And other, unexpected changes have begun to come about.
Auras: she sees them everywhere now, on everyone, a little brighter each day. It comforts her to know that other colors exist besides gray — rose and sapphire and cream and earth, desire in all its infinite, subtle divisions.
Who loves, and who loves unrequited. Who hates, and whose hatred is ingrown.
Envious neighbors and jealous spouses and fickle children. The naughty pleasure of innovation. The bottomless misery that fuels braggadocio.
Every individual glows uniquely, and now, as humanity floods the streets, she sates herself with its dazzling, unimaginable spectacle.
Reaching the northern end of Rabinergasse, she cranes over the partition that divides the men’s party from that of the women. For any other man, this would constitute an intolerable breach of modesty, but everyone knows that Yankele the Giant is simpleminded. Never in a million years would they imagine him subject to carnal lust.
Dry-eyed, the Rebbetzin sits, clapping her hands in time to the distant music. She appears to have made her peace with the match. Still, it can’t be easy, watching one child replace another. She is flanked by her daughters and daughter-in-law. A chair has been left open in Leah’s memory.
She catches Perel’s eye, and they communicate silently through the smoke and noise.
“Yankele!”
Chayim Wichs is tugging at the hem of her coat.
“Rebbe is asking for you!”
The Rebbetzin smiles and raises a hand. Go. I’m all right.
She allows Wichs to drag her to the center of the dancing circle, where Rebbe waits with his arms out. She clasps his hands, taking great care to be gentle, and they turn in a circle of their own. He’s huffing and puffing, perspiration streaming down his long, lean face, but when she tries to slow down, he pulls her closer, presses his body to hers, rocking against her, murmuring into her shirt, “Don’t let me go. Don’t ever let me go,” and she hears the weakness in his voice and realizes that he’s not sweating. He’s crying.
And it pains her to know that she cannot reflect his love back to him. She raises her head and stares out, hating herself, and that is when she sees the men.
There are three of them.
Three variations on tall, the middle one enormous, towering above his companions, above everyone — rising nearly to her level. Gaunt as a reed, long-eyed in the firelight, he sports tufts of white hair above his ears. Wind ripples a rough-spun robe more suited to a cave-dwelling hermit than to a man of urban Prague.
The men with him are like two burlap sacks stuffed with potatoes. The dark one grimaces and shifts. The mottled red cheeks of his counterpart bunch in a secretive smile.
You’d think that three strange giants would attract a certain amount of attention, but nobody else appears to notice them. Standing near the rear of the crowd, they resemble a kind of human orchard. Yet they are not human. They cannot be. They have no auras. Amid the riot of color created by the partygoers, they hover in a chill vacuum, pitiless and tranquil, and the sight of them fills her with horror, drawing the binding around her tongue tighter, and tighter, threatening to cut the flesh in two pieces, like a wire through clay.
They’re watching her.
“That’s enough, now, Yankele, enough, please.” Rebbe’s voice calls her back to herself. He releases her from his embrace and beckons her to kneel. She does so reluctantly. Her back is to the men, and she feels their long invisible shadows on her.
Rebbe places his hands on her head. For barely a moment his gaze flicks over her shoulder and his face tautens with apprehension.
He sees them, too.
He smiles. “It’s all right, my child.”
The blessing streams from his lips.
May God make you as Ephraim and Menasheh.
May God bless you and guard you.
May God light up His face to you and be gracious to you.
May God lift His face to you and establish for you peace.
He kisses her on the forehead. “Good boy.”
Warmth permeates her, cradling the space where her heart ought to be.
The musicians strike up the mezinke . Chazkiel elbows forth wielding a broom, which he thrusts into Rebbe’s hands. She rises to clear out of the way, searching the crowd for the tall men. They’re nowhere.
“I won’t lie,” Perel says. “I’m glad it’s over.”
A week and a half after the wedding, life has returned to normal. In the wake of the frenzy, the streets feel eerily vacant, the filth more pronounced than usual. Residual heat raises a scummy fog off the river; it oozes in the twilight as she and the Rebbetzin return from the riverbank bearing a fresh load of clay.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy for her. You know that.”
She nods.
“I woke up this morning and the house was so quiet. Yudl was already gone, and I lay there, waiting for Feigie’s footsteps. The silliest thing is that I wasn’t longing for her as she is. I was thinking about the sound her feet made when she was a baby. It’s ridiculous, it’s weak, I can’t help it. I think that’s my right, don’t you? I raised her. Twenty-nine years I’ve been raising children. I think I deserve a little time to pity myself.”
She nods, careful not to spill the mud. I know.
“I know,” Perel says, “it’s not as if she moved to another city.” She laughs. “Well, enough of that. We’ve got work to do. I promised Feigie I’d finish making her new dishes. No reason to panic yet, we’ll get it done. Here’s what we’ll do: we’ll go in shifts. Every circuit, you stop in and collect what I’ve done and bring it to the blacksmith for baking. We’ll work through the night if we have to. Does that sound good? We’ll stop at the house first to refill the shed.”
They turn the corner, onto Heligasse. Among the murmurs of the evening, the familiar sounds of the Loew household filter through. The slap of a wet rag as Gittel, the maid, yawns and scrubs the kitchen floor. The scurry of the mice that live under the stairs. The sough of a fire.
And from the open window of the study, Rebbe’s voice, strained and urgent.
I understand. I understand. But—
The voice that interrupts him is a tired whistle, and it stops her dead in her tracks.
There is nothing more to discuss. At your request, we gave you the week of celebration.
Plus a few days extra adds a second voice, gravel in a jar.
“Yankele?” Perel says. “What’s wrong?”
I’m well aware of that Rebbe says. I appreciate it, more than I can express. But you must believe me. It is not yet time. We still have need of him.
Her the gravelly voice says.
Your sisters and brothers are highly displeased the whistling voice says.
I beseech you Rebbe says. We are in need. An extension—
There are no more extensions.
Perel’s fingers clutch at her arm.
A new voice — round and sympathetic but no more inclined to bend — says It has been two years.
And for two years we have had peace Rebbe says. Take him away—
Her the gravelly voice snaps.
— and it will not last. I guarantee you that.
Every evil shall be dealt with in its own time and place the whistling voice says.
But if we can prevent it from happening to begin with—
I knew this would happen the gravelly voice says. I said it, didn’t I?