A Bend in the Stars Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Rachel Barenbaum

  Jacket design by Laywan Kwan. Jacket copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  grandcentralpublishing.com

  twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First ebook edition: May 2019

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Barenbaum, Rachel, author.

  Title: A bend in the stars : a novel / Rachel Barenbaum.

  Description: New York : Grand Central Publishing, [2019]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018046461| ISBN 9781538746264 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781549175718 (audio download) | ISBN 9781538746271 (ebook)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.A775343 B46 2019 | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018046461

  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-4626-4 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-4627-1 (ebook)

  E3-20190322-DANF

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Tammuz I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  Av I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  Elul I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  Tishrei I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  Cheshvan I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  Discussion Questions

  Author Q&A

  For Adam

  And for Ezra, Lily, and Jonah

  Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.

  Tap here to learn more.

  In physical reality one cause does not produce a given effect, but a multitude of distinct causes contribute to produce it, without our having any means of discriminating the part of each of them.

  —Henri Poincaré,

  “The Measure of Time,” 1898

  2000: Philadelphia, United States

  Ethel Zane stood next to her granddaughter, Lena, in the museum’s rotunda and tried to catch her breath by pretending to examine the painting in front of them. The oversize canvas once served as the backdrop for a ballet, a Russian Romeo and Juliet, and Ethel had studied it so many times she didn’t need to look to see its brilliance. A sun and a moon hung together in a sky ignited by shades of orange.

  “Are you ready, Bubbie?” Lena asked. Her curls were dripping, and the dress she’d spent so much time choosing was splotched with rain. “They’re waiting for us.”

  “After all this time, another minute won’t hurt.” If only she could smoke inside.

  Lena threaded her fingers through Ethel’s. “I’ve always loved the romance in this.”

  “It’s not romance. This painting is about an eclipse.” Ethel pulled her granddaughter close. “See, the sun and the moon are converging. There’s the eclipse. And from that you’re sensing passion. You have it, Lenaleh. Passion like that eclipse, like the painting, the kind that makes a woman want to jump into the bath with a man after a sweaty day.”

  Her granddaughter threw her head back and laughed. Another woman might have been embarrassed, but not her Lena. Ethel was proud of that. “I suppose with the right man, anyone would like that bath,” Lena said.

  They took the stairs, slowly. At the top, a bar glittered with champagne. A florist leaned over a vase heavy with the lilacs Ethel could smell from across the room. On the landing stood the great-grandson of Uncle Vanya’s old friend, Dima. The young man was tall, taller even than Lena. He had deep-set eyes and a thick frame as if there was a sailor’s bearing in his bones, like his great-grandfather. He took Ethel’s other hand. “Thank you for coming to celebrate my uncle Vanya,” she said. “None of this would have been possible without Dima. He was a great man. I just wish I’d had a chance to meet him myself.”

  “If only he’d told me more about what happened in Russia before he died, about their adventures during the war and the competition with Einstein.”

  Ethel frowned. “That’s the problem. Life doesn’t travel in a straight line. Knowing the end doesn’t mean you can follow it back to the beginning.” She paused. “And I’m not sure they would have called their time together adventures. There was the need to survive, no?”

  They turned the corner and Ethel saw the exhibit’s title: The Race to Prove Relativity. Then came the shock: a photograph of her mother, Miriam Abramov, hung on the wall. It was one Ethel hadn’t seen before, o
ne the curator must have found at the last minute. The image was part of a constellation of other new prints, each in their own frame, capturing pieces of life in 1914: the Bern clock tower, a Russian port, the czar’s troops boarding a train, but none of them were important. For Ethel, her mother was all that mattered, and she hurried closer to get a better look. The picture had been taken before Ethel was born, back in Russia. Her mother looked so young as she stood in front of a slice of a shtetl and stared down the camera. Her doctor’s coat was smeared dark, and her face was lined with dirt. She must have been working herself to the bone, but still there was an energy to her. It was conviction. Ethel knew it as a quality she saw in herself and in her granddaughter, a quality passed through the blood. How did Mama stand so tall while the world around her was shattering into war? And who was the man next to her? He wore a military greatcoat and a cap with the visor pulled down so low Ethel couldn’t see his face. Instead of looking into the camera, the soldier looked at her mother. He was inclined toward her, drawn by gravity.

