“My God, this is your leg. Such a long leg,” Reuven said, as his sister kept hugging his head. Then Rachel had scrambled down and was standing in front of him. “Such a tall girl!”
They were caught in each other’s gaze. “You are so different. So big,” Reuven said.
“You …” she paused. A slow, almost shy smile spread over her face. “You look just like Aunt Basia said you would.” She gasped and flung her arms around his waist.
“So this is your old friend, the very same violin,” Chizor said, and touched the wood of the Ceruti lightly. They were in Basia’s apartment on Delancey Street on the Lower East Side of New York.
“How did you come to find it again?” Basia asked.
“Oh, it is too long a story for now,” Reuven replied.
Perhaps too long, but also perhaps too desperate or violent. Basia and Chizor exchanged glances. There was not a refugee from Russia or Poland these days who did not harbor a terrible story.
“Besides,” Reuven continued, “I want to hear your stories. How have you learned English so well, Rachel?”
“I go to school. Real school. Girls do that here in America. I sit at a desk. I write on pieces of paper. I have my own pencil box. But I know how to use a dip pen and I am learning to write cursive. We have spelling tests and geography lessons.”
“Can you tell me where the Great Lakes are?”
“That’s easy. That is where Uncle Chizor lives. He came all the way from Minneapolis to be here when he heard you were coming.”
“But tell Reuven how you really learned to write so well in English,” Basia said.
“You mean my book, Auntie?”
“Yes, of course.”
Reuven watched her as she went into the other room for her book. He had not taken his eyes off her all evening. She was indeed the very same Rachel, bigger of course and speaking English as well as Yiddish now. But her spirit was the same. He could tell. Willful, positive. It was right that he had let her come here. She now returned with a large scrapbook.
She sat down on the floor by Reuven’s feet and opened it to the first page. On this page there was a lumpy-looking figure with stick legs and on his back there was a basket with a small round face peeking out. Underneath in Yiddish, written in the hand of an adult, were the words: “This is me. Rachel Bloom. On my brother’s back. We leave Russia.” And underneath the words was the English translation.
Miri spoke now. “We remembered when you first came to our apartment in the alley off Szeroka Street and how you told the story of carrying Rachel on your back out of Russia. It was Yossel’s and my favorite story. We made Mama tell it all the time. And when Rachel learned how to talk, she remembered things and added to the story. Show him the pictures of the snow cave, Rachel.” Rachel turned a few pages in the book to another drawing.
“You see,” Rachel said, “I didn’t know how to make snow on white paper, so I painted most of the paper blue and left the white for the cave. There are you and me, and there is the basket. There is not one picture in the book without the basket.”
Reuven was mesmerized as he turned the pages of the book. The drawings became more expressive, more detailed, and the captions under the drawings grew longer. Soon there was no Yiddish, only English, written now in the wobbly hand of a child.
“So that is how you learned to write English?” Rachel stood up and put her hand lightly on top of Reuven’s. “And not to forget you.”
The next morning Basia asked in a tentative voice, “So what do you think you might want to do here? There are some openings in the Katz shop.”
“No!” Rachel closed a book shut and looked at her aunt. “Aunt Basia. I …” She hesitated and bit her lip lightly. “I don’t think he should do that.”
“Do what?” Basia asked.
Rachel looked down at her shoes and in a voice barely above a whisper she said, “Stitch and cut cloth.”
“What should he do, then?” Miri asked.
Rachel’s gaze slid toward the violin. “He must play his violin. That is what my brother does.”
Rachel heard her aunt draw a deep breath.
“Perhaps you are right,” Basia said carefully. “I shall make some inquiries.” Rachel stole a look at her brother. He was looking at her, his eyes shiny. She bit her lip lightly and felt a flush creep up in her cheeks. It was almost as if there was a silent music between them.
Two days later Reuven was standing in the front office of the Russian Symphony Society of New York. Rachel had begged to skip school and come with them. Basia had relented. Reuven did not understand one word that his aunt was saying to the rather stern lady behind the desk. It seemed very odd to him that Rachel, on the other hand, understood every word. He watched his sister’s face, for that was the best translation. She looked tense and nervous. Her eyes narrowed over something the woman behind the desk had said.
The woman wore wire-rimmed spectacles that perched on the thin ridge of her bony nose, and she was observing the three of them as a very picky bird might regard an insect, or three insects, that had crept into its path—edible or not? But apparently Basia was not ready to creep. She had stepped right up to the desk, fixed the woman with a stern gaze, and began to bark harsh words that were unintelligible to Reuven. He saw Rachel’s eyes widen in amazement. Her cheeks flushed, and a smile played dangerously around the corners of her mouth.
