After Serakh and I waded through pleasantries with Shmuel, Serakh put Celeste’s loaf in the oven. We sat on the bench while Shmuel muttered, and fussed, and threw flour on pallets, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Serakh tapped on a pallet. “You look like one who knows where to buy the best cider in Paris,” she said. “Might I ask your advice?”
Shmuel mumbled something, his cheeks wrinkling into a smile. Soon he and Serakh were leaning toward each other in a conversation I realized was meant to distract Shmuel. I walked toward Avram, keeping Serakh in my sight. Would the language tie hold?
When I was about two feet away from Avram’s back, I coughed. I coughed again. “Excuse me, monsieur,” I whispered.
Avram finally swiveled toward me on his stool, blinked, and gave me a questioning look.
I held out my hand the way I used to do when I fed deer at the children’s petting zoo. The dreidel nestled like corn kernels in my palm. “My sister-in-law and I would like to give a gift to you and your family. For the gracious use of your oven.” I hoped that sounded formal enough and I wasn’t speaking gibberish.
He seemed to shake himself awake.
“It is a top,” I said. “For Hanukkah.”
Avram stared at the dreidel. “Where did you get this?” His voice was soft and intense. “In all of my travels, I have never seen such an object.”
I took a breath. Serakh was close enough for me to communicate with Avram. “I made it,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true. I hadn’t done the carving. I showed him the letters and bluebird and three tiny daisies. “See? The letters are for ness gadol hayah sham. A great miracle happened there. It’s for a game.”
“Yes, I know of this game. Here we use knucklebones.” Avram frowned. “Where are you from?”
“The west,” I said. No lie there. “Shall I show you? This spins very well.”
Avram closed the ledger book and swept a clean spot on his dusty desk with the sleeve of his tunic. Grasping the dreidel’s stem with his thumb and index finger, he managed to give it a good spin. The dreidel landed on the side with a daisy and the letter nun facing up. The way I learned it, nun meant you took nothing and you got nothing. Nun stood for ness. Miracle.
“I believe in miracles,” I whispered, hoping that he did, too. Wasn’t that what the Middle Ages were all about—knights, and saints, and wars, and miracles?
Avram grunted.
I cleared my throat, searching for the right words. “Perhaps this has happened to you, kind sir,” I started. “Sometimes, after I have had something to…eat…on very rare times…as I am making my dreidels…”
“Yes?”
I concentrated on the dreidel, afraid to look at Avram. I shivered at the memory of my own flashbacks, when the screwdriver changed shape, and words danced, and walls melted. I suddenly remembered how, at the Halloween party, the four bowls of candy on the kitchen table formed a barbershop quartet.
“At very special times, I get lost in the intricacies of my birds and flowers,” I said. “I fall into the world of my dreidel. I can taste the colors and hear the wood. Time stretches and I…”
His hand brushed against mine. I lifted my chin. His eyes were wide. Wonder? Fear? Recognition. “I, too, have…”
“Mademoiselle with the blond curls peeking through your cap—do you also like cider?” Shmuel’s voice boomed behind me.
Avram coughed. The dreidel disappeared into the pouch on his belt. I backed away, as Avram stood and stepped toward Serakh. “Your loaf must be ready, Madame. Shmuel, check the oven.”
End of conversation, but that was enough. Avram had hallucinations, just like I did when I was tripping on LSD. I felt it in my gut.
“There’s a link,” I explained to Serakh after we left with the loaf for Celeste. “I’m sure of it now. It’s got to do with the chemicals that are in LSD and ergot, which is a fungus that sometimes grows on rye.”
“So he is sick?”
“Sort of. Avram ate rotten rye—maybe back in Germany—and he had some kind of hallucination that convinced him he has to kill Mon Trésor. Or something like that. Anyway, I’m on the right track. “
“Can you cure him?”
