In the Fire That Burns Me.

Ochsner, Gina

The year Uncle Maris died and Father had to bury him went on record as the rainiest we'd ever had. Through that autumn and into winter, rain fell in biblical proportions and the Aiviekste rose steadily, covering the rocky shoals and flooding the marshy banks. Widow Snoskovkis ran out of her antidepressants and dyed her hair lavender and three of Mr. Arijisnikov's goats went barking mad, all of which is now a matter of public record. We chalked it up to the swollen skies which drove the men to drink and attendance at the International Women's Temperance Society to swell. Mother, acting president of the Society for three years running, couldn't help feeling that at last all of her efforts were paying off: the ladies in town were finally taking the matter of drinking, or at least her, seriously. But her sense of satisfaction was short lived as that winter Father set out to make himself chief of the town drunks. I knew it was on account of Uncle dying and because of what the rain and the river were doing to Father's cemetery: huge patches of ground had washed into the river mere meters behind the final resting place of the most famous horse in Latvia--decorated twice for acts of heroism during the First Great War. Mercifully, Father had the incredible foresight to not bury anybody else back there, but still, the idea that the river might slowly carry off our dead was unsettling.

And we had other problems. Winter was in the thick and what luck we'd had with mushrooming and rabbit hunting had run out. Even though Mother took an extra cleaning job in Rezekne, spending even longer hours on her hands and knees, and Father dug fresh holes like mad to accommodate a sudden spate of ill-timed deaths, we still felt the pinch. I had not done as well as I had hoped to on the placement tests at school and now going to university was out of the question. After graduation, I would go to technical school. But until then my job after school and on weekends was to catch as many fish as I could and preserve them any way I knew how.

One Saturday I lugged our plastic washtub down the back steps. Inside the tub I'd put Rudy's pole and my own bottle lines, strings with hooks wound around empty bottles. Mother had dropped hints night and day that since it was January she wanted to start the new year off right, that is, she wanted to eat the meat of an eel, the bigger the better because for one day in her life she wanted abundance. And because it was for Mother whose aspirations in life and complaints were few, and because I wanted to prove I was a dutiful daughter, on this day when the sky and the road were a single muddy wash, I set off for the river.

As I neared it I stepped carefully through the tall grass. Not so very long ago the Soviets had controlled this river and no one was allowed to fish without a special pass, and sometimes not even then, because Game Warden Shukin never knew if the top brass from Moscow might decide to drop in for a sudden fishing expedition. In those days, Game Warden Shukin patrolled the river with Schnell, a deep-chested Alsatian with very healthy teeth. If Shukin saw a poacher he issued one warning from the whistle and after that, Schnell was let loose.

Almost all the men in town had suffered the attentions of Schnell, who had been trained to attack ethnic Latvians with particular vigor. Father, too, had been bitten, even limped a little on cold days now because of it. Only Mr. Ilmyen, our neighbor from across the road, had escaped Schnell. It was a cause of some bitterness between Father and Mr. Ilmyen, as Father and Mr. Ilmyen had been poaching partners. If either of them spotted Shukin, they were to caw like a crow. But one night Shukin surprised Mr. Ilmyen, who trembled and shook and forgot to sing out. Then Shukin spotted Father with a pole in his hand and a pile of bream at his feet. Even though Father was caught and knew it, he ran. The whistle shrieked and Schnell tore through the bushes and into Father.

Later, after Shukin pried Schnell off of Father's leg, Father spent a long night in our old town hall, which doubled in those days as a movie theater and, when the situation called for it, a part-time jail. For years Mr. Ilmyen tried to make up for this small betrayal, seeing to it that Father got enough apple brandy ("How cheap!" Mother proclaimed) on the weekends and also seeing to it that Father got home safely afterwards. For all this, there was still something of a taint associated with Mr. Ilmyen and whenever his name was mentioned Father rubbed at his shin and muttered: "That dog!" in such a way that it wasn't entirely clear to whom Father referred: Schnell or Mr. Ilmyen.

But two years had passed since Father dug the hole that held Schnell and a full four years since the Soviet Union had fallen--collapsed beneath the weight of its many internal contradictions, Rudy explained the last time he visited on holiday. What it meant to me was that I didn't have fear of a game warden or a dog. But I knew that it was best not to broadcast where you were hunting or fishing, because even now the wrong people could hear about it and make trouble in a dozen different ways. For this reason, on the river it was every angler for him--or herself, staking claims to prize fishing spots, quietly baiting lines and trap nets in a bid to make up for lost time and reclaim what had, for so long, been kept from us.

