The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online Page A

look like Kansas.”
    â€œWhat is Kansas?” Rachel asked.
    Just then Gitl dropped back and listened to them. Hannah was afraid she would interrupt them or make her ride in the wagon. But all Gitl said was “Kansas, it is in America. Near New Rochelle.” Then she walked away, laughing.
    As they wound on through the forest, Hannah guessed everybody from the shtetl was there. The littlest children and some of the older women rode in the open wagons, but everyone else walked. Sunlight filtered through the canopy of large trees, spotlighting the forest.
It was even more magical than the forest in Oz
, Hannah thought. When she stopped for a moment to take it all in, the girls complained.
    â€œGo on, go on,” Shifre said. “What happened next?”
    Putting her arm around Hannah’s waist, Rachel smiled. “Let her be. She is only catching her breath.”
    â€œ
You
are the one who has trouble catching her breath,” said Yente the Cossack. She wrinkled her long nose. “But Chaya has plenty of breath. Shifre is right. What happened next to this Dorothy Gale?”

    Hannah was in the middle of a muddled version of
Hansel and Gretel
, having temporarily run out of movies and books and fallen back on the nursery tales she told Aaron or the Brodie twins, when her attention was arrested by a high, thin, musical wail. She stopped in mid-sentence.
    The others heard it at the same time and Yente clapped her hands.
    â€œThe
klezmer!
” she cried out. “We’re almost there.”She had been holding Hannah’s arm, but pulled away half a step to look longingly toward the front of the line.
    For a moment, Hannah was almost annoyed at having her audience distracted. “Don’t you want to hear any more?” she asked.
    â€œNever mind her, Chaya,” Rachel said smoothly. “How are you to guess Yente knows songs like you know stories? She will leave the dinner table, even, at the sound of a clarinet. So ignore her and finish about this witch. Does she push Gretel in the oven or not?”
    But the mood was broken and a new mood took over the villagers as the sound from the clarinet reached them. The pace of the walk, which had become leisurely, quickened. Even the horses picked up their step. The constant chatter stopped. Everyone seemed to be straining to listen.
    Then another instrument joined in. It took a moment for Hannah to realize that the second was a violin. It certainly wasn’t like the one she had labored on in Suzuki class so long and with so little result. This violin had a piercing, insistent sweetness of tone, almost like a baby crying.
    The wagons came to a halt as the
klezmer
band came around a bend in the forest path. Hannah saw that there were three musicians in all: the clarinet, the violin, and an accordion. The music was fast and full of a wild energy.
    The band members strode down the line of villagers. Behind them came Shmuel, dancing with abandon, his hands above his head and his black hair a dark haloaround it. Yitzchak followed him, big hands clapping in rhythm. Other men soon joined them. Laughing and shouting encouragement, the women watched from the side. Then they began to sing.
    â€œSing, Chaya!” Shmuel called as he danced by her. “Sing!”
    â€œI don’t know the words,” she called back. But even as she said it, she found herself singing, the words stumbling out as if her mouth remembered what her mind did not, as if her mouth belonged to Chaya, her head to Hannah. She began to clap madly in rhythm until the tune came to an abrupt end.
    â€œLook,” Rachel cried above the noise, the breathiness back in her voice, “they have even brought a
badchan
. Fayge’s father must have a lot of money.”
    â€œOr an only daughter,” Esther added.
    â€œThen why is she marrying Shmuel?” Shifre blurted out. Looking at Hannah apologetically, she added, “I mean he is handsome but he is not so