Now she’s writing down the things she will take to Poland in two months, when Jacob will have made the arrangements, and when it will have gotten warmer. They will go in two carriages, with seven horses. In one carriage, she will go with Avacha, Immanuel, and the nanny, a young girl named Lisha. In the second carriage will be the servants and the luggage arranged in a pyramid and tied with strings. Her brother, Hayim, will travel on horseback along with his friends, who will help defend this feminine excursion.
Her breasts, swollen with milk, weigh her down. As soon as she thinks of them or of the child, droplets of milk emerge just like that, of their own accord, as though unable to wait for the tiny little lips of the infant, and wet patches form on her light shift. Her stomach hasn’t gone down entirely, either—she gained a lot of weight during this second pregnancy, even though the boy was born on the small side. As it turned out, he was born on the same day that Jacob and the whole company crossed via the Dniester into Poland; for this reason, Jacob bade her in a letter to name their son Immanuel.
Hana stands and picks up Immanuel, sits with him, and rests him on her belly. Her breast seems to almost engulf the baby’s head. The boy’s face is lovely, olive hued, with light blue lids delicate as flower petals. Avacha watches her mother from the corner, furious, pretending to be playing, though in fact she is constantly observing the two of them. She wants to be breastfed as well, but Hana swats her daughter away like a pestering fly: You’re too big!
Hana is a trusting person. Trustingly she recites every night before she goes to bed the Kriat Shema al haMita, to protect herself from ill presentiments, nightmares, and the evil spirits that might threaten her and her children, particularly weak as she’s been since giving birth. She addresses the four angels as she would friendly neighbors, requesting that they watch over the house while she is sleeping. Her thoughts get away from her, however, and the summoned angels take shape though she tries her hardest not to picture them. Their figures lengthen, tremble like candle flames, and just before she falls into a deep sleep, Hana sees with astonishment that they resemble knives, forks, and spoons, the kind Jacob has told her of, silver and plated in gold. They hover over her, neither guarding her nor ready to slice her into little pieces and consume her.
18.
Of how Ivanie, a little village on the Dniester, becomes a republic
Ivanie is not far from the fault that is the bed of the Dniester River. The village is arrayed along the Transnistrian plateau in such a way that it looks like dishes set out on a table, too close to the table’s edge. It could all come clattering down with a single careless movement.
Through the middle of the village runs a river, siphoned off every few yards by primitive valves that produce little ponds and pools. Ducks and geese were once kept here. All that’s left of them now are a few white feathers: the village was abandoned after the last plague. The true believers have resided here since August, with the Shorrs’ financial support and the benevolent bishop’s blessing, since the village lies on his landholdings. As soon as the safe conduct was issued by the king, people began to make their way to Ivanie in carts and on foot—from the south, from Turkey, from the north, from the towns of Podolia. They are, by and large, the same people who’d camped out on the border after being expelled from Poland, people who discovered, on finally being permitted to return home, that they no longer had homes. Their jobs had been given to others, and their houses had been looted and occupied, and if they wanted them back, they’d have to come up with some way of asserting their property rights, by law or by force. Some lost everything, especially those who made their living by trade and had left behind market stalls and stock. Those people have nothing now. Shlomo of Nadwórna and his wife, Wittel, belong to this group. Shlomo and Wittel owned workshops in Nadwórna and Kopczyńce that made duvets. All winter, women would come and pluck feathers, overseen by Wittel, who is clever and deft. Then they would sew the warm quilts, the down light and fragrant, the coverings of Turkish damask ornately patterned in pink, all of such high quality that they’d get all kinds of commissions from palaces and estates. But all this was lost in the tumult. Feathers were strewn across Podolia by the wind, the damask trampled or thieved. The roof of the house caught fire. Now it’s uninhabitable.
Peeking out from the black and white winter landscape, the little dwellings of Ivanie are overgrown with river reeds. A road winds between them, traveling down the pocked, uneven yards that are strewn with the remnants of abandoned plows and rakes, shards of pots.
The village is run by Osman of Czernowitz, who posts guards at its entrance, to prevent undesirables from straying in. Sometimes the entrance is blocked by carts. The horses stomp cavities into the frozen ground.
Newcomers to the village must first go to Osman and leave all their money and valuables with him. Osman is Ivanie’s steward, and he has an iron lockbox where he keeps the common holdings. His wife, Hava, Jacob’s sister, manages the donations that come from true believers across Podolia and the Turkish lands—among these are clothing, shoes, tools, pots, glass, and even children’s toys. It is Hava who assigns the morning’s work to the men of the village. These men will take the cart to get potatoes from a farmer; those will go for cabbage.
The community has its own cows and a hundred chickens. The chickens are a new acquisition—the sounds of coop-building still fill the air, the pounding of the perches being hammered in. Past the little houses lie community gardens. The gardens are pretty, though there isn’t much in them yet: the community arrived in August, too late to plant. Vines cover the roofs of the houses, untended, bearing sweet little grapes. There were some pumpkins to harvest. There was an abundance of plums as well—small, dark, and sweet—and trees that bulged with apples. Now that the cold has set in, everything’s turned gray, and the winter theater of putrefaction has commenced.