As I crept through the rushes I spied Mr. Arijisnikov and Mr. Lee exchanging obscene hand signals, silently taunting each other. Downriver from them was Stanka, wearing a straw duck on her head and cooing softly at a wad of rushes. I turned upriver for the quieter glides and for the snag made of two fallen birches--Mr. Ilmyen's favorite place to fish for tired eel. As it was late Saturday afternoon, technically still the Sabbath, I didn't think he'd mind.

I baited both lines with chicken innards. The one I cast midstream where the carp and bream and the occasional zander lurked. I buried the pole's end into the mud, then set the tiny bell. The other line I cast from my bottle and watched how it sliced into the water and glided a bit toward the snag. And then I waited. Few people realize how very thoughtful and discerning eel are and how much time it takes to catch them. But I never minded long waits. Anything worthwhile in this life, Father said many times to Rudy and me, required a glacial patience. And I loved this river. I told myself that it spoke to me in a language only I could hear. I told myself that because I understood the river, it understood me.

And then the line on the bottle went tight. I peered at the water and twisted the bottle, slowly bringing up line until I saw the bright and angry yellow eyes of the largest eel I'd ever hooked. I brought up a little more line until the eel was at the shallows, churning the water with his strong body. That's when I recognized this eel as the magical eel whose meat brings wisdom and chancy luck, depending on who catches and eats him. We'd gone head to hand once before, this eel and I, but he'd gotten the better of me that day and the way he thrashed in the muddy shallows convinced me that he was sure he could outmuscle and outsmart me this time as well.

I bent and scooped him to my chest. Before he had a chance to curl and whip me in the face or bite my hand, familiar tactics each, I pitched the eel to the ground and held him on his back. Some people think it's cruel to handle such a magnificent creature with brute force, but as some creatures understand force much quicker than kindness, I felt only a little sorry. And when the eel went limp I placed him in Mother's washtub full of rainwater, where I knew he'd eventually revive.

Just then Rudy's pole bell sang out. Another fish--and in such a short time! I picked up the pole and jerked on the line hard to set the hook. A large fish, I thought, because it bucked and fought, nearly yanking the pole from my hands. I stepped on a rock to get better leverage and that was my mistake. My feet slid from under me and I fell into the river. I splashed and flailed, trying to gain my footing, but my boots were filling up fast and I could feel the water pulling me down. Even worse, Rudy's pole spiraled away from me, carried off by the fish who was hooked, but free. I made one last desperate reach for the pole and that's when I felt myself going under.

"Here!" A man's voice called. "Grab this!" The end of a long birch pole nudged my elbow and I hung on tight. As I kicked and chuffed, I kept my eyes fixed on the pair of hands hauling me in. At the shallows one hand gripped my elbow while the other hooked my ribs and then I was on the bank, coughing up river water and taking stock of my rescuer. Not Mr. Lee. Not Mr. Arijisnikov, but a stranger, taller than our Rudy and almost as broad in the shoulder. He had gotten wet past the waist, and all on my account. But with the way he calmly stamped his feet and wrung the water from his sleeves, he acted as if he were at home on the river and hauling out girls was the most natural thing in the world for him to do.

He turned to me and grimaced. "You know what they say about a river," he said, taking off his coat and draping it around my shoulders.

"No, what?" I studied his eyes trying to decide if they were bluish gray, or perhaps grayish blue.

"Never believe, never trust, never ask."

It was a very Russian expression, but whoever he was, this fellow didn't look Russian. For one thing he had incredible ears, built of the most marvelous construction. That is, they were enormous and jutted from the side of his head, a little like the fins of a fish. A beautiful sight, those ears, and I could not stop staring.

"I've never seen you on the river before," I managed at last.

"No, you wouldn't. I'm out from Riga, visiting for the weekend."

"Well," I fumbled. "I'm Ada."

"I'm David." He tipped his finger to his forelock, a very gallant gesture, and then he set off through the grass.

"Your coat!" I shouted.

"Just keep it," David called over his shoulder. "It's a small town. I'm sure we'll see each other again--sometime." With a quick wave of his hand, he disappeared behind the scrim of trees. I stood there shivering beneath David's coat and tallying the evening's swift reversals. I'd lost the fish I'd hooked. I'd lost Rudy's pole. I'd gotten soaked to the bone. But if I hadn't fallen into the river in the first place, I could not have met David. And none of these things, good or bad, could have happened if I'd not first landed the magic eel.

The eel!

I scrambled through the brush back to the tub where my lucky eel lay, his belly tight from eating all my bait, snoring--lulled to sleep by the falling rain. It was an effort, but I dragged the tub through the cemetery, through our yard, and then up the back steps, into our kitchen, where Mother bustled from the sink to the oven, muttering to herself. This oven was serious business for Mother, who had installed it herself and therefore knew, understood, and adored every bolt and coil. The only thing about the oven she didn't like was the autoclean function, which Father and I were never, under any circumstances, to use.

