What Disappears Page 2

  “Elohim gadol!” the midwife bellowed, feeling as pleased with herself as she was with the Lord of All Creation. She nestled the infants, one at a time, into their mother’s arms.

  Nadia opened her eyes to the sight of her two tiny but perfect-looking baby girls, their little hands still reaching out for one another, touching one another, as they must have done during the past nine months inside her. Inhaling the new-baby smell of their little heads, she caressed them, murmuring their praises, while the midwife told her how the second one nearly died.

  “Blue, completely blue! Roused to life again by her sister’s warmth, she was. Such a life-giving hug I’ve never seen before, in all my years of catching babies!”

  With tears in her eyes, Nadia whispered a prayer of thanks. And then she remembered the men in the next room and the terrible sounds—and the final sound of the little bell above the door. “And my husband?”

  The midwife shook her head. “It seems they’ve taken him away, Nadia. But you mustn’t give up hope.”

  Hope! What hope was there, when a Jew was arrested by agents of the tsar’s secret police?

  The silence was filled by the small new sounds of the babies’ voices, their sighs and squeaks, their pretty little mouths opening and closing, innocent of any knowledge or sorrow.

  “What will you call them, these perfect little girls?”

  Nadia and Misha had already picked out the name Sonya, if the baby was a girl, in honor of Misha’s late mother.

  The midwife, whose father was a rabbi, suggested the name Zaneta for the second girl. “It means God’s gift in Hebrew.”

  “Zaneta!” Nadia sighed. “A good name.”

  Would these babies never know their father? Nadia held them close, recalling every nightmarish rumor she’d ever heard about the prison camps in Siberia, and all those poor souls who died on the journey.

  “You saved your sister,” she whispered to little Sonya, who was the bigger of the two, although, in every other way, they looked identical. Stroking Zaneta’s forehead with one finger, she said, “You mustn’t ever forget! You have this gift of life because of her.”

  

  Using all her savings, Nadia hired a lawyer to try to secure the release of her husband. So far, all the lawyer had managed to find out was that Misha was accused of making a suit of clothes for a man connected in some way to Narodnaya volya, the underground group of hotheads who’d made an attempt on the life of the tsar.

  Other women from the Jewish community helped, when they could, with advice, comfort, and food, as Nadia’s situation became more and more dire. It was impossible to take on new work, or even to collect for work she’d already completed, with two newborns and a five-year-old at home, and no one to help her. It was weeks after the birth of the twins before she was even able to walk properly. She sent her eldest boy, Lev—who was big for his age, light-haired and blue-eyed—out to work as an apprentice in the stable-yards, even though he was only ten years old. Through the rabbi’s efforts, eight-year-old Faya was taken in by a wealthy family on an estate in the countryside, to help with the housework in exchange for room and board.

  Nadia couldn’t sleep for worrying whenever her youngest son, Daniel, went to bed hungry. She’d been able to nurse the twins for a scant six weeks before her milk ran dry. They were living on boiled buckwheat groats and tea, and whatever charity was offered by their neighbors.

  An emissary of the ladies’ aid committee, delivering soup one day, urged Nadia to take her infants to the Jewish orphanage for girls, just until she was able to set her life to rights again. “They won’t remember anything about it when they’re older—and the matron there is very kind, very good. Your babies won’t have you, for a short time. But at least they will have enough food.”

  Nadia could barely restrain herself from telling the woman to get out of her house. The very idea of it—an orphanage! No child of hers would ever be taken to live in such a place, not while she had breath in her body.

  She accepted the soup with chilly thanks, hastening to tell her benefactor, “We’re expecting word, any day now, about my husband’s release.”

  It was a lie. But what else could she say?

  No letters—not a single message—had yet arrived from Misha. The newspapers were full of reports about the government’s efforts to find all the members of Narodnaya volya. All who were found were executed. At least, the lawyer wrote to Nadia, her husband was—as far as they knew—still alive.

