The Singing Fire Read Free Page B

darkness, there was a great wind from God sweeping over the face of the waters …”
    She’d show them all. The time for thinking was over.
    Nehama secretly bought the ticket the day that one of her sisters pointed out the tanner and another told her to keep her ideas to herself when the matchmaker came. She didn’t consider everything she was leaving until she stood on the boat, looking back at the docks, where no one waved good-bye. The spray from the river and the rain from the heavens splashed her face, diluting her tears the way London merchants diluted milk with water and mixed flour with sawdust. And in the blink of an eye, the Vistula River, queen of Poland, flowing between green banks of willow trees, became the Thames, empress of the world, slapping the base of the Tower of London, where queens were beheaded. On the gray waters of a nation that disdained spices and ate boiled beef, steaming ships came in with the west wind, carrying perfume and elephant tusks and Sardinian sailors with great gold earrings.
    Thrawl Street
    So this was an English house. There was an iron stove instead of a tile oven, a painting of dogs in red jackets playing cards, and a large menorah with nine silver cups for oil. The menorah was on the top shelf of an open wooden cabinet, beside it a set of leather volumes in Hebrew. Nehama couldn’t read the titles, but she could write her initials in the dust.
    Mr. Blink worked very hard. All through his meal, men came to call, and for their sake he interrupted his dinner, inspecting goods and making payment from his cashbox. Nehama was uneasy though there wasn’t any reason. After all, what kind of shopkeeper back home didn’t deal with gentiles? They brought all sorts of small things: silk handkerchiefs, a gold chain, a silver spoon, a pocket watch, ivory buttons. One of the visitors smelled of the river, and one of them smelled of the sewers, and the one that smelled of freshly turned earth brought a wedding ring set with red stones. Nehama wiped the gravy from her plate with a piece of soft bread. It didn’t occur to her that it might not be kosher.
    She spent the night on a cot in the kitchen. When she woke up thenext morning, Mr. Blink’s housekeeper gave her some breakfast, sweating heavily as she put the bowl of porridge on the table, and Nehama surreptitiously covered her nose with her hand. The housekeeper sniffed and muttered, pointing to the floor, but if she expected Nehama to wash it, then she was much mistaken. In truth, God alone knew what she was saying, and it was a relief when she went out.
    For a while, Nehama sat at the table, too excited to eat. People said that she had her grandmother’s eyes, and hadn’t she come by boat from someplace small to a bigger world just like her grandmother, who grew up in a small village? It was a shock, Grandma Nehama’s first view of the town with the cathedral rising high on the hill. She was young and coming to marry a man with a baby because her family couldn’t afford anything better than to make her a second wife. Standing on the boat and smelling the docks of Plotsk, she almost changed her mind, but what could she go back to? So she married the man. His daughter was a skinny baby that was fading away, and of all her children this one was her favorite because she had brought it back to life. When the daughter grew up and had five girls, it was Grandma Nehama who took care of them. It’s easier to fall in love with a skinny baby than with a hairy man, she always said.
    Nehama stood at the window, wiping away the dust with her sleeve so that she could look out on a street of old and crumbling houses not very different from the heim . It wasn’t so frightening. As soon as she got her entrance papers, she could go down and walk in the street like a free person who has no sisters. She wasn’t sure what she’d do next, but it would be something marvelous and she’d send for her family. Then she, the youngest sister, would be