“But it’s not my home,” I say, feeling my stomach turn and roil. “Not anymore. They cast me out to die.”
Zsigmond draws a breath. I can tell he regrets his words, but he doesn’t have time to apologize for them before there’s a knock on the door. It’s Batya, hefting two enormously full wicker baskets and a skein of pale silk draped over her arm.
My lips pucker when I see her, like I have bitten into a citrus fruit. By now I have learned enough of the Yehuli tongue to know that the first time we met, she called me chubby.
“Well, I did tell you to invite her, didn’t I?” Batya thrusts the silk at me; as it folds open onto the table, I see that it’s a dress. “And here is your food, as if I don’t cook enough for you all the other days of the year.”
Blinking, I touch the sleeve of the dress, unsure what to say. Zsigmond relieves Batya of the baskets, which are laden with more loaves of sweet bread and sacks of hard biscuits, poppy-speckled.
“Thank you,” he says, kissing her cheek as his own face turns faintly pink. “Have your daughters and their husbands all gone to the temple already?”
“Yes,” she says. “I told them I would make sure you’ve gotten out of bed and dressed yourself, and you did ask me to bring your daughter something to wear.”
“What are the gifts for?” I ask.
Zsigmond opens his mouth, but Batya speaks first. “We’re supposed to give two portions of food to our friends on the holiday, and at least two portions to someone who needs something to fill their bellies. We used to go around to the poorer streets in Király Szek and bring them bread, but they weren’t happy to take charity from Yehuli, and then the king forbid it anyway. Zsigmond, haven’t you told your daughter anything at all? You’re teaching her to read—why don’t you teach her to read the holy book? She looks as baffled as a newborn fawn.”
It’s a kinder characterization than I expected, and for all her gruffness, Batya doesn’t seem to have any compunctions about inviting me to the temple. I feel a pinprick of guilt for comparing her to Virág.
“Aren’t you afraid?” The question bubbles out of me, almost unbidden. “Nándor wants you gone, the counts want you gone . . . don’t you think it’s dangerous, to celebrate anything?”
I wonder if Batya will find my words impolite; if she were really anything like Virág, I might have been struck or scolded. But Batya only laughs.
“If we only celebrated on the days when there was no danger, we’d never have occasion to celebrate at all,” she says. “Come on now, Zsigmond, and bring your daughter. I think she would like to hear this story.”
The temple is nothing like I expect either. In the Yehuli tongue, Zsigmond tells me, it is called a shul. After seeing the gray-washed houses of Yehuli Street, I anticipated a small building, made of wood or crumbling stone, room enough for only a huddle of standing worshippers. But the temple is larger than even the king’s chapel, with its crags and moss and trickling water, and perhaps even grander. The domed ceiling is painted a bright clear blue, like the sky’s broad cheek, freckled with stars. There are rows and rows of polished wooden benches, leading to an altar of carved marble, but there’s no naked statue there—only a lectern with a book lying open upon it. A dozen chandeliers wheel with gauzy candlelight. Volutes of gold clamber up tall ivory pillars, shooting toward the ceiling like hearty, ancient oaks. Even crowded with bodies the temple seems so vast I know that my voice would echo all the way to the lectern, if I were brave enough to speak.
The dress Batya lent me fits surprisingly well, with enough room in the bodice. It buttons all the way to my throat, which is as chaste as I have likely ever been. Most of the other women my age have covered their hair with kerchiefs, which befuddles me until I see them sit down beside their dour husbands, pulling their wriggling children into their laps. A pang of awful loneliness lances through me, and I wonder if Zsigmond aches with it too. Or if he has inured himself to it after so many years, well accustomed to sitting alone in a sea of families. He leads me toward the bench where Batya sits, her three black-haired daughters beside her like ravens on a perch.
The youngest one glares at me sharp-eyed. “Mama, she’s wearing my dress.”
“Enough, Jozefa,” Batya snaps. “You can consider it your act of charity.”
Jozefa scowls at her mother, but when she turns to me again, there is only a look of curiosity on her face, pink lips bowing. “Are you Zsigmond’s daughter?”