The Immortalists Read online

  Two things told them this woman was their grandmother. The first was a wrinkled old photo, greased with fingerprints, in which the same woman stood with a tall man and a small child. Varya and Klara knew the child was their mother, even at this reduced size: she held her parents’ hands in her small, fat fists, and her face was squeezed into an expression of consternation that Gertie still frequently wore.

  Klara claimed the box and its contents.

  “It belongs to me,” she said. “I got her name. Ma never looks at it, anyway.”

  But they soon found that was not true. The morning after Klara secreted the lacquered box back to the bedroom and tucked it beneath her bottom bunk, a caw came from their parents’ room, followed by Gertie’s heated interrogations and Saul’s muffled denial. Moments later, Gertie burst into the bunk room.

  “Who took it?” she cried. “Who?”

  Her nostrils flared, and her wide hips blocked the light that usually spilled in from the hallway. Klara was hot with fear, nearly crying. When Saul left for work and Gertie stalked into the kitchen, Klara snuck into her parents’ room and put the box exactly where she’d found it. But when the apartment was empty, Varya knew that Klara returned to the photos and the tiny woman inside them. She stared at the woman’s intensity, her glamour, and vowed she’d live up to her namesake.

  • • •

  Don’t look around like that,” Daniel hisses. “Act like you belong.”

  The Golds hurry up the stairs. The walls are covered in chipped beige paint, and the halls are dark. When they reach the fifth floor, Daniel pauses.

  “What do you suggest we do now?” whispers Varya. She likes it when Daniel is stumped.

  “We wait,” says Daniel. “For someone to come out.”

  But Varya doesn’t want to wait. She’s jittery, filled with unexpected dread, and she starts down the hallway alone.

  She thought that magic would be detectable, but the doors on this floor look exactly the same, with their scratched brass knobs and numbers. The four in number fifty-four has fallen sideways. When Varya walks toward the door, she hears the sound of a television or a radio: a baseball game. Assuming that a rishika would not care about baseball, she steps back again.

  Her siblings have floated apart. Daniel stands near the stairwell with his hands in his pockets, watching the doors. Simon joins Varya at number fifty-four, rises onto his tiptoes and pushes the four back into place with his index finger. Klara has been wandering in the opposite direction, but now she comes to stand with them. She is followed by the scent of Breck Gold Formula, a product Klara bought with weeks of allowance; the rest of the family uses Prell, which comes in a plastic tube like toothpaste and squirts jelly the color of kelp. Though Varya scoffs outwardly—she would never spend so much on shampoo—she is envious of Klara, who smells like rosemary and oranges, and who now raises her hand to knock.

  “What are you doing?” whispers Daniel. “That could be anyone. It could be—”

  “Yeah?”

  The voice that comes from behind the door is low in pitch and gruff.

  “We’re here to see the woman,” Klara tries.

  Silence. Varya holds her breath. There is a peephole in the door, smaller than a pencil eraser.

  On the other side of the door, a throat is cleared.

  “One at a time,” the voice says.

  Varya catches Daniel’s eye. They have not prepared to separate. But before they can negotiate, a bolt is pushed to one side, and Klara—what is she thinking?—steps through.

  • • •

  Nobody is sure how long Klara is inside. To Varya, it feels like hours. She sits against the wall with her knees to her chest. She is thinking of fairy tales: witches who take children, witches who eat them. A tree of panic sprouts in her stomach and grows until the door cracks open.

  Varya scrambles to her feet, but Daniel is faster. It’s impossible to see inside the apartment, though Varya hears music—a mariachi band?—and the clang of a pot on a burner.

  Before Daniel enters, he looks at Varya and Simon. “Don’t worry,” he says.

  But they do.

  “Where’s Klara?” asks Simon, once Daniel is gone. “Why didn’t she come back out?”

  “She’s still inside,” says Varya, though the same question has occurred to her. “They’ll be there when we go in, Klara and Daniel both. They’re probably just . . . waiting for us.”

