Memory, she thought, is a sacred place. It is the place where the past is gathered—an inner synagogue where we make meaning of our existence.
She had been here nearly three years.
Nerchinsk had changed. But so had she. How wonderful, she thought, that as our bodies age and weaken, our souls get richer, deeper, stronger.
All of it had altered. Or perhaps it hadn’t. Perhaps it was merely their perception that had changed. They had been rubbed down; they lay worn and raw like scraps of glass washed up upon the shores by the frigid waters of the Nercha. Hodel could see what could never have been seen before: that Nerchinsk indeed held good men, and dark ones, and those so torn apart by madness that they scarcely knew themselves. Time leached the impurities from the companions until all that remained was a pearl.
Days passed and grew to weeks; weeks grew to months, which succeeded each other, one after the next, and swiftly grew to years. They were nearer to ash, to dust, to eternity than they had ever been before.
But, still, they had endured. Thus far.
“Bludgeon him!” cried a guard.
Hodel, Perchik, and the others watched from a distance. All of them clumped like bits of clay crudely molded together, motionless, watching. Hodel, nestled in between the men, looked on. Everything in her prickled.
The gentleman stood above two guards as they beat Andrey Tenderov. But Tenderov refused to bow. So upright he stood! Like a tree rooted to the frozen soil. The Gentleman shook his head at the scene, as if his position pained him, then nodded to the guards and returned up the road to his office.
Tenderov was often getting in scraps like this—always in chains, always being pummeled by a guard or two for one thing or another. They would take him into officer’s custody, make him tend the furnace, or send him into isolation.
“Hit him! Do it now!” the first guard cried again
“I’m trying—oh Christ, he’s getting away!” shouted the second guard.
Andrey Tenderov began to sing. It was something he often did as they worked around the camp, the ballads emitting from him so sweet and the tone so golden and woeful that one could not listen without a warmth of feeling. But now, as he sang and ran from the guards, it did not seem possible for such a sweet song to come from a criminal—he seemed a part of some sort of macabre street play.
Andrey Tenderov sang as he dodged and ran sportive circles around the guards—his hands roped together but clapping, his golden hair wild, his face alight with an impish exuberance.
Ah vy, seni, moi seni Seni novye moi,
Seni novye, klenovye,
Reshotchatye!
Kak i mne po vam, po senichkam,
Ne hazhivati,
Mne mila druga za ruchen’ku
Ne vazhivati!
The guards were incensed. “You there! Come back!”
But Tenderov only sang louder.
“What is that song?” Hodel whispered.
“Ah Vy, Seni, Moi Seni’—it is a traditional Russian folk song,” answered Grigory Boleslav.
“What is it about?”
“It tells a simple little story of a girl in love with a young brewer named Vanya, but the girl’s strict father forbids them from seeing each other.”
“It’s very sad.”
“It’s Russian.”
“True.”
Grisha shrugged and chuckled with Hodel in his dark way.
The guards were roaring now. “Don’t mess with me, you fool!” the first guard threatened. “We are professionals, boy. My great-grandfather bludgeoned the Decembrists!”
“What’s he done this time?” Hodel asked Perchik, who was deep in thought. “Perchik . . . ?” she asked, touching his chest, but he made no reply.
“Russia has been exiling people for needless crimes since the eighteenth century,” Dmitri said abruptly. “It happens all the time. How else do you think the tsar could build such roads, fortresses, factories, ships—not to mention Petersburg itself?”
“Oh, it’s appalling,” Grisha sneered.
“That’s Peter the so-called Great for you,” said Dmitri.
“Would that make him simply ‘Peter’?” asked Yevgeny. Dmitri stared at the old man in revulsion. Yevgeny continued, “Well anyway, that is government for you! Just like family: part habit, part fear, part wishing to God we had a different one!” Yevgeny beamed as the men roared with laughter, Anatoly patting Yevgeny squarely on the back in approval.
“You know,” Dmitri said, “some communities band together and elect certain social outcasts to be sent eastward. Sometimes simply for being irritating.” Not at all unlike what I am certain happened to you, he thought.