The woman’s nostrils flared and she gave a sharp rap to the papers she held in her hand so that the edges lined up. She then swiveled in her seat and turned to the typewriter and began typing. Basia moved around the corner of the desk and bent over into the woman’s line of vision, then let loose with a hot string of words that Reuven did understand, for they were Yiddish. He was shocked at Basia’s audacity.
Then Rachel whispered to Reuven, “She’s one of those types. Aunt Basia can’t stand them.”
“What types?”
“An uptown German Jew. They think they’re better than any of us. She’s pretending not to understand Yiddish. But she does.” Rachel clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Basia was speaking now in Yiddish.
“You understand it when I say you are a miserable little piece of pig dropping. But you want it served up with caviar? Well, you can go back and eat caviar with the farshtinkener tsar. That’s what you can do!”
“What is this?” A rather large man with a black waxed handlebar mustache came into the room. The lady at the desk began speaking. Rachel kept interrupting. Again Reuven did not understand a word. Now he saw the lady shrug her shoulders. The man tapped Reuven on the shoulder and nodded his head, indicating that he should follow. Rachel and Basia followed as well.
They entered a small room where there was a piano. A woman was at the piano and another man was tuning a cello. There was some more talk that Reuven did not understand. Then Rachel turned to him and spoke in Yiddish.
“They want you to play. If you play well enough, they’ll let you come back for an official audition. They say they don’t need a violinist. But just play. Then they’ll change their minds.” Her dark eyes flickered brightly.
Reuven’s heart raced. Standing before him was the essence of love and faith. It was almost seven years ago that he had carried her on his back out of Russia, and now she was carrying him into America.
He played part of the Dvo?ák Serenade for Strings in E major. There was a stunned silence at the end.
“More,” the man with the waxed mustache said, and Reuven understood. On the night after he had let Fyodor go, on the night he found his violin and much more, he had begun to compose a piece for piano and violin that he thought of as the first of the Miracle Suites. Why not play it now, just the beginning, because he did not have the music with him to give to the pianist? The first notes fell clear and limpid like the first raindrops after a long drought and one could perhaps anticipate the greening to come.
Rachel was right. The New York Russian Symphony Society did not need a violinist—not one like Reu
ven. Ten minutes later Rachel, Reuven, Basia, and the man with the handlebar mustache were riding in a taxi uptown to Carnegie Hall. They were to meet with the conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Wassily Safonoff.
Exactly one year later Reuven Bloom made his debut as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic. In the front-row seats were his sister Rachel, his cousin Basia and her children, as well as his uncle Chizor. Just before he played the first note, with his bow raised, he listened. He listened to the creaks in the plushly upholstered seats of the house. He listened to the occasional cough from the audience. He heard the beat of his own heart. He thought of Herschel. He thought of his sister Shriprinka, his mother and father, and he thought of the music, the song begun long ago in the shtetl, broken by blood and vengeance in the horror of a single night. Now it was time to mend. Reuven Bloom drew the bow over the strings of his violin and released the notes into the air where the silence embraced them as the sky gathers birds into its blueness.
Epilogue
The immensity of Reuven Bloom’s talent was immediately recognized. He toured the world. In addition to playing the violin, he became a renowned composer. One of his best-known compositions was the Miracle Suites for violin and piano. Ten years after arriving in America, when he was thirty-two, he met Sashie and her family once more when he gave a performance in Minnesota, where they had settled after coming to America. In the small Jewish community in Minneapolis, they had met Reuven’s uncle, Chizor Bloom. Chizor arranged a reunion backstage after the concert for Sashie and her family with the man who had helped them escape from Russia nearly thirteen years before. Sashie had grown into a young woman of twenty-three. Even before Reuven met her backstage, he felt her presence in the audience. He would later say in an interview that he could never understand it, but as long as he lived, if his dear Sashie were anywhere within listening distance of his violin, he seemed to feel her listening. For him, there was a unique resonance when Sashie listened.
“It is almost,” he said, “as if she is a kind of invisible fifth string for my violin.”
Sashie and Reuven fell deeply in love. The same year that he married Sashie, Reuven bought a Guarneri violin for almost a hundred thousand dollars, financed by his uncle Chizor, who had found great success manufacturing men’s overcoats. Reuven’s sister Rachel Bloom remained in New York, where she married and became a writer. Amongst her most popular works is The Basket Stories, which recounts her leaving Russia on her brother’s back in the grain basket.
