SOREL EXPECTED ADELA to bring them back to the print shop, or somewhere near it, but she brought them instead to a street by the river, almost in the river. The ground underfoot was spongy and a creeping moss or algae grew up the walls of the run-down houses. The bank sloped so steeply down to the river that the next street up was nearly at the height of the roofs. The pitch gave everything a cramped aspect, as if they were half in a cave. It was hard to imagine that anyone living here would have any books, much less books to translate; Sorel couldn’t help thinking they would turn to mold as quickly as soft bread. The children who played in the street mostly wore no shoes, and the dogs and goats who picked through the piles of trash in the corners looked both skinny and swollen, their coats dull.
Sorel had never been in a neighborhood like this before; it was not appropriate for someone like herself—the daughter of Kalman the lumber merchant, distantly related to the Vilna Gaon himself, and engaged to the Esroger Rebbe’s own son—to be seen anywhere so depressed and dirty. Her father would have been horrified, which in turn delighted Sorel. She imagined him at home in his study, clutching his heart with a spasm of dismay—and then remembered that he was probably searching for her, and might even be in Esrog himself, which made her all the gladder that he wouldn’t think of finding her in a place like this.
Adela seemed to have no hesitation for her own sake and marched ahead in her farmer’s boots without bothering to avoid the puddles. Sorel tried to emulate the disregard for the mud, thinking her own instinct to pick her way around by the driest path might remind people that this was not her natural place. She could feel Sam’s eyes on her nearly all the time. Though every time she turned to glare at him, he was looking elsewhere.
Adela stopped at a tavern that was barely more than a shopfront with a pair of old men leaning their elbows on an upturned pickle barrel. Sorel couldn’t tell if the place was open for business in defiance of Shabbat, or if it simply didn’t have a door to close to keep the alter-kackers out. When they stopped, a scrawny spotted dog jumped to its feet in the doorway and barked at them, but Sam glared at it and it turned away, chagrined, and slunk into the unlit interior.
“Where’s Yoshke?” Adela asked the oldsters.
The pair had what looked like an entire silent conversation between themselves, looking from Adela to each other and back with a few cursory glances at Sorel and Sam. Then one said, “Nice girl like you doesn’t want to know where Yoshke is.”
“I do,” said Adela. She folded her arms and planted her boots, looking to Sorel as if a team of oxen couldn’t budge her. “You know why I want to know? He owes me money.”
One of the men laughed a sort of helpless laugh. “You and half the Jewish street.”
“And none of you have the kishkes to go get it from him?” said Adela. “It takes a little girl to do it?”
The other old man looked uncomfortable, and turned his face to Sorel, as if seeking help. “You shouldn’t let her run around like this.”
“Me?” said Sorel, astonished. “What have I got to do with it?”
“We’re also looking for Yoshke,” Sam interrupted, so close at Sorel’s elbow that she jumped. “He owes you money, does he, grandfather?”
“He might, if it weren’t the sabbath,” said the uncomfortable old man, shifting in his seat. “This isn’t appropriate.”
“If it weren’t the sabbath, would you want that money back, in exchange for telling us where to find him?” said Adela.
“You two boys,” said the other old man, gesturing at Sorel and Sam. “Two strong lads, we can tell. A girl? The wives would see us skinned.”
This made Sorel remember she was a boy. That was why the old man wanted her to stop Adela from talking—just like Isser had asked. See who’s on your side? She thought at him, deliberately. His voice in her head stayed silent, but she couldn’t tell if it was because he saw the point or he simply wasn’t there.
“There’s a spot on the bank down that way,” the more helpful of the elders was saying now. “He’s got a boat; he rows people across to the forest or the beys oylem for a fee. If he does anything else I don’t know about it.”
“Even this much we didn’t hear from you,” Sam promised. “Gut shabbes.”
The old men returned his gut shabbes with guilty looks, as if they weren’t quite sure why they were bothering. Adela started walking again without giving a farewell, and Sorel jogged to catch up.
“Who’s Yoshke? Why shouldn’t a nice girl go to see him?”
Adela turned a fierce look in her direction, and she felt her cheeks heat up.
“I don’t even think you are a nice girl,” she defended herself.
Adela laughed, a single sharp bark.
“I just want to know what to expect,” said Sorel. She desperately wanted to hide her face. What was she saying?