  “This was a bad idea,” Simon says. His blond curls are matted with sweat. Because Varya is the oldest and Simon the youngest, she feels that she should be able to mother him, but Simon is an enigma to her; only Klara seems to understand him. He talks less than the others. At dinner, he sits with his brow furrowed and his eyes glazed. But he has a rabbit’s speed and agility. Sometimes, while walking beside him to synagogue, Varya finds herself alone. She knows that Simon has only run ahead or dropped behind, but each time, it feels as though he’s vanished.

  When the door opens again, that same fraction of an inch, Varya puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, Sy. You go ahead, and I’ll stand lookout. Okay?”

  For what or whom, she isn’t sure—the hallway is just as empty as it was when they arrived. Really, Varya is timid: despite being the oldest, she’d rather let the others go first. But Simon seems comforted. He brushes a curl out of his eyes before he leaves her.

  • • •

  Alone, Varya’s panic swells. She feels cut off from her siblings, as if she is standing on the shore, watching their ships float away. She should have stopped them from coming. By the time the door opens again, sweat has pooled above her upper lip and in the waistband of her skirt. But it’s too late to leave the way she came in, and the others are waiting. Varya pushes the door open.

  She finds herself in a tiny efficiency filled with so many belongings that at first she sees no person at all. Books are stacked on the floor like model skyscrapers. The kitchen shelves have been stuffed with newspapers instead of food, and nonperishables are clumped along the counter: crackers, cereal, canned soups, a dozen bright varieties of tea. There are tarot cards and playing cards, astrological charts and calendars—Varya recognizes one in Chinese, another with Roman numerals, and a third that shows the phases of the moon. There is a yellowed poster of the I Ching, whose hexagrams she remembers from Klara’s Book of Divination; a vase filled with sand; gongs and copper bowls; a laurel wreath; a pile of twiglike wooden sticks, carved with horizontal lines; and a bowl of stones, some of which have been tied to long pieces of string.

  Only a nook by the door has been cleared. There, a folding table sits between two folding chairs. Beside it, a smaller table has been set with red cloth roses and an open bible. Two white plaster elephants are arranged around the bible, along with a prayer candle, a wooden cross, and three statues: one of the Buddha, one of the Virgin Mary, and one of Nefertiti, which Varya knows because of a small, handwritten sign that reads NEFERTITI.

  Varya feels a pang of guilt. In Hebrew school, she heard the case against idols, listening solemnly as Rabbi Chaim read from the tractate Avodah Zarah. Her parents wouldn’t want her to be here. But didn’t God make the fortune teller, just as He made Varya’s parents? In synagogue, Varya tries to pray, but God never seems to respond. The rishika, at least, will talk back.

  The woman stands at the sink, shaking loose tea into a delicate metal ball. She wears a wide cotton dress, a pair of leather sandals, and a navy blue headscarf; her long, brown hair hangs in two slender braids. Though she is large, her movements are elegant and precise.

  “Where are my siblings?” Varya’s voice is throaty, and she is embarrassed by the desperation she hears in it.

  The blinds are drawn. The woman pulls a mug from the top shelf and places the metal ball inside it.

  “I want to know,” Varya says, more loudly, “where my siblings are.”

  A kettle whist
les on the stove top. The woman turns off the burner and lifts the kettle above the mug. Water pours out in a thick, clear cord, and the room fills with the smell of grass.

  “Outside,” she says.

  “No, they’re not. I waited in the hall, and they never came out.”

  The woman steps toward Varya. Her cheeks are doughy and her nose bulbous, her lips puckered. Her skin is golden brown, like Ruby Singh’s.

  “I can’t do nothing if you don’t trust me,” she says. “Take off your shoes. Then you can sit down.”

  Varya slips off her saddle shoes and places them next to the door, chastised. Perhaps the woman is right. If Varya refuses to trust her, this trip will be for nothing, along with all they’ve risked for it: their father’s gaze, their mother’s displeasure, four sets of saved-up allowance. She sits at the folding table. The woman sets the mug of tea before her. Varya thinks of tinctures and poisons, of Rip Van Winkle and his twenty-year sleep. Then she thinks of Ruby. She knows things, the rishika, Ruby said. We can never repay her for that. Varya lifts the mug and sips.

