Page 44 of Spinning Silver
I didn’t know the answer. Then we got closer and I saw that people were not just walking through the door. The men with the swords were asking them questions and writing things down. I suddenly felt afraid. What if they asked us who we were and where we were from and why we were there? I didn’t know what I would say.
But Panova Mandelstam reached out and took my other hand that Stepon wasn’t holding and squeezed it and said softly, “Just don’t say anything,” and when we came up to the door, Panov Mandelstam spoke to a man with a sword, and then I saw him give that man a silver coin, and the man said, “All right, all right,” waving us on through.
I was so glad and easy with relief that I just kept going without thinking about it, and then I was inside the city. The wall was so big that it took twenty steps from the start of the door to the end of the door. A noise got bigger and bigger the whole way we went. Then we got to the other side and the sky was open over us, and all around us there were other buildings, like the city had swallowed them up into its belly along with us and all the other people.
Stepon stopped and put his hands over his ears and didn’t want to go anywhere. He was trembling when I touched him. Panova Mandelstam said, “Come, it will be more quiet when we get out of the busy streets,” but he couldn’t move, so finally Sergey said, “Come on, Stepon, I’ll carry you on my back,” even though he hadn’t done that for a long time, not since Stepon was very little, and Stepon was big enough now that his legs with the boots that Panova Mandelstam gave him dangled down Sergey’s sides and hung long and kicking while Sergey walked. But he put his face down against Sergey’s back and did not look up the whole time.
It was not easy to walk. The streets had been full of snow for some time, and so that people could walk, they had pushed the snow out of the middle, into two big walls on either side of the street, with holes dug out going to the doors of each house. But the streets were not very big, and then it had snowed again just yesterday, and now the walls were bigger than our heads, and there was some snow in the road that there was no room for on the walls and it was black with dirt and half frozen and slippery under our feet. There were big houses everywhere, all pushed up against each other with no room on either side, going up so high that I felt they were leaning over, looking down at us in the street beneath them. There were people everywhere you looked. There was nowhere that didn’t have anyone in it.
We followed Panova Mandelstam. She knew where she was going. I didn’t know how. Every corner she turned looked just like the other corners. But she walked very steady and sure as though she did not have to think about which way to turn, and she was right, because we finally came to another big wall, not so big as the first one, with a door in it, and two more men with swords. Panov Mandelstam gave them a coin, too, and they let us through the door. I thought maybe now we would be leaving, but there was more city on the other side of that wall, too. Only in this part, everyone around us was a Jew.
I had never seen any Jew but Miryem’s family before, except the woman on the line and her son. Now I did not see anyone else. It was a strange feeling. I thought that when Miryem had to go to the Staryk kingdom maybe it was like this for her. All of a sudden everyone around you was the same as each other but not like you. And then I thought, but it was like that for Miryem already. It was like that for her all the time, in town. So maybe it hadn’t been so strange.
So I was thinking about Miryem, and wondering how it was for her, and that was why suddenly I realized, Panova Mandelstam had come here for Miryem. I stopped in the street. I had not asked why they had come. I had been so full of gladness to see them in the woods, and Stepon, that I had only had room for the gladness and not for any questions. But of course that was why they had come. She was looking for Miryem. But Miryem would not be here.
I had to keep walking because Panova Mandelstam was still going onward, and if we got lost, Sergey and Stepon and I would not know what to do. I didn’t know how to get back out of this city. It was like being in a house that had a thousand rooms and all the doors were the same. We went through a big noisy marketplace in a square, full of people buying and selling, and then we turned down a street into what felt like quiet after the noise of the market but was still very loud next to the forest. Soon it got even quieter and the houses began to get big and wide with big windows full of glass, and here the snow was in neater piles and stairs went up to the houses coming out of the snow. Finally we came to a very big house with an arch and a courtyard next to it, and there were horses there and people carrying things around, very busy.
Miryem’s mother stopped at the steps of that house. She had her arm in Panov Mandelstam’s arm, and he looked up at the door, and I thought that he did not want to go inside that house, but then they climbed up the stairs together, and she turned and beckoned to say,Come along,so we climbed up behind them and inside. “Rakhel!” a woman was saying; she had hair that was mostly grey and silver and white, and there was something about her face that made me think of Panova Mandelstam, and they were kissing and I thought, this was Miryem’s grandmother. Miryem’s mother had a mother, too, who was still alive. “And Josef! It has been too long. Come in, come in, take off your things,” she was saying, and kissing Panov Mandelstam’s cheeks.
I was afraid that Panova Mandelstam would ask her about Miryem right away, but she didn’t. More women came out of the kitchen and there was a big noise of greeting and talk among them. I thought at first they were just talking so fast that I couldn’t understand, but then I realized they were saying words that I didn’t understand at all, mixed up with words that I did know. It made me want suddenly to go away, to go back to that little house in the forest. Sitting at the table in Panova Mandelstam’s house, eating off Miryem’s plate, I had thought a little bit secretly in my heart, without really meaning to, that maybe I could slip into Miryem’s place, but now I felt I had not really known Miryem’s place. I had seen a part of it, but not all of it. This was Miryem’s place too, and it was not a place for me. I was not wanted here at all.
