The Devil's Arithmetic (6 page)

By noon, half the shtetl was gathered outside their door, laughing and trading stories so loudly the chickens hid in the barn, refusing to come out even when three little boys in short pants and
yarmulkes
tried to coax them with corn.

Hannah felt a lot like the chickens, nervous about all the loud, strange men and the laughing, chattering women. She, too, would have hidden in the barn if she could. Sensing Hannah's timidity, Gitl kept her close as she greeted everyone by name, thanking them for
the gifts as if she were the bride herself.

Looking surprisingly beautiful in a dark green dress with a broad white lace collar, Gitl made sure all the tributes were piled onto two wagons: crocks of butter, lengths of cloth, a white lace tablecloth, wooden bowls, and a pair of truly ugly silver candlesticks that Shmuel announced had been sent over by the
rendar
himself. Even the cages of chickens went into the wagons, one in each. Gitl kept rearranging the gifts, making them seem to be twice as numerous, saying again, “Those
schnorrers
in Viosk will know we honor our own.”

Near the barn, Shmuel and the other men stood smoking and laughing at one joke after another. When Gitl disappeared inside for a moment, Hannah thought she'd stand next to Shmuel, since she really knew no one else. But when she got close, Yitzchak shooed her away as if she were one of the chickens, waving his massive hands at her and saying, “Men-talk is not for young ladies.”

Embarrassed at being singled out that way, Hannah spun around, right into the arms of a girl her own age, who looked at her with great, startled green eyes. Hannah was so relieved to see another girl, she almost cried out.

“So—you are Lublin Chaya,” the girl said, her voice catching strangely in mid-sentence. Before Hannah could deny it, the girl had threaded her arm through Hannah's, calling out to a knot of girls who were standing by a newly arrived wagon. “I have found her, Lublin Chaya.”

They came over at a run, hair ribbons flying.

“You see, we have all been waiting to meet you,” the startled-looking girl explained, the breathiness in her voice more pronounced. “Ever since we heard you were coming. Imagine, someone from Lublin living in our shtetl. But Tante Gitl is so fierce. Do you know my father calls her Gitl the Bear?”

“My father, too,” one of the other girls said.

“She said we could not meet you until you had rested because you had been so seriously ill. Almost died, she said.” The startled girl pulled each statement out as if it were a rare gift to be examined, breathing deeply after every sentence. “Ten weeks in the hospital, and no one here knowing. But she promised we would meet you. At the wedding. And here you are.”

Hannah pulled a smile across her face in greeting. At least the dream—or whatever it was—would be more interesting with girls her own age in it.

“Now let me introduce you,” the breathless girl said. “This is Shifre, Esther, and Yente—but we call
her
the Cossack!”

They each bobbed a head in turn.

“And I,” she drew in a deep, heavy breath, “I am Rachel. I am going to be your best friend.”

“I already have a best friend,” Hannah said. “At home. Her name is Rosemary.”

“What kind of a name is Rosemary?” asked one of the girls. Hannah thought it might have been Shifre.

“It is a goyish name,” Rachel said at once. “Do you mean to say your best friend is not a Jew?”

“As a matter of fact, she's Catholic,” Hannah said. “As if that matters.”

“As if that matters!” The girls were clearly shocked, and Esther added, “My father will not let me even
talk
to a goy.”

“Esther, your father will not let you talk to someone from Viosk,” said Rachel.

“Well, I am going to talk to someone from Viosk today!” Esther answered. “After I talk to Lublin Chaya.”

Hannah turned to Rachel, shaking her head slowly. “You can be my second-best friend, Rachel. My first-best here.” It seemed somehow important to keep the two worlds separate. She was sure Rosemary would understand.

The girls all smiled at her, waiting for something else, and Hannah could not figure out what. Trying to memorize their faces, to distinguish them, she saw that Shifre had a pale freckled face and eyelashes so light they could not be seen. It made her eyes look shifty.
Shifre—shifty
. She could remember that. And Esther was plump with rosy cheeks and a mouth that seemed to rest in a pout. She was round like an Easter egg.
Esther-Easter
. The third girl, the Cossack Yente, had a ferrety face, sharp in chin and nose, and a yellowish complexion.
Yente—yellow
. It was a special way of remembering Aunt Eva had taught her. It worked so well, she got
A
s in school using it. And Rachel was just Rachel. Her second-best friend, first here in the shtetl, in the dream.

“So,” Rachel said, interrupting her thoughts, “tell us about Lublin.”

Hannah realized it would be as useless telling them she lived in New Rochelle as it had been trying to convince Gitl and Shmuel. The truth was, she was beginning
to wonder herself whether she was Hannah and Chaya was the dream or if she was Chaya and Hannah was some kind of
mishigaas
, some craziness in her mind from the sickness. Yet there were all those memories—of house and school and Seder; of Mother and Father and Aaron and Aunt Eva and the rest. She couldn't have made them all up. Unless she was a genius. Or crazy. Or both.

She had no choice. “In Lublin,” she began, thinking of New Rochelle, “I live in a house that has eight rooms and the toilets are
inside
the house. One upstairs and one downstairs.”

“
In
the house?” Rachel let it out in a single breath.

“Imagine,” said Yente, “your parents must have been fabulously wealthy. Richer than Yitzchak the butcher. As rich, almost, as the
rendar
himself.”

“The
rendar
's house has twelve rooms,” Rachel said.

“Thirteen,” Yente corrected. “My mother's sister is his housekeeper.” Her sharp nosed twitched as she talked.

“Your mother's sister cannot count,” said Rachel. “She thinks there are thirteen eggs in a dozen.”

“She thinks there are nine days of Chanukah,” added Shifre.

“She thinks there are five fingers on a hand,” Esther put in dreamily.