I stowed the tub under the table. Mother took one look at me and the puddle of water at my feet. "Get changed," she said. "We've got to go clean the hall from top to bottom." Mother hooked her chin toward the Ilmyen's house. "Jutta's getting married. And what with all their relatives coming in from Lithuania and even one from America, there's no other building big enough to hold them all."

Jutta. Getting married. Impossible: she was only two months older than me. I sat down in the chair.

"No. No." Mother pulled at my sleeve. "No sitting. Not now. We've got work to do."

Even though the hall belonged to everyone and had been used for a variety of purposes--weddings, funerals, chess tournaments, the International Women's Temperance Society meetings, and once for a clandestine encounter between an unknown lady and Mr. Cosic before he died--our family felt very proprietarily toward it. After all, Mother's Grandmother Velta and Grandfather Ferdinand had laid the cornerstone and now, just as with the cemetery--we tended to think of the hall as ours. Mother in particular loved the hall. It had electricity, running water, toilets, and best of all, a state-of-the-art double oven she'd installed herself with only minimal consultation of the operator's manual. This explained why Mother did her level best to make sure that, just as at our home, she was the only one who cooked with it. Sometimes I thought Mother cared more for that oven than she did for me, because it never failed or disappointed her, continually cooking with even, reliable heat so that her pirag browned at the seams and her cakes rose and her carp cooked to perfection, bubbling in their own fat and tasting of warmer, wiser waters. And I knew she loved this oven because it baked softly, taking hours to reach temperature and cooling with grace and patience that reminded her just what kind of person she wanted to be: slow to warm up but equally slow to lose her flame.

For this reason, the oven was the only thing in the hall that Mother did not scrub thoroughly after each use. Each subsequent meal carried the traces of every grand dish that had come before it. I suspected that where some people kept journals of their days on paper, this oven was Mother's diary, an olfactory witness of every wedding, wake, chess tournament, and society meeting that she had attended and no sooner did Mother turn the dial than a flood of smells jogged her memory to better days.

Mother unlocked the back door and stood for a moment on the threshold with a stillness that bordered on reverence. "OK," she said at last, clapping her hands. "Let's get busy." Mother grabbed a stiff-brush broom and hummed the song she always hummed when she was tired but still had work to do.

I grabbed a mop and a bucket. I'd cleaned this hall with Mother so many times I knew exactly what she wanted done and how to do it. While Mother swept the carpet on the raised platform, I stacked chairs and mopped the main sitting area. As the floor dried, I scrubbed the commodes and tiles in the bathrooms and Mother set to work on the kitchen, sanitizing the surfaces, and rewashing all the pots, pans, and utensils on the off-chance that somebody might have touched them in passing.

We'd been working for nearly two hours when I noticed that Mother had stopped humming. I pulled off the rubber gloves and found her, head thrust inside the open oven, her hands running along the inside panels. Mother withdrew her head, sat on her heels, and examined her hand. "Good Lord!" Her face was blanched. "Someone's scoured the panels of the top oven! They're as spotless as the day I installed it!" Mother's shoulders sagged and I knew that she was taking quick inventory of her lost culinary calendar. "Well, we'll just have to come back early tomorrow," Mother said at last, wiping her hands on her skirt.

"Why would we come back?" I asked.

"To mind the oven, of course!" Mother charged out the kitchen door and into the rain. I trudged behind her, listening to the sound of the greasy mud wrestling with our boots and taking note of each house we passed: the Lee house, which always smelled of fry oil; the Arijisnikov house; Stanka's falling-down shack; and then the Ilmyens' house, where each window pane threw squares of light into their yard. Even though Mother and Mrs. Ilmyen still held Temperance Society meetings together, I could not imagine that Mrs. Ilmyen would want us anywhere near the hall on the day of such a big event.

And this made me unbearably sad, this recognition that Jutta and I had once been like sisters, inseparable allies, the two of us together against the madness of a small town. And there was a time when I believed that I could be like her, capable and smart, able to navigate out of this town and into a larger, better life. University or marriage was the only way out for a girl like me, and Jutta had tried to help, showing me how to balance chemistry equations, teaching me how to think two and three moves ahead in chess. But where she could perceive endless possibilities within the fixed frame, I could only see how small the squares, how limited the moves, how short the time on the playing clock. I could not imagine how an exercise on a squared board might translate to mobility out of this mud-bound village. Nor did I have a head for numbers or the knack for writing clever compositions. When we all took the entrance exams, I knew before the results were posted on the school doors of #2 that Jutta would go and I would stay. And ever since then I tried not to notice Mother's keen disappointment or how with each passing day I was becoming less and less like the girl she had hoped I would be and more and more like her.

