To & Fro

By Leah Hager Cohen

A tale of two girls—one living in a parable, the other in Manhattan

Ani, journeying across a great distance accompanied by a stolen kitten, meets many people along her way, but her encounters only convince her that she is meant to keep searching. Annamae, journeying from childhood to young adulthood alongside her mother, older brother, and the denizens of her Manhattan neighborhood, never outgrows her yearning for a friend she cannot describe. From their different worlds, Ani and Annamae reach across the divide, perhaps to discover—or perhaps to create—each other.

Told in two mirrored narratives that culminate in a new beginning, To & Fro unleashes the wonders and mysteries of childhood in a profound exploration of identity, spirituality, and community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
• Release date: May 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781954276260

Book preview

Cover: To & Fro by Leah Hager Cohen

Select Praise for

LEAH HAGER COHEN

A masterful writer on every level. —Lily King

One of our most gifted and insightful writers. —Ann Packer

Cohen writes about difficult subjects with unfailing compassion and insight. —Tom Perrotta

Cohen is one of our foremost chroniclers of the mundane complexities, nuanced tragedies and unexpected tendernesses of human connection. —Susann Cokal, New York Times Book Review

Cohen creates gorgeous, uncommon descriptions that sound like grace notes on her pages. —Sarah Pekkanen, Washington Post

Cohen’s empathy is sure-footed and seemingly boundless; her writing gifts its characters with glints of ordinary human radiance. —Leslie Jamison, San Francisco Chronicle

A masterful talent. —People

Cohen has secured a place in the lineup of today’s great writers. —BookPage

Cohen is a wonder with dialogue, catching authentic character beats in thought-provoking sentences. —Jewish Book Council

Cohen excels at family drama. —Library Journal (starred review)

Cohen delicately conveys the uncertainty and moodiness of young girls. —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

With gorgeous prose, Cohen skillfully takes us from past to present and back again as she explores the ramifications of family loss, grief and longing. —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Author’s Note

As this novel came into being, I began to understand that its two strands do not run parallel so much as yearn toward each other. It became clear that the truest form for this book would be a tête-bêche*, a volume whose twin parts are printed upside-down to each other, beginning at either end of the book to meet in the middle.

The paperbound version of To & Fro exists just so. In fact, the two parts don’t simply meet in the middle—they kiss: The final chapters are printed in columns, so that the stories may lap up against each other on the page.

The ebook preserves the reader’s choice of whether to begin with "To or with Fro." While it doesn’t offer the visual experience of the final chapters flowing together, it does allow for greater ease of verifying echoes within the text.

_____________________________________

* I learned the French term very late in the process, and was amazed to discover the format has historically been associated with devotional books. In life, a person might occasionally receive a powerful sense of a connection that can never be fully illuminated or explicated. Perhaps To & Fro is less a riddle to be solved than a praise song to that mystery.

To

&

Fro

_________________

LEAH HAGER COHEN

Logo: Bellevue Literary Press

First published in the United States in 2024

by Bellevue Literary Press, New York

For information, contact:

Bellevue Literary Press

90 Broad Street

Suite 2100

New York, NY 10004

www.blpress.org

© 2024 by Leah Hager Cohen

My Destination from Parables and Paradoxes, Ninth Edition, by Franz Kafka is reprinted with permission from Penguin Random House.

This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, events, and places (even those that are actual) are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cohen, Leah Hager, author.

Title: To & fro / Leah Hager Cohen.

Other titles: To and fro

Description: New York : Bellevue Literary Press, 2024.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023043651 | ISBN 9781954276253 (paperback) | ISBN 9781954276260 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.

Classification: LCC PS3553.O42445 T6 2024 | DDC 813/.54--dc23/eng/20231113

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023043651

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a print, online, or broadcast review.

Bellevue Literary Press would like to thank all its generous donors—individuals and foundations—for their support.

Cover design by Alban Fischer

Book design and composition by Mulberry Tree Press, Inc.

Bellevue Literary Press is committed to ecological stewardship in our book production practices, working to reduce our impact on the natural environment.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

First Edition

10987654321

paperback ISBN: 978-1-954276-25-3

ebook ISBN: 978-1-954276-26-0

To Barney Karpfinger

To

There is no before and after in the Torah.

—Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael 15:9:1

Bugle

What can it mean?

