Broken Song Read online

  “Any minute,” his father said, looking at his watch. “He’s just back from Poland.”

  “Aah, the baron.” Shriprinka sighed. Reuven knew what she was thinking. How she would have loved to see the estate near Bryznck where their uncle went three times a year to tailor clothes for the wealthy Baron Radzinsky. He stayed in the palatial manor house on the baron’s estate. The baron was not a Jew-hater like so many of the Russian and Polish nobility. He loved Chizor and showered him with presents. Chizor ordered the most luxurious fabrics for the baron. He made him everything from evening clothes and fur-trimmed capes to elegant brocaded smoking jackets. The fabrics were often French, sometimes Chinese, and other times Scottish wools. Reuven loved his uncle’s tales of the baron. They had all sat enthralled the first time Uncle Chizor described the long drive leading into the estate, which was lined with white oak trees. Two huge marble lions flanked either side of the entrance of the stone and timber mansion. And then there were the gardens. There was one where only white flowers grew. Another was just for roses. There were vineyards and orchards and an outdoor and an indoor court for playing a game called tennis.

  “Reuven,” said his mother. “Please go get another bottle of wine from the potato hole.” Reuven put down his baby sister and walked to a corner by the window. He pulled a square-cut plank from the floor and bent down to reach for the bottle of wine. Almost every cottage had a potato hole for root vegetables, but the Bloom family’s was unusually large. They kept bottles of wine, bags of sugar, and sacks of grain there. It was so big that Reuven’s mother constantly fussed about putting the plank back for fear that Rachel would fall in. Rachel was right by Reuven’s knees now as he bent down into the deep darkness of the hole.

  “Back, Rachel, back. You don’t want to fall in here and crack your head.”

  Shriprinka came and grabbed Rachel by the sashes on her dress. “You’ll get all dirty in there, Rachel,” she said. “There are spiders and dirt and cobwebs. It’s no place for you in your pretty seder dress.”

  Just as Reuven came up from the hole with the extra bottle of wine, there was the sound of footsteps outside. The door opened, and a large man with a jet-black beard flecked with silver swirled in.

  “Shalom, shalom aleichem!” he cried merrily. “I bring you gifts from the baron.”

  “Ahk, ahk, ahk.” Rachel was tugging on the tails of his gabardine.

  “Oh, you want something too. If I pick you up, no eyebrow pulling.” He shook his finger at Rachel. Uncle Chizor had thick black eyebrows, and each one had a tuft of white at the inside corner, which Rachel’s chubby hands always went for. “Well, this is really a gift for all of us, although it will be up to Reuven to ‘deliver it’ so to speak.”

  “What are you talking about, Uncle?” Reuven asked.

  From a deep inside pocket, Chizor Bloom withdrew several sheaves of paper with small dark marks. “Music—sheet music—the Czech fellow.”

  “Dvo?ák!” Reuven exclaimed. “Antonín Dvo?ák?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “You brought me music of Antonín Dvo?ák?” Reuven could hardly believe it. Sheet music and scores were hard enough to come by in the Pale, but music of Dvo?ák was especially rare. And yet every music student and music lover in Europe had heard of this great composer who had begun as a violinist. “Oh, Uncle,” Reuven said in awe. “The baron gave it to you just like that?”

  Chizor snapped his fingers. “Like that,” he said. Was it such a surprise really? The baron had already found the Ceruti violin that Reuven played. Ceruti violins, made in Cremona, were among the finest in the world. They were also extremely expensive.

  “Ready?” asked Bathshepa. Reuven set aside the sheet music and picked up Rachel again. She gurgled and pulled at his hair as Bathshepa struck the match. The candlesticks were real silver. They were the most valuable things that the Bloom family owned. The candles glowed a pale yellow just like the water flowers that Reuven had seen once in a remote creek. From one tiny window the last ray of the day’s sun flared like a smear of pale blood on the pane.

  Then the seder began.