That night I stayed in the kitchen. Mother--shell shocked over the hall oven--went straight to bed, where she found Father, touched by drink and aspiring to grand notions. That is, he wanted romance, and not just with a vodka bottle. But Mother had had all the excitement she could handle in one day and personally escorted him to the tool shed where she instructed him to sleep it off. This, I told myself, was the reason she had failed to notice--again--my magical eel, quietly slumbering in her wash tub under the table. Thick as a Dachshund and twice as long, marinated or smoked, pickled or baked, he would feed twenty people, maybe more. And then I knew why the river had sent this eel to me in the first place: so that I could give it to Jutta and her family. They would eat the meat and have all of the blessing, all of the wisdom. And if by chance there was a bit left over for us, then all the better. I split the eel down the middle and took out the innards and placed the fish in a stock pot. I poured vinegar into the pot, some of Mother's special occasion wine, and crushed coriander and fennel seed. Then I sat at the table in the dark where I cradled my head in my arms and fell almost at once into an unshakable sleep of exhaustion.

At dawn the dogs down the lane cleared their throats and outside the window a thick fog swelled from the river and held to the lane the way it did when the air was heavy and the light weak. I poked the eel with a fork and when it wept vinegar, I washed the meat and dredged it in flour. The rest of the ingredients for the sauce--shelled walnuts, hardboiled eggs, raisins, honey, parsley, and mint--I'd take with me and assemble at the hall. I had just turned on the oven, thinking I'd precook the eel, when Mother came into the kitchen, her hair pinned up in preparation for a full day. She pointed her nose toward the oven and squinted at the murky glass door.

"You're not cleaning that oven, are you?"

"No," I said. I knew she'd not fully recovered from her previous night's shock. "I'm cooking something for Jutta."

"Oh," Mother sighed. "Well, whatever it is, cover it and bring it with you. We've got to get going before someone makes a mess of that kitchen."

We set off. Rolling over the back of the fog came the distinct smell of chicken. As we approached the lighted hall we could see the silhouettes of women working in the kitchen. Mother held the door open for me and together we stood on the threshold surveying the scene: Mrs. Ilmyen and the twin aunts whom Jutta had once told me about--Reka and Lida--chopping almonds, dicing boiled chicken, and slicing mountains of leeks. Clearly Mother had underestimated the energy of the Ilmyen women.

Mother coughed and after a long moment Mrs. Ilmyen looked up. She smiled. "Oh, Mrs. Kalnins! Everything looks so wonderful. I can't tell you how much we appreciate your thorough cleaning."

Mother grimaced, her gaze taking in the stock pot simmering on the ring. "I thought we'd help out where we could--with the soups maybe."

"Well," Mrs. Ilmyen straightened a pin in her hair. "That's generous of you, but we couldn't ask you to do that. You've done so much already."

"Nonsense! What are good neighbors for? I won't get in the way," Mother added, as if reading Mrs. Ilmyen's thoughts. "I'll just watch over the oven; it can be tricky."

Mrs. Ilmyen glanced at her sisters, who were still chopping, but much more quietly. Mrs. Ilmyen reset the pin in her hair. With that single gesture she acknowledged that in all the years she lived across the road from Mother, she'd weathered much worse: she'd get through this, too.

"All right, then," Mrs. Ilmyen said. "We'll leave the oven to you."

Mother wiped her hands on the sides of her skirt and affixed a smile of blistering benevolence on her face. I knew that her stubborn insistence regarding the soup wasn't merely out of spite: Mother sincerely believed that soup making was sacred work because the bad spirits of the air didn't like it when they smelled onions and beets weeping together in the bowl. They would seize you by the bones and try to make you too tired to finish, which was why Mother sometimes needed to sit on a stool and why sometimes she started a soup and I finished it. Had Mother and Mrs. Ilmyen been closer friends Mother certainly would have reminded Mrs. Ilmyen of these things. Instead Mother stationed herself on a stool in front of the oven and set the dial to temperature.

I kept my back to them and my nose lowered over my sauce--walnuts and raisins swelling with spiced wine--and waited for the oven to heat. And I listened carefully for the little morsels women drop when they work together in kitchens: how many people were coming (sixty, at least); who the big eaters were (the groom's father, who ate half a salmon at a wedding two towns away); where Simeon, the groom, and Jutta would live (in a small room Mr. Ilmyen planned to attach to their kitchen); how Mrs. Ilmyen was handling the stress (well--only one gray hair this morning and so far not a single tear shed from the bride). Through all this talk the hands of the Ilmyen sisters never stopped moving; the three Ilmyens--Solomina, Reka, and Lida--were a veritable whirlwind of chopping and rolling and flouring, mixing, blanching, and boiling. I marveled at their quick and steady industry: latke upon latke appearing on the trays in endless ranks and files, ropes of braided challah dough quietly rising under a towel. After three hours, the Ilmyen sisters decided to temporarily relinquish the kitchen to Mother; Jutta had arrived and ensconced herself in the women's bathroom, where she now needed their help with her makeup and hair.

