A wet snow was falling when they returned to the street. After a quarter of an hour, Israel gave up the hope of a taxi. A densely peopled tramcar lumbered by, and he rushed the two young women onto the back of it. The car bolted forward. In the swaying, steaming throng, Israel, Larissa, and Rachel lost sight of each other—except for Israel’s outstretched arm, which gripped an overhead strap, severed from his body. His wristwatch bobbed before Larissa’s eyes, showing the time well past eight. As the second hand clicked through its stations, the heat and the sour, familiar odors of garlic and unwashed bodies made her drowsy.
Outside the tramcar, a sliver of electricity flew from the conducting wire and froze in white ice the gallery of pedestrians to be found along Myasnitskaya that winter: gesticulating sidewalk vendors, grimacing prostitutes, gypsies, rag-sellers, comb-sellers, and old women holding like icons other small household goods for purchase. They seemed no less distant than Tokyo.
Just when the tram made its turn onto Sadovaya, the humming of its electrical motor died. For several minutes none of the passengers spoke nor took any notice of the thickening coagulum on the highway. The car was stalled precisely so that it obstructed not only the traffic exiting onto the ring road, but also the flow of vehicles already on the inner, clockwise lanes. Time passed. Perhaps all the passengers were lost in reverie, except Israel, who somehow managed to bully his way to the driver’s box at the front of the car. There was a distantly heard argument before the doors sighed and the passengers, at first lingeringly and regretfully, clattered out. Israel ran his two companions to the other side of the boulevard and at last succeeded in forcing a taxi to a halt.
“This is going to be some great article,” Israel moaned.
“You’re supposed to write about the performance?” Rachel asked, wincing. “Oh dear, I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right, it’s already half written.”
The concert had just completed by the time they arrived at the theater, which was down a flight of stairs in a courtyard off the Arbat. They swam against the rising surge of the departing audience, variously outfitted: semiformal evening dress, khaki military-style “French” jackets, threadbare overcoats. Since the proletariatization of culture and the distribution of free tickets by the unions, overalls and flowered peasant kerchiefs had come to dominate the theater halls. This audience was no less proletarian, but by its physiognomy, speech, and bearing it was also indisputably marked as Jewish. Israel led Rachel and Larissa to a large room behind the stage, where several men and women milled around a samovar and a plate of pastries. Their eyes lit when Israel strode through the doorway.
“Don’t ask,” he said, his hand raised and his face contorted in a parody of epic suffering. “I’m sure it was a wonderful concert. Please, allow me to introduce my friends.”
Israel seemed to be known by everyone at the theater, even the visiting musicians, young men from the Ukraine no older than Larissa or Rachel. They had performed in conspicuously unfrayed work clothes. Now they brought some folding chairs together, again raised their instruments, and offered Israel a brief, remedial recital.
“It’s not for me,” Israel said agreeably. “It’s for my readers. But I’ll take a little vodka, if you have.”
There were four men with instruments: a violin, a set of drums, a standard tenor clarinet, and a wide bass clarinet of ebony and chrome. An accordion and a trumpet lay on the chairs. A fifth musician, a thin man with a sparse red beard, was the vocalist. They all looked to the bass clarinetist for their lead. He kissed the reed and embarked on a growling, slithering crawl through the scale’s nether regions. The clarinet and the violin came in, not timidly, but with great care. At first the music was something alien, hardly music at all, and then it was established as klezmer by the arrival of the giddy, fiddling violin. The vocalist stepped before his colleagues and began to sing in Yiddish, looking directly at Israel.
When it was over, Rachel whispered to Israel, her face stretched into a gesture of incredulity: “What was that?”
“Socialist klezmer. No kvetching, no schmaltz, just good honest folk songs for the Jewish working man. Comrades, please, one more piece.”
The second song was also political, something, Rachel murmured to Larissa in explanation, about a young boy who gives up cheder for the Komsomol. But Larissa took little notice of the explanation. She was completely absorbed in the music, which was not about the Komsomol at all, but about something and someplace intimately familiar. Her lips were dry and slightly parted, her head cocked, her eyes blind, like those of an animal that had just caught a scent.
“All right, friends,” Israel said when the musicians had finished. “That was wonderful. You’ve exceeded your norms. Come on, let’s have a drink.”
The vocalist thanked him on behalf of the band, selfconsciously bobbing his head, and retired to a cup of tea. Officials from the theater approached Israel to be congratulated. He said some encouraging words to a few lingering stagehands.
But the bass clarinetist wasn’t finished, even after the other musicians had laid down their tools. At first it appeared that he was blowing and fingering his instrument without musical intent. Then Larissa detected the familiar, submerged melody, and the low notes tongued her entrails. The song, “At the Casting Away of Sins,” was something that had belonged to her grandmother, a hymn at bedtime. No one, she was sure, had ever before heard it played this way: fast, syncopated, loose, and ironic. The musician’s eyes were closed behind a pair of heavy black-framed glasses. Sweating, he rocked as if in prayer. The violinist slid back to his chair and in a moment had stealthily joined him. The other musicians, minus the singer, came in too, each either playing for himself or in competition. The four brought the piece to an unexpectedly raucous conclusion.
Israel smiled. “The old sentimental tunes. They were the best, of course. But these are new times—”
He was interrupted by the bleat of the bass clarinet. Another song. The tall, dusky musician burrowed into the music like a feral animal, and his colleagues followed. The vocalist remained seated, for political reasons. The song was immediately recognizable: A mother braids her young daughter’s hair while describing the man she is destined to marry. The man is strong and kind and the lyrics promise a happy future—but the melody reveals the mother’s sorrow, for the passing of time, as well as for the ruins of her own marriage. Larissa’s hair had once been braided; this melody was as familiar as the swollen, unjeweled hands that had braided them. But now when she closed her eyes, it was not as if she had returned home; it was as if she had never left the tramcar. She was enveloped again by garlic and body odor, hateful and seductive.
No one took notice precisely when Larissa began to sing. She herself first thought she was only humming, but in fact she was silently mouthing the words and then whispering them. The musicians adjusted, leaving just enough room for her voice to edge in between them. By the time she opened her eyes, she was singing fully, her diction distinct and knowing. Her face displayed intense concentration and something like disapproval, the same expression that she had assumed during the Komzet party. The mother’s personal sorrow expressed a race’s, and it became thoroughly Larissa’s own.