The Song of the Stork Read online

  He pushed the tea, which he had sweetened with sugar, across to her with a slice of bread. He took his own bowl and sat on a stool by the stove on which he balanced his tea and sandwich. He picked up a book and buried himself in it, and only then, when he seemed able to ignore her presence did he seem able to relax a little. His shoulders dropped and the tight furrows creasing his forehead smoothed out.

  Yael drank the tea slowly, each sip an unimaginable pleasure, the warm sweetness scalding her throat. After the meagre meal she felt replete and almost dizzy. When she rose from the table, the mute blinked and his neck stiffened. He bent his face to the pages of the book, which were barely visible in the faint light seeping through the window and lost himself once more in the words.

  In the corner of the room she found a coat hanging on a peg. Taking it down she wrapped it around herself. It was a warm winter coat, shabby with age, but thick, fleece-lined and soft. The coat enveloped her. As she drew the collar up around the sides of her face she smelled his musky, earthy scent.

  The mute’s kitchen was small and sparsely furnished. The main feature of the room was the large table. In the corner of the room was a tiled stove, darkened by years of smoke. Its top surface was not large, but the chimney was thick, and the oven door, which hung open a fraction, was bright with flames that danced inside. On a shelf were jars and paper bags and in the corner a sack filled with potatoes. The floor was wooden; old boards that buckled and creaked under the foot.

  Yael curled herself up by the side of the sack of potatoes, out of the draught that came from under the bottom of the door and close enough to the stove to catch a little of its heat without disturbing him. With her stomach warmed by the tea and her body cosseted by the soft warmth of the coat, she drifted to sleep. She woke briefly and was a little disorientated. The mute sat by the stove, still reading, his bare feet propped up on its surface.

  An intense feeling of peace settled upon her. I am safe, she thought. For this moment. For this one moment I am safe. And it was enough for her. She fell asleep once more, heavily, deeply, dreamlessly.

  9

  The mute kept his distance from Yael, as if he was afraid of her. He left her food on the kitchen table and occasionally brewed up strong sweet cups of tea, but beyond that, he seemed unwilling to acknowledge her existence. He spent his time outside, preparing the house and the sty at the bottom of the field where he kept a couple of pigs for the winter, splitting the last of the logs and storing them neatly beneath the tarpaulin against the side of the house. When he came in, he would open the door of the stove, build up the fire and sit by it, lost in one of his books.

  When he had gone out one morning, Yael picked up the book he had been reading. It was a volume of Pushkin. One wall of the other room in the house was lined with crudely constructed shelves, tight with books. Russians mainly: Turgenev, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Lermontov and more recent volumes of Gumilyov and Akhmatova. There were translations of French poets and novelists in Russian and Polish along with Shakespeare and Byron.

  Yael ran her finger along the dusty books, feeling the ribbing of the ornate spines, the gloss of the embossed lettering, the rough texture of the cloth on cheaper bound editions and the brittle smoothness of some newer paper-backed books. Her father had only a small number of books in the family home, but she recalled a visit to her grandfather’s home in Lomza; a three-storey building with a small cobbled yard. Her mother’s father had been pious and his shelves were heavy with books. Copies of the works of the Gaon, Holy books, books by Tsadiks; the Hebrew curious and exotic to Yael’s untutored eye. Sitting on the arm of a battered sofa, gazing across the shelves of books, Yael’s mind wandered back to the evenings of her childhood in her grandparents’ home. Wondering over her grandmother’s wigs, her grandfather’s shawls. The books in the library, leather-bound, polished with use, almost golden in the light of the kurnik, the small lamp stood on his table. In the early evenings small study groups met in his library, pouring over the Talmud, the Mishnah or the Chayei Adam.

  She picked an ornate volume from among the books and opened it. Her eyes flicked down across the Cyrillic script, picking out words, her lips mouthing the beginnings of lines. She had studied Russian at school, and had listened often as Josef read aloud from his bed, but she still stumbled, unsure, not fully confident. Goodbye, my friend, she read, Goodbye, my dear one, you are in my breast.