Before she left the kitchen Mrs. Ilmyen fixed a stern gaze on Mother. "Promise me, Inara Kalnins, you will not tamper with our food or try to cook anything else while we are gone."

Mother adjusted the heating dial then crossed her arms over her chest. "I will only open and close the oven door--and only then to make sure nothing burns."

I could read in Mrs. Ilmyen's eyes utter doubt, but the lift of her jaw indicated the resigned optimism of a woman choosing to believe. "OK," Mrs. Ilmyen said, clutching her purse under her arm. "OK." And she retreated for the bathroom.

Mother hadn't known an idle moment in her life. Expecting her to sit on a stool and merely observe was like asking a lung not to breathe. For the next hour Mother and I worked in silence, Mother assembling her famous pirag, small pasties she usually filled with meat--smoked ham and bacon and onions. I passed my sauce through a sieve, and into the belly of the eel. Then I wrapped the fish with a towel, one of Mother's very best, and slid the entire bundle into the top oven.

"Wait." Mother opened the door of the upper oven and smelled the heat. "What with hall this oven not what it used to be, I can't quite judge. My nose is off entirely." Mother thrust her head farther in. It was important, Mother had taught me, to never rush an oven heating. And you should never bake anything without first dancing the requisite twenty drops of oil on the bottom plate of the oven. How the oil beaded, she'd told me, and how it danced told you how hot it was and which dish to bake first and for how long.

"I just don't know," Mother said, pulling her torso out. "I'd better test the heat." From her apron Mother withdrew Uncle's old stethoscope and inserted the ear pieces into her ears. Then she reached for her backup jar of pork lard and dropped a thick white crescent from the spoon onto the racks. We watched the lard drip to the bottom panel. Mother held the scope near the panel and listened to the lard sizzling. It was better to use olive oil to dance the twenty drops, but we didn't have oil and Mother had always maintained that anything could be substituted for something else if the situation were dire enough.

When Mother, satisfied at last, returned the stethoscope to her apron, I slid my eel, now "Fish in a Cloak," into the upper oven.

Mother then turned her attention to all the Ilmyens' pastries on the trays awaiting their turn in the oven and the two oversized bowls of dough for Reka's latkes and Lida's challah. "What do you think of this?" Mother tasted each batch. Then she thrust her fingers into the dough. "Look--it flakes apart. Too much flour and not enough fat. Fat is flavor, after all." Mother spooned a little lard from her jar into Reka's dough and folded it in with muscular jabs of the spoon. Then she uncapped a tin of Creme of Tartar and added several pinches to each bowl.

"Mother," I gasped. "What are you doing?"

"I'm just seasoning the dough. It's so bland smelling. This is a small repair, not an alteration," Mother said, but I feared very much that the distinction would be lost on Mrs. Ilmyen.

"You know, some women are a strange mixture of pride and humility. Forward and bashful at the same time. Wanting help, but uncertain if they should ask for it," Mother said. "A wedding--now this is a big event, so big it overwhelms. And I know what it feels like to be cowed by circumstances. But I've always believed people should help each other out, wherever and whenever they can."

Fortunately, it was at this time that the musicians converged at the back door: a cellist, two violinists, and an oboist, a man with a white yarmulke stapled to a red toupee. He annoyed Mother greatly by repeatedly addressing her as the Mother of the Beautiful Bride and asking if the ensemble could be paid in advance for their services.

A little after sundown, more of the Ilmyen family arrived, notably Jutta's Uncle Keres, who expressed loud opinions about the holly swags resting on the window sills and who could not stop adjusting the stanchions of the chuppah, a shawl tied to four poles that the Ilmyens had erected on the platform.

At last, when all trace of light leached from the sky, the groom and his family arrived. And with them was the rabbi, a tiny man in a black suit shiny at the elbows and supported on both sides by the groomsmen, in this case two younger versions of the venerable teacher. The entourage shuffled to the platform, where they all took their places beneath the chuppah. This canopy, bowed in the middle like a long-winded prayer, didn't look like much to me: but back in the days when I thought I could become a Jew, Jutta had explained to me that the canopy was God sheltering and protecting the bride and groom. No doubt they'd need it, I thought, so near to the river where rain and stork crap fell from the sky in a far too predictable manner.

And then in a billow of white came Jutta, her hair dark as soil and all bound up with beads. Her cheeks flushed (with a little help from Mrs. I's flat of rouge) and her eyes bright as May marigolds, Jutta glided past me, her gaze fixed on Simeon. She joined Simeon under the chuppah and bent over a low table where they signed a piece of paper. Then the rabbi read a bit from a musty-looking book.