“Well, I think Tenderov is very agreeable,” Yevgeny said.
“You would.”
“And terribly kind to me. Always there with an extra slice or sip or pinch for an old man.” Yevgeny reached into his pocket and revealed a small pot of chewing tobacco, then put a bit into the pouch of his cheek beside his worn-down molars.
“Where on earth did you get that?” asked Dmitri Petrov.
“Oh.” Yevgeny tittered. “I stole it from The Gentleman.”
“The Gentleman himself?”
“Yes. Lifted right from his pocket. A good score, eh?”
Dmitri sighed, shaking his fists in front of him before folding them over his chest again.
The guards stood together now, both breathless from the chase, as Andrey Tenderov made a break for the forest.
“Well, shit,” the first guard said, resigned.
“Shouldn’t we go after ’im?”
“Nah, the forest will quash him if we do not.”
“But with all the talk of uprisings . . .”
“Forget that. I am out of breath!”
“But—!”
“Forget it, I said!”
“Right, then. Anyway, we’ll just bludgeon him later when he returns for food.”
Hodel placed her head upon Perchik’s chest. She could feel the loud, deliberate thudding of each beat of his heart. She held him closer.
“Incredible,” said Grisha, staring at Tenderov in the distance.
“Aye,” Anatoly agreed.
“He is. He is goddamn incredible.”
“Oh aye.”
“He’s a wonder,” said Yevgeny.
“He’s an idiot,” said Dmitri.
“He’s a hero!” Yevgeny replied.
“An absolute hero,” Grisha added, almost giggling with pleasure. “Even his name has a brio to it: Tenderov . . . God, it’s like a musk.”
Anatoly reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a large flask, unscrewed the top, took a sip, and with his gigantic hand offered it to Perchik. “For you, friend—you had’n said much. Awful quiet.”
“No, thank you, Anatoly. I am not in a drinking mood,” Perchik replied. He looked sober indeed. Something had changed.
With the arrival of a letter and nearly two hours spent decoding it, Hodel noted that Perchik appeared more vital than he had in weeks. A light had returned to his eyes, though skin flaked from his face. At last, she thought, to see him cheered by his purpose.
“Hodel!” he had cried, standing and running toward her, laughing. “Oh, at last! At last!” He had taken her in his arms and lifted her clear off the ground—spun her around and kissed her hard despite being winded.
“What is it, Perchik?” She had smiled, laughing too. “News?”
“The only news, my darling! Hodel, will you go fetch Dmitri and tell him to meet me?”
“Where?”
“He will know where.”
He had kissed her again, and she had felt his eyes upon her as she went. She’d lingered in the doorway and observed him at his desk. Alone with only his mind (and whatever promise lay within that letter), she had watched him revel in this great moment of human endeavor. It had electrified a kind of poetry from within him that promised dormant men would soon be roused to action. They were to be the curators of the century.
&
nbsp; It was 1909. How the world would come alive—real and pulsing and transparent.
The men turned and made their way back to the barracks.
All except Perchik, who—Hodel observed from a few yards away— stared outward at the scene beyond and, arms wrapped fiercely around himself, merely shuddered.
thirty-one
HODEL AWOKE BESIDE HIM—HE WAS CALLING HER AWAY FROM the dream. Her breath caught as she rose from slumber to his touch; her female softness pressed against his density.
“Perchik?” she said in a hush, bracing herself against both the distinction of his muscles and the unuttered substance of her own desire. “How do you know how to hold a woman?”
“I never truly held a woman until I held you,” he said, slight shame in his reply, as they both knew he had held so many. Oh God. How she loved him. He swelled instinctively toward her. His hands, though rough with labor, were still gentle and almost reverent as they grazed her body. “But my arms were formed to hold you, Hodel.” He clutched at her. “Yes,” he said, clasping her tight within the nearly terrifying grip of their desire. “Everything else felt like pretending. . . .”
He was Jerusalem, and she a holy pilgrim.
“Hodel, stop!” Tzeitel was cross with her. “Stop it!”
This was Anatevka in 1904. Tzeitel’s wedding day.
