The Gilded Cage (27 page)

Her father sat sewing in one corner, his long beard trailing in his lap. Marguerite could see how bad his stitches were. Her mother would probably rip them out and do all his work over again, at night, when he was asleep. It was the unwritten rule of the Blum family that Jacob Blum never be confronted with his many failures, no matter how large or small. Forget to pay the rent, father, so we're thrown out in the street with our embarrassing bundle of belongings? Let the street boys cheat you out of items from your peddler's pack for two weeks in a row? Forget your daughter's birthday? Strike your wife for no reason? No one will mention a word of reproach.

“Look, Jacob,” her mother said.

Her father looked up. Marguerite hadn't seen him in three years. “I see, Sophie.” He bent down over his work again. She saw the needle shake in his thick fingers.

Sophie crossed the room with rapid steps. She bent over her husband. “Aren't you going to greet your daughter? Aren't you going to say something?” she hissed.

Marguerite sighed. It had been this way since she could remember. Her father ignored her existence and her mother begged him to acknowledge her. It had never been easy. He had struck her only once, at the age of fifteen. She had been ten minutes late coming home from school. After that, she just ceased to exist for him. He would not talk to her, answer her questions, notice her in any way. She had begged him on her knees to talk to her, but he had merely looked past her shoulder and asked Sophie if there was any tea.

He would not go as far as to sit shiva on her, though. That puzzled her, though perhaps it was because he could point to nothing that she'd actually done wrong. She had been dutiful, as far as it went, and she'd gotten a good job uptown, room and board in respectable houses.

Their antagonism had always been silent. She'd left for good at sixteen, returning only for occasional visits when she knew he would not be home. She never knew what she had done to make her father hate her so. She didn't care any longer.

She loosened her coat and leaned against the doorframe. The room was so terrible in its familiarity. Sophie tried to keep the place looking as nice as possible. She'd refused to sell not only her fine tablecloth, only used on the Sabbath, but also the bright pieces of fabric she'd brought from France. So a yellow fringed cloth was draped over the dilapidated sofa, and a red cushion sat in a lonely fashion on a chair with a broken spindle on its back. Marguerite's eyes roamed around the room and finally returned to her father. To her surprise, he was looking at her.

“Sophie, look at her dress,” he said.

Marguerite's hands fluttered to her coat. She pulled it closed.

“Good material, I can see from here,” he said. “Silk. Fine lace. Velvet. And her boots. Look at her boots. Fur-lined.”

“Jacob—”

Marguerite rearranged her skirts hastily, but she could not disguise her boots completely. She met her father's gaze, held trapped in its fiery blackness, suspended, in a dream. She was sixteen, she was fifteen again, still feeling that bewildering rush of shame.

Suddenly, he leaped to his feet, the boy's trousers falling to the floor. “Whore!” he shouted. He took two steps toward her while Sophie grabbed ineffectually at his sleeve. “Did you come here from Allen Street?”

Marguerite stared at him. She kept her face a mask, for she knew it infuriated him more. Tears gave him great satisfaction.

Sophie had begun to cry. “Please,” she sobbed. “Please. I just want to visit with her. We'll go to the kitchen. Sit, Jacob. Please.”

“Is that why you left your father's house?” Jacob thundered. “And who is your cadet, that Benny Gold? The bum who peddles flesh instead of fish? He has the girls you can get for cheap, I hear.”

“Is that what you
hear
, Papa?” she asked deliberately. “Or is that what you paid? You always were a
shnorer.”

“Marguerite! Please.” Sophie's sobs were wrenching.

Marguerite glanced at her mother. “I'm going, Mama.” She turned and went back into the kitchen. Her hands were shaking as she buttoned her coat. Why had she returned? To tell her mother, who loved music, that she had a voice, a real voice? Or to show off her pretty dress? What did she expect?

Furious at her own stupidity, Marguerite banged out of the apartment and hurried down the steep, narrow stairs. She could hardly wait to get outside, where she could breathe again. As she passed the third landing, she heard Mrs. Schneiderman open her door. “Don't worry, I'm leaving!” she called furiously as she ran down the stairs.

