Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (13 page)

“Why shouldn’t I look? At a beautiful woman, you look,” Father jested.

“Ha, ha, ha …” Hodl crinkled her plump face. “I’m still something to look at. Isn’t that so, Reb Leyzer?”

“Stop it, Hodl!” Mother interjected.

“Why should I stop it? You’re not jealous, are you?”

“I’m not jealous, but I don’t like such jokes.”

“He doesn’t hear what you say to him anyway.” Hodl dismissed the whole matter.

It could very well be that Father didn’t hear anything. But I took in every word from beginning to end. It pained me the way she made fun of Father’s deafness. Her loud, vulgar talk hurt me to the quick. I came to hate that plump, overfed creature, like I would a spider. She made us feel cramped, and her shrieks filled the house. After only a week, she wheeled her battered trunk from the kitchen into the other room. From day to day she grew wider and her face, shinier.

During that time Mother lost the pretty, soft double chin she had acquired in Warsaw. Her face became longer, pointy. In the mornings she no longer wore the black silk petticoat that Aunt Gitl-Hodes had given her, but a plain, striped housedress. It made her look taller and leaner.

Hodl, on the other hand, swung her big hips like a cow. She walked around the house with her puffy arms bared to the shoulders. She dressed her blond wig with some thick, greasy ointment, whose smell irritated the nose and penetrated the gums. She never stopped chewing—pieces of cake, oily chunks of halvah—smacking her lips like Wladek when he chomped on his crusts of bread.

Hodl always ate with her face turned to the wall, never talking to anyone. If someone happened to surprise her while she was eating, she would hastily put her hand to her mouth, as if hiding something, and wait for the unwelcome intruder to be gone.

Hodl feared the evil eye. Twice a week, every Monday and Thursday, on Hodl’s instructions, Mother would fill a glass of water, drop a hot ember into it, dip her fingers into the water, and run them over Hodl’s face, while repeating, “Over all the desolate forests, over all the empty fields,” an incantation designed to drive away the evil eye.

My nose often tickled from the sweet smell of the oranges that Hodl nibbled on, or from the preserves she kept under her bed. And even though I didn’t like her, I still couldn’t resist stealing an occasional glance at her and the way she smacked her lips.

One time Hodl called me over, looked me in the eye, and offered me a piece of cake.

“Here, you rascal,” she said, “and if you’re a good boy, there’ll be more.”

Whether I was a good boy or not, I couldn’t say, but several days later Hodl called me over again, looked at me steadily, and offered me a piece of halvah.

“Eat it, boy,” she winked roguishly, pinching my arm. “Tasty, no?”

The halvah was indeed tasty, but did she have to pinch my arm? It hurt and left a bluish mark, which in time turned black. I was afraid Mother would notice it. I would gladly have forgone the pieces of cake and the halvah, if only to be spared her pinches.

It happened one Sabbath morning. The house hadn’t been straightened out yet.
The wet, yellow sand, sprinkled on the floor the night before, by now had dried and turned white. Cold plates, with even colder portions of fish, stood on the window sill. Mother was away, having rushed off to Aunt Miriam’s. Somebody there had taken sick. There was no hot tea in the house.
Old Pavlova, who came to the house on Sabbaths to light the stove, was late that morning. F ather, who had already finished going over the Torah portion of the week, wanted a glass of hot tea. Maybe because his mouth was so dry, he kept calling me t get up.

“It’s time for synagogue.”

It was warm and cozy under the featherbed, but the house was so chilly that I didn’t want to get out of bed.

“Soon, Father,” I answered. “In just a minute.”

But Father wouldn’t wait, neither for me nor for old Pavlova. He threw his prayer shawl over his
kapote
, pulled on his coat over the prayer shawl, ordered me, in God’s name, to follow him to the synagogue without delay, and left by himself.

I still didn’t feel like getting up. I started counting to a hundred and decided that I would jump out of bed at a hundred and one. But I kept on counting, and when I reached two hundred … I was still under the featherbed.

In the midst of my counting, I heard someone moving in the kitchen and the lock to the door snapping shut. What was going on? What did Hodl have in mind there? Before very long, there was Hodl, standing in the big room, probably unaware of how she looked. She wasn’t wearing a petticoat. All she had on was a pair of wide, white, ruffled bloomers whose billowing expanses resembled the pantaloons worn by the magicians I had seen at the fair. I also noticed that she wasn’t wearing a nightcap. Her uncovered hair was thin and gray.

