Rocking Horse: Chapter 51
“There’s no such thing as causes. There are only people”
Becca has written to the girls’ parents but does not know if there will be a reply. She saw that with her friends at the Paris academy: Some parents stayed in touch with their daughters, writing regular letters and sending the occasional package. Others merely sent a card once a year, before Rosh Hashanah, often containing a brachah penned with a quivering hand.
To her chagrin and shame, Mama and Papa were the latter, non-letter kind of parents. It was not that they didn’t care, she’d mentally explain to her friends, although they never asked. It was more that once they had found a solution for a child — sure that he was shod and fed and clothed and safe, they turned their attention to the business of simply getting through each day or week or season.
“There’s such thing as a post office,” she had told them one summer, when she had returned home for a visit.
“Ah. Of course,” Tatte had said.
She had looked at him and realized that perhaps, somewhere in a different universe, a regular postal service existed — just like somewhere out there there were trains and steamers and a school where young women learned to go out into the world and become teachers — but it did not exist for him, in his world.
It wasn’t a lack of love. It was just that they felt their job was done. And without any meaningful way to be in contact with her, they had pushed her out of their minds on a day-to-day level. At least, that was what Becca believed. She didn’t have children of her own, and probably never would, so it was a matter of surmising of what she thought might be correct and right, without telling herself awful messages about either herself or Mamme and Tatte.
Was that what Raizel’s parents were like? Simply wishing that their job was done, and jumping at an opportunity to believe so?
Becca shakes her head and sighs. Parents bring a child into this world with the knowledge — and the hope — that they will leave them there to survive alone. If a mother and father cannot let go and believe in their children, they are finished, not just as parents, but as people.
Becca rubs her forehead and sips her tea, savoring the evening’s quiet. Does that mean that they will do nothing for Raizel? She shivers, suddenly cold. The fire is burning down, leaving darkness and gray ash, with the occasional orange glow. Whatever would be the future of this girl?
*****
Do re mi fa so la ti do. Raizel sits at the piano and picks at the keys. Here and there, when the girl thinks she is by herself, she sings, and Felix has heard her. She has a thin voice, but tuneful, and he can’t help but wonder what would happen if she allowed the air to fill her chest, stood with her shoulders back, and allowed her voice to emerge from her throat.
The girl is still at the piano, and that is good, for she is relaxed.
Felix wants her to be relaxed, for then she will answer some questions, and be more open to his suggestion.
“May I ask you something?”
She stops playing and looks at him. She barely talks, but he trusts that between Chasya chattering away to her in Yiddish, and Mama, she is slowly gaining back her voice.
She nods, without saying a word.
“I understand that you have been through a very difficult time.” Hmm. What would be the correct word in Yiddish: Geferlech, maybe? “Something geferlech.”
She nods again.
“I am very happy that you are now safe and secure.”
Should he tell her that it is he who brought her home? Well, Becca really, but he furnished the advice, and had the idea of sending a telegram and even paid for it, from his own wages. G-d bless Hans and Bertha: Only a man who gets a wage can be called a man, he has realized since working for Wolf.
If he tells her this, she might feel not a debt, exactly, but a moral obligation to help him. Or at least sense that he is on her side.
“And you are feeling settled here? You are comfortable. You have everything you wish for? You are not hungry or cold?” What else could a girl like this want and need?
Parents, for one thing, Felix thinks as he looks at her. Protection. A night that is not filled with nightmares.
“I have a question for you. Let us say that we had a chance to put that man who came to your parents and put you on the boat — let us say that we could lock him up and throw away the key.”
Do, do, fa, she plays. Do, do, fa.
She looks at him blankly. Is it his Yiddish? He does not have quite the right accent, he knows this.
“What do you say?”
She does not answer.
A feeling of pressure rises inside him. Inspector Dussoff’s words: It is almost impossible to get these cases to court, for there are no willing witnesses.
And now. It is within reach. He just has to persuade her talk.
“If you talk to me, we might be able to help you.” He must take the urgency out of his voice, and keep it gentle and friendly. “Well, it is not really me who you need to talk to. It is a very nice man called Inspector Dussoff. And do not worry, you can talk to him in Yiddish, and I will translate for you.”
The girl hangs her head.
“I want you to understand. If you do this, if you tell him your story, then you will help save other girls. You can help make this stop.”
She shrugs.
“You can stop this happening to other girls.” He pauses. “It is up to you.”
“How dare you!”
The piano becomes silent.
Felix jerks his head up. Becca.
She motions him to follow her into the kitchen. She stands with her back to the shining copper pots. “How dare you!”
“What do you mean?”