I raised the muddy hem of my robe and navigated my way around what remained of a mangled cat. “Cure Avram? I’m not sure there is a cure, really. We’ll just have to see that he doesn’t eat the rye fungus again and hope that the flashbacks aren’t too bad. They are supposed to fade with time. We’ll keep the baby safe until then.”
“How long will that be?”
Downwind of the cat, I gagged on the smell, and shook my head. When we turned up another alley, Serakh asked again. “How long?”
“No one knows. LSD is horrible. You’re never sure what will happen. I’ll try to find out how often Avram gets hallucinations. We’ll bring another loaf to the bakery tomorrow.”
Serakh gave me the loaf, put both her hands on my shoulders, and brought her face within inches of mine. “There must be more that we can do. If Dolcette’s baby were yours, would you live each day in fear that your husband’s illness might return?”
The bread felt warm and solid again my chest. Like Mon Trésor. “No,” I whispered. “Of course not.” My stomach twisted.
“There are only four more days until the brit milah. After that, the baby is in mortal danger. He will never be safe until you have cured his father. Of my many travels, this is one of the most difficult. We do not have much time.”
Really? “But I go back and forth in an instant. It’s all magic. I should have all the time in the world. I mean, when I figure out what is wrong with Avram and how to cure him, can’t we go back to…um…where we left off?”
Serakh spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Magic, as you call it, has rules. I cannot change them. During the intertwining, the days that pass in your time and place are as the days in Dolcette’s time and place. What you learn nine or ten days from now might be too late.”
Think! Something was off. What was it? We walked in silence for a few minutes. Then it clicked.
I stopped by a water trough, with no one to hear us but a mangy-looking horse. “The magic works differently here, right?”
Serakh frowned in confusion.
“What I mean is a day in my time is a day in Dolcette’s time. But I can be here for hours and hours and still go back to the same exact minute when I left Berkeley.”
“Yes, this is so. Within the same part of the day. There are complications.”
“But basically that’s how it works.”
“Basically.”
I nodded, a smile creasing my cheeks. “So then when we are done here I can still see Dr. Cavanaugh tomorrow. You’ll take me back to…no. Don’t take me back to Sproul Hall. Can you take me home instead?”
Serakh wrinkled her forehead. “Return to a place that is different from the place we left?”
“Exactly. Please. It’s important. I’m not supposed to be at Sproul. I could get into trouble at my school, and then they won’t let me go to a music competition.”
She shook her head. “No one has asked this of me before. I do not know if I am capable.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Celeste thanked us for the freshly baked bread and told us that Dolcette wanted to see us. “The rabbi’s wife is coming to visit this very morning,” she announced with pride as she wiped the table with a clean rag. “I have wrapped the baby in the finest linen and sprinkled lavender on Dolcette’s bed. We will have dried plums and walnuts.”
The rabbi’s wife. I felt my shoulders relax. She’d be the perfect ally to save Mon Trésor.
When we reached her bedroom, Dolcette was arguing with Tante Rose. “They are my guests. I insist that they be with me when I talk to Madame Léa.”
Tante Rose’s face flushed with anger.
/> “Good morning to you,” Serakh said. “What an honor to be here. I bring news from the bakery that Avram of Mainz is well.”
Ten points for diplomacy. “Yes,” I added. “We are eager to meet the esteemed wife of your venerable rabbi.” Venerable rolled against my teeth and lips and came forth in elegant perfection.
Tante Rose pursed her lips.
Dolcette practically snorted. “She is a bitter old…”
Serakh coughed.
Dolcette smoothed her blanket and sighed. “And she has influence. Word has come that Papa’s wagon suffered a broken wheel on the road, and there will be a delay of some days. I wanted Mama by my side when we spoke to the rabbi’s wife, but I dare not wait any longer.”
“This is most unfortunate,” Serakh said. And I saw that she meant it. She put Mon Trésor in my arms, and I rocked him. He looked up at me with clear blue eyes, and I couldn’t help but entertain him with my favorite medieval madrigal.
Now is the month of Maying
When merry lads are playing.
