by Talia Carner
“What’s your name?” she asked.
The girl responded with a jerk of her shoulder.
“She asked you for your name,” Freda said, her tone ominous.
The girl mumbled something.
“Speak up!” Freda hit the girl’s back, jolting the body.
“Dora.” Her voice was only one notch above a whisper.
“Well, Dora, you’d better listen to Batya.”
Dora dropped her head farther toward her bony knees.
“Farshteyst? Understand?” Freda hit her again.
“Let me take her upstairs,” Batya said to Moskowitz. She kept her tone low as she turned to Freda. “Which is her room?”
Freda gave her a key to a tiny chamber diagonally across from Batya’s. It had recently been evacuated by a girl whose French disease must have been dormant until she started losing her mind. “Clean her up, and always lock the door,” Freda said.
Batya put her hands together in supplication. “Will you please find out about Nettie?”
“She’ll stay in the hospital until she’s better.”
Batya suspected that, visiting the auction, Freda hadn’t checked on Nettie. “Please send her my warmest blessings when you visit her again,” she said with emphasis. Worry gnawed at her, but for now Dora must be her priority. “Come with me,” she said softly to the girl. She would comfort Dora the way Rochel had offered her warmth and compassion in the hours of her greatest despair. “You must be hungry. Let’s feed you.”
At the mention of food, Dora rose to her feet and, without looking at Freda and Moskowitz, allowed Batya to prop her up as they walked upstairs.
“Where are you from?” Batya asked.
Dora only shook her head.
Batya understood. In time, after she gained Dora’s trust, they would talk.
When Batya brought up a tray, Dora ate hungrily, using her fingers. Following the meal, Batya led Dora to the shower. She used her own quinoa soap bar, which bubbled up when applied to the hair, to rinse away the filth of the ship. She wrapped Dora in a soft cotton sheet, then led her to the bed and tucked her in, tightening the light blanket around her as if in a hug. Dora wept, and Batya sang her a Yiddish lullaby until she fell asleep. Although Dora had surely been raped repeatedly during her ocean crossing and probably locked up and starved, she had been lucky to be auctioned off directly upon arriving rather than passing through Nina’s training brothel.
In her sleep, the girl cried and kicked. Sitting on the edge of Dora’s bed, Batya recalled how she, too, had been a suicide risk and could have died from the infection that had spread through her abdomen. By now Batya knew that Rochel had been ordered under threat to see that Batya lived and be broken into the profession, yet her friend’s ministering had been genuine; Rochel’s kindness came from a well of humanity that hadn’t been dried up by cynicism and betrayals. Batya must succeed with Dora the same way.
The girl slept on. Midday rain poured down, then stopped, but the sky remained overcast. At siesta time, the house and street quieted down. Batya watched Dora sleep and wondered if she had a family, and the thought led Batya to her own sister. In her latest letter, written through a scribe, Surale had reported that their father was aging. Aggie had long stopped producing milk, but he didn’t have the heart to sell her to the butcher, so the task had fallen upon Surale.
A commotion from the street drew Batya to the window. The chamber assigned to Dora faced a side courtyard. Batya opened the window and squeezed her head out between the twin bars crossing it. A man wearing a skullcap—a modern Jew—stumbled into view in the alley past the courtyard, clearly drunk. “I’m tired of being lumped in with all of you ruffians and kurves!” he shouted. “I lost a business deal because of you! The goyim think all Jews are ganefs—but I’m not a thief like you, filth of the earth!”
Batya closed the window and returned to Dora’s bed. This time she stretched next to her, hoping to catch some sleep before her late afternoon and long evening’s work. She thought about the drunkard’s anguished words. Just last week, Rochel had been booed when she had gone to the Jewish theater with Moskowitz. When confiding in Batya, Rochel’s eyes brimmed with tears, and she explained that the pimps’ union faced harsh criticism from the leaders of the Jewish community.
