Authors: Anouk Markovits
• • •
They arrived home, cheeks flushed as in childhood. Tiptoeing into the entry, they found Hannah and Zalman sitting in the living room, waiting for them, but rather than question where the girls had been and why they looked so exhilarated, Hannah and Zalman smiled, warmly taking them in.
“Go, quick, dry yourselves or you’ll catch cold,” Hannah said. “Come back when you’re done.” Again, she smiled. “We have something to tell you.”
When the girls returned with towels wrapped around their hair, Zalman spoke first. “We are far from the Rebbe’s court, but your lineage, Blimela, and the good reputation of our home make you a commendable match. The phone has been ringing, calls from America.…”
Hannah’s smile widened. “Word of your beauty seems to have spread as well. We keep saying that you are young, but we received a call today that had the two of us talking all afternoon.”
“A Torah scholar, a favorite at the Rebbe’s court.”
“Handsome, we hear.”
“Surely you remember Josef Lichtenstein?”
Mila caught her breath.
“For years, our Josef was too deep in study to consider any match,” Zalman continued, “but someone mentioned you, that you were coming of age.… It appears Josef now has time enough.” Zalman hesitated a moment and then said,
“Josef Lichtenstein spent seven years on a non-Jewish farm, he called a non-Jew
mother
.” Zalman breathed in deeply. “Blimela, I speak to you as to a daughter: If this young man’s upbringing—for which he bears no responsibility, if you have the slightest misgiving about Josef Lichtenstein, you need not agree to meet him, but all the informatzieh is good. His teachers laud him, so do his study partners and every family with whom he spends the Sabbath. Yes, the merit of fathers visits upon their sons, the soul of the holy Rebbe Elimelech Lichtenstein has been watching over our Josef. I must add, Blimela, your parents, may they rest in peace, your parents would have felt honored to strike a match with the grandnephew of the holy Rebbe Elimelech Lichtenstein.”
That evening, Mila was too restless to lie down. Pacing between the twin brass beds, she talked about Josef, implausible, mystifying Josef—Josef the brave farm boy who was also a Hasidic Jew. Laughingly, then with growing earnestness, her words wove her life and Josef’s; marriage with Josef would signify the culmination of their torn and reconstructed childhoods; children with Josef would be the triumph of their parents’ world over those who set out to destroy it.
Atara wanted to share Mila’s excitement. She remembered liking the boy, and Josef would be different from Zalman, but was it now inevitable that she would lose Mila?
The neighboring bells of Saint-Paul struck, each gong heavy, solitary. Mila sighed. “If I no longer heard those bells.…”
“We’ve always known that a marriage our parents approved meant giving up Paris and its bells.”
“It isn’t a coincidence that I learn of this the day I was so close to going to the library. It’s as if Josef were saving me all over again.”
“From the
library
? Josef is saving you from the
library
?”
“I don’t need to research it. I know: the Rebbe had to save himself so he could save Judaism.”
“Yes, there must be a holy text, somewhere, that says it’s okay to abandon your community if you believe you’re saving Judaism,” Atara said with growing hopelessness.
“The Rebbe had to live. Who knows what worse suffering his prayers averted.”
“If the Rebbe boarded that train thinking he was saving Judaism, then he did exactly what so angers him about Zionists selecting young pioneers to salvage
their
vision of Jewry. In the end, Zionists did save their archenemy, the Rebbe of Szatmár, whereas he saved himself, his wife—”
“I’m not listening. The Rebbe did what HaShem told him to do.”
“It doesn’t bother you that he advised your grandparents to tear up their Palestine Certificates? That he fled with the help of a Zionist?”
They both thought of the Palestine Certificates that Mila’s grandparents had obtained before the war and tore up after seeking the Rebbe’s advice, a story Zalman had told many times so that Mila would be proud of her lineage, of her grandparents gassed in Auschwitz.
“That was before the war,” Mila said, trembling. “He gave that advice before the war.”
“Terrible advice. He also expelled from the congregation anyone who had any dealings with Zionists and then, when it was too late for everyone else—”
“Atara, you’re really becoming an apikores. I’m not listening.”
“—he saved himself. It didn’t occur to him to ask why the Germans might let out this one train of elect Jews? And if it didn’t occur to him, should he still decide for us—”
“It was God’s will that the Rebbe should live.”