“I told you, I know him from the Russian schools,” said Adela. “But more important—he’s a smuggler. And an all-around scoundrel. That’s why no one should want to talk to him, but he’ll know where to find Isser if no one else does.”
Sorel hadn’t gone to the Russian school—the secular schools had a poor reputation and taught barely anything Jewish. Respectable girls like herself wouldn’t go because there were boys there, and respectable boys wouldn’t go because they needed to learn Talmud instead. Only the poorer Jews, who couldn’t bribe their way out of the state obligation, attended. She was a little surprised Adela would have been allowed but didn’t want to ask about it so soon after her other blunder. If she seemed too interested in women’s matters, she was afraid Adela would see through her. Men she trusted not to notice anything odd, but women were different. Women looked each other in the face.
“Be on the lookout,” Adela added. “Yoshke I don’t trust, but I know his tricks. His friends, I might not know—if he has any.”
“Right,” said Sorel. She checked over her shoulder, as if Yoshke’s unsavory friends might be behind her, or some other danger like the black dog from the alley—but there was only Sam, tilting an eyebrow at her as if they were sharing a joke.
“He looks like muscle,” Adela acknowledged, as if Sorel had been looking to him on purpose. “You, not so much, but at least you’re tall.”
“I have a knife,” Sorel added. “I’ve stabbed a man with it already; I’d do it again.”
Adela gave her an odd look, and she realized it hadn’t been a civilized thing to say. On the other hand, Adela didn’t look entirely put off by it.
“God forbid you have to,” Adela said after a moment’s thought.
YOSHKE’S BOATHOUSE was at the end of an alley so low on the riverbank that every step brought water out of the earth underfoot. Here Sorel smelled no Shabbat feasting aromas, only the cool living odor of damp. She thought once or twice she saw someone watching them from inside one of the ramshackle houses, but it seemed everyone kept to themselves here. She wrapped her hand around the hilt of the knife in her pocket and flinched for a moment at a memory of the cold biting her fingers last night, before the dog appeared.
You can always run again, said Isser in her head, but if you run, you have to take Adela with you.
YOSHKE WAS UNMISTAKABLE. Everyone else in this neighborhood looked washed-out, downtrodden, and shifty. The young man lounging on a herring box in front of the little boathouse looked like he belonged to a different neighborhood entirely. He was dressed in the modern style, with his hair slicked back and a carefully trimmed little mustache. Sorel wondered how he had managed to get here without dirtying his shiny leather shoes. He was smoking a cigarette, and evidently spent a good deal of time lounging by the boathouse smoking them, as little scraps of burnt paper littered the ground beneath his seat.
“Adela,” he said, in the manner of a gracious host. “What the devil brings you here?”
“What do you think? I’m looking for Isser.”
“Not so much as a good shabbes,” said Yoshke, pretending to be wounded. He looked over her shoulders at Sorel and Sam. “Who are these people?”
“Friends,” said Adela. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“Friends who know Isser’s business?” said Yoshke.
Adela huffed impatiently. “I wouldn’t bring them otherwise. Don’t waste my time, Yoshke. I walked here from Kuritsev, and my feet hurt.”
“Well, all right.” Yoshke heaved himself up as if it were a terrible imposition. “I know where there’s a peasant who’ll sell you lunch on shabbes and not tell the hasids. Come on.”
Sorel watched his feet as they walked and realized he kept his shoes shiny by picking his way between the puddles like a cat. Watching it made her feel ridiculous for having wanted to do the same, and she stepped in one puddle on purpose out of spite before realizing that her felt boots weren’t waterproof. Her stomach had woken up at the mention of food, and she realized she was once again starving. She’d never needed to eat so much in her life.
Yoshke’s peasant had a little tavern up the hill, which smelled strongly of spilled ale and tobacco. It was a mix of Jews and gentiles, but only men. Yoshke offered Adela a seat on a bench with a gentlemanly flourish that made Sorel want to stomp on his patent-leather toes. The peasant brought them bowls of something brown and spicy that Sorel was certain was not kosher. Sam turned up his nose at it, pushing his bowl in her direction, as she shoveled the stew into her mouth without any concern over what kinds of unclean animals had given their lives to make it. It tasted good, even if it were only hunger that told her so.
“How’s the family?” Yoshke said to Adela, after devouring his own bowl with unseemly haste. “Your sisters are healthy? Is Hasia married yet?”
