But this was just speculation. In the late winter afternoon, her old block looked so empty that maybe no one was there at all. Her body felt empty too, light, heavy, light again, like someone else’s. Yes, that graffiti was Cyrillic. So were the fliers tacked onto utility poles. This was no Soviet army base. Why all the Russian? Well, why not? Why shouldn’t she have to pass through a gauntlet of obscurity and draw on yet another alphabet she had to understand?
She didn’t even see the white van until it pulled right up to her. A woman rolled down the window.
“Let me give you a ride.”
Judit was freezing; her coat was practically pulled over her head. Still, she knew what this was about. She walked a little faster. The van followed at a crawl, and the low, pleasant, female voice trailed behind her.
“Would you deny me the pleasure of doing a favor for a fellow Jew?”
She must have pulled over then. Judit heard the clatter of high heels, and when they caught up with her, Judit turned around and said, “Not interested.”
“In what?” the woman asked. She was unusually tall, and wore a warm, gray coat, and of course a wig like all their women, this one adorned by a yellow knitted beret with a green ornament that made it look like a hand-puppet. Her face was rosy with cold. “Not interested in a ride? Or in something else? Look, we’re only offering the ride, Thursday night special, just for you. No lecture. No asking if my husband can say Kaddish for your grandparents. No chicken soup. Look, you’re smiling already,” she added, though Judit wasn’t smiling. Then Judit sneezed, and the woman said, “Gezuntheit. Maybe you do need chicken soup.”
“I don’t need anything,” Judit said. “It’s just another block. I’m fine.”
“But then you must be going to Chabad!” Now, the woman was absolutely glowing. “You probably don’t know it, but a lot of people can’t find the entrance on a weekday. You can walk right by it after dark. We only light the dome before Shabbos.” Then, she pushed back the beret a little. She gave Judit a long look. “What do you know. Ginsberg. Don’t you recognize your old Youth Leader?”
Now it was Judit’s turn to stare. “Charlotte?” The face was rounder and less serious, but once Judit knew it, it couldn’t be unknown. She could see signs of the girl that Charlotte had been, the eyebrows and substantial forehead, and the long neck, though most of that was covered by a scarf. Her wig was stiff and glossy but more or less the color of her old, black hair. Judit said, “My God, what are you doing with these people?”
“Living,” said Charlotte. Then, in Yiddish, “Some make a living and some make a life. It’s Chana Batya now, by the way. Last name’s Rabinovitch. Judi, come on. Your nose is running. Why are we standing here like a couple of schmendricks? I’ve got a van full of groceries to put away, and I’ve got to start cooking Shabbos dinner. We’re expecting a whole battalion tomorrow. Come home with me. Meet my husband and my children.”
Judit tried to protest, but Charlotte made cunning use of her sonorous alto voice.
“It’s cooooold, Ginsberg. Get in the scaaaaareeeey Mitzvah Tank with the scaaaareeeey black-hat.” She grabbed Judit’s arm and pulled her into the van, and they drove around the corner to the Chabad House.
2
ACCORDING to Charlotte’s husband, Mendel, Chabad house only had five floors. “Unless you count the dome. That would make six. But nobody would be there on a Thursday. We have a minyan in the lobby twice a day, and Baruch Ha Shem, on Fridays we light the dome just before Chana Batya and the girls light candles, and we daven there on Shabbos.” He smiled at her right through his beard and gave her a warm, long look, magnified through his glasses. “Sit down. Please. My wife will bring you coffee.”
Judit did sit, with reluctance, on a worn couch where two little girls were also sitting, a three-year-old who held a sippy cup, and a fragile-looking child in a pinafore who was propped against a pillow and was intently studying a sock she had just removed.
Charlotte picked up the sock-girl absentmindedly, and showed no sign of bringing Judit coffee. “Maybe she’s going to be on the radio. They might be adding on a new floor for a studio. Ginsberg, would you believe it? There’s a radio tower in the minaret, and as soon as they approve our application for bandwidth, our Rebbe will transmit his teachings all over the world. Every day, there’s something new. Even since we moved here from Gorlitz, there’s the women’s dormitory on the fourth floor, and the theater. There’s so much news. I know so much about you, and you don’t know anything about me. That’s not fair at all!”
“Chana Batya,” Mendel said to her. “Calm down.” His manner was a little like the old Charlotte’s, solemn and slow. He pushed back his black fedora, which made him look wistful and beleaguered. Those tolerant brown eyes met Judit’s own in a way that felt like a recruitment tactic. Wasn’t he supposed to look away from women? Maybe Chabad men got special dispensation. He asked her, “Was she always like this?”
“No, actually,” Judit said carefully. When she’d last seen Charlotte twenty years ago, she was studying at the Polytechnic, engrossed in some work too complicated to explain to someone Judit’s age, but she’d spent one final summer at Archeology Camp out of what she’d called “a sense of duty.” Judit could still hear those words. She had both admired and feared her, and assumed she’d either end up finding a cure for cancer or designing a deadly weapon.
The Rabinovich apartment had been completed just that year, with funding from a source in Montreal. Until then, the couple and their children had lived in Gorlitz and before that, Halle, moving wherever Rabbi Schneerson had told them they were needed, but never in such a place as this, where donors from North America and England had opened their pockets and their hearts to bring about the Messianic Age.
Charlotte went on. “It wasn’t easy at first, but since Prime Minister Sokolov eased restrictions on foreign transactions, the money just keeps pouring in. And Judi, these people are so hungry for what we offer—especially the new arrivals from the Soviet Union. You didn’t know? But it was in all the papers when the prime minister made that agreement with Gorbachev. Those Russian Jews, they suffered so much. Their souls are empty and we fill them. Did I tell you? Mendel came from Russia. He was one of the first, and he was born frum too, a regular Talmud Torah scholar, a prodigy, and speaks German like a native already. Then, just last year, he brought his mother. Wait till you meet her! What she’s been through. Talk about stories to make your hair stand on end!” She interrupted herself. “I forgot to tell you. Do take off your shoes. House rule. You don’t wear heels? Well, I have to make sure I’m as tall as my husband, or he won’t respect me.”
“I’m not staying,” Judit said.
From another room came a high-pitched scream. Charlotte pivoted with the little girl in her arms and called out, “Dov! Let your sister work in peace.” She turned to Judit and said, “Leah’s cutting vegetables for tomorrow’s soup, and that boy thinks he’s helping but he shouldn’t be anywhere near a knife. That girl’s got a healthy set of lungs. And the one next to you’s Rebecca. You look like she’s about to bite you, Ginsberg. She’s offering you her cup. Such a little hostess. The one I’m holding’s Dahlia, my miracle child. Born under a kilo and on a breathing machine for six months. She still takes oxygen at night.” Then Charlotte said, “What do you mean, you’re not staying?”