  This was Reuven’s fifteenth Passover, and each time he found it just as wonderful as the last. This time even more so, perhaps because it was baby Rachel’s first seder. Having a baby at a seder was perfect, because babies made everything so imperfect. She got carried away with the hand washing and splashed all the water out of the bowl. She tried to stick the parsley up her nose, then thought that was so funny she stuck some in her ear. How would Rachel know that the parsley at the seder table symbolized hope and spring? It was fun to tickle your nose with it.

  They all laughed at Rachel, and the more they laughed, the wilder she got. After the seder, Reuven got out his violin and played. He tried the Dvo?ák. It was as if the composer’s hands lay lightly on his own. The piece was a slow romantic one. It was sheer intuition that led Reuven to play the opening measures with great calmness. Even Rachel stopped her fidgeting and seemed captivated by the melody.

  That night as he went to bed, Reuven thought how especially wonderful this seder had been. He was not tired, and he could not fall asleep. Often on warm spring or summer nights, Reuven went up onto the roof of the little house to watch the stars. Tonight as he came out on the roof, he was thinking of Rachel. He looked up at the sky and saw the stars swirling in the deep black. The stars are so old, he thought, and she is so young. She has been on this earth for only eleven months. Her first seder.

  Rachel had been born blue … blue as the sky, blue as a violet. But once one has seen a baby born blue, it is hard to think of violets and sky. Blue is wrong. That is all Reuven thought at the time. He was standing in the shadows of the cottage when she was born, but he saw. The midwife slapped her. She sucked on Rachel’s tiny mouth, and finally Reuven was sent to fetch a bucket of freezing cold water. The ice on the river had just broken up. He had never run so fast. Luckily the river was near. They plunged her in the bucket. There was a sound that was like a bubble bursting, and then not a little whimper, but a yowl. A big angry yowl. Even the midwife was surprised. She said most babies born blue, if they live, don’t yowl, they whimper. But it was clearly a mistake that Rachel had been born blue. It was almost as if she were saying blue is for violets, blue is for birds, blue is not for me. She was mad, very mad. How could this mistake have been made? An outrage! She wailed.

  In Reuven’s mind, Rachel had been trying to prove how alive she was ever since. And that is what made this Passover special. This fat baby tyrant, who stuffed parsley up her nose and blew bubbles into her tiny cup of wine, was a miracle by virtue of her very existence. It was Rachel who sang all the seder songs the loudest. “Blah gah gah gah.” It all made sense to her because after you’ve been born dead, there is no real logic. As they were singing the last song, Rachel scrambled down onto the floor. She stood with no hands holding on to anything, swaying like a tipsy man from a tavern. Everyone kept singing, but their eyes were fastened on the baby. Then she took a step, a very first step. And everyone gasped and stopped singing.

  “She is walking to Jerusalem!” Aaron Bloom whispered, as if he thought the breath of his words might topple her.

  Reuven was thinking of all this when Shriprinka climbed up beside him on the roof.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

  “The cricket is back.”

  “It is!”

  “Yes, it always takes some getting used to for me,” Shriprinka said, and laughed softly.

  “I like him.”

  “I know. You hear music in everything.”

  “Where do you think he goes in winter?”

  “The Goldeneh Medina, the Golden Country, America, where else?” She laughed.

  “Maybe Chicago.”

  “Chi—what?” His sisters gray eyes opened like huge pale stars in the night. He had known this would impress her.

  “Chicago. It’s a big city in America. I’ve heard about it.”

  “You mean there’
s more than New York?”

  “Oh yes, there’s San Francisco and Denver and Atlanta and Philadelphia and Boston… .” The names rolled off his lips into the night, and Shriprinka stared at her brother in awe, as if he were playing the most beautiful violin piece.

  “How do you know all this, Reuven? Wait …” She held up her hand. “Don’t tell me. You go to the storybook man.”

  Reuven smiled and nodded. “But don’t tell Mama and Papa.”

  “But Reuven, it’s expensive. Isn’t it?”

  “No, he rents you two for a kopek. I found out about places like Denver through the cowboy stories.”

  “Cowboy stories?”

  “Yes, stories about tough guys who ride horses and round up cattle out in the western part of America.”

  “Two books for a kopek, that’s pretty good,” Shriprinka said.

  “You want me to rent you some?”

