Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life (29 page)

“The Madam isn’t here?” he would ask, without looking directly at Toybe.

“No, the Madam isn’t here.”

“Oh, she’s not here? … What was it I meant to say? Do me a favor, Toybe …”

He never said what favor he wanted of her. He was so refined, he never raised his voice. But Toybe noticed that, during his infrequent visits to the kitchen, he never took his eyes off her slender, beautiful hands.

Toybe had great respect for her gentle master. When in the mornings she brushed his silk
kapote
with the slit down the back, or polished his soft boots, she felt as if some of his gentleness and wealth rubbed off on her.

Toybe seemed happy there. She acquired a suitcase full of underwear, ruffled blouses, sheets, and pillowcases. She even had her own bankbook, tucked in among the clean underwear.

However, in recent weeks Toybe had stopped paying her regular Sabbath visits.

“What’s wrong, Toybe? How come we don’t see you?” Mother asked, when Toybe finally showed up one week.

“I didn’t have time,” she said. “Last week I went over to a girlfriend’s. The week before I went to the synagogue. The bridegroom-to-be of another friend was being honored.”

“You don’t look so well, Toybe.”

“Really?”

To me it seemed that Toybe did look paler, but that only served to enhance her beauty and gentleness.

Several more Saturdays passed and again Toybe failed to show up.

“We haven’t seen Toybe lately,” Father remarked one Sabbath after his midday nap, sitting up in bed and yawning into the room.

“She was probably unable to come for some reason.”

That turned out to be the case. Her mistress had taken ill, Toybe said, when she finally made another Sabbath visit, and Doctor Fiedler had been called in to examine her.

“Doctor Fiedler?” Mother exclaimed with a look of alarm. “Was it that serious?”

“Very serious, Auntie.”

“And how is she now?”

“Much better, thank God.”

“What was wrong with her?”

“An inflammation of the lungs, Heaven preserve us.”

That Sabbath Toybe’s face was bathed in sweat. She looked exhausted, as though she were about to faint. This wasn’t the gentle pallor of several Sabbaths ago. Today, she didn’t tell any stories. Her eyes, blue by day and green by night, seemed to have no color at all.

She looked past Mother’s head at the dresser, which displayed a photograph of Mother’s daughter Tsipe, who was engaged to a brush-maker in Warsaw.

“Does Tsipe write to you?”

“Yes, she does.”

“When is she getting married?”

“Soon, though I can’t swear to it.”

“The bridegroom’s a brush-maker?”

“Yes, a brush-maker,” Mother replied somewhat absentmindedly, as if she wasn’t paying attention to what she was saying. She was staring curiously at Toybe.

Toybe’s face seemed to turn red, but that must have been because of the setting sun. The entire patch of sky visible through our window was aglow, together with Toybe’s face.

That Sabbath, Toybe stayed longer than usual. Shadows began to creep down from the ceiling. The smell of herring and stale hallah, the Sabbath bread, hung in the air. Father was sitting all alone at the table. Tapping on the table with the handle of a knife and swaying slowly from side to side, he was quietly drawing out the phrases of a Sabbath hymn.

“Are there stars in the sky yet?” Toybe looked out the window.

“No, not yet.”

“Can’t you stay longer, Toybe?” Mother asked.

“I really have to go.”

Toybe stood up slowly. Mother peered into the dark as if she were nearsighted.

“A good Sabbath to you,” said Toybe, taking her leave and forgetting this time to kiss me.

“Good Sabbath, good year. Don’t be a stranger.”

The room lapsed into deep silence. Then, from behind the stove, a cricket started up a persistent chirping.

“Leyzer!” Mother called to him. “Leyzer!”

Her voice was muffled, subdued, as if rousing someone gently from sleep.

Father continued his tapping.

“He’s a little deaf,” Mother said to herself and then recited her own prayer, joining her chant with Father’s drawn-out mumble.

We didn’t see Toybe again for some time afterward. Mother meant to go to the house of Toybe’s wealthy employers, to see if Toybe wasn’t sick, God forbid. But somehow, Mother never managed to go.