I would have left if I knew where to go. Sergey was next to me, and Stepon had come off his back and was huddled up against me with his head in my side and was pulling my apron up over his face. They would have left with me. But we didn’t know any way to go. And then I heard my own name: Panova Mandelstam had taken her mother to one side out of all the noise and talking, and she was saying something about me, about us, softly to her mother, who was listening and worried and looking over at us. I wanted to know what they were saying, to make her so worried, and I wondered what we would do if she said she did not want us here even to sleep. There was trouble with us, and she did not know us.
But she did not say that. She said something to Miryem’s mother, and then Miryem’s mother came to us with a smile that felt like it was saying everything will be all right but wasn’t sure if it would, and then she took us deeper into that big house. There was a staircase going up and we followed her to a big hallway with a carpet in the middle of it, and at the end of that hallway there was another staircase, and we climbed that one, and then there wasanother,wooden steps, and then we were in a small hallway that did not have a carpet, only plain wooden boards, and there were only two doors on either side of it and a door in the ceiling with a cord hanging down from it. She opened the door on the left and took us into a room that was the size of the room of the little house in the forest, that was how big that house was, that you could climb and climb up through it and then you found another whole house at the top of it, and that was how big the city was, that it had so many of these houses in it that you couldn’t tell them from each other.
But there was a window in the room in the wall across from the door, and Stepon pulled his hand away from me and ran to the window and pressed his whole face to it with a cry. I thought he was upset, but he said, “We’re birds! Wanda, Sergey, look, we’re birds,” and I went to him a little bit afraid and we looked out through the glass and Stepon was right: we were birds. We had climbed so high up in that house that we were looking down at the roofs of other houses, and looking down at the streets. From up there I could see the marketplace we had been in, only it was so small I could cover it with my hand if I put it on the window, and I could see the big wall of the city and it was only a thin little line like an orange snake going around the outside, an orange snake with snow on its back, and on the other side of it there was the forest with all the trees turned into one big dark thing, and a heavy blanket of white snow all over it that hurt my eyes to look at. There was white snow on the roofs of all the houses, too, but in the streets it was all dirty and black, but from this high even that did not look bad.
“Come, sit down and rest,” Miryem’s mother said. I had not even looked at the room, because of the window. There were three beds, real beds made out of wood, each one with a mattress, and blankets, and pillows. There was a little fireplace with no fire in it, but the room was very warm anyway, and there was a little table in front of the window and there was a chair at the little table and there were two other chairs in front of the fire. They had cushions on their seats that were only a little worn out. “I know you must be hungry. I’ll have some food brought up. I’m sorry to put you so far up, in servants’ rooms: all the other bedrooms downstairs are full of guests already. But some of them will leave tomorrow after the wedding, and then it won’t be so crowded.”
We didn’t know what to say so we didn’t say anything, and then she left us there and each of us sat down on a bed and we looked across the room at each other. I had known that Miryem’s grandfather was rich, but I had not known what rich meant before. Rich meant that this room with three beds and a table and chairs and a window filled with glass was something to say sorry for. It was even bigger than I first thought it was because when we sat down there was a big open place of the floor between us where there was nothing to cook with and no big firewood pile and no pots and no axe or broom on the walls. There was a little picture on the wall above my bed that someone had made of the town outside the window, only it was a picture of spring, with the trees green and birds in the air.
After a while Panova Mandelstam came back up, and there was a girl with her, a tall strong young girl with her hair under a kerchief, carrying a big heavy tray with food on it, and she put it down on the table and then she nodded her head to Panova Mandelstam and went away. I looked after her and I thought, that girl was me; there wasn’t even room here for me to carry things and bring things. They already had someone in that place, too.
Stepon and Sergey went to eat right away, but I couldn’t feel hungry. I was hungry, but there was a pain in my stomach when I looked at the food, and I said to Panova Mandelstam, “We are not any good to you here,” and I almost said,We should go,but I couldn’t, because we didn’t have anywhere to go, unless we did turn into birds and fly away.
Panova Mandelstam looked at me surprised. “Wanda!” she said. “After all the help you have been to us? Am I to say,Oh, but what good is she to me now?” She reached out and took my face in her hands and shook me a little back and forth. “You are a good girl with a good heart. So much work you’ve done without a word of complaint. Since you came into my house, I did not have to lift a hand. Before I thought of doing a thing it was done. I was sick, but because you were there helping, I grew well again. And you never ask for a thing. It’s only what we press into your hands that you take. So now you must let me do it.”
“What you press in my hands is more than all I have!” I said, because it hurt to hear her saying those things that were not true, as if I had only come and helped her to be good, and not because I wanted silver, and wanted to be safe.