  

  Nadia’s eyes in the mirror looked desperate and hollow. A few small new commissions came her way—through the ladies’ aid committee, she suspected. How was it that she had become the recipient of charity, she who had often been the object of other women’s envy?

  The rabbi brought it to her attention that Daniel had distinguished himself in his age group, learning to read and write short passages in Hebrew. Even before Misha’s arrest, little Daniel amazed and amused them by reading out loud, while seated on his father’s lap, from the Russian Bulletin. Such a gifted child, the rabbi told Nadia, came with a special burden of responsibility.

  She tried to think about what Misha would want her to do.

  Alone in the shop, unable to afford to hire help—trying to tend the twins and also be attentive to Daniel—she was falling behind with her work, rather than getting ahead, sleeping late after sleepless nights.

  Why had she and Misha ever moved away from the shtetl, so far away from their families, having only one another to depend on? Why had she insisted on marrying someone she loved?

  Nadia woke in a panic every morning and, often, several times during the night. She was hungry—her children were hungry. And their situation was only getting worse.

  And then one morning she woke knowing what she needed to do. She almost couldn’t believe she was going to do it—but she had to. There was no other choice.

  It would be a temporary measure, she told herself, while she labored to earn enough to put some money by and keep herself and her little prodigy alive.

  en route from France, and in Kishinev

  1880

  There were rumors of war on the limpid April day in 1881, when Monsieur and Madame Dupres of Nantes boarded their train at the Gare de Paris-Est—although word of it didn’t reach them until the train stopped in Hanover. When he saw the headlines, Monsieur Dupres proposed, as gently as he could, that they turn around and go home again, to wait until the political situation was less uncertain. His wife told him that he was welcome to return home, if that was what he wanted to do. She would make the journey by herself, if need be.

  Madame Dupres was thirty-eight and had not yet managed to bring a child to term, despite three pregnancies. Three times, she’d endured the agonies of giving birth to a tiny corpse. In the midst of the crise de nerfs she suffered following her last miscarriage, she conceived the idea of adopting a Jewish baby girl from the place where her grandmother had been born—Kishinev, a place that, to her, seemed as remote and unreal as something from a fairytale.

  One of their suitcases was filled with baby clothes and blankets of the finest quality, acquired by Madame Dupres with such joyous anticipation over the years, then tucked away. Finally, they would be used. The baby would be hers because she would come from the city where Madame Dupres’s grandmother had spent her childhood before marrying out of her faith and moving to France.

  The idea was completely mad. It was only because Monsieur Dupres feared his wife would kill herself otherwise that he made the necessary inquiries, procured the necessary papers, and agreed to undertake the journey to Russia.

  He loved his wife very much, despite her tainted relative. Her grandmother was long dead, after all. None of Monsieur Dupres’s colleagues at the Bureau de Change knew about his wife’s ancestry. Most of his family were also ignorant of this unfortunate connection except for his eldest sister, who promised she
’d never tell. The child would, of course, be raised a Catholic. Madame Dupres was determined never to let her daughter know she was adopted.

  

  The journey of Monsieur and Madame Dupres was long but uneventful. They were both exhausted when they arrived in Kishinev, after dark, and managed to find a place to stay. Early the next morning, they found someone to take them to the orphanage, which

  turned out to be a modest two-story house at the edge of town.

  Monsieur Dupres, nervous about getting stranded there, told the driver to wait.

  A neat young woman answered the door, looking at them with some amazement as Monsieur Dupres told her who they were and why they had come. The matron was away, she explained without letting them in. “I am her assistant,” she added, dropping a little curtsey. She spoke decent French.

  “But we were expected,” said Madame Dupres.

  “If you could come back tomorrow, please, matron will be returning then, although possibly very late.” They heard children’s voices, one of them raised in anger, and then the sound of another child crying. “I hope you will excuse me—” Starting to close the door, she added, “Day after tomorrow is even better.”