After the reading, Simeon peered intently into Jutta's face before lowering her veil. Happiness, I knew. He was divining in the face of his bride where his happiness lay. But even from my distance, on the threshold between the kitchen and the hall, I could see the love between them, apparent and apparently ample, and I felt again that bite of ancient envy. I wanted that kind of love. Not the flimsy kind I'd read about in books, but the sturdy sort of love that would not disappoint with every change in weather. I wanted that boy who didn't notice my hips or my hands, but looked steadily into my eyes and was so kind as to act as if he liked what he saw.

A groomsman placed a glass on the platform and Simeon smashed it under his right heel, a reminder of the fragility of human joy in this lifetime. Everyone clapped and shouted Mazel Tov. Mother rushed for her whisk broom and dustpan, but not before clicking her tongue, having calculated the cost of such an elegant piece of glassware utterly destroyed.

The wedding ceremony officially over, the festivities began. The men pushed to the walls all but two of the chairs, one of which Mr. Ilmyen climbed on, a glass of wine raised in his hand. For ten minutes he extolled the elegance of certain opening chess moves, which was his way of commenting on the many changes in the political and economic clime. His remarks roamed rudderlessly until Mrs. Ilmyen was besieged by a paroxysm of coughing and Mr. Ilmyen finally turned his observations from the universal to the particular.

"As you know, we named Jutta after the famous chess prodigy Jutta Hempel, who gave simultaneous chess tournaments on TV when she was only six years old. Just like that Jutta, our Jutta has always known the right move in life. And why should it be any different in love?" Mr. Ilmyen nodded at Simeon's parents. "So a toast to the parents of the groom for having the imagination and foresight to orchestrate their first meeting. At a chess tournament no less!"

"A brilliant move!" Simeon's father called out. And then he climbed onto the other chair and put an arm around Mr. Ilmyen. "You can't have the sweet without the salt. Every fisherman knows this. Sweet water rushes headlong to the sea where it runs to salt. Both kinds of water are good, both waters nourish life. But let us not forget the inherent risks of living. Let us not forget that joy and sorrow are shadows cast by the same tree and this tree we also call life."

"To life!" Mr. Ilmyen cried and the shout went up: "To life!"

Outside the windows Mrs. Arijisnikov, the two Mrs. Lees, and Stanka, had their noses pressed to the panes. I went to the kitchen entrance and opened the door for them.

"I'm sorry." Jutta's Uncle Keres materialized behind me. "This is a private party."

It was just the kind of thing our Uncle Maris would have said.

"What's private around here?" Stanka elbowed past him.

"We're friends of the bride," Mrs. Arijisnikov said.

"I taught her how to tie her shoes," Mrs. Lee said, heading straight for the punch bowl.

I followed them over the threshold into the hall that had been transformed now by laughter and music and movement. Jutta and Simeon each clutched separate ends of a hankie for dear life while they were carried aloft in their chairs and twirled about. Jutta had never looked happier and where I had just moments before felt envy, a knot between my shoulders, I now felt a simple undivided happiness for her. The music worked on me, and before I knew it, I was tapping my feet and clapping my hands. How could I not? This music was nothing at all like the staunch hymns the early morning Lutherans and Baptists sang on Sundays. This music flew and skipped as if the musicians had never heard of the sturdy four-four time signature tied to the open chords of the major keys. Tipping from joy to sorrow in a half measure, I thought that the music was like each one of us there in the room and at the windows: intricate and sometimes discordant motifs brought together to make a song that every now and then clarified into unified melody.

I watched as Reka set a raw egg before Jutta, so that she might bear as easily as a hen lays eggs.

Stanka nudged me with her elbow. "I know, Ada, you like this Jewish tradition and dance stuff and you have a thing about suffering, but seriously, a Gadje girl like you should have been born a Roma. Nobody knows how to suffer like the Romani. Nobody knows how to bear down on all that is bitter, turning it into a hard beautiful thing. Want to know how they do this?"

"Sure," I shrugged.

"In dances." Stanka waved her hand at the crush of bodies moving through the hall. "And I don't mean this kind of kid stuff. I'll teach you sometime."

I smiled. Stanka always knew when I needed cheering up and she could see how out of place I felt, outside the circles, me with my red hands and big hips.

Stanka moved closer and tried again.

"A girl like that! Spending all that time with chess and books. I'll bet she doesn't even know how to take out her own eyes." It was the Roma expression for orgasm. Clearly Stanka didn't think Jutta, smart as she was, would have enough sense to know how to please her new husband in the bedroom, let alone experience the ecstatic state for herself. Stanka held her hand to her mouth and whispered: "They do it with a sheet between them, for God's sake!"