The Captain’s question cut through the otherwise still morning air. His voice came from just the other side of the stable wall.

I was crouched in the last stall. I’d come to visit the kittens, which had lately begun wobbling around on splayed legs. Their teeth were coming in, too; Agrippina would let them nurse only a little while now before she’d use her hind paws to push them off her teats. Then she’d saunter off to be alone. Whenever she did this, her kittens would strike up a miniature lament. Their mews made me think of a crank-handle music box: tiny pins plinking against a tiny metal drum.

Then I would try to comfort them with stories about themselves. Once upon a time there was a little black kitten who cried for its mother, I’d whisper. Suddenly, the calico kitten climbed right on top of its back—and crossed over—only to tumble into the apricot kitten. It was a kind of game, guessing what they’d do next. Trying to say it just before it happened. As if my storytelling was what created their actions.

A bugle—there! The Captain’s voice sounded again. Don’t you hear it?

An answering grunt. That would be the caretaker.

No?

The caretaker must have shaken his head.

I myself did not know what he was talking about, either.

Moments later the Captain came striding into the stable. I made myself perfectly still, as if I mustn’t be caught. I don’t know why. I wasn’t being naughty. But—as if we, too, were playing a game—I stayed hidden. He went to the only stall that held an actual horse and, with a word of greeting to Genoveva, who nickered back, began tacking her up. Brush, blanket, saddle: I could follow his movements from the sound each made. Tuneless song of bristle and wool, leather and metal. Then it grew quiet. Genoveva was quiet, too.

For a long moment, although I strained for some clue as to what he was doing, I heard nothing. Only the mourning doves in the eaves. I wanted to peep over into the next stall, but I remained where I was. Listening to the nothing. Listening to him listening. Was he hearing a bugle still?

I had the idea he was serene. Or really—this is strange to say—happy.

When the Captain led Genoveva out, I stepped into the stableyard behind them, no longer making any effort to remain unseen. In fact, now it was the opposite. His failure to notice me felt unnerving. I wondered where he was going.

When he mounted the horse and rode toward the gate, I trotted after, crunching noisily over the pea stones.

Five winters had passed since my mother and I set out from our home in the snow. Five thaws had come since I collapsed, alone, on the hill that led up to this stableyard. Five years I had remained in this place and many times seen the Captain go out riding. Never had it caused in me the peculiar feeling I had now.

The caretaker was in his usual spot, reclining on the tractor seat of an old plow. It was just the seat. I had never known it to be part of anything larger. He wore his fur-lined hat. Had his grizzled chin angled toward the sun. His eyes shut tight, as if concentration would help him receive its warmth. The early-spring light was thin as foremilk.

As Genoveva drew level with him, she let out a plummeting breath. You could see the misty staircase of it hang in the air.

The caretaker opened one eye. Where’re you offta?

Away from here, the Captain said. Only—away from here. Always away. Only so will I reach my destination.

It was more riddle than answer.

The caretaker must have thought the same. He opened the other eye. So you know your destination?

Yes. Didn’t I say? Away-From-Here, that is my destination.

The caretaker’s arms came uncrossed. He maneuvered himself more upright on the tractor seat and objected, almost as if taking offense. You have no provisions with you.

I need none, the Captain said. The journey is so long that I must die of hunger if I don’t get anything on the way.

It wasn’t only his words that were strange. It was the formal way he spoke them. As if they were stamped in gold. No provisions can save me. For it is, fortunately, a truly immense journey.

This was so preposterous I thought he meant to be funny, and I laughed.

At last he turned. He seemed neither surprised nor bothered to find me there. On the contrary, he lifted his hat in greeting. I had the impression—perhaps wrong—that his smile held regret.

Now the caretaker, who rarely moved faster than a yawn, scrambled to his feet.

But the Captain only clucked his tongue and Genoveva resumed her leisurely pace. They passed through the gate—it was always left open—and went down the road.

Lost and Found

We called him the Captain for a joke. There were no boats, there was no sea. Although some said the land here had once been underwater. That his ancestors had been ships’ captains. That the roof beams of the house had once been masts and bowsprits.

His actual name was Malachi, and he no more captained us than we served or obeyed him. It was his family’s estate, that’s all. He made us welcome there.