  Madame Dupres clutched at her husband’s arm. “Show her!” she told him.

  He braced the door with one of his fine leather boots and took a letter out of his coat pocket, handing it to the girl.

  She struggled to read it, moving her lips as she parsed the words. Then she looked up at them, chagrined. “I myself am not authorized to approve adoptions.”

  “It has already been approved, mademoiselle,” said Monsieur Dupres, “as you have just seen for yourself.” He plucked the letter out of her hand, tucking it away again.

  “What’s your name, dear?” Madame Dupres asked as she and her husband pushed their way inside.

  “Golda, madame.”

  There was a smell—a smell of poverty, although the place seemed clean enough. They heard the aggrieved child’s voice again. Two curly-haired little girls ran by, giggling. Monsieur Dupres held a handkerchief up to his nose.

  Golda looked embarrassed. “You are—forgive me for inquiring!” Continuing in a low voice, she asked, “You are Jewish?”

  Monsieur remained silent, despite his promise to his wife. To his surprise, she spoke then in another language, a language he’d never heard her speak before, in all their eighteen years of marriage.

  Golda nodded, apparently satisfied with what had been said. Madame Dupres resisted the urge to cross herself, although, silently, she repeated a fervent prayer of thanks to the Virgin for the love her grandmother had shown her, and the few words of Yiddish she’d taught her as a child.

  “If I am understanding correctly, you have come for a baby girl. But the youngest orphans in our care now are not babies anymore.”

  A cascade of silvery, distinctly babyish laughter reached their ears from the floor above them. Madame Dupres reacted to the sound like a hunting dog that scents its prey.

  Following her gaze, Golda said, “Oh, that is just Sonya and Zaneta, always making jokes together. Special case. I can show you youngest orphans, in dayroom now. Very nice girls! I cannot authorize, but you can look. This way, please.”

  But before she could stop them, Madame Dupres, surprisingly fleet in her high heels, had launched herself upstairs. Her husband had to take the stairs two at a time to keep up with her.

  Golda scurried after them, calling out, “Madame! Monsieur! Not that way, please!”

  Passing two empty dormitories on the hallway, they entered a third, smaller room, where all the bassinettes were empty, save one. Madame took her husband’s hand, leading him straight to the bassinette that held Sonya and Zaneta.

  Entranced, Madame looked down at the babies, perfect baby girls, perhaps nine months old.

  One slept, or pretended to sleep, while the other looked up with large blue eyes at the two strange faces hovering above her. Her delicate brows knitted and her tiny chin began to quiver. But then her gaze lit on the brooch Madame Dupres wore on her lapel. It shimmered with a setting of dark pink rubies and very small diamonds. Very small. Very shiny in the slanting light that came in through the window.

  The baby’s face broke into a smile as she reached out, with one dimpled hand, toward the magenta-tinged sparkles of color and light.

  Madame Dupres’s eyes filled with tears. She reached down and gathered the baby into her arms, embracing her with all the unused genius of her frustrated maternity. “Oh, my sweet little darling—I knew I’d find you here!”

  Neither Madame nor Monsieur Dupres paid any attention to Golda’s objections, which segued from French to Russian as her voice became more and more agitated. “I will lose my position, you ridiculous people!” she shouted at them in Russian. “Do you have a heart in your body? Have I not used the correct word for twins? Gemelle!” she shouted in French. “Les gemelles! Zaneta is one of two. They must not be separated!”

  

  Startled by the noise, opening her eyes, Sonya registered the empty space beside her in the bassinette. She saw Zaneta high above her, held in the arms of a person who looked nothing like anyone she’d ever seen before, with feathers on her head and blood-red lips.

  Sonya’s little face crumpled and her chest started heaving. She began to cry with the sound of a hinge in need of oil. Grabbing hold of the side of the bassinette, she pulled herself up onto her knees. And then she wailed with such force that Monsieur Dupres put his hands over his ears.

