A Castle in Brooklyn(24)

Esther would lean forward like this, elbows on the bathroom counter, nose almost touching the reflection, and think. A “pretty girl,” as her father would say; “my beauty” is how Jacob put it. She knew they were right, well, almost. She was pretty enough, and she didn’t need more than that. Often, on these nights with the moon still high in the sky, its light peeking between the edges of the white horizontal blinds, she would imagine herself a very old lady. The idea didn’t frighten her; on the contrary, the thought of growing old was a source of comfort. She and Jacob sitting on rockers on the front porch in the way of old people, waiting patiently for the grandchildren to arrive. And there would always be visitors at the home, sometimes one of their own children, six in all, followed by the grandkids, boys climbing up on Jacob’s lap until, after some coaxing, he got up shakily to have a game of catch in the yard. Meanwhile, she would walk back into the house with a couple of the girls and teach them the notes of the piano or how to cook a vegetable-filled chicken soup the way her mother had taught her when she was a girl. Often Zalman would walk over, joined by his own wife and family, and then they would all reminisce about the days when he lived in the extra bedroom before owning his own house, with its peaked roof and a large picture window. Nevertheless, he would always be there, sitting on the porch or at the kitchen table where all the important gatherings would take place. All under the roof that the three of them had constructed only a few months earlier.

And they would see the seasons right there at her own front door, something she was never able to do in her old apartment. In the fall, when the leaves dropped slowly off the grand oak at the curb in abundant carpets of golds and reds, she would often stand at the front door, where she would peek through the screen and drink in the brisk air. And then, when icy winds began to swirl around the house and shake the timbers in a threatening way, she would wrap Jacob’s woolen blanket around her shoulders and sip the tomato soup she had cooked earlier that day and sit by the sliders and look out at the backyard as drifts of snow fell in crystal piles until the bare-limbed trees looked like winter angels waiting for the sun of an incipient spring. And then it would begin all over again: the tiny white buds timidly arising from the branches of the willows, the yellow green blades of grass she would pick, holding them close to her nose, like feathers against the skin as she inhaled the intoxicating scent of spring. From then on they would spend their days outdoors, waving to the passersby who were always on their way somewhere. Jacob and Esther would mark the time by the seasons and the years passed, but the memories stayed, solid and good. These images flew through Esther’s mind as she stared for minutes into the mirror, looking at her reflection and the dreams she had for them both in Jacob’s house.





ELEVEN



Zalman, 1958

He could hear the music even before he turned the key in the lock. The dulcet tones of Debussy’s piano piece, “Clair de Lune,” floated in the air, mesmerizing him, and, combined with the scent of beef roasting in garlic and onions, made him forget the day at work and placed him at ease.

Dropping his case filled with drawings against the sofa, he sat down and leaned against the blue-striped pillows. If she noticed him there, he was not sure, for she continued to play, her long fingers dancing across the keys. She was, he knew, as hypnotized as he.

His mother had preferred the old Yiddish melodies, but looking at Esther now, he was transported to the two-bedroom home in Raczki, his mother letting the dinner go cold as she was coaxed to play yet another tune, which would wash away the cares of a young boy who studied perhaps too many hours and worried perhaps too much about an increasingly hostile world that he was still too young to comprehend. Zalman had a vague memory of his father and older brother being there, too, all listening as she sang the familiar ditties, her voice light and jovial. But it was Mama he remembered most, and today he could see her in the slope of Esther’s back, the rise and fall of her hands against the keys. The way her skirt, a bright crimson, fell draped over the bench. The song was different, “Clair de Lune,” but it did not matter. He was with Mama again. He was home.

It was Esther’s favorite and almost the only thing she played as the day turned into a fine evening mist. Zalman almost always arrived before Jacob, who kept late hours at work back in the city. Several months earlier, he had listened again to the dreamlike melody that, as her fingers moved along the keys, reached a sweet crescendo. It was aptly named, he had told her—“Clair de Lune”—the light of the moon. She seemed surprised that he knew so much about the song and the poem it was named for, which ended, “The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone/That makes to dream the birds upon the tree/And in their polished basins of white stone/The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.”

She stared at him then, amazed for some minutes once he had finished reciting the poem he had long ago learned by heart. Finally, she asked, “What else is it you know, dear Zalman?”

“Oh, not very much at all, but I do know a bit about very few subjects which are often of no interest whatsoever to most people.”

She turned her body away from the keys and pedal to face him fully.

“I’m interested. I would say I’m quite interested.”

“Well,” he continued, lowering his head as he tried to remember the details, “I know that Debussy was something of a child prodigy and studied music at the Paris Conservatoire at age ten, where he remained for some time. He was a brilliant, an extraordinary pianist. But some consider his personal life, like many of the other masters of his time, much more interesting.