Fa la la la la la la….
Mon Trésor seemed to like the madrigal. Either that or he was totally bored, because he fell asleep. I put him back in his cradle.
Dolcette had it right. Bitter and old were perfect adjectives for the plump woman Tante Rose escorted upstairs. Even though her matching light blue headscarf, robe, and purse were spotless, she spent the first five minutes complaining about her maidservant. “The girl cannot use a smoothing board properly,” she said. “Look at these wrinkles.”
Celeste appeared with a bowl of prunes and walnuts. Tante Rose ushered the rabbi’s wife to the one good chair in the room and set the bowl on a small table beside her. I wondered if Celeste had the good sense to have sampled the goodies in the kitchen.
“You need not stay if you are busy, Tante Rose,” Dolcette said. “Or if you wish to rest in your room.”
Tante Rose folded her arms across her chest. “Celeste and I will stay.”
Celeste gave a submissive curtsey.
Silence. Then we started on the usual ageless topics—weather and health. Small talk—although speaking normally was a big deal for me, not a small one. Finally Dolcette looked at Serakh, as if for permission.
Serakh nodded.
Dolcette began. “There is a matter of grave importance, Madame Léa,” she said. “My beloved husband Avram has made a terrible vow.”
Slowly, painfully, she revealed what Serakh and I already knew. I expected the other three women to cry out in anger, or horror, or grief. I was wrong.
Tante Rose did close her eyes and shake her head. Celeste gasped once and covered her face with her apron, although I had a feeling that Dolcette had already told her most of the story. Madame Léa looked grim.
“Surely there must be something I can do to save my child,” Dolcette said, her voice shaky, her hands clasping and unclasping each other.
Madame Léa sighed. “Such is the will of the Holy One, blessed be He. We must not question His judgment.”
What! “That’s impossible,” I said, looking to Serakh for support. “God doesn’t want sacrifices. He wants us to make this world a better place, not to kill our children to send them to Heaven.”
Madame Léa stood bolt upright, nearly knocking over the bowl of goodies. Red blotches erupted on her face. “I have never heard such blasphemy from a Jewess. Do you not remember Hannah and her seven sons?”
The rabbi’s wife launched into a tirade about a character that I barely remembered from Religious School. This was part of the Hanukkah story I hadn’t even heard about until last year’s confirmation class. Madame Léa spat out gruesome details of how enemy soldiers tortured Hannah’s sons to death one by one during the time of the Maccabees. After each son, the soldiers offered to stop if Hannah instructed her next child to renounce his Judaism.
“But, no,” Madame Léa continued, her hands slashing the air. “Hannah told her sons to be steadfast in their faith. She sent them to the Holy One, blessed be He. She told them that when they met our father Abraham in Heaven they were to say that he was willing to sacrifice one son, but that their righteous mother had sacrificed seven. While the lights of the menorah are burning, women do no work, in honor of Hannah.”
Eyes blazing, the rabbi’s wife gripped Dolcette’s chin. “This is the courage of Jewish women. This is the path for women of valor. Dolcette you must be strong, like Hannah.”
Waves of nausea rippled through me. This was wrong. All wrong. “But the Hannah story makes no sense here,” I said. “No one is trying to convert this baby or his family. He’s perfectly safe in Paris. The Crusaders have gone.”
Madame Léa rounded on me. “How dare you contradict the word of the Holy One, blessed be He! Avram is a pious Jew. He has seen a vision, like Moses and the burning bush. Perhaps Avram will bring about the redemption of our people. Who are you to question?”
“I have every right to question,” I told her, my voice rising. “A baby’s life is at stake.”
Tante Rose scowled. “Conjurers,” she hissed.
Serakh clamped her hand on my shoulder. “My sister-in-law means no harm, Madame Léa,” she said. “Tikvah is merely overwrought with grief. She and I have helped these two good women to care for Dolcette’s baby since his birth. We are devoted to our faith. Let no word she has uttered be mistaken for blasphemy.”