What was Hodl up to? She ran her eyes quickly over the room, went to the windows, and drew the curtains.

What did all this mean? Why draw the curtains?

But Hodl clearly had something in mind. Before I could think things through, she slid toward my bed and sat herself down.

I broke into a feverish sweat. It was a shameful thing for me to have a strange woman sitting on my bed.

I still didn’t know what Hodl intended, but I quickly pulled the featherbed over my head and hid in its sweaty warmth.

“Why are you hiding?” Hodl pulled the featherbed back. “Here,” she said, “have a candy.”

“I don’t want any candies! Let me get up!”

“Stop screaming! You know, I once choked a boy who screamed like that,” she said in a voice suddenly turned hoarse.

For a moment I imagined that I was that boy and that Hodl had already choked me to death. Otherwise, I couldn’t understand what was happening.

My tongue was paralyzed and my toes grew so cold that they began to tingle.

“You little fool,” Hodl bent over me. “I’ve got oranges for you, and grapes, and walnuts. And what do you think I want from you?”

She never told me what she wanted but, without warning, grabbed my mouth between her thick, swollen lips.

I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was choking and tore my mouth from her lips. But Hodl was strong. She gripped my head with her hands, like a pair of tongs, and held me down. Within seconds I felt Hodl’s plump, forty-year-old body lying beside me.

“Darling,” she croaked, her voice now a rattle, “I’ll give you money … I have lots … I’ll even give you a watch. After all, you’re almost a young man … you should have a watch.”

I recalled, as if in a delirium, that Jusza had also talked to me in that same hoarse voice. But Jusza had warmed me when I’d come home, chilled to the bone, from the funeral. What was it Hodl wanted of me? I felt a tightness in my chest. I was now completely in Hodl’s hands, a mere speck of dust.

She hoisted me up. I couldn’t resist.

“Whatever I want, you’ll do!” she said, gnashing her teeth, as she tried to pull me on top of her.

Just then, as if by some miracle, I felt my own strength returning. I didn’t end up in the position that Hodl wanted me to be in. Somehow I slid over to the edge of the bed and from there rolled down onto the floor.

“Help! Help!” I gasped.

“Stop that yelling!”

Hodl rolled off the bed herself and, as I was crawling on all fours on the floor, she leaped on me and set a heavy foot down on my neck. There was no doubt, she was going to choke me, like that other unfortunate boy.

I didn’t know what gave me the idea. It must have been God Himself! I turned my head and sank my teeth into Hodl’s leg.

“Thief!” she shrieked. “Murderer!”

I let go of Hodl’s leg. She hopped up and down on one foot, like a bound goose.

“May you burn in hell, you dirty son of a bitch!” she screamed. “You wait! I’ll get even with you yet! A little bastard like you, and already you’re playing around with women, may the cholera strike you!”

She grabbed a candlestick from the table and hurled it toward where I was now standing, hastily pulling on my pants. The candlestick landed on the soft featherbed and lay there like a corpse. Hodl hopped into the kitchen on one foot. I must have looked like a corpse myself.

I got dressed in a split second, but I couldn’t leave through the kitchen. Hodl was sitting there. So I unlatched the window and, climbing over the plates of cold fish and the bowl of fish jelly, I jumped out the window.

“May you break your hands and feet and every bone in your body!” I heard Hodl say, her departing blessing to me.

Outside, I stumbled into a crowd of people and I must have gotten lost. What was the way to the synagogue? I strayed so far in the wrong direction that I ended up in the old park. Woe is me! What would Father say, and what would I tell him?

I finally found my way to the synagogue, where they were already halfway through the prayers. Father, wrapped in his prayer shawl over his head, gave me a sideways look, his eyes blazing with anger. He didn’t say a word. He just put his big hand on my shoulder and indicated the place in the prayer book where the service had reached.

I buried my face in the tattered, yellowed pages, but I couldn’t make out even the shape of a letter. Father’s heavy gaze lay burning on my back. Hodl’s outstretched body loomed between the lines. I had no idea when to turn the page, nor could I follow Moshke the cantor’s lead. Every few minutes Father poked out his face from behind the prayer shawl and growled at me, “Nu, ah …”

There was no talking in the synagogue, but Father managed a growl, more from his nose than his mouth.