  The rishika sits in the opposite folding chair. She scans Varya’s rigid shoulders, her damp hands, her face.

  “You haven’t been feeling so good, have you, honey?”

  Varya swallows in surprise. She shakes her head.

  “You been waitin’ to feel better?”

  Varya is still, though her pulse runs.

  “You worry,” says the woman, nodding. “You got troubles. You smile on your face, you laugh, but in your heart, you’re not happy; you’re alone. Am I right?”

  Varya’s mouth trembles its assent. Her heart is so full she feels it might crack.

  “That’s a shame,” says the woman. “We got work to do.” She snaps her fingers and gestures to Varya’s left hand. “Your palm.”

  Varya scoots to the edge of her chair and offers her hand to the rishika, whose own hands are nimble and cool. Varya’s breath is shallow. She can’t remember the last time she touched a stranger; she prefers to keep a membrane, like a raincoat, between herself and other people. When she returns from school, where the desks are oily with fingerprints and the playground contaminated by kindergartners, she washes her hands until they’re nearly raw.

  “Can you really do it?” she asks. “Do you know when I’ll die?”

  She is frightened by the capriciousness of luck: the plain-colored tablets that can expand your mind or turn it upside down; the men randomly chosen and shipped to Cam Ranh Bay and the mountain Dong Ap Bia, in whose bamboo thickets and twelve-foot elephant grass a thousand men were found dead. She has a classmate at PS 42, Eugene Bogopolski, whose three brothers were sent to Vietnam when Varya and Eugene were only nine. All three of them returned, and the Bogopolskis threw a party in their Broome Street apartment. The next year, Eugene dived into a swimming pool, hit his head on the concrete, and died. Varya’s date of death would be one thing—perhaps the most important thing—she could know for sure.

  The woman looks at Varya. Her eyes are bright, black marbles.

  “I can help you,” she says. “I can do you good.”

  She turns to Varya’s palm, looking first at its general shape, then at the blunt, square fingers. Gently, she tugs Varya’s thumb backward; it doesn’t bend far before resisting. She examines the space between Varya’s fourth and fifth fingers. She squeezes the tip of Varya’s pinky.

  “What are you looking for?” Varya asks.

  “Your character. Ever heard of Heraclitus?” Varya shakes her head. “Greek philosopher. Character is fate—that’s what he said. They’re bound up, those two, like brothers and sisters. You wanna know the future?” She points at Varya with her free hand. “Look in the mirror.”

  “And what if I change?” It seems impossible that Varya’s future is already inside her like an actress just offstage, waiting decades to leave the wings.

  “Then you’d be special. ’Cause most people don’t.”

  The rishika turns Varya’s hand over and sets it down on the table.

  “January 21st, 2044.” Her voice is matter-of-fact, as if she is stating the temperature, or the winner of the ballgame. “You got plenty of time.”

  For a moment, Varya’s heart unlatches and lifts. Two thousand forty-four would make her eighty-eight, an altogether decent age to die. Then she pauses.

  “How do you know?”

  “What did I say about you trusting me?” The rishika raises a furry eyebrow and frowns. “Now, I want you to go home and think about what I said. If you do that, you’re gonna feel better. But don’t tell anybody, all right? What it shows in your hand, what I told you—that’s between you and me.”

  The woman stares at Varya, and Varya stares back. Now that Varya is the appraiser and not the person appraised, something curious happens. The woman’s eyes lose their luster, her movements their elegance. It is too good, the fortune Varya has been given, and her good fortune becomes proof of the seer’s fraudulence: probably, she gives the same prediction to everyone. Varya thinks of the wizard of Oz. Like him, this woman is no mage and no seer. She is a swindler, a con artist. Varya stands.

  “My brother should have paid you,” she says, putting her shoes back on.