“My client said that the upstanding Jews of Argentina and Brazil blame the caftans for the rising anti-Semitism,” she said. Caftan, the Spanish word for a pimp, originated from the Orthodox men’s garb. Rochel had a regular weekly engagement at an out-of-town private villa owned by a wealthy merchant who entertained government associates away from the public eye. She had explained to Batya that Zwi Migdal worked diligently to widen opportunities for its members. The stronger it became and the greater its holdings across South America, the greater were the bribes Zwi Migdal distributed all around. The organization—legally unionized—was the source of corruption at all levels of government and police.
When Batya went to the kitchen to fetch lemonade and cake for Dora after her siesta, Rochel was there, chatting with other sisters about the incident. “That drunkard? He used to be rich, from an important Sephardi family that has been here since before the Warsaw gang arrived. Now he lost his construction contracts to goyim because they don’t know the difference.”
Batya hurried out of the kitchen to bring Dora her treat and lock her up so she herself could get ready for work. She couldn’t stop thinking about how she had been hated by the women at the synagogue. By Jewesses. Now, like in Russia, Jews were hated by goyim, too.
Just before sunset, in the pavilion, Moskowitz crooked his finger at Batya to join two influential clients he was entertaining on the patio. She sat with them as they, too, were discussing the afternoon’s incident. “A loser that can’t handle his own stupidity,” Moskowitz said to the customers. “Who gives the tailors in town the best business? The cobblers, the milliners, and the haberdashers their livelihood? What about the jewelers and the bankers? Who buys carriages and hires the coaches? Who builds new houses and pays for the cultural institutions? We are the businessmen that drive the economy of Buenos Aires. We bring the money in, and we spend it generously. We are the heart and the pulse of this city.”
“Let’s drink to that!” One of the men raised his glass.
“Lechayim,” said Moskowitz, clinking his glass with both men’s.
Batya smiled sweetly, but her hands closed into fists of despair.
On Saturday, after Batya had brought Dora breakfast, she tended to her kitchen chores. Wiping the breakfast mess off the large wooden table, she prayed for God’s help. Save us all, guide us with Your wisdom. Bless my sick friend Nettie with a full recovery, and relieve Dora’s suffering. She rushed through the rest of the cleaning, looking forward to the market and its concert of colors and sounds, the freedom to move about, even as she still cringed at the notion of handling money on the sacred day of decreed rest.
Moskowitz had arrived early, dressed in the cream-colored suit he wore when going to the synagogue with some of his neighbors, owners of other brothels. He never started his day without first collecting the previous night’s money from Freda. Having deposited it in his vault, he now stopped in front of the mirror in the foyer. Batya watched from the corner of her eye as he smoothed his hair, styled by an Italian barber, and adjusted his Shabbat hat. He admired his diamond ring, then pulled from his pocket a new gold watch, larger than his previous one. To Batya’s amusement, he repeated the gesture in the mirror as if practicing the impression it would create, then tapped on his belly with both palms, approving the paunch of a respectable man.
Moskowitz had started toward the door when two of his fellow pimps burst in. “They take our money to fix the roof,” Enrico, a corpulent bald man, thundered with indignation. “They take our money to buy a new Torah. They take our money to pay the rabbi’s salary, but we’re not good enough to pray with them?”
“What are you talking about?” Moskowitz asked. “I’m getting the honor of an aliy
ah to the Torah this morning—”
“No, you’re not. None of us does, today or ever.” The second man, an influential brothel owner who had changed his Jewish name, Peretz, to Pedro, calmed down enough to speak. He was dressed in a plaid purple jacket with a green butterfly tie. “The leaders of the Jewish community have conspired against us. They teamed up to block us from attending services in every synagogue in town!”
“They hired security forces.” Enrico pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his sweaty brow. “You should have seen these goons standing at the door of each synagogue, preventing us from entering.”
“I’ve sent for the chief of police.” Pedro waved his index finger in the air above his head. “He’ll teach them a lesson—”
“I have a better idea.” Moskowitz made for the door. “Follow me.”