Atara threw her little transistor radio to the floor.
Mila stared, openmouthed, at the cracked plastic shell, at the knob rolling under the bed.
“And will it be God’s will and the Rebbe’s will for you to leave
me
behind?” Atara asked.
“The Rebbe is not responsible for what the Nazis did,” Mila whispered.
Tears welled in Atara’s eyes. “Of course the Rebbe is not responsible for what the Nazis did. And neither are the Zionists. The Rebbe behaved like other people who wanted desperately to live, and we can live, too. We don’t need to ask the Rebbe or anyone. Mila, if I went to college and my father declared me dead, would you not see me again?”
“You won’t. You can’t do it to your parents. You can’t do it to me.” Mila started her night prayers after which it was not permitted to speak:
“Michael is to my right, Gabriel to my left.…”
M
ILA
and Josef had not seen each other for ten years. Occasionally visitors from Williamsburg had brought news: the rescued orphan had chanted his bar mitzvah like a true Hasid; the orphan boy lived at the yeshiva in a room with seven other boys and spent Sabbaths with families in Williamsburg. The teller of one story was unsure of whether it was a sign of good or ill, but a menacing dog once strayed into the yeshiva yard and Josef, to the wonderment of all who watched, knew how to appease the unclean animal.
Except for such episodic news, Mila had been left to her fading memories.
Had Josef stayed with the Sterns, had Mila and Josef been raised as brother and sister, had Josef done what other yeshiva boys do—trust that a marriage with a girl he had never met would be arranged for him.… Instead, Josef waited for the little girl he had rescued when he was a child, for the beautiful Mila Heller who loved Paris but would consider joining the Rebbe’s court in Williamsburg, in America.
*
M
ILA
and Josef sat across from each other—she, seventeen, modest but fashionable in her blue taffeta suit and tall updo; he, twenty-two, face no longer honey-colored but indoor yeshiva pale under the wide-brimmed black hat.
The door of the dining room was ajar, unmarried men and women must not meet alone.
Unlike the averted eyes of other yeshiva boys, Josef’s gaze was direct.
His voice was much deeper than she remembered.
“Mila Heller.…”
“Anghel? …”
He blinked. “Josef.”
She flushed. “Of course! We were so proud when the first letter arrived:
Josef Lichtenstein is now bar mitzvah and he read his haphtorah like a true Hasid
.”
Her eyes were the spring blue of the bouquet he had placed at the foot of the shrine behind the vegetable patch, back there, when he had prayed that the little girl, Mila Heller, arrive safely at the home of Zalman Stern. He blinked the shrine away.
“Yes, I knew my haphtorah by heart. We studied during the entire crossing. Reb Halberstamm taught me the meaning of the verses and what they imply besides meaning.”
The last sentence struck her, intense as she remembered him.
“And Williamsburg?” she asked.
“There are people in Williamsburg who remember my parents, and there are people who remember
your
parents: the brilliant scholar Gershon Heller, the beautiful Rachel Landau, may they rest in peace.”
Tears welled in Mila’s eyes. Besides the Sterns, no one in Paris could have named her parents.
They knew all that they needed to know about each other in a Hasidic courtship: Blimela, daughter of Rachel, daughter of Haye Esther; Josef, son of Yekutiel, son of Mendel Wolf. And they also knew particulars they should not have known—he, the smell of her hair covered in black earth; she, the taste of his tears.
They looked down at the ivory tablecloth that Hannah had embroidered in the style of back there; they looked down and then, quickly, at each other. They knew that they would have a lifetime in which to tell each other the dance of stories that had placed them at this table, b’shert,
destined
, among the generations.
The front door closed on Josef.
“I think it is yes!” Hannah cried out. “B’shert, it is b’shert!” Hannah took Mila by the waist and waltzed her around the dining table.
“Yadidadidam!”
“Auntie Hannah, the doctor said bed rest!”
They glided through the entrance hall, they stopped in front of Zalman’s study. “Mazel tov!” Hannah cried out.
Zalman’s hands came together as he rose. He was beaming. He no longer needed to be afraid, not for this daughter marrying at the Rebbe’s court. “Mazel tov!”