"Why?"

Stanka furrowed her brow. "I suppose they have to do it that way. After all, a young woman's body is the source of all kinds of shameful and unclean things. It's this way for the Roma women, too. Everything below the waist is untouchably dirty. It's why we wear the long skirts. And then, of course, there's our hands," Stanka splayed her fingers and took a quick survey. Clearly, she'd been picking mushrooms; crescents of dirt were packed under her fingernails.

"Psst! Ada!" Mother called from the kitchen. "Stand around like a monument and a pigeon might crap on you!" Mother pointed to her trays of pirag cooling on the sideboard. "Carry these out."

"What about all Reka's latkes?"

"Oh--she's busy dancing. Let's put our food out first." This I did, but I couldn't help but notice that only Stanka and one of the Mrs. Lees touched Mother's meat pies. Not a single guest of the bride or groom even approached the table.

During a break between numbers, Mrs. Ilmyen took Mother aside by the elbow.

"About your hors d'oeuvres, Mrs. Kalnins. We cannot eat them."

"What?" Mother blinked. "What's wrong with them?"

"It's not part of our tradition."

"What tradition?"

Mrs. Ilmyen sighed. "The meat in your pirag is ham. Ham is not kosher, and, therefore, forbidden to us." Mrs. Ilmyen spoke with the same overly patient tones she used when I'd visit Jutta and ask impossible questions.

"Can't the rabbi just bless it?" Mother asked. She hated to see anything go to waste.

"No," Mrs. Ilmyen said. The weight in her voice pulled her words to a place beyond any suggestion of emotion--to the physical state of pure exhaustion: Solomina Ilmyen was not angry. Mother had simply worn her out.

Crestfallen, Mother returned to the kitchen where a great clanging of pots and lids commenced. Taking it as a cue, the musicians started another song, but not before Jutta caught my eye and raised her hankie. Jutta knew me and she knew my mother. No one had to tell Jutta what was going on and the simple fact was, on this day, she was so happy she didn't care, instead she wound her way through the moving bodies until she stood before me.

"Ada," Jutta clasped my hand in hers. "It's time for the Gladdening of the Bride."

Stanka coughed and rolled her eyes.

"I don't dance," I said.

"Nonsense. Everybody dances at a wedding. It's easy--just follow the person next to you."

I looked at Jutta, so happy now, and determined to share her happiness with me. And I wanted to feel it, too--real happiness. I had a few doses of sorrow and for one hour I wanted to trade them for joy. Which is why I allowed myself to be pulled into the current of bodies, turning in a ring first clockwise and then counterclockwise. And I was surprised to feel how lightly my feet could move to this kind of music.

And that's when I saw, above the swirling ring of women, a pair of ears, ears of such grand proportion that they were unmistakably the same set belonging to David. The circles moved and when he and I were opposite each other he clutched my hands and pulled me out of the circle. David had blue eyes to the bottom of a river and back. So blue, it was as if they'd taken a clear summer sky and wrung the color out of it.

"Why it's the girl from the river--I almost didn't recognize you in those dry clothes!" David stepped back and examined my appearance.

I couldn't help noticing his gaze seemed stuck at my hips. "What are you looking at?"

"You have, er, elbows of enormous construction."

My cheeks burned. "I was thinking the same thing about your ears. They're really quite marvelous."

It was David's turn to blush. "For the longest time, I thought I'd grow into them, but every year they seem to get bigger."

I looked at my hips. "I know what you mean."

David laughed. And that's when I knew I was looking at the boy I would marry--he just didn't know it yet.

David pulled me closer and maneuvered us away from the too-enthusiastic oboist.

"So, Ada, do you have a last name?"

"It's Kalnins."

David stopped midstep, then caught up. "Kalnins? As in the Kalnins who narrowly escaped indictment for trademark fraud?"

"Yes, the same."

"As in the Kalnins who salted the birch trees belonging to that Alpine yodeler until all the trees died?" I nodded. "Yes."

"And claimed to have invented the cadmium loop as well as a life-extending vitality drink?"

"OK. So OK--you've heard of my uncle."

"It's just that your uncle is legendary--for many reasons."

My face burned. I recalled that moment when Uncle hurled his crutch at Jutta's father, and the horrible things Uncle said. He was dead and buried but still causing trouble.

"Hey--I'm only teasing. "David touched my chin with his knuckles. "Let's just dance."

"I think you should know, I sleep with your coat under my pillow. I suppose I should give it back to you."

"How about at the river--for old times' sake?"