She burst through the front door and took a deep breath of the chill air. She leaned weakly against the railing for an instant. She had to move, had to get off this street, but she felt paralyzed. Suppose she saw someone she knew? She'd kept to herself for the short time she'd lived here, but still, there were those who might recognize her as the scrawny teenager who'd run away and broken her parents' hearts. Marguerite had thought she'd wanted that, wanted someone from her past to see her fine clothes. But they would all think the same thing, that she was a whore. Because she was pretty and because she had a fine dress, she was a whore. Marguerite walked down the steps.

Behind her, the door opened, and Sophie ran out, pulling on her shabby coat. “Marguerite, wait,” she said, hurrying down the steps after her.

Marguerite turned a stony face to her mother. She waited for the explanation, the excuses. Your father, he doesn't mean it. He's been sick with the cough. He's never gotten over the shame of being a peddler, Jacob Blum, the richest Jew in Odessa. Can't you see what that would do to a man?

Instead, Sophie gazed at her with calm, beautiful blue eyes, looking very practical, and very French. She shrugged. “I have to put up with him. You don't. Next time, I'll meet you somewhere.”

Sometimes Marguerite was able to catch a glimpse of the woman she'd once known, and this was one of those times. Instantly, she softened. “Oh, Maman.” She hugged her mother and tears sprang to her eyes.

“My baby.” Sophie tucked a dark curl into Marguerite's hat. “Come, let's walk, little raven.”

“Don't call me that, please, Maman,” Marguerite said in a calm voice.

Sophie peered at her worriedly. “Of course.”

They walked, arm in arm, toward Canal Street. There was no place to walk to, no park, no square with trees or grass. Sophie probably hadn't seen a blade of grass since she and Marguerite had left France nearly five years ago, Marguerite reflected.

Marguerite had grown up in Odessa, that most beautiful of seaports on the Black Sea, one of the few Russian cities with a European accent. Her father dealt in Ukranian wheat, and he was rich. He'd come penniless from France as a boy, and he'd worked his way up in the grain business. It took him until he was thirty to open his own office, but he did it, starting small, sleeping in the small office next to his files. The business flourished and grew, and Jacob saved his money. When he felt he had more than enough, he bought a house and looked for a wife to run it. He'd wanted someone mature, someone his own age, thirty-nine. But on the street one day he'd seen nineteen-year-old Sophie Marcel, who had come for a visit with her father from France, blond, blue-eyed, with the face of an angel. Jacob had fallen instantly in love. He courted her, and Sophie had been dazzled by the handsome, wealthy man who looked at her so adoringly, who touched her hand so respectfully, so thrillingly. They were engaged within a month.

Jews flourished in Odessa, along with French businessmen, Italians and Greeks, and Armenians. The opera was renowned, the days long and sunny. “Like God in Odessa,” went the Yiddish saying, bringing contentment and prosperity to mind. Sophie and Jacob were prominent citizens, enjoyed the opera and the large house Jacob had built on a hill overlooking the harbor. And then came the Easter riots of 1871. The Easter “amusements” they were often called by the Gentiles who perpetrated them.

It started on a Sunday. There was a rumor that some Jewish students had thrown a dead cat upon the altar of a Greek church. Within hours, twenty or thirty roving bands were searching for Jewish victims. Jewish businesses were looted, Jewish women raped, synogogues burned to the ground. Jacob was in his offices, alone, so he did not hear the news for some time. Sophie was home alone. Jacob ran through the streets, running through broken glass and debris, papers and ledgers, for the marauders had left nothing. He passed the Jewish bank where he did business every day and saw that every window was destroyed, and that on a balcony laughing men were throwing down books, accounts, ripping them into small fragments which fluttered down to the street like snowflakes. Now Jacob could smell fire, and the fear moved his legs as he ran, dodging down the alleys that he knew so well, the side streets, in as straight a line as he dared to take toward his house.