When I was younger, there had been more of us, those who’d come from elsewhere. Some had heard of the place with the always open gate and come by intent. Others, as I had done, stumbled upon it by chance.

If anything, it was the Captain who served us. In all sorts of ways. He didn’t leave chores to the cook and the caretaker. In the time I’d been here, I’d seen him do it all: tool leather, grease wagon wheels, sharpen knives, empty chamber pots. No task was above or beneath him. He took care of people, too. If someone had an infection, he’d bring them an onion poultice to draw it out. If someone needed to tell their story, he’d sit and listen for hours. If someone was too unwell to care for their children, he’d take the little ones hunting for salamanders by the creek. If they couldn’t find any salamanders, he’d fold them some out of paper.

People came and people went. Most, you could tell, had something wrong with them. I remember a girl my age. She had a high, thin voice and a chin that flowed seamlessly into her neck. Her left arm stopped at the elbow. I remember a man who would sit staring at nothing. His breath smelled yeasty. Sometimes he would rock. I remember another man with a bald pate the color of beet juice. Why is it that color? I asked the cook. She said he painted it with iodine. Why? I asked. She just sucked a breath through her teeth and shook her head.

I remember a woman with terrible eyes. The top lids were always drowsy and the lower ones drooped away from her eyeballs, so you could glimpse the raw inner part. I remember a man who had no voice—he could make only a sort of bark, which he’d use to summon people’s attention. It had the opposite effect on everyone, me included. Even animals flinched and veered from his path. Only the Captain did not avoid him. Once I saw the Captain embrace him. The man closed his eyes and rested his cheek against the Captain’s own.

What is this place, then, an infirmary? I once heard someone ask. Some kind of asylum?

Just a way station, the Captain replied. Just a lost and found. He added quietly, perhaps to himself, Same as anywhere on this Earth.

It was a simple place, only the main house and a few outbuildings—stable, root cellar, smokehouse, shed. Beyond the upper field, remnants of an ancient apple orchard bore scant fruit. Beyond the creek, a juniper forest spread dark and dense.

Not everyone had obvious ailments. I remember a woman I liked to follow around. She wore her hair in a great halo that glistened like black soapsuds. She had a perfect mole tucked below one eye. She planted tomatoes in tubs outside the kitchen, and broad beans and squash and amaranth. Her bottom swayed when she walked. Like water carried in a bucket. I tried to copy her gait. I practiced until the cook said, What’s the matter with your hip?

People stayed as long as they needed, left when they were ready. Sometimes they showed up alone, sometimes in a group. Some came separately and left together. Or the other way around. There was always a place to sleep, even if it meant several to a room, pallets crowded upon the floor. There was always food to eat, even if the cook complained, even if sometimes all it was was bread and cabbage. There was always work to do. Taking care of the animals, tending the garden, helping in the kitchen, hanging laundry, scrubbing floors. Some people liked to mend things that were broken. Some liked building new things from scratch. Some people needed to be just quiet. Lie in bed or walk the fields. Figure out where they were going.

How do they figure it out? I asked the cook.

They just do. She was plucking a grouse.

How do they?

They listen.

For what?

How should I know?

Then why did you say it?

She made an impatient sound and went on pinching off feathers and flicking them in the bin.

Most people stayed days, maybe weeks. A few stayed longer, months or seasons. For some time now, no one new had come through. For some time now, it had been just us: the caretaker, the cook, and me.

And the Captain. Malachi. Which means messenger. The cook had told me so.

Is he one? I’d asked.

One what?

Is he a real messenger?

No more than he’s a real captain, far as I can tell.

Story Game

In the story that plays in my head, my mother tells me stories about me.

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Ani, she whispers, who didn’t like to fall asleep. At night she would lie on the sheepskin and her mother would draw sentences on her back and Ani would try to guess what they said.

I have lifted my nightshirt so I can feel her tracings on my bare skin. I feel a circle and guess. The sun?

Silence.

The moon?

Yes.

I feel two lines and murmur, A road?

More lines.

A ladder?

Swirls.

Oh! A tree. The moon was shining on a tree.

Yes.

In the story that plays in my head, my mother tells me stories that come true.

That night, she whispers, a strong wind blew.

Outside our dwelling the trees churn their branches, rustle their leaves.

So long was the wind’s reach, Ani felt it even as she lay inside.

A breeze stirs my hair, gentle as my mother’s breath.

