The knot begins to loosen.
She can feel it unraveling, dissolving, and she exhales and sleep wraps her in a cloak of clay.
“You are here.”
Stunned and numb, stomach greasy, chest thudding, ears ringing, she lies on her back, gazing through fuzzy infant eyes at Perel’s shining face, doubled and cloudy and swimming in the gloom.
“How do you feel?”
“Tired.”
The sound of her own voice stuns them: then the Rebbetzin bursts into tears, and then into laughter, and then they both do, the two of them trembling and whooping and hugging.
“Blessed are You, O Lord, Our God and King of the Universe,” Perel says, “Who has given us life and sustained us and brought us to this time.”
“Amen.”
It’s no less shocking the second time around. They explode in a round of giddy peals.
Perel helps her to a sitting position. “I’m going to let you go, all right? Will you fall over?”
“I won’t fall.” The cloak itches against her back. She’s naked. The realization causes her to shiver violently. Perel fetches an old prayer shawl and covers her with it. “Better than nothing.”
“Thank you.”
“Can you stand?”
“I think so.”
They are roughly the same height now, a shocking equality. Together they shuffle around the garret, her watery limbs firming up, regaining their intelligence, until she moves smoothly, gracefully, exploring her body in space, examining herself, top to bottom.
Blue veins underlie the silky pale flesh of her arms. She spreads her toes in the dust, shrugs her shoulders, twists at the waist. Everything feels familiar, and comfortable. She runs her fingers over her head. She has hair. Long hair, thick and soft. She brings the ends around to see what color it is. The lantern light paints in tones of linen and earth. Her eyes — what color are they? She trips over to the bucket, landing on her knees.
Perel lunges to grab her arm. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, fine.” The water reveals eyes of indeterminate hue. Her face appears even more lovely than she had hoped for, the features finer and softer than they were in clay.
“Are you happy with how you look?”
She nods. It is a lovely face, yes; but more important, it is hers — the face she remembers.
Perel says, “I modeled it after my Leah.”
She knows not what to make of that. But she’s certain of what to say.
“She must have been a beautiful girl.”
A silence.
“There is one more thing,” Perel says. “The knot that stilled your tongue.”
She sticks out her tongue, touches it, finds smooth, yielding tissue — no parchment. She looks at the Rebbetzin, who hesitates, and blushes, and then inclines her head downward.
Toward her pubis.
“I had to put it somewhere,” Perel says. “It shouldn’t come out. It’s deep. But you should be careful, of course.”
“I will.”
“Don’t look so surprised,” the Rebbetzin says. “It’s the source of life, and you are alive.”
Her heart swells with gratitude; the back of her throat aches.
“Do you have a name?”
She smiles. Of course she does.
It’s...
What.
She says, “My name is...”
Silence.
Perel frowns. “Yes?”
“It’s...”
Ridiculous. She has her body back. She has her voice back. And yet the only name she can come up with is a man’s name — the name she’s been living with.
Yankele.
Her mind coughs up words in a forgotten tongue.
Mi ani? Yankele.
Who am I? Yankele.
The letters of each word reassemble themselves.
A new name. She will own it.
She says, “My name is Mai.”
Perel smiles, relieved. “Nice to meet you, Mai.”
Before she can reply, a loud banging comes from the first floor — followed by a silence, and then a tremendous crash, an axe splintering wood.
They’re breaking the front door down.
Perel runs to the trapdoor, kicks it shut. “Help me.”
Not so very long ago, Mai could have managed the bookcase on her own; now it takes the two of them, working together, to drag it atop the trap. Moments later men’s voices ring out, and boots mount on the ladder, and fists beat at the floor.
“Perele,” Rebbe calls, his voice pinched and distraught. “Perele, are you in there?”
Perel seizes Mai by the arm. Together they tiptoe across the garret.
“Perele. Please open up.”
They come to the arched door. Perel lifts the iron bar holding it shut, hauls the door open. Frigid air streams in.
Below, the cobblestones swim.
The Rebbetzin clasps Mai’s hands. “Go.”
Mai hesitates. She’s still dizzy, not to mention barely clothed, and Perel’s grip on her feels like the pull of ten thousand men.
“Go,” Perel says, releasing her hands. “Go as fast as you can. Don’t stop running.”
Mai eases one leg down the side of the building, feeling with her toes in search of the first rung. The metal is freezing, her muscles jellied, and after three steps she slips, letting out a shriek, clinging to one rung, her new soft woman’s body banging into the rough brick. The prayer shawl falls, leaving her exposed to the world. Above her, Perel hisses to go, hurry, go, and she regains purchase and starts again to climb, watching the brick in front of her so as not to get dizzy, and she thinks she’s doing well until Perel screams for her to stop.
She looks up.
The Rebbetzin is waving her arms frantically. “Come back.”
She looks down.
David Ganz is waiting at the bottom.
He appears thoroughly confused — as well he should be, for he has come seeking a giant man and instead finds himself staring up at a naked woman. For a moment no one moves. Then he sprints to the rungs and climbs up after her.
“Faster,” Perel yells. “Come on.”
It’s almost funny: what she would not give to have Yankele’s body back, just for a moment. Ganz is gaining on her, his fingers starting to close around her ankle — hesitantly, because in all his life he has never touched a strange woman, and she jerks free, awakening him to his duty, and he seizes her leg in earnest, dragging her down, the tendons in her wrists straining, her throbbing fingers starting to uncurl. What does he think he’s doing? He’s going to pull her off. That’s precisely what he means to do. He’s going to kill her.
In his raspy voice he asks her to stop; come peacefully; he will not hurt her.
She knows that story.
She’s heard it before.
But her hands are slick and weak and she knows that she cannot hold out much longer.
If it’s going to happen, she’s going to be the one to decide.
It’s not a bad way to die.
She’s done it before.
She lets go of the rungs and surrenders herself to the air.
Her twisting form plummets past Ganz’s sweaty, cringing face; Perel’s screams echo interminably from above.
Then a strange thing happens.
The cobblestones rushing up to greet her begin to slow, as though she is falling through water, and then syrup, and finally glass, and then the stones stop at a fixed size, at a fixed distance, and she floats.
She looks at her arms.
She has no arms.
In their place she sees a gossamer blur, emitting a loud buzzing.
She can’t find her legs, either. She moves them, trying to locate them, and to her astonishment receives an answer from not two limbs but six, wriggling with minds of their own.