“Idiot, there
are
five fingers on a hand,” Rachel said to Esther.

“I know that.”

“Never mind her,” Rachel confided to Hannah. “She never understands a joke. Now, Chaya, tell us more.”

“More,” Hannah said, trying to think what might
interest them. “Well, during the week I go to school, but on the weekends I go with Rosemary to the mall and . . .”

“School, too!” Esther said with a sigh. “Only boys are allowed to go to school here. I always wanted to go.”

“You
want
to go?” Hannah was shocked. “No one I know does. We can't wait for the weekends. That's when we can have fun, go shopping, and . . .”

It was the girls' turn to be shocked. “Shopping? On the Sabbath?” Rachel asked.

Esther was still thinking about the school. “I heard once about a girl who disguised herself as a boy and went into a
yeshivah
to study Torah. I do not believe it.”

“I know that story.” Hannah's voice rose in excitement. It's called
Yentl
and stars Barbra Streisand in the movie. She chops off her hair and . . .”

“Chops off her hair!” Appalled, Shifre put her hands up to her own pale braids. “And not married?”

“We have never seen a movie,” said Esther. “But I have heard of them.”

“Never mind from movies,” Rachel said sternly, the breathiness gone from her voice for once. “And no more interruptions. Tell us the story of this Yentl, Chaya. From the beginning.”

STORIES SEEMED TO TUMBLE OUT OF HANNAH
'
S MOUTH
, reruns of all the movies and books she could think of. She told the girls about
Yentl
and then about
Conan the Barbarian
with equal vigor; about
Star Wars
, which confused them; and
Fiddler on the Roof
, which did not. She told them the plot of
Little Women
in ten minutes, a miracle of compression, especially since her book report had been seven typed pages.

She mesmerized them with her tellings. After the first one, which they had interrupted every third sentence with questions, they were an attentive audience, and silent except for their frequent loud sighs and Esther's nervous laughter at all the wrong moments.

Rachel cried at the end of
Yentl
, when Hannah described Barbra Streisand bravely sailing off to America alone. And all four had tears running down their cheeks when Beth died in
Little Women
. Hannah wondered at this strange power she held in her mouth. It was true
Aaron had always liked her stories. So did Rosemary, but as her best friend she had to. And the Brodie twins, whom she'd only started to babysit, could usually be kept quiet with a tale. But she'd never had such a large, appreciative audience before.

Walking through the woods behind the wagons, the girls kept jostling one another for the place of honor by Hannah's side. Hannah wondered about
that
most of all. In New Rochelle, except for Rosemary and two other friends, who had all been together since first grade, she was not very popular. There was even one clique of girls—Rosemary called them “the Snubs”—who never spoke to her, though three were in her Hebrew class and one was actually Rosemary's cousin. She remembered vividly standing with Rosemary at the school's water fountain, giggling and splashing each other. The Snubs came over and called them babies just when Jordan Mandel went by. He'd laughed at them and Hannah had thought she'd die on the spot. Yet here, wherever
here
was, she was suddenly the most popular girl on the block. Except there wasn't any block. She realized that she couldn't have made up that powerful memory. She
was
Hannah. But these girls, who were hanging on her every word, believed she was Chaya. And it was great to be so popular. She wasn't going to spoil it by trying to convince them she really was someone else.

“So let me tell you about
The Wizard of Oz
,” she said. She couldn't remember which was the movie and which was the book. Shrugging her shoulders, she began a strange mixture of the two, speeding along until the line “Gosh, Toto, this sure doesn't look like Kansas.”

“What is Kansas?” Rachel asked.

Just then Gitl dropped back and listened to them. Hannah was afraid she would interrupt them or make her ride in the wagon. But all Gitl said was “Kansas, it is in America. Near New Rochelle.” Then she walked away, laughing.

As they wound on through the forest, Hannah guessed everybody from the shtetl was there. The littlest children and some of the older women rode in the open wagons, but everyone else walked. Sunlight filtered through the canopy of large trees, spotlighting the forest.
It was even more magical than the forest in Oz
, Hannah thought. When she stopped for a moment to take it all in, the girls complained.

“Go on, go on,” Shifre said. “What happened next?”

Putting her arm around Hannah's waist, Rachel smiled. “Let her be. She is only catching her breath.”

“
You
are the one who has trouble catching her breath,” said Yente the Cossack. She wrinkled her long nose. “But Chaya has plenty of breath. Shifre is right. What happened next to this Dorothy Gale?”

Hannah was in the middle of a muddled version of
Hansel and Gretel
, having temporarily run out of movies and books and fallen back on the nursery tales she told Aaron or the Brodie twins, when her attention was arrested by a high, thin, musical wail. She stopped in mid-sentence.

The others heard it at the same time and Yente clapped her hands.

“The
klezmer!
” she cried out. “We're almost there.”
She had been holding Hannah's arm, but pulled away half a step to look longingly toward the front of the line.

For a moment, Hannah was almost annoyed at having her audience distracted. “Don't you want to hear any more?” she asked.

“Never mind her, Chaya,” Rachel said smoothly. “How are you to guess Yente knows songs like you know stories? She will leave the dinner table, even, at the sound of a clarinet. So ignore her and finish about this witch. Does she push Gretel in the oven or not?”

But the mood was broken and a new mood took over the villagers as the sound from the clarinet reached them. The pace of the walk, which had become leisurely, quickened. Even the horses picked up their step. The constant chatter stopped. Everyone seemed to be straining to listen.

Then another instrument joined in. It took a moment for Hannah to realize that the second was a violin. It certainly wasn't like the one she had labored on in Suzuki class so long and with so little result. This violin had a piercing, insistent sweetness of tone, almost like a baby crying.