So long was the wind’s reach, it even blew the candle out.

Behind closed lids, the room grows darker.

This wind came from so far away, it sang in a different tongue.

And as I drift, my cheek upon the sheepskin, a lullaby comes, sung in the voice that is most familiar to me, in a language I do not know.

How sweet this belief that the world acts in accordance with my mother’s stories. As if letting itself be invented by them.

Unwhole

At the Captain’s house I grew used to leave-takings without farewell.

People come, people go; we don’t make a fuss. We don’t throw a party. There’re no speeches, no crying. Nobody stands around waving a white handkerchief.

I never questioned it until the beautiful woman left. The one with the perfect mole beneath her eye. Out in the garden, her squash hung heavy on the vine, but up in the room where she’d been staying, her things were gone, her pallet stripped and rolled against the wall.

Why didn’t she tell me she was leaving? I demanded of the cook.

She shrugged. She was standing over a bowl of squash blossoms and another bowl of beaten egg. On the stove she was heating a cast-iron pan.

Why? I repeated. I was panting from having run down the stairs and there was a rushing in my ears.

The cook began dipping the blossoms in egg batter, one by one.

The rushing grew louder. Heat prickled at the back of my neck. The fury that had begun coming more frequently of late rose in my gorge. I snatched up the bowl of blossoms and dashed it against the wall. The slender orange bulbs leapt up like long-necked birds.

I braced for a smack. It didn’t come.

The cook wiped her hands on her apron and added a little flour to the batter.

I got on my knees and began gathering the squash blossoms from among the shards, one by one.

Why didn’t she tell me? I asked again, but quietly now. Wiping my nose on my sleeve.

No one’s not broken in some way or other is what the cook replied.

I thought of what I’d long known about the people who came and went: Some were visibly unwhole. Now I glimpsed what I had not understood: The rest were also unwhole.

I brought the blossoms back to her. Tipped them from the hammock of my apron onto the worktable. How am I broken?

You? The cook made a sound like she was drawing on a clay pipe. You’ll figure it out for yourself. When you’re ready.

How do you know?

You will or you won’t.

Now side by side we were dusting off the blossoms.

What about you? I asked.

We finished cleaning the flowers. She went toward the fire and flicked some water on the pan. It sizzled.

How are you broken? I prodded.

Quick then, like she was playing, the cook spun around and flicked some water at me.

A Cry

I am used to leave-takings without farewell, but there are limits.

I am used to leave-takings without farewell, but the Captain wasn’t supposed to be one of the ones who left.

I kept playing it over in my head, what he had said. That he didn’t need any provisions because if he couldn’t get what he needed along the way, he’d die.

He’d said it the way a person might say, I don’t need to take anything because I’ll be back in time for supper.

Part of what made our calling him the Captain a joke is that he could be—not foolish. But careless of practicalities. There in the stableyard after the Captain rode through the gate, I wondered, Was it just his careless way that made him speak so strangely? But what he’d said next had sounded not careless at all, and had been stranger still: For it is, fortunately, a truly immense journey.

I stood baffled in the morning’s chill, listening to the fading clops of Genoveva’s hooves, trying to suss out the meaning of his words. Trying to understand what good fortune lay in a journey’s being immense. Trying to figure out what to do next. I listened. For what, I did not know. There was only the commonplace warble of mourning doves nesting in the eaves. The caretaker’s grunt as he lowered himself back onto the tractor seat.

Then a cry, thin as a paper cut, made me look down. I’d forgotten—I’d been carrying one of Agrippina’s kittens this whole time, ever since following the Captain out of the stable. It peered over the pedestal of my palm at the pea stones far below. For it, a distance of terrible proportions.

I raised it to my mouth, brushed my lips across its apricot fur. Whispered into its triangle ear the Captain’s strange words. Away-From-Here.

Sharply the kitten flicked its ear.

Go, I felt this meant.

Provisions

Quickly then—

From the cupboard in the upstairs hall: a woolen pullover and a woolen hat.

From the floor beside my bed: the nightshirt I’d stepped out of that morning.

From the shelf beside my bed: toothbrush, tooth powder.

From the hook beside the back door: rucksack and jacket.

From the pantry: a box of soda crackers, a box of prunes.

From the root cellar: onions and apples.

