Fortuna turns to her with fire in her eyes. “A teacher has to be an example. And you are no example to my daughter”
Before Becca has even stepped out of the sunlight and over the dim threshold, Allegra runs up to her, and lets out a stream of words. Becca stops, kneels down to meet Allegra at eye level.
Wonder of wonders. The words have gone from black ink in a dictionary to living, breathing expressions of, in this case, worry. Where had she been? Had she been out alone? Mama was furious. Someone had come to see her, and no one had known what to say.
“There was someone to see me.” Becca reaches out and brushes the little girl’s dark hair from her eyes. “About the school, yes? A man?”
“Yes. And he sat here for a while, but then said you should go and see him in the Alliance school, tomorrow.”
Becca stands up and holds out her hand. Allegra wraps her thin fingers around it. “Well, I’m home now.”
Home. Did she really just call this home? How patently, utterly absurd.
Allegra pulls her inside. She runs to the kitchen and pours her an earthenware cup of rosewater. Becca drinks, thirstily. Even in the winter, the sun parches the throat.
She is sitting at the table in the living room, cooling down, when Fortuna appears, arms crossed.
“Where were you?” Her voice is quiet, but insistent.
Should she answer? She does not owe this woman an answer. She suddenly feels like saying something outrageous. The Ladino phrase lies deliciously on her lips: hadras i baranas, what a fuss about nothing. For four years she lived in Paris and answered to no one but the director, who trusted each of them implicitly. Why, now, should she explain her whereabouts to some illiterate housewife?
But something in her relents. “I went to commission” — forge? — “a new passport.”
“Alone.”
It is not a question.
Fortuna wrings her hands and shakes her head. “We would have done this with you. If you would have simply had the patience. It is not something that we do, a woman going out alone. And it is not a good example for the children.”
Is there something shameful about a woman going out alone? Negotiating, showing that she is capable. That it is not only a man who can manage in the world. Becca feels her cheeks start to burn.
She claps twice. “The sooner it was taken care of, the sooner I can move on to the reason why I came — to teach.”
She catches Allegra’s eye and with a flick of her finger summons the little girl. “Would you like to go to school? To learn how to read and write?”
Fortuna’s lips are tight, her fingers are clenched. “What do you mean?”
“My little school. I look forward to having Allegra as one of my first students.”
“Your students? In your school?”
“Of course. We will have an excellent time together.”
Fortuna turns to her with fire in her eyes. “A teacher has to be an example. And you are no example to my daughter.”
*****
Sometimes, Hannah sees herself like the weather vane that stood atop the tavern in the shtetl. She swings this way and that, never still, always checking the direction of the wind. Although there is no wind in their snug house in the middle of Prague.
But she endlessly checks her daughter, Emmy. Has it happened yet? Has Frau von Albrecht spoken? Has Joachim broken her heart? The suspense is not good for her, she lies awake at night, playing out the scenarios in her mind. None of them end well.
Tonight, Emmy is in high spirits. It is Thursday, the night Ernst is home — there are no concerts on Thursday. Outside, the wind is high and snow glistens on the ground. Hannah pulls her chair closer to the fire and selects the next color for her embroidery. Pink flowers, for the border. Palest pink, just a shade above white, but with a warmth.
Ernst sits at the piano, and as Emmy chatters to him, he accompanies her. When she laughs, he plays a little ditty on the highest octave. When they talk about the new harassment of Ernst at the orchestra, his fingers crash down: D-minor, B-flat minor, a seventh hovering for suspense. She half listens, half dozes, content that Emmy is at least talking to someone. They have always been close, Emmy and Ernst.
She used to well, not complain, but voice concern to Sarah about it. “Papas and their daughters,” Sarah had said, dismissively, waving away her concern. Hannah had thought for a moment, then understood. Her own mother was always capable, always strong even when she wasn’t. When Hanna had fallen and grazed her knee, she’d run to Tatte for an embrace, not to Mama, who would simply tell her to wash it, bandage it, and why wasn’t she more careful?
But she, Hannah, wasn’t like that, was she? She completes one petal, starts the next.
She has not been able to rest easy since her conversation with Frau von Albrecht. It hurts to watch the trust in your little girl’s heart, knowing it’s about to be broken.
If she can find her another interest, if she can get her enthused by a project, then perhaps he will not take up all of her thoughts and interests, and it will cushion the blow when it comes.
“Emmy,” she calls. “Would you come with me in the morning to visit this young woman from Russia? We shall take her some Shabbos food.”
A peal of laughter. Hannah turns sharply. But her daughter is laughing not at her, but at some comment Ernst made. The laughter is followed swiftly by a little melody in A-major.
“Emmy?”
Ernst notices. “Emmy, your Mama is talking to you.”
Emmy looks toward her. “Yes, Mama?”
“Sarah has asked me to look in on this poor woman from Russia, and take her some food for Shabbos. Will you accompany me?”
Emmy wrinkles her nose. “What, an ostjude?”
The needle’s point is sharp. “Do you have to call her that?”
“Well, it is true, is it not? Can you not ask Felix?”
“Felix is busy with a writing project.”
Another pretty little laugh. “Yes, Mama. Do you know what he is writing about? Unicorns. A pretty little story for children.”
She does not know whether or not to believe Emmy. Is she just saying this to hurt her? Another petal, another. This is not about her. This is about giving Emmy some occupation, some interest.
“Never mind what Felix is doing. It would be nice for this woman to see someone of a similar age.”
“Why, how old is she?”