“How dare you? Piling guilt upon her, as if she does not have enough to contend with.”
“But it’s for a good cause. I’m giving her an opportunity to seek redress. To put things right. What could be more productive?”
“A good cause? A cause?”
He sighs. Her anger is broiling lava, but there’s something irrational about it.
“There’s no such thing as causes. There are only people.”
He looks at her with what he hopes is calm, although he is riled up from her reaction. Since when did Becca act in such an extreme manner?
“Do you not believe in bringing some good to the world?”
“Me? Me?”
He folds his arms. “Yes.”
“I went to Ottoman Turkey, may I remind you.”
“You went to Turkey because you didn’t have a choice.”
“There is always choice, even when there isn’t. I went there and instead of staying on my high horse and convincing them to learn French and arithmetic, I held their hands.”
She gives him a piercing look. “Take my advice, Felix. If you want to do some good in this world, don’t start with principles and education and a rational philosophy to life. Start by holding people’s hands.”
*****
Felix checks his chain watch for the tenth time that hour. Chasya should be here soon, she usually comes this time to talk to Raizel.
Sure enough, he soon hears Leibele’s voice. He intercepts her at the front door, shoos Leibele inside to help Gertrude roll out sugar biscuits, and asks Chasya for a moment of her time. She looks both directions along the street, and nods.
“Do you believe that causes do not count, only people?”
She laughs. “It would be easier for me to answer if you actually explained yourself. Can I guess that this is about Raizel?”
He stares. How did she know? Perhaps because Raizel has been occupying her mind as well. He quickly tells her about Becca’s outburst.
Chasya brushes down an imaginary crease in her dress and shakes her head. “There are other ways of fighting this than a court of law.”
“How?”
She looks into the distance. “Even if you could get her to testify, which I do not believe would be in her best interest, it is all so complicated. So many names and addresses and false identities. Bank accounts which lead to other bank accounts in a whole web of rishus.”
Rishus. He blinks for a minute until he identifies the word. Evil. It is a good word, it cuts through to the core.
“Are you saying there is nothing that can be done? Perhaps you believe that we should leave it all to God? After all, if He allowed this to exist in the world, perhaps we should not interfere.” His voice is scratchy with bitterness.
“No.”
“What then?”
He leans closer. A carriage is approaching and the clatter drowns out her quiet voice.
“I believe that G-d allows evil to exist so that we can fight it.”
He is silenced. The carriage passes them, the horse shoes clattering on the cobblestones, two piebalds harnessed and bridled, two blinders stopping them from seeing right or left. He feels a sudden kinship.
She watches it, then speaks again. “You need to approach it from the opposite direction.”
“What other direction could there be?”
“How could you have forgotten?”
He looks at her, puzzled. With this tip of his shoe, he dislodges a weed growing between cobblestones.
“You cannot catch the men in a net which you are too small and too unskilled to form. What can you do?”
He shrugs. “What can any of us do? There is a court of law, there are police, there are the boundaries of civilization. What else?”
She looks at him for a moment. “What is it you did for me?”
Nothing. He has done nothing for her. If only… if only she would let him. Every week, he offers to go to the butcher for her, if only that he could pay for her to have a good chunk of beef, put some more color into Leibele’s cheeks, make sure that the baby… but she firmly refuses.
“What have I done for you? Supplied you with some of Gertrude’s leftover chicken.”
She laughs. “No, Mr Professor, journalist, delivery boy, ich veis nisht. You wrote my story.”
“Oh. That.” He shrugs. “I thought that was hard for you.”
“It was hard.”
“But—”
“But a person can’t escape his life. He can try to. He can try to forget about his past, but it’s there in the shadows. Better if he holds out his hand and allows it to walk alongside him. Not exactly defining him, but almost.”
“So?”
“So instead of being just another person in a big city, forgettable even to herself, you gave me a history. You showed people, you showed me, that I have a story. And that means I have strength and that in living and surviving and being a mother there is something that is worthwhile. It wasn’t nothing, what you did. For you, it may have been just a good scoop, just another story—”
“It was never just another story.”
She shrugs.
“But you have been to the police station, correct?”
“Correct.”
“And there is little that they can do, or will do.”
“True.”
“But don’t forget that these girls have stories. Just find them; I believe they are everywhere. Find their stories and you will not have to move through the courts and you will not have to bring people to jail. The whole community will be with you, for you will have made these girls not just another shtetl meidel that no one cares about. Not just another child lost to a big family or another homeless waif. You will have given them a face and a name and a history.”
“A story,” he murmurs.
“Yes. Go, Felix. Go and write the best stories of your life. And in this way, you shall protect them.”
(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 720)
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