She froze in shock. “Toby?” she said weakly. But he was gone already, scattering pedestrians right and left.
She didn’t scold him for the near miss, or for the scuffs and scrapes he’d accumulated during his self-administered lessons. I wanted to surprise you, he said at supper, between bites of brisket, and then told her how he’d wheeled the bicycle back and forth in the alley for hours, how he’d stood on a vegetable crate so he could swing his leg over the seat without falling. Listening, Anna felt her love for him gather to a painful fist in her chest.
They washed the supper dishes together, and then Toby curled himself upon his pallet, across from the bicycle. He’d positioned it so that it would be the first thing he would see in the morning, when he woke. Anna tucked the blanket around him, brushed his hair from his forehead. He was exhausted but happy, already half asleep. The aching weight hadn’t subsided; it felt like a warning, a premonition of some future grief, and on sudden impulse she said, “Toby, if you’re ever in trouble—terrible trouble, a matter of life and death—and I’m not there, then go find Missus Chava.”
Toby smiled sleepily at this. “All right, Ma.”
“Look at me, boychik.”
The boy rubbed at his eyes, opened them wider.
“Missus Chava lives in the boardinghouse at the corner of Eldridge and Hester. Say it back to me.”
“Missus Chava lives in the boardinghouse at the corner of Eldridge and Hester.” A touch of fear now, in his voice; she realized how she must look to him, a looming face in a darkened room. Good, she thought, even as her heart twisted. Maybe he’ll remember.
“I love you,” she murmured, and kissed him on the forehead, and left him to sleep.
* * *
In December of 1905, on a cold, wet afternoon, Kreindel Altschul stood beside her father outside the doorway of the Forsyth Street Synagogue as over a hundred thousand Jews marched silently past, all of them dressed in mourning black.
Onlookers crammed the rooftops and fire escapes, women sobbing into handkerchiefs, children clinging to their legs. Kreindel, on the sidewalk, could barely see over the men in front of her. The air seemed to press upon her ears, and she realized belatedly that even the construction pit at the bottom of Forsyth, for the new bridge across the river, had gone silent. Surprised, she looked southward, to where the anchoring tower rose above the East River slips. Sure enough, the gangs of riveters had vanished from its girders.
She stole a quick glance at her father, wondering if he, too, had noticed. His hat shaded his eyes, but there were tear tracks on his cheeks, and the edge of his beard trembled. The sight unnerved her; and so she looked away, back to the marching men and their banners, all announcing their various affiliations—the Unionists, the Progressives, the Zionists, the Orthodox. All brought together, if only for the moment, by the news from the Russian Empire: over a thousand Jews murdered in the city of Odessa, victims of the latest pogrom.
At last the final banner went by, and the crowd began to disperse. Men from the synagogue gathered around her father, wiping their eyes, exchanging murmurs. Such anguish, what is to be done. Kreindel stood in the doorway, unsure of her role, until her father happened to glance her way. He looked puzzled for a moment, as though he’d forgotten she was there.
“Go home, Kreindel,” he told her, not ungently, and then disappeared inside.
Kreindel Altschul was now eight years old. Her father flatly refused to send her to public school, despite the truancy laws, which meant that she still spent her days in the care of the mothers of her tenement—except they could never be certain of whose turn it was, and in the confusion Kreindel often managed to escape their notice altogether. Alone, she’d wander the hallways, listening through the thin walls and peering into open doors. She scavenged the hallway dustbins for copies of Tageblatt and Forverts, and used these to teach herself to read. Sometimes the Reform settlement ladies, tall and pink-cheeked and spotless, would drift past with their baskets of milk and eggs, knocking on doors as they went. Some doors would open to admit them; others slammed shut in their faces.
When she was hungry, she’d sneak into an apartment and take a place at the table. A woman would turn from her stove and see Kreindel eating bread and schmaltz next to her own children, and wonder just how long she’d been there, and what she’d overheard. They couldn’t begrudge her the food—they all pitied her, the poor motherless child with a holy man for a father—but she unsettled them all the same. No matter how much she ate, she remained a tiny thing, quiet and watchful. And whenever she asked an inconvenient question, gleaned from her silent observations—Why does that boy on the first floor always have a black eye? Why does Mrs. Weintraub spend so much time in Mr. Litvak’s apartment on the second floor, even though she lives with Mr. Weintraub on the fourth floor?—their harried reply was always the same: Go and ask your father.
This was a more difficult prospect than they realized. For the most part, Lev Altschul was a silent presence in his daughter’s life. In the mornings, he was a pair of feet walking past her pallet as he left for the synagogue; in the evenings, he asked a few perfunctory questions during their supper—Did you behave yourself today? Did you study your letters?—and half listened to her answers, then studied Talmud in the parlor while Kreindel washed the dishes and swept the floor. The only time that father and daughter truly shared each other’s company was during the Sabbath hours of rest, when Lev would sit Kreindel beside him on their horsehair sofa and read to her. The book was always the