  The door opened and she heard the whisper of wind, the unsettling stillness of a snowstorm, a foot on the floorboards and the sound of the mute blowing against his fingers. The domesticity of it snagged her heart. She thought of her father, her mother, their home. A dry spasm tightened her throat and she felt her eyes burn. ‘My neshomeleh!’ her father would call as he entered the house.

  When the mute came through the doorway she was crying. The book fell and landed with a thump on the bare boards. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed into them. Sobbed for the life that had gone. For her mother and father, for their home, for the wakening in the night and hearing the sound of her brother’s breathing, for the waking in the morning to hear her father humming a song, the swish of her mother’s brush on the stone flags of the threshold. For their scolding, for their love, for her doll which she had not long stopped playing with but which sat still beside her pillow. For the rhythm of life and its worn, familiar contours. For her life.

  “Oh God, oh God,” she whispered, “Where have you gone?”

  The mute bent by her feet and took up the volume of Yesenin’s poems. Closing it carefully, smoothing down the page that had creased, pressing it tight. He did not look at her. His movements were stiff and uncomfortable. Slowly he rose, and slotted the book back onto the shelf, lining it carefully, so that it did not stick out, nor stand indented more than its neighbours. For a moment he lingered, his finger on the spine of the book, and then he turned and walked slowly from the room.

  Later Yael went through into the kitchen. Her eyes were sore and the skin of her cheeks felt tight from the tears that had dried on them. The mute was seated at the stove with his back to her, his head bent low over the poems of Pushkin, his feet, shoeless, on the tiled stove once again. She stood by the window and looked out. He turned and seemed about to move, but then shook his head and turned back to the book, allowing her to stay there.

  It was snowing hard. The wind drove the heavy flakes against the window and already the ledge had been lost beneath a three-inch ribbon of it. The field was white and the hencoop indistinct. The trees were still dark. They danced erratically in the wind.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, turning to face him.

  She saw his head move, but he did not turn. It was little more than a twitch acknowledging she had spoken, then he bent low, his eyes fixed hard upon the lines of text, fiercely losing himself in Pushkin’s gypsies.

  Yael turned from the window and leaning back against the frame of some cupboarding, regarded him. He was a large man, his skin dark, but smooth, closely, carefully shaven. His clothes were old and patched, but clean. The fingers, which rested upon the edge of the page, ready to turn, were blunt with short cut nails.

  “I said ‘thank you’,” Yael said, a little louder, slightly irritated by his refusal to recognise her.

  The mute flinched a little. For a few minutes longer he attempted to read, but then closed the book sharply and placed it on the table. Without looking at her he pushed his feet into his boots and laced them quickly. Rising from his chair, he went to fetch his coat from a peg close to the door. She reached out to touch his arm as he passed.

  “My name is Yael,” she tried.

  He shied away from her. Slipping his arms into the sleeves, he opened the door, fighting to hold the coat closed as a gust of icy wind blew in, sweeping snow across the wooden floorboards. The door closed sharply behind him. Yael watched through the window as he buttoned up the coat, pulling it tight to him. He stepped out into the snow, which already rose higher than the thick soles of his boots, and made his way
down to the well. Drawing up the bucket he unhooked it and carried it back to the house.

  In the corner of the kitchen was a large tin tub. Pushing through the door the mute placed the bucket on the floor and hauled the tub onto the top of the tiled stove. He poured the freezing water into it and went out, back into the snow. He repeated this journey a number of times, each time returning with a thicker layer of snow on his jacket, freezing in his hair, his bare hands scarlet, then blue and white. Yael sat on her stool and watched him. He was uncomfortable under her gaze, and hurried his task, slopping water onto the floor. Yael took a rag and wiped it dry. He glanced at her and for the briefest of moments their eyes met. She was not sure whether the look in his eyes was anger or fear.

  When at last it seemed he had enough, he secured the latch on the door, pulled off his coat and sat watching as the water slowly warmed, occasionally placing small logs through the cast-iron door into the furnace.

