Broken Song (7 page)

This is what Aaron Bloom would say every night just before they lit the candles.

On the sixth night of Hanukkah as his family chanted the blessing of the lights, Reuven could picture them standing there—Shriprinka, Mama, Papa, baby Rachel, thankfully, asleep in her crib. He could even imagine the lights reflected in the blackness of the windows. Were there frost trees on the glass tonight? Perhaps not, for it had begun to rain earlier. So that would mean the reflections of the lights would slide into shimmering liquid shapes. They would dance across the wet windowpanes like flames, like the light of a
dybbuk’s
face, like … like, oh where was Uncle Chizor on this night? Reuven could see the thick eyebrows with their tufts of white dancing up and down through the smoke of his Cuban cigar. Maybe he had gone to Cuba, to the city of Havana. Or was he in that frozen north place, the place of the lakes like claws that he had once shown Reuven on the map in his library? What funny thoughts he had here in the darkness. And the thoughts were laced with music, all the beautiful music he had learned to play since he was six years old—the Brahms, the Beethoven, the Bach. The music streamed through him, through the darkness. It filled his being until his soul sang and he felt in his own way as powerful as Judas the Hammer hiding out in the Judean Hills of Jerusalem. These were his Judean Hills—this darkness, this hole.

* * *

The next day, Reuven was dozing when he heard excited voices above him. It was Shriprinka.

“Mama! Papa!” She had just returned from the marketplace. “They are saying that the women and the children shall be taken out to the forest and shot if all the boys in Berischeva are not given up in the next twenty-four hours.”

“What?” Reuven’s father asked.

“Yes, it is true,” said another voice. Reuven recognized it as Beryl, Shriprinka’s good friend. “They know many families are still hiding sons.”

“Oh my God!” moaned his mother. “What are we to do?”

“We must leave,” said his father. “We must leave separately from Reuven. We shall go to Zarichka and then to Vilna. It will be safe. And then from there … Yes, yes, I guess America.”

America! Reuven could hardly believe his ears. The map he had studied at Uncle Chizor’s library now danced in his imagination. The claw lakes, called the Great Lakes, sparkled fiercely. He could picture it all: the thin blue thread called the St. Lawrence River, the sausage named Florida, Minnesota, the shining sea on the far edge of the map.

Reuven heard the door close as Beryl left. He heard his father walking toward the potato hole, hopefully to tell him what to do. Where to meet in Vilna, for they would not be able to meet up in Zarichka. It would be unsafe, but Vilna would be good. Vilna even had a music academy. Perhaps they would meet there. First his father spoke to his mother. Reuven heard him talking about a
distant cousin in Vilna. This was news to Reuven. A cousin named Lovotz Sperling, a book dealer. Then his mother and father and Shriprinka began speaking in terse sentences.

“Wrap up some diapers for the baby … We take nothing but the clothes on our backs … A loaf of bread … Coins, sew the coins into the hems of your skirts … Rachel’s medicine … Sturdy shoes … your sturdiest shoes.”

And then his father was standing very near the potato hole. He dared not uncover it. He spoke rapidly. The words were directed to Reuven, who crouched with his chin to his knees and listened.

“Lovotz Sperling, off Szeroka Street. It’s an alley, really. I forget the name. Not far from the great synagogue.”

Suddenly a great clattering. Things were crashing. Reuven heard a horse’s excited snorting and hooves pounding. Hooves right in the house! On the planks of their own floor! Above the potato hole, a deafening clatter and thunder. Dirt was shaking down. He heard screaming.

“Don’t take him! Don’t take him!”

A shot tore through the screams, then another and another. A large splinter of wood was blasted from the plank covering the potato hole, and suddenly a wedge of light dropped into the darkness. Reuven froze. He dared not breathe. Above he heard a soft moan near the potato hole. He rose slightly so he could peer through the slot that had been shot away Reuven opened his eyes in horror. Shriprinka lay inches from him. There was a gaping wound in her neck, from which blood poured. The
shiny boots of a Cossack stepped neatly over her. Reuven saw a hand reach down. Was the soldier going to help her? The hand took out a pistol from a leg holster. Reuven watched, transfixed. It was one seamless movement. The hand drew the trigger and shot his sister in the chest. The other hand reached for Reuven’s violin. A slice of lamplight cut across Reuven’s face, then darkness filled his brain and everything was quiet. Very quiet.

NINE

REUVEN HAD no notion of time. It could have been hours since his sister’s murder, or days, or maybe just minutes. It was as if he had been wrapped in an all-enveloping numbness. He felt neither cold nor hunger nor loss nor outrage nor despair. He could not cry, but he was suddenly aware of a little cry coming from someone else, a whimpering that seemed to scratch at the numbness of the chamber that sealed him off from all feeling. He blinked. The light that fell through the slot was not lamplight, but natural light from a window. An entire night must have passed. It was a new day. The whimpering sound pulled him inexorably toward it.

Like a fish pulled from the sea, Reuven felt himself being reeled out of his hole. He was beyond fear; he was beyond hope. For the first time in a week he stood up
to his full height in the light of day. Something lay on the floor twisted and caked with blood.
This is not Shriprinka
. The words thundered in his head. No, not his sister! He refused to believe that. He could not touch her. If he touched her, he would have to believe. But he could not leave her like this. He took a tapestry that Uncle Chizor had given them. It had been torn off the wall, and he now spread it over Shriprinka’s body.

