THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE OF ESROG had once been a wooden building, painted in bright colors on the inside. In recent decades, it had been rebuilt in stone as a sort of symbol of the confidence and prosperity of the Esroger Jewish merchants, who got along well with the city authorities as long as the city authorities kept it clear in their heads that without the Jewish merchants there would be no city of Esrog.
Sorel had visited it once or twice on the High Holy Days, when her father wanted to make a grand appearance in the manner of a king, followed by his household. The women’s gallery was upstairs, cramped and hidden behind carved wooden screens so that one could hardly see what was going on below, and in any case Sorel didn’t even understand Hebrew. Her strongest memory from the synagogue was the slightly moldy scent that lived beneath the benches in the women’s section, where she’d lain on her stomach and wished bitterly that any other little girl had bothered to come to services. If one had, she wasn’t even sure she would have played nicely, but even a fight would have relieved the boredom.
While the rebbe was Hasidic, the Great Synagogue itself belonged to the maskilic city Jews, those like her father who spoke Russian, did business with gentiles, and studied modern sciences. Sorel’s marriage to the rebbe’s eldest son was intended to be a union between Hasidic and maskilic Jews to keep the city of Esrog from fracturing.
The courtyard in front of the modern stone edifice was crowded with tables today and loud as any village market. The assembled students and beggars could hardly keep themselves from reaching for the piles of loaves and roasted carp and chickens and potatoes: some were even sitting on their hands as they waited for the hamotzi to be said. Sorel passed through the crowd unremarked and unrecognized. She tried to squeeze herself between two old men, in a space too small for Sam to join her, but to her annoyance the elders moved over and Sam, somehow, wedged himself in at her elbow.
“What are we waiting for?” he asked.
“For a message from the rebbe, saying what is the luckiest time,” replied one of the old men. “He is out in the woods, at Kalman’s estate, and only he can speak to the angels to know the perfect hour for the union. He will send a runner.”
Sam was looking at a plate of chicken with deep longing. “If only the angels understood how hungry one gets from walking.”
Sorel couldn’t help but agree. Her stomach, empty since yesterday, seemed ready to squirm up her throat and leap onto the table.
Just as it occurred to her that she didn’t care what the rebbe thought and didn’t care if she skipped a blessing either, there was a commotion in the street and a great cry of joy went up. She grabbed a piece of bread and stuffed it in her mouth while everyone was distracted, only then seeing that it was a Jew approaching on horseback, trotting between the crowds of revelers. He dismounted at the synagogue steps and went up to the elderly hasid who stood there, one of the rebbe’s attendants whom she recognized from her father’s house. The messenger’s words were drowned out by cries of “Mazel tov!” and “May the rebbe live!” and so forth, but Sorel, who was watching carefully between bites of her blessingless bread, saw that the messenger and the rebbe’s attendant both were frowning. They did not look as if they were discussing good mazel. They looked as if, perhaps, the messenger had come to explain that there was no wedding.
He finished speaking, and the elderly attendant stood for a moment with his hands folded, then unfolded them and stroked his beard. The cries of joy from the crowd were dying out as they grew impatient to eat again. Sam jostled Sorel’s elbow and shook his head when she glanced at him, mouthing some sort of reproach at her for eating. Busybody!
At last, the rebbe’s attendant lifted his hands for silence.
“The rebbe sends his blessing!” he cried. “Let us celebrate this feast for the long life and happiness of the bride and groom!”
Sorel stopped chewing. The messenger, still looking uncertain and anxious, handed the rebbe’s attendant a loaf, and he called out the blessing to a raucous amen. The clatter of dishes and conversation rose again.
“What bride?” Sorel whispered, too low to be heard.
“You’re lucky no one saw you eat without the blessing,” said Sam, so close to her ear that she lifted her hand and swatted him. “You could have been trampled to death by pious alte-kackers.”
“Shut up,” she said, and elbowed him for good measure. “Stay out of my business.”
How could there be a wedding without the bride? The rebbe’s attendant must be covering for the awkwardness of the situation. Perhaps it was he who was afraid of being trampled. Sorel tried to keep eating as if nothing had happened, but the hunger had given way to gnawing, anxious curiosity. She had to know. But how could she ask?