  Lena squeezed Ethel’s hand and pointed to the opposite wall. Across from the image of Miriam hung a collection of more photographs, academics posed in front of telescopes. One had a scale model of the solar system suspended behind him. These were all physicists arrayed in orbit around Albert Einstein.

  “Where’s my uncle Vanya’s photograph?” Ethel asked. He should have had pride of place above Einstein—Vanya was the whole reason they were there.

  “I thought they’d found the journals, that this was about Uncle Vanya’s work. Don’t they know what he did?” Lena asked.

  “They do now.” Ethel reached for Einstein’s photograph and plucked it off the wall. It was easier to do than she’d imagined. An alarm blared. The curator and his assistants came running. “History needs a narrator,” Ethel said. “Perhaps this museum chose the wrong one.”

  Tammuz

  The Hebrew calendar is based on three astronomical phenomena: the rotation of the earth on its axis, the revolution of the moon around the earth, and the movement of the earth around the sun.

  The fourth month in the Jewish calendar is Tammuz, from the Aramaic, meaning heat, fire, or sun. It is said that during Tammuz, in the midst of battle, Joshua ordered the sun to stand still. God heard his pleas and the day stopped. Only the moon continued, sliding in front of the sun.

  I

  1914: Kovno, Russia

  On the eighteenth of Tammuz, Miri Abramov sat at the window in her room watching the slip of a moon emerge behind the mottled rooftops of Kovno. Her shoulders were slumped forward, and curls escaped from the braid running down her back. She was exhausted from tending to dozens of patients and couldn’t stop thinking about one in particular—the fishmonger. She lit a cigarette, watched smoke finger the polished glass in front of her. He had been beaten so severely Miri didn’t recognize him, and his was a face she knew. He brought her family his catch every Monday. The word Jew had been scrawled on his chest with so much hate that the charcoal used to write it cut his skin. The letters oozed red. His ribs were cracked and Miri was sure his spleen was pierced. She needed to operate to save his life, but she wasn’t a surgeon. She was still training, couldn’t do anything without permission, and all the surgeons above her—men—disagreed with her diagnosis. They said he was only bruised. But she’d watched his condition deteriorate. She’d recorded his pulse rising, his blood pressure dropping, along with his increasing confusion—all signs he was bleeding internally. Would he make it through the night?

  The grandfather clock downstairs struck the hour. It was time for supper. Miri stubbed her cigarette in a pile of ash on a cold saucer and made her way into the hall. Standing on thick, woven carpet, Miri took a deep breath and arranged her face. Making an appearance downstairs in the crowded sitting room where she’d find her grandmother always made Miri feel as if she were onstage. The house, the paintings, the silks and velvets were props in Babushka’s exquisite theater. Her grandmother was Kovno’s most illustrious matchmaker, and she was paid in gifts. Everything her family had was chosen for them. The house was given by the owner of the brick factory on the night of his wedding. Beds were delivered by a carpenter once he held his first child. Baba’s clients furnished one room and then another. All of her needs were provided for in this way. Babushka found wives for tailors who sent clothing, and fishmongers, like Miri’s patient, who delivered food. The only thing Baba refused was help. She didn’t want a cook or a maid. She was the keeper of secrets, she explained with a wink—one clients never questioned. And Miri knew they were lucky to live so well, especially when so many Jews scavenged for food and heat. She was grateful for it, but none of it felt like a home.

  Baba was her home and had been since her parents left for America fifteen years earlier when Miri was six and her brother, Vanya, was twelve. The plan had been for the three of them to join Mama and Papa after they were settled, but their parents’ boat sank during a storm. The loss spun Miri into a darkness that left her limp. Every night after Babushka kissed them and thought they were in bed, Vanya rocked Miri until her silent tears stopped, and whispered stories their mother used to tell. Stories about brave girls and boys who fought Baba Yaga. Stories about fearless children who dared travel across Russia in search of treasure. Miri’s favorite was “Levi’s Monster.” Levi refused to follow the rabbis and throw his sins into the river every year at Rosh Hashanah. Instead he let them pile up until they grew into a powerful ogre that Levi had to defeat to save his wife and children. Like Levi, Vanya pushed Miri to fight, and she did. She learned to tuck the darkness away. Sometimes, though, it iced its way back, and she felt it then as she stood outside her room worrying about the fishmonger. But she had to go on, Vanya would say. And she knew he was right. She straightened her back and started down the stairs.