“None of your business,” said Adela. “They’re all healthy. Where’s Isser? When did you see him last?”
“I don’t know,” said Yoshke. “Three, four days? A week? Two? I’m not his mother.”
Sorel could tell Adela was trying to be diplomatic, but she had no patience for it. “You work with him, don’t you? If you work with him, you should care where he is, because there are men looking for him who’ll kill you if you don’t have an answer.”
Yoshke looked at her askance.
“I don’t mean us,” she said, gesturing to herself and Sam. “But I could mean us, if you don’t start talking. Have those goyim been after you to find Isser, or not?”
“No, no, no,” said Yoshke. “No goyim, nothing like that—I don’t even really work with him, all right? He’s made a stamp for me maybe. One or two times, that’s all, just a little job. I don’t get into all that political stuff; it’s too complicated, all that intellectual business.” He was looking at Adela now. “That’s not my field. I don’t like it and I don’t trust it. So no, I don’t know where Isser is. Maybe you should ask that weaselly little hasid.”
“What weaselly little hasid?” said Adela, frowning.
“Why should I know the names of all Isser’s friends? The hasid who looks like a weasel! I don’t know. I saw them sometimes in the beys oylem.”
“Doing what?” said Sorel. All these poor Jews spent so much time in the cemetery! As if it were a public park.
“Talking, I assume,” said Yoshke. “Perhaps about books—God knows it’s hard to get Isser to talk about anything else.”
“When was this?” Adela asked. “Did it happen often?”
“Mainly Sundays,” said Yoshke. “Not that I kept track, mind you. I don’t care what Isser does with his time. Only the other one used my boat sometimes.”
“What did he look like?” said Sorel. “And don’t say weasel again, we all heard that already.”
“Jewish,” said Yoshke, unhelpfully. “Listen, I’m a professional. I don’t go around sharing anyone’s business but my own, and if Isser’s in trouble I don’t want to be mixed up in it, all right? And neither should a young lady.”
“There aren’t any young ladies here,” said Sorel, forgetting Adela for a moment. “What do you mean Isser made you a stamp?”
Yoshke made a shushing gesture, looking around the tavern as if someone might have overheard. “Don’t just go flapping your jaws in public! Who are you, anyway? What grave did Adela dig you out of?”
“He’s from down the river,” said Sam, smoothly covering for Sorel as if he’d known her forever. “We’ve all been in business with Isser. I sell his pamphlets. So none of us need to have secrets.”
“Not that big of a secret, anyway,” said Adela in an undertone. “The whole riverbank district knows what Yoshke sells. It’s a customs stamp, Alter—to show the tax has been paid on goods from Romania.”
This Sorel understood. It was a constant aggravation to her father that the gentiles believed Jewish smugglers were responsible for bringing things from Romania untaxed—liquor, cloth, sweets, anything worth having. He was always trying to convince the gentile officials that to the contrary of their expectations, Jews were honest dealers. He mainly seemed to demonstrate his honesty by bribing them, but he was never happy about it. She’d assumed that perpetual thorn in his side, the Jewish smuggler from Esrog, was a sort of phantom. Yet here she sat looking at one.
“It doesn’t matter what the whole riverbank knows, it’s still no good tempting the evil eye,” said Yoshke. “This is why you and Isser are bashert, Adela, because neither of you knows when to keep your mouth shut and your eyes on your own work.”
“My mouth has been shut,” Adela said, “but it doesn’t have to stay that way. What do you suppose would happen if we went to the rebbe or to the kehillah and tell them what you’ve been doing? The gentiles will work with you as long as you’re turning them a profit, but they’ll never work with you again if we make your name public.”
Yoshke’s eyes darted around the room. Sorel remembered that Adela had described him as a friend, and suddenly wondered what sort of friendships ordinary people had. She’d never had any friends herself, but she’d read about them in books, and this was not how they tended to look.
“If you don’t know where Isser is, show us someone who will know,” said Adela. “Get us a meeting with Pavlikov.”
Yoshke looked from her to Sam, who was simply gazing steadily back at him, to Sorel, who showed him the handle of her knife, for encouragement. He sighed and slumped in his seat.
“Pavlikov,” he grumbled. “Fine, fine. If you’re determined to tempt the Angel of Death, who am I to stop you?”