From the kitchen: a wedge of cheese, a slab of mushroom pie, and the remains of a roasted—Just what do you think you’re doing with that chicken? said the cook. Nothing! I set it back quick, in hopes she wouldn’t ask what else was in the bag.

From the back step: rubber boots.

From the stable: one of the bicycles from the stall next to Genoveva’s. I felt the tires and picked the firmest. Agrippina, sitting on the windowsill, lashed her tail at me. What? I said. She gave me a long, unsmiling stare. Why don’t you worry about your children next door? I told her. The other four kittens were mewing in the adjacent stall. The one I’d taken, which I’d slipped inside the jacket pocket, was quiet. I scooped a bedding of straw into the bike basket, set the apricot kitten atop, and pedaled out of the stable.

Halfway to the gate I skidded to a stop, leapt off, tore back into the house, up the stairs and down the hall to the Captain’s room, where I went to the standing mirror in the middle of his room. I yanked open the little drawer built into the bottom, snatched the small leather book he kept there, shoved it, along with his reading glasses, into my pocket, and clattered back down.

The caretaker, reclining on his seat, said nothing at all as I rode off the estate. The sun had risen higher by then and in the mellowing air he may well have fallen asleep.

Book

The road leading from the Captain’s house was downhill, and I sailed along at a good clip, now pedaling, now coasting, confident I would soon overtake them. Genoveva was a cob horse, after all—not much bigger than a pony, with short legs and a stout build.

On my back I wore the rucksack stuffed with the provisions the Captain had declared he didn’t need. In my pocket I felt the weight of his little leather book. I did not know why I’d brought it. Maybe in hopes that when I caught up with him, he’d be pleased.

Smaller lanes branched off the main road here and there, but they weren’t thoroughfares. Some led to hunting cabins or isolated cottages. Others were only old logging roads that led nowhere now but into regrown forests.

Deep in the woods to either side I spied occasional stubborn patches of snow, and my fingers were cold on the handlebars, but the sun kept climbing, and soon it was high enough to clear the canopy of trees and strike the road. My breath was no longer visible. The apricot kitten uncurled from its tight ball in the basket and stretched out on its side.

It was exhilarating to wheel along at such a speed, wind trilling in my ears. It was the time of year when the trees still look skeletal, but their branches are secretly studded with buds.

I rode past a pond I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know if it was because I’d come farther than I’d ever been, or because the pond was new.

I rode past a section of forest that had been scarred by fire and was now partly submerged in a bog.

I rode past a field dotted with haystacks neat as jelly rolls.

I rode past a writhing black heap that turned out to be crows feasting on carrion.

My palms grew sweaty on the handlebars. I kept wiping them, one at a time, on my pants. The road had long since leveled out, and I had to pump continuously. Then it began to climb, gradually at first, but soon it rose so steeply, I had to stand to make the pedals turn. My jacket hung loose and one pocket, weighed down by the Captain’s little leather-bound book, bumped against my thigh.

I puzzled over what had made me double back for it. It made no sense to me—neither my action nor the book itself. Although I had been taught my letters, I’d never been able to read words.

All I could read was the Captain’s face whenever he sat with the book. The soft wonder of his gaze as it traveled across the page. The way his glasses slid low on his nose, the way his lips, half hidden inside his reddish beard, moved ever so slightly without making a sound. Was it that he mouthed the words as he read them? Or simply that his face couldn’t help but register their effect?

With each pump of the pedals, I felt the book pulling me forward.

But what to?

Mirror Game

I had a game I used to play. By myself, alone, with the standing mirror in the Captain’s room.

A long mirror, the length of me, in a wooden frame that had a drawer built into the bottom and little screws that let the mirror tilt back and forth. I’d adjust it perpendicular to the floor and stand so close, my breath fogged the glass. Then I’d study the girl, the me-but-not-me who studied me back. Once we touched tongues. Me and my not-self.

To play the game, I’d let my eyes slip out of focus, hold my breath, and will myself—through.

Upon the exhale, I’d open my eyes. I’d arrived on the other side.

Then I’d look for proof that I’d crossed over. I’d try to spot some telltale difference, anything that might give this world away, reveal it as a copy and not the real thing. It was astonishing how similar everything appeared. Same number of acorns and oak leaves carved into the mirror’s frame. Same pattern of wrinkles in the coverlet on the Captain’s bed.