  Shriprinka hunched her shoulders and giggled. “I don’t know, Reuven.”

  “They’ve got romances for girls.”

  “What do I care about romances?”

  “You don’t?” Reuven didn’t know that much about girls.

  “No. I think I’d rather read stories about other places than here—about, you know, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco. And Phila …”

  “Delphia.”

  “Yes. That’s it. What do I care for romances? Romance is a waste of time.”

  “It is?” Reuven was surprised.

  “You know that. Mama and Papa will go to the matchmaker for me when the time comes, and what will romance have to do with it?”

  Now all Reuven could think about was the girl in the marketplace with one eyebrow. What if a matchmaker thought the best match she could make for that girl was a boy who never studied Talmud and instead wasted his time on rented storybooks and the violin? Reuven sighed deeply and tipped his head up. The stars whirled in the sky.

  Then it was as if Shriprinka could read his mind. She patted his hand.

  “Don’t worry, Reuven. You’re safe from the matchmakers. They think you’re a lazy dreamer. But somewhere out there is a girl who loves music. She will quiver when you play, and she won’t care at all if you know Talmud or not.”

  He heard the cricket that night as he lay drifting off to sleep. He heard it shaping sounds with its legs. Was it the same cricket he and Shriprinka had heard last year, or was it the great-great-great-great-grandchild of the cricket he heard in this cottage when they had first moved here? That had been over ten years ago, after they had been forced from the village where he was born, the village he could hardly remember. But it had not been in the Pale. Maybe the cricket had come with them. Or was it a native, a Pale cricket? No matter, he liked its song. Someday he might write a concerto or even a symphony and it would have all the sounds of the land—the music of the cricket, the rush of the river, the stillness of the creek where the nameless yellow water flowers grew, and yes, the yowl of Rachel. He yawned and fell fast asleep.

  FOUR

  HIS LESSON had gone well. Once more he was passing by the spindly-legged chicken house of Reb Mendel. On the lapel of his gabardine coat he slid his first finger up an imaginary violin string, thinking how Herschel had said the beginning of the Bach should be played. Simply, without effort, but with restraint. “Restraint.” Herschel had whispered the word. And then Reuven’s thoughts were shattered.

  “Did you hear me, you idiot boy? You no-good piece of ignorance! May a darkness be yours! Why not you? Those catchers—they got no sense. We will put you on the list next time—you piece of swine dropping!”

  It was Reb Mendel, his eyes bulging out of his narrow head. He hopped first on one foot then the other. Flecks of spittle flew from his thin purple lips. He was screaming curses.

  “What? What are you saying?” Reuven thought he heard Muttle’s name. “What? What about Muttle?”

  “They took him! You fool. The catchers came and grabbed him for the tsar’s army.”

  “What? This is impossible.”

  “Yes. That is what I said. I said, how can they take the pride of our village? Our most gifted scholar. Why not take you? You could fiddle to the Cossacks. Yes, like Nero …” The thin purple lips pulled back in a horrid grin, revealing yellow teeth that came to sharp points. “Yes, you could fiddle as they burn Jewish villages across Russia. That would suit you fine.”

  Reuven turned his back on the man’s rantings and began running as fast as he could, as fast as the night when Rachel was born. All he could think of was that there must be some mistake. Why ever would they take Muttle? Muttle, who hardly weighed more than a sack of grain. How can a living book make a soldier?

  As Reuven ran through the village, he noticed knots of people standing on the corners and gathered in doorways. There was an eerie quiet that seemed to have descended over everything. And was it his imagination, or did some of these people slide their eyes sideways and look at him, stealing a glance as he flew by? Were they wondering, Why not Reuven? Why Muttle our scholar, God’s blessing to this shtetl? Take the fiddler.

  “Is it true?” he gasped as he burst through the door. But he knew it was. Why else would his father be home from work? Why would Shriprinka be so deathly white and still on a stool in the corner? Why would his mother be clutching Rachel and trembling so hard? It was as if his mother had suddenly become an old lady. Her eyes seemed sunken and faded with that mixture of fear and confusion he had sometimes seen in old folks’ eyes. Even Rachel seemed to know something was terribly wrong. She jammed her thumb into her mouth and looked as solemn as Reuven had ever seen her.