In the mayhem, two dozen sisters trailed out after the men. More girls streamed out of the houses up the street, and soon more pimps merged with their colleagues as they all headed toward the center of town. Batya couldn’t resist following, and within minutes she was swept along behind one hundred caftans and twice as many prostitutes.
To her surprise, Moskowitz’s destination was the Judaica store. As expected, the store was closed for Shabbat. Moskowitz kicked gently at the door to protect the polish of his lacquered shoes, but his gesture served as a signal to two other men, who unleashed their fury on the stubborn door until it crashed in.
Once inside, Moskowitz headed to the locked glass display case behind the counter, where a large Torah scroll stood upright, exhibited in all its glory with its heavily carved silver posts peeking through a velvet sheath embroidered in gold. It took a sofer painstaking years to hand-scribe a parchment, Batya knew, and it cost a fortune. None of the synagogues in the shtetls had been able to afford such a holy Torah.
“Break it,” Moskowitz directed, and the man standing next to him smashed his handgun into the glass, splintering the case to a million pieces. Moskowitz grabbed the Torah and the additional double silver crown resting beside it, decorated with precious stones.
The mob behind him cheered as they marched out. On the street, Moskowitz danced with the holy scroll as if this were the festive holiday of Simchat Torah.
Batya hung back until the store emptied of people. She stood still, disbelieving her good luck, then rushed to the floor-to-ceiling bookcase. In the hundreds of thick leather-bound, gold-embossed spines she was unable to locate the simpler, smaller tkhines book.
God, please show me the way, so I can recite for You Your words of prayer. Please give me a sign that You will accept my prayers, me, Your humble Batya who’s sinned so much. Please show me that You know that my soul is still as pure as it was on the day I was stolen from my parents’ home.
Scanning more rows of books, she kept speaking to Him. She couldn’t leave without the book. Failure would mean that God had indeed turned away from her forever.
The minutes ticked by on the huge wall clock, the pendulum marking every other beat of Batya’s pounding heart. Hurry up, she told herself. Running along the bookcase on her left, she examined every shelf, then retraced her steps to view each with more care. Hurry up! If she was the only person here when the police arrived, she would be accused of the double crime of vandalizing the store and stealing the precious Torah scroll. Her fingers shook as she passed them over the wooden shelves, her eyes searching. Cold perspiration formed at the back of her neck.
The strike of a bell jolted her: the chime of the clock marking the half hour. More minutes ticked past. In a corner toward the back of the store, near a bolted back door, she found a stack of volumes with torn covers resting on a table next to pots of glue, brushes, and sheets of pulp paper.
At last, next to the table, on a low bookshelf, Batya recognized the small burgundy spine. Blood pulsated in her temples as she grabbed the book and quickly leafed through its pages to verify that it was what she thought it was. It was! She tucked it in the pocket of her skirt and rushed out, her heart singing.
Just before rounding the corner, she heard the siren of a police carriage entering the street from its far end. She broke into a run.
Back home she discovered that Moskowitz, for the first time other than for the Passover Seder, had emptied the house of its clients. One of his colleagues, formerly a chazzan, a cantor who’d found a new calling as the pimp of his wife and sister-in-law, began to conduct the Shabbat services right there in the pavilion.
The sisters gathered in the courtyard, peering at the backs of the men inside. Their eyes were bright; for once they were permitted to hear God’s holy words.
Batya squeezed through the sisters. Walking slowly to avoid attracting attention, she climbed the stairs to the second floor. She sat on her bed and pressed her book to her chest, then kissed it, happiness filling her. Even without the prayer shawl men used, she could wrap herself in solitude with God, commune with Him. No matter what happened to her body, from now on she could keep her soul pure.
From below came the voices of the men repeating some sentences after the chazzan. Moskowitz didn’t get the honor of an aliyah today. Batya smiled with satisfaction. The one thing Yitzik the Pitzik craved remained out of his reach: respectability among the upstanding Jews.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In Flores Cemetery, they weren’t allowed in the Jewish section. No prostitute—alive or dead—was to contaminate the Jews buried there. The few sisters from the house Freda had permitted to participate in the sacred act of accompanying Nettie to her last resting place congregated outside the fenced-off section.