  The light had begun to fade when he thrust his hand into the water and seemed to think it warm enough. He laboured it down onto the floor, and lit a candle on the table. He searched around for a while and found at last a small wooden box which he placed carefully on the table. Disappearing into the other room, he came back with a rough cotton towel, faded in its pattern, but clean. He placed it on the table beside the wooden box, which was decorated with a delicate carving of a flower, painted once red and gold, though the paint had mainly flaked away now. At last he seemed content.

  He glanced quickly at Yael, who had been watching his careful work with some bemusement. He indicated the water and the towel and box with a sharp, nervous waft of his hand. With that he walked from the kitchen and drew a thin curtain over the door, giving her privacy.

  10

  For some moments Yael was rooted to her stool, confounded at his kindness. She stood up nervously and went to kneel by the tin tub. The water was deep enough to cover half her thigh and the tub wide enough for her to sit in. Lifting the cuff of her shirt, she tested the temperature. Steam rose from the surface. Stepping back across to the doorway, she delicately lifted the edge of the curtain. The mute had lit a candle and was seated by the far window, a book in his hands, engrossed once more.

  She stripped slowly and carefully, peeling the clothes from her body. Lice dropped onto the floor and scuttled across the bare floorboards, fat, gorged with blood. Her body was etched with numerous strings of bites, where they had moved across her, the scabs picked at, bloody and sore. Her feet were blistered and sores and bruises peppered her legs. The months of hard living showing on her skin.

  She placed her clothes across the stool. The water she stepped into was hot, but bearable. She lowered herself into it and felt the heat rush through her. The steam rose and moistened her face. Droplets soon condensed on her skin, on the split tips of her lank hair, on the pink, delicate skin of her nipples. She cupped the water in her hands and poured it over her, rinsed her face, felt the delight of the hot water running in rivulets down her back. The wooden box contained an old bar of fragrant soap, dry and hard. She dropped it into the water and let it moisten a little.

  When she had scrubbed herself so hard her mottled skin turned pink and looked for a moment almost healthy, she stood up. The itching remained. Stepping from the water, she tiptoed across the boards, leaving a trail of water on the floor. She found what she wanted by the side of a small mirror. Taking the mirror and the razor back across to the tub, she carefully shaved the fine pale hairs from her body; the disgust she felt at handling the flat-bodied lice that clung to her was considerably less than her desire to be clean of them.

  When the water had grown cooler, she got out. Taking the bucket of cold water stood by the door, she heated it up, feeding more wood into the stove, until the heat was so intense she was forced to close the door. With the hot water she washed her hair over the tub, scrubbing it hard, so that the water, when she had finished, was dark with the dirt. Then carefully she dried herself. She found a comb on the shelf and combed through her hair ferociously, taking handfuls of it out in the process. Cleaning the comb and the shaving knife as best as she could, she dropped them into the pot of bubbling water on the stove and let them simmer there.

  She could not bear the idea of putting on her old clothes, so she wrapped the damp towel around her and slipped the mute’s coat over the top. Opening the door of the stove, she carefully poked in her clothes. Her underwear first, which popped and crackled as the lice exploded, then her blouse and finally her skirt which dampened the flames and sent up an acrid, foul-smelling smoke that hung in a fug beneath the ceiling.

  She found an old curtain folded on a shelf. The material was coarse cotton, faded by years of sunlight. She found a needle and thread and she sat sewing a skirt, taking enormous pleasure in this task, carefully drawing up a pattern, making sure the seam was neat. She heard the mute’s footsteps and then his nervous cough as he stood behind the curtain. Trying the skirt on, together with one of his shirts, she stood and admired the effect in the small mirror, having to hold it at many different angles to see herself properly. “I’m decent,” she called, realising only as he hesitantly poked his head through the cloth that she had used Yiddish, as if he were her brother.

  “Almost human again,” she said.

  The mute had seemed oblivious to the change in her appearance. Whenever it was possible he avoided her, working for hours outside in the freezing conditions, coming in, covered in snow, hands blue with cold. If she attempted to care for him at these times he reacted angrily, brushing past her stiffly, eyes averted, as if she did not exist. When inside he would busy himself with some chore, or take up a book. Only occasionally would she glance up and find he had been watching her, before he quickly looked away.