Her lips grazed my ear. “Show you are contrite,” she whispered.
I stared at the tips of my loafers and swallowed.
“You will find another way,” Serakh whispered.
I swallowed again. “My apologies,” I told the floor. After that, I was grit-my-teeth civil. Once I managed a smile. A thin one, but good enough to satisfy Serakh. She was in charge. I felt like I was watching the Titanic sink.
Fifteen minutes later, Celeste and Tante Rose escorted Madame Léa downstairs. Serakh lifted Mon Trésor from his cradle and changed what passed for a diaper. “Do not be afraid,” she told Dolcette as she got him ready to nurse. “If you are consumed by worry, your milk will dry up in your breasts and your son will lose his nourishment.”
I stood by the door, listening for footsteps on the stairs. “Can’t we arrange to have Avram sent away somewhere?”
Dolcette wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, took her baby, and started to cry again. “No, I could not bear it. I yearn for Avram even now. I begged Papa to arrange our marriage. The heat of our unions sparked the life force of the seed within me.”
The look on Dolcette’s face reminded me of the times my mom and dad eyed each other with so much love that I was jealous. Will I ever find someone like that?
“If Avram loves you this much,” I said, “then maybe we can persuade him, for your sake, to change his mind.”
She patted Mon Trésor. “He has tried. When Avram returned from the Rhineland and told me of his vow, I beseeched him to test the truth of his vision. He applied every remedy the herbalist could devise to balance his humors. Leeches, hot baths, purgatives. He fasted and he prayed. Madame Juliane, the herbalist’s wife, told me to give him betony harvested on the feast day for Saint Denis, and I did. Nothing helped. He still believed the vision to be true. He said that the messenger in the vision was an avenging angel. Two days before my confinement to the birthing chair he fell on his knees before me, and we wept.”
I shook my head. Angels—if they existed—were the gossamer-winged variety who protected you. They adorned Christmas cards and my old Little Golden Book of the Bible. They didn’t tell you to kill your child.
“Dolcette, you believe in miracles,” Serakh said. A statement, not a question.
“As I believe the sun will rise and set.”
“Then do not lose your faith. You will witness your miracle.”
By the time we
left Dolcette, Serakh had managed to reassure her. Dolcette seemed almost calm.
I was anything but. “This is impossible,” I told Serakh as we walked toward the grove of trees. “How can we compete with an angel?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Afterwards, I sprawled on my bedroom carpet, with Serakh lying beside me. “You did it,” I told her.
She moaned. “Yes, but with great difficulty.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I, too, do not understand. It is the way of The One.” She took a long, shuddering breath.
“The One. That’s another name for God, right? Well, I have a bone to pick with The One.”
She creased her forehead. “A bone?”
“I mean I have a disagreement with God about the way the world should work.” Understatement of the year.
She managed a weak smile. “This is natural. Always we are in conversation with The One. Even I, since I was in my first youth. Now, turn away, lie on your bed, and rest. Your mind holds the answer for Avram.”
Some time later, Sylvester rumbled near my neck. And then my alarm went off. Six-thirty. I pounded the ringer into submission and sleepwalked to the bathroom.
When I came back, I poked the lump on Dagmar’s bed. All clothes, no Dagmar. I retreated under my covers. Another ten minutes wouldn’t hurt.
Dad’s voice dragged me out of sleep. “Miriam Hope, wake up. Are you sick? Where is Dagmar?”
I opened my eyes to full sunlight and a worried face. “Dad?”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Leona just phoned from school. You never met her this morning. She was afraid you got stuck in Sproul Hall. Her father said he saw you and Dagmar yesterday afternoon. What happened after that?”
“Wh-what t-t-time is it?”
Dad checked his watch. “10:27.”
Rats. Too late for choral music, the one class I couldn’t afford to miss.
“When did you get home last night?” He shook his head. “I never should have let you go to that Baez concert.”
The Ninth Day Page 11