It was a Sabbath afternoon and we had just done eating. The reflections of large, puffy clouds sailed across the windows. Father pushed himself under the featherbed and fell asleep immediately.
Mother went over to the bookcase and took down the storybook
A Son of Two Mothers
, wiped the gold-rimmed spectacles she had brought back from Warsaw, and was settling down to continue reading the fascinating tale of Rudolf the scoundrel and the beautiful, innocent Carolina.

Here, in our new dwelling, Mother read a lot of books, not so much for her own enjoyment, but for the entertainment of the neighboring women, who gathered in our house, like hens flocking onto their roosts, to listen as Mother read to them.

A week earlier, Mother had stopped at the point where the innocent Carolina had mysteriously vanished from the palace of her father, the millionaire count. She now opened the book to the page where a corner had been turned down to mark the place, and waited for her audience to assemble. I, myself, was waiting eagerly and impatiently to hear the end of the story, but apart from that, I simply loved to hear Mother read.

Her delivery was so clear that even a child would have had no trouble understanding. She read in a kind of incantation peculiarly her own, a blend of the two different intonations used, respectively, for the reciting of the penitential prayers of the High Holidays and the reading of the Yiddish women’s Bible. When Rudolf the scoundrel tormented the beautiful, noble Carolina, Mother screamed and fluttered her hands. Rivkele, the young wife of Meyer the soldier, who always brought along several slices of
hallah
and hot tea in a bottle, couldn’t bear it any longer.

“Frimet!” she pleaded. “Stop for a moment. This can’t be happening. It just breaks my heart!”

And when Mother came to the part where Carolina took a moonlight stroll with her beloved, the duke, while the birds twittered in the trees, her voice dropped to a hush and filled with such feeling that each of her listeners imagined herself strolling with the duke in the moonlight among the twittering birds.

But on that Sabbath I was not fated to hear how the story of the innocent Carolina ended.

God only knows why none of Mother’s listeners showed up that afternoon. Did they discuss the matter among themselves and come to some mutual agreement? Were they angry with her? Mother didn’t know what to make of it. Meanwhile, she began reading to herself. She turned a page, then turned it back, took off her spectacles and put them on again, but was unable to concentrate.

While Mother was still in a quandary over her missing auditors, the door suddenly flung open and a tiny woman with red, flaming cheeks burst into the room. She wasn’t part of Mother’s reading group. It was Reyzl, Itshe Bik’s widow and a distant relative of Mother’s.

Reyzl would drop in to see us every six weeks or so. She was very short, as if her growth had been stunted, and when she sat down her feet never quite reached the floor. Mother always shoved a footstool under her, so she wouldn’t look ridiculous with her feet dangling in the air.

Reyzl liked to drink tea with lemon when she came to visit us. She would pour out her heart to Mother. Her own children, she bemoaned, were ashamed of her and begrudged her anything. She cursed her sons-in-law and daughters-in law, and always berated Mother for not finding her a respectable match.

“After all, I’m all alone, like a stone,” she said between sips of the steaming tea. “How long am I supposed to remain without a husband?”

“But Reyzlshi,” Mother suppressed a smile, “this would be the fourth …”

“So what? Am I that old?”

Certainly not. By no means could Reyzl, Itshe Bik’s widow, be considered old. She had red, flaming cheeks that always seemed to be chuckling, thin, dainty lips, and a network of creases enfolding her soft neck. She walked with little dancing steps, thrusting herself forward. She was constantly complaining to the Almighty, summer and winter, for making it either too hot or too cold.

Reyzl didn’t think much of the beautiful Carolina and of Rudolf the scoundrel.

“Made-up stories,” she scoffed. “Who cares about Rudolf and his whole … what’s her name … Carolina, Shmarolina. It’s all not true, anyway.”

This was the Reyzl who had just burst through our door in a state of great agitation.

“Frimet!” she cried.

Mother quickly put down her storybook and stood up, an astonished look on her face.

“A good Sabbath to you, Reyzl!”

“Are you alone?” was how Reyzl responded to Mother’s greeting.

“What do you mean, ‘alone’?” Mother wrinkled her nose, a sign that now she was frightened.

Reyzl immediately set her little eyes on me, all the while nodding at Mother. I looked from one to the other, trying to understand the wordless conversation they were conducting with their eyes.

“Mendl,” Mother said, “go outside for a minute.”

“What for?”

“Do as you’re told!”

I didn’t want to go out.