  The woman rises, too. She walks toward what Varya thought was the door to a closet—a bra hangs from the handle, its mesh cups long as the nets Varya uses to catch monarchs in summer—but no: it’s an exit. The woman cracks the door, and Varya sees a strip of red brick, a thatch of fire escape. When she hears the voices of her siblings drift up from below, her heart balloons.

  But the rishika stands before her like a barrier. She pinches Varya’s arm.

  “Everything is gonna come out okay for you, honey.” There is something threatening in her tone, as if it is urgent that Varya hear this, urgent that she believe it. “Everything is gonna work out okay.”

  Between the woman’s fingers, Varya’s skin turns white.

  “Let me go,” she says.

  She is surprised by the coldness in her voice. In the woman’s face, a curtain yanks shut. She releases Varya and steps aside.

  • • •

  Varya clangs down the stairs of the fire escape in her saddle shoes. A breeze strokes her arms and ruffles the downy, light brown hair that has begun to appear on her legs. When she reaches the alley, she sees that Klara’s cheeks are streaked with salt water, her nose bright pink.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Klara whirls. “What do you think?”

  “Oh, but you can’t actually believe . . .” Varya looks to Daniel for help, but he is stony. “Whatever she said to you—it doesn’t mean anything. She made it up. Right, Daniel?”

  “Right.” Daniel turns and begins to walk toward the street. “Let’s go.”

  Klara pulls Simon up by one arm. He still holds the drawstring bag, which is as full as it was when they came.

  “You were supposed to pay her,” Varya says.

  “I forgot,” says Simon.

  “She doesn’t deserve our money.” Daniel stands on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips. “Come on!”

  They are quiet on the walk home. Varya has never felt further from the others. At dinner, she picks at her brisket, but Simon doesn’t eat at all.

  “What is it, my sweet?” asks Gertie.

  “Not hungry.”

  “Why not?”

  Simon shrugs. His blond curls are white beneath the overhead light.

  “Eat the food your mother has prepared,” says Saul.

  But Simon refuses. He sits on his hands.

  “What is it, hm?” clucks Gertie, one eyebrow raised. “Not good enough for you?”

  “Leave him alone.” Klara reaches over to ruffle Simon’s hair, but he jerks away and pushes his chair back with a screech.

  “I hate you!” he cries, standing. “I! Hate! All of you!” />
  “Simon,” says Saul, standing, too. He still wears the suit he wore to work. His hair is thinning and lighter than Gertie’s, an unusual coppery blond. “You do not speak to your family that way.”

  He is wooden in this role. Gertie has always been the disciplinarian. Now, she only gapes.

  “But I do,” says Simon. There is wonder in his face.

  PART ONE

  You’d Dance, Kid

  1978–1982

  Simon

  1.

  When Saul dies, Simon is in physics class, drawing concentric circles meant to represent the rings of an electron shell but which to Simon mean nothing at all. With his daydreaming and his dyslexia, he has never been a good student, and the purpose of the electron shell—the orbit of electrons around an atom’s nucleus—escapes him. In this moment, his father bends over in the crosswalk on Broome Street while walking back from lunch. A taxi honks to a stop; Saul sinks to his knees; the blood drains from his heart. His death makes no more sense to Simon than the transfer of electrons from one atom to another: both are there one moment, and gone the next.

  Varya drives down from college at Vassar, Daniel from SUNY Binghamton. None of them understand it. Yes, Saul was stressed, but the city’s worst moments—the fiscal crisis, the blackout—are finally behind them. The unions saved the city from bankruptcy, and New York is looking up. At the hospital, Varya asks about her father’s last moments. Had he been in any pain? Only briefly, says the nurse. Did he speak? No one can say that he did. This should not surprise his wife and children, who are used to his long silences—and yet Simon feels cheated, robbed of a final memory of his father, who remains as close-lipped in death as he was in life.

  Because the next day is Shabbat, the funeral takes place on Sunday. They meet at Congregation Tifereth Israel, the conservative synagogue of which Saul was a member and patron. In the entryway, Rabbi Chaim gives each Gold a pair of scissors for the kriah.