When he reached his house he saw, through the broken windows, men in the upstairs room. A group of them stood on the balcony, tugging at Sophie's beloved piano. A window shattered and the glass fell in the street. And then with a roar, the piano went over, splintering on the cobblestones with an awful cry. With his heart in his mouth, Jacob ran to the back and opened a cellar door. He went down the dark stairs and found Sophie, sitting on the dank floor, half-dressed, her blond hair loose and hanging down her back. She would not speak, and he picked her up like a child and half-carried, half-dragged her a few blocks away to a friendly baker who lent them his cellar at peril of his life. They ate bread and pastries for three days and emerged at last to find the Jewish quarter devastated, every window broken. Dazed, they walked through streets that were full of feathers, for it seemed every bed in the quarter had been ripped open. It looked as though a heavy snow had taken place, the streets were so white. They walked through the feathers past the burned-out shells of houses, not daring to hope. When he saw his house standing, Jacob wept. He did not care, at that moment, that all the precious things Sophie loved and cared for were broken or missing. And when he heard of the mother who had tried to prevent the rape of her daughter and had her ears cut off, then bled to death, he thanked God for his wife, whose empty eyes would surely fill with love and hope once again, please God.

Jacob never felt safe in Odessa again, but it was his home, and he loved it, so he said to all who would listen that the riots had been an aberration. He talked of moving his money to France but never did. Jews were too important to the economy of Odessa to destroy their businesses, he said. The czar would protect them. He rebuilt his business and refurnished his house, and he went on and prospered as before, slowly but surely. Marguerite was born in December of 1871, and though Sophie had been depressed during her pregnancy, she seemed to revive at the first sight of her pretty daughter. Life began anew.

Marguerite loved Odessa. She spoke fluent French, Yiddish, and Russian. She was a privileged child, cosseted by her mother, adored by her father. She still remembered her childhood as whole years of sun and warmth, good food, loving arms and generous kisses. She grew up, a beautiful child, with perfect white skin and her mother's dark blue eyes. Her hair was of the deepest black, unlike Sophie's, which was blond, and her father's, which was a dark red. She took after her paternal grandmother, who had been renowned for her beautiful hair, like sable, her father said, showing her a miniature of his mother. He called Marguerite “little raven,” and he indulged her every whim.

On March 1, 1881, czar Alexander II was assasinated by terrorists. The czar had been known for his modest reforms, his liberalism toward Jews. Within days, a riot began in Yelizavetgrad, then spread to the neighboring cities, reaching Kiev on April 26th.

This time, news reached them, and Jacob saw it coming. He could not quite believe that it would spread as far as Odessa, but he made plans. He bribed a captain on one of his ships to take Sophie and Marguerite on the next run to France. He gave Sophie a purse full of gold, but he had no time to transfer money from the bank. He sent them away on the morning of May 3rd, just as trouble began in the streets, but Jacob stayed with his home and his business. Marguerite remembered the smoke and the cries from the city as they sailed away, hiding among bales of wheat. She remembered how her mother trembled as she held Marguerite too tightly.

The captain was supposed to hire someone to deliver them straight to Lille, to Sophie's aunt, but he dropped them off at the pier in Marseille and never returned to Odessa with the ship, saying he had had enough of dealing with Jews.

Jacob never spoke of what happened during the riots, but he lost everything. Nothing was salvagable, nothing remained. Consoling himself with the thought of his wife and daughter safe with her relatives, he booked passage for America. It was the only way, he wrote Sophie. Many Russian Jews were going. In America, Jews were safe. He had no money, but he would make it again. Other Jews would help him.

Sophie showed an unexpected strength on the pier in Marseille. She got them to Lille, chattering about the great adventures they were having. She exclaimed over the new house they would live in in Lille, though it seemed small and dank to Marguerite after the grand house in Odessa. And she laughed and sang while she peeled potatoes and dug in the garden.

Marguerite spent four years in France. Her aunt and uncle were not rich, and they weren't very kind, but Marguerite was happy much of the time. She hardly missed her father after a few months, for Jacob, in the past years, had been rarely home, trying to build up his business to what it had been before. Now without a governess, she became closer to her mother. Sophie seemed to blossom without Jacob, and even grew to be a gifted gardener. It came as something of a shock for both of them when Jacob sent the fare for their passage to America.

Still, it was another adventure, and though Marguerite didn't want to leave France, America loomed as a romantic place, full of possibility. Sophie and Marguerite spent days sewing and packing and making sure their wardrobes were perfect for the trip. They scraped together some money so they could both have new hats.