The rebbe’s attendant was whispering to the messenger again. Sorel got to her feet, her mind spinning out an excuse, a story—Mama, please forgive me for using you like this—but it was a good story, a good distraction, she thought. Only she wished her head was covered. Sam had a soft wool cap—she should have thought of it.
But it was too late, her feet were already carrying her to the synagogue steps, where the two men had been joined by a small group of others: a few of the rebbe’s men, in dark coats, and a couple, incongruously, in the bright blue-and-red of the gentile guardsmen.
“A Jewish girl,” the rebbe’s attendant was saying as she came close, “tall, with red hair—not a beauty, but strong and healthy. What do you want?”
This was addressed to Sorel, a bit more harshly than she thought the old man intended. He softened his face as soon as he’d said it, folding his hands and smiling at her with the sweet detachment of an angel.
No one was giving her more than a disgusted sidelong glance, the distinct attitude of men who’d been interrupted and wanted to get back to business. Sorel, her heart leaping with an emotion she couldn’t identify—was this terror or delight?—hung her head and wrung her hands.
“Reb Yid, you seem like a holy man—you must be one of the rebbe’s tzadikim—I need to ask a favor, you see, my mother died, may she rest in peace; my mother died recently and I’m her kaddish, but I don’t know the word—”
“Wait just one moment,” said the rebbe’s attendant. “Wait here.”
He gave her a gesture like a man telling a dog to heel and turned back to the others. In Russian, he said, “We must find her before some misfortune falls on her. She is the rebbe’s daughter-in-law. The wedding must take place. She can’t have gotten far; she’s only a girl, after all.”
Sorel didn’t wait to hear the rest. There had been no wedding, because indeed there was no bride. They only didn’t want the embarrassment of the whole world knowing she’d escaped.
As she passed by the tables, she reached over the heads of the revelers to stuff her pockets with bread rolls and raisins and slipped out of the courtyard unnoticed. Her heart was singing now. The terror was gone, leaving the delight alone, as the men behind her broke ranks, going to search for a tall Jewish girl with red hair—whose face they’d just looked at, and not seen.
Sorel Kalmans did not exist.
SHE NEEDED TO SELL the hairpins. Those, aside from her face, were the most unique thing she had. She hated to part with them, but then, they were expensive. She could live on them for awhile. She’d need to cover her hair—boys covered their heads anyway—and someone who bothered to really look would see how badly she’d shorn it in the darkness, with a knife and the dedication of panic. And then? Anything. Anything! Isser Jacobs could go where he wanted, could do anything.
Isser walked with the confidence of one who knew the streets of Esrog well. Sorel had not walked these streets: when her father brought her to the festivals, she had ridden in a carriage. But now she walked with long strides, her hands in her pockets, and whistled a little song as she watched for the sign of a pawn shop or jeweler. The fox who had sprung the trap last night now found itself outside the farmer’s walls, savoring the wide-open world.
A few twists and turns brought her to a street in the Jewish district whose shops advertised used clothing and furniture. The first shop Sorel looked into had a woman behind the counter, mending a seam on a pair of trousers. Sorel felt somehow that a woman might see through her more easily than a man, so she continued on to the next, which was selling a jumble of clothing out of stacks of orange crates. The shopkeeper here was an old man in spectacles who gave her the same assessing look as Sam when she offered her hairpins, but he didn’t ask aloud if she’d stolen them. Sorel bargained for a hat, new thicker socks, a satchel to carry things in, and tied up the rest of her money in her stocking. At the last moment, she thought to purchase a tallit katan, so that the tzitzis at her hips could help her disguise as a boy.
Trying out a new story, she told the old man that she was an orphan, and she was going to Odessa to find some distant relatives of her mother’s. He either believed her or couldn’t be bothered to care, merely grumbled half-hearted responses; she left him polishing her hairpins with a silk handkerchief.
She hid in an alleyway to wriggle into the undershirt without taking off her shirt, tucked the loose strands of her hair into the cap, and started walking again with a spring in her step. The morning fog had burned off, and the blue sky reflected her mood. She felt she could do anything, go anywhere. Why not go to Odessa? She could lose herself entirely there. She’d take a coach to the railroad, and then a train—she had seen a train, once, her father had taken her to watch it hurtle by on a newly opened stretch of track. She remembered the rush of it and remembered also that her father had been displeased by it. That night he had one of his long discussions with the rebbe, sequestered in his study with endless glasses of brandy. Sorel had not understood then, and did not understand now, what had upset the old men so much, but she liked the idea of taking the train away from her father and her wedding. It would be another jab at her father.
