So Bluma did the only thing she could think to do:
She sat and waited.
“For?”
Bluma didn’t seem to like this question, and she tossed her head and changed the subject. “I heard you started a fight with Issur Frumkin today.”
Yehuda Leib sighed. “I didn’t start it. I never start it.”
Bluma rolled her eyes. “Of course not.”
Now there was a short, empty silence.
“But did he at least deserve it?”
“Certainly.”
Bluma chuckled.
“You didn’t say what you were waiting for.”
“No,” said Bluma. “I didn’t. But you didn’t say where you were going.”
“Well, you didn’t ask.”
“Where are you going, Yehuda Leib?”
“I don’t know,” said Yehuda Leib. “Away.”
Bluma was standing just inside the door, the candle behind her throwing a warm flicker into the street; Yehuda Leib was standing just outside, the snowflakes on his coat melting away like dewy ghosts.
“Anyway, I can’t stay here anymore.”
Bluma’s eyebrows fell. “Does your mother know about this?”
Yehuda Leib nodded. “It was my mother who sent me away.”
Bluma’s chin began to twitch, and for an agonizing moment, Yehuda Leib thought she might start to cry.
But instead, an idea seemed to march into her mind, her lips locking into a light, tight frown.
“What?” said Yehuda Leib.
“One second,” said Bluma, and she ducked inside, returning quickly to thrust a large braided challah at him. “Here,” she said. “Take this.”
“What?” said Yehuda Leib.
“Take it,” said Bluma. “And eat it sooner rather than later. It’s already a few days old, and they go stale quickly.”
It broke Bluma’s heart to see Yehuda Leib’s beautiful blue eyes widen; it was as if no one but his mother had ever given him food before, which was an unutterably sad thought.
“Thank you,” said Yehuda Leib, and then, four or five more times, “Thank you,” as he stuffed the challah into his little knapsack.
When he finally looked up again, he caught Bluma peering out into the darkness, searching.
“Well,” said Yehuda Leib, “good night.”
“Good night,” said Bluma. “Stay safe.”
Yehuda Leib shrugged as if to say, What can I do?
“I hope you get what you’re waiting for,” he said.
Bluma sighed. “Me too.”
And, unfortunately, she would.
* * *
—
She came trudging out of the woods haltingly, snowdrifts on her stooped shoulders. She jostled the door as she crossed over the threshold, and in the front room where she’d fallen asleep, Bluma’s mother moaned and rolled over.
Bluma’s bubbe saw this, and, disappointed she hadn’t managed to wake her daughter-in-law, she made a loud, rude noise with her tongue and tramped over to the staircase.
Up, as always.
Up, past her granddaughter, dozing, still dressed atop the bedclothes.
Endlessly, endlessly up.
She was tired—exhausted, really. As tired as she would ever get.
All she wanted to do was lie down and rest.
Arriving heavily at the top of the stairs, she found that someone had been in her room, and she made the rude noise again, this time to the universe at large.
With a weary shimmy, she shook what snow remained about her onto the floor, stumped over to the window, wheezed, coughed, and blew out the two dwindling candles that had been left burning on the sill.
Slowly, she turned back to prepare for bed in the gloom she felt entitled to.
And at this very moment, on the far side of the river crossing, a small bell began to ring.
* * *
—
If you arrived in Tupik at the end of a long day’s journey and wished to continue on the next day, the only place for you to go would be back the way you came. Just beyond the far shore of the muddy river, the ground became first unpleasantly moist, and then impassably swampy, and to make matters worse, a series of precipitous drops and rocky rapids in the river downstream made it impractical to pilot a boat, a barge, or any other vessel out on the water.
Tupik was a dead end.
It might, then, be a surprise to learn that an old stonework ferry shack still crouched low on Tupik’s riverbank. According to the town’s founding charter, as long as the Jews of Tupik provided, at their own expense, a ferryman to work the crossing, they would be allowed to continue to live and trade in the little town by the river. Of course, the nobleman who had granted the charter had been dead for hundreds of years, and his descendants had long since lost track of the bargain, but to the denizens of Tupik—like the rest of their people—it was no small thing to abandon an ancient agreement.
In those days, the ferryman was a fellow named Mottke, a devoted souse who was rumored never once to have bathed.
The entirety of Mottke’s responsibility consisted of sitting close to the ferry, waiting to hear the ringing of a small bell that could be pulled from the landing platform across the river. Of course, the bell never rang. But in the event that it did, Mottke’s job was simple: he was to climb aboard the little ferry barge that sat tethered on the Tupik side of the river, take hold of the chain attached to the far platform, pull himself across the current, and return with whoever had rung the bell.
But, of course, the bell never rang. There was no road passing anywhere near Tupik on the far side of the river, and it was almost impossible to conceive of someone slogging through the miles and miles of nearby swampland in order to end up there accidentally.
This is why it was so very strange that, just as Yehuda Leib began to think about finding a place to steal a few hours’ sleep, his ear was drawn down to the banks of the river by the unmistakable sound of a tinkling bell.
* * *
—
“Mottke.”
The ferryman was snoring softly, his breath curling away in little ringlets of mist.
“Mottke!” This time Yehuda Leib jostled the man, and he started awake.
“Hrrrrghm?”
This was not a word. Yehuda Leib had never before heard Mottke make a sound that could be unconditionally classified as a word.