In our town to say to someone of the opposite sex that you wanted to meet at the river was just like saying you wanted to look for the magic fern that blooms at midnight. That is, it was an invitation to grope madly. But possibly as David was from a big city he did not know this, and I was only too happy to educate him on the matter. Later. "OK," I said. "What time?" But before he could answer a scream pierced the air. The orchestra fell silent. I pointed my nose toward the kitchen, toward the source of the noise and also an unmistakable odor.

The Ilmyen sisters raced to the kitchen and I followed and found Mother standing stock still in front of the open oven doors. Dark clouds of smoke billowed and purled up the walls and across the ceiling. Apparently we'd used too much lard, so much that it had dripped from the back of the top oven into the bottom and both ovens, top and bottom, had caught fire. Now it was every cook for herself.

Stanka lobbed a tureen of coffee grounds at the fire. And still the flames raged.

Though I could see it killed her to do it, Reka hurled an open sack of flour into the ovens. Mrs. Ilmyen scrambled to cover the trays of latkes, lest the flour contaminate them, but there was no help for it. The flour hit the flames in a big white cloud that traveled from inside the ovens and dusted every surface in the kitchen--animate and inanimate. "My challah!" Lida shrieked even as the flour settled in her hair and on her skin. And still the top oven flamed.

"My eel!" I cried. I wrapped a dish towel around my hand and pulled at the rack and the baking pan. I could not have held that pan more than three seconds, but it burned through that dish towel all the same. The smell of burning flesh revived Mother: she hurried me to the sink and my hand under the faucet. Mother, too, was covered head to toe in white flour and my throbbing hand, blaring red, was the only thing not grainy white. I smelled coffee grounds in her hair and I knew she was ashamed, like me.

Mrs. Ilmyen sat on a stool and buried her face in her hands. "Everything is ruined!" she sobbed.

"What are you talking about? There's plenty of food here." Mother nodded at her many trays of pork-filled pirag, my eel, blackened and smoldering in the sink.

Through the open doorway I could see the guests whispering nervously. The two Mrs. Lees exited the back door as Mr. Ilmyen climbed atop a chair to better assess the catastrophe.

Mrs. Ilmyen took a big breath and held it. "Mrs. Kalnins--Inara," Mrs. Ilmyen attempted a smile. "If you'd kept the oven clean like any decent cook--none of this," Mrs. Ilmyen swept her arm toward the oven, her flour-dusted sisters, the chalk-white challah, my burnt hand, "would ever have happened."

Mother drew herself to her full height. "Please, do not besmirch these ovens. They are absolutely faultless in the matter."

Mother was ready for a fight, but Mrs. Ilmyen, drooping on the stool, had had enough. "Please take your trays of food and that," here Mrs. Ilmyen swallowed hard, "baking pan and go. Just go."

Mother sniffed mightily. The flour had gotten into her nose. And then Mother sneezed. This, too, on Lida's challah.

At this Mr. Ilmyen, still perched on the chair, raised his glass: "To life!" he shouted.

"To life!" everyone in the hall cried.

The orchestra struck a new number--a lively reel--and I knew this scene in the kitchen was only a small pause in the celebration--the Ilmyens and Simeon's family would dance and forget any of the rest of us had ever been there. I stood on tiptoe and caught sight of David moving away in the mix of bodies. I knew I would not get another chance to talk to him about the river and even if I had, he would not want to meet me there. Not now.

All the way home Mother and I didn't speak a word. Music poured out of the hall, now a box of sound and light shrinking behind us. In my arm the pan cooled to a leaden weight and I was never so glad to see our laundry still flapping on the line, our dingy back steps. Mother paused at the rose bush to compose herself, but I forged ahead.

Inside the kitchen I snapped on the light. Father sat at the table, blinking. With a loud thunk, I set the fish, the saddest-looking meal of the many I had ruined, onto the table.

"What's that?" Father peered at the pan.

"I call it Fish in a Cloak. But you can call it dinner," I said. I pulled my hand back, but not before Father saw the angry welt still rising in the middle of my palm.

"You're hurt."

I shrugged. "Not badly," I said, but I kept my hand under the table where nobody had to see it.

Father poked at the smoldering lump with a knife. "Carp?"

"Eel."

"I love eel," he said, sawing at the charred mess until the meat yielded.

Mother came in at last--still covered in flour and white as a ghost. She sat across from Father who studied her and chewed for a long moment. At last he cleared his throat. "I like what you've done with your hair. You look very dignified."

Mother made a savage pass at her eyes with her sleeve. But then she managed a wobbly smile. "That's why I married you--you don't talk much, but when you do, you always say just the right thing."

Father considered this carefully. Then he sliced another chunk of meat from the pan and put it on a plate for Mother and me. Together, the three of us, we ate that entire eel, every charred little bit. And then we went to bed, so that in the morning when we woke, we would be wiser.