She was taking turns randomly, not entirely sure of the direction to the coaching inns on the main road out of the city, and did not notice at first when someone cut across her path. She moved to the side automatically, assuming he meant to pass her by, but he sidestepped to block her way out of the narrow, cobblestone back alley. It was a young man, a gentile close to her own age and dressed in the uniform of a guard but without the garish coat.
Sorel stopped and glared at him. “What do you want?”
“How did you come back here?” He’d planted his feet in a stance that said she’d have to fight him to get past.
“I walked,” she said. She didn’t necessarily want to pick a fight with a guard—that is, the part of her that was sensible didn’t—but if he’d recognized her, she wouldn’t be reluctant to punch him in the face. “Listen, I’m leaving the city, so whatever your problem is, find someone else to take it out on.”
The young man made a grab for her, and she skipped backward, her hand curling around the handle of her knife.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” he said.
Sorel stopped. “What?”
“God damn Borysko,” said the guard. “He said he’d killed you. Where is it? Do you still have it?”
Some instinct made Sorel look over her shoulder, and a chill went through her as she saw that while they’d been talking, two more men had come up the alley behind her. They were also gentiles without jackets and with sleeves rolled up as if they already had the intention to fight.
She decided in that moment that she didn’t care what the man was talking about, or who he’d mistaken her for. There was no point in waiting to find out.
“Stop him!” the guard shouted as she leapt for the gap between the two newcomers—they’d been expecting her to run for the easier escape. She almost made it past them, but one grabbed the tail of her long coat and yanked her back. She struck out blindly with the knife and heard a gratifying howl of pain. All three men were yelling now, cursing her and each other. Someone caught her arm and threw her to the ground. She shielded her face with her arms and rolled, struck out the knife again, and felt it sink into something solid, flesh or leather. The guard kicked back at her, and the knife flew from her hand, clattering onto the cobbles out of reach. She thought for a moment that he meant to stomp on her face, but instead one of the other two grabbed her by the back of her collar and hauled her to her feet, pinning her arm as she tried to jab him with her elbow. The largest of the three, fair-haired and blocky with the muscles of someone who did manual labor, was glaring and nursing a cut that ran down his arm from elbow to wrist. She felt some grim satisfaction that she’d at least made him bleed. The guardsman, clearly the ringleader, stared her down as she struggled in the third man’s grip.
“Where is it?” he repeated his nonsensical question from before.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sorel said.
“Of course you don’t, you damned snake,” said the guard. He shifted his stance, uncomfortable, and Sorel saw that he too was bleeding, a dark stain spreading on the calf of his trousers. If she could only get free to run, she thought, she could run faster.
The man was still talking. “You’re a fine liar, Isser, and you’ve led us on a fine goose hunt, but I’m tired of chasing you. You can tell us now, or we can ask your little Jewess—what’s her name? Adela Pinsker? I know where she lives, Isser. I found her letters in your room. So sweet! A girl with real thoughts in her head. Wouldn’t you be sorry if I had to talk to Adela? Wouldn’t you rather we finish it here, now?”
Sorel blinked at him. Isser, that was her name, the name she’d given—had he overheard her talking to Rukhele, or to Sam? He must have heard her give the name and mistaken her for another Isser. Maybe all Jews looked the same to him.
She opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t know anyone called Adela, but the words died on her tongue at the sound of a deep, rumbling growl—a growl that raised all the hairs on the back of her neck. She saw the same fear reflected in the men’s eyes as they turned, looking for the source of the sound.
A great black dog crouched in the mouth of the alley, shoulders low to the ground, teeth bared. Its eyes were light, almost wolf-gold. It could have been mistaken for a wolf, if not for its dropped ears.
“What the hell—” the guardsman began to say, but the words were lost in a shout of alarm as the dog sprang from its position and hit him with the full force of its leap, knocking him over. The man holding Sorel staggered back. His grip loosened, and she tore out of his grasp and threw herself down the alley, looking for the knife. Instinct told her she shouldn’t turn her back on the dog, but she couldn’t make herself look. The guardsman was screaming. The third man, the fair-haired one, ran past Sorel as she picked up the knife. His eyes were wide with panic. Sorel glanced back and saw the dog with its jaws around the ankle of the man who’d been holding her, knocking him off his feet and dragging him. The guardsman lay on his back, staring with wide, blank eyes at the sky, blood pooling around his head.
