I Am Forbidden (28 page)

She heard Judith’s lament; she heard Josef’s lullaby consoling the lament:

An old man stepped out of a birch grove. “Are you a Jewish? Evreu?”

The man decided this woman must be, standing there among the graves. He smiled an impish smile and in his threadbare, Soviet-era coat, with his mouth emptied of teeth, he sang,
“Yadidadidam!”

He unfolded a grayish napkin on a stone and placed upon it a few plastic barrettes, a bookmark with a photograph of a synagogue, safety pins, portraits of saints.… “Cheap, very cheap!”

Atara gave him a bill and left the cemetery.

She found the linden tree by the gate, the yard with the cowshed, the chicken coop.

An ancient, stooped woman in black kerchief and black dress shuffled toward her, a watering can in her hands. “Hello, who are you?” the woman asked.

“I … I came— Josef … Josef Lichtenstein.…”

“Shh.…” The old woman placed a finger on her lips.

In the shadow of the linden tree where Zalman had stood half a century before, Atara started again: “Anghel, I came to speak of Anghel.”

The woman’s gnarled hand went to her pocket. She retrieved a wrinkled postcard and held it out.

Anghel had written to Florina that he would send for her when he had plowed the fields of America.

The woman wiped an eye, slid the cracked postcard between the folds of her black skirt, looked up. “Hello, who are you?”

Atara spoke of Anghel’s marriage to the beautiful Mila Heller whose parents had lived near Cluj, across the river. She spoke of Anghel’s love for his two mothers.

The woman raised the watering can. The water flowed from the spout, some inside the potted nettle.

Atara opened her purse and took out the brooch. “Anghel would have wanted Florina to have this.”

The old woman eyed the brooch uncertainly.

Atara asked whether Florina had married, after Anghel had left.

The woman raised her clouded eyes. “Hello, who are you?”

Atara entered the yard and pinned the brooch on the woman’s lapel. The woman hummed to herself. When she noticed Atara again, she said, “Hello?”

Atara started down the dirt road. Quacking ducks waddled after her as she pressed on, past doorways where mothers stood with tightened shawls around their shoulders and called through the lanes for children to come home.

M
ILA
wakes in her chair by the living-room window. She leans forward and looks out. Among the sidecurls and the black coat flaps waving on the overpass, she searches for the messiah’s white donkey, the sign that Josef and Judith live again. She hushes her great-grandchildren running circles around her armchair and listens for Elijah’s step. She buries her face in her prayer book.
If my time comes before the messiah, may I be worthy of sojourning near my Josef, in the house of the pious.…
She dozes off as her great-grandchildren laugh and spin their flyaway silken hair around her. One last time, Mila dreams of Josef placing a hand over his heart, a hand over her heart, and mouthing the word.

Scott Moyers and Andrew Wylie of the Wylie Agency responded to my over-the-transom manuscript and have my trust and admiration.

Lindsay Sagnette and Becky Hardie are extraordinary editors and supporters. I am grateful for the new literary community they are building at Hogarth, together with Maya Mavjee, Molly Stern, Clara Farmer, David Drake, Rachel Rokicki, Rachelle Mandik, Barbara Sturman, Christine Kopprasch, Rachel Meier, Julie Cepler, and Jay Sones.

Florence Berger, Toby Berger, Julie Hilden, Heather White, and David Coleman are the sort of readers every writer hopes for.

At different stages in the creation of this work, Adam Eaglin, John Casey, Maribelle Leavitt, Stephen Leavitt, Melanie Thernstrom, Sherry King, and Deborah Reck gave me important feedback and encouragement.

Larry Berger read every draft from the first short story in English to the galleys.