Наоми Новик: Spinning Silver

Miryem said, “He borrowed six kopeks! At half a penny a day she’ll be four years paying it off. Don’t try to tell me that’s not a fair wage when she gets her dinner with us.”

Four years! My heart was glad as birds.

Flurries of snow and my mother’s cough both kept coming back long into the spring, but at last the days warmed, and the cough finally went away at the same time, drowned in soup and honey and rest. As soon as she could sing again, she said to me, “Miryem, next week, we’ll go see my father.”

I knew it was desperation, trying to break me loose from my work. I didn’t want to leave, but I did want to see my grandmother, and show her that her daughter wasn’t sleeping cold and frozen, that her granddaughter didn’t go like a beggar anymore; I wanted to visit without seeing her weep, for once. I went on my rounds one last time, and told everyone as I did that I was going to the city, and I would have to add on extra interest for the weeks I was gone unless they left their payments at our house while I was away. I told Wanda she still had to come every day, and get my father’s dinner, and feed the chickens and clean the house and yard. She nodded silently and didn’t argue.

And then we drove to my grandfather’s house, but this time I hired Oleg to take us all the way with his good horses and his comfortable wagon, heaped with straw and blankets and jingling bells on the harness, with the fur cloak spread over all against the wind. My grandmother came out surprised to meet us when we drew up to the house, and my mother went into her arms, silent and hiding her face. “Well, come in and warm up,” my grandmother said, looking at the sledge and our good new dresses of red wool, trimmed with rabbit fur, and a golden button at the neck on mine that had come out of the weaver’s chest.

She sent me to take my grandfather fresh hot water in his study, so she could talk to my mother alone. My grandfather had rarely done more than grunt at me and look me up and down disapprovingly in the dresses my grandmother had bought. I don’t know how I knew what he thought of my father, because I don’t remember him ever having said a word about it, but I did know.

He looked me over this time, out from under his bristling eyebrows, and frowned. “Fur, now? And gold?”

I should say that I was properly brought up, and I knew better than to talk back to my own grandfather, but I was already angry that my mother was upset, and that my grandmother wasn’t pleased, and now to have him pick at me, him of all people. “Why shouldn’t I have it, instead of someone who bought it with my father’s money?” I said.

My grandfather was as surprised as you would expect to be spoken to like this by his granddaughter, but then he heard what I had said and frowned at me again. “Your father bought it for you, then?”

Loyalty and love stopped my mouth there, and I dropped my eyes and silently finished pouring the hot water into the samovar and changing out the tea. My grandfather didn’t stop me going away, but by the next morning he knew the whole story somehow, that I’d taken over my father’s work, and suddenly he was pleased with me, as he never had been before, and as no one else was.

His other two daughters had married better than my mother, to rich city men with good trades, but none of them had given him a grandson who wanted to take up his business. In the city, there were enough of my people that we could be something other than a banker, or a farmer who grew his own food. City people were more willing to buy our goods, and there was a thriving market in our quarter behind our wall.

“It’s not seemly for a girl,” my grandmother tried, but my grandfather snorted.

“Gold doesn’t know the hand that holds it,” he said, and frowned at me, but in a pleased way. “You’ll need servants,” he told me. “One to start with, a good strong simple man or woman who won’t mind working for a Jew: can you find one?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of Wanda: she was already used to coming, and in our town there wasn’t much other chance for a poor farmer’s daughter to earn a wage.

“Good. Don’t go yourself to get the money anymore,” he said. “Send the servant, and if the customers want to argue, they have to come to your house. Get a desk, so you can sit behind it while they stand.”

I nodded, and when we went home, he gave me a purse full of pennies, five kopeks’ worth, to lend out to towns near ours that hadn’t any moneylender of their own. When we came home, I asked my father if Wanda had come while I was gone. He looked at me sadly, his eyes deep-set and sorrowful even though we hadn’t gone hungry for months now, and he said quietly, “Yes. I told her she need not, but she came every day.”

Satisfied, I spoke to her that day after she finished her work. Her father was a big man, and she too was tall and broad-shouldered, big square hands made red with work, the nails close-trimmed, her face dirty and her long yellow hair hidden away under a kerchief, dull and silent and oxlike. “I want more time to spend on keeping the accounts,” I said. “I need someone to go round and collect money for me. If you will take the work, I will pay you a penny a day, instead of half.”

She stood there a long moment, as though she was not sure she understood me. “My father’s debt would be cleared sooner,” she said finally, as if making sure.

“When it is clear, I will keep paying you,” I said, half recklessly. But if Wanda did my collecting, I could do a circuit round the neighboring villages and make new loans. I wanted to loan out that little lake of silver my grandfather had given me, and set a river-flow of pennies coming back.

Wanda was silent again, then said, “You will give me coin?”

“Yes,” I said. “Well?”

She nodded, and I nodded back. I didn’t offer to shake hands; no one would shake hands with a Jew, and anyway I knew it would have been a lie if they had. If Wanda didn’t keep to the bargain, I would stop paying her; that was a better guarantee than any other I could have.

Da had been angry and sullen ever since I went to work in the moneylender’s house. He couldn’t sell me to anyone, and I wasn’t home to work, and still we didn’t have much to eat. He shouted more and swung his hand harder. Stepon and Sergey spent most of their time with the goats. I ducked as much as I could and took the rest in silence. I closed my mouth with counting. If four years would have cleared my father’s debt, at half a penny, then two years would do it now. So two years was six kopeks. And I could work for two years more before my father would think the debt was paid. I would have six kopeks. Six silver kopeks of my own.

I had only ever caught a glimpse of so much money, my father letting two coins slip gleaming into the doctor’s open hand. Maybe if he hadn’t drunk and gambled up the other four, it would have been enough.

I didn’t mind going to strangers’ houses and knocking and asking them for money. It wasn’t me asking, it was Miryem, and it was her money, and she was going to give some of it to me. Standing on their stoops I could see inside, handsome furniture, warm fires. No one in their houses coughed. “I am here from the moneylender,” I said, and told them how much they owed, and I did not say anything when they tried to tell me the number was wrong. At a few houses, someone said they couldn’t pay, and I told them they needed to go speak to her at her house if they did not want her to send it to the law. Then they gave me something after all, so they had been lying. I minded even less, then.