.

  My cheeks hurt from smiling.

  “I’d like to weave holy things, not curtains for the house. Things like a parochet for an aron kodesh, or a me’il or a mitpahat for a Torah.”

  His eyes catch mine and I see the light that dances there. “What about a tallit?”

  “Maybe… someday,” I say hesitantly. I know what he’s asking. It is customary for a bride to give a groom a tallit on the eve of their wedding.

  “Well, if you ever do weave a tallit, Sarah Bat Isaac, I’m sure it will be unlike anything that anyone has ever seen before. Like you.”

  I don’t reply. He found me in a thorn bush, following him, snooping where I shouldn’t be—not exactly the qualities one looks for in a wife. My only reputation is as a troublemaker—a firestarter. People say Guvriel is destined to lead his own kehilla one day. Why would he want to marry me? Surely his father would want him to pick Hannah instead?

  “Will you be needing an escort home?” he says.

  “I think I’ll remember the way now, thank you.”

  “I don’t mind…” His words trail a path on the wind.

  My mind races faster than a galloping horse. What does this mean? Are we no longer keeping our meetings a secret? I see he’s watching me, waiting for my reaction.

  “Work hard and well, Sarah. Perhaps I’ll be waiting here at the end of the day when you finish,” he says. I can hear a bit of dejection in his voice and my heart clenches. None of this was ever my intention. I didn’t go into the forest to find a husband.

  “Well,” I say, playfully tossing my hair in his direction the way I see the other girls in town do when they think the boys are looking. “I guess that depends on if you can get your nose out of the Talmud in time.”

  “It’s not really that big, is it?” He laughs and points to his nose.

  I shake my head.

  “Then perhaps we will meet again,” he says. “It’s not every day that someone compliments your nose.” He waggles his eyebrows and turns back the way he came, humming a niggun to himself and dancing a bit, then stopping to spin in the center of the road, his hands outstretched to the sky. The dark fog lifts for an instant—the sky growing just a little bit brighter.

  He is silly and funny in a way I never noticed before, and I have to take a few deep breaths to calm my heart before I turn to walk the rest of the way to Mária’s shop. There is no lesson in
any book I’ve read that tells you how to manage this. And with all these swirling thoughts in my head I open the door to the shop, grateful for the distraction he provided because I didn’t even have a minute to be apprehensive about my first day of work.

  Levana

  “The stars in the sky and the moon up above mark every aspect of our days and nights,” Abba says as we walk home from synagogue.

  I know he’s right, because they mark mine.

  “Before Rav Hillel fixed the Jewish calendar, it was up to us to look to the sky for the moon. Until two witnesses saw the slightest sliver of moon, the new month could not be decreed. The moon reminds us that every month we need to search for the spark of light within us. When the sky is darkest, when we think there is no light, that’s when we look to the sky for the moon. It reminds us that no matter how dark the sky gets, it is only temporary. Light is on its way.”

  But we haven’t seen the sky in weeks now. A thick black fog coats Trnava like a blanket. We are anything but warm. I want to ask him what it means when we can’t see the moon and stars at all, but I don’t because I’m scared to hear his answer.

  I know the stars are there even though we can’t see them. The moon is the same even if it hides its face from us. It is always a ten-day-old moon that shines on Yom Kippur night as we disavow our oaths, a full moon blazing like a lantern on Tu B’Av when girls dressed in white go out to the fields to dance by the light of the moon. There is an order to the sky—the moon is not fickle, even if this mist is.