Sashie and Reuven had three children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. One of those great-grandchildren was named Rachel. I am that Rachel. Some years back I wrote my Nana Sashie’s story in a book called The Night Journey, and now it is time for me to tell Papa’s story. The story of my great-grandfather, Reuven Bloom.
Historical Note
The history of Jewish persecution began long before the nineteenth century and the time of the family of Reuven Bloom. For centuries, there were almost no Jews in Russia. When Poland was partitioned among Russia, Prussia, and Austria starting in 1772, however, Russia annexed a large segment of Poland. Suddenly there was a sizable Jewish population to deal with. Beginning in 1791 during the reign of Tsarina Catherine the Great, Jews were confined to an area that came to be known as the Pale of Settlement, which was created partly to eliminate Jewish economic competition from major cities like Moscow and to guard against racial mixing. By the late 1800s, about five million Jews lived in the Pale. This constituted almost half of the Jewish population of Europe. The Pale contained twenty-five provinces that included Ukraine, Lithuania, Belorussia, Crimea, and part of Poland.
Because it was almost impossible for Jews to own farmland, small Jewish villages known as shtetls sprang up in the Pale. For the most part, the people in the shtetls spoke Yiddish, but many could also speak and understand Russian or Polish. Their life was hard. They were poor, but they still managed to have schools both religious and secular, build humble synagogues, and carry on as best they could.
For many years, Jews were forbidden to join the Russian Army. In 1827, Tsar Nicholas I reversed the law and began requiring the shtetls to fill a heavy quota of soldiers. Jewish boys were drafted at eighteen and forced to serve for twenty-five years, but were not permitted to hold the rank of officer. During their years of service they were subjected to brutal treatment and attempts at conversion.
Each shtetl usually had a ruling council that was responsible for dealing with the representatives of the imperial government. The council members usually selected which young men would go into the army. If the ruling council refused to do this task, the tsar’s troops would simply come through the village and kidnap eligible boys. This same army would often storm through a Pale settlement setting fires and murdering innocent people.
In 1881, the relatively liberal Tsar Alexander II, who freed Russia’s serfs and even relaxed some of the restrictions on Jews slightly, was assassinated. Many people blamed the Jews. In response to the assassination, Alexander’s son—the new tsar, Alexander III—became reactionary and intolerant. By far the worst persecution of the Jews took place under Alexander III (1881–1894) and his successor, Nicholas II (1894–1917). New laws were passed in 1882 that restricted the lives of Jewish people even more. Violent anti-Semitism was officially encouraged. This only added more fuel to the anger of the Jews and the dispossessed in Russia. As conditions became increasingly bad not only for Jews but for all poor people, anger spread and the seeds of rebellion were sown. It was during the reign of Tsar Alexander III that the organized massacres known as pogroms, which had been rare, really began. More anti-Jewish laws were passed that excluded Jews from certain jobs, rights of ownership, and freedom of travel.
A great number of Jews decided to simply leave. Between 1881 and 1914, over two million Jews left Russia. Some joined a Zionist movement and went to Palestine as young settlers. Even more went to America. Many of those who stayed behind were determined to change Russia. They became revolutionaries and sought to create a socialist nation. They formed underground groups to encourage strikes, launch protests, and sabotage the Russian army. The government usually responded with brutality.
The winter of 1904–1905 was especially harsh. People were starving, work conditions were horrendous, and the crippling war between Russia and Japan had just ended in defeat. Civil unrest was at an all-time high. The tsar and his family, however, suffered none of the indignities or the deprivations of the Russian people. Then one bitter cold January morning, 150,000 people massed in front of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in protest. Russian troops fired on them, and over five hundred people were killed. This day came to be known as Bloody Sunday.
It would take twelve more years for the Russian Revolution to really begin. On March 15, 1917, Nicholas II abdicated the throne. On July 16, 1918, the tsar and his family were murdered, and on November 7 of that year, the Winter Palace was stormed and the Bolshevik Revolution began.
Rachel and Reuven are fictional creations, but their story is similar to that of the author’s own grandparents. Like so many Russian Jews who had lived in the Pale, Joseph Lasky had been forced to serve in the military. A pogrom in a nearby shtetl convinced him it was time to leave. Unlike most of the Jews of that era who left for America and settled on the Lower East Side of New York City, Joseph took his family to Duluth, Minnesota, to live. The author’s father, Marven Lasky, was the first child of Joseph and his wife, Ida, to be born in America.
Kathryn Lasky, Broken Song
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