  In the front hall, Miri found the usual line of mothers and grandmothers spilling out from the sitting room. The few that spotted her nodded a greeting, but she knew they didn’t dare stand or move to kiss her for fear they might lose their place. All were waiting their turn for an audience with Babushka, for a chance to plead for help in matching their children. Miri leaned against the polished wooden doorframe. It wouldn’t be long before Baba spotted her and realized how late it was. Then she’d finish for the night and Miri would help her usher the women out so they could sit down to eat together.

  Baba sat on her perch, dressed in aquamarine with her thick silver braid resting over her shoulder. She was as wide as she was tall, and she had a chair on stilts, with a footrest to match, so she could sit at eye level with her visitors. She held the hands of the seamstress, Katinka, who was afflicted with a curved spine that kept her half-bent. She was there for her son who had a business delivering vegetables. “He’s a good boy,” Katinka said. Miri knew that since Baba held Katinka’s hands, they were just beginning and the seamstress would be cut short.

  “Does he drink too much?” Baba asked.

  “Sometimes.” Every woman knew to be honest.

  “Does he fight? Use his fists?”

  “Never.”

  “Good,” Baba said. “What else?”

  “He tells me stories about love, about the future.”

  “He understands better days will come. Perhaps not this year but they will come.” Baba paused and looked up, sensing Miri’s arrival. She nodded at her granddaughter, then leaned toward Katinka. “You’ll unwrap his story for me in the morning.” Katinka exhaled, showing she understood this meant Babushka would consider his case, and her chest crumpled as if she’d been holding her breath.

  “Thank you. Thank you,” the seamstress said.

  Babushka squeezed Katinka’s hands. “More tomorrow. All of you, more tomorrow,” she said as she turned to face the rest of the room. The women grumbled. Some must have waited for hours and still hadn’t been heard. And while the rabbi stayed as late as he was needed, Babushka did not. Her clients knew she required sleep to clear her head, to make better matches, and so no one arg
ued. They all wanted to remain on Babushka’s better side.

  Just before Miri stepped into the room to help urge the women along, Yuri walked in through the front door. She heard him even before she saw him. One of his legs was shorter than the other, and the shim he used to compensate creaked when he walked. His gold watch swayed like a pendulum from his vest, and he was still in his white surgeon’s coat. “Yuri Chaimovich!” Miri said, excited and alarmed because they’d already said their good-nights at the hospital. His being there meant something was wrong. She hurried to him. Before he’d even had time to hang his hat, she asked, “What’s happened? Why have you come?”

  “It’s agreed. Finally.” Out of breath, he put his bag down and took her hands. They stood eye to eye. “You left early. For the first time.” He gulped for air. “The fishmonger, if he survives the night…The other surgeons, they’ve agreed you’re correct. His spleen must be removed. And they’ve agreed you will do it. You will operate—alone.” She must have stepped forward. They were closer now. He kissed her cheek. “You’re being elevated to surgeon.”

  “He’ll be saved?”

  “Yes. By your hand.”

  “It would be better now. We need to operate now.” Hearing the news also had Miri out of breath. Her words came quickly. “He’ll lose less blood. Have a better chance. To live.”

  “You know the operating theaters are shuttered at night. We can’t see well enough.” He pushed so close his legs pressed on her skirts. “Did you hear me? You’re being promoted.”

  “Surely we can compensate with candles. Gas lamps.”

  “We can’t.” He cleared his throat. “Miriam. You’re a surgeon now.”

  The house behind them was loud with women’s voices, but as the news took hold it all seemed far away from where Miri stood. “Surgeon?” she said. “You’re certain?” So many mocked her ambitions because she was a woman. Enough told her to give up the dream that she’d begun to hear them, to accept she would never be promoted no matter how great her skills. But oh, how she wanted it. The title would allow her to act without seeking permission, which meant she’d save so many more. She reached for a bench to steady herself.