  When one evening she caught his eye, as she was at the table drinking a cup of scalding sweet tea, she smiled. His face flushed with embarrassment and he stood up sharply, knocking over his chair with a clatter. Picking it up, he stumbled. He pushed his feet into his boots and grabbed his coat from the peg. The door slammed back against the wall and a flurry of snow skittered across the kitchen as he plunged out into the darkness.

  “Aleksei,” she called from the doorway as the wind whipped at her clothes and snapped her hair back from her face. “Aleksei…”

  Yael huddled in the corner of the kitchen she had made her own, the flame of the candle dancing in the wind that found the gaps around the door and window. “Aleksei,” she whispered, trying the name on her tongue, finding that with the use of it he became more real, a person, somebody whose presence she desired back in the kitchen. “Yael,” she whispered too, and wondered how long it had been since she had heard her own name spoken. How long in fact it had been since she had properly spoken to somebody. Not since Rivka’s death and that had been in the autumn, when it had still been warm enough to sleep in the woods.

  If nobody knows I am here, she thought, if there is nobody to say my name, then do I really exist? But the mute knows I exist, she thought, Aleksei knows I am here, that I’m alive.

  At intervals during the night she went over to the door, and opening it carefully, called out into the darkness. The wind whipped away her voice so she was barely able to hear it herself. The light from the candle immediately went out, sizzling in the sticky, liquid wax. Yael curled herself into a small ball beneath Aleksei’s coat and finally slept.

  She dreamt of her father, on the doorstep of their home, tacks sticking from between his lips. ‘It’s in stillness God is found,’ he said. But the tacks became black teeth and instead of her father she found she was sitting with a lunatic who had passed through the town when she was a small child, his beard reaching almost to his waist, his hair as white as icicles. ‘Ódem yeséyde mey-ófer v’séyfe l’ófer!’ He whispered as though this wisdom was a secret, to be shared covertly. ‘Béyne-l’véyne iz óber gut a trunk bromfin!’ And with that he laughed, loudly, rudely, slapping his knees. Man is from dust and will return to dust. In the meantime it’s
good to have a sip of vodka! ‘He’s not wrong,’ she recalled her father saying, when she had awoken and lay breathing heavily, sweat dampening her brow.

  11

  Aleksei did not return that night, nor in the morning. Yael woke late, her head aching. Overnight the storm had blown itself out and half the world had disappeared. The snow lay deep across the back field, banking in a soft white rise to the wall of the house, nearly lipping the windowsill. The clouds had dispersed and with the clear sky, the temperature had begun to drop and Yael could hear the house creak as the wood contracted.

  Wrapping herself up warm, she struggled out, a wave of snow tumbling onto the floorboards as she opened the door. She was breathless as she waded through the stiffening crust of snow and dug out some wood from the pile beneath the tarpaulin. The cold air scolded her cheeks and her chin. Her fingers froze to the chopped logs. With an armful she hurried back, pushing the door closed with difficulty.

  Later, when the wood was burning in the stove and the room had heated up, Yael stood by the window and gazed out into the whiteness through the narrow circles that were now opaque with frost and snow. There was no way he would survive out in the open. Where had he gone? She paced back and forth, brewed a cup of tea, leaving enough hot water in the pan, in case he should at that moment push back through the door. But he did not.

  The light began to fail soon after midday. The snow was washed with a pink hue, the delicacy of which belied the lethal nature of the cold. The bellies of the undulations were blue.

  Yael wandered through the two rooms of the small house, traced her fingers along the spines of his books, gazed at the print on the wall, a mediocre painting of a river running through a forest at sunset, the garish colours fading gently with age. Yael imagined the time in the far future when the scene would finally be engulfed by night. At the end of one of the bookshelves was a large leather-bound volume, uninscribed. Yael eased it out and opened it. Beneath a sheet of thin tissue paper a face peered. It was an album of photographs. Seating herself in Aleksei’s seat, she carefully turned back the protective page and examined the photograph of a middle-aged man, beard still dark though flecked with grey. He was well-dressed, his collar new and pinned tightly at his throat, in his left hand a cane, the bone handle cradled loosely in his palm. The photographer’s name was at the bottom of the print, and the address of his studio in St Petersburg.