Days before the wedding, all Tzeitel could do was fervently pray—for her future husband, and for the new life they hoped to build together. She prayed for loving kindness, for faithfulness and devotion, for good health, for provision, and for any children God in His grace might grant them.
Tzeitel’s new home above Motel’s tailor shop was mostly bare (though Motel’s mother, Shaindel, had gone to great lengths to prepare it for their growing family). Motel and Tzeitel were to live upstairs, Shaindel below, on level with the tailor shop; and though there was still much work to be done (including the impending arrival of the sewing machine that would, blessed be to Him, change their fortunes, as well as the lives of everyone in the village), Tzeitel was looking forward to every moment of the building of this new beginning with the man she had loved her whole life. This union was, indeed, a miracle.
Tzeitel sat, surrounded by sisters. She was watching the day unfold at long last.
Her mother marched endlessly in and out of the room (attending to thousands of tiny tasks). Chava brushed (and re-brushed) Tzeitel’s hair, then arranged it delicately on either side of her head. The little ones were attending to her shoes, her nails, her undergarments. Everyone squabbled.
“It is your wedding day!” Hodel cried, pinching the waist of the wedding dress.
Hodel was testing Tzeitel’s patience (again), trying to convince her to better display her figure.
“The dress is sitting on my figure, Hodel, not squeezing it!”
“Please!” Hodel threw her head back. “You are swimming in that dress and all the village will be there looking at you!”
“Hodel, a bride’s vanity is just a sad display of her submission to worldly temptations. When her wedding dress is too tight, there is no room for holy thought. And no room to breathe.”
“I am sorry, Tzeitel; I only—”
“That said,” Tzeitel continued, “I don’t know a single bride who wouldn’t want to look her best for the sake of her husband.” Tzeitel’s voice changed to a timbre Hodel had never heard before. There was a tenderness emitting from her that startled them all. “Oh,” Tzeitel whispered so quietly, Hodel didn’t know if she was meant to hear. “I do so want Motel to see me as he has never seen me before.”
At this, Shprintze began to weep.
“Come now, Shprintze, there now,” Tzeitel said to her younger sister. “There is no need to weep. This is the most special day in a woman’s life!”
Even on her wedding day, Tzeitel was still leading them. Hodel could not help but think what each of the others would be like on their own wedding days. Chava would enjoy the pampering and attention, until of course she became frustrated with her hair. Bielke would mollify the others, making certain everyone else was all right. Shprintze would be on a knife-edge, her mood fluctuating from high to low, laughing and then weeping. And Hodel? In the silence of her own mind, she knew she would be a vain monster (before her mother and Tzeitel both put her in her place again, that is). She smiled at the thoughts of all of them in white dresses with rings on their right index fingers. Of each stepping under the marriage canopy, circling her husband seven times, sipping the wine, making vows. And, of course, of the wives they all promised to become.
But in her heart, Hodel knew that none of them would ever display so thoroughly graceful a dignity, or so great a strength, as Tzeitel did today. Suddenly, it struck her: they were all losing Tzeitel, their leader, forever. Their family would never be the same.
They all loved Motel. In many ways he was already a brother—as much a part of their upbringing as any of them. Hodel felt deeply for him; they all did. But none so much as Tzeitel.
It had been a remarkable thing to behold—watching Tzeitel and Motel as they grew together. At first, they had been childhood playmates. Tzeitel would make Motel play house in the barn, pretending all the animals were their children. They built forts, made mud pies, and sometimes splashed in the stream behind their house. No matter the game, their roles were always the same: Tzeitel was the strong one, Motel always keen and attentive behind her. If Tzeitel was the certainty, Motel was the hope. If Tzeitel the pragmatism, Motel the dreams. For as long as anyone could recall, they brought out the best in each other.
But as they grew, Tzeitel became more reserved—she was well aware of the restrictions their community placed upon their relationship; she recognized the roles they were supposed to fulfill, even if Motel didn’t fully comprehend them. Playtime was over, and their childhood companionship had to end. And yet, as Tzeitel returned to her family and Motel apprenticed at his father’s shop, Motel found a new way to connect. A brilliantly talented tailor whose gifts far exceeded his father’s, he displayed his talents in beautiful gifts for Tzeitel—at first little quilts and pillows, and eventually aprons, waistcoats, and headscarves for the Sabbath. It was how he showed his love before they were allowed to express it.