“I do not know, exactly. She has a little boy and another child on the way. She cannot be much older than you. I thought you might enjoy it, meeting someone from a different place. You always talk about being cosmopolitan.”
Emmy rolls her eyes. “Oh, Mama, cosmopolitan does not mean knowing about Russia and other backward places. It means visiting Paris, London. Even America.”
Hannah stabs the needle into the linen, mindless of the pattern. “Oh, and here I was thinking it simply meant expanding your horizons. Learning about people who are different from you. Not only about fashion.”
“Mama, really. No need to get upset. Why should I bother with some poor Jew from Russia?”
Hannah stands up and walks over to her daughter. She looks at her for a long time. “Do you not feel any kinship? She is your people. A fellow Jew.”
Emmy sits down on the piano stool, next to her father. She places both hands on the piano and slides between chords. “And the whole of humanity is my brother. Come, Mama, we all know these big statements sound nice but don’t really mean anything.” Another chord. “Besides, tomorrow, I have plans.”
“Oh?”
“I’m accompanying Rosaline and her mother to try on some new hats. Peacock feathers are all the rage.”
“Peacock feathers. Are they not rather large?”
“Yes, it is true, they have to be pinned just so. Wound around the brim a little. Extra hat pins. But the way they catch the sunshine is quite, quite worth the effort.”
She slips into Bethoven’s Moonlight sonata, and Hannah stands, listening. The sound of the moon shining on a dark lake. The waves, rhythmic and achingly sad. How is it that such melancholy can come from someone who thinks so little? But then she feels disloyal for the thought.
Emmy stumbles over the fingering. Her hands crash down on the keys in frustration. “Besides, Mama, we all know that you are only taking such an interest because this woman reminds you of yourself. If there were people coming from, I don’t know, Turkey. Or Baghdad, or any of those other places, would you still be running to help them?”
Emmy’s face is turned to the music. She begins again from the difficult section, slower this time, more careful. Unaware, or maybe hiding from the hurt her words inflict.
Should she say something? Tatte would call this chutzpah. Ernst, filial ingratitude. But neither of these things really capture what she feels. She feels… erased. Like her daughter is trying to erase her.
There. Done. The hard part performed flawlessly. Emmy smiles to herself, and pauses in her playing. “Because if you would run off to help all these fellow sisters, from all over the world, then hats off to you. But if not, and you are simply going because you’re helping yourself, that poor girl from the shtetl who never quite believed it when Papa came to rescue you, then I am sure you will excuse me if I do not join you.”
Hannah says nothing. There is nothing to say, nothing to feel.
Emmy closes the lid of the piano and turns. “Oh, whatever is the matter, Mama? As Felix always says, speak truth to those who can hear it.”
Shaking and silent, Hannah escapes to the kitchen. Who is this monster who is her daughter?
*****
Four pages.
Actually, not four pages. Just four sides. Two dapim, in Uncle Shneur’s lexicon.
Come, Felix. You’ve never had a problem with filling pages. Pretend you are writing an analysis of the difference between Kant and Hegel’s conception of materialism. Four pages and you would just be starting the introduction.
But this. He has never written for children before. What do children like?
He casts his mind back, and it is like wading through the Vltava on a summer’s day when the very water seems thick with heat.
Stories. Mama always told them stories. On Friday nights, in the winter, when Papa was gone to the concert hall. She’d change them into their flannel nightclothes, and they’d sit close to the banked-up fire. They would sit on the floor, and she’d throw all the pillows and cushions to the floor — and they’d laugh in delight, because Papa never allowed that. The three of them would lie curled around each other: Felix with his head on Mama’s lap and Emmy snuggled between the two of them, and she would tell stories.
The Golem, of course. That Shabbos they had gone to the Altneushul for a change, and Mama had pointed to the boidem, the attic, where the Golem was said to lie in the deepest, darkest sleep.
There were more. Stories about Shlomo Hamelech, tricked out of his throne by the king of the demons, Ashmedai. King Shlomo had wandered around his kingdom, king only of his stick, while Ashmedai took on the likeness of the great monarch and sat on his throne. He was ousted only when a wind picked up his cloak and they noticed that in place of feet, there were rooster claws.
He remembers that. Why doesn’t he remember it more often? In the summer, when Friday nights were short and they went to bed after the chicken soup, she’d tell them stories as they walked along the river on Shabbos afternoon.
She told of Yoshiyahu, hiding the Aron deep in a tunnel under the earth, where it lies until today. And how the Menorah was taken by the Romans, and it still may be in the Vatican City, deep in the treasure troves, where who knew what else lay. She told of the Genizahs, the huge storehouses of manuscripts, where all kinds of secrets lay and would continue to be buried until some intrepid explorer dug them out and revealed them to the world.
Papa had also told them stories, but mostly about Beethoven, and how he had a huge ear trumpet, to help him hear. It didn’t work very well, but that hadn’t stopped him composing the most heavenly music. And he told stories about Mozart and Haydn.
Felix looks at the four pages. Children liked stories. At any rate, he did. So he would cover two pages with a story. Another page with something about a composer or an artist — parents surely would like that. And the fourth page. What would he do with the fourth page?
The Wonders of Science, he writes.
Thinks for a moment, shrugs his shoulders.
What could he do instead? Moral messages from the Bible. Perhaps. If the children didn’t like it, at least it could potentially be a cure for insomnia.
"Thank you for your efforts, surely you are a brave and courageous reporter and I admire your values. But these subjects do not belong in our newspaper”