She moved backward, step by step, the knife clutched tightly in front of her chest. She did not think she could outrun the dog. She watched it plant a great, heavy paw on the back of the second man and shut her eyes as its jaws closed on the back of his neck. The cobbles were uneven under her feet as she took another step backward, then another, eyes shut, the sound of her own breath loud in her ears.
There was no thud of paws chasing after her. She did not feel the hot breath of the wolf on her face. The growling had ceased.
She stumbled backward out of the alley into the startling heat of the sunlight. She felt as if she had just stepped out from underwater—suddenly, human voices were loud around her, people going about their ordinary business.
When she opened her eyes, she saw no dog in the alley. There were two men lying still on the stones, and there was Sorel, with the knife in her hand.
A woman passing by with a basket of leeks gave her an odd look and Sorel fumbled the knife back into its sheath and wiped her hands on her coat, though she saw no trace of blood on them, only dirt and sweat. What had she just seen? What had she just done?
“Isserke!” a voice called a cheerful greeting. “I was wondering where you’d disappeared to.”
It was Sam, grinning, his peddler’s pack slung casually over one shoulder. Despite herself, Sorel was glad to see him. He seemed solid and real, his warm golden skin belonging firmly to the world of sun and human voices.
“I was looking for a coach,” she said, her voice hoarse. She moved toward him, forcing herself not to look back into the alleyway. “I got turned around.”
ISSER JACOBS came home to his room from the print shop one day in the spring to find Kalman Senderovich’s gentile stable-boy, Ostap, waiting for him with a message.
“He wants to talk to you. He’s at the Great Synagogue.”
The boy was Isser’s own age, illiterate, and incurious, but all his own shortcomings only made him happier when he got to order Isser around, wielding the authority of Kalman Senderovich like the tsar’s scepter.
“Talk to me about what?” said Isser. Kalman did not usually bother meeting with him. It was beneath the dignity of Esrog’s single most important Jew to speak face-to-face with a poor orphan and—let it not be spoken aloud—a criminal. Usually, the gentile boy just brought him messages written in stiff Yiddish and stood around looking impatient while Isser read them.
“You think he tells me about what? Just hurry up. I’ve been waiting for ages.”
Isser hadn’t eaten, and he didn’t much relish the walk all the way across the Jewish Quarter to the Great Synagogue, but he wasn’t going to complain to Ostap. The boy seemed to think Isser was his competition somehow, and though Isser always told himself he wouldn’t rise to the aggravation, he still didn’t like to give Ostap the upper hand. So he turned on his heel and walked right back into the stable-yard, on his tired feet, so that Ostap had to jog after him.
Kalman Senderovich, of course, wasn’t simply waiting in idleness for someone as insignificant as Isser. Let there be no respect for the fact that Isser never told him no: Kalman the lumber merchant would never have considered it possible that someone should refuse him.
He was conducting business, not in the synagogue itself, God forbid, but in the inn next door at the great room in the back with the other members of Esrog’s Jewish governing council, the kahal. Isser was left to sit in the hall, waiting, while Ostap irritatingly refused to go back out to the stables. Instead he joined Isser on the bench and downed glass after glass of hot cider, as if he never had a chance to get drunk on Kalman’s estate and as if he didn’t have the horses to look after or even a carriage to drive. Isser couldn’t be bothered to keep track of which petty responsibilities fell to Ostap on what occasions, but he remembered at least once the other boy had tried to impress him by mentioning that Kalman had him drive.
“You heard his girl’s getting married?” Ostap asked, after they’d been sitting awhile and Isser had steadfastly refused to speak to him. “That’s real news, that is. No one in the city will know that yet.”
Isser had seen Kalman’s daughter once or twice. A tall girl, bony. He remembered thick eyebrows. Once, he’d been leaving Kalman’s study—on a rare occasion when he had actually been on the estate—and they’d passed each other in the hall and she’d twitched her skirt away from him as if she expected him to soil it. Another time, he’d sold her a chapter of a novel for a markup she didn’t notice.