“Then you don’t have enough, and I have more than I need,” she said. “Hush, sweetheart. You don’t have a mother anymore, but let me speak to you with her voice a minute. Listen. Stepon told us what happened in your house. There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. And if there has been food in my house for you, then I am glad, glad with all my heart. I hope there will always be.
“Hush, don’t cry,” she said, and her thumbs were wiping tears from my face, though they were coming faster than she could take them away. “I know you are afraid and worried. But there will be a wedding here today. It is a time to rejoice. For today we don’t let sorrow come into this house. All right? Sit and eat, now. Rest a little while. If you want, when you are not tired, come down and help me. There is still work to be done, and it is happy work. We will raise the canopy for the bride and groom, we will put food on the tables, and we will eat together and dance, and the wolf will not come in. Tomorrow, we will think of other things.”
I nodded without saying anything. I couldn’t say anything. She smiled at me, and wiped more of my tears, and then she gave up trying to wipe them and just gave me a handkerchief out of her skirt and touched my cheek again and went out. Sergey and Stepon were sitting at the table staring at the food on it. There was soup, and bread, and eggs, and when I sat next to them, Stepon said, “I didn’t know it was magic, when you brought it home. I thought it was just food.”
I reached out my hands to them, suddenly: I put out my hand to Sergey on one side, and to Stepon on the other, and they put out their hands to me, and to each other, and we held tight, tight; we made a circle together, my brothers and me, around the food that we had been given, and there was no wolf in the room.
In the morning Mirnatius thrust back the curtains early and set the servants scurrying before I had even sat up in bed; they brought us hot tea on a tray and warm bread with butter and jam, another plate of thick slices of ham and cheese: hearty food that was surely their best, though only a step up from peasant fare. He made a face at it and only picked. I forced myself to eat, keeping my eyes downcast so as not to look at him in his luxuriously embroidered dressing gown, his hands and his mouth. The fire was warm against my cheek, but my other cheek was hot also. I kept remembering his fingers on my thigh, and my ring wouldn’t swallow up that heat.
He demanded a bath, and I had to endure that: they put it before the fire, and two serving-girls washed him while I tried not to watch their hands moving over his body, tried not to feel something like jealousy. I wasn’t jealous over him, but over what he’d made me feel, that stirring that should have belonged to a man I would havelettouch me; a man who would havewantedto touch me, who could really be my husband. I wanted that shiver along my leg to be a gift I’d never expected; I wanted to be able to look at him in his bath and blush and begladfor it. And instead I had to deliberately look away, because if I had my way, tonight I’d throw him down into a pit with a Staryk king, and bury them both, and marry myself off to a brutish man as old as my father.
Magreta crept in timid-brave, with her comb and brush, to do my hair; her hands on my shoulders asked a trembling question I couldn’t answer anymore. She’d told me some time ago, in quick prosaic terms, the way between a man and a woman, when I was still young enough to think it sounded silly and to promise without hesitation never to let a man do it until we were married. “Not thatyou’llbe left alone with any men, dushenka,” she’d added, belatedly, stroking my hair: she’d been passing on a speech that someone had given to her, a long time ago; a speech she’d listened to and obeyed for all her days.
Some years later on from there, when I’d been old enough to understand whatmarriagemeant for a duke’s daughter, and why I would never be left alone with any man long enough to choose anything at all until my choices were gone, she’d told me of it all over again comfortingly, as something to be endured: not too bad, it’s only a few minutes, it won’t hurt much, and only the first time. I had been too old to be comforted so, however. I understood that she was lying, without knowing exactlyhowshe was lying; perhaps it would hurt every time and perhaps it would hurt a great deal and perhaps it would go on for ages—a wide array of unpleasant possibilities. I’d even asked her how she knew, and she’d gone pink and embarrassed and said, “Everyone knows, Irinushka, everyone knows,” and that meant she didn’t really know at all.
But she’d never told me about other possibilities, about why she’d made me promise in the first place. Now I wondered if she’d ever been hungry this way, and how she’d stifled that hunger; what crust of bread she had pressed into her mouth to keep from swallowing up the seeds of a disaster. I sat with her hands slowly braiding my hair and my hands were clasped in my lap, the silver of my ring lit gold by flame-reflections, like my husband’s skin, sheened with amber light as he stepped dripping wet from the bath.
He stood like a statue before the wide fireplace before me as the serving-girls wiped the droplets from him with soft cloths: a little too lovingly, which I tried not to notice. They were both very pretty, of course, chosen to please the tsar’s eye. But he only twitched his shoulders like a horse shivering away flies and said with sharp impatience, “My clothes.” They left off hurriedly as his own body servants from the palace shooed them away and brought him his garments, silk and velvet laid on in layers as carefully as my father’s armor, under a sharp critical commentary from him all the while, dissatisfied with this crease or that bulge.
