When she came out of her room, she brushed her hair herself in the kitchen over the simmering skillets and pots and when she saw a fish fluttering in the sink she threw her hairbrush to the floor, wrapped herself in a coat, and went out. Her mother's eyes followed her from the window and then the fish was destroyed by a blow that shook the table. Rebecca's mother said to the cook: They've gone crazy, the young people, they just go to America, to the Land of Israel, got no manners, what a world! The cook didn't understand what she meant and so she didn't answer her. Rebecca wandered around aimlessly. The light she saw in the window still distressed her, but guided her steps. Even now, in the stinging cold, she knew precisely how beautiful she was. Her beauty was the source of her yearnings for herself. The taste of the night hadn't yet vanished and Rebecca hugged herself without emotion and her hands shook. She didn't shout because she knew that nobody deserved to hear her shout. Now the wind flew snowflakes to her. The houses flogged by the wind were wrapped in a dull glow of frost from the squashed sun flickering between the heavy weary clouds.
Rebecca took an apple out of her pocket, polished it on the fabric of her coat, and bit into it. The bittersweet apple pleased her. Snowflakes started sticking to her coat, she tasted in her mouth the jaws of the dogs preying on the man of her fantasy. Before getting up in the morning, before she opened her eyes, and as usual she counted the dead children she envisioned, she lost her reflection in the window and saw the dead in the obituaries plucked off the synagogue wall and hung over her bed. The dogs' teeth smelled like perfume. She put the dead children into a gigantic suitcase clasped with leather straps.
The suitcase exploded and eyes burst out of it. The eyes were words plucked from the obituaries, they flew in the room and sought a hold in the paper where they had been written before. The words would stroke her and torture and all the time she would think quickly: How many dead do I really know, and would count the dead and make a list on a scrap of paper and look at the list and say: There were more and I don't remember.
Rebecca spat an apple pip and trembled. A thin layer of ice covered the wooden boards that had been laid next to the houses. People passing by were so wrapped up that only their eyes showed. A carriage harnessed to a pair of horses wrapped in blankets passed by and sprayed mud. When she entered the copse, the top branches of the trees were already touching the shreds of sky sailing quickly under the heavy clouds instead of over them. By the time she climbed up the hill, the charm of the flying sky was extinguished and the air was layers of heavy, hostile gray. An unseen hand played with the sun that was seen flickering now and then, heavy, and immediately extinguished. At the moment of flickering, the top branches of the trees would move in the wind like sparks and she saw that as a sign that everything was crushed and broken and so she could blend more easily into something as hopeless and stupid as she. And then, as if by accident, she came to a river. The river was frozen and white. From the shadows of light she imagined she saw a cow munching snow across the river. Then she understood that those were linden trees. On the bank of the river, she stood still; I'm darling and wicked, she said, threw away the rest of the apple, took hold of the hem of her skirts, and lifted them.
Her naked skin was notched now by a strong burst of wind from the river. The cold was crushing and came with a blow of wind, and stabbed her. She felt a lust she had never known before. The wind ripped into her body, through her groin gaping to it, and she felt the cold penetrate through the veins into her innards, enter her belly, up to her throat and choke her. Her nipples hardened and her body sharpened. Blissful now as never before, she was disgusted with herself, started smiling and the cold changed to downy warmth. And again was sharp as a razor. Her heart beat hard. The stone that had lain on her chest for many days began to melt. I won't have to search for my other half anymore, she said to herself, if I stand in profile, they won't see me. The razor cut her, she put her hand on it and felt the warm blood. She collected the blood in her hand and licked it. Across the river, once again a linden tree disguised as a cow munched snow that now turned black. She felt licentious and wonderful and wanted to marry a woman. Threshold of my violated honor, she said with a splendor just as false as the sudden bliss before that, I'm done with sadness, eighteen useless years old, the blood now flowed from her mouth, not from her groin. Inside her, something refused to pity her and so she felt grateful. The kingdom of naked trees around her was a pierced slave to her, lords of cutting down, glorious in evil, she said. An indifferent aristocratic and frosty wind blew toward her. And then, on the verge of her bloody defeat, she undid her skirts, let them drop, gathered her hair in the kerchief she kept in her pocket, rubbed her hands with ice, put her frozen palms on her face, wiped the blood of her groin from her mouth, and stepped back as if the river were a lord and you couldn't turn your back on him. She thought: nothing can ever again endanger my beauty, and the solitude filled her with joy and the joy created tears that weren't tears of sorrow, they were red in the extinguished and kindled light and they dropped onto the ice.
The tears of blood resurrected a passion in her she didn't remember being in her, to know what would happen to her after the stone in her chest melted.
Rachel Brin came to talk with her. She saw Rebecca light and hovering. Rachel was her only friend. Maybe she pitied her. Later on, Rebecca would say that Rachel was simply a necessary device to be saved at long last from the need to know how unnecessary love is. New winds were blowing in the land then, new books were read, people fled to distant places. The riots left an unprecedented rage. In the attic, Rebecca found books her father had inherited from Secret Charity, his great-grandfather. Rebecca saw the world in translation. But as in translation, she couldn't pity the dead people she collected in her boxes, not even her aunt who died near her. Her grandmother's dying was a poem in a foreign language for her. So she created her own language of syllables and taught it to Rachel Brin. Rachel believed Rebecca that there were enchanted trees and when they'd lie in bed under the obituaries and the words would fly in the room, some ancient anger that Rachel didn't know would slowly pass from Rebecca's body to Rachel's. At the age of seventeen, Rachel Brin was what Rebecca would never be, a love that came from Rebecca's body and disguised itself as a body. So, Joseph Rayna's unborn son burned so much in her. With her good common sense, Rachel understood what others never did: that Rebecca was able to love only a love that others loved for her. What was strong in Rebecca turned dreamy and loving in Rachel. You've got to learn how to stumble in order to triumph, Rebecca told her, but Rachel found in her room only dry tears and wept them for two days. She looked at the tears and saw the beautiful rainbows and couldn't appease Rebecca, and when she started to weep the weeping of Rebecca's world, the letters flew into Rebecca's eyes and she laughed. Rachel was startled and felt a stab of a son in her womb. So, Rachel turned Rebecca's truths into a game, and would help her cut out obituaries just because she didn't understand why she did it. She spoke the language of syllables with her and didn't know why. You have to learn to build yourself a coffin and live in it, said Rebecca, but Rachel thought about beauty and about life. Rebecca learned about her great-grandfather who was buried standing up, she wanted to understand who was Rebecca Secret Charity who bought herself a shroud at the age of fifteen, measured it, and kept it under her bed. Till the day she died, she slept in bed as in a coffin, under the mattress, the shroud, the soap, and the brushes hidden. She prepared her grave and wanted to live in it. Nehemiah Schneerson, whose girlfriend intended to ascend to the Land of Israel, saw Rebecca for the first time when she was gathering obituaries. Nehemiah, the hope of the Gaon Rabbi, then fighting the struggle of the gods against the prophets of Israel who, in his opinion, were bringing disaster and destruction onto the nation. He wanted to ascend to the Land of Israel to restore the kingdom of David and Solomon, to grow Japhets and Boazes and not to cultivate prophets and mourners anymore. Maybe that's why he hated Joseph's embellished songs so much, even though they were filled with freedom and love of the Land of Israel. He loathed the ethics that brought a heavy disaster onto his people. Between Elijah and Ahab, he chose Ahab; between Saul and David, he chose Saul. He was born in the destruction, the prophets prophesied me, he said, I'll prophesy their disgrace, and the old rabbi wept.