Mila and Josef met two more times before the wedding, but not alone. The first time, Josef brought Mila his mother’s brooch and a modest diamond engagement ring. Mila pinned the brooch on the collar of her suit, close to her heart. The second time, he brought her two gift boxes, one white, flat, tied with a purple ribbon; one purple, tied with a white ribbon. Mila pulled on the purple ribbon, unwrapped the fragile rice paper, unfolded a silk stole. She stroked the pearl-and-lavender stripes, but did not bring the fabric to her cheek for fear that it might seem immodest. She pulled the white ribbon, brushed the hand-painted flower on the frosted-blue perfume bottle, and with her light Hungarian lilt, she read out the label:
“Anémone des bois.”
Josef pulled back his hips and stood a bit hunched, coat closed, to conceal his twenty-two-year-old ammah rising in praise of Mila and HaShem.
A
FTER THE ENGAGEMENT
, Hannah announced that a bride to be needed a room of her own. Mila protested. Like most Hasidic girls, she knew nothing of the intimate inspections that precede a Jewish orthodox wedding night, but after she started private bride classes, Mila moved into the living
room. Atara came to visit every evening. She brushed Mila’s hair, bristles rustling over the waves and highlights, the long hair Mila and Atara knew would soon lay curled at the bottom of a wastebasket, the long hair Josef would never touch. Their gazes met in the mirror.
Once again, Mila peeled back the folds of the fragile rice paper wrapping Josef’s gifts. She stroked the silk stole. “I’ll wear it every month, to let him know when I am permitted,” she said one evening.
“Permitted?” Atara asked, and did not wait for an answer.
Atara did not want to know, did not want any of what she soon understood was Mila’s count of blood days and clean days, a count Mila entered in a new notebook she had titled, in her flowing cursive and well-rounded loops:
Mila’s Book of Days—Private
.
*
T
HE MEN
sang the groom to the wedding dais with a joyous march:
“There was a king among the righteous.…”
Zalman turned to face the center aisle, to await the bride, and the guests turned with him. He hummed the melody he had hummed at the wedding of his study partner, Gershon Heller, back there, in Transylvania,
Bilvovi mishkan evneh (In my heart I will build a temple)
, he hummed until Gershon’s daughter appeared, a white radiance holding a pale bouquet in gathered hands.
Mila could not see where she was stepping, under the thick veil that covered her face, but Hannah and Mrs. Halberstamm guided her. When Mila’s foot reached the dais, Zalman thundered “Blessed be she that cometh!,” and to the measure of the voice that had been deemed the most beautiful east of Vienna, Mila circled Josef seven times for the seven heavens, the seven days of creation, the seven rotations of the phylactery strap; as man binds himself to God, so Mila would bind herself to Josef.
Josef slid a wedding band on Mila’s finger. He uttered the ancient vow: “Harei at mekudesheth li b’taba’ath zo kedath Moshe v’Yisroel.”
(Lo thou art consecrated to me with this ring according to the Law of Moses and Israel.)
Hannah lifted the veil from Mila’s face.
There were no blood relations on either side to attend the wedding.
Arm in arm, eyes sparkling, bride and groom stepped down from under the dais.
In winding chains, the men wove their steps on the men’s
side, the women on the women’s side. The dance continued into the night, until a sign from Zalman indicated it was time for the festivities to wind down. What was the propriety of so much joy when the Temple was destroyed, when the divine presence was in exile?
*
M
ILA
lay in darkness, silence, and holiness.
She imagined her long hair, shorn for this night, gathering itself inside her prayer book, inside the night table, just as Anghel’s locks had gathered on the newspapers ten years earlier.
Now Josef stood by her bed, swaying in prayer.
She was surprised to find herself within the Law, yet alone with him.
He leaned over her, kissed her cheek.
Between their bodies, his long nightshirt, a few remaining inches of darkness, her gown, which he now lifted.
He held her like milkweed, afraid to crush, afraid his breathing might carry her off.
May our union be in holiness … May our children …
She felt his hardness searching for the place in her she barely knew of, until she learned to inspect it in preparation for this night.
Her gasp as he pressed into her. He stilled—was he doing something wrong? He had intended to think of Torah matters, as the sages advised, but his whole being arced toward her.