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Warm crumbs from the toasted walnuts he’s breaking up for the charoises stick to his fingers and coat his palms. He’ll have to go outside and rinse his hands later.
“Ask me again,” he hears Rhoden’s voice behind his back.
“Ma nishtana ha-laylah ha-zeh,” Fira begins chanting cheerfully, “mikol haleylot?”
The four questions are meant to teach the Pesach story to children, but Fira doesn’t need to be taught. She loved the cadence and the structure of the recitative from the moment she first heard it, and Steinberg would catch her swinging her legs and singing ma nishtana halaylah hazeh under her breath over and over long after the evening ended.
“We escaped through the desert, Sasha,” she’d tell him every time, excited, like it was fresh news.
No, it’s not Fira who needs the questions - it’s Rhoden. He stumbles a little with his Hebrew but repeats after her dutifully, no doubt trying to remember the seders he must’ve had with the Rubinstein family.
Steinberg thinks of his mother. These days he tries to forget, but as he stares at the walnut crumbs on his hands, the memory comes to him unbidden. He thinks of her sitting opposite his bed, next to Fira’s crib. A small night light illuminates the hem of her old lavender plissé scarf. She’s singing Tsi Shpait, and as she sings, tears run down her cheeks. The tender darkened skin under her eyes glistens with moisture.
Her name was - is - Rosa. Once, he couldn’t sleep and caught her crying as she rocked Fira’s crib. She told him then that the song reminded her of her own late parents.
“Fayerl, give me some raisins, will you,” he says, hoping his voice doesn’t betray his feelings. Tonight is, of course, the time to remember one’s suffering; but Esther already remembers too much.
“I’ll be a second, Arno,” Esther says, all businesslike, just as if teaching Rhoden the Pesach story were her official responsibility. Steinberg hears the pitter-patter of her bare feet on the wooden floor, then the crackling of a paper bag being torn open; then a small hand emerges from beneath the table and plops a handful of amber-yellow raisins into his bowl of charoises.
He glimpses, too, the awkward angle of her wrist, permanently altered by the imperfect setting of the bones of her forearm.
He will never cry over the memory of his mother. Like her, he is Jewish; but he will never be Jewish like her. When Rosa and Osip hurt Esther, something important ended forever. Some connection was severed. Something in the very heart of who he is will never be the same.
He didn’t really need more raisins. The charoises will be too sweet now. He can only hope Rhoden won’t mind.
There must be Estlish spring celebrations, too, he muses, as he goes outside and splashes his hands in the basin of water sitting on the lip of the well. A pagan agrarian culture like Rhoden’s - they’re bound to have something marking the beginning of the growing season.
When he turns around, Rhoden himself is standing on the porch. Dressed in his perpetual old-fashioned black waistcoat, arms crossed on his chest, the man would cut an imposing figure if it weren’t for his only footwear being moss-green crocheted socks.
(Rubinstein made them in a fit of affection when they got back from Parlevo. Steinberg remembers him grumbling, every few rows, just how big are your feet, Arno? Rhoden would glance at him amicably from where he sat, cross-legged, in an old worn armchair, reading Yulia’s latest treatise, and say, same as the last twenty times you asked, Leon.)
“You need a hand with anything, Sasha?” he asks.
Steinberg probably could use a hand. There’s still the z’roa to think of.
Instead, he walks back slowly and stands next to Rhoden, looking out into the garden and at the first blossoms on the chestnut trees.
“I appreciate you humouring Fira,” he says. “I know she’s probably asked you the four questions about forty times by now.”
“I’m not humouring her,” says Rhoden, one angular shoulder twitching up in a half-shrug. “She’s welcome to ask me four hundred times if she so desires. It’ll come in handy next time.”
This is not our last Pesach together, Steinberg hears. And, I want to know about your culture. And, you’re important to me.
“Is there an Estlish spring celebration?” he asks.
Rhoden does a small double take. Something complicated reflects on his face for a moment; then, he smiles at Steinberg.
“Marjapunapäev. The Day of Red Berries. Not as grand as your seder, I think. But men are supposed to do women’s work that day, and the cutting of trees and branches is forbidden. It teaches you to appreciate life and labour not your own.
“That, and your cheeks will be red all year ‘round if you drink red berry brew on marjapunapäev. My mother would always make fun of me in that respect… Drink your berries, Arno, she would say. Perhaps next year we will even be able to tell your face apart from that linen yonder.”
He trails off. Out of the corner of his eye Steinberg can see that Rhoden’s prosthetic fingers are moving lightly, tapping out some silent tune. Steinberg wonders if it is still The Golden Rowan-Tree or perhaps something else, something connected to the Day of Red Berries and Õnne Rhoden.
What happened to Rhoden was very different from what happened to the Steinbergs. But he, too, had his link to the past severed.
“It doesn’t seem to have helped,” Steinberg offers, by way of lightening the mood. Rhoden snorts and touches two flesh fingers to his right cheekbone, as if hoping to feel whether it is sufficiently pink.
“No,” he says. “No, it really didn’t.”
“Still,” says Steinberg, “you should make us some red berry brew sometime. Who knows? It might yet work on us.”
“Certainly.” Rhoden beams at him, the lines around his mouth deepening so sharply it almost looks like it hurts. His prosthetic hand feels a little uncomfortable when he uses it to get a hold of Steinberg’s elbow, but Steinberg can live with that.
“Next year?” he asks, quietly.
“Or the year after that,” Rhoden agrees, and hearing that feels like the sweetness of charoises and the warmth of an embrace.
They cannot go back, but perhaps there is a future where they can build something of their own on the ruins of the things that were never meant to be.
“Come,” Rhoden says, turning back. “I’ll help you with the z’roa. And we’ll check up on Fira - it’s been a solid ten minutes since she last asked me how tonight is different from all other nights.”