He did not much care if Kalman’s daughter got married.
Ostap the stable-boy didn’t care if Isser was interested or not. The important thing was that spreading fresh gossip gave one power. He went on, “You’ll never believe who she’s marrying, either. The rebbe’s son.”
Isser turned his head and mentally kicked himself for showing a reaction. Ostap was smirking at him. But he had to know.
“Not Shulem-Yontif?”
“God knows,” said Ostap. “How many sons has he got?”
“Only one old enough to marry,” Isser conceded, though truth be told even Shulem-Yontif was a bit young—he was fifteen, the girl was seventeen or eighteen. Not the youngest anyone ever got engaged. But these were modern times, and Kalman was a modern Jew. Isser would have thought he’d marry the girl to some maskil or a rich merchant from Odessa. What did he want with a hasid for a son-in-law? “What kind of marriage is that?”
Ostap laughed. “What? Were you hoping he’d make you his son-in-law? You’re less than dirt to him.”
“It doesn’t seem the kind of match he would have made, that’s all,” said Isser.
The stable-boy let him sit for a minute wondering about it, just to flex his own superior knowledge. Isser swallowed his pride and prompted, “You’re such a trusted servant. I just thought he would have told you why.”
“Maybe,” said Ostap, glowing. “Maybe not. If he did, I wouldn’t be telling the world about it. That’s Reb Kalman’s own business, isn’t it.”
And Shulem-Yontif’s business, and the girl’s, Isser thought. What was her name? Soreh. The princess. God, she’d eat Shuli alive. “You can borrow my knife, if you like.”
The knife had been a source of contention between Isser and Ostap for nearly a year now, since Kalman Senderovich gave it to Isser with the warning to watch his back about the city and the order to never breathe a word to anyone about the lumber merchant’s business. Isser had taken this as a sort of threat, a tacit suggestion that he should cut his own throat before betraying Kalman’s confidence. Every time he touched the decorated leather sheath, it gave him a chill. But the print shop had been raided twice this year, and sometimes he had a sense of being followed as he walked through the city. And so, he kept it with him.
Ostap saw it as a sign of unearned favor. To him, it was something beautiful that Isser did not appreciate. His eyes shined as Isser handed it to him, hilt first, and he slid it from its case to admire the glow of the lamplight on the blade.
“You don’t take care of her,” he said. “Look, the leather will crack if you don’t season it.”
“To hell with the leather,” said Isser. “Why’s Kalman’s daughter marrying the rebbe’s son?”
“Twisted his arm, didn’t they,” said Ostap. He picked a loose thread out of his trousers and tested the edge of the knife, looking pleased with the result. “The kahal’s about to mutiny. No one listens to Kalman anymore. All your lazy Jews here in the city with no jobs, looking for handouts. Well who gives them the handouts? Their rebbe, that’s who. Handouts, and promises that they can bring your Messiah.”
“What Messiah wants to visit Esrog?” Isser grumbled.
“Anyway, Reb Kalman knows what’s good for the city, but he can’t get any of those superstitious fools to listen. So what does he do? He says to the rebbe, here, you can have your miracles, feed your cripples, and whatever else you want. But you’ll do it as my daughter’s father-in-law, and it’s my name people will be repeating when they talk about how the wedding saved Esrog from ruin. Clever, isn’t he? Clever son of a bitch.”
Isser propped his chin in his hands, frowning at the opposite wall. He had a sinking feeling that Kalman’s business with him today had something to do with the wedding. It wouldn’t be get me a copy of this book, with a fake censor’s stamp on it so it looks legal. It would be something complicated and strange.
Before he could come up with a guess, the door of the back room opened and the men of the kahal filed out, sharing their own gossip as they went and paying the boys no heed. Ostap slid Isser’s knife into his pocket, put down his empty glass, and slunk after them, getting himself out of the way in case Kalman caught him idling.
Isser waited until the last of the elders was gone and went in to Kalman Senderovich. The lumber merchant was sitting alone at the table, making a note in his community ledger. There was a decimated platter of rugelach in front of him, so Isser took one without asking and sat down without being asked.
“Ah, Israel,” said Kalman, barely glancing up and entirely ignoring the rudeness. “Good. I need you to steal something.”