Batya covered her head with the lace scarf she’d brought. A few meters away stood a one-room structure. Since the Chevra Kadisha, the official Jewish burial society, shunned the tme’ot, the two elderly women who formed the prostitutes’ burial sisterhood had retrieved Nettie’s body from the hospital and brought it here to wash and purify. Now Batya and Rochel volunteered to carry out the stretcher on which she lay, wrapped in white shrouds. Her body seemed so small that Batya couldn’t reconcile it with the full-bodied friend she had first met.
Outside the fence, one of the two aging prostitutes gestured to rest the stretcher on a flat stone bench. Perspiration made the woman’s flowery dress stick to her body, and the powdered skin of her face drooped under its two painted blotches of red. Yet there was fervor in her hooded eyes as she addressed the small group of mourners. “Whatever happens to us, we must always remember one thing: we’re Jewish. We may neglect most of our Jewish traditions—even forget many—but the tahara, purification of the body in preparation for burial, is one thing we should never ever give up.”
“Amen,” murmured the sisters.
“Today, the tahara allows your sister Nettie to meet her Maker with the utmost respect and dignity. She may be banned by people of our tribe from being buried among them, but the gates of heaven will open to her no matter. There she will wait, pure, with all other departed holy souls of our people, until the Resurrection of the Dead with the arrival of the Messiah.”
“Amen,” murmured the sisters.
“And after we’re gone,” the woman went on, pointing at herself and the other sister, a small-boned woman with a birdlike face whose sagging breasts reached her protruding belly, “you must take over this very important tradition. It’s a mitzvah that will grant you a special spot at God’s feet.”
As the sisters nodded, Batya nodded, too, wishing that she had such benevolence in her heart to wash and cleanse dead bodies. For the first time in a while she thought of Miriam, who had been deprived of the last rites of purification and burial. Had her young friend’s soul been punished yet again by being turned away from the gates of heaven? Could God be this unfair? At least Nettie was again as pure as the child she had once been. Goodbye, Nettie, my beloved friend, Batya said in her head. May the Good Spirit envelop you.
Juliet and Clara, sisters always eager to help, took over the carrying of the stretcher, and the procession walked along the outsi
de periphery of the cemetery, where small tombstones listed the names of pimps and prostitutes, forever outcast.
“The curse of consumption,” Batya said to Rochel.
“Not consumption,” Rochel murmured. “She poisoned herself.”
“What?”
“She swallowed drops of rat poison. She’s been doing it for months to avoid drinking carbolic acid all at once.”
A chill ran through Batya. Drinking liquid carbolic acid, as many prostitutes did, caused agonizing pain. So many had tried it that the hospital and the police dubbed it “blue-fingers death.” Freda read aloud the newspapers’ detailed descriptions so all the girls understood what was awaiting them if they attempted it. The mouth, esophagus, and stomach lining burned off, followed by convulsions, uncontrolled vomiting, and fingers and lips turning blue before one died in excruciating pain. “You’ll be lying in your vomit,” Freda had warned, “writhing like a worm, with the pain of hell’s sulfur eating your mouth and throat so you can’t even scream.”
“You knew?” Batya asked Rochel. Nettie had lied when she said she’d seen a doctor, and the bottle she’d shown Batya hadn’t been an elixir for appetite.
“I suspected.”
And you didn’t stop her?
They reached the freshly dug grave, where a burly Spanish man stood beside the gaping hole.
Nettie’s shrouded body was lowered to the bottom of the grave. There was no man to say kaddish for the soul of the departed, so the two elderly women recited this prayer while the laborer shoved the earth back. The thump of the earth dropping on top of Nettie’s body jolted Batya with the finality of her friend’s life. With a new burst of tears, she joined the sisters in reciting the sacred words. “O God, full of compassion, who dwells on high, grant true rest upon the wings of the Divine Presence, in the exalted spheres of the holy and pure, who shine as the resplendence of the firmament, for the soul of Nettie who has gone to her supernal world.”