No sooner had he done that then there was the whimpering sound again, then a cry. A loud insistent cry. Where was that coming from? Everything was turned topsy-turvy. Tables upended, bed mattresses ripped open. His mother’s sewing machine lay smashed in the fireplace, and the big wardrobe that his father had taken the door off and built a few shelves in for their few books and dishes was facedown on the floor. This was where the whimpering was coming from.

Reuven stood and looked down at the back side of the wardrobe. Another cry.

“Rachel?”

This must be the miracle
, Reuven thought as he lifted the heavy wardrobe and discovered Rachel in her crib. She raised her arms to Reuven. Her face was smeared with tears and snot. But she was alive! The huge crash he had heard the night before had been the wardrobe falling over. Falling over so precisely it had simply dropped like an enormous box over Rachel’s small crib, sealing her off from the violence of the slaughter. And it had been a slaughter. Shriprinka was dead. He could see the bodies
of his father and mother through the doorway of the cottage, for there was no longer a door. It had been torn off. Beyond them, other bodies lay in the street. Several houses had been burned to the ground. By some miracle, theirs had been spared, or else he and Rachel would have never found themselves alive on this morning, the last day of Hanukkah.

Rachel was remarkably well, considering that she had spent the last fourteen hours in a coffinlike box. The sleeping draught they had given her must have worked very well. She was hungry and she was frightened. Her little mouth stretched into an enormous, lopsided, dark O as she howled for her mama. It was a din of rage, and her eyes seemed to slide with terror. Then she looked at her brother as if to say,
Fix this. I am the baby! Just a baby. Feed me
! And Reuven realized that it was all up to him now. Her life depended on him. Him alone. There was no one to help them. There were only people out there who could kill them.

And then it suddenly struck Reuven that it was very possible that he and Rachel were the only living things left in Berischeva. He had not heard a dog bark, a horse whinny, a chicken cluck. He had not heard the voices of any humans. He had not even heard a footstep in the street. The stillness began to creep into him, settle in him like mist. The Cossacks were gone and everybody else was dead. This he knew. Therefore, at this moment he and Rachel were in no immediate danger, but he had to make plans. Careful small plans. He could proceed only step by step. His first problem was how to prevent
Rachel from seeing the dead bodies of their parents and Shriprinka. This made burying them impossible. He knew it was terrible to leave them like this, but what choice did he have? His duty was to the living, his little sister.

Then the first step of a small plan took shape in his brain. He and Rachel would leave by the back door. But they could not leave in the light of day, could they? The Cossacks might be just outside the village. And yet if they waited here, Rachel might discover Shriprinka under the tapestry or run out the front door. She was already squirming in his lap. They would have to leave now. He would just have to be very careful. He sat staring at one of the immense woven baskets that his father used for transporting grain to the miller. It gave him an idea. Rachel could easily fit into the basket. If he strapped it to his back and then wrapped his head up with scarves and wore a skirt of his mother’s—there was one flung over in a corner—from a distance, he might look like one of the old Russian peasant women going to market. Anything was better than looking like what he was—a nearly sixteen-year-old Jewish boy, muscular and fit for the tsar’s army.

Reuven told Rachel to sit very still, that he was going to show her something funny. He had managed to find her a hunk of cheese and some bread, which seemed to satisfy her for now. He went and put on his mother’s skirt. Rachel looked at him curiously, her face slipping to an expression halfway between a laugh and a cry. Next he found some of his mother’s scarves and
wrapped them around his head just like the babushkas the Russia peasant women wore. Rachel pointed. The corners of her mouth crinkled into a tentative smile.

“Yes, aren’t I funny? You can call me Miriam, or Tovah, or …” Another odd expression seemed to play across her face.
She’s trying to figure this out
, Reuven thought.

“Mama!” Rachel pointed her finger again and giggled a bit.

“Yes, Mama.” Reuven whispered the words so softly only he could hear them.

“Mama!” It began as a whimper, a plea. But then her face slid into that awful grimace. The little mouth began to stretch into the dark hole that seemed to blot out her features. It was almost as if she were swallowing herself.

“Mama! Mama!”

The entire house seemed to shake with the single word. Now Rachel was standing up and stomping her little feet. Her face, turning red, was contorted into a horrid mask. Suddenly it was illuminated by a shaft of brilliant sunlight that flooded through the two small windows of the house. God, she looked like a baby
dybbuk
. It was as if a tiny evil spirit had taken her over. He had to get her out of here. She was toddling toward the doorway. Reuven lunged for her as she began to run off. In one swoop he put her in the big basket and slung it up onto his back. Now Rachel whooped with glee. This was the greatest fun! Whoever heard of riding in Papa’s wheat basket?

They were out the door, through the muddy backyard.
One large open field to cross and then they would be at the edge of the woods. They could lose themselves in the dense shadows of the trees. There they would wait until dark, when it would be safer to travel.

As soon as they had gotten beyond the village, somehow Rachel had sensed that her mama and papa were gone. Carrying her on his back, Reuven could almost feel her stiffen through the basket. A cry so wrenching and so enormous came from her that it stunned Reuven. He could hardly believe that a body so small could make such a sound. She cried and cried and cried and then, finally exhausted, she fell asleep in the basket.

It grew colder as the afternoon wore on. Rachel awoke and began to squirm in the basket. He knew he had to get into the woods and build a fire to warm them. Reuven had remembered to throw the rest of the bread and cheese into the basket with Rachel, along with a box of matches, but he had forgotten diapers. This thought first struck him as he lifted Rachel from the basket in the woods and set her down by the stream where they had come to rest.