  Reuven dropped to his knees by his mother’s chair.

  “I am here, Mama. I am here. Don’t worry. They don’t want a fiddler.” But she was not listening. A stream of colorless words in a near monotone came from her mouth in a strange mechanical voice.

  “They came and they snatched him and Isaac the orphan right from the study house, him and Isaac. And two of the rebbes jumped up and said, ‘No, not him’ and they meant Muttle. They didn’t bother to say, ‘No, not Isaac.’ Can you believe it, and they call themselves holy men?” There was no anger in her voice, but she continued reciting, as if she were trying to accustom herself to this tale of horror. “And then, you know, they did the usual. They went for the poor ones—the rag man’s son Koppel, Shlomo the cobbler’s boy, and then of course, any other orphans.” His mother’s voice dwindled off into the shadows that seemed to cling in the corners of the cottage.

  That night when Reuven went to bed, he asked into the darkness, “Why?” But there was only the sound of the cricket.

  FIVE

  IN THE sleepy moments of the first morning that Reuven awakened after Muttle’s kidnapping, he felt a terrible heaviness within him, and also a darkness. It was as if the shadows of the night had somehow crept into his body. It did not matter that it was daylight, that the sun shone with the bright ferocity of early spring. He was confused in those first minutes. He vaguely knew that something was terribly wrong—wrong with him? Wrong with the world? And yet he could not quite remember why he was feeling this deep sadness. Then it slid over him, just like the spots of sun on his blanket. His mind fully wakened to the reality. His best friend was gone.

  That was the first morning. Now he had not grown accustomed to it, but he was no longer confused. It was the first thing he thought about every morning and the last thing at night, and then a thousand times during the day.

  Seven weeks it had now been; almost fifty days had passed. Nothing had been normal, and yet everyone had to pretend it was. That was perhaps the worst of it. His mother went on cooking and cleaning. His father went on hauling grain to various millers as part of his contract with some local farmers. His sister studied and took care of Rachel. Rachel went on playing, and he, Reuven, practiced his violin. His playing had not suffered. Was this bad? He felt almost guilty for playing so well.

  No one had held a second seder on the night of Muttle’s capture. People were to
o scared. But now it was time for another holiday, Shavuot, the celebration of the Torah and the giving of the Ten Commandments. It was on Shavuot that children, when they were three years old, began their formal studies of Hebrew. That was when Reuven and Muttle had first met, almost twelve years before.

  It was rumored that the village council made up lists of boys who could be drafted. They traded the lists for favors from the tsar’s government—favors such as allowing their villages not to be burned, their families not to be murdered, their study houses and synagogues not to be destroyed. And everyone knew that there were Jew catchers, many of them Jewish, who snatched boys from the religious schools. There was a famous one from the Polish town of Orla who traveled far. His name was Lejb Tate, and he was said to be a strange and sadistic man, but a Jew nonetheless, who worked on a quota system for the tsar—so many Jewish boys delivered each year, for which he was paid handsomely. It was said that some village councils actually hired Lejb Tate secretly. On the councils there were scholarly rebbes. “Can you believe it, and they call themselves holy men?” Reuven’s mother’s strange mechanical voice came back to him. No, Reuven could not believe it for one minute.

  Tonight those holy men, if they dared, would be praying in the synagogue all night long. Such was the custom. They would read from the Book of Prophets. They would read the Song at the Red Sea.

  Reuven’s mother and his sister were in the kitchen. Suddenly his father spoke. “Come, Reuven, we’ll go to synagogue.”

  “Really, Papa?” Reuven looked up with surprise from the sheets of music he was studying before supper. Reuven saw his father looking at his mother’s and Shriprinka’s doughy fingers. The two women stopped what they were doing, but baby Rachel kept banging on a pot. For this, Reuven was thankful. He saw the resolve in his father’s eyes. His father was no great scholar, but he was a Jew and he would not be bullied out of his beliefs, he would not be prevented from reading Torah on this evening.