  He looked briefly at the infant in his wife’s arms. “Hello, baby,” he said as if he’d just tasted something sour.

  Madame Dupres was laughing now. “Oh cheri, we could take both of them, couldn’t we?”

  “Are you mad? One will be quite enough.” Still wincing at the sound of the other baby’s piercing cries, monsieur called out, “Let’s go! The driver is waiting.”

  Madame Dupres glanced once over her shoulder at Sonya. And then, holding Zaneta tight, she escaped out of the infants’ dormitory with her prize.

  Golda hurried after them downstairs.

  From a pocket deep inside his coat, Monsieur Dupres took out an envelope stuffed with cash. “A donation, mademoiselle—for the good work you do.”

  Blinking back her angry tears, Golda glanced down at the thick wad of banknotes—and then pushed his hand away.

  “For the orphans,” said Madame Dupres, not unkindly.

  Monsieur Dupres put the money on the matron’s desk, then sat down and helped himself to a piece of writing paper. He used his own fountain pen to write a note filled with the deceptions he and his wife had agreed upon, although, as a man of probity, it pained him to do so.

  Madame knew that she had what she needed now—and this baby, her baby, would have everything she needed. The world had come round to where it was supposed to be.

  Paris

  1909

  Shoving past the monocled man in formal dress and his mustachioed servant, Jeannette realizes it’s the impresario of the Ballets Russes himself she’s just treated so rudely. She curses under her breath as she makes her way down the dimly lit corridor, past the open door of another dressing-room where she glimpses a man in costume and a half-dressed ballerina, one long leg wrapped around him, his hands cradling her ass, her face buried in his neck. Why don’t people bother shutting their doors?

  She sees the bald pate of the regisseur approaching and ducks her head to avoid his gaze, worrying about having her pay docked again. He leaves an overwhelming scent of cigarettes in his wake, as if he himself were made of burning paper tightly wrapped around a pinky’s worth of fragrant tobacco.

  Jeannette’s heart is beating as hard as if she’d just done a series of complicated jumps in a cross-floor exercise.

  Explanations percolate inside her, words and possibilities that gleam and shimmer, threatening t
o surface from the murkiness of her oldest and least understood feelings and memories. Looking at that woman’s face had been like looking into a mirror. Who was she?

  The company’s choreographer, Mikhail Fokine, hired Jeannette on the spot when she auditioned as an extra dancer for the Russian Ballet’s season in Paris. Had he recognized something in her that she had failed to see in all her days of gazing into mirrors and dancing past them?

  Russian. Russians. But Jeannette is French, through and through.

  She starts to climb the metal stairs, then pauses halfway up, gazing down at the floor below and all the people scurrying about there, each of them busily preparing for the performance—the painters with their color-spattered smocks and brushes; the carpenters with their hammers and saws. Ballerinas in toe-shoes, looking like little flocks of ducks as they make their way through the dust-filled air, trying to avoid nails, tacks, and the wandering hands of the workmen.

  No answer she can think of makes any sense.

  The backstage bell chimes four times: thirty minutes till she needs to be on stage. Jeannette forces herself to look away—to keep climbing, taking care not to stumble.

  Her aunt’s words come back to her—her sour, cold, unloving aunt, who so often spoke in a way that was full of portent and yet impossible to comprehend. What can you expect?—Jeannette had overheard her say to her father, more than once. It’s a question of blood.

  Jeannette had thought it was her menstrual blood that had so offended her aunt’s sensibilities. It disgusted Jeannette too. For an embarrassingly long time, she thought she was the only person who bled that way, every month. She always did her best to hide it, scrubbing away any evidence, disposing of the soiled rags, using scent to cover any lingering odor left behind.

  Blood. Her blood. One of her dance mates finally let her in on the secret, that all of them bled, in just the way she did. It had so often felt shameful to Jeannette, being an only child. Being without a mother who might have helped her make sense of what it meant, being a girl. Becoming a woman.