“What took you so long? Why aren’t you praying? Why do you look so upset?”

It was an agony to get through the prayers, sheer hell. I kept praying to God for the service to be over already, so we could go home. But the walk home wasn’t any easier.

“What’s wrong with you, Mendl?” Father’s voice cut into my brain like a chisel.

“Nothing. Why should anything be wrong?”

“Why didn’t you come to the synagogue right after me?”

“I didn’t have a clean shirt,” I quickly made up a lie.

“What do you mean? Mother laid out a clean shirt for you on the chair.”

“I couldn’t find it.”

“Nu … ah … Mother wasn’t back yet?”

“No.”

“You look upset, Mendl. What’s wrong? Don’t you feel well?”

“I have a bad headache.”

This time I wasn’t lying. My head hurt, my temples were throbbing. I felt a wave of nausea rising from the pit of my stomach. Father gave me a prolonged look. I couldn’t tell whether he believed me or not. But he no longer pestered me with questions.

We walked on in silence. The snow crunched familiarly under our feet. At any other time I would have taken a slide in the frozen gutter, or slipped away from Father’s measured Sabbath pace to join a group of kids I knew, building a snowman. Today, however, the white Sabbath street looked totally black. I felt chilled. The snow crunching under my feet seemed to proclaim my sin. I was ashamed to walk beside Father, as if afraid of defiling his Sabbath garments with my unclean body.

By the time we reached home, the burners on the stove were white-hot. The pots were simmering under their lids. There was an aroma of goose fat, sweet cabbage, and burning wood.

By now Mother had returned from Aunt Miriam’s and told us what had happened. Uncle Shmuel had had too much to eat the night before and—it shouldn’t happen to us!—fell over on his stomach. Tuvye the doctor had to be called and treated him with leeches. Mother then proceeded to attend to the beds, going slowly from one bed to the other, plumping the pillows, straightening out the featherbeds. For just a moment, it seemed to me that Mother was lingering over Father’s bed. My heart skipped a beat. Did she notice something unusual? But she merely turned over the featherbed, folded it in two, and ran her hand lightly over its top.

Hodl was standing in the room, facing the window, wearing a black dress and a long gold chain around her neck. She was saying her Sabbath prayers. Prayer book in hand, she rocked her bulky girth lightly back and forth.

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, certain she would, at any moment, turn around and scream out why I was so late getting to the synagogue. I was preparing my answer. After all, I too had something to tell.

But Hodl never said a word. She went about her business, angry, sullen, not raising her head nor looking anyone in the face.

“Hodl,” Mother tried to probe her, “you seem upset. God forbid, is something wrong?”

Hodl didn’t answer. Shortly after we finished eating, she went out and stayed away the entire Sabbath day, and didn’t return until late that night, when Father was already sitting on the bed, pulling off his boots.

I made up my mind to keep my distance from Hodl. I now knew full well what all those pieces of cake and chunks of halvah meant. On Sabbath mornings I no longer dawdled in bed. In fact, I was often up even before Father himself.

Ever since that fateful Sabbath, Hodl stopped speaking not only to me, but to everyone else in the house. She pretended not to know anyone, she never asked anyone anything. For the better part of the day, she walked about the house, openly, in a sleeveless blouse, her arms bare. Again and again she would open her trunk and then bang it shut. She cooked for herself in Mother’s pots and pans, and would often break a glass. She seemed to have gone mad. Mother looked on, but kept silent.

Father, who left the house early in the mornings, never saw Hodl in this state. No sooner than he shut the door behind him, Hodl turned over in bed. By the time he returned, late in the evening, she had already tired herself out from carrying the burden of her anger all day long.

One day, when Mother—it should never happen again—was laid up in bed, Father stayed home, and that’s when he saw what was going on.

Hodl kept wandering around the house, from the kitchen to the big room, from the big room to the kitchen, dressed in her sleeveless blouse. That day she was very busy with her trunk, putting things in and taking them out, locking the lid and unlocking it, over and over again. Father was standing in a corner, in his prayer shawl and phylacteries, quietly saying his morning prayers. It was hard to know whether his eyes lingered on Hodl, but suddenly he began to pray louder and faster.