Hodel had never known or observed anything like what existed between Motel and Tzeitel—it exceeded the devotion she understood toward her family or for God. This was something altogether different. Something simultaneously earthly and holy.
Tzeitel never shared any of this with her family; her sisters merely observed it for themselves. If Hodel had Chava, and Shprintze had Bielke, within their family unit, Tzeitel had no one at all. No one, that was, but Motel. Motel had been her “person” for as long as anyone could remember. But love matches were not made in their community; people had not married for affection for as long as anyone could recall. Love grew out of marriage; it did not instigate it. And no matter how lovely or capable, the eldest daughter of a milkman—a girl with no dowry or family background—was in no position to be selective, particularly if her selection was a poor, almost comically feeble tailor.
On this day, Hodel finally understood: for Tzeitel, life without Motel would have been a death.
What a miracle that Motel and Tzeitel would soon become the Kamzoils—the unit that, in some manner, they had always been. Theirs would be a humble life, but a life not worth living without the other. Their dreams were finally coming true.
Hodel’s mind shifted in her skull. She wondered if she would ever feel for another what Tzeitel felt for Motel. She wondered if she was even capable of such feeling. She wondered if she would ever stand beneath a canopy with someone she more than admired, but loved. Suddenly, her heart filled for her sister—it filled ruby red and overflowing like a cup of Sabbath wine—in a deep way she had never known before.
“So,” Hodel said, placing a hand on Tzeitel’s shoulder and gazing upon all of her sisters, “let us make this a truly beautiful day. May we rejoice in pure thoughts and the endless l
ove we feel toward God and our new brother, Motel. May we support Tzeitel as she dedicates herself to her husband. And may we be as faithful and helpful for her today as she will no doubt be to Motel for both of their lifetimes.”
Tzeitel’s face was glowing. “Thank you, Hodelleh,” she said, placing her own hand upon Hodel’s, still resting on her shoulder.
“And He shall love you and bless you and multiply you, and blessed will be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your earth,’” Shprintze recited. “Amen.”
“Amen,” they all said together.
Then Motel and Tzeitel were married—moments before their town was annihilated by hate, by the pogrom the town constable and all his soldiers called a “demonstration.” Before all the destruction and enmity to come. Before Perchik stood up for their family and threw himself at the vicious strangers who had burned their barns, broken the windows of Anatevka’s high street, destroyed every last wedding gift, and ultimately gripped Bielke by the hair. Before the smoke, which barely masked the putrescent stench of hatred as it filled their village and every village throughout the Pale.
Motel and Tzeitel’s wedding was only the beginning.
There was a young woman about Hodel’s age working at the camp whose face Hodel recognized. Hodel did not know her, but she saw her every day.
Her name was Irina, and she possessed a composition of features Hodel had never seen before in all her life, had never known to be possible! Her face was shaped like a heart and clothed in a light headscarf—not as Hodel would have worn it, but wrapped beneath her chin in the babushka style of a Russian grandmother. So unusual was this mix (of what some whispered to be both Cossack and Mongol races), at times Hodel could not help but stare—her tawny skin tone and small, flat nose; the height of her cheeks, the prominence and beauty of her bones. Irina—none other than The Gentleman’s own daughter.
She was small, her body relentless in its productivity, her manner so reserved, she seldom spoke in anyone’s presence. Perhaps it was due to The Gentleman’s overprotectiveness that she remained so silent. He kept her close, unvisited, forbidding anyone to speak to her—not only the prisoners, but fellow sentries, guards, and keepers, and soon she had managed to learn a life of silence so effective, she scarcely seemed bothered. Irina would leave her residence in the morning with her head lifted proudly, repelling any man who ventured near her. She’d dart straight from her home at The Gentleman’s house to the office and back again, avoiding the taunts of the camp. Life was kept from Irina by an invisible paternal boundary.
After Anatevka Page 17