“Just for a minute. Go!” Reyzl shook her small, foolish head at me.

It was she who closed the door behind me. I remained standing on the other side, angry and ashamed. What evil spirit sent that stupid cow here today! Who asked her to come? So she had a secret to tell. Couldn’t I hear it, too?

Actually, whenever there were secrets to be told, I was always sent outside. This time, though, I decided to stand firm and stationed myself behind the kitchen door to eavesdrop on their conversation. I put my ear to the closed door and peeked through the keyhole, but I couldn’t hear or see a thing. It must have been a really big secret for them to speak so softly, a terrible secret, too, for suddenly the door burst open and I saw Mother throwing on her fur winter coat.

Within those few minutes of their talk about the secret, Mother’s face had taken on a drawn, panic-stricken look. Reyzl’s dainty lips trembled, like in a fever. Father had heard nothing. He lay asleep, his nostrils pointing at the ceiling.

In her great haste, Mother couldn’t fasten her coat. Her head scarf didn’t sit properly on her skewed wig. She ran with little half-steps around the room, casting glances, first at Father, who was still fast asleep, then at me. She looked at me with bewildered eyes, as if she wanted to tell me something and was straining to remember what it was.

“Mendl!” Mother said sharply. “Don’t leave the house! When Father wakes up, tell him that there are some stewed pears on the shelf. I’ll be back soon.”

God forbid! Something terrible must have happened to somebody for Mother to rush off so, as if she were shot from a cannon. Reyzl danced after her, on her short, stumpy legs.

The house was now quiet, except for the wind. I was seized by a panic. I knew I was told not to leave the house, but I also knew that if I stayed, I would die. So I disobeyed Mother. Come what may, I simply had to find out what the secret was that had sent Reyzl over, and why Mother had rushed off in such frantic haste. I threw on my coat without buttoning it and also ran out of the house.

At the German church I wedged myself into a corner space, afraid that Mother might turn her head to see if anyone was following her. On Warsaw Street I hid once again in a doorway.

Mother and Reyzl turned into the lane alongside the
shul
, and I followed them. The lane was narrow and crooked, like a bent hoop. The white
shul
, with its round, blue windows, leaned against the low
besmedresh
, which jutted out slightly into the lane. The rest of the houses on the lane, small and pushed together, looked as if a windstorm had passed through and left them aslant, without them ever recovering their uprightness.

Something must have happened here.

The whole town, men and women forgoing their usual Sabbath-afternoon naps, had come running over to gape at the terrible disaster that had occurred. People were pushing and shoving, craning their necks, standing on tiptoe to peer over someone else’s head.

Every few minutes more people arrived, fresh packs of women. Mother and Reyzl had gotten entangled among all the beards and the wigs. I had no idea where they had disappeared to. I pushed my way through the cold
kapotes
of the men and the warm skirts of the women, past strange feet and elbows, trying to reach the spot that was the object of all the craning necks and peering faces.

Nobody seemed to know who I was. Nobody paid any attention to me, otherwise they wouldn’t have made the comments they did.

“Yes, the poor thing’s Leyzer the hay merchant’s.”

“What do you expect, having a stepmother!”

“Is the stepmother to blame?”

“Who else?”

“If one isn’t decent, a natural mother won’t make a difference.”

These were hailstones, not words. They were talking about my father, my mother. This meant that all the commotion, all that pushing and murmuring, must have something to do with us, with our family.

Just at the moment when I was finally able to get clear of all the skirts and
kapotes
, a long, drawn-out shriek rose above the heads of the crowd, followed by a prolonged scream that turned into a woeful wail.

“Dear God in heaven, let me die! Let me die!”

The crowd drew back in terror. The screaming stopped for a moment, slowly fading away, but soon started up again, echoing through the air.

“Oh, merciful Father, what more do you want of me?”

People averted their faces. An old woman in a nightcap shouted out of a toothless, shrunken mouth, “Men, away from here!”

There was a scraping of boots and shoes as people started moving back. It became less crowded. Suddenly I found myself up front, at the very spot toward which all the heads and noses had been turned.

Only then did I see that all around me, where the crowd had been the thickest, the snow was stained red. But the sun hadn’t set yet, its farewell glow lighting up the sky and the snow. The windows of the shul were still blue. Then why was the snow so red?